Posts tagged suicidality
Where Does Hope Fit? And What Is It?

Although I am over nine years from dday, it has been a long journey to find my voice. I well remember putting one foot in front of the other every day as one of the walking dead. I didn’t use the word hope. I just kept going. That was hope. Now, leaving terror behind means I can use my critical faculties to do what they do best—identify, question, analyze and discuss what happened, and choose what happens next.

I seek a just way for us to understand and heal our lives that begins with ourselves as priorities for care, not women to be “managed.“ I will not ignore the domestic violence in our experience or when practitioners add a “therapeutic” version of it to our nightmare. And I keep going. That is still hope.

Read More
Post-traumatic stress, therapeutic abuse, self-careDiane Stricklandhope, suicidality, your strength, hopium, misogynist therapy
Suddenly Alone

What was your dday?

For most women, there were many episodes of uncovering bits of evidence, stumbling over contradictions, and then questioning our husband or boyfriend. We had no notion of the massive bottom to the iceberg on which we stood. But those episodes weren’t ddays.

Dday is something else altogether. Dday is when you grasp you have been deliberately deceived by your life partner on core value ground. You may not know all the who, what, where, when or why’s—but you know there’s been a breach in your relationship that is a critical breach. It’s not about a crisis that reveals illness, a mental lapse of some kind, or a stress related behavioral problem. Dday is when you perceive for the first time that he is “okay” with hurting you. That, in my opinion, is dday.  And for me, that meant I was suddenly alone.

Read More
therapeutic abuse, self-care, Post-traumatic stressDiane Stricklanddday, discovery, isolation, alone, finding company, audio blogs, partners look after themselves, suicidality, hopelessness, therapeutic incompetence, misogynist therapy, trauma symptoms