Blog Voices from Our Community
Read stories, updates, and reflections from artists, staff, and survivors. Here, we share the heart of Awakenings — one post at a time.
Forgive and forget. We hear these words used together so often that by the time we’re old enough to really think about what they mean,
- Essay
What do you see when you look at me? This broken, fragile vessel Of a used up fragrance That radiated Confidence from my pores Yet
- Poetry
text reads: Often, I imagined myself to be Laura Ingalls, of Little House on the Prairie, adored by her father, Charles. He wouldn’t beat his
- Book Excerpts
2015 – Happy New Year, the year I decided would be the year I told any man I felt deserved it “To go fuck themselves,”
- Journal Entry
Yes, my god, please, please fuck off. I can’t think of a better way to put it. Just fucking fuck off. Leave me alone, don’t
- Essay
“My grief lies all within; and these external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured
- Essay, Image
When I was nine, I sat, afraid, in a confession booth in the church I had been unwillingly dragged to nearly every Sunday of my
- Essay
” It’s bittersweet, this love I have for you. It mixes with the pain and creates beautiful art. So many times I wish I could
- Essay, Letter
” I did not settle for survival.” He was born weak, innocent, dependent and vulnerable just like every other human person that has ever come
- Essay
” They are breaking stereotypes by showing emotions as men, providing the strength and support a survivor needs to see. ” As a clinician working
- Essay
1. my father could lift me up and put me on his shoulders my father can’t lift me up and put me on his shoulders
- Poetry
I’m not yours you can’t make it so try as you might shoving yourself in night after night tracing your name in red against my
- Poetry
hush now don’t you cry says the father to his child his lips against hers tightly pinched let me kiss you, open up so I
- Poetry
My mother hated me the way I looked at her through my father’s pale eyes the independent insurgence of a being where she wanted a
- Poetry
As the Executive Director at the Zacharias Sexual Abuse Center, I have had the privilege of seeing firsthand just how true – and powerful –
- Article
April 1, 2012 is a date that will resonate with me for the rest of my life. My family and I had just returned from
- Journal Entry
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