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Some readers of this blog might remember some posts I wrote several months ago as I went to a massage therapist – with hopes of making some kind of hoped-for progress toward – what?  I was disappointed, of course, although I do not regret the experience or the money those two sessions cost.

But today I am thinking about some of the imagery that appeared to me in those 2 sessions about being face-to-face with a massive, impassable bramble bush.  Today I realize that for severe abuse survivors who have experienced permanent and major physiological alterations to our development due to severe abuse, neglect and trauma during especially our earliest months of life when we were growing and developing our brain, our nervous system, our immune system, our stress-calm response system — NOTHING we experience about being alive in the world matches what ‘ordinary’ people experience.

At this moment I am thinking that my life has mostly been about learning to thrive in any way I can IN SPITE of that bramble bush.  I am always learning how to seek and find treasures that nobody else would probably think are remotely important, let alone valuable, right there inside that bramble bush.

This is not a wrong or a bad thing.  All the wishing in the world will not change what we experienced and what those experiences did to make our lives extremely difficult in ways non-early abuse, neglect and trauma survivors will never know or even be able to begin to imagine.

Lately as I watch movies in which ‘killing’ or ‘being killed’ is always portrayed as a disastrous thing I find thoughts wander into my thoughts sometimes that there is also situations in which remaining alive sure seems a worse fate than to NOT be alive.  Yet life is a struggle on many levels for many humans, not just early trauma survivors.  What is actually (to me) most important is being able to identify and to USE what many call either ‘resiliency factors’ or ‘protective factors’.

Survivors have gifts that brought us forward through our horrible childhoods.  Our problem is that in the presence of our bramble bush challenges we often do not understand that we need to identify what IS and WAS good in our lives – has always been good and right in our lives – or – putting it starkly – we would be dead!

Never mind there are times when we might think being dead would be better than to remain alive with our suffering.  Those aspects of our bramble bush existence are just a part of our experience – NOT ALL OF IT.

I do absolutely believe that every single one of us had something we loved when we were little.  Many of us, most sadly, did not have a human being who loved us.  That did not mean that we didn’t love SOMEONE, didn’t love a pet, didn’t love beauty, didn’t love music, or some aspect of nature that we noticed – and that for even the briefest of seconds put us into a time-space where we experienced a glimmer of joy.

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One of the most important of my protective factors certainly was Alaska and our homesteading time on ‘our’ mountain.  I still don’t believe I would have survived had our family not left the hideous horrors of Los Angeles for the pure wilderness that I loved from the first breath of its air I inhaled right before my 6th birthday.

I was also gifted with an insatiable hunger for locating beauty in the world around me – usually in the smallest of details.  I did have crayons.  Crazy Mother encouraged all of us to use art supplies.  They were not always forbidden to me.

Something beautiful and good was available (and still is) for every single one of us that is directly connected to what I call soul – our essential self that will live forever and that no abuser can ever touch.  I am not remotely into the ‘saved’ or ‘damnation’ kind of perspective on soul.  I am far too realistic for that kind of vague double-speak that does not contribute to my desperately needed sense of some kind of peace and well-being and hope and connection to the immeasurable grace and goodness that most survivors have to search very hard to find in their early lives.

Survivors might in the beginning need to break through denial to find out what actually happened to us.  But this is only a part of our story.  If we don’t go back into our own self, into our own memories that we have chosen to keep, to find our own shining child self inside the hell we know of so clearly — we will simply feel more miserable than we have to today.

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I am not being arrogant in any way when I say I know what it’s like to grow up being abused, terrified, traumatized by a psychotic madwoman in hell for 18 years.  I know.  But as far as I can tell it is not possible for us to still be alive without a WHOLE LOT OF GOODNESS having been present around us then and now.

In some ways I have a very Dr. Spock logical brain.  What I am saying is simply LOGICAL common sense to me.  I am going on 61 in August.  I have worked very very very very hard to learn about myself what I now know.  And I now know that I can go back through the corridors of my life now – walking – no STRIDING with confidence all the way back – because I have cleared out all the garbage of my childhood that really belonged to all the adults in my family (as I have written about on this blog).

This work was hard.  But what I refused to let the abuse of my life take from me was my RIGHT to HAVE my own self in my own life — however I experience that self.  I don’t buy the crap that was not mine.

If I could remember what I titled those earlier posts I would put links to them here – but I don’t have a clue.  I know there are readers that go back through the growing list of archival posts at the right side of this home page.  Every reader will have some kind of reaction inside of their own self to everything I say – and it is in THOSE REACTIONS that your own truth lies.

We have suffered gloom – but we are never gloom ourselves.

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Yesterday I spent a wonderful day with a dear friend of mine who understands me probably better than anyone else outside of my dear family that I have ever known.  Yet in spite of the glory of my day yesterday – I often noticed that on some level I felt as if I had just cried for hours and hours and hours…..

