Experience a Re-Birth after Child Abuse – March 2008 Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse

Welcome to the March, 2008 edition of the

Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse.

Since March is Easter, the first month of Spring, and the time we "spring forward" in the United States to set the clocks for daylight savings time, this edition's theme is Spring-related. Issues of re-birth, new awakenings, new revelations and starting over. Learning who you are after abuse is a huge issue that survivors deal with. Learning how to survive in the world after escaping an abusive environment is often difficult. Many survivors can pinpoint that time when they awakened to learn who they are today and began to move forward, blooming in their new, safe environment.

I learned from the After Silence site (sexual violence survivors website) that the lotus flower is one that rises from the mud - the deeper the mud, the more beautiful the flower. All abuse survivors have the potential to be beautiful blooming lotus flowers --- this spring, and always.

Warning! Some of these posts may contain triggering content. Please use caution when reading these submissions.

Angela presents You Can Stand Under My Umbrella posted at Reality Testing, staring out with those words too many of us heard - “What goes on in this house stays in this house.” It's a story of finding people who care, about whom she writes, "They showed me something about myself that I hadn’t realized before: I was worth being cared about."

Enola presents I Now Pronounce You Divorced. I chose this post to submit because it was a time when I felt a time of re-birth. While a fictionalized divorce, it is one of the most powerful legal documents I have ever drafted.


Advocacy & Awareness
Holly presents Report IT Rally for Victim’s Rights posted at Menstrual Poetry. Report IT is a campaign Rally for Victim's Rights. It started locally on February 19 and will go nationwide on April 29. "Give victims of sex crimes the justice they deserve."

Rising Rainbow presents Psychological Incest - What Does It Mean? posted at My Clouds, My Storms and Multiple Personality Disorder, saying, "This insidious form of abuse is most difficult to identify. Also know as covert or emotional incest it traps its victims in a web of conspiracy that is ensnares all relationships leaving a victim struggling with emotional attachments long into adulthood." Rising Rainbow does a great job of explaining what this type of incest is and why it is so horrible.

Marcella Chester encourages everyone to participate in the Blog Against Sexual Violence Day 3 April 2008. You can find details at her blog - abyss2hope: A rape survivor's zigzag journey into the open. The theme this time is Prevent Sexual Violence....in our workplaces.

Aftermath
Sometimes Saintly Nick presents Incest: Does the Pain Ever Stop? A Personal Story posted at his blog Nick's Bytes. I had specifically requested that family members of survivors post about the effects their loved one's abuse had on them. Nick obliged and submitted this wonderfully written post he wrote awhile back, saying "In this post I write of the pain and trauma of incest and its on-going effects not only on the victims, but also on the people who love her/him."

Nancy presents PTSD and Me posted at Heal and Forgive, saying, "For me, PTSD was the most frightening aspect of my recovery from child abuse. Learning to stay in the present was the most freeing." Her post offers hope to those struggling with PTSD.


Healing & Therapy
Marj aka Thriver presents Begin Again Each Day: Be The Light! posted at Survivors Can Thrive!, saying, "This is a survivor story. It's also a healing story. But, most of all, it's a story about beginning each day anew, striving for unconditional love and being a light in the darkness."

April_Optimist presents If I Were A Guest In My Own House (part 1) and Part 2 posted at The Thriver's Toolbox, saying, "How often do we really stop and realize how we speak to or treat ourselves? Especially compared to how we would treat a guest in our homes?" It's a great question to ponder.

Perfect shares a post from her self-titled blog called Nurturing Self Care. Perfect does great work with a therapeutic exercise and offers us all the chance to learn about self-care. Perfect is a first-time submitter and I look forward to reading more in future carnivals.

Marcella Chester presents Katie Couric Misses Opportunity During Clinton Interview posted at her blog. This post explores the world of high school bullying and a missed opportunity by the media to shed light on this issue.


Holly Ord presents Stop Protecting Pedophiles posted at Menstrual Poetry. This is a post about a Catholic priest-pedophile and how one parish failed the children. (warning for some language). In another submission, George Bush Thinks Poverty, Death, and Abuse are Blessings of Freedom, Holly critiques President Bush for the after-effects of the war in Afghanistan on women.

Rose W presents Not Your Pawn posted at Roses on the Moon, bringing light to the tragic fate of Cindy Powell, a woman caught up in the bureaucracy of the mental health system.

Dana brings light to another tragic case in her post Abuse cases spur reform in Hawaii posted at Principled Discovery.


Survivor Stories
Beauty writes a very moving story letter to herself at 15 on her blog, Beautiful Dreamer, called Dear Me at 15. The story outlines her progress through life, as she tells herself, "This much is certain: you will make it all the way into adulthood. Battered and bruised, yes. But alive in ways you never thought possible."

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That concludes this edition. Thank you for letting me host. Be sure to submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival against child abuse using the carnival submission form. Our host for next month is Beauty at Beautiful Dreamer.