The assault continues...

And the assault continues. Yesterday, I found a huge package on my doorstep, FedEx. I assumed it was just the monthly shipment of diapers and wipes, and I left it outside. This morning, however, I flipped it over and glanced at the return address. My father. And this one was addressed to me. I was, frankly, stunned. I mean, what the hell? What the HELL is going on?? Dh has a theory--that he expected me to come running back after a while, all full of apologies, ready to give in and offer to give myself away yet again. And I haven't. It's been over a year, and I haven't budged. I have stuck to my principles and self-worth, and it's driving him crazy....hence the assault, comprised of trying to insult me through gifts to my daughter, ad nauseaum. And now this.

I believe he's right. I don't know what's in that box, and I don't want to touch it. The thought just occurred to me that it might be anything of mine from my childhood that remains in his condo, just to let me know how furious he is with me. I'm going to let DH open that box. If I'm indeed right, fine. If not, I want him to give whatever it is to charity. Our porch storage closet is packed with gifts he has sent to my daughter, just waiting to go to Goodwill. She has enough toys and clothes from people who LOVE her. We are well off, we can afford to buy her toys and books and clothes and we need NOTHING from him. I've waited all my life to get to the point when I can announce that I don't need his money. I DON'T NEED HIS MONEY. EVER. AGAIN.

Fuck you, dad.

And for anyone else who thinks I'm not strong enough to hold out and value my self-worth, fuck you, too.

I have all the protection I need. A husband who would fiercely defend me to the death, emotionally and proudly, and has been military-trained.  And a lover, military-trained, technically proficient, and a Tai Kwan Do black belt. My daughter and I will be JUST fine.  

Speaking out on covert incest

Since today is SPEAK OUT day, I will add my voice to those of countless other victims of domestic violence. In essence, this entire blog is devoted to speaking out about one particular, insidious form of domestic violence: covert incest (also called emotional incest)--a term many people have never heard. 

COVERT INCEST

"...occurs when a child plays the role of a surrogate husband or wife to a lonely, needy parent. The parent's need for companionship is met through the child. The child is bound to the parent by excessive feelings of responsibility for the welfare of the parent. As adults, these children struggle with commitment, intimacy and expressions of healthy sexuality.

There is no physical, sexual contact in this form of incest. Yet, inherent in the relationship is an archetype of feelings and dynamics more comparable to young love than a nurturing parent-child alliance. They become psychological or emotional lovers." 

-From Sanctuary for the Abused (see link to page on the blogroll)

It is a quiet, devastating form of abuse that is accompanied by guilt, fear, and confusion. In my case, my father used me as his surrogate wife (my parents' relationship was an unhappy one, obviously), and our relationship was intense, emotional, physically expressive, and even at times felt as though there were a sexual energy attached.  Let me make it clear that there was no OVERT sexual abuse. However, the result of this relationship has been sexual frigidity, which, in my mid-thirties then turned on itself to become a raging sex addiction, lifelong severe and chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, physical illness, and much more. 

I have spent years in recovery for codependency, and more recently, love and sex addiction. Twelve step programs have been my sanity, and I highly recommend them (resources located to the left and right of this blog.) Therapy using EMDR, hypnosis, breathwork, and other forms of energy therapy have been most effective for me. This struggle will never end, but it can be coped with and lived with comfortably if one is able to do the inner work and walk through the pain to get to the other side.  

Three posts I have written explain in more detail what covert incest is, how to recognize it, and give a bit of background to my story: 

http://theworldthroughneweyes-liliacspring.blogspot.com/2011/04/beginning.html

http://theworldthroughneweyes-liliacspring.blogspot.com/2011/05/covert-incest-101.html

http://theworldthroughneweyes-liliacspring.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-recognize-covert-incest.html

 I truly hope this has helped. If you think you might have suffered covert incest, do not feel shame. This was NOT your fault; abuse, no matter what form, is NEVER the child's fault. Use the resources on the side bar if you need to. Feel free to contact me at liliacspring@gmail.com if you would like to know more. 

NOTE: Yes, I know "liliac" is spelled incorrectly...this was intentional in order to preserve my anonymity from angry, vengeful, prying family members.

