joyful heart
Marisca Hargitay, the actress who plays Detective Olivia Benson on NBC’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, has a sexual abuse/assault survivors support foundation The Joyful Heart. The youth friendly website is rich with information. If you look under “teens” there are several self-help, other-help, and stay-safe pages. And they have a program for survivors to go to Hawaii and swim with dolphins!
Strong at the Heart is listed and linked on their home page with a very nice write up. Thank you!
The Joyful Heart site is graphically beautiful, with the sound of water in the background, but it takes a while to load.
wikipedia revisted
Whoa! I just got an education in Wikipedialand. My son Ben and I were Skyping (he lives nine time zones away) when he went to Tony’s Wikipedia article and found that in the last few days it’s been hijacked.
Here’s what I learned about Wikipedia. Anyone can post an article. And anyone who wants can edit that article in any way. I guess this works as an exchange of ideas if a group of historians are contributing information on their speciality. Or if micro biologists are comparing research. But when something political comes up it can become a battlefield of opposing ideas.
What is happening to the article and book list is that some pedophile apologists jumped on it and edited it to a totally different end. That started a posting frenzy. Tony’s been posting back. The article changes several times a day. But I can’t really recommend it anymore. I’ve taken down the link on the my blog post below, and added a cautionary note there, too.
If Tony sends me a link to his original article, which was excellent, I’ll post it here for you.
So if you are curious, go to the Wickipedia site, but bear in mind what’s going on. You can look at the history of the article to see how it is all unfolding. Do understand that it is no longer “survivor safe.” Some of the “consensual” adult/child sex stuff is creepy from the viewpoint of someone who knows what the long term damage can look like.
Marj (aka Thriver) said,
June 14, 2006 @ 12:37 pm
Hello, Carolyn! Just a friendly reminder–don’t forget, the deadline to submit your blog for the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse is Thursday, June 15 (for the Monday, June 19 debut). Submission instructions are at my blog, http://survivorscanthrive.blogspot.com or www.blogcarnival.com (use keywords “child abuse” to search for our carnival). Thanks!
Molly said,
June 26, 2006 @ 10:38 am
I’m a little worried about those survivors going off to Hawaii to swim with dolphins: dolphins have been known to be sexually aggressive toward humans. It would be too bad to go on a healing adventure like that and get triggered all over again by a large fish. I’m sure someone has told Marisca Hargitay this by now, but if you’re thinking of doing something like this for your own healing - and it sounds wonderful to me - make sure to ask the handlers about the phenomenon. Maybe the females aren’t as aggressive.
Hey, Carolyn - great weblog!
xox Molly
Carolyn Lehman said,
June 26, 2006 @ 5:46 pm
Wow, Molly, I never thought of this angle.
Swimming with dolphins has always appealed to my romantic and nature loving self but every time I’ve had the opportunity the set up has seemed so commercial that I’ve made other choices. For me it is the thought of the dolphins having to pose with tourists to have their pictures taken–every day, day in and day out–that seems kind of sad. Under the right circumstances I imagine it would be an ecstatic experience.
I haven’t heard of anyone being traumatized by a sexually agressive fish!
I did pet white Amazonian Dolphins at the old Steinhardt Aquarium when my uncle was the vet there. The dolphins seemed starved for attention or stimulation of any kind. They came up to the surface of the tank and wanted to be touched and also liked to have classical music on. They were kept in a small, dark painted tank. It was heartbreaking, actually.