There are some traumas that change your life forever. You will never be the same person after that you were before, and fighting to reclaim that innocence will just mess with your head. It happened, and it changed you.

When I heard this years ago regarding a trauma that I could not get past, it set me free. Free to move on as a changed person. What you may be mourning, as much as your parents' death, is the death of your old innocent self. And once you allow yourself to say goodbye to that person, you can move forward with this new, deeper you.

While I would never sign on for trauma voluntarily, it can lead to a richness in life that the old carefree, resilient parts of you may appreciate and awaken to.

And if those parts just don't seem to want to return, then you have heard lots of good advice about therapy and medication, both useful and necessary for many of us.

I am very sorry for your loss.

I would also like to honor the LW for her honesty with her friend. After I left my bad marriage, I had too many friends tell me of their early impression that he was wrong for me. I had no idea they thought so.

In the same situation I know I have also kept my mouth shut out of fear of giving offense or losing a friend, but it strikes me as much braver to say something. It may, as Cary says, help the friend down the line, if she is feeling crazy and scared, to remember that someone who loved her felt all along she deserved better.

C.S. Lewis, a committed Christian, often spoke of having moods when the entire Christian thing looked very improbable, and of times when he was an atheist and Christianity looked "terribly probable." He wrote "Faith...is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

I think it is a very healthy thing for people raised with faith to question and doubt and change as they reach maturity. The Master of the Universe must appreciate intelligent and questing minds, or we would not have them.

What happens next for you, LW, may take many forms, and may change many times. It is unwise, in my opinion, to share the shifting moods of one's faith with people who are unlikely to appreciate them. One of the places I found the most comfort and adventure in my faith journey was on an atheism message board. I still find inspiration in the doubts of others. The discussions eventually made fundamentalism and Biblical literalism appear to me as the Anti-Christ, and I was fully on my way to a relationship with God that often confounds me, but never leaves me empty.

Enjoy.

Cary is absolutely right, but the person with the moral imperative to speak up is not the LW, it is her boyfriend. His behavior within his family is critical information for the LW to consider in assessng her future with him....if he is not able to argue loudly against the defense of rapists put forth by his little brother, I doubt he will ever stand up to his parents' bigotry.

And so she will stand alone, and the rift between them will eventually be deep. For how can she respect such a man?

!

It seems to me that, like checking out a person's HIV status by viewing a test result, it would behoove men who truly want sex without consequences to get it in writing - a standard contract, signed in advance by the woman stipulating that if a pregnancy should result, the woman will take full responsibility for all child support.

Add a clause splitting the cost of the abortion, if needed, and take it to your local notary.

Men CAN opt to be just sperm donors, but they'd best clarify their role in writing before making their deposits.

Apparently, I misspoke. In many states, sperm donors cannot terminate their own parental rights (say, for example, by stopping by the notary public on their way to the motel) unless they transfer their sperm to the woman through a medical doctor. Which could kill the mood, I'm thinking.

Cary wrote: "And good luck! Adulthood is not all that much fun."

If I could tell each and every self-absorbed adolescent one thing, it would be the exact opposite. Adulthood is WAY more fun. Cary's last line contradicts all the rest, the great message to give up the symbols. Giving them up, and then being free to drive any car and travel any distance and stay out all night and drink any wine and go to bed with whom you please or have ten kids and raise them all Mormon or, well, whatever else in the world you want to do?

Doesn't get much better than that.

Many posts seem to accurately identify the LW's mother as "overreacting." What was one of the things mama did that communicated to the LW that she was damaged? She sent her to a therapist.

It is not accidental that the LW felt rejected and crazy - being shipped off to a therapist to discuss perfectly normal thoughts and feelings is not without consequence. And probably more parents today can handle a discussion with their children about sexual orientation. Even so, entire generations are being raised by parents who think that if a friend or relative dies, the children who grieve the death automatically need "grief counseling." How absurd. What happened to our ability to handle the events of our lives, to frame them for our kids, to help them within the safety of the family?