For abuse survivors, I’ve been on record talking about how so many of us are trying to somehow go back to the life timeline that we would have been on had the abuse not happened, and I’ve suggested that you can’t.
What you can be is something new, though. If you have the courage to try it.
I saw this article the other day and it covers many of the things we’ve been talking about here over the last few weeks and months. It’s about what is referred to as the wellness industry, which is a bit of a vague term, but it encompasses all of the wellness rituals and products that…
What if the operators on the line do get the necessary training and we make all the improvements we can make as we learn how to do this better, and there is just no system to hand the caller off to? Because I feel like that might be the case for some callers. The call is a door to care, but is the follow-up care available?
It’s all forward-looking. It celebrates how far I’ve come without constantly constantly reminding myself of what I haven’t done. In Todd’s words, it allows me to simply be human, like every other adult. In the end, isn’t that what we all want, to not see ourselves as the freak abuse survivor, but as an adult like other adults? With strengths and weaknesses, with quirks, and with success alongside failures?
We need to let ourselves be human and create a life where we can feel safe to be human.
As I read the rest of her insights, I realized this is where it all starts. We don’t have a mental health care system. If we had some semblance of a system the other four insights would go without saying. We’d see mental health patients as human beings, we would listen to them about their lived experiences, we’d have support systems for families, and we’d understand that despite all the effort and love put in, some people would still lose the battle, just like we do with cancer and every other illness.
I’m willing to bet the reason this is true is that we’ve struggled to define verbal abuse: “Currently, four subtypes are used to categorize child maltreatment: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Verbal abuse is noticeably absent. Of those four, a June 2023 study of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among U.S. adults found…
