Thank you Nevaeh — you will always be remembered.

. Nevaeh Buchanan

She is on my mind a bit early this year. Usually my memories get triggered about her in May, the month she disappeared only to be found in a makeshift grave by a river, covered with a quick set cement. Nevaeh Buchanan was just a five year old little girl. A little girl they said was buried alive as there was dirt in her lungs.

Her short life ended in May of 2009 after she disappeared from her Monroe County Michigan apartment complex. It was a disappearance that urgently was followed by media and the public.

It was also during a time I was facing some dark shadows of my life. The child sexual assault survivor in me knew why she was disappeared and as the days since she was last seen piled up, news of her world- her environment- cemented those assumptions.

Those of us who have survived child sexual assault know that we escaped her fate. We live with those thoughts every time we hear about a child who suffered for being born, for being innocent, for being a light a predator tried to steal. We live with those thoughts and especially if our abusers were never brought to justice going through life leaving other victims- ones we know of and the ones we don’t. We wonder how if only had we known to speak up and out how many others we could have saved from experiencing our fate, or even Nevaeh’s.

I had all of that surging that spring of 2009 along with a broken heart and as a newly divorced single mom trying to make it in a life during a recession and not even a full year after my ex husband was sentenced to a significant prison sentence for his crimes against me and ones that happened in front of our children- domestic violence and sexual assault.

I was raw. I was trying so hard to hold on to hope so my children could grow up whole, or at least as close to whole as I could provide in a hurricane of bullshit. I was terrified. I was getting sicker and dealing with a lot of physical pain, I knew whatever mysterious autoimmune disorders doctors tried to understand when I was a kid, were now surfacing with a vengeance.

It was a whirlpool of pain — emotional, spiritual and physical. I remember bits and pieces of it as when you’re trying to survive an avalanche, everything is in slow motion as it hits you but you feel the rush, the urgency, to make a quick and right decision to get through to the next day — the next hour — the next moment.

Nevaeh Buchanan’s sweet little innocent face flashing across the television and my computer screen snapped me away from my own doom as the reminder that could have been me, many times over in my childhood, in a twisted way provided a grateful emotion that it wasn’t while slashing my heart knowing that little five year old girl had to be terrified. I remembered being that age, and the first time I was ever molested…while playing in an apartment complex courtyard, and by someone I knew, a neighbor. I remembered my own fear, the way it felt like my heart stopped beating and how must she felt that too… but I survived and she didn’t.

Yes, it’s heavy and goes very deep my attachment to that little girl’s story. I never knew her but feel like I did, at least that part of her she didn’t voice.

The stories of her existence started pouring out while she was missing. Stories on how her mother had been friends with or known to be around two sex offenders, exposing her child’s world to them.

Needless to say anger and disgust filled me when watching those reports. It was and still is unfathomable to me how a parent would willingly expose their child to a sex offender. As a mom I do not understand it and as a survivor I am disgusted.

Survivor’s guilt. A lot of us have it and it is triggered every time we hear of another victim, especially one that didn’t survive.

Neveah and her life, especially how it ended, provided me with a motivation to truly tell my story giving the little girl in me a chance to be free while trying to bring awareness to a topic so many think they understand but truly can only be felt by walking it, living it and spending a life healing from it all. The burden of carrying someone else’s shame can only be felt by carrying their baggage.

Her story, her pain, her murder is one of the reasons I really started pouring out my secrets and kept me walking a healing journey, even if I fell a few times.

I thought of her every time I covered a story on sex offenders, especially ones where the victim was a child. I thought of her every time I shared my own story whether it was on my blog or reaching out to others in my volunteering.

I still think of her — obviously.

Her case is still considered open, all these years later there has been no justice for her murder, her suffering. With the case being open law enforcement keeps those files and information under lock and key, they tend to remain tight lipped. When a case is officially labeled cold, then the case files are public and reporters can pour over them.

Now maybe I am cynical from too many years of digging into stories and knowing what it is like to be media trying to get information on a case where they may have been mishaps…mistakes..or even cover-ups — but, I wonder what could be in those files that officials do not want known. Cynical? Wisdom? Experience? Call it what you want but it is the question in my head as I write this and as I did all these years around the anniversary of her young life ending.

That little girl I never knew and who only lived five short years provided me with something no counseling ever had- a reason why I had survived those crimes against me as she kicked my butt into motivation on my own healing journey to use my voice…the voice of a little girl that had been silent too long. Hope. Hope to reach others. To let them know they are not alone. Hope that maybe we can address this evil that touches too many lives, too many children.

I know there are others like me who were greatly impacted by this little girl and her short life. We communicated through blogs. For now that will have to be the justice we hold on to her having — a domino effect of healing and awareness. It is why we survived.

Neveah I pray you’ve found peace.

Thank you to all the other pebbles out there sharing their voices and standing up for Nevaeh. When we do it for her we do it for all. True Crime Garage posted these videos just this year.