authenticity

  • Sometimes Dreams Do Come True

    I am thrilled to announce here that I have officially published my first book! The Journey Back to Self: A Beginner’s Guide to Recovery from Cultic & Narcissistic Abuse is available in print and ebook on a variety of platforms. You can find it here: The Journey Back to Self At the heart of this

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  • Dysregulation, Anxiety and Paralysis

    I’m back to report that life has been life-ing, as usual, and I’m still steady jogging to keep up with it all. We’ve just passed the 3 year anniversary of when #igotout, and to look back at how much life has changed in such a short period of time is positively mind blowing. ðŸ¤¯ I don’t

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  • Stepping Out of the Shadows and I Need Your Help

    Hi folks, This is a scary one for me. I’m used to sharing some of my innermost thoughts and feelings here with you (all nine of my readers 🤣) but I’m not used to asking for help, especially from so many people. It’s been three years since I escaped the high control group and began

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  • The Grace of Giving Up

    The Grace of Giving Up

    Giving up is given such a bad rap. We’re continually admonished to “hang in there” and “don’t give up!” Certainly, these words of encouragement are designed to bolster our flagging spirits and push us through to the finish line. It is the “western culture’s” way: to just keep pushing. Often, there is no other choice

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  • The High Price of Trust

    The High Price of Trust

    He told me he loved me. I believed him. He told me he adored me. I adored him. He told me he wanted to keep me safe. I was hurt over and over. He said he was sorry. I believed him. He said he loved me. I thought I loved him. He said he could

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  • Hope Springs Eternal

    Hope Springs Eternal

    Hope springs eternal in the human breast;Man never Is, but always To be blest:The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,Rests and expatiates on a life to come. ~Alexander Pope from An Essay On Man, Epistle 1, 1733 This quote has languished at the head of an otherwise-empty, drafted blog post for more than 9 years.

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  • The Softer Side of Life

    The Softer Side of Life

    The way I see it is, we can use life’s challenges to make us soft or we can use them to make us hard. I think the world’s tendency is toward hardness. We’re given the impression that hardness equals protection, equals safety, equals “smart.” This makes sense in a lot of ways. The tortoise retreats

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  • Beautiful Escape

    Beautiful Escape

    Written May 23rd, 2023 He was the most beautiful escape. In a vortex of recovery and growth and inner work and stumbling and scrounging and healing and looking all about me frantically to get my bearings, he became a central point, a post onto which I could fix my gaze and all my attention. For

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  • Winter is Coming

    Winter is Coming

    I recently had a thought and it arose with concern. I thought to myself, “What if I am most at home within my darkest hours?” and I felt afraid of it being true. I have found that it is often within these darkest hours that I feel closest to myself and closest to a divine

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  • [We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this special anniversary post.] June 4th, 2023 It’s 7 pm on a Sunday evening and I’m sitting in my arm chair, laptop in my lap, candle flickering across the room, easy tunes playing in the background. My little apartment is tiny, but so cozy, and the natural light

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