The Lamplighter Movement
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Having a Bad Day?
Posted by Marjorie McKinnon in Articles on March 3, 2012
You didn’t sleep well. You woke up with a headache and groggy. You realize you overslept and are late for work. You dig through your closet and find an outfit that should have gone to the cleaners weeks ago but you never got around to it. You slip into it anyway. You dump everything out of your lingerie drawer looking for a pair of nylons that don’t have a run in them. Dang. You should have stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home but forgot to. Oh well, maybe no one will notice. You race into the kitchen and grab for a cup of coffee. Oh no! You forgot to set up the coffee maker the night before. You’ll have to get a cup at work. You reach for a box of cereal, dump it into a bowl and open the refrigerator to grab the milk. Out of milk! How can that be? That was one of the things besides nylons you meant to grab at Wal-Mart. You put a piece of stale wheat bread (another thing on the grocery list you forgot) and plunk it into the toaster while you pour a glass of orange juice. At least there’s one thing you didn’t do wrong. Something looks funny about the juice. You check the sell by date. Good Lord! How could you possibly have let your orange juice get that old. Now you really are losing it. You’ve been able to hold yourself together for the last half hour but a glass of fresh orange juice in the morning is the main thing that gets you going. You switch mental directions. You can stop at McDonalds on the way to work and get some breakfast, then eat it at your desk. You promise yourself that after work you are definitely stopping at the store to pick up everything you could possibly need. You grab your purse, pull your keys out and race for your car. The engine won’t start. Oh no! What could possibly be wrong? You check the gas gauge and see that it’s on empty. Now you do lose it!
Has this ever been you? It used to be me before I got into recovery. It never is now. Negative energy has a way of following you once it gets started. As one thing after another falls apart you realize getting out on the wrong side of the bed started it all. Back yourself up. It only takes a few common sense rules to make sure you don’t have this happen again. Here’s a few pointers:
- Stay organized.
- Watch HALT – Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. If any of these are present in your life, take care of them immediately and you will begin to feel better.
- Use your head! That’s what it’s there for.
- Stay disciplined about personal responsibilities
- Don’t take on too much.
- All things in moderation – watch your alcohol intake, don’t’ smoke, exercise regularly, eat healthy, get plenty of sleep.
- Keep goal oriented, supportive people in your life.
- Think ahead.
These are just a few rules that can help make your day go smoother. Think of some more and implement them. Good luck!
Flashbacks
Posted by Marjorie McKinnon in Articles on February 25, 2012
We plug a movie into our DVD player. Within minutes there’s an unexpected, brutal rape scene. Our throat goes dry, our heart starts beating rapidly. We shut it off. For the remainder of our day we struggle to make our minds go blank, to think of something positive, to forget about the movie lingering in our DVD player and most of all to forget the horrors we suffered as a child.
A flashback, an incident that recurs vividly in the mind, inserting itself into our everyday life, is the cross that most victims of child sexual abuse carry throughout their life. Even if we have completed recovery and pronounce ourselves healed, we are still vulnerable to searing memories from our past that slip into our conscious lives unbidden. This is a normal occurrence of anyone who has suffered from a past trauma. Victims of the Jewish holocaust during World War II no doubt had to learn to live with them for the rest of their lives. Our troops over in Afghanistan and Iraq are forced to relive horrors they experienced during the Gulf War and even now in Afghanistan. My son was a Marine for four years, spent fifteen years on the LAPD and is now working for the State Dept over in Afghanistan, training and mentoring police. He has seen his buddies blown to bits, men he had just had breakfast with. But he said he doesn’t have any problem with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Somehow he is able to put everything that was difficult to witness or go through into a corner of his mind, one whose door has a lock and key, one he never opens. He is fortunate. Survivors of child sexual abuse suffer from PTSD. We seldom know what triggers the flashbacks. Sometimes it is a nightmare, sometimes it is a coincidence, sometimes it is that movie we had no idea contained a rape scene. We rid ourselves of the DVD.
