Month: September 2009

+TERRORISM – FEAR AND THE THREAT OF BRUTAL ATTACK

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What is life like for the millions of our globe’s population that are destined to live their entire lifespan under the threat of brutal attack?

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Do we remember the community terror instigated by the fear that Russia was going to launch nuclear weapons at America?

The following letter (link below) was sent home from public schools after the events of the Bay of Pigs April 15 – 21, 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 14 – 28, 1962.  This was the closest the world has ever gotten to all-out nuclear war — so far.

— I remember my parents sending all of us older kids outside the Jamesway where I could still clearly hear through the canvas walls mother’s rantings at father about what she wanted him to do if/when the Russians invaded.  She told him to shoot her first and then gave him the order in which she wanted him to shoot the rest of us before he shot himself.

I remember standing at the kitchen of the log house doing dishes probably in the spring of 1962.  I kept looking over my shoulder out the window at the woods in back of the house waiting for the Russians in full military regalia to appear at the door.  I knew Alaska was only two miles from Russia at the narrowest passage point, and based on the adults’ terror at this time I was quite certain that an invasion was likely.

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I could THINK about this externalized terror — and I could fear it.  I had no capacity, however,  to ever think about the terror that existed within my own home.  There was a concept for attack from ‘the outside’ enemy.  There was no concept for attack from ‘the inside’ enemy — the mother who birthed and abused me.

The entire culture surrounding me in my small childhood world feared the Russians and a devastating attack from them.  There was no culture about fearing my mother!

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*Age 10 — 1962 Civil Defense Letter from School

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+FINALLY — FIRST PICTURE OF MY MOTHER ON MY BLOG

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Sometimes I don’t think learning something new is fun.  Sometimes it is still necessary, so I have to believe this is going to get easier!!

Evidently Adobe has expired the free old version of Photoshop that came with my scanner — and I’m not one bit happy to have to dink around with their online version of photo doctoring.  There is no way I can “fix” the photo damage to my mother’s face, for example.

I’ll have to decide if I can afford to fork out the bucks to get their NEW version now.  And here I thought the one they gave me with the scanner could continue working just fine.  No warning — just tried to use it tonight and —  DEAD!

I uninstalled my Photoshop thinking I could reinstall it in case I forgot to register this software in the first place.  Only now the door on my computer for the disc drive won’t open.  It’s a fairly new computer, not abused, and now I couldn’t install a brand new version, either.  I guess these fire damaged pictures will just have to stay this way for awhile!  Anyway – – –

I FINALLY have my very first photograph of my mother — and of the homestead ready for viewing!  Please take a look!

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It strikes me that my mother is literally and figuratively standing on the epitome of a Borderline Personality Disordered woman’s BORDERLINE in this picture.  On this spot, at this point in time, she is standing on the borderline of where civilization met the wilderness, on the borderline of where civility met ‘the frontier’ — in all actuality — of madness:

*1959 June – Mom, Tractor, Stuff

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*1959 June – Two Views of Hut and Mountains

I’ll be working with more pictures — this should all eventually get easier with practice, at least, but the online photo editing is technically CRAPPY!

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+IMMUNITY AGAINST INSECURE ATTACHMENT DISORDERS BEGINS AT CONCEPTION

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092609 post Origins of Emotional Abuse

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Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW

Annie Kaszina offers free assistance on her site and through her free email support to women who have experienced emotional abuse.  I personally find it disheartening that she does not equally offer her advise and expertise to men as well as to women, but I am mentioning her work here because I want to consider information presented in her writing about emotional abuse.

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Emotional abuse is not JUST a woman’s issue, it is a human issue.  Emotional abuse is not JUST an adult issue.  The seed potential for being both a perpetrator and a victim of emotional abuse begins – believe it or not – even before our conception.

No matter our sex, no matter what our genetic potential makeup may be, a mother’s emotional state influences her body to such an extent that her hormones and other body chemicals affect whether or not conception even takes place, as well as affects whether or not the tiny new human can or does implant itself on her uterine wall to further its growth and development from that time forward.

A mother’s hormones and internal chemical environment constantly signal through molecular communication what the world is going to be like that this new human is going to be born into.  Those signals about stress, distress or future well being influence how the genetic potential of a human manifests itself – from conception onward.

These early signaling processes particularly influence the future sensitivity of the new human.  I mention this now because Ms. Kaszina’s words this morning, as they arrived new and shiny in my email inbox, are concerned with emotional sensitivity.

Emotional sensitivity is not something that some of us have and some of us don’t have.  All humans have emotions.  All humans also vary in degree of sensitivity according to their fundamental genetic makeup, according to the information all kinds of molecular signaling has given them about the benevolence or malevolence of the world their body is growing up to live in, and according to the information that a newborn infant’s body-brain-self receives from its first early caregiver environment.

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We cannot possibly disentangle the topic of secure and insecure attachment disorders – from conception onward – from any discussion about so-called emotional abuse.  What we are actually considering when we talk about emotions and sensitivity, in my opinion, has to do with the quality and kind of human attachment system we developed from conception.

If adults do not provide safe and secure attachments to infants and young children from the beginning of their lives, HOW this tiny person develops will be affected on every level.  This most certainly includes emotional sensitivity.  If the safe and secure attachments do not exist in an infant’s life, its body-brain-mind will be forced to take a pathway in its development that is less-than-optimal.  An insecure attachment pattern, or insecure attachment disorder, WILL result from these conditions.  That is the way our social species is designed.