Many of you know that feeling — what it feels like to have cried so long and so hard you never thought the crying would stop.  What you feel like AFTER that – it’s a kind of hangover that for severe early abuse, neglect and trauma survivors NEVER REALLY GOES AWAY.

After many years of educating myself about my ‘condition’ I nearly always recognize now that negative emotional states as I feel them in the present have nothing really to do with what is going on in the present.  My body was built out of these kinds of feeling states – and they remain a part of me on the physiological level.

BUT – as with yesterday – I could carry on – as it were – ‘two conversations’ with myself at the same time.  One was of the glorious loving friendship sharing adventure day that WAS my day yesterday.  The other was a very gentle and kind recognition of the deep, deep what I now call PERENNIAL sadness that is so much a part of my body.

All I really had to do was to HONOR that due to the complexities of my entire life, I live a complex life – I am a complex person – and part of me can be very happy and relaxed AT THE SAME TIME another part of me is barely above the surface of such deep and terrible REAL sadness.

I HAVE cried – especially as a child – for many many many thousands of hours.  Uncensored, genuine, appropriate, tears and tears and tears because I WAS HURT!

I honor that reality in myself – but I wish to experience in my present life ANOTHER REALITY as well.  If I end up feeling BOTH realities at the same time – so be it.

But I WILL NOT let the sadness – or any other strong survival-related emotion – steal from me what joy I can tap into NOW as I live the best life I can.

Not perfect – not fair – not…… whatever we can add into and onto this list.

BUT – there is MORE to life and far more to us.  We have a choice at every moment, not that any of us can make this choice perfectly, to find something good and true and right and beautiful NOW.

As we do this we can increasingly understand that we have ALWAYS done this — even through all of the terrible times of trauma in the past.  We have ALWAYS been able to find joy somewhere, somehow.

As children we did this automatically and instinctively.  As adults we most often need to make a choice to continue to do what we did so well as children — continue to live our own life of goodness no matter WHAT else was going on at times during our life that was so hurtful to us.

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I fell into the trap during my 2 massage sessions that today right now I am getting myself out of.  The therapist wanted me to find a way around the bramble bush that appeared to me – to make it go away – to escape it – whatever…….

No.  I honor that bramble bush – and it is my personal and very special task to examine my relationship with that bramble bush – my way.  This is a kind of making-peace with all of me, all of my life, that lets me at times live more than one life at the same time.  I see nothing wrong with this — being happy AND sad at the same time!!  The sadness does not need to be gone in order for me to – at the same time – be experiencing joy at the same time.

Perhaps this I am looking into a different meaning of wholeness…..

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A HUGE part of the quandary I create for myself is my (so far) inability to peacefully accept that I was born into exactly this time period, into this particular segment of the evolution of the species I am a member of.  Yet I also understand that if every person was entirely content to remain aware of only that which is known and practiced by our species nobody would dream, nobody would hope, nobody would even be able to GUESS that there IS A BETTER WAY – not just for a selected few of us, but for all of us.

Given that my right brain hemisphere remains the most dominate for me over the two brain hemispheres we have been blessed with as humans, I now draw on a very clear, very sensual, and very relevant image that seems to have rested within my awareness this morning.

One of my most glorious series of childhood memories is of the wild Canadian geese, the Honkers, as they migrated south in the season of Alaska’s fall.  While I know they also migrated north in the spring, that flight pattern evidently did not exist directly over our homestead mountain.

I didn’t, as a child and teen, wait for this event to happen.  I didn’t think ahead that way.  But every time this happened my innermost essence stopped to pay the closest attention that I could to what was happening during these most special moments in time.

Always it began with my first hearing – like a remembered glimmer of a shimmer – of the faintest whispers of the sound of these grand birds announcing their coming from the north with their calls.   I stopped in the yard and breathlessly waited as the sound of the honking became louder and louder and LOUDER.

Suddenly high above the outline of the highest mountain peaks behind our homestead the first goose appeared against a brilliant blue sky, followed in formation by thousands of birds.

They flew fast.  They flew with instinctual determination.  They flew without err, taking a period of some minutes for the end of the back, final, wide end of this gigantic “V” to appear over the mountain’s ridge.

My heart danced with fundamental delight THEN at the sound and the sight of these birds, just as it does now in my memory.

I know things as an adult that of course I did not know when I was that young.  I know that the strongest bird always flies at the front of the “V”, that the shape of the pattern itself allows maximum distance to be covered at maximum speed with the least amount of effort possible.  Wingtip to wingtip the bodies placed this way allow the wind to flow like invisible gossamer silk on down the entire length of the “V.”

