Category: Guest Blogs

Guest Blogs

Tattoos – NO APOLOGY

iwalkwithalimp

This survivor reclaimed her power in a beautiful and deeply profound way.

Touched2 MySoul

I hope our relationship has room enough for this conversation. I don’t require your approval. Though I do ask that you respect my decisions.

My tattoos are not some “old fools” thing. My tattoos are me screaming. They are my validation. When I was a child being strangled, and beaten and scared beyond my understanding. I screamed and no one heard me. No one saved me – including you.

My tattoos are me screaming now. Screaming at the top of your lungs for hours, isn’t allowed as an adult- they would lock me up in a psych ward and throw away the key! So I choose to get tattoos. They represent my survival. Though they are hidden most of the time. Those rare moments when they are visible and someone says they are beautiful – it helps to validate my pain. The very pain that no one validated when I…

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Guest Blogs

I Just Feel Like Celebrating

iwalkwithalimp

Katie made me realize how important it is not only to recognize but to celebrate our accomplishments as we work toward healing from trauma.

Becoming Katie Butterfly

I just feel like celebrating all my successes. I’ve come so far. You can watch my YouTube video to hear my reasons for celebrating.

Go Katie Go! Join me in giving me a round of applause!

It’s so important for us to celebrate our successes – no matter how big or small. You are all so amazing.

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Guest Blogs

I Can Tell-I Can Heal

iwalkwithalimp

Patricia J Grace

Acceptance of symptoms from the traumas in childhood that remain have to be re-accepted over and over again; a body on hyper-vigilance which includes an exaggerated startle response, sleep disturbances, habitual negative thinking causing low level depression, disordered eating patterns stemming from age 8 as a survival mechanism, dissociation from the body- another survival tool, panic in small windowless places which includes elevators and airplanes, fear of people- knowing too well what they are capable of, and on it goes.

Patience and acceptance are not inherent qualities, they take effort and persistence. Persistence is part of my make-up. But no amount of it will take away the daily challenges. The work is ongoing. .

Out of the trauma grew a women whose voice is heard only if you listen carefully. A voice silenced in childhood, hushed by a mother embarrassed, and a family embarrassed, the voice goes mute. It is…

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Guest Blogs

Child Sexual Abuse: the Neglected Little Sister of the #MeToo Movement

iwalkwithalimp

My thoughts put into words.

The Second Wound

I was enormously gratified last year to watch as the #MeToo movement erupted with a sudden and powerful force, to see sexual harassment and assault survivors courageously tell their truths as the world finally paid proper attention. I cheered the brave women and men who came forward, risking more of the judgment, doubt, and scorn they had likely already experienced. I felt hugely gratified to witness perpetrators of abuse finally being called out and made to answer for their crimes. Most of all, I cried tears of joy to know that – at last – our society is shining a ray of light on the dark, hidden, shame-filled world of sexual victimization, for illumination is the only sure path to the prevention of sexual abuse, as well as justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators.

I, too am a survivor, not of assault or harassment but of child sexual abuse…

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Guest Blogs

Just Be

iwalkwithalimp

I look forward to the day when I can take action on these wise words.

Patricia J Grace

The struggle is to make room for all the feelings and not run. That door is locked, open it, let it air. Because closing off one room causes stagnation. Free the feeling by feeling it and acknowledging it is there which allows for quicker dissipation.

Running from a feeling freezes and locks it. There it stays until the door is opened. The tendency is to escape from feelings of sadness or loneliness on this bright sunshiny day. Yet those feelings accompany me daily as part of my whole repertoire.

Note those and move on, because other feelings also exist. When burying one, you bury them all; the bright greens of summer while walking the meadow as the soft breeze whispers through my hair, the heron startled by my presence lifting off with such grace to fish farther down the creek, the intense quiet of a summer day interspersed with a…

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Guest Blogs

STAY

iwalkwithalimp

This really resonated with me.

Patricia J Grace

The letter came, “You are permanently excused from jury duty.”

Words used to delineate challenges since childhood describe a very incapable person. Shaking off those thoughts I know that by owning my past I became whole.

A child abused is not allowed to recover. All those years no one knew what lurked inside, the tangle, confusion, and wounds bleeding deep. You look like everyone else. That is the goal because you don’t want to know either.

But until you do, the parts remain scattered and you run. You run to food, alcohol, shopping, and business, whatever takes you elsewhere than within your own soul. You don’t want to be you so you run.

Settle in, hold on, and peace will come.

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Guest Blogs

JOY

iwalkwithalimp

This blog post resonates deep within me.

Patricia J Grace

photo by Patricia

The hardness in my heart left no room for joy, or peace, or any kind of lasting contentment. The rage burning was not my doing, nor was the inability to know how to give it the salve needed to put out the blaze. The fire needed to speak. The family squelched that right. The family so desperately needed even if it was the source of the open, frizzling, scalding wound.

It wasn’t until over the age of fifty that facts came out of me where they had festered for decades, first as a little girl when no one came, then all the years hence where the traumas swirled. And she was like an ice box with an explosion inside.

Who will let her talk? Who will help her feel safe? And even in safety the bars of childhood silence lock her down. The filth and muddy tar…

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