support

Back in Tulsa Hubby and I lived less than a mile from a major hub of prostitution, a street similar to what South Broadway is to Wichita.  At one point the police cracked down on the area and the prostitutes moved elsewhere.  Instead of naively believing prostituion abolished in that area, one night Hubby said, “You know, I bet they just moved a block north, into the neighborhood and off 11th [the major street that held the visible activity].”

So that night on our way home from dinner we turned north off 11th onto a side street.  Right away we saw a woman who was probably a prostitute: a woman seemingly by herself with her head down and walking slowly down the street in clothes too skimpy for the cool night air.

That was enough for us and we wanted out of there, away from the tangible reality of prostitution.   To so quickly be proved correct was more than we wanted.  In the back of our minds we hoped to be wrong.  The perfect situation was for the prostitutes to be gone, onto other real jobs, not so blatantly continuing their sex trade.

As Hubby slowed to turn at the intersection that would get us out of that neighborhood and on the way to our house another woman–a woman seemingly by herself with her head down and walking slowly down the street in clothes too skimpy for the cool night air–heard our decelerating vehicle and turned to us as she walked our direction.  She thought we were a john and she was ready to make herself available.

Unwilling to make eye contact I shook my head to say “No, not us” as Hubby turned quickly to get us out of there.  The heaviness of the 30-second situation sat in the air between us and thwarted any attempt to speak the words racing through our brains and sitting in our throats.  We drove the six blocks home in silence.

Hubby pulled the car into our driveway, put it in park and stared at nothing through the windshield.  “You know,” he said without looking at me, “one time that woman was a baby.  Somebody’s baby.”

That woman had started her life as a big-eyed baby who cooed and flailed her arms with joy when someone gave her attention.  At one time that precious little baby sweetly drank her bottle and then drifted off to sleep.  How long before her innocence was taken?  How long before the trauma was inflicted on her that forced her into believing her only means of survival was through pleasuring men for money?

My sister has a heart for the broken.  She worked in the inner-city of Wichita and loved the children of a prostitute mother and alcoholic father as if they were her blood.  Then last year she sacrificed fun clothes and decorative items for her house so that she could get a round-trip ticket to Connecticut as an early Christmas present.

While in Connecticut she attended the Love146 Collective Shout conference.  Now she is trying to raise money to support them as they help children of the sex trade learn who they really are.  Here is how Hayley explained it on her blog:

I hate that evil, broken people take away a child’s power to choose how she feels about herself and her body. And I don’t think we should let that happen anymore.

I value my body and I get to control what it looks like, what it does, what it’s used for, and, to the extent it’s possible, what other people think of it. The victims of sexual exploitation don’t get to control any of those things. They don’t know their body can be used to hula, or hold someone’s hand, or love on a pet. They don’t know what it is to dress for their own amusement rather than someone else’s sexual gratification. They come to believe their bodies are only useful to provide someone else with physical pleasure. If their bodies can’t do that, they’re meaningless.

The victims also don’t know what it means to feel creative, or funny, or smart. No one delights in them and their unique traits. They’re not wonderfully-created individuals to their pimps and abusers; they’re vessels for their profit and enjoyment. And they start believing they’re only worth what someone will pay for 15 minutes with them.

And that’s why I support Love146. Their Round Home and U.S. and Europe prevention programs allow children to reclaim their inherent value. They learn they’re more than what those people used their bodies for. They learn they can choose how they’re going to feel about themselves. They learn they have more to offer men than false sexual fulfillment. They learn the joy of creating something new, the exhiliration of learning a new dance, and the excitement of reading a book with ideas that had never occurred to them before. They learn people do value them and their singular contributions to the world.

So please help me tell some little girls that they matter.

I ask you to support my sister in her endeavor to raise money for Love146.  She is asking for $500.  I check the stats on this blog and I know how many people read it.  A lot of you have a lot of money that you can give to this cause and some of you have a little.  But every one of you has something you can donate.  If everytime you checked my blog in one day you also donated $5 we could support Love146 with more money than Hayley is asking.  It is worth it to do that, yes?  To support a little girl and give her the tools to discover her inherent worth that will return the beautiful sparkle to her eyes.