I know that no matter how powerful, how fit, how superior any lead bird started out to be, it is mortal.  It will tire.  It will expend itself for the good of the entire flock until it eventually and naturally, without question or shame, gives up its heroic and vital place in the flock and falls, falls, falls not DOWN but BACK to the tail-end of this fascinating, dignified, impressive, most memorable gathering of birds in flight.

And – then this job falls to the next most powerful bird in the lineup – and on they all travel south over many mountains, over many thousands of miles.

I also know that migrating birds are designed to be able to travel incredible lengths of time, as well, without needing to sleep.  I know this can happen for the same reason sharks don’t sleep:  There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING unusual happening that their brains would need to process.  “No sleep necessary or required.”

On they go.  Year after year, season after season – the constant from my perspective was ME, the one watching, the one with feet planted upon the earth covering the great stone of the mountain while the migrating “V” stretched itself across the Eagle River Valley as their lead goose vanished over the crest of the mountain ridge on the other side.

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About 15 years after I had left home, left Alaska, I had a dream that I lived near a far northern village in Alaska.  Only there was a city there, lots of people residing therein.

One day I was outside in the dream and I heard clearly the faintest sound of a  thundering flock of Canadian honkers migrating south.  I knew their flight path would cross over the ground slightly outside the collection of buildings that defined the edge of this city.  I stood in awe watching – and then I saw the miracle!

These thousands of geese were flying not in their common “V” pattern.  They were approaching from far to the north in the shape of a perfect 5-pointed star!

I gasped in amazement, turned and raced to the city, running through throngs of people going about their late afternoon routines – as I yelled at them as loudly as I could, “Come!  Come see this!!  The geese are coming, and they are flying in the shape of a perfect 5-pointed star.”

Nobody – absolutely NOBODY – cared!!!!

I knew I had to give up trying to find anyone to come with me.  If I didn’t return NOW to watch them I would miss what I knew was perhaps the greatest miracle I would ever be a part of.

So I did.  Alone I watched this massive formation of some of the most impressive birds God has seen to create flew exactly over my head as they disappeared to the south.

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It’s a common and familiar saying that “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”  Perhaps no matter the size of a migrating flock of birds their travel is limited by the pace of the weakest birds flying.

At this juncture in time that God chose to pop me into in the river’s flow of the life of my flock of humanity, there still seems to be a great many weak links.  Someone like Dr. Allan Schore, as reflected in his writing, is a ‘pinnacle’ human being – a leader of the “V” of humanity traveling forward at its crippled yet still moving pace.

It is my belief that if everyone who has any concerns whatsoever about the well-being of humans and how that well-being is either created in great degrees or all but destroyed by the quality of human attachments – READ and studied these three books I post links to below – 99.9% of our questions about what goes RIGHT with humans and what goes WRONG – and why – and how we can prevent the WRONG and improve on the RIGHT – can be clearly understood.

We would all then be strengthened to be a leader of our flock in every and any way possible as needed.

Read and study – difficult BOOKS?  No?  Let’s all just play helpless victim.  Let’s all just act plain lazy and stupid.

After all, what does any of this actually matter?

And then there’s also compassion, patience and wisdom…….

Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self/Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self (two-volume set) by Allan N. Schore (Apr 2003)

I doubt there is a better book on the planet for understanding attachment and its critical role in building human beings from their foundation forward!!

The Attachment Connection: Parenting a Secure and Confident Child Using the Science of Attachment Theory by Ruth Newton PhD and Allan Schore PhD (Jun 1, 2008)

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If this is the snake that is wandering around in my yard, I better be scared of it!

Mohave Rattlesnake

Picture here

For a reason researchers do not yet understand this ALWAYS deadly snake is far more deadly in the county I live in than any other snake in Arizona.

Read here

One of my young neighbor boys spotted the snake last weekend inside the chicken coop – that would have been the same snake – no doubt – that I evidently saw (kind of without seeing it) today (see previous post:  +DISSOCIATION? DEHYDRATION? DID I REALLY JUST SEE A SNAKE?).

Last weekend I looked online and could not find a picture that matched the snake in the chicken coop.  We watched it exit the coop moving south into the narrow stretch of weeds between my back fence and the American-Mexican border fence.  I hoped the snake had stopped for a few moments in the coop and moved on.  Perhaps it has not.  Perhaps it has moved into my garden.  Perhaps I better WAKE UP LINDA!!

This snake is very, very dangerous.

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I met a local man named Leo at the Laundromat café this week and I have his telephone number.  He catches snakes, ‘milks’ them for their venom, and sends the vials to the University of Arizona where they develop anti-venom.  He receives $500 per vial.  I think I better call him tomorrow for a chat.

