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After I returned home from my travels north to see my family I hit a definite slump after learning the neighbors’ dogs had jumped over the yard fence, crashed through the roof of my chickens’ pen and slaughtered most of them.  Slowly, gradually, I am pulling my inner and my outer resources together to see what I can do to make absolutely certain no unwanted critter can ever again get into my animal yard.

I still do want to have a miniature goat or two, or possibly one big retired sweet nanny.  My 12 baby chicks are very soon outgrowing their box in my bathroom.  What if I decide I’d like to have a rabbit?  A pheasant or two?

What a JOB it is trying to remodel my original lovely goat pen area so I can keep ALL dogs, ALL cats, and ALL sparrows out of this area (sparrows consume massive amounts of expensive chicken feed!)

A HUGE job, a great investment of money and time.  I was too naive, I realize now, as I finished what I thought was a corral complete with small barn and shade shelter.  Now that I am in the middle of improving safety — I see how terribly far off in my assumption that what I had made last spring was ‘good enough’.

Not by a wicked long shot!

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And of course I am always thinking of the upcoming books to be published next year as I work outside.  I want pain to stop.  I want infant and child abuse to stop.  I want the world to be NICE!  But – if this teensy experience I am having in my own yard is any indication, it will take a LOT of work to make the world safe for babies and children!  A HUGE investment of capitol and human energy input!

Safety doesn’t seem to be automatic.  Safety is not a given in this world, no matter how ‘modern’ we might like to pretend we are in our society.  What, exactly, will it take to create a world safe for little people so that they can get their needs met – to grow up happy and healthy in every single way?

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I remain disappointed that I didn’t know last spring what it would actually take to do this job of mine right.  Remodeling is very unpleasant business as far as I can tell.  Having done this job right in the first place would have been such a better deal!

But I didn’t do my job right.  I still want little animal-people in my life.  I do not want them exposed to ANY chance of being harmed.  That is my responsibility once I choose to bring them into my life.  Nothing like raising children, of course — but safety and a life free from harm is just that!

Last spring I enjoyed every single moment of making the corrals and fences, barn, shade shelters.  I was making a work of art, which it was.  Which it is.  But this work of art is an absolute ZERO at accomplishing what it needs to!

Now I am at the stage of repair – a nightmarish job in my opinion – but one I choose to complete.  Having the little animals in my life is worth it to me.  And today I realized a little bit more about why this is so.

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I cannot return to the wilderness of my Alaskan childhood.  I am HOMESICK for the wilderness, my first true love, my only attachment, my friend.  Having small animals (I don’t have land or finances for big ones) allows me to have a tiny bit of ‘the wilderness’ near me.

So tomorrow – back into the hot dusty yard I go like a miner after hopes in the future, a treasure of small life — as I re-create this place of safety.

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Some part of myself is assuring me that I will not be able to publish books that contain my TRUTH without having to find – for the first time in my entire life — what my rage feels like.  This involves me becoming absolutely clear about WHO/WHAT am I REALLY ANGRY at?

Last week I thought for awhile that the beginning of my preface on this upcoming book to be published would be about the day around the 4th of July, 1977 that my baby sister (she was 21, I was 25) rode a bus from Edmonton, Alberta to my home in northern Minnesota (2 weeks before her delivery date for her firstborn).  I was going to mention at the start that when she said to me, “If you are not very, very angry at Mother for the things she did to you when you were growing up there is something REALLY REALLY wrong with you!” – I had absolutely no reaction.

I did not respond to her — etc — but I was most certainly NOT angry with Mother – so therefore I guessed there indeed MUST be something wrong with me.

During all the years of therapy, recovery, research, etc etc etc that I have gone through since that day – I have NEVER felt angry at Mother.

That’s all part of my story – whereas TODAY – and yesterday – and the day before that I am feeling the rising of my rage as if it were a Tsunami coming.

I HATE RAGE – but so what.  In the interest of finally finding my own truth – so I can get this business done of publishing books – I am saying, “BRING IT ON!!”

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As of TODAY – I am quite singularly ENRAGED at the entire HUMAN RACE – well, at least those of my culture – which are the only ones I have ever been in interaction with.

