child abuse awareness

When secrets take over your life

Keeping secrets gives them power. Here’s why I stopped.

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The whole reason I started a healing journey was because I was tired of lying about my life. I didn’t want to keep making up stories, then bursting into tears whenever I talked about my past.

I was tired of running from the truth, denying my past experiences & feeling jealous of all my friends with “normal” lives. I just wanted to be ok with myself and my life.

Last year when I went to the Texas Book Festival I watched an interview with Adrienne Brodeur and she said the following words which I furiously wrote in my notebook and have stuck with me ever since.

“When you deny and oppress secrets, that gives them more power. When you shine a light on it, you’re able to get over the fear and surpass it.”

I realized that by running from the truth in my life, hiding my past and keeping secrets, I gave them power. That meant anyone who “found out” about my life growing up in The Children of God cult could immediately use that information against me somehow, and people did.

I became convinced that somehow I did something wrong, I should be ashamed, I should hide my life and my past, and everyone was so much better than me.

Turns out that by hiding my past I gave that past power over me. And when others found out my “secret”, that gave THEM power over me. Not anymore. I was over it.

I no longer wanted to give away my power. I wanted to face it head on. Sure, it would be hard. Sure it’ll be uncomfortable, and sure, I’ll make a ton of mistakes along the way. But getting over my fear of talking about my past was worth it.

When you keep deep secrets, things will continually happen to get the attention of that secret. Your life will not be yours until you address the thing you fear the most.

It’s only been a little over a year since I first started openly talking about my life, and wow, what a relief it’s been. I’ve made deeper connections with others & myself. Slowly but surely I made order out of chaos and meaning out of pain. Sure, it felt vulnerable and exposing at first, but it was totally worth it.

If there’s a secret you’ve been keeping, and things continuously keep happening that force you to keep looking at that secret, consider facing it head on. Accept all possibilities of what could happen when you face it, and know that the outcome will most likely be nothing that you expect.

When you speak from the heart, when you tell a deeply personal story and share your journey, no matter how fearful you are or how scary it is, it will resonate with someone, and people will respect you for it.

I know because it happened to me.

Society's skewed version of sexuality

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I'm seeing a lot of comments on social media that are, surprisingly but also maybe not surprisingly--almost mocking the fact that Netflix was indicted by the grand jury in Texas for the lewd depiction of children in the show Cuties. People are saying it's not that bad, this is all due to conspiracy theorists and getting blown way out of proportion.

Interestingly enough, some of these people are the ones criticizing me and others for having nudity on their page. Let's just pause for a sec at these ridiculous contradictions and the hypocrisy of it all...

Newsflash! The sexualization of children is NOT normal. Images and film depicting "cute kids" in "cute outfits", shaking their butts and twerking on stage at 9 years old is NOT ok and there are NO circumstances where this is appropriate.

Guess what is normal? A 37 yr old woman who knows herself, doesn't stand for people's bullshit, who is proud of & celebrates her body in its natural form, who has gone through horrendous amounts of sexual abuse and trauma, only to come out the other side perfectly healed with a healthy sense of sexuality, showing off her body in an artful way on social media, just the way she wants to. Shocking? Maybe to some, but certainly not wrong.

I can't believe the state of the world sometimes and its skewed view on sexuality. How anyone can think that a grown woman posting beautiful photos on social media is not OK, while a disgusting show on Netflix with underage twerking children is fine, is beyond me. Something normal and natural like images of women showing their bodies or nursing their children, are censored online all the time, while the sexualization of children remains all over TV and Social Media. Guys, we can do so much better as a nation and so much better together.

Your reaction to other people's actions and what they're doing with their lives says far more about you than the other person. I would suggest we all examine our morals, our beliefs, and our thoughts to see where they are coming from and how they are being influenced. What you find may surprise you.

#nudaisnormal #nakedinnature #sereneearth #skewedperspective #cancelcuties #childabuseawareness #bodybyhiking

Human Trafficking...the real pandemic

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I’ve seen many people on Social Media with such strong views about what’s going on in today’s world. Everyone seems to believe something different regarding COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, politics, vaccines, and all the conspiracy theories going around.

I do admire the people who are using their platform to speak out on things that are going on in the world, which is something I’m choosing to do more. One of the things I've been particularly interested in is human trafficking, and I'm happy that this topic is getting more attention.

In doing some research I found the following statistics:

▪️In 2020 alone, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children experienced a 90.46% increase in reports of missing and exploited children, compared to the same time frame in 2019. Think about that...that’s almost a 100% increase, and there’s still five more months to go in 2020!

▪️In 2019, the NCMEC assisted with more than 29,000 cases of missing children. These case types were:

▫️91% endangered runaways
▫️4% family abductions
▫️4% critically missing young adults, ages 18 to 20
▫️Less than 1% nonfamily abductions
▫️1%, injured or otherwise missing children

▪️ From the 26,300 runaways reported to NCMEC in 2019, 1 in 6 were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Now think of that number and multiply it by 90...and we have hit the stats for the 1st seven months of 2020. That is an astronomical amount.

Conspiracy theories or not, human trafficking--in particular child exploitation---is happening. Whether you are Republican, Democrat, somewhere in the middle or not political at all, these stats should shock, concern, and horrify you. This is the real pandemic, folks. This is what we should be talking about and what needs attention.

Something is going on that is hurting our kids. We need to pay attention, question and be willing to look deeper into uncomfortable issues. Now is not the time to keep following the masses. Do research for yourself, find out what’s going on & what you can do about it.

We may think our voice doesn’t make a difference, but it does. The more we continue to shine a light on things that are ignored, collectively we can exact change.