Summer is typically my time to ‘re-group’. Either most have their hearts filled with hope and joy on vacations they are about to experience or what they’ve just experienced … or maybe it’s the overindulgence of Vitamin D from the warm summer days that lends to keep people’s spirits high… regardless, I typically have time to enjoy my own family and reconnect with the simply joys in life during the summer months.
When you listen to various dark stories, not one any worse than the other, at least two times a day the mere empathetic rage and injustice of it all can leave me mentally and spiritually exhausted.
This year, as crazy as it has been with the cancer diagnosis, surgery, radiation, and now still more waiting and doctor’s appointments to come, meeting with survivors is what has kept me sane. Even when my mind was in ‘brain fog’ because of no thyroid function the only time I felt ‘normal’ was when I was meeting with a survivor or talking to them on the phone.
What is my mission in life has also been what is saving my life. I know my mind, it would have gone to the ‘dark side’, especially finding out my cancer ‘metastasized’ and is now considered ‘metastatic’. No, it’s not easy to hear what one human is capable of doing to another…it will never become easy to listen to… but I will also never get tired of watching the life and color of hope return to a survivors face.
This morning I was going through my ‘list’ of shows we DVR’d to listen to while I got ready for work and I saw a 20/20 about a story of a 16 yr old high school girl who was ‘allegedly’ (I have to write that and cringe at the same time after having now watched the whole report) raped by an 18 yr old ‘star football player’. I saved it for when I could come home and pay full attention.
Here is a link to this story… and if you can get the chance watch it. 20/20 Behind Closed Doors Watch it with your high school kids. I’m very proud of this young woman for coming forward, blogging, and having her ‘voice’ as she said in the report (BRAVO!!!!)… I cringed as the entire high school went against her because she was ‘the new girl’. Only a few remained true to what happened that night. She was highly intoxicated and didn’t even know she had been raped. Others who witnessed the event had to tell her…and yet she is the one that is ‘at fault’ and ‘to blame’???
The reporter shared a bit of her blog (b/c of her age at the time of the event they do not share her full name so I do not know what her blog is to find it and share it…if you DO please share it with me!!!!) and what I love that she wrote is this: “We shouldn’t be telling youth ‘try not to get raped’…we should be telling them ‘not to rape’.” SO TRUE.
Why does it all come on the girl? Trust me, I have a 16 yr old and 18 yr old boy…I’m definitely doing my best to drill into their heads that they have to uphold the young girls dignity even if they don’t seem to uphold it themselves.
Again, I find myself revved up, once again itching to DO SOMETHING about this. I want to find this young woman and give her a hug and support.
We are doing more, I see it, especially with the ‘IT’S ON US’ program at colleges. Again BRAVO to them!!! So it’s not all a loss. But it is a mission never-ending.
The more we speak out the better chance we have at preventing our younger generations from suffering the same.
Now,… where is the beach?? I need some sun. 😉
Blessings
Shannon
Read more about Shannon’s journey of healing in her Memoir’s EXPOSED and REDEEMED on Amazon.