Hi your post touched my heart. Please do your best to remove yourself from that toxic environment. You need to heal in order to grow. I know this because I too was battered with verbal and emotional abuse for many years by my family. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and started changing myself. I began reading every thing I could that would teach me about positive energy.

As an example of one of the million emotionally brutal things that my family dogged me into, was working for the federal government when I was 17 yrs old and for 32 years I HATED every single minute of it. Please don’t think I was ungrateful of having a secure job, but it wasn’t who I was and the internal battle was epic. They beat me down for SO MANY other things, that I became a person who didn’t have a voice and my spirit was broken. I became physically ill behind the constant bullying. It is not healthy for anyone to spend one minute not being true to themselves. Now at 50 years old I am finding my rhythm and healing my spirit. I am living my life exactly as I want to – I had so much hurt, anger, and resentment that I had to completely delete immediate family members out of my life and it has been the best decision I have ever made for myself. My inner circle is very small, but I know they are good people, and only want the best for me. The greatest gifts you can give to yourself are the gifts of self-reliance, self-awareness, positive self image, self-love, and to please yourself…HUGS and KUDOS to you for surviving the craziness, I know it has been awful and that you want better for yourself. Don’t let anyone ever tell you, that YOU aren’t living YOUR life correctly. Life is simply just too short for that level of crazy! Their perception of you is not your reality…

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by BlueBunny.