I HAVE SIXTY-THREE TATTOOS. So far, anyway.

People ask about them. Why so many? Are they an attempt to reclaim your body after a lifetime of abuse? No. Absolutely not. Rather, they are a visual exploration of my identity. They make up a canvas that holds the art and symbols and words that mean something to me. My tattoos chart the journey of who I’ve been, who I am, and who I’m becoming.

I was thirteen when I got my first tattoo. It was a very funny little smiley face that I thought at first was the sun smiling, but it was really just a dumb smiley face. It didn’t mean anything to me, so later I covered it up with other tattoos.

The first tattoo I got after I was rescued is of a baby sleeping in a pair of hands. That was the first baby Castro forced me to miscarry. He even made me look at the fetus, which was tiny and barely developed at all. That’s why I wanted the tattoo image to be faint, like it’s fading from view. The baby also has a pair of wings. It’s my angel being cradled in God’s hands, and it’s on my upper arm, where everyone can see it.

Around the sleeping baby are four roses. They represent the other four babies Castro made me abort. He starved me, beat me, threw me down the stairs—whatever it took to get rid of the babies.

Another tattoo comes from a drawing I made when I was still a captive. It’s a teddy bear with a rose for a heart. I drew it for Joey one Valentine’s Day, and as I drew it I made a promise to myself that when I got out of that house I was going to get that drawing tattooed onto me. I just knew I needed to have my son imprinted onto my skin. There’s another Joey tattoo on my back: a cross with wings and his name. I don’t see it, just like I don’t get to see my son—at least not yet—but he’s always with me. He is part of me and I am part of him.

Joey and the five babies I lost are my missing children. So is the child Miguel and I may never be able to have because of what Castro did to me. And there is one more missing child: me. I was a missing child twice over. First, I was lost in an unloving family and in a system that did not pay attention. Then I was kidnapped and presumed to be a runaway, so no one came looking for me.

THE WORDS under the title at the beginning of this chapter are something I once wrote about what it feels like to be a missing child. It is why I feel I can never stop speaking out on behalf of missing children—kidnapped, abused, in danger, lost. No one has a better right and no one knows more about the issue than those of us who have actually been through the experience. Putting my voice to work for missing children and for all victims of domestic violence—and extending a hand to the people searching for them—is the best way I can give meaning to my own suffering.

Put it this way: I should have died in that house. What that man did to me was enough to kill me a few times over. There must be a reason why God kept me alive, and it has got to be what I’m doing now: bringing awareness about missing and exploited children and about domestic violence, and giving hope to the mothers and fathers who have lost their children, encouraging them to keep pushing. I feel like this is the reason I was put back on this earth.

Obviously, the job’s still not done.

I DON’T KNOW how many missing children there are. I know there’s a website^* that keeps a running total. As I write this, they’re reporting nearly half a million missing children in America in 2016. Then there are the missing children no one may be counting, and then there is the rest of the world. Just thinking about what the real numbers might be blows my mind.

I also don’t know how many of those kids or any other kids are being sexually abused, but I know the government’s statistics^† say that more than 42 percent of female rape victims were first raped before the age of eighteen, nearly 30 percent between the ages of eleven and seventeen, and that more than 12 percent of female rape victims and nearly 28 percent of male rape victims were first raped when they were ten years old or younger.

Anybody can find any of these statistics on the internet any time.

What I do know is what it’s like to be a little kid inside those statistics, and if I can raise my voice on behalf of them, I’ll do it until I drop.

Then there are the women at the receiving end of domestic violence by a partner or spouse. Every nine seconds in America a man beats or assaults a woman he is living with or in a “relationship” with. ^* I know a thing or two about that kind of control and those kinds of beatings too, and I need to speak up about that as well.

Here’s something else I know: when I ask audiences I’m addressing to close their eyes and then to raise a hand if they’ve ever been abused or know somebody who has been abused, the number of arms up is always higher than you would suspect. Always. In fact, anytime you find yourself in a crowded room—a movie theater, a stadium, a crowd at the airport—there is likely a woman or man standing near you who was abused as a child or is being abused right now. And that person has probably neither looked for nor found the help they need and deserve.

MAYBE THE most important thing people need to know about what happened to me and is happening to children and women everywhere right now is that it can happen to anybody. It doesn’t matter who you are—whether you’re rich or poor, short, tall, fat, skinny, awkward, graceful, or anything else.

Take the case of my kidnapping. It was what they call “opportunistic”: it wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t personal. Men like Castro don’t care who they take; they don’t think it out. They wait, they see you as a sexual object, you’re within range of their power, and they want control because they feel they don’t control anything else in their lives. A woman chained up or a little boy locked in a closet can’t walk out the door. That’s what guys like Castro want: for you to have no choice whatsoever, to be totally dependent on them. You’re not a person; you’re a thing they make use of. They rule.

