Category: borderline mother

+MAKING IT CLEAR: MY SYMPATHIES ARE NOT WITH BORDERLINE PARENTS

alchemynow4 Comments

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I believe that these blog comments posted in the past few days about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (and how I use the term ‘Borderline’ to describe my own mother) are worth a careful, thoughtful read.  If you follow the live links posted below with the comments you can see the original posting the comments were made to and my replies.

Before I launch into my discussion of some of the points of view expressed in these comments, I want to mention some facts as they are appearing in the scientific community about what I call ‘The Borderline Brain’.  Each of these live links below leads to related information in a Google search – and represent the very tip of the proverbial iceberg about how different a Borderline’s brain, nervous system, mind, self, are changed from ‘ordinary’:

(1)  Difficulties in early caregiver infant-child interactions create developmental stress that can lead to a person developing BPD.

(2)  BPD involves a developmentally ‘changed brain’.

(3)  These changes affect all interactions in the brain regarding ‘self reference’

(4)  BPD most often involves an insecure attachment disorder

(5) BPD affects memory

(6)  BPD brain and nervous systems do not process emotion in ordinary ways.  These changes affect someone with a Borderline brain in significant ways that include:

– their brain’s self-referencing resting default mode

– their ability to regulate emotion

–  their ability to experience empathy for others

– their ability to process their life experiences and interactions with others because the development of their Theory of Mind is altered

– their ability to use a human-social skill called ‘mentalizing’ is affected

– all these alterations affect how the Borderline brain-mind operates – and their ‘mind sight’ abilities

(7)  Epigenetic factors that change development are beginning to be recognized in BPD – that affect the way the genetic code manifests (see phenotype and genotype)

(8) All these changes are known to affect a BPD mother’s interactions with her infant and her ability to form safe and secure attachment with her offspring

(9)  The BPD central nervous system is involved, their autonomic nervous system, their vagus nerve system, their stress response, their oxytocin connection system, their immune system, their hormones, and their neurotransmitters – to name just a few of the major influences that Borderline Personality Disorder can create in the body

(10)  BPD can involve delusional disorders and dissociation

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Would you place YOUR well-loved child in the care of someone with life-disorder complications like those described above?  We have to use our common sense – not a BPD strong suit.

When I use the term, ‘my Borderline mother’ I am describing a woman whose physiological existence was probably entirely influenced by the kinds of changes I mention above.  My story is about my life as the abused daughter OF my Borderline mother.

I make no claim to be an expert about BPD.  I am, however, an expert at being the daughter of my Borderline mother.  I had nothing like an ordinary mother.  I had a mother who was a Borderline mother – and a severely disturbed one.

My concern in writing for this blog is ONLY about people who have BPD physiology as it might relate to their ability to safely and securely parent their children.  My concern is WITH THE WELL-BEING OF INFANTS AND CHILDREN.

I do not believe that my mother had any CHOICE about how she behaved toward me and the rest of my family.  The only CHOICE that could have influenced positive change for my mother would have needed to come from the outside and would have needed to be court ordered and professionally enforced.

In essence, I firmly believe that in cases like my mother’s, her children needed to be permanently removed from her care.  Any contact she might have then been able to have with her children would have needed to be strictly (professionally) supervised.

In today’s world of not wanting to be ‘politically incorrect’ we put ourselves at risk for leaving infants and children in dangerously abusive, unsafe and insecurely attached environments with Borderline parents – especially mothers.  There is no comparing – as the commenter below suggests – between an inadequate and/or dangerous BPD parent and a ““lesbian mother” or “over-eater mother”.”  My Borderline mother had no problem with bashing my 4-year-old head in the toilet, for example.

The very last people on this great green and blue earth that we can afford to listen to about the dangers to infants and children of Borderline Personality Disorder parents are PBD parents, themselves – for ALL of the reasons I just pointed out above.

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Comment posted by reader to:  MY BORDERLINE MOM

Hi,
It is okay for me if you want to post my comment and also okay if you don’t. Mostly I would like to express my personal feelings about your blog (basically one particular thing).

First, I read your blog on occasion. I am DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder] and can relate to what you write about. I think you do a wonderful work with your blog and it does help others (at least it helps me).

The thing that bothers me is how you slam your “BORDERLINE” mother. I know everything you went thru was terrible (I have my terrible experiences) but as a BPD [Borderline Personality Disorder] mother it really hurts me how you always refer to her as “Borderline Mother” as if all borderline mothers are terrible monsters. I am DID and Borderline and anorexic and . . . . I have 4 outside kids who belong to a 14 yr. old alter who no longer wants them because they are not “babies” any more. I have stepped in and am working really hard to be the best mom I can be. Most of the time my BPD is contained inside (comes with a lot of “inner self-harm” because it does not get released). I do not want that crap released onto these kids.

When other people read your site and are not real familiar with BPD they will assume all BPD moms are out right crazy. Then if they come across my blog and read that I am BPD they will assume I unleash that same crazy stuff onto my kids and I do not. I wish you not refer to your mom as terrible, crazy “Borderline” mom (though I am sure she was). Maybe you could mention she was (is) borderline once or twice and then just refer to her as “crazy, horrible, terrible” instead of slamming the borderline word around when referring to her.

I cringe somewhat when I come to your site, though I like it, because I believe all borderline moms do not behave as such on the outside. I have begged my psychiatrist to remove that label from me but I know I have it. I just hate the way people out there slam it so frequently.

Thanks for listening to me rant! I only wanted to point it out to you. I will still read your site anyway I just do not need to be reminded about how terrible I am.

Thanks

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Next comment posted by this same reader to:  +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

Hi, I appreciate you listening to my feelings, posting my comments, and leaving it open for others to post also. I am not sure what you are saying in this new post. It seems like you are still saying bad things about borderline mothers, borderlines in general. But I could be totally wrong. When I see borderline and “yanking out the jugular” that does not feel good. Yank YOUR mom’s jugular, not all borderlines behave that way. Why can’t you just say “My Mother” instead of always attaching the BPD with it? You can mention her detailed issues, BPD being one of them, in another place where you explain more about you and your family.

I do not know where I am on the spectrum of borderlines but I can tell you it has to be a conscious effort on my part to think through things before I react. It is a work in progress. I am not the best mom and I lose it at times. I believe any mom can admit that.

One of the beliefs of Dr. Colin Ross (DID expert in Dallas) is that all DID people first split into BPD (that is the FIRST split) then DID comes next. The more I think about it the more I can see this making sense. Some in our system ARE BPD while others are not.

I wonder how others would feel if you were referring to your “lesbian mother” or “over-eater mother”. I do not think it is necessary to continue slamming the BPD label down with the abuses your mother did to you. It is like saying BPD is completely uncontrollable and all of us are crazies who should be in a mental institution.

My mother launched BPD stuff on me all of my life but I would not refer to her as my BPD mom repeatedly. She is my mom and she had a choice not to behave that way but she chose to. I have a choice NOT to behave that way. I am learning a new way.

I understand your anger, your frustration. It just seems you are SO focused on just BPD and not all of the other ways moms abuse their kids. If you abuse kids you abuse them no matter what your diagnosis.

