Category: What I’ve Learned

This image holds a powerful reminder of how our perceptions can be misleading. It’s a photo of rocks that, from a particular angle, appear as a person quietly sitting in water, reading a book. The visual illusion mirrors the inner landscape of trauma recovery: assumptions about appearances can lead to profound misunderstandings.   When I […]

Discrediting a person is a common behaviour from someone who feels afraid, shameful, or jealous. Sometimes it comes from sheer ignorance. To those who receive the misjudgment (discrediting) know what is being said is not true and trust that eventually the truth will come out and if the accused is innocent, they’ll be exonerated. Childhood […]

If we consider ourselves amongst those who empathize, respect and dignify others, we interact with others with an underlying assumption that those we cross paths with are the same way. We project our own goodness onto others, assuming they’re like us. In time we learn that nothing could be further from the truth. There are […]

Why did you let it happen? In the past this question was either thought of or asked of one who survived sexual assault or sexual abuse. Perhaps the victim/survivor may have even asked themself the same question. Now it is offensive. It comes from a victim-shaming and victim-blaming mindset. Fortunately, society has come a long […]

Why don’t you just pray about it?   ** Possible Trigger Warning     The quick reply I’d give is: What makes you think I don’t?   The number of times this question is asked by persons of faith to survivors of child abuse [childhood trauma] is impossible to count. While those who ask this question […]

Most of us would shudder to ever think that we would enable a predator or an abuser to abuse a child. To enable is defined as:  To provide the means or opportunity; to make possible, practical, or easy; to cause to operate To give legal power, capacity, or sanction to  With this definition would you […]

Grooming has been talked about and related to child sexual abuse a lot recently. Especially when it is done by those in positions of authority and trust and how they can twist what they’re doing around to make it *seem* perfectly okay and justified. Larry Nassar comes to mind when I make this statement. Yet […]

I’m not talking about transcendental meditation or any other type of meditation that involves anything hokey or Woo Woo type of stuff. Mindful Mediation is about teaching your brain and your body to reconnect. As Child Trauma survivors, we had to learn how to ignore or shelve away the awful emotions and feelings we had. […]

When we have been abused physically, sexually, or emotionally as a child we don’t know what to do with the horrible feelings that we have inside of us. At such a young age, our brains are still developing so we are unable to comprehend that we are being coerced, manipulated, shamed, dominated or groomed or […]