I can remember the playgrounds at school. The place where we would congregate before school, at recess, and after school. A place to play different games could also become a place to put up your dukes. Whether one could fight well or no, the reaction to someone throwing a jab is to naturally put your hands up to your face to block the punch. My post will consist of explaining how the abused blocked punches. Not with their hands, but with their minds. Not only those who are abused but those who are witnesses to other forms of trauma as well. It can be due to the horrors of war. Witnessing 911. Losing a child at childbirth. Watching a love one being killed. It’s at these times that we have to find someplace to run. Not a physical place like some do from the bully on the playground, but a place in the mind. A place that no one else knows about. You’ll find it on the website under the menu labelled “Sayings”.
This website discusses adult subjects. But as I remember, the hardest thing for me to do was tell what was happening to me. As a result, I wrote a poem. It is a little light. Part of it is on the site. And it is most fitting for children; as you see fit. In my world before the abuse started, there were little instructions: Keep your legs closed with that dress on. Let those grown men talk and don’t go over there interrupting. Who is going to be there when you go to your friends house? But nothing like the things that I should have been told should the situation present itself.
And then I grew up and learned about other stories of child abuse. That it transcended pretty much everything; all demographics. The little children at the catholic churches that are in the news as of late. An older program called Investigative Reports with Bill Kurtis with an episode titled Child Prostitution. The informed narrator discussed that the reason for the hordes of children that were out on the streets prostituting themselves was due to childhood sexual abuse. I remember one of the interviewees said that she ran away from a crazy home, one where the grandfather had raped grandmother, daughter, the nieces and her. I don’t know, perhaps it can be a poem to share with a kid maybe to give insight that things happen. To open up avenues to discussion should something happen. It is a hard thing for a child to talk about. Excerpts of the poem is on the menu labelled “On the Side”. I think you’ll find it interesting.