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If a person could actually weigh information, tons of it exists at our fingertips about secure and insecure attachments.  My purpose is to encourage readers to go poke around and take a look at this information for themselves.  Without including the facts about our human attachment system in our thinking about ANYTHING that has to do with ANY human relationship, we are like children ourselves who might expect to sit in a broken down car out behind a weathered barn in some countryside – hoping and hoping if we just hope enough that useless car will take us out away from our miseries.

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Every human being whose brain-mind did not develop in an early environment that included a caregiver to whom that infant could safely and securely attach – on a predictable and sustained level – will end up with an altered brain-mind that includes an insecure attachment disorder built into it.  All humans are amazingly resilient, and even a tiny infant can make amazing use of whatever safe and secure human attachment opportunities that DO actually exist in its early environment.

But at the same time we ARE human, and we are vulnerable and fragile.  Degrees of damage are exactly that!  If you spend some time following links included above, you will discover enough information for yourself to begin to understand what Dr. Allan Schore says about all insecure attachment disorders include empathy disorders.  Nobody is immune to the consequences of forming a body-brain-mind in a malevolent world.

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With this very brief survey as an introduction to the following words written by Annie Kaszina, I encourage readers to begin to realize that both ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ of emotional abuse most likely suffer from an adult version of an insecure attachment disorder – either an ‘organized’ one or a ‘disorganized’ one.  If our first displays of our emotions were not consistently appropriately and adequately responded to from the time we were born by one or more early caregivers – our emotional self will have altered the way it developed.  This naturally affects both how we respond to our own and to others’ emotions.

If we are going to refer to these changed patterns as ABUSE, we need to include in our thinking that all these emotional patterns exist in our brain’s construction and operation.  They can sometimes be changed to some degree, but our emotional construction is as much a part of our body as are our organs and limbs.

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From my own childhood experience I can say that the environment of the home I grew up in, with my Mad Monster Mother at the helm, contained no real emotional health and well being except as it was accidentally provided – mostly to my siblings.  My entire blog is devoted to this HUGE topic.  My point this morning is that I encourage every reader to read the following words as if they are simply and completely referring to interactions between parents and children – not between adults.

Focus your inner vision.  Consider your childhood – whether you were a girl or a boy — for awhile ONLY as it either sustained the development of your authentic self emotionally – or did not.   Parents are not their offspring’s’ partners.  They have assumed the job of raising their children so that they themselves can later be other human’s partners.

Please ‘translate’ this information provided below through the lens of your own very young childhood perspective.  What you were given THEN is reflected in how you are NOW!  We had no choice as infant-children but to build into our growing body-brain-mind the attachment patterns our early caregivers ‘fed us’.

Down the road, the following is exactly how insecure attachment disorders (systems) can show themselves when we are all grown up.  We can repeat them with both the adults and the children in our lives.  We need to understand what this means by beginning to in-form our thinking about how these patterns established themselves PHYSIOLOGICALLY into our very young developing bodies — and remain within us for the rest of our lives.  Once recognized consciously, we can begin to alter the effects our inner attachment system has on the quality of our life.

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Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW

Written and published by Annie Kaszina
Women’s Self-Discovery Coach
www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com

To sign up to this ezine, go to www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com

“My name is Annie Kaszina and I spent over twenty years in an abusive marriage, before I learned how I could become the woman I want to be. Now I work with women who have been in controlling and abusive relationships, to facilitate their journey into joy and self-realisation.”

“You’re just too sensitive!”

“Has an abusive partner ever told you: “You’re just too sensitive?”

Okay, let’s be more precise about this; has your abusive partner repeatedly told you that you are too sensitive?  Because the chances are, if he has said it to you once, he’s said it a thousand times.  That’s how abusive relationships work; an abusive man throws the same complaints at you over and over again.

Why?

We’ll come to that in a moment.  First, let’s deal with the really important question: How has that left you feeling?

Clearly, I don’t know you, and I can’t know how you think, but I’m guessing that it leaves you feeling small, needy, pathetic and very, very flawed.  Accusing a partner of being ‘too sensitive’ tends to make them feel as if someone has exposed a very dark, unlovable, immature feeling at the very heart of their being.

In short, it makes them feel unlovable.

There is a reason for this.  When an abusive man says his partner is ‘too sensitive’, that is not just a throwaway remark, triggered by frustration; it is, actually, a well-calculated barb with a venomous hidden agenda.

“You’re too sensitive”, is code; a code that, I suspect, you have not been translating correctly, until now.  If you had, you probably would not have given your accuser the opportunity to wound you with that well-honed barb, time after time.

“But”, you might object, “I am very sensitive.”   You might even say: “I am too sensitive.”

There is a distinction here that we need to clarify.  When you say that you are ‘very sensitive’, or even ‘too sensitive’, what you actually mean is this: “I can feel hurt very easily; it doesn’t take much.  I really wish that it wasn’t like this, but it is.  There doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.”

Acknowledging the acuity of their sensitivity tends to be a kind of apology that I often hear form abused women.  They wish they could change it, but they can’t; at least not with the tools currently available to them.