How do we deal with these flashbacks? Everyone has their own way. Some wait till the flashback is too intense and cry our way out of it. Some grit our teeth and look for something to take our mind off of it: a book, a phone call, a chore, or a Walt Disney movie. Some are successful. Some never find a way to cope and lose themselves in cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or some other obsession. I was fortunate. I thought my original experience was a nightmare. My mother, who heard me screaming for help and failed to link together what I had just experienced with my father who stood at the door to my bedroom, clutching his robe, with a guarded look on his face, told me it was a nightmare. I believed her. From that time on I have memory lapses. I can’t put together my graduation from high school or even any of my classes. I can’t remember being with friends, baby-sitting for neighbors, eating a meal, or going to church. Most of my traumas after that original one are buried so deep along with my other traumatic memories. I remember the beatings but don’t go there. What I do suffer from is periodic flashbacks to abusive ex-husbands and the horror they rained down on me. They are searing.
How do I handle them? I find a distraction, immediately. I force myself to leave the memory and think instead of how wonderful my life is now. I say a prayer. Sometimes I talk to my husband about it. Bringing the memory out and stomping on it empowers me. I place objectivity between me and the flashback, moving it further and further away from me until it is as tiny as the head of a pin. It works. I do whatever it takes to not dwell on them for what you dwell on grows and what you ignore diminishes.
Emotional Abuse
Posted by Marjorie McKinnon in Articles on February 18, 2012
Emotional abuse is often undetected, leaving in its wake deep scars. In the raising of children it’s quite a set up. Your parents are supposed to use their wisdom to guide you, to teach you right from wrong. But in many homes there is little wisdom and the guidance is a whiplash of verbal insults, put downs and anything that will make you feel “less than.” Think about it. Why would your mom and dad, who are supposed to love you most in the world, want to rain down on you anything but compliments, loving words and pride in you? Good question. If your parents are already dysfunctional themselves most of their world is about them, not about you. If you are annoying them while they are paying bills, talking on the phone or fixing dinner, they are not going to be happy about that. Isn’t is so much easier to say, “Not right now sweetheart, can we talk about this later,” than to take their bad mood out on their children? Then why don’t they? Why do they have to take their bad temper, their worries, their own “I feel less than” that they would never want to impart to the world, out on you? This type of child rearing has a serious and sorrowful side effect. Those who come from childhoods where emotional abuse was a regularity often wind up marrying an abuser who picks up where their parents left off, liberally sprinkling emotional abuse throughout your day. It, like child sexual abuse, is a multi-generational problem.
I remember when we were growing up, my older brother, Scott, at the age of ten went into the kitchen to ask my mom something. She responded with a resounding, “Go away. I don’t have time for you,” or heavy handed words to that effect. He did exactly that. We were living in Tucson, AZ at the time. It is a big city and was at that time as well. My brother took off and wandered through the city all day and into the night. When he didn’t come home for dinner and my parents couldn’t find him they called the police. I remember peeking through my bedroom door listening to them talk to an officer. I was terrified that I would never see my brother again. All night long the police searched for him. By morning my parents were white with anxiety (this is before our house turned into a nightmare because of my father’s sexual abuse) and all of us were convinced Scott had been kidnapped and a ransom note was soon to follow. He wandered into the house around noon, surprised that anyone even cared enough about him to call the police. He had walked as far as the airport (an hour’s drive from our house), spent the night sleeping there and then wandered home. To this day he doesn’t remember the desperateness of two parents terrified they would lose their son. He remembers only a mother who told him to go away.
Sometimes emotional abuse is worse than physical abuse. When we were growing up our house was like the Gestapo. Our every move was thwarted by stern rules. No one was allowed to feel good about themselves. That was a cardinal sin punishable by lecture after lecture about your behavior and how bad it was. Then came the punishment: standing at attention for hours (my dad was an ex-Marine), going to bed without dinner, writing a hundred times, I will not be prideful, (citing the biblical verse, Pride goeth before destruction) and other such abuses designed to tear you down, to make you feel “less than.” How were we expected to grow into a confidant, strong and wise adult with that kind of childhood?
