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Sunday, October 25, 2015.  I haven’t felt calm enough to muse since I wrote this post that sits here on my computer – waiting.  Erase or post?  Well, I might as well put it online and be done with this.  Until next time….

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Friday, October 22, 2015.

Muse.  Musing.

ntransitive verb

1

:  to become absorbed in thought; especially :  to turn something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively

2

archaic :  wonder, marvel

transitive verb

:  to think or say reflectively

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I am reminded that the core of “cognition, to cognate” is female.  Of “the mother.”  Muses?  Female?  Contemplate.  Contemplative.

I would say as “of the moon.”  Reflective of light within.  Inner light reflecting inner light.

Always with a tinge of The Great Mystery.”  Things unseen.  Things unknown.  Not a Mountain Goat surety of step and climb.  More of a slippery thing.  More about things that are wet rather than hot and dry.

Not a far flung reaching for the sun.  More of a depths-plumbing experience.  Perhaps more gentle.  Perhaps a kind of inner whispering.

Not grapping or gripping.  Not even grappling.  A kind of holding things loosely.  A kind of active watching.  Wandering without demands.  But, yes, with questioning!  With curiosity.  A kind of puzzling things out.

A process of defining.  Defining shapes of processes that don’t even need to be delineated with concretized boundaries.  Process.  Construction in process.

Kind of sounds like life.

Kind of like “mothering.”

A kind of safe and protective ALLOWING of “things” to evolve, to show themselves without critique or control.  Gentle.  With pride and encouragement and joy.

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No confusions.  No predictions.  And yet the nurturing-ground is CHAOS in its purest forms.  No fear.

Very much like pure play.  The same required conditions present for both processes.  Signaling an “OK enough” condition in “the world” during such moments of time.

This is about having a home.  Being at home in one’s self in the world.  Blossoming.  Or, on the other end of seasons, about preparing the ground for the resting time of winter.

No pushing thoughts around.  Letting them appear in images, in sensations, through the senses.  As memories – past and future moving through the now.

I think it’s important, helpful, significant to NOTICE these times of wandering wondering – to recognize them – and even to cherish them.  They happen in the absence of immediate toxic stress pressure.  We are feeling degrees of peacefulness, of calmness, of safety and security when these moments appear.

They might not stay very long.  That’s OK.  That’s the wonder-full thing about daydreams.  No pressure!

These moments will return again like the small gifts of life that they are.  Our inner selfie time.  Our a’musing time.  These are times we are not lost to our self.  In fact, I think we are MOST present WITH our self.

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By my own definition I do NOT include stress-filled-thoughts/feelings in this category of thinking-without-THINKING (passive-instead-of-active)!  Yet inspirations can certainly appear during these times that seem to magically help us resolve difficulties we face.

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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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Leave a Comment »

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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

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Wednesday, October 21, 2015.  I never thought of myself as “old” when I began this blog 6 ½ years ago.  I never even thought of myself as “aging” back then.  What has changed so much for me in those few years that I now feel like I am an entirely different person?

I could just as well simplify this question by asking myself, “What resources did I have then that I lack now?”  Is that what aging IS?  Nothing but a depletion of available resources?

Real or imagined?

How do we know the difference between these two states?

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I have a dear friend who is what he has termed for all of us high ACE score people – a TADPOLE – a Trauma Altered Person from way early in our development.  My friend talks a lot about “bandwidth” in terms of our continued experiences of our self in our life.  Huge amounts of trauma take up huge amounts of “space” within our bandwidth.

We FEEL this!!

But it’s not “just the trauma” – past and present – that so taxes our resources.  It is – as Laura Porter describes – the TOXIC STRESS of trauma that wears us down and wears us out.  Nearly all the transactions a very high ACE score person experiences involve some kind of stress because the stress is IN our body.  Toxic stress BUILT itself into is as we were getting built in the first place.

So I don’t think we ever really escape the stress of toxic stress.  We are stressed by stress.  Or, more specifically, are distressed by stress.  All of this being caught within this “bandwidth” of resource we negotiate our self through our life with.

Aging?  When I was younger I did not need to KNOW what this felt like.  I can no longer, it seems, avoid feeling what this feels like!

