MWM, I am sending so much strength and healing your way. You are strong enough, MWM. You will get through this part. Post-traumatic stress responses only come to us when we are well enough, are strong enough, to see them clearly and are ready to heal the hurt of it.
How awful of 36 to have done that.
I saw that you have posted 36 was verbally abusing you, again. It is so hard to stand up in the face of that. Please read Patricia Evans' Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, MWM. I am in a verbally abusive relationship, too. This book has helped me through the years to recognize and to heal from, the hurtful things the abuser says.
I am so sorry this happened to you, or the either of the children you loved. But here is the thing, MWM. As bad as 36 is now...who might he have become, without someone like you to cherish and teach and hold him close? We always think we are seeing the worst, we always blame ourselves...but who might our troubled kids have been without mothers who loved them beyond thought or reason?
We only have proof of the bad things, though. The goodness we put in them, the bad things that never happened...we have to take that part on faith.
It is hard, to do that, to know and believe that.
I think it is true though, MWM.
Cedar
I have seen that look, too.
Empty.
Cedar