You Didn't Imagine It

If you, like me, have survived abuse and now are struggling, today's post will be my version of Tough Love. That's my goal, anyhow. My theory, based on the scientific study of my experience, is that when we're at our low times we start to bargain with our past and idealize the stories, and yearn for something we shouldn't ever want to go back to. That's why we need to tell the truth to ourselves in black and white. Not the watered-down version you told your concerned friends and family, or the complete denial that anything was wrong that you kept telling yourself. The. Truth. So here goes ... In my first post on this blog, Now What? , I touched on times when I've questioned if I should have stayed in my former life and put up with the abuse so that I could have more time with my children. Prior to freeing myself from that situation and starting my new life, I was a stay-at-home mom of 4 who also homeschooled. We were together every day, all day long. It was my w...

Have you ever felt so angry, so hurt, so incredibly betrayed by life that you end up stuck? Maybe you survived a nightmare that was so hellish and so soul-destroying that the majority of people couldn't even fathom situations like that existing, only to claw your way free to what now feels like a new hell - a hell you don't deserve. You've put in the weeks, months, maybe years of hard work on healing yourself, you've forged forward to the new shiny life everyone swore would be there waiting once you broke free ... And found something quite different. Now what? This is what I ask myself quite often now. I was there, in the literal 9th circle of hell. Some days I truly don't know how I made it through alive. My abuser kept upping the ante, and I slowly lost myself to years of narcissistic, emotional, and eventually physical abuse. When I finally reached out to a trusted person of authority in my life for help, they used their position of power to hurt me even worse. I...