One day, it came to me..."Parents, sometimes, become the 'boogey man' who they aim to protect their children from. The illusive boogie man who comes to terrify children during the night time-the reason children are given night lights-to protect them from the darkness. The boogey man-the person aiming to pick them up and place them in their vans, removing them from everything they have ever known, their comfort, their homes. The boogey man-the person who bullies them at school and makes entering the doors, daily, a walk of death plagued by shadows and shame. The boogey man, woman, parents who, on the surface appear to be so loving and kind-not to mention likable, become and exist as shadows that no night light's ray can cover. Children's lives, living with these boogey men and women, masked and outfitted in the parent costume, is torturous because they cannot wake up from them-they, the boogie man and woman, are reality!
Oftentimes, I see memes and hear sayings -"Your parents did the BEST that they could"! "They made due!" "Your parents were healing from their own traumas!" I get that. I am not diminishing anyone who has or who continues to do so. With that being said, we all have an innate compass of what right and wrong is. We have a choice to become those things we hated or choose to be "better" or "different".
A huge portion of the world population has experienced some level of trauma, and a favorable amount occurs in childhood, which is truly sad. All that I ask is that parents make conscious decisions that not pass on the trauma to their children because why some parents are so concerned with protecting their kids from being kidnapped, bullied, or assaulted outside of the home, they have to take a look in the mirror and ask "Am I robbing my child or children of....; Am I being the bully I tell my child to stand up to...Do my words and actions assault my child or children's character, emotions and thinking?"
I know far too many people who have had parents as the illusive Boogey Man. One person I came into contact with lamented that her parent was extremely abusive, mentally and physically-that the parent opened the floodgates for her to be sexually assaulted. I was made privy to another case of a young girl being abused by her mom's boyfriend-a case I had to report because of my mandatory reporter duty. Countless cases and examples exist. And, guess what, in those households, their parents were like Daedalus, a mythological character who advised his son Icarus to be cautious in his actions to protect him from death.
It is so mindboggling that parents are more concerned about the physical death rather than the slow death children live on a daily as a result of their actions.
*I do not own the rights to this video.
If you know anyone, parent or child, on either end, you have a duty to help, to serve the afflicted for the greater good by charging the person(s) responsible for the child's care to do their freaking, appointed duty or leave the children in the hands of someone who will hold the children's innocence with the care of fragility that it deserves.
Please, remember the words of Dave Pelzer, In A Child Called "It", “Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.”
The woman who lamented to me still attempts to get control of her life and herself, to create healthy boundaries. " She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.”
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
