YOU GO, GIRL!

You've made one attempt to get your license. Congrats!

You've done it in the face of a phobia. WAY TO GO!

The examiner sounds like a kindly person with his encouragement, and he did what he had to do in practical terms: not yet grant a license to someone who is not yet fully able to drive a car. You'll do it when you're ready!

To quote you: "I am not giving up!" YESSS!

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About your family not understanding, not wanting to acknowledge your experience: this is a heart-breaker for sure.

If abuse occurred within a family...think of a mobile; every piece on it is a member of your family. If someone comes along and "pings" one of the mobile pieces...what happens? Every other piece dings or pings or whatever...Every part of the mobile is affected when one part moves. A family's like that...if one person moves her life in a significant new direction, every other person in the family will react.

Your acknowledgement of your experience makes the others aware of it in a new way...it's in the open now, whether they like it or not -- it's "the elephant in the living room". What will each person do in relation to the elephant?

It is so hard to acknowledge abuse, to accept that it has happened, to accept it for what it is, and for what it has done.

My sense is that there is so often a depth of shame...in everyone: survivors, perpetrators, and anyone who has witnessed abuse and not stopped it. Often, too, whoever is abusing one person might abusing someone else...regardless, the entire family is under threat.

Nowadays, there is widespread social awareness of abuse, trauma, and related things...and you will have support...you might not be able, now or ever, to receive any support from your family because whether or not they were abusers, they are part of the pattern and there are fewer things in life that are more agonizing to acknowledge.

In my family, there was much abuse...and still, so much shame. I've had rare moments with each member (Dad, Mom, two brothers and one sister) where someone touched on IT...different outcomes with each...and now, after so many years (27 years since I started my own healing), I'm pretty much wrung out of the need to getting my relatives to account for their actions (or passivity). The way I see it is, we've all been injured, and everyone goes about living with their injuries differently...

My heart's with you.