With many, emerging triumphantly from a painful past is more often than not insurmountable.
In fact, it does take divine intervention to exorcise demons of a past whose memories could still slice the heart into bits.
With an unprecedented awakening, it has been established that the fragility of childhood requires, rather, demands closer parental attention. Childhood being a crucial, decisive stage in the development of an individual character can only be ignored at the peril of the victim.
Thus, the development of an all round individual – in the psychic sense – does not only demand full parenthood presence, it also requires practical communal concern; the latter would be a passive, albeit stabilizing factor in the building of the individual’s character.
The rationale is that abused or lost childhoods do inevitably have direct negative social – and by extension – economic bearing upon the society to which the character-deficient-individuals belong. The first casualty would be the individual, the next immediate victim would be the family institution. Obviously, the ramification of this social disorder would then spread to the entire society in terms of heightened immorality, depravity and other anti-social behaviours.
Just as the human conscience awoke to condemn slavery in the early 19th century, so has a similar universal awakening emerged to address the social ramifications of child abuse as a global affliction so widespread that many can’t afford to look the other way anymore.
Such luminaries as Joyce Meyer, Paula White, Oprah Winfrey, Donnie McClurkin, Kirk Franklin, Winona Rider, Robin Givens, Frank Bruno, among many others, have come face to face with the child within them whose desperate cry to be heard had never been heeded in the most deserving manner. Of course, this realization makes it abundantly clear that abused painful childhood experiences, have a way of destroying our adult lives, stunting and/or depriving us of our full potential.
The cited list constitutes the lucky few whose lives have somewhat defied the impact of all the misfortunes of pasts characterized by their painful, childhood abuse to register extraordinary success. However, even the extraordinary success (as we know it) can also serve as a spur that would cause the pent-up childhood pain to erupt like a volcano, causing the otherwise promising - or even “enviable” - lives to take a disastrous turn for the worst.
The reason being that as individuals pursue success in the hope of finding fulfillment through ostentatious lifestyles, they end up terribly disappointed and left wandering and groping in the darkness of emotional turmoil.
Why? The void within remains insatiably hungry for a filling that doesn’t come through material wealth or possessions but through psychic accomplishment that operates in the abstract.
When happiness has proven elusive and contentment has become like an estranged foe, choices are minimized and life finds itself on the slippery slopes of social and emotional momentum towards wreckage. The individual victims soon resort to habits that are – at worst – attributed to fatalistic mindsets.
One remarkable confession about the child-within-desperate-to-be-heard came when the late Michael Jackson said, amidst public outcry following accusations of child abuse labeled against him, that his strange behaviour stemmed from the fact that he missed the normal childhood life and experiences. That while other kids were playing with each other, he was being hauled into music studios to record albums. There have been a great many casualties in this regard.
This statement is corroborated by scientific research that has proven that social skills children gain on the playground or elsewhere have a tendency of showing up later in life.
It has been acknowledged that unstructured playtime (i.e. when children play and interact without the guidance of an authority or mentor), they get the chance to experiment with relationship norms that may form part of their behaviours in adulthood. That’s what Michael Jackson was deprived of as a child. Does the make-up of Neverland Ranch come to mind?
With this in mind, one doesn’t have to look very far to see the casualties, especially among the celebrities who get the benefit of media coverage at every turn. Ain’t the fact that child stars like Drew Barrymore, Britney Spears, McCauley Culkin, Charlie Sheen, to mention but a few have, at some stages of their lives, ended up locked in desperate fight to keep their lives on the right track now an open secret?
But this list is only restricted to the limelight-circle privileged class, often in the richer world. In places like Africa, children are even more susceptible to ACU-situation failures following the complete lack of attention. But the hope amidst monstrous parental neglect, abuse and squalor can never be hidden from anyone who interacts with a destitute African child.
Poverty-stricken but determined to hold onto the hope that life, however uncertain, will be better in adulthood, these kids’ determination to stem the tide of their poor social conditions is anything but heroic and admirable.
What all this has proven is the fact that there are social implications that may bring us face to face with the suppressed “child” we might have not yet realized exists within us. The danger of smothered, neglected, deprived or abused childhood is that most victims often discover the cause for their wayward behaviours in adulthood when too much damage has already occurred. Unfortunate. Regrettable. It all happens when it ought not to be the case.
When the founder of ACU, David Russell, realized he was in the abyss of near total destruction, he soon acknowledged – with the help of some amazing persons – that he needed help. Not even the wealth he was swimming in then could help calm down the raging child in him, who, suppressed for years, was now determined to be heard. And, unless this reclusive child was heard, he realized nothing would have reversed his free fall into the abyss of total social – or even physical – destruction.
His was one of the many stories of “A Child Unheard [ACU]”, the very apt name of a vision birthed within the prison of unbearable pain that was his own life.
But responses to ACU-situations vary remarkably. While some choose resignation to and acceptance of pain as a normal way of life, some are awakened to the fact that not only do they need help but that, no one else, no other child, deserves to go on in life with the similarly unbearable pain.
What has not found sufficient mention though is the fact that resentment of one’s childhood, drug abuse, sex addiction amongst other calamities of conscience are woven together by threads of either psychological or physical abuse - or both – suffered in childhood that have metamorphosed into self-crippling anti-social behaviours. They are the ones who understand the truth behind the fact that there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story of a past so painful, even in memory.
A study has recently linked individual’s ability or inability to relate well with others to factors of childhood experiences. Factors such as one’s inability to pick up and respond to nonverbal communications from peers may lead to rejection. And rejection has been cited as one reason for crippling anti-social behaviours such as aloofness and agoraphobia, among others. They concluded that since there is an inherent need for every human being to be loved by others, rejection can mutate into full-blown psychological problems whose symptoms may manifest through drug abuse, poor academic performance which in turn could lead to school dropout or recourse to crime or violent disposition.
When the lifelong pain, brought about by the dark memories that the conspiracy of fate in our lives sets flying in the face of even the famous and fortunate; when even the choking affluence of materialism is no more refuge but a monstrous beast of burden…when the emptiness in the soul mocks our dream vocations and luxurious vacations, designer perfumes and the “elegance” of celebrity farce then the only credible source of hope to fill the inner void is none other than God. Turning to a deity is what most people, especially in the Western world, scowl at but even the scientific evidence cannot dispute the fact that the healthy disposition of people of faith is worth every attention.
