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The rest of the sentence?  Don’t call me easy-going!

There are places in my mother’s letters during the years of my young childhood where she wrote to her mother that I was “easy-going.”  Nope!  I was beaten and beaten down by abuse and lived in a world reined in by intolerable sadness – except for the inner sanctum of my self held so near to me in my heart – because I had never had a chance to get out!

What options did I have but to not resist?  I did what I had to survive – and showing NOTHING of myself as a person to Mother was a big part of what my survival demanded of me.

I am not easy-going now.  “Self soothing” is something I work to accomplish, and when events loom within and without that make demands on my resources, I do not respond to them in an easy-going way.  I am an INTENSE person.

I remember when I was in art therapy graduate school a classmate noted that “intense” is being “in tense.”  She meant IN THE PRESENT TENSE – in the moment – deeply engaged in experiencing my life.

Well, on Sunday morning I will be participating in a wonderfully generous gift from my youngest (baby!) brother.  I am leaving Arizona to spend five days with him where he lives in Alaska.  This will probably include three days with him on his 60′ yacht-trawler somewhere in Alaska waters. 

Yet traveling is anxiety producing to me.  I am working toward preparing myself in every way to actually ENJOY myself!  I will be stopping in Seattle for a few days to visit family there before I return home on the 11th of June.

I have a friend who loves to come stay in my home when I am gone to keep an eye on things and to relax in this quiet little neighborhood. 

I am very fortunate and grateful!  Away from the seriousness of my writing work I hope to reacquaint  myself with a quieter side of me.  I am thrilled to spend some time with my brother and family.  “Bon Voyage!”  I hope my going (and coming home again) is easy!!

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Destiny has evidently arranged that the planned editing of this book is going to happen during the first week of June as I am being treated to a visit with my youngest brother in Alaska.  We will spend the bulk of the visit somewhere out aboard his boat!  I have spent time these last 48 hours making sure the collection of past notes intended for my daughter to have as she edits are all in line for her where she can find them.  It looks like this brilliant capable daughter of mine will spare me the agony of having to do anything more on that book before it is published.  I will not be available for questions during the days she will have available for editing.

However, I know from comments my daughter made months ago when she read the manuscript that my final chapter of this book does not sit well with her AT ALL.  I refuse to have a single word of it changed.  I have finally decided that a brief epilogue might take care of ‘this problem’.  If my daughter questions that final chapter – really, the final WORD of the book – many other readers are likely to have the same response.

This is my compromise for Story Without Words:

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Epilogue:  Being Mother’s hope

Boiling down all the trauma of the first 18 years of my life to my mother’s desperate need to carve out a kind of hope for herself that she could hold onto by brutalizing me can make little sense to an ordinary mind.  Mother did not have an ordinary mind.  She had a desperate one.

Because she felt from her earliest life that love would only come to her when she was perfect the obvious solution was to become exactly that – perfect.  I was therefore born into Mother’s life to be all that was not perfect in her.  This was an inviolable arrangement that could not be tampered with or changed in any way.  As long as I was alive to stay all-bad Mother could be all-good which ensured that her hope for love would remain alive within the dynamics operating between us.

Mother never wavered in her need for love nor did she waver in how her mind had determined that it could be made available to her in unending supply.  As long as I remained alive as the personification of all of her badness – and not as a person in my own right – she had only that single need for hope – me.  Her mind’s design eliminated all risk that her hope could be disappointed because love could not be withheld or withdrawn from her as long as she could keep me in my (her) place.  She had all power.  I was imprisoned in her madness from the moment I was born with no chance of escape offered to me.

That I received enough love to be able to retain access to my own self in the midst of Mother’s madness is the miracle of my life.  It was the one exception to the fact that all love during the years of my childhood belonged to Mother that allowed me to live.  That my brother loved me was a fact in my life.  I did not hope for his love.  I had it.  His love for me was guaranteed and unchangeable.

There had been no such love available to Mother in her earliest life.  All she had been left with was the hope that she could find a way to earn love by deserving it.  I became that hope so that Mother could find her way to be loved.