No more ignoring the effects of toxic stress in my life.  No more “back burner.”  If “working memory” includes ALL of who we are and what we know about our self in our life including how we FEEL in every way – then my “aging” self’s working memory is packed with information that I did NOT HAVE TO have any awareness of on an ongoing basis – when I was younger.

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Maybe I am thinking about a process that could be talked about in terms of “saturation.”  Be stressed enough long enough – and live long enough being stressed too much – something is going to give.  It won’t be “anxiety” that gives way.  It will be a sense of well-being.

That “Peaceful Easy Feeling.”

NOT FAIR!!

Nope!

SO?

I think we need to pay very close attention to even the smallest, tiniest, perhaps nearly insignificantly-seeming experiences in our life that are on the side of INCREASING our sense of well-being – because as these things help us feel BETTER they – even for the briefest of moments – diminish the impact of toxic stress in our life.

Toxic stress is, for high ACE score people, present all of the time BECAUSE it is built into our body.  BUT we have a RIGHT to figure out positive ways of claiming some space in the bandwidth that is our ongoing life – for things that bring us calm, peace and, if we are lucky, joy.

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Yesterday I woke up to the roar of a big Bobcat mower destroying the cattails in the only small area of natural beauty in Fargo anywhere near where I live.  The Bobcat got stuck in the wet black clay mud.  The yard service hired to complete this (dastardly) task brought in a 4×4 pickup to tow out the mower.  It got stuck.

Round and round they went until finally – my one positive soul-stirring visual tie to ME – was turned into a smashed, rut-scarred ruined horror of a mess where once I was able to look out my window and at least see a little bit of beauty.  A little bit of nature.

I felt devastated. I called one of my daughters in town who so kindly called to talk to management about this, to me, bandwidth shattering experience.

Today my daughter heard back from management that every few years they have to mow down the cattails (which are part of the rain water control system for the land these apartment buildings are built upon) so that they can then grow BETTER for the next few years.  Most importantly, nothing is going to be BUILT in that space!

RELIEF?

Oh, yeah, I feel relieved!  Did I OVERREACT to the horror I watched happen?  NO!  Did I REACT?  YES!

There are not many experiences up here in this northern land that feed my soul.  I suffer in this apartment (my friend calls this a Gulag – he is not wrong).  I hate it.  I suffer in this city.  I hate it.

But it is very clear to me that for reasons I don’t even understand, or even NEED to understand, it is not yet time for me to leave here to return south.  But another horror of a North Dakota fierce-wind-driven winter marches closer to me every moment of each of these days.  My escape has been to watch the birds among the reeds.  The rabbits.  The neighbor children playing hide’n’seek there.

To watch the wind shifting among the reeds solaces me.

Now what?  A different kind of hope?

The raving meanness of a material life – when that happens – when “things” tough happen – and people – and other life – get stronger and better for the battles?

When the Pruning happens.  So that new and better life can appear.

Don’t like it necessarily.

Nobody asked me.

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I may be feeling very fragile and vulnerable right now, but I am NOT helpless.  And, I have a plan.

Sometime in the next few weeks I am going to thin my son-in-law’s packed bed of hardy orange lilies.  I am going to gather a hoard of sturdy roots and I am going to surreptitiously find a way to sneak-plant them at the edge of this cattail area.  I am not going to ask management for permission.  I am not going to risk being told NO.

Once those lilies are in place they will not only survive among their cattail neighbors, they are going to thrive there for as long as these buildings stand and this area is draining water into that muddy place.

Long, LONG after I am gone from here.

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

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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

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Wednesday, October 14, 2015.  Oh my HEAVENS!  I feel as though I have been living all my life in one world, and now that I am discovering this next stage of the evolution of healing human trauma – I am NOW living in an entirely different world!

PLEASE watch/listen to Laura Porter’s talk in this YouTube video!!!

Laura Porter Keynote: NEAR Science & New WA State Resilience Factor Findings

The front image that appears at the start of this video reads:  ACTIVATE – ACCELERATE – TRANSFORM

I have NEVER in my life heard words as glorious as those Laura is speaking here!  (And the Hopi elder’s quote at the end is PRICELESS!)  This is about HEALING trauma through the generations so that before too long – if we ALL pay attention and become informed – FLOURISHING can increase for everyone.

And the steps that must be taken?

