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Friday, February 21, 2014.  I began to look online this morning specifically for “the longterm consequences in adulthood of neglect during infancy and childhood.”  I am not sure it is possible to search out NEGLECT as a topic separate from abuse.  I certainly did not find an inroad this morning into the specifics of my intended search. 

I gave up easily once I landed on the following which is good enough for me — at least for the time being.

A HOST OF

EXCELLENT VIDEOS ON ATTACHMENT –

Most of these videos on YouTube are by Dr. Daniel Siegel.  I found them this morning using a Google search using the terms “Daniel Siegel neglect.”  I actually have the time to watch/listen to all of them given the subzero weather outdoors and babywatch I am currently involved with.  I’ll give it a go!!

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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 (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!o 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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Thursday, February 20, 2014.  I cannot find a way to stop the Merry-Go-Round of my thoughts this morning as they continue to inform me that insecure attachments are STILL — attachments.

My thoughts are telling me “There is something worse and that is no attachment at all.”

NEVER in all of my years of research and study about what happened to me as an abused infant and child (birth to age 18) have I had these thoughts before:  No matter how psychotically abusive mentally ill Mother was I was STILL attached to her.  Majorly so.

I had no choice.  That this attachment was NOTHING but unsafe and insecure matters not a bit. 

Mother interfered with and prevented any attachment I could have had with anyone else.  She had great difficulty in preventing my brother’s attachment to me in the early years of my and his life.  He was 13 months old when I was born and loved me as much as is possible.  While his love and care for me did not go away when he reached about the age of two Mother could control his access to me.

The same thing happened very early in my life with any relationship infant me could have had with my father and with my grandmother.  Eventually right before my 6th birthday Mother made sure my grandmother could no longer interfere at all on my behalf.  Grandmother was left behind in Los Angeles, CA while Mother moved her family to Alaska.

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Never before this morning have I ever thought in terms of me having ANY attachment relationship with Mother.  Yes, I have considered the “trauma bond” that connected me to her.  But at this moment I am realizing that I would have to list my newly discovered fact about my childhood that I DID have an unsafe and insecure attachment with Mother (the only attachment I was allowed to form).

An unsafe and insecure – insanely abusive attachment AS ONE OF MY RESILIENCY FACTORS?

Oh, Geeze!  This can’t be good.

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My thinking has been running along the general groove of early primary attachment figures being those people in a young person’s life who are CONSISTENTLY present over LONG periods of time.

This basic definition as it runs through my thoughts does NOT include any information about the quality of such an attachment relationship.

Is it, then, a bottom line in regarding attachment histories that ANY such ATTACHMENT exists versus NO such ATTACHMENT — AT ALL?

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What is the length of (real) time required for such an attachment to be formed for a little person?  How many hours a day?  Hours per week?  Over how many months?  Over how many years?

What is the degree of dependency needs a little person has to have as it seeks to fulfill those needs in a primary attachment relationship?

What if the requisite amount of time is not available for the little person to get their needs met?

Are they forced to substitute less permanent (and faulty ineffectual by default) attachments (as Dr. Neufeld might suggest, with peers) in an attempt to get their needs met?

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The kinds of attachment needs and patterns portrayed in

Still Face Experiment: Dr. Edward Tronick – YouTube

do not only exist in the first year of life.  My thinking today is scanning the recesses of my being for information about what I could imagine happens for little people who HAVE FORMED NO ATTACHMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE that allowed them to get to the advancing stages of the baby in this video as it interacts with its mother.

When more and more mothers abandon their infants at birth to care that is ALWAYS substandard to the mother-infant attachment relationship care an infant is built to require are we “breeding” as a society a strata among us who are without any primary attachments at all?

Of course we must rethink what primary attachments are, I suppose.  What worked in eras where mothers, with the assistance of other very close kin, invested massive amounts of contact time with offspring – even in modern times – before a child entered kindergarten PART TIME is not working today.  How CAN it work with the mothers absent?

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I am honestly scared by what the determined nature of my thoughts is telling me.  No matter how horrifyingly torturous and abusive — on a consistent and longterm basis — my mother’s treatment of me was I WAS STILL BETTER OFF THAN CHILDREN BEING STRANDED IN DAY ORPHANAGES today because at least I DID have an attachment relationship with mother — NO MATTER HOW UNSAFE AND INSECURE it was.

My thoughts today are telling me this is true even though I know the insecure attachment disorder that I have had all of my life beginning at birth is among the most complex and troublesome possible (as it includes disorganization, disorientation, reactivity, emotional dysregulation, dissociation, etc.).  At least I HAD attachment.

(I have also been considering that the troubling rise in austism-spectrum disorders would OF COURSE be tied to such scenarios where they exist — and who is looking THERE for source material inside little people being raised with socially-legitimized absent mothering?)

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I encountered the term ALLOPARENTING this week (which is what I am doing 50-55 hours per week with my youngest grandson who turned 19 months today).  I have to research this term which is evidently rooted in sociology and anthropology.

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I also want to mention here that any thinking I do about early attachment an infant NEEDS with its mother begins in the kind of information presented in this article which I consider to be among the top 10 most important articles on the internet:

Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health

SCROLL DOWN PAST THE MULTI-LANGUAGE ABSTRACTS – TO PAGE 16 FOR DRAWINGS if you do not want to read the entire article — but PLEASE consider trying to read enough of Dr. Schore’s words to gain a basic understanding of how fundamentally essential these interactions are to the physiological development of a human being.  How could it be possible for daycare center staff to replicate these essential interactions?

