Category: love

Saying Goodbye is Hard

This week I had to say goodbye to a pet that I’ve had for 22 years, my turtle, Herman. He was the perfect pet for all those years. He wasn’t cuddly, he never demanded my attention, and I couldn’t take him for walks, but he was always there, quietly listening to whatever I had to tell him.

Granted, since my life has been good, I haven’t talked to him quit as much as when my life was a wreck all those years ago and he was a captive audience on my dresser in his tank. He listened without judging and I liked that. He never spoke back or asked questions I didn’t want to or wasn’t ready to face. When I was in the midst of anxiety I could watch him swim or crawl around his tank and some of his peace would transfer to me.

Tuesday morning, I went to feed him and he was dead. I cried. Even though he’s a turtle and I couldn’t cuddle him or whatever, he has been a part of my life for the past 22 years. He was moved with me too many times to count. The water fall in his tank is a relaxing sound that fills my house.

This experience made me think about all the people I’ve had to say goodbye too in my life. Grandparents, parents, friends. Some who have passed away, some who have left and some who I have had to leave behind.

Whatever the reason that we have to say goodbye, even if its good for us, its difficult. I hate saying goodbye! I only see my sister once or twice a year. When we leave each other, we don’t say “goodbye,” we say “see ya later.” It’s less final that way. Saying goodbye is just too sad.

Unfortunately, we always have to say goodbye. We are left with the lessons that we learned and the imprint they left on our lives and good or bad we can learn from them, no matter how hard saying goodbye is.

Evil Triumphs

Last week I watched the movie Spotlight, about a sex abuse scandal and the Catholic Church that was uncovered by the Boston Globe in 2001. This week I have been watching the Netflix series, The Keepers. It’s a docuseries about a sex abuse and murder cover up in the Baltimore, Maryland Catholic Church Diocese. One thing that these two cases had in common is that people knew about the abuse and kept quiet about it.

I’m not talking about the victims or their families staying quiet. They were silenced by their abusers and society with shame, fear and accusations of the abuse being their fault.

I’m talking about the ministers and police officers who knew about the abuse and kept it to themselves, moving the abuser from one place to another, rather than stopping the evil and putting the abuser in prison where they belonged.

When a minister, police officer or other person in authority, especially as a mandated reporter, chooses to remain silent, they are just as guilty of abuse after they were made aware of it as the abuser is.

Many people in authority work to silence the victims when the victims find the strength to finally confide in them. They may attempt to shame the victim by telling them the abuse was their fault. They may attempt to make the victim fearful of  retribution by the abuser for telling. They might silence the victim with their disbelief of the story. They may make the victim feel overwhelmed by the questions they will be asked by the police and make the victim doubt if that’s what they want to do.

There are many ways that someone in authority allows abuse to continue by their decision to remain silent and not act on behalf of the victim of abuse.

When a person allows abuse to continue, as so many did in the cases I’ve seen, that person is just as much to blame as the abuser. The person who knows what is happening and just moves the abuser from church to church becomes an accomplice to the abuse. They have allowed the abuse to continue.

In the case shown in The Keepers, Sister Cathy was killed because she knew what was happening within her church and school and was going to expose it. Some “Christians” are more worried about how the abuse will cause people to look at their ministry than they are about the abuse.

I am currently involved in exposing a group of accused, admitted and convicted child molesters who were allowed to work around youth. Some were allowed to work with kids even after those in charge new the allegations about the sexual abuse.

One of the people who allowed an abuser to continue to work with children isn’t too happy with my friends and I telling people that an admitted child molester worked with him at youth camps and taking youth on mission trips to Mexico.

In my opinion, he is more worried about those of us who are exposing the evil that happened, instead of worrying about the evil and how to help the people who were hurt. He has had his attorney draw up a lawsuit against us and is threatening to file it in court if we don’t back down. However, the truth is the best defense against a defamation lawsuit and we have the truth on our side.

Truth will stop evil!

 

 

Stop Silencing Victims

Lately, I have been dealing with a lot of my past between writing and releasing my book and and being part of a news story that aired last Friday night on abc7news.com.

I have read and heard responses from so many people who are proud of me and the others that I am proud to call friends, for standing up and telling our stories. It hasn’t been easy, but it is necessary to help others.

I have also been asked, “what took so long?” Or “Why now after all these years?”

What is the answer to these questions?

Society, as well as our abusers, silenced us.

Our abusers told us they’d do worse things to us if we told. Or they convinced us that nobody would believe us anyway.

Maybe we believed our abusers. Maybe our abusers were right, nobody believes us. If you watch or read that news story above, people didn’t believe the victims when they told what happened to them.

The pain we suffer from the acts of abuse however aren’t what keeps victims silent; it’s society that keeps us from telling our story.

Society tells us it’s our fault, because of what we’re wearing, or not wearing, o because of what we said or didn’t say.

