Survivors' Voices

Donna Jenson 10/10/202:25 PM

Hello ACE's Connection Members,

I’m delighted to send out this explanation of a program I’ve been working on creating for the past year. Since 2008 my project, Time To Tell, has had the same mission: Sparking stories from lives affected by incest and sexual abuse to be told and heard. Our new program is:

Survivors’ Voices: Works of Resilience Written and Read by Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) created by Jackie Humphreys, LICSW with Donna Jenson from Time To Tell and Lucinda Kidder from Silverthorne Theater. This event is an opportunity for survivors to share their original writing, prose or poetry, regarding their CSA experiences and their healing paths in a creative, community-supported, and survivor-led virtual weekend on January 22nd, 23rd, and 24th, 2021. We are strongly encouraging the voices of youth, all genders, BIPOC, LGBTQI, elders, and people with disabilities to submit their writing. Submissions are due on Nov. 11th. If you or someone you know might be interested in this healing and empowering program, please visit our Survivors’ Voices webpage for more information.

If you are a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I invite you to consider submitting a piece of your writing. If you serve or advocate for CSA survivors, I would deeply appreciate you extending an invitation to them.

If you’d like to talk to me about the program, please be in touch.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Barry Lopez:

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

Thanks for reading,

Donna Jenson

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Frank Sterle Jr.Member

Even in this day and age, there remains a mentality out there, albeit perhaps subconscious: Men can take care of themselves against sexual perpetrators, and boys are basically little men.

Also, I've noticed over many years of news-media consumption that when the victims are girls their gender is readily reported as such; however, when they're boys, they're usually referred to gender-neutrally as children. It’s as though, as a news product made to sell the best, the child victims being female is somehow more shocking than if male.

I wonder whether the above may help explain why the book Childhood Disrupted was only able to include one man among its six interviewed adult subjects, there being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to come forward for the book? Could it be evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset?

10/13/202:39 PM