Child Abuse Survivor

Merry Christmas to our On-line friends!

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Thanks to a great plugin, I've enabled you all to have the ability to subscribe by email to comments on any entry on the blog. So, when you leave a comment and want to know if anyone responds to your comment, just be sure to check the box for that, and leave your email address with your comment!

As with anything else, let me know if it's not working so I can look into it!

Start a Blog

I got an email yesterday asking for advice on finding people to talk to about being a survivor, and within the email the person expressed a desire to share their own writings and poetry. Naturally, I couldn't help but suggest starting a blog.

Not only does starting your own give you a place to share those writings and ideas, but as your participate in writing your blog, linking to other survivors blogs, commenting on other sites, and just generally being part of the survivor's blog community, informal as it is, you'll find lots of people to connect with, and lots of thoughts and ideas that can be very helpful in your own healing.

By the way, that person did start a BlogSpot blog, which is a really easy place to start a simple blog for those of you who know little about all this HTML stuff. Go check it out and say hello!

Carnival Against Child Abuse Christmas Edition

Megan has it up already. Be sure to check out what looks like a good collection of posts, and read to the bottom of the carnival to get the details on winning the copy of Ten Points that I was given to review back in the summer if you're a US resident.

Somewhat Painful Reminder

As the holiday season approached, one of my fellow Friends in Tech members, Douglas Welch had a great idea for a series of podcasts. Called the Wishbook the idea was to go take a look at on-line versions of old Wish Book catalogs from our child hood, and record some audio talking about a particular toy or memory that is sparked by the catalog.

When I first heard about the idea, I thought it was great. I still do, but in the course of looking through the catalogs from my youth, I also quickly realized that I couldn't possibly take part.

Not that I didn't see some toys that I remembered having as a kid, but that was pretty much it. Yes, I had that toy, and I remember playing with it, but that's the sum total of my connection to my child hood. There are facts that I remember, with no emotions tied to them. Not exactly the warm, fuzzy holiday spirit, eh? :)

When I think about being a survivor, and what that means, I often think in terms of how it affects me now, and all the work I had to put in to learn how to make healthy decisions and take care of myself. When people ask me about the costs of being a survivor, or what the abuse took from me, those are the costs I immediately think of. I forget the things I missed out on as a child, the lack of any connection to my childhood. I almost tend to think that it's normal, and it's things like this project and hearing other people talk about childhood memories that remind me that it isn't normal to look at a photo of yourself as a child and fell no connection to that person. To not feel some sort of connection to who I was or what I was feeling at the time.

I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on it, because I have learned not to spend much time dwelling on things that I can't change. There's no way to change this, it is simply the cost of being a survivor for me. I accept that, but that doesn't make it easy.

Continuing a theme about showing appreciation

In each of the last two posts I've written here, I've made mention of both using this time of year as a good excuse to show your appreciation to the important people in your life, and also offering friendship and support to them during troubled times.

I had another, related, thought today. The most important gift you can give to anyone is your time. Think about it, how many people do you know who go out of their way to make time for you? I'm betting it's not many, and I'm also betting than when you do make time for someone, there are no words that can more clearly express that they are important to you. I can proclaim how important someone's friendship is to me all day long, but if I'm unwilling to make time to spend with that person, take time to think about that person, if I am unable to act in a way consistent with my words, then they are just that, words. The people who are most important to you are the people you spend time with, no matter how that time is spent.

This past Thanksgiving Day, I had a somewhat unique opportunity. My wife had passed along some information about a gathering at OSU's campus, where they would be serving a traditional meal to about 1200 international students and faculty, and their families. Since we had already decided our plans for the holiday would be separate, she out of town with her family, and I in town with mine, she wouldn't be able to volunteer with me. Being a somewhat socially awkward person, I wasn't really interested in volunteering by myself, but we also knew that a good friend of ours would also be in town, and had been looking for various ways to get out and volunteer. Angela also knew she felt similar to me, and wouldn't want to do this by herself, so she contacted her and this worked out well for both of us.

By her willingness to spend a couple of hours working this event with me, I was able to do something good, and enjoy myself quite a bit in the process, and vice versa. Because of both of our willingness to do this together, along with the 120 other people who spent part of their Thanksgiving Day giving of their time as well, 1200 people of various cultural and religious backgrounds, sat and had a meal together. None of it took any special talent or skill. Literally, I spent most of the time spooning out corn to people as they came by, not all that difficult, but someone needed to do it! :)

All it took was the willingness to spend the time listening to our friend when she mentioned wanting to volunteer, being aware of opportunities for her to do that, and then spending the time doing it together. I can't imagine a better way to show appreciation than that.

I also can't imagine a better way to show appreciation than the way my wife did, by being the person who facilitated this to begin with. She was willing to look at this event and think past her own plans to find other people who would be available and would want to do it. That's appreciation for me, our friend, and the folks she knows who were coordinating the event! She was able to show us that, simply by sending a few emails and getting people in touch with each other!

Good Advice

How to help someone with a mental health concern.

I especially agree with the first rule, "Offer your Friendship and Support". You'd be surprised how effective you can be just by being available to listen. It may not seem like much, but it is so infrequent that someone actually takes the time to really stop their lives and listen, that it is a huge help!

Holiday time

It occurs to me as I write this, that many of us are probably dealing with holiday stress right about now, or at least will be some time soon. Between the holiday cards, shopping,  the get-togethers and the family gatherings, the holidays can be a whole lot of work. It can be a pretty exhausting time, especially for us introverts who have to spend more time being social than maybe we're used to.

I was thinking earlier about trying to see the holidays in a different light. I can't really change the social aspects of it, but rather than dreading the shopping and other things, I've decided to see the holidays as more of an opportunity.

As we go through life, there are precious few opportunities to show the people you care about just how much you do care. For me, at least, it just doesn't really feel normal to express appreciation for the people that I truly do appreciate it. Most of the time I'm too busy, even when I'm spending time with friends and family, to show any appreciation for them.

The holidays, though, provide a great opportunity to do that. Let's face it, this is the one time of year you can think about what your friends need, go out, buy it for them or make something for them, give it to them, and no one has to feel weird about that. It's perfectly normal. ;-)

So, I'm going to spend some time thinking about how I can show appreciation to the people who are most important to me, starting, naturally, with my wife. As much as I love my friends, and value their friendship, it still doesn't compare to how much appreciation I have for my wife. Now I just have to find the perfect gift that says that, which is never easy, but is worth the effort!