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I just spoke in length with my daughter again about my current predicament about this stage of work with myself and with my mother’s writings.  I need to regain the position that she helped be obtain several weeks ago that allowed me to remain more remote and objective as I work this intimately with the words of this woman, my mother, who tortured and abused me for 18 long years.

Part of what I recognize at this moment is that I am summoning an immense amount of personal courage and determination as I pursue this work.  What I am trying to do seems almost like an impossible task.  I am hoping to find something good and useful, helpful, truthful and beautiful within a context of terror, trauma and unspeakable suffering.

I am believing in the GOODNESS of humans.  All humans, even those who commit terrible crimes – as my mother did against me.  I want to be fair, truthful, and I want to do this work with my own integrity intact – beginning to end.

I want to honor my species.  I want to recognize our amazing powers of resiliency.  Yet at the same time I can feel the damage within me.  I cannot make that damage go away.  As I work with my mother’s writing I also understand that how she was so hurt as a child damaged her, also.  If it is true that there is goodness in all of us — I want to be able to recognize that goodness within my mother.

At the same time I am also looking for the damage.  Where the brokenness of my mother met her goodness, a human being lived her life.  I do not seek to judge her.  I seek to understand.

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