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Attachment and the regulation of the right brain – by Dr. Allan N. Schore

Notes on this blog:  **Dr. Allan Schore on Emotional Regulation – Notes

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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!o 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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Wednesday, February 19, 2014.  I am going to write this post in an effort to unburden my thinking and feeling that has me in its talons this morning.  My grandson is down for his morning nap.  A little bit of time to myself has appeared.  What can I say?  What MUST I say to be true to myself?  Will my thoughts come into words in anything like a coherent pattern?

I must try….

First I will say I am thinking about the vision I was given up on our Alaskan mountain homestead the year I turned 15.  I have not asked – that I know of – for my perceptions today at 62 any more than I asked for that vision to come to me.  I was physically a woman at 15 but only around the time of my vision did I face the transition, the transformation that would take me from my age of innocence into my age of accountability.  I have been accountable for many of my choices since that day.  I am accountable now.  But – for WHAT?

What lone voice do I think with, sing with, today?  In that vision I had no fear.  No worries.  No concerns of any kind.  The extent of my feeling troubled today is so strong upon me that it is hard for me to follow my ordinary self through this day.  I WANT me to be in THIS day.

I am far into the future.  I am foreseeing the possibilities of scenarios playing themselves out that shake me.  That quake me.  Yet I also know that if “people” are not remotely concerned about the fact that certain groups of humans are changing the earth climate to bring about ice ages in some places and severe drought in others, are changing the planet with concerns not for the death of species but for the trillions to be made once trade routes across the poles and access to resources under the sea — what future do we face?

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I find myself feeling hopeful today because I do believe it is the “poor” in money people around this globe that will end up saving the human species.  These people live in cultures that are the closest to indigenous ones that can be found.  These saviors of our species probably include those living in the 100+ identified “untouched” groups within the depths of the tiny bit of wilderness this planet still has upon it.

It is not the wealthy in America – or Canada – or anywhere else on this earth that will save our species — if we can, in fact, be saved at all.

What I do know is that it is the worst of the worst kinds of signs to me that women – MOTHERS – of increasing numbers of our species’ offspring are abandoning them at or very near their birth to work outside the home.  It bothers me that because the truth about what children need especially prior to age 5 can so easily be forgotten that nobody has to feel guilty or bad in any way for the suffering through neglect that our offspring are being forced to endure.

This neglect is changing the kind of humans these children will grow up to be – in their very physiology.

See no evil?  There is none.  Who says so?

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I don’t want to know what I know.  Yet I am the one who opened my own self up to research and discovery about what attachment of humans to their mothers and other PRIMARY consistent attachment caregivers IS and what it is designed to accomplish.  Humans DID reach a point in evolution where things were going so well in cultures that mothers could care for their infants optimally so that our nervous system-brain could develop in the finest of directions.

We were able to achieve SELFHOOD and consciousness.  We were able to develop the ability to connect our feeling being with empathy, compassion and altruistic action.  We evolved to make informed choices freely.  We are losing these abilities.  They came to us DIRECTLY THROUGH advances in abilities of mothers to MOTHER their young offspring.

Take away the mothers – take away the essence of our humanity.

We are so neglecting the facts about what safe and secure attachment early relationships are designed to accomplish that we are putting our “civilized” children at great risk for a retreat to a physiological response to life that makes them – in the depths of my thinking – more animal than evolved human.

That I realize today I do not see this happening IN EVERY CULTURE in the world is of great solace to me.  That the direction America is going in appears to be sending our nation over the brink like so many 7-year annihilation lemmings is becoming less and less of a concern to me.

We are going to get as a nation exactly what we are asking for!

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I find myself boiling down the problem.  Our culture succeeded in devaluing the contribution that women – as mothers – made to the point that they finally fought back – and LEFT.

Women abandoning their offspring for most of their waking early life is NOT merely about money although our problems are increasingly talked about as if “the almighty dollar” has control over everything especially Americans think, say and do.

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Safe and secure intimate early attachment relationships for human offspring are not touchy-feelie incidentals to human growth and development.  Those relationships make us human and advance us beyond the animal characteristics that are meant to only be HALF of who we are in our physical lifetime.

Take away those relationships – take away the best of our humanity.

That must be what America wants.  We could hardly be doing a better job of designing our own demise.

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I began this blog personally focussing on the effects of the terrible abuse I suffered for 18 years from birth – done to me by a psychotic mentally ill (Borderline Personality Disorder) mother.  What I see today is that NEGLECT — the insidious NEGLECT of the needs of our little ones under the age of 5 has the power to destroy our entire nation — and see how easy it is to neglect to even notice this is happening?

Look around.  Who is caring for the babies, toddlers and preschoolers in our society?  How do we define care?  Take care of their physical needs and what comes out at the end is ……  well, I’ve said enough for one day.

Except to ask, “Where is the tipping point?  Where is the point that once reached means we cannot turn back?”

When SELVES disappear and we don’t even notice?  When the ability to communicate through facial expression disappears?  When half of our citizens feel numb and don’t even know it?  When we lose the ability to notice suffering or to care and act accordingly on behalf of others — or even care about the planet we live upon? 

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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!o 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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Monday, February 17, 2014.  I could easily have written 50 posts over the past months about the information contained in just this one succinct article.  Nobody listens to me.  Does anyone listen to this gifted expert in the development of HEALTHY little people and thus of HEALTHY adult human beings?  It is IMPERATIVE that we pay attention to this information Dr. Gordon Neufeld is giving us!  Is anybody listening?

