5Waves and Sibling Sexual Trauma

I first learned of the siblingsexualtrauma.com website via LinkedIn; then, I found 5Waves.org.

I still don’t know why they have two websites, but I do know all of their content is empowering and helpful to any person affected by sibling sexual trauma/abuse.

Most of what I first learned about the advocacy, activism and research surrounding sibling sexual trauma was on LinkedIn.

I was connected to two lead researchers on LinkedIn—Emma Rees in the UK and Stuart Allardyce in Edinburgh, whose work I was citing in Resolve. Emma generously supports my mission of healthy inquiry, and when I’d reach out to her about anything new on the research radar, she’d be fast to send me links to go sit and read for a while!

One day, my mind switched to noticing the people they were connected to or commenting on, and I saw a post by Brandy Black. I clicked to read it, which led me to begin communicating with Brandy and her co-founders of 5Waves.org.

5Waves are five women who, as their siblingsexualtrauma.com website’s tagline states, are “real people who have felt real pain, and they are offering real hope”.

For over four years, I had been writing a memoir and reading everything I could find in texts, research papers, and web searches. Yet I had never seen sibling sexual abuse advocates out there until I was at the stage of sending my manuscript for design. These women reached out and that was so appreciated as I’d been on a lone-wolf type of mission until then and my book was coming to the date of release.

As I connected with these advocates, it became obvious that most of us had started ‘something big’ in the same four-year period!

We were ready to take action, speak up, and share our stories in memoirs. We were women in our wisdom, most of us in our 50s, some a little younger or more mature than that beautiful stage of life. One 5Waves co-founder, Jane Epstein, even stepped onto a stage and delivered a vulnerable and powerful TEDx talk about sibling sexual trauma! She did that two years ago this week.

There is a global movement towards breaking the stigma and doing something about sibling sexual abuse. Here are a few leaders in the work of SSA and also CSA or Incest – Incest being the keyword people are searching for on the web – that I have come to know of:

• 5Waves.org in the USA.
• Nancy Morris and her #siblingstoo project and podcast in Canada.
• Gloria Masters’ Handing the Shame Back podcast in New Zealand. Actor Rebecca Gibney just narrated a short clip of Gloria’s story on the podcast Nolaughing Matter this week. It’s heart-wrenching but necessary to share – no child should endure what she did.
• Elizabeth Sullivan, the CEO of EmpowerSurvivors, has some wonderful peer support groups on Facebook. In May, I will be a guest on her podcast. You can come and be there with my via this Facebook link.
• Jo Lauren, the IncestAware co-founder and activist, talked to me about their vision to be an online ‘umbrella’ for incest awareness. Jo invited us to list our books or ourselves as speakers there.

I am looking, but there does not appear to be an organisation 100% focused on sibling sexual trauma or abuse that’s easy to find in Australia as yet.

So, for now, I’m hanging out with these good people and authors and beautiful survivors who’ve reached out to me on my social media.

Closing out with 5Waves.

In November 2023, Brandy at 5Waves invited me to be a guest blogger on the siblingsexualtrauma.com website.

Brandy is a mother of siblings affected by sibling sexual abuse. When she read Resolve, she asked if the poem I’d written in one of the chapters could be shared. It was hard for her to read as a mother. She said it also let her feel even more compassion for the daughter in her family, whom a brother had abused.

Click the orange button below for the link to the guest blog on the siblingsexualtrauma.com website.

While you’re there, please bookmark their site or share it on your social media. You can also take a look at the plethora of information and resources that you may need.

If not for you, perhaps one day you’ll provide realistic hope for another person by giving them this lifeline of an organisation to reach out to. It’s all there!

With love,

Alice

Resolve: A Story of Courage, Healthy Inquiry and Recovery from Sibling Sexual Abuse is now available globally on Amazon, and all online bookstores. Libraries and bookstores can order copies. Please follow me on Instagram and Facebook. The audiobook is now also available via over 50 audiobook sites.