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It has taken me 60 years to begin to be comfortable using the four letter word ‘evil’ as I am beginning to personally understand what I mean when I use that word.  It’s not that I don’t have a very solid background of experience with what the presence of evil can do to self and others in a lifetime.  In fact, it is no doubt because I do have an extensive personal history with evil that I have avoided using the word at all — until I gained some personal confidence that I know what evil is to me.

I wasn’t supposed to SEE the evil that surrounded me during the 18 years I lived through severe abuse from my severely ill mother.  I wasn’t supposed to know it was there, that it existed, that what was being done to me had a name.  I wasn’t supposed to have words to talk about the evil that so existed in my universe as a child that barely nothing else happened at all.

And for nearly 60 years I have remained evil-blind.  Being evil-blind leaves me at risk for being blindsided by evil.  Not any more!  I see the enemy now!  This enemy has nothing to do with some fake red devil running around with a pitchfork and goat feet.  Nope.  Evil comes from one source — and one source only:  HUMANS.

Now how humans actually end up DOING evil seems to be through processes that are far too complex for me to understand.  I am comfortably able to accept the words presented here about the difference between humans DOING evil versus BEING evil:

*NO MATTER WHAT – HAVE NO ENEMY

It makes sense to me that evil is committed by humans because of the three difficulties mentioned in the words at that link:

(1) ignorance

(2) sickness

(3) immaturity

++

I had some face-to-face conversations today as well as some online ones with people who were unbelievably hurt and wounded by adults in their childhoods.  Today I can finally, and fortunately, think about what I hear in stories of the suffering of innocents that what was done to them (as well as to me) was ABSOLUTELY EVIL.

I have no more confusion.

I know what evil is.

I know what it is when I hear descriptions about actions that are one thing and one thing only — EVIL.

Evil is the absence of goodness.  All goodness comes from God (there is only one God, who sent the great Beings to humanity over time that created every religion on earth).

Reality is the light of God’s love.  The darkness of evil is, yes, very real — but it is not GOD’S reality.  It is humanity’s.

My mother had a terrible disease that prevented the goodness of her soul from operating through her body/brain in her lifetime.  There was great sickness, ignorance and immaturity (and therefore evil) in all adults  I ever met during my 18 years of suffering as a child who did not SEE what was happening to me.

For every story of child abuse and tragedy I heard today — each of them a clear description of the operation of evil — I felt great compassion for the huge amount of suffering that unbridled, unchecked evil creates in life on this planet.  This suffering is needless!

But humanity has yet to take the turn it needs to take at accepting that the One God (however people relate to God) wants only the happiness and well-being of His creation.  Humanity does have a choice.  So far it appears to me that evil will be increasingly darkening the planet until humans choose to reach for, ask for, and accept the infinite supply of GRACE that God has made available to us.

All goodness comes from God.  Evil comes from human inability for whatever reasons to live in goodness and to recognize its Source.

One way or another the day is coming when our species is going to make the choice to leave evil out of our lives – personally and collectively.  The entire combined society of humanity will eventually forbid its presence in any of our affairs.  No, not in my lifetime — but without any doubt that day is coming.

I personally believe it is a great stride in the right direction for us to notice and to name evil for what it is every single time we encounter it — anywhere.  Goodness is infinitely more powerful than the shadow of the absence of goodness – which is what evil is.  Why do we allow this poison to exist?

Of course the most important place for me to spot evil — and the hardest place for me to spot evil — is within my own self.  Do I always do the right thing?  I can pray for help and I can pray for forgiveness — however I choose to do that — and I know both will be given to me.

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

A dream came to me, as best as I can place it, around twenty years ago.  Given some specific events of these past few days I know it is not only time to write this dream but most hopefully to live now through its most important elements.

Last Friday evening I enjoyed a pizza dinner out with a new friend.  As we were parting in the parking lot he handed me a brochure about the work of a new therapist in a town about 30 miles away from this rural area where I live.

Yesterday I began to investigate if there might be some healing options open to me through this woman’s work.  I am on very low fixed disability income without any insurance that will cover the healing work that this woman provides.