Nurturing children: Why “early learning” doesn’t help

Children should start attending school later, not earlier, Canadian development psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld reveals. “Early learning” programs for young children have no benefits for kids, he adds. So why are governments running down the opposite track?

by Andrea Mrozek, Manager of Research and Communications, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada

From the article at the above link:

“I want to make sure that my son learns how to get along with others,” one parent will say. Another will add, “My daughter is shy. I want her to be with other children, to help her come out of her shell.” A third might enthusiastically report that her child loves all her friends at daycare: “She can’t wait to go and spend time with them!”

These are just some of the things parents say when it comes to the benefits they see in the social settings that pre-schools, daycares and all-day kindergarten provide. Parents are rightly concerned about whether their children get along well with others.

However, is it true that early interaction with peers improves socialization for young children? Canadian developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld says this is not the case, particularly in sending young children into “social” environments before they are ready. [1]

Defining socialization

The word socialization can mean different things to different people.

With regards to small children, Dr. Neufeld clarifies one thing that socialization is not: “Probably the greatest myth that has evolved is this idea that socializing with one’s equals leads to socialization.”

Developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner also clarifies what socialization is not: “It should be clear that being socialized is not necessarily the same as being civilized. Nazi youth were also products of a socialization process.” [2]

Socialization in childrearing means rendering children fit for society so that children can grow and mature into becoming contributing adults, who can respectfully interact with others in community, be it at work or home, with colleagues, family and friends.

Successful socialization is of particular interest where reports of bullying hit the media with some regularity. [3]

For Dr. Neufeld and his colleagues at The Neufeld Institute, socialization is more complex than simply being able to get along well with peers. [4] Socialization involves being able to get along with others while at the same time being true to oneself.

Please read the rest of this important article HERE!

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I have been howling into the maelstrom on this blog for years now about the preventable lifelong terrible consequences of trauma that is passed to our offspring by the people who are entrusted to care for them. 

As my awareness has grown to include the national crisis we have created in our neglect of understanding how earliest attachment needs of infants and children ARE NOT MET in all but the most select small home-centered day-care settings I find that the kickback to my efforts to pass on exactly the kind of information Dr. Neufeld gives us are most often met with extremely hostile, defensive and unsettling misinformation based on very select current research that “proves” that there are BENEFITS and NO HARM to little people who spend the majority of their waking early lives under the care of hired help rather than under the care of THEIR MOTHERS or another very qualified entirely safe and secure attachment person.

I have moved in my thinking and belief to consider that nearly every early care setting, especially for children under the age of four, that I have heard of is little more than a “day orphanage” situation.  HOW DARE I SAY SUCH A THING!?!?!

True, as so many seem to like to claim, for abused and poverty stricken (?) infants and children daycare settings MIGHT be “what saves” these little people from “doom.”  But, really!?  What kind of a bizarre twist is this to the fact that few women who bear children into the world “can” stay at home to care for them during their offspring’s most critical early developmental stages?

We can, as individuals and as a society, justify anything we want to.  We are doing exactly that in regards to how we are slinging “the facts” around to “prove” that it makes no difference whatsoever WHO takes care of our babies!

Dr. Neufeld stands on the opposite side of popular in this free-for-all.  I absolutely stand there with him.

There is nothing haphazard, willy-nilly or accidental about the way humans have evolved over the eons plus eons we have been moving into our future.  We have a very specific design that requires that very specific early needs be met in very specific ways at very specific times for us to “come out OK.”

There is such a small margin of error during the earliest months of human life for “messing things up” that it basically doesn’t exist at all.  There is a price to be paid – a HIGH price called A HUMAN LIFE – for neglecting to provide in intimate, loving, safe and secure relationships what little people need ESPECIALLY from conception to age three so that they turn out as close to FINE as is possible.

Otherwise – if we want to accept this fact or not – some degree of trauma altered development is going to take place as a little person’s BODY (and self) are forced to adapt to survive in a less-than-optimal “good enough” benevolent world.

We need to get “back to the drawing board” to redesign our “modern” society so that the needs of everyone can be met in the best way possible.  IS THIS POSSIBLE?  We will not find out if we do not take a hard look at the truth about what humans need to come out of their most critical early developmental stages – intact.

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This is a very important study whose findings hit the “press” today:

Years after Bullying, Negative Impact on a Child’s Health May Remain – Longitudinal study shows negative, compounding effects of bullying

Who is tracking the longterm consequences of what daycare is doing to our children into unhealthy people?

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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!o 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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment

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Monday, February 17, 2014.  In spite of having a quite demanding young toddler after my attention at the moment – (distraction:  Too strong a word?  Not.) –  I am going to try to post something important as I introduce it in my almost coherent words!!

What does being human have to do with ancient jawless fish?  Have you ever read any of the work of Dr. Stephen Porges (professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and director for that institution’s Brain-Body Center)? 

Illuminating.  Simply illuminating, very important information about – being HUMAN!

Here is a transcription Ravi Dykema was kind enough to post online in April 2006 of an interview done with Dr. Porges that is very readable and a great place to begin thinking along the lines of this great man.

