Hi, everyone!
I’ve always wanted to start a blog, so what better time than now?
I hope this blog keeps you updated and informed about what I’m doing, what’s going on in the world, and what we can do about it. Also, I hope this serves as another venue for discussion, education, and advocacy. Please feel free to share this blog with other people. We can’t have enough people committed to this work.
So what is “this” work?
In “specific” terms: Ending child abuse and child exploitation.
That includes a lot of things, but more specifically, ending child incest, neglect, physical and emotional abuse, child trafficking/commercial sexual exploitation, using children for pornography. And I’m not just talking about the extreme stuff. I’m talking about child abuse at all levels. Parker Palmer’s definition of violence encompasses abuse at all levels best: “
This work also includes, healing child abuse trauma. If we do not heal, we will pass on our trauma in small and big ways, consciously and unconsciously.
In broad terms: This work is about justice.
Akonadi is the name of the Goddess of Justice in Ghana. My mission is to live justice. And by justice, I mean justice that feels nurturing to the soul, rather than justice that is superficially gratifying to our desires for revenge.
Justice that recognizes how basic humanity -human needs - were violated for both victims and perpetrators, rather than justice that seeks to punish. Yes, even a perpetrator’s humanity is violated when s/he commits an act of violence. Because what human being is born as an infant with the desire to hurt another being? What infant is not born pure and seeks only to be loved? It is the atrocities that occur along a child’s lifetime that leads them to perpetration. So justice that values an eye for an eye will not end abuse or suffering.
This work is also about love. Love for self and love for others. We do not love that which we are willing to harm.
