Yes, it was horrible Mowtown, and to this day when he is stressed as a grown man he still sucks his thumb in his sleep. He had several year in therapy for his challenges resulting from what he experienced growing up, it was truly horrific.

When I lost so much of what I had created, I tried so hard to explain "why" it was so important to me. I touched on that history even because of the devastated condition
I was in and that I was not getting through to people the depth of how what I did meant
so much to me.

I was so shocked to see how badly misunderstood that was and lead to me being so badly misdiagnosed too. Oh, how that misdiagnosing lead to making it worse and worse for me too, even my GP looked at me with so much anger and threw my records at me.
My ex lawyer was going to try to pursue for psychological damages, he got my records before I did and once I saw what was written and learned how the opposing side would
get to see "all" my records and how all of that would be made public, I took that out of my case. I did not want to be misunderstood or have so many "private" challenges of others in my life exposed to where they would be hurt.

All I ever did my entire life was help people, and YES, it took a lot out of me, it was very hard. I was not prepared to have so much hard work destroyed the way it was and have
so many people just not get the significance of what I had been doing either.

I was the only adult that was willing to see that trainer severely neglecting his children
too. I left him even though I my daughter was so close to the end of a season and so close to obtaining awards for state and zone championships. I could not have my daughter thinking that ignoring that was in any way "acceptable" either. I could not fail those children who were students coming to me so concerned about this abuse either. These young children coming to me, and afraid of telling their own parents?

I never in my wildest dreams would imagine the gossip this trainer spread about me in anger that I left him would come up by the opposing attorney getting advice about
horses from a trainer who heard this gossip either.

Yes, I suffered in my childhood, my brothers rages were awful and I had to know how to run from him. Yet, I also took a lot of lemons from all that and made lemon aide in my own way too. No, people did not understand that yet I did have therapists tell me I was gifted and should be a psychologist.

I never ever dreamed I would have so much turned upside down the way it had to where I struggle with this disorder and how people have been so horrible to me. The only one who is seeing a lot of "the real me" is my T and it took a lot of time to explain it all to him. You think people don't understand PTSD, well, they don't understand dyslexia either, or a lot of the ways people are challenged through no fault of their own.
My daughter has dyslexia as I have mentioned, well, she also has a very high IQ, but she definitely learns and processes differently, it took a lot of patience and time and dedication to help her with that.

Mowtown, there are a lot of people that process information differently, that have challenges that other people do not understand and abuse them for too. I saw that constantly growing up. I see it now so many years later too. I had a child that I taught that displayed behaviors that I had never seen before. She would ride a little and then just have to rest and discuss how she "needed to rest a bit before she could continue".
It turned out that when she was being raised by her mother, her mother was battling breast cancer and treatments that made her tired all the time and that is the way she interacted with this child. The mother never noticed "why" her own child behaved this way either. She tagged her as not very "athletic", but that was just not the case at all.
I spent a lot of time on it but I worked on slowly teaching her to abandon that "need to rest all the time" and she got so she stopped doing that and became more involved and developed athletically. She still rides now "years" later and she called me to touch base and let me know she has been riding the jumpers over in England and there certainly is no resting in riding the jumpers.

I am so sorry for those who were mistreated for things they could not help, or for things that their parents struggled with that traumatized them. Yes, the world is full of ignorance and labeling that is definitely "cruel".

OE