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I remind myself that I am not some kind of a Bobo doll designed with weight at the bottom of my being so that when I receive a PUNCH I will instantly and automatically stay righted to pop back up unchanged.

Life does change me as I move along through it.  I am not unique in this fact.  No matter how much trauma has altered my physiology brain and all, I AM human!  Humans are designed to learn and to change, to adapt and to return to a state of peaceful calm from which enthusiasm, interest, exploration, a sense of triumph and joy can flow.

Some of us just have more of a fight to fight!  Perhaps that means when we win we have more to gain.

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Thinking about how the best of minds, the best of scholars, the best of students will face a time if they write a dissertation that they will be asked to defend it.  I am today at the point where I am looking deep within myself – and I am coming up with entirely new ideas in defense of my book cover’s image. 

Challenge to our status quo is not a bad thing.  Reacting to that challenge and resolving it is not a negative process, either.  I had to turn all the way over several times, over and over, intensely struggling to find my own right way through the challenges that creating a MARKETABLE book cover creates!

I am not all the way through this process yet.  In defense of my image I understand this morning that it can do exactly what I wanted it to do:  challenge potential readers – and readers – in new ways.  Why not begin to do this before anyone ever considers the words of a book titled Story Without Words?

As I have emailed to my sister today, this is a daring book about a daring subject that I dare daring readers to read!

This is already a reverse-marketing book.

I also told her that by the time I got to the 9th manuscript in this double series I wrote into its pages that any reader – by the time they reached this point in my books – that was siding with my abusive mother against me — should back out of the book and quit reading.  I don’t want those people inside my books!

In all fairness I would rather inaccurate readers not buy these books in the first place!  After all, paying money for a book that eventually tells you to get the hell out of it could seem to smack of unfairness.

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We do not live in a culture that encourages individuals to express their own stories without words through art.  I know as an art therapist that every human being around the world is designed to pass through specific sequential artistic stages of development just as we pass from lying to rolling to sitting to crawling to walking to running.  Artistic developmental stages are just as clear – just as necessary – and certainly in our culture – are aborted.

My book cover tells a story without words.

How much more clear could that book’s cover be?

The current proposition to my son who can and will do the photoshopping of that image is that the brilliant light green of the bedspread be sampled, spread entirely over the area within the pink at the top of the image, and that the biggest, boldest, blackest and clearest lettering be used to redo the title – STORY WITHOUT WORDS.

I want to see THAT version before any other decision is made regarding cover work.  Yes, we also need to see that whole thing in black and white next – but if all ereaders but one display in color – I am not concerned with how a black and white cover looks to anyone.

If that doesn’t work – well, then, perhaps further compromises will march over the far book marketing horizon to land on my book’s cover.  Meanwhile, I will not participate in artistic rape.  I have integrity.  My book has integrity.  My cover art has integrity.  And these three integrities belong together intact if at all possible.

I am fine with presenting a postage stamp (thumbnail) image with bold clear readable type at that size that dares (challenges) reader to click on enough links until they see what the heck that complex maze of intense colors is actually about.

People can be so easily lulled into taking the easiest possible pathway toward dopamine release and a flash of satisfaction.  I don’t mind challenging (daring) them in such a way that they are motivated to take a tiny action outside their comfort-box, a tiny step off of their boring pathway, into a possible new world of discovery.

If we are going to consider the realities of infant-child abuse and trauma we are going to have to venture into untrodden territory anyway.  Why not do it with a first click?

If readers can’t be inspired to be curious by a postage stamp with a title, they probably aren’t the right readers for the book.  Story Without Words is written to be a prelude that leads into two separate series of books for an eventual total of probably 15 books. 

People don’t go to hear an orchestra play just to hear the prelude.  They are there for the whole shebang.  I want to market to shebangers!  Stopping infant and child abuse is going to require a reverse of current attitudes and inactions.  My contribution to the literature might as well begin with reverse marketing.

Maybe all we need to do is make the title clear and bold – and we are good to go.  I would like that to be true very much.

I can visualize the changes to this I mentioned above.  I like what I see – but actually seeing it changed will be better.  My son would have to sample the pink to erase the small circle overlaps as he changed the central color – but this may be doable….

