Child Abuse Survivor

I’ll be hosting the March edition of the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse later this month, and given my own Irish heritage, and this being the month we celebrate the Irish with St. Patrick’s Day, I thought it would be appropriate to make the theme of this year one that speaks to the Irish part of me.

Historically, Ireland has been a country of misery, and the Irish people have suffered oppression, famine, civil war, poverty and pretty much every kind of bad thing that can happen to people. Yet, through it all, they maintain a sense of humor and know how to have a good time! Listen to traditional Irish music, for example. The lyrics speak of a miserable existence, yet the music is upbeat, and full of rollicking fun!

I’ve always thought, as a survivor, that healing requires a little bit of that. In the midst of my worst days of trying to cope, I found that having those little moments of joy to look forward to, made it just a little bit easier. To this day, I know the quickest way to find some joy and happiness, despite whatever might be going on, is to have things I enjoy, and to be able to look forward to enjoying them!

So, as part of this month’s carnival, I’d like to add one more category to the regular categories. I want to hear about how, as a survivor, you’ve managed to find the joy in life and have a good time! We’ll call it the “Life is Grand” category, and I’ll be posting something more about why I chose that.

Of course, we will also take any and all submissions in the normal categories: Advocacy and Awareness, Aftermath, Art Therapy, Healing and Therapy, In the News, Poetry and Survivor Stories.

I’ll be publishing the carnival on Friday, March 26. (I would post it closer to St. Patrick’s Day, but that weekend is my grandmother’s 90th birthday, and I’ll be out of town celebrating that, speaking of things to look forward to enjoying!) That means, that if you want to be included in this month’s edition, you’ve got to get your submission in before the 24th at midnight EST.

As you know, from time to time, I like to post here about new things that are happening over on the Child Abuse Survivors Network, just as a reminder to those of you who don’t make regular stops over, or as a way to let those of you who aren’t members know what’s going on.

Today, we’ve had a couple of folks step up and create their own sub-groups on the network, “Support for under-18s” and “Girl Talk for Survivors”.

Obviously, being well over 18, and male, I’m going to entrust overseeing the groups and monitoring things to their creators, but if you happen to fit in one of those demographics, or know a survivor who does, and who might benefit from chatting with folks in a similar situation, let them know to come on by!

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I was actually not aware of this until I was working on things behind the scenes around here last week and caught site of the first blog post, but it has been eight years now that I’ve been blogging about being a survivor of child abuse. It occurs to me that, on top of the other reasons I’ve been unable to blog here as much as I’d like to this year, I do often get an idea, or the very beginnings of an idea and struggle to say something I haven’t said before!

After that much time, and close to 600 posts, I do feel like I don’t have many original thoughts left. Then again, I’m not ready to simply quit writing here either. I know that lots of you read these posts and find value in them, so I’m going to continue to do that, and give myself the freedom to write what’s on my mind, regardless of whether it’s a topic I’ve covered, and as time allows. So, hopefully I’ll still be covering some original ground, but I’ll also probably be covering some things that are familiar to anyone who’s been reading for a long time. Sorry about that, but then again, there are probably just as many people finding this blog for the first time too. Maybe if I update it more often, they’d even come back!

Seriously though, reading that there are 39 millions sexual abuse survivors in the US alone, reminds me why, even if it takes time and energy to write this blog, or keep up with the Survivors Network, it’s worth it.

Don’t be scared off by the title.

I thought I would take a few minutes and help you all understand some of the new things I’ve been doing around the site while I had some spare time over the holidays. Overall, the thought is to make it as easy as possible for anyone who is interested in this site to follow along. In light of the fact that life has gotten busy, and that has kept me away from writing here as much as I’d like to, I wanted to find ways to make it easier to share things here, and for you all to know when something new is here without having to drop by every day.

So, I created RSS feeds for comments, added an email subscription list and a Facebook fan page.

I had toyed with the idea of creating a Facebook group, or fan page last year, opting instead to create the Survivors Network on Ning because it allowed me to let the members enjoy some privacy. It is important to me that survivors have a place they can share as much, or as little, information about themselves as they felt safe. Facebook doesn’t really allow that. You have to give up some personally identifiable information, that’s sort of the whole point of Facebook, and so having a Survivors group there meant that all the members would be tied to that information.

