Peter Schorsch
April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month and National Child Abuse Prevention Month — and former Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book is hitting the road for a powerful cause.
With her nonprofit, Lauren’s Kids, Book is embarking on her 10th 1,500-mile walk across Florida to raise awareness about child sexual abuse, stand with survivors and give communities the tools they need to protect kids.
The Walk in My Shoes journey is personal. Book is a survivor herself. What began as one woman turning pain into purpose has grown into a statewide movement to protect children and heal hearts. Over the next month, Book will stop in communities across the state to walk alongside fellow survivors, advocates and local leaders, calling attention to a crisis that affects 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys before they turn 18.
Through Lauren’s Kids, Book has made it her life’s mission to end child sexual abuse. The nonprofit’s award-winning prevention curriculum programs, Safer, Smarter Kids and Safer, Smarter Teens, teach age-appropriate safety skills in schools across Florida and beyond — because 95% of child sexual abuse is preventable with education and awareness.
Book’s leadership has changed laws, empowered survivors, and helped keep kids safe. Now, the Walk in My Shoes is rallying Floridians to do their part.
There are over 42 million survivors of child sexual abuse in the U.S. — and every day, new cases are reported in Florida. The walk is a chance to say: no more. No more silence. No more shame. No more abuse.
Book will kick off her statewide walk today from the Southernmost Point in Key West, trekking 20 miles north on the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway. Follow along via Livestream, view photos, and register for a walk near you at LaurensKidsWalk.org.
4 comments
Earl Pitts American
April 2, 2025 at 6:37 am
Good Morn’ting Florida,
Lauren is a good ‘Ole Gal from a good family. She took up with leftist causes at a young age as we all did. I, Earl Pitts American, am working with her for the next logical transformatiomon in her development into a “Sage Patriot” and a member in good standing of “The Earl Pitts American Fan Club”.
Thank you, Florida,
Earl Pitts American
Peachy
April 2, 2025 at 6:54 am
Have a cheeseburger or two Lauren.
Frank Sterle Jr.
April 5, 2025 at 6:22 pm
A mentally as well as a physically sound future should be every child’s foremost fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter; a world in which National Child Abuse Prevention Month [every April in the U.S.] clearly needs to run 365 days of the year. Instead, some people still hold a misplaced yet strong sense of entitlement when it comes to misperceiving children largely as obedient property, sometimes even to abuse.
If even survived, prolonged early-life abuse typically causes the brain to improperly develop. It can readily be the starting point of a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in otherwise non-stressful daily routines.
When inflicted emotionally/psychologically, it amounts to non-physical-impact brain damage in the form of PTSD. Among other dysfunctions, it has been described as an emotionally tumultuous daily existence, indeed a continuous discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’. For some of us it includes being simultaneously scared of how badly we’ll emotionally deal with the upsetting or negative event — which usually doesn’t occur.
The lasting emotional/psychological pain throughout one’s life from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one’s head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated.
In the meantime, too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development science to parent in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. They seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
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“It has been said that if child abuse and neglect were to disappear today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would shrink to the size of a pamphlet in two generations, and the prisons would empty. Or, as Bernie Siegel, MD, puts it, quite simply, after half a century of practicing medicine, ‘I have become convinced that our number-one public health problem is our childhood’.”
(Childhood Disrupted, pg.228)
Frank Sterle Jr.
April 5, 2025 at 6:33 pm
Being a caring, competent, loving and knowledgeable parent [about factual child-development science] should matter most when deciding to procreate. Therefore, parental failure seems to occur as soon as the solid decision is made to have a child even though the parent-in-waiting cannot be truly caring, competent, loving and knowledgeable.
In Childhood Disrupted the author writes that even “well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24). While liberal-democratic society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, not even the plainly incompetent and reckless procreator, it can educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those intending to remain childless.
If nothing else, such child-development curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such valuable science-based knowledge?
In the meantime, too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development science to parent in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. They seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
A mentally as well as a physically sound future should be every child’s foremost fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter; a world in which National Child Abuse Prevention Month [every April in the U.S.] clearly needs to run 365 days of the year. Instead, some people still hold a misplaced yet strong sense of entitlement when it comes to misperceiving children largely as obedient property, sometimes even to abuse.
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“I remember leaving the hospital thinking, ‘Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies! I don’t have a license to do this. We’re just amateurs’.”
—Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons
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“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
—Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus
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