No one is the keeper of your emotion; everyone is the creator of their own experience....

Every time we don’t stand down the key abusers in our lives, we lose a little ground, we fade into the night, and we die a little inside. 

As important as it is to reach a stage of genuine forgiveness where possible, it is even more important to assert boundaries with those who have violated ours. It may well be why they came into our lives- to force us to recognize and claim our own value by standing down those who diminish it. 

Standing tall!

I recently allowed myself to express anger to an extremely abusive person, I need to do that for my friend and I know this person will never change; the expression of that anger actually quelled my anxiety tremendously. 

My rage was contextually appropriate, & the confrontation long overdue. 

Sometimes we need to roar at people who do not hear calm assertion, especially if that roar is the only language they understand because my calm assertion has never been heard - was only treated like a sign of weakness. 

Always speak up. 

Nobody should ever be allowed to cross boundaries of any kind.

Sometimes confronting clear violation appears more attainable than realizing for oneself when confrontation is justified if the violation is more subtle, even when recurring. 

Often in those situations the great inner battle rests in determining where self love meets love of another, where one's story is just a story, and where fears and/or denial become the story.

Even harder perhaps is becoming aware that no matter what stand you take it will be ignored. Ignoring others pain is such an entrenched pattern in positive thinking. 

And being ignored can be so painful we do not really realize that is the deeper issue, not the issue we are trying to take a stand on.

So powerful we may go round and round without feeling the deeper Olin of being ignored, which for a child can actually tie the stomach in knots and keep one frozen there for a lifetime. 

Then the cycle is perpetuated as we paradoxically attempt to rescue the abuser in an attempt not to be hurt again. It is so painful one can be told they are being ignored thousands of times and still not get it.

Everything is challenge to get whole.

ps/smoh