Ohmygod, I totally understand your rage, and frustration. take good care.

When we think of the law we think about right and wrong. With the many high paid lawyers out there the law has become twisted and it is no longer about right and wrong. In this case the wrong is not being brought to justice which is wrong and against our beliefs which causes rage at the fact that he is getting away with what he did wrong and our up bring tells us he should be punished. It picks at our belief systems.

So you might want to try to channel that rage into a positive since there is very little you can do about the above. Your daughter needs you. Help her find a good therapist and you should also find on to help you deal with the anger. Be there when she needs you. Get her out and doing stuff. Check in on her often and at different times of the day. Take her to the mall, on walks, or to the movies. Tell her you support her and you are there for her. See if there is a local support group she can attend also.

I know you are angry and you have every right to be, but the legal part is done. Focus on your daughters needs and getting her well again.

All the best

Nelliefay- seeing your reply shortly after I wrote in the "wee hours" was more helpful to me than I can express. If you think it was no big deal, please know that to me it helped me get on with my day.

Crazycanuk- meet Crazy-manufactured-by-the-system... I don't intend to stay here as in getting stuck on rage. I know it wouldn't change a thing for my daughter, and in fact could actually cause her more pain than she would otherwise feel. Flipside of that is I won't stuff my rage; I have spent too much of my life in depression and I know that for me stuffing rage (rather than chemical imbalance) was the source of it.

Point well taken about the therapy. She has a person she sees; in all this turmoil she feels it is a poor fit. I'm trying to listen and suggest ways for her to make her feelings more known and get her needs met. We are both famous at telling therapists what they want to hear. They are people too, and some part of our need to make stuff okay for others gets in the way of accessing the value of therapy sometimes.

Are we enmeshed some? You betcha, but I do make an effort when dealing with any of this to think "now are these her needs I am fighting for, or is this something with me?" It is a fact that part of the difficulty I have with this all (besides the obvious) is the sense that when I needed similar support as a kid, it was not there for me. I am stuck now feeling helpless to do the one thing I really want to do well (help her). Not wallowing, but just observing that even in the desire to help and assist another is a wish to be saved myself.

I totally agree on the justice stuff, and I knew that going in. It really has less to do with righting wrongs and more to do with lawyers and symantics. I also know for sure, those who do get convictions are not miraculously healed by doing so.

Thank you for bringing my mind back to the essentials which are caring for my daughter and taking care of my own emotional condition for both of our benefit.

A sidebar note: did a good amount of physical labor today. I was grateful not to have a desk job. I'm hoping the movement earlier will result in some stillness later. Again, thank you both for listening and responding.

well-agreed with Nellie and CrazyCanuk. Sorry for your situation. I know the depth of ragefulness....

When my memories started coming back I got so angry. I also had to change my conscious understanding of the world around me to a more truthful and realistic one. I think I felt very much like you. I was meditating one time and I just felt this clear message that love is THE SACRED response to evil. Injustice is a massive burden to carry. I believe with all my heart the only response is to love others all you can and let others love you. So continue to love your daughter and I hope yourself as well. Please continue to share yourself with us. Peace to the both of you.

I've known a lot of people in my life who suffered injustice, and I've suffered it myself. The anger that comes from those experiences can be hard to deal with, because it's such righteous anger.

I also understand your rage and all the other emotions you are going through. I wish you peace and healing, it's going to take a lot of that to get through this I'm sure.

I hope you can find a way to channel that rage, but I know that's not always possible. Sometimes all we can do is learn to live with it and try not to let it make us bitter.

KatB, I obviously don't know and I'm not prying, but it sounds like our brothers are "cut out of a similar cloth". If that is the case, yeah you do know the depths of rage My own brother is a big source of rage that never got worked through. One of the difficulties in dealing with rage (and why it didn't stop at plain anger- then get resolved) is how we are socialized to deal with other peoples' transgressions. This may sound totally sexist, but atleast in my family, there were two sets of standards and the standard set for me was to be tolerant to a fault. That can only work so long, right?