On the other hand, I know there are lots of people who read this site, who also use Facebook. Some of whom would love to share some of the content here with their Facebook network or who just want to keep in touch with myself and other readers of the site while they’re spending their time on Facebook. I didn’t think my personal profile was the place to do that. I use my Facebook profile for a number of other reasons, professionally and to keep in touch with family and friends all over the country. Trying to force the connections I have here, and the things I write about here onto that profile wasn’t something I was comfortable doing. Not because I’m hiding anything, I use my real name here and link the site from my other profiles, but because it would mean mixing together things in a way that everyone might not enjoy. I didn’t want everyone who knows me professionally, or through my family, to be forced to see me contemplating child abuse, depression, mental illness, etc, nor did I want folks to know me from this site to have to see me talking about technology and eDiscovery if they aren’t interested. By creating a fan page for both of my websites, I can give you the option to follow what you like. If you’re a big fan of either sites, but don’t care about the interactions I have with family, friends, and coworkers, you can simply became a fan of either site and interact that way. If you want to interact with other survivors on the Facebook platform, you can do so there. If you need more privacy, or want to interact in a safer environment, the Ning network is probably where you want to go. Or you can be part of both. Again, you have options this way.

One other new thing I’ve added, and will be working to update, is the Delicious links. They’re on the sidebar of both blogs of this site, and will be included each day on the Facebook page. They’re also included if you subscribe to the News and Reviews feed or email lists. That’s been a good tool on my other site to easily share articles and other links of interest without having to take the time to write up new blog posts, so my hope is to provide the same service to this community.

I want to thank the folks who have already signed up to be fans on Facebook, who have subscribed to the different feeds, or who continue to come back to the site and read, leave comments etc. It’s not like I have any advertising budget for any of these services. People only find them because you all spread the word, and they only work because everyone is willing to be part of the community, especially on the Network. None of this would be as valuable without you.

So, however you choose to be part of things here, thanks!

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

Subscribe by email

Subscribe in an RSS Reader

Subscribe to Comments in an RSS Reader

For the Survivors News and Reviews blog:

Subscribe by email

Subscribe in an RSS Reader

Subscribe to Comments in an RSS Reader

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

Thanks to finally finding the time to move the site to a new server last month, and the WPTouch plugin, there is now a mobile version of this site. If you navigate to either this blog, or the Survivors News and Reviews blog on an iPhone, Blackberry or other mobile device, instead of waiting for the full version of the site to load, you should see a scaled down version listing just the latest posts that you can expand to read.

Just one of the ways I want to make sure the information here is getting to you regardless of how you choose to visit!

Look forward to more small changes over the next few weeks, if all goes according to plan!

Yes, it’s been a little over a year since I announced the launch of the Survivors Network site. Like most years of my life, this year didn’t exactly go as planned either, and changes in my job caused me to spend less time there, and less time working on my websites in general, as I expected to. Yet, the site surely has struck a nerve and become a “home” to many survivors. Some have been involved heavily at times, coming and going as their own lives have dictated, others have been involved in limited ways consistently all year, and still others are relatively new to the site, but all year long it has proven to be a place where folks are interacting and supporting one another. I cannot begin to express just how thrilled I am about that.

Consider, that in just one year the site has grown to this:

384 Members

147 Forum Discussions

157 Blog posts

6 Groups

348 Shared Photos

Countless personal connections, status updates, personal comments, and even a few chats.

Wow. Thanks to everyone who has been part of the network this year, and I hope you will continue to be part of it as your own life and journey allows. If you haven’t visited yet, what’s keeping you?

If you came around looking for the site last night, it may have disappeared on you. It didn’t really, I just moved everything over to a new server, and as always, it took a little while for everyone’s ISP to get the information on where the new site is.

Anyway, the reason for the move was to get into the latest version of MySQL database, and finally get rid of all the old Movable Type stuff that was left behind when I moved to Wordpress a while back. Seems someone was able to get into those old Movable Type archives and insert links to various spammy sites on the pages. So, I took all that stuff out, and just loaded back up copies of the old static pages so that if there are links out there to those posts, they still take you to that post, even though it’s not tied to a database or connected to the Wordpress stuff at all any more.

I’m looking forward to doing some new things behind the scenes with MySQL 5, and you may see some of the results of that out here on the site, such as the list of related posts on each entry.

Let me know if something’s not working correctly with the new server. So far, it looks good to me, but you can never be too sure!

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!

Here’s to hoping I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and can get back to doing some regular posting around here again!

Someone left a couple of comments on the site last night, anonymously, and then sent me an email using the email form anonymously as well, requesting that I remove the comments they had made, as they were embarrassed by having made them public. I agreed to honor that request, feeling that any comments made here belong to the person who made them.

I also deleted the comment I left in reply, as it no longer makes any sense, but without any contact information for the commenter, I wanted to copy my reply here, so they, and anyone else struggling with being a survivor, could see it:

My normal advice to any survivor that leaves messages here is usually to do whatever you have to do to take care of yourself first. I don’t know enough about your situation to say more than that, but I’ve found it to be the most effective thing for us to focus on. That may mean getting away from your family, it may not. In either case, feel free to join the social network I put together for abuse survivors at http://childabusesurvivor.ning.com/

Perhaps just reading the other stories will help you see that there is a place for every survivor, but sometimes it can take time to find it!