Child Abuse Survivor

I’m sure many of you have seen this article floating around. I’ve even linked to it on the Facebook page, but I wanted to make sure everyone saw it here too.
What We Wish Our Parents Understood About Our Sexual Abuse

In it, many survivors share how their parents reacted to finding out their children had been sexually abused, and how they wish they had done so differently. As I read it a couple of things stood out to me. One was that so many of these kids had no actual grown ups in their lives. Their parents couldn’t deal with what happened, and either ignored it, or forced the children to figure out how to cope with it on their own. To me this just proves that even in situations where it’s not a parent who was sexually abusing a child, their lack of parenting certainly made targets of their kids. They hold some responsibility for raising kids who were vulnerable to being abused, and unable to start healing early because of the lack of support from their parents.

The second thing was that so many of the things your kids need when you find out they’ve been abused are the same things that adult survivors need as well. We need to be believed, we need to feel safe, we need to know that we are worthy of protection, and we need to be heard. All of those things are a big part of healing, no matter how old we are now. If you have a loved one of any age, who is trying to heal from sexual abuse, these are good things to remember, and you should definitely read the whole thing!

So nice to see such a large number of submissions, and even more, some new folks submitting for the first time! Thanks to everyone for getting the word out, and for sharing their posts with us. It truly shows me that there are many, many survivors finding their voices during this month of child abuse awareness.

With that said, let’s get right into the categories!

Advocacy and Awareness:

Tricia McKnight shared a post with this introduction. “We all are human and we all use our eyes, rather than our heart, to Judge those around us. If others could see inside our souls as to what we endured and what we have conquered – how would they feel if they had to carry this horrific and disgusting secret??? Read “Judging Eyes” and see if your heart can be touched to reach the reality of another person before turning away.”

Our own Blog Carnival organizer, Tracie, shared another touching story in Separate Cars

Jayneartin shared a story, which was also part of a “Five Sentence Fiction Challenge”. Thus it’s short, but very effective! Listen to the Children

Sherry, on her Wounded Breeze blog, shares the one thing we can all do, every month, in A Gift of a Smile to a Child Alone.

Lastly, Rox sent us her thoughts on Child Abuse Awareness Month, her first time submitting an article, right at the beginning of April. Definitely quite a lot to think about. Personally, reading it reminded me that speaking out about what happened to me won’t necessarily change the world, nor should I expect it to, but it can reach individual survivors and let them know that they are not alone. That’s good enough to keep doing it, in my book.

Aftermath:

Tracie, having a rather prolific April of writing, shared her story of the effects of abuse – Broken Cookies

Speaking of prolific, Kate submitted two posts on the topic of aftermath, Taking Back the Enemy’s Territory and Being Different

Art Therapy:

Beth wrote the following to introduce her post:

“I’m actually working on a story (novella or e-book I suppose) as part of a Challenge. It’s my first attempt at writing fiction and I made my main character a little girl who is a survivor of domestic violence. This link is to my first post/chapter/segment in the series. It could easily stand alone although I hope people will consider following more of Allie’s story“

Healing and Therapy:

My co-blogger on the News and Reviews site became a first time contributor to the blog carnival, with his own story of starting therapy and what he’s used to help healing.

RebeccaPi wrote “I’m struggling to forgive the person who abused me and my children- not because he deserves it, but because I need to have a healed heart. This post is about my search for what forgiveness means and how I can go about healing my heart.” I think we can all relate to A Change of Heart.

Tracie adds one from the Band Back Together blog, Twitter Parties are Good for the Soul, and I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes when we most want to be alone, what we really need is the chance tor each out and connect with someone else. Social Networking sites are a great way to do that when all else fails! As she wrote herself: “I still struggle with April being child abuse awareness month, because it is such a hard month for me, personally, with flashbacks and memories. But I put myself out there and participated in a discussion on twitter about surviving sexual assault and was reminded that hiding (my go-to coping technique) never really helps me.”

Kate adds some insight into friendships for survivors in Here’s the Thing:  “This post is about learning good boundaries as a survivor when it comes to new friends. My survivor blog friends taught me what a real friend is.”