Anyway I am sure my therapist will recommend I stop reading this blog as she does a lot of the blogs I read because it upsets our system. I am thankful to be able to speak up for all of us and express how we feel when we read the BPD references.

Post or not I am okay either way.

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Followed in time of posting by this comment by another reader also to:  +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

Linda, In reading your blog, I would assume that your mother was on the severe end of the borderline spectrum. Borderline personality can manifest itself as extreme anger and violence–it is what it is! The label itself explains much of your mother’s bizarre behavior. I know not all borderline’s are like your mom just like all depressed people don’t stay in bed all day or commit suicide. It’s a matter of degrees but it is what it is!

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Followed by yet another reader to +FOOLED BY AN ABUSIVE BORDERLINE? – MY MOTHER’S EXPERT DISTORTION OF REALITY

Linda,
There would be a quite a lot of people who would call it a bluff. But rest assured, I completely agree with you on this count. Your assessment of BP (borderline personality) is just about perfect. In my case however it is my father and his mother (my grandma) who appear to be the culprits. It appears that BPs are compulsive control-freaks and their entire life revolves around a desperate and somewhat diabolical obsession to take charge of everything and everyone around them. The best option for a non-BP in most situations would be to walk-out on these scheming maniacs without prior warning. As I have observed trying to warn these people of dire consequences if they do not stop their abuse is usually counter-productive. It simply strengthens their resolve to find more innovative ways of abuse. It is only when they [have] no fall-guy left to flog, that they are faced with the terrifying reality of their madness and usually break down irreversibly.

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Infants and children born to a Borderline Personality Disorder parent DO NOT HAVE THIS CHOICE:  “The best option for a non-BP in most situations would be to walk-out on these scheming maniacs without prior warning.”

It is up to outside informed and compassionate adults to protect ALL children.  In my opinion, we cannot trust those with Borderline Personality Disorder to parent their infant-child appropriately.  While this fact might not be true in SOME BPD parent cases, my strong suspicion is that as long as we continue to turn away with our blind eyes to the possibilities for severe distortion of reality with a BPD parent’s brain-body-mind that can lead to their offspring’s’ maltreatment, we are risking being contributors to this infant-child maltreatment.

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Prevalence:

BPD has a higher incidence of occurrence than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and is present in approximately two percent of the general population. BPD has been evidenced in all cultures. It is estimated that between 10 percent of clients in outpatient clinical settings and 15 to 20 percent of those in inpatient psychiatric settings meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD.

Thirty to 60 percent of those presenting with a personality disorder have BPD.

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+MY FATHER STILL REMAINS IN ALL SIX OF HIS CHILDREN’S ‘BLIND SPOT’

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Even now, ten years after the death of my father, not one of his six children can make a definite statement about who he was or how-why he was the way that he was in our childhood.  The ability to master any clear perception of him alludes us all just about equally.  If all six of us sat in session with the most competent therapist for a month of Sundays, would we come to any better of a conclusion about him than – “He was an enigma?”

Did we all come out of our insane childhood equally enveloped within the illusion that my mother was ‘the demon’ and my father was ‘the angel’?  After all, that kind of ‘splitting of the archetype’ of good versus bad was certainly a big part of the delusions of my mother.

I am sure glad that I am not an only child.  I am very glad that I have five mature siblings who all agree with me about the condition of the home we grew up in together.  And yet, reading these letters my father wrote to my mother in 1957 makes me feel uneasy, as if we all made up one version of a childhood while OBVIOUSLY my father lived in a different one!

It baffles me that anyone could be as blind to my mother as he evidently was.

In this letter (below) from my father:

“And I miss the children too – the feeling of all of us together as a family – the happy rush to meet me when I come home – the tender little voices at bedtime – I even miss their noises.  It gives me the saddest, tenderest feeling to think of all of you so bravely carrying on without me, and depending on me to take care of you – and I will.  And I will take care of everything, you can depend on me and trust me completely – always!”

and:

“(And thank you, my dearest Mildred, for being the sweetest Mother any children ever had.)”

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July 1, 1957 Monday – Anchorage, Alaska

Dearest Mildred,

Boy – what a time I had today!  The woman who brings the mail around to the office came in this morning and handed me a bundle of mail – 8 envelopes and 3 cards!  J  The mail seemed to be very slow last week, and some of them had been mailed as long ago as Wedensday [sic].  Then this afternoon she brought me another one which you mailed on Saturday!

Thank you, thank you, thank you – for writing so much and for telling me everything.  I know how you feel – the loneliness, the responsibility and the helplessness.  I don’t wonder that you wrote the way you did.  I don’t know which of my letters you got when, or even remember just what I said, but I know you react to the things I write.  The one where I talked about buying the house was written hurriedly in the postoffice [sic].  I’d  been out looking at houses for sale – much as you’d been looking at cars.  The one I wrote about would have been a good deal, a nice house to live in, one that could be enlarged very easily, and a good resale.  But of course it would be out of the question.

I know I must have told you about the apartments but I’ll repeat it just to be sure.  The first week I was here I went over to their rental office and filled out a card.  When she went to file it she found that I already had one in, dated May 10th – when I wrote to them.  So I’m on the list as of then, but she also told me that there were still people on the waiting list who’d been waiting since March.  She said that today, July first, was the deadline for people to give notice who were moving out August 1st, so I’m going over again tomorrow to check on it.  Incidentally, I’ve been over twice more in between – just to make sure I didn’t miss out on anything.

From what you said in your letters last week you apparently didn’t know this.  Yes, I would take an apartment right now if I could get one, and yes, I have applied and will keep hounding them.  As for anything else – I followed up several ads in the paper which proved to be no good, but in every case in talking to the people I found that they expected two months’ rent right now.  They wouldn’t even take a deposit to hold if a few days while I wired for money!  They have a credit union here at the District where I could borrow money but – Dammit – you have to be here 90 days before you can use it – which is no help at all.

I figured that I would have to send money to you on payday – Wedensday [sic] – but in this last letter I got you said not to.  I still don’t understand about those two small checks you got from work – or did I understand what you said about getting $68 soon from L.A.  Is that my vacation pay?  Did you check on it?  Anyhow – I’ll put as much of my pay check as possible in the bank, and I won’t send you any unless you ask for it.  Your next letters may tell me more, but I’ll go on the assumption that you have enough to get by on, unless I hear otherwise.  I would like to send it all to you, but the most important thing right now is to have enough to rent a house for us to put our home in.

I’m living just as cheaply as I possibly can, and I’ve resorted to one of Charley’s [mother’s brother] old tricks.  I bought a notebook before I left L.A. to keep track of my expenses on the trip so I could put in for reimbursement, and after I got here I kept on using it.  I write down everything I spend – even a nickel for a cup of coffee – and it sure helps.  I think twice before I spend anything!  Breakfast only costs 60 to 80 cents, lunch about the same, but suppers run from $.75 to $2.00 – and there’s no place else to eat.  The room costs $6.15 every two weeks, which is about 45 [cents] a day.  I wash my own socks and underwear but I send my shirts to the laundry at 40 [cents] each so that’s another 20 [cents] a day.  Yes, you’re certainly right about the cost angle of this business – and that’s the least-bad part of it.

