++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It would be nice if I could post nice thoughts.  Instead I have jumbles of words that run amuck in my thoughts like too-hungry mosquitoes searching for prey.  Prey.  Such a small word.  Such a necessary word in the world of the natural order of things.  But children are not meant to be the prey of grownups.  Neither are innocent animals.  I mention this because of the past 24-hours of my life that have been entangled with the misdeeds of one of my neighbors who is not really my neighbor at all.

A year and a half ago the family that once lived in the trailer two spots to the east of my house here along the Arizona-Mexico border wall disappeared with their seven children and five adults into Mexico.  I recently learned that the mother was deported.  Yet like several families in this small unincorporated town of 700 manage to do, rent is paid on their trailer as their ‘official’ address so their children now living in Mexico can walk across the border and attend American schools.

What they do with their life as adults only marginally bothers me.  There is nothing I can do so I ignore this situation.  (I must add here that I miss those children.  They were some of the sweetest, wisest, most intelligent and kind children I have ever met.)  Until last night.  Until this morning……

For some bad reason the adults in that family choose to keep a white pit bull on a chain heavy enough to pull a semi attached to a light pole beside a dog house beside their empty trailer.  One of those children (I imagine) walks over daily to water and feed the dog.  But not always and not now.  Not on this holiday weekend.

Other neighbors around here and I have spoken together about this dog who is known to bark for long periods of time when she is in desperate need.  We combine our efforts to make sure she has water and some kind of food to stave off her misery until someone who owns her shows up again to meet the basest of her needs.  We are all justifiably afraid of this dog and cannot go closer to her than the end of her chain.  We also all know if we call the Sheriff’s department to complain about this pitiful pit bull they will send animal control down here to shoot her.

++

I wasn’t going to write about this.  This isn’t ‘nice’, but it dawns on me that this is not a blog much about ‘nice’.  It’s about infant and child abuse and the intergenerational transfer of trauma through oppression, terrorism, torture and violence by adults who are NOT able to parent their children.  It’s a blog about all those on the outside with the power to intervene and do not.  It’s a blog about how to recognize abuse when it is happening to little ones, and about how to stop this abuse.

After barking all night, at daybreak this poor bit bull continued her nonstop barking.  I went to see her and found both her water bucket and food dish completely empty.  Her ribs are showing.  She has been so attacked by bugs she has scratched herself raw and bleeding.  I went home and then brought her the only food in my house I thought she would eat, two pounds of frozen hamburger – and turned on the neighbor’s hose to squirt her bucket full of water from a distance.  Then I FINALLY called the sheriff’s department and reported this heinous abuse (no water!? and our temps have been in the 90s +), knowing that on Tuesday when animal control officers return to work this dog will no doubt be put down.  Whatever her name is, she has NOT stopped her incessant barking.

The topic of cruelty to animals brings to mind that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is a non-profit animal welfare organization originally founded in England in 1824 to pass laws protecting carriage horses from abuse.  The American Society branch was founded in New York in 1866.

The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in 1874 (and incorporated in 1875) as the world’s first child protective agency.  It is worth taking a look at the history of the formation of THIS society that came about when a church worker named Etta Wheeler approached the animal cruelty prevention organization regarding the mistreatment of a child called Mary Ellen McCormack, who was being beaten daily by her foster mother who cut her with scissors.  (see more history of the case HERE:  Case Shined First Light on Abuse of Children )

++

As I slept my fitful sleep through the darkness last night with my doors and windows shut against the barking of the neighbor’s dog (shutting out the cool evening breeze always welcomed after a hot desert day), a gruesome scene appeared in my dreams in the passing of the hours:  Coyote.  Scruffy coat.  Dead on the graveled dirt beside the road.  Cut in half.  Torn and oil-blackened scrap of a tarp thrown over the head half of this poor creature.  I could see the end of its muzzle poking out.  I looked, sickened, disgusted and horrified.  I walked on.

Much later in dream-time I again approached this carcass.  The back half lay exactly where I had seen it the first time I walked past it.  But this time a paw reached out from under the tarp, gripped into the gravel in front of the head as this severed animal very slowly pulled itself forward.

I woke up.  Was my dream literally showing me the ‘half dead’ dog?  I went to help her.  She is still barking.

++

Some neuroscientific experts on human emotions name DISGUST among our primal emotions past our initial startle response along with emotions such as anger, fear, sadness and joy.  We have DISGUST for a reason!  Disgust is an immediate physiological reaction to danger to self and/or to others.  We must not allow a break between disgust and a positive reactions to threat and danger.