Other scars left by emotional abuse are many: lack of confidence, hopelessness, a negative attitude, the inability to have faith in your own dreams, neurotic tendencies and so on. One of the worst scars we inculcate into our children is expecting too much out of them and then hammering away at them about it. Years ago I heard of a young lady who graduated number two in her senior class at a well-known university. All her father had to say afterwards was, “Why weren’t you number one?” Depending on the severity of the emotional abuse an adult who suffered such child abuse could wind up an addict, an insomniac, needy, suicidal, have weak boundaries, make unhealthy choices in members of the opposite sex, have eating disorders and/or severe depression; all this because of a parent who didn’t take the time to make you feel valued as a human being.
When you are given a child an unspoken agreement comes with them. You are the parent. You teach your children love, kindness, generosity of spirit, sensibility, prudence, knowledge, visualization, feeling, foresight and the best one of all, a sense of their own importance. Not arrogance, not disrespect, not egotism, just a sense of their own importance. This last is vital. This unspoken agreement is a thing of beauty. You must not betray He who gave you that child and instilled this unspoken agreement in you.
When you think of a world where the majority of people were emotionally abused in their childhood with the resultant lack of belief in themselves, one wonders how the world manages to get on with the business of living. If you have children, please remember to lavish praise on them, to give them hugs in abundance, to let them know how important, how smart they are and how much you love them. Validate all that they are. Remember, if you don’t, it’ll trickle down to the next generation and your grandchildren will have a similar lack of self-esteem.
Foster Care Homes
Posted by Marjorie McKinnon in Articles on February 11, 2012
U.S. Politics Today headlined:
The High Cost of Foster Care Abuse
“More than 500,000 children in the U.S. reside in some form of foster care. Within one year of their initial placement, at least 15 percent of them will experience neglect, abuse, or other harmful conditions. Six times as many children die in foster care than in the general population. Children in placement are also far more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse than other children. In group homes, where many of the residents abuse each other, there is more than ten times the rate of physical abuse and 28 times the rate of sexual abuse as in the general population. And these are just the reported cases. Since foster care agencies cannot always be relied upon to police themselves, the actual rates are likely to be much higher”.
A few years back I was a foster care mother. My teenage daughter had a friend who needed a foster care home. She begged and pleaded for me to become a foster care mother. As a single mother working at times three jobs to hold my head above water I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on this job but at my daughter’s insistence I finally jumped through all the hoops required to take this task. I was paid several hundred dollars per month for this job. When the young lady who I was to care for showed up at our home I sat her down and explained to her how much money I was receiving and where it would go: certain amounts was allocated for her medical care, for her share of household expenses, for school expenses, for clothing, for food, for entertainment and for her allowance. I also had a percentage allowed for a savings account for her to access once she became 18. She was stunned. She had lived in many foster care homes and had never been given an allowance. She had always had chores she’d had to do but had never received any money much less a savings account established in her name. Her foster care parents had always been given free rein with the funds they received for her care. That meant they could have fed her oatmeal for breakfast, a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and a cup of soup for dinner. That meant her foster care parents could have her wear hand me downs or rummage sale clothes. That meant, like Cinderella, she could have done all the chores in the house and received no allowance, no pay for it at all. That might even mean no medical care. I don’t think my young friend believed I was actually going to do all that I had said. But do it I did. I tried my best to treat her as if she were one of the family and as time went on she began to relax. When it was time for her to leave our home I cashed in her savings account and handed her the money.
During the time she spent with us I heard many stories from this young gal about abuses in various homes. It opened my eyes to something I found hard to believe. But believe it I did. Today, as per the first paragraph of this article, Foster Care homes need a major overhaul. The lawsuits that are filed as the result of abuse that occurs in the foster care homes is the largest monetary expense but it is only the beginning.
As per U.S. Politics Today: “New Jersey has spent $51.7 million in 317 lawsuits brought on behalf of abused foster children dating as far back as 1996. Since 2005, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) has paid out more than $3.4 million in civil lawsuit settlements. In a recently settled class action lawsuit involving foster care abuse, Oklahoma DHS spent $7 million in outside attorney fees in defense of the lawsuit, with $2 million more set aside for future costs. Additional class action lawsuits are pending on behalf of thousands of foster children in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Texas. Even when such cases do not result in monetary awards to the original plaintiffs, attorney fees can run well into the millions.”
