Diana, your writing is very good, it certainly drew me in, allowed me to taste your pain along with a weary resignation but also a hint of strength and determination to find your way out of this. Your writing makes me hungry to know more, especially to find out how the writer finds her way out of this limbo into her own life.

As far as suggestions regarding publishing, I don't know what to add to Starting Over. I agree with her opinion that writing under a different name may not be the best solution - you will always want to "own" this story because it's yours, but you won't have the freedom to own it unless it's under your own name.

The idea of writing it as a novel and ascribing all of this to your heroine might work really well...your writing is so good that you would probably be able to transfer yourself into your heroine and thereby still own the history and the story AND enjoy the freedom that comes by telling the story.

Maybe another place to go to ask would be to your children. Ask them. They're old enough to see your truth. Like SO says, they're not blind, they probably already know a lot more than you think they do. They might surprise you with encouragement to "go for it" - or at worst, they might recoil, in which case you'll know better what direction to NOT go in.

Whatever you decide, I think that your writing is too good to hide.