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While I was traveling I found and read The Origin Of Humankind by Richard Leakey.  Since the 1994 publication of this book even more ancient human-species bones have been discovered.  I find such information fascinating.

But what’s on my mind this morning – in regard to writing out my abusive mother’s story and in thinking about my own – is that anthropologists can determine from studying a skull of any mammal the age adult teeth erupt.  Given this information they can determine how long that species was SUPPOSED to remain safely within its mother’s womb before it was born (as well as its expected lifespan).

Humans?  We are SUPPOSED to remain unborn until we reach the age of 21 months.

Obviously due to the massive size of our brains and skulls this age range for absolute safety cannot be met.  But this does affirm how fundamentally critical the experiences of our first BORN 12 months of life are to our entire development.  These are the ‘attachment formation’ months — secure vs. insecure.

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As I consider publishing Mother’s writings, as I try my best to form a ‘coherent life story narrative’ of her story, I think today about what Mother was given once she was born.  I KNOW she did not get what she needed, and in fact no doubt (to me) suffered from neglect in massive ways – if not also from direct abusive handling and treatment (as Mother ended up also doing to me).

Birth and earliest caregiving interactions directly communicate to a rapidly developing infant’s body-brain what the conditions of the ‘world’ it is being formed to live within for the rest of its life actually are.  Of course the womb experience also directly communicates this information to a fetus, as well.

Because we are actually born 12 months too early, it is the care we are given by those within our environment that determine — in fact — the bulk of what happens to us the rest of our life.

Those of us who were NOT taken care of will NEVER have a body-brain that REALLY knows what ‘taking care of self’ means.  (This topic has been mentioned in recent blog comments.)

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This connects to what is described as a trajectory of development directed by and for either a ‘malevolent’ or a ‘benevolent’ future by an infant-child’s quality of early attachment, as outlined here:

+Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

*Notes on Teicher

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If I do title the first half of the book about my very mentally ill and severely abusive mother “Born in Shadow,” I understand that I would on the parallel need to title my own early story “Born in Complete Darkness.”

I will give myself permission to mention something here that cannot but fundamentally and most deeply disturb me.  I HATED the intrusion (contamination?) of my own reality into my experience with my perfect grandson.  While I visited my family up north I could not separate the experience of holding my beautiful, most precious new grandson who was 6 weeks old at my arrival and 9 weeks old  at my leaving, from what I know about myself and about my mother.

In my case Mother was already fully within the terrible psychosis that was created in her very sick mind with my birthing, as I have certainly mentioned before.

She absolutely, unequivocally and permanently believed that the devil sent me to kill her while I was being born, that I was not human.  Because we both survived my breech (and evidently very difficult) labor process, she then believed that I was the devil’s child sent “as a curse” upon her life.

Blackness.

Mother, however, was born into an extremely troubled family and into very destructive conditions – but without an accompanying most destructive psychosis to embrace and envelop her from birth.

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Tying these facts in my thoughts to how conditions of the world at birth (and of course before) as reflected by the quality of the attachment caregiving interactions given to an infant ARE about how ‘the self’ is taken care of.  These patterns FROM BIRTH directly become the underlying architecture in our body-brain of how we will later operate to take care of our self.

When I describe how Mother’s abuse of me had a purpose, I can state directly that EVERYTHING my mother thought, felt, understood, believed and DID to me was about how she ‘TOOK CARE OF’ herself.

She HAD no other options.  This is ultimately what true madness is about.

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Telling my abusive Mother’s story, at least what I understand of it and what part of Mother’s story came to me in the collection of her papers after her death, does seem to me at this moment to be an incredibly gutsy thing to do.  At the same time I also feel relief that I doubt the risk to me of having my own full-blown body memories appear out of nowhere to swallow me up — as I know they can do when I work on writing my own story as her victim — does not exist when I ‘just’ work on publishing HER story.

I have the advantage of being clear about a severe disadvantage that I personally have.  All research, including the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) indicates that because I am the survivor of severe infant and childhood abuse, my life expectancy has been greatly shortened.  I do not have any luxury to believe that the writing and publication of the books I hope to write can be postponed.  If it takes all I have left to offer to this world to accomplish this task, I am prepared to spend it.

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I anticipate that in ebook format the two books I intend to epublish before next spring will most likely be titled:

The Demise of Mildred:  A Profile of My Severely Abusive Mother

Book One:  Born In Shadow

Book Two:  Her Alaskan Dream

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In hard copy print these books would be massive.  I will know more about how they might need to be divided into ‘parts’ after their ebook format has been completed.

I currently lack the faith in myself that I can accomplish this task to fruition without help.  But if no help appears to me, I will have to do this all myself — a process that I cannot imagine!!

It is most strange for me to contemplate at this moment the possibility that what may be the destiny of my writing has NEVER been about me writing my own story.  Maybe this is a stance I will need to remain in as I work thoroughly with Mother’s writings so that I can do all possible justice to the power these books will have to help others who live with troubles caused by early abuse.

These books are about a woman who DID grow up to become a monster abuser.  My story is of a woman who DID NOT grow up to be an abuser.  The trajectory of my life took a direction opposite to my mother’s.  At this point it feels most important to me to describe what happened to make an abuser than what happened not to make one.

I am not an objective reader of my mother’s story.  I process everything my mother wrote going back to her childhood stories and everything I know of the stories she told of her childhood through the filter of being the survivor of her horrendous insane abuse.

Yet I KNOW her abuse of me was not random.  It had a desperate purpose, and because I have so thoroughly considered my own story I now know exactly what that purpose was.  My guess is that it is this purpose that will tie Mother’s story and mine together most clearly.

In this way everything I know about Mother is a part of my story.

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