“What if many of your troubles could be explained by an automatic reaction in your body to what’s happening around you? What if the cure for mental and emotional disorders ranging from autism to panic attacks lay in a new understanding and approach to the way the nervous system operates? Stephen Porges, Ph.D., thinks it could be so. Porges, professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and director for that institution’s Brain-Body Center, has spent much of his life searching for clues to the way the brain operates, and has developed what he has termed polyvagal theory. It is a study of the evolution of the human nervous system and the origins of brain structures, and it assumes that more of our social behaviors and emotional disorders are biological—that is, they are “hard wired” into us—than we usually think. Based on the theory, Porges and his colleagues have developed treatment techniques that can help people communicate better and relate better to others.

The term “polyvagal” combines “poly,” meaning “many,” and “vagal,” which refers to the important nerve called the “vagus.” To understand the theory, let’s look at the vagus nerve, a primary component of the autonomic nervous system. This is the nervous system that you don’t control, that causes you to do things automatically, like digest your food. The vagus nerve exits the brain stem and has branches that regulate structures in the head and in several organs, including the heart. The theory proposes that the vagus nerve’s two different branches are related to the unique ways we react to situations we perceive as safe or unsafe. It also outlines three evolutionary stages that took place over millions of years in the development of our autonomic nervous system.”  By Ravi Dykema

How your nervous system sabotages your ability to relate:  An interview with Stephen Porges about his polyvagal theory

These are some of the questions Dr. Porges answers in this interview:

RD: Please tell me about the theory you have developed, polyvagal theory. Isn’t it an innovation on the theory of the two nervous systems [sympathetic/autonomic]?

RD: I’ve heard the human mind described as a paranoid instrument. The premise is that when we are living in our senses, in the here and now, we usually feel safe, but our thinking mind often throws scary impressions in front of us, as if it’s anticipating some threat.

RD: Can you talk about polyvagal theory as it relates to our need for safety and our reaction when we don’t think it’s there?

RD: Where’s the “freeze” response in all this?

RD: How does polyvagal theory relate to all this?

RD: So we could use dramatic facial expressions to calm down?

RD: So do humans have the ability to consciously access our more recently developed neurological systems, instead of reverting automatically to our reactive systems? If so, can we use them to override the vague anxiety with which many of us live?

RD: So let’s say I’ve just arrived at a party where I don’t know anybody, and I realize I’m underdressed for the occasion. I’m embarrassed, but it’s an important business function and I can’t leave. How would I use the listening-to-my-body approach to calm myself and feel safe?

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE INTERVIEW!

How your nervous system sabotages your ability to relate:  An interview with Stephen Porges about his polyvagal theory

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My personal favorite Porges’ gem in this article:   “…“home” is a powerful metaphor for safety.”

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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!o 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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Saturday, February 15, 2014.  Twenty nine years of my life is a long time.  I am 62 – so for nearly half of this time I have been the ex-wife of Joe.  We were married for 10 years, marrying days before my 23rd birthday and days after Joe’s 24th.  We were young.  I didn’t FEEL young but then I never WAS young.

We met 3 years before we married.  I married him because he asked me.  I had already been married and divorced and had a 3-year-old daughter.  I remember thinking, “Yes, I will marry him because I don’t believe anyone else will ever ask me and I know he will be a good father.”

We never dated.  He never courted me.  I never was given a wedding ring.  (This was true for both of my marriages.)

Because there are family times now (as I have mentioned in recent posts) when Joe is present I am facing a host of circumstances from my past with him that have never in the past 30 years been dealt with.  For example, I could sum up that huge segment of my life in these words:  “I did not know any better.”

Those words also cover the fact that while I was married I still had no way to recognize the horrors of my childhood or that I had ever “been abused” at all.  I had no information.  I had no point of reference or of comparison.  I simply accepted “my lot in life” without complaint and did the very best I could with what was available to me.

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I find I have to ask myself today – as I seem to have no choice but to ask — “Would I be better off today if I had not sat next to that man at the humble family Valentine’s Day dinner at my daughter’s house last night – with her husband and the two young grandsons (ages 19 months and almost 4) present?”

Was I prepared for the gentle tone of complex conversation between Joe and I that just happened to take place as we stayed at the kitchen table together for an hour and a half after dinner last night?  COULD I have been prepared?  HOW, In God’s sacred name, exactly HOW can anyone prepare for — LIFE — as it plays itself out with movements of dance steps that nobody ever learns and knows — when the time shows up for us to dance them?

“We were really poor while we were married,” Joe came out with — out of nowhere in my universe — last night.

Poor.

Oh, in God’s holy name AGAIN — were we poor!  Was I poor in ways that had NOTHING whatsoever to do with the fact that there was so little money coming into our humble home during those ten years.

Yet…..

I knew a kind of sorrow in my heart then that is the same sorrow I live with now — amplified as it is and has been through all the experiences of my life thus far.  As unknown, unseen horrible traumas from the first 18 years of my life circled then as vultures (and yes, that word and the image of those birds did arise in conversation last night as I was shown a photograph being entered by Joe in a local art show of such a bird sharing a metal roof in a starkly elegant picture with a coal black crow) circle above both the dead and the potentially dead.

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Was I dead during those years of marriage I shared with this man?

Yes.  Through no fault of my own and certainly not through fault of Joe.

Fault.

Does anyone ever get through a marriage and then a divorce without that word – that word – FAULT – finding its way into what is central in one’s life?

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I sewed and cooked and canned and gardened and cleaned past the edge of immaculate during those years.  I did the very best with what I had been given as I always had.  And again — I did not complain.

