Introduction

INTRODUCTION
I am starting this blog because I am physically and spiritually ill. Years of abuse, powerlessness, social invisibility and voicelessness have brought me to this place. The fact of having been serially hurt cannot be changed; apparently, I can do nothing or little about my individual social marginality; but I wish to be, at least, no longer voiceless.

I know too much about realities of which I wish I knew nothing. To live in this manner is to live unprotected and exposed to further injury. I will write about what I know because I wish, if possible, to heal myself and stay alive.

In these pages, through the great democratic instrument of the Internet, I intend to tell what I know about domestic and legal abuse; the loss of home and savings; unemployment and slim earnings and hunger; depression and addiction to painkillers; war.

I will tell also about saving acts of friendship, oases of spiritual rest, manifestations of ordinary beauty -- discoveries and surprises that I might not have been awake to if not for the pain.

I write as an aging woman and a civilian. The rest you will discover later, and presumably I, too, will discover much.