The 12-Foot Teepee

“The 12-Foot Teepee”  openly discusses a problem nobody wants to admit exists: incestuous child abuse. This particularly nasty crime is frighteningly common, yet it is rarely reported, Everyone thinks this is something that happens to some one else, some where else.

Chances are that it's happening right now in a dark corner near you. This crime crosses boundaries of class, ethnicity, education and geography. Any child can be a victim and many more than you imagine already are or were victims. The pederasts and molesters, disguised as human beings, don't pay for their crimes. It's the victims who pay and keep paying.

My brother and I were abused for many years and became more than just siblings to one another. We had been allies in a life and death struggle that only we remembered. Those memories gave us a special bond. We were the only survivors of the shipwreck that had been our childhood.

My brother’s premature death from cancer devastated me. I'd kept running from the blackness since I was a child, but now it threatened to engulf me. My life had become a never-ending crisis. Somehow, at some point when I wasn't looking, hope and joy had become casualties in my personal battle of survival.

I had begun defining myself by the bad stuff that had happened to me and ONLY the bad stuff. I had become a post-menopausal abused child, living eternally in dread. More than half a century had passed, yet my wounds were still raw and bloody. I needed to heal and I had no idea where to begin

God speaks to us in strange ways. Out of the blue, I decided to build a teepee. All the tasks I had to perform to raise that teepee freed my mind to roam. Cutting down trees, peeling off the bark, sanding the poles, painting the designs allowed me to take a mental and spiritual journey at the end of which lay the first real peace I'd ever known.

We can't make all our problems go away nor can we make the molesters and abusers of children disappear. We can stop paying their bill, stop feeling guilty about what they did to us. This crime, this evil thrives in secrecy. It cannot survive the light. When we talk openly about what happened to us. we shine the light of truth and we disempower the perpetrators. We will make a difference.

Don't continue to define yourself by what happened to you or even by what you may have done. The monsters and demons you've locked away can't get you. They are gone, long turned to dust. Unlock the doors and let God's light in. You will heal.

We can change the world. We start by changing ourselves.