Although this woman, who is a Holistic Healer named Jacquelyn Brenner, used to practice in a northern region of Arizona she is now close enough to where I live to be accessible to me.

Here is a link to her website:

Hollow Reed

While I suspect that I would benefit from more orthodox ‘talk therapy’ at this point in my life I very truly cannot afford that avenue to healing.

More importantly, I have reached a point at my age of 60 — after having spent half of my life pursuing healing for the consequences of the 18 long years I spent being severely abused by a VERY sick psychotic (probably Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)) mother — what I see appearing within the circle of my life is an option for healing that I suspect is far, far more necessary for me than any healing work with words could possibly offer to me.

++

Those readers who follow this blog know that over this past year especially I have devoted the majority of my efforts toward writing my story of abuse for book publication.  I finished the first rough draft that will cover this abuse history up to nearly my 11th birthday.

My goal was to complete this first rough draft by last October.  I did.  Then when I began to work my way back through what I have written in that draft I reached a point beyond which I could not pass.  I have been at a dead-still in my book writing work ever since.

Most simply put what I know about how I feel right now is that VERY WISELY my own self is not and will not allow me to return to my book writing BECAUSE IT WOULD NOT BE WISE OR GOOD FOR ME TO DO SO.

It is the impact of how the severe abuse I suffered from the moment of my birth resides in MY BODY that has me stopped dead in my writing tracks.

Most simply put I can say it is my very wise fear of body memories returning to me in the present during a process of returning to my abuse history’s stories that is preventing me from moving forward.  I had one occasion happen to me already with the body memory overwhelming me in reawakened memory of a severe beating my mother did to me when I was 22 months old.  (It was when I reached my 2nd writing through this memory that the book writing stopped.)

I cannot now wisely open any door of memory right now that will enable any more of those kinds of severe beating body memories to awaken into my conscious experience in my present.  In addition I feel sick in my body right now, and it is scary to me not to feel myself getting any better.  My life force seems to be depleted — depleting — every day.  This is NOT a good sign or a good way to be in my body in my lifetime!!!!

++

So, I have been waiting and I have been praying.  The brochure that was given to me last Friday does, I believe, offer to me the help and the healing I need RIGHT NOW.

In the listing of services this brochure describes is one I was (until I looked it up online yesterday) completely ignorant of in this ‘real time’ of my life:

Jin Shin Jyutsu

I don’t even know how to pronounce those words, but as soon as I found the first information online that is included if you click on those words, I KNEW I know — and have known since I was given the dream I am going to write here now — exactly what this form of healing bodywork IS.  Exactly.

At the same time I also knew yesterday that my prayers have been answered.  I telephoned Hollow Reed this morning and have an appointment this evening for a discussion with Jacquelyn Brenner about possibilities regarding my being able to work with her.

I am more than hopeful.  I am awed and extremely grateful that this healing avenue has appeared in my life.  SOME WAY will be made for me to access this healing.  The fact that this would be an issue for me was a very clear part of the dream I had 20 years ago.

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

The Healing Dream

I was in full moving stride with one foot in the air as it was coming down upon the floor just under a wide arched doorway when I experienced a startled shock of awakening into this dream.  I knew I had just walked down a long (what I would now call) enclosed veranda that ran down the side of a very large ancient building constructed of massive chunks of cut stone.

I stopped walking as I stood gazing around me with an unsettled feeling that I had always known this place and myself in it — but that I had suddenly and inexplicably forgotten.

On my right along the wide tiled floor of this light filled passage I saw a line of great tubs filled with what I knew was hot mineral water.  The tubs and the walls around them were covered with deep indigo tiles, some of them painted with fine delicate yellow flowers with white leaves.

Many beautiful bottles filled with herbs in liquid solutions stood around the edges of each tub.  I knew I was here to soak in one of these tubs.  I knew I would know exactly which of those herb bottles I needed to use to add medicine to my water.

