Since Google announced the new community feature for Google+, I thought creating a community for survivors would be a fun way to experiment with the feature, and see what we could make of it as a group. Not making any promises, but thought it’d be fun and interesting. We’ll see what happens!
If you’re interested in checking it out, you can find it here
Angela and I will be off early in the morning to spend a nice three day weekend exploring Baltimore. It should be fun, seems like there’s some neat stuff to do there, and most of all, it will just be nice to spend some time with my wife! We’ve both been so busy and preoccupied…
Pin If you can’t read that, or Twitter starts blocking embeds again – at the mention of a pediatric psychiatric hospital Rep. Cox said “You might want to check that place for grooming”.
Yes, the very mention of providing mental health care for children is met with a suggestion that it is a place for grooming. Because, of course, anyone who encourages kids to talk about their mental health is out to groom them for sexual abuse.
This is a dangerous path that we are on.
I’ve been disturbed by recent events in the media and in our online communities. I’m disturbed, not because we are talking about issues of child abuse and/or sexual assault, but because too many people are so attached to that agenda that they are undermining it with their actions. Simply put, it is never acceptable for…
Pin It’s worth considering your friends and recognizing that we need all kinds of friends. We need loose connections, and we need tight connections. We need long-term friends, and we need friends for a season of our lives.
In short, we need each other. I’m afraid this has gotten lost in our culture and priorities, and I consider myself as guilty as anyone.
I also know that being guilty of not prioritizing friendships has hurt me. It’s likely hurting you. It is hurting all of society. It’s time we started valuing close friendships again.
As I waited at the airport in Las Vegas yesterday, I did some quick figuring about the month of August, 2010. In the first 27 days of the month, I had spent the night in a hotel for 21 of them. In that time I had: Slept in 5 different hotels Flown over 10,000 miles…
Pin The context for this quote is a handful of stories where someone felt ashamed of an event or something that they’d allowed people to believe about them that wasn’t true. Marisa goes on to talk about how when we have something we won’t discuss, it creates a separation from other people, and that separation can take away from humanness. Our interactions with other people are blocked off. We know we aren’t sharing our whole selves with the people we should be. That block can protect us from potential pain, but it also prevents us from having all the benefits of having close relationships with other humans.
Doesn’t that sound exactly like growing up keeping our abuse secret?
We grow up with shame around something that was never our fault. That shame prevents us from fully connecting with other human beings. That lack of connection harms our mental health as adults. We struggle to heal without one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal as human beings, other people. We keep our secrets and hide our shame, meaning we will never know the healing power of being accepted and loved by those who know our whole selves.
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