SEE notes and posts on this blog:

**DAMASIO ON EMOTION AND FEELING

+SIEGEL – DEFINING EMOTIONS

+SIEGEL – EMOTIONAL REGULATION

++NOTES ON SCHORE – EMOTIONS

Other scientists disagree that disgust in an emotion, but I believe it is a human reactionary experience of great opportunity related deeply to our ability to survive by being able to ‘read’ other people’s facial expressions at nearly the speed of light.  If another person’s face communicates DISGUST when they eat something, we know instinctively that toxic poison and death are related to that expression.  If we happen to have that same food in our own mouth at the time we see that DISGUST on someone else’s face – we will SPIT our share out!

DISGUST is intimately tied with VOMITING!  Disgust is a baseline survival reaction that has kept our species alive on the physical level – and on the social-emotional level it is supposed to work the same way.  Disgust, in my thinking, is directly tied into our human body wiring connected to compassion and empathy, as well.  These are ALL connected to our stress response system – which has to be considered with ‘calm connection in a safe world’ on the one end and extreme danger on the other.

These are also some related posts on this blog:

+PITY HURTS, COMPASSION HEALS: KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE

*Keltner (2009) chapter on compassion

+GENUINE EMPATHY AND COMPASSION: THE ROLE OF ATTACHMENT AND ‘EFFORTFUL CONTROL’

and these:

+LINKS – VAGUS NERVE – ABUSE- HEALING

+CALM THE CRYING BABY — IMMUNE SYSTEM STIMULATES VAGUS NERVE TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

 

+INFANT-CHILD TRAUMA CHANGES THE VAGUS NERVE’S DEVELOPMENT

+VAGUS SOCIAL NERVE – INFLUENCED BY CULTURE

+MY MOTHER’S VAGUS NERVE: THE MAKING OF HER PERFECT BORDERLINE STORM?

++

Photograph free compliments of this great site! Public Domain Photos

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I am finding it interesting to see how many days I am taking in avoiding writing a memory for the book that has to be written.  My own book writing rule is that I am going in the order of my childhood for the first time in my life.  I will not allow myself to skip ahead.  I cannot write forward without first writing this age 10 memory that I seem to be doing a very good job avoiding!

An idiom comes to mind, “plumb the depths (of something).”  Etymology of the expression is based on plumb line (a cord with a heavy piece of metal attached to it, used to measure the depth of water under a ship).

Well, that certainly seems to apply!

I am thinking about child abuse survivors who find in their adulthood that they (me) seem to have a collection of certain memories.  Like dead butterflies pinned through the head to a board, these memories don’t seem to change much over time.  Perhaps their colors fade like laundry left too long on the line in blazing Arizona sunshine.  But the gist and body of each of these memories remains whole and intact.

Flashbacks common to PTSD are often full of more sensory-related information than a survivor would ever want to know.  These are the multiple-dimension memories, not the 2-D flattened faded butterfly pinned to a board kind.

I am talking about trauma-abuse memories.  Sweet memories can be a problem if they stir longing and grief of lost happiness, true, but it is the memories of abuse that concern me for they ALWAYS contain unresolved trauma at their core.

This memory that is staring me in the face from when I was 10 is a wide memory if I let it be.  It covers a span of at least three weeks’ worth of time.  I of course don’t want to spend time NOW reliving these three weeks!  And yet I don’t seem able to open my can of proverbial paint and splash out a quick image of this ‘thing’ so I can move on in my writing.  This memory must have some unplumbed depths to it that I can’t quite imagine – but know are there.

My experience currently must still be about preparing to ‘deal with’ not only the memory of what happened the end of that May in 1962.  It must also be about me preparing myself to deal with myself NOW as I face who I was as a child at that point in my 10^th year of life.  This is not a memory of something I can gloss over.  This is a memory of depth.  This makes me think that ALL of the childhood trauma memories we have in our collection have depth to them that we rarely, if ever, find a way to PLUMB.

Yes, we can ‘tell’ them.  We can ‘recite’ them.  We can mention them.  But do we plumb their depths?  By not doing so, is that what keeps our power bound up in these memories?

Children do not have the power to truly comprehend what happens to them unless there are caring people around them to help them work their way through their troubles.  This is no different from what researchers have discovered about adults who experience trauma – of any kind, at any age.  Attachment relationships of quality heal traumas.  We know that.  But how many of us get to tell anyone, I mean REALLY get to tell anyone, about what happened to us SPECIFICALLY when we were traumatized as children?

I guess I will learn more about this process as I work through preparing to face this age 10 memory of mine.  A dear old-time friend of mine called today and asked me to tell her the ‘story’ of this memory.  I did describe it to her – and she cracked up!  I mean REALLY cracked up!  Of course I did, too.  How could such an experience be funny?  What is it about the very fine line that must define the difference between tragedy and comedy?

