I had recently turned 17 when my boyfriend proposed to me – which was nothing more than asking me in bed one day if I would marry him. We went and got a ring, and my mom raced me down to Lazarus to their Bridal Department. It was a beautiful day, probably one of the best memories I have with my mom, as a teen. I put the gown on, one that I had fantasized about from all the wedding magazines. I was on a dais, looking at myself in a three-fold mirror and felt like I was on top of the world. Intuitively, even though I didn’t understand what this word meant back then, I knew I would never wear the dress.

My life in Ohio, for 17 and a half years, was someone else’s life. My mother told me what I would do and when I would do it. My father would use corporal punishment to keep me in line. My sister was special needs, so she got a pass most of the time and my baby brothers were boys – and little kids. I was not in love, I didn’t know what this really was. A guy paid attention to me, I responded and followed along as I assumed the normal plan for young girls in rural areas of the Midwest.

My father was my step/adopt parent who was a refugee from Hungary. We went to his church and his cultural activities, but I was never Hungarian. My identity was Irish, English and German. I sort of knew this but after my adoption by him when I was 9 years old, I was given his name, and my identity was never discussed again. My paternal Irish family, grandparents, aunts/uncles, half-sisters, stepmother and birth father were stripped of me on that spot. I didn’t realize this until I overheard my mom talking to my paternal grandmother and then she told me the new rules. While I didn’t hate being a part of the Hungarian community, in fact I loved it, I lost myself in this world until I grew up and these people began to reject me. The previous folks who went in on the plan were all dead by now. My paternal family I began to reclaim when I was about 25 years old. Little by little, I began to look into my own heritage as well.

I wanted to be in ballet, my mom put me in tap. I hated it as I always thought about ballet. I took French because it was ballet, but this never seemed to be enough for me. I went to the ballet and my body wanted so much to move with the dancers on stage. I internalized the dances and acted them out at home, as an adult. I danced any chance I could at the clubs. It was my little secret. At one point, I even took modern dance in college, but the teacher, while she was great, didn’t care about supporting or coaching a late 20’s woman who wanted to dance. She had her favorites, told me to see a chiropractor when I talked about my back, and I dropped out in the 2^nd level. I was used to yoga teachers listening when you mentioned any soreness, helping you to adapt to the position. My whole adult life, until I began to understand narcissism was about internalizing my needs and wants. I could never ask people for things or set boundaries, and I lost so much in my life. I quit if it was frustrating or unsupportive. This even included jobs which eventually became boring and my skills unrecognized.

Sometimes I even felt like I was living the wrong life. I wished I had a manager (many survivors will say this) to tell me what to do, give me the right direction. In fact, I had a very good spiritual friend and teacher who did tell me things, but her way of communicating often seemed antagonistic or it would be cryptic, and I just didn’t get it – until she died and I began to grow up. I found that I had been living with her decisions rather than thinking for myself. She wasn’t a narcissist, like my mom, I was just used to this.

I had a child with that first marriage. My husband and I became pregnant by January of 1980, or maybe February, who knows exactly but he was born in October. The menses ended in January. To his only merit, he went to the U.S. Navy when he realized he wasn’t going to afford a child, had lost his job and unemployment said they weren’t going to pay him. First, we went to Chicago and within a couple of months after the birth of our son, we were in San Diego. By then, I knew he was not a father, that he was abusive and now I was 3000 miles away from my own abusive parents. He also had no ambition and wasted his time on duty with the Navy. He even bragged about how he “skated” through the day. I was much more involved and interested in learning about the military than he was. The West Pac, that took him away for six months, was my life saver. I began to grow up.

By the time he came back, I had been with another man, who encouraged me as a woman. He pushed me to think for myself and to not think I was dumb. By now, I had already realized my husband was with other women, all the way back to the beginning, when we were living in Chicago, and it was easy to visit Ohio. To me, I was 19, he had cheated, our marriage was over, what difference did it make. The affair gave me the strength to leave my husband, though it also was handled by a 19-year-old.

