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Below is an Interactive Board sampler. A fuller listing is found in the "Stories" menu above.

4/14 Interactive Board: Codependent Partners

3/23 Interactive Board: He's Changing... I'm Not...

3/1 Interactive Board: D/s Lifestyle

1/14 Interactive Board: My Purrrfect Husband

12/12 Interactive Board: What if He Could Have Changed?

10/23 Interactive Board: Quandary Revisited

8/24 Interactive Board: Quandary! What's Going On?

7/20: Dr. Irene on cognitive behavior therapy and mindfulness

6/12 Interactive Board: Unintentional Abuse

11/7 Interactive Board: Is This Abusive?

12/29 Interactive Board: There Goes the Wife...

11/4 Interactive Board: A New Me!

10/8 Interactive Board: Seeming Impossibility

9/8 Interactive Board: My Ex MisTreats Our Son

5/1 Interactive Board: I feel Dead - Towards Him

4/26 Interactive Board: Why is This So Hard?

4/19 Interactive Board: I Lost My Love...

4/7 Interactive Board: Too Guilty!

Poem: Her Way Back To Life

Poem: Her Way Back To Life

by Julie Buchanan

January 31, 2000

Hello, my name is Julie and I've been exploring your site for a couple of months now. I hate to sound like a "copycat" but, I too, just have to tell you what a life changing blessing it has been for me. I won't go into great detail about me, as I have seen my story on almost every page of your site. The details may vary but the characteristics are amazingly the same. I am (or was....just filed for divorce), a victim of verbal abuse. Times have been tough, but I have decided to be a survivor. Recently, as I tossed back and forth through another sleepless night, I found myself with a pencil and paper......somehow these words ended up on it. (I don't even remember coming up with the idea, it was almost like a dream.) Haven't even decided on a title. I think I will call it "A Passing Phase" or "Her Way Back To Life."       


In late October when the last leaf withers and falls
It lands atop a vibrant backdrop of already fallen leaves
To create a beauty that no living green leaf dare.

In this irony, death, the end of a life cycle, takes on a life of it's own
Transforming the once barren landscape into an ocean of multicolored jewels

And the tree that has sustained such a loss?...
She is left bare, naked, cold, alone, and exposed.
Fearing the winter and his fury
The coldness of the sometimes agonizing, lonely still nights
And the icy wind he uses to wear down her strength.

Yet she stands with a radiant inner strength, an inner knowledge
Knowing that once again she will wear her majestic crown of beauty and new life.

The death she has shed, the parts of her that have died
Remain momentarily to remind her
That spring will come once again
Bringing her the needed warmth to birth a new beginning.

So, as she stands alone in the cold with her world crashed down at her feet
She stands tall and sure and full of hope.
Knowing with certainty that this death that surrounds her is not the end
Merely a passing phase, a transition she must survive on her way back to life.
 

Another beautiful poem by Julie here...