There are too many new letters being transcribed to include them all on the temporary page. I am spending time right now working on the 1960 letters and am currently working on April and May of that year – with more to follow as they are filed within the months of 1960.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I especially would like to recommend to readers the important comments made today on this blog by Paul M. McLaughlin.
Please visit the two comment pages he posted to: Stop the Storm’s Contact Information Page and to the post HOW DID THE ABUSE CHANGE US? Valuable links to his website, to the record of his work to prevent child abuse, and to his personal story are contained in his comments.
I am honored that Paul has shared the heroic story of his life as a survivor of 20 years of terrible childhood abuse with me and with my readers. Thank you, Paul!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have benefited over the years from the efforts of many therapists that I was able to access on my pathway of healing. Some of the words that I heard them tell me have returned when I have needed to remember them. I would like to say a heartfelt “THANK YOU” to all the professionals working in a wide variety of fields to help not only prevent child abuse, but to help those of us who survived it, to heal.
After my work on the ‘writings’ yesterday I had great difficulty in sleeping last night. It is now 9:30 at night and I am only now feeling ‘strong enough’ to approach any writing for today.
The words of two separate therapists from my past echoed in my mind today. One of them said to me, over and over again, “Linda, always do what YOU need to do to take care of yourself.” When I look back at the sessions I had with this woman, I remember that I had to take a tape recorder with me to record every session. Without these recordings I could never remember one single thing we talked about together.
I didn’t understand dissociation at that time. Nor did this therapist ‘waste’ any time explaining it to me. We simply together found a way around the problem as it related to our sessions. I would play the tapes over again several times between sessions, and doing so helped me to ‘grow into’ the topics we discussed. But the single most important gift I received from this woman are the words I just mentioned. “Always do what YOU need to do to take care of yourself.”
Those simple words contain within them a universe of healing potential. They will never be words I will outgrow, or afford to ignore. Today has been a day when I had to take special good care of myself. Survivors need to learn how to do this for ourselves, always.
++
The other set of words a therapist of my past told me that came into my mind today are about the process of healing itself. She told me that this process is like a finely crocheted, beautiful doily. What makes them attractive is the balance between tight and wide open spaces within the pattern. She told me that when we sometimes work very hard on an ‘issue’ we are making the tight, close together, denser part of the pattern of our healing. But we need the loose times, as well. There are times we have to leave all of it completely alone, take a break, do whatever we need to do to give ourselves a rest from the ‘work’ itself.
I thought about these words today and am so grateful for the opportunities I have been given in the past to access quality therapy. Each time of contact I have had with each ‘specialist’ gave me what I needed at that point in time. Today I carry so much within me of what these people gave me – as well as the work I did for myself each step of the journey along the way.
++
Reading Paul McLaughlin’s words echoed with the sadness inside of me about how hurtful ANY abuse is, but particularly the abuse of infants and young children. I believe that we have a social taboo against truly allowing ourselves to look severe abuse of the tiniest of people straight in the eye. No species endures if their most helpless offspring are not cared for and cherished.
While the taboos against harming infants and children exist for a wide purpose, I want to encourage all of us to build up our tolerance – like building and strengthening muscles – so that we can allow ourselves to know in our minds and in our feelings what the reality of early terrible abuse of young ones really is – that it exists, that it happens, that it has severe and lifelong consequences.
I am not suggesting that we pursue a morbid approach – just an educational one for ourselves as members of a culture that continues to need to ‘raise consciousness’ about child abuse and neglect. Paul’s writings contribute to this denial-smashing. True, Paul was born in 1948 and I was born in 1950, both of us in a time when public awareness and consciousness about child abuse was still in the stone ages.
But what touched me most today when I visited his website is that there were no doubt many, many, many people surrounding this boy and his twin sister who SHOULD have used common sense to intervene to protect these children. I’m not going to be the one here to point the finger, but read his story and look at it yourself. If we were all actors and actresses in a stage play of his childhood, what would each of us have been able to do differently from what the people actually did who were there?
Where and how in today’s world, where we each live our lives, can we apply new insights and new information so that if history ever repeats itself within the sphere of our individual influence we can do something BETTER to help a child – to help many children – that so desperately need someone to notice, pay attention, and care enough to help them?
Stop the Storm 