WATCH THIS VIDEO!

PLEASE!

I have been waiting all of my LIFE for exactly THIS information!

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

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

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Tuesday, October 13, 2015.  Nobody comes to read anything on this blog because it is entertaining.  Nothing about what is presented here is FUN.  Is it enlightening?  In-lightening?

Is there anything that I can say here that turns that inner light of comprehension on for readers?  I don’t know.  What seems to be happening not only for me but for a growing number of people on every “level” of our society is that THE WORK is being increasing defined as it CAN change the world.

Change the world for the better for children – change the world.

I am disappointed with myself that I am not feeling more thrilled about this growing tide of awareness accompanied by facts about damage done to suffering children across their lifespan and about how these situations can begin to REALLY be changed.  Personally, across the decade of involvement in studying these issues I have become tired.

I am not used to such feelings!

As another horrific North Dakota winter approaches, as I have chosen to remain in this tiny apartment (and not yet return south) in a place I do not remotely like, I am beginning to panic.  How will I endure and survive the next 6 months?

I try nearly every moment to override these concerns with asking myself, “What is my useful purpose in being here?”

I don’t really know.

But after taking a look at this article — “Economic Costs of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Alaska: The price of not intervening before trauma occurs” – that my friend sent me this morning I had a concept come into my thoughts that is a new one for me:  SOCIAL ENGINEERING

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Because of the power inherent in such a process, along with possible sinister intentions, I would ordinarily be suspect of supporting such a process.  But isn’t that what ending childhood traumas – as the above article describes — would actually accomplish in the most positive ways possible?

Isn’t this the reason I established this blog in the first place?

Everything we do especially with our children in a society is about engineering them to participate in a society we MUST be in favor of.  If we decide as a society that we no longer wish our children to SUFFER, can we put an end to the conditions that cause this suffering?

Yes.  We can.

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

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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

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Monday, October 12, 2015.  I remember the years I felt enthusiastic writing posts for this blog.  I was enthralled with hope and discovery.  I was in a process of revelation as I devoured detailed information about the neuroscience of human development.

Then I began to sense the holes in what I was reading.  What about THE REST OF US?  Those of us who lived through hell from birth with nobody around to help us?

Lost.

We were, it seemed, left at the bottom of paragraphs with a word or two that always seemed to include descriptions of inevitable doom wrapped around that single – horrible word – pathology.

Sometimes I would read entire pages and chapters without finding my points of personal resonance – but!  There!  Inevitably at the end?  Pathological development.

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And then I discovered that one article of Dr. Martin Teicher’s research group describing, in its essence, what I have come to know as Trauma Altered Development.  These words appeared on my researching tableau at the same time I encountered “epigenetics,” although then, around 2006, I could find very little in the research about what that meant.

But.  Teicher’s article!

I have traveled years now with this drowning-in-the-reality-of-truth information in hand, mind and heart:  Severe early trauma survivors are not broken.  We are not ruined.  We are manifestations of the most vital intelligent-design-for-survival known to our species – over all the time of our existence.  But our lives have always been very, very hard.

We ARE different from our more safely and securely attached, more benevolent-world-survival designed peers.

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Then what?  Now what?  What is next?

I discovered the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research and its findings as mentioned in these posts:

CDC Adverse Childhood Experience Study

+THE ACE SCORE REVOLUTION (Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma Altered Development)

+WHAT ADVERSE EXPERIENCES IN CHILDHOOD CAN DO

Some “older” – LINKS for CDC Study

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NOW?  Do an online search for these words – “ace interface training”

The top link that will appear will take you here:

Master Trainer Education

There is now an opportunity for ANY and EVERY community in the United States of America to organize a local training in ACE healing-trauma so that the first 25 people trained are then able to themselves train others.  This “movement” is beginning.  It will spread like wildfire.  This work will turn the tide on early trauma.  It will reverse the storm!

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Serious stuff.  Hopeful.  Powerful.

To get an idea of what is turning the tide, even reversing the STORM of the transmission of intergenerational trauma – PLEASE take a few moments to listen to these critically important words of Laura Porter about “the largest public health discovery” at this link!  (This work is what the film Paper Tigers grew out of.)

