+A LIFE MOSAIC

++++

Tuesday, January 26, 2016.  Thinking and experiencing, feeling and struggling, macro to micro and back again – and again – and again….

Makes me think of the Mobius Strip – a surface with only one side and only one boundary.

The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It can be realized as a ruled surface. It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.

Intellectually I understand that all life is interconnected and that these connections exist as influences moving forward in time.  All that has happened in the past affects all that happens in the present which influences all that will happen in the future.  And in the middle of all of these grand movements are the movements of each one of us in our (seemingly) separate lives.

++

After a three and a half months of living hell under those with one 6 year old boy who was, I suspect, entirely LOST as a child with very real essential needs not being met, the horrors of the constant running, thumping, banging, vibrating of ceiling and walls – as of last Saturday – ceased.

This process included yet another noise complaint call that I was forced to make to the police, and undoubtedly some serious threats of eviction to the tenant adults above me.  Whatever it is that has taken place in their micro world up there, someone is now paying attention to that child or he would NOT have stopped his horrible out-of-control desperate and incredibly LOUD and NOISY behaviors.

Now to see if this quietude lasts over time.

I am grateful.  I have been living in a hell like I could not have imagined.  Very bad for my anxiety!!!

++

Now, another little note that might interest some readers.  In my last post I mentioned this herbal supplement — NaturalCare HearAll, Supports Optimal Hearing Function – which I purchased online and used at the recommended initial double doseage – until I let myself run out.

It is not cheap, and I had to make room in my poverty-based budget for its continued use.  Well, in the inward-outward Mobius Strip kind of way that life operates, having had the help form this product for nearly 3 weeks and now being without it until replenishment arrives, I have learned something very intriguing although I have no explanation for it.

Sometime within the past year of being ‘trapped’ in the circumstances I have chosen to endure during my tenure as active, involved grandmother to my 2 young grandsons, I began to have what I can only imagine would be called panic attacks.  This condition is purely situational, I am sure.

Without going down to the micro level of explanation about specifics except to mention that at times I wake several times a night with these ‘panics’ and feel that I am being crushed within a coffin, being buried alive, I will say that until yesterday when the Hear-All had completely left my system I had not suffered these attacks for nearly three weeks.

It intrigues me that I DID NOT once notice their absence during that time!  My body had returned to some kind of a physiological state that did not include their presence.  Only yesterday when such a panic attack hit me and did not diminish for over 10 hours did I recognize the connection so that I could credit my taking this supplement to help quiet the awful anxiety-related complexities of my trauma-altered-development with the amplifying problems that the tough cancer-chemo regime I went through 8 years ago seems to have had hearing problems!

So, simply put, I recommend this product to anyone who analyzes their life experiences with anxiety and who especially knows they have an early history of severe verbal abuse exposure.

++

Off in another direction of the micro level of my current existence I want to mention an upcycled cd art-craft process that has captured my interest and attention recently.

There is a series of four related YouTube videos at this link.  They move VERY quickly so that I have found I must utilize an interactive learning process by pausing and rerunning each segment many times to see exactly what is being taught:

DIY MANDALAS – video series

I find it takes a kind of Mobius Strip online searching process, using terms related to “youtube cds suncatcher” to locate related tutorials.  In the midst of wandering around these lessons videos you will find ones that tell how to make a small nick with a sharp knife or end of scissors so you can use tape to stick to the silver so you can pull it off in pieces!!!

BUT, I am still trying to figure out how to remove the blue tint that appears on some stripped cds and not on others.  I understand that rubbing the surface with alcohol-based product does the job – but NOT quickly!

I bought thin drill bits to practice putting the holes at the edges of these cds so they can be hung – but I haven’t started THIS part of the process yet.

As you search around on related subjects there are amazing mosaics being created through upcycled cd and dvd techniques!!  There are also incredibly creative pieces of jewelry being formed using related techniques!!!

