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It has been busy few days. I attended my two networking meetings yesterday. I really enjoy going to these meetings. Of course both are here in San Diego. One of the meetings is the Child Abuse Prevention Committee with County of San Diego Commission on Children, Youth and Families. This group meets one time per month. It is a great place to learn what is going on around prevention in San Diego. I have met very nice people there and the meetings are excellent. They bring in presenters that are working in the field that are sharing what works and resources that we can all benefit from. It is a place where profesionals and others (like me) can come together, share their concerns and learn from each other. The other meeting was the ACTION network or the AN. This organization is put together of 50 organizations that work together Against Child Trafficking & the Prostitution of Teens in Our Neighborhoods. Both these organizations are a great place to be and let me know if you would like to learn more about them. I am new in town, but at both these meetings are wonderful people with a true passion for their work. I made a couple of good connections at the meetings yesterday. A school counselor for a small school district and a person from a local church. They are both a great fit for the Stewards of Children training. You can check it out online www.darknesstolight.org
I was also at these meetings to share about the child abuse prevention training, Stewards of Children that we are providing on on april 14th 2007. When I say we I mean, the members of Authentic Voices International in San Diego, www.ethicalife.com and others. Just hoping to get the word out that the training is available and needed! I am not one that tries to re-create the wheel. I belive in working together and if there is something out there that we can all get behind to support, because it works, then why starting from scratch? Wasting time and money! That is how I have done what I have done….in a short amount of time. See I am just a survivor trying to help. That sounded like a victim stance. It is more that, today I see the gift in my path, my pain and what happened to me. I don´t wear it on my sleeve any more, I want to change how peopel see and feel about this issue and especially make people aware of the fact that it is happening all around us and we need to change that and we can!!
So the good news today. My sister (twin) that has worked with me (the two of us are the co-founders) on the project (Blátt áfram) in Iceland sent me email and shared that the Ministry of Justice is giving us just over $10 thousand dollars towards the conference that we are planning for this may.
I was so happy! I have been waiting for a while for a reply from about four of the ministries in Iceland that I applied to for money for this conference! I think I shared in an earlier post that I am planning our annual conference that will be held the 24 and 25 of May. The conference is called Education + discussion = Prevention; is the best way! It was my mother in law that put that title together for me.
We have invited some great speakers. Robert E Longo www.saperi.us, Shirley Paceley www.illinoisvoices.com , David Burton and John Patterson www.nonprofitrisk.org . You should google them and see what you find. They are all unique and bring a wonderful and important message to the issue of child sexual abuse prevention. I will add their web sites under my favorites soon. It is getting late. I tend to do my work very early in the am or very late in the pm when the kids are in bed. Especially at night I can spread out on the couch, watch CSI and type on the computer. Aside from the dentist appointment today…it was a great day!
I got an email a few days ago from a boy in Iceland. At first I did not know how old he was. He was reaching out for help, I think. He did ask, can I trust you? will this email only go to you? I sent him the same reply I send when I get emails like this. If you are going to tell me about abuse, I have to tell the authorities. It is the law and especially if you are under 18years of age. In a couple of days he sent me another email. He said “sorry for waisting your time, I am 16 years old and I do not want the child protection agency to learn about this”… He is not the first under-aged person to reach out to me.
Let me explain. I co-founded a child sexual abuse prevention organization in Iceland in 2004, I moved my family back there (you will see under about or bio) and ran this project for 2 years. I am still a part of it, via the Internet and traveling back and forth. I have talked to thousands of adults and teenagers about child sexual abuse, prevention and my childhood. I give people permission to ask about my abusive childhood any question they would like. It is usually after a talk with teenagers, that I will get an email like this. Someone in the group that I was talking to, knows all to well what I am talking about. This is perhaps the first time they hear someone else speak about it. Describing the exact feelings they have had and the pain and shame that they have felt.
I wrote him back and said. Look – I can not report to the authorities if I do not know your name or where you live. I am however more than happy to listen to you, or read what you would like to write to me. Any qquestions or concerns. Nothing is to bad for me to hear. (God, how often have I wished my mother would have said that to me, when I was a child). It worked. He wrote back! A very sad story of physical and emotional abuse by his step-father from the age of 6. His mother has passed away and he shared that he did not even cry when she died. She did not protect him. This brings tears to my eyes, now. I can relate. I used to feel so angry at my mother for not protecting me from the abuse. I understand today that she did the best she could in a abusive relationship.
He went on about troubles at school and thoughts of hurting himself. At least he is writing about this….getting it out. I wrote him back…shared the things I can relate to and asked him to write more. Told him that the abuse was never ever his fault. That is something that takes a long time to take in. At least for me it did. I thought for years that I was the bad one. I must have done something to deserve this treatment. I processed with my husband. It is hard to know of someone out there in pain, but does not want the help, because then the life he knows will fall apart. Even if it is bad, at least it is what he knows. I can relate to that…can you?