I cannot imagine any more important information coming into public awareness anywhere on the planet at this juncture in the evolution of our species than what is presented in its essence in this talk:

Laura Porter on ACEs – 2013 Community Summit

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To tell the truth about how I am reacting personally to the information I just posted above is more than I can manage to do.  I am literally feeling overwhelmed.  I think I could best describe my current state like this:  I feel as though I contracted a most deadly disease, and have lived until my current age of 64 having learned everything I could about what has happened to me to give me this disease (dis-ease), what this disease has done to so harmfully impact me in my life, and I have lived as well as I can, nobly in a good way to the best of my abilities, but there has been no SERIOUS word about a cure until RIGHT NOW?

And – for me – the information we are now able to access is coming far far too late.

I am in transition.  What I have always told myself I believe is at this moment being tested on every level of my being.  If I REALLY care that the storm of early trauma is STOPPED – I have to care about EVERYONE!

What is happening now has power, as the words in the above video talk link will tell you, to change in powerful ways the quality of life of those in high-risk-for-early-trauma environments in – TWO generations.

I am in the do-the-work, provide-any-support and assistance I CAN generation.

But the deep grief that I believe ALL unsafely and insecurely attached severe early trauma survivors of ANY age feel – is at these moments being triggered.

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Topmost in my thoughts are memories of myself at age seven when my parents began their great Alaskan mountain homestead extravaganza at THIS SPOT.

Being taken to that mountain saved my life.  I have no doubt about that whatsoever.  I had no human being to care a damn about what was happening to me at the hands of the psychotic, abusive madwoman who was my mother.

But I was able to bond to the depths of my being with the natural world of the Alaskan wilderness once we found THIS SPOT.

There are lots more pictures HERE – But these are the two pictures that are the portals for the expression of my place in this family.

In THIS ONE – that is me behind my father – the rejected, hated, spurned, horribly abused child who was by no fault of my own (although I could not know that) kept permanently in the hell my mother created to contain me within.

But it is THIS PICTURE that is at the top of the pile of misery that I cannot avoid having triggered after listening to the talk above.

You will see the “rest of the family” surrounding my brother on his birthday.  I am standing rigidly in my little plaid flannel shirt like a cardboard prop pasted into the photograph.  I KNOW what I felt like – TERRIFIED ALL OF THE TIME!  Oh how I suffered ALL OF THE TIME!

I do not remotely wish to remember any of these things that happened to me from the first breath I was able to take in this world.

I was SEVEN in these pictures.  When you listen to the talk (above link) you will notice that it is the brain/self developmental stage around seven, as it correlates with the information Dr. Martin Teicher has given to humanity, that this is the earliest point the “new movement” to end childhood trauma is focusing on (and then beyond through the adolescent stages).

What about the critically important brain building 0-1?  From then on BEFORE the age of seven?

“We” aren’t there yet.  But I DO agree with the idea that is would be the best place, the most essential place to begin stopping the storm of the transmission of intergenerational trauma to reach young people (as this talk describes) BEFORE they become parents themselves!

It is just that NONE of this work is going to “heal” me.  My hope has to solidify and crystallize more than ever before on the next generations.

I am just caught in an incredibly complex storm of my own right now – unable to escape what all of this FEELS like to me – right now – in my body, in these moments of my aging life.

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I have known for a long time that the healing for the generations has to start somewhere.  It is starting NOW with the info I posted above.  There is a kind of shock wave when such a storm begins its reverse.  I am feeling THAT.  In many ways.  On many levels.  And that is OK.  Just not easy.

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+GLOBAL RESPONSE TO LIFELONG EFFECTS OF EARLY TRAUMA IS GAINING STEAM

+PAPER TIGERS – A FILM ABOUT HEALING THAT MATTERS

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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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

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

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Wednesday, October 7, 2015.  THIS came along in my email box this morning from the Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog.  And this email may change the course of my life.

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People living in New York can get to this – not me, way over here in North Dakota.

Paper Tigers Film Screening

Posted: 06 Oct 2015 07:50 AM PDT

“The impact of unloved and traumatized children on society is profound and widespread. 85% of inmates were traumatized as youth. 27% of hospital visits can be traced to causes linked to childhood trauma. Hurt kids grow up to hurt people. The generational cycles of trauma and abuse are as stubborn as they are tragic.