++

Making things – crafty kinds of cheap-material things (on my budget) – is a survival operation that began, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, for certain by the time I was two years old.  Given the restrictions of my current city/apartment/winter/anxiety conditions for the first time in my life I am finding that it is very hard for me to focus even on my creative process.  I discredit much of this current difficulty to my having endured the neighbors above me and their sound-mess for quite some time (along with the fact that I have no reason to believe they will continue their quieter lifestyle.  AND why is that 6-year-old boy not in school?  Management thinks this might be because the adults in that boy’s life are too lazy to put him there.)

++

A large part of the micro processes of my life right now are family oriented and are personal and private enough that I cannot write about them.

At the very bottom of this post I am adding something I recently discovered about “using prayer” in one’s life that I really enjoyed reading and thinking about – so that perhaps I can practice it!  Some readers might enjoy such a faith and spirituality topic reading.  Others might certainly not!!  I am in no way making any effort to challenge or persuade anyone about anything!

And thank all you to all this blog’s readers for your patience with how my current life situations are impacting my writings here!!!  Welcome!!  Your presence as readers is always greatly valued and appreciated!

(see more at bottom of post if interested)

++++

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.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

++++++++++++++++++++++++

An approach to prayer

“First Step – Pray and meditate about it.  Use the prayers of the manifestations as they have the greatest power.  Then remain in the silence of contemplation for a few minutes.

“Second Step – Arrive at a decision and hold to this.  This decision is usually born during the contemplation.  It may seem almost impossible of accomplishment but if it seems to be as answer to a prayer or a way of solving the problem, then immediately take the next step.

“Third Step – Have determination to carry the decision through.  Many fail here.  The decision, budding into determination, is blighted and instead becomes a wish or a vague longing.  When determination is born, immediately take the next step.

“Fourth Step – Have faith and confidence that the power will flow through you, the right way will appear, the door will open, the right thought, the right message, the right principle or the right book will be given you.  Have confidence, and the right thing will come to your need.  Then, as you rise from prayer, take at once the fifth step.

“Fifth Step – Then, he said, lastly, ACT; Act as though it had all been answered.  Then act with tireless, ceaseless energy.  And as you act, you, yourself, will become a magnet, which will attract more power to your being, until you become an unobstructed channel for the Divine power to flow through you.  Many pray but do not remain for the last half of the first step.  Some who meditate arrive at a decision, but fail to hold it.  Few have the determination to carry the decision through, still fewer have the confidence that the right thing will come to their need.  But how many remember to act as though it had all been answered?  How true are those words – ‘Greater than the prayer is the spirit in which it is uttered’ and greater than the way it is uttered is the spirit in which it is carried out.”

An approach to prayer, shared by Shoghi Effendi to Ruth Moffett.  Pilgrim’s Note cited in Principles of Baha’i Administration, 3rd ed. P. 90-91, 1973

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

 

+REACTIVE INSECURE ATTACHMENT

++++

Monday, January 4, 2016.  The very essence of this blog is about changes our body was forced to make essentially from our birth forward – although life quality in the womb profoundly also affects everyone, as well.

We had NO choice but to react on the physiological level to all harm and deprivation that happened to us so long ago.  Because the impact of those traumas is literally BUILT INTO our body there is no way for us to escape those consequences so long as we live on this earth.

Some of the times of our life are easier than others are.  True.  But at no time can we go back to the beginning, place our self within a safe and secure attachment environment, and begin our physiological development all over again.  We will NEVER have the benefit from this kind of attachment that so many others did – and usually take so absolutely for granted.

Comments continue to arrive to this post written April 11, 2012 —

+ADULT REACTIVE ATTACHMENT DISORDER – THE GREAT UMBRELLA!

This is affirming to me at the same time I know very clearly that ALL of these problems for ALL of us who were forced through absolutely no fault of our own to have them, is a tragedy beyond compare!

There are many serious conditions of my lifestyle right now that are making my reactionary trauma altered development physiology suffer.  I write posts very seldom right now because of this fact.  I am here for very particular – and because those reasons deeply involve my family – precious reasons.  This fact does NOT make the truly difficult moments of my life right now easy to bear.

