Pedophilia - Does Sexual Abuse Hurt Children?

I was on a radio program recently as a guest where the title of the show was "Its a Family Affair - Pedophilia, should it be an accepted act? This radio program was presented by Butterfly Dreams Abuse Recovery on Blog Talk Radio. It was hosted by two of my friends and Advocates for survivors and children - Patricia A. McKnight and Michal Madison. Here is the link for the show:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/butterflydreamstalkradio/2014/03/11/its-a-family-affair--pedophilia-should-it-be-an-accepted-act

I hope you will take the time to read and share this link with your friends. Pedophilia is a topic that needs to be discussed if we hope to be able to protect our children from being molested. As you will hear me mention on the show, not all pedophiles molest children. My dad was not a pedophile. He molested me but he was also attracted to adult women. I have been told that not all pedophiles act on their desires. From what I have read on the internet, many do. They form groups online to talk about their desires and share photos of some of their abuse of children. It seems to be growing more and more each day. That is why I and many other survivors are writing articles to inform the uninformed public. We cannot remain blind to this problem if we want to protect our children.

The topic of Pedophiles came up for this radio program because of a blog article shared by another friend and Advocate, David Pittman of the website TOGETHER WE HEAL. The article that David wrote was entitled, "We can't prove sex with children does them harm" says Labour linked NCCL.  Here is a link to David's blog post:

http://together-we-heal.org/2014/03/04/we-cant-prove-sex-with-children-does-them-harm-says-labour-linked-nccl

For those of you who read David's blog article, this is happening in England but that doesn't mean it is not happening other places in the world. If these beliefs are accepted in England, it will spread to other countries too. We can't be complacent just because it is happening somewhere else. Thank you David Pittman for sharing this article from England. In the origin article that David mentions in his blog post, lowering the age of consent was also being discussed and lobbied for by the Paedophile Information Exchange. Here is the link to the original post.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/462604/We-can-t-prove-sex-with-children-does-them-harm-says-Labour-linked-NCCL

I don't need any studies done to tell you that sexual abuse does hurt children. The act does not have to be violent to cause emotional scars that never completely heal. Self-worth is affected which can then affect every one of your adult relationships. Some are afraid to have adult relationships because of their fears of being abused again. Many sexually abused children will grow up to have relationships that are full of domestic violence because they feel they don't deserve better. Trusting another person is hard for many sexual abuse victims, especially if those who abused us were our parents. Ask a childhood sexual abuse survivor if they were harmed by the abuse. They will tell you yes.

I have another link for you to check out to an article called "Sexual and Emotional Abuse Scar the Brain in Specific Ways" written by Maia Szalavitz on June 5, 2013. The research in this article comes from the American Journal of Psychiatry from a study of the brains of 51 women from Atlanta, Georgia. This article tested women but I would bet that men's brains would look the same for those who were sexually abused as little boys. Here is the link.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/06/05/sexual-and-emotional-abuse-scar-the-brain-in-specific-ways/

If you would like more information about Pedophiles, check out the book by expert, Anna C. Salter. I haven't read the book yet but I do intend to order it soon. The name of the book is Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists And Other Sex Offenders.

Well, I have given you plenty to listen to and read in this article. I hope I haven't overwhelmed you with all of this information but it is an important topic if we want to protect our children from sexual predators.
Patricia

Birthdays And Valentine's Day

February 12 was the birthday of my mother and February 14 was the birthday of one of my abusers, in addition to being Valentine's Day. Most years those dates don't bring me any hurtful feelings to deal with. This year, on February 1, I was aware that both of those dates were coming up soon. The suspense was building all through the days up till then.

I have had dreams also. I wouldn't call them nightmares but I do remember the confusion and I remembered the details of each of them when I would wake up from them each morning of the week leading up to those two days. Without going into those details which are now fading from my memory, what I brought out of each of those dreams was a feeling of being lost and out of control of what was going on in the dreams. One of them even had my uncle in the dream sitting in a living room chair with a dead snake with an irridescent blue stripe down its back in front of him in a round hole in the floor as I was sitting on the floor beside his chair. I don't remember this uncle ever being in my dreams before. Sometimes my mother is in my dreams but she wasn't in this one. I know from a dream class that snake can represent sexuality and spirituality both, energy wise. I rarely see colors in my dream so I know that is important too but I don't know why unless blue is a healing color. I know that my uncle and my dad both damaged my sexuality with the rapes of incest which has lasting scars to this day. Also my trust in God was dented for awhile but that came back alive even stronger for me.

Dream books can only help so much with interpreting our dreams because symbols and their meaning belong to us individually. I would guess my uncle was in the dream and there were children in the dream with us because of the birthday date that was coming up. There was more to the dream but it doesn't pertain to this discussion of those two birthdays.

