Opportunities

   I just made contact with a lady at the LIFE Resource Center in Picayune, a local organization that works to both prevent abuse and deal with its aftermath.  I am supposed to meet with her tomorrow, and may I say I am super duper excited!  She said they have a few different capacities in which volunteers can help, and I cannot wait to find out what they are.  Besides just doing all the preliminary volunteering stuff (applications, scheduling, etc.), I want to talk to her about what I can do in the way of an event for National Child Abuse Prevention Month.  Also, I wonder if I could help out with maybe making a facebook page to help make people more aware of this incredibly precious resource we have in our community.
   Mostly, I'm just incredibly grateful for an opportunity to work with like-minded individuals who are motivated and willing to devote their time to preventing and softening the blow of child abuse.  Abuse of all kinds is a scourge of our society.  Hurting people hurt people it's been said, and I know it's true.  I'm hoping to do a survey of some sort at the local jail to find out what percentage of the inmates have been abused.  Studies have shown that criminals are much more likely to have been abused than noncriminals.  In a Bureau of Justice Statistics study, Dr. Caroline Wolf Harlow reports that "between 6% and 14% of male offenders and between 23% and 37% of female offenders reported they had been physically or sexually abused before age 18."  Those numbers should startle you, maybe even scare you; because that's just the prisoners they surveyed, and that's just the prisoners who happened to admit abuse or even recognize that what they experienced as children was abuse.  Also, this study focused on inmates.  Can you imagine how many more abuse victims there are out there?  If you think you don't know someone who's been abused, you are probably wrong.  And if you know someone who was abused and says they are OK and it hasn't affected them negatively, well, they are probably dying on the inside and may not even know it.
   I leave the TV on something boring while Baby Boo sleeps so she can have some white noise.  Well, today, Dr. Oz was on so I left it on that.  I rarely ever watch his show.  Anyway, on today's episode he had some women who are into what's called Feederism, apparently some weird fetish where men pay morbidly obese women to eat and eat and eat.  At any rate, toward the end of the show Dr. Oz had some psychologist (or psychiatrist I'm not absolutely sure) talking to the women who needed help.  He asked them "Who in your life told you you were worthless?"  The woman who seemed most resistant to the help said the question didn't apply.  The doctor reminded her that she had shared with him some trauma from her childhood and asked her if she didn't indeed think this was what was wrong.  She basically went on to say that she had been molested and her mother knew about and allowed the abuse to go on, but this had nothing to do with her current situation.  The thing is, y'all, she was serious.  When my mother had her last most severe nervous breakdown, when she couldn't leave the house without having a panic attack and cried all day every day, she told me plainly that she "didn't need therapy" and that "she was over the abuse."  She didn't even get how badly it had hurt her until just recently and with much therapy... she just turned 60 and is finally starting to understand how horribly she was hurt by her father's actions.
   For anyone who was neglected or hurt as a child -- mentally, physically, or sexually -- know first that it isn't your fault.  The guilt is not your burden to bear.  Know also that if you haven't yet come to terms with your abuse, it is never too late.  There are resources somewhere nearby that can help you.  Please, seek them out.  Choking down the pain over and over only causes more pain.  I've seen it time and time again.  Above all things, know that you are not alone and you do not have to suffer alone.  You are worthy of love and happiness.