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Thursday, April 9, 2015.  What follows in this post is my reply to a conversation between myself and a fellow survivor of an in-survivable childhood about our questions regarding the current thinking about “resiliency.”  This conversation can be accessed here:  BRIEF COMMENTARY ON “RESILIENCY”

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Tina, fire meets fire in the two of us.  In the middle of my eleven hour day caring for young, needy little boys yesterday, as I stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink (I did not have time to read your posted comment until very late evening) I had the inner image come to me of people like us:  We are like fish who were able to come ashore, stand on legs and breath air.  Speaking of air, your words took my breath away.

This morning as I determine to write a reply to you in these brief moments before my w-year-old grandson arrives for yet another day of my care the word – the one simple word for which humans at present really have no true definition for – comes to mind:  Learning.

You and I LEARNED how to endure and survive what was done to us, the unimaginable brutality, the fundamental insane madness, the encroachment of evil done to small children – only we were somehow NOT helpless.  We were able, instant by instant, to LEARN as our lives passed through the time of our childhoods from birth, how to keep our inner self intact along with our body which houses us.

“Learning” is a much humbler word than “resiliency” is.  It carries no special stretch of thought to imagine.  Does a newborn learn how to cry?  Does an infant learn how to smile, roll over, sit up, crawl, walk?  I say my youngest grandson is learning to talk.  How is gaining the ability to talk any different than gaining the ability to crawl – or to survive the in-survivable?  For how we made it through to the other end DID come from within us.  Somehow.

To me it is this “somehow” as it applies to all I mention in this prior paragraph that needs to capture attention when considering how unbearable trauma is made bearable to those who survive it.  And for some, like my mother and your father, the ability to bear whatever happened to them during the most critical stages of their early life seemed to have forced madness to erupt without cessation.

There is no line between survival and triumph, absolute triumph, when it comes to people like you and me.  Of what shape and form was our lifeline?  This line of thought only sends me backward in my thinking.  Does a zygote learn to grow its body?  Does it grow only because it is so-called resilient?

And again I question even the growing collective body of thoughts about “attachment.”  It is essentially an attachment of self from the start of life to self that causes a life to move forward in time no matter what circumstances it may be traveling through.  Attachment is not a series of Hallmark Moments.  It is a very literal physiological process of interactive relationships that take place according to critically important discernable patterns that sustain, maintain life so that death does not occur.

It seems, Tina, that you and I could importantly collaborate on a book about these topics and our time, effort and investment would not be wasted.  If, however as I suspect, humans are involved in an organic process of learning right now it may be that a requisite level of maturity has not yet collectively been reached that would allow for comprehension of what we have to say.  What we know.

In the meantime you and I exist as chaos theorists discovered within that “mystic” space where creation itself takes place in the “insignificant” realms of statistical improbability.

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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.

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NOTE:  I am stuck with a new version of the blog’s posting page that I do not like and cannot get out of.  It has refused to post or include my chosen tags:

adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame