Tag: survivors

The damaged woman

Here is a truth you often don’t hear: traumatized women have the potential to become the most powerful people in this world.

The most ignorant members of society call this type of woman “damaged.” But she is the most powerful type of woman there is.

What they forget is that survivors have the most dangerous advantage of all: resilience.

When you try and you try but you can never bring a woman down, you’ll know there is no going back. Don’t fool yourself. You could never defeat her. You never will.

This is the woman who will always rise from the dead; Lady Lazarus, after going through hell and back.

This is the woman who has burned her feet in the flames time and time again and always lives to tell another tale – even if she has to crawl back to life.

She was never given love or approval on a silver platter, so in order to survive, she had to love herself in a way others could only dream of. She fought tooth and nail for her own self-acceptance.

No one cuddled her as a child or told her pretty things; she had to fend for herself each step of the way. She knows she can survive because she already has and will again.

When someone tells her, “You can’t do it,” she says, “Watch me.”

She is fiery light birthed out of wintery darkness. Brought into the underworld by Hades, Persephone brings forth spring and rebirth when she reemerges finally from the cold.

She owns her shadows and seamlessly weaves them into the fabric of her freedom, creativity, imagination and independence.

All of her life, she was given every evidence of human cruelty and the evil people were capable of. She understood early on that the monsters people dreamed of existed in human skin.

She lived all of her nightmares in high definition. She was given every reason to give up, handed every justification to never believe in herself or anyone.

But there is raw magic in the ways in which she cultivates a faith in herself, to manifest the dreams her soul was meant to bring forth.

Despite it all, she still conquers.

She still survives and thrives.

The “damaged” woman is capable of immense manifestation not just in spite of, but because of the traumas she has gone through.

There is no one more motivated than a woman who has constantly been told what she cannot do or who she cannot be throughout her lifetime.

There is no one more determined to succeed than someone who has nothing left to lose.

The “damaged” woman doesn’t sign up for the hardships of her journey – but she plays the hell out of the cards she’s been dealt.

The “damaged” woman is not damaged at all – she is wounded, and in channeling and healing her wounds, she becomes the source of incredible energy, the site of unbelievable potential for abundance and change.

She possesses the power to use her wounds for the greater good and her highest good.

She builds her own success and becomes her own rugged hero; tends to her own scraped knees.

She uses every stone thrown at her to build the foundation for her empire.

Brick by brick she builds – and despite every attempt to tear her walls down, she rescues herself again and again.

Despite it all, this type of survivor may still face hatred, envy, greed from those around her. They try to tell her she is too damaged to soar.

See, when the women society call too “damaged” perform better than those who never were, it tends to upset the status quo.

As a result, she becomes the survivor of countless witch hunts, the target of many persecutors. Yet when they try to burn her at the stake, she does what comes naturally: she resurrects herself.

After all, nobody suspects that it is the wounded woman who has more power inside of her than the bullies who appear to overpower her.

They laugh and ridicule the mute warrior, the one who seems to never fight back.

But here’s the thing about this type of woman: she observes.

She learns how to pick and fight her own battles. Her spirit may be broken, but it is relentless. She perseveres, bit by bit. She takes it all in.

Perhaps she stays voiceless for years. For her soul, it may seem like for centuries. This is an ancient wound, one that seems to follow her from generation to generation.

Yet at some point, it comes time for her soul to fight back in order to survive. It comes time for her to rise.

She stays silent for so long that when she finally speaks, the world erupts and cracks wide open.

Her pent-up magnificent energy, born and bred in the pressure cooker that she calls life – is that of lightning.

Where once hopelessness was her default, now abundance becomes her birthright.

Where once she was timid, she now unleashes thunder in every action and word that she wields like a sword – and with it, she always brings a storm.

Now when she creates, she creates new worlds and transforms and manifests on a level that cannot be recreated by someone who never had to struggle to survive.

When you hear the voice of a powerful survivor and the will of a warrior – there is nothing you can do but to stop and listen.

She is the voice of a million lifetimes lived.

She is the voice of the hopeless and the powerless when the fire is brought back to their eyes. She is the harbinger of the justice that the voiceless have longed to hear and feel and touch.

Regardless of how much you try and how it may seem, you can never truly bring a survivor like this to her knees; she already knows the value her scars bring.

She knows how to fill the cracks between her wounds with gold.

She knows how to transform each bitter word cast upon her into an iron-clad will that will set her and other caged birds free.

You can’t ever defeat a “damaged” woman, because she knows exactly how to save herself.

– Shahida Arabi

Counting

I counted my years

and realized that I have

Less time to live by,

Than I have lived so far.

I feel like a child who won a pack of candies: at first he ate them with pleasure

But when he realized that there was little left, he began to taste them intensely.

I have no time for endless meetings

where the statutes, rules, procedures & internal regulations are discussed,

knowing that nothing will be done.

I no longer have the patience

To stand absurd people who,

despite their chronological age,

have not grown up.

My time is too short:

I want the essence,

my spirit is in a hurry.

I do not have much candy

In the package anymore.

I want to live next to humans,

very realistic people who know

How to laugh at their mistakes,

Who are not inflated by their own triumphs

and who take responsibility for their actions.

In this way, human dignity is defended

and we live in truth and honesty.

It is the essentials that make life useful.

I want to surround myself with people

who know how to touch the hearts of those whom hard strokes of life

have taught to grow with sweet touches of the soul.

Yes, I’m in a hurry.

I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can bring.

I do not intend to waste any of the remaining desserts.

I am sure they will be exquisite,

much more than those eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied

and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

We have two lives

and the second begins when you realize you only have one.

Misdiagnosed Child Abuse -Craig Childress PsyD

Follow the yellow brick road. Follow the yellow brick road. Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick road.

