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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!
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.
“It’s a very interesting paper,” says Moshe Szyf, professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who studies epigenetics. “The important thing about this paper is that it looks at PTSD that has different life histories. One group has a life history of child abuse and the other doesn’t and we see a completely different functional genomic appearance.”
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Why Your DNA Isn’t Your Destiny
By John Cloud Wednesday, Jan. 06, 2010
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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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Stop the Storm 
Do you think that for children, art is often the only way they can ‘speak’ of their trauma?
If so, when you did this art you connected to your child hugely (who had been so voiceless
and then when you couldn’t use it you were even more strongly affected than normal because
You had let little you come out?
Also I think that this world of ebooks is really new and foreign and its quite scarey to navigate!
It sounds like people don’t think of and read and view books in the way they used to pre kindle!
That for me is quite something to think about. A bit of a shock because when you are epublishing
This is a big change and challenge. A book and any art is a piece of one and in this world of seeming
utility to all things this takes away from the personal.
Sorry for late posting – I’ve been madly marking essays as our semeste is ending and exams are round the
corner – whew!
Xxx
Congratulations on nearing the end of a long haul! My daughter taught a soc course – along with all else she does – ended recently – students have no idea what work teachers put into their classes! I hope you get to experience that feeling of TRIUMPH when all is done and graded!!!
Somehow as I created that cover image I TRUSTED and had faith and belief – and hope – that readers would GET what that book is deeply about exactly by looking at the cover art. They would know to pass it by if they were not up to facing the truth of that book just from the cover.
I give up.
That is exactly how I feel right now. This may all just be from here forward in the hands of my son and daughter who are fully able to interface between me and the world. They are very busy, however — giving them the cover to work with toward publishing was even a gift I felt I was giving to them – so that the energies they put into editing, etc. could bear good fruit.
As the Teicher article points out, severe trauma survivors are designed for a malevolent world – and are at mismatch with one more benign. I had hopes that this book effort could cross that bridge.
I have shared the digital image of the cover with some people here – I do believe women react to it differently than men do – I would be fine with that – I just don’t know……. xo
I’ve just read your rough time post, aw gosh am so aware of that rocking of the boat that is really
A rocking of the world. I haven’t seen your final product yet and am so looking forward to it on Monday.
I feel emotionally invested in it too and am so sorry it can’t be used in the way you wanted!! That is such
A disappointment in a big way. 😦 you know I think that the imagary is such an important part of telling your
story and of connecting to your readers. Especially an art work which you have put so much of your feelings
Into and your experience. It is a way of speaking that touches somewhere deep and satisfies our child who
Couldn’t verbalise. So it makes perfect sense that you felt all those feeling and to the degree you felt them
– because of what child you went through and couldn’t know or speak of it until you did as an adult.
Lots of love!
i posted what i hoped was the final cover pic here
https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/book-cover-we-did-it/
reading your words – a light went on – I DID have many feelings beyond words glued into the image, so-to-speak – a rejection of the possibility of USING the image for what it was created for, that rejection that only people on this blog can comprehend – is interwoven (interglued!) with a rejection of ME and of the story I work to tell – that’s helpful info, Gingercat – thank you! xo