++++
Monday, April 6, 2015. While I don’t understand my point exactly in writing this post it seems to be one that has moved past the perculation stage into WRITE ME NOW. So here is a little more about my personal conflicts with the concept of “resiliency” as it may be achieving a generic standing within the “healing trauma” circles.
The adult human body is made up of about 37 trillion cells. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the world population exceeded 7 billion on March 12, 2012. To do research that tried to extrapolate meaningful information about ALL cells or ALL people based on a small sample of ONE would be ludicrous.
Nobody can determine each individual’s experiences with trauma in such a way that the data generated could be made useful to anyone, let alone everyone! So naturally what I have lived through and what I know as a result of my studies about what happened to me and how I survived it will never fit into any clear “significant probability” statistic with meaning. I can, however, share parts of my story to illustrate points important to me.
I am sharing a story included on this blog that I certainly am NOT going to read right now. I may never return to read it again. (This is often the case with my own childhood stories once written, which is why my ace professional researcher and writer daughter is my editor for our books. She has not yet proofed the story at this link.)
What I wish to say about the experience detailed in this story as it connects to my standpoint on “resiliency” is that had I NOT gone through this event I do not believe I would have come out of my childhood having ANY sense of what “feeling loved” felt like.
The story is of trauma, true, but for me having my family gathered around me as I was nearly bleeding to death was the ONLY clear time of my 18-year childhood that I felt I belonged to this family. It was the ONLY time that the feeling I lived with all of rest of my childhood from birth that I was at any moment, out of nowhere (my mother was psychotically mentally ill with me as her abuse target as my book at link below describes) going to be brutally attacked was absent.
This event COULD have been a very low spot – what I call a risk factor moment — in my horrifying childhood rather than being the powerful, necessary (to me) resiliency factor moment that I built upon to successfully raise my own children and to care about others. (In my case, I believe in what I call “borrowed secure attachment” rather than in “earned secure attachment” – a online search of terms “stop the storm borrowed secure attachment” will highlight some related posts.)
There is no possible “resiliency measurement tool” that could capture what truly traumatic childhoods are/were like. But in the interest of preserving the integrity of useful data through meticulous research what is found MUST be processed by thinkers steeped in the depths of what early trauma IS. The impeccable artistry and beauty of individual survivor’s lives must not be lost in the mad rush to understand what numbers-only are telling us.
Only with this understanding can any useful thinking about a vague concept like “resiliency” be made to pull its weight in efforts to understand and stop trauma and to assist those who survive it to increase their well-being across their lifespan.
I learned all I was going to find out in the 18 years of my childhood about what love-of-Linda was going to feel like. All I was going to learn about what love might be like PERIOD I learned during those moments. I believe traumatized children notice every possible useful bit of information and make PROFOUNDLY amazing good use of those tidbits. That kind of resiliency, if we are going to call it that, is to me nothing more or less than the will to survive coupled with accumulating the tools necessary to do so.
++++
Here is our first book out in ebook format. Click here to view or purchase –
Story Without Words: How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?
It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.
++++
++++
Stop the Storm 