I’m on the Radio on February 20 – And Other News Items

The Infinite Mind Conference was a blast. I’ve never been in a room with 300 people, most of whom were multiple. I’ll write more about it later.

The only bad thing about it was that my sister-in-law, who I have known for fifty years, died while I was flying home. I immediately left to be with the family for the memorial service. I’m very sad and not feeling up to writing a whole post, but I have gathered some news items.

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I’m going to be interviewed on the radio on Wednesday Feb 20 at 5 PM Pacific time! It will be 90 minutes. I’d love if some of you tuned in so I could imagine friendly ears as I talked. If you cannot make it, no biggie – all shows are archived.

Go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/NAASCA and click on number 3 in the box below the description. Then click anywhere on the description. The show starts with an ad, then some music, and then the interviewer explains the series and makes the introduction.

Two people have already been interviewed: Ellen Lacter, a therapist who works with both children and adult survivors and Kim Kubal, an RA survivor. To listen, go to the bottom of the page and click through the numbers until you find the archived show you want. Ellen’s website is http://endritualabuse.org/ and Kim’s is https://kimkubal.com/your-strength-to-heal-healing-from-trauma/

It would be great if some of you would also like to be interviewed – it’s such a great way to share your story, educate people about RA, and/or give them resources. If you are interested, write to Bill Murray and tell him you heard about the series on my blog. You can reach him at support@blogtalkradio.com

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Please consider helping with gathering data for a PhD thesis on ritual abuse survivors’ experiences with social media. I took the survey yesterday. It wasn’t triggering to me, and it made me grateful for the sense of community the Internet gives me.

By the way, Izzy’s Promise is Scotland’s foremost resource.

“My name is Joseph Lumbasi, the manager for Izzy’s Promise http://www.izzyspromise.org.uk and currently a PhD Student at the University of Dundee, School of Social Work and Education.

“To participate in this research please copy and paste this link into your browser [do not click the link please] https://dundee.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/views-and-experiences-of-self-identified-ra-survivors-on-t-4

“Please help me by completing and circulating the survey to your networks.”

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March 5 is Dissociative Identity Disorder Awareness Day. You are invited to celebrate it by explaining to somebody what DID is and what it isn’t. Certainly it is nothing like what is depicted on television! You can also explain to your insiders. There will in all probability littles listening in, so it’s good to keep your language smple.

Power to the Plurals has a free poster. https://powertotheplurals.com/2019/02/15/free-poster-for-dissociative-identity-disorder-awareness-day/ You can print it on 8 1/2 by 11 paper. (A4 paper is what most of the rest of the world uses; it is about 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 inches.)

There is also a lovely ribbon available. Read about it at http://www.copingincrazyville.com/index/table-of-contents/didmpd-awareness-ribbon-links-and-info/ Read still more at: http://traumadissociation.com/awareness

And here is a blog entry I liked https://www.discussingdissociation.com/2018/03/dissociative-identity-disorder-awareness-day-march-5/

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Power to the Plurals is planning an online conference for March 28 – April 1. If you would like to participate, let me know and I will pass along your message (it’s not officially announced, so there is no formal contact information published.)

 

Feeling “Less Than”

* Detailed instructions for making comments are in “News Items.”

* Looking for people who have been impregnated in a cult setting and lost their child through forced abortion, sacrifice, or forced adoption for submissions for an anthology I hope to put together. Even if you have not been abused this way, could you spread the word and tell all your survivor friends and therapists or pastors about the project? They can write me at rahome@ra-info.org for more information. Thank you so much!

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I’m near the end of a two-week trip to visit my kids and attend my high school reunion, which was earlier this week. I felt a little awkward at the reunion because every one seemed to remember me and I didn’t recognize some people. When I learned their names, I didn’t remember them from high school, either.

Outside of that, I was pretty comfortable because at the last reunion I had told everybody (in one of those tell us-what-have-you-been-doing meetings) about my RA background. It went pretty well. Some women were sort of clueless, but nobody thought I was making things up or was crazy or evil. This time, although I didn’t refer to it often, I felt okay mentioning it when it was appropriate and didn’t have butterflies in my stomach, not even once.

The catch-up group was the last meeting of the day. I was next to last to talk. All those women were doing so much, accomplishing so much! They seemed to have so much energy, such great organizational skills, and so much creativity. I began to feel more and more inferior. I thought about the number of projects I have on the back burner and how little I get done. I felt myself getting smaller and smaller as each woman described her life.

Finally I pulled myself together and thought, “Taking care of my body is a half-time job in itself. Besides, it is natural to slow down as you age. It is unrealistic to think you can do all you did even ten years ago.” Of course we all were the same age, so that didn’t explain much.

Then I thought, “Anything I do takes a lot of effort because it always brings up my own history and issues. I am wounded. Whatever I do, I must fight the old tapes that I will fail, I will never do anything right, I am helpless, and the situation is hopeless.” I know these things are not true now but I still have to spend precious energy dealing with them.

“And everybody else with a ritual abuse history is wounded. That’s why there are so few organizations, so few grass-roots movements. It takes so much courage to fight the lies and threats we were made to believe and to actually do anything for ourselves and for our community.” I felt a little better.

I realized that our need is great and our resources are few. Our perpetrators and oppressors are so very powerful. But you know, I, and thousands of other survivors, keep on doing things for ourselves and others. We may not do as much as we would like to, but we do what we can…over and over again.

Then I was honest and said what I had been thinking, even though it was scary to be so vulnerable. I had some perspective and no longer felt less than all the others in that room. I felt I was real and that I was sharing the real me. No more hiding behind a curtain of silence!

