That’s our blind spot. We’re so busy looking for creepy, anti-social, stereotypes that we miss the charming abusers right in our midst, and we miss all the signs and hints that our kids might be dropping because we just didn’t stop to consider that adult to be dangerous. We just assumed they were safe, and our kids would somehow know better anyway.
Clearly, that strategy isn’t working.
How often do I see people talking about “wanting to be an advocate” and waiting for someone to invite them to be some sort of official spokesperson as if that is what makes one an advocate. It’s not. Advocates see holes and fill them. Sometimes that’s volunteering to work with kids, sometimes it’s telling your story, and sometimes it’s just seeing the people around you dealing with child abuse or mental health and letting them know they aren’t alone.
I saw this video shared on Lauren’s Kids Facebook page and wanted to share it here because I think what the folks who work at this Children’s Advocacy Center have to say about childhood trauma, and what children remember is incredibly valuable.
We often expect child abuse survivors, especially when the abuse was so recent, to remember the details, and be able to provide an exact timeline of events. When they struggle to do that it becomes a little too easy for us to start doubting that they are telling the truth, instead of understanding that this is exactly the way it’s supposed to work.
It’s the insistence that everyone around you also is positive all the time, demanding “Good Vibes Only” as the article points out, that worries me. Because people in real pain, social issues that cause real harm, etc. are not good vibes. When a team was winning gold medals, no one wanted to do more than focus on that success, and repeated stories of abuse went ignored. Is our constant need for positivity forcing us to ignore racism, homelessness, abuse, and many other social issues that we need to do more than give passing support to on social media?
Maybe most importantly, are there people in our lives right now hurting, who desperately need our support, who we are ignoring because they bring us down?
In my experience all of that is true. The trauma of my childhood left me numb in early adulthood. The current pandemic and all of the other things going on around us every day have left me numb from time to time now. It’s the overwhelming stress that just living every day can bring right now. So, I find myself doing some of the things recommended in the article below to help in the short term, while also knowing that if that doesn’t work, I need to consider the long-term options as well.
