When everything shattered

I was in what I thought was a secure, trusting relationship for nine years with the man I believed was my life partner when I discovered the affair. My whole reality had been ripped out from beneath my feet.

Everything began to unravel when I asked him to leave and he refused. The person I thought I knew seemed to disappear, and something far darker came through in his place.

When I stood my ground that he would not have his affair in front of me in my own home, something truly sinister emerged. This was when the psychological warfare began. The taunting. The setups. The calculated calm. As I continued to uncover endless lies, he only engaged more diabolical tactics. I still remember the chill that ran through my body when he said, “Part of me loves you and part of me has to destroy you.”

He would record me while I was in emotional collapse. He would call the police on me while remaining pathologically calm himself. I was never arrested or charged with anything. I was clearly a woman in distress. That only seemed to deepen the anger within him.

As the lies and psychological torment escalated, I became desperate to understand what I was dealing with. What time revealed was something I did not want to accept: I was dealing with a disordered personality. That realization was devastating. Accepting it felt impossible.

What was left of me

My body had gone into full survival mode. I lost thirty pounds in two months, couldn’t hold down food, and I was vomiting daily for months. I barely left the house except to go to work, and often did not sleep for days, sometimes longer.

The worst part was that I knew psychologically exactly what was happening to me, and I still could not stop it. At the time, I was a group facilitator in a trauma-focused mental health and addiction recovery center. I understood what prolonged psychological abuse does to a nervous system. And I was watching myself being dismantled by it in real time.

My lowest point was a full mental breakdown, a diagnosis of severe anxiety, severe depression, and severe complex PTSD. I no longer recognized myself. I had become so desperate, that I briefly considered ending it all to stop the pain.

PTSD is a special kind of hell. Your body acts like the danger is still happening, even when it isn’t. You are exhausted, terrified, hypervigilant, and alone in ways that are hard to explain. Most people don’t understand it unless they have been through it themselves. That isolation was the most painful experience of my life.

What brought me back

Healing did not happen all at once. It came in pieces over time. Some forward gain, some backward spin.

I was living in my van RV full-time, and I decided to leave town for good. There was too much trauma there. I left for Sedona, a place that has long felt like another home to me. There, I began reaching for life in small ways. I found a community of friends. I was hiking, drumming, singing, and dancing. And all of that helped my nervous system begin to stabilize.

Photography became part of my healing my nervous system as well. Through the lens, I found beauty and presence again. Moments of awe and simple treasures reminded me life was still here, and so was I. My breath and softness returned.

The following summer, I had one final hard bout with PTSD. That was the point where I realized I had to stop quietly hoping for someone or some magical moment of internal shift to save me. My mantra became: “No one is coming to save you.” This was a turning point.

Grizzly bear medicine

I headed north into the mountains of Wyoming and Montana. That is where the deep healing really began. And I didn’t know it yet.

It was being alone on the road and in wild places, in grizzly bear country, that brought me to meet my deepest fears. It showed me what still lived in my body. It showed me where I still did not trust myself or life itself. And in facing that, something began to return.

That is where my self-trust came back. That is where my courage returned. Out there, hiking alone in grizzly bear country, I began to remember who I was. The real me. The deeper me. The one who can walk into fear and stay with herself.

I’m not easy to kill

Post-Traumatic Growth is Real.

Today, I enjoy life on my own in my rig, and I am happy, healthy, and whole in a way I had never known before. Nurturing relationships and community fill my life. I know a love for myself now that I had never touched before this.

Overcoming the pain of the abuse I endured and the PTSD has made me more aware and compassionate. More rooted in my own strength. Unapologetically unwilling to betray myself ever again. I no longer beg for love from people who hurt me because I have built an emotional home within myself.

I recognized the attachment wounds and old patterns that conditioned me to self-abandon in order to receive love, and I did the hard work to change them. Reconnecting with my nervous system and creating a sense of safety with me, has allowed me to know my inner voice, strength, and capability once again.

I trust myself, listen to red flags, and walk away from what is not right for me. I feel no sense of longing or loneliness. I fill my own heart with love. My life now only holds space for the things that enhance the joy I’ve created on my own.

Why I do this work

I know what it is like to be shattered by narcissistic abuse. I have lived through the debilitation and terror of PTSD. I know what it is like to feel like your mind, your body, and even your soul have been devastated beyond repair. I also know that healing is real.

That is the woman I walk alongside now. I am proud of the woman I became through the hard work of healing.

If you have left a relationship with a disordered personality and find yourself still in the thick of devastation, if you feel broken beyond repair, if you do not recognize yourself anymore, I want you to know this: there is a way back. It may be slow. It will ask everything of you. But it is there.

I am living proof. And now I walk alongside other women so they don’t have to go through it in isolation.