sexual abuse
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Some mornings it feels like my heart is its own little plot of land, stubborn and overgrown. Not a polished garden, just soil that needs attention and a woman determined to show up anyway. That’s the real work: tending what you’d rather ignore. I’ve learned that resentment grows fast if you let it. Neglect does…
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Suicide and death are such a common theme among incest survivors. You know why? It’s all murder, that’s why. I only saw my father a handful of times after that. He had chosen deceit and the battle between us was on. About six months before this illness, I’d dreamt that my father was milling about…
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Somewhere along the road, we were told that to matter, we had to harden. That softness was weakness. That to succeed, we had to compete like men, speak like men, perform like men. And in many ways, the world rewarded us when we did. But something sacred was lost. Womanhood is not a costume to…
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They always have a backstory, don’t they? Some excuse tucked into the folds of their history— a troubled childhood, a lonely adolescence, an addiction, a trauma (a trauma just like mine, funny how that works). And so the world wrings its hands. Poor man. He didn’t mean it. He was hurting. He needs help. They…
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I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you. A Jewel: I love John Eldridge of Wild at Heart ministry. I want to share one of his daily readings with you, “I love feeling happy. Absolutely love it. Who doesn’t? But my pursuit of it has sometimes gotten me into trouble. I’m pretty…
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I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you. A Jewel: Easter is tomorrow. It means a great deal to me because Father God left his residence to come into ours and meet us where we are. He took our shame, our guilt, our discouragement and lack of understanding and he wrapped it…
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I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you. A Jewel: If I were not loved by God, I wouldn’t have made it through this life. How do I know God is real? Because I first new evil. Darkness hovered in every corner of our house when I was young. If darkness were…
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I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you. A Jewel: “Teach me how to talk,” a friend honestly asked me on day. She shared that she struggled knowing how. Now, this was a friend that I spent hours talking to but I knew exactly what she meant. She wanted to speak in…
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In this land of polished smiles and hollow promises, we drape ourselves in the pretense of cherishing our children. We construct monuments of virtue, each brick laid with declarations of their importance. Yet, beneath this facade, our actions whisper truths too bitter to acknowledge. We parade our offspring as trophies, their achievements our own reflected…
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I was born into a world that seemed to shun me, a fragile vessel adrift in a sea of despair. My earliest memories are tinged with shadows, the kind that cling to your very soul, refusing to let go. Pain was my constant companion, whispering cruel nothings into my ear, convincing me of my unworthiness.…