When I looked at this article on-line today I thought, wow, there are some really good ideas here for folks struggling with self-esteem issues, which is pretty much every one isn’t it? Let alone survivors!
Anyway, here are 22 tips for maintaining high self-esteem. Do you have any other tips?
Seen via a link on Dumb Little Man.
Pin What I want to address, however, is how our society defines victims and how it leaves far too many people behind. The article above is a great example. How many people, if asked about sex trafficking, picture little white girls or women abducted from Target? Probably a lot. For many, the only information they’ve ever gotten about trafficking are warnings about Target or shopping mall parking lots from their Facebook friends. They don’t know how many teenage boys from broken homes, living in poverty, are pulled into being trafficked. How many gay youths, rejected by their families, fall victim to it? How many immigrant children here, with no parental supervision, are sold off by the people who should be protecting them from sexual slavery?Â
Those stories, even if they’re told, are not going to grab national headlines. They are not going to evoke world-wide outrage and sympathy. Those are things that happen to “other people”. We might even be tempted to start looking for reason why it’s their own fault, or at least the parents fault, right?Â
From a media perspective, we also have to keep this in mind. An abduction of a young white girl from her home, is a rare event. It’s actually newsworthy because it happens so rarely. When it happens, it’s shocking. A trans, minority, teen being coerced into selling themselves, with no one to turn to for protection, isn’t any of those things. A gay male teen being kicked out of their parents house and trying to make it through homelessness, is also not something that happens so rarely that there would be major news coverage of it. These things happen all of the time. So often, that they aren’t really news.Â
So, which group should we have support and services for? I’d like to vote for ALL OF THEM. But that will take educating people about the reality of who gets abused, who gets trafficked, and for us all to accept that it happens everywhere. Until we get there, and are willing to see all different types of people as victims, we will continue to fail one group or another. That’s not acceptable.Â
Pin I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we think about scientific studies, and how they are covered by the media in this age of Twitter and Facebook. I’ve also been thinking too about much of what is covered in this article, because it spends a bit of time describing what help is available, and…
Being a survivor is a challenge, and healing from childhood abuse is a struggle. Don’t let anyone kid you about that. What it’s not is a death sentence. There is hope, there is joy, and there is life. It may be a long, rough tunnel, and the light at the end of it may seem dim now, but it is there. Survivors need to know that, and they should hear it from us.
If you missed last month’s edition of the carnival, or just want to know what the heck I’m talking about, you can check it out over at Tracie’s. This month, I will be doing the honors and hosting it right here! Of course, since this is Child Abuse Prevention Month, I am really looking forward…
I really liked Natasha Tracy’s description of depression when I read it. I have problems with lots of the little things. Opening mail, for example. You would think that tearing tiny pieces of paper and reading letters would be relatively simple, but it’s not – at least, not for me. For me, I just think…
I was reading Carolyn’s comment on that last post, and she used a term I’d been thinking about lately, “damaged goods.” Are we, as child abuse survivors, damaged goods? To a certain extent, we are. Being victimized like that as a child leaves long-lasting impressions and issues. On the other hand, it’s not exactly a…
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