Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse Nov/Dec 2013 Edition

Edition Topic: Happiness

First, I wanted to acknowledge all the great submissions from the great, brave, and courageous bloggers. Your honesty, courage, bravery, persistence, and, determination never fail to inspire me and touch my heart and soul. So thank you all.

The Blog Carnival continues because of Tracie from the blog From Tracie and because of all of you, monthly hosters, submitters and readers. Thank you Tracie. Thank you to all of you.

Second, I would like to note that in this holiday season of festivities, family of origins, and stress, love and dysfunction, happiness, and depression I am including three links to some of my resource pages:

Holiday Coping

Grounding/Coping Skills

Self-Soothe/Comfort

Happiness Topic

Kim from her blog Perfect submitted A Better Choice.

Kim wrote:

“Maybe stretching the theme a little, but anytime I am able to do something better….it definitely makes me happy and gives me hope for continued growth and healing.”

Kim shares a self-aware step in life and healing where she is able to understand her own experiences of being parented by anger, her rejection of that, and choosing a different path for herself. Kim is so right when she reflects that in parenting her child well she is parenting her own inner child. So true. And yet so difficult. Excellent job Kim and thanks so much for sharing this post here at the Blog Carnival.

Megs, from her blog Muddy Fingers Meg, submitted Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse– Holiday Happiness

Megs writes about her healing process around the holidays.  Meg writes about getting rid of things and traditions that are painful, keeping the traditions that she wants to keep and that bring her joy and happiness, exploring and finding new traditions, her partner and her using the holiday season as a reason to be very giving to one another, and giving back to their community.

First I want to say that I think this is a wonderful template on how to approach the holidays or any time of year that is annually difficult. This is a wonderful guideline, but even so you won’t get the real joy and pleasure if you don’t read Megs’ post yourself. Please do!

Thanks so much Megs. 🙂

I wrote this post below for the Blog Carnival and am including it here with a link, but also in it’s entirety so that the main point of my blog post is including in the body of the Blog Carnival.

What is Happiness?

Happiness and exploring, endeavoring, and embracing happiness has been a big part of my life and healing, especially in the last fifteen  years and even more so since starting my blog almost five years ago. For a long time I have believed that finding and embracing our happiness, on many levels, is an important and essential part of healing from child sexual abuse. So it seems natural to pick happiness as the main topic for the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse for this edition.

Healing Quotes 35

“To find your own way is to follow your own bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where the real deep bliss is–  not the quick little excitement, but the real, deep, life-filling bliss.

~ Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell, when asked what his bliss was, replied that his bliss was his wife/partner.

Finding your own bliss and happiness can be very difficult, for anyone, but even more so for a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Few of us survivors grew up in an environment where we were safe enough and content enough in our lives to fully have the opportunities to explore our own self and personal happiness, joy, and bliss.

Boundaries are a big part of finding our happiness. Boundaries are often something that survivors of abuse were not allowed to have as children and do not have a good sense of as adults. Often our families of origin and the people that we have allowed into our lives do not want us to have healthy boundaries and that creates further difficulties and challenges in finding the effort, energy, time and ability to explore our boundaries.

Boundaries are not just rules that we have for ourselves and how others treat us. Boundaries are also what we love, what we like, what we hate, what we loathe, what we will allow and not allow into our lives, what kind of treatment we will allow and not allow into our lives, what we value and deem important in our lives, our morals, our ethics, our personal belief system. All of those contribute to our sense of self and how we engage in the world and how we explore, find, and embrace personal moments of happiness.

I started my journey on finding what gave me happiness and bliss by making up a bliss list, suggested by the author Jennifer Louden from the book “A Woman’s Comfort Book.” Happiness, I believe, is in the little things and the big things. I started trying to find some of those.

A Bliss List

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“Follow your bliss.  ~ Joseph Campbell

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bliss–noun1. supreme happiness; utter joy or contentment.
2. Theology. the joy of heaven.
3. heaven; paradise: the road to eternal bliss
4.Archaic. a cause of great joy or happiness.”Here are links to our bliss lists.

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My Bliss List

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Teens Bliss List

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Littles Bliss List

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Do you have a list? Do you have things that you know bring you bliss, comfort, happiness?Figuring out how to embrace my bliss and to follow them were hard. I unfortunately butted up against the negative programming from my mother abuser through this process. I am happy to say that I have found a lot of healing in this area. I know now that I deserve my bliss and happiness and with just as strong of a conviction I know that you do as well.

