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Private Family Matter
Child Abuse and Torture:
Birth through 13 Years Old
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I traveled throughout the Pacific northwest, Canada and Alaska delivering RV's to dealers. On both doors I had signs that read, STOP Child AbuseDrivers approached me at truck stops to say "Right on, lady" or give me the "thumbs up" as they passed me on the freeway. If anyone didn't agree with me, they kept silent. I never heard even one negative response to the signs during my 230,000 mile adventure. Spontaneous conversations of child abuse from total strangers prompted me to keep focused on this project. A slow but burning awareness crept into my consciousness. Men were just as wounded as women, but they were much quieter in revealing their pain. 
Photo
by Sue Christensen 2003
This is a 39' Forest River, heading
for Alaska during the worst trip I ever experienced. Freezing rain in
Frazier Canyon, BC. Blizzards from Cache Creek to Kitwanga. Traveling the
Cassiar Highway, 450 miles due north, more blizzards and whiteouts. Connect
with the Alcan Highway, Yukon Territory outside Watson Lake, BC. Softly
falling snow. All along the 2500 mile trip there were car and semis
piled up, sideways and upside down!
"Oh lord" I
prayed, "Let this great grandmother get through safety!"
Passed sawdust pups smashed
against the Frazier Canyon walls. Waited 6 hours for two semis to be
removed from a head-on collision outside Cache Creek, BC. Passed the site
of a hotshot driver whose flatbed carrying two travel trailers were ditched
north of Dease Lake, BC. Kept on praying for a safe trip.
Reached Wasilla, Alaska safe
and sound! Woo Hoo! What a trip! Prayers answered.
If I had the money to travel slowly across the US and really spend time talking to wounded people, I would do it! There are millions of "chi-ults" who need someone to listen to their story! They want someone to listen that understands their trauma and pain. The details may be different but their wounds hurt the same. Delivering RV's to dealers was a job, my only source of income. I couldn't stay extra days to listen to everyone so mostly it was quick snippets of conversation. But I had the feeling just reading the signs helped a few. They knew someone really cared to travel around with bright yellow signs on the truck. STOP Child Abuse (This was before I separated the "brutality" and "torture" side of private family matter and still lumped all forms of child violence under abuse.) See On the Road |
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© 2008 Sue Christensen, All rights reserved. Write: PO Box 1188, Nome, Alaska, 99762. Links to this site are welcomed, but wholesale downloading for reproduction elsewhere by any means, print or electronic, is expressly prohibited and will be prosecuted under relevant Federal statutes. Written permission is required to mass produce, copy or reprint by any method. No permission is implied or granted to duplicate or distribute pages or graphics in any manner, either electronically or in printed form. No reprint in any form is allowed including storage in a retrieval system, transmitted or copied for public or private use other than for “fair use” as a brief quotation without prior written permission of the author.
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