Year: 2010

+THE PROCESS OF RUPTURE AND REPAIR NEED REPOSE AND RESTORATION

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Well, here I am at mid-day and I am not outside working in my yard.  It’s very hot outside, but that by itself is not what is stopping me.  I have lymphodema in my left arm after cancer in my lymph nodes on that side, and today my arm is swelling from my work outside these past few days, and I am always worried when I see puffiness beginning to move down into my left hand.  THAT will not do.  Today my arm needs to rest and I cannot WILL it any other way.

This leaves me with some free mental time to think further about my observation about whiners and workers.  As usual, my thoughts turn upon their own invisible fulcrum and in that expanding spectrum I ran into two recently found friend-thoughts:  Rupture and Repair.

Yet because of the past days I have needed to work on some repair for myself, my thoughts have slowed down enough that I can see some of what lies between these two big “R’s”.   And as I do, I look outside into my transforming front yard and because of the clearing, simplifying and patterning of my new layouts I can see something I never noticed before.

My brother and I planted a desert Sycamore tree out there while I was taking my chemo.  This is a fast growing tree, and I have been trimming off its lower branches as it stretches up in height and now I can see that this tall trunk with its bunch of neat branches at its top is actually working like something I have always wanted in my yard for a long, long time:  A sundial.

Within my new landscape plan I figured out yesterday how to dig 8″ deep rectangles between each of the perennial plants.  In these holes I wet and stir the mud with a little cement, and then place stones in them so they look like the bed of a stream.  I figured out that the weeds and Bermuda grass is not likely to be any more able to sprout through these ‘spacers’ than it does through the actual adobe bricks I have been making my walkways out of.

In addition, after watching the downpour the other day I can see that these ‘stone pads’ between the perennials will also be able to accomplish another important job.  They will create water runoff streams that will now go exactly where I want them too when the rains come — seldom and hard — right onto my perennials!

But as I looked outside today, somewhat begrudged that I can’t healthily be out there furthering my working plans, I see that those pads as they lie at the outside of my newly created garden give the shadow of my tree a place to land on as the sunlight scoots across the landscape.  Each of those stone pads now looks like a marker on a sundial!  How cool is that?

And in between the pad-markers are the plants themselves which of course vitally depend on the sunlight to reach them and NOT be overly shadowed by the tree leaves as the light passes them.  It seems to be working out OK.

And this whole visual experience this morning, combined with my ‘freed time’ to think helps me understand that in between the two fundamental poles that living in an ever changing and often challenging world creates — patterns of rupture and repair — are shades that can be named more specifically.  Because patterns of rupture and repair are what build our ‘operating system’ of secure or insecure attachment in and to the world from our conception, it is helpful and important for me to understand that in the cycles of living there is more detailed and specific information I can learn, name and use in my life.

Because of the severe abuse I survived, that altered my entire body’s development permanently in my early years, I understand that my resulting insecure attachment (along with the other Three Sisters I mentioned previously, depression, PTSD and dissociation), all happened to me because patterns of rupture and repair did not follow one another in supportive ways in my early years.

I have never found ‘functional’ or ‘dysfunctional’ to be useful terms to my thinking when I look back on my severely chaotic, traumatic, dangerous and harmful infant-childhood.  These terms do not name anything I can relate to, so I went searching for more accurate and useful terms.  Rupture and repair are REAL processes.  Yet as I think about them today I see some of what lies along the spectrum between them, and those things add more detailed information that I can use to think with.

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I have a collection of those little “Y” shaped hose end attachments, some metal, some plastic, some older, some new.  They all cost me money, all cost the planet resources, and they all eventually seem to fail for no reason I can determine other than planned obsolescence and shoddy craftsmanship.  Yesterday as I was working away on my project outside the one I have been using for several months at the watering end of my hose (I then have one ‘spigot’ open for running water and the other has a sprayer attached to it) simply fell apart.

I had been adding water in the shower formation to my adobe mud mix one minute, had dropped the hose end to the ground to stir, and when I picked the hose end back up the water could not be turned off on one end of the “Y.”  What on earth had happened in that split second?

It turned out that the tiny screw that held the turn-on-off on one side of the “Y” had fallen off and vanished!  I tried another “Y” I had on hand, it was flawed also.  I twisted on a new one I bought last week, and for no reason I could understand, my hose end had decided to spring itself a major leak also!  The washer was fine.  I ended up having to use the super (and very effective) Rescue Tape the hardware store people had convinced me to buy last week — along with a hose clamp (which I found out last week now costs $1.29 for one of the smallest ones they make!) to FIX the end of the hose before I could even screw on the new “Y.”

All said and done, I never expected to find the tiny pieces that fell off the first broken “Y” as they fell down somewhere between the tangled masses of Bermuda grass, the dug-up dark, damp earth and the mud.  But they DID appear!  A tiny rubber ring about 1/4″ inside diameter, and then suddenly the little turn-off handle itself!  Seemed like a miracle to me!

Well, to make a long story even longer, all of this fed into my thought channels about rupture and repair, and about the four things I mentioned in a post last week:  Make, Use, Fix, and Break.

I never until yesterday realized that there is maintenance required on some of those hose “Y” attachments.  I didn’t know that eventually the tiny screw that holds the little handle on that turns the spray on or off loosens — and then falls off!  Maintenance.  Obviously connected to FIX and to REPAIR.

Yet maintenance is more closely connected to another word that appeared to me yesterday, one that lies within my more finely-tuned understanding of the spectrum between Rupture and Repair.  The need to MAINTAIN something keeps it working BEFORE it needs to be repaired.  Maintainance is a form of RESTORATION.

As I mentioned, I never knew that these “Ys” needed to be maintained so that they would continue (at least some of them) their functionality.  Maintaining the proper tension on the little handle screw by checking it periodically would have RESTORED it to its ‘factory specs’ and kept it working properly.  The whole minor mess I encountered yesterday could have been avoided if I had both known this, and done it.

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Which now leads me on a minor diversion here.  I have instinctively known, as I have mentioned before, that the term RECOVERY did not have the same meaning to me as a severe infant-child abuse survivor that it has for others who did not have a severely traumatic childhood.  I do not have very much at ALL to go back and ‘recover’ of myself from ‘back then’.

