TruOasis Counseling Services

02/03/2026

An incredible story about survival and strength. A must read!!

She held her head on with one hand, her organs in with the other, and crawled toward the light.
December 18, 1994. A quiet Sunday night in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Twenty-seven-year-old Alison Botha dropped a friend home after an evening of pizza and games. Then she drove to her apartment, parked her car, and reached for her laundry bag.
In that single, unremarkable moment, everything changed.
A man forced his way into her car at knifepoint. He drove to pick up a second man. They took her to a remote stretch of bushland where no one could hear what was about to happen.
What they did that night defies human comprehension.
They r***d her. They stabbed her thirty times in the abdomen, deliberately trying to destroy her ability to ever become a mother. When her leg twitched, they knew they weren't done. They slashed her throat sixteen times—so deeply that her head nearly separated completely from her body. Then they left her in the dirt, certain she was dead.
They were wrong.
Alison Botha was still breathing.
Lying in the darkness, unable to feel most of her body, covered in her own blood, she understood with absolute clarity: if she didn't move, she would die here and no one would ever know what happened.
So she made a choice.
First, she needed to leave evidence. With her fingers, she scratched into the sand beneath her. The names of her attackers: Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger. Then, beneath their names, four words that would later break the world's heart:
"I love Mom."
Then she began to move.
Her head wouldn't stay upright—the wounds were too deep. It kept falling backward. Her intestines kept spilling from her abdomen. She used one hand to hold her head forward. The other to hold her organs inside. And with nothing left but the most primal will to exist, she crawled.
She collapsed. She rose. She collapsed again. Her vision faded. The pain transcended anything a conscious mind should be able to endure. But each time she fell, she found the strength to rise.
She reached the road.
At 2:45 AM, veterinary student Tiaan Eilerd was driving down that highway. He saw something in his headlights he couldn't understand. Then he realized—it was a woman. He thought she was already dead. Then she moved.
He stayed with her. He kept her conscious. He called for help. He would later say that something placed him on that road at that exact moment for a reason.
At the hospital, doctors stood in stunned silence. One surgeon said that in all his years of practice, he had never seen injuries of that severity in a living patient. Alison wasn't expected to survive surgery. She wasn't expected to survive the night. She wasn't expected to survive the weeks that followed.
She survived all of it.
And while still in her hospital bed, unable to speak because of the tube in her throat, she did something extraordinary. She identified her attackers from police photographs by writing their names. Du Toit and Kruger were arrested. They pleaded guilty. In August 1995, they were sentenced to life in prison.
But Alison refused to wait for the courts to give her back her voice.
In a country where r**e survivors were expected to remain silent and carry shame that was never theirs, Alison chose to be seen. She became one of the first women in South Africa to publicly identify herself as a r**e survivor. She became a motivational speaker, traveled to more than thirty countries, and told the truth about what had been done to her. She wrote her memoir, "I Have Life."
Then she did what her attackers had tried to make impossible—she had two sons. Doctors warned her the damage might prevent motherhood. Her attackers had deliberately tried to destroy that possibility.
They failed.
Then came the day she had always prayed would never arrive.
In July 2023, after twenty-eight years, both men were granted parole. Alison wasn't consulted. She learned about it only after the decision had been made. She later wrote it was the day she had always hoped and prayed would never come.
Many believe the emotional devastation of reliving her nightmare contributed to what happened next.
On September 25, 2024, Alison suffered a brain aneurysm. She spent three days in a hospital before emergency surgery in Cape Town. The damage was severe. She lost the ability to sit, stand, or walk independently. Her left side was weakened. She needed speech therapy. The road ahead seemed impossibly long.
But then, in February 2025, after public outcry and legal review, the parole was revoked. Her attackers were sent back to prison. The Minister of Correctional Services made the decision personally, citing the imperative to protect the community.
Today, Alison is recovering. Slowly. Patiently. Fighting again—not against violence this time, but against the quiet, grinding toll of surviving what no one was meant to survive.
She recently shared this message:
"Whatever you're going through, it's just a patch. It might hit you unexpectedly and feel heavy, but if you keep moving forward, you'll come out the other side. I WILL be okay."
Some people survive tragedy and move on quietly, letting time do its healing work.
Alison Botha did something harder.
She turned her worst night into a reason for someone else to keep going. She held her own body together with her bare hands when everything said she should let go. She chose life when the entire world had already decided she was finished.
As she once said: "I realized my life was too valuable to let go of."
That's not just survival. That's something else entirely. Something that reminds us what human beings are truly capable of when everything is taken from them and they still refuse to disappear.

