Welcome

Hello,

Welcome to my blog.

I'm a survivor of childhood abuse and am writing this blog to help me heal and maybe help other people going through similar things or help those working with abused children and adults have an insight into what I went through.

My blog comes with "trigger warnings". A trigger warning is to show there may be content which is upsetting to other survivors or may cause them to have flashbacks. Survivors please remember self care, http://ptsd.about.com/od/selfhelp/qt/Self-Care.htm and ensure you are safe to read on.

As a survivor I have PTSD and some dissociation, along with depression and anxiety.

Dissociation can be as mild as having small episodes of feeling disconnected from the real world to having "multiple personalities". My level of dissociation is having a "little". This is my "inner child", the part of me who broke away during the abuse in childhood. It is a coping mechanism for the harshest parts of the abuse I went through and helped me survive. 

My little is about 9-10 years old and a girl. She often comes out when I feel scared or triggered by something. My healing process is to work through things and make her feel safe and protected and loved. This is something she didn't have as a child but is something I can now give her and hopefully it will give me the same so I can move forward and start becoming a thriver. She may post occassionally so say hello, I will post a note if this happens.

The different stages of healing I'm going through are moving from victim to survivor to thriver. A tactic I picked up from the charity HAVOCA, their website is here http://www.havoca.org/HAVOCA_home.htm with the laid out table showing the journey from victim to survivor to thriver. It might help you, it might not, it does show to non survivors how we can move through the healing process from the pain to something positive. I have moved on from victim to survivor, it has taken about 3-4yrs but I am happy that I've taken the time to heal. I'm not all the way there and fall back often, but each little step forward is an achievement I can work on and work through to ensure I have the power over my life now and those who abused me no longer have that.

I will also use this blog to talk about things in society and the news which affect me. People keep telling me I survived for a reason so I want to use that for a positive and maybe give those working with children today the courage to speak out if they feel something is wrong with a childs situation. My opinions on this are my own, coming from the current place I am at in my healing.

I'll also be discussing therapy and how I use that to heal, being unemployed and hopefully moving into work and how being a survivor affects me in everyday life.

Thanks for reading through and hopefully you'll enjoy my blog,

Yours

Iliana 

p.s. All photo's on the site are be myself and available for purchase as a framed print, please email for details.