Yesterday – as this rage-finding mission moves forward – I realized that because no human being ever took an interest in me or in my well-being during the first 18 years of my life in hell — NO WONDER I loved the Alaskan wilderness.

Humans were the LAST thing I needed.  My life taught me that!

Humans are the LAST thing the wilderness needs.

No wonder the wilderness and I were such friends, had so much in common, shared implicit understanding of what LIFE was really about.

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Humans.  Pitiful social connection seeking pandering pitiful (did I mention that?) – selfish persuadable useless parasites upon the earth?

What do I know?

But it is illogical to me that I will continue to track the scent of my rage without entering parts of my being that have NOTHING good to say about humans.

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People broke my mother:

On her emotions –

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Please note:  I am not making any kind of blanket statement about people who suffer with Borderline Personality Disorder.  Mother’s illness was extremely severe!  She was, I believe, quite a rare case on the far, far end of a continuum of how BPD affects people.  It took a lot of people making very big mistakes, people harming her most greatly, to make her this sick.

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I need to get outside today to work on vicious-dog-proofing my chicken pen – but before I do I am going to post here a series of short emails I wrote today to a friend and fellow collaborator on researching the truth about what early insecure and unsafe attachment interactions do to change our early physiological development – and hence our body-brain’s development – and our lives.

I am not going to edit these or formalize these thoughts of mine on the subject of ‘psychology’ – I don’t have the time.  Yet I have never written on this top before – so here are this morning’s notes posted in the order the emails were sent off:

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(talking about my take on ‘psychology’)

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As far as I know Berkeley developed the adult attachment assessment tool, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).  The AAI remains to this day ‘held hostage’ in the Ivory Tower and has never been worked on in order to come up with a lay-friendly tool that can be used by all of us to begin to understand our own degrees of safe and secure versus unsafe and insecure attachment.

Just as our entire underlying attachment physiology determines how our body-brain develops in the first place, it seems that an accurate assessment of our attachment patterns is the very first place we have to start in understanding our self in our life.

Having this very accurate and very specific information is essential to us defining the truth about everything we know about being a human being.

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My brain gets me up with streams of thoughts running in all directions about these books I intend to publish.  I have spent the better part of the past 72 hours in conversation with friends and with family about the parameters of this project.

This morning my ‘first thoughts’ centered on this:  When people say so blithely, “The greatest journeys always begin with the first step,” – well – in my world of thought this statement is NOT telling me the most critically important point.

I can’t begin until I first determine exactly where I am and exactly where I want to go!!

In my world, that’s a HUGE step all by itself!!

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My daughter used two words last evening in our conversation about ‘the project’ that have great significance to me.  She explained that it is her hope that whatever words of my own that I end up placing within the books dedicated to allowing my very sick, abusive mother to speak in HER own words — come from a place in my being that completely describes to my great grandchildren what this entire epic is about.

The epic includes all I know of my great grandmother, my grandmother, my mother (and my father), myself — and THEN there are my three children, my two grandsons — AND THEN there’s the Seventh Generation, the children that these precious little boys might choose to have of their own.

My daughter included these two words:  FAMILY LEGACY.

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OK.  Right here I began to detect a very subtle shift beginning as I turn, turn, turn, turn in my heart, my mind, around in the direction that begins to more closely let me know where I am beginning this project, the direction I intend to go, and what I intend/hope to accomplish in this work.

Family Legacy.

Who wants to tell of a family legacy that includes mental illness and extreme abuse?

Any kind of abuse?

What if I forget — simply erase entirely from my own mind as if I never heard this thought to begin with — that there is any possible stigma attached to mental illness?  What about trauma of neglect and abuse in families?

OK.  Progress.

That allows me, then, to unfold a saga that is a slice of stories of being alive as humans that has been – and is — played out in my family.  These patterns are played out in MOST families if we are all honest – and with the stresses of modern life in our nation (and in consequence to the national choices we are making) — the patterns of continued stress to mothers, fathers, infants and children is increasing by the day.

The legacy.  I did not abuse my own children, but neither were they exempt from suffering ‘the spill over’ of the horrors that happened to me.  All of this belongs in the family story – and will not be detailed here.