Society says we must be lying because so and so is a nice upstanding member of society.

Churches tell us that our worth lies completely in our purity and that nobody wants to marry used goods.

Parents tell us to wait until marriage to have a sexual experience because that’s what good kids do.

We are shamed into silence. We don’t want people to know we’re “used”, that we’re no longer “good”. We don’t want to be accused of “asking for it.”

The pain caused by the act of abuse is mild in comparison to the pain caused by being shamed into silence.

Keeping silent kills marriages and families. Keeping silent allows the pain to bounce around inside until you can’t take it anymore. Keeping silent is the most painful thing a person can endure.

When a former victim decides to speak out, listen to them. Know that for them to tell you their deepest pain is difficult and they know you can’t fix it, but it’ll ease their burden.

If a former victim decides to speak out, encourage them to file a police report if they are an adult, if they are a minor, do it for them, go with them, hold their hand and offer them a piece of your strength.

Sometimes victims may speak up years or decades after the abuse, because they can’t carry the burden any longer. Allow them to. Healing can take a lifetime, especially when the abuse is buried deep inside.

If a former victim tells their story, believe them. The vast majority of us are not going to make this stuff up; society is too hard on victims for us to want that.

I hope that every victim of every abuse gets the nerve to speak up and tell their story. Maybe then the abusers will be too scared to continue, but I don’t think that will happen until society stops silencing victims.

 

 

We All Have a Story to Tell

I didn’t write a blog yesterday because I had an extremely busy day, that ended with a Book Release Celebration. I was surrounded by family and friends and friends who have become family as I celebrated, my lifelong dream of becoming an author.

For those of you who were unable to make it to the celebration, I will share with you here, what I shared with them last night:

“I was encouraged to write my story for several reasons, but mostly so people will know that they aren’t alone in their struggles. Students continuously tell me things that are going on in their lives, thinking that they are the only one who has a parent who belittles them, or a significant other that mistreats them or a friend that isn’t a real friend or whatever their struggle is.

I also want people to know that your worth, your value isn’t based on how other people see you or treat you. Each person is a valuable human being because we are made in the image of the Creator. When somebody hurts us, it is a reflection of them, not us. Our value isn’t changed by the pain and hurt we endure.
Worthless No More tells part of my story, from age 14 to 26. My story isn’t over yet and neither is yours. Our stories are being written day by day through our experiences. We can allow the story to be written for us, and believe what is written about us, or we can make the conscious choice to write our own story, by how we choose to respond to things and what we believe about ourselves.
When I was younger I believed I was worthless because that’s how I was treated. I just wanted to be loved and accepted and many of my decisions were based on those desires. Because of my family, I mistakenly believed that love and pain went together and allowed my high school boyfriend to mistreat me because I though he loved me. I had learned that you accept the pain to have the love.
I eventually got out of that relationship, and right into another one. He treated me well, but my mom didn’t like him, so to earn her love, I broke up with him and began dating a good Christian boy who wanted to be a youth pastor. The problem was, he didn’t love me, he loved controlling me. I still wanted to be loved though, so I put up with it and married him.
When the marriage ended so did the life I had worked so hard to create for myself. I could no longer live my life looking for love from others when I didn’t even love myself. It was the lowest I had ever felt. I was completely empty and broken. I believed all that I had been told about myself, I was worthless.
That’s when some incredible friends of mine, Kim and Jeff, tricked me into seeing a counselor. That was the best thing that happened in my life up to that point. In counseling I learned that we don’t have to believe the words that people say about us. We can replace our negative self -mage with a positive one. I also learned that the only way to find true love and acceptance from others is to love and accept yourself first.
Each one of us has a story to tell. We’ve all had struggles to survive. When we have the courage to face our stories that’s when we begin to heal from the past and create a new story, page by page, day by day. As we live our stories we learn that every moment passes, the good and the bad. We try to hold on to the good memories and forget the bad, however the bad memories, the struggles, the pain we endure are the moments that help us grow and show us the strength we never knew we had.
Remember when we were kids and we experienced growing pains? That was our bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons growing and stretching to help us become stronger and taller. That’s what the bad moments are for our character, the pain makes our emotions grow and stretch until we are able to handle and heal from things we never thought possible.
Good times pass as well and we remember them, take pictures and celebrate them. Those are the memories that give us hope in the bad moments; that let us know that even in the midst of the struggle we can know that moments pass and good will come again.
We all have a story to tell, I published mine, that doesn’t make it any more important than yours or more difficult than yours. Every story is important. Each person has their own personal story that helped them grow and become strong and amazing. When we know that we are not alone in our struggles, that we each have a story that is being written day by day, we can be there to remind each other that the bad moments pass and that we can learn from them.
Being a part of other’s stories allows us to be there to help people celebrate the good moments, because they will also pass. Thank you all for the part you’ve had in my story and helping me celebrate this dream come true of becoming a published author.”