Psychological abuse chart from Singular Insanity

What a fantastic post by one of my favorite bloggers! She posted a chart on the definition of psychological abuse, which was published in a Canadian study on the topic. The link to her article is http://www.singularinsanity.com/2011/11/what-is-psychological-abuse.html

I'm going to reproduce the chart here because it's a concise and accurate description of the various forms of psychological abuse out there. I hope you find it as useful as I have.

Neglectful Tactics	Deliberate Tactics
Denying Emotional Responsiveness -       failing to provide care in a sensitive and responsive manner; -       interacting in a detached and uninvolved manner; -       interacting only when necessary; -       ignoring the other person’s attempts to interact (for example, treating an older adult who lives in a residence or institution as though she/he is “a job to be done”)	Accusing, blaming and jealous control -       telling a person repeatedly that he/she has caused the abuse; -       blaming the person unfairly for everything that goes wrong; -       accusing the person of having affairs or flirting with others; -       making the person feel they cannot be trusted; -       checking up on their activities; -       demanding the person account for every moment of the day; -       using anger to control the other person.
Discounting –      not giving any credence to the person’s point of view; –      not validating the person’s feelings; –     claiming the behaviour was meant as a joke.	Criticizing behaviour and ridiculing traits -       continuously finding fault with the other person or making the person feel nothing he/she does is ever right; -       setting unrealistic standards; -       belittling the person’s thoughts, ideas and achievements; -       diminishing the identity, dignity and self-worth of the person; -       mimicking her/him.
Ignoring -       purposefully not acknowledging the presence, value or contribution of the other; -       acting as though the other person were not there.	Degrading -       insulting, ridiculing, name calling, imitating, or infantilizing; -       yelling, swearing, publicly humiliating or labelling the other person as stupid.
Denying or forgetting -       denying that any abuse has ever taken place; -       telling the person no one would believe the accusations because it is all in his/her head; -       forgetting promises or agreements.	Harassing -       repeatedly contacting, following or watching the other person; -       ‘keeping tabs’ on him/her through others; –sending unwanted gifts.

Countering -          implying something is wrong with the person who has hurt feelings or complains about not liking his/her treatment as a result of the abuse; -        contradicting what the other person says.	Corrupting/Exploiting -       socializing a person to accept ideas or behaviours that are illegal; -       using a person for advantage or profit; –training him/her to serve the abuser’s interests; -       enticing him/her into the sex trade; -       permitting a child to use alcohol or drugs
Minimizing / trivializing -        refusing to validate the other person’s feelings of hurt; -        suggesting that nobody else would be upset by the same treatment.	Terrorizing –      inducing terror or extreme fear in a person through coercion or intimidation; –      placing or threatening to place a person in an unfit or dangerous environment; –      threatening to hurt or kill a pet or loved ones; –      threatening to destroy possessions; –     threatening to have the person deported or placed in an institution.
Rejecting -       refusing to acknowledge a person’s presence, value or worth; -       communicating to a person that he/she is useless or inferior; -       devaluing his/her thoughts and feelings; -       repeatedly treating a child differently from other siblings in a way that suggests resentment, rejection or dislike for the child.	Isolating –     physically confining the person; –     restricting normal contact with others; –     limiting freedom and excluding an older adult from personal decisions; –     locking a person in a closet or room; –     refusing a person access to his/her own or jointly owned money; –     depriving a person of mobility aids or transportation; –     using others as pawns in relationships.

This information has been sourced from the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence.  "Psychological Abuse: A Discussion Paper" Prepared by Deborah Doherty and Dorothy Berglund. Ottawa: Public Health Agency of Canada, 2008. 


Thanks again to Singular Insanity for posting this!

How to Recognize Covert Incest

I wish I had seen this list a LONG time ago. 

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life
Bantam Books, 1990

(From http://botkinsyndrome.blogspot.com/2008/07/covertemotional-incest-checklist-long.html )

  

Indication of an Overly Close Parent-Child Bond

1. I felt closer to one parent than the other.
2. I was a source of emotional support for one of my parents
3. I was “best friends” with a parent.
4. A parent shared confidences with me.
5. A parent was deeply involved in my activities or developing my talents.
6. A parent took a lot of pride in my abilities or my achievements.
7. I was given special privileges or gifts by one of my parents.
8. One of my parents told me in confidence that I was the favorite, most talented or most lovable child.
9. A parent thought I was better company than his or her spouse.
10. I sometimes felt guilty when I spent time away from one of my parents.
11. I got the impression that a parent did not want me to marry or move far away from home.
12. When I was young I idolized one of my parents.
13. Any potential boyfriend or girlfriend was never “good enough” for one of my parents.
14. A parent seemed overly aware of my sexuality.
15. A parent made sexual remarks or violated my privacy.
    
