Minkiemink

Hi Mark, Kidnapped child here as well. Kidnapped first by mother and then by father along with my little brother. Was hidden age 5-9.5 before I was found. Front page news across the country in 1962. Parental kidnapping laws were based on our case. The subsequent lunacy after we were returned was off the charts. The kidnapping ruined my relationship with both of my parents and for quite a long while made me a pariah with other kids and their families. Therapy later in life did help. Over the years I've found many others like us. How are you coping?

It never occurred to me until now that people might be interested. I'm older. In my day, things like this were something you were supposed to hide. Telling people about your abduction back then....and even now to some extent...was like having a third arm. Someone asks you to light their cigarette. When that third arm shoots out from your jacket with the light, the person asking almost always recoils in horror. So you stop telling anyone about your abduction and remember to keep your third arm tucked inside of your coat so people won't avoid you.

Wow. Thank you kind stranger for the silver! Didn't expect this much response. My father was a wealthy developer. My mother a beautiful actress. Ergo the attention the newspapers gave to our abduction. After we were found, we ended up being dragged through the court system by both parents until my brother and I were almost 18. Pure craziness. Parental abduction wasn't really considered "a kidnapping" until my relentless mother made it so through the courts. In the end, my father still got visitation.

Mom never got over our abduction and never let my brother and I get over the abduction. She destroyed whatever relationship we might have had with our father, and frankly, being little kids after 4.5 years away, we didn't really remember our mother when we were returned. It was pretty terrible. Mom is now in her 80's and still talks about what my father (who's been dead for almost 20 years "did to her".

Unless there really is serious abuse, (not in my case at all), parents who abduct do this because they want to use the kids to screw over the other parent. The rage that parents like these feel they are entitled to can and do leave everyone's lives broken.

I modeled back when I was young. Several nude or semi-nude art shoots. Much like the poses in your photos. Never did I ever sleep with one of the photographers.

Huh...and then there is someone like me who is working on my 9th language. I love language. I love learning languages and usually do so quickly and easily. Not so this time. I am currently in the process of totally readjusting my brain for the past year of study in order to learn Korean. The only Asian language I have attempted to learn. Just this week I felt (physically) the shift in my brain where I am finally beginning to attach in a way that will lead to understanding and in the far future possible fluency. I have always wondered how other people attach to language to the point where the new language becomes an actual connection to understanding the new non-native languages?

In my spare time I volunteer teaching theraputic horseback riding to non-verbal autistic children. I am untrained in language learning and teaching language, but I specialize in getting non-verbal children to connect to language. Several of my students now speak and attend normal schools. Guessing that skill may be because of my own connection to and love of language?