On my left was a wall of massive glass windows.  The window ledges were deep, the walls being very thick.  I gazed out at a forest of lush, beautiful perfectly healthy ancient trees.  My vision followed the flowing sight of them down the gently sloping curves of the mountainside far down to the edge of a brilliantly sparkling turquoise sea.  My eyes followed the sea to a distant horizon.

I turned toward a woman preparing to enter one of the tubs and as I spoke to her I felt distressed that I was speaking fluidly to her in a language that I knew I could no longer recognize.  “Where am I?”  I asked her.  “What place is this?”  Feeling foolish and conspicuous in my confused ignorance I also had to ask her what language were we speaking!

I do not remember what she spoke back to me but whatever it was, it was what I needed to hear to instantly feel completely comfortable in all I was experiencing.  After I soaked in my bath I dressed in clothing that had been laid for me at the outside corner of the tub’s edge.  Having (in this current life of mine) hand woven many fabrics I recognized the high quality cotton and the deep pure colors of the dyes used to create this tunic I put on.  It’s colors were of a range of deep indigo, sky blues, radiant aqua tones, emerald and light green — in other words of plant life, of water and of moonlight — laced periodically with very thin fine threads of sparkling silver.

++

I then left this area  through tall wide heavy wooden carved swinging doors and entered a wide hallway very brightly lit and filled with streaming groups of many people.  I stood for a few moments once I passed through the doors gazing in wonderment at what I was seeing.

There were groups of people walking together who were wearing the same colors of woven cloth garments that I was.  There were ALSO other people moving both ways in this wide hallway that were dressed in garments of the hot fire range of orange, scarlet, deep reds, yellows laced with threads of gold.

These people were VERY tall and very thin and moved in a very straight line as they stared with stern faces straight in front as the walked.  Or, I should say, glided ABOVE the floor.  These tall stern intense serious people floated with their feet about eight inches above any firm surface.

The blue-green people were very much ‘on the ground’!  They moved like wind moves the leaves and grasses, like the moon moves the tides, like water tumbles over ledges and logs and stones.  They laughed as they chatted with one another, even stopping at times in the middle of the passageway, blocking traffic so that the stern people gave them invisible frowns as they had to alter their forward straight line glides a little bit to avoid crashes, as the blue-green people gazed at the expressions in one another’s animated faces as they talked.

(It seemed that many were going to ‘classes’, and while it might not be polite to speak ill of dream people, I could say that although perhaps the tall people were regal, it seemed to me also that they were intimidating in their rigidity, if not downright haughty and disdainful of those dressed as I was!)

Having come to some kind of peace with myself that it was OK that even though I had known these people and this place all of my life at this moment everything was entirely NEW to me, I felt inside of myself and noticed that what I wanted to do was to SKIP with abandon and joy down this hallway toward a door I knew I needed to enter.

But SKIP??  Could I DO THAT HERE?  What would the red-orange people think?  What would they do to me?  What would happen to me if I SKIPPED?  I didn’t care.  With the gleeful abandon of a happy, happy child I held to the wall edges of the hall and skipped through the next set of tall swinging doors.

Immediately after I had passed through them I made a left turn into another narrower hallway, and then an immediate right through a set of shorter, narrower doors into the room that was my goal.

The ceilings in this room were low.  The light was warm but quite dim.  This large room was filled with what I would now call healing stations, each with a narrow bed with a folded white sheet at the foot and a bodywork healer standing at the head.  I walked to one of these beds, shed my woven garment, laid down on my stomach and pulled my unfolded sheet over the lower half of my body.

The bodywork healer went to work.

I payed close attention to how it felt to have this healer work over my body without touching me with hands.  I could feel the work happening on the inside of my body.  I felt good.  Nothing hurt.  Until the very end when, having moved what I remember the healer telling me were my “27 points of darkness” to one centralized point on my lower back above my left hip bone, I was told that this would hurt as these points of darkness were removed from me.

And DID THEY HURT!  For a matter of perhaps 45 seconds I felt the most intense, excruciating pain I had ever known in my lifetime in this body.  The pain stopped.  I felt better than I could ever remember feeling.