When I described the snake that was wandering through the chicken coop to Leo he immediately told me it was a Mojave.  How could he know that quickly from my very rough verbal-visual sketch?  Did I closely examine the head and markings of this snake in my yard today?  No, as I described in my last post, I most certainly did not.  Some part of me evidently saw the snake, ‘telepathically’ greeted it with respect, and let it go its way without paying a single bit of attention to where it was going – as I trivially heeded a stupid centipede.

“No way to go, Linda!”

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Since writing my last post I have had thoughts now and then about the terrible traumas of my childhood of unbelievable abuse.  I was NEVER safe, and yet remaining consciously in a state of hyperalert-hypervigilance awaiting Mother’s next attack was impossible.

Because of the psychotic break Mother had while birthing me, there was never a time during the 18 years I lived with my parents from the moment of my birth that abuse or the threat of abuse was not a very real presence for me.  But because I was a child I somehow was able to FORGET the constant danger I was in – in between many of Mother’s attacks.  They always came out of the blue anyway.  I never knew when exactly she was going to attack me.  I was nearly always taken by complete surprise.  How did I manage to live that way?

Somehow I must have developed some kind of coping skills to survive her.  Today’s experience with what I now see is most likely an extremely dangerous snake brings these issues into immediate focus for me.  I did see that snake today – even though some part of me is in denial that the snake was real, that I really saw that snake, that it was less than two feet away from me – and that it most likely is the most dangerous snake by far of any in Arizona.

My inner self somehow had made some kind of peace with the close proximity and presence of that snake today.  Some part of me simply said, “Hello!” and then completely turned away as if that snake did not exist.  I made the same kind of ‘peace’ with the presence of that snake as I did with the presence of my mother.

I made the snake go away.  In between the thousands of brutal attacks against me – physical and verbal – how was I able to make Mother disappear?  Go away?

I had to become able to vanish-banish Mother any time I possibly could do so or I would not have been able to both survive her and grow up as a child at the same time.  A more dangerous creature than she was could hardly have been found by any child.  I HAD to make some kind of space within which I COULD ENDURE and survive – a space into which Mother could not really enter.  I think this happened automatically – naturally in this so-unnatural condition I was forced to remain in for those 18 very long years in Mother’s hell.

That Mother COULD attack out of the blue without warning at any given instant of time is not really one bit different than knowing an indomitable killer snake is slithering around in my yard and can and probably will make its appearance ANYWHERE at ANY TIME – when I least expect it to.

How does a person – especially a little child – protect itself from such overwhelming ever-present horrible deadly danger?

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I see now I need to call Leo about this snake.  I am most grateful that I met him this week.  Because the Mohaves are far less common here than the Diamondback rattlesnakes are, Leo is always looking to find a Mohave to milk for its venom – and then release the snake safely into the wild.  I truly hope he will willingly come down here to investigate.  I truly hope he is knowledgeable enough to know exactly not only where to look for this snake ‘of mine’ but most importantly how to FIND IT.

I do not wish to live with this continual threat of death this close to my door – within my peaceful garden.  As beautiful as this snake may be, it can and under the wrong circumstances will kill me.

I want it gone.  I want the threat GONE – and dissociating from this danger as I did so smoothly and instinctively and effectively this afternoon IS NOT the way for me to handle this.  This snake is NOT my friend – any more than my mother was a mother!

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The topic of this post gives me a most unsettled feeling – as it should.  I am reminded to remind myself that I am not always the best at being able to keep myself safe in the world.  Yet having to trust my well-being to ‘dumb luck’ also makes me feel most unsettled.  As it should.

Let’s see.  How can I most simply describe what in the world I am talking about?

Start here:  I made the 26-mile round trip out to a feed store today – spent $121 on a 6-month stock of chicken scratch, minerals, laying crumble – also ‘meat as first ingredient’ cat food, great dog bones for the pup along with two 120 pound bales of alfalfa.  I needed this feed run taken care of before my upcoming 3,400-mile round trip up north to see soon-to-arrive new grandson and family.  I do not want the man who will take care of my house, garden and animals to run short during the 3-4 weeks I am gone.

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Not too exciting.  Made the trip fine in my ’78 old worn El Camino.  Next comes the job of how to store the feed away from rodents and rain.

Note:  It really really rained yesterday!  Our yearly high desert monsoon has been off to a very slow start, but yesterday’s rain was the real thing.  Thus, our normal humidity of 5-7% jumped today to 35-50%.  Is this the culprit for my unsettled feelings?

I am used to working outside in the heat, often the 100 degree-plus heat — working hard – but today at 88 – sweating like nobody here is used to, dripping like a personal carry-around shower — was I dehydrating out there as I moved in hard-work mode around the yard cleaning out 5-gallon plastic storage pails, hauling the 40-50 pound bags around……

This storage job included emptying a large 35-gallon blue plastic garbage pail I used for soaking cardboard before adding it to the compost bins.  I plan to break the alfalfa bales apart and store the hay in these blue wonders.