Only in the past year or two have I started to talk about my uncle as an abuser. I dealt with the abuse from my dad first because it was the most damaging and longer lasting. I guess I hoped by dealing with the abuse from my dad that the abuse from my uncle would be taken care of too. Most people assume that this uncle was a brother of my dad and he was not. He was one of my mother's brothers. All of the other brothers of my mother I loved but this one always scared me even at a young age. One of my earliest memories is of him walking me through the night from my grandmother's house to my parents' house one dark night. I was walking but not in school yet. I would guess from the image in my mind that I was around three or four years old. What I remember about that night was walking side by side and him getting upset with me because I wouldn't make up my mind if I wanted to go home or stay with my grandmother.

I loved my grandmother. She took me in at the age of two when I had whooping cough and the doctor said I couldn't stay at home because if my baby brother got it he would die. I believe that early time with my grandmother is why I never fit in that well with my family of origin and everyone always told me I was different. She gave me my sense of values.

Back to that night, I remember walking with my uncle down the dirt road and being in love with the beauty of the night. It was apparently Summer time because it was a warm, star filled night. The night time sky was awe inspiring, so unlike most three year olds, I was quiet and just enjoying the night. I felt safe in the night. Sometime not long after that I learned to fear the night. I am not sure exactly when my love of the night left me but it did.

With these two dates in February, this year, I felt some grief. I have felt the grief many times. I have learned to feel it, sit with it and then let it go. I used to live with the heaviness of grief as a background feeling that was always there, like the headaches that I have had most of my life. When I started healing and opened the doors to talking about incest and my issues, I could finally give the grief a name and acknowledge it for what it was. It stayed around for awhile until I worked through all of it. I cried at 12-Step meeting for a year once the feelings returned. Today, when an issues comes back up to be healed some more, I experience a day or two of grief and then it leaves. I feel it as the color gray and a heaviness that leaves my mind and body after about two days.

Back on February 5, I caught a brief glimpse of something else during the time that I was listening to a radio program hosted by my Advocate friend Patricia McKnight (Trish) on her Wednesday night program called Survivors World. This particular program was called "Survivors World - Its Teen Night w/ Justice K."  Justice is a teenaged friend of mine who is such a courageous young woman who shares her story of being sexually abused by one of her trusted teachers at the high school that she used to attend. He is now serving time in jail. Because of Justice's courage in turning him in, others are not being abused by him in his classroom. I will put the link to this radio program at the end of the page for anyone who wants to listen to this courageous 18-year-old tell her story.

At an early point during listening to Justice and Trish talking and also reading and responding to comments in the chat room of the program, for just an instant, something inside of me opened up in my mind's eye. All I could see was blackness with a feeling of a lot of hurt for what was done to me as a child. I felt hurt so intense that I had to shut it down. I had to leave the program because my headache just got so bad that I was feeling nauseous too. I went and took a pain pill and laid down for about three hours after that. I didn't actually go to sleep but I just had to be still and quiet. I don't know if this was old stuff coming back up or if it is possibly some of the memories that I don't have getting ready to present themselves. Just for a second, I also felt an anger and disgust for the people that hurt me and for those who didn't protect me. I felt deep sorry for the child that I was back then and also sorrow for the child that I would no longer become.  Except in one of my paintings on anger, I have not seen this blackness before. In my painting, the darkness is full of rage and hurt. The intensity of this blackness is not anything I have felt before. I will remain open to it coming back and letting me see and feel a little more. I hope this is making sense to you.

Before I close, I want to also share with you that I was one of the call-in-guests on Friday, February 14 on Valentine's Day to Butterfly Dreams Radio and Survivors World for Patricia McKnight's program called "Survivors World - Let's talk about LOVE." The link is also below under Related Links. I shared a little bit about what it has been like for my husband and me to live and love through the years of me healing from incest. I also had one ah-ha moment for myself during the show. I shared it with my husband after the program. It probably won't be obvious to you as you listen but it is more for me to process and think about and decide how I feel about it.
Patricia

Related Links:

Survivors World - Its Teen Night w/ Justice K. @
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/butterflydreamstalkradio/2014/02/06/survivors-world--its-teen-night-w-justice-k

Survivors World - Let's talk about LOVE @
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/butterflydreamstalkradio/2014/02/15/survivors-world--lets-talk-about-love

Processing Fears Of Inner Child

So many of my incest issues have been healed and no longer influence my day-to-day life that I am always surprised when the inner child and the fears that she carries rise up again. As a survivor, (Maybe everyone does this, I don't know.) I have fears that I face and release quite often. The thoughts come and go. I acknowledge them and let them pass on without reacting to them. Those thoughts are no longer issues or triggers for me.

