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I can’t tell if I’m losing ground on my book writing project or not. I fear that I am. I fear I will give up completely.
The woman, Joe Anne, who knew Mildred from her August 1957 arrival in Alaska until her death in 2003 just called me and talked for 1 1/2 hours about her history with my psychotic abusive Borderline Personality Disorder mother. Joe Anne just finished reading book 4 of Mother’s writings to be published in the Mildred’s Mountain series, The Up Down Mountain Waltz. Joe Anne had a lot to say, but I am not sure today was the day I wanted to hear things like my father very nearly killed his wife twice after I left home. (I know the abuse done to me prevented Mother from turning on Father and then he on she until after I left home — one helluva burden for me — I was only a CHILD!)
This conversation coupled with how clear it became to me through my brother’s visit that he is so NOT PRESENT in any possible way with me in my writing work about our family leaves me at this moment having my memories of being SO ALONE with the abuse I suffered for 18 years while my siblings lived their entire different all-good life in Mother’s psychotic split world.
I felt so alone as a child because I WAS alone. I feel so alone now with this writing because I AM alone. Why should my siblings care? Why should they have cared then and why should they care now?
I have one of five siblings who can tolerate even thinking about Mother. She has told me she will talk/write something at some point down the road, but she is busy with her own life. At least her support helps me.
I was not prepared to have this reaction to spending last week with my brother. If I can’t get past how I feel right now what needs to be written next will never be written. I am OK with taking a break now — but I have no way of knowing if I am headed toward abandoning my work or toward finding a new place inside of myself to return to it. If I have lost my way I would say the timing of my brother’s visit was devastating to me.
If I become swallowed in the family denial my book writing is done for. I am dangerously close to giving up. I knew I needed at least one of the nine books in the editing queue to be finalized and epublished to help carry me forward in this awful work. My daughter is too busy to give any time to this project. This has been very, very difficult for me. I wait. Those books wait. And I have always known there is a line beyond which — if I cross it — I will NEVER finish these books.
Where is my commitment and determination? I feel as though I’ve been hit head on. I fear I have crashed. Yes I am strong, but without even the remotest encouragement or remotest interest, concern, compassion, support or assistance from my siblings I am not sure today that I am strong enough to write what needs yet to be said.
My siblings suffered. We all had an insane Mother. But as the child chosen to be the target of Mildred’s psychotic abuse my suffering so far surpasses theirs that I cannot understand why they would not WANT to help me in any way that they could. I am deluded. I live in an idealized world. This one is real.
I am feeling discouraged. Stupid for caring or trying. Is this a low spot I am in or is this a bottom? I am angry, feeling my siblings have turned their back on me as surely as Mildred made sure that they did while we were growing up.
Maybe I am damn sick of caring.
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Stop the Storm 
[…] You will find Gertrude’s voice in comments listed to the right side of the home page of the blog. The ones I am referring to in this post can be found at the end of this March 6, 2013 post: +BOOK WRITING: DAMN SICK OF CARING […]
I had a painful familyencounter also. Having to sign all of a sudden for the sale of my deceased mother’s house. 4 sisters, the brother absent. We are all so dysfunctional. They cannot see me, they cannot really help that for i have never shown myself. Am unable to. As a 5 year old i was my mother’s confidante, the one she talked to about her triple suicideattempts, after she found my father committed adultery. I know things, while being the youngest and the most unwanted the others do not know.
So you crashed. That is ok. Part of the process. Just remember all you need to do is breath. And if you can play the drums close to your heart.
You have no obligation to anyone to write any book. Many manuscripts never get read and some books should never have been written.
Writing can be a good process but do it for you and possibly keep in mind that someone might read it and have their lives changed.
Each one deals and handles trauma and dysfunction in their own way, which is their undeniable right to do.
Maybe it is us, still looking for the care and nurture that should have been freely and abundantly given to us when we needed it. As babies, as todlers etc.
So just visualize a river and let yourself float, it will take you effortlessly to the shore that is yours to go ashore. Maybe your book is there, maybe not.
One of the symptoms is always giving up, before completion.
But another one is, always getting up after having been trampled upon and starting anew.
Wishing you well.
Good days, bad days it is all in the game.
am breathing – breathing – part of what is happening – I have always been other-minded. Letting myself fret about anything to do with someone else = my personal no no
thank you for your perspective and for your wisdom – very much!!!
I usually trust that life brings what’s needed when needed. The other kind of trust you mention about myself and this writing journey brings me face to face with what I know from myself in the past — that I can seem to become a different person – or at least end up in a different ‘place’ – unexpectedly and then I cannot return again to ‘where’ (who?) I was before.
