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I just spoke on the telephone with a woman in her mid-80s in Alaska, JV,  who other than my mother’s mother, maintained the longest relationship with my mother of Mildred’s lifetime.  I visited with JV last when I visited Alaska last summer.  It had been about 38 years since I had seen her.  Now when I talk on the phone to JV that visit certainly helps.  She and I can ‘see’ one another now.  And I am grateful beyond words for JV — as an amazing woman — and for the friendship she had with my mother.

I needed to talk with JV about the issue of what my mother says in her letters about her.  JV very reasonably said, “I have to see what she said about me.”  I assured JV as I go through my next edit I will pull out all the references to her and to her family my mother makes and print a copy to send to her.  JV, out of all people on earth, knows exactly the entire context for the entire story of my mother, and probably knew her better than anyone ever did.

JV and I made an appointment for a telephone visit a week from this Saturday, on the 17th of July.  She would have spoken to me this coming Saturday, but I have to prepare myself for this conversation.  JV is not a writer, but she wants to tell me what she knows.  I will be sitting at my computer and will document everything that JV has to say.

JV is the last person, other than the hospital personnel in the emergency, to speak to my mother before her death.

Here is one thing JV told me tonight that will give you an idea of the kinds of things JV knows and wishes to tell me about my mother.  Long after I had left home, after my mother and father’s divorce, my mother had rented a very expensive two bedroom apartment that was beyond her means to keep.  She charged all kinds of expensive furnishings for it, even though both JV and her husband tried (as they did probably hundreds and hundreds of times during the years they knew my mother — 1957 to 2002) to warn Mildred about her actions — to no avail.

During this period Mildred was becoming increasingly paranoid of her grown children, JV says, until it reached the point that my mother wrote “666” on her forehead and on her hands “to protect herself from the devil and from her children because the devil had taken them from her.”

When I talk, as I did in my earlier post today about the seriousness of Borderline Personality Disorder, I am thinking about how even this one single action of my mother’s had roots in the entire spectrum of illness that had swallowed my mother whole from the time she was a little, little girl.

JV told me tonight that many times she knew there were things mother was doing with her children (meaning in particular with me) that were terribly, terribly WRONG.  There was no talk of ‘reporting’ abusive parents to authorities back then in the late 50s-early 60s.  JV did her best to intervene, and talked with my mother — and every time this happened my mother broke off contact with JV for a long, long time.

JV wants to tell me these stories.  I think in the year that has passed since last summer when she and I and my youngest brother visited, at which time I gave JV the ‘handle’ on my mother that Mildred was not simply ‘eccentric’ but was severely abusive and severely mentally ill — JV has been thinking about our family’s situation.  She wants to help us to heal, and I explained to her tonight that the potential for healing with this story is far greater than ‘just’ for the Lloyd family children.

When I mentioned earlier today in a post about the dream I had last night about fighting the good fight and causing no harm or hurt, I mentioned San Miguel, or Saint Michael as well as the Cherub image regarding the combined image of the bull and the lion that relates to guarding the gates — of truth.

St. Michael, in Catholic belief, leads the Army of Light against the Army of Darkness.  The story at the link I posted earlier about St. Michael (San Miguel) is a fascinating one — and is specifically about healing.

My mother’s story, and my and my siblings’ stories as her offspring, carry within them the seeds of healing because they present the potential of harm the absence of the ‘light’ creates.  My mother’s mind was dark, no matter how bubbly, vivacious, creative, determined, etc. she might have appeared to others.  JV knows the truth about my mother.  My mother – also – shared with JV (as perhaps the only human being she ever did so with) the awful, dark truth about her own horrific childhood.  It is very possible that JV wishes to share some of those stories with me as well.

I feel like a vessel.  I feel like a tool.  I feel like a conduit or a channel for a story that resonates with others who suffered severe, unbelievably severe child abuse.  But it is NOT just the story that matters, in spite of all the words that the story is crafted from.  What matters are the patterns that exist within the story — and it is my part, my job, my mission, my responsibility, and my greatest hope that I will be able to FIND, identify and clearly point to these patterns in my mother’s life.

Borderline Personality Disorder IS ABOUT PATTERNS.  We can call these patterns symptoms – but they are, to me, so much more than that.  These patterns are the outward signs of an evolutionarily altered being (as Dr. Martin Teicher and his research group describe).  Although Teicher, et. al. do not specifically point to or even mention BPD, I personally believe that in cases as severe as my mother’s was, the signs, the patterns are clearly visible.  My mother was a gifted child, whose body-brain-mind-self was formed within an early environment that was hazardous to her health — and changed her development so that she ended up becoming an entirely different person than who she would have become if her needs had been met from birth.

I am grateful for the gift that JV is going to give me – give us.  I have to prepare for this interview conversation with her.  Any of you readers who understand what I am presenting here and wish to offer prayers that this work be done well and reach those who can be helped to heal from it — thank you!

We are doing battle with the darkness, though I will not call it evil.  We are talking about dis-ease here — and one that we need as much information about as possible.  Mine is an information and fact-finding mission.  Mercy!  I even have to wish myself well on what is coming up next!

I believe there is a constellation of patterns with the severely abusive Borderline psyche-body-mind that can be identified, and I believe the comprehensive story of my mother’s holds a vitally important key that can unlock the mystery behind ‘splitting-projecting’ severely abusive parents.  I am looking for the patterns and I am looking for this key.  I am looking.  I am looking.  I am looking……

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