“Jeez, he was a jerk!”

Lana was a dear friend of mine for 10 years, before the light finally dawned and she – and I – realized my husband was emotionally abusive.
Strange to say, we both discovered what was ‘hidden in plain view’ around the same time.
Lana knew my husband quite well. She was someone he felt the need to […]

How to break the spell of abuse paralysis

Do you ever look at your situation, and ask yourself; “Why am I still struggling with this?  Why can’t I just move on?”
If that sounds like you, let me tell you about Sarah…
Sarah couldn’t have been more frustrated and disgusted with herself.  She knew exactly what she needed to do: she needed to stop giving […]

Who Do You Think You Are?

That’s a serious question, and one I’d like you to think about for a moment: how do you know who you are? (Most emotionally abused women really DON’T know.) Maybe it will help you if I rephrase it:
How do you get a sense of who you are?
Where does that sense come from?
And who would […]

“Out Of The Relationship, But Not Over It”

“Dear Annie, What can you do when you have been out of the relationship a while and you’re on a sort of plateau?  Life is better (obviously), and you no longer need to “fight” as much, with yourself or him, but you know you’re nowhere near over it? How do you move on from there?”  […]

Like mint and lemon balm

Burying your hurts and your pain  may once have been the best way you had of dealing with them.
If you knew, from bitter experience, that you were not going to get your needs met, and your hurts acknowledged, what else could you do?
Unfortunately,“Feelings buried alive never die” as Karol K Truman rightly observes in the […]