I don’t do well with being blind-sided. I will wait and see what happens. Right now, it is time to tighten the drums. I can do that!
It is like our lives are being controlled from outside of us, by whatever happens. But also i feel guided from a divine source. We are special people. And possibly someday we will get it right and get to wield are specialness in a balanced way, where we will no longer risk to be triggered into the traumastate. Being thrown into the freezestate, no longer to determine actions, is as it is. I have learned to surrender to it. Knowing nothing i will try to force by willpower will change it. It all happens in a kind of timeless zone, having its own rhytm. But in time it will return to the baseline, where i feel comfortable, a sense of true self. I have learned to forgive myself, believing it is all part of the process. A process that is perhaps beyond my understanding, but in which i play an important role.
Family, when having originated in a dysfunctional family, is a difficult thing. Lots of old patterns get triggered. And when only one of them, like in my case, undertook a lot of therapy and a journey in gaining more knowledge and insight, similar experiences are shared, but in no way did the others, who did not invest, what i invested, have an equal understanding.
I have stayed away from family for decades. Even a visit used to drive me to the brink of insanity and being a single parent, i chose to protect my children and abstain from the toxic contacts. My mother chose not to want to see me anymore during her 93rd, last, dying year. I was banned from her funeral and everything. Then a bizar thing happened. I initiated a walk on the beach with my brother, we went to visit my mother’s grave and he asked whether i wanted to see my sister. As she was the one i was mortally afraid of, i thought let’s have it and deal with it. Believing it was her idea, i agreed.
She lived nearby so she was there in an instant. Since then we are trying to develop sisterhood. With my brother, who could in no way acknowledge our history, my history/my trauma, even blamed me for my father’s attempt to murder me at age 12, i broke contact again. Not in anger, but by knowing i could not heal, when having someone in my life, who denied my history.
Recently my brother in law died. And by divine intervention i went to visit him the friday before his death. I was invited to the funeral and dinner afterwards. I had told my sister again and again to inform him, which she refused. So he was horrified when meeting me there. And let it be known i was not to be allowed back into the family and my mother should have changed her will and disinherited me.
Then i was in total shock, but i refused anger or hate. Now i come to see more and more, that all my siblings have traumasymptoms, are possibly even borderline, never having dealt with it. Knowing how impossibly hard it is to deal with it, i have become mild, refuse to judge.
I see my journey as a courageous journey and know many people lack that kind of courage/strength. I am the weakest and i am the strongest and many variations in between. I have a disorder yet i am neither crazy or disturbed. My mother used to say i was crazy, because i had the genes of my father. Knowing what i know, i knew that to be bs, yet could not argue with her, knowing she had no knowledge about such things. The world loved her. But i had seen her real self and that was not a pretty picture. Judgemental, unforgiving, uncaring and never a loving, nurturing mother to her children, which she in fact had never wanted to create, but in those times was just forced to have. I am the youngest one, a calendar accident, her method of birthcontrol in those days.
I know the ALONENESS. And it is terrible. To be alone, yet to have to maintain family relationships is a struggle that is at times beyond ones power to bear/carry. Often a oneway street.
I know in my case, however much i talk about myself, they cannot see me, for that part has learned to hide herself in deep crevices, so she would feel safe and protected. I belief she was separate, in the spirit realm, and through soul retrieval, many years ago, i managed to get her very close to my heart, within my aura, but possibly not yet in my body. She controls the shots though. When it becomes too much, i can sense this barrier, this brick wall, i know there is no passing through, no pushing through. I know it is FULLSTOP, not going any further. And others cannot see that, nor understand that and judge me harshly, telling me to be normal, to be as they tell me to be, want me to be.
And yet my journey seems to continue, has its own pattern, its own logic. They say you cannot loose what is yours, you cannot loose they, who really belong to be in your life. The state of nonknowingness. Knowing my adult children to have free will, they too are free to ban me from their lives, deciding i am too toxic. And i know i will survive, i will deal with it and handle it, once the turmoil of many devastating emotions, pushing me towards death have subsided.
The book of Alan Carr seems to work wonders for some people who attempt to stop smoking. My oldest son has used it several times now, Other children have too. My oldest keeps believing, this one cigarette will not matter, and again and again he came to find it did.
OK the drumming helped – I feel more grounded and am calming down. I allow myself to reach for the most stable motivation for continuing this work – soon – I know of and that feels selfish but is not. MONEY for me and for my family. I am severely isolated down here (was 79 degrees and sunny today, blizzards in Fargo where my daughter is – I can’t live in that climate again). I miss them up there, and the grandbabies! I need to be able to travel to see them – and them travel to see me.
