Crazy-making is your abuser’s ability to throw you off balance and keep you teetering. Abusers accomplish this by saying one thing and then swearing they said the opposite or didn’t say it at all, by talking the talk but not walking the walk, by claiming that you are crazy and unbalanced, etc. If you’re a…

My mother asked me to complete this sentence: “I am a woman who…”. And I am having a horrible time with it. I realize the exercise is to help me define myself, and I am fearful of doing that. What if I’m no one? Or worse, what if I’m no one special?

My husband found my website and blog. I figured he already had found them, but I suppose he just wasn’t interested or didn’t make the connection between what he saw me doing at home and what was going online…or whatever. At first he was angry, but now he isn’t. At least, that’s what he says,…
The idea to make a website documenting the verbal abuse and my reactions/thoughts relating to it came to me around the time I realized it was happening – about October or November of last year (2008). I never hid the fact that I was making a website about verbal abuse from my husband. In fact,…

Maybe it hurts because it’s supposed to hurt. He meant to hurt me. “Goodbye and good luck.” I think he meant to threaten me, too. The “good luck” part was not lovingly said, you know. On a high note, this could be the first time he’s ever wished me good luck in anything.

Maybe I’m being too cynical. Maybe he really does want to improve our communication; maybe he really does want to fix “our” problem. Maybe I really should just “get over” my trust issues and let him back into my heart and mind.

Making verbalabusejournals.com is a healing process for me. Writing the pages, updating my entries (both past and present), sharing resources that have helped me…all of it serves to remind me that even now I struggle in the web of abuse. I sometimes feel like a butterfly re-cocooned in spidery fibers waiting to be the main…