This past week I heard a heart breaking story about a young woman of 24 who is missing. Her parents and community are heart broken, sick with grief at her perpetrator and fearing that she may have met grave harm at the hands of the person she was last seen with. When you are a parent, you do worry about your children no matter what age they are even if they have long since grown up and moved away from home.
When we were young and living in “the nest”, our parents were constantly vigilant about where we were going and who we would be with. We always immediately went to the thought that; “…they just want to control me, be nosy and know every breath I am taking….I can’t wait to be free of this leash….it’s only XX months until I am 18 and I am outta here…..!” Remember?!?!?!? I know you do, and I thought that way too!
Think about this story in the first paragraph here. This vibrant, employed, living on her own, beloved young woman was out there in her community, making a difference working in her dream job and one night after work she went out to have a drink and some “fun” and was never seen again. By all accounts of those who are her peers and colleagues, and family, she is a level headed woman, who is careful and watches her back.
So what happened?
Where in her “routine” did she let down her guard and expose her most vulnerable point or side in her life?
What about you?
Where in your own life is your guard down or the place where you leave yourself open for the opportunity for someone to do the most harm to you?
For young women, it is when they judgment is impaired. That could be drinking to much alcohol, drinking on an empty stomach, not being a a fortified group of men and women for protection and support, it could be texting and driving, of talking on the cell phone and driving, jogging in a darken place with little or poor lightening without a partner, not carrying mace, being emotionally upset and again and again, the opening appears for someone to take advantage or take a shot at your weaken state.
I have observed that we still carry around a great deal of that saying from the 90’s “NO FEAR”. We wear it like a mantra. Statistics bare out some startling facts about how “fearful” we really should be when you take into consideration what can happen to any of us at any time.
All of this is not to scare you, but to rather, raise our awareness of who you are, what you do and where you are at any given time in your day, your week and your life.
This week, look around a do a personal assessment of the areas where you may be leaving yourself open for “harm”. Harm shows up in many different ways. Look for them.
Then decide how you can begin to not be in a position or place where you are open for harm.
