Yesterday was the first day I came to really face the trauma inflicted on me in my childhood----after a year and a half of therapy and self-exploration to pierce the crust of the most sophisticated and complex defense mechanisms. These defense mechanisms, though, have allowed me to survive and succeed in my life. The trauma involved my father from age 1-3 and a separate abuse by a 12-year old boy from age 6-8.

I cried in my wife's arms last night harder than I have ever cried in my life. And I began to feel and express what I never expressed----how much anger and hatred I had for my father and in turn how angry I was at God for what I experienced.

I was an atheist until a year ago. My pain had metamorphisized into a erudite intellectualism and an almost vengeful life goal to help others by challenging hypocrisy and the status quo. I have changed so many lives, from disadvantaged children from very broken homes, to political refugees, to incredibly brilliant spectrum students whom the system had simply ejected and/or gave up on. From this I came to have an undying faith in humanity and the limitless dynamic of the human spirit.

However, I've always felt that as human beings we are alone, and that the only way for us to go about changing our circumstances is to help one another. There was certainly no mystery god in the sky that was doing anything---we are simply a cosmic accident that is capable of beautiful things in the short course of our lives.
I didn't realize how much hatred and anger I had for God or the idea of it until last night, which I now know stems from the abandonment and betrayal I had felt from my father, the first "God" that I knew.
Anyway, I still feel a kind of doubt when it comes to a higher existence, but I now believe that a supreme force or something similar is responsible for all the good and love in the world, and that we share in it :).

I want to thank everyone for having the courage to be a part of this group, because it really helped me begin to really heal yesterday.