My favorite cover

First I must say thank you to everyone who has commented on their favorite cover design. I love the feedback on what people like. I liked the fact that most everyone agreed their favorite was the same as mine and that is the first one.

The unique thing about the first cover is it fits my second book and I feel after people actually read it they will really understand what I mean by what I am saying.
The first one was also my editors favorite. She described to me that Daisy represents innocence and it growing in between cracks represents survival and overcoming a foundation that has been rocked to the core. I love the thought of that.
Reading back on the significant parts of my second book I really sit in aww of just how much I put out there about my life the parts that were not in my childhood diary and the events that have played out in my life since I went public with my story.

However on Monday I was contacted by my editor and was informed there is another cover design being discussed that was not one of the five. Thinking about what they might do would fit really well with the title. Now I sit back and wait to see what happens as my second book “Living For Today” eventually comes to life in the form of a book.

It is amazing how the notes and thoughts I jotted down in the very begin stages of writing this book have transformed into my second book. At the same time I look at the life I have been given and no joke sometimes I will flip open my first book “Stolen Innocence” and start reading and really ask myself was that really me. Little did I know when I published it how much more growing I really had to do and the wake up calls I would get in my life as I continued forward.

The difference between now and then is I live in the present. I do not allow myself to stay stuck in pain or the trauma I experienced in my life. I have found ways to heal, forgiveness being one of them, speaking out being another. Those were my two biggest weaknesses growing up as a survivor I was holding onto so much anger but I was not letting that anger out because I was too ashamed to talk about it. Eventually I began talking and soon found myself at podiums talking to strangers around America sharing such personal details that I was told in my childhood never to talk about because it was a secret and was given the message by society I should be ashamed of what happened. Well those are two things that do not dictate my life…Silence & Society. Instead I speak above and beyond so openly about it and don’t give a damn what society thinks. If I make people uncomfortable hearing the horrors of what goes on in our world good because someday I will live in a world that will accept sexual abuse is happening and do something about it instead of ignoring it. You do not hear cancer survivors ashamed of their battle, so why must survivors of sexual abuse carry this shame.
You hear about the gay community expressing they want equal rights and fight in the court systems to get same sex marriages legal, or same sex couples the right to adopt. There are stories on it in the news all the time. There still is that shame and stigma attached to the gay community but they are being heard. The press is allowing their voices to be heard and are reporting on it. The press does not report on the rights of keeping children safe and educating children in schools about sexual abuse. It seems the only time the press every gives any attention to sex crimes is when a child goes missing and it turns into some law named after a raped and murdered child. Why cant we educate the public before we have children being hurt or killed.

I am about to graduate with my masters in social work certified to work as a school social worker. I can run out and apply at a bunch of schools and begin in the fall, but that is an opportunity that will always be there for me. I feel a much greater calling in my life where I wont be busy finishing a college degree but instead have my masters behind me and be able to go out their and do what I feel I am called to do and that is break the foundation of this planet Earth I live on and wake up the world. If that means making some noise I will. I have looked evil in the eyes before now I am going out their and exposing it because it is all around us. If you ignore evil you will just continue to live in a toxic world and I believe that is the world we currently live in because society is too afraid to expose the evil….but I’m not.