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Do you know what it takes to recover from childhood sexual trauma? I don’t, because I’m not there yet. 

Last month, just shy of two years into my weekly therapy sessions, I asked my counselor how much longer it would take until I got better. When she informed me that healing is a lifelong process, my heart split open. I felt like I’d been handed a life sentence.

Of all the causes I’m willing to take a stand for, and there are a lot, I don’t want this to be one of them. I want to be out there saving dolphins from discarded fishing nets or teaching overweight kids how to eat healthfully.

Child sexual abuse is too ugly, or as media folk say, the polar opposite of a sexy issue. It’s horrid, and I didn’t ask for it. But it’s one of the heavier cards I’ve been dealt.

How children are treated and what they learn early on forms their thinking and sets their standards for life. For example, take learning a second language. It’s more than a skill or additional avenue for communicating. Studies show that “bilingualism exerts systematic effects on cognitive performance” in children and even protects “bilingual older adults against the decline of those processes in older age.” The brain develops differently in the heads of bilingual children.

I've seen this for myself. By the time I was 10, I had spent at least half my life in Germany. I wasn’t taught a lot of German in my American schools, but the German vocabulary I have now remains from those elementary days, not the four subsequent years of high school German class, of which I retained nada (or nichts, but now I’m just showing off).

I can count as quickly in Deutsch as I can in English. Meanwhile, I’ve been studying French for the past few years and still can’t count past 30. German, or at least German numbers and colors, are tattooed inside my brain forever.

And so are feelings of insecurity, guilt and abandonment. If I can’t remove from my being the bit of German I learned over 25 years ago, how will I ever recover from not being protected as a child? It stares at me in the mirror like my ears, nose and teeth. I see it in every child and adult I meet, wondering if he or she endured this too.

I lost something before I was old enough to know I ever had it – a whole self. On days when terrible things headline the news, I’m not sure I’ll ever have it back.

I write about this because I hadn’t told anyone about what had happened to me when I was little. It took me decades to find my voice. Some kids are braver than I was then, and they speak up. Or the crimes are discovered as they’re occurring.

Either way it’s the responsibility of adults to prevent it, or if not, take charge and hold the offenders accountable. The Penn State mess is inexcusable, unforgivable. It turns the character & community building of sports into a farce.

Some days I forget there's anything to be thankful for. But little things, like this column by Eric Wilbur of the Boston Globe, remind me there's a lot of people on my team. I'm thankful for that.

Knowing Who Your Friends Are

A few weeks ago at Skipper's while chatting up a friend, I glanced a passing stranger and whispered, "Ooh, that's one of my Facebook friends!"

My friend, a non-Facebooker, asked: "How do you know him?"

"I have no idea. But his face is so familiar to me from his photos."

I am one of those people who has no idea who hundreds of my Facebook friends are. As a media person, it was bound to happen, but some days I don't feel great about it. For the most part, as lovely and like-minded as my FBF's might be (having found each other through groups like WMNF, Veterans for Peace, and Jim Hightower), they are not friends I can call up on a Tuesday morning when I'm stuck sick in bed, bored out of my mind and in need of chatting.

And though it's been said that social networking and the internet are making us less sociable, I continue to believe these tools have the opposite effect.

For example, at work the other day, my relatively new co-worker and friend (and FB friend) Emily excitedly told me we have a couple of FBF's in common, including Mirko Soko, whom she knows of through her boyfriend James. She quickly relayed the story of how James met Mirko online when he bought his extra Wilco ticket. They ended up going to see the show together.

FB keeps us in touch: my former AmeriCorps team members Rosalinda and Amber earlier this year

In Mirko's (truncated) words:

Then we found each other here on FB and somewhat kept in touch. Then one night late I saw an update from him that he was gonna pick up a set of sofas (later found out he got them through freecycle) anyways he needed some help and I was available so I helped him out so that's pretty much the story. He seems like a good guy. It's funny 'cos I realize that I'm perhaps friendlier online that I'm in person sometimes ;)

"How do you know him?" Emily asked me.

"Uh, I don't know. I don't think I've ever met him before."

I sent Mirko a message on FB to confirm that we indeed have not ever met. He agreed, though noted perhaps we've seen each other in passing at the radio station or at a show. He seems like someone I should be friends with.

Me and Ronny with our traveling troubadour FB friend Ramsay Midwood

Character Counts

Near the end of my fifth-grade year, my teacher printed four A's on the black board, depicting her top student's grades for every semester of that year. Then she wrote C, C, B, A and singled out the student who had gone from average to outstanding after working hard over the last nine months.

I was reminded of that story after I heard of the passing of Robert C. Byrd, the senator from West Virginia, who started out as a Klansman but ended up a leader for all Americans. He voted in favor of the war in Viet Nam but learned from his mistake, and vehemently opposed the current wars. He asked questions and made a fuss when others fell in line.

I'm also reminded of the time that same elementary school class turned against one of my friends. The chairs and desks of our music class were divided into two sections, and every student moved over to the other side of the room to avoid (and further target) this poor girl I'll call M, beckoning me to join them.

I sat at M's side as she lowered her head into her hands and cried. Every set of eyes in the class stared her down. (I think her crime might have been wearing bell bottoms in the late 80's.) For whatever reason the teacher was nowhere to be found, and when she returned she didn't question why the room was offsides.

M's parents may have dressed their daughter like Jan Brady, but M was, until that day, well liked. The following day everyone liked her again as if nothing had happened.

It's difficult to stand out from the crowd, and I used to (naively) think that growing up made people bolder, strengthened their character. But few people ever acquire such strength. Senator Byrd was a model for us all.