01/01/2026

Happy New Year! As you step into a fresh year, remember that it's a canvas for new stories, filled with 365 new chances to grow, learn, and achieve your dreams, so embrace the journey with courage, set new goals, and believe in the magic of fresh starts, knowing that every small step leads to big changes and that the best is yet to come.

11/03/2025

10/21/2025

Very insightful article about the pandemic of loneliness and isolation!!

https://www.facebook.com/share/16Dq52tbMc/?mibextid=wwXIfr

The Anatomy of Loneliness: Understanding the Six Voids. It’s one of the great contradictions of our time: we live surrounded by people, yet many of us haven’t had a meaningful conversation in weeks. The roads are crowded, our phones buzz all day, but inside, there’s an echoing emptiness. We scroll, reply, attend meetings, share memes — still, something in us keeps whispering: I feel unseen.

Isolation vs. Loneliness: Two Different Silences. People often use the words interchangeably, but they’re not the same.

Isolation is external — a state of disconnection from the world. It happens when someone is cut off from physical or social contact. It can be voluntary or circumstantial — moving cities, losing a job, retirement, migration, illness, or technology replacing touch.

Loneliness is internal — an emotional ache, a longing for connection and company that grows out of isolation. It’s not about how many people you have around you; it’s about how deeply you feel seen, understood, and valued.

You can be isolated without feeling lonely — like an artist happily working alone in a studio. And you can feel crushing loneliness in a crowd, in a marriage, in a family photo where everyone is smiling but you.

To address loneliness effectively, we must first address isolation. Because until the bridge to the world is rebuilt — until touch, talk, purpose, and recognition return — no amount of self-help or spiritual optimism can fill that void.

The emotional landscape of an individual is hard to measure — the empty evenings, the unsent messages, the silent dinners between couples, the ageing parent staring at a muted phone screen, the young professional celebrating alone with delivery food.

We are, in many ways, the most connected and the most emotionally malnourished generation in history.

Why Loneliness Hurts So Deeply?

Because human beings are biologically wired for connection. Our brains release oxytocin when we hug, serotonin when we feel accepted, and dopamine when someone says, “I’m proud of you.”

When these social nutrients go missing, the body reads it as danger. Cortisol spikes. Sleep breaks. Immunity weakens. The mind begins to turn inward — rehearsing memories, replaying conversations, inventing reasons for rejection.

Over time, loneliness becomes self-perpetuating: we withdraw to protect ourselves, but the withdrawal deepens the wound. Isolation becomes both cause and consequence.

In my study of human relationships and emotional psychology, I found that loneliness rarely stems from a single cause. It takes shape through six specific voids — six forms of disconnection that hollow the human experience. Each void represents a missing nutrient in our emotional diet.

1. The Moral Support Void (Read my previous article on this): When effort goes unacknowledged and belief is withheld. This void creates self-doubt — the feeling that your dreams don’t deserve applause. It’s the loneliness of being loved but not encouraged.

2. The Friendship Void: When companionship becomes transactional or vanishes with time. We lose those who once knew us without explanation, and new friendships remain polite but shallow. This void breeds nostalgia and mistrust.

3. The Guidance Void: When mentorship disappears — elders, teachers, or role models too busy or too distant to steer the young.
This void leaves people wandering through adulthood with information but no wisdom.

4. The Intimacy Void: When closeness loses warmth. Couples share homes but not hearts, families share meals but not words. The skin may touch, but the souls don’t.

5. The Companionship Void: When you lack romantic companionship— missing emotional support, physical intimacy and a sense of belonging. This void breeds frustration and self-doubt.

