Always Daddy's Girl

I referred to this book in a recent blog entry on my SunshineGirlOnARainyDay page.

Here are some quotes from H. Norman Wright's book:
-"This daughter is emotionally deprived. Early on, she learned to avoid the fear of abandonment and isolation by denying feelings and pain... She is fearful that anyone else she opens her heart to may also be ripped out of her life."

On fear of intimacy:
-"She wants a man in her life, but she is unsure about trusting him. Any violation of trust from the man she cares about is further proof to her that she can't trust any man."

-"She wants to be loved and she wants to be loveable. But anger, mistrust and fear of intimacy with men can keep her from giving herself to a man."

On fear of abandonment:
-"I guess I'm tired of trying to make everything right just like I did when I was a child. I couldn't make men stay then, and now I'm afraid I can't keep you either."

On workaholism:
-"Many fatherless women pour their energy into work as a substitute for the fathering they never had..."

On distant, bystanding fathers:
"As his daughter's first example of a man, this father distorts her concept of how a man should behave, causing her to believe that all men are distant and detached like her father."

On weak fathers:
-"If you are the victim of a weak father, you must give up the idealistic hope that you can ever make him strong."

-"A strong man can turn the tide for a woman whose primary masculine model, her father, was weak. Her new model of strength can be a source of learning and guidance to her, filling the void created by a weak father."

On survival:
"The reason I'm here is because I'm a survivor. I had to be. I know I'm insecure emotionally, but I do survive."

“The artist’s response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write. Not to impose restrictive rules, but to rejoice in pattern and meaning. For there is something in all artists which rejects coincidence and accident…We must meet the precariousness of the universe without self-pity, and with dignity and courage.” - Madeleine L'Engle.

"One writes out of one thing only - one's own experiences. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art." - James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 1955.

"To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." - Roberta Flack (1989)

“Suffering in the Jewish tradition conveys no privileges. It all depends on what one makes out of that suffering. It is possible to suffer an entire lifetime, and still not give up the art of laughter.” – Eli Wiesel, after his imprisonment in a concentration camp and the loss of all of his loved ones

"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you" - Mary Tyler Moore.

"Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it." - James Baldwin (1962)