February 15, 2008

 

After Child Abuse--Love Remains: The February, 2008 Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse

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!

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Comments:
Yes, dear reader, I'm trying to drive you crazy by changing fonts all over the place in my post. Blogger is being a booger again. I'll get it fixed soon. Thanks for reading! ;)
 
Thanks for including my Blog Carnival Submission into your post. Please come and enjoy my postings as i will do for yours.
Admin,
http://avilesnews.blogspot.com/
 
Marj, thanks for including my article this month. I think I submitted it before I read about your Love theme for February so I wasn't sure if you would use it or not. This Carnival is the most important (to me) Carnival that I submit my articles to. With this Carnival, I know that other survivors are reading my articles. Your support and/or criticisms are the most important to me.
 
This is a HUGE Carnival. How great is that. Well done with getting it together Marj.

Thanks so much for your very supportive words about the Teddy Tour. Power to those Teddies!

Take care all - my thoughts are with you.
 
Thanks and you're welcome, Admin.

Patricia: I'm so glad that this carnival is so important to you. Thanks for being a part of it!

Heal&Forgive: Yes, I think we all need more beauty, poetry and self-care in our lives...and thank YOU!

Megan: I always appreciate your support. And I really want to see the Teddy Tour go global in a huge way. I'll get over there soon, I promise! ;)
 
Oh, Man! H&F had her comment on another post. I'm doing it again...ya gotta watch me! :P
 
Looks like a fabulous carnival! Can't wait to read the posts everyone has!
 
April: Thanks for reading. And thanks for participating with your great posts!
 
Please visit JIPs blog; she really needs our support right now.
 
I'll go right over now. Thanks, K!
 
Hello Survivors Can Thrive,

Thank you for all that you’re doing to spread awareness! Thanks to supporters like you Women for Women International was chosen as one of the Top 25 in the American Express Members Project out of nearly 1200 projects! I hope you’ll help us spread the word. Contact me at calexander@womenforwomen.org to receive a sample blog that you can use. Thanks again!
 
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