Don’t ever, ever think I’m “getting used” to being away from you!  Perhaps you feel the strain more because you have the sole care of the children and because you’re reminded so much, but I do miss you – Mildred, I love you – I need you – I want you here as much as you want it.  I am and will always do everything in my power to get you here just as soon as possible.  Nothing in this world could ever make me go through a separation like this again!  We were made for each other, Darling Mildred, and we were made to be together!

I want so much to be able to give you the comfort – the love – the care, protection, – everything you need.  And I need just as much from you – all the things that you and only you can give me.  But most of all I simply need to be with you – always near you.  Sweetheart, my eyes fill with tears too when I think of being away from you any longer – Oh Mildred I want YOU!

And I miss the children too – the feeling of all of us together as a family – the happy rush to meet me when I come home – the tender little voices at bedtime – I even miss their noises.  It gives me the saddest, tenderest feeling to think of all of you so bravely carrying on without me, and depending on me to take care of you – and I will.  And I will take care of everything, you can depend on me and trust me completely – always!

I’m sending you a clipping from the paper – let’s hope it does some good.

I’m also sending the Household Finance paper back – signed.  Sorry I missed it last time, too much hurry I guess.

I’m so happy that you and the children have had a little fun for yourselves.  I had noticed that Museum when we’ve gone by it before, but never got around to going there – like so many other things.  I’ll bet Johnny really enjoyed looking at the old cars, the way he’s always talked about old-fashioned things being best.  🙂  And the fishing trip!  How I wish we’d discovered that before.  That sounds like so much fun – for you and them.  Next summer we’ll be able to do that all the time – and not at 40 [cents] a fish either.  I’m waiting eagerly for those pictures – I can just imagine the happy, happy faces.  🙂

I looked at the postcards first when the mail came, and I couldn’t figure out where they came from or how.  Then I read through all the rest of the letters and came to the last one before I finally found out.  I hope you didn’t forget the rest of the adventure story – the titles were intriguing!

As I read your various letters, I got several stories about the car.  But when I got to the last one I discovered that you weren’t going to wait for an answer from me.  It would sure be nice to have a new station wagon, and the prices you quoted were better than the first one you gave me by quite a bit – and considerably less than the price I got here, even counting $300 for shipping.  But I think you’d do better to sell the Chevy yourself rather than trading it in, in any event.  If you have definitely decided to go to your Mother’s to stay, you could get by without our car for now.  Then we could decide later about a new one.  I agree that the Ford is a better buy than the Chevy – this year anyhow.  I’ve tried to find out about how much travel allowance we’d get if you drove to Seattle – just out of curiosity mind you, I still don’t like the idea – but so far I haven’t been able to.  It seems that every time I try to see somebody they’re on vacation.

As I said before, Darling, you alone can decide whether you could live at your Mother’s.  It would certainly be the most practical thing to do – if the other can be worked out.  [Linda note:  “Other” being grandmother’s interference with mother’s parenting]

I am truly sorry about the letter that Jonna saw – there was really no need to say those things and I regretted it right afterwards.  You might know that would be the one!  I’ll never do that again, and not because I expect you to let anyone read them.

I still haven’t gotten my trunk, there was a ship last week but it wasn’t on it.  There’s another one next Monday and I sure hope it’s on it.  I need my “tools” and books at the office, and my clothes that I put in there.  I’m sure glad you insisted I get some moth-balls, the moths could have emptied the trunk in all this time!

Tell Cindy “thank you” for the lovely bag she made for me.  I’ll use it every day and think of her.  And tell Linda that her picture looks very nice on the wall next to the other one she sent.  And another thank you to Johnny and to the girls for the beautiful pictures of the place where they went fishing. They are on the wall too, and my room is brighter for having them there.  Tell Johnny I would like to have another letter from him, too.

(And thank you, my dearest Mildred, for being the sweetest Mother any children ever had.)

This is my last sheet of paper, so I have to stop now.

This time each day when I write to you is the happiest – and the saddest – of the whole day.  It makes me feel close to you for a little, but when I seal the envelope and drop it in the mail box – a piece of my heart goes with it, and I walk back to my room with sad, slow steps.  Without you I am so alone, my sweet, I need you to make me whole again.  I love you always, I love you truly, Bill.

P.S.  Yes again, I did take out Blue Cross, and you are covered.

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+’PARTICIPATION’ AND MY MOTHER’S SHARED DELUSIONS

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I have been outside working on my adobe yard project, but my mind is not on the job.  My thoughts are turning again and again in the direction of my mother, my father,  my childhood and the letters.

I have already written a post some time ago about this statement my mother made to my father in one of these June 1957 letters:

June 17, 1957

I spend every spare minute packing and sorting.  This house is so nice and well laid out for a small house.  It has many nice features that our others didn’t have.  Oh, to be able to build a house of our own and incorporate all the features.  I am going to buy some chicken wire to put across part of the back as there are so many ant hills out there.  I mentioned to you that Sharon sat on one.  Linda was to watch her in the yard and I had bought them a beach ball.  I think Sharon caught it and sat down on the hill.  She screamed! They were small red ants and each one was doubled over and seemed to have their stingers in her.  I had to actually pick them off of her.  She stopped crying when she knew I was fixing her and said over and over, “bite, bite, bite.”  I didn’t even know she knew the word “bite”.  There must have been 30!  They swelled and got all red.  They’re almost gone now.  Everytime [sic] we go out back, needless to say she hasn’t gone out alone since, she walks around looking on the ground and says “bit, bite, bite.”

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When I write about the missing silent truth in my mother’s letters, I think about this one.  While she does mention that I was supposed to watch nearly two-year-old Sharon in the yard as she describes this event, she does NOT tell my father of her violent attack on me because her baby got hurt.

Whether or not five-year-old-me was given the responsibility to watch Sharon in the yard or not I don’t know.  What I do know is that this event was added to my mother’s abuse litany for me and brought up again over and over with repeated beatings throughout the following years that proved I was irresponsible, that I could not be trusted with anything, that I hated my sister, that I resented her for being alive, that I wanted to be an only child, that I LET Sharon get bit by the red ants on purpose…..

No, mother doesn’t mention this to my father.  She didn’t share with him the rest of the story.  She simply told him her version, leaving out what she DIDN’T want to share with him.  She did this in the same way that she carefully chose to share with my father what she did in her letters (as I mentioned in my last post) about the missing card and my missing tooth.  Because my grandmother was just too close by, and because my grandmother was beginning to UN-SHARE parts of my mother’s delusions, grandmother had to go.

But what is really rolling around in my thinking as I dig dirt and shovel wet mud into my adobe forms outside is the fact that this collection of letters between my mother and father shows some of the patterns of the SHARED delusions between them in a way that is unique to the situation that allowed the letters to be created in the first place.  (Eventually the letters ended up being shared with me and now with you – but that certainly was never mother’s intention!).

SHARED relates to her statement that “We’re not ordinary people – we’re a close knit family and should never be separated!”  My mother lost her ability to share her delusional world unquestioned with her own mother different than she could when I was smaller (“Linda’s tired, she’s in her room resting, she’s in her room sleeping, she was a bad girl and I had to punish her…”).  Because the delusion had to remain intact, my grandmother was, as I wrote the other day, simply and effectively removed from the stage of our family’s ongoing life once we moved to Alaska.  From that point forward, my mother could control what my grandmother knew in her letters – the same way she did in these letters to my father.