Sometimes people can even victimize you without the chains and locked doors and boarded-up windows. They do it through bullying and talking down to you and making you feel insecure, unimportant, or invisible. People like that control you because they have torn you down so low that you’re just broken. You’re not going to try to escape or do anything “wrong” because you know what will happen if you do. And fear of what would happen if you walked out that door can sometimes be just as powerful a brake as being chained or locked up.

When I talk to groups about these subjects, people always come up to me afterward and say they’re glad I made it out alive. Because I escaped, I now feel an obligation to keep speaking up about it. I wish I had known when it was happening to me that someone was out there saying something about it. So when I make my voice heard, I am doing it for the person suffering what I suffered and wishing that same wish.

This doesn’t mean that it is easy for me to make speeches or be on panels or address even small groups. And it doesn’t get any easier with time. For one thing, it is painful to share what I experienced, but making myself do it has become a key part of my healing process. Remember that I was raised to put my feelings aside, hold my tears in, and bite my tongue. So now I give myself grace to shed light and teach others what I know from having experienced abuse in more ways than I can count: emotionally, physically, sexually, verbally, and by being held captive.

To get through it, I imagine the people who might be listening, and I think about what my words might mean to them. I visualize a woman being bullied by her partner who hears me and begins to look at her life differently and finds the strength to make a change. I see in my head a young girl who thinks her life is worthless because people have told her she is ugly, too fat, too skinny. I hope she hears me and realizes that someone else knows what she’s going through and understands—and maybe she will turn around and say, I love myself for who I am and nothing that you can do can turn my smile upside down. I think about the people who still need to come home as I did, and I think about the people still waiting for them to come home.

I warn kids about predators who may wait outside the school or playground. I tell them to yell “Fire!” or fight against or even bite someone if they have to in order to get people’s attention. Don’t worry about feeling silly: feeling silly can keep you safe.

And if nobody hears you and you are hurt, don’t be afraid to tell someone about it. It was not your fault! So tell somebody you do trust. Don’t wait. Hiding the pain only protects the person who hurt you and lets that person hurt others.

I often talk about body image and the criticism that some young people are sometimes cruel enough to deliver. I want all kids—but especially teenagers—to know that there isn’t just one standard of beauty in the world. There isn’t just one way to look, any more than there is just one way to think or one way to act.

If others criticize you or, worse, bully you, that is no reason to try to be what others think you should be. Most of the awful stuff people say to hurt your feelings is the stuff those people dislike about themselves. I recite some of the hurtful things I heard as a kid—that I was too short, that I had a big nose I should get fixed, that I looked like a clown, that I was too fat, and what was I thinking when I wore that outfit! I tell people I know how that hurts, but why on earth should all of us look the same? Why should we all try to look like those images we see everywhere? How boring and bland the world would be if we all looked the same. Instead, I think we should celebrate all the different beauties there are, remembering that true beauty is more than skin deep, and if you love yourself, you should love the unique way you were created and pay no attention to what other people say. As long as you love yourself, I tell teenagers, what others say doesn’t matter. As long as you love yourself, you are beautiful. You are uniquely you, and don’t ever forget it.

But kids can feel this kind of criticism so deeply. I remember at one of these events a girl of about twelve or thirteen who said to me, “I’m fat, I’m ugly, and I’m worthless.” I wasn’t going to let her get away with thinking anything like that.

“For one thing,” I said, “you’re big and beautiful. For another, you’re not worthless—you’re a diamond in the rough. You just gotta take a little grease and shine that diamond.” We sat there and talked. She said, “I’m going to lose weight because everybody calls me fat.” I said to her, “I want you to rephrase that. I want you to say, ‘I’m going to lose weight because I love myself and I’m doing this for me and nobody else.’”

“Why would I say that?” she wanted to know.

“Because you don’t ever want to do something just because somebody else told you to do it.”

Then I asked her to sing with me, and I started singing “Amazing Grace.” She joined in right away, and when we had finished, I said to her, “How can you tell me that out of what you consider an ‘ugly’ person came that beautiful voice? The beauty that I just heard in your voice comes from your soul, and it makes you as beautiful outside as you are inside.” That’s what I try to tell the kids I talk to—that their beauty starts within themselves.

THIS IS my life’s work—to keep on talking about abuse and its impact and ways to prevent it or stop it or recover from it. Although I always try to tailor my message to the audience I’m speaking to, there are three core messages I try to bring home to all audiences: first, listen; second, speak up; and third, look for signals.

Listening first. This is the message I drive home again and again to teachers and school administrators, police officers, medical personnel—all the people who represent some kind of authority. By law all of them are required to report any sort of suspected child abuse to Child Protective Services, which is then obligated to investigate the matter. Different states have different laws about the procedures for doing all this, but there is no such thing anywhere as a “protocol” requiring that you can’t send parents out of the room and talk to children on their own.

