PinIf you’re a regular Tumblr user, you can now follow this blog, including all of our posts, on our tumblr blog. Right now it just has a link to the latest posts up, but eventually I’d like to start getting involved with other survivors over there, the same way that we do on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, currently.
If that’s your place to hang out and you want to keep up with the site, by all means, follow us over there – http://childabusesurvivor.tumblr.com/
Recently, I was contacted by Nicolette Winn, the founder of the No Longer Silent Movement (http://www.nolomovement.com). The first paragraph of the NoLo Movement’s mission struck a chord with me. Giving a voice to those who previously had thought themselves voiceless, the No Longer Silenced Movement seeks to empower teenage and young adult survivors of child abuse. By…
I had actually been giving some thought to writing on this subject before Joe Paterno passed away earlier today, but he certainly does provide the latest example of what I wanted to talk about. With the news of his passing, there seem to be two schools of thought. He’s either being remembered as the coach…
As I pondered the theme for this month’s Carnival Against Child Abuse of renewal, or re-birth, I kept coming back to the same thought. Namely, that when we make a turn into a different direction in our lives, whether that be something as simple as giving up smoking, or making the very first steps into…
Pin Think about it. Right now, this very second, you are reading this post because either you found the headline intriguing and clicked, or someone shared it with you and said you should read it, and you clicked. In both cases, you were persuaded by another person to do something. If you saw it on Facebook or other social media platform, there’s a Facebook algorithm watching you and trying to give you more stuff you like, to persuade you to keep coming back to Facebook, and you’re reading it on a device that you were persuaded to purchase by some other factor in your life.Â
Not to mention the fact that parents, teachers, or someone, somewhere, persuaded you to learn to read. You were persuaded, even manipulated, to go to school, study, become the sort of person who could get a well-enough paying job to own a piece of technology and pay for an internet connection, and all of that wound up with you, right here, right now.Â
You were “groomed” to do what you are doing right now. And yet, so many want to look at children, and make them responsible for knowing which persuasion is good for them and which isn’t.Â
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 As I approached my 50th birthday today, my wife asked me if this is the life I thought I’d have at age 50. It was funny, because I had actually thought about that very thing earlier that same day. The truth is, I don’t ever remember a time where I thought about what my life…
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