The point my daughter is making is that it is in the lives of HER SONS that the great difficulties in the lives of those from whom she is descended have been lessened to the degree that they barely exist at all.  By the time HER grandchildren are born, my great grandchildren, the hope is that the intergenerational transmission of unresolved trauma will NOT EXIST AT ALL.

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There is then one more extremely important step to make in my thinking – and my daughter and her husband understand this:  Anyone who is raised from conception forward with safe and secure attachment in their lives will NOT suffer from the kinds of devastating lifelong difficulties that those who do not have safe and secure early attachment are nearly guaranteed to have.

In order to create generations of truly safe and secure attachment humans we MUST each be committed to the well-being of everyone else.  There is no US AND THEM.  There are no stigmas.  There is no condemnation heaved by the ‘lucky ones’ upon those who have not been ‘so lucky’.

In the healthy generations there will be built into them from conception the fullest knowledge that humanity is in this business of being alive ALL TOGETHER.  Each and every person is obliged to care about everyone else and to be committed to doing the job of making sure avoidable PAIN caused by humans hurting one another STOPS.

(This process will always include an open, honest, fair, truthful look at all we can find in ourselves and in our family legacy of all that went right along with all that went wrong.)

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Which brings me to the turning-around thinking about pain I have been doing in recent hours.

I found myself saying to someone in conversation, “The point of my healing is that I be able to remove the pain I experienced within any abuse experience from the experience itself.”

Well.  What on earth did I mean by this?

Pain.  The experience of pain (Google search “stop the storm Substance P”) belongs to LIFE itself.  It is not exclusive to humans, it is not exclusive to individuals.

The massive ‘pool of pain’ in which I would say over 90% of my reality resides within is unavailable to me because I consider it unwise and unsafe for me to ‘go in there’ after certain pieces of information I know.

I found myself saying, “I cannot do this work alone.”

OK.  How about doing the work NOT ALONE?

Not alone must mean to me that I take what I know of my own pain — and then of the pain of my mother — and then of the pain of anyone else I can think of — and then realize that ALL THAT PAIN belongs to ALL OF US as humans.

THEN?

My next series of thoughts I recognize very quickly as I turn, turn, turn to find my place of beginning for this book publishing journey crystallized in this statement I make to myself:  “I WANT THE PAIN TO STOP!”

NOT just my pain, not just the pain of my mother…..  Of course we cannot go backwards in time and change the beginning of life for those who have already suffered from their conception forward — suffered unnecessarily from hurt that could have been prevented and avoided.

No.  I want ALL PAIN TO STOP for everyone — and most importantly I want it to stop NOW!!  Is there anything I can contribute in any small way toward making this happen?

Stop all human caused pain to everyone on the planet NOW??

Well, I admit I list to the naive side.  I DO believe that humanity can do ANYTHING WE WANT TO!!  ANY TIME WE WANT TO!

So if we do not protect all infants and children from the start of their life to guarantee that their needs be met in safe and secure attachment relationship to the world they are born into — it’s because we don’t want to.

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Here I begin to glimpse the far edges of the threshold I intend to stand on one side of – and then cross – as I most seriously and effectively begin my book writing work.

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I feel so sad today.  I do not want these tears —

TOLERATE

1: to endure or resist the action of (as a drug or food) without serious side effects or discomfort : exhibit physiological tolerance for

Origin of TOLERATE

Latin toleratus, past participle of tolerare to endure, put up with; akin to Old English tholian to bear, Latin tollere to lift up, latus carried (suppletive past participle of ferre), Greek tlēnai to bear

First Known Use: 1524

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Am I an Icarus, ignoring even my own warnings and instructions, flying for the thrill of it, too close to the sun, melting my own wings, falling to drown in the sea?

No.  There is no thrill of flying for me.  There is no flying.  There is no sun.  There is pain, intolerable pain.  There is danger.  I could drown in my pain.

The warnings?  The instructions I have discovered for myself?

“Leave you pain alone.  Do not approach the shores of your pain.  Do not go near it.  Do not do anything that would bring you close to where it lies at the core, at the center, in your body, in your being, where this pain resides.

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What am I doing?