What I do as a severe abuse survivor is something else — not recovery.  If I had maintained my “Y” over time, and adjusted it to RESTORE it back to its original operation, I would have been assisting that little piece of hardware to RECOVER what it once possessed.  To me this is a FINE and an important distinction!

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To get back to whiners and workers — to rupture and repair — to sunlight being marked by my growing single tree in my yard as the minutes of the day tick themselves along — and to the words and terms we use to explain the important processes of life — I will now add yet another concept here.

This word that came into my mind has virtually nothing to do with the mechanistic metaphors used to describe human experience such as ‘functional’ and ‘dysfunctional’.  It has nothing to do with a functional or dysfunctional “Y” watering attachment.  But it has everything to do with what happens to living organisms that are required to go through natural cycles of rupture and repair to stay alive.

The word is REPOSE.

My broken (ruptured) “Y” is, true, reposing in a bowl of vinegar water to remove the calcium within it so that I can try to repair it now that it’s broken and I miraculously found its tiny pieces in the muddy mess of my yard.  Will the repair actually restore it to use?  Time and effort will tell.

In the meantime, I am thinking that in my severely abusive home of origin, with my continually working father and my chronically whining mother, rupture without repair — or hope of repair — was the chronic state of our environment.

Along with all the ruptures without repair REPOSE was entirely missing.

Looking at it today, REPOSE and REPAIR are essentially tied together.

REPOSE only happens when safety and security are present.  REPOSE happens at the same time a safe and secure attachment in and to the world is possible.

REPOSE lets restoration that leads to repair happen.

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When it comes to understanding that our ‘stress response system’ in our body, the same one that is permanently altered and damaged as we grow and develop under malevolent infant-childhood conditions, is ALSO our ‘calm and connection system’.  They are THE SAME SYSTEM.

Without safety and security REPOSE doesn’t happen, REPAIR doesn’t happen, and our entire body-brain-mind-self lands smack on the STRESS end of things rather than on the CALM end of things.  We pay the price physiologically — and then in every other related way — for the rest of our lives.

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So in the sundial movement of the circle-cycle of life between ruptures that need repair, and the repair that either does or does not happen, lies MAINTAINANCE and  RESTORATION that only happens when REPOSE is possible, attainable and present.

Trauma does not offer repose.  Repose is an essential requirement for repairing a rupture (healing) so that both growth and an ongoing life of well-being can happen.

Neither continual working or continual whining allow for repose, and hence the cycle of rupture and repair is broken.

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Just as I did not know I needed to maintain my “Y” neither of my parents were able to maintain their own self.  I had to assess what went wrong with my “Y” yesterday (not hard when I saw pieces missing).  Neither of my parents ever knew the truth about what happened to them during their infant-childhoods that robbed them of well-being.  They never knew what happened to MAKE them BROKEN, so they could not either USE their full abilities or FIX what was wrong.

And REPOSE, what is supposed to be formed at the center of our physiology as our body-brain grows from conception forward, was completely missing.  REPOSE ability was missing because neither of my parents ever truly knew what safe and secure attachment even was.  Neither of them had it formed into the center of their body-brain as they grew up.  Repose, which lets restoration repair the ruptures life creates, was completely left out of the recipe both my parents used to create their life — and the life of their offspring.

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Just as rest and repose is what my swollen arm needs today — not whining without end, not work without end, it is what ALL of me needs — nearly all of the time.  So much trauma-based rupture without repose and restoration that leads to repair makes heavy demands on me, as it does for every severe abuse survivor whose life did not offer to them the opportunities to be safe and secure in the world.

But at least now I am beginning to find the words to think the thoughts that are more closely aligned with what I need.  I do not think in terms of ‘functional’ and ‘dysfunctional’ and I am glad for that.  I also know that my need for REPOSE is beyond great.  And I am learning why that is so.  I have to live in and with this body my mother so drastically affected in its development, but as I do so I hope to continue to understand what I can do to live a little bit better every step of the way.

No this isn’t easy.

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+WHINERS AND WORKERS. HUM……

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Today I accomplished some catch up with myself.  Yesterday we were showered well with a late monsoon rain — a real soaker!  The adobes I had made for my newly forming front yard walkway were aged enough to survive it, but I sure got to see how and where the rain off of my gutterless roof pounds down on some of them.  Today I did some repair in those spots, adding stones for the rain to beat upon — and let it come!

The ground was wonderfully wet.  I could dig away anywhere I wanted to without hard caliche (in Arizona, a layer of soil in which the soil particles have been cemented together by lime) to stop my shovel and demand a hose soaking before I could have my way with it.  And today the clouds obscured the punishing sun.  I worked all day out there — and now I feel better.

Only twice did I have to detour my thoughts away from the negative patterns that can crop up so quickly — and so unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere.  When those thoughts came today I could do one of two things:  (1) say a simple prayer, and/or (2) redirect my thoughts to the next physical action required of my task.

It worked.  Then five times after I told myself, “That’s enough for today. Your body is tired.  There’s always tomorrow,” I perched my sweat soaked rubber work gloves on the handles of my upright shovel and hoe — after sunset.

Today I made a low three-leveled adobe wall out of bricks I had formed last spring that are too sandy to support much weight without breaking.  The wall encircles the exposed two sides of my north-east corner of my front yard.

Everywhere I work I am hell-bent on digging up gone-wild Bermuda grass trying to clear the soil for planting of something else.  There is no way to eliminate this (to me) terrible pest.  It has roots two feet deep, and with every rain sends out four to six foot runners with little rootlets along it every two inches.  Left on its own, with its tiny little (to me) obnoxious seeds, it takes over everywhere it is planted, and everywhere it can reach.  (One square foot of Bermuda grass, if chopped up very finely, can solidly seed an acre — great if you are bovine or equine!)

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I did have one solid thought as I worked away out there today, sweat pouring into my eyes despite my headband and the cloud cover above me.  This thought, once it appeared, could not be chased away.  Not that it matters, but it is now stuck like it is a part of me.

“What if there are basically two kinds of people in the world, one being whiners and the other being workers?”

As this thought popped up in my mind, like a slice of toast just cooked in the toaster, another slice of toast popped up right along side of it.  “My mother was a whiner and my father was a worker.”

I don’t think I ever heard my father whine.  I BARELY ever saw my mother work.  So there.

