No Longer Ashamed Surviving Sexual Abuse

This May in Illinois the states attorney general found that more than 450 Catholic clergy abused nearly 2,000 children since 1950.Revealing that the problem was far worse than had been reported by the Church. He also stated that those abusers "will never see justice in a legal sense" since the statute of limitations has expired for most of those cases. Where is the outrage? The laws need...

Exposure to pornography when you are too young can be traumatic. To give a child pornography is abusive and can have life long affects on them. This can lead to addiction to porn which can destroy their lives. Sexual content is so easy to find and it is becoming normalized in every day life. We have to be more careful about what our children are exposed to and teaching them why it is important to...

This week we have our friends Mike Chapman and Daniel Eichelberger on as guests for our panel about reporting your abuse to the authorities. Both of our guests have had very different experiences with reporting and they share what it was like for them. This is a difficult subject for survivors of abuse because it can be so hard to report because it can feel like being re-traumatized. Because the a...

When Beth was growing up she wanted what she saw that the other kids had - a loving relationship with their parents. But she knew that her mother couldn't be there for her and her father could not be trusted. She ended up with resentment and self hatred that she has had to overcome and has lead to much of the hardship in her life. In the time that we have known Beth we have watched her growth...

We first interviewed Daniel Eichelberger back in November of 2022. He is the author of the blog "These Ashes, Reflections of Hope in the aftermath of male childhood sexual abuse". in these past couple of years he and his wife have been busy with fostering children and are preparing to adopt the baby boy that they have been fostering since he was three days old. We catch up with him on ho...

Is it possible to have the Serenity to accept the things we cannot change? Is it possible to Heal without having that Serenity? These are hard questions for a Survivor of Abuse. But they are very important to realize that we cannot avoid them. We cannot change what has happened to us, but we can change our narrative of how we talk about it. bolgerkevin15@gmail.com

In episodes 162 and 163 we talked about Ethan Krosses book "Chatter" and how to manage your inner voice. Now we want to talk about his book "Shift: Managing Your Emotions - So They Don't Manage You" We were introduced to his book when we listened to the podcast "Hidden Brain" episode: How to Harness Your Feelings. For survivors of abuse being able to manage your e...

So here we are coming up on our 5th year of doing this podcast and we are still learning! This has been an amazing process and one of the most amazing things that we have learned is that for survivors of abuse the process doesn't end - but it can get better and easier. That doesn't mean that is always better or easy, but that as we learn more about ourselves and about our issues than we ca...

Last week we talked about Ethan Krosses book "Chatter" and how so much of it applies to survivors of abuse and the methods that are useful to understand and control chatter in our lives. This week we take another look at chatter and how we can help others with their issues with their chatter and how we can receive help from others with our own chatter. This issue of chatter can be so per...

Chatter is about that voice in our head that can sometimes become that static that interrupts everything and takes us over for awhile "Chatter" is the title of the book by Ethan Kross that I actually discovered when listening to "Hidden Brain" the podcast by Shankar Vedantam episode "How to Harness Your Feelings" about Ethan Krosses book "Shift" When I researched the title "Chatter" I realized tha...

We have been taking a break for a few weeks as our schedules changed which made it difficult to record We are getting ready to start a new chapter of expanding beyond into Youtube and Instagram with shorts so stay tuned we will be announcing soon While we get geared up we wanted to re-post this important episode about unresolved trauma and repressed memories since these are issues that can be very...

Why is personal growth so important for survivors of abuse? Many of us were taught by our abusers that we did not matter, that we were just objects to be used. It is through personal growth that we can prove to ourselves that we do matter and we deserve to have hope and healing. It is the small steps that we take to take care of ourselves and improve little by little that leads to the larger goals...

This is something that has been on our minds a lot since we really find it important that as survivors of abuse that we do share our stories. But what do you say when people don't know how to respond? Which ends up being a lot of the time. Sometimes the subject of being a survivor comes up at unexpected times and we might not feel like it's appropriate to share our story. Or are we just do...

What does it mean to be broken? As survivors of abuse we often feel beyond repair. That isn't really true but it can feel that way. If we can unlearn the lessons we were taught by being abused. Then we learned that we aren't really broken, just injured. No Longer Ashamed⁠ ⁠ No Longer Ashamed FB⁠ bolgerkevin15@gmail.com

There are so many reasons that we stay silent about our abuse. It can be so hard to break the shame and guilt that keep us from speaking about what happened . But are you robbing yourself of getting past the abuse you survived by keeping silent. Are you forcing yourself and those that care about you to suffer from the issues that you refuse to address. If you feel that what happened doesn't ma...

The coach was found guilty of all 19 charges of sex crimes in Sumner Washington! We have been following this trial for the last couple of years and we are thrilled that the perpetrator has been found guilty on all counts of the sex crimes! We first reported on this crime back in episode 87 in December of 2023 when we did a panel about sex abuse in sports with our guest Charnell Bolger, Kevins wife...

For this week we are doing something different. Charnell was able to find the original recording of when Kevin gave his testimony of being a survivor of abuse in Church. Since this is where it all started for this podcast we decided to publish it to share how it all began. This is in a way the origin story of this podcast . No Longer Ashamed⁠ ⁠ No Longer Ashamed FB⁠ bolgerkevin15@gmail.com

How we talk about what happened to us as survivors can be very important in our healing. If we are using language that can be harmful for ourselves we can make it harder to get past our history. That is why it is so important to pay attention to what we are saying to others and to ourselves about what happened to us and to learn from that on how to make changes. No Longer Ashamed⁠ ⁠ No Longer Asha...

Almost two years after we first interviewed Luke we followed up to see how he was doing . What we found out is that he had been doing a lot! His story is so inspiring to show how we can make a difference. Luke has taken his story to other podcasts and shows to spread the message to other survivors of abuse that you are not alone. That there is healing and help and you deserve to have hope. We are...

When Luke first contacted us we asked him if he would like to share on our podcast because we thought that his story of being abused by a woman could resonate with other men who were too ashamed to speak out. Since that episode almost four years ago Luke has been advocating for survivors sharing his story on podcasts and other platforms as well as joining us on panels and now he is working with CS...

We have both had a couple of rough weeks and I have to admit it has been enough that I was questioning what is the point? I am not very proud of how I felt like I was ready to give up. This isn't easy and there are times when I wonder why I am putting myself through this. Then I got a reminder of why this matters, why it is so important that this message is heard, why your stories count. It is...

In this week we are revisiting our panel discussion about toxic masculinity with our guests Mike Chapman and Nathan Spiteri. We feel that this is such an important topic for survivors of sexual abuse since toxic masculinity can often be a result of abuse, for male survivors it can be one of the ways of coping. This can lead to unhealthy relationships with others and an inability to be vulnerable....

For this episode we are excited to have Kevin's wife Charnell on for her experience working with children in the classroom and as a coach. What is our role if we see something and wonder if we should report it? We all would like to believe that abuse happens to someone else, not to anyone that we know. That it happens in those other places, not here in our nice neighborhood or school or church...

Trauma from abuse can show up in many ways, some might seem very obvious and some might not. The truth is if we ignore the affect that the trauma has on our life it doesn't go away it just gets worse. We can try to hide it by overachieving or appearing to be so in control. But often the affects will show up in ways that we aren't aware of and they can be very devastating to our mental and...

For so long I did not want to share about the abuse that happened to me because I did not want to feel that people would pity me. It felt like because I was a survivor of abuse that my life was tragic. Once I started addressing what happened to me and working on the issues that I had, it started to become easier to share because I felt better about how I was dealing with it. The more that I worked...