For similar reasons to why ALL should write a book…

Protect Others via:

Protect Others: Tell Your Story (Please Help Break the Silence-Shame-Intimidation-Exploitation CYCLE …)

How can telling your story, as one friend told me, protect others?  I suppose that as one progresses, and learns

how to overcome, those lessons learned along the way can help prevent that same harm from befalling other

vulnerable people.  But how?

1.
Well, if the first childhood memory is one of sad anger, of loss, the green Caddy driving to NYC may impede, for a

lifetime, that love of large cars and of the Big Apple that so many Americans seem to boast.  If that memory is

tied to a borough where the kids rejected you, and your next memory was of being locked in a room, at 4 years of

age, hearing your mothers screams as furniture fell and things broke in the living room, as her boyfriend beat

her, how do you use this to protect others?

By coming up with a plan for teaching children to protect themselves from silence, from shame, intimidation and

from exploitation, via:

A New Adult Rite of Passage:  http://meowdate.dreamwidth.org/6177.html

2.
If one was sexually abused at 6, and told not to tell, how do we protect children from parents who can protect

neither their children nor themselves?          -Teach kids that Silence = Death, because silence can lead to

suicide, after a few years.

3.
If one took refuge from bullies by running and retreating, how to undo that shame?  -Teach kids that we ALL have a

right to our personal boundaries, to equal bodily respect, and to equal human dignity.

4.
If one was refused self-defense because “young ladies don’t fight” but they can come home in bruises that will be

ignored, how does one learn to stand up to intimidation?  -Teach kids that if you stand up, you might or might not

be hurt today, but if you cower you WILL agonise for years to come.

5.
If one was physically and sexually abused as a teenager, with all the blame heaped on a 15 year old, how to learn

not to exploit nor be exploited?  -Gandhi and Frankl cite adult choice and power: UpHold your Values and Create.

6.  Only then is one ready to be An Adult: http://adulthoodchallenge.dreamwidth.org/318.html

(This is the real answer to Millie’s question:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7591180-answer-to-millie-s-question-on-education)

((and a summary of the Adulthood thread: http://meowdate.dreamwidth.org/tag/adultriteofpassage))

ShiraDest,
April, 12015 HE (Holocene/Human Era)

(original post at: http://meowdate.dreamwidth.org/12873.html earlier today….)