++++
Friday, February 24, 2017. I have written many posts here in the past about early trauma recovery. Circles and cycles, time itself, whizzes past and topics come around again and again. Today I am specifically thinking back to posts about healing as a search for our pristine self as we existed in the midst of terror, chaos, turbulence, trauma that we could not comprehend, escape, even anticipate — that came to us over and over and over again.
This level of healing is a kind of archaeological excavation of selfhood. Here are some of those earlier posts —
+BURIED TREASURE (Dark Side book 2, chapter 22)
+WHAT DO WE WANT TO DO WITH THE INFO IN OUR TRAUMA MEMORIES?
+WHEN THE GOODNESS APPEARS IN SPITE OF THE TRAUMAS
+THAT MESS – WAS NEVER MINE
++
I have nearly completed this tapestry weaving, the first I have done in at least 30 years. I feel very blessed to have arrived at a southwestern New Mexican town that is home to MANY fiber artists. Spinning and weaving are a part of ME — of my SELF — and last night after probably a hundred plus hours of working on this tapestry — in the middle of the night when I felt too troubled by unseen cares to sleep — I put in some overtime on this work of my art.
The reward that came to me was completely unanticipated! As I near the finish line — either by pattern design or by running out of warp thread on the loom — I ………
Hum……. How do I express this?
The easiest way is that suddenly I SAW MY SELF!! Clearly, there I was in that section of particular colors, texture — that exact PLACE in this weaving came together in some magical, mysterious way — in such a way — that there I was having myself reflected back to myself.
+
Now for “regular people” I doubt this kind of experience ever happens to or for them. As the developmental neuroscientists can now track even in our physiological development, the self of a human being comes clear through a very specific attachment relationship beginning, really, even before birth — with a mother.
Untold events can interrupt, intercede,interfere with and even break this process early in one’s life. The severe psychotic break my own mother had laboring hard to birth me made a total, complete, abysmal disaster of any hope of a sustained, sustainable, loving, caring, adequate (etc.) attachment relationship between Mother and me.
Through patterns of horrendous abuse and neglect that followed my birth — how EXACTLY — did I ever “become” a self at all?
Well, that’s too big a subject for this post, that’s for sure! Yet it is quite simple to say that my self — SELF — did exist within that hell always. At my current age of 65 I can also say that my relationship with mySELF has not been smooth – sometimes it has been invisible — sometimes I have been and am lost to mySELF —
So when mySELF showed up in the mirror (think attachment mirroring, attunement processes essential to human development…..) — of my weaving last night/early morning I FELT this happen and this MATTERS greatly to me!
+
It has always been easy for me to loose mySELF in the caregiving process of others. We all know how many billions of ways this can happen for us. As a mother of at least one of my children under the age of 18 in my home/care, mySELF continued for those 35 years to be organized around caring for them.
+
NOTE: If you put “collins need” into the search bar at the top of the blog here you will find a series of articles that describe exactly how our attachment self-needs and our ability to give care to others are intimately (and physiologically) connected. There is a lot of really important info in that series of blog posts.
+
I do believe that going all the way back as far as we can remember to find our SELF in the midst of the trauma of our early years MUST include finding out what we LOVED — what we LOVED doing! What intrigued us? Interested us? Made us curious? From a VERY young age these kinds of self-touchstones existed. What EVER brought us a sense of PEACE?
Those self-touchstones are a PART of us, connected to (I believe) the very special, precious, unique soul-self person that we were created AS = our SELF. We all have certain capacities, talents, things we LOVE to do — and our SELF has NOTHING to do with trauma!
+
However, I do believe that early trauma – any kind of unresolved trauma that has had residual and/or current connections to our SELF — quite simply put for an extremely complex situation — MESSES UP our relationship with our SELF.
+
And again, most simply put, working with my hands to make things creatively has always been a part of my SELF. Having this weaving/weaver/spinning/spinner part of me activated right now must give me more than a THREAD of a connection to my essential self! Last night – for that split second in time – which I noticed, relished, appreciated, studied this connected-self experience for as long as I could — and hope to experience again — there was an unimaginably strong and immeasurably wide connection of ME to ME.
+
Readers of this blog who caught my post three years ago when I was up north caring for the youngest of my grandsons about that incredible instant I witnessed — as he FOUND and IDENTIFIED and CONNECTED through a conscious felt experience — for the very first time — with his OWN self — might recognize my own similar experience being described here “in the weaving” process I describe.
It is the same clear, incredibly JOY-filled recognition my grandson put into words back then when he was 22 months old: “HERE IT IS!!! RIGHT THERE!”
I was sitting down. He came up to me, face to face, eye to eye when he shared this epiphany of literal self discovery and felt self realization with me — tapping himself right in the middle of his chest.
Being a part of his awakening will always be one of the most precious moments of my life. And the fact that the time I spent caring for him to the best of my ability MADE that exact experience possible — give me limitless joy.
Now…. This FEELING FELT experience of my SELF at times takes for me — a LOT of tough healing WORK to reach! Sometimes it feels hopeless. Last night I remembered IT IS NOT!
++++
SONG –
VIDEO ON HARLOW’S RESEARCH –
ARTICLE –
https://www.verywell.com/harry-harlow-and-the-nature-of-love-2795255
++++
++++
Here is my first book out in ebook format as it provides an outline of the conditions of my malevolent childhood. 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. A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.
++++
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
Stop the Storm 