Educated

"I had to teach myself that my own mind was worth trusting."

"I learned that history was not written by one person, but by many voices."

"In trying to become educated, I had to become someone my parents no longer recognized."

"Knowledge became my weapon against the darkness I had been raised in."

"I had to choose between the family I was born into and the person I wanted to become."

"You can love someone and still choose to leave them."

"There is a voice in my head that says I am not good enough, that I never will be."

"I understood that I had been educated, in a manner of speaking. But I had not been taught."

"I learned to read so I could read the scriptures."

"My father's view of the world was not just different from mine—it was constructed from completely different materials."

"I had never been to school, had never even been to a doctor or dentist."

"I was not safe in my father's house, but I was not safe anywhere else either."

"My education was a journey from darkness to light"

"I became myself when I stopped believing what I was taught to believe"

"The past shapes us, but it does not define us"

"I learned that questioning everything is the beginning of wisdom"

"I refused to let my father's reality be my reality"

"My story is not a story of victimhood, but of survival"

"I had to become a stranger to myself to become myself"

"I was educated in the shadows of Buck Peak"

"To forgive does not mean to forget or to accept"

"I learned more from my mistakes than from my triumphs"

"The truth is that I was not raised, I was hidden"

"I had to erase myself before I could remake myself"

"My father was a man of contradictions"

"Education gave me the language to understand my own life"

"I was taught to fear the world, so the world became something to fight"

"I had to choose between my family and my future"

"Some people cannot be saved if they do not wish to be"

"I became educated by refusing to accept what I was told"