Update on Kim Noble, Activist Artist

I check the statistics for my blog every week or so to see which posts are popular and what key words have been used in searches. The number of people reading  “Kim Noble, Activist Artist” started to climb. At first, two or three people consistently read it each day and I thought maybe I should do an update if Kim was willing. But then something really weird happened – the numbers of views increased steadily to a high of 280 on 12/14. I wrote Kim and asked her if she knew what was going on.

Then I found out that things had gotten really wierd!

I don’t know how many of you are aware of the conspiracy claims about Pizzagate. Basically, some private email of John Podesta was hacked and leaked. (Podesta is the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and champion of declassifying many CIA documents, including those on UFO’s.) People started to claim that the e-mails contained secret codes relating to child sexual abuse. “Cheese pizza” was supposed to stand for “child pornography.” A summary of this confusing conspiracy theory can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington D.C. was accused of being the center of a child sex ring. The owner and employees were harassed and received dealing with trollsdeath threats both by phone and on-line. Other business in the neighborhood were also targeted.

Kim Noble believes that somebody found my blog post and shared it with the “Pizzagate” conspiracy people, saying that she had sold one of her paintings to the owner of Comet Ping Pong. She, too, started to get badly harassed. She told me that she got 90,000 hits on her paintings’ website in one day!!!  Luckily, things have calmed way down by now.

Kim says:

“It has been strange and in the beginning very frightening. I was told by my agent, therapist and friends not to respond. I sat watching for two days and thought no they are so wrong I need to respond. I then answered or commented on every comment. Now it is quiet and people have been very supportive, thanked me and said I should be a spokes person for Pizzagate, not that I would, but the turn around and support now is amazing. One person answered that they would of preferred to learn about abuse from my paintings rather than their babysitter. What else needs to be said?”

Talk about bravery! I think the world of Kim.

P.S. Remember that we can’t all be Kim, and that we shouldn’t try. We can try to be our true selves and put ourselves out in the world as much or as little as is right for us. By being our true, real selves, not what the perpetrators taught us we were, or tried to turn us into, we make the world a more genuine, more loving place.

I Need Some Help

I had an idea for a 365-page journal. Maybe 366. On each page, it would have the date, a quote relating to abuse or healing, and perhaps also a line drawing of a flower or leaf or something else simple and from nature. I would call it “Book of Days.”

It sounded so easy! And then I started working on it and it wasn’t so easy after all.

Poking around finding quotes is fun. But when I find a fantastic one, it makes all the others look sort of dull. Now I am thinking I ought to get about 1000 and choose the best ones. My work has just tripled!

And then how do I get it published?  It would be useless as an e-book, because nobody could write in it. I doubt if anybody would want to download and print a 366-page PDF. Even if they did, the pages would float around and get lost because the book wouldn’t be bound.

These days there is such a thing as “print on demand.” You send a company a digital file of your book and they keep it on file and print the number of books you order from them. I priced a few and they turned out to be about what I wished the retail price to be. In this day and age, 366 pages is one beeeeeg book.

Some of these companies leave the marketing to you, others do the marketing (except for book signings, of course.) That brings the price way up. But I do not think it would be a good use of my time to do the marketing, which would be a half-time job, at the very least, in the beginning. Especially since I have never done it before and would probably make a large number of beginners’ mistakes.

So I’m asking for help on three fronts.

One is with the quotes. Got any inspiring lines that you are willing to share? Here are a few of my favorites so far —

It is never the child’s fault. – Anon

In all the years still to come, may your body walk as fast as the love and passion that moves you. – Catalina

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. – Leo Calvin Rosten

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break. – Shakespeare, Macbeth

The tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. – Mexican proverb

Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible. – Saint Francis of Assisi

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent; but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again. – Finn Butler

When in worry
When in doubt
Run in circles
Scream and shout.
“EEK! EEK! EEK!”
– contemporary Wiccan spell

Two is with the illustrations. Can you draw maple leaves? Daisies? Weeds?

Three is with printing advice. Have you published a book? What good choices did you make? Did you make mistakes I could learn from?

I’m open to all feedback. Even if you think this is a really dumb idea — I need to hear it.

Book Review: A Coloring Book of Healing Images for Adult Survivors of Child Abuse

You can read the introduction and order the book through http://colortoheal.com

The year ends on a high note for wonderful RA/MC books!!!

This book was a good five years in the making and it is absolutely gorgeous. The paper is really heavy, so you can use watercolor pencils or pastels as well as crayons and colored pencils. That’s inviting for adult and teens parts as well as child parts, who usually get to do all the coloring. (Not fair!)

The book is designed for all survivors of child abuse, but there are many sections that speak directly to multiplicity and ritual abuse. It’s hoped that it will tap into the immense inner strength and wisdom that survivors possess and to help make these resources recognized at a deeper level, cherished, and celebrated in all aspects of life and self.

There are seventeen chapters, each organized around a theme like safety, self-soothing, separating from the abusers, self-love, and spirituality. The chapters contain a few pages describing the theme, lists of healing ideas, and suggestions for creative activities.

Then come the images themselves, each with a self-affirmation.

The author is Ellen Lacter, who started off as an art therapist and became a clinical psychologist and Certified Play Therapist-Supervisor. She has worked with abused children and adult survivors — many of whom are survivors of ritual abuse — for over thirty years, She is a prolific writer — take a look at all the articles on her webpage. (http://endritualabuse.org/)

Two artists illustrated the book. Robin Baird Lewis has illustrated many children’s books. Her 1982 Canadian classic, Red is Best, has been in print for thirty years. She also, among other things, teaches crafts at children’s camps and paints murals. You can see a small sample of her work at http://robinbairdlewis.com/

Art was an integral part of Jen Callow’s healing process from ritual abuse. Today, she creates for self-expression and joy as well as healing and is thrilled to be able to contribute to others’ healing through this book. Jen is also a contributor to Alison Miller’s books, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control and Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse. Although she does not currently have a website, this may change in the future.

This review cries out for an illustration, so here’s a page from the chapter on Self-Love. The affirmation for the illustration:

Honoring the Gifts That Come from the Abuse That I Have Endured
Because of my abuse, I have depth, complexity, sensitivity to others, spiritual resources, and wisdom beyond my years.

Robin and Ellen gave permission for you to print out and color it if you think it would advance your healing. Enjoy!

However, I could not figure out how to do this. If you can, please tell us in the comment section. I also uploaded it to my website but I can’t figure out how to download it there, either. Can’t be good at everything, you know. Try this http://ra-info.org/color-to-heal