If you’re not Following me on Bluesky, why not? It’s useful information.

If your attorney, your involved mental health professionals, your GALs and Parenting Coordinators, are not Following me on Bluesky, why not?

Sometimes I skeet about diagnosis. Sometimes I skeet about dark personalities. Sometimes I skeet about the court-involved assessment. Everything I skeet about is court-custody and treatment related.

Droplets of information each day, like a gentle rain of knowledge into the parched desert of the family courts.

I do what I do. You do what you do. We’re both working toward exactly the same goal – protecting the child from child abuse by a pathological parent.

I’m not your warrior – you’re the warrior fighting to protect your child. I’m a clinical psychologist with knowledge that’s useful to you. I’m your weapon.

I’m headed into the AFCC to contact the Hydra. You can’t do that. I can and I am because I do something different. I’m a clinical psychologist not a parent. We’re both working for exactly the same goal – protecting the child from child abuse – differently.

Because we’re in different roles.

Part of my role as a doctor is to educate the patient – you – about the pathology you have in your family… and with your child… so that you, as a parent, can get a proper assessment that will return an accurate diagnosis and effective treatment plan… to fix things.

Courts and the legal system land on the wrong end-point. Courts and the legal system land on the Court’s custody decision. That’s the wrong end-point of consideration.

The healthcare system lands on treatment. That’s where we need to end up – with a treatment plan that fixes things and gives the child a normal-range childhood.

For a treatment plan… you’ll need a diagnosis. For an effective treatment plan, you’ll need an accurate diagnosis.

If we treat cancer with insulin because we think it’s diabetes, the patient will die from the misdiagnosed cancer. Whenever possible child abuse is a considered diagnosis, our returned diagnosis needs to be accurate 100% of the time.

Misdiagnosing child abuse is too devastating to the child. We need to get it right – every time. We can do that when there’s the motivation to to that.

The appellate system in healthcare for a disputed diagnosis is a second opinion, or even a third opinion. Doctors in healthcare consult all the time – because we need our diagnosis accurate and early – we need to start treatment right away.

Any diagnosis returned into the legal system will be a disputed diagnosis – so – let’s get a second or even third opinion right at the start through telehealth.

Get one primary treatment provider who will both diagnose and then treat the pathology. Allow each litigant parent to appoint a second-opinion doctor of their choice to represent their interests and concerns. Then let the doctors do what doctors do.

You’ll get a report from the primary treating doctor (duty of care) and two consulting reports that agree, or perhaps disagree to a degree. Provide this information to the Court for its decision-making.

The Court can decide which doctors make sense – and the doctors should make sense. They should 1) describe the symptoms, 2) describe the diagnostic criteria and established knowledge applied, and 3) the diagnosis that is supported by the symptom pattern.

Doctors are not concerned with custody. That’s the Court’s decision based on all the evidence it considers. There is NO quasi-judicial role for doctors. Doctors diagnose and treat pathology.

In the absence of child abuse, parents have the right to parent according to their cultural values, their personal values, and their religious values.

In the absence of child abuse, each parent should have as much time and involvement with the child as possible.

In the absence of child abuse, to restrict either parent’s time and involvement with the child would damage the child’s attachment bond to that parent, thereby harming the child and harming that parent.

Is there child abuse? If a child is rejecting a parent, yes, there is child abuse by one parent or the other, we just don’t know which one yet.

It might be authentic child abuse by the targeted parent creating the child’s attachment pathology toward that parent – OR – it might be child psychological abuse by the allied parent who is creating a persecutory thought disorder and false (factitious) attachment pathology in the child for secondary gain to the parent.

Which parent is abusing the child? We need a proper risk assessment to the appropriate differential diagnoses for each parent to answer that question.

Then we protect the child. That’s what we do in ALL cases of child abuse. We always protect the child because ALL mental health professionals have a duty to protect in cases of three types of dangerous pathology – suicide – homicide – abuse (child, spousal, elder).

It’s not “complex” – it’s simple. What’s the diagnosis? Collect the symptom patterns, apply the diagnostic criteria patterns, and if there’s a pattern-match… that’s your diagnosis.

That’s not complex. That’s simple.

So is Following me on Bluesky. Sign up then Follow. Easy peasy for such valuable information to your professionals who surround you. Once they know… they can’t un-know what they know.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist

WA 61538481

OR 4392 – CA 18857

Unhealed Parents

A child’s first enemy is often an unhealed parent. It’s a subtle, almost invisible dynamic that creeps into a household without warning. Picture a parent, heavy with unprocessed pain, wielding their wounds like invisible weapons—sharp words, dismissive glances, unreachable affection. The child doesn’t see the parent’s trauma; they only feel the sting of its consequences. An unhealed parent might unintentionally pass down shame, anger, or fear, not because they don’t love their child, but because their own love has been tangled in the web of their past. Imagine a parent who flinches when their child cries—not because they don’t care, but because the sound dredges up their own unheard cries from decades ago. Without realizing it, they teach the child that emotions are dangerous, that their needs are burdensome.

Now, contrast this with a healed parent. Imagine a parent who has faced their own darkness, who has wrestled their demons and come out on the other side. They create a different kind of space for their child—a sanctuary where emotions are allowed to breathe and wounds can be mended instead of ignored. When a healed parent hears their child cry, they don’t recoil; they lean in. They don’t silence the child or rush to fix it. Instead, they validate, comfort, and teach resilience. The difference is profound. An unhealed parent unknowingly becomes an adversary, while a healed parent becomes a guide. One teaches survival; the other teaches thriving. And yet, the tragedy is that the unhealed parent was once a child too—a child whose first enemy might have been their own unhealed parent. The cycle is unrelenting until someone, somewhere, decides to break it.