Diana, it sounds like you were able to develop some detactment from the situation which helped. I would say that at the moment, rage is sort of speaking my own personal truth, speaking "truth to power" (or to anyone in the room yesterday, truth through profanity). I feel that there really is no objective truth, but people will each hold their own personal truth. Each person's emotions are their own subjective truth. With some detatchment that came to you through mindfulness, that is probably about as close to objective truth as anyone can get. I appreciate what you are saying, there is more to the picture than what's going on in my veiw of it.

And since love (for my kid, myself, or others I can give that to) is incompatible with blind rage, it does make sense to find my way out of the rage stuff so I don't miss the oportunity to care for the people I do love.

The feedback you give both validates where I am at and gives me some ideas about getting to where I'd rather be. Thank you.

It's shocking what's happened to you. No wonder you feel emotionally punch drunk. My assailant got away with what he did to a bunch of us kids. Then, randomly, he got caught years later. Randomly, the charges stuck this time, and he went to prison. Inside, since he was a jerk, somebody shanked him and, randomly, he died.

Why didn't we get the justice years earlier? Iff anyone's ever had to face questions like that as you are now it's that randomness that makes it hard to build a stable life again. I hope you can get some balance back again and not feel so punch drunk, as you put it. You're not alone.

Richie- I think we were typing concurrently, so my response is after the fact. I hope what I said above about my family dynamics (preferential treatment of males) didn't feel disrespectful to you or any other man who has been a target of violence or injustice. A disservice to women can be that we were socialized to not make waves; a disservice to men is often that they were socialized not to cry (complain, testify) when they were targets.

Thanks for validating where I'm at and being able to relate. I think the hardest thing for me at various points has been the fact that 1. it 's not something I can discuss with many people in person (it's someone else's private matter, though it does affect me emotionally). and 2. most people (of the few I can talk to since they are close) can't understand directly so they tend to say things that are not sensitive. I know they don't mean to, but the effect is still hurtful.

Mujica- as satisfying as some people who read the story of demise of your attacker, might appear to be (in a literature, we might say that was a satisfying ending to a bad situation), I would think for you and the other targets of your attacker the main feeling could be that it feels personal: someone else was able to secure the justice that for some rediculous reason was not available to you. I like that you have the perspective that it is random; I don't know that these things are entirely random, but they are for sure senseless. The idea that there could be a larger picture going on, whereby situations that are mindblowingly wrong are eventually "righted" is of limited value to the person who is asking "why me?"

I guess as a secondary to my daughter's pain, the best thing I can do is to make sure she knows that while this latest event feels like a grand jury has just handed across invalidation in the form of "we don't believe it", that I know that what she says is the truth (and that I could give a rat's hiney what the purp's alternate version is). I know saying "we can't prove it" is not the same as "we don't believe you", but that is certainly how it sounds at the moment. For people who have faith, this is a real test; why us?

guayaba, you said it better than I did: "someone else was able to secure the justice that for some rediculous reason was not available to you." Me and my group of survivors were left with that feeling that we hadn't deserved to be believed and someone else had. I know it's not rational and maybe not even right, it's just a feeling.

So our assailant's sentencing and even his death did not satisfy like one would expect and, as you mention being a person of faith, my faith was tested. Reading that little book in therapy When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Kusher helped get me started in processing my feelings.

Imho, you nail it right on the head when you talk about the court proceeding seeming to say "we don't believe you." What happened to us is incredible even to ourselves, after all, isn't it? So it's natural that we would ask for external validation about shocking events that shouldn't happen to anyone at all.

Imho once more, you've got it figured out more clearly at this stage than I did back then. Let us know how to support you in your perspective now. Blessings.

Mujica- so funny, after I got to work today I started thinking about the book by Kushner. Could be worth getting my hands on that again.

I do feel very supported here, and I think the reason that is so is the difference between the "how it is" (the rational version or the "justice" version) and how it feels. I don't want to be told how it is and how it works (though I am a person who loves rules and reason, perhaps a little too much). What people are giving me here is the validation that people thinking about this in theory can't do. It is helping me to get on with the "well, since this is how it is, what do we do next?"

I got to about midday and thought to myself, "We can be okay; we can get past this." That didn't even appear to be among the choices when I started this thread, so thank you all.

=smile=