I was also thinking that in the letters my mother wrote to her mother once we were all in Alaska, patterns of difficulties between my mother and other people outside our family begin to appear in her letters to her mother.  The only delusion that my mother could make REAL – and could hence tolerate other people’s participation in it, albeit remote participation – was our ‘homesteading’.

As far as the truth about what was going on within the walls of our home, my mother could hardly tell the neighbors or anyone at PTA meetings, “I beat my 1st grader last night, didn’t feed her supper, made her spend the night in the dark alone on a kitchen stool because she got the white ruffs at the edge of her coat dirty.  By the way, what happened in your family’s home last night?”

Experts often talk about the isolated world abusive family’s live in.  Of course, my parents found very extreme ways to accomplish this state for ours.  But in the end, I think it may well be that the need to keep the violence and abuse going on within a home a secret is so that the SHARED delusions that feed the abuse can remain intact.

Shared, in my thinking, means joint participation.  Joint participation in my mother’s delusion about me was critical to its continued existence.  The delusion justified her martyrdom of me.  As long as nobody broke through the delusion, her treatment of me could continue unchallenged and unstopped.  This is exactly what happened.

NOTE:  In case we might be tempted to entertain any illusion or delusion of our own about how powerful delusional participation-sharing can be, we need only to think about what happened when Hitler was able to create a delusion and share it with others who were willing to participate in his delusion with him.

While I was born into my mother’s delusion and never given any option but to participate and share her delusion with her, somehow I have managed to claw my way free enough to begin to consider the delusion (and my childhood) from an outside perspective.

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+SILENT TRUTH – MISSING FROM MY PARENTS’ 29,000 WORDS IN THEIR JUNE 1957 LETTERS

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Having just completed the transcription of the nearly 29,000 words contained in the *JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER I now face the most difficult task of all.  Do I do what I suggest in the title I have found for the collection of my essays if I ever publish them, “Breaking the Silence that Binds,” or do I let the silence of the words NOT written in my parents’ letters remain intact?

First of all, I know about the silence because I was there, and because 53 years later I can feel that silence now.  I know I feel it, because it upsets me.  “How dare I speak about what I know?”  “DARE” is a word my mother frequently used against her children, especially me.  “How DARE you look at me that way?”  “How DARE you – blah – blah – blah…..?”

How DARE I, 53 years later, speak my own truth about what I know about what went on in my family?  Well, do I dare?  Can I dare?  Will I dare?  It’s as if I stand at a silent, invisible boundary line at which I need to summon my courage, my willingness, my commitment to my own self (and to those who suffered abuse within a family similar to mine), and all of my ability to differentiate myself from both of my parents so that I CAN break this binding silence contained within these letters.

“Dive in, Linda.  What is most troubling you?”  I find it hard to think at this moment.  It’s like I am at the center of a powerful vacuum that sucks all my thoughts along with my whole version of my own reality away from me.  How do I begin?  I will simply locate the passages within my mother’s writing that I need to use my voice about.

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I can feel my fear.  I can feel the inner experience of DARING to challenge my mother, even now, all these 53 years later.  Where are my thoughts?  Where are my words?

First, there are seeds of my truth within these words from mother’s June 12, 1957 Wednesday letter to my father:

“Darling I can’t stand being away from you.  I must be with you.  I’ll never let anyone separate us again.  Never, never, not even the Army – oh darling, I love you.

We loved your letter and cards.  Linda didn’t get one – I hope you didn’t forget, I know you wouldn’t.  I gave her mine.  They were so proud and happy.  Come to think of it mornings and afternoons aren’t so bad, but far from good.  But from 4:00 on I am SICK!!  All this I’ve heard of mind over matter, I must put it into practice.  Can I??“

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Second, there are seeds of my truth within these words from my mother’s June 27, 1957 letter:

“Oh darling, my heart never ceases aching for you.  I had ‘the feeling’ this afternoon I should check again to see if there was mail again.  I usually only go in the morning but I had to go again and there was!

It was the letter written before the one I got this morning.  It was written Friday.  It’s funny to read them backwards.  I drove over to the little park in Glendora and let the kids play awhile, took a few impromptu pictures, which I’ll send to you, and read your letter there!  I took one close-up of Linda as she lost her 2nd front tooth today.  Isn’t nature wonderful, right on time?  Tonight the angel will visit her – usually you do that – I know.”

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Finally, the contrast I am going to speak about relates to this in her ‘fun filled’ descriptions in her June 27, 1957 Thursday night letter:

“I wish you could have seen John when he caught his trout!  He was so excited, he swung his line around and caught it in a tree.  Naturally, he had had several bites and near catches before he actually caught one.  It really was priceless!  He jumped up and down and exclaimed.

Cindy was such a ‘patient fisherwoman’ and soon caught a big one.  I took a picture of her holding the line with the fish on it, with the others standing close, admiring it.  J  I surely hope IT comes out!

Linda caught the biggest and is so proud!  We got home at 8:00 P.M. and so will cook them tomorrow!  Grandma will be here then, as I have errands in Pasadena (what a let-down) to do tomorrow.  I know she loves trout and I’m afraid the children might not eat it.

The only one that minded ‘hurting the fish’ was John.  He couldn’t stand to see it bled and naturally I had to get someone else to pull the hook out.  J  I was glad cleaning them was part of the price and I even had her cut the heads off.“

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OK.  Step one is completed.  I have used my net woven of my bravery and determination to snatch this collection of my mother’s words out of her letters, out of the context that she wrote them within, and I have moved them into MY universe – 53 years later.

How telling it is to me that the power of my mother’s severe abuse of me, coupled with my father’s unwillingness to EVER stop her or to even recognize that the abuse was happening, makes it this difficult even today for me to DARE to speak about what I know about my parents’ version of reality.

Now, as I try to locate MY OWN SELF, my own feelings, thoughts, words, perceptions in relationship to my mother’s words, I need to distill this down if I can into my own crystallized words about these letter passages.

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(1)  My mother’s Borderline reality began to take shape from the time she was very, very young.  The neglect, abuse, trauma and malevolent conditions that she was born into influenced the body-brain changes that led to her condition.

(2)  My mother’s Borderline reality was already well in place before she ever met and married my father on June 11, 1949.  They knew one another six months before the marriage took place.

(3)  My the time my oldest brother, John, was born on June 15, 1950 my mother’s Borderline reality had expanded to not only include the existence of her ‘perfect husband’, Bill, but also had grown to include the appearance of this firstborn ‘perfect son’.

(4)  A healthy, balanced relationship between my mother and her mother had been trashed beginning with my mother’s birth.  While I became the victim-pawn within the complex interplay of the disturbances between my mother and her mother, I was not the cause of them.

(5)  Patterns of chronic and severe abuse in a family happen because these patterns both grow into the family dynamics and shape them.  These patterns are especially well-disguised within a Borderline-based brain-nervous system-mind-self focused home.

(6)  These patterns are at the same time NOT detected because their disguise is perfect and because they have shaped every single interaction and transaction that occurs over time between the people that are part of the close family.