My escape plan to Ohio went very well, it would be the life changing moment there that destroyed me again and changed me as a mother forever. His ego came racing back to my parents’ house. Where else would I go? They didn’t have domestic violence shelters back then and there were no advocates or hotlines. He came to my parents’ house and told me he wanted to take my son to visit his family, since I wasn’t coming back with him. I said “Okay” but on the way out the door my dad begged me to not do this. I reasoned “He is just going to visit his family.” Coercive control, narcissism, manipulation, also not part of my radar back then – nor anyone else’s in the world. The day before, I had gone to an attorney, named Anthony (my dad’s name) and the first thing out of his mouth was “When was the last time you had sex with your husband?” I was so embarrassed to have a stranger ask me such an intimate question, but I answered as his boss was my parents’ attorney Randall Pees (respect for professionals). “The day before I left because I had to prove I was not leaving so he would go to work.” I had originally just told my husband that I wanted a divorce, and he took a week off from the Navy to keep an eye on me. I explained this too. Ohio divorce laws didn’t care about domestic violence or all the other phrases we say today. Rules are rules and you couldn’t have sex for 30 days with your spouse and until then, you could not file for a divorce. I could not file for custody of my son. My husband was able to kidnap him and take him to California and the police could not do anything at the airport.

Eventually, I saved up some money to get back to California. However, I was homeless, living with friends – one (the sister) would steal the only thing of value I owned and so I couldn’t even get a break. The divorce played out with lies on his part – he said that I did what he actually had done to me. His attorney looked at me when I came into the court room, and it was obvious he knew what really happened. He never paid him, so he stopped using an attorney. I went to another one pro bono and eventually we were divorced and I got my name back. But this was not until psychiatrists, social workers, and judges, decided that I was penniless and ignorant, and they were not going to give a child to a presumed welfare mother, so off he was sent to Ohio to live with my parents. I had no say in the matter, except whether to choose family or foster parents. John Skukas, the social worker, warned me against choosing a foster parent – I’d never see him again.

Sure, I could have just gone back with him and my life would not have been my life, once again. I assumed, at the time, it would be short lived and wanted to believe my parents would not work against me. Instead, they used him as a pawn (but more my mother’s doing than my father). I stayed in California. I eventually went to college, later got my master’s degree in psychology and here I am a psychotherapist in Ohio. Meanwhile, in between, I made some really poor decisions – based on my own naivete, being desperate to be loved and accepted by someone and all the other things that happened in between.

Prior to meeting my husband, a young male family friend died while out bicycling one day in Hilliard. This was the beginning of the deaths of the Hungarians. One of my church female friends, the minister’s daughter – all her family uprooted and left to another church in a different state. This was the beginning of abandonment from friends and realizing that they don’t stay in touch no matter how desperately you want them too.

Staying in California, people died one after another at the Hungarian church. I was growing up there and my childhood reality from home was slipping away. I would save up my money to visit my son, whenever I got time off from work and back then Sprint had these airplane reward programs. This enabled me to have a very rigid visit with my son, while my mom tried to skirt him away from me whenever she could. If I was home for a funeral or a wedding – that conveniently matched my time, I would go, if not, I had no closure at all. Then my youngest brother died in a car accident and my world came falling down. I went home for this, and someone paid for my ticket. I ended a relationship after this and told myself I didn’t deserve to be loved or to be married. My next relationship was abusive and then the one after that wasn’t ready to be involved with me (he is now, but this is 35+ years later). They just came one after another, never really committed and I didn’t really care, but I did, but I didn’t know how to say so. When I did, a little bit, half-heartedly, I would listen to their words and not mine.

Then I began to be in narcissistic relationships, one after another. I knew nothing about this topic at this point. It was time to begin learning this lesson. The one in Santa Barbara, I was in therapy again – for about the third time in my life and she pointed out to me, for the first time, that my mother was. She didn’t mention my boyfriend, but in retrospect, I know she was trying to point something out to me. It wasn’t hard for her to mention my mother because she fit the description to a “T”. I am not sure even this very experienced therapist knew what I know now, about men and their victims. Maybe she did, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t part of our society and our playbook of knowledge anymore than it was when I was going through the divorce.