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It only made my day harder when a friend suggested that there’s something wrong with me for caring about child abuse, for caring so much about my writing work, for – basically – not knowing HOW to live a trite life.

What’s WRONG with me, then, that leads me to give a damn about things like EPIGENETICS as it is being discovered in cutting-edge science – that our EPIGENOME is a whole greater level to what makes us who we are – and is harmfully and DIRECTLY affected by infant and child abuse that changes our DNA coding to affect GENERATIONS?

My friend tells me he loves me in spite of my continual concerns about the well-being of our specie’s little people.  Well, I’ll be jiggered!  I don’t understand him any better than he doesn’t understand me.

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This is a short, extremely informative and vitally IMPORTANT article!

  Epigenetics: How our experiences affect our offspring – New research suggests that people’s experiences, not just their genes, can affect the biological legacy of their offspring

 By The Week Staff | January 20, 2013

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Abused Children May Get Unique Form of PTSD

May 02, 2013

Child abuse scars not just the brain and body, but, according to the latest research, but may leave its mark on genes as well.

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Childhood maltreatment is associated with distinct genomic and epigenetic profiles in posttraumatic stress disorder

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Why Your DNA Isn’t Your Destiny

By John Cloud Wednesday, Jan. 06, 2010

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Scientists Discover How Epigenetic Information Could Be Inherited: Mechanism of Epigenetic Reprogramming Revealed

Jan. 24, 2013 — New research reveals a potential way for how parents’ experiences could be passed to their offspring’s genes. The research was published January, 25 in the journal Science.

Epigenetics is a system that turns our genes on and off. The process works by chemical tags, known as epigenetic marks, attaching to DNA and telling a cell to either use or ignore a particular gene.

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Stress can affect future generations’ genes

15:21 25 January 2013 by Andy Coghlan

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Sorry, but this nonsense matters.  It matters A LOT!  And it especially matters to people who were – and to little ones who are currently being – exposed to infant and child abuse, neglect, and trauma!  Somebody better care.  Somebody better pay attention.  One of those some-bodies might as well be me.

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I had no plans and certainly no intention of sucking my own trauma drama into the making of the cover art for the book Story Without Words as I have been posting about its process and progress recently.  I am comforted by knowing that loyal readers of this blog know exactly what I am talking about when I say what I say about myself in my life.  Yes, this book is about the trauma of intergenerational trauma from infant-child abuse and neglect.  Yes, I did intentionally plan for the cover art work to exactly reflect the nature of the stories (crime reports) that make up the backbone of this book.

So how did THAT trauma come to be present NOW in its own sidling, intrusive and bothersome way?

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I received further vital expertise in feedback today about Kindle publishing (and while the cheaper versions of this ereader are still in black and white, the Kindle Fire and many other ereading devices from which any ebook can be accessed and read are publishing in color).  Any of this blog’s readers who are considering epublishing can benefit from what I am learning – in my own very hard way – about this process.

No, I did not envision the cover art I created so carefully, honestly, thoughtfully and hopefully for this book in its THUMBNAIL size.  Nor do I know anything about marketing – and I assure you the person who wrote me the following words is an expert in the book business!  The following came to me in response to a tantrum sent via email that closely paralleled my previous post on this subject – and no, I have not personally used an ebook reader.

“Okay, now that you got THAT off your chest…

Have you ever purchased (or even downloaded a free or 99c) Kindle e-book? Do you or anyone you know have a Kindle, or have you put a Kindle app on your PC? That experience will/would help you see how things look in the environment where your work is going to be viewed. The cover of ANY book is not about art, it is about marketing. If those two often-competing elements manage to compliment each other, so much the better.

There is a “cover” in Kindle-land, but unlike a conventional book it is not always the first thing a reader sees. In fact, often the reader will never see the Kindle book’s cover on the reader itself. This is because the author/editor selects the place in the book that is the “beginning”, and when someone “opens” the book, that is where they land. It can be the Title Page, TOC, the Intro, Chapter One, or whatever. It is hardly ever the copyright page, and rarely is it the cover. If the author does mark the e-book to begin at the cover, the reader is forced to page ahead to wherever it is they think is important enough to begin reading. Unlike a traditional book, an ebook reader will never finish a chapter, lay in a bookmark, close the cover, and gaze thoughtfully at the book’s colorful, intricate, and symbolic cover while the contemplate the author’s words.