When an abusive partner, or other near one, tells you that you are ‘too sensitive’, it is, apparently, because they wish you could change.  (The subtext is that if you could change that it would, somehow, transform the abusive relationship.)  Not that they are offering you any clues as to how you might reduce that sensitivity.

In reality, they don’t know how you could reduce that sensitivity; nor do they care.  Much as they may criticize you for it, your sensitivity fits very nicely with their agenda.  But they are not in a rush to admit that to you.

Think for a moment about the circumstances in which have been told that you are too sensitive.  Most probably it happens when you feel hurt by something your abusive partner said; or else something they did, or did not do.  Had you been ‘less sensitive’, they figure, you would not have reacted.  In other words, you would have just ‘got on with it’, and spared them the trouble of having to consider your feelings.

This holds true for other circumstances in which your ‘hypersensitivity’ means that you would like to receive comfort or reassurance.

That is not what your abusive partner, or other near one, had in mind.

When they say: “You’re too sensitive”, what they really mean is this: “Please don’t visit your feelings on me, I don’t want to hear about them.”  There’s more as well – and it doesn’t get any better.

“You’re too sensitive” is shorthand for; “I’m really not prepared to take your feelings into account.  In fact, I thoroughly resent your visiting them on me.  As far as I am concerned, this is the way I believe our relationship should work: I can say whatever I like to you, and you will get on and deal with it, without making a fuss and trying to make me feel bad about it.  What’s wrong with you, anyway?  Why can’t you just get on with being in an abusive relationship without moaning about it?”

The question, “What’s wrong with you, anyway?” is the key to your partner’s thinking.  There must be something wrong with you, or else you would respond to whatever it is that they said or did in exactly the way they would have you respond.  In other words, what they wanted was no response from you.  (In an abusive relationship, all communication is intended to be a one way street.) Whatever it was that they said or di, they hoped that you would let them ‘get away with it’.  And you did not.

It’s not as if you took a strong stand; anything but.  A strong stand would have meant saying: “This is unacceptable.”  You would then make yourself scarce, as far as they were concerned.  Your abusive partner would duly get the message that they were out of order, and would need to clean up their act, or else lose you.

Whether or not they would clean up their act is another story.  If, instead, your refusal to accept abuse led to the earlier end of a damaging relationship that was bound to end in unhappiness anyway, then your strong stand has paid off handsomely.  That would save you time and misery.  And if it concentrated their mind, and led them to behave better in the future, even better.

But just asking an abusive man to behave, and/or speak to you, differently, is as ineffectual as saying to a child: “Oh, don’t do that!” All it conveys is your weakness and your reluctance to act.

It leaves your abuser free to repeat the pattern time and time again.  He will continue to speak and act as he pleases and, when you object, he will reproach you, again, for ‘being too sensitive’.

With that one simple phrase he has laid the blame for the hurt in the situation on you.  With one simple piece of sleight of mouth, he has dumped blame for the situation on you, so that he comes up smelling of roses.  Or, at least, as close to smelling of roses as he is ever likely to get.

How did you get into an abusive relationship like that in the first place?

Here’s the irony: it happened, in part, because of your sensitivity.  Not that there is anything wrong with being sensitive; there is not.  However, an abusive man has a finely tuned nose, and can smell sensitivity a mile off.  He knows that he can exploit that sensitivity to gain control over another person.  He knows just how to do that – as you have discovered, to your cost.

So what will you do differently about your sensitivity in the future?

First, you need to become much more vigilant; you learn that someone who is prepared to disregard your ‘sensitivity’ is telling you that they will completely and utterly disregard your feelings.  You give such people a very wide berth.  Second, you learn to honour and manage that sensitivity; treat it with respect and other people will treat you with respect, also.”

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— SEE ALSO —

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

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New Resource for Parents: CDC Parent Portal

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Related Post:

+CHILDHOOD DISSOCIATION, DEPERSONALIZATION, DEREALIZATION – I NEVER HAD A CHOICE TO BE OR NOT TO BE

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+CHECK THIS OUT – Artists United for Human Rights

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Artists United for Human Rights

Posted: 25 Sep 2009 03:17 AM PDT

PCANY is proud to take part in Artists United for Human Rights, a music and art festival in Buffalo on October 4th. The mission of Artists United For Human Rights is to educate locally, nationally and globally about human rights, focusing on the prevention of child abuse, violence and trafficking. The event takes place aboard the USS Little Rock at The Naval & Military Park at the Erie Basin Marina and is being held in support of Prevent Child Abuse New York and Maiti Nepal. For more information, contact Susan Marie at 716-783-7067 or Susan.Marie.1971@gmail.com.

+DON’T MISS GRANDMOTHER’S HOT RESPONSE TO MY MOTHER!

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PART II:  Grandmother’s  response

*Grandmother’s 8-5-1962 Letter to Mother

to previously posted

+MY MAD MOTHER IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL

These letters shine a light on some of what lies ‘behind the scenes’ of the letters that flew back and forth between my mother and my grandmother.  Was my mother oblivious to Grandmother’s feelings?  I don’t know.  I have to search through more letters to find out!  It appears that these current ‘issues’ were addressed via telephone.

See the written responses such as these words, I believe spoken in her 5-year-old-onset Borderline voice:

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postmarked August 6, 1962

Dear Mother,

Just re-read your letter – the one that came before I called you.  Do you understand better?  I surely hope so.