    
    
    
    I recently came across a photo my dad took of me--he sent me a disk with my some childhood pictures he took of me as a gift--that shocked the *^#$ out of me. High school. I am posing for him. Seductively posing. I wanted to throw up. I don't remember this at all. 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Part B. Indication of Unmet Adult Needs
16. My parents were separated, divorced, widowed, or didn't get along very well.
17. One of my parents was often lonely, angry, or depressed.
18. One of my parents did not have a lot of friends.
19. One or both parents had a drinking or drug problem.
20. One of my parents thought the other parent was too indulgent or permissive.
21. I felt I had to hold back my own needs to protect a parent.
22. A parent turned to me for comfort or advice.
23. A parent seemed to rely on me more than on my siblings.
24. I felt responsible for a parent's happiness.
25. My parents disagreed about parenting issues.
    
    
    
    
    Part C. Indication of Parental Neglect or Abuse
26.  My needs were often ignored or neglected.
27. There was a great deal of conflict between me and a parent.
28. I was called hurtful names by a parent.
29. One of my parents had unrealistic expectations of me.
30. One of my parents was very critical of me.
31. I sometimes wanted to hide from a parent or had fantasies of running away.
32. When I was a child, other families seemed less emotionally intense than mine.
33. It was often a relief to get away from home.
34. I sometimes felt invaded by a parent.
35. I sometimes felt I added to a parent's unhappiness
    
    
    
    
    CHECK, CHECK, CHECK TO ALL. If you find yourself checking off all of these indicators, please, be kind and gentle to yourself and realize you were the VICTIM. Nothing that happened was your fault. Children do NOT cause their own abuse. 
    "If your checks tend to be clustered in the first and second sections, you may have been enmeshed with a Romanticizing or a Sexualizing Parent. If your checks are clustered in the second and third sections, you may have been enmeshed with a Critical/Abusive Parent. If you have checkmarks sprinkled throughout these three sections, you may have been alternately loved and abused by the same parent, or one parent may have abused you while the other adored you. Reflecting on your life history will help you sort this out."

Mindfucked

Reading from Sanctuary for the Abused, I came across this passage, which helps clear my confusion about 1) how this covert incest with my father, where sexual acts did NOT occur, led to my struggle with sex and love addiction and 2) why I had to completely exorcise him from my life in order to get better (I'll go into this more in a later post).

...since the atmosphere in which they were raised was sexually charged, it is common for survivors of covert incest to use sex as a means to intimacy. This can result in sexual addiction or other types of dysfunctional behaviors as an adult.

Covert incest can persist all the way into adulthood. As long as one remains in such a relationship, it is impossible to form healthy relationships with others. Unless the close bond with the invasive parent is altered, the parent will continue to interfere in the life of the child, causing problems to arise in relationships.

If the invasive parent refuses to change the nature of the relationship, there may be no other recourse than separation. This separation can be temporary or permanent. What is important is for the child to set firm boundaries which the parent cannot cross. Depending on the severity of the situation, it may even be necessary to permanently separate from the invasive parent.

It was the atmosphere that I was living in--and more so when dad's girlfriend came into the picture. My therapist uses the term "mindfucking" to describe my experience. And that's apt--you FUCKED with my HEAD, not my body, dad. And after that, I got the two confused.  I began searching for someone like him, at the same time as struggling to hold on to a healthy marriage. Thank God my husband was so intuitive, so smart, and had his head screwed on straight. Thank God.

My wedding was planned for October of that year, and in September, my father announced that HE was marrying the girlfriend. Talk about stealing my thunder! There was something very obscene about that, and I still can't put my finger on exactly what it was. I didn't attend his wedding (he didn't really expect me to, thank goodness), and I was trying to focus on my own impending marriage. He was passively aggressive during that time; he made promises about the responsibilities he would take care of for my wedding, and when the time came, he acted as if he had never promised anything. He volunteered to be the MC for my wedding, announcing when events would happen, etc. And he didn't do it. My wedding was chaotic. He didn't give a toast. He walked me down the aisle with an angry frown on his face; the wedding photos of us break my heart. He never wished me well. Before he left, he hugged me close and said "We'll talk." That was it. That was how my father sent his daughter off to be married.

