Another List. Codependency? PTSD? The Amazing Brain.

It is amazing how books "fall of the shelf," conversations can be just "the words you need to hear," and emails and texts seem Divinely inspired and timely beyond wonder. You get what you need when you need it. When you know better, you will do better. Pain is an annealing, and alchemical process. Everything you need today will be provided for you. Everything. There is always a gift.

Today is a day of finally returning those phone calls, emails, texts, and responding to comments, of getting back to life and all it's amazing possibility. 9 sentences and a list is what I'm up to, and it is enough, for now.

1. FT, if you are reading this, and you know you are, I am done. I am moving on with my life. I am not responding to your last email, yet another manipulation, another stall tactic. You just do what you have to do or not do. Nothing I say makes a difference anyway. Get it done or keep it going, I'm still moving on. No response is the only response, though the old me would have been certain, to the point of being frantic, that the sky was falling, and I'd be trying to use words to keep it up there. Now I have the serenity, the courage, and the wisdom to know the difference.

2. In the spirit of serendipity, see Barbara's post about emotional and verbal abuse. It needs to be said and understood, that it is happening and it is destructive. For me, the nutshell is in the words, "If he further tries to convince her that something is psychologically amiss with her and that she needs therapy, this is moving to extreme verbal abuse." And, "...it constantly denies her reality, her very existence." How extreme is that, to deny someone's reality, her very existence? I'm thinking Marlowe, in the jungle, his last words.

3. This, too was in my inbox, mention of this book: The Princess Who Believed in Fairy Tales: A Story for Modern Times, by Marcia Grad. Again, with the falling off the shelf thing. Thanks, TTU of JWC! I love a good fairy tale, and what about that magical thinking?! I've ordered this book, too.

4. Martha and I are going to start a forum to discuss Complex PTSD. For right now, I'll try to make time between emotional and legal skirmishes. If FT is reading this, and you know you are, I don't want to post a link here, but that can be worked out between all of us. Isolation is one of the tactics, along with the denial of your reality, so sharing has got to have as much value as EMDR and Brainspotting. Did you know that if 2 or more people, indigenous people, congregated during Apartheid, it was considered a crime of conspiracy? Communication, validation, could have implemented action, a threat to the oppressors. We need a united front, an uprising, even.

5. The hope here is in brain science (well, among other things, like recovery, and taking that spiritual journey), and the newly emerging field of neuroplasticity. Through experience, we can rewire the physiological consequences of those mindf**ks. We can heal. We can overcome.

Sorry, who was it who said to Mozart, "Too many words"? I am no Mozart, but perhaps I've said too much, or not enough. To say the words, "I don't know." What a relief! And I'm taping Derek Walcott's poem, Love After Love, from Martha, on my mirror.