Child Abuse Survivor

This is a quote from Dr. Wayne Dyer that I saw someone share on Twitter earlier today, and it got me thinking about abuse survivors, especially those of us who were abused within the family unit. On one hand, speaking from my own experience with the friendships I’ve developed over the years, I can honestly say that I agree with the quote. My friends (including my wife, who is my best friend as well) are a huge source of support, love and laughter in my adult life.

On the other hand, I also remember what it was like early in my adult years, when I kept people at arms distance, hard a difficult time relating to other people, and generally distrusted, and disliked, most people I came in contact with. That was a legacy of being an abused child, and it was that legacy that had to be overcome before I could really see the value of good friends.

So, the odd thing about Dr. Dyer’s statement is that even if friends are the apology for your family, you still have to overcome the abuse suffered, sometimes within that family, to truly enjoy them. That can be quite a challenge for survivors, but it’s worth going after. There truly are people in the world who are good friends, and who will be great additions to your life. Not everyone, obviously, but it’s worth it to try and find those who are.

I know that the friends I have add so much to my life, and I wouldn’t be having as much fun without them!

You may have noticed the weekly “links” post that gets dropped into the Survivor News and Reviews feed and picked up in other places like Facebook and Twitter on Sundays. If you’re interested in seeing those same links, only in real time when I add them individually instead of in the weekly wrap up, you have myriad choices to do that as well. They start out on my Diigo account, then through the magic of If This Then That, they go out on both my Twitter, and the Facebook page for this site.

If you’re following either of those, you’ll see the links as they get added, give or take 10-15 minutes. You’ll also see various other things I share as I come across them in those channels, that aren’t necessarily showing up here on the blog.

I’m also toying with a few other ideas, but not ready to commit to them just yet, and trying to figure out how a Google+ page fits in here as well. I’m trying to use it more, both my own profile and the pages, but that lack of automated import is hard to get over!

I’ll be sure to keep ya’ll posted!

This being the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, it’s a good chance to take a step back and remind yourself all that you have to be thankful for. I’m not going to bore you with a list of all the things I’m thankful for, but this year, with all the changes that have gone on, this is especially poignant. It can be difficult to pick up and make major changes in your life or career. As exciting of an adventure as this has been, I also know it’s been difficult to start over in a new place, leaving behind many of the friends and family that I depended on.

Luckily, it’s 2011, and staying in touch with friends all over the place has never been easier. Luckier still, the people I count among my closest friends are more than willing to stay in touch even if it is electronically, for now.

The Internet, and social networking tools in particular, have really changed the dynamic when it comes to making big changes.  Technology allows us to maintain relationships that would have required so much work before. It also allows me to build new relationships and connect with people regardless of physical location. I know a great many people through my websites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., and have come to consider them friends, even though we’ve never met. I’ve learned from them, shared with them, laughed with them, and even disagreed with them sometimes, all online. We truly live in an amazing time.

It may not be the easiest of times, and god knows it’s difficult to keep up with all of the changes that are constantly being thrown at us every day, but we are capable of doing things that were nothing more than dreams just 15-20 years ago. There’s simply no reason, in 2011, for any abuse survivor to feel alone. Survivors are everywhere around you, and there are plenty of us out here on the internet (there are over 500 people just on this blogs Facebook page!), connecting with each other, sharing with each other, and simply acknowledging to each other that WE ARE NOT ALONE! There’s certainly something to be said for being thankful for that!

So, I hope you all enjoy a great holiday, and never take for granted the people in your life, whether they be right there to celebrate with you, or miles away. Either way, it’s easy to let them know how important they are to you.

From a highly recommended article on Slate, How what happened in State College forced me to confront my own abuse.

Several of my friends, for example, were shocked when Rick Reilly reported that, according to a 1998 study on child sexual abuse by Boston University Medical School, one in six boys in America will be abused by age 16. For girls, it’s one in four by the age of 14. They were shocked, no doubt, because concrete examples of abuse are not as available to them as the statistics suggest. Most people don’t think they know any abuse victims.

But they do know victims. They just don’t realize it, because so many of us have been unable to reveal ourselves. This breeds a false sense of security, with too many adults believing abuse is someone else’s problem.

By now I’m sure most of you are familiar with the recent charges brought against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, as well as charges of perjury and failure to report against Penn State officials. If you aren’t familiar with the details, you can read them here, although they are quite disturbing.

When I first saw the story, Sunday night, it made me absolutely sick that this person was seen in a shower with a “10 year old boy”, 9 years ago, and was just now being charged with a crime.

After having a couple of days to digest the allegations, and read up on the details, I have to say, that as sick as it makes me, I’m not necessarily surprised. This is the Catholic Church, various boarding schools, junior hockey coaches, etc. all over again. Claims are made against “one of us”, whether it be a priest, a fellow coach, a board member, and we are hesitant to believe them or pursue them. The people in positions of authority don’t want to believe that this sort of things is happening under their noses, or being done by the same people they live and work with daily, so they do the minimum, if that. After all, Sandusky was one of them, and they wouldn’t do this, so surely there must be some misunderstanding, right? It’s called cognitive dissonance, and it’s actually quite normal, this ability we have to filter information in favor of what we already believe to be true. This is what makes it possible for abuse to go on right in front of us, with all the signals and hints visible, without people really seeing them, because we already believe good things about the people we are close to. Bad things struggle to crack our awareness.

Obviously, in this case, a couple of officials have been charged with not even doing the minimum, legally, but the focus has now switched to head coach Joe Paterno, and the graduate assistant who made the initial claim. They, apparently, met the minimum requirements of reporting it to their superiors, but did they really do the “right” thing? Did Paterno owe it to those kids to see past his dissonance when it came to his long time assistant, and personally get involved in making sure this was investigated? Did the university have an obligation to do more than simply tell Sandusky not to bring children to campus?