I never got my son back. Only a few visits that were temporary. My mom played so many mind games, and I deferred to her as she wielded all the power. My son was raised to not respect me and so he never really has. By 2010, I had had enough of California, my 8-year job with the county ended with them forcing me to quit – pretty much, as they were continuing to put me on administrative leave, while they made up more lies about me. The union did nothing and the attorney I spoke to had had enough fun the last time he went up against the county. I had done nothing wrong, I just had a lot of power and got what I wanted from court – for my clients – because I was well liked and respected. It was the recession. Also, a year prior I had been honest with a family about a client I shared with another social worker – who was in a pilot program. My client had become a “poster child” for this program, but me being a very honest person with a lot of integrity, and ethics didn’t think when the aunt called me and just kept talking and informing her of things she didn’t know. If I had not done this, the child would have gone back there, they would have abandoned her – it was all the way across the country, and she would have been destitute all over again. But the Program Director hated me from that point on and made it his duty to get rid of me. The problem was, I didn’t do anything wrong. They couldn’t find anything, so they began making things up and colluding with other people in the group homes that took part in an advantage it might have on their program – and losing their money if they didn’t.

My choice to go to Ohio was because I was also starting to realize, intuitively, that something bad was going to happen in California and I needed to get out of there. It didn’t happen right away, but eventually it did and that is Governor Newsom who took the rights away from parents. What we used to think was child abuse was now acceptable – gender switching and mutilation by hospitals. Now parents were losing their children for not accepting such horrific treatment. And, if they got a divorce, how quickly the child needed surgery, and the disagreeing parent would lose custody. We all know this now and it was not just California. But this was a premeditated thought I had to get out of town before “bad” happened. I also realized that I wanted to come full circle and deal with the narcissism that I was beginning to understand. My son was now a full-fledged drug addict, popping kids out one at a time – that time it was two. The mothers weren’t listening to me. I had nothing in my life but a house I had purchased in Columbus (bad idea), a job I would end up losing four months later. I had paid all my bills off too, by then, only to rack up the credit card in Ohio, while trying to get a job with a license that no one had heard of in Ohio – at that time.

Ohio was a quicker pull it together process though, then when I began alone in California. I had a license and so eventually, I put a business together on a shoe string budget. I began to realize how my mother was colluding with my son – enabling. I fought hard to explain this to the family – to stop them from giving him money. After two trips to jail and finally walking out without a family member to protect him, he eventually went to AA. I begged him to do family therapy with me, I told him I would be open to whatever he wanted to say. He could tell the therapist whatever he wanted, I wanted to heal this relationship. He didn’t.

His dad died of drugs. This was a relief to me, as I still was afraid of him tracking me down and trying to harm me in some way. He held grudges and told me he would always find me. He had contacted me before. I had later contacted him for child support many years prior, (to moving back to Ohio) pleading that I wanted to raise my son, not have my parents do this. He said no, he wasn’t going to let me “have a good life.” He could care less about a son he never wanted. So, when he died, I was relieved.

I tried to build a relationship with my son, with the trail of children (he has five now from four women), he was creating. He would make addict attempts with me, false promises, – he never stuck it out with AA either. He never made amends to those he harmed – he couldn’t complete the 12 steps. He would bull shit and said he made amends but when I went back to everyone (and I also knew myself), he never paid us back what he stole. Ironically, he even stole from my mother’s husband (his Medicare funded prescriptions). I was frustrated and felt more powerless than I did when he was a child.

While being with my family, I had stood up to my mother – one Easter and from this, I began to build a practice on narcissism. I began to understand the patterns of mothers and soon would learn about fathers (from my clients). I understood relationship dynamics from my own personal experience and saw how these patterns matched with my clients. I started taking courses, reading books, looking at my past clients’ scenarios until I eventually put together a workshop for the public and now a workshop for therapists.

In between my life continued to fall apart. I built a seven-year relationship with my granddaughter, though I could see her mother was manipulating the course to the end all along. I pretty much had to beg for visits, several times before they would be granted. At first, I had to go to their house – when she was a baby, no problem but it was filthy and no food to eat for an 8-hour day. Then they allowed visits at my home, but no overnights – I was told I didn’t know how to raise children. Coming to my house though required the begging – several emails before they would respond at the last minute. Eventually, she had two overnights with me – calling home – my own idea to satisfy her mother. However, the overnights sealed the bond, and we were becoming too close for her liking. Her seventh birthday came, and I was not invited. I had returned from a spiritual retreat, emailed about what the plans were and got no response. I didn’t think anything of it, assuming they probably didn’t have a party, until I saw a photo of my mother and sister sitting at a birthday gathering at their home with a bunch of other people I did not even know. Needless to say, I was enraged, I was inappropriate with my language, but I fought back. How could they do that?