When my mother writes to my father in one of her June 27, 1957 letters, “We’re not ordinary people – we’re a close knit family and should never be separated!”  I believe she is recognizing within herself that her entire reality depends upon the ongoing patterns that were not only established within her own Borderline mind when she was a little girl, but also is recognizing that her ongoing reality is completely intertwined with my father’s presence in her life.

(7)  The patterns that formed the fabric of the ongoing interactions within our family worked because they were silent.  The silence of the truth about what was really going on was as completely necessary to maintain ‘reality’s existence’ as was the presence of my father.

(8)  The key point I know about the passages I selected above is that it wasn’t just the presence of my father in my mother’s life that was required for her reality to remain intact.  It was absolutely essential that my father completely understand my mother’s version of reality as it regarded me as the kingpin of her mad illusions.

My mother very effectively, efficiently and expertly manipulated how my father saw me throughout my entire childhood.  My mother had to convince my father of her mother’s love for me so that she could then justify and defend her abuse of me.

The pattern of the dynamics of my mother’s abuse of me with my father’s acceptance if not approval happened over time because:

(a)  My mother could ensure that my father knew she had undying love for him.

(b)  My mother could ensure that my father’s entire life involved his love for her at its center.

(c) My mother could ensure that my father could not understand what she did to me in any way than I ‘abused my mother’ by being such a terrible child.  My mother was ‘put upon’ by a ‘curse child’ – she bore her burdens with glorious magnanimity.  My mother created a pattern of reality that meant my father never questioned her version of the truth.

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In the two first passages I include here from my mother’s writings to my father, I know the truth is invisibly included in her words.  Both of my parents, whether they made the choices consciously or not, DID exactly choose what words they included within their letters.

Although my mother does mention their other three children in her letters, it is exactly and specifically Linda that she draws attention to in terms of her magnanimous ‘good mother’ actions toward me.  In both of these incidents she includes about me in her letter, she directly hooks my father – and his role as my father — into ‘the story’.

(a)  Father evidently ‘forgot’ to send Linda a card.  Magnanimous ‘good mother’ gives me hers.

(b)  Mother makes sure to mention that she took a picture ‘close up’ of just Linda as she hooks in my father by also drawing his attention to his usual role as the lost tooth routine.  Magnanimous ‘good mother’ takes his place and performs his job for him.

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In the third passage I included above a different dynamic is operating (from my point of view).  As mother describes the fishing adventures of her group of children, she does include Linda as one of the group.  This mention, to me, is not one that involves the kind of husband-father-conning-manipulation that she used in the first two passages.  In the fishing scene, she actually ‘forgot’ to separate me from the rest of ‘the pack’.

The problem with this thirdly-mentioned experience is that any time I was ‘accidentally’ left out of my mother’s psychosis regarding me at the same time I was ‘accidentally’ included as a member of the sibling group, I never, never, never knew when to expect my mother’s psychosis to reappear in some random violent extreme outburst against me.

I mention this fact here because these ‘happy Linda as part of the group’ experiences did as much to create major dissociational patterns in my ongoing experience of my life in the world as did the violence.  I never could anticipate ‘which was going to be which’.  I could not predict, I could not prevent, I could not understand any of it.

So when something good actually did happen, when I actually was allowed to be a child, it always happened not because I WAS a child, but happened because mother was in one of her “giddy-happy let’s-do-something-fun isn’t-this-fun” moods that NONE of us could understand.

NOTE:  My mother seems to have some peripheral comprehension of the difficulties her shifts of mental state, mood and attitude had on her children when she described this in the same letter where she talks about the fishing trip:

“Next door to us there’s a beautiful trailer court (I don’t think they allow children).  Mostly, the people seem to be retired.  It really is nice.  They have a lovely swimming pool, shuffle-board etc.  Some of them have their patios fixed so nicely with ferns, tropical plants etc.  We all enjoyed seeing it.  You can’t imagine how much I enjoy the children – they’re truly fun to be with – if no other adults are along.  When we’re alone I treat them more as adults.  We talk and laugh and have fun.  When other adults are there or in the car they’re treated as children and resent it.  I can’t blame them.  It must be hard (Pals and friends one minute and a mere child, the next).“

But it is obvious to me that even as she wrote these words, even as she noticed the process she described here, it doesn’t MEAN ANYTHING TO HER.  My mother remained consistently at the center of her own universe and everything that happened always happened to us with her at this center.

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With the exception of the simple report that I caught the biggest fish and I was proud (she doesn’t’ describe to my father what her reaction to my pride might have been), the other two examples regarding me have nothing to do with Linda.

In both of the other two events mother is the star player.  Father becomes the blind, manipulated hooked-into-my-mother’s-version-of-reality player.  All I am is the actress-prop being used to continue the solidification of the pattern-dynamics that HAD to be protected and maintained in the family even though my father was not physically present in the home.  There could be no lapse of pattern.

My mother had to SHINE.  My father had to see her SHINE.  My father had to stay entranced.  He had to see my mother SHINE as his wife.  He had to see her SHINE as a mother.  And, for the overall, overriding, overarching dynamic of my mother’s psychosis – with me at its center – to continue to operate as my mother’s Borderline madness HAD to have it happen, my father ESPECIALLY had to see my mother SHINE as MY magnanimously good mother.

My mother had to so comprehensively control the pattern-dynamics in her home that when she acted viciously toward me, even her insane, mad violence would be seen by my father as just another aspect of her SHINING ability to be this terribly BAD child’s magnanimous good mother.

To say that ‘my mother as martyr’ was an aspect of the pattern-dynamics of our home is such an understatement it’s almost ridiculous.  At the same time, my grandmother did the ‘martyr thing’ to near perfection.  Adding another bizarre twist, it was a part of my mother’s abuse litany against my father that HE played such an excellent martyr role!

All the while these dynamics were slithering around among the only grown-ups in my child life, it was ME that was being sacrificed.  I was not ‘a martyr’, I was martyred.

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I need to take my word-search detour here for a moment:

MARTYR

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin, from Greek martyr-, martys witness

Date: before 12th century

1 : a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion
2 : a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
3 : victim; especially : a great or constant sufferer

MARTYRED

Date: before 12th century

1 : to put to death for adhering to a belief, faith, or profession
2 : to inflict agonizing pain on : torture

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As an infant-child I certainly had no ability to volunteer as a martyr.  At the same time, I was accused from birth of being sent as an agent of the devil to kill my mother, I was not given any means of defending myself.  I could not ‘renounce’ the devil!  I had no principle or religion to denounce.  I had been assigned a religion as being ‘the devil’s child’.

Yes, I witnessed.  Yes I sacrificed.  Yes, I greatly and nearly constantly suffered.  But this truth only appears in my parents’ letters by its silence.

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Letters: 

*JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER

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+LINK POSTED HERE TO COMPLETED JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MY PARENTS

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I just completed transcribing what exists of the June 1957 letters written between my parents after my father flew to Anchorage, Alaska to start his new job and look for housing so that the rest of his family could join him there:

*JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER

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+ANOTHER ONE OF MY FATHER’S 1957 LETTERS TO MOTHER

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My parents 8th wedding anniversary was the day my father arrived in Anchorage (without my mother).  To my knowledge, the house they were living in when the final move to Alaska began to take place (with my father going up there 2 months ahead of the rest of us), our family was already living in the fourth house since I was born (perhaps it was the 5th).

