This is my reference/self-help/spiritual bookshelf. I have spent most of my life trying to figure out what is going on around me. Take my family. I realized that if my folks had not needed to put me on deck now that my brother who drives them around and shops for them is out of commission for a while, I never would have heard about his stroke. That is because it has always been my job to call them and find out what is happening. No one there thinks I am worthy of notifying when an uncle dies, or Mom has to go to emergency after an animal bite. Now, I spent about 35 years believing that I was just always going to be a victim of these really mean-spirited people, the ones that did not visit me in the hospital when I was horridly ill because they don't like hospitals. Loads of therapy and 21 years of recovery have taught me that they are who they are, and wanting them to change just made ME crazy. Hating them made ME unhappy. And if I was a victim, it was of my own thoughts and subsequent feelings and actions. And I made a different decision. I am not nuts. THEY ARE. So I have this mantra. Whenever one of those venomous words drops from my mother's lips, I say to myself "that's not about me". It is about who SHE is and what SHE thinks and what SHE does. And I can walk away, all in one piece, unscathed. Some friends think I shouldn't even visit. I know that if I didn't honor them on the days that are important, and now, in this end time when they are really like baby birds over there, with their mouths open, crying to be fed, I would feel awful, about MYSELF. So I go, over and over again. You know, I have learned that if you are broken, it doesn't matter whether it was at another's hands or your own. You're still broken. Feeling a little cracked at the moment. Thank HP, this, too, shall pass. Soon, I hope.
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