Natascha Kampusch interviewed in The Guardian
British newspaper The Guardian has published a new interview with kidnap and abuse survivor Natascha Kampusch today. You can read this interview here.
– CBG
As I have written before, being an advocate online for me means writing, sharing information and insights, interacting with other survivors, etc. but sometimes I just can’t. Not because I’ve lost interest or don’t want to do it, but because I’m just tired of the pushback. I’m tired of having stories about male victims challenged or dismissed, tired of people in the mental health space telling me that everyone should just do what worked for them, tired of dealing with other people’s definitions of what healing looks like, or how long it should take, and on and on.
It’s all stigma, it’s all the stigma that I want to fight against, but some days it’s just exhausting. So I’d rather not talk about it.
One of my frequent notes about auto/biographies featuring child abuse is that they fail to go into relevant detail about the recovery process. Josh Cannon’s Silent Scream, which I read in hardback, sets this right by bookending the whole story with being shipped off to recovery, some in the UK, but at the beginning of…
“Healing is not a linear process. You may revisit a particular issue, say, the fear of intimacy, as you begin a new relationship. Or you may have to learn to set limits with your children if you have always had issues with boundaries. But the process of moving on cannot be rushed. Getting there will…
There are no easy answers, but hopefully, this guide can help you spot child abuse, such as the shaken baby syndrome, or spot children that have been neglected, provide information about prevention programs, and learn the steps to report the abuse to child welfare services. They are right, there are no easy answers, and I suspect there will…
At any point in that journey, through all the ups and downs, not having support and access to a resource may have meant the difference between my healing and my not being here to type these words.
I think about that a lot, too. I think about how many unknown people have been lost who didn’t have that one connection or access to that one resource that could have helped them keep going. It’s a haunting thought. It’s a thought that motivates me to keep speaking and expect better from our society.