And since then, I hadn't been able to have sex. It was mostly me; I was depressed, I was confused, frustrated, angry, and not allowed to vent my feelings toward the person responsible. He never took responsibility for the fiasco that my wedding became. He said only that he never agreed to that role at my wedding and then claimed he "forgot" because of a minor stroke he had a while ago. (He used the stroke as an excuse for all of his action from then on) I, for some reason, came to the conclusion that sex wasn't important. That my marriage was a sham because my husband wasn't physically affectionate like my father. I couldn't accept him for who he truly was--quiet, reserved, with a pool of love for me that was deeper than the ocean floor. He may not have been as extroverted about his feelings--he didn't express them in words as much--or as openly affectionate--he believed in private displays of attention rather than garish displays in public places--but, my God, did he love me. Twenty years later, I realize how foolish I was. How messed up and ungrateful for the person my husband is. My husband showed me through his actions what love is. My father flaunted lip service and infatuation.

(Image from botkinsyndrome.blogspot.com)

Ah! Validation!

As I searched the web for informative blogs on the topics of the narcissistic parent, covert incest, and toxic families, I stumbled on this gem: One Angry Daughter

"One Angry Daughter's" situation similar to mine; and as I am accused of being "sick" for having a personal yet anonymous blog, well, I think this blogger and others like us are on the sane side of the aisle. Just look at what happened to her:

Unfortunately, I underestimated their internet search skills and left a path (albeit a convoluted one) right to this blog. As such - I know they have read everything. To anyone who thinks if you can just tell your family members that you think NPD, alcoholism, BPD, etc... are in play and maybe they will get the help they need - let my experience be an example that it may not.

Same here. And our intentions are the same as well:

I hope by sharing my experience I can help others going through a similar situation. I want other DoNMs, ACoNs, ACoAs and other victims of emotional abuse to know it is not their fault and they have the power to walk away from the source of the abuse. Even more importantly - you have the power not to fall down that slippery slope and pass on the abuse to your children.  Having the strength to face your past to become a healthier person can stop the cycle.  

Survivors of emotional abuse thrive in community with each other, especially as we walk away from the source of the abuse, as One Angry Daughter states. It is too easy for us--being already vulnerable to pain inflicted on us-- to feel guilted and shamed into believing that we are the crazy, manipulative, dysfunctional person in the family, that we are making these issues up in our heads. That alone is enough to push us under deep water--the lack of empathy ans validation that comes with this type of treatment by our families of origin.

I welcome connections with other bloggers in this type of situation--please don't hesitate to leave a comment if anything you read here helps or hurts, or you'd like to join together as a  blogging community.

Family secrets

 Identifying that one has been covertly (or emotionally) incested is difficult because direct sexual contact does not occur in these situations--and I believe, in our (American) culture, that anything other than the "real deed" is considered to be a figment of an overly sensitive person's over-active imagination. This is why I doubted myself for so long. I still do.    Sometimes I think that I am making a big deal out of nothing....but I realize that is the voice of the guilt I still feel and what members of my family of origin want me to believe. When I recall my experiences of psychosomatic illness; chronic, severe depression; constant anxiety and vigilance; suicidal thoughts, and past sexual dysfunction in my relationships, I now understand that these are not "normal" behaviors.  Nor is secretly running off in the dead of night to a foreign country and staying for two years until guilt overwhelmed me. Nor is having difficulty making friends and having no hobbies or career interests until I cut off all contact with my father, over ten years ago. Once I did that, I magically became interested in the world outside of "him and me" and started discovering what made me content and invigorated. Ten years, and I was able to repair my sexual relationship and finally bear a child.

The sexual "side effects" of covert incest, that is a whole other story I will get into later. Let me just say that at least my father had enough boundary sense not to violate explicit sexual limits, thank God.  I have recently learned, however, that overt incest is present on his side of the family, it happened to my dearest relative, and my personal theory is that covert incest occurs in families in which overt incest has previously occurred in some form; the atmosphere is charged with a sexual, enmeshed, boundariless energy that seems "normal." 

