Hi @StanD.  For someone who says they don't know how to reply, you did a pretty fine job of it.  It's incredible reading your reply and hearing how much reaching out here has helped you.  We all know that feeling of opening our hearts to strangers for the first time, it's not easy by any means, but I'm so happy you've found it so rewarding.  It's a pity this place is not more widely known than it is.  I was amazed when I found it earlier this year.

I think knowing trauma is probably permanent is comforting, because it redirects the mind to work on it's effects rather than trying to fix it or make it go away which can be so futile in a lot of ways.  Once you do that then you can start to find ways to heal from it's effects and even turn some of it into positives... like the idea of DV work for you as doing a lot of awareness work has helped me take positives from my own.

If you have to impress someone, they're not worth impressing in the first place.  I can take us a long time to figure that out.  And by 'us' I mean 'me' 😁  It's awesome that you now feel you can focus than energy into loving yourself.  It's always the first, and best step in any healing process.

I love your painting/drawing as well.  It's such a beautiful combination of colour and fine detail when you look deeper into it.  Thank you for sharing it.