I feel as if I were a child who was told X-Mas wasn’t coming – or there wasn’t a Santa Claus?

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in context here:

*August 1962 – Mother’s Letters

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+MY MAD MOTHER IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL

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PART I:  My mother was a professional bully.  There are very few direct examples in her letters about how mother handled outside criticism about her thinking and decisions — or ANYBODY’S attempts to intervene.  Here in this letter mother effectively deflects whatever observations and opinions her mother must have expressed about our mother.

The homestead served the integral role in her madness of being her ‘isolation chamber’ for our family and for her actions.  She didn’t need a burning ring of fire around us.  She didn’t need a moat filled with starving crocodiles.  When we sat perched in our canvas hut high on the mountainside at the end of a long terrible road without any near neighbors, mother could rule her kingdom with her entire family as her captives.

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July 31, 1962

Wednesday

Dear Mother,

Today Bill will send the message to you telling you it’s better, we [Linda note:  meaning as usual, I’m certain, HER] feel, that you wait for your trip until next summer.  More than likely we will make a trip ‘out’ before then but we have thought and thought about this and agree it’s best you wait.

I’ll send the letter along that I wrote last week telling you ‘same’ and why after I received your advisory letter.

Then I wanted to see you so badly I let my heart not my head rule and decided not to send it.

Then over the week-end we got a nice letter from Spoerry [landlord of log house] saying we could spend $150 to fix up drive-way and 450.00 new roof – also Reynolds can stay.  I had expected “no, no, no’s! from her on all 3 counts.

We’re thrilled to be able to remain on homestead now but my gosh the work that will have to be done here so we can stay and if I teach them I must get the place done now.

Floors must be put down and all ready before Labor Day when all of our furniture will be moved up here!!

I know you’re against our spending winter here and my teaching the children and I couldn’t stand to have you come and arguments start about it.  I know they would.

[Linda note:  There were NO possibilities for anyone to ever contradict my mother about ANYTHING – and she could control all outside input and influence – as commander-in-absolute-charge of our family!]

Believe me Mom, we all want to see you but it wouldn’t be happy with things as they’re.  I live in fear that what happened last year would occur again.  I’d be too sick, then, to do a thing this winter.  [Linda note:  I am not sure what happened the summer before – is she referring to the arguments with her brother and wife when they came to see us?]

You’re so right I must watch my health.  I must have a serene environment.  It wouldn’t be if you came and we disagreed.

It’s my life and I choose to live it here on our mountain and I won’t stand for interference on this point and I no longer want advise [sic]!  Our minds are made up and we’ve been busier and happier since we’ve decided.

We’ll have electricity this winter and a chemical toilet [never happened].  Next spring will dig a well [never happened] and have a bath-room [never happened] next summer.  Then you can come all summer if you wish.  Perhaps we could erect a little log cabin where you’d have some privacy [never happened].  It’s hard to all live together for any length of time.

I hope you’re not too dissappointed [sic].  I want so for you to be happy.  You’d be a whole lot unhappier if you come and it wasn’t pleasant.

And I’m afraid it couldn’t be when I’ve so much to do and all — .

Please write and tell me how you feel — Love, Mildred

[Interesting, the envelope mother used to mail this letter to grandmother has Spoerry’s, the owners of the log house, address crossed out on the front and grandmother’s written in.  Spoerry’s address is in Algeria.]

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See in context:

*July 1962 – Mother’s Letters

*1962 – MOTHER’S LETTERS

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See also for background context regarding homesteading:

*Dad’s April 2, 1960 Letter to Alaska Land Office

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

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+MOTHER’S MAD MERCURIAL MIND – AND OUR RESULTING SUFFERINGS

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It is my continual hope as I work with my mother’s letters that sooner or later the ‘truth’ of our life with her will appear behind the façade, between the lines, or below the surface of her written words.  I believe these openings do exist in the Borderline’s wall between realities.

I found one of those openings today and it was contained in one simple word I found in her July 17, 1962 letter where she stated in reference to the certain probability of another move:

“We can’t stand thought of shifting back to log house.”

That’s it, the truth about how our continual moving was in my mother’s distorted mind.  We never really, actually MOVED from place to place to place.  We SHIFTED!

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Here is another letter that is a ‘snipit’ of the bigger picture that was the turbulent chaos of my childhood.  Please follow links at the bottom of the post for the fuller context for this letter (beginning particularly on June 1, 1962) , including her references to our trip ‘outside’ Alaska.

I am amazed and stunned as I go through these letters at how completely her thinking changed sometimes from day to day, often certainly from week to week.  She never was able to follow the trail of her own unpredictable and changeable thinking.  Very mercurial — jam packed with unstable elements of logic, emotion, thought and action.

Of course the consequences of her radical decisions drastically affected us all, though she does not seem capable of even beginning to grasp what her ‘sick self centeredness’ is doing to her family or even to herself.

Her chaos has created an ulcer in her own body.  My brother, who was turning 12 the day after this letter was written, was suffering from a terrible boil that erupted on his back.  The other, unseen side of life with my mother never appears in her letters — her chronic outbreaks of unpredictable, uncontrolled rage and violence against me.

Her moving frenzy thoughts have expanded by this time not only to include travel ‘outside’ of Alaska for a California ‘visit’, but also a possible ‘transfer’ to Europe.