“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion,” I can hear Dolly Parton say to her friends in Steel Magnolias.  I didn’t get near the tears today talking to my friend, but we sure did hit the laughter.  Was that depth or surface?  I do not know.  But I will know more once this memory is brought into my book writing soon, very soon.

As it is I know it wouldn’t take very much for me to reach my hand out in space and time to run my fingers over the surface of the table in my memory.  “Not yet,” I hear myself say.  “Not yet.”

Photograph free compliments of this great site! Public Domain Photos

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

At the risk of my siphoning off words into this post that could go into the section of book writing I am working on right now, I want to spill out some words here about making conscious choices in childhood – or in adulthood, for that matter.  In light of this topic, I will revise my thinking by refraining my statement:  I CHOOSE to spill out these words here.

I don’t actually have any shortage of words.  It’s not like I have to go out into the hinterlands and hunt up some more because I have consumed them all already.  There are plenty of words to go around, plenty of words to serve my purposes – both on this blog and in my book writing.  So what do I fear?  I fear I am going to miss something important in my thinking, ‘waste’ an insight, miss an opportunity to state something in the middle of my childhood life story by hiding the thought over here instead of putting it clearly and boldly exactly where that insight belongs:  At the point where my inner life changed when I was 10 – yet changed only for a very, very brief period of time.

I will be writing about the single span of perhaps 3 seconds that maybe did change the course of my life from that time when I was 10 forward.  But this part I will ‘save’ for the book section I will move from here to there to write today – after I do my 45 minute walk about, after I spend some time exercising all of me at my keyboard practice, after I summon up a different kind of willingness to move forward in my story for the book that I find is VERY different from the willingness I use to write in circles over here on this blog.

++

What I am narrowing my focus on, like a gliding bird of prey with its eyes open, talons adjusted to grab and fly with my newest food for thought, is this question:

“At what point is it a natural growth ability of a human being to CONSCIOUSLY make a choice that then follows into a consciously-inspired action?”

Thanks to this book journey I am, the journey that requires of me that I put all the dissociated single BUBBLE memories of my abusive childhood into the best coherent, linear, this-followed-that format I can manage to accomplish, I am learning new insights about my self.  Learning about one’s self is NOT easy in the midst of a childhood of violence, oppression, terrorism, loneliness, and trauma survival.

The kind of abusive infant-childhood that I had happened because my mother was a mentally ill psychotic Borderline Personality Disorder woman.

I didn’t know that, of course.  Looking back through the filter and lens of my own mind today – using every bit of scientific information I have accumulated in preparation for my task – I realize that my mother probably never once in her life past age five had the ability to clearly and consciously weigh her thoughts, emotions, desires along with those of the children she came to be responsible for raising so that she could exercise true compassion and wisdom in her life.

Making conscious choices is not something we are born able to do.  We have to grow a body and brain that THEN has the physiological abilities to come to consciousness.

++

I just mention all of this because in my book writing I am about to cross a threshold in my own human development that would have happened sooner or later in one way or another no matter WHAT the experiences of my childhood had been – benevolent or malevolent:  On May 13, 1962 I made a conscious decision.  I made my first conscious choice.

In my book writing I will (because I can and want to) return directly inside the body of myself at 10 ¾ on that day so that I can re-experience this life-changing moment.

That it happened once, that my choice and decision reaped for me dire consequences, that after this abuse incident that lasted at least three concentrated weeks I have no memory of making such a higher-level conscious choice again until I-don’t-know-when, is another matter.  Degrees of wisdom of the decision doesn’t matter.  The fact that I had physiologically developed the physiological powers to make a decision of my own – FINALLY – matters more than I know right now.  I will know the rest of it when I write it – elsewhere.

++

Trauma that passes itself on down the generations in families has great, great power that should NEVER be taken lightly to remove from ‘the contaminated’ victims of repeating traumas the conscious power to recognize these massive trauma-based patterns that continue on down in families.

These patterns appear in trauma drama.

The trauma itself usurps the consciousness of the actors and players in the dramas.

Untangling the icky sticky puppet-string threads that steal people’s free-conscious-choice and decision making away from them is not easily done.

It takes, I believe, a level of conscious choice and dedication to this difficult task for any of us to be able to separate what happened to us through the trauma dramas of our families (and nations) to find OUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS in the midst of the trauma dramas that seem to run our lives – and often the lives of those we are closest to.

