Do you know how to fracture the cycle of abuse? It starts when we break the silence. Abusers keep secrets, are controlling, and manipulate our perceptions and reality. They don’t often begin that way at the start of a relationship, or we’d likely recognize it and run. Or confront with…
It was my long week of anniversaries: an adoption date, a wedding anniversary for a marriage that ended in divorce, and the eighth anniversary of my teenage son’s death by suicide. Annually, when this week cycles, I have learned to lean-in and ride the emotional wave, taking care of my…
“Verbal abuse is a violation, not a conflict.” – Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to recognize it and how to respond I know I must write author Patricia Evans into my top 40 list, and her books are significant. But—and I rarely use the word but—I’m also afraid.…
The night before my son died, I opened mail, standing in the kitchen. My boy sat at a round table, watching. Soup heated on the stove. I had worked all day, and needed to attend a class later that evening. He had stayed home from high school, sick with the…