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June 14, 1962

Dear Mother,

Tomorrow is John’s Birthday.  Thanks for the $ for him.  He’s saving it to spend in Calif. For we have rented the log house until school starts – unless the Army condemns the well water, as the house has to be inspected and the water has to be safe.  The Army prefers drilled wells and the log house has a dug well.  We rented to a military family as you can guess and they’re very nice.  We left all of the furniture etc. and we can have it back September 1st.  They pay $195 so we profit 40.00 a month.  GOOD!!

[Linda note:  Oh great!  In June 1, 1962 letters she says we’ve left homestead and moved back into log house.  Two weeks later we move BACK to the homestead?!?!?]

[We] pay 135 rent but pay for electricity and rubbbish [sic] collection so profit 40.00.  Now I hope they don’t move out.

If possible will come by SHIP – exciting.  There’s a big Army vessel due in Anchorage Port on July 11th and will leave July 15th and get into San Francisco on 15th.  [Linda note:  No, I don’t think so!]  If not will go by Army plane.  I prefer the boat but Bill thinks space will be all taken up.  I’ll try and get a clipping of the article about the boat etc. to send you!

Now this all came about because we figured that if we paid rent all summer we couldn’t go outside or anything so made a list of musts if anyone rented it.  We put a sign up FOR RENT and rented it next day.

Ives came and were there to dinner (long story I’ll tell you when I see you) when people came to look at the house.

The house was beautifully fixed and they came by surprise.  All went fine and next day and since all HAVOC broke lose.  Luck.

[Linda note:  I can just picture this.  Two weeks earlier she ‘moves’ us all from homestead to log house – then sets up her ‘homey stage’ so that to all appearances we are the happiest family in the world in our ‘beautiful home’!  Two weeks later everything has changed and back to the homestead we ‘move’ again!]

Well, now I hate to write you until Army approves house as that would really ruin plans.  These people I trust and feel they will take excellent care of everything.

Now I insist on not staying with anybody.  I wasn’t going to tell you we were even coming as I don’t want to upset anyone but you have to know so you won’t plan to come to Alaska.

I’m putting all our books etc. etc. in storage and although of course, we’re at homestead now, don’t plan to come here when we return.   [Linda note:  Go figure!!  Back ‘home’ again!  Any stability in our family?  I think absolutely not!  She’s already planning to move us back down the mountain – somewhere – again by fall!]

If we go to Europe will sell tractor, jeep etc. – in fact, plan to trade jeep in on new car which we will get in Seattle and I’ll drive back – want to come?  Bill will come down Friday before Labor Day and we will see Fair and he’ll fly back as will only have short time off.  I’ll have to drive back.  I’ll try to get someone (man preferred – and young – you better chaperone) to drive.

Thought I’d ask Roy who is in Kansas and rented our room and he’d have free trip back.  He went out with Mrs. Erickson in car.

I guess her house sold but she still plans to teach at Eagle River – 10 new classrooms etc. are to be added on to school!! – and new Highway completed too!

We think will just forget about homestead next winter and rest in log house and next summer take week end trips all over Alaska in our new car.

We’re going to get a Chevrolet Greenbriar – holds 9 passengers easily!  [Linda note:  Probably holds lots of junk for the moving frenzies, as well!  Doubt it has much traction for mountain glacial ice and mud roads, though.]

We can do all this if we don’t fight homestead.  We were going to add onto hut here this summer but now will wait and build cabin or basement of our house.

We may sell tractor and get 3,500 for it (!  Oh, how I wish you were here to talk to.  We may sell trailer for 750 – if we go to Europe.  Would have to put metal roof on hut then to serve as ‘prove up’ instead of trailer.

I want to get out of homestead rut for awhile – I still love it here but we need a change of wheels.

Now I’m dying to hear your reaction.

I felt good at log house but move through [sic] me again and stomach hurts again.  [Linda note:  So many examples of being a victim of one’s own madness!]

We moved on our Anniversary for three consecutive years and I had to get out in one day and next day (our anniversary) go back and clean house and made four trips over this damn road and was dong wash at Eagle River Laundromat at 12:00 P.M. and got so sick I felt I couldn’t get home.

This place was so neat and is a mess now.  I’m not going to sort a thing – things going in suit cases!  — already.

Gosh, I’m excited.

Baby is a jewel – so good, husky and smart.

I can stay down there [California] for as long as I like.

I may go to beach a week, mountains awhile – shall we go to Santa Barbara? – Laguna?  [Linda note:  “I” seems to forget she has 5 children with her?  Or should I say, ‘props’?  Touch of the manic here?]

Bill says I can come and go as I please.  I don’t want to be stuck in Pasadena.  I want to see and do things.

Such fun!

I may get our car in Seattle so as to have it down there.  It’s big enough to hold a crib.  [Linda note:  Hint.  Never happened.]

I’ll bring his stroller and car seat but will need a high chair – and small crib that folds easily!!

So much to plan and do!

I’ve got enough clothes – but need some light pants.

— David wants nap.  I’ll write soon.  Love, Me.

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Context for this letter can be found at the following links —

*June 1962 – Mother’s Letters

*1962 – MOTHER’S LETTERS

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+WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

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26 states in the U.S. still allow spanking and other forms of corporal punishment in public schools.

