This is an excerpt from an essay written by a nine-year-old child after completing 12 weeks of therapy at a Childhelp facility:
It had been a deep, dark secret time, until the day it all changed. I woke up just like every other day. I got on my clothes and went to school… That’s when it happened. [the perpetrator was discovered] The secret was cracked, like me drinking a coconut, except coconuts aren’t secrets. It was the day I learned to get my pride back. Almost like a mouse, being cunning enough to get the cheese off the mousetrap.
I would tell other kids that have experienced this, “You know what, I have gone through this before…and remember your trust in yourself is bigger than any mountain and runs deeper than any hole you could dig and you can do anything you try to do. And that waiting to be scared is worse than being scared itself.”