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Tuesday, January 28, 2014.  Given the nature of my life and work it isn’t hard for me to find metaphors around me that give me pause to think.  The idea that our life is like a tapestry is a common image.  Yet because I now have a loom to warp I begin any thoughts I might have about that tapestry right at the beginning. 

Not only do I have to warp my loom if I want to weave a single thing upon it but I am working from that point forward with yarn I have spun from the stinky mess of raw sheep fleece.  From that point, in the drab place I have landed myself in, I now weave simply to bring more color into my life.

All seemed to be going relaxingly well this past weekend as I again measured off my warp –

And went through the careful process of threading each thread in order through the rigid heddle and winding this warp onto my loom.  Suddenly right at the very end I discovered a very near disaster!  I had threaded my heddle upside-down!

True, I am one of the few who can tell what I mean to show in this picture!  Clue:  What you see on the right side is my work to correct all that is wrong on the left side of the heddle here!

That little notch at the bottom of the heddle was at the TOP when I carefully threaded this thing.  WRONG!  With no possibility of actually weaving a thing on this loom without correcting my error I set to work….

carefully pulling each thread out and threading it in again correctly!

All fine and good but yes, irritating!  I will not be making that mistake again!

Of course this whole process gave me time to think about what happens to the lives of infants and children who suffer from trauma in their earliest attachment caregiver relationships so that the “warp” of their nervous system and brain is set WAY off track from optimal in development from the start of their lives!

How are we supposed to weave a great super-duper tapestry of life on a warp that was all messed up from the very beginning?

I could straighten my mess out here.  But straightening out my life from the mess my psychotically abusive mother made of me for the first 18 years of my life?

NOT EAZY-PEAZY, I assure you!  And in many significant ways – IMPOSSIBLE!

Our nervous system and brain have a very particular exacting process of development that does not sit well with the interruptions early trauma creates!  An extremely high price is paid by the survivor of early infant and child abuse and neglect.  The developmental neuroscientists can now name the changes our development endures one step at a time in early trauma environments.

I can think of no simpler way to put it than — OUR WARP IS MESSED UP!

I mean — MESSED UP!  And in ways that cannot simply be corrected.  The best many of us can hope to achieve is a thorough understanding of what traumas we endured, at what age going all the way back, often to our womb life and the health of our mother.  Who hurt us?  Who was NOT there to help us, who WAS there to help us, and most importantly — How did the trauma we experienced change our development all the way down to how our genes manifest themselves?

Then we look at the raw material — what GOOD things, what resiliency factors were inside of us and available to us that let us weave the very best tapestry of ourselves in our lives that we possibly could?

Most importantly — we have NOT GIVEN UP!!  Not once!  Not ever!

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I thought I had achieved a great stage of progress in my healing years back when I was able to know inside of myself that my entire infancy-childhood was life in a holocaust environment.  These last few days I have “revised my forecast.” 

I was a Prisoner of War.  A POW.  Whatever horrors my mother carried within her from her own traumatic childhood turned her inside out so that her hell was externalized in such a way she could PUT ME IN THERE instead of herself.  Yes, that was not only mentally ill of her but psychotically so!

18 years from birth forward – a POW of Mother’s war.  No wonder I hate trauma that runs down the generations and lands on the innocent and helpless little ones!

Just saying….

I came out of all that doing the best I can to make my life beautiful in any way I can — from the inside out — messed up warp and all.

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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