I had an amazing experience speaking to Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) last week! Thank you for your warm welcome and your amazing support!

I had the pleasure of presenting with an amazing survivor leader and author of I’m Not Broken, Jesse Leon. We spoke to an audience of social workers, psychologists, and nurses from the MPS district, and they were all amazingly supportive and engaged.

Thank you so much to the wonderful women who brought me in to speak about my story and answer questions about familial child sex trafficking. I know that this group will make a huge difference in their students’ lives. I could feel their concern and their determined energy throughout the room.

Thank you again for all of your support for me and other survivors!

Best and be well,

Adira James

I’m so honored and excited!!!

I’ll be doing a presentation at the 2024 JuST (Juvenile Sex Trafficking) Conference in Phoenix, AZ with Annabelle Thomson from NCMEC!

This amazing Conference presented by Shared Hope International will be held from October 22nd-24th. It is the leading national conference in juvenile sex trafficking, and I can’t express enough how honored I am to be a part of it, and to be able to have the opportunity to partner with Annabelle from NCMEC.

The title of our presentation is “From a Survivor’s Perspective: Understanding Familial Child Sex Trafficking”. It will be a facilitated discussion style presentation, where I will be sharing information about the dynamics and indicators of familial child sex trafficking, how Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is often, if not always used and produced in conjunction with the sexual abuse, and the impact that this abuse has on a survivor. We will be sharing not only the signs, but how we can respond to this often overlooked form of child abuse. We will be endeavoring to empower the multidisciplinary audience to understand this form of child sex trafficking on a whole new level, save as many children as we can, and help as many survivors as possible.

Registration is open at http://www.justconference.org. Hopefully I’ll see you there!

Thank you for all of your support! I couldn’t do this without you!

Best and be well,

Adira James

My fourth book is out, and I’m so excited to share it with you!

In Sunbeams Through Blankets: An Inspirational Guide to Surviving Familial Sex Trafficking, I continue to use a hybrid format of poetry, prose, and artwork to shed light on the familial element of the human trafficking spectrum by describing my vivid flashbacks and the abusive situations that have been most strongly seared into my memory.

Along with sharing how I survived my abuse, I discuss ways for survivors of trauma to heal and grow based on techniques that I have used successfully, including art therapy. In fact, I have put colored images of my works throughout the book.

Through this book, I strive to bring hope to those who suffer. I also hope to inspire agency in those who read my book, encouraging people to help save children who are trapped in the grips of the inhumane industry of child sex trafficking. 

In this guide, I hope to galvanize the reader’s inner strength. I believe wholeheartedly that healing isn’t a straight trajectory, and that being a warrior isn’t like being in a race for perfection. This guide helps readers to understand that life is fluid, and so is healing. Therefore, being a warrior means you are maneuvering through the maze of life and allowing yourself to work towards present moment happiness.

This book speaks to everyone: survivors, therapists, teachers, doctors, law enforcement professionals, social workers, and more. My goal is for this guide to help readers realize we are all warriors and we can come together to help stop familial child sex trafficking.

Sunbeams Through Blankets is now available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

• Amazon
• Link

It’s January again. It’s another month to remind all of us that we need to continue to battle against the evil that is Human Trafficking. There are many rays in the kaleidoscope of human trafficking – labor trafficking, sex trafficking, familial sex trafficking, child labor, and more.

January 11th is Human Trafficking Awareness Day, so remember to use that day to donate your time, funds, knowledge, or energy towards the fight to end human trafficking.

So much pain is being endured every day by so many people in our world. Let’s keep fighting! and please support survivors who have physically made it through their darkest days, but are still fighting to survive and thrive from the aftermath.

And to all of the survivors out there, we see your bright light… we see YOU!!!

I want to thank everyone who is in the fight, and thank everyone who supports me and other survivors.

I appreciate you!

Best and be well,

Adira

I can’t believe that it’s almost the end of the year! It’s always a time of reflection for me. I try to stay positive, just like millions of others, as the Holidays make their way through and the calendars change over, but it can be a difficult task. Let’s be kind to those around us and to ourselves during this transformative time. Remember your affirmations! I’ll see you in 2024!

Oh, and I have a bit of exciting news. I will have a new book published in Spring of 2024!!! More details to come…

All my best,

Adira

October is National Domestic Violence Prevention Month. I was blessed to see a recent webinar put on by the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) in honor of Wa Wokiye Win – Woman Who Helps Everyone – Tillie Black Bear. She was an amazing Lakota woman who was the Grandmother of The Battered Women’s Movement, and her work to advocate for victims spanned for almost 40 years. Her ability to unite people to combat domestic and sexual violence both for Indigenous women and children, and women in general, was astounding. Her story and her life were so inspiring.

She was the first Native woman to take this issue to Washington D.C. and work to end domestic violence on a national level. She also helped create prevention and after care programs for those touched by domestic violence, including having counseling available to help all parties involved, help with education, child care, and housing assistance. Black Bear did so much to honor and restore the strength and safety of women, and in the 30 years she spent working on legislation, she made sure that the needs of Indigenous women and the sovereignty of Indian nations were represented.

I wish I could have met her before she passed, but her legacy and her work continues on. The Tillie Black Bear Women Are Sacred Day is October 1st, but let’s honor her everyday, be of service to others, and take care of each other.

Best and be well,

Adira

I want to thank everyone over at NCMEC for all of their support! And I wanted to share the blog post that Karen Dabrowski wrote about me and my book “What They Couldn’t Take: A Memoir of Survival From Familial Sex Trafficking”. I am so honored to be featured on their site! I can’t thank them enough!

Check out the post here:

• Link

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Best,

Adira

This time of year is very hard for many people that live where snow falls. It feels like it should be Spring already, and yet there is snow on the ground and snow in the forecast. The lack of sunshine doesn’t help either. I’ve found that I need to consciously look for the beauty and the images of life that exist everywhere around me, and I’ve found that I need to get creative!

I put together a few photographs of hidden beauty that I hope you enjoy…

Can you see the butterfly? I can’t wait to see them flutter on the milkweed that is waiting to bloom in my backyard!

Can you see the mountains? Do they make you want to gaze at Colorado’s Rocky Mountains?

I took this photo after our second ice storm. It looks like an ice fairy should be floating around these magical branches, don’t you think?

I hope you’ve gotten some joy from these photographs, and hang on… it’s the first day of Spring on March 20th!

All my best,

Adira

I am so honored to be a Survivor Advocate Consultant for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)! I was so lucky to spend a week in Alexandria, VA at NCMEC in February where I was welcomed right away by their amazing and dedicated family. I can’t express how special they made me feel, and how much I learned while I was there.

Thank you so much to everyone I met there, and everyone who has supported me on my journey so far!

I hope to see everyone again soon!

Best and be well,

Adira

Be Bold! Wear Blue!

Blue is the chosen color to show support for the effort to end Human Trafficking, so wear it with pride today and every day!

Let’s show the world how much me care!

Best and be well,

Adira