Her birthday was near Christmas, I already had gifts for everyone. I took them to their house; they were hiding in the basement and didn’t come up. Why do I know this? They were on their way to my mom’s gathering. All the cars/trucks were in the driveway. The door was open on a main street with plenty of traffic to notice. The house was filthy, even more than usual, and I laid the presents down on the floor and texted my son. “The presents are here if you can find them.” It was a 45-minute drive to take them to their house and then of course to drive back home. I never got to see my granddaughter again. It has been two years.

All of the mothers found ways to keep me or my son away from the children, one after another. I had begged the last one not to do this and she lied and said she wouldn’t. I got to see the third one, one time, while she was visiting her dad. I didn’t even know who she was – at first. Two are now adults and do nothing to try to reach out. Their parents taught them to behave this way, but still, they are adults. The third child, a girl, while I gave her my contact information, I doubted a young teen would keep this for someone she met once.

If this were not enough, I have watched, since 2010, how the mothers of my great nieces and nephews have also played this game of pulling their children away from me. I didn’t even know these mothers very well. One actually told me, when I first came to Ohio, “I thought you didn’t like children.” I told her, “Don’t you think you should try to get to know me a little bit before you make such an accusation?” I was so hurt and upset, like I always am when I am around my family. These rumors were not just from my mother but others in the family who have colluded with her and continued to try and use me as their scapegoat. But I believe in respect and loyalty. And I get lots of evidence of patterns of narcissism when I am around them. I practice setting boundaries when I am with them and then teach my clients what works and what doesn’t. I will try to apologize for my own wrong doings – it goes on deaf ears. I communicate in ways using the tools I have learned from the Gottman training I have taken. Sometimes this works, sometimes I am to tense to pull it off very well.

I am ready to leave Ohio now. I came full circle, learned a lot of lessons and I am ready to move forward in my life and have closure with family. I am no longer running away, just feeling ready to retire and enjoy life with my partner. We both have had to struggle with so many things in our life. As I said, he came back (after several tries) and was ready for that commitment, but I wasn’t. I almost went to him about 20 years ago, the first time he got back in touch, but then didn’t – fear of asking, once I was available again. Then he reached out before I moved here and wanted me to come to him. At the last minute, I did not. It was a foolish decision both times for dumb reasons but here we are. I was also at the beginning of menopause on the last occasion and did not know it. The job was starting to fall apart and when he called me, I would not know that for several months but felt something bad was about to happen. I couldn’t make wise enough decisions, and I still did not know how to speak for myself and say what I needed. Two years ago, he came back one last time, reaching out to me and I accepted. He came here, with several months of communication ahead of time – saying what we wanted and needed, and here we began to build a life together. I am 62 and he is 64.

As a psychotherapist, I should have reached this point sooner in my life but as you can see, my life was a never-ending series of battles and tragedies continuing to torment me emotionally. Sending me from one direction to another. I didn’t even have a vice to hold me down, just so much confusion, dissociation and other PTSD symptoms. As a survivor of narcissism, I was also coaching and counseling survivors. I was researching and writing. Narcissism and survivors were never far from my mind. When you are studying psychology, you are your work, and you have to take care of yourself. I do. Every day I am impacted by something, and I go home and take care of myself. I have daily rituals to offset these things. I have someone who loves me, and I love him back. For the first time in my life, I have a real partnership and a plan for my future. While it is at the end of the road, it is better late than never. It is the happiest I have ever been.

A good friend encouraged me to put my work with survivors in one place, one website that focused solely on this. I did this a week ago. I know that people want to hear a story, so I allowed myself to write this post once again. In the early 2010’s (not sure how to say that), I wrote this same story under this exact title. I was at the entry point, the jumping off point to working with survivors. Now, I am saying this again, as I feel accomplished, learned and emotionally, psychologically and spiritually more aware of what and who I am. My story all fits together now, in unison with my work.

I hope you have appreciated reading this and relating to your own life. As a survivor, we are a work in progress. Always learning, growing, making mistakes and learning once more. Don’t ever give up on yourself, keep saddling up that horse and getting back on again. No matter what, you will survive your narcissist or toxic situation, and you will get what you want in life – if you don’t give up on yourself. No matter what people say to you, to put you down or slow your progress, listen to your inner voice.

Post-Note: Now you can read Part II. Crying Doesn’t Fix the Pain – But it Helps in the Healing Process.