“What on earth does this mean?”  I ask myself.  “Useful information?”  I can’t at the moment begin to imagine what possible use this observation is to me — or to anyone else!

What I do know is that I WORKED my way through the 18 years of my childhood!  I have no idea what would have happened to me given how much my mother hated me and how intensely she did work at proving it (Oh!  I see.  She WORKED at abusing me!) if I had been a whiner instead of a worker.  Collapsing in a pitiful heap on the floor with one flick of her finger upon me, or one bash of her fist, or one smack of a belt would not have done me any good whatsoever!

So I guess I, along with all five of my siblings, inherited my father’s working genes!  (Who would have wanted HERS?)

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Which reminds me, part of what I have been doing this past week is sorting through my inventory of all the ‘things’ I have made with my hands that I cannot seem to ever sell.  Some I priced and will send up to North Dakota to my daughter who will take them to a November craft show she exhibits at every year.  Good riddance, STUFF!  I have given away heavy crocheted rugs I made, donated  a bunch more STUFF — and……..  More to go!  I am determined to find this STUFF I have made a home — freely given, most often welcomed!

But I also had the thought appear several times these past days that in long gone days I would have been a valuable asset to some tribe or another for my making-things abilities, drive, ambition and accomplishments.  Whatever happens to people like me, deprived as we are as a true place in the grand scheme of our survival in today’s American world?

I don’t get to be a making-things blessing as my genes have dictated.  I am not a square peg meant for a round hole, or vice verso.  I simply don’t have a slot at all!  I just carry these WORK genes, designed for survival of a whole crowd of people — in a different time, a different world, a different culture than the one I have obviously flopped into in my lifetime!

Well, that’s getting awfully close to being a whine — so I better quit before I go THAT far!

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+TRIGGERED. STOP THE CHURNING

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Sometimes words can be so quiet that they don’t come out at all.  When that happens, I do things.  I just do things and do things and do things — and time goes by and things get done eventually.  The inner times, the waiting times.

Sometimes my thoughts and my emotions just seem like weather.  Inner weather.  Tides coming in and going out.  Inner mornings, days, evenings and night times.  Right now I feel like a tiny speck of glitter in a huge, huge world I am a part of.  A link in a never ending chain.

I guess it’s a kind of ‘world weary’ that I feel lately.  My Four Sisters — my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder, my PTSD, my depression, my dissociation — sometimes it seems they are so busy living my life for me I just have to find a quiet place, be as calm as I can manage to be, strive for contentment and exercise my gratitude — and then wait, do, wait, do — life is guaranteed change.  I just want as little of unforeseen change as possible.

Having spent a great many years in a seriously rocking, topsy turvy boat, I aim for the shallow waters out of the mainstream, out of the wild currents.  I just want to BE.  Just be.  (I just made myself a pot of decaf coffee — without the coffee!)

Those Four Sisters of mine — sometimes they shake the high-wire I am trying to stay balanced on — walking.  Thoughts running too fast.  Unable to sleep.  Skirting my emotions like they are pools of quicksand.  Wanting to run, my ankles are shackled.  No hope of even flying, hands bound behind my back.  (And I am very, very certain that these Four Sisters would not be present in my life if I had not been so severely abused for the first 18 years of my infant-childhood.)

Yes, something has triggered all this STUPID activity, and there’s nothing I can do but let the mud settle to the bottom while I go on — day by day, night by night — the best that I can — waiting while I live, living while I wait.

PS.  I have now moved my adobe making to my front yard — LOTS of work, and I like it.  I have a vision inside of what I want to see come of my labor.  THAT is ME, a sliver of me I can see ahead of me as I feel myself inside of me moving through the present, into the future, changing what was the past, making something new and different and beautiful.

And while I do THAT work, I ONLY think in the immediate present EXACTLY about what I am doing mind, body and soul.  Transformation.  I know it’s really what we all do while we live — alchemy now — turning what this earth gives to us into our self and then giving something back.  I can feel the beauty in that — and I am grateful.

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+INCHING TOWARD FREEDOM

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The last thing I had during the 18 years of my abusive infant-childhood was freedom.  I was born my mother’s captive as much as I was born her victim.  If that had not been so, I don’t suppose I would have such thoughts while making myself a big bowl of guacamole and slicing a bagel to toast as, “Gee, I am choosing to make this food because I want to.  I am free to choose when and what I want to eat.”

This thought led to a next one, “Hum.  Maybe I can learn to pay close attention to everything I do at the same time I notice if I am doing what I REALLY WANT to do.  Is what I am doing more toward being harmful or healthy?”

That process is what inching toward freedom is about.  True, I’ve been out from under my mother’s roof for a good long time, 41 years, actually.  But my inner freedom didn’t come with my step off into adulthood.  I work for it every day of my life.  Every moment.  Every inch.  This is true for all the reasons I included in my previous post about how trauma changes physiological development for the lifespan.

The older I have gotten the more limited my range of ‘motion’ seems to be due to the difficulties these developmental changes have caused me.  But cancer didn’t kill me off and I am still here for another round at this event called life.  There ought to be something useful I can yet accomplish while I enjoy doing it.  I am certainly inching my way in that direction, even if it’s one avocado, one tomato, one bagel at a time!

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+’SHAKE IT UP BABY!’ — MOVEMENT MATTERS

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Yesterday I spent all of the generously given birthday money I received on drip-soaker irrigation supplies.  It just struck me as I decided to write a post that my thoughts FEEL about how that collection of pieces, parts, hoses and tubes looks like in their pile on my kitchen floor:  JUMBLED.

Then I thought, “Well, if one of the key indicators of a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment pattern-disorder is ‘incoherency’ in the narrating (and living) of one’s life, then figuring out how to put together a complicated working irrigation system for my back, side and front yard is actually a similar process to organizing BOTH jumbles — the one on my kitchen floor and the one inside of me.”

OK.  Then, “If it isn’t necessary to put together my irrigation system in a simple straight LINEAR way then it isn’t necessary to put my thoughts together in a linear straight way to make them organized, oriented and coherent, either.”

I will certainly admit that putting that watering system together so that it actually WORKS within the limitations I have both financially and expertise-wise, is intimidating.  Both involve a learning curve, and if I want to get both jobs accomplished, I have to start at one single place:  THE BEGINNING.

