I’ve been reading therapeutic blogs all evening. It’s a far easier task to read these entries than it is to read scientific journals. However, what they lack in academic rigor they make up for in emotional demand. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fascinating to read these people’s stories because they are candid in a way that you rarely see in real life, however it’s depressing and in one case extremely frustration. This young blogger was keeping repeated abuse a secret and refused to tell a soul. The people reading her anonymous blog were the only ones that knew this was happening to her. Her readers repeatedly advised her to tell someone, sometimes using guilt, sometimes by being supportive, and sometimes by insulting her. She expressed several times in the text of her blog entries that she did not want people to pressure her to tell someone. In the end, she abandoned the blog, announcing in her final post that the lack of support was making things worse. She said that she started writing about her abuse online to her her get through it and to heal, but that in the end she was turned away because people kept pressuring her to tell someone in the real world. I wanted to scream every time that the abuse was repeated, and I completely understand why her large group of readers kept urging her to seek help. The last entry was years ago, meaning that we’ll never know if or how this girl’s story ended. I hope she finally found the courage to end her suffering and to start healing.
I am inspired by your work.
The good news is that done collecting data!!! I’ve read all the blogs that I am going to read, and analyzed all of the material I will use. I need to run my statistics and write up the results before Monday. Then by Friday I need to type of my discussion. After that I just need to write my Abstract AND I’M DONE!!!