This story about the newly released documents from the New Jersey Child Welfare system are very sad. I know children service administrations try to do the best they can but, obviously, they need to do better. No child should be put in these situations by the very people who are supposed to be protecting them.
Pin Recently, I linked to an article whose headline referenced a rape epidemic: Link – There’s a Rape Epidemic in America That No One Is Talking About https://t.co/KWJSR0PaQ7 — Child Abuse Survivor (@SurvivorNetwork) June 14, 2016 The article in question referred to male victims of rape, boys raped as children, and males raped as adults…
Pin Last night, during the #Sexabusechat on Twitter, the topic was disclosing – the fear, the struggle, and the results. That’s a huge subject with a ton of nuance around it, and sure enough, it inspired a lot of good conversation. Toward the end of it, however, a thought occurred to me in response to a tweet…
Bad dream I had a dream last night that I found out my nephew was being molested and I had to tell his parents. What a horrible dream. I was so relieved when I woke up and realized it was just a dream, but at the same time, I feel oddly “spooked” this morning. Ugh!
Pin Many survivors like to think they know what their future holds, and many of them end up being correct, because they spend so much time trying to control their life that they don’t ever really experience any big changes. I’m here to tell you, however, that is no way to live. If there is…
Pin Recently, an old friend started going through some old photo albums and scanning in the photos in order to share them on Facebook. She and I were in the same church group back in those days, and many of the photos, despite being a cringe-worthy reminder of some the things we did in our younger…
Pin As she and her guests shared their stories and the research around how this happens, I kept replacing all of the stories; the pain of giving birth, the struggle to bike up 4,000 feet of incline, and others with trauma and PTSD flashbacks. When we have those kinds of reactions, we become different people. Often, we become the child who was being abused instead of the adult we are, and we act accordingly. We lash out, self-protect in unhealthy ways, or try our best to hide from it.
The exact reactions are not the important thing. We need to know that it happens. When in an extreme emotional state, we can act like a different person. We all do. The problem is that we don’t know that person. We are not good at predicting how we will react. When we are in a calm state, the warm-state version of us makes no sense, and how we think we’ll act turns out not to be what actually happens.
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