It strikes me today that COMPLAINING — having the ability to COMPLAIN — is a gift that I as a survivor of 18 years of horrific infant-child abuse had to EARN by looking – finally – into the darkness.

Yet not one single time last night did my POWER to complain, even inwardly, come to my rescue as allusions both direct and subtle to those years of my life with this man floated around that dinner table last night.

Could I think, “Gee, it would have been nice to have been appreciated for what I so willingly did and tried to do for my children — and for YOU — during those years of poverty.”

Could I ask even of myself, “Do you look back with any appreciation NOW?”

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I did not ask what lay behind the troubled emotions I could so clearly detect in this gentle man as he spoke those words to me.  Some part of me feels like I lost the right to ask this man anything about ‘then’ in the now.  Today I realize I am doing now what I was so good at doing back then.  I listen.  What troubles me about this pattern is that it’s so familiar!

I listen.  I don’t fight back with my words.  I notice, sense, absorb — and feel great sorrow.

For WHAT exactly I am not yet sure. 

There seems to be the same uneven ground underneath me that I knew back then when his family supported HIM against ME and that was simply – that.

Who is “on my side” even now?  Why would it matter to me if anyone was “on my side?”  How much of even asking this question is directly tied to the long years of abuse I suffered when NOBODY was on my side?

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Yet I can see some kind of voiceless, soundless suffering in the being of this gentle man.  I recognize it.  His suffering – if it does exist – is not my concern.  It is not my business.  That he seems to be divorcing and thus ending in some ways the 30+ year relationship he had with “that other woman” must have concerned me in my very troubled dreams last night.  I asked him in one dream if he was divorced yet.  He simply replied to me as if talking to a brick wall, “That’s the plan.”

It came up in the dream because there was another man present who wanted to  know if the divorce was final because if it was then HE could – in word only – claim to be my partner now so HE could get a 20% couple’s discount off of a great deal of lumber he wanted to purchase at a local lumber yard.  (Joe is an ace carpenter and has made a living off his hard, hard work and great, great skill all his adult life – and still does.)

(How in the tangled world of my dreams did Joe’s divorcing “her” have anything to do with “freeing” ME as this dream suggested?)

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That’s all I am – in my OWN dreams?  A pawn to gain a discount on a lumber purchase for a total stranger?

I am of the generation that blew like flecks of dust in a windstorm through the onset and finalization of “The Women’s Liberation Movement.”  I crossed a threshold during my marriage to Joe as I accidentally discovered that the humble, honest, sincere efforts women put into keeping a home and taking care of children were WORTH NOTHING to the men who benefited from that labor.

As we were divorcing (and before I found out Joe had been chasing around with another woman for 3 years without my knowledge) Joe said to me, “The biggest mistake I made in our marriage was not making you go out and get a job.”

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So NOW – these 30 years later — where lies that sentiment in any context of the poverty of our family back then?  Where does it lie in the reality that I trashed my home down south to come up here to live in this tiny window-impaired apartment locked in a trap with horrendous frigid wind chills week after week so that I could do NOW for at least one of my baby grandsons what I did so well for our children back then — stay home and love him 100% during the day so that he can come out of these early developmental years being the very best human being he can be?

A long-worded question!

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Do I have “issues” with wanting (or needing?) to be appreciated for what I work to offer to the well-being of others I care about?

I don’t approve of WANTING to be appreciated!!  Either I do what I choose to do because I want to — or I don’t.  Being appreciated (in my inner Linda-bashing circles) SHOULD not be a part of the picture.

And then there is that word SHOULD – which I learned long ago is an inner landmine word that again connects to freely making choices.

Yet again — I am not sure that severe infant-child abuse survivors ever live in any kind of “ordinary” choice-making world.  The blunt force of the trauma we endured and survived relays itself into and through every aspect of our life.  Looking back being a trauma survivor (which means, bottom-line, BEING ALIVE at all!) just simply includes the fact that I entered my adulthood not only missing all the goodness I needed to receive to make it through childhood in a healthy way — but I also made it to adulthood having spent the life force of ten thousand lifetimes just plain surviving what happened to me at all.

There was NOTHING left over!  But I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life when I so KNEW that fact as I know it right now! 

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I am realizing that I used the fact I could walk out my door 365 days a year in the high desert I just left in comfort to FEED, heal, sustain myself in nearly every way just by being in that place in that climate.  I stripped my own sustenance from myself by moving to this physical location.  I know that now.

I guessed before I came here that something was going to change for me.  I could not predict exactly what.  Would I make the same choice again knowing what I know now – how fragile and tired and depleted I feel here — in order to spend these most valuable precious days with my little grandson?

Yes.

Being in the presence of the rest of my family here is also wonderful.  I did not predict that Joe would so closely be connected to that family in my life.  No, not only connected.  BE a part of that family.

Family is about shared history.  History past.  History being made in the present.  I swear.  I did not plan this.

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I just thought about a dream I had 29 years ago after the divorce between Joe and I became final.  I was living in a solid old farmhouse on a peaceful bluff surrounded by gorgeous fields within a circle of healthy trees – green and thriving.  In the dream Joe drove up my driveway.  Parked.  I stood at my living room window watching him approach my front door.

He knocked.  I do not remember any exchange of words between us other than my saying, “Come.  This way.”

