I'm realizing and learning that not everyone gets the happy ending they want. Sometimes, not even just A HAPPY ending. Sometimes . . . "an ending" is what we get and we have to make it be enough.

This realizing and the learning that followed are still recent for me, though eating myself alive from the inside out over my abuser and attendant what-ifs has been my most frequent pastime for almost thirty years. I started going to an SIA group this week and that was eye-opening . . . but not the first eye-opener. This article is the most recent and the most hope-inspiring take I've heard on this subject, to date. Also, it's simply, but powerfully and poignantly written. Honest and clear and true.

You're right. Sometimes pain is just pain, even if we call it wisdom. But recognizing that has given me choices and roads I didn't even realize I have. That I can make choices to know and feel my pain honestly, rather than not know and feel pain except as vague and stuffed down panic and misery. I can learn to live with knowledge and acceptance, rather than in denial and silence. Fear. None of those three have ever helped me or anyone else. And to read this article you've written is confirmation, empowerment, solidarity, community, and a kick in the pants when I need it most.

It is, most of all, an invitation to shift my paradigm to one of my making, rather than live with what was forced on me. What I'd been lead to believe was the best option I'd ever have.

I need to find and make my own ending, happy or not, and close that part of my life as much as possible, so I can actually HAVE a life and future that isn't filled with more of the same pain, denial, silence, and fear. I can keep walking around with walking wounds unattended, festering, and still bleeding.

Knowing that you and others have had the strength and courage and tenacity to take up such a momentous and sometimes lonely project is inspiring and heartening. THANK YOU so much for sharing. Your pain, told here, is more than pain or even wisdom. It's a light in the dark for some of us just beginning to deal with this. It's more path in the woods that might help us to ultimately be less lost. It's hope.

Just . . . thank you. And I wish you ALL the best in your journeys.