I was just reading this article: https://open.substack.com/pub/verahartmdphd/p/the-anatomy-of-doubt-when-betrayal

And I got stopped at the sentence, “Yes, that was abuse.”

It stopped me in my tracks.

I have known this in my body for a long time, but to acknowledge it in written words is something else entirely. Acknowledging it takes away so much of the hidden power of the abuse. It wasn’t a personality problem, it wasn’t just normal conflict. It was abuse.

That’s a pretty big statement because I’m not sure that my family of origin is in agreement that it was abuse. This drives so many aspects of those relationships, and this foundational difference in understanding the events with my father will cause confusion, at least in my part, but probably in the rest of the family.

I think there’s a lot more for me to write about this but I think that this will need to settle into my body and mind a bit more before I can speak more on this.