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Regarding my jumble of thoughts, I will go back and pick up a little piece of information I found on a website early in the week when my daughter and I were discussing (via email), “How important is it for an infant to crawl before it walks, and how is crawling related to the ability to read?”

From the Minnesota Learning Resource Center I found an article titled, Movement and Brain Development which states:

“Fascinating research informs us that the baby’s brain develops through natural movements of nursing, tummy time, rolling, creeping and crawling. Baby’s most complex senses, vision and hearing, are also organized by doing the same movements.

Developmental movements organize and structure the brain for cognition, attention asset (vs. attention deficit) and emotional regulation, the ability to modulate between calm and excited states. The earliest learning takes place through movement explorations. Baby’s natural movements also provide a baseline of core strength and good coordination.”

(Bold type is mine)

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I had never until the moment my eyes scanned these words heard the term ATTENTION ASSET.  “Well how cool is that?”  I thought to myself.  “Like in so many cases, what we tend to hear about is the negative side of things.”  That’s what I have finally come to understand about all the public hoopla around ‘the stress response’.  We are not likely to hear about the other part of the WHOLE that makes up our body-brain-nervous system responses to life — THE CALM AND CONNECTION SYSTEM which is exactly part of the SAME response system.

In the same way we are likely to hear of ‘attention deficit’ without hearing at the same time about ‘attention asset’.

So, I appreciated LEARNING something new just from these few simple words.  At the same time I know that ALL learning IS MOVEMENT — and also that because I have some particular prior learning, I also understand that the interactions an infant has with its earliest caregivers ALSO are also exactly building these same abilities in the infant body-brain at the same time!

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But what I am particularly thinking about right now is about how MOVEMENT is essential throughout our entire lifespan so that we can both continue to live as we continue to GROW.  We make no significant, meaningful progress on ANYTHING (even staying alive) without movement taking place.

All the so-called ‘anxiety spectrum’ disorders that pile up inside our body-brain due to our having had to grow and develop our body-brain in the first place in horrendously inadequate, traumatic, abusive, malevolent infant-childhoods ALL involve some complication with our attention.  As our body responds continually to our environment, we are often left with a disorganized-disoriented (dissociated) condition that saps our life force and deprives us of the ability to focus our conscious, self-directed desires and will power into the channels that would allow what REALLY MATTERS MOST TO US to manifest in our lives.

I am thinking not only about dissociation, but also about ‘depression’ and ‘posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)’.  If I don’t build my irrigation system exactly right, water is going to leak and spill, overflow itself in its hoses and in its tubes in the wrong direction, overwater, underwater, and basically NOT end up where I want it where it is needed.

That’s very similar to how my thoughts and my energies (ALL of them) end up much of the time if I am not very careful to take care of the JUMBLE inside of me.  The ability to focus ATTENTION and to be resiliently flexible and responsive to our inner and outer environment has been DISRUPTED through the horrific experiences in our infant-childhood that we survived.

As a consequence, I believe we survivors have to build our conscious awareness and power of directed CHOICE every moment we are alive.  We cannot take for granted that either DECISION or CHOICE comes easily to us.  All severe trauma has the power to change our body, and if the stress response end becomes overtaxed — and hence takes over the utilization of our energy and life force on the AUTOMATIC AND UNCONSCIOUS LEVEL, we will have (pardon me) a HELL of a job (if not a battle) getting control of our own energy and life force back again — for our SELF.

The ONLY way I see to improve our well-being and the overall quality of our (survivorship) life is by finding as many ways as possible to NOTICE both what is happening in us that DOES NOT HAVE OUR CONSCIOUS ATTENTION (attention deficit) and to what DOES HAVE OUR CONSCIOUS ATTENTION (attention asset).

If I simply turn on my outside water spigots and let them run, the water will go wherever it wants to because I have not both paid attention to how the water is directed AND found ways to make it go where I want it to according to my conscious CHOICE and intentions.  This jumble of $147 worth of irrigation ‘stuff’ piled in my kitchen has no use or purpose whatsoever until I make the movements — ALL of them — that are required to make something out of them according to my wishes and my intention.

On a personal level, I have to ask myself, “What is your investment, Linda, in directing the flow of your own life today?”  In the same way that I have invested all of my birthday gift money in my hopes for a finished and working irrigation system, I need to FIND, KNOW, VALUE, and INVEST in my hopes for myself in my life regarding every part of it-me that I can wrestle away from my body’s automatic pilot that my trauma-built body-brain runs on — naturally.

Sure, my body has hopes, plans and ways to keep itself alive — but, “Wait a dang minute here?  Where is MY choice in all of this living?  What do I want, need, desire, hope for?”

Staying alive isn’t enough.  Building my irrigation system right isn’t enough to promise me a beautiful yard.  I need the plants.  I need to amend the soil, pull the weeds, chose the right plants, feed them, give them enough water for their needs, make sure they have the right amount of sunshine.

And — I need to enjoy them!

I am making all this yard-related effort and movement for simply THAT reason — it is a part of who I am since my earliest memories that I love flowers.  Along the way I figured out that growing food is also a good thing.  What I love CAN have a ‘lionesses’ share’ of my attention.  No matter how great this struggle, the more I learn how to organize and orient myself according to what my passions can make clear to me, the more I can direct the flow and consequence of my own energy and life force — at the same time I diminish how ‘anxiety’ rules my life.

The physical exercise that gardening (and my addition of adobe into the landscaping) gives to me benefits me in exactly the same way the author referenced above says about little tiny growing babies.  We NEVER leave behind the need to MOVE.  (Contrasted to being miserably STUCK anywhere along our life’s journey!)

And if I can’t get outside due to weather to do what I want to, I can jog, I can dance — I can do SOMETHING.  And I have to because physical movement of the body is absolutely necessary to human well-being.  I am convinced of that fact.  Movement helps cure the ‘jumbles’ — so off I go with my attention focused on my intention to make SOMETHING GOOD happen in my life today!

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+GREAT FREE EBOOK!

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I went wandering around the web universe and found this — pretty cool, I think!

The Power of Less:  A free ebook – Thriving on Less – Simplifying in a Tough Economy

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+I WILL FORGET THE ANGELS’ PRESENCE NO MORE

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Wise are the mysterious promptings of the heart that sometimes cause us to make new connections in our thoughts, to say things to those we care deeply about, to finally find our own courage to stand by what we know as our own personal truth, and to let ourselves leap into the feared unknown so that we can find hope for ourselves and for others that we never knew existed before.

