Share Your Experience - Illuminate Colorado

Share Your Experiences

Sharing your lived experiences with policymakers or contributing your story to the narrative in Colorado to promote positive community norms that strengthen families is one of the most powerful gifts you can give to future generations of Coloradans.

Your Story is Powerful

Your lived experiences can build bridges where some only see walls. Your stories can help hold our representatives accountable to the reality of our lives. They can shine a light on communities that have fought and are fighting for a fair shot going forward. Storytellers can illuminate prevention in our everyday lives and bring the protective factors to life.

We want to hear your voice—will you share your story?

Contact Us to Learn More

Ways to Share Your Story

Join a Circle of Parents group or the Illuminating Colorado Parenthood Facebook group and share your recommendations and support with other people parenting in Colorado.
Talk with the media about the importance of strengthening families
Share a testimonial for a program or service that strengthens your family
Participate on our family advisory board
Become a contributor to our blog helping to illuminate the protective factors in your life.

Parent and Caregiver Storytellers Wanted

It is so important to listen to people raising people to create stronger communities. Sharing illustrative stories from people parenting creates a stronger understanding in the community of how, together, we strengthen families and prevent child maltreatment. The Illuminate Colorado blog is featuring storytellers interested in illuminating the protective factors in your life.

If you have a passion for promoting positivity and strengthening families, we encourage you to contact us with a story idea connected to one of the protective factors.

We need storytellers with a wide variety of lived experiences and intend to ensure inclusivity, equity and diversity in our storytelling as we contribute to the narrative in Colorado promoting positive community norms that strengthen families.

By supporting storytellers in this way, we also hope to reduce stigma by featuring parenting storytellers addressing issues including mental illness, addiction recovery, economic struggles, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, as well as then general pressures of parenting.

We also welcome parents and caregivers willing to share stories highlighting the realities of parenting in connection with a much needed policy solutions connected to one or more of the protective factors.

Ideal blogs should be 3-5 paragraphs and can include a photo or video. Stock photography can be provided and storytellers are welcome to maintain anonymity. Illuminate can also provide editorial support to help craft your story, if needed.

Story Topics can include, but certainly aren’t limited to, personal stories or helpful guides or tip lists on how you:

Managed challenges related to parenting during the pandemic,
Leaned in on your support system,
Met your families needs even when money or resources were low,
Asked for support managing the daily routine raising your kids,
Learned new things about your child as you spent more time with them during stay-at-home orders, or
Kept your cool and managed your emotions while working and parenting or parenting under stress.

Contact a member of our storytelling communications team to share your story idea and learn more about the process of supporting you in contributing to Illuminate’s blog.

We need people interested in connecting with the media to talk child sexual abuse prevention.

What does “talking child sexual abuse prevention” mean to us?

One of the things Illuminate found after surveying parents to inform the Creating a Colorado Where Children Grow Up Free From Sexual Abuse: An Issue Brief on the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse in Colorado.” was that:

Less than half of Colorado parents (47%) say they typically use anatomically correct terms for body parts with their children. But, research shows that use of anatomically correct terms protects children.

The language we use at the earliest of ages promotes positive body image, self-confidence and parent-child communication, all important factors to preventing child sexual abuse.
The use of anatomically correct terms also discourages abusers. AND
In the event of abuse, anatomically correct terms help children and adults navigate the disclosure and forensic interview process.

What we also found was that awareness makes a difference. When informed that using anatomically correct terms is a way of preventing child sexual abuse, 71% of parents said they would consider using anatomical terms to protect their kids.

We also know some of the conversations that, as parents, we need to have to keep our kids safe can be a little awkward. With the holidays coming up it’s also a great time to have a conversation about this topic. Our experts will tell you, not forcing kids to hug people when they don’t want to is an important step to shifting the culture in our homes, neighborhoods and communities to protect kids. But, we know from modeling this at home since taking the training that we offer, it is hard when the kids’ grandparents don’t get why it’s such a big deal. Conversations with people you know and trust are sometimes the hardest. But, again, we know from the data and terrible stories in the news, overwhelmingly it is a person in a position of trust – a relative, teacher, a coach – that is sexually abusing children.

We’d love to connect with a parent(s) who can speak from experience about having the tough conversations &/or using real language. Email jvonarb@illuminatecolorado.org to learn more.

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