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Healing a Heart During the Holidays
Going Home for the Holidays When Home No Longer Exists
Those of us who are in recovery from a long relationship with a person with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) know how hard the holidays can be. But I have discovered a new layer of challenges.
We are the new homeless.
Make no mistake, the plight of the “unsheltered” (the newly rebranded and preferred term) is profoundly and systemically one that deserves compassion and concern. Those who find themselves, in increasing and alarming numbers, without shelter face another existential crisis. Most of us are only a couple of paychecks or one serious accident or major health event from financial crisis, so becoming “unsheltered” is not too far fetched for any of us these days. Every human deserves the dignity and safety of a place to call home and shelter, regardless of how they ended up in such a condition.
So without diminishing the original homeless population who are now the “unsheltered” demographic, I think I’d like to co-opt that term for those of us in the process of attempting to survive and thrive after narcissistic abuse.
We are the post narcissistically abused discarded, and we are homeless in every possible definition of the word.
