A co-worker sent me this yesterday and it just cracked me up:
Some people are like Slinkies …
Not really good for anything,
But they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.
Hope you’re having a good weekend! 🙂
Pin Last night, the wife and I were each doing our thing on our laptops, getting ready to start the work week off today, while we had the cable switched to the Palladia channel. This is something we do every once in awhile, as the live concerts they show become the background music to whatever we…
Pin It’s disheartening to think that I’ve spent over 20 years in the online survivor community advocating that we believe survivors and act on accusations of abuse only to wind up here. This feels like we’ve gone back to the days of sexual violence being unheard of because no one would dare talk about being a victim. It’s enough to make you want to quit. I felt that way last week. As I watched my wife’s hope for women across the country leave her body while also being overwhelmingly angry at people who voted for a criminal and a rapist, I wanted to walk away and shut myself off from the world.
Instead, I stepped away for a few days and reminded myself that there will be innumerable victims of sexual abuse who can’t talk about it and need to know that they are not alone. There are growing numbers of survivors who will be losing their families and friends and need to know that they are not alone. We will all be looking for community.Â
If anything, the importance of staying online and continuing to talk about child abuse, sexual violence, mental health, and supporting vulnerable people is higher now than it has been in the entire time I’ve been doing this. Now is not the time to walk away; it’s the time to fight for survivors.
Pin The recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education paints the picture pretty well, but what we are seeing this last week with the trial, and eventual conviction on a count of child endangerment of former University president Graham Spanier is an interesting example of something that I think is fairly typical. On one side…
Pin 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.
I saw this comment hit the blog this evening, and have since sent an email response, but I wanted to share my thoughts with others, and perhaps get a discussion going around the topic. Here’s what Amie wrote earlier: No victim of child abuse will EVER live a happy life. Somewhere deep down inside, they…
I had an email conversation the other day with another survivor and they said something that I’ve seen far too many times, in one shape or other. Namely “I am a creation of what everyone wants me to be”. Most children in abusive situations become what they need to be in order to avoid the abuse….
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Oh boy….I needed that joke right now.
Stunned Silent
The past few days have been a bit of a blur…the thoughts in my mind forming as I lie in bed and try to sleep, yet when I get up in frustration to come down and write it all out,…