Because my theory for myself states that for every memory of abuse I retained for my self over the span of my lifetime contained something extremely good, and therefore redeeming of ME — as a person separate from all the trauma drama of abuse that was done to me — I am prepared to work toward viewing my age-ten self from this gentle perspective.

No matter how ‘dumb’ my May 13, 1962 decision and choice was, it was an act of creation equal to or surpassing anything else I may have accomplished in my lifetime.  For that moment I WAS ALIVE as a human being!!  And for the very first CONSCIOUS time.

More than anything that fact triggered such an aftermath of horrific abuse perpetration in my mother that I would have dissociated and forgotten that any of this ever happened – EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that there is something embedded within this experience that is of such value to me that I would not be the person I turned out to be without it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well, it took me five days off of the book writing to get myself started back on the job today.  Tomorrow I hope to tackle the really hard memory I am so opposed to invading.  In the meantime I went searching for some neuroscientific information about brain development in children during middle childhood, the age I was at the time I was when my resistant memory was created at the end of my 5^th grade year in school when I was ten.

I found the Cliff Notes web page has a terrific batch of readable information related not only to the age period I am considering right now, but also as it pertains in its expanded presentation to the entire range of infancy and childhood all the way through the human lifespan.

Here is the link to the Cliff Note pages on what they call DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY.

You will find the following at this Cliff Notes link —

Introduction to Developmental Psychology

• What Is Developmental Psychology?
• Issues in Developmental Psychology
• The Biopsychosocial Perspective

Developmental Psychology Research

• Research Concepts
• Research Designs and Methods
• Research Ethics
• Evaluating Developmental Research

Conception, Pregnancy, Birth

• Stages of Pregnancy
• Prenatal Care
• Stages of Childbirth
• Problems During Pregnancy and Childbirth
• Infertility

Physical, Cognitive Development: Age 0–2

• Physical Development: Age 0–2
• Cognitive Development: Age 0–2

Psychosocial Development: Age 0–2

• Personality Development: Age 0–2
• Family Relationships: Age 0–2
• Sexuality: Age 0–2
• Gender Development

Physical, Cognitive Development: Age 2–6

• Physical Development: Age 2–6
• Cognitive Development: Age 2–6

Psychosocial Development: Age 2–6

• Personality Development: Age 2–6
• Family Relationships: Age 2–6
• Friends and Playmates: Age 2–6
• Sexuality: Age 2–6
• Fear and Aggression: Age 2–6

Physical, Cognitive Development: Age 7–11

• Physical Development: Age 7–11
• Cognitive Development: Age 7–11

Psychosocial Development: Age 7–11

• Self‐Concept: Age 7–11
• Social Cognition: Age 7–11
• Family Relationships: Age 7–11
• Friendships: Age 7–11
• Peer Pressure: Age 7–11
• Sexuality: Age 7–11
• Stressors: Age 7–11

Physical, Cognitive Development: Age 12+

• Physical Development: Age 12–19
• Health Issues: Age 12–19
• Cognitive Development: Age 12–19

Psychosocial Development: Age 12–19

• The Search for Identity: Age 12–19
• Sexual Identity, Orientation: Age 12–19
• Sexuality: Age 12–19
• Juvenile Delinquency: Age 12–19

Physical, Cognitive Development: 17–45

• Physical Development: Age 17–45
• Health: Age 17–45
• Intellectual Development: Age 17–45

Psychosocial Development: Age 17–45

• Independence: Age 17–28
• Relationships: Age 17–45
• Establishing a Career: Age 22–33
• Starting a Family: Age 33–45

Physical, Cognitive Development: 45–65

• Physical Development: Age 45–65
• Health: Age 45–65
• Intellectual Development: Age 45–65

Psychosocial Development: Age 45–65

• Crisis in Middle Adulthood: Age 45–65
• Relationships: Age 45–65

Physical, Cognitive Development: 65+

• Physical Development: Age 65+
• Health: Age 65+
• Intelligence and Memory: Age 65+

Psychosocial Development: Age 65+

• Theories of Aging
• Relationships: Age 65+
• Work and Retirement: Age 65+

++

This site is worth a gander.

Again, it is important to understand that the entire spectrum of human development can be altered by the onset of severe relational trauma from birth onward.  Once severe unsafe and insecure attachment conditions communicate the presence of trauma in an infant’s environment all future body-nervous system (including brain) development can be altered in important ways that cannot be reversed once certain Critical Window time periods for development have passed.

In extreme cases such as my Borderline Mother’s was, the earliest traumas of her life came to combine themselves into ever-increasing cascading developmental changes that came to include the triggering of a specific combination of her genetic potential that created her terrible Borderline Personality Disorder condition.

