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
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