Survivors News and Reviews

Nathan from DadWagon sent me a note today to let me know about an interview they did on the site with Joel Johnson. Joel is a gadget geek, and has worked on such well-known blogs as Gizmodo, and BoingBoing. Recently, he posted on his personal site about having grown up a victim of sexual abuse and how that has affected him into adulthood. You can read the interview over at DadWagon, and here’s the link to his original piece, which may be a bit graphic for some.

With all of the celebrity suicides in the news recently, John Grohol took advantage of the uptick in people looking for information about suicide and untreated depression to give a brief glimpse into the risk among young adults, and some of the warning signs to look for in this post today. I’m copying the important bullet points under how you can help, but read the whole thing to truly get all the information:

Every single day, another 11 young adults will choose death by suicide.

What You Can Do To Help

It’s important to recognize the warning signs of a teen or young adult who may be thinking about suicide:

• Talking about suicide or death or “going away”
• Talking about feeling hopeless or guilty
• Pulling away from friends or family
• Losing the desire to take part in normal activities
• Having trouble concentrating or thinking clearly
• Exhibiting lots of self-destructive behavior (drinking alcohol, driving too fast)
• Giving away prized possessions or their stuff
• Big changes in their eating or sleeping habits

Experts recommend that, if you’re an adult in a teen’s or young adult’s life, to stay involved:

• Watch and listen for warning signs
• Keep lines of communication open and express your concern, support and love
• If your teen doesn’t want to talk, suggest a more neutral person such as a relative, clergy member, counselor or doctor
• Ask questions, even tough ones, such as if he or she has had thoughts of suicide
• Get psychological help if your child is thinking about suicide
• If your teen is in a crisis situation, your emergency room can conduct an evaluation and refer you to resources
• Make sure you keep an appointment with a mental health professional — even if your teen says he or she is feeling better

Saw this announcement over on the Pysch Central blogs and thought I would pass it along for any survivors who are familiar with the community over there:

It’s a proud day for our Psych Central family. Today, we officially announced the creation of the Psych Central Community Connection, Psych Central’s new non-profit arm.What is the Psych Central Community Connection?

The Connection is our non-profit that makes micro grants (also called personal grants) available to Psych Central members in emergency financial need. These micro grants (of $500 or less per individual) are for immediate personal/family need that might make the difference between homelessness and staying in one’s home, heat in the winter or freezing cold, or keeping the electricity turned on.

A couple of new ways, and a reminder of the other ways you can get new posts from the site without actually having to visit the site and check for new entries. Of course, you are always encouraged to come to the site and leave comments!

For the Child Abuse Survivor Blog, you can

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You can also get notified on the SurvivorNetwork Twitter account for new entries to both blogs, or the brand new fan page on Facebook.

In honor of World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse, Marj set today as the day for this month’s blog carnival, and got an overwhelming response! I even managed to get something submitted that I wrote earlier in the month, in spite of how busy I’ve been.

As always, go check it out and find some good folks who also happen to be survivors!

I was out of town until yesterday, with some rather sporadic internet access, so I’m a bit late to the party on this. On the other hand, if you haven’t been over to check out the October edition of the blog carnival, you can check it out along with me, now!

As always, looks like there’s plenty of good reading material.

He talks about the upcoming movie, “Precious” and how working on it brought back memories of the horrific childhood he survived.

I really enjoyed this quote from Perry:

“I know that there are a lot of people out there with stories far worse than mine but you, too, can make it. To those of you who have, welcome to life. I celebrate you,”

It’s up over at Mind Parts. Paul’s got a whole section of entries covering relationships for survivors. Looks like there’s a bunch of really interesting ideas being talked about. Go check it them out!!

Tracee from the Reclaiming Innocence Project sent me an email this evening about the project. I went and checked out the website and thought this was worth letting you know about. Granted, taking part in the project will require some time, that I don’t currently have, but I think it’s a pretty fantastic idea:

Please note that there are nearly 140 questions on this form. Some are simple “yes or no” questions, while most of them require multi sentence answers. This will most likely be difficult for you to complete. A quiet place, where you have no time restraints and no likely disturbances is highly recommended. Please remember, that the more you explain your point of view, the more understanding will come from it for future generations. This project is for the children being abused right now. The hope is that when these children are ready, should they pick up this collection of survivors’ stories, it will make their journey through the healing process quicker and easier. Thank you so much for your time and participation.

Hopefully, that goal will be met and this will turn into a great resource for future survivors!

I’m in the midst of upgrading both of the blogs here to the latest version of Wordpress. Seems like everything is working, but if you find a problem around here, hit the email link above and let me know about it!