I walked with him around the outside of the house to the back where I showed him the addition I had built for him there.  A comfortable room with old lace on the curtains, a fine old quilt on a single bed, a kerosene lamp on a small table with a polished glass chimney. 

This place was his.  There were still a few studs showing in the walls.  The construction was not yet complete.  (Hum, lumber again.)  I knew he would be this close to me and a part of my life for the rest of our lives.  I knew we would each come and go — separately.

Maybe now — all these years later — he is coming knocking and I will show him that room.

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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 probono – what a gift and thank you Ben!o 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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Wednesday, February 12, 2014.  I didn’t just wake up one day as an adult and end up “gifted.”  I was a gifted child.  My mother HATED my intelligence!  True, she hated me no matter what but the fact I was smarter than her drove her even crazier in her abuse of me from the time I was very young and she figured it out that part of the reason she could not break me was because I was free in my intelligence in ways she could never reach or touch me.

Yet when I read this article today I began to think that giftedness for severely abused infants and children is probably as much a risk factor for troubles throughout life as it is a resiliency factor.  I am posting this in case it rings BIG BELLS for others of this blog’s readers, and I am betting it will.  How does being gifted complicate the abuse survivor experience?

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This comes from an Australian website – Davidson Institute for Talent Development

 — Emotional intensity in gifted children

Gifted and Creative Services, Australia 2001

This article by Lesley Sword explores and explains emotional intensity in gifted individuals. A number of traits of emotional intensity are described. Strategies for parents are suggested to help their emotionally intense gifted children to accept themselves as they are.

Giftedness has an emotional as well as intellectual component. Intellectual complexity goes hand in hand with emotional depth. Just as gifted children’s thinking is more complex and has more depth than other children’s, so too are their emotions more complex and more intense.

Complexity can be seen in the vast range of emotions that gifted children can experience at any one time and the intensity is evident in the “full-on-ness” about everything with which parents and teachers of the gifted children are so familiar.

Emotional intensity in the gifted is not a matter of feeling more than other people, but a different way of experiencing the world: vivid, absorbing, penetrating, encompassing, complex, commanding – a way of being quiveringly alive.

Emotional intensity can be expressed in many different ways:

•as intensity of feeling – positive feelings, negative feelings, both positive and negative feelings together, extremes of emotion, complex emotion that seemingly move from one feeling to another over a short time period, identification with the feelings of other people, laughing and crying together

•in the body – the body mirrors the emotions and feelings are often expressed as bodily symptoms such as tense stomach, sinking heart, blushing, headache, nausea

•inhibition – timidity and shyness

•strong affective memory – emotionally intense children can remember the feelings that accompanied an incident and will often relive and ‘re-feel’ them long afterward

•fears and anxieties, feelings of guilt, feelings of being out of control

•concerns with death, depressive moods

•emotional ties and attachments to others, empathy and concern for others, sensitivity in relationships, attachment to animals, difficulty in adjusting to new environments, loneliness, conflicts with others over the depth of relationships

•critical self-evaluation and self-judgment, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority

Many people seem unaware that intense emotions are part of giftedness and little attention is paid to emotional intensity. Historically the expression of intense feelings has been seen a sign of emotional instability rather than as evidence of a rich inner life. The traditional Western view is of emotions and intellect as separate and contradictory entities, there is however, an inextricable link between emotions and intellect and, combined, they have a profound effect on gifted people. It is emotional intensity that fuels joy in life, passion for learning, the drive for expression of a talent area, the motivation for achievement.

Feeling everything more deeply than others do can both be painful and frightening. Emotionally intense gifted people often feel abnormal. “There must be something wrong with me… maybe I’m crazy… nobody else seems to feel like this.” Emotionally intense gifted people often experience intense inner conflict, self-criticism, anxiety and feelings of inferiority. The medical community tends to see these conflicts as symptoms and labels gifted people neurotic. They are however an intrinsic part of being gifted and provide the drive that gifted people have for personal growth and achievement.

It is vitally important that gifted children are taught to see their heightened sensitivity to things that happen in the world as a normal response for them. If this is not made clear to them they may see their own intense experiences as evidence that something is wrong with them. Other children may ridicule a gifted child for reacting strongly to an apparently trivial incident, thereby increasing the child’s feeling of being odd. Also sensitivity to society’s injustice and hypocrisy can lead many emotionally intense gifted children to feel despair and cynicism at very young ages.

The most important thing we can do to nurture emotionally intense gifted children is to accept their emotions: they need to feel understood and supported. Explain that intense feelings are normal for gifted children. Help them to use their intellect to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Parents need to exercise appropriate discipline as this helps develop a sense of security that leads to the development of self-discipline and a feeling of emotional competency. Appropriate discipline is the consistent application of values, rules and behaviours that are held to be important in the family. Explain the benefit of rules to the child and enforce them through consequence of behaviour.

Discuss feelings openly; the negative as well as the positive. It can be helpful to use an “emotional thermometer” to initiate discussion eg “on a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling today?  “Take time to listen to children’s ideas, opinions and feelings. Be non-judgmental: don’t interrupt, moralize, distract or give advice.

Appreciate their sensitivities, intensities and passions. Don’t try to minimize their emotions because you feel uncomfortable with their pain. It doesn’t help to say “you’re too sensitive” or “snap out of it” or “it’ll be OK”.

Reassure them when they are afraid and help them to find ways of expressing their intense emotions though stories, poems, art work, music, journal entries or physical activities. Realize that they become frustrated when their physical capabilities do not match their intellectual ability and help them to deal with this. Reward the process of effort and not only the outcome. Emphasize strengths and don’t dwell on shortcomings.

