"It's Latin name may come from bellis, meaning beautiful, so Bellis Perennis can be translated to perennial beauty, as the daisy flowers for so long. Or bellis may come from bellum, Latin for war, because it grew in fields of battle, and can staunch bleeding and reduce bruising and shock. One of the daisy's old names is bruisewort.
The cheerful little daisy is a symbol of innocence because of its association with children, and of survival.
Daisies adapt to almost any landscape and soil type, and will survive being trodden underfoot and all the indignities of the hoe and the lawnmower."
-Anne McIntyre, Flower Power
"I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.
I've tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?"
-Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Note: This page is for listing homepages and informational websites created by abuse survivors and other educational sites that create awareness about childhood abuse.and documenting the reality of its extent and effects. Personally I hate the term "survivors" but have yet to hear a good alternative, so it is used frequently here.
Update, 2003: Most sites listed here do not have a heavy emphasis on prayer, God, angels, or other religious dogma or symbols, as I do not find patriarchal religions basd on a foundation of sexism to be empowering to women or to be useful in ending violence and abuse that occur due to the same foundations of patriarchy and sexism, or to be necessary for healing from abuse. Since that pretty much eliminates a large portion of the abuse survivors' sites online, this might not be a popular opinion, but it is my opinion, and this is a feminist website. It's possible sites listed here will have that type of religious focus and I missed it, or I just chose to ignore it at the time.
I've also tried to remove sites that play music when you open them, as many of us do not want to have loud noises blasting from a computer when we are looking at a website and many people use public computers to access the internet. If I missed some of those too, sorry about that.
A Lily or a Rose: Survivors of Abuse and Bullying on this site a woman describes her personal childhood experiences with abuse and with being a victim of bullying. This is a rare topic to find on survivor websites. She addresses bullying with information and resources.
Kimmie was a victim of child pornography and this page addresses that important topic, also not mentioned on many websites in the words of people who experienced it. A picture which she says is of herself, found from an internet child porn website, makes a poignant statement here.
Dear Teacher: Education on Abuse describes a project called "Dear Teacher" and displays the contribution this website's host made to that project, by writing a letter describing her story and what she would like teachers to know about students in their classes who may be victims of child abuse.
Still Rising: A Resource Site for Survivors of childhood trauma, has several pages of resources, including a section for survivors under the age of eighteen. This site also fits with the Daisies Part II - Coping Help page of resources, but seems fitting for listing here too. The site title comes from Maya Angelou's poem, "Still I Rise".
I Have Survived was created by a survivor who tells her story her and shares a collection of many resources for other survivors on issues related to trauma. Also I like this site as it does not have the tons of rather annoying graphics and music and such things that take forever for a page to load, which are on many other survivors' sites I've come across. This site gives useful information on pages that load quickly.
The American Boys Choir is a site about a school and boys' choir in the U.S. where many young boys were sexually abused
Pages listed here before this recent update (these have been online for a few years and are still up, unlike most of the websites previously listed here)::
Tesserae is a creative and interesting site by a survivor of incest and ritual abuse with Dissociative Identity Disorder who shares her story through poetry, and prose. There is also a section of feminist essays she wrote. Note, some sections of this website depict very graphic descriptions of abuse, including satanic/ritual abuse
Pitkey's Side Door is a site by an adult survivor with many links for survivors, some of her thoughts on abuse, and some of her artwork.
Soul's Self Help Central has information on many topics of interest to abuse survivors, including pages on various mental health disorders abuse survivors are often labeled with (that's my phrasing, not the way this site phrases it) , and some pages on lesbian and gay issues are there also
This Healing Journey is a beautifully designed site for support of survivors and includes forums and a Wall where you can list the name of the person who abused you
Mollykat's Resources for Survivors is a very thorough collection of links to resources in many categories related to abuse created by a young woman who is a survivor hersel
Intermotion is an incest survivors' dance and theater company in Florida with most performances in Ft. Lauderdale and used to make a creative forum for survivors