BTW, how does your cover look in B&W? Do the shapes/words/designs still pop when the color is not there? This is important because the Kindle family is still B&W until you get to tablets (Kindle, iPad and others).

Final note: I’m fairly sure Amazon does not require that you use the SAME image for the itty-bitty cover thumbnail as you do for the book (i.e. the image in the ebook file that is marked “cover”). You can keep your gorgeous work of art for the book (although I think you’ll be disappointed with it in B&W, and 250 hours of works for something most readers will never see until/unless you do a print version is a shame) and just do a smaller, simpler, uglier (if you insist) version that is ONLY used for marketing on Amazon. What I think you CAN’T do is have one thumbnail image that displays on this page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/ref=pd_dp_ts_kstore_1

And when someone clicks the cover thumbnail to “Look Inside” they see a larger (but slightly/drastically different) cover:

http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Novel-Robert-Langdon-ebook/dp/B00AXIZ4TQ/ref=zg_bs_digital-text_1

Then when they click THAT image they finally see your full-color work of art in this format:

http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Novel-Robert-Langdon-ebook/dp/B00AXIZ4TQ/ref=zg_bs_digital-text_1#reader_B00AXIZ4TQ

You can see where it would be very confusing if the cover kept changing in each of these steps; the reader would think they accidentally got switched to a different book. That’s why I recommend a single cover version that “works” in all sizes and all environments where it is to be used.

Maybe your present image deserves a place inside the book as an illustration, if not as the cover. COVER = MARKETING, plain and simple.”

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I also received this response from someone who knows my story and the story of my family of origin very well:

“It really depends on the viewing device. The Kindle (which is black and white) is not a good vehicle for photos, drawings, charts, etc. And yes, the cover is not promoted in any way. When you begin reading a book on the Kindle, you start on the first page. The Kindle Fire, on the other hand, is great for viewing artwork. And, if you decide, moving forward, to move to paper books, the cover becomes obviously important. 
 
And, there are other ebook readers that might provide a different viewing experience; I have seen only the Kindle and Kindle Fire, so I’m not sure.
 
At any rate, it’s a beautiful, intensely personal, piece of art — heartrending, emotionally difficult, horrendous — but it came from you, from your experiences, and can be also used on your blog as a main piece.”

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Well, I have been flying around through intense experience of all the stress response survival-based emotions today – big time.

I have so little resources in my physical world – period.  Every loss – and this realistic useful information today STILL feels like a huge CRASH and a huge LOSS to me — hits me much harder than it would ‘ordinary’ kinds of people who have not been forced by circumstances of severe, chronic and horrible long-term early abuse and trauma to live such a constricted life as I have and do.

I don’t mean to whine about my life.  My current conflicts are simply very real.  I reacted in distress to the loss of my hoped for sense of triumph and success toward publication.

Instead – I returned to my friend’s with the super megapixel camera today (who did not remotely comprehend why my work is important to me, why I am so invested in it, or remotely why I would be distressed by the failure of the project that he so kindly helped me complete (I thought) yesterday.  This photograph today is the only one of those taken of the ‘new and unimproved’ version of the suitable-for-thumbnail cover that runs in landscape (horizontal) rather than in portrait (vertical).  As I have mentioned before, I have no way to crop images – they have been sent to my son and daughter for their very kind assistance in that department.

The cloth visible in this image simply runs UP and UP and UP — boringly, irritatingly, necessarily UP – so that legible lettering that can be read in a thumbnail image can be implanted upon it (This necessary version of an image can be lined up, cropped, whatever):

That’s it.  That’s all I can think of.  I tried my best (see last evening’s post: +BOOK COVER: WE DID IT!!!!) and it wasn’t good enough.  Oh, do I know THAT feeling!  I suspect most if not ALL of this post’s readers know what I don’t even have to say here about that feeling!

I also greatly struggle with affirming for myself that I have a right to have ANY of the feelings I am having today!