Having these latest comments come in on the above mentioned blog post DOES make my life easier to bear IN THE PRESENT MOMENTS of my endurance, and I thank everyone who writes those comments.  I do not believe that anyone – really – who is not a trauma altered Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) person can ever begin to even imagine what our lives have been and are like – with every beat of our heart.

Currently it is the horrendous continual noise above my head as I live “trapped” for the tenure of my apartment’s lease that is pushing me to the limits of my endurance.  I have one glimmer of hope.

A friend of mine from my home area in southern Arizona is a very knowledgeable herbalist person.  She has recommended this supplement, which I have ordered.  I so hope it will help calm some of my reactionary nervous system!!

NaturalCare HearAll, Supports Optimal Hearing Function

I am hoping with all within me that this supplement will help me!  It has been used successfully to ease hearing-related problems for both children and adults with autism.

I continue to marvel at the difficulties I now experience with NOISE!  I do know that because my psychotically mentally ill mother, who abusively hated me from birth, SCREAMED abuses at me from the start of my life that this – and the verbal abuse that continued for the next 18 years I lived with my family of origin – terrible harm was caused to me on many MANY levels, including very critically my physiological development.  (I suggest an online search for these terms:  “verbal abuse teacher” – this information is IMPORTANT!!)

Just as trauma in the earliest years of our life caused cumulative damage, so also does cumulative stress/distress cause us dire complicated reactions in our life now.  Having this family living above me now, who stays awake making noise often until 3 am making my sleep impossible, has GREATLY compounded the difficulties I was already having living in this northern city and in this confined, ugly place.

What can I do to help myself endure – better?  That is the question!!!!  That is my moment-to-moment task.  As hard as it is to read about the sufferings of other people, this DOES help me keep my life in perspective.

We are the heroes of our lives – and it is important that we share our reality with one another.  Thank you!

Now.  If those men above me would walk with lighter footsteps and TAKE OFF THEIR HEAVY WORK BOOTS IN THE HOUSE – well — Life goes on….  Some days and nights certainly do contain harder challenges than others do.

++++

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.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

 

 

+WE ARE NOT ALONE!!

++++

Tuesday, December 22, 2015.  I feel I need to apologize for writing so few posts during these months of my tenure up north here in North Dakota, but I also know no apology is needed.  There are simply times and seasons of life.  At least now we have passed in this hemisphere into the time of growing day length.  I am happy for that although several months of winter still lie waiting ahead.

This winter has been very warm.  That is a good thing.  Yet it may also be a bad thing.  I am not one who knows about such things.  I am a wonderer.  (A wanderer, too, I must admit.)

I am into my third year away from my adopted Arizona-Mexican border land that was so kind to me for fourteen years.  I still have no real idea what lies ahead for me in my life.  Will I return there next September after my lease here is up?  Time.  It will tell.

Meanwhile I continue to battle with the noise from the apartment above me that is so unsettling to my so-sound-sensitive ears.  Things seem to be better – most of the time – and I have not yet had to call the police with a noise complaint as the apartment managers suggested that I do on November 9th.  It is not the children’s fault up there who are not put to bed before midnight and who are allowed to sleep until noon.

I have contacted Head Start to see if they will send me some information I can anonymously slip under the door up there.  It has been suggested that if a time approaches when my own well-being means a noise complaint must be made that I call social services first.  I don’t want to do that, either.

I do pray for myself – and for that family up there – and for the world – and for EVERYTHING!  Which brings me to the point of mentioning what has inspired me to finally attempt to place a few words on the blog this evening.

Someone on my Facebook feed posted this quote.  “Star of the West” was an early magazine published in the United States.  I don’t know how to access those to see if I could find the volume the following appeared in.

What I do know as a very high ACE score, terrible child abuse survivor for the first 18 years of my life, is that trauma seriously impacted every stage of my early development so that now I am a Trauma Altered Development person (my friend calls this being a tadpole).

