I have read the book. Some of what she had to say was helpful to me, especially the stages of healing from abuse.

The stages were encouraging to me; I could see where I was on the healing process. I can't go completely no contact either - h was still at home when I read the book and like you, we have a child at home still. I could do detached contact where I didn't feed the drama and limited my dependence on h.

H was getting a lot of advice about what to do in our marriage from his pastor who most likely had some narcissistic tendencies. H wanted to be accepted by this person, so... . That all created another level of the abuse that I have encountered in my own healing journey.

Recently, I had a "toxic" person (member of my extended family) who wanted me to stay at her house; the people who were making decisions didn't ask me what I wanted or what would work for me. Eventually, I said that it wasn't okay for them to be making plans about where I would stay without asking me. That upset the very tenuous balance of how things were going. It wasn't pretty, but I held to what I needed. The toxic person still doesn't like me. I was glad that I had been on the healing journey and came to a place where I was able to say no to the control and be okay with the toxic person being unhappy with me. It's hard when they are family members.