One thing I wanted to mention, for whoever, and for my journal:
The more I get out into the world and try out this "old+new me" thing I created, the more I am convinced/comforted that this MLC thing really wasn't all about me, that it is the mlc'er. Yes, I contributed a lot to the M issues, but have remedied them. Of course I wonder if this could have been all dealt with in MC without having a crisis, but, that's not how things rolled. I accept that. It was/is reality.
I have regained "myself", built a better self, done the work, the hard work, that this mlc journey provides such an opportunity for...it was a good thing in the end, if a painful thing. I am not what the mlc'er claimed; those things that destroy self-esteem, self-confidence, faith, trust in life when we are initial told and spewed at by the one person we trusted, opened up to, the most in life.
But I know now I am going to be okay no matter what life throws at me, and I have modelled that for my boys, and am teaching them how best I can.
"This life is more than just a read through" is really getting a lot of spin time of my jukebox...
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. - Albert Camus
Uncertainty is the very condition which impels people to unfold their powers.-Eric Fromm