This means that my nervous system/brain, stress response system, immune system, etc. is different – entirely different – than would have been the case if someone had intervened, stopped that abuse, rescued me and my siblings from our severely mentally ill psychotic mother.

This means – in regard to this quote I am posting – that very often it is impossible – IMPOSSIBLE for me – and for many ‘tadpoles’ like me – to “simply” change our “mood.”  We experience our life differently than other people do through absolutely NO FAULT of our own!!!

In my older age I am experiencing cumulative effects of the traumas in my life and am now “on disability” for them.  I cannot simply “forget the past” and “be OK.”  I cannot will myself to “be happy.”  I work every moment of my existence to endure – and endure some more – and endure….

Some moments and hours, some days, are better and easier than others are.  Being down south, as readers mostly know, was very much better for me than is being up here in an apartment, in a city, in this climate, etc.  I can’t get out to see friends, work in my garden, more etc!!!!!

So – here is the quote!!  This is what I do in every way I possibly can.  It includes why I came back up here, so that I could help my daughter and my little grandsons in any way that I can, especially now at this juncture in the family’s lifespan.

But – still – there is NOTHING easy about my life right now.  True, “things could be much worse,” but knowing that is no panacea for tadpole people!  THIS helps my heart!!  THIS feels realistic to me and within the realm of possibility!!

And – at this “holiday season” there can be many complications for people and for families!  I thought these words might be helpful to people who might be struggling with extra difficulties – realize they are NOT ALONE!!!!!  We care!!!

++

Be not the slave of your moods, but their master.  But if you are so angry, so depressed and so sore that your spirit cannot find deliverance and peace even in prayer, then quickly go and give some pleasure to someone lowly, or to a guilty or innocent sufferer!  Sacrifice yourself, your talent, your time, your rest to another, to one who has to bear a heavier burden than you – and your unhappy mood will dissolve into a blessed, contented submission to God.” –

By Abdu’l-Baha, in Star of the West (sometime prior to 1921), a Baha’i publication

++

Certainly an ongoing and repeating process!!

++++

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.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

 

+A FEW WORDS ABOUT PANSIES AND WORMS

++++

Wednesday, November 24, 2015.

I cannot kill these pansies

Little bit of life

That they are

+

As winter’s cold and darkness

Settles outside my door

+

I hauled them inside

In their five gallon plastic buckets

After I left them out there

Long enough to freeze

Several times

+

Their blossoms have given up

Yet not their buds

And not the emerald green of their leaves

And certainly not their tenacious roots

+

I MUST love them

I MUST care for them

I MUST

I will

It is a part of who I am

+

April through November they have blessed me with their beauty

They did not ask for life

They do not crave death

Theirs is a certain kind of bravery

Courage to the end

+

And these earthworms

Are they as silent as they seem?

+

What, my dear, can I give to them

Remnants from a summer garden confined

Gathered in a gelatinous mass

Having seeped themselves down through and out of the bottom holes of these buckets onto the plastic beneath them

Only to have found no real possibility of escape?

+

Do they live?

Are they dead?

+

I bury them again in now warm so-black bucket dirt

I can wait

We will see

+

I must apologize

I am so sorry for my own confusions

My uncertainties

+

I, too, share this life and death cusp

With all of you

+

This seek for safety

This holding on to life

This approach to death

To transformation

First

+

O worms!  I feed you water soaked cardboard and bits of paper for a winter in these buckets

In this apartment

Stashed so cleverly in a spare corner

On my kitchen floor

+

Unlike my species

If there is even one of you left alive

You will reproduce.

More.

+

I

Would be glad

For that.

++++

Note:  I cannot create my chosen spacing here without using “+” as markers

++++

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.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

 

 

+PEACEABLE PROCEDURE?

++++

Wednesday, November 24, 2015.  A different kind of peace seems to be encompassing my apartment’s living space than was here before all hell broke loose above and around me – and perhaps has left again.  So strange.  What an unwelcome ordeal.  But perhaps existed in my life – as a kind of teacher.

Relief.

