Misconception

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

I can see from my server logs an increasing amount of traffic coming in from specific searches. For the record, this is a site wrtten by someone who was a victim of child abuse, and it contains links to photos that I have taken, mostly from my travels over the last few years. There are no “pictures of child abuse” here! The pictures are purely G rated fare, the sort of thing your grandparents might have made slides out of. 🙂

So, if you came here looking for pictures of abused children, for whatever reason, please move along. Nothing to see here…

Share with your friends!
BlueskyMastodonThreadsLinkedInRedditTumblrBuffer

Similar Posts

  • Raising Awareness

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    With April being Child Abuse Prevention Month, and groups trying to raise awareness of child abuse all month I wanted to try and highlight some lesser known activities you might be able to help out with this month. Obviously, there’s no way I can possibly make an all-inclusive list, but look for a few throughout…

  • |

    Grief is Hard, and Long

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Something else interests me about grief though and that is the grief that child abuse survivors have because it’s complicated. We aren’t grieving a person we’ve lost, we’re grieving something we never had. A safe, happy childhood or a loving parental relationship that didn’t exist. The lack of any kind of family bonds as an adult, or the inability to trust anyone. Those are things we can, and should, grieve. Often we aren’t given the chance to do that. Other people expect us to “put it behind us” because it was a long time ago. We may even convince ourselves that the best option is to suck it up and forget it, no reason to think about any of that. But, I think there’s a reason to grieve the things we didn’t have as children. They are very real losses. They have very real impacts on our brains and our emotional well-being. We can’t change it now, but we can allow ourselves the freedom to feel grief over it. It’s part of the process. 

  • Some Conversations Are Easier Online

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I have understood this for a long time. I can write here without having to see anyone react immediately when they read it. I can see their reaction when I tell someone about being abused in person. I can watch their facial expressions and body language. I can see every bit of their discomfort, and their signs of dismissal cut me. If you don’t think telling someone in person that you need their help isn’t scary, I can only assume that is because you’ve never done it.

    So when you see someone share something on social media about their mental health, and your response is to wonder why they didn’t just talk to you about it, remember how much harder that is. Maybe they aren’t ready yet, or you just haven’t done enough to earn that trust. Consider how many people in your life may be dealing with very difficult things they just haven’t told anyone about yet.

  • No-follow

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    I’ve implemented the new MT-NoFollow plugin to try and do my part to help in the fight against comment spam. If somethings broken, drop me a line and let me know. Just don’t expect a quick response, there’s been a death in my wife’s family (I’ll leave it to her to decide whether to discuss…

  • It’s OK to Just Enjoy Something For Yourself

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    I came upon this idea later in life than some of you may have. Thanks to an abusive childhood and a fairly demanding church involvement in my teens and twenties, I was about 30 when I finally gave myself the freedom to take on a hobby just because I enjoyed it.

    For me, I grew up never feeling good enough or worthy. I needed someone else to tell me it was OK for me to do something, or heaven forbid to spend money on something just because I liked it.

  • You’ve Already Done Hard Things

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    We’ve already done hard things, but we don’t give ourselves credit for it. Typically, we do the opposite, blaming ourselves for the trauma or our mental health struggles, thus seeing ourselves as weak, the kind of people who can’t do hard things. That carries over into all aspects of our lives. We don’t take risks in jobs, relationships, and other areas because we don’t think we’re capable, and we don’t think we could survive failure.

    Which is weird, given how much we have survived.

4 Comments

  1. I think that you shuold put pictures of the abused children on the internet because it would make a change in some abuser lives and it could cause less abusive things happening in the world today. I know waht some people do may not change but there are some people that may change some day after looking at hte damage and scars that they heve casted upon a little innocent child.

    Reply

  2. Child abuse makes me sick. I have been in a few abusive times that I can remember. I feel very sorry for the way children are talked to and in most times touched. Any person in their right mind would not touch a little innocent child in any harmful or violating way. Those children have my wishes and prayers to be in a safe place and a good home.

    Reply

  3. I would suggest that you provide photos of children that are abused for those that would like to present to other individuals of what the effects are of child abuse. I myself have been a victim and I don’t see a problem with giving proof of damages that were done because of individuals who choose to act purely out of selfishness and evil. I want to present to my class the statistics of child abuse and to give them a visual aid on what becomes of children that are abused.

    Reply

  4. people who do these type of things are called
    nothings, people that do this type of stuff it
    was done to them and they turn out to be what they were.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)