I have only a vague memory of something my sister remembers very clearly from my childhood.  She tells me that each of my elementary school years my mother walked into the principal’s office at the start of the school year and left a paddle with my name on it with permission for it to be used on me if needed.

The paddle was one of those toy ones with the ball and string removed.  How humiliating for me!  Yet, did her action send up any possible red flags about what a terribly abusive mother she was to me?  How could it when the school itself approved corporal punishment itself?

Nobody every hit me in school that I remember, though my sister remembers having a teacher that would whack student hands if they missed a multiplication problem presented orally in a class quiz format.  My brother had a teacher in school that hit him, and ironically my mother blew a gasket over this!

Two of my Texas nieces are no longer being home schooled and have found upon entering public school that spankings in the principal’s office are a very real threat of terror in their new world.

I would add in relation to the article below that many children who have been neglected, maltreated and abused OFTEN act out in school — myself included evidently.  When those children are not shown another way of interacting socially, aren’t the already existing abuse patterns of violence in their lives being reproduced and reinforced in the only other major arena of functioning young children have in their lives — their school zone?

What do you think of spanking in American schools?

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By Sue Shellenbarger

  • September 1, 2009, 9:18 AM ET

Spanking Kids in School Still Common, Especially Among Disabled

Spanking kids in school has gone the way of the buggy whip – right?

Wrong, based on a new study by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, as reported here and here. More than 200,000 U.S. schoolchildren were subjected to corporal punishment during the 2006-2007 school year, the study shows. And the South has a big lead in whacking schoolkids, with Texas, Mississippi and Alabama holding the top three spots.

Paddlings in school are still legal in 20 states, and the report suggests they are quite common, based on 202 interviews with parents, teachers, students and school officials, plus federal Education Department data. The courts haven’t afforded students in classrooms the same protection as criminals have against cruel and unusual punishment.

Many pediatricians now advise against corporal punishment; some research suggests spanking makes behavior problems worse. And while I admit to having harbored now and then a fleeting wish that my kids’ teachers could smack fellow students whose behavior disrupted class, I never would seriously advocate such a thing.

In the saddest finding of the ACLU study, children with disabilities, especially autism, drew corporal punishment at a far higher rate than others, the study found. Children with autism were often punished for behaviors linked to the condition, because teachers lacked the knowledge, training or patience to use other methods of behavior control.

Stefanie has posted before on how this touchy topic plays out in different families. I have known parents who occasionally spank their children, whose kids seem well-adjusted; my own mom and dad, who I thought were great parents, used spanking occasionally. Nevertheless, I find the idea of routine corporal punishment at school pretty appalling.

Readers, are spanking and other forms of corporal punishment ever warranted in schools? Should local school officials be free, as they are now, to choose disciplinary methods, in keeping with the values of their own communities? Or do we need a nationwide ban on spanking in schools?

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+RETHINKING MEDICINES THAT HEAL US

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I think it’s too easy to blame our relationship concerns on ‘addiction’.  Some people in our lives are our medicine and having them in our lives helps us heal, just as surely as some others are toxic poisons and make us sick and harm us.

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What does my all time favorite movie and my all time favorite man share in common for me?  Healing.  Plain and simple – healing.

I’ve been doing some thinking lately (of course) about the man I am in love with who has ‘dismissed’ me from his life.

I think about what I’ve heard people discuss about ‘addictive relationships’.  I have a related yet different take on the subject.

Humans, as a social species, are INTENDED to heal through human relationships.  We will be drawn to such healing powers like magnets.  Science has provided us now with quite a wide array of ‘psychotropic medications’ to attempt to ‘fix’ what ails our emotions, our brains, our minds.  But do they EVER heal our heart and soul?

Some people become addicted to ‘street drugs’, some to prescribed drugs.  What matters to me in my thinking right now is that there are times and conditions that cause us to NEED medicine.  Sometimes these required medicines produce side effects.  The complications of some love relationships, to me, are the side effects of the healing medicine the relationship itself produces.

I ask the question of myself, “Were you, are you, Linda, addicted to this man?”  No, but as I have no real choice but to inch my way forward in time without contact with him, I continue to search for ways to lessen my sadness.  If “knowledge is power” and “the truth will set me free,” then perhaps a combination of the two will allow me to put some gold in this pan of mine and allow me to toss back the dull, unappealing, useless gravel that serves the beauty of my life absolutely no purpose.

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In today’s world of media access I suggest that each of us probably has at least one favorite movie.  This favorite movie of mine fits like a key into the lock of my being.  It in-forms me of things I most need to know.  It provides me access to some of my most important inner feelings.  It resonates with my essence.  And, yes, not surprisingly it is a child’s movie.

I watch and re-watch The Secret Garden primarily because through the eye of the camera that filmed it, through the actions of the people who participate in the telling of its story, through its scenes and scenery, I can repeatedly glimpse the surest information I have ever had access to about what it MIGHT be like to be a child.

Watching living, breathing, active children in real life does not give me what I need to look into my own secret places and try to discover if I have ANY information within myself about what being MY OWN child was like.  So far, at 58 years of age, I still have no other clues but the ones that I discover anew each time I closely watch every second of this film.  This process, on some deep and very real profound levels, heals me.  I know it.  This movie, as a form of a work of art,  is one of my ‘medicines’.

