Thank you for your words of encouragement. Your message really touched me in a good way today. Sadly, it doesn’t always which is mostly because of where I am still at I suspect.

Thank you for this video. It’s so validating to hear. I’m a betrayed spouse but I also grew up and was raised in an environment of trauma and abuse. That’s a messy combination. People tell me I’m strong often and I just as often feel like I don’t know the meaning of the word. I feel like I am just me. I’ve always been doing this, always been in survival mode so I don’t know what I’m doing that’s somehow different or strong. People say, “I don’t know how you do it.” or, “I don’t think I could fight so hard or forgive that. You’re so strong, so brave.” I don’t get it. It doesn’t compute. I feel weak very often because I’m so plagued by self-doubt, anxiety and depression. I’ve utilized so many unhealthy or unhelpful coping skills that were learned behaviors (like not trusting people or pushing people away or isolating myself, for example) that I needed to actually keep myself alive. I’ve had those ways of being, ways that I worked so very hard not to be, used against me as fuel to gaslight or excuses for bad behavior. It’s so defeating, so candle snuffing, when I get advice of “how to be” that’s supposed to help, supposed to work, helped and worked for others, even those in my “same” situation and it just doesn’t work. No matter how hard I will it so and do the work, it doesn’t help. It makes me feel like I’m on an island unto myself, like I’m the only freak or like I’m doing it wrong! I trust the people who tell me I’m strong so I’m left with no choice but to believe them but, at the same time, I have no idea what they’re talking about. This vlog gives me some kind of idea that strong means trying...I have that...I try. I try relentlessly to keep going, to trust, to be forgiving, to forgive myself...or at least, not keep blaming myself...I try to be better, to put the pieces back together and I try to not stop trying. I’d say that is far and away my biggest battle, fighting to not stop trying. It’s validating to have some loose definition of what strong is and to give myself permission to let it be ok when something doesn’t work to just let it not work but to keep trying. If whatever something is, that was helpful to others isn’t helpful to me, that’s ok. I just need to keep trying to find the right thing.

Hi Samuel
Just listened to this message and it spoke to my heart. Although I am only in 10 months since “D” day, I needed to hear this message.
Thank you for your continued blogs in spite of how you are feeling. I appreciate them so much. Wishing you speedy recovery. I wish I was further down the road, getting through each day can be almost I’m impossible, but like you said I cannot give up, I believe God has a better plan for my life
once I am on the other side of this indescribable pain and unbelievable horror, of going thru betrayal trauma.
Thank you
Karin