I have a nearly 20-year-old cassette tape Walkman with headphones that I use while I do my 45 minute near-daily jog.  I only have two tapes that work in the player.  I have tried all kinds of other ones, but I have decided that the bands that move the tape must be geared only to the exact weight of these two tapes — and nothing else.  One is a Chet Atkins tape that is obnoxious to listen to — hard as that is for me to believe!  The music is clipped and fakey to me, no matter how great the talent recorded on it.

The other one is a Stevie Nicks tape, The Wild Heart.  I have listened to that tape throughout my jogs so many times I can’t count them.  Yet suddenly yesterday, on my 59th birthday, there was one line from one song that leaped out not only into my ears, but into my heart, mind and soul so loudly that all other sounds on the tape completely disappeared.  I can’t even say at this moment (until I do today’s jog and hear the song again) what the name of the song even is — but here is the line:

“I BLAME THE ANGELS!”

At that moment something changed inside of me — the greatest birthday present I could ever have been given.  I can’t name or describe the change exactly, but I can feel it.  For the first time in my life I can feel, sense and almost physically see that all the supposed empty space around me, around all of us here on this earth is filled not only with air — but also with angels!

There are actually so many of them that I don’t know how they fly around without bumping into one another!  I guess they have their own version of traffic control, because “Oh, my GOLLY!  There’s a whole LOT of them!”

And each of them is here to help all of us.

Well, I humbly must admit that I have to wonder how it could have taken me all the way through time to my 59th birthday to reconnect to something I so absolutely knew as a child on that mountain I had no question.  I will try to scan in a photograph that my sister just sent to me that will (again, and hopefully more clearly) introduce you to the Angel on the Mountain that was my closest friend and companion during my abusive childhood.

(Give me a moment here.  I have to dig through this pile of photographs for the one I am thinking of.)

I first met this angel when I was 7. She was more real to me than anything else in my life, and she was my Companion and my Comfort.

This angel was a Presence in my life. There was in feeling no distance between us. While I could see her visually across the valley and over there perched on her mountain peak, I felt bonded to her.

This angel heard everything I ever said to her, but mostly in my misery I had no words, yet I knew she ALWAYS knew exactly who I was and what I felt.  I knew she always watched over me and never left ‘my side’ — and never would.

I hope you can detect her up there.  In my senses she was alive — and every time I looked up at her I was in a different spot, never exactly in the same one twice, so her shape changed subtly with my movements as if she, too, could move — though of course I never THOUGHT about these things.

I can look at this photograph my mother took probably in 1959 and there on the left in the back, at the end of the mountain range across from our Alaskan homestead where this picture was taken, I can see that angel up there as clear as day!

Her head is turned slightly to her right, and as a child I knew without ever thinking of it that she was looking at me, that she could see me just as clearly as I could see her.  Her wings spread out to her left and right, her dress cascades down the mountaintop below her.  In the summer she appeared as she does here.  In the winter she donned her winter dress, her halo turned whiter and her wings grew in vastness along the top of the mountain’s crest.

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Yesterday as I loudly heard the words of Stevie’s song, “I blame the angels,” it was like a veil was torn away that has kept me from feeling the presence of angels like I was able to with THAT Angel on the Mountain when I was small and so terribly hurting.  I never knew I created that veil after I ‘grew up’.  In fact, I have shrouded my entire feeling experience of my childhood under this same (or similar) veils.

These veils, or shrouds, have buffered me from the emotional memory reality of my childhood suffering, as well as from most of the dissociated specific facts of my childhood memories.  I had to not only endure and survive my childhood, I ALSO had to endure and survive my adulthood!

Part of how I did that was to cast over my first 18 years of life a sort of cloak that not so much made it invisible as it did dim and obscure it from my awareness as I made my childhood so out-of-focus and obscure (like having a blindness, a terrible ‘vision’) that I could direct my attention elsewhere (at my adulthood).

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The way my thinking works, all of this I am writing about seems closely connected to an experience I had within hours after my double mastectomy surgery in December of 2007.  Nobody had told me prior to surgery what they told me afterward, and perhaps in part because of this I experienced the following:

I was given IV morphine for the first 20 or so hours after surgery.  During that time I did one very important activity — I stretched!  I sat up in bed, raised my arms as high over my head as I possibly could, and I stretched.  I continued to move my arms in this wide stretch in all directions — yes as I think of it, not unlike a butterfly might stretch its wings when it first exits its cocoon (or a new angel).  And as I instinctively performed this stretch without thought or intention, I could hear and feel (though there was no pain) a strange ripping, crackling, snapping inside my shoulders, across my chest and back.

I thought nothing of this until hours later when the surgeon stopped into my room and mentioned that many women experience a limitation in their range of motion due to this surgery.  As she verbally described what this limitation would be like I naturally raised my arms and searched for this limitation within myself.

It wasn’t there.

I had broken through whatever that kind of limitation could have been even before anyone had told me of its possible existence.

I mention this now because in my thought connections I realize that I am again experiencing a related kind of ripping through limitation.  Whatever veil-shroud I naturally created to obscure the pain, horror and reality of my infant-childhood of trauma and abuse  — because I HAD to do it to survive my adulthood — ALSO numbed my ability to experience my ‘Angel Love’.

Some part of that veil was ripped away yesterday on my birthday as I jogged around listening to Stevie Nicks wake up and hone in her musical echos, my ‘angel senses’.

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I realize now as I write that I am tired of words.  As a child, back there within that veiled and shrouded world of trauma and trouble, I had very little use for words, and I certainly did not use them to think with.  I was fully capable of thinking without words.  In that state of being, I could simply BE with that angel, a fact that at this moment helps me know a broader sense of Shakespeare’s statement, “To be or not to be.  That is the question.”

That is not an itty bitty personalized reality.  It is as big as the creation all of us are a part of.  I know myself well enough now to know I don’t think in terms of ‘faith’, and not even in terms of ‘belief’, either.

I didn’t have ‘faith’ in my intimate interrelationship with that Angel on the Mountain.  I didn’t have ‘belief’ in her unending and absolute love for me.  Both she and I were simply BE-ING.  We existed.  We were.