I sat up on the edge of the bed, sheet wrapped around my torso, as I reached for my woven clothes that were folded on a low stool beside the bed.  I remember clearly thinking to myself, “This has been a fantastic, wonderful experience — but how am I going to PAY FOR ALL OF THIS?”

At the end of that thought I again ‘forgot’ about myself in that place — in other words I did the opposite of waking up into that place as I had at the start of the dream as I again was made ‘unconscious’ and asleep to it.

When I awoke to my regular life in the morning I remembered also that in the dream I had been very aware that I had been given a great gift in being allowed to ‘remember’ this place and this healing.  I was aware that there were what I might call guardian angels or spirit guides present with me as I was shown this experience.

++++

Yesterday as my eyes scanned the verbal information I found on that webpage about Jin Shin Jyutsu I knew exactly what is going on right now.  Why in my dream there were clearly “27 points of darkness” in my body instead of the “26” that this JSJ site mentions, I do not know.  Other than that tiny detail, JSJ is evidently the name for what it was that healed me in that dream (although I doubt the physical pain is a literal part of the experience).

A point on the side about this dream is that I mentioned the dream to someone I knew briefly those 20 years ago — I do not remember who it was — but I remember what she said back to me after listening to me describe my dream experiences.  “I know that place,” she stated matter-of-factly to me.  “I have been in those tubs.  I have seen those tiles.  I looked out those windows.  That place was Atlantis.   Did you know it was destroyed because those ‘intellectual’ orange-red people acquired the power to use the technologies they discovered in harmful ways and did not listen to the knowledge the green-blue people had about how to use the technology wisely?  You are not alone.  I and many others have dreamed this place.”

I could say, “No, I didn’t know that,” but I honestly do not know what I know — what I remember, what I have forgotten.

But I do sure know that I am THRILLED to have found this bodywork healing available to me now!  And there has to be a way for me to ‘pay for’ what I need in my lifetime – now!

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

I received the gift the other day of meeting Laura at my piano teacher’s place.  She is a trained classical pianist who has played over 40 years by sight reading.  Now she is taking lessons to learn how to play by ear and to FEEL the music.  She so far has considered herself not as a musician but as a technician.

Sure enough Laura could play some of songs I wrote perfectly – technically – but I know what she is describing.  When I met this woman, who lives in Seattle with her husband but spends months in SE Arizona here every year playing golf at our tiny town’s impressive golf course (the oldest in our state).  When I met Laura I felt as if I have known her all of my life.

So the next day a song came to me titled “Laura’s Song.”  I am taking it to an office supply store to Xerox it today, and will leave her copy with our teacher.  Again, this is a song that is still quite above my pay grade – I cannot yet TECHNICALLY play it.  I have not written into the song all the musical signs and symbols that would tell another pianist how to FEEL the song – and I don’t wish to even hear Laura play the song note by note with mechanical perfection.

I would like to wait until Laura’s playing of it – perhaps – happens exactly as the last words of the song suggest.  I had the song completed last night, so I thought, until I woke this morning and knew those musical notes in the last measures were not meant to stand alone.

I awoke knowing the last line.

I have only been learning music since I began lessons last October.  What an amazing process!  I love it – and once I do have Laura’s technical skills honed a bit better for my own self – I can’t WAIT to hear what I will be able to play (as I write the music) THEN!

++

Laura’s Song

I left my arrows with their feathers

At the back side of the sun.

I left my quiver with its beauty

At the bottom of the sea.

My bowstring is wrapped

Around the moon

My bow lies in the heart

Of a tree.

I planted my feet firm

And sent my breath out around the world

Out around the world.

My breath echoed back to me

Back to me

In sound.

I gather my arrows

My quiver

My bow.

I shoot straight.

I am setting my songs free

Free

Free

So now I play

Moon strings

As my songs play me.

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

There are times when words we hear seem to arrive at the exact time we need them most, as did the words of my friend as I mentioned them in my earlier post, +WORDS FROM A FRIEND in which I found great comfort.  I needed to remember that questing is a natural inclination of being alive.

