April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month

Dinae Knox is a fourteen-year veteran of the foster care system in Illinois and the product of teenage, alcohol and drug addicted parents. She is from a single-parent and single-guardian home in a poverty-stricken and gang-dominated community on the west side of Chicago. Despite the violence and abuse in her life, she has beaten the statistical odds to become an author, mother, wife and a professional. She hopes to inspire others with her story.

“I want to serve as an inspiration to children in foster care and those in abusive situations. Bad things happen to good people and it’s not your fault,” says Knox. “April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month and I want to spread the word that we need to be diligent and protect the children in our community. We need to speak out when we see a child in an abusive situation. And for those of us who have been abused beyond imagination, we must forgive and move forward with our life. Life is a gift and I believe a gift from God.”

Knox’s book, Bootstraps Laced with Faith is an illustrated, riveting and true story of her triumphant recovery from extreme corporeal and sexual abuse, neglect, mental institutionalization, and crime. She overcomes it all with grace.

Through this work, along with its companion journal, and the author’s nonprofit organization, Pro Se Services, Knox strives to encourage children and youth of hardship to chart their own path towards recovery, resiliency, and become persons of excellence; and, inspire people, especially those of stature to lend them a helping hand, listening ear, or soft shoulder.