Survivors Can Thrive!

Hey, it's me. As some of you know, our son has "special needs." He is going through a very rough time right now and we are all really struggling--it is a struggle to get through the day...every day. I'm no doctor, but I'm really concerned that I think I'm starting to see some really bad warning signs of anxiety in him. He's also started to have dreadful insomnia, for the first time in his life. I had to keep him home from school yesterday, because, if we had gone on with the regular schedule, he would have been attempting to operate on only about two hours of sleep! And last year was such a great year, too. I don't know what the hell happened. I'm leaving no stone unturned looking for some help. I'm not afraid to admit it: HELP!!! WE NEED HELP!!!

Please forgive me if I don't get around to comment on your blogs for a few days or so. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking about you, appreciate you, and all that other good stuff. Any thoughts, prayers, healing and peace vibes you can send up are greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the February 15, 2008 edition of the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse. Since February is the Valentine's Day "Love Month" here in the US, we're doing a love theme for this edition. Love is a topic of huge importance to child abuse survivors. Many of us did not get healthy love modeled for us as children...but love remains. Some of us have had the opportunity to break the cycle of abuse and offer unconditional love to our own children. Many of us have struggled--and succeeded--at learning to love ourselves. I, like many others I'm sure, have found a special bond, love and support in our survivor community.

I received a very large number of post submissions for the theme--love--of this edition. Some months, we hardly get any for the theme. This month, I think we made up for that, with 10 themed entries. Thanks for breakin' loose with the love writing everyone!

So, our first category for this edition is "Love." Let's spread the love, y'all!

Disclaimer: Warning! Many of these posts may contain triggering content. If you are a survivor with PTSD or a dissociative disorder, please use caution when reading these posts (even some of the love posts may be triggering).

Love

Our first post on love comes from Keepers of Keepers Korner. It is appropriately entitled, "The Healing Power of Love."

Keepers of Keepers Korner presents "part two" of her two-part series, "The Healing Power of Love." Here, she talks about things she treasures as symbolizing love.

April Optimist of The Thriver's Toolbox presents a post simply called, "Love." I always appreciate April's insights, whether on the topic of love or anything else healing related.

Austin of Sundrip Journals has written a love poem called "I am You" at her blog, The People Behing My Eyes. Austin explains, "This poem is about loving all of me, the good, the bad and the ugly." I think Austin is beautiful and I love the way she expresses herself.

Enola, from the blog of the same name, is going to be our host next month. She has given us two posts on love for this edition. Here's her first in her Valentine's series called, "What is Love Anyway?"

In her second of the two-part Valentine's series called, What is Love Anyway? we get a description of what is love by Enola as perceived through the five senses.

Jumping in Puddles--JIP as we all lovingly call her--has a blog called Life Spacings. She has recently begun posting with a co-author, her therapist, who has written a post called, "The Strength of Love & Friendship." JIP remarked, "We wanted to share it from a therapist's perspective."

Mike, at Child Abuse Survivor, presents, "Love for February." I like how Mike emphasizes the love of the self in his post.

Again, Keepers from Keepers Korner returns by sharing with us a wonderful, love-filled event and post with a great title, "Finally Family." Keepers remarks, "Our JM officially takes all of us as family, so all keepers feel the love finally."

And, finally for our Love Theme Category for this edition, I'm including my own post from Survivors Can Thrive! It includes a poem with the message, "I love and cherish you" to my inner child parts. The post is called, "Inner Child Rescue, Care & Love."

Advocacy & Awareness

Kevin Heath presents a handy and succinct list of the types and "Signs of Abuse" at the blog, Children's Safety. He also provides the detail of how to go about reporting abuse. Thanks, Kevin!

JIP graces our carnival again, this time writing herself, for a post called, "Life With Little Alters." It's an awareness-raising post at her blog, Life Spacings. It's a very educational and enlightening read.

This is so cool, people! It's an amazing opportunity. As soon as I get my head above water after this carnival, I'm going to do this myself. It's an ingenious idea for raising awareness about us child sexual abuse survivors and it's called the Teddy Tour. The idea is all explained in a post simply called, "About Teddy Tour." With the help of her friend Leigh from "All for Women," my down-under friend and two-time past carnival host, Megan Bayliss of Imanginif Child Protection Became Serious Business, created this site just for raising awareness on this critical issue. Megan comments, "Megan from Imaginif and Leigh from All for Women love Teddies. We also love survivors of child abuse because they just have so much personal power. Marrying our two loves, we have unveiled the blogospheric TEDDY TOUR. If you are a survivor of child sexual abuse please send us your anonymous story tag to be toured throughout the blogosphere. " Awesome!