“There is hope. That’s the message of Paper Tigers, a documentary that takes an intimate look at a year in the life of the students of Lincoln High School, an alternative school that specializes in educating traumatized youth. Set in the rural town of Walla Walla, WA, the film examines the concept of Trauma Informed Communities—a movement that shows great promise in healing youth struggling with the dark legacy of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).

“Prevent Child Abuse New York and the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany will present a special screening of Paper Tigers. A panel discussion will follow the film. Event details are below.”

When: Wednesday, November 4, 2015, 4:30 PM
Where: University at Albany Downtown Campus, Milne Hall Room 200, 135 Western Ave., Albany, NY 12203
Register: Please register here to ensure your space at the event

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Click HERE to see if there is a screening of this film near you!

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I sent this information to my daughter who is employed in the Masters of Public Health department at a university here.  Perhaps she can pass this information to someone who will work to get a screening of this film in Fargo.

Take a look:

“Paper Tigers captures the pain, the danger, the beauty, and the hopes of struggling teens—and the teachers armed with new science and fresh approaches that are changing their lives for the better.”

And from this film’s website –

ABOUT THE FILM

“Paper Tigers is an intimate look into the lives of selected students at Lincoln High School, an alternative school that specializes in educating traumatized youth. Set amidst the rural community of Walla Walla, WA, the film intimately examines the inspiring promise of Trauma Informed Communities – a movement that is showing great promise in healing youth struggling with the dark legacy of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).

“Exposure to chronic and adverse stress (and the altered brain function that results) leaves a child in a fruitless search for comfort and escape from a brain and body that is permanently stuck in flight or fight. That comfort comes in the form of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, sex, food and more.

“Every year, millions of unloved and traumatized youth enter adulthood with damaged brains and hearts. They are highly predisposed to die from self-destructive behaviors, and highly likely to continue the cycle of abuse. Even those who do not engage in self destructive behaviors are highly predisposed to get cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and immune disorders.

“The impact of unloved and traumatized children on society is profound and widespread. 85% of inmates were traumatized as youth. 27% of hospital visits can be traced to causes linked to childhood trauma. Hurt kids grow up to hurt people. The generational cycles of trauma and abuse are as stubborn as they are tragic.

“But there is hope.

“There are doctors, researchers, teachers, nurses, social workers and law enforcement officers that are turning the tide against the cycle of trauma and abuse. A movement is rising, one that sees aberrant behavior in children as a symptom rather than a moral failing. This movement asks not what is wrong with our youth, but rather what has happened to them. The paradigm is shifting from punishment and blame to a deeper commitment to understanding and healing the underlying causes of aberrant behavior. With this shifting paradigm comes the promise of great improvements in many of the society’s costly ills: less crime, less illness, less teen pregnancy, abuse, rape, divorce.

“Simply put, it is cheaper to heal than to punish. Paper Tigers takes a look at what is possible.”

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I can always feel a twist of the knife of disappointment when I read of work about early trauma that ends up mentioning – MONEY – in terms of “the cost to society.”

What about OUR suffering?  The suffering of high ACE score survivors?

Well, I can read between the lines of the effort this website and this film represent to understand that bridges must be built between the HAVES (those who were raised with safe and secure attachment and low ACE scores) and the HAVE-NOTS who suffered the opposite.  Without those bridges such survivors, along with little ones suffering in real time present moments, will continue to be ignored by those with the means to make the biggest positive difference.  (It is also not true that violence always travels down traumatized generations – as some of the information at this website might seem to suggest.)

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I had thought I would end my tenure in Fargo, North Dakota right about now by heading south again.  Didn’t happen because I could not move myself off of what felt like dead center.  It did not feel right for me to leave now.  A matter of timing and/or a matter of destination place?

I am beginning a serious search for information about Walla Walla, WA to find out of the excitement that I felt at this healing work being done in this place connects me remotely – or perhaps will connect me much more closely with that work.  Perhaps by this time next year I will be relocated there.

Time will tell….

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Meanwhile, perhaps some of this blog’s readers can attend one of the many screenings of Paper Tigers – or perhaps organize a screening of this important documentary in their hometown – INFORMATION ON HOSTING A SCREENING HERE.

And, please get this information to anyone you can think of who CARES!

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

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