As I read this next letter of my father’s I am posting here, I wondered about how those first 8 years were for them as a couple.  It was this statement my father makes in his letter that most caught my eye:

“I am proud of the way you’ve gotten along by yourself, and I worship you for the wonderful wife and mother that you are to me (and our children).”

I tend to think that if my father had been married to a woman who was healthy, my father might have been healthy.  As it was, it seems the whole pattern of my parents marriage actually was one of continued disintegration.  That they lasted as a married couple for 37 years before my father finally divorced my mother seems pretty amazing to me.

As I read these 1957 letters that they wrote to one another, I hear the echoes of what many in our culture might consider to be ‘romantic love’.  I think that two people who can compliment one another in relationship is far healthier than when two people seem to complete one another – but I’m not in the mood for commenting at the moment – so, here’s my father’s letter:

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June 24, 1957 – Anchorage, Alaska

[Mother wrote in the top margin of this letter while apart from dad and living the winter in Tucson, Arizona in 1966: – “Sounds so much like now, only it’s 9 years later and tonight I’m bitter, lonely and can’t even write you – I can’t – it’s like an old record playing ‘yes later’ over and over.”]

Dearest Mildred,

Don’t worry any more about my not getting your letters – I got four again today, the latest one postmarked Saturday.  All you need use for an address is:  c/o District Engineer, Anchorage, Alaska.  The box number etc. is the official address but it isn’t needed.  I think by now I’ve received all the mail that you sent to the APO box number in Seattle.

Oh, my Darling, I feel so sorry for all the troubles you’ve gone through.  I know how much has happened to you and how much you’ve had to do all by yourself.  I feel so helpless, as though I was sitting here wasting my time while you have so much to do.  I am proud of the way you’ve gotten along by yourself, and I worship you for the wonderful wife and mother that you are to me (and our children).  This is a trying time we’re gong through right now, and I swear I’ll make it up to you for the rest of our lives.  If you hadn’t been willing to do what you’re doing I never could have come here, so we are truly partners in everything we do.

I know more every day that we’re going to like it here, and on that glorious day when we’re all settled here we’ll both really begin to live again.  I die a little too every day that I spend without you, and I dread the days that lie just ahead.  I could never grow accustomed to living without you – instead it gets worse every single day that we’re apart.  I feel it most of all at night when I turn off the light and go to bed.  I could never sleep well alone again!  When the light’s on I can see where I am and see how alone I am, but when I lie down in the dark I feel that you should be there beside me – and when I’m half-asleep I reach out to hold you close to me.  That horrible empty feeling when my hand finds nothing but the wall – it would be impossible to describe if you didn’t feel it too.  Oh my Mildred, my life is only in you.  I won’t really live again at all until you are in my arms again.

You must take care of yourself and try to live some sort of a “normal” life while you’re there, get into a routine and have your meals on time and get enough sleep.  You do have a big load to carry, their’s [sic] no getting away from that, and you just have to take care of yourself!  I know there doesn’t seem to be anything but trouble and worries and waiting but please try to relax and have at least a little fun this summer.

Before you do any driving though, you’ll have to have a spare tire.  Go to a tire store and get a retread – not a new one – and don’t let them charge you over about $9.00 for the tire and tube.  It sounds like the car needs new spark plugs and a tune-up, go to a garage – George and Murray’s down the Hi-way is good – and have it done and I think the car will run O.K.  Don’t let them sell you an overhaul or anything else.  By the way – I forgot to tell you to use the 25 [cent] oil and regular gas in the car, anything better would spoil it.  J

This afternoon my boss “invited” me to go out and look at the runway paving that I’m working on, and he’s a real “company-man” so we got back too late for me to get to the Beneficial Finance office before they closed.  So I’ll take off in the morning and be there when they open up.  Then, I’ll go right over to the post office and mail it to you.  If it doesn’t get there the same time this does, go back in the afternoon and it might be there then.

I’ll ask you once more, although you may already have answered, what about writing to you at the Motel?

I’ve already written a card to Ben Wright and I’ll write him a letter soon.  Also I’ll send a post-card to all of our friends – although it will be hard not to make them all sound alive (I hope they don’t’ get together and compare them).

I agree emphatically about sending the card back to my mother!  She must have rocks in her head to think she can go right on as though nothing had ever happened  Believe me, I didn’t write to her for her sake – only to get it off my chest so I could forget about it!  [Linda note:  Nobody in the family has any idea what the conflicts were about between my parents and my father’s family.]

I’ll check on the price of the Chevy Station Wagon – just out of curiosity.  It would sure be nice to get it, but that’s another wild idea we’d better forget about – along with my idea of buying a house!  If we can just get settled here without going broke we’ll be doing well – without buying anything more.

I’m glad I’m in time in telling you about the stove.  I know how hard it is to part with our one remaining original appliance, but it would be completely useless here so sell it!  L

I know there was something else I wanted to say but I can’t remember it.  If it comes to me I’ll put a note in with the papers in the morning.

Try to tell the children how I love them and miss being with them, miss hearing their voices and hearing their prayers.  Every time I see a little child it reminds me of them and makes me all the more homesick.  As soon as I get payed [sic] I’ll send everyone a little gift – something Alaskan if I can find something that wasn’t made in Japan.  Good night now, my beloved Mildred, and remember:

[He drew little musical notes all around the edges of this]

‘Till I hold you in my arms,

I will hold you in my heart.

I love you sweetheart, I love you forever and for always, I Love You, Bill

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IN MEMORY OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER:

Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms / Diagnosis Treatment Coping
From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder

May is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness month in the U.S.   What can you do to spread the word about BPD?   Forward this week’s newsletter to someone unfamiliar with the condition — help us educate the public about BPD.

BPD is Not What You Think It Is – Myths About BPD

Borderline personality disorder is a very real and serious mental illness. It is not a “personality problem” or just a set of maladaptive ways of coping with the world.

Fighting Stigma – Stigma and BPD

Perhaps the most important way to fight stigma in your own life is to engage in educating others about BPD. There is evidence that when people learn about the symptoms, causes, and treatments for BPD, their attitudes tend to change.

What is Borderline Personality Disorder?

What exactly is borderline personality disorder? How is BPD different from other disorders? What is the experience of a person with BPD like?

Getting Help for Borderline Personality Disorder

If you have BPD, finding treatment or support can be a confusing and frustrating process. Learn more about how to find the help you need. Finding a mental health professional (e.g., a psychiatrist, psychologist, counselor, or social worker) with whom you feel comfortable can be an important step toward better health.

Must Reads

What is BPD?
Symptoms of BPD
Diagnosis of BPD
Treatment of BPD
Living with BPD

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+IT MIGHT BE JUST FINE TO RIP THE JUGULAR VEIN OUT OF ‘BORDERLINE’

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What if we really can prevent most so-called mental illnesses?  I think we can – but being silent about the truth is not going to get us there.

