Simply put....

There was a lot of crying. I texted Duchess and asked her why I feel empowered after talking about what we did. Her response, "your sadness was connected to all the guilt and shame from those past events. The empowerment is connected to the truth that you didn't have choices to those events so there is no need for guilt and shame concerning them. Your responsibility now is to move forward with that new perspective."

Basically, I feel re-newed and okay, which is a new and rather odd feeling for me.