I have been on a healing journey for almost 4 yrs since I chose to walk across the threshold of the home my wife and I had built together for the last time and say goodbye to the toxicity of the narcissistic abusive cycle once and for all and go NO CONTACT, and follow thru with divorce, which has been no small task. It is indeed the only path to freedom from the cycle. It hurts, and you tumble and fall, and you get scraped up, and bruised and battered, just like when youre a kid and jump off a Merry Go Round as a child, but when you go thru the grief and loss, and spend a period of time, which is different for everyone, alone, and heal, you come out the other side, healed, and with a new sense of awareness that is beyond your wildest imagination.