“If you bury things that are traumatic, as we sort of have to do sometimes because the brain almost does it for us, either you go back and explore that or you just leave it there. And I felt that if you don’t allow yourself to go to that place, you’re not really living your full life. At least I wouldn’t be living my full life. I needed to allow that experience to emerge — and that was awful, but it was necessary.”

A conversation with Elaine Pagels in the Rector’s Forum at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, January 12, 2020.

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