I spoke via telephone for a second time yesterday with the management of this apartment complex.  This time I spoke to the ‘main man’ – and the horrendous all-hours stomping and romping, running and crashing, shaking of ceiling and walls – the great BOOMS above me – have stopped.

Relief.

Is this permanent?

Time will tell.  I feel as though I just went through a great battle of a war that appeared in my life out of nowhere.  There really is NOTHING my so-harmed-by-severe-early-abuse-and-trauma nervous system requires more than predictably stable peaceful calm.

I am STUNNED not only by what just happened here so recently but also by what happened to ME during these “attacks.”  Scary stuff.

++

I keep hearing one particular echo from that management-me conversation yesterday.  As I described yet again what was happening here I also, by habit?  By my inner design?  Mentioned that “I am a good tenant….”  Management responded, “It does not matter if you are a good tenant or a bad tenant.  That kind of noise and behavior is simply not accepted in these apartments.”

Oh, within us the echoes of horrendous early years of violence, terror, abuse, trauma – they NEVER really leave us in our lifetime.  I suspect it really is ONLY a matter of what kind of circumstances we find ourselves subject to that determine how those sometimes-latent trauma changes make themselves felt in our body, in our life.

That is OK.  It has to be.  That is our reality.

What happens next is what matters.

Are we in meaningful ways protected from further harm in every situation in some way?

++

I kept thinking over these past days of horrible torment (in my universe) of something I experienced way back 41 years ago.  I lived in Redwood City, CA in a 2nd floor apartment in one of those buildings that had a railed walkway on that level to reach all those apartments from the outside.

My daughter was 3 ½.  I was still, at 22, oblivious about the horrific nature of the trauma I had endured during the entire first 18 years of my life.  I knew NOTHING BUT endure and survive.

I had badly fighting neighbors on the right-wall side of my apartment.  Horrible fighting erupted one night about 2:30 in the morning as the man screamed and shouted at his wife – I could tell with a gun in his hand – threatening to shoot her.

My response?  The only response I was capable of at that time in my life?

Yes, with fear but quite calmly, I woke my little girl and carried her to my bathroom.  I crooned to her quietly, soothingly as I dragged a comforter along with us to spread out on the bottom of the cast iron bathtub where I curled up with my daughter in the only place of safety I could imagine.  We spent the rest of that very long night there waiting for bullets to come tearing through my apartment’s wall.

++

I sure cannot garner any special nuggets of wisdom from this situation right now.  I feel too worn down and worn out by life, actually, to put forth the kind of effort it would take of me to try to mine something out of this any more meaningful than to say – THANK YOU for this peace and quiet here now!

What about “It should NEVER have happened in the first place?”

Moot point.

Entirely.

++

It is NOT silent up there with a family and at least one child as tenants.  But it is CIVILIZED and reasonable and acceptable.  It is now doable for me to adjust my needs for quiet and peaceful calm in response to and in relationship to the life of that family that has moved in above me.

In some ways I SENSE or feel or imagine – that this family NEEDED to be able to stop the madness within their own lives.  That little child needs that peace, some kind of appropriate response by its caregiving adults.  Letting a young child, perhaps age 4 ½, run like a maniac around until after 2 am is NOT appropriate.

Not in THIS portion of the universe, at least.

Not here.  Not now.

But I am very aware of my own inner struggle to stand up for myself in this situation – even at age 64.  It was NOT easy to do.  But it was necessary.  And I hope this peace – is lasting.  I really, really DO!

++++

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.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

 

 

+PERFECT PEACE

++++

Tuesday, November 24, 2015.  These few words came to me last Sunday at a time when the horrible stomping romping wall and ceiling shaking so threatening my peace from the apartment above me had abated for a time.  For the past two years I had neighbors up there who were quiet adult men.  I NEVER in ten billion years would have renewed my year’s lease if THIS family had been up there.

I really do NOT know how I can endure and survive a long North Dakota winter being trapped in here with them up there.  I am losing entire nights of sleep.  Scary.  Hard.  Very, very disturbing having people up there with no pattern to their life I can detect, little children romping hard until 2 am….

