It can be hard sometimes to feel as if you will ever be “back to normal”. The idea of celebrating life or experiencing joy might be far-removed from where you are right now. Here at The M3ND Project, we firmly believe that everyone can find healing and wellness; even if it takes some time. We…
Today, we share with you a story from someone who refers to herself as “Dissociative Scapegoat”. She is a woman of great strength and deep determination and love. She shares honestly and vulnerably about her journey as a child victim of abuse by her mother who the authorities never believed; always the scapegoat. When she…
In today’s blog, we are talking about Institutional Abuse. Again… Truly, it’s becoming so challenging to hear about this issue over and over again and to see it played out within many institutions, but notably and repeatedly within churches across our country. One of the challenges in discussing “Institutional Abuse” is that the name alone…
“‘There will be joy in the morning,’ she said as she prayed for me one day. “Joy in the morning.” After the pain, hurt and grieving I’d been feeling for so long, this was music to my ears. But it was much more than that as I felt a sudden shift within me responding to…
Picking up where we left off in our blog from last week (which you can find in the resources section below), we all know that despite the best of intentions to resolve conflict through healthy confrontation lovingly, the other person doesn’t always respond the way we hope. Why is this? Sometimes, the knowledge that they…
Confrontation. Many of us sigh deeply and quietly murmur UGH at the thought of confrontation. Why is it so stressful? It just seems most often confrontation isn’t handled well. One or both sides of the equation brings unhealthy habits to the table which make conflict resolution a struggle. Often, the one who chooses to confront…
I never intended to hurt my little girl with my words and responses to her. I really had no idea how badly I had been harming her. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that I had been minimizing and invalidating her for quite some time. Covert emotional abuse is such a complicated topic. It…
In this blog, we recognize National Child Abuse Prevention Month by sharing one young child’s journey through the foster care system, as seen through the eyes of his volunteer child advocate. Like the more than 400,000 children living in foster care within the United States, this young child whom we will call Darius* did not…
It is daunting to look at the history of domestic violence world-wide and ask ourselves, “How far have we come?” As a woman who is face to face with the not-too-distant past where the law allowed men to physically abuse their wives and when the church itself openly encouraged husband’s physical abuse of their wives…
Today, we are talking about “Toxic Positivity”, a subject that really strikes a chord with our team at The MEND Project. For some of us, putting “toxic” and “positivity” together in a phrase seems inherently wrong. How can anything positive be toxic? There are many times when toxic positivity is harmful. It usually happens as…