For those of us who survived extremely abusive childhoods without intervention or reprieve some degree of Trauma Altered Development changed the patterns that are optimally presented at the above links.  If we simply scan through this information we will be able to detect in our reaction to this information which parts of it have special importance to us — both in terms of the changes that traumas caused in the earliest stages of our abuser’s development and in terms of how our own development changed from the abuse we suffered ourselves.

We cannot learn too much about what happened to us.  The good thing is that the alterations in our development that our body was able to make in the face of overwhelming trauma kept us alive.  What those changes are and how they change the way we live in our body in the world demands that we learn — on our own because no professional is really going to tell us — how we can identify the changes to us so we can learn to live a better life in spite of them.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I am in need of writing a post about purity and goodness!!  A dear friend sent me a poster about angels in my birthday card yesterday.  It came from this site:  Special-Ideas.

I feel like nearly every single thing a survivor of an abusive Borderline mother (parent) has to say is really nothing more than part of their obituary.  These people suffer, I am coming to believe more and more strongly, from a sickness that obliterates the expression of their soul in the world during their lifetime.

When God tells humans that no soul will ever be burdened beyond its endurance, I am coming to understand that there is a way this happens that would defy belief if we survivors of Borderline mothers didn’t know what we know by being their offspring.

I firmly believe that early trauma so changed the physiological development of these Borderlines that no pathway to the visibility of their SOUL remains – or very, very little of it.  What happens instead is that EVIL takes over the lives of these people BECAUSE the powers of their soul have been obliterated.

The changes their body-brain took in order to survive their early trauma happened because the trauma would have overwhelmed them TO DEATH otherwise.  The changes actually protect their soul – as strange as that might seem — from being overwhelmed at the same time their physical life is protected from ending.

The ONLY redeeming factor to this debilitating and HORRIBLE disease is that the person who has it DOES survive and VERY often has offspring.  But these mothers (parents) ARE NOT CAPABLE of raising their own children.  I don’t believe nature EVER intended that they even try — or be allowed to.  Only in a broken society would these mothers be left to torture their children (and sometimes kill them).  Nature wanted the GENES to endure — but not for these sick mothers to raise their offspring.

In my effort today to bring a little balance to the topic of the evil that really is the life of severely abusive Borderline mothers I want to present some of the information on this angel poster I received yesterday for my 60^th birthday:

Are You an Angel?

There are many theories about the nature of angels.  Bahai’s believe that angels are ordinary souls whose spirits are so aligned with the Will of God that they are allowed to be of service to people here on earth.

The exciting news is that you don’t have to die to become an angel!  All you have to do is practice angelic virtues such as kindness, honesty and perseverance, and you too will be allowed to perform miracles of love for people on earth.

The poster lists virtues and I added some.  The way I understand it, the way this virtue-angel ‘thing’ works is this.

All good comes from the one God who sent Messengers to earth with His lessons all the way through the evolution of the human race.  Humans are creatures of temptations, and our soul is like a mirror.  If our mirror faces only the material/animal part of our existence our soul mirror becomes covered with grime and cannot reflect the goodness that comes from God.

As we apply ourselves to turning our soul mirror toward God (I picture reflective satellite dishes!) and apply ourselves to cleaning and polishing the mirror of our soul, then we can reflect more and more goodness until we become like angels – or in fact become an angel!!

The sad part of the story is that Borderline Personality Disorder takes away from the afflicted the ability to participate in this kind of choice-making!  That is their sickness – and I am not at all convinced that no matter how despicable their behavior that they have choice like the non-sick people do.

ANYWAY…..  here is a list of some virtues.  The ability to reflect these virtues of goodness on anything like a consistent and genuine level is missing from a severe Borderline:

COURAGE – WISDOM – JUSTICE – STRENGTH – NOBILITY – HOPE – KNOWLEDGE – REVERENCE – PATIENCE – RADIANCE – UNITY – SERENITY – RESPECT – PEACEFULNESS – GENTLENESS – GRATITUDE – MODERATION – HUMOR – OBEDIENCE – IDEALISM – COOPERATION – MODERATION – LOYALTY – DONFIDENCE – COURTESTY – WONDER – CLEANLINESS – IMAGINATION – HUMILITY – TRUST – HONESTY – COMPASSION – FAITH – MODESTY – CHASTITY – KINDNESS – PERSERVERANCE – GRACE – JOYFULNESS – LOVE – MERCY – PURITY – CURIOSOTY – REASON – PRAYERFULNESS – RESPONSIBILITY – SELFLESSNESS – SERVICE – EMPATHY – SINCERITY – FRIENDLINESS – GENEROSITY – ENTHUSIASM – INTEGRITY – WISDOM – DISCERNMENT – RADIANCE – FAIRNESS – HAPPINESS ————

The important point for survivors of severe relationship trauma is that when a human soul is blocked by diseases of the body that interfere with a person’s ability to BE WELL – it is like they are in a coma!!  They are sleep-walking!  That early trauma that happens to an infant-child during their very first HUGELY important growth and developmental stages has the power to change physiological development and create these severe illnesses IS VERY REAL!!  I believe the early trauma actually triggers survival genetic combinations such as Borderline that would NEVER have been triggered if the early traumas had not had to change development so that these people could PHYSICALLY survive.

