if you’ve lost years of your life to abuse or mental illness, please know it’s not too late for you. it’s never too late for you. you can do everything you dreamed of when you were a kid - there’s still time. you have time to shape yourself and your life into what you want. there is no time limit on happiness.
Please share!! By survivors for survivors is the MOST valid and best type of resource for anything sexual assault/abuse/trauma related.
LIFE IS ALREADY DIFFICULT ENOUGH FOR US AS SURVIVORS OF ABUSE AND ASSAULT. THE LAST THING WE NEED IS PEOPLE WHO ARE PURPOSEFULLY TRYING TO PREY ON OUR WEAKNESSES OR MAKE US FEEL LIKE IT WAS DESERVED BECAUSE IT WAS 100% NOT. THE OPINIONS OF THOSE PEOPLE DO NOT MATTER. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH, YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, YOU KNOW YOUR TRUTH, YOU KNOW YOURSELF. THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS. YOU DO NOT NEED TO PROVE YOURSELF TO ANYBODY. PEOPLE WHO WOULD EVEN THINK TO PUT YOU DOWN BECAUSE OF YOUR TRAUMA OR PURPOSEFULLY ENXOURAGE IT HAPPENING AGAIN ARE HORRIBLY SICK AND HAVE THEIR OWN VERY EXTENSUVE ISSUES AND HEALING TO DO, THEIR HATE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU OR THE VALIDITY OF YOUR TRAUMA. YOU ARE 100% VALID. YOU KNOW YOU ARE TELLING THE TRUTH. YOU KNOW HOW REAL IT IS. YOU KNOW THAT THEY COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND. YOU ARE SO STRONG.
(3/15) “A month before we got married I was sitting with my husband in a gravel lot behind the old Hidden Valley Catfish Restaurant. He said: ‘Detra, you’re a strong woman. Do you plan on being a submissive wife?’ I told him that I certainly would try my best. And he said: ‘Well if I can’t conquer you, God will.’ For our honeymoon we went to Eureka Springs and saw a live performance of The Passion of The Christ. The day we got home I moved my one box of things into his apartment. While he was at work I began to decorate. I laid out some of our wedding gifts. There wasn’t much, but I made it beautiful. And I couldn’t wait until he got home to see it. But he wasn’t smiling when he walked in the door. He said: ‘You touched my things.’ He made me put everything back. For the next 34 years of my life, I never felt like I had my own space. My only escape was music. I was the pianist for my husband’s church: at weddings I’d play my joy, at funerals I’d play my pain. It was the one thing that allowed my soul to stretch. Each of our seven children were musical, so we formed a band called Heart for Home and did it full time as a travelling ministry. Over an eight-year period we travelled across sixteen states in a fifteen-passenger van. Everyone played a different instrument. And I must say, we were good at what we did. We’d open every service with three bluegrass songs from the Heavenly Highways Hymnal. Then my husband would bring out the puppets, to loosen people up. After the puppets we moved onto the sermon. My husband preached the sermon. But not before I sang the special. I always sang the special. It was the one time I felt celebrated for being me. We came off the road after our oldest son Lucas joined the marines, and back in Arkansas I fell into a depression. I couldn’t lift a finger without a man’s permission. When I finally met with a therapist, she asked me the crucial question. She said: ‘Would you leave your husband if he was beating you? Because what he’s doing is worse than beating you.’ I’m ashamed to admit that I stayed for another eighteen months. Until that dusky dark evening, when I stepped out onto Interstate 40. And God pulled over to pick me up.”
This describes so perfectly what my ex narcissist did to me, using all the intimate details if my life I had shared with them against me as ammunition for the smear campaign right from the very beginning when I was still completely unaware of what was happening. Assassinating my character behind my back while somehow taking ownership of all my good qualities, adding them to his fake facade. And how people I thought were life long friends turned their backs on me.
I needed to see this again to remind myself of what really happened. My memory gets fuzzy and sometimes confused about the reality of the situation because it was so traumatizing I think. But I need to always remember.
This describes so perfectly what my ex narcissist did to me, using all the intimate details if my life I had shared with them against me as ammunition for the smear campaign right from the very beginning when I was still completely unaware of what was happening. Assassinating my character behind my back while somehow taking ownership of all my good qualities, adding them to his fake facade. And how people I thought were life long friends turned their backs on me.
