Daisy Coleman Found Her Voice, But Her Struggle Didn’t Stop
Which brings us to Daisy. She did not get her justice from the court system, quite the opposite. But, she did something else that many assume is a sign of “being healed”, she found her voice. She told her story, she had a movie made where she could speak her truth to the whole world. Surely, that is healed, right?
As we now know, that probably wasn’t the case. I assume that many people who watched that documentary went on to become fans of Daisy, admiring her for having the courage to tell her story, happy for her that she was able to overcome, but that had nothing to do with the reality of what surviving actually is.
The coincidence that I spoke of came this morning, when I popped over to Twitter during a quick coffee break, and saw Rachel Denhollander, another survivor who’s made an appearance in a documentary, Athlete A, on her involvement with the Larry Nasser case, talking about this article:
Daisy Coleman’s Death Lays Bare the Myth of ‘Surviving
More on Athletes and Mental Health
When I wrote about watching Athlete A last week, I mentioned the fact that the win-at-all-costs mentality of USA gymnastics blinded the organization to the fact that girls were being abused right under their noses, and played a role in … Continued
Quick Thought #15 – Stigma Around Mental Health Issues May be Lessening During COVID-19, but Will it Stay That Way?
You may have seen someone talking about this on social media, or in an article online, or somewhere else. I’ve seen it in numerous places. The idea is that, right now, with a pandemic, racial justice issues, and everything else … Continued
Watching Athlete A
If you pay attention to the news at all, I’m sure you’ve seen something about Larry Nasser over the past couple of years. You may even be fairly familiar with the story. If so, the Netflix documentary Athlete A might not offer a lot of things you don’t know to some extent or other. But, you may want to watch it anyway, even though watching it and hearing the stories will be difficult. I did a couple of nights ago, and had a couple of thoughts about it, in no real order of importance.
Following My Own Advice – Calling Out False Pedophile Stories
I have been on record saying that if you truly believe in a cause, and the importance of it, you need to be the first to call out untruths.
I’ve said it about false rape allegations, false child abuse allegations, fake hate crimes, etc.
If you believe rape, abuse, and hate crimes are big issues that our society needs to be concerned with, and that the victims need to believed, you need to be the first to call it out when someone undermines the issue by spreading false stories.
So, while it may cost me some followers, let me just say this. If you believe QAnon conspiracy theories about elite pedophile gangs and sex trafficking rings with zero proof aside from some seeming coincidences with a bunch of half-true facts, and go spreading them around, you are undermining the very serious issue we have in society with actual, real pedophiles, elite and otherwise, and real, true to life, sex trafficking.
Quick Thought #14 – When it’s Someone You Know, You Know.
Why do I see these two things as related? Well. let’s start with Sean Astin. It’s hard not to think that he has lived an amazingly privileged life. He’s been famous since he was a little kid, after growing up part of Hollywood royalty. If anyone has the means to shelter himself away from the harder topics of life, he’s one of those people. But he chooses not to, because he’s seen first hand what it is like to life with, and love someone with, mental health issues. That experience drives him to advocacy. He wants to share what it was like, and help others watching a mental health condition tear apart their own family.
In short, he gets it because he knows.
The same seems to be true when it comes to how serious COVID-19 really is. It seems to me there are a lot of people thinking it’s not very serious because well, no one they know has died or anything serious. 130,000 “other people” have died in the US. On the other hand, there are those of us who do know people who’ve died, or spent time hospitalized, tend to take it very seriously. Because we know. We’ve seen it. We’ve grieved because of it.
Another Birthday and Another Reminder That We Are Not Alone
Last year, on the day after my birthday, I was writing about how it wasn’t exactly the birthday I would have planned, spending the day flying home after my Mom’s funeral but it wasn’t all bad. . My wife and … Continued
How Much Blame Should We Really Get for not Picking up on Grooming?
Think about it. Right now, this very second, you are reading this post because either you found the headline intriguing and clicked, or someone shared it with you and said you should read it, and you clicked. In both cases, you were persuaded by another person to do something. If you saw it on Facebook or other social media platform, there’s a Facebook algorithm watching you and trying to give you more stuff you like, to persuade you to keep coming back to Facebook, and you’re reading it on a device that you were persuaded to purchase by some other factor in your life.
Not to mention the fact that parents, teachers, or someone, somewhere, persuaded you to learn to read. You were persuaded, even manipulated, to go to school, study, become the sort of person who could get a well-enough paying job to own a piece of technology and pay for an internet connection, and all of that wound up with you, right here, right now.
You were “groomed” to do what you are doing right now. And yet, so many want to look at children, and make them responsible for knowing which persuasion is good for them and which isn’t.
Quick Thought #13 – More Trauma Makes More Problems More Likely, and This is Trauma
All of the caveats aside about ACE scores that I’ve written about before, (tl;dr – Yes the more childhood traumas you’ve had, the more likely you will deal with various issues as an adult, but it’s not a set fate … Continued
Just Stop – The Universe did not Cause My Abuse For My Greater Good
I was abused by people who made the decision to abuse me. I did nothing to cause it, and there was no lack of purpose to which I needed to be directed. I was a little kid being beaten, and eventually molested, for years. My purpose in life was to be a little kid. There was nothing fair about it, there was no sense to be made of why it happened, it was the result of another person’s actions which happened to be directed toward me because I was there. And, I was there by chance. Not by divine interference, just random chance.