“Someone in your past sold you a false story about who you are and what you’re worth. It has been holding you back for too long. Take control of your future.”
GROOMED was a very good self-help book to begin the New Year on a positive note. It takes a look at how folks are groomed by the messages they receive and integrate into their lives from many different sources. We all have a huge list of concepts we understand about ourselves and our actions and this is a detailed look into how we can identify those messages and redesign them so that they fit the way we believe now – finding our own truth. Good began researching this idea when she discovered that one in three girls are sexually assaulted in their childhood, and that her home county was one of the worst areas in the USA for sex trafficking. Good had been sexually assaulted in her youth and her grooming fed into her religious training from her church community. It changed her life. She has gone through the stages of “recovery” and discovery and in order to change her life and to begin a community to help others overcome their programing and find wholeness.
The book highlights 5 areas where children/humans are groomed, and the anecdotes paint a solid picture of how everyone has been groomed and what can be the positive and what can really hold a person back. They are: Groomed for Appearances, Groomed to be Invisible, Groomed to Endure, Groomed for Judgement, and Groomed for Financial Fear. The author discusses in detail how she personally was groomed by her parents and a traumatic event which happened in her family. She does not ignore the grooming experienced in her religious training and she can be hard about all the young women who experienced sexual assault in the “name of the Lord”.
I was particularly moved by the section on Financial Fear, because that is an area where I have worked all of my life to overcome that which I was programed to believe about money. Good identified several more ideas in this arena that still plague me today and one of them is an area I have not explored. A discovery.
The Bibliography at the end of the book is extensive. The steps to make change are detailed and just about the normal list of “how to” activities that can provide help. The author does emphasize that one cannot do this alone, and that the talking and sharing are vital components with trained assistants. (Maybe this is more groomed information, but in most cases, it is quite often true).
Elizabeth Good and her two close friends founded the Selah Freedom Organization and the Selah Way Foundation which has assisted thousands of individuals to leave the Sex Trafficking life and move forward with recovery and satisfying futures. The organization began in Florida but has chapters and communities all over the country.
ELIZABETH MELENDEZ FISHER GOOD is the CEO and Co-Founder of Selah Freedom and the Selah Way Foundation, which exist to end sexual abuse, exploitation, and sex trafficking. Her leadership has brought freedom to thousands of American children and young adults who have been rescued from sexual slavery, and she has helped educate millions on the topics of leadership, exploitation and sex trafficking. Learn more at FreewithE.com.
Related:
Search Inside Yourself
Lost Child
Code to Joy