Spending time with the man I am in love with was also a medicine to me.  I don’t even think the person himself is the medicine.  The medicine was what happened when I was with him, as if the combination of the two of us being together resulted in a lock opening to our own secret garden that freed me – and I believe at times him also – to exist for those times in a world where troubles dissipated.  In that world I felt calm, safe, peaceful, happy, joyous, entertained, connected. grounded, and well.

People in connected relationship DO heal one another as they also experience healing themselves.  Humans are created this way, of this I have no doubt.  Our entire feel-good chemical system in our bodies is connected to this fact.  That is what safe and secure attachments are all about.

However, neither the man I love, nor I, experienced what we needed of safe and secure early attachment relationships as our body-brain-mind formed in our early childhoods, which of course left us at greatest risk of – quite simply – letting our insecure attachment patterns destroy the ‘us’ of our relationship.

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When it comes to the very real ‘soft tissue’ of my heart’s ache, it is not to the technical information that I turn to.  Nonetheless, I have this foundational information to support my inner healing work.  The man of my love no doubt has what experts would call (using various technical explanations) a dismissive-avoidant insecure attachment disorder.

This simply means that his brain formed to operate primarily by categorizing, compartmentalizing and sealing off any incoming or inner information that feels uncomfortable.  He can dismiss and avoid discomfort because his brain-mind was formed that way.  At the same time, if his brain were to be scanned by an expert the actual emotional energy working behind the screen of his consciousness would STILL be visible.

All that his dismissive-avoidant (organized) insecure attachment style is really accomplishing is that what he feels can remain nearly completely ‘out of sight, out of mind’.  But because this insecure attachment pattern is included among the ‘organized’ rather than ‘disorganized’ ones, he can carry on his life just fine – and certainly that can mean without me.  He might appear extremely narcissistic from the outside, but so what.  He convinces himself he always gets what he wants – and he probably does.

Then, on the other hand, there’s me with my disoriented-disorganized insecure attachment disorder.  It is entirely ‘my problem’ that I ‘oriented and organized’ my emotional universe around my attachment to this man.  NOT his problem – nor should it be.  Yet none of this changes the fact that I am left — now that my 35 years of being a mother with a child under the age of 18 in the house has vanished as my orienting-organizing center, now also without this 8 year plus relationship in my life that also gave me an orienting-organizing center — to face the full splendor of what is really going on inside of me.

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Having a movie for a healing medicine is a whole lot simpler and easier to depend on than having a connection with a special person for a healing medicine.  In either case, both these medicines temporarily alleviate my deep, ancient-to-me underlying major sadness and depression that was ‘impressed into me’ by my extremely abusive mother.  Watching the movie vanquishes the depression for a time.  Being with the man I love also vanquished the depression for a time.  Is there, for me, anything like a more permanent solution?

I honestly don’t know.  I am as yet completely opposed to consuming psychotropics (or street drugs including alcohol) because I believe that my combination of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and identity, depersonalization, derealization and dissociation disorders are far, far too complex to be ‘healed’ with drugs.  I do not believe that they would act as medicines to me, and I am not willing to deal with the side effects.  [Please do not take my personal opinions regarding this issue over into your own pasture.  I am me.  You are you.  Always consult your medical providers about your own concerns.]

If missing this man in my life is one of the side effects of having spent many, many healing hours in his presence, so be it.  I discovered through my relationship with him the best of feelings I never – until then – ever even knew existed.  And of course I both miss those feelings as well as deeply miss HIM, the person who is most special to me of all I’ve ever met in this lifetime (my children, of course, being in a different category all of their own).

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We cannot ignore the tragedies created within human relationships caused by insecure attachment disorders.  Nor do I believe we have any chance of healing these relationships themselves if we do not and cannot address the insecure attachment systems that doom them. We need to be crystal clear that most often the ‘fault’ — or fissure that destroys many otherwise healing relationships belongs to the insecure attachment disorders themselves — not to the individual people that form these relationships.

I am not going to demean, disregard, or distort anything about my relationship and feelings in connection with this man.  I honor the whole of it all.  I can accept that healing of a medicinal nature was transpiring for me, but this does not indicate an addiction.  That both of our insecure attachment histories would prevent a sustaining, long term, two-way-committed relationship from blossoming between us seems obvious to me.  Knowing this does not make losing him in my life one single bit easier.

He can shut off awareness of feelings and conflicts and I cannot.  He lives his life.  I live mine.  Yes, I miss him.  Terribly with anguish.  Yet at the same time I can focus my efforts to find all the other experiences in this world that can each help to heal me.  I’m going to start by ordering myself my own copy of my favorite movie so I no longer have to rely on the public library when I want to watch it.  This might be just a small thing, but it will help me.

I must look for all the ways I can nurture myself.  After all, the very roots of the word ‘medicine’ are feminine, and the word relates to what affects our well being.  That is fundamentally what I am after – improved well being.  I need well being as much now as I did every time I was able to be at that man’s side and feel better than I did without him.  I never took one single second of that time with him for granted.  I was clear in appreciating every second I was with him.  I valued that time.  I was grateful.  I knew I was being given the gift of a precious blessing.  Of that I am certain.

Yet today I must search for and find my medicine elsewhere.  All this being said – I am going for a walk — as always, by putting one foot in front of the other so I can move forward.  Dick and Jane, see Linda go.  “Go Linda!  Go!”