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And here is where this small strange (to me) story really began…..

I tipped the blue pail that had spent a year sitting in one corner of the yard to the side — and there skittered for cover a rather large centipede.  I DO NOT LIKE those critters!!!  They give me the WILLIES!!!

And — my dissociational brain………?

Looking back – what exactly was going on at this pail tipping centipede spotting split second of my life?

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Dissociation, I believe, ALWAYS involves a distortion in one’s perception of the ongoing experience of time.

Time can slow down, speed up, seemingly stop completely — and, most uncomfortably, dissociation can create the experience of being in two ‘places in time’ at the same time.  Or, as when depersonalization-derealization hop into the picture of the experience – it can seem as if we cease to exist in time at all — and/or that things are going on of which we are not really a part of — as if we are aside from, apart from, outside of – space and time.

Severe early abuse and trauma creates alternative brain states and ways of processing information during critical early windows of infant-child development.  Duh!  HUGE “OF COURSE” to this one!

How do we survivors experience our life through our different body-brain?

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Back to the tipped blue large tipped pail under which this centipede had evidently been happily living its life.  Back to me staring at this critter who at this second had to decide itself exactly what it was going to do next in its state of surprise ——

And me?

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Now, I have to jump ahead about an hour of hard work later – large sacks of feed emptied into their clean white 5-gallon buckets and stored – etc. – me having stopped several times to consume large glasses of water mixed with powdered red G2 — sweating like I am SO not used to — now stopping to sit for a moment in the shade, take a break, smoke a cigarette — and…….

What NOW at this moment jumped into my thoughts was this – “Did I really see a snake just recently since I returned from the feed store?  Am I remembering a dream that I saw a snake?  Did I make this up because of the picture of the small bright green snake half coiled hanging off a tree branch staring down that hummingbird in mid-hover that I viewed last eve when a facebook friend posted it?”

Into my mental imagery brain slowly came the image of the snake that I MIGHT have seen or not seen – along with a dimly creeping creepy memory that I DID see this snake not long ago – in MY yard – that it was about two feet from my feet, that it had stopped in mid slither because I was there, that it was not coiled — along with a ‘memory’ of its size — not large, stretched about 18″ – not real fat, a young snake —

And here came my backwash of “What it is like to live with an unusual dissociational brain.”

I ‘remembered’ in this memory that did not feel like a memory of seeing a snake that did not feel like seeing a snake – that felt like it had happened in a dream – that felt like it had happened to somebody else – somebody whose memories I HAVE????

It took me at least 5 minutes of concentrated thought as I sat on my work-break in the chair to ‘remember’ – realize – where I MIGHT have REALLY seen that snake.

Over there beside the big blue garbage pail…..

“Linda, you have to go back over there – retrace your steps – stand exactly where you were when you MIGHT have seen that snake RIGHT NEXT to where you saw the centipede at EXACTLY the same moment…..”

So I walked over there – and yes – this really WAS a memory – how STRANGE!!

What part of my desert-dwelling brain would have CHOSEN as a consequence of HOPEFULLY assessing RISK to attend to — associate my attention and entire focus — on a CENTIPEDE rather than on a SNAKE???

I KNOW and clearly remember watching the centipede squiggle on the ground while I thought about whether or not it would ‘attack’ me – or even head up my ankle – what would happen if I tried to stomp it as it tried to ……. whatever it would try — my thoughts including an assessment of how fast it could move, how fast my foot could move, how much weight I carry – how soft might the ground be — knowing how DIFFICULT it is to step on and squash and KILL a hard-crusted ugly old centipede….

meanwhile – in this place of all kinds of venomous snakes….

WHAT ABOUT THE SNAKE????

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As I again stood at the spot where maybe memory and real memory coincided – part of me ‘knows’ though cannot CLEARLY own the memory that some dissociated part of me made an instantaneous assessment at the split-second I was in range of both these creatures that the SNAKE was not a threat — I did not see rattles on its tail, though young rattlers of that size might have only ONE rattle, very difficult to notice – young rattlers being aggressive and extremely deadly should they strike because they have to learning about how to and why to control the amount of venom they eject ——–

DID I assess the danger of the snake?  How can I be sure when this entire ‘experience’ feels so surreal and remote from me?

Was there a snake right there?

What part of me decided a relatively UGLY but in comparison to a poisonous snake not one bit dangerous centipede needed ALL my concentration??  Did I accurately assess the risk the snake may or may not have offered?

I do not know.

I did not again look back at the snake.  Nope.  The centipede had all of my associated attention.