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I am trying to, actually both hoping and intending to, find a way to tell my own truth – in my words – that belong within the confines of these books I will publish that contain the words of my abusive Borderline Personality Disorder mother as she wrote them in her lifetime and as I have organized and transcribed them.

My own truth.  My own TRUTH IS PAIN.  I tolerate being alive in my body in this lifetime because I was graced with an ability to endure being alive IN SPITE of my pain.

How close can I get to the level of my own truth and not drown in my own pain and sadness?

I am pushing toward my own answer to this question.

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My instructions to myself (and therefore to others) is to always honor the existence of our pain at the same time we stay away from it.  The only time – THE ONLY TIME – I would advocate to others or to self a closer approach to our pain is if it can lead to our healing – and in my case, to the possible offering of something useful that can help others to heal, to increase their level of well-being in their lifetime.

But ALWAYS I would say, “Don’t you DARE go near this pain ALONE!”

Do not dare……

It is not safe…..

I am too close…..

How can I write what I need to, wish to, want to, intend to say?

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I have obviously already gone too far in this project.  I didn’t know this until I evidently GOT THERE!  Here’s the sadness.  Here I am in this enveloping could of sadness that moves out in front of me, above me, below me, surrounds me on all sides.

Here I am feeling this sadness that is a part of my larger body, my body that extends in all directions out from my skin.

I will not even mention what must be going on INSIDE of me that at this moment I can block from my awareness – because I STOPPED!  Right here!  I STOP!

I stop until I can find someone to help me because I cannot do what I need to do ALONE.  (I have made the contact with the person I requested to help me and am awaiting a certain reply.)

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Some of us were born into pain as we were born into this world.  We have never really known anything else.

I am one of those people.  My mother was one of those people.  (My guess is that my father was one of these people, as well.)

The books I will publish are entirely about what this pain is, where it came from, and what being born into this pain did – in the first books – to my mother – and in the next books – what she, in her pain, did to me.

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Our body finds ways in its earliest development to continue to remain alive IN SPITE OF this pain.

The only way Mother remained alive was because her body took a detour into severe mental illness that effectively blocked from her awareness that this pain existed at all.

I remain alive even though I know perfectly well that my pain exists.  I continue to live as effectively as I do BY LEAVING MY PAIN ALONE!  My pain has never – yet – completely overwhelmed me past by ability to find other ways to tolerate it that do not break my mind.

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The weight of my pain as I can feel it right now – as I have ALONE approached it too closely, asking something of myself I cannot do ALONE, allowing myself to FIND where my limit of tolerance actually is – the weight of my pain requires that I back away from it NOW – in the safest way that I can.

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This backing away means that I separate myself now from the reality of my own truth.  I will do this in very practical ways.  I will drink lots of water, take all of my vitamins, eat a huge chunk of watermelon after I drink milk with protein powder mixed in.

I will put on my work clothes and go out into the life-giving fresh air and sunshine.  I will begin to take the lumber and horse fencing supplies out of the back end of my old ’78 el Camino and begin to build reinforcement to my little goat pen I made in my yard last spring.

I will then go find some friends to visit for awhile until I am feeling better.  When I come home I will begin my different kind of work.

I need to make a home for the rapidly growing 12 golden chicks living in a box full of straw in my bathroom.  I found and bought these replacements for the hens my neighbors’ dogs slaughtered while I was up north visiting my family.  I intend to find a way to both have what I need – my little ‘service’ animals that grant peace to me when I need it most – and to keep them absolutely safe from predators who wish to tear them apart.

I will wait for reply from the person I have asked to help me move further in my writing by standing with me in full awareness of the essential pain we both carry.

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There IS PAIN that is not tolerable.  Yes, those of us still living and enduring in spite of our intolerable pain pay a great price to do so.  It is only for the greatest personal cause that I can think of that I am working to find a way to get closer to mine.  But for today these books will have to remain vaulted away from me and me from them.

For today I will go back to leaving my pain ALONE.

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As I work with Mother’s words – I think about the early study I did of the writings of a survivor of Chinese communist mind control in prison around 1953 – My mother was an expert as a result of her mental illness (most likely Borderline Personality Disorder) – in applying these techniques (also used by cults) to create her reality to to manipulate what others – especially my father – knew about her abuse of me.

