Letter to the Editor and a thought
Well, I did it again. I wrote a letter about the sentencing of Fr. Mc Bride, as reported in Friday's Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, US of A. In a postscript I thanked the editor Racquel Chatmon for her help in getting me past the whole "last name" issue surrounding the publication of my letter from last week. The way I see it, she showed concern for me by double checking that I was ok with the publication, and she showed her professionalism when she explained the newspaper's policy against publishing anonymous letters. I had to face the fact that I if I choose to speak out, well, it's called out for a reason. 
The letter from last week will be in the paper tomorrow, Tuesday, 1 July. Again, if anyone is in their publication area and can get a copy of the paper, please PM me.
You know what else I noticed in this whole business? The world has a lot of good people. We come here because we need a safe place to find people we can trust. Some of us have turned for help from an abuse experience to receive another abusive experience. Coming from that kind of background, it's hard for us to see how much good there really is.
But here's a woman, Racquel, doing a job at a newspaper. She sticks to her principles and insists that people looking for a pulpit own up to their own opinions, but she also takes the time to be sure I'm not hurting myself by allowing the letter to go out with my name on it. She has no idea who I am, and unless she found time to come here and surf the site, she has no clue what my sexual abuse history is. She's just doing her job, with a respect for a fellow human being.
It occurs to me that in more ways than one, we beat the odds. Although abuse is far too common, the odds are against any one person being victimized. Unfortunately for us, against the odds, we each came up with the short, shitty end of that stick. I get the feeling in my own case, with 26 years of denial and avoidance, that on any one day, the odds are against starting recovery. Yet I did, as each of you have.
Maybe now it's time to play the odds a little bit. Stretch a little bit, taking a chance that something could go wrong, but recognizing that it probably won't happen. Shed a little irrational fear. I'm not talking about disclosing my abuse to everyone I meet, or even to anyone else right now. For quite a while I had been considering how to tell the very people that I did tell this weekend. But maybe I can be a little less suspicious of the people around me, realizing that there are a lot more like Racquel Chatmon and a lot fewer like that perp than my irrational fears ever let me recognize. Some of them might turn out to be as nice as you guys!
Thanks,
Joe
The letter from last week will be in the paper tomorrow, Tuesday, 1 July. Again, if anyone is in their publication area and can get a copy of the paper, please PM me.
You know what else I noticed in this whole business? The world has a lot of good people. We come here because we need a safe place to find people we can trust. Some of us have turned for help from an abuse experience to receive another abusive experience. Coming from that kind of background, it's hard for us to see how much good there really is.
But here's a woman, Racquel, doing a job at a newspaper. She sticks to her principles and insists that people looking for a pulpit own up to their own opinions, but she also takes the time to be sure I'm not hurting myself by allowing the letter to go out with my name on it. She has no idea who I am, and unless she found time to come here and surf the site, she has no clue what my sexual abuse history is. She's just doing her job, with a respect for a fellow human being.
It occurs to me that in more ways than one, we beat the odds. Although abuse is far too common, the odds are against any one person being victimized. Unfortunately for us, against the odds, we each came up with the short, shitty end of that stick. I get the feeling in my own case, with 26 years of denial and avoidance, that on any one day, the odds are against starting recovery. Yet I did, as each of you have.
Maybe now it's time to play the odds a little bit. Stretch a little bit, taking a chance that something could go wrong, but recognizing that it probably won't happen. Shed a little irrational fear. I'm not talking about disclosing my abuse to everyone I meet, or even to anyone else right now. For quite a while I had been considering how to tell the very people that I did tell this weekend. But maybe I can be a little less suspicious of the people around me, realizing that there are a lot more like Racquel Chatmon and a lot fewer like that perp than my irrational fears ever let me recognize. Some of them might turn out to be as nice as you guys!
Thanks,
Joe
