AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
Recovering from abuse is one of the most challenging emotional tasks a person can undergo. Trauma, shame, and fear cannot be simply walked away from. They ripple out forever. Even harder is finding new love after this type of betrayal. The victim’s (survivor’s) mind has shaped itself around the trauma and developed pathways and habits to prevent future abuse, from fawning (one of the F responses to danger, along with fight, flight, or freeze) to submissiveness to rage, to dissociation. When something triggers the memory, the response is innate. It can take years of intensive therapy to untangle and deactivate these trauma buttons, which leaves the survivor open to future abuse. After all, familiar = comfortable, right?
I want to acknowledge that Luke and Elisa