The questing that sometimes feels intensely uncomfortable to me is no different than what a newborn colt does as it asserts its powers to stand on its own four feet, or that a plant does as it begins to open the walls of its seed so it can quest for the sunlight.

Yet as survivors of severe chronic traumatic stress caused by malevolent treatment by our earliest caregivers, it seems common that many natural events and processes required for ongoing living get tangled up in so-called ‘negative emotions’ in the present.  Those emotions are NOT negative.  They are survival emotions that have always held special powers to help us stay alive.  They can SEEM negative when they are out of balance inside of us, thus masking our ability to FIND and to FEEL what we think of as our more ‘positive’ emotions.

Questing, by itself, is a wonderful process that I deeply know is directly tied to what I call the life of my soul.

As I have carefully and meticulously examined my own self in the midst of the horrors of my infancy and childhood of abuse, I have consistently found that there I was, right in the middle of those experiences of hell created by my mother (and allowed to happen by my father), shining shining shining!

I was consistently and brutally attacked in so many ways from the time I was born — but those attacks NEVER changed who I was then — who is exactly who I am now.

As I have recently mentioned, the continuously falling heaps of rubble that crashed into MY life — did not belong to me!  Yes, the experiences of trauma impacted and injured me greatly.  They changed how my physical body had to develop as I survived in the midst of that hell.

But in the center of that storm created by my mother’s terrible mental illness (most probably severe Borderline Personality Disorder with psychosis that centered on me), I stood as an amazing person as I walked through every moment of that abuse in GOODNESS!

I continued through those horrible and horrifying 18 years always carrying inside of me my own self — intact, amazing — and according to these new words that appeared to me this morning — MORE THAN PERFECT!!

++

However I acquired my powers to quest forward into my life every moment of my early years, I do not know.  Through the grace and mercy provided by God, is my best guest.  I was gifted.  In many many ways.

My problem today is that I so often forget to remember this reality — MY REALITY.

Because of the continual severe abuse and trauma of my early, formative years, all of my movements through my childhood were mixed up.  The darkness of evil was so obvious that it has only been in these last few years of searching, questing for healing that I am able to begin to see that PERFECT goodness existed inside that maelstrom of troubles.

Goodness was ALWAYS present — because I was there — in my own life.

Just as I am now.

I have always been questing for a better me, for a better life.

It seems to be when I forget that goodness and am left only with the anguish of feeling that surviving is ALL that I do — that I have always done — that I lose track of my connection to my ability to feel great inner JOY.

I had that ability from the time I was born.  Standing inside my own body, intact with my own soul, my own self, I never lost the natural ability to hope that I was born with.  I never lost my ability to notice beauty in my world.  I never lost my ability to try, to the best of my ability, to make the right choice every time I possibly could.

I never lost my desire to hurt no one.

I never lost my desire to make my life a better one in all ways I could find that mattered.

++

My soul has the ability, has always had the ability, to know right from wrong, truth from error, good from bad.  I didn’t know how to use those powers when I was very young, so I just CARRIED them with me as they carried me — forward, always forward.

I just carried the right, the truth, and the good along with me.  I didn’t lose these abilities.  I just tend to lose track of the part of me that knows that I know!!

I have, in fact, always been looking for deep, abiding joy — a spiritual joy that lies within and apart from the external events that life brings to everyone.

This kind of joy is, I think, not a temporary passage through momentary happiness.  It is a joy that is vastly connected to the ability to feel both compassion and awe.  This joy comes directly from God’s grace and mercy that surpasses any ability humans have to make mistakes.

Humans are born MORE THAN PERFECT because God gave us a most special gift to be able to know love because we have been made to know God.  As a little person struggling every moment to stay alive and to make it through a long, long tunnel of infancy and childhood that was so unbelievably dark, I never left the state of grace and mercy that God provided to me at the instant I was conceived and God created my soul.

I am learning to pray in ways I never had before because I know in the essence of who I am — that this connection to God, to divine questing for the good, that this connection prayer provides me to walk in the best way I possibly can through this life — is a uniquely human experience.

