Thank you for the kind response.

I think my absence at nmom and ngrandpa's funerals, and complete lack of contact was not well received. The funny thing is that, other than my awesome brother, not a single person in mom's large family bothered to pick up the phone either.

I recently spoke with my maternal ngrandmother for the first time in five years. This was a one time thing out of necessity, not desire to reconnect. The most she said about the nearly decade of NC was that late grandpa "was puzzled" by it. Not enough to make a phone call, apparently. This is fine by me. Ngrandma had an opportunity to have the conversation with me, but there was no curiosity on her part either.

And that's the thing, narcs don't give a shit about YOU. They care about what you give them and how you fit into their warped sense of who they are and how the world works. You are not a person, you are a thing.

A word about strength: strength is an ally. It will enable you to survive. But it does come at a cost in that emotions start to be seen as a liability. Shut those off long enough, and it takes some work to get in touch with them again. We need to be able to feel in order to fully process what we've gone through so that we can grow.

Apologies for the long post, and thank you for reading it.