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As I dig holes by my fence to plant my bare root roses in, as I sweat the job out in the heat of the desert sun now because I chose to write while it was cooler outside instead of run outside and get to the day’s job immediately, I am thinking – and thinking hard not only with my two brain hemispheres (who each see life differently from one another) but also with my senses, with my emotions, with my body and its memories.

I see an image that has been in my mind since the early days of my Alaskan childhood on the mountain homestead:  When wolves are hungry and they decide they want a giant moose for dinner, all the have to do is gather together as a pack, chase down the moose, assign one wolf to race up front while the rest remain at the rear.  The pack tears out the Achilles tendon of one of the moose’s hind legs followed immediately by the wolf up front tearing out its jugular vein.  Great for the wolves.  Very bad for the moose.

As I think about this process of nature, I think also about how far behind we would all be if nobody had ever been willing to break the conspiracy of silence about cancer.  If speaking about cancer had remained taboo, think about what we would have all lost.  I don’t have to detail it.

Borderline Personality Disorder is as serious a disease as is cancer.  By joining the conspiracy of silence about telling the truth about this disease, I would be removing my efforts from the side of “Let’s get real about this disease and do something about it,” and joining the ranks of the timid.

Along with the near volcanic-sized eruption of new neuroscience facts about the impact of trauma in childhood on the developing body-brain, comes the very real possibility that not only is Borderline Personality Disorder probably nearly completely preventable, but so might be the vast majority of so-called mental illnesses.

Considering the facts, am I willing to remain silent about the truth of my story and demote myself to the ranks of, “Gee, I really have nothing useful to add, but I sure do like to complain about my childhood – thanks for giving me audience?”

I believe IN THE NEAR FUTURE, when all the attachment and the infant-child developmental experts put their heads together, they will come to understand that what we call ‘mental illness’ – no matter which one and under which name we may call it – is a result of a developing infant-child’s immune system response to extreme stress from inadequate caregiving that IS an attack on the body.

This means that although we cannot currently cure ‘mental illness’ there is very possibly a very common sense means to accomplish its prevention:  Adequate parenting.

I would rather put my energy into thinking about how to accomplish the changes that can lead to improved parenting than put my energy into enabling the silence about the causes and consequences of ‘mental illness’ – along with possibilities for its prevention – because of my reluctance to NAME the life-threatening disease of my mother’s (the same one that determined how she died at the end).

So if naming my mother “My Borderline Mother” is the equivalent of tearing out the Achilles tendon of this disease and bringing it down by its jugular vein forever – well, perhaps my Word Warrior self truly is out there with a wolf pack.

Don’t worry – still thinking —— nothing decided yet.

NOTE:  In our language-culture it’s OK to say, “I have cancer” rather than “I am a cancer.”  We need to improve our logic!  We do not = our illnesses.  At the same time, I realize that I cannot think of one aspect of my mother’s life that was not filtered through her illness!

I am finding nothing in the current research literature that even suggests that we are born with a so-called mental illness like we are born with our blood type.  Research is far from being advanced enough to understand the interactions between the influence of environmental factors on how genes manifest.

What is known (in my opinion) is that the same genes that are connected to the greatest gifts of our species are linked to risk factors that can more easily result in ‘mental illness’ if the genes are told early in development that the world is hostile and malevolent place.  Giftedness is ‘expensive’ in genetic terms.  I believe that the more gifted a newborn is (even before birth) the more their eventual well-being is put at risk by inadequate early parenting conditions during the beginning of their body-brain development.

“Mental illness’ is, in my opinion, just a species-wide signal, or means to communicate about the conditions of the world that MADE the individual the way that they turned out.  Looking at my mother, it is obvious that something was very wrong with her childhood environment!  Her early world was malevolent in some significant way that forced her immune system to take a detour in her development – that activated her gifted genes in a different way than they would have been activated in a benevolent world as a response.

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It is not to the hardy and naturalized native desert plants that I am paying my closest attention to in my yard right now as I dig them wide holes, mix great amendments into their soil and as I place them in line with my soaker irrigation hose.  I am paying this extra special attention to the ‘gifted’ plants, the resplendent plants – my roses.

If I neglect to care for the native plants, they will manage pretty dang well all by themselves.  But if I want the roses to survive, and then bloom their every loving hearts out, I cannot expose them to much of a range of deprivation, now, can I?  Gifted people are no doubt just about this dependent upon extra careful tending during their developmental stages.  I would stake my cotton socks on a bet that this is true!

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+WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

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No reader of the autobiographical writings of my mother, Mildred Ann Cahill Lloyd, is going to be privy to what the readers of this blog already know as the truth about Mildred.  I haven’t quite worked my own self around this new turn of events, my intention to allow my mother to speak to anyone who wishes to hear her words – just in her own words.  But I do suspect that the process I might go through as I prepare her manuscript might be something akin to forgiveness.

I had a strange realization overcome me last week.  That’s exactly how it happened.  I was overcome with a thought that seemed quite unusual and odd to me.  I had no idea how it showed up in my mind.  I tried to track its origins.  I looked backwards at my thinking for the day to see if I could find what this new thought about my mother might have been connected to in my earlier thinking patterns.  Nothing.  I could find not one single lead-in line of thought that put me where I ended up.

Suddenly, out of this nowhere that I could find, I had this thought:  “What if when we get to the other side and meet our Creator, and are faced with the truth of our actions in this lifetime including what we have done that has truly HURT other people – what if our Creator blankets us with forgiveness and washes all our transgressions completely away as if they have never happened — and it’s not enough?”

Suddenly I was crying.  There I was outside with my raggedy dirt covered clothes, wearing mismatched rubber work gloves because each of the other glove in the pair had already disintegrated as I worked in the yard.  There I was, walking across the yard with a 5-gallon dirt smudged plastic bucket full of rocks (I have no wheelbarrow), when this thought hit me like an apple had just fallen from the sky and knocked some unfamiliar new sense into my head.

“What if my mother is on the other side, having been granted complete forgiveness by her God, but is still as sad as a soul can be because, stripped of the physiological changes and sickness of her mortal flesh and bone body, she now understands what she did to me how terribly she hurt me and the rest of her family.  What if she cannot be free, cannot be happy, cannot move on in her new life, without my forgiving her?”

Suddenly at the instant this thought came to me I understood what forgiveness might be for me, what it mean, and what it might be needed for.  The thought was so foreign that I sloughed it off like I might a bug that just appeared on my shoulder.

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But I woke up this morning remembering the trace of something I was dreaming last night that had something to do with thinking very hard about finding exactly the very best thing to do for people I have met in my life that I could never quite stand for something they did – something that I could not stand by them for, something that did not let me stand to have these people in my life.

My sense this morning about this dream is that for all of the people that I have decided I could not stand – not stand what they did, or who they were in my life – I found a way to make what the 12-steppers might call an amend.  Of course in the dream world different rules about who and what is safe or not safe are different.  In the dream I was safe to find my own way to – essentially – forgive them, I guess.

As I awoke this morning I knew I came out of a dream where I was standing with a palette of oil paint colors in my left hand and a 1/2″ paintbrush in my right in front of one of these people’s canvas of a painting they had wanted to complete all of their lives but could not.  In the dream I knew exactly how this person wanted the painting to look, and I was completing it for them – perfectly.