God’s forgiveness and guidance is what I seek.  In that seeking there is anguish and there is joy.  I am nothing like a ‘religious fanatic’ of any kind.  I just happened to notice along life’s way that this Unknowable Essence happens to be the source for all goodness in creation.  Probably even this ability to notice this is a divine gift in itself.

I would be NOWHERE, alone and completely lost, without it.

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abuse, adult attachment disorders, anxiety disorders, borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse, depersonalization, depression, derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder, dissociation, dissociative identity disorder, infant abuse, music therapy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, peritrauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, reactive attachment disorder, trauma altered development TAD

+++++++++

I am responding further to a comment left on the page + About this site:

“People who have experienced a lot of trauma have difficulty concentrating on abstract concepts. Thus understanding your excellent but technical information may be difficult or even impossible for them. If your readers are unable to comprehend, you can send them my way if you like. My job is to take the scientific data and put it into layman’s terms and simple graphics on radio and internet television.”

I added my response to this comment at the bottom of my last post, +HOPE FOR THE GENERATIONS.  Somewhat unfortunately, I need to say something else on this topic.

In this last post mentioned here, I also wrote about how my grandson noticed dust motes swirling in a ray of sunlight, and mentioned also that at his same age of 22 months I also noticed the same beauty.  I mentioned that my grandson and I lived in different universes.

I did not say different worlds.  I said what I meant – different UNIVERSES.

I hate comparing that new little precious boy’s reality with what mine was, but in this case I will say a few more words about the universe I was living in when I was his age.  Because my mother suffered a psychotic break while she struggled to birth me that left her believing I was the devil’s child who was not human, but who had been sent to kill her while I was being born – and that I was an entirely evil child – I never had a mother.

Her abuse of me began with my first breath, and by the time I was 22 months old I had already been forced to walk a road that no child on earth should EVER have to travel.

The day of my dust mote gazing – actually at the same time I noticed the motes – my mother was engaged in a terrible fight with her mother over me.  It’s a long story – but in the end within an hour of the dust motes my mother was home swinging me around in the air as she beat my little body as hard as she could until she finally let go of me so that I fell in a crumpled heap on the living room floor.  At this point she screamed at me how much she hated me, and how she couldn’t stand the sight of me.

I was ordered to go to my room, only when I tried to stand and walk I found the entire world swirling around me as I staggered from side to side – because get up and walk I did.  I had no other choice.  (My father witnessed this attack and did nothing.)

Now in my world terrible ‘relationship’ trauma had already long ago altered the way my body-brain was forced to develop so that I could survive the malevolent, traumatic universe I happened to have been born into – and not rescued out of for the 18 long years I endured it.

My point here is that I am NOT an ordinary person in an ordinary body.  Nobody who survived horrendous trauma especially during their first 33 months of life from conception to age two, is an ordinary person in an ordinary body.

As much as we might wish that we are, we are not, nor shall we ever be in this lifetime.

So I say be very wary, be very aware, of any information ANYONE gives you that suggests that our body can be changed BACK into an ordinary one.

Nope.

Won’t happen.

This blog is packed with – yes – complicated scientific information about how trauma during critical stages of our early development changed our physiology.

Yes, this information can be very hard to understand.  A quick scan through REFERENCES (main file) will lead to titles of many books and articles of information related to these kinds of developmental – trauma induced – changes survivors of severe early abuse had to go through to stay alive in a most hostile world.

But I say that any such survivor who finds their way to this blog is completely capable of reading and understanding ALL the information presented here.  If you found it, you can read it, you can comprehend it, you can learn from it – and you can begin to heal in new ways because of the empowerment you will receive by finding out the FACTS about how what happened to YOU – changed the body you live in for the rest of your life.

If someone does not want to go through the WORK of studying this information, that is one thing.  This does not mean such a person could not understand it if they try as if their life depended on it.  Because in many important ways a NEW life DOES depend on knowing the facts about Trauma Altered Development.