Mother’s distortions ARE her letters!!!  Mother formed my entire mind from birth with her twisted reality being my reality.  Mother created an ‘abuse litany’ that she repeated in singsong fashion with the rhythm of her extended beatings on my body – the litany was a list of all the ‘crimes’ I had committed since I ‘tried to kill her’ while I was being born – This does at times seem like more than I can comprehend – or write about.

Even thinking about this ‘stuff’ is hard for me – and extremely intense!

This all fits together with this:

+DID MY MOTHER SUFFER FROM BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)? (this is eerie)

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Brainwashing and Mind Control

From pHinnWeb –

http://www.phinnweb.org/neuro/brainwash/

1) HYPNOSIS – Inducing a high state of suggestibility, often thinly disguised as relaxation or meditation.

a. Repetitive Music (most likely with a beat close to the human heart 45 to 72 beats per minute). Most likely used during “study sessions” as the teacher will say the music helps you relax and concentrate better!

b. Voice Roll — A “voice roll” is a patterned, paced style used by hypnotists when inducing a trance. It is also used by many lawyers, several of whom are highly trained hypnotists, when they desire to entrench a point firmly in the minds of the jurors. A voice roll can sound as if the speaker were talking to the beat of a metronome or it may sound as though he were emphasizing every word in a monotonous, patterned style. The words will usually be delivered at the rate of 45 to 60 beats per minute, maximizing the hypnotic effect.

c. Room “Feel” – The way a room feels is essential to hypnotizing unknowing subjects. It needs special lighting, florescent lights are best because they aren’t too dim, but aren’t too harsh. Also, Room Temp helps a bit, usually a little cooler than normal room temperature. You need to have the unknowing subjects very relaxed, perhaps even close to falling asleep.

2) PEER GROUP PRESSURE – Suppressing doubt and resistance to new ideas by exploiting the need to belong.

3) “LOVE BOMBING” – Creating a sense of family through physical touch, thought & feeling sharing and emotional bonding.

4) REJECTION OF OLD VALUES – Accelerating acceptance of new lifestyle by constantly denouncing former beliefs and values.

5) CONFUSING DOCTRINE – Encouraging blind acceptance and rejection of logic through complex lectures on an incomprehensible doctrine.

6) METACOMMUNICATION – Implanting subliminal messages by stressing certain key words or phrases in long, confusing lectures.

7) REMOVAL OF PRIVACY – Achieving loss of ability to evaluate logically by preventing private contemplation.

8) DISINHIBITION – Encouraging child-like obedience by orchestrating child-like behaviour

9) UNCOMPROMISING RULES – Inducing regression and disorientation by soliciting agreement to seemingly simple rules which regulate mealtimes, bathroom breaks and use of medications.

10) VERBAL ABUSE – Desensitizing through bombardment with foul and abusive language. (Physical abuse, such as torture, is the more extreme form of this.)

11) SLEEP DEPRIVATION AND FATIGUE – Creating disorientation and vulnerability by prolonging mental an physical activity and withholding adequate rest and sleep.

12) DRESS CODES – Removing individuality by demanding conformity to the group dress code.

13) CHANTING OR SINGING – Eliminating non-cult ideas through group repetition of mind-narrowing chants or phrases.

14) CONFESSION – Encouraging the destruction of individual ego through confession of personal weaknesses and innermost feelings of doubt.

15) FINANCIAL COMMITMENT – Achieving increased dependence on the group by ‘burning bridges’ to the past, through the donation of assets.

16) FINGER POINTING – Creating a false sense of righteousness by pointing to the shortcomings of the outside world.

17) ISOLATION – Inducing loss of reality by physical separation from family, friends, society and rational references.

18) CONTROLLED APPROVAL – Maintaining vulnerability and confusion by alternately rewarding and punishing similar actions.

19) CHANGE OF DIET – Creating disorientation and increased susceptibility to emotional arousal by depriving the nervous system of necessary nutrients through the use of special diets and/or fasting. Also applying drugs for these purposes fall in this category.

