Finding Community Everywhere You Go

My my my, I'm not very good at keeping up with this blog anymore, that or maybe sometimes I feel I have nothing to talk about with any value. It's amazing how easy it is to get caught up in a schedule and cycle as you get older. I've done plenty of fun things but mostly a lot of work - just how I like it as an extremely type A lady. 

I will say before I get to my point, that I am finally recovered from my brain surgery and feeling more and more like myself every day. It took me personally about 5 years to overcome the side effects of the surgery and medication I am on now - still have a bit of anxiety but I can manage it most days. 

I'm writing this particular post to share my experience in attending the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Conference for the first time. This was hosted by Fox Valley Technical College in conjunction with the National Criminal Justice Training Center - where I have happened to get quite a bit of online forensic training for school. Truth be told, I wasn't aware things like this existed and to be perfectly honest, I never even researched it. My friend Loren from Australia that I have spoken about before got word of it and asked me if I wanted to attend with her - so I did. I hadn't see her in person in 10 years so that was a whole story in itself, but I will keep it to myself. But I will say this, I do not know where I would be if I hadn't met Loren O'Keeffe. While we are here, she recently rebranded her amazing organization from the Missing Persons Advocacy Network (MPAN) to https://missed.org.au/. If anyone reading this is suffering with a long-term missing person, also known as "ambiguous loss", you may want to take a look at this product they have created: Hope Narrative. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to email me! 

I've been to many conferences in my life, it's par for the course of most professions, but especially in the science and education realms. But this was a conference where I wasn't sure what to expect, the agenda was very diverse and there was a little bit of everything for the attendees - from talks about forensic anthropology, DNA technologies that piece together minuscule amounts of DNA from degraded samples to get potential matches, search and rescue approaches, adult amber alerts (Ashanti Alert, see: Ashanti Alert), police discussing how they create missing person teams and make decisions, the developments for the support for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Populations (#MMIP), many people invested in long -term missing/unidentified people and cold cases, as well as talks from the living victims (family members) of the victims of violent crimes. 

I have never met other people that have made me feel completely normal because we have suffered the same and continue to suffer years after these events have taken place. And it's not to say I don't feel "normal" it's just that there's always something on the back of my mind when I'm interacting in public as to whether or not the person across from me may recognize me, and if they do, what do they know about me? The struggles with PTSD and anxiety disorders, the media, trying to maintain PR representation over our loved one's stories (that, again, are public information and ANYONE can make ANYTHING they want with our loved ones stories), and constantly being bombarded with external people wanting to talk about the murders. And to know that other people's days are also horrible because we woke up to yet another "murderino" making money off of our loved one's death... was not good but it was.. relieving? bonding? I'm not sure how to describe it - I felt validated in the anger and disgust I have with the social media "true crime community" - get a life. 

I could go on and on about this aspect as I did last year but I digress... I again, realize how lucky my family, friends, and community are for not only having found Mickey's remains but also having caught the man that murdered her. Many people don't get both, many don't get either - for them their eternity is never knowing where their loved one is. Never knowing who may be responsible for their death. And one thing I can tell you, regardless of what you learn, there is not such thing as closure. I am going to post a video here that a new friend I made shared in his talk for his organization, Project Cold Case: the video is "I'm doing fine". 

And please be aware that not all missing person cases are due to malice or caused by another person. What they call being "voluntarily missing" is even more complicated because they're still missing and you have no idea what has happened to them after they have chose to walk away. I will say, in my very few experiences of working on cases where an adult has chosen to leave their current lives, families, jobs, etc... it is relatively easy to find whether or not they are still alive... but not always. And I certainly don't have access to all the tools that government institutions do - legally or financially. But you know what, if someone really wants to disappear.. they will find a way. 

The more amazing and impressive thing was all of the things these family members have done, not just for their community but for the nation and world. The missing person world is not a very large community and yet the expansive way it permeates into other fields was so wonderful to learn. And for all the families I have worked with or that may be reading this, I want you to know that there are 100s and 1000s of people out there doing things for you every single day. We all care about you, love you, and love your missing person and want them to be brought home. We are as desperate for it as you are and will always help you to keep fighting. It's the only reason anyone does it because I tell you what... outside of a few very specific fields... no one that works in missingness is bringing home a lot of money - we are all doing what we gotta do to keep helping. 

One of the biggest complaints all the Family Advocate Groups (of which there are very few businesses) all receive from the family members we work with is that the police aren't doing enough. And I do recognize why we all feel that way, and I recognize that sometimes that is, unfortunately, 100% accurate - sometimes they aren't doing enough, or anything for that matter. But I have to say, there are so many Law Enforcement Officials that do everything they can and they are grossly impacted by the cases they work on. I would go as far as to say that this was a conference primarily directed at Law Enforcement Officials, and of course there were scientists and a few advocate groups there but these LE people care. A lot. There is a serious issue with a lack of Law Enforcement in our country and because of that, there cannot be a team dedicated to cases like we see in the movies. Maybe for a few days but not for the long haul, it's a hard pill to swallow but there are things we can do to increase engagement, I call it "raising hell" - if you need help increasing police activity on your loved one's case please email me at ramssingpeople@gmail.com. I will say, the police, detectives, supervisors, etc. were listening to the living victims that spoke at this conference and understood that a missing person case or a murder investigation is more complicated for the loves ones than simply just dealing with the missingness or murder. And that's something not all of them were aware of... we are burning the candles at both ends and in the middle - it's hell on earth. And what more can we ask for than for people to continue to grow and change with each other. 

Many of the things I'm putting here, are things I have already known and experienced because I have been doing this for almost 11 years now and I have helped 100s of people with their missing person campaigns, but it was very refreshing to see the people out there that fight the good fight every single day. I must say, I know that I am an "unusual" person and I think it takes a special type of fire to continue to use your personal experience to try to make a change - and I am happy to be the person selected to do this by our universe. I wish my sister could know that her sacrifice has lead to some good but of course, I would still do anything to get Mickey back. 

Running an organization is very challenging, especially after my brain tumor and surgery that started this blog. When I had my surgery, I had to make a choice do I want to 1) concentrate on building this business or 2) continue to help family members and I choice option 2 because I just couldn't do both at the time and recover and work as an educator. I finally feel like I am in a place where I can begin working on the business side again and I have a few great ideas. So I will use the ending of this to put out a few public pleas/requests. I am looking for 

• 1) web content editors 
• 2) funding opportunities - I will do all the work but will accept assistance hahah 
• 3) someone to teach me how to make TikToks and YouTube videos and 
• 4) family members of abducted adults that interested in petitioning the state of Louisiana to pass the Ashanti Act here - I know that an adult amber alert would not have saved my sister's life but it may have helped us catch her murderer more quickly - although, let's be honest, he left a lot of evidence behind 
• 5) will always appreciate volunteers, especially if you have interest in helping our Event Planner get some fundraisers going
• 6) we will gladly accept any donations here: donate here!

Sending my love to everyone and thank you for reading and supporting me, my family, my friends, my sister's friends, and every single person out there suffering with a missing loved one. 

If you have a missing loved one, please make sure they are in the following databases:

• https://irp.fas.org/agency/doj/fbi/is/ncic.htm
• https://namus.nij.ojp.gov/

Missing child: https://www.missingkids.org/

And if you have a loved one that has been missing for more than a year or murdered more than a year ago with no conclusion, consider putting them into: https://projectcoldcase.org/victim-submission/