I thought about whether or not I would/could kill that creepy centipede as I watched it disappear into a crack in the dry earth where the blue pail had stood – as my brain slowly pondered in its altered state of time and space, “Can a centipede dig itself trenches in the earth?  Tunnels in the earth?”  As some other part of me snapped in response, “Obviously they can, Linda!  Who do you think dug that hole for that centipede to escape into?  You sure didn’t!”

In that slowly moving time I even had time to remember all kinds of memories of times I have had chickens – times I watched them attack centipedes – their favorite food – as they race and dart and chase around while every one of them finally gets a snippet size snack of centipede.  I had time to wish I had a chicken right by me right at that instant?  (And the snake?  Who was paying attention to the snake?  Not me!)

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Great.  How can I trust myself to keep myself safe in a snake zone like this desert is – if…….. ??

Well, I am still here.  I was not attacked by either of these creatures – both of which had no wish to be bothered by me in the first place.

But what about next time?

I do wonder….  I also surprise myself that when push came to shove I would dislike a centipede more than a snake – and, again, what kind of snake was that?

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And I STILL do not FEEL LIKE I really saw that (real?) snake, even though I could draw the exact position ‘that snake’ seems to have been in, and I can point out exactly where on the ground I ‘seem’ to have ‘maybe’ seen a snake because I ‘seem’ to remember seeing one….

Very unsettling way to live…..

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See next post:

+KILLER SNAKE. KILLER MOTHER. EVIDENTLY I HAVE THE MAGICAL ABILITY TO MAKE KILLER THINGS ‘DISAPPEAR’

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If I were to name this post before I write it I would say “FEELING TROUBLED WITH MYSELF.”  Yet because I am writing this post with the hope that doing so will help me order my thoughts and feelings so that I can find the positive in what has been troubling me about myself today I am hoping by the time this is completed I will have a DIFFERENT title!!

As I write, what comes to me first is that my ‘troubledness’ probably stems in part from ‘boundary issues’ that are directly tied to difficulties I have with empathy – both of which are consequences of being raised for 18 years in a severely abusive home that gave me no safe and secure attachment to anyone, not even to myself.

I can’t really write about the situation my feelings and thoughts are tied to because they involve someone else I know – someone local – whose business is NOT really my business.  I would not care at all what happened to this person except that she is a mother – and I care about what happens to her children.

First of all – that statement strikes me as being ‘mean’.  How could I not care about this grownup?

I am reminded of the years I worked as an art therapist with a caseload of children ages 3 – 10 who were all in foster care because of the terrible abuses they had suffered.  I was told at one point by my boss that I was “too much of an advocate for children.”

Although I have to work very hard at turning my thinking around into a direction where I can understand what my boss said to me – even though the therapy work I did was the children was amazing and VERY helpful TO THE CHILDREN – I did not in my heart give any break to the grownups who had – in my world – been responsible for what happened to these children.  Even when the parents had not been directly responsible for abuse, I ALWAYS hold adults accountable for being responsible for meeting the needs of children and for keeping them safe.

In my world, adults DO FAIL CHILDREN!

There is no place I can find inside of myself where I can excuse adult lack of appropriate and adequate protection and care of children.

This brings me around, also, to thinking about my own life – how hard I found it to parent my children RIGHT especially in my younger years right after I left home and did not have a clue (1) about the terrible things that happened to me growing up and how those things affected me, and (2) the slightest idea, really, what being a good parent even was!

But I had instinct – and my instinct did not fail me.

This fact includes another critically important fact:  As I grew into the light and into increased healing for myself I ACCEPTED HELP!  I sought out help.  I asked for help.  I listened to everything people told me in their wisdom.  I WANTED to get ‘better’.  And I most certainly wanted to learn how to be the best possible parent I could be.

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Evidently this might not be true for everyone who is trying to change their life.  Evidently many people just want to do it THEIR WAY – while ignoring the truth and while only listening to those who pat them on the back, make them feel OK even about those things that are actually hurting these people’s children.

I don’t buy this.  I don’t.  I don’t.  I don’t.

My only option is to refrain from contact with such people because there is nothing I can do to change a person who wants to take the ‘easier, softer’ way into their own future.

Children are NOT put into this world to meet the needs, wants and desires of their parents.

In my universe this means that children are not in a parent’s life to take away their loneliness, to be their best friend, to parent their siblings or to parent their parents.

Selfish, self-centered parenting HURTS CHILDREN.  Very often their might not be any sign whatsoever that there is outright abuse present – but I cannot look the other way when in the face of situations where the needs of children for the CHILD’S healing is being ignored because it might make the parent uncomfortable to take their own steps into the light of truth about how their own past actions have harmed their children.

Putting the cork in the bottle, throwing out the hardcore drugs, stopping anti-social and illegal activities is – certainly!!  Taking steps in the right direction — but they are not enough.

Nobody who received ugly parenting can parent their own children without essentially going to the school of “I want to learn what my children need and learn how to provide that for them more than anything else in the entire world!!!”