When I think back to the teachers and social workers and doctors who did basically nothing when I asked for help as a child, it seems to me that all of them disobeyed federal law. To me, that says that they didn’t care or they decided I was making it up or they did not want to get involved. Whatever the reason, they weren’t doing their jobs.

But these are the people children will talk to if they can. They are “authority.” They wear the uniforms that say they have the power to help: a cop’s blue shirt and badge, a doctor’s white coat and stethoscope, a nurse’s cap, a teacher’s place at the desk up front with the power to keep you after school. These are the people children look up to, and when the people children look up to don’t come to their aid, it tells them that no one will, that they’re on their own, and that they just have to put up with what’s happening to them.

We need to train our teachers and counselors, our social workers and police officers to make kids feel safe when they ask for help, and the first step in doing that is to take what they say seriously—not to tell them to go home and talk to Mom or Dad. In fact, when kids are ready to talk about their abuse, make the parents leave the room. That’s the only way the child will speak openly, freely, and without fear. You can always decide later that the child was exaggerating or making it up or just looking for attention. That happens, of course. But it isn’t nearly as damaging a sin as abuse is, and for the child being abused, you, the person in authority, are the first stop on the way to ending the abuse. I showed what I now know were clear signs of abuse. It would have been life changing if someone had believed me.

I know that the attitudes and actions of people in authority are changing, and I want to be part of that change. I frequently give talks to police officers and social workers who are committed to finding more and better ways to keep an eye and an ear out for kids in the kind of trouble I was in. I wish more medical personnel and teachers could attend some of the workshops I participate in that focus on these issues.

But I tell all grownups: listen to children. Not just to what they’re saying but also to what they’re not saying. Listen to the way they talk about home or family. Ask about how they feel. Pay attention to their body language. And listen hard. A kid who is being bullied in school is already so cut off from his classmates that he probably won’t want to answer a question about whether he is being bullied. Please don’t leave it there; don’t take “Yes, I’m fine” for an answer. Because believe me when I say that the thoughts and feelings inside a child being bullied can be dangerous, both for the kid and for those bullying him.

It is always a good idea to follow up on a child’s claim of abuse or bullying rather than to dismiss it. You can always dismiss it later. But a teacher who decides for himself that the bruises on a kid in his class are just the way the kid’s family disciplines bad behavior may be missing something. The same goes for the emergency room physician who is “too busy” to ask questions when a kid is brought in black and blue all over. So when I speak to any group of people in authority, I’m not there to remind them of their responsibility—they know their responsibility. I’m there to tell them what it feels like to be a child when grownups who are in a position to help avoid their responsibility or just run away from it.

To kids themselves, I say: listen to your gut feeling, especially if you feel like there’s something wrong and even if you are just not sure. For example, I tell them: you might start walking down a side alley because it’s the quickest route to where you’re going, but then your gut tells you to turn around. When that happens, do what your gut tells you to do. It’s better to take more time and arrive late than to get stuck in a situation you don’t want to be in.

Second, speak up. Kids often want to tell others what they’re going through, and to them I say: keep telling it. If nobody hears you the first time, don’t be afraid to tell it again and again and again until somebody hears you. Remember that getting hurt is not your fault! So don’t wait. Hiding the pain only protects the person who hurt you and lets that person hurt others.

Grownups can be even more reluctant than kids to speak up. Women in damaging relationships are often afraid or ashamed to tell someone. They’re worried their partner will find out and take it out on them by exercising even tighter control or carrying out more violent beatings. Or they’re terrified he might take it out on their children. Or they are mortified to be caught out, having “chosen” this man as a partner.

Tell someone anyway—no matter what you think the cost might be, no matter how guilty or embarrassed or stupid you feel. Delay just raises the cost of silence. It gives your abuser more time to cause more damage and just makes the whole situation worse.

Again, if the first person you tell doesn’t believe you, tell someone else. Keep speaking up until someone believes you and comes to your rescue.

The women and girls who so bravely spoke up in 2017 about the abuse they suffered as children or about the toxic harassment that broke their professional dreams have taught us so much about the power of raising your voice. A rumble that keeps going can become a roar. The middle-aged women who have spoken up about abuse they experienced as children—the athletes telling about coaches or team doctors, the many women telling about abuse by relatives—have all helped make it that much easier for children being abused now to speak up. I applaud them, and I hope they will join with me in continuing to tell our stories wherever and whenever there is anyone to listen—and for as long as it takes to create change. For when it comes to abuse of any kind, silence is the great enabler. Please don’t stay silent. Say “me too.” Speak up.