Jenny shares some very personal thoughts on Stockholm Syndrome for abuse survivors in Associating

For my own submission, I’m also adding a metaphor for healing. Roll With the Changes.

Survivor Stories:

The Middle State shared some very personal thoughts in The One Thing. I found parts of it reminded me of my own thoughts a couple of months back about making kids easy targets for those who would abuse or bully them. It’s the damage caused to kids that makes them vulnerable.

Sperk, a new contributor as well, sent in This is Your Journey. How many times have I offered up that same sentence when talking to survivors. We’re all on our own journeys, there’s no right or wrong way to heal nor a set amount of time, so long as you do it!

Erin Grace shared two blog post with her story, The Day She Went to Work and Footsteps (The Cult of “K”)

Ray shares his own experiences with an abusive childhood as well in a post simply titled Abuse.

Poetry:

And we finish up this impressive gathering of survivors speaking out with our one poetry entry for this month, Brittany’s The Man Who Molded Me

Thank you to everyone who submitted an article, and for those of you who continue to write, read, and comment on blogs to help our little community grow. It’s been an honor reading the entries that were shared this month, and being the host!

If you follow the News and Reviews blog on this site, you’re already familiar with CBG. I hesitate to refer to him as my co-author, since he really writes more of the posts than I do now, but he’s been contributing TV/Movie/Book reviews and news items relating to child abuse for a few years now, with his own English point of view. With the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse being hosted here at the end of this week, he wanted to add a little personal story of his own to that, and I think it’d be great to have a additional post of his over here on the main blog, which is where things tend to be a bit more personal. So, with that introduction out of the way, here is CBG’s Blog Carnival contribution:

At the end of 2006 I found this blog. I contacted my local organisation for therapy the week before Christmas and started the first week of January 2007. Even in a country with widespread support for abuse-related therapy like England, this nearly never happens without paying a lot more money than I did. I should’ve bought a lottery ticket at the same time, such was my luck.
So if you’re a male victim of child abuse, perhaps you haven’t stumbled  upon this blog but actually read everything that’s posted without commenting and you still don’t want to get help, ask yourself what multiple of five or ten you want your age to be before you finally address the past (note I did not say “deal with”) which will allow you to get past the abuse perpetrated against you (note I did not say “get over”). It’s great once therapy is over and you can get on with your life, and feel free to live it on your own terms. One tenuous analogy for therapy finishing is that of having smoked your whole life, maybe having enjoyed it too, despite knowing the health issues surrounding it. Then you decide to give up and need to use various therapies, eg  patches for support, but one day you manage it. Healthwise, you will achieve a base level of recovery from having given up smoking but for a non-smoker to try to explain to the person on two packs a day how great they will feel when they give up, compared to how crappy they feel right now? It’s hard to hear, especially if that drug is masking pain.
That’s how it is when you feel ready to end therapy and move on. The image of therapy needs an update from its East Coast American stereotype of the therapist being a close friend that you might go shopping with or someone that could be around milking money out of your for decades instead of a much shorter, issue dependent timespan. Of course, starting therapy is a lot harder depending on your country, where you are mentally and your health system and the cost and time commitment required. A lot of nonsense is talked about therapy which needs clearing up. It is WORK, a fact I almost never read about in books and magazines. Like a real 9-5 paid job, that work will take up time, you will get sick of it and need to take time out from it, but the better therapists will be monitoring how much you can process and guiding you accordingly. It’s not scientific, but I was in therapy for 20% of the time that I didn’t disclose, so five years out of 25 – not week-in, week-out, but that was how long it took to feel like every issue including the single abuse incident had been processed. Steve Bevan of AMSOSA quotes a general average of three years for the service users of his organisation. Of course every survivor’s experiences are different which will cause the length to vary. The sooner therapy begins after abuse ends, the quicker you will move on. In America, college is the last environment where any help on offer might be as close to free as is allowed in a country operating using health insurance but at least the RAINN support line has had its highest profile year last year with former Penn State students raising funds and their current campaign running to the end of April where donations will be matched. As remarked in my introduction, when you contact a therapist, anywhere in the world, you won’t “win the lottery” as I did and start in less than three weeks, you will normally go on a waiting list which can be anything from three months to a year. Whilst you’re waiting for that therapy to become available, you can save up for it but in lieu of therapy what every survivor can aspire to do, is MOVE. Get out of the house, town, city where the abuse happened – if you live on an island, technically get out of the country – and make a new life somewhere else, where you are free of any reminders of places and people. Since human beings aspire to do this as part of life in general, abuse victims just have an added incentive.
So the best thing to do if you haven’t started any kind of therapeutic process is to first, set that date – to start by a certain date or to want to be finished with the first major set of therapy by a certain age. Once you set goals it’s surprising how hard you will fight to achieve them even if you might have to work with others to set them. That’s just a general overview but now it’s up to you. What will signal the need for you to get help and pick up the phone or go online? If you’re underemployed or unemployed due to the recession, shouldn’t your abuse issues be something you can face up to and resolve so that you can hold down the next job? It’s the rest of your life we’re talking about at this blog so I hope you’re able to make the choice to get help – starting right here with the archives of the main blog right here as I did five and a half years ago.