I KNOW the books will help someone — so I work to allow myself to find my OWN reasons for getting through the hard times in this process. There are hard times when the hope for financial reprieve WORKS to motivate me — so —
I believe when MONEY is tied in with your writing about such an intensive subject, baring your soul, it calls for a difficult motivation. If you are good at writing, cannot you find other things to write on to make some money. Or correcting other people’s writing, which my daughter in law does.
The only way, i believe, you will truely touch someone with your writing, there where it counts, is when you stay true to yourself and let go of any material motivation. Let the only motivation be your willingness to share your pain, and your journey towards healing.
For there must be a way through!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I believe we are never given issues, without having been given the key to solve them/bring them to healing. Possibly it may take some lives, but time is of no importance in the bigger picture.
I will post a piece of writing in response to your first comment here —
Money. Personally I am perfectly fine with reaching for it in regards to the books I will publish with my daughter. It’s interesting that she and I had a phone conversation last eve in which she suggested I look for ways to make money from my blogging. To that my response was an adamant NO!
I draw that line.
I believe much of the foundational causes of intergenerational transmission of horrendous trauma comes from the platform of a scarcity, a dearth of resources. Even if the resources are actually present, they cannot be recognized or used fruitfully.
We need resources in our family, financial ones. In accepting the potential for income the books can create, seven of them being the full publication of my mother’s own writings intact, I am opening myself to that aspect of goodness that the horrors of this entire story offer.
I am vastly more of a giving person than I am a taking one. Part of my healing comes from recognizing that while taking is not in my nature, learning to accept gifts IS SOMETHING I find highest value in. All six of us children were born with brilliant minds and incredible talents. We were hampered in moving into an adult life of plenty. I am going to restore some of that lost potential to myself and to my family.
I frequently dream of what I would want to do with excess of “spare change” should this stream of books (there will probably be around 15 of them) sell well. Even experiencing the freedom of imagining what goodness income from these books could create gives me joy. Random House publishing sold a pulp smut series last year that brought them the highest $ return EVER. Every one of their employees was given a $5,000 Christmas bonus from that intake.
Grassroot poverty for those of us living in the trenches requires capitol to remedy in many significant ways. There is a nonprofit shelter here, a nonprofit residential facility, a foodbank, lots of arts programs, need for parenting education subsidies — all in need of resources.
I have needs that have been in deprivation status all of my adult life. My children can make terrifically positive use of capitol. I now have two wonderful grandsons who can benefit for increased capitol for their education. Because thinking about the benefit of the gift of cash gives me great joy, I know it is good. It is good for me and it will lead to goodness.
This goodness alone helps me not become mired in the very real moment-by-moment experience of having to return to hell to retrieve this story and to give it words. I have to be able to see the light of love and of goodness as I do this work. That goodness guides me if I can find and sustain my connection to it.
I sufffer the same symptom of deprivation. Never been able to create a healthy income, living of benefits or some other alike system. Yet i the universe has always taken care of me. My children all contribute financially each month, so i can afford supplements. They let me use their car, i only have to pay for petrol.
I understand through several of your blogs that your mother was a writer. I am curious. What is her writing name? Through some other issue i watched on YouTube i understood, that in the US there are alternative ways of publishing and making money on that. It is my view also, that if i am ever to spread my knowledge about health or trauma into the larger world, i make the choice to not tie money/income to that. Knowing how impossible it is to find healing, for people with low sensitive/modest income, i have chosen a long time ago, to give it away for free or on donationbasis.
I would like to learn how to write a blog. Have been subscribed to worldpress for months, but have trouble in my brainwiring with all technical stuff.
WordPress free blogs are not hard – I knew NOTHING when I started — because my sister so encouraged me. I use Misty Lake for my format. I like that it is clear and straightforward. You just have to dive in — there are lots of FAQ support pages to wordpress — Let me know and I will subscribe ASAP!!
Mother could not ever write the book she wanted to because of her mental illness. Her work will be published probably under my name — my daughter will figure all that out. Mother’s name was Mildred Ann Cahill Lloyd.
I am curious what country you live in!!
I live in the Netherlands, in Amersfoort, which is near Utrecht, and about an hour’s drive below Amsterdam. We are a very small country, yet taking a prominent place in the worldculture. I speak, write english almost fluently, because i used to travel back and forth to the UK when i was around 20. Also was an aupair overthere.
I had subscribed for blogging on WordPress in June last year. You just pushed me, it feels like death, to write my first blog. Have no clue about the technical stuff, hope i will find out, or be given help and advices on the how to. I would like the option to upload a video from YouTube or Facebook. I could not find out about the themes you were talking about.
Will make a further attempt to dive into it these coming days.
Link is: http://amarushayatranquilsanctuary.wordpress.com/