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I can see I am not really making progress here in my thinking.  I ask God to forgive me for where ugliness lies inside of me – leftover from the truly horrible childhood I had – that skews and biases me when it comes to passing judgments on other people that I have no right to make.

Because I know I do that!!

I am trying to become more positive today – but there feels to be something gnarling away in my gut.  It’s as if I can see down the road of the children of this person I had some contact with again yesterday.  I can see 10 years from now that the steps that I THINK this parent needs to take NOW and are not being taken — will create yet another whole river of intergenerational trauma that will be passed along along along.

It is already happening.  This mother ‘caught’ most of her troubles from her parents (especially her mother).  I hate to see this.  I hate to know what is missing and be so powerless to make things better.

There is nothing I can say.  This person wishes to hear nothing.  Very good, she wants to pray and go to church.  But that is NOT ENOUGH!  There are very real problems that can have very real solutions.  But a lazy approach to changing one’s life and the lives of one’s children will not work – because healing and growing – especially in the beginning stages – is HARD WORK!

To not do this work when it needs to be done is a tragedy that leads to tragedy – on down the generations.  Extremely important first steps have been made in this family — but I can ‘hear the crash’ in the future if the rotten foundation of trauma carried within this family is not entirely rooted out and replaced with a truthful acknowledgement of what has been wrong, what is still wrong, and what is being actively worked on toward making a lasting firm and good foundation that will stand true far into the future of everyone concerned — even for those who have not yet been born.

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While I have been busy with projects inside the house and outside I have been waiting to see if I will wish to take back my words from my last post. No.  Not so far.  Those words stand:  I cannot find my self-love.

Given the choice – not that such a choice actually even exists – between being able to love myself and being able to love other people, I would take the other people love.

I realized as soon as I posted that last post that what I have described as my inability to feel what it feels like to be loved by other people is directly a consequence of not having been able to build self-love ‘circuitry’ into my body-brain from birth due to abusive trauma.

I know that feeling of NOT being able to feel loved has seemed deeply connected to a perennial loneliness that I think many early abuse survivors live with all of their lives.

I am working on one of three baby blankets right now – they are bigger than I thought they would be – which is nice ’cause the little boys will be able to use them way after their babyhood!  One is for my nearly born newest grandson, one is for my 28-month-old grandson who is soon to have a brother, and one is for one of my nieces who is due with a boy Oct. 5th.

So, not complaining – just pausing.  The sewing has been a lot of work – good thing it was a cooker of a day outside today or I would have been out there working much longer – and missed this great sewing-work day.

So, until later…….

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There are some wonderful comments and replies accumulating with this June 29, 2012 post:

+SEVERE TRAUMA SURVIVORS: WE LIVE IN A DIFFERENT WORLD THAN ORDINARY PEOPLE DO

What if some magical entity had whispered in my ear as I grew up as a child in a universe filled with violence, assaults, chaos, absolute madness, that single – to me now – most important piece of information I wish I had known all of my life?

I needed to know that I did not stand a single solitary chance of growing up to be ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’.  Every single time I was attacked in some way, which happened every single day – often multiple times a day – for the 18 long years my mad mean mother had complete and total access to me – I did the only thing I knew how to do.  I did the only thing that even now looking backwards from age 60 that was possible – not only during those 18 years but every single second since then:  I moved forward in time the best and the ‘goodest’ way that I possibly could.

I am feeling some aftermath feelings to the reply I just made to today’s comment to the above post.  It is as if right now I hear my own voice echoing along the corridors of every second I have been alive.  “You are a good person, Linda.  You have always been a good person.  You have always done the best you can do.  And AS A CHILD – you WERE A GOOD PERSON THEN.”  I was a good child.

I was EAGER to be good.  This eagerness, I see now, did not come from wishing to avoid the scourge of Mother’s wrath at me.  She was insane.  She was psychotically and viciously MAD when it came to me.  There was NEVER any way I could anticipate what would make her ‘go off’ at me.

Therefore I was left with that only option – which is a combined effort, really:  I moved forward in time the best way that I could and that way was ALWAYS a good way.

Nobody ever affirmed that to me as a child when it mattered most.  Sure, adults seem quite willing to remind other adults that they are ‘good’ people and that they ‘should’ love their self.

I was thinking of that recently.  If someone told someone else in a very self-assured (I am right absolutely) way to go into their house to search it for the valuable diamond that lies inside — where do we get to say back, “You might have such a diamond but I have NEVER had such a diamond.  And furthermore, I will no longer believe your reality as my own.  When I say I have no diamond anywhere in my house – I mean that exactly!  Now, leave me alone about this diamond thing!”

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What diamond thing?

This diamond to me is this one:  “I love myself.”

