By Denise Turney

Childhood is supposed to be filled with laughter, playfulness, happiness, exploration and learning. It’s a time when our subconscious minds are developing. If we are surrounded by love, affection, support and care we learn to trust ourselves and others while we are children.

However, childhood isn’t always filled with fairy tale experiences. Childhood doesn’t always follow love’s plan. Sometimes our parents are too bruised to care for us. Yet, keeping to traditions and perhaps, out of a sense of obligation and guilt, they may struggle to give us what they realize children need to thrive. They may try .  . .

Childhood Gaps at Love

What we don’t receive from our parents we may spend the remainder of our physical experience searching for. We may seek love, affection and confirmation in strange faces. World travels or moving from one neighborhood to another may attract us, whispering to us that the acceptance we longed for and sought as a child is in these new places.

After awhile it may start to feel as if life is playing a mean, a very cruel, trick on us, sending us around in circles in search of love . . . the very thing we were created with . . . the very thing no one can survive without. This is Raymond Clarke’s (the main character in my new book, Love Pour Over Me) story. It’s a backdrop Raymond doesn’t want. Unbeknownst to Raymond, it’s also a backdrop his father, Malcolm, a man with untreated alcoholism, doesn’t want.

Every Child Needs Love

Reports attest that Raymond Clarke is not alone. In fact, according to Child Help as many as 6 million children are reported as suffering beneath abuse in the United States alone. Every day five of those children don’t make it. Their stories are not fictional like Raymond’s. Because they are young and physically small in stature, adult abusers may feel empowered when dealing with them. Over time these children may start to think like their abusers, that it’s always someone else who has the power over them, controlling them . . . enforcing their will upon them.

Yet, these children are not disempowered. They need a voice, support, someone to stand in the gap for them until they step into their own true power. For Raymond this person never comes. He gathers his strength from within, until he can leave home . . . striking out on his own in search of happiness, peace and, of course . . . love. He also uses his talents and gifts to make a name for himself, to start to connect to and feel his true strength. It is my hope that Raymond Clarke’s story will inspire adults (and the people who love them) who have grown up beneath a hard childhood, to tap into their true power, leave old hurts and haunts in the past and . . . thrive in love’s glory.

After all, it’s only love that will save Raymond . . . all of us.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com ($3.03 – lowest price I’ve found so far) and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Sources:

http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics (Child Help)

Report child abuse and love every child you see (young or old). We all need it!