Let's see if I can repeat my thoughts:

1. You, as always – from the day I first found and read your blog – are both an inspiration and encouragement. Thank you for your words of both here.

2. I love this: "Giving up your power to another person is a choice. Taking it back is a choice." Amen, amen and AMEN! (lol – after writing that thought about your atheism post http://bit.ly/7MfDdZ)

You're exactly right. I realize from my experience how difficult it is to get to the place where you recognize this truth (much less take action to empower yourself) when you're drowning in the emotional cesspool of heartbreak and disillusionment. Having been there (many times), I wanted to write a post that addressed the women in the emotional state that they must be in to type in such phrases in a Google search. To them, I just want to infuse them with the will and determination to trudge through the pain…the hell…to the other side. Just survive. That's all you have to do when you're walking through hell. When you get to the other side, that's when empowerment starts to flourish and mindsets can be reshaped. To this day I feel like I can survive anything because of what I have survived already. That in itself is empowering. I've walked through hell many times. I can do it again. Each trip through has made me stronger.

Off to catch up on Part 2 of your atheism post. http://bit.ly/6soyrL

Thanks for your addition to this post, Maija. I wrote it for the sole purpose of future Google searchers to find and hopefully be encouraged to press on and push through to a better place – something you and I are obviously familiar with.

Allison

Life begins when you decide to make your own happiness in spite of the pain. Let the be the catalyst and not the excuse for what you are becoming. Meh, trite sayings for some but for me it was the breathe I had to suck down and gulp through a divorce, the loss of what was, and now deeply breathe the life that is beginning through the pain.

Easy, no. Necessary to prevent one's self from curling into a permanent fetal position? Hell yes.

Well spoken, Ali. Absolutely well spoken.