In fact, I did have an unfortunate sexual experience with a cousin on that side--molestation, I might call it. What do you call performing a sexual act that your heart says is wrong because you want to please the person? A first cousin, who I trusted and thought cared about me. This memory did not surface until recently, as well, but I have always experienced a highly charged erotic feeling around this cousin and could not understand it. This feeling caused me such shame over the years--what a sick person I was for having sexually charged thoughts about this first cousin. And why was I so shy around him, why did I feel so "violated" and "ashamed" when I was alone with him in later years, even for a few minutes. I was so uncomfortable in his presence, well, it was hard to tolerate. And the sadder and sicker part is that this cousin was my father's FAVORITE nephew. His FAVORITE person, like a son to him. Why was I surprised that this person would have been the one who violated me sexually? They were both, as I have come to learn, narcissists in the extreme and ended up estranged because, in my opinion, they couldn't cope with how alike they were! It makes me sick to my stomach, the whole thing.

I think this is enough for today. Trying to dredge up and clear out the past while struggling day-to-day to be a normal, healthy parent for my young daughter is turning out to be the challenge of a lifetime. I am determined to give her the life I wished I had, though, at whatever cost.

Covert Incest 101

  "Covert incest happens when a parent, usually an opposite-sex parent, makes the child a surrogate partner or spouse, most often when bonds of sexuality and intimacy have been or are breaking down between the child's parents themselves. The child, feeling loved and put into a privileged position by the opposite- sex parent, becomes a confidant and advisor, an object of intense affection, passion--and preoccupation by that parent. Appropriate boundaries between parent and child are blurred or obliterated and the child does not realize that he or she is living to meet the needs of the parent rather than his or her own. The parent develops a dependency on the child and the opposite-sex parent's relationship with the child increasingly becomes more possessive, jealous, demanding -- all the time chipping away at the child's personal boundaries. Not unlike the victim of overt incest, the child increasingly feels manipulated, used and preoccupied with the parent's needs, whereas the parent's "love" begins to feel more intrusive than nourishing and more demanding than giving. The parent-child relationship becomes structured to meet the needs of the parent, so the child feels embarrassed to have needs of his or her own. Should the child try to have those needs met, he or she feels at risk of losing the parent." (From Silently Seduced by Kenneth Adams)

I hadn't heard this term until my therapist explained that this is what happened to me as a child. I could never put it all together—there was no outward sexual abuse, no outward verbal abuse, nor physical. So why did I feel so messed up? Why did I hate myself so much, believe I had to put myself last always, be swayed by one person’s opinions, so affected by one person’s moods that I didn’t know what I was feeling? Why was I obsessed with performing to please this one person? I didn’t know what I was good at, was interested in, what made me happy or sad—in fact, I couldn’t recognize any of my emotions. I was completely enmeshed with this one person. If his day was bad, so was mine (even if it wasn’t); if he was happy, I was in heaven! Since he was a psychologist, I decided to be one too…until I started recovery.

I was a nonperson, a ghost, a replicate. His approval meant the world to me, his anger made me feel like dying. I walked on eggshells if he was angry, afraid to emerge from my basement room even for food—going entire afternoons through the next morning with nothing to eat or drink. 

I didn’t have a sense of me at all. I lived for him.

I was a little girl who just wanted to be happy and loved. I discovered that I could earn his love by doing what he wanted me to do, by pleasing him. And I also learned that if I didn’t please him, I would be punished: silences that lasted for days to weeks, being ignored as though I weren’t alive, and invasions of privacy in which he would barge into my room (the door being shut and sometimes locked) and yell for extended periods of time, the accusations moving from the present—what I didn’t do or say—and flowing backward to things I had done to “hurt” him in the past. And I was only a child.

Most of the details are a blur in my mind. I can’t remember specifically what I was punished for or accused of, although I did keep journals my entire life. I plan to go through them and blog about some of these details at a later date. What I do remember was crying, apologizing, begging for forgiveness for my “sins,” and if the accusations didn’t stop, giving up and dissociating, my mind floating near the ceiling, watching below as this poor child cowered and sobbed.  

However, two specific episodes do stand out in my mind. One, when I brought home a D in typing class. I was not good at that, obviously. Typing without looking at my hands was virtually impossible (nor was it that important in the long run!) and I failed for that reason. But dad was furious and I remember that he stopped talking to me and refused to acknowledge my presence for at least a week, probably more. I was a good student in general, As and Bs, very conscientious,  and I felt like an utter failure in life, ashamed to be alive from that experience.

