Discovered a handful of new blogs this week that I’ve added to the side of the page. First a pair of abuse survivors DanDare, and Jennefer, and also a blog by someone dealing with MS called Thoughts from my broken brain.
Thank you for sharing your stories with us!
Pin It pains me to know that so many survivors spend their adult lives in isolation and shame because they don’t know other survivors around them. This is why telling our stories when we can, is so important. No one should spend most of their adult life ashamed of surviving abuse. Those of us who are in a position to share our story and the statistics about abuse can change that. You can change that by sharing those stories and those statistics, shedding light on a subject we spend too much time trying to avoid. That light saves lives.
Pin Somehow, even though this is from 2016, I hadn’t seen it until last night. It’s a TEDx talk by survivor, and advocate Lauren Book. (https://laurenskids.org)
In it. she shares her own story, and some words about going from victim, to advocate and how we can all advocate for children, but the part that really caught my attention was the beginning, and no not just because she uses an air horn. It’s the description of our responses to trauma, and how they are just part of us, mostly outside of our control, especially as children. Lauren’s freeze response wasn’t just a one-time event either, it went on for years, and was tied to thinking that all of it was her own fault.
If this sound familiar, that’s because it is really common. We just don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about sexual abuse at all, and if we do, this kind of response is usually met with some nasty comments about why we waited to say anything. Those comments simply communicate that the person saying them, knows nothing about the brain and trauma response.
Don’t be that person. Watch and learn a thing or two.
Pin No, the easiest way to break up those circles, as any kid who threw rocks into the water can tell you, is to throw another rock and create new concentric circles starting from a different location.
In my metaphor about the trauma, I wonder what those other rocks could be. Mental health treatment? Care and support from family and friends? The elimination of stigma attached to trauma?
How about instead of ignoring the circles, we started throwing some more useful rocks and disrupting the cycles of trauma that we see repeated over and over again in those circles?
It seems there is more Geocities stuff going on, they are now telling me that due to “maintenance” the site will be unavailable for the weekend of May 17-19. Sorry, but there’s really nothing I can do about it. Had to go testify at an administrative hearing yesterday. I can’t get into details, but naturally…
One of the personal notes I wanted to share about the book review I posted last week, is that there was a quick blurb in the book about how Susan likes to bring in the significant other of someone she is seeing, especially when they are in therapy for a sexual-related trauma. She wants to…
A few years ago, I took a look at using Disqus for the comments on my blogs, but ditched the idea because of some technical difficulties. Since the move to using WordPress on the site, I had sort of forgotten my desire to use Disqus and wasn’t exactly unhappy with the comments features within WordPress,…
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