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As the book heads into editing, I am finding myself wondering about my mother’s dream (posted at above page link for “About This Site”).  It troubles me that for all my thinking, research and writing, I have no more of a clue what this dream might ‘mean’ than I did the day I discovered it written in her long ago journal.

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MY MOTHER’S DREAM as recorded in her journal on March 29, 1960 during the early months of Alaskan mountain homesteading:

“The whole family was out walking and suddenly we looked up to see a dark rainbow appear – then it got bright and behind it a skyline appeared outlining massive dormed buildings such as I’ve never seen and skyscraper buildings – then it all disappeared and a big wind came.

We realized it was a hurricane. We could hardly stand up against the wind. We saw big apartment buildings on the sides of the streets but the entrances faced another street and we were on the wrong side. The wind grew stronger – finally a door appeared and we went in the building and the person asked us what was wrong? We told her of the great wind but as we pointed outside – all was silent and the wind was gone … and I awoke.”

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Making the connection between the work I hoped this blog would promote and this dream led to my naming this site Stop the Storm (of intergenerational trauma).

I of course had advance notice well before I discovered her dream record about the fact that she was a very disturbed woman (like from the  moment I was born).  Yet if I were to ever have a ‘wind in my sail’ about her treatment of me being intentional, or something that she ever REALLY had any control over or choice about, this dream would deaden that wind.

I didn’t wake up one morning and discover that I am a Word Warrior.  I am a member of a family with a history of word-warrioring.  There were professors on both sides of my family.  My mother’s mother was a Word Warrior.  I have Word Warrior brothers and sisters and children.  We are a family who loves literacy and books.  This is not the same thing as being a family of gifted story tellers within the oral tradition, although I recognize that I have such a yen – if not a gift.

I have spent hundreds of hours (as you readers know) transcribing my mother’s letters and journals that found their way into my hands after her death.  It is very clear throughout them that my mother WAS a writer, although her words never found their way into publication.

I have the advantage of digital equipment and information access that my ancestors never dreamed of.  No matter what has happened to me in my lifetime, having this advantage gives me a power that they never had.

In looking again at my mother’s dream, and as I think about if I am going to include it in my ‘Devil’s Child’ book, I continue to notice that when I read it I feel worms snaking their way around in my gut.  Part of this is because of the insider information I have about my mother being so out-of-control in her violence and in the patterning of her life.

Part of my reaction comes from a suspicion I have that I don’t often name:  My mother was as powerless over who she was, what she did, and what happened in her life as I was powerless over her actions toward me when I was a child.

My mother suffered enough trauma in her early life to turn her into the equivalent of a disastrous storm in our family home.  In this dream I get the sense that she was as helpless to understand or to change the course of what happened to her or how she felt and acted as she was powerless to stop this storm in her dream.

In the dream she was innocently out walking with her family.  First there was the dark rainbow, it changed into light temporarily, and then the big wind came.  She sought shelter along with her family that was denied to her along with everyone else.

I thought about how profound this truth is all afternoon as I worked making adobes outside.  When trauma is passed down in a family through the generations, EVERYONE is its victim.  The storm that is created by the existence of the unresolved trauma remains mostly unseen by outsiders who are not a part of a family’s inner circle.

“The wind grew stronger – finally a door appeared and we went in the building and the person asked us what was wrong? We told her of the great wind but as we pointed outside – all was silent and the wind was gone….”

My mother’s use of the words ‘the person’ here fascinates me.  Why didn’t she say “a woman?”  What inner unknown and desperate need do trauma survivors have to find ‘the person’ to whom they can SHOW the storm to that they know in their own lives?

‘The person’ never appeared in my mother’s life that could truly understand who she was.  The mystery person who did not have to endure the storm, and who could have offered safety and security to my mother along with the rest of her family remained missing – not only for the 18 years I suffered the worst of her madness, but also for the rest of my mother’s life.

Peering into what my Word Warrior mother wrote about her dream today ended up helping me to realize what a terrible, terrible tragedy my mother’s life was.  She COULD NOT find ‘the person’ to rescue her – or us.  She could not even find ‘the person’ she was inside of herself.  Like a missing word we can’t remember or find when we know we know it, my mother on some level might have known how desperate her condition really was, and her family’s as a result of her condition.

But she could not do anything about it in her lifetime, nothing to ever make anything better.

Which makes me think about the power of my words, what I hope for them, that in some small way some of them might be ‘the person’ someone else needs so that they might experience some version of this for themselves if they need it:  “finally a door appeared and we went in the building and the person asked us what was wrong?“

How can we be ‘the person’ and better ask this question, “What was wrong,” both of ourselves and of one another in a caring and compassionate way?  Is it this question that when asked by ‘the person’ (if we ever find one) that can Stop the Storm of unresolved trauma?

“We told her of the great wind but as we pointed outside – all was silent and the wind was gone….”

I don’t believe it was a ‘bad mother’ that had or wrote down this dream.  I believe ‘the person’ who had and wrote this dream had suffered greatly very early in her life while her body-brain was forming and developing.  As a result of the changes that early trauma forced her body to make, many abilities that we consider most vital to being human were taken from her.

This dream might be the closest she ever got to knowing the truth about herself, her life and the life of her family.  It might be the closest she ever got to understanding what was needed for the storm to stop.  Fifty years later her Word Warrior’s dream can still sound an echo about what being powerless in the face of danger is like.  It also shows the power one open door and one person can have to help Stop the Storm for others.

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My first experience with my editor as she does what editors do – morph things!

First morph – the title!

She Believed I was the Devil’s Child:

18 Years Of Abuse By My Mother Didn’t Make Me Like Her

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