by Patricia Ella

This book is part of my healing journey back to wholeness. It is my story, having left my upper middle class upbringing to live with my first boyfriend in 1967 shortly after I graduated from high school. We legally married, but my boyfriend removed the words, 'till death do us part' from the ceremony. Thus, he justified full sexual exploitation of me. While he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, my then husband abandoned me to a hippie commune in Berkeley, California, two months after our first son was born in1972. I have been through fire. In 2000 during my first session with a psychiatrist, he jumped from his chair and said, 'See, you have depression, and you have had it most of your life.' I did not agree then, but I do now. I had no sense of it, none. As we began to work together and my story unfolded, it became clear that I had it 'all'; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex PTSD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder and/or deep emotional wounding. I didn't seek help for 30 years. I worked full time, attempted to raise children and swept my life under the rug. No matter how bad it was for me, I just kept going until one day I couldn't do it anymore. I began to collapse. I had to face the truth about my life. I had been treated worse than an abandoned, abused animal. I learned that you can run, but you can't hide. If God is going to save you, He is going to do it, no matter who you are, what you have been through, where you have been, how you treat yourself and what other people say, do or think.