By Lizz Bennett
What an incredible and powerful event we were all lucky enough to be apart of! i am still getting donations and registrations so it will be a few
More day before I have the total numbers of participants. I will let you know as soon as I can!
To all the brave and giving people that supported The Burpee Mile, what a crazy thing to do. The amount of time, alone, in burpee-ing a mile, is the same amount of time it takes some people to complete a 10k or 1/2 marathon. Some people can bike a good 30-40 miles or trail run up to Elephant Rock and back. In that same amount of time, on a motivated Saturday, I can edge, mow, and fertiluze my lawn...probably weed my flower beds.
Without hardly any notice AND paying for it, you decided to put yourselves through a mile of the most hated movement we ever throw at you.The soreness, grass stains, hives, scraped knees and ripped up palms could have easily been avoided by just writing a check, true. And that's what NMV needs most, is the $ to help those children find safety, guidance, support, and strength to heal from the layers of damaging abuse that people these children, at one point trusted. People who inflicted willingly and repeatedly to these helpless children. NMV needs this $ to pay the therapists and for the programs and centrrs for safety for these victimized children. And $, even a little bit goes such a long way when every single cent is for this purpose alone.
$ is only part if the need. NMV needs brave people to lend a voice to the ones who can't speak about it. Whether us because they think its their fault, because they're embarrassed, because it might get someone they really care anout in trouble, because it makes other people uncomfortable, because it isn't a topic that anyone wants to think about or address, its too awful to face and confront. But one victim lead to another. It is a silence that is loudly banging against the shut doors around us.
To everyone that supported The Burpee Mile, in ANY WAY, you opened your mouth and lent a voice to the speechless, spoke the taboo, stood up for the beat down, sacrificed your time, sweat, skin, clothing, other more glorious events, possibly even the snide remark or comment from another. Based on all the statistics in Utah alone, we ALL either know someone that has been sexually abused as a child, by someone they knew, or we have been victims ourselves.
A Mile of Burpees is a crazy thing to do. So very many of you did it! Alone, with your families, in OK, FL, WY, CO, MI, Canada, TX, with perfect strangers, with 40 sponsors!
With victims. As victims.
On behalf of No More Victims, the many generous and suportive Sponsors, the families of victims, the victimized children, as a victim myself, thank you for speaking up and doing something hard because you can and because there are things so much worse than a mile of burpees. One day let us hope and pray the cycle will end and these children will be victims no more.