Child Abuse Survivor

Wow, that turned unto quite a long title, didn’t it?

Anyway, this months edition didn’t see the same number of entries that recent editions have, probably owing to the weather getting a bit nicer and people spending a bit more time away from their computers I’d guess. However, don’t let the number fool you, there is, as always, some excellent stuff in here!

As you know, with this month being the month St. Patrick’s Day falls, and your host having quite a bit of Irish blood flowing in his veins, I wanted to focus on the way I view my Irish heritage. I’ve always considered the Irish to be a people that managed to live through their suffering by always looking forward, always willing to enjoy what they have to look forward to, and apply that to survivors. To me, having the ability to enjoy the little things in life, and having positive things to look forward to is a real key to healing, and I shared my own thoughts on the matter through the words of my grandmother in the post Family Wisdom.

Katie picked up on the theme and submitted an article she had actually written in Feb. (She was ahead of the game!) called What Makes you Happy?

Marj was also ahead of the game, submitting a post from July, 2009 entitled Helping Your Inner Child Help You along with this explanation:

I’m submitting this post for our “Surviving with Joy” theme because working with my inner child during my recovery has provided me with many little moments of joy.

Meanwhile, Issue Knitting also picked up on the theme and submitted Finding Joy, which literally made me smile as I read it!

Lastly, Paul took an interesting twist on my Irish Heritage theme, and talked about the Irish Famine Memorial in Boston, and how he relates to the struggle and the need to continue marching forward! How true, Paul!

Of course, each month the Carnival also gets plenty of great submissions in the regular categories, so please take a few moments to enjoy these as well!

Advocacy and Awareness:

Cornut32 added a post with a link to an article talking about protecting LDS church members from abuse, titled Sisters Speak: Teaching about Sexual Abuse. In it she shares the comment she made on the article about ways to teach church members about the topic. Good lessons for us all to keep in mind!

In the News:

Morrigan wrote back in Dec. about the ongoing scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland sharing thoughts on what is going on there in Bad Apples or a Bad Barrel? Sexual Abuse and the Irish Catholic Church.

Poetry:

As far as Survivor Poetry goes this month, we had two folks send in some of their work. Robert shared a couple of haikus, every night freight trains and we turn.

Meanwhile, Rick Belden added One Day.

Survivor Stories:

Had a few folks submit stories, including at least one newcomer to the Carnival!

Growing Up Broken shared how far she has come in Looking Over your Shoulder. Good for you!

Achieving Peace sent in Surviving, Conquering and Forgiving -My Story

And, Ligeia, who learned about the Carnival recently over on the Survivors Network made her first entry into the wonderful community that has built up around this monthly carnival, What’s in a Name?

Healing and Therapy:

Saving the best, or at least most popular, category for last this month, we had a number of entries in the area of healing and therapy.

Dr. Kathleen Young contributed her thoughts in What’s Love got to Do with It? Self-love and Healing!

Patricia Singleton wrote something very similar to Dr. Young, almost creating a mini-theme for this month, in Loving Yourself First is Being Real. She also sent in a second post in this category, about Fear, which has some good information about learning to admit and acknowledge the things we fear.

Paul also added a second entry to this month’s Carnival in this category, Dissociative Identities and Healing, proving that there’s usually more than one good thing to be added to any Carnival, a note I will surely make to myself!

Lastly, but certainly not least, Mia sent in an educational article, about Color Therapy. Even though the blog isn’t a Survivor blog per se, I still found the 30 Things You Should Know about the Psychology of Color to be quite interesting, and you might too!

So that’s it! Just 18 entries this month, but all well worth taking a few moments to read! Thanks to everyone for the great writing they have submitted, and thanks to Marj for allowing me the honor to highlight just a small taste of the many great blogs written by and for curvivors out there! I hope you enjoy, and have found a new voice or two to read. I also hope that you will consider submitting your own articles for next month’s Carnival, and will continue to support this wonderful endeavor with your posts well in to the future!

This month’s theme is “birthdays”, and the carnival just keeps on growing. Looks like yet another large collection of posts!

Head over to Issue Knitting and check for yourself! It should give us plenty to read for the weekend.

Marj isn’t doing a full blog carnival against child abuse this month, a nod to the craziness that is the holidays for most of us, but she is going to be putting together a collection of Holiday Survival Tips for Survivors. If you have written some tips be sure to go over and let her know you’d like to be included, and if you’re in need of some tips for this holiday season, keep an eye out for the collection when she posts it! I’m sure there will be some good ideas!