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One thing that Barbara Sher, the inspirational author, said in one of her seminars comes back to me over and over. She suggests that if you don’t know what you like and love and what you want to do, then take the opportunity throughout the day to rate everything you come across in a day on a scale of one to ten, ten being the things that bring you the highest level of happiness and enjoyment.If you would like a book to help you through the process of helping and healing through the process of finding your personal happiness.

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I would suggest the book “Finding Your Own North Star” by Martha Beck. I love that book. It was unfortunate that there wasn’t a book out there that I found until after I had done a lot of my work on my own, but I highly recommend this book. It is wonderful and does a step by step process to assist anyone.

Advocacy and Awareness

Angel, from her blog Ramblings of a Southern Angel, submitted this post:

Child sexual abuse.. the pain doesn’t end when the abuse ends…

Angel shares in her post about an incident when someone judged a woman harshly to reflecting on the aftereffects of child sexual abuse, the silence, and speaking up for yourself as a path to healing. Sharing her story of sharing with her husband and how that changed her whole life and how she was seen by this man was so powerful, I loved it so much. I agree with Angel that we all need to find someone to share as a part of walking our paths of healing. Thanks so much Angel for sharing this here.

Healing and Therapy

Dave, from Together We Heal, submitted this:

Do You Know How to Listen to a Survivor’s Story?

He wrote:

“What is more valuable than diamonds and oil? Time and Patience. Especially to a survivor of CSA when you make time to hear them.”

His main thesis of this post is encapsulated in this excerpt:

“And that’s what I have tried to relay to my friend and to so many other survivors. It only takes one person taking the time to stop for a moment and pay attention. To actually listen to what the survivor is telling you. You have no idea the IMPACT it has on our lives when someone finally says the three words we need so desperately…

“I hear you.”

Dave writes about the importance and positive impact and healing of another’s time and patience as a gift when they listen to a survivor. Incredibly important. Thanks so much for sharing about this David.

Mike, from his blog Child Abuse Survivor, submitted this post:

Failure to Grow Up

Mike makes an important point , that for parenting to be effective it must include opportunities for learning and daily coping and life skills practices. So many child abuse survivors did not receive this or had to be a parent to themselves and others while still in a child’s body. We didn’t learn how to be a child and learn how to cope and manage daily life and challenges. These issues contribute to further difficulties in managing the aftereffects of child sexual abuse once we are adults. It is unfortunate, as Mike points out, that another group is also having similar difficulties, due to smothering parenting.

I enjoyed this post so much. Thanks Mike.

In the News

Dave, from Together We Heal, submitted

Is The American Dream Becoming The American Nightmare?

He wrote:

“The issue of eliminating statute of limitation laws needs to be on the forefront of our lawmakers minds and we have to get them moving in that direction. We can only do that by working together on a grass-roots basis and letting them know, change the laws or we will change whose in office.”

Another great post by David at Together We Heal. And an important point that children are not being protected and instead when they are suffering the aftereffects as an adult to end up on the wrong side of the law again. Our American legal system is backwards in many ways and David makes some important points. I hope you will read.

Survivor Stories

Darlene, at her blog DarleneBNemeth, submitted

A Father’s Passing.

Darlene wrote:

“This is a short story of events from my childhood.”

Darlene recreates her little child mind in this heart-breaking story of abuse and death. It takes a lot of courage and bravery to do that. I admire Darlene in her healing work. Thank you so much Darlene for your courage and bravery.

David Pittman, of Together We Heal, submitted

When Does the Worst Day of Your Life, Turn Into The Best?

He wrote:

“A lot of life is about perspective. Sometimes ours can be skewed until we see the full picture.”

As David shares:

“In sharing my story, I often mention getting arrested and having to spend 30 days in jail for drug possession. The reason I do is to bring to attention how low my life had gotten due to the sexual abuse I endured as a child. I was in so much emotional pain, the only choice I saw was to try and cover the pain by ingesting as many narcotics as I could.”

Coping with the aftermath and aftereffects of childhood sexual abuse often leads us down many dark roads in our lives. Being a survivor of abuse is never an easy one. Choosing life means we have a tough journey in the short-term and more challenges down the road. David shares honestly about his own process. Thanks so much David. I admire you so much.

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Good and healing thoughts to you all.