As I continue to stumble forward at this moment in my world of words I also know now that I can thank the fact that our family had no indoor bathroom for much of the assistance I received from my relationship with the presence of that Angel.  Sooner or later, no matter what punishment my mother was at the moment engaged in regarding me, I had to use the outhouse.

Those moments I walked out the door of our strange canvas-covered abode into the open air of the wilderness I was both in those moments NOT in my mother’s presence at the same time I WAS in the presence of that Angel as if she and I existed together in an entirely different universe than the one my mother existed in.

Most of my childhood my beaten body and my broken heart bled tears.  During the brief intermissions in abuse created by my having to go outside the ‘house’ into the air of wilderness freedom I was automatically blessed by the presence of that ever-present Angel on the Mountain who I understood without question knew everything about me and compassionately cared.

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Yesterday I was reawakened to what that feels like not only to be so loved by an Angel but to be able to receive that love as naturally as I receive air.  THAT angel was situated on THAT mountaintop and never left it (although her love felt like a physical presence as she expanded herself all the way across that valley to wrap me in it).  What I received for my birthday gift yesterday is not only the reawakened sense and knowledge of what that love FEELS like, but also the knowledge that there are angels EVERYWHERE that are all full of that same love for humanity.

I have no desire to complicate this gift with thoughts about ‘proof’ or ‘religion’.  These angels seem to be as much a part of this creation I am a part of as everything else is.  They simply ‘BE’.  I have greatly missed knowing this.  No matter what else I have had to ‘forget’ about my childhood, I will forget the existence and presence of these loving, compassionate, caring angels no more — hopefully forever.

(I swear!  I feel as though I am walking through ANGEL SOUP now and they don’t mind a bit!)

(The song lyric is from Stevie Nicks’ song “Wild Heart,” and literally is “Blame it on the angels.”)

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CLICK HERE – TALKING ABOUT THE POWER OF LOVE

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+SEVERE EARLY ABUSE SURVIVORS: LEARNING TO READ, IT’S MORE THAN YOU THINK

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This is my 59th birthday post today.  I am deadly (life-ly) serious about this!  Learning how to read?  YES!  What is different about US and why-how it matters:  We severe infant-child abuse survivors, with our trauma-changed body-brain-mind-self, life in a different world because we were made in, by and for a different (malevolent rather than benign-benevolent) world.  I am going to present two very short articles from “O” – The Oprah Magazine that I pulled out while I was searching for little images to cut out for my daughter to use in her light switch collage project.

Because I am a severe, severe infant-child abuse survivor, and because I was FORCED to go searching for the truth nearly seven years ago when my youngest child left home (my serious disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder trigger), I have LEARNED A LOT.  It is the purpose of my blog writing, and my greatest hope that somehow what I share in everything I write can benefit the suffering FEW (overall and in perspective) of us that are severe early abuse survivors.

Yet at the same time I mention and take seriously that ONLY a recognizable half of our current population is seen by researchers to have had a safe and secure enough early attachment environment (good-enough benevolent) to NOT have ended up with some degree-version of an insecure attachment disorder that affected every single aspect both of their early growth and development and therefore how they experience and live their life.

What I see happening — and what will continue to happen for the roughly 10% + of US – the severe early neglect and abuse survivors — is that not only did our early traumatic environment change our development, including the way our genetic code manifests and operates — we are DISSED (disrespected) in every possible way from that early point forward.

We NEED information.  We need to understand the platform that we stand on within our physiology — our body-nervous system-brain-immune system-mind-self AS IT TRULY EXISTS.  We need to STOP the disempowering (life force leakage) that continues to happen for us because we live in a society that has not yet recognized the power that early infant-childhood deprivation and abuse in a malevolent environment has to  CHANGE  development and create lifelong complications for us in everything we face.

These two little articles present me with an opportunity to elucidate what the ‘gibberish’ I am talking about!

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Without further explanation, please read these (right-click on image and choose ‘open in new tab or window’,  and on page it brings up, use ZOOM from your toolbar View button if you need to):

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Those of you readers who have followed this blog for a period of time can probably already know what I am going to say.  In the first article we are reading about how MOSTLY safe and securely attached people are likely to experience ’empty nest’.  Nobody ever tells us that we early abuse survivors are NEVER GOING TO HAVE A CHANCE to experience what is being touted here as not only POSSIBLE, but within the realm of NORMAL.

No, for the abuse survivors I am talking to and about, we fit into the ‘tainted’ category of “Oh well, what else can be expected of THESE PEOPLE?  They were already flawed, already depressed.  Let’s just ignore them (after we DISS them) and go on with our happy, well-adjusted lives!”

Yes, ‘already depressed’ people are going to experience MEGA difficulties when their primary attachments are disrupted, altered and perhaps nearly evaporated.  They are also the likely ones NOT to have good partner relationships that would help support then through these transitional passages in adult life.

We MUST begin to understand the insecure attachment ‘disorders’ and the changes they created in our genetic code expression (that’s how abuse activates most depression genes in the first place) so that we can all get on with the business of recognizing that if we choose to ACCEPT the existence of early infant-child abuse, we are choosing to punish those survivors with our societal arrogance and ignorance.

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The same pattern exists in this second article about “Smoking & the Blues.”

“Oh, those ‘mentally ill’ and those ‘depressed’ (flawed) individuals….”

MOST of so-called mental illness, and I would guess a whole lot of ‘depression’ is directly tied in its origin and its continued existence to early infant-child abuse, neglect, maltreatment and trauma that so changed the little one’s early growth and development that these ‘mental illnesses’ had no choice but to manifest.  Those ‘mental illnesses’ go hand-in-hand with what our body had to do to adjust enough within our malevolent early environment to survive at ALL!

Again and again and again I will mention — it is of HIGHEST value and importance to begin to KNOW the truth about subjects like these two high-in-the-sky-apple-pie articles are ACTUALLY — and in an undistorted REAL world talking about (in other words, in a word without childish denial and magical thinking).  What you will find when you do a Google search using just these three simple terms for your search means more to me than anything that has ever been discussed in connection with “O”:

CDC ACE STUDY

No kidding!  Take a look, a refresher if you have done so before and follow those links that show up there!  (And I would suggest a serious study of this information for all attached to the ‘O-Empire’.)  When I point the proverbial “GET REAL!” finger at Oprah and all she represents — as clearly demonstrated by the angle of these two articles and the slanted information they present — we have to KNOW OUR OWN TRUTH AND OUR OWN REALITY.