Finally, look for signals. Abuse doesn’t just happen suddenly. The statistics say that most abusers were abused themselves. They didn’t get help, and they were not able to cope, so they fell back on inflicting on others the same kind of cruelty they were experiencing. But whatever the cause, if you look back after abuse has happened, you can usually see where it started. There are always telling signs.

This is certainly true for signs of abuse in kids. Kids who show signs of withdrawal—who hang back against the fence during recess, staying away from the other kids and their activities—may well be suffering abuse. The same goes for kids who are just the opposite—too aggressive or too active. If a kid’s grades suddenly tank, that’s a sign. If a child seems fearful or depressed, that too is a sign.

Frequent absences from school are a sign, and so is the kid who seems to never want to go home. A kid who wears the same clothes for a week or looks unwashed may be coming from an abusive atmosphere where there is no supervision. “Inappropriate” clothing is another sign: kids in thick sweaters or wearing head wraps or other odd clothing to cover themselves, or kids unwilling to use the gym shower may be trying to cover up their wounds from being beaten or from cutting themselves. That’s what I did to cover the cutting I did to myself—wore big sweaters, whatever the weather. When I finally gave up cutting, I used rubber bands to flip against my skin and wore a bunch of them around my wrist so I would have them handy. Flipping a rubber band was an action I controlled. It meant I could direct the pain onto my body myself instead of the abuser doing it to me. So a kid with rubber bands around her wrist could be a signal.

It may be tougher to read the signs with grownups, who have more resources or more practice putting up a front. For instance, say you’re visiting with a woman friend, and she keeps getting phone calls and texts from her husband or partner: Where are you? Who are you with? When are you coming home? What time?

In a way, it can seem romantic—like he just can’t bear to be apart from her and can hardly wait until they’re together again. But if he keeps calling, maybe every hour—Why aren’t you here yet? Don’t be late. Do not be late—that isn’t romance; it’s abuse. It’s how he exerts control over her.

Or say you’re trying to set up a girls’ night out, and one friend says she needs to know how much it will cost so she can gather the right amount of cash. No, she doesn’t have a credit card—only her partner does—and she relies on a limited allowance from him. Also, she would need a ride because she has no access to the family car. In the end, she decides she’d better not come at all. Warning signs, all of them: no money and no car equals no mobility, and that means no freedom. She might as well have her feet tied together; she really can’t move on her own—a sign of excessive control.

Abusers actually wave red flags as well. An early sign of an abuser—and this is something that pains me a lot—is abuse of small animals. Even little kids can easily gain control over frogs or bunnies or kitties. If they exercise that control in cruel ways, they’re already in trouble. Unless somebody intervenes and gets through to them, they will simply escalate to bigger animals—and then to humans. I have seen the awful evidence of this in my own life. My family abused small animals first, then their own dogs, then their own children. Ariel Castro killed my puppy, but he’d been abusing animals long before. He abused his wife; he abused us. There was no one to stop him, so the abuse kept spiraling up and up.

If you see kids showing cruelty to animals—which is against the law, by the way—it is time to alert someone or set something in motion that may be able to turn those kids away from their path of cruelty and the destination it almost certainly leads to.

I know that sometimes it can seem that everything is a sign of abuse. And if you are an individual who doesn’t have the authority or training of a cop or a social worker, it’s hard to know how to act on what you hear or see or think. You’re on a bus going somewhere, and you see a kid with bruises, and you wonder if he fell off his bike or if he’s being hit by a parent. What’s your responsibility as an individual and a stranger? That’s hard to figure out.

Still, better safe than sorry. If you see something, say something. That goes especially for people in authority, because for them, the standards are pretty clear. And from where I’m looking at it, there’s a special place in hell for people who hear about or suspect child abuse and then do nothing about it.

ONE DAY at a time. After the darkness I take my life one day at a time. I think those of you who have survived your own darkness know what I mean.

One day at a time, we remind ourselves never to belittle what we went through and never to deny the pain. Every day we remember how far down inside ourselves we had to reach to find enough hope to fight for survival that day. We can do that again if we need to.

One day at a time, I remind myself that my past does not define me and that I have the power to turn things around.

Each day I walk out the door to new and exciting experiences. But I remember what it was like to be afraid to walk outside, and to fear that I would never come back.

One day at a time, I take up the fight to forgive so that I can open my heart. And I fight to remember that forgiveness can take time.

Every day is a struggle, and every day is a learning experience. Every day those of us who have survived the darkness must promise not to give up on ourselves. If we make a mistake, we have to try to learn from it and give ourselves some grace. Every day we must remember that what we went through was not our fault.

We can be happy. I have found that the light I walked into after all that darkness offers so many possibilities for happiness. Just to be with my sweetie, to draw what I choose to draw, to write whatever I want to write whenever I want, to start each day with my cup of coffee, out in the backyard, just taking in what I see, hear, and can feel all around me…