20) GAMES – Inducing dependence on the group by introducing games with obscure rules.

21) NO QUESTIONS – Accomplishing automatic acceptance of beliefs by discouraging questions.

22) GUILT – Reinforcing the need for ‘salvation’ by exaggerating the sins of the former lifestyles.

23) FEAR – Maintaining loyalty and obedience to the group by threatening soul, life or limb for the slightest ‘negative’ thought, word or deed.

Three Principles of Re-Education

1) REPETITION – Going through the same subject over and over again until it is known by heart.

2) ACTIVITY PEDAGOGICS – The subjects are never left alone nor give any private time of their own, they are always in activity.

3) CRITICISM AND SELF-CRITICISM – The subjects are supposed to feel uncertain; under the constant threat of being humiliated and despised.

In the Korean War the “criticism and self-criticism” sessions held for the American prisoners of war by the Chinese clearly had deeper effects than the POWs could initially comprehend, and when they found out, it was too late. In the beginning many prisoners found this whole procedure just childish, and were inclined to take it merely as something of a joke, but without them being able to realize it, the situation of being subjected constantly to the criticism of one’s comrades became humiliating.

That a grown-up person should publicly discuss one’s habits or inclinations — some of them of very private nature — confess one’s faults, receive strong criticism for insignificant misdemeanours, will not be indeed in the course of time anything to be considered childish or playful: it simply will be experienced as insulting. This continuing feeling of humiliation became crucial in the gradual psychological break-up of the prisoners’ personalities. Furthermore, this ongoing process of “criticism and self-criticism” was bound to cause mistrust for one’s own comrades: it was the tactics of “divide and conquer” as the ancient Romans would have called it. (“Criticism and self-criticism” were also widely applied during China’s “Cultural Revolution”starting in 1966, as a method of “re-education”.)

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I am faced as a writer with the complex task of making a point that our society is not evidently ready to understand.  I am faced within myself with my own inability to clearly state in my own words even what the point I wish to make actually is!

I found a clue last night.  Any blog readers that have a Netflix account can either watch this movie via streaming or ask for the disc.

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The New York Times movie review of

Buck (2011)

NYT Critics’ Pick

One Man Who Knows the Way of the Horse

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: June 16, 2011

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What I am asking for is a quantum shift in awareness about how we look at ‘difficult’ childhoods.

This movie discusses the terrible, brutal abuse that Buck and his brother suffered at the hands of their alcoholic father.

The MAIN POINT, the most CRITICALLY IMPORTANT point of this entire story is so ignored it hardly exists at all.

It is what is LEFT OUT of all such child abuse stories that is most important!

There is only very brief passing mention of the boys’ mother being a very kind and loving woman before she died an early death.  The boys were left with their terribly abusive father until the abuse was recognized.  Buck, with his brother, were removed from the home and placed in fantastic foster care when Buck was 12.

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For all the discussion of the abuse in this movie NOBODY mentions what matters most!  The boys’ mother was without doubt able to form safe and secure early attachment with her sons, thus allowing them to form a body-brain that was NOT altered by trauma in its development.

With their safe and secure attachment-created body-brain these boys were THEN able to successfully survive all the horrors their father created through his brutal abuse in their childhood.

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As a society — and as survivors of early abuse — we HAVE to understand that it is exactly where we are NOT willing – or able, evidently — to look that the ENTIRE solution to the mysteries of child abuse lie!

Had these boys NOT had this quality attachment with a loving mother NOTHING about this story of BUCK would have happened.  I do not believe this movie would have been made!

As the developmental neuroscientists explain — all experiences that happen after the first 33 months of life (conception to age 2) happen in direct consequence to the quality of attachment (safe and secure or not) with the MOTHER.  The experts talk of a CASCADE of developmental changes that happen when early attachment fails.

This CASCADE, in my opinion, goes BOTH ways!

In a benevolent safe and secure early attachment world all physiological development during these most critical formative months goes ONE WAY.  In the opposite case within a failed attachment universe of a malevolent world the signals communicated to the developing little body-brain send this CASCADE in the opposite direction.  By Trauma Altered Development (TAD) channels that nature has provided us — so that we can form our body-brain to MATCH the world we are growing in to — we adapt to the world nature tells us we will live in for the rest of our lives.

