The Fifth Edition of the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse is up over at Survivors can Thrive today. Once again it looks like there quite a bit of good writing going on, as usual.
Next month’s edition will be hosted right here, so start thinking about submissions!
Since tomorrow is the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, and I have been writing about the idea of thankfulness each year at this time, I just wanted to take a minute to say that I’m thankful for you, the readers of this site. I’m grateful that you take the time to read, comment, send…
Pin Just like in sports though, sometimes it’s not about how the world works, or what mistakes we made, it’s about the other team. In our case, it’s the abuser. They did this. Healing is understanding that, and coming to grips with the fact that our lens is wrong. We’re looking at someone else’s actions and choices through a lens that only sees ourselves. We were abused, maybe when we told someone, we weren’t believed, or maybe even as adults, when we share our experiences we make others uncomfortable. But it’s not us. Other people get to make their own choices, have their own reactions, and choose who, and what, to believe.
What we need to do, is start untying other people actions and reactions, from ourselves. The abuser chose to abuse. The people who refused to help, made that choice, and the people who still don’t believe us, have their own reasons for doing that. None of it has anything to do with us, those are other people making their own choices, playing their own game. We can do everything right, live our life to the best of our abilities and still “lose” in these interactions. It happens. It doesn’t lessen us, it shows us who these other people are, and tells us about their agendas.
We learn from that, and move on. We do not blame ourselves for their agendas.
It does take developing a more mature lens to view life through, and that takes time, and work. Are you up for it? Or maybe the better question, are you tired of blaming yourself?
Pin The people who helped me, and continue to help me, are the ones who will ask me questions and then just listen. They want to hear my story, even though they can’t fix it. They know that they can help by just giving me a space to tell my story, without worrying about the need to fight off their attempts at fixing something that may or may not be relevant at all to my situation. (i.e. I’m glad your cousin felt better after a walk in the forest, but that’s not what is happening here!)Â
So please, just listen. Make the space around you, even if it’s virtual, a safe space for your friends and loved ones to tell their stories. Find small ways to help, if you can, but also know that by just listening, just sitting with our stories, you are already helping so much.
Whatever you choose to believe is the reason for someone being raped, or a child being abused, or someone being murdered, we all instinctively try to make sense of it, to find a reason why it happened. More importantly, we want to find that reason so that we can convince ourselves that it will never happen to us.
Pin More importantly, though, is to understand what we say to each other because, as someone who was abused as a child and dealt with severe depression for years, I know what it’s like when people around you see you as less-than. I know what it feels like to feel that way internally, and that is part of the abuse and depression, but it was also part of society that told me that. The part that got uncomfortable any time I was around, or who gets on podcasts and blogs to talk about the damaged goods that abuse survivors are, or mocks “crazy people.” The solution to that is not to find another group that you consider to be beneath you; it’s to see the value in every life. To recognize the humanity in all of us and make political decisions that lift the humanity in all of us.Â
I’m showing all the classic signs of someone struggling with stress related disorders right now. Headaches, fatigue, jaw pain from gritting and grinding my teeth, etc. That’s not good, but at the same time, it’s something I’ve got to learn to live with. You see the stress comes not from looking for a new job,…
Subscribe to our Newsletter
See a sample before subscribing here
If you’d rather use RSS – that feed is here.