Survivors Can Thrive!

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

# posted by Marj aka Thriver @ Friday, February 15, 2008