16 Days of Activism

On the 25th of November we start our 16 Days of Activism against abuse to women and children and even though you may think that you cannot contribute much, we are making of our cause, your cause as well. The stats on abuse are alarming and we overlook the fact that a neighbour, a sister, a friend may become the next victim. Embrace our battle on awareness and join us by inviting a woman who will benefit of participating of our Awareness Meeting on the 29th November, 2:30pm @ 25 PLEIN STREET - JOUBERT PARK - AUDITORIUM B1
This meeting will take place in Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth,and Pretoria. Online video conference to Bloemfontein, East London, Pietersburg, Welkom, Lesotho, Rustemburg and Witbank

If you would like to set an appointment for counselling, kindly use one of this means:
Facebook Page: Save a Tamar
Email: woman2woman@uckg.org.za
Website: www.womaninaction.co.za
Help Line: 0861 330 320
We will be on schedule during these 16 Days to assist all those who need support and guidance or are seeking for ways to overcome past experiences.

I forgot!

Any person who has been through a traumatic situation, always look for to forget what happened, or not to speak about ir or even to delete the occurrence from his memories.

And many of us act in this manner with memories of the past of which we do not want to remember.

We think that acting in this fashion, we are dealing with whatever situation grieves us but the truth is that we do not forget it that easily.

Do you want me to prove my point? Action just like that has never helped you to overcome such memories. So we can agree it does not make the trick, does it?

So that we can "deal" with any situation, we need to do the opposite to forgetting - we have to become aware of such situations. It is rather painful but necessary.

As we cannot play "hide and seek" anymore, we have no other choice rather than going through the following steps so that we actually deal with the  trauma:

•   confront the facts;

•   identify our feelings towards what happened;

•   find out how it affected or changed our behaviour;

•   to make a final decision

What does it mean "to confront the facts" - use no longer words like "I don't want to talk about that", "I wanna forget", "I think it has never happened but it was my imagination" because in truth you may not verbalize such words but whatever happened has been the centre of your thoughts since then.

No one likes to speak about subjects that will trigger sad memories; it seems like we are living it all over again; but when there is no confrontation to the truth you see yourself so small before your past.

From the moment you admit you never forgot, it was not a dream and you want to overcome it, you become taller than your past.

You then start identifying feelings that were developed as a response to that situation: fear, insecurity, hate, subjection, low self esteem, anger, shame, among others.

Do not see yourself intimidated by such feelings; being aware of them will make you stronger and will help you overcome them.

How? You will find it out in our next post.

For now, identify which feelings are manifested in your and if you are willing, share with us here.

Marcia Pires