But I do not believe the SOUL of the person is present and accounted for in this lifetime.  God, of course, is the only One who knows – and who judges, has mercy, and forgives all of us – but a Borderline like my mother was does not have the capacity to even know that something was wrong with her!

The rest of us have full choice what we wish to do with our souls in this lifetime.  Once we realize that even the virtues listed above have to take place THROUGH a person’s body in their lifetime.  If the development of an infant-child’s body, nervous systems-brain, vagus nerve system, immune system, etc. WERE ALL CHANGED due to Trauma Altered Development, then the MEANS to express these listed virtues has been tampered with, altered and damaged.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Whining, moaning, complaining?  Nope, but it is time for we severe child abuse survivors to admit that there is a realm of special joy the nonabused among us will (thankfully) never know.  Those of us with severe trauma in our earliest life know a very special joy that comes from the experience of identifying those traumas, what they did to us, how we can heal them — and THEN notice especially those very special moments AS THOSE TRAUMA WOUNDS ARE HEALING!

Turning 60 yesterday was something for me to celebrate.  I think having survived two nasty breast cancers gave me a second life — so on my birthday yesterday I celebrated BOTH of my lifetimes as they have been given to me — along with yet ANOTHER kind of new life experience:  Being very aware of a level of healing that I have never been this conscious of before.

Without spending eons of time or galaxies of words (see previous post) to describe all of this — in part because I am ‘writing out of line’ to even mention this right now (because it will all have to be carefully documented in the book being written of my childhood), I will simply present the following.

Although I am only at my age 10 1/2 in the book writing so far, this trauma event from my age 14 1/2 came very much into my arena of focus yesterday on my birthday.

++

This description of the ‘event’ was written some time ago and will be re-remembered and rewritten when I get to this point in the book.

But yesterday, as expressions of love and caring flooded into me from all those who know and love me, I remembered another ‘tidbit’ of memory that happened right after this incident recorded at this post (right click title and open in new tab or window):

*Age 14 – DIRTY DIAPER AND PEPPLES IN MY KNEES

Because I am learning and therefore changing all the way through this book writing process, what I knew when I wrote this post (above) and what I know now are different in important ways.  I know MORE now and I know it more deeply.

But what I wanted to mention here has to do with the ‘tidbit’ that hit me yesterday.  That part of the memory, that I understood yesterday to be directly connected to what I had written about before, I had NEVER mentioned to another person.

Yesterday I was preparing for the fun gathering of friends at a local Pizza house.  As I waited I realized that this ‘tidbit’ memory was plaguing me.  I knew it was interfering with my experience of the present moments of my 60th birthday.  This ‘tidbit’ had a grip on me.  I was in TWO places at the same time experiencing TWO separate and conflicting/contrasting experiences at the same time.

When my daughter called me shortly before I was to head up for the party I asked her if she could/would listen to me tell her of the ‘tidbit’ memory.  (I try to be very care-full and considerate when I wish to share something with anyone of this nature.)  My daughter agreed to hear me.

++

I want to also mention that during these 96 hours of book-writing pause-break time I am taking I have also been battling with myself about why in tarnation (is there such a place?) I am doing this book-writing of my abusive childhood in the first place — but that’s a different concern!

What it relates to in THIS moment and to YESTERDAY’S moments is that I found myself, in connection to this ‘tidbit’, thinking, “You know, Linda!  This memory belongs to the category of ‘childhood secrets’.  Secrets are secrets for a REASON!  What is WRONG with you that you are telling these secrets?”

HA!  I quickly wrested back the power in THAT discussion!

Anyway……..

++

The tidbit:  If you read the ‘story’ as it is currently stored in words at the link above, this tidbit follows it by several days.

In the memory, very REAL memory yesterday, I am sitting on a swing on our family’s swing set.  On the mountain homestead, during a gray and windless day.  Alone.  I am looking down at my knees.