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

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New Resource for Parents: CDC Parent Portal

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+THE CHILD ABUSE CONTINUUM – THROW DENIAL TO THE WIND

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Deception, denial, deflection – whatever the tactic abusive parents such as my mother was – and as my father was through his compliant complacency — may use, their intent is to find ways to confuse young abused children about the facts of their condition and situation.

I remember a time in my childhood when my mother described a TRUE child abuse case to me and my siblings.  Someone in Alaska had become so furious at their young toddler for soiling its pants during potty training that they had beaten the child and then taken it outside and placed it bare bottomed, in the middle of a freezing Alaskan winter night, on the top of a car hood.

After some period of time they had yanked the child off of the car, ripping all the skin off its bottom.  They took the baby to a hospital where the truth of their crime was then uncovered.

“Now THAT was child abuse,” my mother let us know – particularly me.  She did not make clear her intentions in telling this story, but I think similar tactics are often used to present in the minds of abused children – and even in the minds of adults who were abused as children – the distorted ‘fact’ that we are not abused ourselves.  We are only punished because we are bad children and have to get what we deserve to straighten us out.

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I have written in other posts that I figured out the bare minimum sentence that my mother – and my father through his passive participation in my mother’s madness – would have deserved for the abuse perpetrated against me in my childhood.  Theirs would have been a minimum sentence at 14,500 years each.

So what do we make of the kinds of abuse acts like those referenced below?  Does the abuse we suffered ourselves so pale in comparison to these kinds of cases that we ought not to consider that we ourselves were abused at all?  Are we tempted to compare our history to much worse cases so we can minimize our own history and thus vanquish our own abuse experiences into the oblivion of ‘not so bad’?

I think not.  I believe that altered brain development caused by malevolent early childhood conditions underlies all chronic and sustained adult abuse actions against children.  These evolutionarily altered brains can be extremely dangerous.  In my mother’s case, she was wise enough and narcissistic enough to usually know exactly where the line was that would have brought outside negative attention against her for her abuse actions toward me.

I also have to credit myself with the fact that from as soon as I was old enough to do so, I remained hyper-aware, hyper-alert, and hyper-involved while my mother beat me so that I could make every possible effort to protect my body from devastating impacts against hard objects as she threw me around in the midst of her frequent and extensive physical rage attacks against me.  During her severe attacks on my small body, preserving my life was not my mother’s concern.  Fortunately, it was mine.

I also know that she used food as a weapon against me, but that is substance for another post in the future.  She certainly did not starve me because she knew someone would make her pay for that act.  If she could have done so with impunity, I think she would have – and would have enjoyed doing so.

My point today is that hearing about cases such as these (below) brings to mind that child abuse exists on a continuum of damage caused by faulty brains in faulty human beings.  That child abuse DOES exist at all reflects faults within our entire society.  At no time does denial or minimization of the reality of ANY child abuse help anyone — most certainly not ourselves.

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Carnation-area woman pleads guilty in stepdaughter’s starvation case Local News A Carnation-area woman accused of starving and withholding water from her 14-year-old stepdaughter last year entered a modified guilty plea Friday to first-degree criminal mistreatment. Rebecca Long’s plea came just days after her husband, Jon Pomeroy, 43, pleaded guilty to the same charge. 9/5/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Woman pleads guilty in child starvation case Local News A 45-year-old woman accused of withholding water and starving her 14-year-old stepdaughter has entered a modified guilty plea to a charge of first-degree criminal mistreatment. 9/4/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Couple indicted in Texas starvation case Nation and World A grand jury in Dallas has indicted a couple accused of keeping the woman’s three young children starving in a hotel bathroom for at least nine months. 8/26/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Wash. man pleads guilty in daughter’s starvation Local News A Carnation man has pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal mistreatment, after his daughter was found severely emaciated last summer and told investigators she was allowed only about 6 ounces of water a day. Jon Pomeroy, 43, entered the plea Monday in King County Superior Court. 8/31/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Starvation abuse rare, shocking even to experts Local News …and the 14-year-old victim, but has studied cases of starvation involving children ranging in age from 2 months to 13 years…systematic and deliberate,” Wilson said. Kellogg said starvation victims such as the Carnation girl need far more than food… 10/14/2008 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Pa. social workers charged after starvation death Nation and World By all accounts, there is blame to go around for the 2006 starvation death of disabled teenager Danieal Kelly. Her mother pleaded guilty to murder this week for criminally neglecting the once-vivacious… 5/1/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Vegan couple sentenced in baby’s starvation death Nation and World …sentences on Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31. Their son, Crown Shakur, weighed just 3 ½ pounds when he died of starvation on April 25, 2004. The couple were found guilty May 2 of charges including malice murder, felony murder and cruelty… 5/10/2007 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

New mental evaluations ordered for Kent mother in starvation case Local News …found Robinson passed out amid 300 beer cans. Officers also found a 6-week-old and a 16-month-old boy dead of starvation and dehydration. A 2 ½-year-old son survived, apparently by eating uncooked noodles and rice. 3/15/2007 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Lesson In Death By Starvation Business …Red Cross, described the process of starvation. NAIROBI, Kenya – Starving to death…die of illnesses, rather than actual starvation. The victim initially feels hunger…of infection. The body copes with starvation by burning fewer calories, the fuel… 8/27/1992 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

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