I travelled through the mental health system for 5 decades seeking help. Some people find success there but I wasn’t that lucky. I unknowingly masked who I was so well that a clinician never figured it out. I was misdiagnosed by drs who spent 10 minutes with me and prescribed medicine for something I didn’t have. I am trying to accept that professionals were as confused as I was. And then I found Sharewell, my first authentic experience with community and I’m in my mid sixties! The communities I experienced previously were role playing places where I could never be myself. Eventually I couldn’t hold in the fake persona that I wasn’t aware of. She came bursting on the scene during an accident that caused everything I held in for 60 years to start spilling out. My family had not seen this hidden part of me that was angry, confused and very hurt from a lifetime of Narcissistic Abuse, tragedies and mental illness. While all those things were terrible events to live through, nothing has undone me like the estrangement that occurred December 6, 2022 when my children and grandchildren were lost. After living through daily deep grief for 3.5 years, feeling imprisoned in an impossible situation, I came back to my faith I wandered from. After divorce and parental alienation and finally Estrangement, I crawled back to my faith. At the 3 years mark, in my spirit i heard, “I will restore what the locusts have eaten.” I knew that voice, those words, it was the first ray of light. Though I had wandered , I was welcomed back by those words. Though I thought I had lost everyone I loved deeply, there was One left who didn’t think I deserved being discarded. I resumed a daily relationship with God. He’s transforming my heart and mind because I cry out to him for everything now. In the first part of my walk, I didn’t know I was fake, I merely role played who I was told to be by all the influential people in my life. My name means “God has answered” in Hebrew. I chose that name after one abuser died and I could breathe and live freely. I don’t look to people anymore for hope. People are to love, not to place hope in because people can’t help but fail eventually.