AMAZING post over at "Emerging From Broken" blog...

Happened upon an amazing blog post today about receiving bad advice and was blown away. Rarely have I come across someone who is able to put into words exactly what I've been feeling inside of me. Here's a snippet of the post:
 

People always told me things like “deal with it” and “get over it” and “put it behind you” They always seemed so impatient with me and even exasperated that I was still “there” and not over it.

Has anyone ever given you instructions on HOW to “deal with it”? Have you been giving information about HOW to get over it, that didn’t include statements to which you have to keep asking “how do I do that”? Just get over it. (HOW?) Just put it behind you. (HOW?) ~ “Give it to God”. (HOW?) To which the answer was “Have faith”. (HOW?) Well, you get the picture.

Further down in the post, the author writes, "The real message out there in the world is don't deal with it."

It's never occurred to me before but, as I thought about it, I realized that the author is right - having someone say to you, "Get over it already." or "It's in the past. Put it behind you and move on." IS essentially them saying to you, "DON'T deal with it or, at the very least, don't talk about it." This is because it holds a mirror up to them and forces them to see what they don't want to acknowledge. It interferes with their hard work to go on pretending everything is "hunky dorey" when the truth is anything but.

As I'm sure is the case for many of you, if I had a nickel for every time my N FOO has said to me, "Get over it already." or "It's in the past.  Move on already.", I'd be a freaking millionaire. Being invalidated in that way is, to me, almost worse than the original abuse we were made to suffer. Not only did/do we apparently deserve what we got but now we're not even entitled to our feelings about it! Talk about a wounding to the soul.

I hope you all will head over to "Emerging From Broken" and check out her other posts. I'm telling ya, there's some GOOD stuff over there! ;o)

DA xx

Checking in...

The stress around here has eased up just a lil bit now that the house is officially on the market. We had a couple delays getting it up for sale but, as of this Monday, the house is on the market. We had our first showing today. No word from the realtor yet but we're keeping our fingers crossed. The houses around here seem to sell pretty quickly so, we're hopeful!

NM continues to be on decent behavior. There have been a couple comments here and there to the tone of "I wish all the kids could be together at Christmas" or "It would be so nice if ds could play with the other kids here in my neighborhood". On both occasions, I was quick to say - politely but firmly - "Ain't gonna happen NM." To her credit, NM did not push. Instead she said, "I know. Just wishful thinking on my part." and added that she's trying to let go and accept what is but it's hard.

As for me, I seem to be having a better time of letting the few comments NM makes roll off my back and not get to me. I'm hoping that I can continue along this way but realize that I may slide a bit here and there. As always, I'm ready to stand my ground much more firmly when the time arises.

Found out from talking with NM that my NHS has been homeschooling her two kids this school year. This news was very upsetting to me. NHS' level of malignancy makes NM look like a harmless kitten, and that's putting it mildly. The one silver lining in the whole situation for me was that those two children were at least exposed to some normalcy for a few hours each week day while they attended the local public school. But now, they are subjected to NHS' particular brand of insanity 24/7 and it just makes me extremely sad and worried for their eventual well-being. Even dh agrees that NHS and NBIL's way of thinking is extremely cult-like. It's just a crappy situation all around.

My aunt N revealed that NHS - who has apparently been studying to be a medical assistant of all things (what is it with these malignant N's wanting to go into the health care field?) - recently failed her exam. The big thing was that she failed in correctly putting on a T.E.D. sock - talk about easy peasy - and (NHS) claims that, after the lady told her she'd gotten that part wrong, NHS was too "flustered" and couldn't concentrate and so THAT is why she failed almost the entire exam. As always, it is NEVER NHS' fault. (Never ceases to amaze me just how many excuses an N can come up with as a means of shirking responsibility.) Now, supposedly, NHS is whining all over Facebook about how she can't retake the exam any time soon because they "can't afford the fee". Aunt N believes, as do I, that the only reason NHS is whining about not having money on FB is because she's counting on certain relatives to send her money and bail her out yet again. As I understand it, this is a weekly/monthly occurrence with NHS whining about not having money and either NHS' aunt (NSJ's sister) bailing them out or NSJ and NM sending NHS and NBIL money. Aunt N says that NSJ frequently takes money out of his retirement fund (which he and NM have already been quickly depleting to keep up with house payments, etc. lately) to send NHS cash. Yet I'M the irresponsible fuck up who needs to get off my lazy ass and get a job. Whatever!

