Wednesday 24 October 2012

Why The Blog

ACOA technically means Adult Child(ren) of Alcoholics.  I am morphing it to my own meaning for the purposes of this blog.  Adult Children of Abuse.  And my range of abuse is quite inclusive.  Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect.  For the purpose of this blog, when I speak about abuse, I mean abuse that happened when the person was a child, and for the most part, for a long period of time.  I am not denying that one time abuse, especially in the instance of sexual abuse, is not devastating.  And lots of what I write here will also apply to situations such as that.  But generally, I will be referring to abuse as prolonged dysfunction in a family situation, that significantly molds the character of a person.

I am no 'expert' in any of the areas that this blog may dare to go.  I have no degrees or doctorates in psychology, counseling or psychiatry.  In fact it took me about seven tries to even spell that last one.  But I have experience.  I am an ACOA.  I don't feel the need to go into details about that, suffice it to say I have first hand knowledge of how some of this plays out.

If I use any technical jargon it will have come from books I've read on the subject in my 'free time'.  I am not likely to remember which book exactly and may even mess up the technical jargon.

The entire purpose of this blog is to give people hope.  The most important thing you need to know about me is that I know that the true source of this hope is in and comes from Jesus.

This is my favorite scene from the movie 'Shrek'.

Shrek: For your information, there's a lot more to ogres than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example... uh... ogres are like onions!
[holds up an onion, which Donkey sniffs]
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes... No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave 'em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs...
Shrek: [peels an onion] NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
[walks off]
Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!
Shrek: I don't care what everyone else likes! Ogres are not like cakes.
 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/quotes)

ACOAs are like ogres, they have layers like onions.  Thick layers, thin layers, layers upon layers.  Their layers are not like cakes.  The layers can be coarse, partially missing and are quite often rotten beneath a deceivingly smooth outer shell.

This is not to say that people who have not experienced abuse have perfect lives or are not complicated, by any means.  Every human being on the face of the planet is complex.  We were created to be.  Realistically in this day and age, in this fallen world, I would guess that the percentage of people who have not experienced some sort of soul damaging abuse is probably lower than that of people who have been abused.  More plainly put, almost everyone has been subject to some form of abuse at some point in their lives.  But again, in this blog, I will be mostly addressing prolonged, childhood abuse.

And I think I'll leave that there.  I want to keep these short and to the point as best I can.  So, if something seems incomplete, please let me know and I will do my best to modify.





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