++

Right on the surface of the glass

Looking inward

Looking outward

That’s where our psychology will be

+

Where on a spectrum does light become sound and sound become light

To humans?

+

There is a quiet there – at these places.  In these spaces.  A kind of pause – the quiet both before and within the storm.

Calmness.

Life, though, is never easy.

+

There is a pause

Where darkness turns into light

(and the other way around).

+

When a flying bird’s wing beats downward

That point just before the wing

Turns up again

There is an instant of

Perfect peace.

++++

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 disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

 

 

+WHEN EMPATHY FALTERS – AND FAILS

++++

Wednesday, November 17, 2015.  I remember those days, weeks, months, years when never did a blog post topic come into my thoughts that I didn’t simply write and post it.  Those times seem to me now to have been part of a different lifetime.

I could sit at my funky old desk with my laptop gazing at brilliant blue skies, across the range of my adobe flower gardens, past the tall rusted Mexican-American border fence at the topmost peaks of San Jose Mountain in Mexico, and write.

I could think.  I could ponder.  I could feel and sense and I could write.

I was living in an environment that fed, nurtured and sustained me.  Fargo, North Dakota?  Nope.  Winter is coming, etc.  Simply put, “Too much darkness.”  Working to remain positive is, well, A LOT OF WORK for me here.  A great deal of work.

There doesn’t seem much of me left over to write with (or from),

This, too, shall pass.  Everything does.  Sooner or later.

++

So, (a) when given a situation with a lot of depletion going on and not much for restoration, (b) how does one FEEL?

I KNOW everyone goes through (a), but the older I get (I am 64 now) and the more American society changes, the more I see that it is certainly not true that everyone experiences (b).  At least not that they know about.  Not that they are forced to accept or ‘deal with’.

There are many, MANY ways not only NOT to feel, but in tandem with not feeling their own reality people DO NOT FEEL other people’s feelings, either.

Bye bye EMPATHY!

And WHERE on earth are we as human beings without EMPATHY?

Oh, shake, quiver and quake!

Answer?

In trouble.

++

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

If a feeling is a response to life itself and nobody FEELS it, does that feeling exist?

++

The word “void” comes to mind here.

Without the information that our feelings give to us about being alive in this world as members of a profoundly social species, are we creating voids all around us without even noticing?

Do we then expect other people to simply ignore the fact that these void-living (absence of feelings/empathy) people CANNOT truly be reached or communicated with?

OR TRUSTED – in the deepest safely and securely attached sort of way (so that we do not feel all alone in a nor-really safe world)?

++

“Knock knock.”

“Nobody is here.”

Nobody is an island?  You bet that they are in current American society.

They certainly are.

++

I know that I am a dreamer.  I am always looking for and in some way hoping for a world that probably does not exist.  A friend told me the other day that he heard that humans are only capable of truly attuning to another person about 30% of the time.  That’s why, as developmental neuroscientist Dr. Allan N. Schore describes, the process of “rupture with or without repair” is so central to the processes of being human.  Of being alive.

But we must care enough and be able to NOTICE when a rupture occurs so that it can even be repaired.  And we have to know how to sort out the causes of ruptures and learn how to orchestrate repairs.

Yes, in my dreamer world I believe that humans are BORN (given good enough uterine conditions of earliest life) to DO all of these things.  But I also see, with great concern and sadness, that an increasing number of mothers in America are perfectly fine with bringing their children into the world and then abandoning them into the care of strangers.

The building of all of the essential structures within a human’s body-brain to process feelings and then to be able to live with true, healthy empathy, is a job that nature has always given to mothers of infants.  This is a vast area that I will not address specifically here except to say that on the one hand we have Autism Spectrum Disorders where social and emotional information which includes the empathetic processes is not a part of those people’s reality.

And then on the other hand we are fine with having larger and larger numbers of people who are placed into the care of “professional” childcare providers who have to intimate investment in using attuned empathy to communicate with these little ones – so that the end result – seems to me – is our current building of a nation where empathy is nearly entirely missing.