The CDC’s (Center for Disease Control) ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study is ongoing and is finally carrying enough absolute WEIGHT to begin to displace the biases, the stereotypes, the prejudices, the ignorance and the PARTICIPATION MYSTIQUE that our society continues to wrap around so-called ‘mental illnesses’ at the same time our society will not recognize with grateful appreciation, humility and even SHAME what the HAVES were given in their earliest infant-child caregiver interaction environments in CONTRAST to what the HAVE NOTS were not given!

The kinds of changes that we were forced to make in our physiological development to endure and survive within our deprived malevolent early world DO NOT GO AWAY.  The contribute to, exacerbate, and CAUSE the difficulties for us over the duration of our lifespan that the CDC ACE Study recognizes — and these ridiculous “O” – Oprah articles DO NOT!

WHO IS READING AND WEEPING NOW!  It’s our time to empower ourselves to know who we are and how we are in the world WAS NEVER OUR CHOICE!  We have long ago paid the price for our survival or we wouldn’t even be here with our complicated body and our complicated life.

At the same time, “Society around us — WAKE UP!  Get real!  And be grateful you never suffered as we have!  Get with it!  Blaming and shaming victim-survivors is so PASSE!”

(These are the same kinds of processes described regarding autism in my previous post.  We need to add early abuse and neglect to the array of possible toxins and realize that nearly ALL so-called ‘mental illnesses’ are included in the kinds of consequences that originate from interactions with ‘malevolent’ and toxic early environments during early human developmental stages from conception onward.)

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+RESEARCH: EPIDEMIC OF AUTISM AMONG YOUNG

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Is it abuse to pollute the growing and developing body-brain of our young?  This article on childhood autism increases came into my email box through a group I belong to — looks to me like one of the ‘classic’ windows for epigentic forces to alter genetic expression which may then possibly move forward through the generations affecting not only current offspring, but bringing the genetic responses and changes forward into the future.

What do we consider ‘acceptable risks’ and ‘acceptable losses’?  Take a look:

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-barrie-nd/child-autism-epidemic-fir_b_696179.html

Child Autism Epidemic Firmly Linked to Environment

Stephen Barrie, ND

Author, medical researcher, entrepreneur

Autism among U.S. children has reached epidemic proportion. And it’s getting worse by the year.

Since the ’70’s, there has been a 60-fold increase in American children with autism. Currently one in every 100 U.S. children and one in every 58 boys are being diagnosed with autism. That’s over 2.6 percent of all male children in America. The number of autistic children expected to reach adulthood in the next 10 years along with their caregivers will exceed the population of Rhode Island and cost an estimated $27 billion in additional care beyond the almost $60 billion being spent on current autism-related costs. (1,2)

Under the specter of an autism epidemic sweeping America, Senator Barbara Boxer (CA) convened hearings last week on the “State of Research on Potential Environmental Health Factors with Autism.” (3)

The result?

Experts agree that the primary explanation for the dramatic increase in autism is toxic environmental exposure and gene-environment interactions. New research shows that even low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a key factor to the onset of autism.

One expert, Dr. Linda Birnbaum, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health, testified that “Research supported by NIEH has clearly shown that it is not just genetics that causes neuro-developmental disorders such as autism but rather the interplay of both genes and the environment”.

Dr. Birnbaum also stated that NIEH has uncovered information on the role that early environmental exposures play in the development of a broad spectrum of childhood disorders, including not only autism but also ADHD, and other learning disorders.

Another expert, Dr. Paul Anastas, the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency’s assistant administrator, told the subcommittee that children are especially susceptible to the effects of chemicals in the environment because they eat, drink and breathe in more for their body weight than adults. They absorb a greater proportion of many chemicals in the environment than adults, and due to hand to mouth behaviors, young children tend to have higher exposures to contaminants, such as pollutants in the surrounding air and dust, deposited from lead paint, tobacco smoke, cleaning products, pesticides and other chemicals. (4,5)

We already know that prenatal and early childhood exposures to chemicals such as methyl mercury (commonly found in fish and some vaccines), lead (in paints), PCBs (in plastics such as baby bottles and food storage containers) and arsenic (in the air) can affect development of the nervous system and lead to developmental disability. (6,7,8)

Also, the developing brain and nervous system can be disrupted by much lower levels of environmental exposures than would affect adults. (9,10,11) You can read about the current levels of exposure in the just released CDC’s National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, a frightening document.

Dr. Isaac Pessah, Director of the UC Davis Center for Children’s Environmental Health, testified that many of the molecular and cellular systems associated with autism are the same ones that are the target of environmental chemicals currently of concern to human health because of their widespread use. He spoke of a critical need to identify which chemicals in the environment influence the same biological pathways that are effected in autism. Dr. Pessah said that limiting exposure to these chemicals is the only way to mitigate or prevent autism in susceptible individuals.

Increasingly, evidence links even chronic, low-level exposure to industrial pollutants to many of the most prevalent and disabling learning and behavioral problems in children.

Professor Bruce Lanphear Ph.D, of the Child & Family Research Institute, Simon Fraser University, reported that some of the most widely dispersed environmental toxicants, even at very low levels are risk factors for the “new morbidities” of childhood — both intellectual and behavioral impairments such as autism. Indeed, there is often no apparent threshold — in some cases the effects appear to be greater at the lowest levels of exposure. (12) Emerging evidence shows that a whole host of new environmental chemicals such as Bisphenol A, (the protective inner lining in tin cans and baby bottles) PBDEs, pesticides, phthalates and airborne pollutants are all associated with intellectual deficits or behavioral problems in children. (13,14,15)

Just prior to the Senate hearing, several important research papers were published that further documented the relationship between environmental toxins and autism:

• A study in India correlated the increased body burdens of lead and mercury with the severity of children’s autism — the more severe the autism, the higher concentrations of heavy metals were found in their bodies. (16)
• An exhaustive scientific literature search just completed in August shows that the link between autism and toxic exposures in infants is supported by current published research. (17)

My own recent study of a large autistic clinical database shows that children with autism had elevated levels in their bodies of several chemicals known to be neurotoxic. The children have genetic variations, which interfere with the proper detoxification of those chemicals. With over 2,000 patients in the database, my paper is one of the largest studies to show that environmental factors interacting with associated genetic components may be contributing to the causation of autism.

