Month: April 2009

April Child Abuse Prevention Month

alchemynow1 Comment

It is soon to be 40 years since I left behind the actual 18 years of nearly constant horrific abuse by my mother.  After all this time it seems a special blessing that I ‘accidentally’ happened to launch my first internet effort to do something small to help fight the ongoing epidemic of child abuse not only in America, but in the world.

April is observed as National Child Abuse Prevention Month in an effort to encourage individuals and communities to support non-violent discipline and good communication between children and families.

Please stop hurting the little people!  We all need one another!  Check out

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090416/ts_nm/us_usa_childabuse_2

http://preventchildabuseny.typepad.com/prevent_child_abuse_new_y/2009/04/children-learn-what-they-live.html

HOW DID THE ABUSE CHANGE US?

alchemynow12 Comments

The fact that children raised from birth (and trauma can happen from conception due to changes communicated to the infant from the condition of the mother’s body if SHE is stressed) end up with changed brains, nervous and immune systems that have been prepared for survival in a hostile, toxic, traumatic, dangerously malevolent world does not mean that we grow up to be hurtful or malevolent people ourselves.  It does not mean that we will grow up to perpetrate against or victimize others, not even our own children.

It simply means that because nature has the ability to enable us to make physical adjustments within our bodies (including internal relationships between our body, our self and the world) and including even the expression of our DNA on an ongoing basis long after the abuse has ended — that we had to develop differently AS we survived the abuse from birth.

It is not only because of the abuse that we are now different, but we are different BECAUSE we survived it.  There was only these two alternatives:  Either adapt and adjust our development so that we could BE in the world (as in “To be or not to be”) or we would have ceased to exist.

As Dr. Allan Schore repeats in his writings over and over again, an infant is driven to “go on being” no matter how traumatic the circumstances are that surround it during its development.  The fact that we HAVE survived has turned out for many of us to be both our blessing and our curse.

We have been turned lose in a ‘benevolent’ world in which we are expected to function just like everyone else (in my section on ATTACHMENT I will describe in detail the approximate breakdown of percentages about how many of us actually grow up in a secure ‘good enough’ home and how many of us don’t — and what happens to our development in the storm).

Our changed body, brain, nervous system and immune system mean that we are literally geared differently than those who were told through their experiences that the world was a safe and secure place.  My intention is to describe what our differences mean to us as we try to get through every day of our lives.

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Tools ‹ Stop the Storm — WordPress

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Definition of genesis

-genesis: A suffix referring to the beginning, development, or production of something. For example, gametogenesis is the development and production of the male and female germ cells (the gametes) required to form a new individual. Osteogenesis is the production of bone. Pathogenesis is the development of a disease, the sequence of events leading up to that disease. The Latin word “genesis” is derived from the Greek “gignesthai” meaning “to be born.”

April 12, 2009

I introduce here the concept of not only ‘Genos Trauma’, or trauma that came down to us from our parents and their parents, but also a movement I would hope for all of us, from the Greek “gignesthai” meaning “to be born.”  Every single fraction of an instant we are alive and breathing our genetic code is being activated and the results are made manifest.  We are, in fact, continually being born, and I hope we can participate in that activity in ever increasingly more conscious ways.

This is the goal I hope this site facilitates progress toward:

Conscious Gignesthai.

We can no longer afford to have the hidden machinery related to reactions based on unresolved traumatic experiences running our lives – not as individuals, not as a species.  To carry unresolved trauma within us is to rob ourselves of our own energy, our own life force that has to remain tied up in ‘bubbles’ as we protect ourselves from our own woundedness.  We are therefore at risk of being perpetrators not only against others, but also against ourselves.

We can stop this by becoming informed, aware and conscious of what has happened and is happening to ourselves and to others.  We can take action toward being born more healed and more whole than ever before.  And as we do this we will Stop the Storm of unconscious infliction of damage stemming from unresolved trauma that came to us in our lifetime or was given to us from the past.  We all deserve a new and better life, as does this precious planet we live on and also are perpetrating traumas against.

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Visualize this as a kind of virtual memorial opportunity.

While this Memorial Wall — upon which we might inscribe the names of those who have hurt us, those who themselves were hurt, those we care most about, those we wish or hope care much about us — does not take up a physical space  it does exist where all life does, right at this moment where all of the past becomes the future.

It is at this point that we might ask our heart felt desires for healing, for forgiveness, for knowledge that feeds our new understandings, for blessings, for goodness, mercy and justice for all that might seem wrong in our lives — globally and personally.

It is at this place of the invisible memorial wall of hope that we remember our own pain and loss, one another’s pain and loss, the pain and loss of our planet so that we can prepare for a better tomorrow for us all.

The storms of our lives may come, but unfortunately they do not all go.  Human tragedies and traumas are easily passed right on down the generations.  In fact, this is a far more common occurrence than not.  Yet it is within the power of each of us as individuals to change the past as it moves into the future.  This is the act of becoming.  This is the act of living.  This is the act of positive change.  This is the act of empowerment, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant an act it might be.

Once we overcome the magical childhood state of thinking that is denial, all good things become not only possible, but probable.  It is in this light that we mention the woundedness that has overtaken us, overtaken our parents, overtaken all of us in this human condition at one time or another.  We mention these things not in blame, not in shame, not in rage or anger or hatred.  We mention these things on our memorial wall to remind ourselves and one another that we are both limited and most greatly blessed with the condition of being human.

So while tears may even blind our outer sight as we inscribe upon this Memorial Wall, we know that our inner sight is becoming clear and strong.  We are taking steps toward fulfilling an even greater potential than has ever existed before this moment as members of our species, Homo Sapien Sapiens — “The Wise Ones.”  In doing so we are taking a stand.  We are joining voices in the clarion chorus as we sing together silently, “It is time.  It is time to stop the storm.”