This past winter my world and that of my clients and other ladies in
the field was rocked, shaken to the very bedrock so to speak ... My career
literally got "frakked"
It shook me so hard that my journey into monthly experiences was put on pause
It shook me so hard that my journey into monthly experiences was put on pause
So hard that I didn't know if I would be able to continue my work
Scared me
Angered me
Plunged me into grief, despair and frustration and then back out the other side
I am still standing
My work is still here and I am more committed than ever to being here
I am one of the fortunate, the elite, the practitioner who has forged client relationships some nearly 10 years long
I am NOT ready yet to retire and be in the public advocation role and take on the world... I still have woofers to feed and a household to sustain so for now, I can't join the other brave ladies who are front and center on TV, news feeds, writing as "retired escorts"....
So I am trying to see what I can do, how can I change this, how can I make a dent in this witch hunt that is literally costing people their lives, livelihoods and impacting their families and relationships in ripples.
How can I forge through this as I watch people now being destroyed for something we will look back on later and see is as barbaric as people tossed in jail for decades for partaking of a specific plant which was out of favor for decades?
I have been through mental hell and back trying to grapple with this, wrap my brain around this.... to even begin to get my bearings.
This earthquake started not with smaller tremors but with a full on seismic event when, while on a date with one of my all time favorite clients we started getting texts, calls, emails and realized that a major communication portal had been decimated and eliminated.
Then, articles that scared at first, hurt deeply as I/we were thinking that there might be "truth" to them and spiraled into abject confusion and disbelief.
I redid my entire website and security.... only to find that the targets of this witch hunt couldn't be protected by anything on my end.
People, good people, people I care about, clients I love, like and have spent so many hours, days and years getting to know... were suddenly dropped into a situation no one could see coming, Something that has never happened before in history any where in the world that I know of.
It hit me like the literal shit-ton of sharp edges bricks: something that in accepting my clients words of appreciation (i.e. reviews)... had potentially caused damage, harm and legal issues for those people I truly value. I had advocated to my clients for the benefits of sharing the "yelp" of my world. To find out that now, in many cases years later... those communications would be used against clients, broke something internal in my heart.
Suddenly clients and providers who had known each other for years... found seeds of doubt and mistrust. Communications were blocked, new clients pushed away.... established clients who had not been to visit in a while re-scrutinized ..... relationships were dented. Fear rather than caution and careful screening erupted like a geyser.
For those people reading who weren't on "The Board" or who are new or came to me through other ways of meeting, let me explain what this portal represented. Imagine if tomorrow Facebook went down, went away was seized and everyone who had ever "liked" one of your posts, say political posts, was suddenly being charged with a felony for "promoting" a political view that advocated something that was now out of favor.
Let me make this clearer... imagine that your friends, your followers on fb, your acquaintances were now being charged with felonies for not actually engaging in a political protest or riot, or attending a party or growing weed, but being charged for "liking" a post about those things, or for, gasp, making a meme about them, or WRITING about the topic. To be clear, people are being prosecuted for WRITING about topics, not for being caught in the act of something illegal.
So say you thought about speeding, or texted a friend that you really wished you could have run a red light, or thought about running a red light, or thought a red light was badly placed, or wow, that was a fun yellow light, and then you got a ticket for writing about that. You know speeding is an infraction, a small ticket if caught in the act. You take that risk. But then your friend, riding in the car with you, blogs about it, and then gets charged with a FELONY for promoted negligent driving............
That kinds of puts it in perspective.
I am still not centered about this whole string of events
I am NOT in support of any human being actually being trafficked, used, slaved or for child porn.
AND this is not what the witch hunt is actually about.
A dear friend sent me the link to this article - it is about the best written piece I have seen to date about all of these changes:
http://reason.com/archives/2016/09/09/the-truth-about-us-sex-trafficking
I don't know what else to say, except that I hope to still be standing when we wend completely through this craziness and I hope no more lives are lost while we get through this maze.