When I first read the comment mentioned above I sighed in relief that maybe FINALLY someone had appeared on the Stop the Storm horizon that could chew up the hard information and then regurgitate it into the gaping mouths of the little birds needing to know.

Alas, fairy tale BUSTED.  No such thing.  We are not baby birds in need of regurgitated facts to feed and nourish and sustain us.  We can chew up those words, sentence by sentence, making ample use of Google searches for words and terms we are unfamiliar with – and we can think for our own self!!!

And, perhaps most importantly to me, it is critical that we understand that the kinds of trauma changes that happened to us due to abuse and neglect during our critical stages of development ARE PERMANENT for the MOST part!  To suggest that we made it through our horrific traumas without CHANGING in our development is to deny the nearly unimaginable impact that infant-child abuse has to harm survivors.  No real harm?  No need to eliminate infant-child abuse!  A lie is a lie – no matter how reputable the source might seem to be.

+++++++++

+++++++++

Something about this glorious full moon night forbid me to sleep past 2:30 in the morning.  Even though I am up well before dawn, the world is light out there with a gentle white light.

I am finding myself thinking about my grandchildren.  The first one turns 22 months old today.  This week he displayed his first clear creative use of language as he pointed excitedly to dust motes dancing in a ray of sunlight streaming through my daughter’s kitchen turret window, telling his Mommy, “BUBBLES!  BUBBLES!”

He knows bubbles from bath time and from blowing bubbles, but it so thrills me to know that this next generation following me is already noticing with joy beauty in the world around him.  I have a clear memory of my own self at his exact age gazing with joy at dust motes in sunlight.  But I was in such a different universe that I cannot even compare mine to this new little guy’s.

I have lived from the moment of my birth in a world that was tearing me down instead of building me up.  There was never a single breath I took during the first 18 years of life that wasn’t contaminated by my Borderline Personality Disorder mother in her psychotic abuse of me.

Her abuse and the trauma continually created by her in my world did not stop me from noticing beauty in the world around me.  I am thrilled that my grandson is already noticing beauty like I did.  And I am of course even more thrilled that he is free to exclaim and to be recognized as an amazing little person fully in his own right.

If I were to name one single wish I have for the world it would be that every child conceived on this earth be loved fully.

If we as the adult caregivers on this planet cannot guarantee that we can fully love the children we conceive, then we have no right creating these new precious lives.

I have lived in the shadow of destruction all of my life due to the horrendous abuse done to me.  I have fought all of my life to free myself from the terrible piles of rubble that nearly buried me alive from the time of my birth.

Yet somehow through a miracle of God I was able to pass to my own children incredible goodness.  The badness that met me at my birth was left in the rubble pile so that my children, and now my grandchildren, do not have to fight the battle I have had to fight.

The permanent physiological changes that extreme stress causes to little developing children guarantees that the consequences of this severe early attachment-related trauma will never leave them — it is built into their body, into their nervous system.

Our species pays a high and terrible price for not promising to the little ones brought into this world a safe passage through infancy and childhood.  Once our species grows up and becomes a spiritualized species, all preventable trauma to little ones will cease.

I pray that day is fast approaching!  I cannot describe the joy I feel knowing that love surrounds the next generation of people coming through my family.  I want that for ALL!!  We CAN leave the trauma behind us.

++

Check out HEALING TALK RADIO

Yet I do have some reservations about how the information on this site might be erroneous in regard to survivors of extremely traumatic early infancy-childhood experiences:

Dear Diana Hoffman:

In response to the comment you recently left on my blog, I scanned your website this morning.  I see on your site you make this statement:

“Learn about the HPA axis that regulates stress hormones, how infancy and early childhood affects the development of this system, and how it can be retrained and reset from hyperarousibility to normal function.”

I encourage you to consider the fact that this retraining and reset ‘to normal function’ is most certainly NOT possible for many survivors of severe early trauma, especially in cases where early severe abuse and trauma altered development of the nervous system-brain during the first 33 months of life (conception to age two).

