Any recovery journey is really about taking care of yourself – you can’t take care of others without taking care of yourself first. You can’t make sense of your circumstances until you take the step to be good to yourself and examine what is going on.

Recovery from anything is to look at yourself without judgement or criticism but rather with curiosity and compassion.

We must learn about those deeply hidden secrets we keep from ourselves, and uncover their origin.

Recovery is about looking at yourself and comforting yourself as you cry buckets of tears, as you express anger, as you throw your fists up a the incredible injustices you have endured.

After all this expression, over and over, you come out on the other side-instead of crying there’s compassion, instead of anger there is peace, instead of raging at injustice you are living a life of justice.

In my life I get why my high functioning father became so cruel and hateful and addicted to drugs and alcohol – his childhood was horrible – males and females were addicts and alcoholics and he was illegitimate. I get that my mother was a high functioning schizophrenic and so was her mother, my mother was a mess.

She and my father were ill equipped to be parents or decent human beings.  They lived their lives enjoying cruelty and being surrounded with those who were the same. They died without ever recovering and no acknowledgement of their disgusting display of hatred towards me or anyone else. I was the scapegoat until their very last breath.

I get it. I don’t condone it – it was not OK on any level and sadly there was no changing them.

So as painful as it was I had to journey alone and for a very long time in my own trauma recovery. My message to you is recovery is very possible.

Recovery will require that you commit to creating a better life for yourself. You will have to show up to therapy, groups of like minded folks, crying, writing, grounding your emotions, all one day at a time. Sometimes it’s one breath at a time.

You deserve a wonderful life, you deserve to be cared about. You deserve to be safe, You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be respected. You deserve to be loved and don’t let any negative person or internal false belief tell you otherwise.