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Hi Woodsgnome and everyone.

I've been thinking of you recently, WG, and out of the blue, through some blunder most likely, OOTF appeared on my front-page, top menu and on clicking, it opened with my lost username and password automatised.

I never understand these machines.  But I call it 'serendipity'.

I'm charging my mower battery and feeling lazy, and my back is hurting but the lawn in spring is now beyond 'luxurious'.

It's such a nice day here, I don't want it to be night yet.  But across the ocean where you are I'm wishing you deep, peaceful sleep, because I think it us the middle of the night across the equator.

I need to get up off this porch now.  The battery has finished.

Warmest wishes

Hi,
I'd be happy to talk about Ketamine treatment by PM if anyone is considering this treatment.
As Kizzie said, I don't get here very often so it would probably be the only way I'd be likely to know if there was any interest.

Sorry to hear, WG.
It always has to be somewhere far away in location or time for many to be able to hear our truth.  Then it is batted away anyway with any number of dismissals. usually, "but that was then ...(or there)..."

It makes for such disconnection and isolation for everyone, those living in denial and those who can't.  I'm always amazed that people find it so easy to hurt those who have been hurt to avoid the discomfort of hearing about their hurt.

I don't know what the answer is. But good for you in not accepting this person's behaviour as your due.  It is necessary to respond.  I wish there was a magic formula for dealing that didn't bring more pain, but in the longer term the price of accepting being erased is higher I think.

I can relate, but I have found that there has never been an option in which I  can enact abuse on myself, including neglecting to be kind and respectful towards myself, and recover.  There is dissonance and a feeling of threat somehow, in self-kindness.  It is the very definition of unfamiliar because what I learned about myself in my family arose from lack of kindness and respect.

The way I see it, I have a choice in this between the 'familiar' , - quite literally what I originally derived from my family, and the unfamiliar and frightening experience of self-compassion, self-kindness and self-respect.  Without these, I can never deeply connect with others who might validate these attitudes, or with the world itself.

It might be compassion fatigue.

Something that really struck me when I was disabled and in pain waiting for surgery, was how kind people were.  I don't think I received so many warm smiles from strangers in all the previous years put together.  People offered to help, though I seldom needed any. At first I was confused, but kindness came to feel normal.

I think this is a natural human response  at its best, to seeing another in pain and struggling.  I can't describe how warm those gestures of acknowledgment, inclusion, and caring, made me feel.  I suggested to my T that maybe the best thing we could do for people who are in psychological pain would be to issue them with a stick.  (I don't know if they'd need to adopt a strange  crab-like walk to go with it). Maybe it would mean that the distress that showed in their faces and bodies would be interpreted by others in a way that made it seem understandable and safe to respond to.

Really happy for you LilyTV!!!

Sending love, Dee.

The second is to try to recreate the same danger we were harmed by in order to (hopefully) get a better outcome and thus gain control over the original tragedy.

I have done both of these myself, long before I got any kind of diagnosis or understanding, I was like a hamster going round in a wheel.

This is an important part of the truth, it is the empowering part, it allows us to see what we need to change, it is a valuable opportunity.  But it's not the whole truth.  We can never entirely insulate ourselves from abuse, imagining we can and trying to change and adapti according to just part of the truth can be dangerous in itself.

What doing so can obscure from view is the beauty, justice and kindness that is also a part of humanity.  I know I need to actively seek that out.  But a real danger in doing so is seeking to hide from myself, ever again, the cruelty that is part of being human.

I don't know about you, but I need to be able to be alive to both, and seeing abuse as something that was ever within my control makes me vulnerable.   That doesn't mean that what happened hasn't given me an opportunity to grow in the ways I had already sorely needed to - but some people are making their way by hurting and exploiting.  Others are hitching a ride with them for their own reasons, others are "naïve".  Those who are very well insulated from the harsher realities of life can often get away with wilful blindness, unless something makes them vulnerable....

So happy to read this.  Anger is our defender.  It also comes to the defence of others.

You so needed, and continue to need and deserve defence and protection. 

Thank you so much Three Roses, Woodsgnome,  LilyTv, Phoebes, and Contessa.

I don't know how I'd get through this without your kindness and understanding.  I'm struggling with disbelief.  It feels like I've spent a lifetime trying to understand but from my own experience of being in the world, never before understanding that people are different.  I think that is part of why good people get dragged into this vicious game, that an being afraid, instinctually, of those who are not governed by conscience.