If you missed last month’s edition of the carnival, or just want to know what the heck I’m talking about, you can check it out over at Tracie’s.

This month, I will be doing the honors and hosting it right here! Of course, since this is Child Abuse Prevention Month, I am really looking forward to getting entries, and am especially interested in hearing how we can better get the word out about child abuse, how to prevent it, how to support survivors, and the damage it does everyday to millions of children and adults.

I hope that you will consider submitting a post this month, and sharing your ideas about what it means to be a survivor!

When you’re ready, just head over and fill out the form Tracie has setup to take entries. The deadline will be midnight my time (US Eastern) on April 25th, and the carnival will be posted on Friday, the 27th. I look forward to reading entries from the great people who submit on a regular basis, and some new folks!

With April being Child Abuse Prevention Month, and groups trying to raise awareness of child abuse all month I wanted to try and highlight some lesser known activities you might be able to help out with this month. Obviously, there’s no way I can possibly make an all-inclusive list, but look for a few throughout the month.

One such group contacted me last week. Advocates for Youth Efficacy works to connect young people with opportunities to get involved in their communities. This month they are running the “1 in Too” Campaign to “raise both awareness and support for victims of all forms of child abuse.” They are aiming to get youth involved in raising awareness and help out in any way they can in the fight against child abuse.

You can learn more at the video below

I’m borrowing some of this from my other blog, but if you’ve seen it over there, we use a different ending here.

Last weekend, the wife and I set out to do some exploring in the area where we live here in South Carolina. When we left the house, it was warm, and mostly overcast. On the 25 minutes journey up to Table Rock State Park, we drove through a bit of a shower, but it had stopped raining by the time we ventured into the park, so we decided to do a little hiking on the creek side trail.

Along the way, the rain started again, just a little bit, the humidity picked up some, and then dissipated, and the gray day gave way to some pretty sunshine and a great sunset.

As a photographer, the changing conditions could be a bit of a challenge, but what are you going to do, give up and stay home? Nope, we kept hiking on and tried to keep the rain drops off the camera lens. (Not to mention trying not to slip and fall into the creek with camera in hand myself!) And we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset over the lake before heading home again.

This is also an interesting metaphor for healing. Sometimes the path you start out on changes mid-hike, and you have to adjust to some new conditions that you hadn’t planned for. Healing is never a straight road, it’s full of all sorts of changing conditions, unforeseen obstacles, and more ups and downs than any mountain hike you could take in one day! That can be a challenge, certainly, but if you roll with the changes and keep persevering on the path you’ve set for yourself, you may just find some rewarding views on your way, and some joy at the end of the trek.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I found myself listening to a science program on the BBC here in the US the other evening. When I joined in, the expert was wrapping up a discussion about the heart, about how it works, how it’s designed to work, etc. It was interesting, but what he said in wrapping up is what really stuck with me.

