Circle of Safety

I always have my circle of safety around me. The circle of safety is the imaginary circle formed around a person if the center of the body is the center, and the extended arm, parallel to the ground, is the radius. That’s the area that I was told not to let strangers in if I was away from my parents or some other trusted adult. The circle of safety was very important to me, due to a story my mother told me when I was five or six years old. She told me this was a true story.

There was a married couple who ran a day care in their home. One of the nice things about this day care was that they had turtles for pets, and the children got to learn about turtles – how to care for them, how to play with them without hurting them, and so on. The owners of the day care did craft projects with the children, and one of the projects was a refridgerator magnet in the shape of a turtle. All the kids got to make them and give them to their parents as gifts.

It seems that this couple molested many (perhaps all, I can’t remember) of the children they cared for. They would kill one of the turtles in front of the children they abused and told them something to the effect of, “If you tell, this will happen to your mommy and daddy.” So the children, at home, would look at the turtle-shaped magnets on the refridgerator and be reminded of the threats made by the day care owners. The children didn’t tell anyone until they were well into their teens.

So that story scared me enough to seriously fear the unknown threat from strangers. And to this day, I think of the turtles and remember that my circle of safety will keep my parents from harm.