Realize that sensitivity does not mean weakness. Give them responsibility that is age appropriate and do not over protect them from the world and from the consequence of their actions. Remember that they are children first and gifted second. Don’t expect them to be little “adults”. Play, fun and leisure activities are essential for strong emotional development.

Finally, seek preventative professional counseling where appropriate; it is important both to support healthy emotional development and to prevent social and emotional problems.

We can help our emotionally intense gifted children to accept their inner world of experience and value it as strength. This often means we have to accept and value our own emotional experience and feelings so that we can be a positive role model for children. Speaking about and valuing our emotions can be very difficult to do in a society that values rational, logical thinking and sees emotions as the opposite of rationality. However, if emotional intensity is seen by parents and teachers and presented positively to children as a strength, children can be helped to understand and value this gift. In this way emotionally intense children will be empowered to express their unique selves in the world and use their gifts and talents with confidence and joy.

References

Piechowski, M.M. (1991) Emotional Development and Emotional Giftedness.  In N. Colangelo & G. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of Gifted Education. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon

Piechowski, M.M. (1979) Developmental Potential.  In N. Colangelo &T. Zaffran (Eds.), New Voices in Counseling the Gifted. Dubuque, IA : Kendall/Hunt.

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Gifted Exchange Blog
The blog about gifted children, schooling, parenting, education news and changing American education for the better.

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Book:  Genius Denied

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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 probono – what a gift and thank you Ben!o 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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Please click here to read or to  Leave a Comment »

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Wednesday, February 12, 2014. 

Handspun wool – variegated – dyed in oven

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The warp is half wool, half cotton – I liked the ‘surprising’ way the warp shows up as it adjusts around the variation in the bulk of the handspun warp

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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 probono – what a gift and thank you Ben!o 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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Wednesday, February 12, 2014.  Buying a plastic life all wrapped up in plastic with a plastic card!  Who saw THIS coming?  (Yes, Sandy.  I know YOU know who did!!  lol)

With the best of intentions right before Christmas I marched myself in the frigid darkness over to the only store I could get to without a car – Home Depot!  Walking around thinking about Christmas – which as a whole I detest as a “holiday” – I found a display with sticks of fake tree scents that people could buy to help them pretend their plastic trees were ALIVE!

Well, I bought a small live tree in a pot, wrapped it in multiple layers of plastic bags and hauled that poor thing home with me.  It survived just fine!  But I also bought a SPRUCE tree plastic container of scent sticks.

I laid one of these on top of my old 1980s television set and did not think about it again until I moved the TV across the room.  I was shocked to discover that I could NOT lift that fake tree scent stick off of the TV!  It had eaten a groove into the plastic as it sunk in and became a part of the TV’s casing.

That was SPOOKY!  What poison lurks in our modern world around us?  Do we want to know?

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In my thinking people who have suffered wounding to their hearts are more like actual living breathing growing trees deep in a forest whose life span is recorded in beautiful rings within them.  Some rings wide and far apart – times of relative ease and plenty.  Some rings narrow and so close together a toothpick could not be laid between them.

But PLASTIC people in a plastic shallow trivial embarrassingly EMPTY and pretty dang surface and meaningless life — WE ARE NOT!

Does quality mean anything anymore?  How much of our daily suffering as survivors of a So Real world of horrendous early trauma comes from a mismatch between the quality of who we have become in stark contrast to a plastic world that displays barely any SOUL DEPTH at all?

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If you look along both sides of the image for “Imagine” at the top of my blog you can see some mosaic pieces that came from the Bisbee dump that was closed in 1954.  That dump is off limits but during the horrible months I was undergoing chemo in 2007 dear friends and family took me on the 1/2 mile trek into the dump (a test of endurance in my chemo-weakened state!) on Sundays as we trespassed on mining property on the day there were no guards and hauled out heavy buckets of treasure.

I bring this up because the pieces of old dishes and glass delighted me then and delight me now.  However, it is the little figurine of Mary and Jesus that I want to highlight in my post here.  They were made in Japan in the era of my childhood – before the China implosion of merchandise into the US anything “made in Japan” was looked down upon by many people.

Yet as I retrieved this little piece from under a foot of soil that day at the dump and rubbed the soot off of it from the many dump burnings it had gone through – I was thrilled to discover this delicate image:

I found the broken tea-cup on that same day – Mary and Jesus on a tea-cup still tickles my fancy!  I can relate to this version of spiritual expression!

I did intend to keep the tea cup mosaic – but not the rest of these.  What to do with them?  They were heavy to haul with me – and I find they solace my heart in this @$*%Y(# place!

This one and the next one hang above my kitchen sink on one of my MANY WINDOWLESS WALLS!  And, yes, this piece is about homesickness for my desert home

Pieces of people’s history are in these dish remnants!  Beauty has very little to do with plastic in my world.

Latest batch of butterfly wing weavings!  Once the edges are knotted off the pieces are handwashed without agitation in HOT water in my sink – dried – pressed with my cheap old iron and brushed until they are soft and fuzzy.  At that point the white warp has been tainted by the residual dyes in the handspun yarn and everything blends together into a beautiful whole.

I liked these dancing clouds the other day.  As I watched them I could hear their music.  I could hear them talking with one another, with the sky and earth and with me.

Nothing plastic about that.

