So glad @condorhanson wrote this piece. I read it and cheered because it echoed so much of how I felt that same day, watching the same kids run around and play.
Those kids are the most compelling possible answer to, why bother doing all this?
Those kids are the most compelling possible answer to, why bother doing all this?
https://twitter.com/acnatoo/status/1549857445320671232
It was so good to see the little girl in question having such a great time, days after watching her endure a brutal cross-examination in court while her abuser sat maybe 20 feet away, facing her.
It was good to see her just getting to be a kid instead of having to be a hero.
It was good to see her just getting to be a kid instead of having to be a hero.
And I was thinking about the other kids, too, many of whom were there playing together that day because their parents had met and connected with each other due, at the root of it all, to their various experiences with spiritually abusive churches.
One thing I learned about in the past year is how much kids can suffer, even when they themselves aren’t directly targeted by an abuser, but just because their families have to leave a church that is perpetrating or mishandling abuse.
I don’t have kids or experience with this dynamic, so I learned about it from various parents over the months telling me privately about how much becoming church community outcasts affected their children.
It is both obvious, once you see it, and often overlooked.
It is both obvious, once you see it, and often overlooked.
So it felt particularly significant and healing to see all these kids, who had been the collateral damage of the harmful church situations their parents had to escape, finding joyful new friendships with each other as the parents sat off to the side doing the same thing.
It was one of many moments over the past year of “even if this were all that ever came of #ACNAtoo, it’s totally worth it.”
❤️🩹
❤️🩹
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