Thanks to all of you, especially Amy for bringing this very important and complicated subject to the forefront. As a community of posters we bring a lot of different backgrounds and perspectives to a forum that often becomes "first responders" to a someone in crisis reaching out while they are in extreme pain and confusion. We are all in different states of recovery and some of us are still "walking wounded" ourselves who trigger very easily when we view children being in possible danger.
I am not going to go back and look at my posts as I don't have time this morning but I am sure I might have been one of the folks who screamed "fire" when the poster was obviously in shell shocked PTSD themselves. Sadly, there isn't a perfect "formula" for when is the exact right way to handle one of the more dramatic and scary posters whose children are obviously in harms way psychologically and physically.
We deeply need all of us to speak into that persons life who has come here for direction and HOPE... we need Amy most of all. Someone who has been in their shoes and afraid of rejection and judgment to speak to them of how much she cares and how she found her way out of her situation.
Sometimes a very scared person who is at the tipping point might need to hear someone like me... an advocate for the scared child hiding in the closet or crying in the night wishing someone would help them escape the misery and horror of the alcoholic home. I was that child and a half century later I am still affected and while I am living a dream life of joy and gratitude I will never forget what it is like to be a helpless and innocent child frightened so much that she lost her ability to fear to this day. My brain actually destroyed that function of my brain... I never get icy tentacles of fear even if attacked or in a dangerous situation.
So I am the opposite of fearful and tentative... I will tear someone apart if like a mother tiger fighting for their cub....even if it is your cub or your child. I have to be reminded by
Amy and others that we are dealing with very broken people and have to use discernment and judgment when speaking to those coming out of the fog of abuse.
Balance is the key and most importantly reaching out to our HP and thinking through our responses carefully when it is a crisis situation with a newcomer who we could potentially drive off with too harsh or judgmental a response.
Truth is what sets us free ultimately... getting a new pair of glasses to view our world and life situation and for all of us it took a LOT more time than we think it should take for others...lol! I was here for years and I read my old posts just to remind me how blind I was! NO ONE could tell me that I wasn't going to get my man sober...lol!
Anyway... maybe we could always make sure that the newcomer knows that this is a community that welcomes EVERYONE to share their experience (I do try to stay in this realm but I have been known to stray) strength and hope and just like everywhere else on the planet we are very diverse in our opinions and styles of communication.
Eating hay and spitting out straw is a good thing. Years later I found the straw I hated two years ago was actually the delicious stuff that set me free in time! The posters who told me the truth years ago that I ignored I now LOVE their posts and nod my head at their sage wisdom and the newcomers don't like what they have to say!
So... I say "stick around" and "keep coming back" and now we need to add "we love you right exactly where you are right now" .... "one day at a time" ....
I love this place.... because we are all different and we are still "growing".... thanks for the lesson Amy and I will work on my "kinder and gentler side" that my A father robbed from me when I was 6 years old and crying in the closet hoping that he wouldn't really throw that gas in his hand and match on the house to kill us all.