• Featured,  narcissistic abuse

    Five Reasons Why Women Stay with Narcissists

    I have often gotten asked why did I stay if my ex-husband was so terrible.  The question always sends a pang of anguish through my heart, mostly because I wish I hadn’t. But looking back, the answer to that question is very complicated. Abused women stay for a number of very difficult reasons, ones that are not immediately obvious. It took a good deal of prayer and spiritual and emotional growth to get to the point where I could see clearly enough to leave. Part of the reason I write about this topic is that I get a steady stream of emails from women struggling with this very dilemma. To…

  • Narcissism

    Be a Narcissism Detector with 1 Test

    Now that I am seventeen years free of being held captive in an abusive marriage, I am quite a good narcissism detector. But a friend recently recommended the youtube videos of a life coach named Richard Brannon in Southern California. He made some extremely wise connections that answered some serious questions that I could never seem to get answered. (I am putting a link to his channel at the end of this blog. He is excellent, but he uses language that some might find difficult to listen to.) Seriously, he is the best narcissism detector I have heard. His first observation that struck me was that if you want to…

  • use
    Bondage

    God Doesn’t Want to Use You; Why You Need to Stop Asking

    The title sounds harsh, but as I see it, presenting God as a deity who will use His children to further His ends heads down a dangerous slope. I am not judging Christians who like to say this phrase. For most, I am sure it comes from a place of wanting to be a part of what God is doing. I want to be a part of what God is doing, too. But I definitely don’t want to be used. At first, I thought my dislike of this phrase had to do with my narcissistic ex-husband, and undoubtedly it does. He used me all the time to run interference between…