6. The Connection Void: True connection goes beyond surface-level interactions. When we cannot share our hopes, fears, or disappointments, relationships can feel shallow and unsatisfying. Prolonged emotional distance can lead to profound sadness and loneliness.”

Each of these voids interacts with the others. The absence of encouragement can lead to the loss of purpose; the loss of friendship can trigger isolation; the lack of intimacy can weaken self-worth. It’s a web, not a checklist.

How did we arrive here?

The short answer: speed, screens, and survival.
The long answer: we replaced community with convenience.

Technology promised connection but delivered comparison. Urban life replaced interdependence with independence. Families became smaller, careers longer, attention shorter.

Our communication became performative. We talk not to share, but to broadcast. Our emotions became consumable — instantly shared, instantly forgotten. And somewhere in this constant noise, real listening vanished.

What It Feels Like Inside the Void?

Ask anyone who’s truly lonely, and they’ll describe sensations that border on the physical: a heaviness in the chest, a quiet panic during meals, an inexplicable fatigue, the sense of floating outside one’s own life. A 2023 UK Biobank study found that chronic loneliness activates the same brain regions as physical pain. It’s not “in your head” — it’s in your nervous system.

People living in prolonged isolation often describe their lives as a film watched from the back row — they can see themselves functioning, smiling, succeeding, but they feel no pulse beneath it. They are *participants turned spectators*.

The Irony of Modern Empathy: We are flooded with information about mental health, yet starved of lived empathy. We post infographics about “checking on your friends,” but few of us pick up the phone. We champion “self-care” but rarely “community care.”

The real antidote to loneliness isn’t meditation alone — it’s connection. Meditation may quiet the noise, but only relationships can restore rhythm.

Addressing loneliness isn’t about forcing positivity. It’s about rebuilding the missing bridges — one human link at a time.

Rekindle Real Contact: Make room for small, physical togetherness — a meal shared, a hand held, a face seen without filters.

2. Relearn Encouragement: Offer moral support without judgment. Praise effort, not just success. Words are small doses of healing.

3. Seek Circles, Not Crowds: True belonging comes from small, consistent communities — not audiences, but allies.

4. Acknowledge Emotional Labour: Appreciate those who listen, cook, care, teach, clean, and console. Their invisibility sustains us all.

5. Give Purpose a Human Face: Work is meaningful only when it connects us to something larger — a cause, a craft, a community.

The Six Voids Project: Over the coming weeks, I will explore each of these voids — their emotional architecture, psychological consequences, and relatable stories of people living through them.
From the unacknowledged artist to the forgotten mother, from the burnt-out employee to the friend who stopped calling — every narrative will reveal how isolation takes root, and how reconnection can heal it.

Because loneliness isn’t an individual flaw; it’s a collective fracture.
And every fracture can be mended once it’s named.

Closing Reflection: The opposite of loneliness isn’t company. It’s *understanding. And the first step toward that is learning to listen again — to ourselves, to each other, to the quiet cries beneath composure.

Loneliness, after all, isn’t just an emotion. It’s the soul’s way of saying: "Remember me. I was made for connection."

Yours Truly
Aritra Sarkar

06/27/2025

I wonder if my clients feel this way! 🤪🤣🤣🤣

06/06/2025

Summer is a great time to recharge emotionally.

With longer days and slower schedules, create moments to reflect, reconnect, and reset.

Practice mindfulness outdoors, take intentional breaks, and set gentle goals for your mental wellness.

For deeper support, visit https://truoasiscounseling.com or call (248) 762-6748.

06/06/2025

Fun fact: You don’t need to be in crisis to benefit from counseling.

Therapy supports growth, self-awareness, and even decision-making in everyday life.

Whether you’re thriving, struggling, or somewhere in between, therapy can support your continued progress.

Find out how at https://truoasiscounseling.com or call (248) 762-6748.

06/05/2025

Parenting can be rewarding—and challenging.

TruOasis Counseling offers parent coaching to help you build stronger relationships with your children, manage behavioral concerns, and feel more confident in your parenting.

Let’s create a more peaceful home environment together.

Schedule a session at https://truoasiscounseling.com or call (248) 762-6748.