Last night, instead of relaxing and spending a quiet evening watching the latest episode of Ken Burns documentary on America’s National Parks, I sat by the TV with my laptop reading about the people defending Roman Polanski, and getting very angry that anyone would try and defend someone who raped a 13 year old girl.

And my outrage, justified as it is, did no one any good.

I broke one of my own rules about staying mentally healthy. I let my life be affected by something I have no power over. So, i vowed to keep an eye on the news stories, and to try my best to not support anyone who is making excuses for him, or arguing that he shouldn’t have to face justice for what he did all those years ago, but I’m not going to waste my time arguing with people who want to go online and support his freedom. After all, anyone who could possibly dismiss the rape of a 13 year old girl isn’t really worth my time and effort, and isn’t going to suddenly see the error of their ways because of something I say.

So, I’ll keep my outrage and I’ll stay aware so that if there is anything I can do, I’ll be at the ready, but then I’ll go back to living my life. I can’t decide whether Roman Polanski will be extradited to face the State of California, but I can continue to do the work I do for survivors, and continue to live my life the best way I know how. That’s the road to mental health, not the one that focuses on my anger and outrage.

It’s troubling that so many are willing to ignore what he did to that girl all those years ago, but as survivors, are we really surprised? Haven’t we all seen example after example of people who want to do the same to our own pasts? How many people would like us to be quiet and just “get over it”. How may don’t want to believe that someone they know could do this? How many simply don’t believe you? Those people aren’t part of our healing, they should simply be left behind in their own ignorance. We’ve got more important work to do than argue with them.

Got this email today and wanted to pass it along, if you’re interested go ahead and contact Christina at ctorres at healthyplace.com:

My name is Christina and I?m a producer with the HealthyPlace TV Show, an online mental
health tv show that airs live over the HealthyPlace.com website.

http://www.healthyplace.com/mental-health-tv-show/

Our next Tuesday night show (June 16) is on adult survivors of sexual child abuse and its
impact later in life.  I?m writing to ask if you would consider providing any contact
information for potential guests for the show. As you know, sharing your personal story
so that others may learn from it helps others know they are not alone in their own
experiences.

The show airs at 7:30p central, 8:30 eastern.  All that is required is a webcam attached
to a computer.  The interview would run about 15-20 minutes.

Please send me any contact information along with a good day / time for me to call and
I’ll be touch.

Thank you,

Christina Torres
Producer, HealthyPlace TV Show
HealthyPlace.com – America ‘s Mental Health Channel
“When you’re at HealthyPlace.com, you’re never alone.”

There’s some research out now suggesting that it might:

The researchers found support for deeper self-disclosure from bloggers resulting in a range of better social connections. These included things such as a sense of greater social integration, which is how connected we feel to society and our own community of friends and others; an increase in social bonding (our tightly knit, intimate relationships); and social bridging — increasing our connectedness with people who might be from outside of our typical social network.

I think there might be something to this. I know that way back when I started writing online about being a child abuse survivor, that connecting to other survivors, learning from each other, and supporting each other was a tremendous help to me, in terms of increasing the ways in which I was connected to other people and just felt like I belonged somewhere. Of course, I think that also has stepped outside of just “blogging” and into all of the various other technologies that are online currently helping people connect to each other. Just take a look at Twitter, Facebook, and even our own Abuse Survivors Network. I see exactly what they are talking about in this study, occurring each and every day on those sites as well. The technology is not only making staying in touch easier, but is helping folks like survivors, who have traditionally had a difficult time in social situations, to feel more comfortable and safe, and thus giving them freedom to be more expressive.

What do you think, has being active online, and connecting with other survivors, or just other people in general, been beneficial to your mental well-being?

I cant say that I was really aware of this organization until I got an email from someone at CASA-Nashville yesterday. I did want to bring them to your attention though, if you live in the Nashville area:

I work with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Nashville, Tennessee. We are a nonprofit organization that provides trained community volunteers as Special Advocates for abused or neglected children whose cases are currently in the court system. As you know, it is a huge challenge to serve all the children in our area who need a voice in court and a caring mentor. Last year, we were able to serve over 600 children, but 2300 cases of abuse and neglect came through the Davidson County court.

