I'm New

[funkdog]

I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

I am making great progress in my recovery and am glad to have finally found a forum for this.

[angelic]

[ Hi, welcome to AS.

[Survivors sanctuary]

Welcome ...

[Lindy]

Hello and welcome to After Silence. Glad you joined us

[sisterinsurvival]

Yahoo, !
We love you, and are glad you've found AfterSilence!

[girlsnz]

I am also new. I am so glad I found this website. I have been looking for a support group and there are none close to me. The closest is about an hour away from me.

It is an answer to a prayer

[funkdog]

Thank you all for your welcome. It is hard choosing a screen name. I choose one from a little story I read on another forum.

Some guy-type buddies of my youth lived for a time in a veritable garden spot that they lovingly, if misguidedly, referred to as The Ranch. If you've ever been to the South and taken a drive down a country road, you'd have spied out in the middle of a field an old abandoned shack.

This place was an absolute hovel. I have no idea if they even paid rent; there's an excellent chance they were merely squatting. But it suited them just fine. They held huge wild parties, thinking themselves to be invisible out there. I guess they didn't believe anybody would think it curious that there were a couple hundred cars parked around this shack in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, a stranger came to their door one day. He was singularly unattractive -- very little hair covering his hideous sore-wracked skin, just generally ratty and nasty looking. But, as is often said of the unbeautiful of the world, he had a great personality. He came to be known as "Funkdog," because he was, in fact, a dog, and he was really funky.

He came around regularly, and the boys would feed him and talk to him, but no one could quite bring themselves to actually touch him. And so they started this thing of petting Funkdog with a small stick. He would come and sit at a respectful distance, I guess knowing himself to be unclean, and eagerly await being petted and scratched with his stick.

That image always just made me want to bawl, and now I think I know why.

I think Funkdog being petted with his stick is a perfect metaphor for what can happen to any of us in this life if we don't pay attention. In any area of our lives, things can go from great, to not so hot, to downright unspeakable, and do it so gradually that we keep downshifting our expectations to correspond with our current situation.

We settle for less and less and tell ourselves, "It's not so bad," until finally one day we wake up and we are, in effect, hairless and scabby, just hoping to get petted with a stick for a little while.

I am no longer a Funkdog.

[rescuer4him]

that s cool ..... i have been here for like 4 days or so. this is an awsome place of support! i am glad you found us! i found it by surfing the web .... kinda funny when you find what you have needed for a long time after you have stopped searching for it.

[ali_smith585]

Hey

I'm Ali and i'm new here too.

i've found lots of people who are willing to support and listen to me and i hope you find that too.

Take Care

Ali

[probably]

Hello, welcome to AS

[teazle]

Hi funkdog, and welcome to AS

I hope you can find what you're looking for here

take care of yourself

teazle

[Katia60]

Hi,

Welcome to AS. Good for you for working on healing.

Kate

[Butterflyangelbaby]

Welcome to AS

[summerb]

Welcome to AS I hope you find the support you are looking for.

Take Care,Summerb