What Students Really Need to Hear

Chase Mielke

It’s 4 a.m.  I’ve struggled for the last hour to go to sleep.  But, I can’t.  Yet again, I am tossing and turning, unable to shut down my brain.  Why?  Because I am stressed about my students.  Really stressed.  I’m so stressed that I can only think to write down what I really want to say — the real truth I’ve been needing to say — and vow to myself that I will let my students hear what I really think tomorrow.

This is what students really need to hear:

First, you need to know right now that I care about you. In fact, I care about you more than you may care about yourself.  And I care not just about your grades or your test scores, but about you as a person. And, because I care, I need to be honest with you. Do I have permission to be…

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Eden: a sex slave’s story

Investik8

Wearing just their underwear, the girls line up with their backs to the wall, arms by their side, heads down, frozen to the spot. They dare not move.

Their captors walk up and down the line – picking them seemingly at random and tapping them on the shoulder – ‘You, you, you and you… come with me’.

In the back of a warehouse truck, they are driven for miles across the scorching Nevada desert until they reach a hotel. There, they are forced to have sex with up to 25 men one after the other.

This was life for Korean-born American Chong Kim who, at 19 years old, was sold as a domestic sex slave in 1994 to Russian gangsters and held captive for more than two years.

“The clients never came to the warehouse,” she recalled “That was just where we slept. There was nothing there but bed mats…

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Holding my own

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s my ex boyfriends birthday on Saturday. It will be the first time in 6 years that I will not staying up till twelve ,so I could be the first to wish him. I have been relatively ok for a long while till it got to this week.

 

I don’t want him back or neither do I want to dwell in the past. But I do miss him. I started hearing his voice in my head again, and it makes me smile.

 

However I will not wish him for his birthday. He has moved on, and I will move on in time.

 

 

My Legs Were Gone — Only Bloody Rags Remained of My Pants

Life after legs

The sand filled my eyes, my pants, hell even my mouth. As I opened my eyes everything was replaced by a cloud of sand. A tan nothingness. My spirit had left my body, and an empty self-awareness remained. Within this moment, I realized I was flying through the air. Although it lasted only seconds, it seemed to be forever. As my brain processed the physical stimuli into an equation; I knew it could yield only one conclusion. I had stepped on an I.E.D.

We had just been talking about how Greer loved to find IED’s. I told him he sucked at his job.

“You engine-queers try too hard to be EOD techs”, I said.

“We find them just as good as you guys do”, he replied instantly.

This was how we communicated. Marines; especially when faced with a dangerous mission, can be like affectionate assholes. We spoke harshly to each…

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The Super Bowl: A Sex Trafficker’s Playground

Mandy Black

In just a few short days hundreds of thousands of visitors will flood to the MetLife stadium in New Jersey for Super Bowl XLVIII. Many visitors will be coming to show their pride and cheer on their favorite team, but tragically, thousands more will be coming for something entirely different. What most people don’t know is that the single biggest game of the year has also been called the single largest human trafficking event on the planet.

Just beyond the stadium lights, hidden within the shadows will be thousands of victims, women, children and even men, caught in the inhumane web of sex trafficking. For them this day will bring something much different than football, loud cheers, hot dog stands and painted beer bellies. For them it will bring pain, abuse, repeated rapes and even fear of death. The exact numbers of trafficking cases in a given year or…

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Death Becomes Her: A Mortician’s Thoughts on Fetishizing Death

www.carlavalentine.co.uk

I call myself a ‘Mortician’ for want of a more succinct term in the UK for my profession, but the real job title is Anatomical Pathology Technologist. In my eight years assisting Pathologists with autopsies (post-mortems) I saw every possible face of death, and believe me none could be considered ‘beautiful’. I looked upon death every day: some days with grim determination and a sense of duty to grieving families, but other days with a sense of horror or outrage at man’s inhumanity to man, or just their sheer bad luck. Some days I’d be sated with a valuable sense of being needed at this last point in a patient’s journey, other days I’d shower long and hard to remove death’s cold touch from my flesh, drink wine to remove death’s bitter after-taste and wash my clothes twice to remove death’s hideous, cloying presence. So when I read this recent…

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The speed of pain

This morning I awoke to a dream of my ex and me. It was very realistic and the happiness I experienced was pure bliss. It was him and I getting back together, and for those moments we made each happy again. Like how it was  in the beginning . It’s been hours later and I still hear his laughter and can see his smile.

In the dream we had decided to give it another try and were looking forward to the future. As I awoke from the dream , my first thought was I don’t want him back.

A bit of background, we dated long distance for a few years. I loved him and thought the son rose and shone from him. This of course changed over the years. While I still loved him , I was no longer in love with him. He ended  the relationship six months ago, and it has been a long process to getting to an okay place. I relied on him and didn’t know how to be on my own again.

We had spoken after the breakup, he had moved on and I had not. I was angry at him for a very long time. Every promise that was made by him, would mock at me.

After the dream, I messaged him. Told him, that I forgive him and wish him happiness with partner. He wanted to talk and hoped I saw things as he did six months ago. That part was a bit too hard. I didn’t not need to know he thought about me. It took a long time to get a place where I was stable.

I let go of him and the dreams that have died six months ago. I enter this new year looking forward to dreaming new dreams.

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

love this

“I Feel A Change Comin’ On”

 If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

“Issac Newton

In the passing of Nelson Mandela , I am inspired to be better person. Even though I do not laud him in the generally accepted God like status.

I respect him  for the feats he accomplished and I applaud his message of love , even when it was undeserved. Since I am 26, I didn’t live through the apartheid era. I have no negative memories with it , unlike the older generation. I take freedom as a right and not as something that was fought for.

Apartheid may be dead in south Africa , but there new battles to be fought. Which require people of calibre to rise up and take a stand, as our predecessors did.

Currently I’m not sure what changes I can bring about, but I will keep searching for a social. 

cats equal love ?

 

 

I thought i was in love once. It was strong , passionate and unrequited. It continued for a few years and to date, it’s pretty strong.

But it wasn’t love. It took having pets to show me what love is. Specifically cats.

I have two cats, one is an adult male. The other is a kitten.

The older cat was abandoned by his mother and had a pretty low self confidence. He was also unaware of what cats should do. So I decided to help him. I would watch birds with him, help him to reach places and shoo off other cats that didn’t have friendly intentions. So it grew ,the pet love. The type of love which only cat owners appreciate. I love you so much in spite of you waking me up at 4am or digging your claws into me. Or even refusing to eat the carefully selected food that was purchased for you.

And then the kitten came along. And this was a different type of love. His personality was much more loving and engaging than the older cat had ever been. I was and still am smitten. Im not sure if I am capable of loving a human in the same way. Does that make sense?

With my pets, I will without complaints get up at an ungodly hour to feed them. When they call, I answer immediately. I let them have full access to me, without any limitations.

When look at them, I do not see the expense of cat food , or damaged mat or the noise they make when I try to sleep. It’s so uncomplicated.

Am i capable of doing that with someone else? I’m not so sure,