GUEST SPEAKER EVENT

I felt honoured to have been invited as a guest speaker to a Stepping Stones conference on Monday 4th December. I mention Stepping Stones on many occasions in my book Monster in my Mind, and even placed a well-deserved dedication to Mr. Steve Harris at the front of my book in respect of the support and help he provided me through their Non-Profit Organisation. I arrived and was fascinated to listen to the tail end of a speaker from the prison service, before the attention was turned to me. There were around 35 professionals from Stepping Stones at the meeting, and I was strategically placed next to Steve for the questions and answers session I’d been asked to do. I'd agreed to participate, let's face it, I'd agree to almost anything they asked of me after the help they gave me over the two-year period I was in contact with Steve, and I'd suggested that all the therapists just ask me questions on the day, questions unknown to me so that they would have real answers rather than rehearsed. I must have taken around 14 plus questions and I loved being able to give them an insight into how an adult survivor of child abuse felt when accessing their amazing services. I suppose I was able to answer the questions they usually can't ask a survivor during their sessions. The questions weren't all about me, it was also about how I perceived Steve (My therapist - John in my book) when I first met him. I was brutally truthful and told them I didn't trust him in the slightest, or expect anything at all out of our meetings, but that I couldn't have been more wrong and, what they all do at Stepping Stones with all their individual cases, is something they should be extremely proud of. Quite a few of the therapists there had already read my book and I had taken 11 copies of my book with me, and left them for those who hadn’t as yet got a copy to fight over.
If you’re reading this blog and haven’t yet read Monster in my Mind, my journey through Stepping Stones is within the book, along with some of the various forms of abuse I suffered as a young child, followed by a history of coping alone with the after affects of years of child abuse and being misunderstood, and onwards throughout my life to around the age of 54 when I got the clarity of mind I had searched for, for so many years. I hope that readers of my book will learn or take something from it through positive thinking, for survivors like myself it may make them feel less alone knowing that we will always be different, for parents it will make them more aware of who is around them and for the general reader, I hope they will react positively and spread the word to raise awareness of what is still happening today in every town, in every country across the world. Tell everyone they really should read this book…

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