Development of the human nervous system begins in the womb and extends throughout childhood. During these periods of rapid development, the brain is vulnerable to some environmental exposures, which may have the potential to disrupt the chemical signals that organize development. Even small changes can have potentially major consequences for brain structure and function. Thus, even brief adverse exposure at these vulnerable stages can have lasting effects on brain function throughout life.

My report showed on average the amount of lead and mercury in the children’s blood was 50 percent higher than normal. Their genetic changes (SNPs) were related to what is called Phase I and Phase II detoxification — specifically the CYP and GST family of genes. This defect reduced the children’s ability to remove excess toxins from their bodies.

These autistic children also had a several fold higher level of bad gut bacteria and reduced levels of beneficial gut bacteria. Bad gut bacteria can produce neurotoxic amines and cause a “leaky gut” which allows toxic substances to more easily enter the circulatory system (see my previous Huffington Post entry “The Keys to Maintaining a Healthy Gut“).

You may read the full clinical study here:http://personalizedmedicine.posterous.com/environmental-factors-contributing-to-the-ons#

We as a society have a toxic chemical addiction, which we need to kick now. We need to be better informed consumers — choosing chemically free foods, products and environments, affecting change with our wallets.

Here are some Toxic Exposure Avoidance Tips for All of Us — And Especially For Pregnant Women. Start taking them, right now:

  1. Avoid eating foods that may contain high levels of toxic chemicals
  2. While fish are a good source of protein and omega-3 fatty acids, some contain high levels of mercury. Tuna, Cod and Mahi Mahi are ones to avoid. Wild salmon is a good healthy choice.
  3. Consume organic foods and drinks as much as possible.
  4. Use glass containers instead of plastic to store left over foods and drinks.
  5. Reduce our purchase of foods in cans as the can lining contains high levels of Bisphenol A (an endocrine disrupter linked to increased rates of cancer and abnormal behavior in children).
  6. Limit exposure to toxic household chemicals, pesticides and cleaning supplies. Look for natural alternatives.
  7. Install HEPA and carbon filter air purifiers in bedrooms to insure a healthy toxin free nights rest.

Exposure to toxic chemicals by pregnant women, fetuses and children has a high probability of causing autism and other neuro-developmental disorders and learning disabilities in those whose genetic profile expresses in a reduced ability to detoxify these chemicals. This is not “fringe” science; it’s fact.

The time for action is now. We must reduce our exposure to toxic chemicals for ourselves, for our children’s sake and for future generations.

We have a responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves. We cannot afford to be incurious, indifferent or uninformed when the price of inattention is disability and heartache — an overwhelming emotional and financial burden to families and society.

Ask for help: Tell your government that we must lessen our exposure to these chemicals. For the future of all Americans. Email or call your own representatives. Senator Boxer can be reached at: senator@boxer.senate.gov.
References

(1) Autism Society of America (ASA). 2003. Facts and statistics. Available: http://www.autism-society.org/

(2) Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfate. 2005 PA Autism Census Project: Final Report; Oct 2009

(3) US Senate Subcommittee on Environment and Public Works. Aug 2010

(4) National Research Council. 1993. Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. National Academy of Sciences Press, Washington, DC.

(5) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 2005 Guidance on selecting age groups for monitoring and assessing childhood exposures to environmental contaminants. National Center for Environmental Assessment, Washington, DC; EPA/630/P-03/003F

(6) Wasserman GA, Liu X, Parvez F, Ahsan H, Factor-Litvak P, Kline J, van Geen A, Slavkovich V, Loiacono NJ, Levy D, Cheng Z, Graziano JH. 2007. Water arsenic exposure and intellectual function in 6-year-old children in Araihazar, Bangladesh. Environ Health Perspect. 115(2):285-9

(7) Landrigan PJ, Whitworth RH, Baloh RW, Barthel WF, Staehling NW, Rosenblum BF. 1975. Neuropsychological dysfunction in children with chronic low-level lead absorption. Lancet 1:708-712

(8) Rogan WJ, Ware JH. 2003. Exposure to lead in children – how low is low enough? N Engl J Med. 348:1515-1516

(9)(ATSDR). 2007. Toxicological profile for Lead. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp13-c3.pdf

(10) Grandjean P, and Landrigan PJ. 2006. Developmental neurotoxicity of industrial chemicals. Lancet.;368(9553):2167-78.

(11) Jett DA, Kuhlmann AC, Farmer SJ, Guilarte TR.1997. Age-dependent effects of developmental lead exposure on performance in the Morris water maze. Pharmacol Biochem Behav.57(1-2):271-9

(12) Canfield RL, Henderson CR, Cory-Slechta DA, Cox C, Jusko TA, Lanphear BP. Intellectual impairment in children with blood lead concentrations below 10 micrograms per deciliter. N Engl J Med 2003;348:1517-1526

(13) Eskenazi B, Marks AR, Bradman A, et al. Organophosphate pesticide exposure and neurodevelopment in young Mexican-American children. Environ Health Perspect 2007;115:792-798

(14) Herbstman JB, Sjödin A, Kurzon M, et al. Prenatal exposure to PBDEs and neuro-development. Environ Health Perspect 2010;118:712-719

(15) Braun JM, Froehlich TE, Daniels JL, et al. Association of environmental toxicants and conduct disorder in U.S. children: NHANES 2001-2004. Environ Health Perspect 2008;116:956-962

(16) Priya MD. Level of Trace Elements (Copper, Zinc, Magnesium
and Selenium) and Toxic Elements (Lead and Mercury)
in the Hair and Nail of Children with Autism. Biol Trace Elem Res
DOI 10.1007/s12011-010-8766-2

(17) DeSoto MC. Sorting out the spinning of autism: heavy metals and the
question of incidence. Acta Neurobiol Exp 2010, 70: 165-176

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+SEARCH TERMS TOUCH THE HEART – PRAY IF YOU DO….

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My admin page keeps track of search term combinations that land people on this blog.  Please — all of you readers who pray — please pray for this person.  Of course we will never know the needs in these search words, but they so touched my heart I post them here with this request:

“will a infints brain heal with holes at birth”

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