It was impossible to build up trust when I continued living around the same people I was with during the trauma. My Mom died in January 2005. I couldn't even get back in the house for almost a year afterward with all the nightmares I was having it just made them worse. That stress also caused my anorexia to go off again & I was really sick for most of that year. One thing that kept me going was that my mare had just had a foal September 2004 just at the time everything hit but I spent so much time with her that year, it helped me some. The real help came after I sold my mom's house & I actually went 2100 miles away & bought a little 10 acre farm. I left my bad marriage of 33 years (which only added to the trauma because of his lack of support & inability to be there for me (long story).

I didn't know anyone in the town I moved to & the only family I have is my daughter who lives 1/2 way between where I lived before & where I live now....no other family. I have met the most wonderful people here. I am very involved in the horse community here & was invited to a wonderful Bible study & have formed amazing relationships through that. I also found a church I go to & they are my family. I had grown up with such dysfunctional parents who never emotionally connected with anyone & then married a H who was the same. I always wondered why I was fighting my environment & didn't understand until I left it completely what I had been struggling with in that part of my life. The trauma with my mother was the straw that broke the camel's back on my leaving & kicking my H out of my life.

I'm sort of thinking that I had trust, emotional connection & the ability to communicate inside of me all along, it just couldn't come out until I was free of the environment I had lived in for all the 54 years of my life. These 9 years have been totally growth for me to regain trust & to learn how to be a normal person. God has been a huge part of this. I wondered where God was also......I have learned that He is right here with me providing in ways that I never understood before. I struggle with money, but it is totally amazing how God has provided for my life & things work out that I never thought would.

Will keep you in my prayers also....sometimes it's these things that bring us closer to God through the difficulties & his provisions we can look back on when we get through it.

I also got into a wonderful psychology group & my psychologist encouraged me to get into the 2 year DBT group. That leader is awesome. after my first psychologist retired, I started seeing the group leader for my private psychologist. That helped give me a voice & words to express what I had been feeling & experiencing. Having a voice is also important in the healing process.

There is definitely hope...something I never believed in. I had struggled with major depression since loosing my computer engineering career way back in 1994 & realize now that my suicide attempts weren't just because of the loss of career but because I was trapped in the bad marriage. I didn't get it because of the dysfunction I had grown up with & he was a nice person so it was hard to understand the concept of abuse.....more like emotional neglect & financial abuse. I have come to understand what his problem is, but could never go back to living like that even with understanding.....I LOVE my alone life because I'm surrounded by wonderful, supportive & caring people outside of my little farm. Something I had never experienced before in my life. That has definitely helped me slowly trust people & be able to open up some about my own life too.