Upgrades

I upgraded the Movable Type installation to 3.11 this evening. Assuming that this posts, everything seems to be working properly. The impetus for moving was comment spam, unfortunately. I came back from our last vacation with a dozen or so comments that had been posted to the site. Normally, spam comments are gone just about as quick as they appear, but since I was unconnected from the Net these stayed much longer than I would like.

In regards to comments, I’m really kind of caught between a rock and a hard place with this site. I want anyone dealing with child abuse to be able to leave comments, and be heard on this site in whatever fashion they like. If they want anonymity, I want to be able to provide that. On the other hand, I want to protect the people reading and contributing to this site from having to look at offensive comments. Upgrading to 3.11 and the latest version of MT-Blacklist gives me quite a bit more flexibility than I’ve had previously. As with anything though, this will be a trial and error, but I think I’ve got a pretty good start on finding a nice middle ground.

Basically, if you’re registered with Typekey, you can leave comments here without any problems. If you’re not there are a few limitations, but you are still able to post comments and take part. Depending on how things work out, those limitations will change, but basically they’ll only come into play if you’re leaving a comment on an older post, or trying to link to a URL that’s been blacklisted.

Let me know if you have any difficulties with the site!

Similar Posts

  • About last night…

    It was late when I went to bed, later than usual. But that was ok, I had taken a long nap after dinner and spent some time looking at the site and thinking about what I want to do with the site. I fear that the tech side of things has been dominating lately, and…

  • |

    Dissociation, it’s Good For You!

    Late last week, and over the weekend, I was having an email discussion with an online acquaintance about child abuse, and dissociative disorders when she said something that sparked further conversation. She mentioned that “everyone dissociates and for good reasons, it’s just a matter of degrees”. That got me thinking about the coping skills we…

  • Movie night

    The other night my wife and I watched Sleepers and then proceeded to have an interesting conversation. She made the comment at the end of the movie that it wasn’t really the happy ending you thought you were getting by the time they reviewed what happened to the characters in the future. My response to…

  • |

    Little Over a Year

    Yes, it’s been a little over a year since I announced the launch of the Survivors Network site. Like most years of my life, this year didn’t exactly go as planned either, and changes in my job caused me to spend less time there, and less time working on my websites in general, as I…

  • How Shame Keeps Us Disconnected

    The context for this quote is a handful of stories where someone felt ashamed of an event or something that they’d allowed people to believe about them that wasn’t true. Marisa goes on to talk about how when we have something we won’t discuss, it creates a separation from other people, and that separation can take away from humanness. Our interactions with other people are blocked off. We know we aren’t sharing our whole selves with the people we should be. That block can protect us from potential pain, but it also prevents us from having all the benefits of having close relationships with other humans.

    Doesn’t that sound exactly like growing up keeping our abuse secret?

    We grow up with shame around something that was never our fault. That shame prevents us from fully connecting with other human beings. That lack of connection harms our mental health as adults. We struggle to heal without one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal as human beings, other people. We keep our secrets and hide our shame, meaning we will never know the healing power of being accepted and loved by those who know our whole selves.

2 Comments

  1. Mike,

    I have been in talk therapy for almost five years. It’s been a journey of self in the world of me. I suffered from child abuse too. I am the oldest of five children. I saw and experienced some terrible and horrible things as a child. Growing up in that household took courage because I did not have the tools to nor the real maturity to handle the situation I was dealt. Child services were even out to find out more about the abuse but were fooled by my parents. I am 35 years old, now. The most difficult thing about child abuse, is that it robs the adult child of emotional development. I have struggled with expressing my emotions. Finally, through the years I have uncovered within myself the real mental and physical pain, denial of the past, resentment, sorrow, guilt, rage, loss of self esteem, anger, punishment, and levels of forgiveness. Every emotion I felt during this journey was like feeling it for the first time, it was overwhelming…I have felt panic attacks, heart arythmia’s, terror, rage of a caged beast, sorrow with tears of fear, and void of self worth enough to contemplate suicide. God gave me two powerful gifts for this life, “Drive” and a part of him living in me. I have read some terrific books, maintained the courage to open my mind to my therapist, sought out who I really want to be, and did a ton of writing through this emotional development. I even confronted my father and mother about the abuse. That took courage. I am writing to you because, I saw some articles about your anger. Mine is ever persistent. I have done the acting out with transferring the emotion to hitting the heavy bag or pillow. What I really want to find is a way to disperse the contact tension, the nag of anger out of my system. It’s a real parasite.

  2. Anger is difficult. For me, and I can only speak for me, it’s still there, and probably always will be to one degree or another. But the degrees have lessened as I’ve learned to live my own life and find my own enjoyment/contentment. Nothing beats back the anger inside like being content with things in your life now. Give it time, you’ll get there…

    Thanks for stopping by!

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.)