Gaslighting: is an apology necessary to heal after you’ve been abused?

For anyone who has had legitimate anger disavowed, who has had to sublimate feelings in order to appease, who has had to tamp down their rage as a means to function and questioned whether their experience of trauma was really that bad, the Kavanaugh hearings and subsequent confirmation unleashed a pyroclastic cloud of salty ash into our wounds. It has activated and re-traumatized a lot of people and for many of us, the coping mechanism for survival is defiance.

When I wrote a memoir in 2016 about chronic gaslighting at the hands of my mother and its lingering effects, I was frequently asked to explain what the term meant. I , and in the years since, I’ve heard from hundreds of people who have shared their stories of having been on the receiving end of such psychological manipulation. Trump’s presidency has ignited a cobalt triggered state and helped give this term a global