From the Archives - July 31, 2026
The off-week trip through 24 years of blog posts.
Think before you post or share anything on social media. Consider what you are distributing and whether it enhances the lives of those who follow you.
Another Reminder - Just Because Something Works for Others, Does Not Mean It’ll Work For You
If Mindfulness is something that helps you, great. If it doesn’t, don’t beat yourself up over that fact, or continue a practice that is actually causing harm. That makes no sense at all. Just accept that it’s not for you, and hopefully, the people around us who are pushing it as the cure-all, especially the ones trying to sell it to you, can learn to accept that too.
The "I'm a child abuse survivor" story is one that many survivors need to tell and need to give voice to; there is no doubt about that, but it's also not the complete picture of who we are. One of the things I have always set out to do is highlight other survivors on the web, because I want people to understand the broad spectrum of survivors that exist. If there were only one narrative to be told, I wouldn't bother with that. But there isn't one narrative about abuse survivors; there are millions of them, and the stories come from all types of people in all walks of life. That's precisely the point. Surviving childhood abuse is a hugely significant thing, but overcoming that and healing from it requires working on the rest of your stories. The stories you tell yourself define who you are today. Are you just a survivor, or are you more?
Does Childhood Trauma Disrupt Our Storytelling Abilities?
We know that the folks who get to the quickest and best healthcare are the ones who come in with details like what is wrong, how long it's been going on, what happened previously to an illness or injury, etc. Trauma survivors typically struggle with exactly that.
Sharing - Peer-on-Peer Abuse: What can be done when kids hurt kids?
There’s no real difference. I should know. I was sexually abused by an older minor. There was no creepy old man, only an older and bigger kid who threatened me. Someone in my own family. Mall parking lots, school, and our neighborhood park weren’t the places where I was not safe; my family was.
And I had no way to tell anyone because I wasn’t taught about that being child abuse. Only strange men in white vans offering candy were to be avoided. That was child abuse. Whatever was happening in my family wasn’t to be discussed with anyone. It wasn’t, and it went on for years.