BUCK did NOT get a TAD body – no matter how horrible the abuse he and his brother suffered from their father.

THIS IS THE EXACT POINT WHERE OUR LIFE-STORY CHANGES!!!

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To the credit of BUCK and the producers of this movie they include a segment of story — a horrifyingly real segment — in which a young horse COULD NOT BE SAVED.  The glorious golden stallion colt left the scene in the movie (and in life) to be euthanized.

The points I am making about human development are clear in the microcosm of this segment of the movie.  This story is tragic, and was created in its beginning by a complete deprivation of caregiving of all kinds to this horse.

There is a scene where BUCK is laying into the woman who owns this horse about — essentially — her terrible neglect of the animal and the other 17 stallions she had on her property.  The woman is crying – and there’s no doubt in my being that she was a TAD survivor herself.

But what struck me most powerfully is that as I watched the actions of the stallion in the barn behind Buck the words that appeared in my mind were these:  “That horse has lost its horseness.”

In exactly the next frame after these words hit me Buck makes his statement that this animal had turned into the closest thing to a PREDATOR one can find in the horse world!!  Horses are prey animals, as humans are also essentially prey animals.

That horse, in my mind, was exactly showing what had happened to my mother.  Just as this horse had lost its ‘horseness’ (and I knew before the story ended that there was no way anyone was going to help this horse return to its ‘horseness’), my mother lost her HUMANITY!  There is no way anyone, including Mother, could have changed the physiology of her body, including her mental illness, to truly restore her humanness to her as long as she lived in that same TAD body.

There is a very fine line, then, between what Dr. Teicher says about TAD creating an evolutionarily altered body-brain — and the far hopeless extremes that TAD can lead to.  Both this horse and my mother had been pushed TOO FAR — and this permanently broke them both.

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My problem, it feels to me, comes from the fact that it seems NOBODY cares about the TRUTH!!!  We are all toddling down the WRONG ROAD together when it comes to making sense of how some people manage to overcome the consequences of severe abuse in childhood to have a successful life while others do not.

The absolute FIRST PLACE we need to look as we untangle our own life story of neglect, abuse and trauma in our early years is to go ALL the way back to our beginnings to discover the best we can what happened to us in the most important 33 months of our life.

We can see this in the story of the golden horse.

We can see this in Buck’s story.

If we LOOK!

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Please watch this movie with my points in mind!!!!!  If I were teaching a college class on this subject, watching this movie would be a required assignment.

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We HAVE to look in the direction of MOTHERS if we are going to solve the worst problems that early trauma causes people – and our society.  If we can’t bring ourselves to do this — we will NEVER know the answers to the questions we ask about what troubles people most.

NEVER!

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I might as well begin this post by asking a question for which nobody knows the answer.  “What does a body know?”  I experience so much of my life IN MY BODY in such troublesome ways – or at least in ways that I cannot say I like.  Moment to moment I battle to obtain any tiny slice of my life that I can claim as MY OWN separate from what my body seems screamingly to tell me.

I am emerging from a state of exhaustion from the stressors of my travels, from my return, from a nasty bug I am still not over yet that required antibiotics.  As strength and stamina begin to return to my body I am realizing that it was ONLY in those worst days of being sick (something that used to happen to me so seldom) that what I call my ‘anxiety’ did not seem to be physically present in my awareness.

Last evening before sunset my anxiety came back to me (darn it!).  It began when I received a second telephone call on my phone while I was conversing with my daughter.  I hurried to catch this local call though I had no idea who would be on the other end.  In one fell swoop a past era of my life was brought back to me – unexpectedly.

There was nothing identifiably threatening about the caller or the topic of the call.  An 82 year old gentleman who had asked me a year ago to send him some copies of the songs I had written wanted to apologize for his year of neglect in acknowledging them.  He explained the serious health troubles he’s been battling.  He talked a lot with his gentle, well-intentioned voice.

I have not touched my keyboard for months.  Yes, all events stacked against me as I began to work to learn how to play and read music did discourage me.  Why did anxiety arise at the mention of this era that I have moved past for the time being?

