Personal Passion:    Advocacy for child development with enthusiasm to broaden their tomorrows!  

Majored in: Soul Survival - Self-esteem Remediation - and Cognizance

                                                 I believe my theme music to be "Begin the Beguine" 

The book, Romance Stew, tells of my trek through a land of differing beliefs and finding my way back to me.  My experience in a marriage where I found myself shaken by the alien territory of life with a narcissist  is characterized in the last chapters.  It took quite some time to evaluate the trek as that within the parameters of relationship Stockholm Syndrome. 

The first edition precipitated an upbeat, optimistic feel for romance and the bumps along the way.  In the second edition, I included my journey within a marriage where not only "he" became the only presence that mattered, but his family supplied additional overwhelm.  In this writing, the precursor to my awareness of narcissism, I worked to "take the high road."  The finale found me less optimistic and "settling" with an expectation that life within my chosen domain would improve.

Lessons to be learned?     Trust yourself and know that not all the certified gurus have truth...it can be found within....answers are filtered through the one offering advice. In my situation, I discovered a name and category for the anguish I had experienced - life with a narcissistic spouse and his chaotic clan.

Through it all, I am not the same person - there truly is choice and free will that goes hand-in-hand with personal growth.   And I find myself in agreement with Thomas Sheridan, author of Puzzling People.  An evolutionary development within humanity may be occurring with the expanding numbers of psychopaths.

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agartha1952@gmail.com

(406) 560-6144

Service Concierge for short term care after surgery upon your return home -  

Skills: Management training, law enforcement, EMT, lab technician, veterinary technician, writing and editing, 10-year operation of sole proprietorship residential and small office cleaning service, observation and evaluation, conflict resolution (the greatest challenges as a single parent), communication..

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              *Flexibility to aid with your needs and comfort as you return home

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Author: Romance Stew   -----   on Amazon.com

 

       

Romance Dot Com – Cooking Up A New Life
http://www.dandelion-books.com/romance-dot-com.html

"Don't be afraid and turn up the volume!”

Enjoy A Romance Dot Com Excerpt of Romance Stew                                                                    

Romance Stew  shows the woman I was before I boarded the barreling freight train of life with a narcissistic spouse.  (I feel the music behind this segment of story should be from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's movie format, "So long, so long...and thanks for all the fish! which captures the sense of humor) This has been my personal journey of choice using reality therapy.  It proved an amazingly swift roller coaster of emotional turmoil.  As an optimist and fairly bright gal, my attempt in the last chapters describing my marriage and the menagerie of distressed family members along for the ride was to take the high road, and yet I seemed unable to evaluate that my questions of what I wanted in this reality of marriage could not mesh with those of my partner.  Only after much time had passed did I believe the category to have been narcissism.  He presented so very well.  

At 54, I jumped at the chance for perhaps one last shot at romance with all the accoutrements.  Even though there resulted in what felt like earth-shaking anguish, I have become a stronger person...different in so many ways.  Now, after close to a year of time away from the madness, I wish them all well and success.  Most especially during the year of recovery, I regained a trust in the All-That-Is and my own place in this vast human experiment.  But, for others on a similar path, I have added this bit to let you know that you are not alone.  Many of us who have tread this way before you have felt frightened, angry, and afraid.  Our equation regarding life and its appearance didn't fall into our experiential history and the methods we used to attempt to correct our behavior and the outcome failed to manifest that desired "Now."  You will survive.  I say this to you with great warmth;  you will be amazed at the "you" that you are. 

As Paul Harvey used to say, "The~~ Rest of the Story..."

                                                                  2nd edition...

"I love acting, it is so much more

                   real than life." ~ Oscar Wilde

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The Book: [about the Point of View Gun] The Point of View gun conveniently does precisely what its name suggests. That is if you point it at someone and pull the trigger, they instantly see things from your point of view. It was designed by Deep Thought, but commissioned by a consortium of intergalactic angry housewives, who after countless arguments with their husbands were sick to the teeth of ending those arguments with the phrase "You just don't get it, do you?"

My Story:  Choosing to write about my varied and colorfully dramatic forays into romance, I hoped to leave tidbits of wisdom for my daughters. Wisdom? Knowledge about my frailties, hopes, dreams, love of life, and that oh-so irresistible element called romance. The sage in me hopes that others will see that it is more than acceptable to fall down, bloody ones knees, and rise again.

The new edition of my book includes my belief that I had found "Mr. Right" and an addition of the "Alice in Wonderland" surprises that awaited me on the other side of "I do," even if frightening and "Twilight Zone" like in appearance. Coming from a love of self-help ideas, religious base, spiritual background, and even the overtones of Scientology, riding the roller coaster in my marriage with unbelievably strong ties within my spouse's family and extended clan stunned me.

This time of my life, after marriage to a narcissist, had been a trek through the bowels of the Twilight Zone. I found myself in an alien land - the wife of a man who later presented as bipolar, his invalid mother with Asperger's Syndrome, and a bipolar and alcoholic adult son. I was ill prepared in my enthusiastic dash for one final chance to have love with all the trimmings. The close dynamics in which I became enmeshed along with my spouse left me feeling as though I were drowning in a black hole of unrelenting need.

Letting all my financial holdings be liquidated, always with the promise of "we have the rest of our lives to make this up," I was left out-in-the-cold when I refused the final beseiging to sell my tiny house. The world of narcissism left me exhausted and frightened - there was no empathy for me as a being. I was only a tool to be used. Suffering relationship Stockholm Syndrome, I was cut from the clan as coldly and precisely as if it were a surgical incision. I was no longer valuable to these people.

It was a long journey back to find myself. The strange morals of the group always left me feeling out-of-focus. There are many of us survivors and we are taking steps to reclaim our lives.

Radical Forgiveness: Let blame go. Look for goodness. AND risk being true to oneself. Reclaim life. What do I now at age 58 think of romance? I don't know whether it exists within my previously narrow view of boy-meets-girl and the heavens sing. Romance to me now is that of one interacting with life, making choices, righting wrongs, and being the best me possible - with a passionate appreciation for the grand possibilities of relationship WITH this moment in time. 

Integrity...and so it is....

And the beat goes on.... There exists a more prescient awareness of the changing direction of our society and culture today with the introduction of writings on relationship narcissism from Lisa E. Scott's It's All About Him, Sandra Brown's How to Spot a Dangerous Man, and Sam Vaknin's Malignant Self Love. To include the emotional impact of such encounters and resulting “dark night of the soul” for recipients of this psychological act, blog sites must be included such as that of Betty LaLuna and her Narc Raider on Facebook. Something insidious has altered life perspective across the world regarding a sense of detachment with no empathy. Public social networking has brought a surprising focus to this imposing occurrence. Howard Bloom writes of change in comprehensive thinking and actions that lead to the survival of societies in his book, Global Brain,  and these impressively thought provoking encounters in the literary field strive to calmly elucidate the developments precipitating from altered perspective of thinking patterns. Narcissism appears to be rapidly gaining the high ground within a growing number in our populations who simply fail to comprehend the well being of others, as if those being encountered unaffectedly cease to exist once the viewer's attention passes. This takes the phenomenon of New Thinking's “living in the now” as expressed by Eckhart Tolle into a totally alien realm.  Our culture is morphing in ways that redefine humanity.