The IL's have still been somewhat pissy and refuse to help out at all but dh and I haven't given them a second thought and have just been coming up with ways to do for ourselves. It's actually turned out kind of nice because it's brought dh and I closer and helped up be more resourceful. We're rather proud of what we've accomplished as of late. As for the IL's, we've just been keeping a bit of distance and leaving them to their crankiness. LOL

Still no word from NSM and NF which is just FINE by me. I'm curious as to whether or not we'll hear anything with Christmas coming up soon. They chose to ignore dh's and my anniversary in September as well as dh's birthday so it's possible we'll continue to hear nothing for Christmas. They may send ds something but, then again, they may choose to ignore him too. (Anything to get out of spending their precious money, don't you know.) Guess only time will tell, though I'm rather hoping the holiday passes without hearing from them. Who needs more of their over-the-top religious cards filled with intended guilt-trips like "We miss you."? Bah-humbug!

Hope you are all doing well. I'm hoping to be able to post more now that the house is on the market and I have a bit more time so, with luck, hopefully I'll have something more to post soon!

Warmly,

DA xoxo

What the hell?? Freaking out a bit...

Got this in my email inbox earlier today:

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to \"draft\" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.

A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. For more information on our DMCA policy, including how to file a counter-claim, please see http://www.google.com/dmca.html.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at http://www.chillingeffects.org
. We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You can search for the DMCA notice associated with the removal of your content by going to the Chilling Effects search page at http://www.chillingeffects.org/search.cgi, and entering in the URL of the blog post that was removed.

If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

The post they are referring to was a post titled "What Makes A Relationship Healthy?" that I had posted on here a little over a year ago now. There are a couple things that don't sit right with me:

1.) I don't feel I did anything wrong, or at least nothing I haven't seen dozens of other blog writers do a bunch of times. I quoted a few snippets from an online article - only what I needed to get my point across - and made sure to give full credit to the author/source, including giving a link to the article online for those who wished to read the full article. As a "small potatoes" blog writer, you wouldn't think anyone would care about the couple dozen people reading the quoted snippets, particularly since I'm hardly getting any money from the post.

2.) I find it rather hard to believe that the original author/source of the online article just happened to stumble upon my puny blog and take such great offense at the few snippets I quoted.

It seems far MORE likely to me that someone - for some reason I feel in my gut this was NHS - filed the report either to cause trouble for me or because they didn't like what I'd said about them in the article.

According to Blogger, only someone with rights to the content can file a DMCA report but how exactly do they go about this? Does this mean that Blogger takes the time to investigate EVERY SINGLE REPORT filed to make sure the person making the accusation has the right to do so? Nothing against Blogger - they may well do just that - but I'm thinking it much more likely that they just ask, "Do you have ownership of this content and/or the right to claim it?" and if that person says, "Yep." that's good enough and considered "proof".

I clicked on the links provided to me but haven't been able to find anything at all regarding the claim, most important, who the hell filed it. Everything so far has come up "No Match Found", which is another thing I find curious.

I decided to delete the "used-to-be-post-now-draft" so as not to get into any further trouble. I kind of wish I hadn't done that now as it might be useful to be able to go back and re-read the post but, at the time, I saw no way to edit it in order to comply with the DMCA complaint and was afraid that, even saved as a draft, it might somehow show up on my blog and get me into more trouble.

What really freaks me out is that, according to what I've read online - what little I've been able to understand - the fact that this DMCA report was filed against me now means I have a "strike" against me. This "strike" is permanent and will now follow me everywhere I go online.

I'm so angry about this! If someone on here was upset by something, why didn't they just contact me via email like a mature adult and give me the chance to remove or edit the content first before taking (what I see as) such extreme measures and filing a DMCA report against me?

I tell you, if I find out that NHS or anyone else in my NFOO - if I had to bet money, it'd be on NHS and/or NBIL as I KNOW they were the ones who reported me to Facebook about two years ago and got me banned for supposed "harassment" (for daring to say "hi" to NBIL's sister) - I am going to get a lawyer and sue the ever-loving SHIT out of them until they have NOTHING left, mark my word.