Bloggers Unite To Stop Abuse

Aeschylus

"And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."

I 've teamed up with a group of bloggers on blog catalog today who are blogging to stop abuse.

Everyday we read the horrifying details of some form of abuse in the newspaper. Whether the article is about the victim or the perpetrator it's origin is always the same, the plot always familiar, and the results life altering. By blogging together in an effort to stop abuse, we're in fact saying no more abuse, no way, not on our watch!


It's horrifying to read that some 40 million children are subject to abuse this year alone, and that many of that number, will never speak of it. Their perpetrators will move on and the world will keep turning in much the same way, except in the eyes of the child involved. For them, their nightmarish existence will continue somewhere in the back of their mind, for the rest of their lives. The victim of abuse retreats into a secret silent world of introspection, often developing an inappropriate inner dialogue of distorted ideas about themselves and the world around them.


Anyone whose experienced abuse has endured an unbreathable pain, that most of us can't begin to understand.
The child abuse victims today are our future tomorrow, and will join a society of bankers, lawyers, doctors, mothers, fathers, etc...

The heartbreaking number of combined abuse statistics has the semblance of a battleground lost to a powerful enemy. That is to say, the combined statistics are emotionally disturbing, to overwhelming a concept to comprehend. Nevertheless, if we work together educating ourselves and others on what we can do as a society to prevent abuse, then we have the framework for a battle won.

When I think of the wasted years and lives of just the few people I know who have suffered from abuse it's horrifying. We must be careful not desensitize ourselves or worse yet, develop an attitude of indifference to the way we think about abuse.

Indifference, to me, is the most intolerable of emotions, the likes of which will rear its ugly head and devour us if we're not careful. What I mean is, what we're indifferent about will often come back to haunt us in the most poetic sense of the word.

When we see signs of abuse or something wrong, we must trust our instincts and do something about what we're feeling or thinking. When we accept a more popular view rather than follow our own instincts, we lose the capacity to be honest with ourselves and others. This attitude breeds tolerance for certain behaviors that at one time, we might have deemed unacceptable.

Here is the link to a post I wrote on an incident I witnessed involving child abuse. I feel I was guilty of the very thing I'm protesting here.

Because, the event happened in a public area, I questioned my ability to judge whether it was considered abuse. Then to my astonishment I saw there wasn't anyone else reacting either to a three year old child being slapped across the face! (Not even the security guard in the waiting area.)

In addition, others in the waiting room, including the perpetrator, looked at me as if they wished to say, " Mind your own business." I felt like saying, "Forgive me, but your child is screaming and you're more worried about me staring at you!"

Well there you have it, my contribution to and public support of a social community obviously dedicated to the "power of the pen." A virtue I admire and am honored to have been a part.

Please feel free to check out the link to my post "Spanking Where Do You Draw The Line?" and please understand this post is not against parents spanking their children. What the post is meant to suggest is the lack of this Mother's ability to draw the line, between what is spanking and what is abuse.