I offer these critically important resources for you consideration in support of this fact:

“Effects of Secure Attachment” by Dr. Allan Schore at

http://www.allanschore.com/pdf/SchoreIMHJAttachment.pdf

“Attachment and the Regulation of the Right Brain” by Dr. Allan Schore at

http://www.allanschore.com/pdf/SchoreAttachHumDev.pdf

+Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

scanned at this link

https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/a-book-being-born/dr-teichers-article-on-trauma-altered-development/

I also most highly recommend Dr. Bruce Perry’s book, ‘The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog” at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Raised-Psychiatrists-Notebook–What/dp/0465056539/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326201262&sr=1-1

It is critically important not to mislead the public, especially those who have been most hurt by early trauma that has caused PERMANENT changes in their physiology.

Sincerely, Linda

Stop the Storm blog at https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/about-stop-the-stor/

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For other consideration:

*BEING A SPIRITUAL SEEKER

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I have been struggling these past days with the BLUES.  My flu is still not quite gone, so my low energy feeds into itself and it is a struggle to gain my good footing again.

Lack of joy and struggles with attachment vs. detachment — those are on my plate right now.  But it is the words a good friend wrote to me today that comforted me, and it is those words I would like to share here this evening.

I am actually trying not to think at all.  I am moving ahead with exercise, with house cleaning, with organizing my music books — doing dishes.  Remembering to eat and drink fluids.  Waiting for my energy, and for some useful hope to return.

In the meantime — from my friend:

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For me it seems so impossible to live this Earthly life to the extent I would like to.  Which translates into (I wish I did not feel inferior, not enough, etc.)  In AA and the short time it’s been around the program has helped so many.  Yet at best it claims about a 5 % success rate.  Most people even with long term sobriety go back and drink.  I know I could be one of those people and that would be a fate worse then death.  So I am always mindful to be grateful for my Sobriety and to remember the price I had to pay for it.

Yesterday I was reading (“Pass it on”) Bill Wilson’s biography.  After being Sober for many years and not long after the Big Book was published Bill met with a man, Father Dowling, a Jesuit priest responsible for founding AA in St. Louis.  That night, Bill told of his high hope and plans, and spoke also about his anger, despair, and mounting frustrations.  The Jesuit quoted Mathew: “Blessed are those who do hunger and thirst.”  God’s chosen, he pointed out, were always distinguished by their yearnings, their restlessness, their thirst.

In pain, Bill asked if there was never to be satisfaction.  The priest said: Never, never any.  He continued describing as ‘divine dissatisfaction‘ that which would keep Wilson going, always reaching out for his unattainable goals, for only by so reaching would he attain what- hidden from him – were God’s goals.  This acceptance that his dissatisfaction, that his very ‘thirst’ could be divine was one of Dowlings’ great gifts to Bill Wilson and through him to AA.

This last week I have been praying the serenity prayer many time through out the day and evening.  At night I pray that many souls I know would have peace in their lives.  You are one of these souls Linda.  God Bless you and let’s be grateful for what we have today.  Love

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It seems I have been far away from my blog for quite some time now, but I have not abandoned my post!  I am just turned around a little bit facing a different direction.

WordPress published blog stats for 2011, and I guess I wrote 565 posts.  No wonder I am tired and in need of some refreshment!  I am writing songs, and the one I am finishing today is based on these words:

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“I implore thee,
by Thy divine sweetness
and by the splendors of the glory
of Thy face,
to send down upon us
from Thy retreats on high
that which will enable us
to draw nigh unto Thee.

Set, then, our feet firm,
O my God,
in Thy Cause
and enlighten our hearts
with the effulgence of Thy knowledge,
and illumine our breasts
with the brightness
of Thy names.”

by Baha’u’llah

From page 191, in ‘Baha’i Prayers’

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The weather has been fantastic, warm and sunny.  It is nourishing for me to just be outside.  I am also involved in a little project crocheting very heavy rugs from cut rags to donate to residents locally in low income housing.  A closet-cleaning effort is also under way.

Now I have to de-pit my five pounds of cherries so I can dry them.  Oh, I need to bake some bread.  In a little while a couple of friends will be here for a visit in the sun.

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