Mental Health Support

In my life and in my family I've seen two outcomes from this sort of thing.

One is to embrace the ugliness, and the other is to be sure to walk toward the places where the ugly things don't go.

My grandfather held a hot iron over my grandmother's face after mercilessly beating her, threatening to burn her face off.

My father found him, pulled him off, and kicked him down the stairs, telling him never to return, which he didn't. (Six months later my grandfather was dead.)

My father made sure to be all the things his father wasn't; he was a wonderful father, an outstanding husband to two wives, the first of whom, my mother, died in horrible suffering which he did everything in his power to address. I was in awe of him. (My 95 year old step mother still talks about how much she loved him, 30 years after his death.)

You have a husband; a son in need.

You clearly didn't embrace the ugliness. You went the other way.

Continue to be as beautiful as you are; put it away; it really isn't you; it's what you decided, wisely, not to be.