By Indie Mom
I never started out to write a book, let alone a personal memoir, laying bare the most intimate and personal details between my husband and me and our children. Looking back four years since he left our family home, I can barely believe the repressed stories that have surfaced, and even more, stories that make complete sense to someone other than me.
Because I had endured years of gas lighting, projection, triangulation and manipulation at the hands of my husband and father of my children, I looked and felt like a very unwell person when I tried to share anything with our closest friends and family members.
Eventually, when our house of cards came tumbling down, there was also a part of me that believed I was the reason behind it all: It was my fault that my husband sought the companionship of another woman. It was my fault that we were embroiled in a high conflict divorce. His parental abandonment was a logical decision in escaping a home of discord and chaos that I created. And worse yet, the pain and suffering experienced by my beautiful and innocent sons was mostly my doing.
A new understanding
Today I understand that none of this could have been further from the truth. However, it has taken time, unbearable pain, and continued work to get to this place.
When I unknowingly embarked upon a healing journey, it began when an old friend suggested I find a twelve-step support group due to a desire to understand my husband’s alcohol abuse. Within thisvsupport group of complete strangers, I began to share tidbits of my life’s story. That experience led me to a local women’s abuse group.
While listening to their stories and sharing my own, I finally knew I was not crazy. I then found a personal therapist and with her persistent and gentle guidance, I took apart my relationship with my husband piece by piece.
Reading. Learning. Sharing.
During these times, I also read. And read and read. It felt as though the floodgates of my psyche were thrust open. I also found a very safe and accepting online abuse recovery forum where I could advance in my healing journey by integrating what I had learned from support groups and counseling, with telling my story as many times and in as many ways as I needed. A funny thing happens when you begin to discover a commonality amongst anonymous persons. You share unconditionally. You trust. You analyze and offer ideas. You begin to move forward believing, yet with a guarded resolve, that life can be better.
The healing timeline isn’t always clear, but there comes a time when you suddenly see a light in the distance that wasn’t there before. I was absolutely shocked that there existed other women, children and families enduring the same hell I was living.
”˜Discarded’ — a source of hope
Eventually, this personal pathway through a labyrinth of internal conflict ended at an unexpected pinnacle of self-actualization — the writing of ‘Discarded’. All of the sudden, and almost like an epiphany though, ”˜Discarded’ represented something else. It became a story of hope for others. A hope that other confused and hurt and utterly exhausted spouses and parents could find, through my story, the courage and strength to stand a little taller, think a little more clearly and realize without a doubt that love of self and for a child never fails. It is the constant to return to again and again in rebuilding lives destroyed by a psychopath.
Discarded — One Mother’s Journey with a Psychopath is available on Amazon.com
Indie Mom – thank you so much for being willing to share your story. And for the message that there is hope after involvement with a psychopath.
Indie Mom
Thank you for coming forth. I like to refer to it as ‘coming Alive’. It is like re-birth, no?
You have so much courage.
A special tribute to a special soul…Indie
Thank you, Barb. Yes, it is like a re-birth and a very painful labor all in one. 🙂
Thank you so very much, Donna, for sharing my story. I truly hope that it helps others in similar situations. I have learned that one of the greatest impacts to personal healing is when we reach out and offer support and help to others. When we stand together as kindred souls. This is so important when there doesn’t seem to be an answer in how to get out, stay out, and move on after psychopathic abuse. Just knowing that we are not alone in our experiences is critical to change. Unique to sharing children with a personality-disorded person is that we most likely will never be able to exercise ‘no contact’. The Grey Rock method that I learned from this site has helped me tremendously in preserving my energy in all areas of my life .. workplace, family, ‘friends’, the courts, and of course, the psychopath himself. So thank you so much for that golden nugget!!
I also want to thank Lovefraud for the constant and amazing work toward bringing these monsters into the light.
Indie Mom_Discarded,
Thank you so much for sharing your story!I’ve never written my story in it’s entireity,only in tidbits,in various posts.But I so agree with the therapeutic power of “writing it out”!
My girls were grown by the time I left my husband,so I was fortunate;and more than happy to to put No Contact into practice!I gained peace of mind and self-respect back!
The one thing I still struggle with at times,is the “guilt feelings” like you spoke of in your story.Not guilt about my marriage or the type of mother I was per se.But I know my girls resent the fact that I didn’t leave their father sooner.I did try;it just wasn’t successful.The first time I left,the youngest girls were still in school;the first 2 yrs were awful!!! The oldest girl was most affected and is most resentful.She says she has “forgiven us”.I’m thinking by that comment in itself,she still holds a grudge!I never hurt her,and have explained to her that she needs to take into consideration Stockholm syndrome & PTSD!
Thank you, blossom4th, for your comment. I also wrote about my experiences in bits and pieces for a long time through blogging. It helped me to get to the point where I could write the entire thing more clearly and with purpose .. so I can definitely understand what you mean.
Looking back, I wanted to leave many times. What stopped me, and gave me pause for thought, was what I can identify now as the cycle of psychological abuse. The good man vs. the bad man. The good man would give me enough energy and hope to continue on. I wanted more than anything to be a normal, functioning family. I wanted my sons to have a strong, healthy, stable home and family. I didn’t want to raise them on my own. So I endured a lot of abuse, and they lived amidst a lot of dysfunction because of my actions AND their father’s.
I continue to struggle with that guilt, yet it gets more manageable the more I learn about my parenting skill set and how I was doing the best I could with what I had at the time. After I told my oldest sons that I had filed for divorce from their absent father, one of them simply stated: “What took you so long? It’s about time.” That broke my heart. And they have lived with me since and have witnessed first hand the fall-out and the rebuilding. I’m glad they have seen how hard I’ve worked at all of this. And of course the difficulties they had in school, and now in life due to their upbringing, will probably always weigh heavy on my heart to some extent.
I’m grateful that we have these support groups where we can share, stand together, and help one another through these continued struggles we have. Thank you so much for reaching out and I wish you continued strength and peace on your journey.
“What took you so long?”
Did you feel guilty about it? I remember asking others of my acquaintance if it would be a good idea if I quit the ‘spath’. How sad!
Most of them said, ‘It is about time.’ Not one thought it was a bad idea. Only “do it NOW”…
One woman said she wanted to shake me because I hung in there for years. It is almost like the spaths claimed our ‘allegiance’. Little Hitlers, all of them.
Others were not so forgiving and still blame me. Because the spath in my life became much more attractive (just in time, the last year of high school) many others thought it was from jealousy. I had to ‘hang in’ there, doing ‘more time’ because of that attitude towards me…but it remains to this day…45 years later. Unreal? Some of those people never really left high school.
It does make me very sad, actually, that so many people saw what was going on for so long yet couldn’t help me. I put on a good show of normalcy, though, and living like that sucked a lot of life out of me. I think that people turned away from ‘us’ and me throughout the years because they did see the drama, they did sense the abuse, and they just didn’t want to be a part of it. It was the people that the psycho had under his spell that were most present in our lives. They were his minions. Healthy people came and went. I can see that now, but not at the time.