Yes, the cover I intended to use was made as an image meant to be “a beautiful, intensely personal, piece of art — heartrending, emotionally difficult, horrendous.” That image was created to match with integrity every word of the book itself.  The cover was supposed to honor the story and vice versa.

Yet I do want to MARKET this book.  This ebook.

Yet I also know that because of severe trauma during the first 18 years of my life – my brain did not develop in ordinary ways – and that includes my LEFT brain hemisphere which cannot comprehend – really – what the FACTS of marketing even are!  (see: +Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT)

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I cannot explain to or describe to those who have no clue from their own personal experience of being a trauma-changed person what my state of dysregulatory REACTIVITY – of ‘disorganization’ and of ‘disorientation’ of my internal relationship with myself and with the world FEELS like in response to this massive disappointment.  This IS a big deal to me.  I NEED to publish. 

Evidently I do NOT need to publish with my own art image on the cover of any ebook.

Health of a human being is greatly measured by our ability to flexibly and successfully cope with changes and upsets that appear in our lives — to positive resolution.  Trauma altered development steals from us the ability to respond to upsetting/distressing challenges in ordinary ways.  This is a very personal upset to me – of course it is!  But my difficulty in COPING with it was built into me by trauma.  THAT is what I hate!

I found strength for myself today by thinking that it might matter to some blog reader/s that I move forward IN SPITE of this upset – and do so successfully.  So what if I feel as though I was just drop-kicked across the Grand Canyon – half way – to crash into a fall – still falling — ?  Why let that feeling state stop me? 

I have been truly amazed at the difficulty of my emotions today – and at their intensity!!!  I wrote a piece in the 10th book manuscript that I just completed (needing edit) – that today’s experience has shown me needs one more critically important thought added to it.  I would NEVER have known that piece was missing — let alone how important it is — if I had not gone through (still going through it!) exactly what happened INSIDE of me today in reaction to — well — you dear readers know exactly what I am reacting to.

Thank you for being here!!  With all my heart!

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This could not have come to completion without the generous help of a friend who brought his 12.1 megapixel camera to the scene today to spend time with me photographing what he calls the ‘diorama’ which is the cover for our first book – Story Without Words.  I thank him, and I thank my son for his prompt professional cropping of the image for this kindle-sized ebook cover.  I could not have done this without these dear men’s help.

I am relieved!  This has been a long, carefully orchestrated, patient haul.  Mod Podge, tissue paper, cardboard, glue, a few tin cans for the pillars, the careful printing by a young boy – and here it is.  I tried in many shots to get the abuser’s right arm out of line from the bedroom prison bars, but in the end this was the shot with the best color and detail – and it must be meant to be this way.  There would not be prison bars if there was not abuse….

It was a large construction, 36″ x 58″ to get all the pieces adjusted, attached, secured, leveled, plumbed — and I did the best I could do.  I will be content.  That the very top edge does not run perfectly level is, at least for now given the photographic abilities available, how this image will look.  It is a simple, humble, “primitive” and childlike piece – and such an image belongs to such a story – such an important story – as this.

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With immeasurable thanks to my daughter, here is at least a crop of the cover image that shows there is HOPE!!

The crop was accompanied by her sweet words:

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I could do so much MORE and so much BETTER if I had more resources for this whole project!  My eyes are aging so that I can’t even see the image as far back as I have to stand in the room to get this whole monstrosity in the view finder (whose view is not MY view!).  I try to be hopeful.  I try to be of good cheer.  But I don’t even have any way to crop this image other than put it on my computer screen and hold paper up to block out what’s not supposed to be a part of this image.

I have put over 250 hours of hard work into the creation of this cover art for Story Without Words.  I have so many trauma altered development changes to me that I can’t go out and choose my life.  I feel so limited in my world – because I am.  I hate it!

“Be positive, Linda!”

Yeah, right.  Here’s what I have so far.  I need a professional photographer!  This is about 32″ wide by 53″ tall – needing to be cropped and sized for an itty-bitty ebook cover!

I am out of my league.  This work is above my pay grade.  As if I even have one of those!  At least on my old computer screen the detail on the little lavender plaque on the wall is GONE.  I give up for the day.  Give up!

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