On long trips, like our Gettysburg, PA trip, my inner child sometimes gets the upper hand and acts out. As an incest survivor who grew up with a controlling, dictator, possibly narcissistic father, I have an irrational fear that is still pretty big sometimes of being out of control of my own life and decisions. This fear comes up on long driving trips where there is speed and lots of lanes of traffic, especially in big cities that I don't know or when it is dark and raining as it did several times on our trip.  For whatever reason, Daniel plays into my fears too. I talked with him yesterday and he didn't realize that I was reacting out of fear. I guess he just thought I was being bitchy and controlling. I don't want to focus on his part in our little drama. That doesn't help me to figure out me and my inner child. Focusing on someone else is just a way to keep from looking at my part in the drama, which accomplishes nothing in stopping the drama from happening again.

This processing may take me some time to get through because of the grief that gets added on to the other feelings that came up during the trip. I have to find a way to assure my inner child that she is safe, that I will always do what is in my power to protect her. She is not defenseless like I was with the incest and emotional abuse from my dad when she was little. I am an adult and can protect myself and her. I did let my husband know that his behavior lead me to feel that my feelings weren't important. I need to trust my husband's driving skills more too. I need to tell him when he scares me instead of holding it in and hoping it will go away. He is not a mind reader.

Grief always comes along after an issue like this because of the losses involved. Sometimes the grief comes for a day, sometimes for several days. Today I don't ignore the grief. I acknowledge it for the heavy, dark feeling that it is. I feel it until it goes away, until the next time. I grieved for much of my childhood with the adult responsibilities and the unchildlike behavior that was expected of me by the adults in my life. I called it sadness then and knew it was my constant companion at least from the age of 7. Today I know that sadness for the grief of a small child who had so many losses in her young life. This grief is another sign that something was seriously wrong in my childhood at an early age. The abuse didn't start when I was 11 years old. Something happened to that small child of three or younger that I simply do not have the memories of. Grieving is healing that is necessary to move on, to grow. Ignoring grief doesn't make it go away. More grief just gets added on top of that grief that you already carry. For the first time in my life, I recognize grief and even welcome it because I know it means I am healing and letting go of another layer of abuse instead of holding the grief inside to eat away at me.

Being at Gettysburg and visiting the actual battlefield after the reenactment was a humbling experience. I am grateful for the experience and for the processing that is going on right now. It is sometimes painful but the experience is also a necessary part of my healing. As I said in the chatroom of the radio program last night, "In payment for the present pain of healing, I have more moments of joy, laughter and peace in my life today." I talked a little about my processing on the radio program Butterfly Dreams-What is Freedom last night. Here is the link if you are interested in listening:

http://www.Blogtalkradio.com/butterflydreamsabuserecovery/2013/07/09/butterfly-dreams-what-is-freedom

Last night's show was a special two-hour program. I am not on until the last 20 minutes or so. I missed most of the first hour of the show myself because of a new meditation group that my friend and I went to for the first time last night. I miss meditating with a group. Group meditations seem so much more powerful than just doing it by myself. I hope this group works for me even though it means I will come in late for each of the Monday evening Butterfly Dreams radio programs. In case you miss the live shows, each of the Butterfly Dreams shows are archived for later listening. I learn so much from Patricia McKnight's programs that start at 8:00 p.m. CST in the U. S. on Mondays, Wednesdays and with Debra Mize on Thursday evenings. I hope you will check out the programs.
Patricia

A Thank You Note to The Wounded Warrior

This is a very late Thank You to my friend Jan L. Frayne who is Beyond_Survivor on Twitter and his blog is The Wounded Warrior. Jan, I am so sorry that I haven't written this thank you post before now.

On February 26, 2013, The Wounded Warrior blog and its creator/writer/blogger Jan Frayne gave me an award. The award is called the Written Acts of Kindness Award. To see this beautiful award and the words that Jan wrote about me, you need to go to the following link:

http://whatislove-2010.blogspot.com/2013/02/written-acts-of-kindness-award-patricia.html

Jan and I met through his blog The Wounded Warrior and Twitter close to 2 years ago now. Jan was one of my first male survivor friends to meet online. We have supported and encouraged each other ever since then. I hope you will take the time to visit and read some of Jan's blog articles and feel what it is like to be a little boy sexually abused by those who you should be able to trust. Jan is one of my poet friends too. I have a few online now, male and female. Writing poetry is a talent that I admire but don't possess myself. Not all of Jan's writing is poetry. I did a book review sometime in the past year of Jan's first book, Beyond Survivor: Rising from the Ashes of Childhood Sexual Abuse. You will find the link to my book review here:

http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2012/08/beyond-survivor-rising-from-ashes-of.html

Whether you are male or female, Jan's book is a good read. Again, thank you Jan for the honor you gave me. Together we are changing the world for ourselves and for other survivors of childhood sexual abuse.


