This holiday season, there is a profound incongruence in our world situation, within our families, and within ourselves. The lights, traditions, and expectations of the season may feel hollow compared to the uncertainty and violence in the world and perhaps in the face of one's own crippling depression. So you may struggle mightily when the season calls for celebration. We know that grief and sorrow have no convenient timetable at such a time. 

All at once everything is different. It can happen in an instant or a day. The world goes dark, stark, violent.  An accident an assault, a murder, a suicide, a heart attack, a terminal diagnosis, a national disaster, a fire, hurricane, or a betrayal, a revelation, even an offhanded remark.

When the unexpected devastates you, there is a before and there is the now.  Many may share the event. But sometimes nobody knows. You may have lost your home or health, your livelihood, your partner or your child. You may have been betrayed by the person you thought you could trust the most.  Whatever it is, nothing is the same, yet the world outside goes on.  

And you are still you.

On Saturday, the 28th of September, a small band of 3 folks in Ohio put together the First Annual Thrivers’ Cookout! We decided that since healing really does happen in community, it was high time we had some fun together! No therapy, no telling our stories, just good food, great company and a little music. 

You may already sense—as an observant human and certainly from your experience as a survivor of sexual trauma—that no matter how your violation occurred it is the perpetrator’s narcissism that has left its indelible imprint on your heart.  

The perpetrator might have appeared to have all the power. Perhaps they even expressed interest and concern about you, the victim. But in fact, there was a specific self-centeredness that belied their own deep sense of emptiness and profound self-loathing. All of this was contained in an encasement of shame… creating a false self. For the narcissist, this view of the self may not always hit their own conscious awareness and can masquerade as high self-regard. But any threat to the false self will be responded to as if it were an assault to the "real self” inside, because it threatens their own primitive fear of abandonment and annihilation.