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If there is one thing that I suspect everyone with the so-called diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is familiar with, it’s the inner sound of what I call ‘the clamoring within’.  What does the word CLAMOR teach me this morning as I contemplate a writing offer that has been given to me – an offer whose aftershocks set off the noisiest inner clamor that I have experienced consciously in my lifetime?

CLAMOR

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French clamour, from Latin clamor, from clamare to cry out — more at claim

Date: 14th century

1 a : noisy shouting b : a loud continuous noise
2 : insistent public expression (as of support or protest)

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The ‘public’ nature of this clamor I am experiencing happens because ‘all involved’ in the act of clamoring are making themselves present to me, and therefore conscious.  The ‘public’ IS my conscious awareness.

At age 58, I suffer from no delusion that the multiple voices clamoring within are ever going to so-called ‘integrate’, nor do I even desire that.  Every one of the perspectives I contain as grown-up Linda – the noisy and the silent ones – have a right to exist BECAUSE THEY EXIST.  I do not wish to extinguish them.  I do not wish to disrespect any of them.  I do not wish to bulldoze my way on down the road of my life without listening to and honoring what they know and what they have to say – if I pause long enough to listen.

If I give as many of these inner perspective-takers an equal voice and an equal voice in affairs of my life that matter to them, I already know the answer to a question that has been posed to me.  Without disclosing information that I have been asked to keep confidential regarding the ‘offering agency’, I – on my own – after taking a vote among those perspective-takers within me already have my answer.

The answer to the question as it has been posed to me in the present and as it may very likely be posed to me in the future is simply – “NO!”

I will not give any rights away to my words.  Not to anyone outside of The Lloyd Family, and not even to any single member of The Lloyd Family.  Everything that ever happens with my words belongs within an intimate construct that operates through consensus taking.

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The fantastic ‘thought factory’ of my body, my right brain and my left brain has fed me accurate information about my own inner truth about the reality of my word ownership.

Some clear images have appeared to me this morning from my body-right brain information channels.  The first one comes from the memory of a skinny, beaten and abused, lost and alone little girl of about nine years old.  She is gazing toward the edges of the highest mountain tops define where earth meets the deep blue Alaskan late summer sky.

This little girl, this me-memory person, stands frozen in time and space, listening to the approaching yet still-distant call of hundreds of Canadian geese heading on migration south.  There is no anticipation that I can think of that matches the wordless awe of this waiting.

And there they come!  High, high, high above her comes the very first goose sailing along at the front of this “V” over the dividing line of mountain and sky.  Behind this goose come the two separate wings and the air is filled with the wild goose fall song.

I didn’t know, of course, as a child that the head goose is the strongest and flies to cut the wind for the rest of its flock both to its right and to its left.  When the lead goose tires, it falls all the way back in the line and flies without effort at the final back tips of the “V.”  On up moves the next strongest goose – which is, by the time the other strongest goose tires, is now THE strongest goose.

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In this offer that I was just given, I can see the seeds of a reality as they appeared to me in another image:  The roots of trauma and abuse that are my experience from the time of my laboring with my mother to come into this world, are directly tied to the stout trunk of the tree that is me complete with strong, wide-spreading branches that feed ever-growing twigs.  This tree-of-me is approaching full leaf now, and the manifestations of its hard-worked for health (such as I have been able to accomplish degrees of it) take form in the ‘public world’ IN MY WORDS.

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The next image that came to me this morning is a Sacred one, and I do not write the following words with any disrespect.  What I understand about the Lakota and Dakota women’s participation in the Sacred Sundance is that they peel pieces of their skin from their arms and offer them with prayer in support of their men who are dancing.  The women’s sacrifice adds to the sacrifice of the men, and helps to make both the men and their prayers for help and healing stronger and more powerful.

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The clamoring voices of the perspective-takers within me have let me know that the words that I write, the final messages contained in these pieces of who Linda is, do not belong to any ‘big’ or ‘old’ or ‘single’ or ‘adult’ Linda.  They are part of a whole and they cannot be owned by anyone – not even the Linda that supposedly writes them.

I seriously doubt that any public agency representative or any other version of an outside publisher, is going to understand that the whole of who Linda is owns my/her words collectively.  That my story, in the end, is a strong one that can take a place with the lead geese of great migrating flocks of trauma-healing people, does not mean that it exists as an object, or as a thing that can be bought, sold, bartered or owned in any ordinary way.

My words do, however, BELONG somewhere.  I was deprived of my words for myself in my life (and their accompanying thoughts) throughout the 18-years of my torturous abusive childhood.  As these words are now being born, as my words open their wings and flap their way like butterflies out into the cosmos beyond my computer’s keyboard, they simply become what they are:  A part of Linda and her family’s living story.  These butterflies are sacred and do not wish to be captured in any way at any time along their pathway into existence by anyone else for profit.

My words are, therefore, not actually mine.  There is no single all-knowing, all-powerful Linda person who can ultimately determine the fate of my words.  They belong with and to an entity that does not LEGALLY exist yet – but I am becoming quite clear that the legal entity of The Lloyd Family Publishing Trust needs to be formed in THIS material world before any of my words leave my Stop-the-Storm blog.

How that is going to happen, where, who is going to help me with this next step is at present unknown.

There.  That being decided and said the clamoring settles.  If anyone wishes to publish anything I write in any format they will need to have my permission to do so from The Lloyd Family Publishing Trust – CERTAINLY it cannot happen the other way around, no matter how well-intentioned or enticing any outside publishing offer might be.

I am free to leave this keyboard and go outside to continue making something out of earth-mud.

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