He talked about how the heart is an amazing thing, how by design it simply keeps going, and going, without stop, until the one time when it does stop. He then said, (and I’m paraphrasing from memory here), that the one thing he has come to truly understand as a doctor is that the heart will stop, eventually. You can’t prevent that, all you can do is make the most of the years you have before that happens, make sure those you love know that you do, and hope for a “good” death. (Using Davy Jones’ seemingly painless, quick and in-his-sleep death as an example.)

Of the three, obviously we won’t get to choose the third one, but those other two are entirely up to us. Have you let your loved ones know you love them recently? More importantly, are you making the most of today? We don’t know how many more days we’ll have, and no matter your beliefs on the after-life, we should be doing what we can to make the most of our time here. It will end, eventually, and there will be no chance to go back and do it differently. Might as well do what we can with it now.

I’ve started doing a little side project for the P. Luna Foundation, helping to promote their work to raise awareness for male abuse survivors. The foundation is promoting Male Abuse Awareness Week on various outlets, and I’m helping out with their Google Plus page. So, if you’re a Google Plus user, I’ll be sharing information specific to male abuse awareness, and as we get closer to Dec. we’ll also be promoting Male Abuse Awareness Week on the foundation’s Google Plus page.

Of course, if you are on Google Plus, you can also follow the Google Plus page for this blog as well, and I’d appreciate you sharing those pages with your own G+ circles! Thanks!

My wife, and a bunch of her friends, have been using the social network Pinterest for awhile now, and being involved in the online community, I couldn’t help but notice how popular it is becoming. Always being one to want to check out new online tools, and a bit of a geek, I knew eventually I would give in and try to understand what all the fuss is about.

The one mental hurdle I needed to get over what that Pinterest was mostly for sharing recipes and fashion tips. Oh there’s plenty of that, but you won’t find that on my profile.

I did, however, think that Pinterest could be an interesting way to share some resources, and reading recommendations, for abuse survivors. They are still in the early phases, (at this point I’ve shared a couple of resources and have added a few of the books we’ve reviewed on the News and Reviews site in the last few months to the pin boards.), but if you’re a regular Pinterest user, you can either follow my profile, or just the pin boards aimed toward survivors.

It’s all part of trying to take some of the things we share here to you, wherever you are online. You can also check us out on other social networks:

Become a Fan on Facebook!

Add Site to your Google + Circles

Follow on Twitter

I wrote a review for a book title It’s OK to Tell earlier today on the News and Reviews Blog, and I won’t repeat what I said about the book here, but reading it I did have a thought that was completely unrelated to the book.

In it, Lauren talks about the “absence” of her mother due to health issues, and the void that left in her live. She goes on to talk about how she was a lonely child who never felt like she belonged anywhere, and how the pedophile in her life sensed that, and used that to groom her for abuse. It’s not an unfamiliar story to me, and I’m sure it’s not to many others. It’s pretty common for kids who are missing positive role models, who have an underdeveloped sense of themselves, to fall prey to abusers. I’d say it’s the same thing when you look at kids who are being destroyed by bullying as well. It’s the kids without a healthy sense of themselves; who they are, what their place in the world is, etc. who are hurt, yet we continually focus all of our prevention attempts on the outside behavior of strangers we can’t control.

Instead of raising kids with a healthy sense of themselves, who feel loved, safe, and have the tools available to them to deal with bullying, or to possibly protect themselves from abusers, we spend all of our resources trying to keep abusers away from them, or launch giant anti-bullying campaigns that will only do some marginal amount of good.

Look, I’m not saying that those attempts aren’t good things, but if we think we can completely wipe out any bad thing from invading the childhoods of millions of kids, we’re sadly mistaken. What kids need most are the tools that help them deal with being bullied, to avoid being targeted because they feel safe, confidant, and loved, no matter what else may be coming at them from the outside world. They need positive role models, people who are capable of listening to them, and who they know they are safe with.

Simply put, the best thing you can do to protect your kids from abuse and bullying, is to be a good parent. Short of that, the best thing an extended family can do is fill in the gaps and provide a good, safe, loving atmosphere for the children in it, and lastly, a community can provide good role models, leaders, teachers, social workers, etc. who do the same. Give kids the tools to protect themselves, and you’ll find a lot less abuse and bullying, because there won’t be easy targets.