To raise awareness of child abuse and recruit more dedicated volunteers, we recently began a fundraising campaign in partnership with Network for Good.

We have a donation “badge” online for individual donors (http://www.networkforgood.org/pca/Badge.aspx?BadgeId=108465), and we are entered in a contest to recruit the most unique donors to our badge, for the chance to win $50,000. This would make a huge difference in serving many more children who badly need a safe, permanent, nurturing home!

If you are interested in assisting our effort, or simply in learning more about CASA, please visit our website at www.casa-nashville.org.

If you don’t live in Nashville and want to make a donation to your local group you can check the National website for a group near you. I never had to go through Family Court or Protective Services myself, but I can only imagine how difficult that would be to deal with at such a young age. It’s nice to know that there are people out there willing to help kids in that situation.

I’ve been off-line for a couple of days, enjoying some vacation time with the wife. Tonight we’re in Boone, NC with free wi-fi so I’m spending just a little bit of time getting caught up on some things. One of those things is pointing out that the October Edition of the Carnival Against Child Abuse is up. Check it out for some interesting reads.

At least, that’ll give you plenty to read while you wait for me to have some more writing time.

The fine folks at Hyperion Books contacted me about doing a review of Ten Points, by Bill Strickland. They even sent me a free copy of the book to review on the blog.

Disclaimer, they did send me a free book, on the other hand, now that I’ve read and reviewed it, I’ll be running a contest, of some sort, in the near future to give the book away, so I’m not really getting any benefit from agreeing to review it, aside from reading it for free.

Discalimer #2, I’m not a book reviewer by profession, nor do I claim to be one, so remember, this isn’t the New york Times Review, just one survivor’s opinion.

First off let me say this about the book. If you’re looking for the typical child abuse memoir, with the typical chronology of the abusive childhood, followed by the troubled years, followed by a long journey of healing, you will be disappointed by this book. On the other hand, that’s exactly what I liked about this story. This wasn’t yet another memoir about the struggles of healing from a broken childhood, this was a story set during one particular bike racing season, when a 39 year old man takes on the physical challenge of trying to score ten points in the weekly races at the request of his daughter.

It’s a story about working towards a difficult goal, and learning about yourself in the process. In this case, it’s learning to identify, and overcome, the “monster” that rages inside of abuse victims.

Now, granted, as a fellow 39 year old who has been interested in bike racing since I was a little kid and used to watch the Tour de France on televison, obviously the story was going to hold my attention. The descriptions of riding in the pack, or the physical demands of sprinting toward a finish line are told in such detail that I can easily identify with the struggle. But even if you’re not all that interested in bike racing, I think the all too common themes of struggle, of identifying how those things you’ve tried so hard to put behind you still affect you on a daily basis, and of learning to live with them, will be useful to survivors of all types.

For example, one of the themes that struck me as I read this story is the fear and shame of failing at a goal. Many survivors, myself included, struggle with  failure in ways that other people don’t seem to comprehend. Even the smallest project can become a source of great frustration, even rage, when we are unable to complete it, or the task will simply consume us until it is completed, no matter how unimportant it may really be. Many survivors live with a very strong sense of shame about what happened to them, as if their failure was a cause of being abused as much, if not more than, the abuser. Failing at any task, no matter how small, means reliving all that shame that has built up over the years in the present. Shame is a very powerful emotion, and the avoidance of shame is a very powerful motivator. To some extent that is natural, no one wants to fail at any task.  To the shamed survivor though, it’s not just about this one task. The current task is a symbol of all the shame and failure he/she has lived with for many years.

That’s the beauty of this story, because it does take place over one short period of time, and focusing on one task as symbolic of all the tasks that go into a life, it gives you insight into the inner workings of a survivor as he focuses on one task. It shows us, without any sugar coating, how painful abuse can be, even long after the actual abuse has stopped. More importantly, Bill shows us these details while weaving a wonderful tale of competition around all of these other themes. Well done.

Tags: BillStrickland, TenPoints, HyperionBooks

Yes it’s been a full year since Marj started the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse, and from the look of this month’s carnival, hosting over on her blog, this may be the best one yet! She’s got 30 posts linked in this edition, so there’s plenty to read, and talk about. Please, take a look, and visit all the contributors.

While you’re there, be sure to thank Marj for starting the carnival, and for all the work she puts in as well!