My update from Community:
BOO!
You all thought I had died, but that my spirit was somehow trapped in another reality, occasionally posting on my blog and doing numerous things behind the scenes, right?
Thanks to Chillzero and all the wonderful JREF supporters!
It's been busy for us this fall. We rolled out a new forum that I believe is one of the best in terms of information provided and case listings. (We have close to 1,000 listed.) We've also developed private areas for families of the missing to converse with each other, away from the curious eyes of the public, AND we are the 1st organization I know of to offer free online counseling with one of the nation's most knowledgeable and respected grief and trauma counselors. We've also done alot of updating on the main site.
I developed and presented a new training session to teach families and advocates what they need to know about DNA. I did a one day trip to AR last month to teach a group of 40 advocates and now am scheduled to teach several hundred in March of 2008.
In September, our guide for dealing with having a missing elderly loved one was published and we were involved with the recovery of two missing teens.
We are now working on the launch of a local awareness program, one which we hope will be replicated in other cities across the nation.
I still get the occasional email from "psychics", but they quickly learn they're barking up the wrong tree. I admit to getting a slight bit of satisfaction from pointing out that their "psychic" abilities failed them since they didn't get any "messages" beforehand about my bad "karma". This forum and the people here played a large part in my ability to handle their nonsense.
Thanks also to anyone who helped with the issue as presented in the thread about the National Center for Missing Adults closing date. Not only is it a bad deal for all the families, but will also have huge implications for the "kitchen table" organizations like ours. None of the rest of us will be able to handle the influx of new cases once they close.
Anyway, I hope you are all doing well. I am really looking forward to meeting those of you who will be at TAM in January.
Warmest Regards,
Kelly