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. 

One of the miracles of nature is that evolution is constantly in motion. Life stubbornly carries on despite war and planetary disruption, and reminds us again and again that nature continues to function. It is always solving problems, running on sunlight, fitting form to function, recycling everything—relentlessly "creating conditions conducive to life."¹

There are times when you find yourself in some endless loop and cannot clear the way out of the mire. The situation can be physical, circumstantial or mental. Understanding why you are stuck is only a piece of this and often there seems to be no easy trick to getting unstuck.