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Those of us who are survivors have honed gifts of sensitivities, perception and of expression.  We are different from ordinary and therefore utilize the powers of our mind in extremely creative ways no matter what our chosen outlet may be (even if it is not a VISIBLE outlet!).

We know how to hold our own or we would not still be here!  Holding our own against a plastic mainstream?  Well, truth be told, as we honor ourselves we just might find this is easier than we think it is!  More importantly — WE CAN DO IT!!  There is a quality to us in our lives that is so rich, so varied, so GORGEOUS!!!

But nobody can tap that source of genuine wealth but us.

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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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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Tuesday, February 11, 2014.  The developmental neuroscientist Dr. Allan N. Schore has a lot to say about how rupture and repair in early attachment infant-caregiver relationships work to build a nervous system including the brain (most essentially the right limbic area) before the age of one.  (Online search his name in any combination with infant mother attachment brain development.)

He tells us that prior to age one, certainly, it is the ADULT who MUST repair any breach in the ongoing infant experience of feeling safe and secure in the world.  Once the infant is old enough, usually after age one, to venture out into the world to actively explore the environment there are then times when the infant intentions and actions must be modulated by the adult’s reactions – and here is where SHAME begins to enter the infant’s world as the nervous system “crashes” when “rupture” STOPS ongoing experience.

Adults “correct” the direction of infant exploration simply by turning down a pleasurable response to the infant.  But this “rupture” cannot be left to carry forward in time without being “repaired” by a caring, compassionate caregiver who knows instinctively how to give the infant what is needed to “repair” the problem.

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Life always involves rupture and repair.  We cannot go forward through life without periods of rest and revitalization.  Caring for all the physical needs of the body is a part of this restoration and repair process.  What is important to me this morning is the fact that because we are human we are also designed to add the advanced process of CREATIVITY into our lives.  It is very hard to be creative if we are depleted and in need of restoration and repair!

Those of us who were neglected, abused, traumatized from the start of our life never had a chance to build a body (nervous system-brain included) that had EASY channels included in it that came to be through happy, loving, safe and secure caregiving. 

(The image just popped into my mind – our experience was sort of like playing a video of a baseball game backwards.  There must be something in this image from my right brain that is about the fact that every step I tried to take forward in my child life and development was met with brutal abuse that did nothing to give me what I needed to go through the patterns of my life smoothly!)

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I believe that as survivors of severe early trauma we need to pay very special, careful attention to how we can meet our needs for restoring our inner (and often outer) resources so that we can repair ourselves from the outgoing expenditure of these resources that is required just to exist (subsist?!).  Where is the “re-creation” in our life?

Yes, repairing ourselves does involve aspects of recreating ourselves – but I think there’s more to this part of our life cycle.  For many survivors – certainly this is absolutely true for me – I never had enough safety in my early environment to PLAY.  Not only that, but Mother’s particular mental illness psychosis demanded that I NEVER play.  How could she keep me in her psychotic hell perpetually if I could at times escape – and PLAY?

In fact to psychotic Mother my playing was a criminal offense.

So – I don’t know HOW to PLAY!  This is one of the great tragedies of my life.  When ‘experts’ talk about the perpetual state of alarm that our body has built into it they are even in that assessment diagnosing a lack of safety ending in a lack of joy AND a lack of PLAY.

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As I see things destiny allowed me two avenues of re-creation within the mad hell I grew up in.  One was access to art materials at the same time I was (mysteriously?) allowed by Mother to use them.  Yes, she abused me often by denigrating what I created (and wrote) but I WAS (miraculously?) able to preserve and protect myself by keeping what I wrote and made PRIVATE, secret, and out of her range of sight.

The second avenue of re-creation allowed to me – and DEFINITELY this lies within the sphere of miraculous!  Our family left suburban Los Angeles, CA when I was five and moved to Alaska.  I was given the gift of access to the wilderness!

I have always ‘been in love’ with both creative expression through “the arts” and with the wilderness.  If I haven’t been able to reach the actual wilderness I have found ways to place myself in regions where my soul is fed by the land and plants surrounding me. 

That this is not true for me where I have landed at this point in my life is amplifying my struggles significantly.  But I still have writing.  I still have work I can do to create with my hands.

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I struggle with all the basics of my life:  Breathing.  Sleeping.  Eating.  I struggle with social difficulties on multiple levels.  Yet I also have the great gift of being near my two daughters and two grandsons at this point.  My questioning often has to do with ME and MY LIFE – my own unique and personal life within myself.  My daughters have their lives.  As I have asked at so many difficult junctures in my adult life, “WHERE and WHAT is my life and HOW to I find and make my own life?”

These thoughts have led me recently to thinking about the term “death wish” as I realize that as a severe abuse-trauma survivor I have always struggled with a “life wish.”  I have always stayed alive IN SPITE of what happened to me at the same time I mostly feel that I have never truly come alive in my own life!  I am 62 and I can still say this!

And as many of us have discovered it is the INFANT abuse and neglect prior to age one – and then prior to age two – that did us the most harm.  The fact that the severe abuse I suffered lasted from birth until age 18 just means — WHAT? 

Certainly it does not mean that I am alone in this kind of predicament!  Knowing this helps me to feel a little more OK.  More acceptant.  More hopeful.  It gives me strength to go forward.  It is one of my most important inner resources I can use to restore, repair and re-create myself at times when life feels difficult to me — which is most of every day these days.

Thank you for being here!

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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!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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