My knees have wounds on them from what Mother had done to me.  Gravel had embedded itself into my skin and cut my flesh.  I had already picked out the tiny stones, but the wounds on my knees were still bleeding and scabbing, still oozing puss as unhealed fresh wounds are apt to do.  (I had similar wounds on the palms of my hands.)

Yesterday I could not sit without seeing THOSE knees of that age-14 girl-me.  Not until I had told my daughter my secret.

Sitting on that swing, all alone, so still, so silent, so wounded, I had no thoughts of anger at my mother.  I had no thoughts or feelings of emotion that I could detect.  No envy that my siblings never were treated as I was.  No self pity.  No concept that something WRONG had been done to me or that there was such a thing as ‘unfairness’ or ‘injustice’.

As I sat staring at the wounds on my knees, staring as if I was not in any way involved with the body with those knees — I watched flies begin to land on my wounds.  They gathered there, lots of flies.

I felt their tiny dainty feet walking around on my injured flesh.  So delicate was their touch.  And in that touch I faintly knew these flies were comforting me.  But most of all, the most important words that I needed to say and said to my daughter — the words in the secret, the words that broke the spell that trauma-induced moment had held over me for 46 years were this:

“Being there with those gentle-footed flies on my wounds — I was glad for their company.  I was thankful for their being with me.”

++

I can’t name the sadness that this kind of child abuse memory of experience carries within it.  I will deal with that on some level when I have moved forward another 4 years’ of time in my book writing.

But what I needed to know yesterday, as I prepared to join friends for my birthday pizza gathering — is that my inner wound from lack of ‘friendly bonding’ (safe and secure attachment) with anyone in my life — by the time I was 14 — is what directly impacts my lack of true ability to be able to FEEL what it feels like to be loved today.

I can go through the motions with people — but I cannot feel the EMOTIONS that come from having a body-brain built from birth with positive social-emotional experience included.  Most simply put, it is a very real ‘SHAME’ that the 14-year-old girl I was, who was grateful for the gentle non-hurting touch and companionship of a collection of flies on my abuse-created wounds,  NATURALLY cannot truly feel NOW what I could not feel THEN.

By naturally I mean — the ability to experience certain things happens because we can (or cannot) PHYSIOLOGICALLY process the information that is included in and presented by our experience.

Attachment and human bonding are literally PHYSIOLOGICAL experiences.  The ability to experience bonding and attachment is formed into humans before their first birthday.  The self that then can (or cannot) include attachment and bonding experience information, THROUGH THEIR BODY-BRAIN, is formed before the age of two.

If this seems difficult to grasp, just relate it to this:  Researchers know that there is a very narrow and very specific range of developmental opportunity for a mammal to grow the body-brain circuitry to be able to see.

When researchers (yes, horrific!) sew shut the eyes of a kitten and leave them sewed shut through this Critical Window time for vision development, and then ‘unsew ‘ the eyes — the kitten will NEVER be able to see.  These kittens were born fine.  They had the full potential to be able to see — but experience during the Critical Window of growth for vision was interfered with and the potential for vision was erased.

When some human beings, in extreme and hopefully very rare circumstances, are deprived of love and attachment as I was — well the rest of that story is in my story…….  Which includes whatever avenues of discovery and healing I can find along my way as I no longer have to wonder in the darkness why and how my life as a severe child abuse survivor is different in many important ways from the life experience of ‘ordinary’ people.  And every new discovery I make, and all of my new learnings DO give me joy!

(And, no, the flies were not paying me ‘negative attention’ — Theirs was the closest thing to positive attention I knew!  And, yes, my 60th birthday pizza party with friends who love me was a whole lot more fun! (Never lose a sense of humor!))

++

Technical note:  I have always remembered the ‘fly tidbit’ memory but only now as I write the book do I have the context of when/where that memory belongs.  I DID NOT remember the main ‘I am a pig!’ incident until in 1983 my sister told it to me over the telephone, at which point the entire memory came back to me.  According to my own theory regarding which memories I have ‘chosen’ to retain, there evidently was nothing redeeming connected to the main memory that would have ‘made’ me keep it, but there was something redeeming about the tidbit:  Companionship in nature even in the face of human-to-human destitution.

(Putting this post together has been extremely ‘disorienting’ and ‘disorganizing’ – in other words, this entire memory of the main incident itself was DISSOCIATED.  It was forgotten in a particular way for a particular reason.  It was ‘coherency’ supporting and life enhancing for me to NOT remember this memory.  This post has had MANY revisions to get it right – I didn’t even have my age or year correct when I wrote the original post about the memory.  I think I have it right now — another reason why those readers who subscribe to this blog should ALWAYS click on the title of the post in their email box and read it on the blog.  The revisions will NOT show up in the first email notification you receive about a new post.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I bet music, movement and dance were an essential  human experience from nearly the time of our earliest beginnings.  It’s power to heal humans is probably as powerful as our experience with music is ancient!