….He wrote back and thanked me for replying to him. Said it was just such a relief to tell someone…and that he heard me speak last year and then realized that the abuse was not his fault. I sat in tears reading his mail. See what we can do when we are willing to speak up, break the silence.! We help others, that may still be stuck with the thoughts that it is their fault.
I love what I do !!!
Ok Ok, I know I can be a bit extreeme, according to my husband. Perhaps not a habit yet, but I am definitely focused on getting information up on this site. It is actually starting to look like a site. So my extreme habits of seeing the world in black and white, either – or is another consequence from surviving child sexual abuse. The wires get all twisted up, all or nothing, good or bad, safe or not safe, love and sex. Get’s hard to separate all these things when you learn about them in the wrong order, and the people that were supposed to teach you about love and trust…are the people that abuse you. Your brain or nervous system is not even cabable of sorting this out. It takes a lifetime. Here I am going on 41. Do not take me wrong…I am a pretty happy person today, definitely not dvelling on my misery. I just can’t afford it, meaning I have 3 kids that I am determined to model what it is like to be a true adult. My biggest challenge is to model self love – to take good care of me. To eat well, exercise and rest. We are getting there….or according to my new beliefs, I am there! Don’t know if you have heard about the Secret? www.secret.tv Enjoy!
Busy these last few days with this site and my work in Iceland. I need to contribute to the annual report and the stats from our web site. I am also this week starting to promote the prevention training I facilitate called Stewards of children. More about that under prevention on this site. I am doing this training in April (Child abuse prevention month) with the organization I belong to called AVI or authentic voices international. A peer support group for survivors of child sexual abuse. We are hoping to educate adults in our community how to prevent child sexual abuse. It is a really good training, for anyone! You can check it out at www.darknesstolight.org
I called Starbucks yesterday to give us some coffee for the event and they agreed. The store manager was so friendly and helpful. I figured it was perfect since they are located just across the street from where we are hosting this event. This organization is a great place to come and meet other survivors. This one is here in San Diego, CA.
…well it seems that this is turning into my evening habit. Sitting here on the couch with my daughter, watching Dirty Jobs, her favorite show. I guess it could be worse. We are all tired after celebrating the youngest family members 4th birthday today. He was so happy with his new tractor, that drives and makes all kinds of noises. I can´t believe he is 4. While we are watching Dirty Jobs I am pulling up my last years schedule and putting all that hard work up on my bio/training page. Well it is school night, the battery on the laptop is about out and we need to get to bed. Plan to learn more about blogs..and check out others blogs this week.
I managed to figure out how to put up information on this site and make it work. Still a way to go. I needed to put this up so I can point people to something when they do want to learn about my work. My other agenda with this site.. is to write, about today, the past and the future. So, today we took the kids to the beach, and I spend about 5 hrs putting um curtains. It looks nice. Curtains make me happy! So not sure if I am going to turn this into may journal, but thinking about it. Today was a big day for survivors of child sexual abuse in Iceland. The government is finally going to approve that the statute of limitations be changed from 14 years to 18 years of age, for the worst offences. Don´t get me started on this topic. Who is going to decide what is bad abuse and what is not so bad. I get this question a bit when I speak. My answer is, it only takes one time to breach the trust, or to touch someone inappropriately to affect them for the rest of their life’s. (check out the ACE study ) It may not ruin their lifes, but it effects it, big time. The person that has been violated, is stuck with all kinds of thoughts and feelings that they usually end up turning on themselves, in self-hatred and blame. OK…I am past those feelings so it does not run my life anymore, but it is amazing how these old feelings can come up when you least expect it. So, I was saying the changes in Iceland. Been a long time coming. I am planning a trip back in may. I am planning a conference on behalf of our organization in cooperation with the child protection agency of Iceland and other organizations. It is keeping me busy these days. We got five amazing presenters coming to Iceland from the states to educate Icelanders about child sexual abuse prevention. I will say more about that here later and put up links under my favorites to their web sites.
Tooooo much going on this week. Sick kids, 2 on antibiotics with strep throat. Then the Cody got a seizure… That was scary, scared me and the kids more than anything. It is weird to write like this …put it out there for all to see. I hesitate.. I think it goes way back. Being a survivor of child sexual abuse, you are very careful what you present to the world. The old thinking of, Someone could use it against you… It amazing how long that stuff hangs on. I talk a lot about the issues around child sexual abuse and prevention… but to start to write about it? It is like pulling teeth for me. I can feel my insides responding to this unsafe, new territory. But on I go, it is safe, it is good for me. This is my latest challenge. I also wonder if I can create a nice page out of all this here. I need to take time to sort through what is available. Hoping to start to promote myself…sort of. Or my message rather. To speak to adults about child sexual abuse prevention. So much that we can do. People are just so afraid to talk about it.
I am new to bloging …taking it slow. Get easily overwhelmed by all the new terms and how tos. Sure I will figure it out. My biggest dilemma now is do I blog in Icelandic or English?…hm. I think English is it for now. Icelandic last night and English this morning..
