MK forum

Well said, Paul. I agree. Thanks for your post.

I just read an article that makes my blood boil. A father in Florida is trying to keep his daughter from her half brother. The father must have took the child out of state in fear for her and now the mum has full custody and the father has no rights to see her. The half brother raped her when he was 12 and is now 17 and was never to be with her again but he is in the same home. There is no doubt he raped her and the courts know this unequivocal, the mum admits it as well. What is the judge thinking, no need for an answer. Full stop.

Aussie I just read "what love is" on page one and am very thankful for the love I feel here on FE. Thank you and don't put the chainsaw down.

Why do we keep talking about child abuse on this site? Why is childhood trauma such a big deal to us?

Tonight I listened to a TED talk that discusses some very significant ways in which adverse childhood experiences affect a person's health and wellbeing for the rest of their lives.

Please take 15 minutes to listen to this pediatrician speak about the long-term consequences of childhood trauma.

And then think about the MKs you know who were abused, abandoned, and terrorized. Those who lived on a daily (nightly) basis with a heightened fight-or-flight response.

How many MK adults have physical and mental health concerns like the ones this physician discusses?

This is why I keep calling attention to the things that happened to NTM MKs in the 1950s-1980s. The abuses those children suffered DO still matter today. Many of those MKs still deal with the consequences on a daily (nightly) basis.

Don't think it doesn't matter anymore. Don't tell yourself it's all in the past.

Listen to this video. Please.

http://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_h ... e#t-132039

It's a matter of statistical relativity, I think.

Given that we were brought up in environments where some of the major adverse health factors were not present, we should statistically have a higher than average good long term health expectancy. i.e. very few MKs have parents who are alcoholics, smoke e.t.c., so this should have a positive influence on statistical outcomes. And even economically I would suggest that an MK on the field was not raised in abject poverty, like many would be in the lower socio economic in home countries, taking into consideration we were living in the third world and some luxuries were not available.
But in reaching out to other MKs, what I've found is significant poor health outcomes that statistically are higher than they should be.
These are manifested in both mental and physical health. While children in many societies are exposed to stresses, such as those living in conflict zones, I wonder if the toll of living in a lie is much higher than previously thought.

Let me explain. Most of us went through the smiling prayercard routine and being wheeled around donors, supporters and churches, portrayed as a happy family. When we knew that on the field it was a totally different situation than being portrayed and yet we had to keep the lie going for "the work". And herein, I suggest, lies the problem. Reality was totally screwed up and there was little escape from it, till (if one was lucky) one graduated and set off on ones own (although how many of us re entered "the work" or never left mentally because we hadn't been given the tools to do so?).
A child growing up in a warzone is under daily stress but we were in some sort of "spiritual warzone" (so we were told over and over) where it was hard to tell which side the enemy were actually on. And it went on for year after year and is probably still going on (has anything really changed in NTM or other missions?).

The good doctor is right, the natural reaction to meeting a bear is the flight or fight response, but many of us had the bear living under the same roof. And when we drank from the well, what exactly was being put into it? Because it sure seems to have had longterm toxic effects.

Thanks Raz, it is a thought provoking clip and well worth discussing in light of our situation.

Currently I'm listening to the autobiography of Anne Franks sister-in-law. In the early stage of the story, she relates how she was sexually molested by a man boarding in the same residence and that nothing was done about him, despite him being exposed/caught because he was a long term guest and the writers family were more transient.
The bit in the account that struck me was when the author said that despite the horrors of Auschwitz (I haven't got to that part yet), what really effected her that the offender was allowed to go free because people choose to do nothing.
She also described the method of grooming and for me this was, as discussed in the poetic thread, a trigger point as I have seen/experienced this first hand, but it is only over the last couple of months that I've come to see it for what it really was, not a set of isolated strange occurrences, but a pattern of preying on children that is insidiously clever and manipulative. What the author described was the offender using an incident to get power over the victim by applying guilt and offering forgiveness by allowing perverted acts to be performed.