When The Cerebral Mum, with her blog of the same name, got tagged with a meme (you know, it's one of those blog games that get passed around the blogosphere) that required her to post Seven Random Things about herself, she decided maybe it wasn't really a game to her and to do "A Serious Seven Random Things." So now, her Seven Random Things are about her life as a child abuse survivor. I was so impressed about the passion with which she wrote this post, I asked her to let us use it for the carnival. Thanks, CM!

For the last post in this category, I just have to put up this video. It's really cool and raises much-need awareness on YouTube. How cool is that? This video collage was masterfully created by my friend, Ani, from My Dissonance. The creation is called, "The Secret." It's not a secret anymore! Thanks for letting us broadcast this, Ani!

Aftermath

This next post, from Nancy at Heal and Forgive, could have been put under our umbrella love theme category, or Healing & Therapy. I think the reason Nancy submitted it under the Aftermath category, however, is because it takes an honest look at family estrangement after coming out about abuse. It also talks about that critical inner voice and how to deal with it. Good info to have! The post is entitled, "Loving Voices." Nancy remarks, "Since the theme is love - I thought I would submit my recent post "Loving Voices." Thanks for providing a great community of support!"

Healing & Therapy

I thought this was a very intriguing post, that talks about something many of us have experienced, or at least wondered about, but we've not talked about at our blog carnival. It's the topic of admission to an inpatient psychiatric ward. We may argue about whether or not this is an option that really aids our healing, but it's good information to have. Austin from The People Behind My Eyes returns to present it in her post, "A Psych Ward." Austin comments, "If you've never been to a psychiatric hospital you may have no idea about what goes on there. You may have television based ideas but here is a description of the average inpatient psych ward on the higher functioning wing. "

Warren Wong presents, "The Value Of Our Parents" on his blog, Personal Development. This post follows an interesting exploration of the difficulties in communication as adults with parents and coming to terms with that relationship. Warren remarks, "Describes how the our parents give us a sense of meaning and purpose in life."

Here's JIP, from Life Spacings again, sharing "What We Have Learnt" over the last year of therapy. I think it describes some marvelous, healing, positive re-programming. You go, girl!

In The News

Anything Goes And General News alerts us about a story entitled, "Body of 1 of 4 Kids Found in Alabama Water."

Did you know that Ani is AKA Joanna? She's a busy lady, making YouTube videos, co-founder of The Survivor Archives Project and also blogspot blogger of Eyes Open. In this post, Ani AKA Joanna gives us some good news about sentencing for a child abuser in her post, "Man Gets 365 Years for Raping Children". We need some good news/justice like this once in a while!

Jane's Mental Health Source Page presents "Child Abuse and Neglect: Another Casualty of War." This is an informative post about research findings published by The American Medical Association.

Poetry

My amazingly aware friend, Mother Wintermoon, has written a moving poem called, "Between Living and Dying." It is a reaching in and reaching out type of poem that describes the struggle...and the hope. Thanks for this gift, MW. I encourage you to check out Mother Wintermoon's compassionate, aware and insightful posts at this blog, Mystical Moonshowers, as well as her blog, Romancing The Crone.

Survivor Stories

Another amazingly insightful and aware survivor who has become my blogging friend is Patricia Singleton. She has written a very thought-provoking series of posts about family secrets and incest at her blog, Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker. Her fifth post in this series is called, "Family Secrets--Incest May Be a Part of My Life Series--Part 5." Patricia remarks, "The family secret was so insiduous and undermining of conversation that I didn't even talk about it with my sister until we were in our 20's." I can relate to that, Patricia! That was about the time my sister and I actually started talking about our abuse as well. And my identical twin and I shared the same tiny room for 15 years! Let's stop the secrets, shatter the silence and break the cycle survivors!

This concludes this wonderful edition of our blog carnival. Thanks to all who participated. Please link to these courageous survivors and advocates and leave comments where you are able on their blogs. If you'd like to submit to our next carnival, just use the blog carnival widget on my sidebar. Until next month...continue to spread the awareness and the love!

Labels: advocacy, aftermath, awareness, Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse, blog carnivals, chid abuse, child abuse prevention, community, healing, love, Poetry, self-love, support, survivors, therapy

Happy Valentine's Day, Everyone! I hope it is a love-filled day for all. Go out and do something special--some form of self-love--just for you today, okay?

With this day of love and our love theme for the blog carnival this month, I've been thinking a lot about ways I can love my inner child parts. I've been trying to be much more attentive, assertive about getting our needs met, asking for what I want, focused on comfort and validating. I've been much more open to doing things that little parts especially want, even when I might feel childish or silly if anyone else saw me do some of these things.