The highest cost is in what it does to children who are already emotionally torn with no parents, no family, no love and no real sense of belonging. And you’re upset because of what? Your folks won’t buy you a new car, you think your bedroom needs redecorating, you want a more expensive prom dress………. Can you imagine starting life off with the kinds of handicaps foster care children have? Can you imagine the loneliness, the fear, the confusion, the rejection? And that’s only the beginning. Again…….I cried because I had no shoes, till I met a man who had no feet.
For the rest of the U.S. Political article please see http://uspolitics.einnews.com/247pr/261786
The Blue Ribbon Campaign
Posted by Marjorie McKinnon in Articles on February 4, 2012
In 1983, April was proclaimed the first National Child Abuse prevention Month. As a result, child abuse and neglect awareness activities are promoted across the country during April of each year. The Office on Child Abuse and Neglect (OCAN) within the Children’s Bureau coordinates Child Abuse Prevention Month activities at the Federal level, providing information and releasing updated national statistics about child abuse and neglect.
In 1989, the Blue Ribbon Campaign to prevent child abuse began as a Virginia grandmother’s tribute to her grandson who died as a result of abuse. She tied a blue ribbon to the antenna of her car as a way to remember him and to alert her community to the tragedy of child abuse. The blue ribbon is now the symbol of Child Abuse Prevention much as the pink ribbon is the symbol of Breast Cancer Awareness. But, and it’s a big But, the blue ribbon as a Child Abuse Awareness symbol is not as well known. I just Googled it and came up with such non-related topics as Blue Ribbon BBQ, Blue Ribbon Restaurants, Blue Ribbon Campaign for Electronic Frontier Foundation, Blue Ribbon Schools, Blue Ribbon Pet Products and a long line of others. But no Blue Ribbon for child abuse prevention. The Blue Ribbon is a term used to describe or symbolize something of high quality hence its frequent use. What we want to do is make it so linked to Child Abuse Prevention that whenever you Google it that will be the first thing you see.
Bill Murray, of the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, is a popular host on Blog Talk Radio. He is initiating a Blue Ribbon Neighborhood Watch program, marrying the two sister websites…www.LACP.org and www.NAASCA.org. Of significant importance to them is the combination of already existing public safety-minded groups and getting them to discuss the issues of child abuse. The link is www.NAASCA.org/BlueRibbon. Please see what they are trying to do.
In my little corner of the world I’m doing what I can to get as many people as possible to wear a blue ribbon during the month of April. Child sexual abuse is a huge part of child abuse but not a pleasant topic of discussion. Despite the 63 million survivors in the United States (up from 60 million just two years ago) most people still would rather not talk about it……..that is unless they are a survivor. Most survivors are dying inside to talk to someone about what happened to them. But no one wants to listen. A large number of therapists don’t want to listen. They tell their clients that they don’t go back in time. It is only this day forward that they want to hear. I receive so many emails and phone call from people who are desperate to talk about what happened to them only to find that their therapist doesn’t do “backward in time. “A couple years ago I gave a talk at a local community organization. I spoke of what had happened to me and what I was trying to do to eradicate it and provide healing for the survivors. Every one of the 40 or so people in the room turned their heads away as I spoke. One man even stood up, turned his chair around and sat with his back to me the entire time I spoke.
We can’t have this. The world should not be that cowardly. To turn your back on someone who has been sexually abused as a child and wants to talk about it is pure cowardice. A few decades ago people didn’t speak about Uncle Willy who was an alcoholic. If they did they referred to him as not feeling well, has medical problem or any words they could use to disguise the real problem. Today, as a result of AA, we can tell the world if we are an alcoholic and feel no shame. Today we can heal ourselves. Why are we not allowing the same standards for an abuse that is so dastardly, one that destroys lives as surely as cancer does.
I am speaking with city officials about heightening the awareness in our community of child sexual abuse. I am giving talks. I am sending messages all over the Internet. I am doing anything I can so that the whole world will wear blue ribbons. Next year will be the 30th anniversary of the proclamation by Ronald Reagan of Child Abuse Awareness Month. We have fifteen months to get our act together, to get rid of our aversion to that “yucky sex stuff”. But we are going to have a dress rehearsal this April. So everyone, please, wear a blue ribbon during that month. You will not only be proclaiming awareness of this epidemic. You will be demonstrating the proof of your courage to the world.
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