About
Healing Yourself Heals the World is a site dedicated to just that–The long and difficult journey through the healing process. Healing from abuse and trauma is an extremely difficult task, so much that some survivors choose to keep their abuse a secret, sometimes for their entire lives, for several different reasons. It is because of this that so many survivors never heal from what happened to them in their lives and that so much abuse continues to happen as time goes on. This website was created for survivors of abuse and trauma to obtain resources and ideas to use in their own healing process and to assure survivors everywhere that they are not alone. If we all heal ourselves and overcome abuse, we can heal the world and ultimately stop abuse from happening. As we heal, we become a united brother and sisterhood of people who because of our healing, speak out about abuse, educate others and continue to heal each other so that abuse does not happen and if it does, no one is afraid to speak out about it and go on to get their abuser convicted. We need a revolution and now is the time to heal from past abuse and unite as one against this worldwide pandemic.
While survivors know that the journey through healing can be long and difficult, many don’t know exactly how to go about getting there. This website will serve as a complete reference of my own, personal healing and will also give other survivors ideas and tools to utilize themselves in their own healing journey. I will be passing along ideas and healing techniques that I received from psychologists I have had over the years and also from publications such as The Courage to Heal, The Courage to Heal Workbook, the book club questions from Finding Angela Shelton, and also from online resources such as Angela Shelton’s Survivor Manual and 30 Day Journey.
Abuse and trauma affects survivors in all aspects of their lives, especially if the abuse happened at a young age. As we grow into adults, we possess traits that can later be identified as products of the abuse we endured at a young age such as Clinical Depression/Manic Depression/Bipolar Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and so on. It is because of this that we must heal from the abuse we have endured in our lives and lead healthy, happy and fulfilling lives.
About Me
My name is Holly Ord, I am 21 years old and live in a residential/farm town in Pennsylvania. I live with my boyfriend of 3 years and our anti-social, spoiled cat Devin. I am a practicing poet and have written two novellas, prose, vignettes and I am also full-time freelance writer, web designer and developer. I run a feminist/political website, Menstrual Poetry and am also the Founder of Woman Tribune, a website that focuses on women, life, family, entertainment and more.
I am a survivor of child abuse, (physical and emotional) and child sexual abuse, all of which occurred through the ages of around 6 to 10 by several of my mother’s boyfriends. My mother not only knew of the abuse, but it was facilitated by her and she was also extremely physically and emotionally abusive. I was also raped at the one and only party I went to on a college campus when I was 18.
When I was around 10 years old I lived with my father and was raised by him, my grandmother and my aunt. Throughout my life my family did not talk to me about the abuse that I had endured as a child which led me to believe that it was something that was either normal or something that simply was not talked about. When I got to the age where I did want to talk to my family about my childhood they made it clear that it was not an option and at that time I was interviewed in my local newspaper about being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
This website is widely inspired by Angela Shelton.
During the first few years that I was accepting the abuse I remembered and remembering other abuse that I had repressed through the years through nightmares, flash backs and body flash backs and piecing together what I could remember from my childhood into a time frame to come up with the facts that I have now, I was part of an online community for survivors of sexual violence, After Silence. While reading through the message board someone mentioned how this woman’s documentary was on 48 Hours and there were many people who were posting about how amazing and inspirational this Angela Shelton woman was with her documentary Searching for Angela Shelton. I immediately checked out her website and within a few weeks I had a copy of her movie. From the first time I sat down and watched the film I was inspired. I knew that I had to speak out about the abuse I have been through as a child and during the very early years of my healing progress, I was raped by a guy I worked with and thought I knew fairly well at a party he invited me to.
I felt that I had backtracked and erased all of the healing I had accomplished up to that point and had to start over. I was emotionally exhausted, falling apart and felt like I had no options. I officially had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
I was kicked out of high school the month after I turned 18 for absenteeism because I couldn’t bring myself to go to school day after day; I just felt exhausted all the time though I couldn’t sleep much because of the nightmares I had and the body flash backs I would have when I woke up. While I was in therapy after moving into my own apartment they chose to identify my “problem” as a chemical imbalance and not what it really was–Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and put me on mood stabilizers. It was through watching Searching for Angela Shelton more times than I can count, reading her website and watching videos of speeches she had given that motivated me to do more.
I got off of the medication I was put on because I was (and still am) convinced that because I don’t have a chemical imbalance, I do not need medication. Overall, I am a better person because of it and know that while I am healing, it is perfectly acceptable to feel angry, upset and depressed because if I were to feel perfectly fine after what I have endured throughout my life, it would then mean that something was wrong. By repressing our memories and numbing our emotions we are doing nothing to overcome abuse and nothing to spread the word about abuse and help it from happening to millions of people worldwide.
It was after reading Finding Angela Shelton and thinking about her parting words–That healing yourself could heal the world where I was the most motivated I have ever been in my life. It was because of that book that this website exists and where my own, personal healing journey will take place. I hope you will follow along with my healing process, take an honest look at what it is like to heal from abuse and trauma and also use the techniques and resources that I share for your own healing.