Right now, I have some little parts who really want to use the sand tray at my T's office. It's like an indoor sandbox. Fairly large, about the size of the top of an office desk. It's also raised--you don't have to sit on the floor to use it. I haven't checked it out thoroughly, but I can see from a distance that it has many toys strewn about it. I promised my little parts that we would check it out today during my T session. I--adult Marj, me--am scared to death! I have no idea what it's about. I usually enjoy playing with the dollhouse I built and decorated and things like that. I don't know what's up.

Have any of you ever used a sand tray in your therapy? I guess I'll give you all an update when I have one. 'Til then, I'll see you all at THE BLOG CARNIVAL AGAINST CHILD ABUSE tomorrow. We've got some wonderful posts on the love theme, and it's going to be great!

Don't forget, folks! The deadline for the February BLOG CARNIVAL AGAINST CHILD ABUSE is Wednesday, February 13, for the Friday, February 15 post. That's tomorrow, so hurry! We're talking about love--love of your inner child and/or child parts, love of our awesome survivor community, etc. By the way, we still have all of our regularly-occurring post categories as well: Aftermath, Survivor Stories, Advocacy & Awareness, In-The-News, Poetry, and Healing & Therapy. You can click this link and submit here. I haven't hosted the carnival for a while and I'm excited to do it! I love you guys! xoxoxo ((((safe hugs))))

Labels: Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse, blog carnivals, inner child, love, survivors

This is one of the first poems I ever wrote. It was one of those things that just came to me when I awoke in the middle of the night. Back then, I had been doing a lot of "inner child" work with a very good therapist and I had just started therapy for PTSD.

Now that my T and I are working with my parts, I've found that I have to do a "rescue" for each child part. What I do is a visualization where I go back to my childhood house (sometimes with a SWAT team to immobilize the monsters who were supposed to be my parents). I'm always with an angel. We scoop up the terrorized little girl and we fly her away to safety. My poem is called, Child Fly Away.

Child Fly Away

I love and cherish you
And I know you love me too
Come now and we will dance and play
And then we’ll simply fly away

I can feel your pain
I know they tried to break you
You’re helpless, sad, alone
No peace within

I can tell you’re tired
I see a child who’s tortured
With trying to atone
For unknown sin

Hey, let’s fly away
We’ve struggled with chains too long
Let’s grab this chance so we can see
If we are ever to be free

Why wait here in the dark?
All it can ever show you
Is pain and it’s the pain
That you still fear

I can see the light
In my heart faith remains
And I know that this is it
Our chance is here

I love and cherish you
And now I know you feel love too
Now we can dance and run and play
Then we just simply fly away

Away
Away
Come let’s fly away
We’ll fly away

Copyright 2002 Marj McCabe ~ All Rights Reserved

Below is a music video I received from a fellow survivor who is also a musician. He is a child abuse advocate and he found me through The Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse. His name is Mike Skinner and he has his own website at: www.mskinnermusic.com.

Labels: advocacy, child abuse, healing music, inner child, Mike Skinner, Poetry, rescue, self-care, self-love, YouTube

# posted by Marj aka Thriver @ Friday, February 08, 2008 16 comments

I swear, I'm going to put up a post called, "Meme Madness." In it, I will update the "linky love" I've been trying to keep up on and spread for those bloggers playing my Survivor Needs & Wants meme. Then, I'll try to make sure I put up my own lists for the memes I've been tagged with lately.

Right now, however, I've got to let you all know what's going on with the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse. I've decided just to take February myself. Since February is Valentine's Day month here in the US, let's do a "love theme" for this edition. Submit posts about learning to love and trust again after abuse, loving and forgiving yourself, loving your inner child or alter parts, etc. Let's spread the love, y'all!

I've set the submission deadline as Wednesday, Feb 13 for a Friday, Feb 15 edition post. You can submit here.

Now, as for future hosts, I'm a little mixed up. Me, mixed up? Never, right? I know I had several would-be first-time hosts who told me they wanted to wait until spring to be in charge of an edition. One blogger, unfortunately, had to pull her blog down. I'm pretty sure Enola and S'onnie told me they were looking at the possibility of hosting in March. Mike, at Child Abuse Survivor said he'd be willing to host again anytime. Then, I think April at Thriver's Toolbox told me she may be able to host in the not-too-distant future, but I can't remember when.

I know I'm forgetting at least a couple of people who showed interest. I'd like to give the first-time carnival hosts a chance before we go back again to repeat hosties. If you're interested, would you please comment here and let me know a possible month you may be able to host? I'd like to get a host list compiled to get us through to at least June. Thanks. I'd sure appreciate it.

Labels: Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse, blog carnivals, inner child, links, love, meme, parts, survivor, survivor needs, trust