No.  I do not have that diamond.  Nothing in my infancy and childhood ever happened to me that would have given me this diamond of self love.

I – again at age 60 – am only now reaching a point where I am beginning to know this.  I don’t believe self love, this diamond that others evidently take so for granted – that because they own one everyone else does and can — is GIVEN to us by the people who we were born to – the people who were supposed to love and care for us, keep us safe and secure, help us find our inner self love (the real kind!) from the moment we were born.

THEN and only then could we have carried this diamond with us all of the rest of our lives.  THEN – as ‘normal’ and ‘ordinary’ people can, we would benefit and appreciate in gratitude the reminder from these same people that at those times the diamond is forgotten or lost that it can be found again.

I no longer believe this diamond ever existed for me.  I did not lose it!  My diamond of the POTENTIAL for self love was stolen from me primarily by my mother – with lots of assistance (enabling and complicity) by my father.  All of society around our family stole my diamond as well by not noticing or caring about the suffering going on in my family of origin – especially to me.

(This removal was permanent for this lifetime.   I further believe that self love is directly connected to degrees of safe and secure attachment ‘circuitry’ that is built into our physiology during critical windows of early growth and development that cannot be later changed in anything other than peripheral ‘non-primary’ ways.)

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I can act-as-if I have a diamond of self love available to me.  But I will no longer run around anywhere looking for what I know does not really exist in my life.  I can work to learn what it might be like to have such a precious diamond of self love, but the best I think I can do is to try to KNOW myself and to LIKE and appreciate myself, and to attempt to treat myself as kindly as I ordinarily try to treat other people.

But I DID NOT get to grow my own self love diamond.  Therefore it is a silly waste of time to run around looking for it at this point in my lifetime.  My self love – in my belief system – has always been held by God.  I will be given it back when I reach ‘the other side’.  Meanwhile – I want to know my own TRUTH!!

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Anyway – this again is a post that I don’t expect ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ people to comprehend.  I am increasingly liking this fact – actually!  We survivors do have our own reality!  We really DO!!!!

Survivors’ lives are not better or worse than ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ — but our life is very very different!!  How could this not be true given what we have experienced?  Giving myself permission to learn about the ways my life is different because I am different is absolutely empowering to me!!

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Of course I normally delight in waking to head out into my garden to tackle a project for the day – BUT there is a limit!  As I mentioned in my post yesterday there is one area of my garden I was content on leaving the way it is – until months ago my neighbor on the west tied her large Bull Mastiff up by her front door so she has no choice but to make her ugly, stinking messes right by the fence.  I see this every time I exist my back door on this narrow side of my house/garden:

It gets much worse than this as time goes on.  Often it builds up for months before one of the grown children clean it up – which seems to be happening less and less often.  There is NOTHING physically wrong with this neighbor woman that she can’t clean this up herself!  I imagine her kids must be disgusted and sick of the part they have been playing in this crappy dysfunction!

This woman walks directly past this crap every time she goes in or out of her house – and does not care.  I am not about to try to have a civilized conversation with her to try to ‘manipulate’ her into doing what I want – CLEAN THIS UP AND KEEP IT CLEAN!!!

Nope, I am stuck dealing with this myself on my side of the fence.  This is NOT a project to delight me!  Work, much work, expense — time I would much rather spend on other more friendly projects —

AND YET

I am so reminded of survivors of infant and child neglect and abuse.  We had the CRAP from our abusers dumped onto us from the time we were so little NONE of it belonged to us.

But who is going to FIX the horrible rotten stinky mess?

WE ARE if anything is going to be improved at all.  And this includes building our own boundary fences in the present when we need to between our own beautiful life and the toxic dramas that belong to others.  It also includes detecting and repairing-healing the messes inside of our own self the best that we can that are directly in consequence to the evil treatments we received during our most vulnerable developmental years of infancy and childhood.

So – I will try to keep my attitude positive as I tackle this stupidly necessary job.  The hotter it gets outside the stinkier that ugly mess becomes!  The more it rains now this time of year the more the crap steams when the sun comes out.  There will be no time for the poopdy-doo to petrify in the heat – it just plain is NOT going to go away!

Yes, I feel angry and disgusted at my neighbor!  But I will not change her!

I have a rediculous waste-of-time-and-money job to do and I best get to it.

No complaining in the world, no pointing fingers, no amount of negative emotion, resentment, wishful thinking is going to block out this ugliness.

For as beautiful as the entire rest of my large yard is becoming as I transform it into garden – this sight of CRAP is what first greets me outside my own door 20 feet away.  Trying to find a solution is up to me.

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That’s the American-Mexican border fence behind the adobe chicken coop – the adobe pathways control weeds, divert water, create and define garden spaces and ELIMINATE the Bermuda grass I despise

More front garden….

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