From The Courage to Heal page 44:
“Write about the ways you’re still affected by the abuse.  What are you still carrying in terms of your feelings of self-worth, your work, your relationships, your sexuality?  How is your life still pained, still limited?
Write about the strengths you’ve developed because of the abuse.  Think what it’s taken for you to survive.  What are the qualities that enabled you to make it?  Perseverance?  Flexibility?  Self-sufficiency?  Write about your strengths with pride.”

Well right this minute I am hiding in my garage alone in the house.  Noah took the kids off to a fun sounding party and I was not up for it at all.  I feel incredible anxiety about going there.  I feel like I could probably handle being around people who are already close to me but the circle has to be insanely close to me.  I don’t trust that people aren’t going to hurt me or the kids.  I am not able to connect with new people at all.  I cannot assess current threat.  That’s really the problem.  I feel like I am being revictimized pretty much all the time right now.  I feel like I am living inside my nightmare.  And I’m trying to recognize that it is right now.  This came hard and fast.  This is not always.  This is not usual.  This is not my whole life.

I am not this broken person hiding in the garage.  But I am.  This is awful.  Right now I am full of hate.  Hate hate hate hate hate.  I can hate everyone.  That is one of the big ways I am still affected by the abuse.  I am afraid to learn more about magic.  I am afraid of being a neophyte in public.  I am afraid that if I take agency and change things that everything will go to shit.

What strengths do I have?  Well, there isn’t a whole lot in the world that scares me.  It’s kind of funny, actually.  My father held a gun to my head when I was 9 years old.  He forced me to suck his cock.  What in the hell else is likely to go wrong in modern America that will rivel that?  Acts of nature?  Bah.  Acts of terrorism, well if you must.  Do I deserve to live?  Yes, mother fucker, I deserve to live.

I deserve to live and you don’t.  I am glad you are dead you piece of shit.  And I hope my mom grows a set and offs herself soon.  Because then I will be over this god damn sword of Damocles.  I am ready to move on with my life.

Oh stages of grief, how I know you well.  I want to rush through you.  Can I fake it till I make it?

And the most important reason I am doing well and my mother is not?  I tell the truth.