Category Archives: child advocacy

Martha Speaks, Mary Speaks

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I love the PBS show Martha Speaks. Martha is a very lovable talking dog who teaches vocabulary lessons. One of the reasons I love PBS kids is the safety inherent in these child-centered communities. Such safe places.

In today’s episode Martha becomes discouraged when her constant chatter is not appreciated. She neglects her speech and has to resume talking quickly to foil a crime.

I feel for Martha. Often people don’t appreciate words. Some things are difficult to face, much less talk about. This episode always makes me grateful for those who expose crime and injustice. Like my adopted daughter, for instance. She helped her little sister get help. She spoke out.

Thanks kid.

The Bad Days

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Some days are just hard. You could tell me I need more sunlight or you could tell me that I need to leave the past behind me. I wouldn’t advise it, but you could.

But what I would say–

Grief is a big dog sitting on your chest
An arrow lodged in my sternum
The shadow on my daughter’s
Face
Lost people
And the dream of a family where everyone is safe
Someday.

April.

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Google holidays and earmarked days in April. What do you get? Doctor Day? Earth Day? STD Awareness? Our calendar is littered with days of remembrance, but how about child abuse?

There are supposed to be child abuse awareness marches today. Heard about them?

How about crime victims? This week is dedicated to crime victims. Heard about that?

We get really quiet when it comes to child advocacy and victims’ rights.

Why?

Why are we so afraid to speak for the children? Why are we equally skittish about protecting crime victims?

Who speaks for the voiceless? Do you?

Our Inner Voice

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I just read a poster–

the way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.

Wow, I thought, true.

I remember my grandmother’s wake–old style, do-it-right southern luncheon. I could hear her voice in my head exclaiming over how delicious the fried chicken was. That was the last time I heard her voice.

My mother’s voice haunts me. I miss her laugh and her intelligence and her occasional generosity. But there are many things she says to and about me I do not miss. I have taken steps to avoid those painful words.

After my daughters’ counselor read Just she said, Now I understand why you are such a careful parent.

I want more than anything for my children’s inner voice to be one of profound wisdom and love.

A love that lasts forever.

The Cypher

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A few of us may remember a night spent with dear, dear friends camping in the woods. Deep, off-site camping.

Spooky.

There were four of us. Two were afraid of bears. A couple afraid of humans.

In the end two slept. And two did not. The sleepers were candid–

we slept because we knew you were awake.

Guarding us, so to speak.
Vigilant and awake
Maybe a little paranoid, even.
Tired in the morning.

Some will stay awake
So that the little ones can be
Safe.

The elision of ordinary evil

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Years ago a friend described his parent’s divorce–“it was like a bomb going off in the livingroom.”

His description was vivid and devastating and it came back to rest on my shoulder when my adopted children wreaked violence on my family.

The dust, the debris, the shrapnel of crime and violence rocked my own family.

I think about the steroid-bloated image of Uncle Sam, I think of the empty rhetoric and cries for both caution and justice. To me so few of the words are useful. They will not restore.

They will not restore limbs to the wounded.

They will not restore peace to the shattered.

They will not replace trust or safety like vases fallen and broken after a blast.

Do you want to help the victims?

Then shut up and listen.
Listen very carefully and stop congratulating people for being heroes.

We are none of us heroes.

We are fragile, easily broken and we take great care to heal.

And if we want any kind of justice or restoration we must first mourn our dead and then we must think, really think, in silence and humility–

if I had lost my safety, my loved ones, my dignity, my limbs, how would I want people to respond–to my pain and grief and loss?

Think hard.

Then do something.

This is you.

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I know people would prefer I not write or talk about what happened to my family. I know because they tell me to shut up. I know because they tell other people I am a liar or crazy or at fault. The lines of thinking are terrible and wretched. But the abuse itself….

Is haunting.

I write about what it feels like to have adopted a predator because predators are common. Yesterday I saw an arresting picture of a “shark circle”–hundreds of fish in schools carefully leaving a distance of a few yards between themselves and the shark.

You gotta know a shark to avoid a shark. What if the sharks could assume the shape of an ordinary fish? What would happen to the schools?

I write to stay off of drugs. If I articulate the enduring pain and hauntedness of what happened to my babies I am debreeding a deep and terrible wound. I don’t know if it will ever truly heal.

My adopted son made himself out to be safe. But he wasn’t. My children were victimized. That does not go away.

But I think somehow that if I cry out, mourn, and wail for the things we have lost in trust, hope, and community perhaps my children will not have to.

Or at least they will not grieve alone.

Slaughterhouse Delicacy

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So. I gather from social media there is a trial going on.

Kermit Gosnell and his employees are on trial for a variety of interesting (and thoroughly ghoulish) crimes. What has struck most of us is how quiet this story is. Really? Obama’s taxes are more news-worthy than butchering live babies for profit?

I tracked down one late-breaking article and was amazed by the delicacy of the description. These people were in the business of murdering viable babies and the language is confined to the equivalent of an embroidery lesson. Snip? Snip what, pray tell?

Poor little ones. Even now their squalid murders are treated with a subtle linguistic delicacy. You may be sure their deaths were anything but a sewing lesson.

The article exonerates the employees of this “clinic” by claiming they could not find other jobs. I am positive that was a defense in post-war Europe. What to do when only Auschwitz is hiring?

Dearest Child

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Dear Girl,

I found out about you from another mother who, like myself, became a child advocate after discovering her child was abused.

We are an ornery bunch–the moms who speak out. Our social media pages are littered with appeals for greater care. Greater care for our kids. Greater care for you.

I don’t know your name. I pray you are safe. I will continue to pray for you. You need to know some things:

You are a crime victim.
You need safety and a chance to heal.
Sex is not who you are, nor is it a way of valuing you.
You are a precious young woman and your innocence was stolen from you.
Terrible, but worse that it was taken by your own mother.

You deserve better.

You deserve a real mom.

A real mom would fight like a wild dog to keep you safe.

A real mom would make a fool of herself to protect you.

A real mom would tell the truth and do whatever she could to…

Give you love
Life
Safety
Hope.

You deserve a real mom.

I am here if you need me little one.

The Resilient Child

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Children are resilient.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard this….

The truth is children are not any more resilient than adults. They are helpless and not yet mature enough to understand or control the harm done to them. We all carry our wounds with us, and children need vigorous advocates, not cheap platitudes.

My friend tells a story: he was quite young and won a prize at a picnic. An older child tricked him into relinquishing his winning ticket. Only later did he understand the trust he had placed in the older child was misplaced and he had been cheated.

Small story, but one he tells to this day with a sense of injustice. How much more are the truly harmful things that happen to children wounds we carry into adulthood?

So think about my small story the next time someone says children are resilient. If you want your child to recover from the wounds of deception, abuse, or cruelty in a darkened world you will have to be their advocate and physician– providing a safe place to heal, a shoulder to grieve on, and a tough mama or daddy to fight for them. Fight for the safety of the little ones.

You be the resilient one. Speak out.