Personally, I believe that they did, but I also acknowledge that it’s sometimes easier said than done. I’d like to believe I would take serious any charge of child abuse, even if it was levied against someone I am close to, but when push comes to shove, are any of us willing to believe that our best friend, our spouse, our family members, our friends and neighbors, are capable of such heinous acts? Aren’t we sure they are just like us, and incapable of such things?

If this tragedy teaches us anything, it should teach us that abusers come in all shapes and sizes, ages, make and female, and just because we think we know someone, doesn’t mean they aren’t hiding horrific secrets. We owe it to these children, and the potential future victims to put aside our dissonance and take these kinds of claims seriously.

We should also raise our awareness of who pedophiles are. We like to think of pedophiles as those creepy guys from the TV movies, who we all know to avoid, but the reality is much more complicated than that. Pedophiles can be anywhere, and the best way to protect children is to stay closely involved in their lives, including keeping up with the people they are spending time with. Jerry Sandusky couldn’t have had a cleaner image at Penn State, and it was that image and prominence in the community that he used to cover up what he was doing, allegedly.  Abusers don’t announce themselves, assuming kids are safe just because no one “creepy” is around, is a huge mistake.

Now that Google has released Pages for Google Plus, I’ve gone ahead and made a page for this site. Now, you can be “connected” to things around here, anywhere you want.

Google Plus Page

Facebook Page

Twitter

RSS Feed

Subscribe by Email

There you go, we’ll keep writing here, you follow whatever way works best for you!

I was listening to the latest BS Report podcast on ESPN today, an interview done by Bill Simmons with Sugar Ray Leonard. I was aware that Ray openly discusses the sexual abuse he suffered as a child in his recent autobiography, but I hardly expected that to be a major portion of the interview.

If you want to hear that part, and don’t care much about the boxing talk, skip the first 20 minutes or so.

The interesting thing that I took away from the discussion, among a few really interesting things about the difficulty of talking about sexual abuse in a macho culture, was his description of telling his wife early in his marriage. Actually, the same scene played out in both of his marriages. He told his wife, she just stared at him, not knowing what to say, and he changed the subject, never to bring it up again.

It got me thinking that, even as a survivor myself, when people tell me about being abused, I’m not sure what to say either. I hate to think that is causing them to change the subject and never talk about it again. I hope that hasn’t ever happened, but if it has, I hope whoever it was is reading this now!

So survivors, here’s your chance to let folks know, how should people respond, what should they say? Is it ok to not know what to say? For me, I think it’s ok to not know what to say, but say that. Don’t stare at me like I’m a freak, I already feel like a freak for having experienced this, and now talking about it. Just admit, you don’t know what to say, and show that you care. It goes a long, long way!

I spotted this post by Faith Allen on her blog recently, and have been enjoying the various comments that came pouring in.

In it she talks about how healing has become a challenge within her marriage because she is not the wife her husband expects her to be any more. She has been spending her time healing from her child abuse, and becoming  a stronger and more independent woman, and that’s not who he married. I can identify with what she is going through, because I went through a similar experience.

As I began healing, being married actually became quite a problem for me. Not necessarily because my marriage was horrible, but because trying to be the husband my wife expected me to be, and allowing myself the freedom to heal and change created a huge internal conflict.

As it turned out, in my case, that conflict became the source of even more depression and mental health issues, causing my wife to decide she couldn’t stay and watch me make myself worse. In essence, she solved the conflict for me, by filing for divorce. Not every marriage that experiences this sort of issue fails in the way mine did, but it is a challenge.

Healing requires us throwing off some of our old coping mechanisms and learn to become full-fledged adults. That adult is going to be a different person than the one you were when you first got married. It’s not that this new, healthy, person is worse, or a bad spouse or anything along those lines. They’re just different. In my case, it means wanting different things from life than my wife did. I suddenly felt pulled away from the lifestyle and views she held very dear. I was no longer what the kind pf man she wanted to spend her life with. I think I sensed that as I healed. I was moving away from the religious views that had been a very important part of our marriage, (Not religion or spirituality in general, but away from the specific church that we were heavily involved in) and away from the sort of family life that was important to her. Attempting to somehow reach a compromise within myself and heal while remaining that guy was a horrible, horrible idea!

Some marriages survive this sort of thing. Sometimes a spouse can change along with the one who is healing, and they both can become better for each other than they were before. Sometimes you just can’t. It doesn’t always mean that you’re a failure or that the marriage is a failure. It’s ok to simply want something out of life that your spouse doesn’t want anymore, and it’s ok for them to be free to find what they were looking for. I don’t resent my first wife for leaving me when I was at the lowest point in my life. I’m grateful that she set me free to heal and have the wonderful life I have now. Hopefully she has been able to pursue the life she wanted as well, the one I could no longer give her.

On the other hand, if you can heal and stay married, more power to you. I can only imagine that having gone through all of that with a supportive spouse is an amazing experience, but I also know it was probably very hard, and not for everyone!

As I’ve said many times, we’re all different as survivors, and for those who are healing, and married, your marriages are all different too. There’s no telling where it’ll end up, but know that as long as you pursue healing, you’ll be better off, regardless of what happens!

Due to some spam, and possible hacking attempts in the installation of the Survivors Network, I’ve taken the whole site offline.

It may not be coming back. A big part of the reason for this happening was my inability to keep up with it, and keep the software installation up to date. Since there hasn’t been much activity over there in recent months, it’s very much been out of site, out of mind. Perhaps I will make another attempt at hosting a discussion forum or some other tool for survivors who wish to remain anonymous, but for now, if you aren’t afraid to put your name up as a Survivor, you can follow the latest updates to the site, and have some conversation with other survivors, over at the Facebook page.