"It's more about their false motives and desperate self-esteem issues; then you're left alone with sadness they probably wouldn't understand either"


I've come to believe that it's not just "wouldn't understand", but also wouldn't be able to handle.  One of the biggest components of abuse is an inability to tolerate shame, and therefore the need to dump it into someone else.  It must be we who are strong because we are able to carry what they cannot. (which does not mean we should carry it). I think it is more often cannot than 'will not'.  I know the faith community takes a great deal of pride in their reputation.  I wish it had the courage of its convictions.  They are shame-dumping because they have been shown up by what happened to me.


"You are recovering and you are going to attract incredible, genuine and kind people who will lift you up instead of tear you down."

Right now I don't feel I have the courage to reach out again.  It's something I need to find in myself.


".....are the people who immediate jump to not believing you. Not believing your experience could possibly be."

Sometimes naivety is moral cowardice.


" I know you will build a new, good, better life in this new place, because you were strong enough to carry me too."

I'll hold onto this.  I really needed it today.

love to you all

I'm feeling broken.

The bully who bullied me out of both my faith community and a community project we were both involved in, smeared me so severely that I have been planning to move to another city and start afresh next year (this isn't anywhere near a full summary because this is a small place and the damage has gone far wider than the membership of these groups)  - that delightful person - has managed to do me more harm.

Last month she and her supporters moved out of the faith community to worship separately, in large part because of the "slander" caused by my telling some people what had happened.  I left that community two years ago.  I felt it was a power play.  Almost all in that group and everyone in the other group have ostracised  me.  But I still have two friends from the faith community.  But it seems it wasn't good enough to have anyone still speak to me.

It was predictable given the close-knit nature of the group, just a matter of time really.  One friend tried to talk me into saying that my feelings from previous abuse had been projected onto the bully. She also hinted I had other reasons for unfairly accusing this person.   I was shocked but managed to politely reject that, but things have changed now in both friendships and I feel I have now been completely socially annihilated

I don't know if this will be helpful to you, but I've found a site called irrelationship.com useful in understanding my difficulty with reciprococity in relationships and why I find it so hard to 'accept' from others.

I am defined by their lies


Believe me, I know what those of you who have been violated in this way are saying.  The harm to me in my community is huge and sometimes the injustice burns and eats me up.


But I take issue with this.  Other people do and think what they like but we define ourselves.  You might say what difference does it make if we are paying an awful price in pubic humiliation, blame and ostracism, and sometimes I feel that way too.

But I told the truth at a very high price to myself.   I didn't knuckle under to coercion and violence despite that price.  I wrote in my journal "X could destroy me, will she?" and still told the truth.
I didn't cow or betray myself or all the other targets, past and future, much later when I was pressured to back down to a moderated version of the truth which would have allowed a degree of vindication. In doing so I could have undone some of that harm to myself and reopened some doors of people and things I cared about.  Doors that will always be closed to me.  I wasn't prepared to "negotiate" the truth about severe abuse.

That is what defines me about what happened.  That is what I feel about myself about what happened and the feeling is self-respect.


In a community the size of the one I live in, with the status of some of the enablers, the repercussions have been huge and affected much wider areas of my life than I could have anticipated.  But when it comes to what defines me I made a choice that my actions define me, not what people believe about them.

I value that you/we keep on.
I'd like all the kind and gentle people to stop taking on the shame and anguish that never belonged to them.

You/us we are the true beautiful people.  Not because we are perfect but because our hearts are still intact and ache.


Sending love WG

Unfortunately, all the advice in the world to get out is unlikely to be taken.  It's understandable, one of the common problems with this situation is not being able to quite believe it could be happening, and if it really is, that justice, or common sense or just sanity can't prevail.

When it was happening to me I found thousands of people online.  The stories are so similar it is eerie.  I haven't heard of a case where it turned out okay for the target.  Pretty much everyone says the same thing.  If a person is being seriously targeted leaving is the only choice because staying pretty much always means being forced out with serious health detriment and re-employment issues making everything, including the injustice much worse.

No-one who has experienced this recommends going to HR.  The bully has long prepared for this.  She wont be his first target, or his last.  I wish there were better options.