Hope cries out from pain

My gut churned as she relayed the abuse in her childhood. The details of terror in one woman's growing years. The physical abuse her little body suffered from being hit with belt buckles and being made to sit in salt baths with her open wounds burning.

She spoke about the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the man who adopted her, and how the woman she called "mom" knowingly turned away. Gruesome details of innocence stolen and adults failing her.

The one time she told an adult in her life, a teacher at school, lead to a social worker visiting her home and a conversation with her and her parents where she was drilled ...and how she sat in silence denying anything ever happened. She didn't need to tell me the next thing, I already knew what it was...... when that social worker left she would have received the worse beating of her life.

Her pain was so evident in the lines of her now middle-aged face. They told the story of her life of abuse, while they also gave way to the longing of a once little girl to know the joy and comfort of nurturing love.

"Why do men take what is not theirs to own?" she asked.

I tried to explain to her that not all men are like that, that there are some good men in the world...that there were more good men than the monsters she had known.

"Then why do I seem to find all the monsters?" she replied.

I knew exactly how she was feeling when she said those words, at one time in my life...more than one time I should say...I had wondered the same thing.

"Your pain calls out to them - it's your innocence crying, they are drawn to it -they find you." I countered.

That conversation I recently had with a woman just months ago was a stranger to me..relays the legacy of child abuse...child physical abuse...child sexual assault..and perhaps the worse of all child emotional abuse.

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There are times I will find myself in a room of children, and before long I try to pinpoint which children are the ones going home to terror. Which one is carrying that secret in their heart? Statistics tell me that they are in the room...and if only I could figure it out, then maybe ...somehow...someway...intervention could enter their life and just maybe they will never wonder about or have a conversation like the one above when they look back on their own childhood as a tired and worn adult searching for love.

I know this is a heavy subject to write about...it is depressing.........

But it is real, and unfortunately it is rampant. And now with in the age of technology there are even more avenues for the abusers to find their targets.

Just last week I heard a startling announcement - Internet predators are not targeting 5th or 6th graders....nope...they are zeroing in on 2nd and 3rd grade aged children, and they are finding them.

So as I sit here right now writing these words out for strangers from all over the world to read, I know there is some slimy monster grooming a victim, a young child, by typing his twisted mind, slanted thinking....yes...sick to think about, huh?

And remember that every case that does get a national headline represents thousands more in your own state, and perhaps your own community depending on where you live.

I am not sure what the answers are to this shame...

I wish I could give that woman I had that conversation with a magic pill so that she could find healing without needing to dig deep and relive the pain.........

I wish I could walk into a room of children and know that each one was returning to a loving nurturing home.

I wish that the abuse I suffered at the hands of many of man when I was a child could serve to prevent it from ever happening again to another child..........

But until then ........

I will continue to share just exactly what the legacy can and will do....

These words represent the lines on my own face that tell my own story....

While they may be depressing in the stories they relay...they also contain something else that at first may go unnoticed by a reader...and that would be the hope that is in me that one day there will not be a child carrying that secret in their heart, and that they can just enjoy the innocence that is bestowed on them rather than having it ripped away..........

Yes, I still have hope - I've turned a corner in my life and my pain now cries out in hope..........

Thank you for paying attention.............

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