By: Mae Rhine
LAMBERTVILLE A childhood of abuse and neglect and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States has inspired a city woman to start a Web site she hopes will "make the world a kinder place," particularly for children.
Carol Sullivan has started Blossom Foundation, a Web site that takes no donations. It is supported entirely by a volunteer staff and includes links to the Sierra Club; the Anne Frank Web site; Elie Wiesel Web site, a Peace Prize winner, Holocaust survivor and historian; the Save the Children Web site, that works to make lasting positive change in the lives of children; the Boys Town Web site; and others. All are concerned with protecting children and the environment, two of Ms. Sullivan’s pet causes.
Although she has long since forgiven her family, Ms. Sullivan can’t talk about the years of abuse without sobbing. It has left scars that once caused her to lose her voice entirely; scars she hopes to prevent other children from having.
"Nature was my best friend growing up" in Colonia, N.J., in Middlesex County, Ms. Sullivan recalls. She was the youngest of four children; she had two sisters and a brother.
She was neglected physically and mentally, she says, mostly by her mother.
"I know I’m not the only one; I speak for a lot of people" who have been through similar experiences, she says. She’s a "happy" person now at 41, but she says it took her about 25 years to get over it.
Besides her misery at home, in school, she "was easy to pick on." She had "a nice group of friends," all of whom turned away, one by one.
"I don’t hold it against them," she says. "The voices of peers are so strong."
She also claims she was sexually molested in sixth grade by a group of boys who would attack every time the teacher left the room.
"No one interceded on my behalf," she says with the tears still streaming down her face. "I was only 11. I was too ashamed; I had nowhere to go, no one to talk to."
Ms. Sullivan says as the years went on, she became "an invisible person."
The school she transferred to in seventh grade was so large, she was able "to hide myself."
Her mother continued the abuse, however, even trying to stab her daughter with a kitchen knife when Ms. Sullivan was dating a black man. Her brother suffered, too, and still bears the scars from his mother taking a hot iron and placing it on his stomach.
"Abuse takes many forms," she says, including "withholding love." She found herself competing with her siblings "for any scrap of love" she could get from her mother.
It was in eighth grade when her mother "threw me in my sister’s car and said take ‘this,’ ‘this’ being me."
During this time, Ms. Sullivan used nature and singing to escape her problems. She lost her voice temporarily as a teen-ager, but regained it a short time later.
Ms. Sullivan finally got away when she went to Rutgers College.
The Blossom Foundation, she says, is "just to let people know that humanity should recognize the dignity of each individual human being."
She is active as music director at her church, St. David’s in Princeton Junction, which lost six members of its congregation at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
"It hit the church hard, struggling with the reasons why," she says. "It was a time to remember there is a god, and you have to preserve and remember life; it doesn’t last forever." We have to do what we can to make it a better world."
Members of her church help her with the Web site, which she calls "a public clearinghouse for information." There’s help on adopting children and encouraging the enjoyment and protection of the environment as well as many other links to information for nurturing children. It can be found at www.blossomfoundation.org.
Her love for the environment led her two months ago to work at the Bucks County Audubon Society in Solebury Township.
And she said her son, Tommy, 11, is "the light of my life."
She says, "Children generally need extra attention. They should all be treated with love and concern and respect. I want to enlighten people and encourage them to reach out, to make it a kinder world. I know we can’t do it all, but people in everyday life should be kinder."
On her wall is a picture of Pearl S. Buck, winner of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for literature. She is sitting in a chair with her daughter, Carol. Ms. Buck is Ms. Sullivan’s idea of a role model for a mother because of her foundation, Pearl S. Buck International, and love of children.
"It is only more poignant to me that Pearl’s daughter was mentally retarded, but so loved by Pearl that she wrote a book about her daughter and her struggle to have her fit in."
Nowadays, she’s content with her life in Lambertville. And she calls her mother once a year "to make sure she’s OK."
She doesn’t speak to her two sisters, but is close to her brother, now living in Texas, who she considers "a gentle and loving person."
She adds, "I forgave my mother. I said the words. You can’t be bitter. Too many people are alone."