In writing this, I realize that I see people, today, who are moving mountains, and they make my heart sing. I think they are amazing and I cheer them on. In turn, there are people who think I do amazing things. Maybe they are deluded or maybe it’s just that I was trained to have no confidence in myself. Practically speaking, it doesn’t matter. I am just going to continue doing as much as I can. And that is enough.

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UPCOMING HOLIDAYS

October

10/13 Backwards Halloween
10/24 Full Moon
10/31 Halloween/Samhain/All Hallow’s Eve/ Hallomas/ All Souls Day/Start of the Celtic new year.
November

11/1 All Saints’ Day
11/22 US Thanksgiving
11/23 Full Moon
December
12/21 Yule/Winter Solstice
12/22 Full Moon
12/24 Christmas Eve
12/25 Christmas Day
12/31 New Year’s Eve

Dates important to Neo-Nazi groups

10/12 Hitler’s half birthday
10/15 Death of Goering
10/16 Death of Rosenburg
11/9 Kristallnacht
(Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lamas, Halloween, the solstices and the equinoxes)

 

The Awareness Center

Upcoming Holidays
August
information on August holidays https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/august-ritual-dates/
8/1 Lamas/Lughnasadh
8/7 Full Moon
8/7 Partial lunar eclipse: visible in most of Europe, most of Asia, Australia, Africa, and eastern South America.
8/21 Total solar eclipse: totality visible in parts of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina; partially visible in other parts of the United States, Canada, Central America, northern South America, western Europe, and western Africa.
September
9/4 S Labor Day
9/6 Full Moon
9/5 – 9/7 Marriage to the Beast (Satan)
9/7 Feast of the Beast
9/20 – 9/21 Midnight Host
9/22 Fall Equinox
9/29 Michaelmas (?)
October
10/5 Full Moon
10/13 Backwards Halloween
10/13 Friday the Thirteenth
10/22 – 10/29 Preparation for All Hallows’ Eve
1
0/31 Halloween/Samhain/All Hallows Eve/
Hallowmas/All Souls’ Day/Start of the Celtic new year, the “dark” half of the year
Important dates in Nazi groups
7/29 Hitler proclaimed leader of the Nazi party
9/1 Start of WW2
9/17 Hitler’s alternate half-birthday
10/16 N Death of Rosenburg
10/19 Death of Goering
10/20 Hitler’s half-birthday
.

The Awareness Center

Back in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, there were many very good organizations devoted to ritual abuse resources and healing. Many of them folded after a few years. The WayBack Machine only started archiving websites in 1996 and it didn’t really get going until 2000. Some website owners specifically asked that their material not be archived or, when they took down their webpages, asked to have the material removed from the archives. I was very saddened because I thought that information was lost forever.

You saw how excited I was when svali returned to the web and posted all her past writings and promised new articles. Now I have found another treasure.

The Awareness Center was a project of the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA). It served as a clearinghouse of information, resources, support, and advocacy and was on the net for fifteen years – from April 30, 1999 to April 30, 2014.

Although the website disappeared, JCASA’s founder, Vicki Polin, collected the finished webpages and put them in blog form. You can find them at http://theawarenesscenter.blogspot.com.

Jewish communities, like all persecuted groups, are very silent about sexual abuse and assault. They do not want to give their enemies any information that could be used to discriminate against them and persecute them. Although there are Jewish cults that practice Satanic ritual abuse, this secret is held very, very tightly, for fear of reactivating the “Blood Libel.” This centuries-old myth claims that Jews kill babies and use their blood as an ingredient in the wafers that are used in the most holy part of Catholic masses. For centuries the “Blood Libel” was used as an excuse for pogroms.

Of the major Jewish branches, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, the Orthodox branch is most active in its efforts to keep all information about abuse within the community. People who say that they suspect abuse are told to talk to a rabbi, who will forbid that person from going to the police. If somebody does talk to the police, they and their families are shunned and verbally abused. People have lost their jobs and been banned from their synagogue. Their children have been expelled from school. Even women who have been raped as adults are shunned if the assault becomes known.

I have known only a very few Jewish survivors. Of these few, most were abused by non-Jewish groups, usually Neo-Nazi groups who wanted a Jewish child to use as a scapegoat. I can only think of three survivors of Jewish ritual abuse within the family – three in twenty-eight years! And between people I met in person and those I corresponded with by e-mail, I must have met over 2,000 survivors. Of course, many were focused on healing in the present and did not share much of their past with me, so the number may be a lot higher.

Back to the Awareness Center Blog. If you scroll down on any page, underneath “popular pages” you will find the blog archives, which start at May of 1970. Obviously that was not a 1970 blog entry; Vicki Polin must have filed information or kept it in a diary.

At http://theawarenesscenter.blogspot.com/2001/01/articles-written-by-awareness-center.html there is an index with articles grouped under the topics: community issues, clergy abuse, clinical (issues), cults and missionaries, general, family members of sex offenders, holidays, legal, offenders, parenting issues, rabbis, survivors of childhood abuse, and survivors of sexual assault. It includes space for articles planned for the future as well as those already written. Unfortunately, links to a couple of really interesting entries lead to a celebrity gossip page: https://www.axs.com/. I wonder how that happened.

It took an incredible amount of courage for Vicki to create first the webpage and then the blog. Every Jewish survivor deserves to know that this blog exists, for the knowledge of its existence will challenge the feeling of being the only one.

Can I ask a favor of all of you?

Will you tell every Jewish survivor you may know about this resource? And can you tell all the other survivors you know about the blog and ask them to tell their survivor friends to spread the word. Here is a sample paragraph for you to copy if you wish. “Could you tell all your survivor friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish, about this blog? It has information and resources about sexual assault in the Orthodox community. http://theawarenesscenter.blogspot.com. Wide distribution about its existence will ensure that it will reach many Jewish survivors and lessen the burden of feeling that they are the only one who has suffered like this.”

Thank you so much!!