Peace in Action Presents: The Journey Within

By Victoria Kelly

Founder and Managing Director at AHHHS - A Helping Hand for Healing Souls

Assumptions  and Appearances

Victoria Kelly is a writer, poet, artist, and activist living  in Minnesota with her family and  dogs. Her forthcoming memoir, Journey Within, tells the story of her remarkable journey. Victoria is a living example of triumph, and demonstrates how difficult it is to know  what kind of lives and struggles people have come through when we meet them as they are now, thriving and an inspiration.

Victoria was abused as a child, trafficked, and betrayed by many people in her life. She was led into and used in prostitution, and was addicted to drugs and alcohol, self medicating because of the effects she suffered as a result of her abuse. But her story is one not only of victory and survival but of compassion for others who fall and find themselves in circumstances as dire as hers.

We start our excerpts from Victoria's work at the beginning, when she used poetry and art to express her comprehension of what was happening to her. Here is the first of these works:

Who’s a Prisoner?

Do you know what it’s like

to feel protected…

only in the presence

of closed shades

and locked doors?

Even then, at times, feel unsafe?

Daddy walks around

going wherever he may please…

I once was his prisoner,

yet, he still holds the keys.

The law says he can’t harm me

the time goes slowly by…

Do they know the torture that’s still present?

with every tear I cry?

I can’t tell them how much

it hurts me

to know they let him roam…

Do they know I’m still imprisoned?

in a place I should call home?

The law was made to protect me

yet it is so unfair.

I wait and cry for justice

as my abuser roams and breathes the air...

Excerpted from Journey Within: A Survivor’s Story

A forthcoming memoir by Victoria Kelly