There is so much to respond to. You've all written about intense trauma. Songbird wrote "which only brought me closer and deeper in my relationship with God. It made me search for His purpose in my life." I always thought it was about searching for my purpose in God's life, or why does God want me here? I need to mull over His purpose in my life. I attempted suicide several times as a teen, but the worst attempt I was 25, and I did have a near death experience. My deceased father whispered to me, "No Lynn, not this way." For the next decades, I went through a mind, body, spirit transformation. When I was 48, I had breast cancer, discovered much the same way Lady Jane describes. It was not the initial lump that was concerning, it was the nest of lumps behind the initial lump, which could only be seen via ultra sound. I had six months to do something or it would be too late. Doing something meant bilateral mastectomies and chemotherapy. Chemo and therapy are contradictions in terms. Like Meredith, migraines were the plague of my existence. 60 days a year bedridden. Like Meredith, I many times thought that if I was dead, the pain would stop. With chemo, the migraines were so fierce I was hospitalized and on steroids to stop the migraines. The irony is that 23 years after my last suicide attempt, I was fighting for my life. Chatty, you are one of the strongest women I have ever "met." You are in no way a coward, considering some of the circumstances you have had to endure. Dancer, I too find ways to "sabatoge my life" as you put it, and that is something I am working on in my new life since cancer. I take a long time to make changes. I do not open to whatever talents and specialness I might have. I'd like to know how to do that. Mountain, I can sense some pretty deep pain, and I'm sorry for everything you had to endure. Same to all of you who have experienced trauma and pain. Life is for the learning, I think