I do not know, but this call was immediately followed within moments by my discovering a growing pool of water in my front yard.  Nope, not a leak in my irrigation line.  Yep, a leak in my yard from the main waterline coming from the meter outside my fence.  Turn off the main waterline.  Inner panic sets in.  Why exactly?  Fear I am to be blamed and held accountable for something I did not do – with some unforeseen, unimagined impending consequences of ‘punishment’ I cannot imagine — only feel coming at me out of the great unknown?  Shades of my insanely abusive childhood…..

And then there are the computer troubles that continue to give me cause to worry as I move forward on these books I want to publish.

And then………

I am fortunate in my life that nothing impending or in the que for arrival seems to begin to meet the fears I am always prepared to welcome changes with.

But my body does not know anything about what my life is like NOW.  It was prepared in a malevolent world from the moment of my birth to suffer from hardships nobody should have to bear.  I can’t ‘logic’ my body NOT to feel what it feels.

At the same time as I await the return of the plumber man with his tools to fix this water leak I think about the INTENSITY of what my body feels. Am I misnaming as ‘anxiety’ what really is ‘intensity’?

The inability to smoothly handle environmental challenges – and the inability to regulate emotions in seamless ways — is what we get when our mother failed absolutely to provide a safe and secure attachment while these body-brain functions were being built into us (as us) at the start of our life.  Certainly INTENSITY — if nothing else — was the most likely outcome for me of suffering what I did from my birth.

I could not name at the beginning of my life the causes of my terror and pain.  The monster was THERE.  I was THERE.  There was that perpetual struggle between what my body needed to stay alive and how those needs were brutally met.

In the meantime I wonder about the popular phrasing of the distress response we call ‘flight’.  I want to withdraw right now – from the world.  But wait!  I AM home!  The trouble for me is that an unknown stranger must enter my seclusion to complete a job that must be done.

I want to disappear from the world – which I mostly effectively manage to do.  But I cannot disappear from my body that holds all this intensity — we are supposed to be partners in this venture called life, not enemies.

I live in a world that is as quiet, secluded and unshakable as I can manage to make it.  But life is change.  Change seems to EQUAL intensity in my body.  Will it help me to live with this intensity better if I name it for what it probably is — seems to be – rather than always naming it ‘anxiety’?

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A big part of this topic for me has to do with this serious beginning of my work to publish my insanely abusive mentally ill mother’s writings.  There is no way I can inoculate myself from feeling SOMETHING in my body as I work on this epic task.  I guess if the overall feeling that my body is going to alert me to in an ongoing way as I work is INTENSITY — far more than what would usually be the case — perhaps I can be grateful.

It could be a whole lot worse, a whole lot more uncomfortable, a whole lot more disturbing and distressing for me.

This intensity IS a body memory.  EVERYTHING about Mother’s interaction with me was intense first — and then painful, terrifying, whatever — next.

It may be that this intensity is the oldest feeling my body remembers.  The source feeling.  The foundational feeling.  The primary one from which all my other body feelings come from and connect back to.

Certainly my body is not going to ‘forget’ to tell me of this intensity as I plow the poisoned fields of my mother’s writings.  It is not going to let go of me as I work as hard as I can to let my mother’s lies stand exactly as she wrote them in these current books I am working on.

I did some writing this morning sitting outside with pen and spiral notebook that will probably find their way either into the preface, the introduction or my brief commentary section at the end of the book I am working on first.

I will not defend myself in these books, even if everything in my being tantrums now against me withholding my own truth from Mother’s books as I wait for the publication of my own.

No doubt I will become more familiar with this process as I move forward meaning that I will also become more comfortable in my body as I let Mother’s lies stand exactly as she wrote them.

My standing point is that every human being has the right to their own life no matter how they live it.  I am finally – tangibly – separating Mother’s reality from my own.  She could never do that.  I can.  I will.

I will learn about and from the intensity in my body that I cannot at this moment buffer myself from.  I will be as careful of myself as I can be.  I had no control over this dang water line ending its life in its own spot at its own time.  But the man who is here fixing it now is a very nice person.  This shall pass.  All will be OK.

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