I'll start since a couple things are on my mind...
First, I think part of the reason that my brothers experience was a bit better was that I was there to protect, teach and nurture him. It must have been difficult when I left after high school and didn't look back...
Second, this is hard work and I think sometimes I've tried to do a bit too much, experienced too much sadness and pain from my story during the week. But from this I'm learning to develop what I call child-me and mommy-me. The validation about talking out-loud from this weeks group helped me to do so. So I was able to have child-me cry, say she felt sad and alone, that she wanted to eat only cookies and candy. Then mommy-me could validate her feelings, remind her of her self-worth, and remind her that she feels better when she eats fruits, vegetables and kind of sick w/the sweets. It's been helping w/my emotions and my eating so yay for that!
Third, all of this progress is a combination of real life experience, this group, the forum, therapy, a new friend, my daughter, my developing Faith community (two new women from Latin-America, yay!), and ME

A shout out to everyone who reads this and the group members for that overwhelming feeling of gratitude that fills me up and spills out with tears for the love I'm receiving now, but the sadness that it didn't happen earlier in my life...words just don't seem to cut it but I need to express that gratitude...MIL GRACIAS
