I recognize myself and my abusers in these 9 ways. I had been gaslighting myself and questioning my own sanity when I kept being told - ‘no, I never said that.’ And
‘Why can’t my truth be as legitimate as yours?’ Because YOUR truth is a LIE! And I don’t have to keep trying to see your side of it anymore. I am freeing myself from your spell over me.
I needed to hear this. I have been guilty of saying, “It wasn’t that bad” & “Others have it worse.”
Thankfully, since starting my healing journey, I have been finally allowing myself to process all the things that I experienced when I was younger. I am no longer burying the memories & diminishing what I experienced.
Thank you for the post. So many ppl need to hear this❤️
"But trauma isn’t a competition. There’s no medal for suffering quietly." Thank you. Thank you for the entire text, of course, but especially for "others have it worse". Is that supposed to mean the pain you're feeling is less paiful than for "some"? And then what ??? Are you relieved, like "that's right, man, I'm soooo feeling lucky !" So yes, thank you. Again...
You wrote what freedom actually feels like—disorienting, unfinished, raw. The body still wired for alarms long after the danger’s gone. I recognized it immediately. When I left my own abuser, everyone wanted a celebration, not silence. They didn’t see the shaking, the constant self-interrogation, the instinct to defend the person who almost ended me.
Each lie you named is a fuse still burning in the dark. “It wasn’t that bad.” “Maybe I overreacted.” Those weren’t abstract to me—they were daily prayers I whispered to keep from collapsing. In my memoir I called that voice the dark passenger: the echo that keeps you apologizing for surviving. You didn’t just list the lies; you cracked open the circuitry that keeps them alive.
What your piece captures—what I’ve spent months trying to write—is that healing isn’t glory. It’s mechanics. It’s the slow rewiring of the nervous system, the unlearning of obedience. Naming becomes demolition. Every sentence dismantles an old script until the silence starts to sound different.
In Now That I’m Still Here I wrote about that silence—the one that follows crisis, when the world expects gratitude and you’re still learning how to breathe without permission. Reading your piece felt like meeting that silence again, but with light breaking through the cracks.
You reminded me that trauma isn’t memory, it’s syntax. The abuser teaches you their grammar of guilt, and recovery is the long act of rewriting it—word by word—until your own language feels native again.
Maybe healing isn’t escape. Maybe it’s the art of standing in the ruins and refusing to rebuild their house.
This hit deep.
It felt like someone finally said out loud what survivors usually keep buried.
Every line felt like taking back a voice I thought I’d lost.
Thank you for writing with that kind of truth.
I recognize myself and my abusers in these 9 ways. I had been gaslighting myself and questioning my own sanity when I kept being told - ‘no, I never said that.’ And
‘Why can’t my truth be as legitimate as yours?’ Because YOUR truth is a LIE! And I don’t have to keep trying to see your side of it anymore. I am freeing myself from your spell over me.
It felt good getting that out! 💕
I needed to hear this. I have been guilty of saying, “It wasn’t that bad” & “Others have it worse.”
Thankfully, since starting my healing journey, I have been finally allowing myself to process all the things that I experienced when I was younger. I am no longer burying the memories & diminishing what I experienced.
Thank you for the post. So many ppl need to hear this❤️
Especially with narcissist.
When an abusive parent says, It’s all about me”
Taught to shut down.
Thanks. I needed to hear some of this.
It ended 30 years ago, and it carried on another 20, in some ways, and its shadow is definitely still there even now.
Insightful and well explained 🌻 thanks
"But trauma isn’t a competition. There’s no medal for suffering quietly." Thank you. Thank you for the entire text, of course, but especially for "others have it worse". Is that supposed to mean the pain you're feeling is less paiful than for "some"? And then what ??? Are you relieved, like "that's right, man, I'm soooo feeling lucky !" So yes, thank you. Again...
You wrote what freedom actually feels like—disorienting, unfinished, raw. The body still wired for alarms long after the danger’s gone. I recognized it immediately. When I left my own abuser, everyone wanted a celebration, not silence. They didn’t see the shaking, the constant self-interrogation, the instinct to defend the person who almost ended me.
Each lie you named is a fuse still burning in the dark. “It wasn’t that bad.” “Maybe I overreacted.” Those weren’t abstract to me—they were daily prayers I whispered to keep from collapsing. In my memoir I called that voice the dark passenger: the echo that keeps you apologizing for surviving. You didn’t just list the lies; you cracked open the circuitry that keeps them alive.
What your piece captures—what I’ve spent months trying to write—is that healing isn’t glory. It’s mechanics. It’s the slow rewiring of the nervous system, the unlearning of obedience. Naming becomes demolition. Every sentence dismantles an old script until the silence starts to sound different.
In Now That I’m Still Here I wrote about that silence—the one that follows crisis, when the world expects gratitude and you’re still learning how to breathe without permission. Reading your piece felt like meeting that silence again, but with light breaking through the cracks.
You reminded me that trauma isn’t memory, it’s syntax. The abuser teaches you their grammar of guilt, and recovery is the long act of rewriting it—word by word—until your own language feels native again.
Maybe healing isn’t escape. Maybe it’s the art of standing in the ruins and refusing to rebuild their house.
https://substack.com/@egretlane/note/p-176186417?r=5ezmlv&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action