What do I think about all of this?  One word:  Uh-oh!

++

I do note that those who endured and survived horrific early life filled with trauma, we have had to learn about empathy through different channels.  Those of us who HAVE done this were, for whatever reasons, highly motivated to do so.  I have HUGE concerns that with the proliferation of infants and young children now being abandoned for most of their waking life by their mothers (essentially) – nobody is going to even notice — what is going so wrong OR what is missing:  Feelings and Empathy.

These are processes that I believe are essential to being fully human.

++++

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 disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

 

+PBS DOCUMENTARY – WATCH FREE UNTIL NOV. 30th

++++

Tuesday, November 17, 2015.  There are five important PBS videos at this link, free to watch until November 30th.

new PBS documentary series: “The Raising of America.”

Acesconnection comments 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 »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

 

+MUSING ABOUT MUSIC – AND TAKING SOME ACTION

++++

Tuesday, October 28, 2015.  The north wind is roaring around here.  It’s not THAT cold out yet, although I did see a sneeze of snow flurries this morning.  In Fargo, North Dakota it’s when the sneezing turns into full blown COLD with massive COUGHING north winds that drop wind chills to deadly that people here have to worry.

So, for the time being, I can leave my sliding glass door open a crack for fresh air – and for wind music.  I can actually tune this music by changing the width of the opening I leave for the wind to sing through.  (Nope.  This will NOT be music I wish to hear by next month.)

A wind whistle.  Howling?  Sometimes sounds like an oboe.  Sometimes rather piccolo-esque.  A little sax.  A little tuba.

Reminds me of wind howling across our family’s Alaskan mountain homestead during my childhood.  Of wolf songs.  Of wild things.  Things that what might remain of the earth’s wilderness know about.  A certain primal sense of freedom.

Of music in water’s movements.  Storms.  Yet wind?  How can it make any sound at all if there is nothing for it to blow around, through and against?

Like a crack open into this room

++

Speaking of music….

I picked up this book a few weeks ago in trade at the little used bookstore a mile from my apartment –

Musicians in Tune: 75 Contemporary Musicians Discuss the Creative Process (1992) by Jenny Boyd (music psychologist)

In posting the link to this book I now see that Boyd has another book out that I will be ordering –

It’s Not Only Rock ‘n’ Roll: Iconic Musicians Reveal the Source of Their Creativity (2014) by Dr. Jenny Boyd and Holly George-Warren

++

I do know that Boyd’s writings will be the basis of my serious self-examination this winter about how the traumatic abuse of my childhood so damaged my musician-within.  I am after some healing here.  Serious healing.  Lots of it.

I am also going to add to my study this book so highly recommended by Boyd –

Toward a Psychology of Being (2014 edition) by Abraham H. Maslow

++

I spend nearly all the time I can making things with my hands.  I am an extremely creative person.  Yet, I also know that for some very bizarre reason I do not understand my mother not only allowed me to pursue 3-D creativity, she fostered it and often even praised this aspect of my being.

This was true only for one other part of me – that I liked flowers.

Bizarre.  In her mentally ill psychotic mind – what was she THINKING?

I don’t really care.  Except that I want my musician self to BE BORN NOW!!  I want to pursue what is, to me, the invisible side of my creativity.

I want to make music.  I want to stop hearing my mother’s words about me and music.  Her hate-filled voice.

I want to end this entrenched tyranny of her over me.

Now.

I am going after this freedom.  This joy.  This right.

Now.

++++

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 disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame

+CALM ENOUGH TO MUSE?

++++

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….

++++

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 :  wondermarvel

transitive verb

:  to think or say reflectively

++

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.

++

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.

++

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.

++++

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 disordersadult reactive attachment disorderanxiety disorders,borderline motherborderline personality disorderbrain developmentchild abuse,depression,derealizationdisorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorderempathyinfant abusePosttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factorsPTSDresiliencyresiliency factorsrisk factorsshame