The other, and I’ll have to go back to my journals and reconstruct this, was when I turned 16. All I remember of that is pretty pink packages sitting next to the fireplace, my mother silently creeping around the house, my father lurking somewhere in the house, an angry, dark presence, not wanting to see me or speak a word to me. At the end of the day, I sat down in front of the pretty gifts and opened them, as tears flooded down. It was the saddest memory I have.  Becoming a woman. I felt as though I were being punished for growing up and becoming a woman.

The other issues that sparked blowups that I can recall were leaving crumbs on the kitchen counter, not finishing a project—a dollhouse we were building and furnishing together became a source of terrible strife. My hands shook during daily piano practice because I knew he was listening and would be quite angry if I didn’t perform well. Every chore I did I constantly double and triple checked myself to make sure I made no mistakes, which would come back to haunt me in those invasive yelling sessions.

On the flip side, when my father was pleased with me, he loved me like he loved no one else. He was so proud when I accomplished something. He loved hugging me and treating me as though I were his princess and confidant. Only I never knew when the loving would change to anger. I was constantly seeking this love and blaming myself when I did “something wrong” that caused him to fly into a depression or an angry spell. His moods were my fault, and I was never disabused of this belief.

Life with him was like walking on eggshells with tiny soft patches in between.

One Girl as a Projection

A sad fact of this world is that oftentimes people see you how they WANT to see you, not as you really are. I suspect my family of origin was unconsciously looking for one member to place all their guilt, anger, and shame on--the scapegoat as it were. They wanted to see this member as a sick individual, the one who gives away the family secrets, the one who shuts the rest out, who doesn't listen, is unreasonable and one-sided in her thinking, and shuns the others for no apparent reason. So, here is the sensitive daughter, the frightened, timid member, and they projected all of this onto her and ensured it played out exactly as they had imagined. She has lived up to their "expectations." A fulfilled prophesy. Funny how that works, huh?

 

I became the ogre who shunned the others. The bad girl who hurt them all. The guilty one.

I have become this nightmare of a horrible person to them; I am a mix of all the negative traits these family members individually possessed, rolled into one unpalatable package.

A lifetime of being pushed and shoved and having others' thoughts, feelings, opinions stuffed down my throat, well, yes, I did FINALLY stand up for myself--after forty fucking years! How dare I stand up for myself in this family? Feel my own emotions, speak my own views, have my own opinions? How dare I defy the status quo? Change and not be the pushover I always have been? BETRAYAL! BITCH! SICK!

Only no one, except five people, view me this way. Everyone else knows a loving, sweet, sensitive, funny, yet hurting, aching human being. A thoroughly vulnerable, mistake-making, imperfect human.  If I were such an ogre, wouldn't I have been abandoned by friends and husband long ago? Would my mate have stayed with me despite everything for twenty years and counting? Would wonderful recovery siblings have continually encouraged me during my struggles? Would many of my relationships still have shifted and evolved yet remained strong and comforting? Would my work colleagues still have donated amazingly generous amounts of time when I ran out of sick days during my maternity leave? Would a few cousins still determinedly keep an eye on me to make sure I am okay? If I were so nasty, so horrid, such a sick individual, wouldn't be I completely alone by now?

The beginning.

 

Let me make a long story short. I had an anonymous blog where I discussed personal issues relating to emotional abuse and narcissism. This was extremely therapeutic for me and helpful for other readers.  Family members "found" it, silently tracked it for many months until unleashing their anger about my honesty. I am now estranged from most of them.

Moral of the story: I will not be silenced or shamed by anyone for my experiences or mode of expression. I am a writer and expressor; I will be heard, if only by GOD. If readers don't like what I have to say, then for goodness sake, stop reading! No one forces us to read anything. We are all entitled to our feelings and forms of expression.

My history in a nutshell: survivor of covert incest and emotional abuse by a narcissistic father. Depression and suicidal feelings since I was old enough to remember.  Struggles with an eating disorder, codependency, and sex and love addiction. Found comfort and support in an amazing Adult Children of Alcoholics and other dysfunctional families 12-step group over four years ago, and began both my recovery and journey to rock bottom and back again.

So, welcome to those who share these types of trials and those who want to listen and be heard. Welcome compassionate readers. My greatest hope is that by identifying with each others journeys, we can find support and comfort.