My take home point
There have been a couple of occasions in our group where I was afraid we were commiserating, instead of encouraging. (It feels like we're headed in the right direction)
Thank you for bringing this to light Samuel.

Samuel I think that you did a bang up job on this topic. And I love that you started with explaining that you go to Samantha for her insight into these areas.
I played the poor pitiful me card for awhile. I think, looking back at it now, some of it was a process that happened as I moved towards acceptance and some of it was because I did not understand the grief and even what I was grieving. The main thing I noticed was once I was able to put that card away that it only left EVERYONE feeling even more like CRAP the more I was in the self pity. My mother used to say a victim will remain a victim until they choose to be an overcomer/survivor. Yes this HORRIBLE thing happened to me or was done to me and I can either allow it to define my whole life or I can learn from it and move forward. Once I said YES THIS HAPPENED. YES IT WAS HORRIBLE, BUT I am going to learn from this and move forward my feelings improved. Once I did some work and searched out some answers and listened to some blogs and did some soul searching and praying and discovered some of this was grief and the grief has to happen to heal I really turned a corner.

Just my thoughts.

Thank Samuel and all the bloggers.

SLM