Missing Child

 I’m slowly but surely working on a blog post about missing people that might be alive. When ready, the post will be here. I started that blog almost two years ago, and I have since decided that writing about each individual case is not for me. For one thing, there are so many missing persons, I could never keep up. I would probably leave out the one person that does get found alive. For another thing, there are a lot of good podcasters that are called to do that. Also, a lot of family members do not like that their loved ones’ stories are exploited for entertainment. Many family members want all the media attention they can get, believing that it can lead to answers. It can!  It’s also valid to not want people listening to their stories for shock value. I remember two siblings fighting online over their missing sister. One of the siblings wanted to be interviewed by podcasts, believing it would lead to answers and the other sibling didn’t want the exploitation. 

I would rather talk about it *in general* why a missing person might still be alive.  

One missing person that I am very passionate about is Cherrie Mahan. She was kidnapped at age 8 in 1985, and would today be 47. I adore Cherrie’s mother. She’s a wonderful advocate. She’s very open about her struggles with addiction after her daughter’s disappearance as well. I just like her a lot. So when a woman recently came forward claiming to be Cherrie, I was hopeful. But Cherrie’s mother and others in her facebook group weren’t. Apparently this was the fourth person over the years to claim to be her, and it was messing with her mom’s mental health. The members of the Facebook group pretty much ate her alive. I started to hope that it wouldn’t be Cherrie. I can’t imagine being a victim and receiving those comments. In the end, it wasn’t her.

Sometimes all I can get done on that new blog post is two or three sentences a week. It’s hard, but I want to get it done. The whole thing with Cherrie was a setback, but I still believe that people claiming to be missing people shouldn’t be so easily dismissed. If they are, then why would a real mossing person come forward knowing that they’ll just be hated and called a fake?