And speaking of the passage of time, I finally today photographed this picture my son, who is now 26, created when he was 6 weeks away from his 6th birthday.  I kept an art portfolio of every piece of art my son did until he left home at 18 — but this piece NEVER left my side!

He doesn’t remember this, of course, but I wrote a note on the back of it that lets me remember!  He and I had gone to the high school to listen to my daughter’s concert (she played sax).  The instant my son returned home he ran to the table in the house with the art supplies on it, grabbed this stiff cardboard 11″ x 14″ black background and went to work quickly and passionately expressing his emotions from the music he had just heard.

The music MOVED him.  That he at his young age specifically gifted this work of art, his creation, to his Mom with love — and did not destroy the art piece because it took him all those attempts to get his message to me the way he wanted it — well over the passage of time in this case the music AND the visual art work give me JOY (as has my son FOREVER!)

I am doing a great job of learning to read the music for this song, to PLAY it – and most importantly to HEAR it in my BODY as it comes through my body into existence in the immediate space and TIME of my life:  STARLIGHT WALTZ by C.S. Brainerd (orchestra listen here – piano solo listen here – but I’m not this good yet)!  I am ALMOST crossing the threshold of enjoying the process.

Crossing the threshold to the experience of total JOY is not an easy task for severe child abuse survivors!  No, of course being joy-full is NOT supposed to be a TASK at all!  Therein lies the clue!  Early abuse, especially relationship trauma during the first year and through the second year of life CHANGE the development of the JOY pathways in the developing body and in the brain.

A long, broad and very solidly entrenched highway of fear and sorrow carves itself into the body-brain of an abused infant INSTEAD of all the OTHER expressions of life in the world that a safe, secure and loved infant will build into theirs – INCLUDING the experience of true joy.

Joy, I believe, is an experience that does not ever exist when trauma is present.  Because early abuse implants the experience of trauma into a little one’s growing body-brain, it becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to get that trauma out again.  (Yup, like an impossible laundry stain!)

Therefore, we severe early abuse survivors will find ourselves celebrating ANY MOMENT we experience true joy – or at least what we imagine true joy to feel like.  I don’t think we will EVER take joy for granted the way ‘ordinary’ people can – and are SUPPOSED TO!  Being joy-full is, after all, what human evolution has designed us to experience in the best of all possible worlds – the aim and goal of our healthiest desires.

Part of what fascinates me about learning to read music and to play it is that time takes on a very real and tangibly-intangible meaning through this experience.  I suppose when we read words and write words in the literate literary fashion we are able to experience a relative of what I am talking about here.

I ENJOY reading and have from the time I was very young (reading classics by age 9, having Borderline mother accusing me of ‘pretending to read them’ to ‘show off’ – had she asked me a gosh darn thing about the story I could have told her – but that was the twisted nature of my Borderline Mother’s mental world!)

But I’m not sure reading written words has given me the kind of JOY that music has.

Before now there have been many times I have listened to music that has turned-my-crank and found itself in the middle of my DNA in the middle of the molecules in the middle of my cells – etc! – and FORCED me to MOVE and FORCED me to forgo rational thought!

But now learning to read and to PLAY the music – well, there are all those little notes on the paper, each with its own tiny piece of multitasking purpose!  Pitch!  Got it.  Tone?  Got it.  And TIMING?  GOT IT!

Put them all together, along with all those other little markings all over the pages that I don’t yet know the meaning of, and there is MUSIC which is tracking history in the passage of TIME.

Like the written word, music on paper tracks the inner experience of the person who did the writing.  But there is something SPECIAL to me about music BECAUSE the writer of music is specifically and exactly writing about the passage of time because without doing so – well, there is no music!

Of course any accomplishment in being able to read and actually PLAY the music allows for a totally different translation (within reasonable parameters) by the present-time musician over what the original musician meant to communicate.  That’s pretty marvelous, too!

At my age, I will NEVER take reading and playing music for granted any more than I take joy for granted.  Playing music, even when I get to playing my own inspirations, is a miracle of accomplishment to me.  Healing the musical channels in my badly infant-abused musical-sound brain and in those connections throughout my body is miraculous, also!

And because I believe so much of what lies within the PTSD experience is related to alterations in the passage of time – along with accompanying dissociation – my having discovered an activity that can so directly access, address and begin to physiologically HEAL some of these difficulties is – well – just another miracle in the passage of time!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++