Before I close this post, I want to introduce you to two ladies that I have recently met through Facebook. They are two special ladies that I look forward to getting to know better.

The first is Annie O'Sullivan. I introduced you to Annie O'Sullivan in one of my recent blog posts where I listed the radio programs for Butterfly Dreams Talk Radio and  Abuse Recovery March Guests which you will find at the following link:

http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2013/03/butterfly-dreams-talk-radio-and-abuse.html

This time I want to introduce you to Annie O'Sullivan's blog, Broken Until Spoken and one particular article that she just recently posted that I especially like called "Who AM I NOT? Here is the link for that:

http://brokenuntilspoken.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/who-am-i-not/

I know Annie would love it if you left a comment on her post. She is a great lady. Stop by and listen to her radio program every Friday night at 7:00 p.m. EST. You will enjoy the programs. You might see me there in the chat room. I don't make it to all of the programs because I am busy some Friday nights. That is when I go and listen to the archived shows when I have time. Tell Annie that I said "Hi."

The last person that I want to introduce you to is Ms E. L. Farris, better known as El. Her blog is called RUNNING FROM HELL WITH EL. I am just getting to know El and I very much like what I see. El is a runner in marathons which I greatly admire. In another lifetime, I might would have been a runner. I loved running as a kid. I always had more skinned up knees and elbows from trying to run faster than I could when I was a child. I did win a few races in elementary and even one in college that was a surprise to everyone. I loved it. I would have run track in high school but my dad wouldn't allow me to participate in after school activities that he couldn't control. Here is the link to El's blog:

http://elfarris.com/

Well, I know I have given you a lot of links and a lot of reading to do. Have fun. Thanks to Jan, Annie and El for coming into my life. Have a glorious week everyone unless you choose otherwise.
Patricia

Butterfly Dreams Talk Radio and Abuse Recovery March Guests

One of the things that has taken up a lot of my time over the past few months, in addition to helping Daniel with his book, Standing on the Edge of Time, has been listening to the radio programs of Butterfly Dreams Talk Radio and Abuse Recovery on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings starting at 7:00 p.m. EST here in the U. S.

Patricia McKnight is the founder of these programs. The topics for some of the past programs have been child abuse, incest, child abductions, domestic violence, and bullying. Trish, as she is called by friends, works well with co-host Michal Madison.

If you are interested in joining me in listening to these programs, here is the link for the list of programs for March:

http://survivorsjustice.com/2013/03/04/fascinating-march-guest-line-up-for-talk-radio-show/

If the timing of the programs doesn't fit your schedule, the programs are archived for later listening. I seem to miss most of the Friday night ones so I usually have to listen to the archive for those programs myself. There is a chat room that is always active with each of these programs. You can sign into the chatroom with your Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Monday and Wednesday evening programs are hosted by Trish and Michal. Friday nights programs are hosted by Annie O'Sullivan and Kelly Behr. Some of the programs are information gathered by Trish followed by call-ins from the listeners and others have scheduled guests with lots of information about the topics of interest. I have grown so much because of the sharing of information in these programs which are called "Generation No More" on Monday nights, "Survivor's World" on Wednesday nights and Annie's show on Friday evenings is called "Can You Hear Me Now".

Don't get discouraged because the program sometimes has technical difficulties at the beginning. Wednesday night's program of Survivor's World was like that. I stuck with it and was able to finally connect and the program was one of the best that I have heard. Janet Nestor was the guest talking about her new book on self-care. So many survivors have no clue on how to take care of their bodies or their emotional needs because they weren't taught as a child that those were important to having a good life. I certainly wasn't taught self-care. I was so disconnected from my body and my feelings just to survive the incest. I had to learn how to do the simple things of self-care. Here is the link to Monday evenings program:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/butterflydreamsabuserecovery/2013/03/07/survivors-world-welcomes-Janet-Nestor

On Friday evening, Annie O'Sullivan on "Can You Hear Me Now" is hosting her first HAPPY HOUR call-in program. The question she is asking is, "What makes you a survivor and not a victim?" I hope that you will join the program and call in your answer to the Annie's question. The link for Friday night's program is:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/butterflydreamsabuserecovery/2013/03/09/can-you-hear-me-now-w-annie-osullivan



One more radio program that I stumbled across just this week because of my friend Cyrus Webb is of an interview that he did with a fellow survivor and activist Hank Estrada. Here is the link for that radio interview between Cyrus and Hank:

http://tobtr.com/s/4479447

I hope you will join me in listening to these programs. Some of them do need Trigger Warnings. If the topic is too sensitive for your place of comfort, do what is necessary to take care of you first.
Patricia