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There is something about this discovery I had last night in conversation with my daughter that contains some element of my forgiveness of my mother.  I guess what struck me hardest on the head last week as the invisible apple clunked me into the realization that God’s forgiveness of our transgressions in this lifetime might NOT BE ENOUGH to remove terrible inner suffering from the people who have hurt others was my awareness of my own understanding that IF this might be true, IF my mother needs my forgiveness to be set free I would find a way to do that for her.

Maybe my act of publishing my mother’s words exactly as she wrote them will not ACTUALLY or REALLY be an act of forgiveness.  Maybe it will not ACTUALLY or REALLY set her free or remove her great sorrow.  I ACTUALLY know nothing about what goes on in the next life.  But for me, in this lifetime, it feels like an act of my forgiveness of her – to me.

It feels like an action on my part related to mercy toward my mother to fulfill a wish of hers she always had to publish her story of her Alaskan homesteading adventures.  Her sickness and her madness stole away from her all of the truest hopes for her lifetime.  Writing and publishing was perhaps, from the outside, one of the least significant of the losses of her life due to her illness.  But I am the one that ended up not only with her writings that survived her death, but with the motivation to transcribe them and to publish them.

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I am still framing in context my relationship both to my mother and to the word she wrote in terms of us both being Word Warriors.  I think about her uncountable acts of aggression toward me while I was powerless, without any weapon, unable to defend myself against her or to escape.

At the same time I think of a conversation I had with a man not too long ago.  I described a scenario to him.  “You are at war with your greatest enemy.  Both of you are expert swordsmen and well armed.  You have both fought your way to the top of a great hill.  Your enemy finally admits defeat, lays his sword at  your feet and stands now powerless against you.  What would you do?”

The man I was talking to replied quite simply, “I would cut off his head.”

I have what could be referred to now as the distinct advantage over my mother.  I am alive in this world with her words at my disposal.  She is dead.  What I do now with my Word Warrior power will determine the fate of my mother’s words.  I  am choosing to set my mother’s story free.

I will not hold my mother’s written words captive.  I will not hold them hostage.  I will not demand a ransom for their freedom.

Because being human involves imagination (that’s the way our brains got made), and because writing is a manifestation of our gifts of imagination, I can say that using the analogy of the image I just presented about the two men in mortal combat, what I will not do is pick up my mother’s Word Warrior sword and chop her head off with it.

In my imagination I am going to use the equivalent of my ‘alchemynow’ powers in regard to my mother’s sword of words.  I am going to transform her sword into a carefully folded elegant rice-paper crane.  All her words are written upon the paper that crane is made from.  I am going to carry that sword across the globe of my mind to the shores of the Ganges River.  I am going to kneel upon the shore, place this crane gently upon the water, say these words, “Mother, I completely and forever forgive you for every hurt you did to me.”

Then I am going to give that little crane a gentle nudge with the tip of my finger to send it out into the current where it can float away.  I will stand to watch it disappear into the distance at the same time I know there is healing for me in letting that crane go free.

Ganges River Dolphin - India’s National Aquatic Animal

This does not mean that I am free of the painful and difficult experience of finishing the process of transcribing these remaining letters.  But this pain is mine, not my mother’s.  For whatever reasons my mother’s body-brain was made in such a way in this lifetime that she could not feel for me what I can feel for her.  The abilities I have are gifts my mother did not have.  I want to use them for good, and I want to use them wisely.

The Ganges is a polluted and wounded river.  My mother was a polluted and wounded woman.  If I think about my mother’s writings as being the river of her words, I am not going to pollute them by adding in my own.   I will simply publish her collection with a blessing:  “Go in peace, my mother.  Go in peace.”

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This comment just in to MY BORDERLINE MOM

chasingfairies

Hi,
It is okay for me if you want to post my comment and also okay if you don’t. Mostly I would like to express my personal feelings about your blog (basically one particular thing).

First, I read your blog on occasion. I am DID and can relate to what you write about. I think you do a wonderful work with your blog and it does help others (at least it helps me).

The thing that bothers me is how you slam your “BORDERLINE” mother. I know everything you went thru was terrible (I have my terrible experiences) but as a BPD mother it really hurts me how you always refer to her as “Borderline Mother” as if all borderline mothers are terrible monsters. I am DID and Borderline and anorexic and . . . . I have 4 outside kids who belong to a 14 yr. old alter who no longer wants them because they are not “babies” any more. I have stepped in and am working really hard to be the best mom I can be. Most of the time my BPD is contained inside (comes with a lot of “inner self-harm” because it does not get released). I do not want that crap released onto these kids.

When other people read your site and are not real familiar with BPD they will assume all BPD moms are out right crazy. Then if they come across my blog and read that I am BPD they will assume I unleash that same crazy stuff onto my kids and I do not. I wish you not refer to your mom as terrible, crazy “Borderline” mom (though I am sure she was). Maybe you could mention she was (is) borderline once or twice and then just refer to her as “crazy, horrible, terrible” instead of slamming the borderline word around when referring to her.

I cringe somewhat when I come to your site, though I like it, because I believe all borderline moms do not behave as such on the outside. I have begged my psychiatrist to remove that label from me but I know I have it. I just hate the way people out there slam it so frequently.

Thanks for listening to me rant! I only wanted to point it out to you. I will still read your site anyway I just do not need to be reminded about how terrible I am.

Thanks,
Haley

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My response:

alchemynow

Dear Haley

I just copied your comment over to the end of the post I just wrote: +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

at https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/word-warrior-news-go-in-peace-my-mother/

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Thank you very much for posting your thoughts and feelings.

When I use these two words in connection to one another, “Borderline mother,” I am always and specifically referring to MY mother. At least that is what I try to do. When I include information on Borderline Personality Disorder I try to do that by referring to expert and professional descriptions and information about the ‘condition’ from the outside.

In reading your response I will make the clearest effort that I can from now on to make even more of an effort to keep these distinctions as clear as I can.

I of course can not tell this for sure, but in reading your words I perceive that you express three things I can see here that my mother never had toward me (and only peripherally demonstrated toward anyone else, including her other 5 children): (1) the ability to self-reflect, (2) the ability to connect consequences with actions, and (3) the ability to experience care, concern and compassion for the well-being of your children.

Without having these three abilities, my mother was a lethal weapon and an extremely dangerous mother.

The shortcomings related to diagnosis of so-called ‘mental health categories’ and the cultural stigmas connected to them is a problem within our society at large: http://www.jwoodphd.com/borderline_personality_disorder.htm and http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/b/borderline_personality_disorder/wiki.htm#wiki_Origin_of_the_term

There is enough neuroscientific research appearing to suggest that before much more time passes, it will be possible to diagnose something akin to what is now called Borderline Personality Disorder far more accurately by watching scans of a person’s brain operating while performing certain specific tasks.

When this time comes, I see that the diagnostic process will be very similar to the ones used now to find and diagnose something as problematic, life threatening and difficult to treat as are breast cancers discovered through mammogram procedures today.

It was not that long ago in the past that ‘having cancer’ was considered as a shameful thing. We are socially removing that stigma.

It was not that long ago in the past that child abuse was also a taboo topic for public discussion.

I make every effort to connect what my mother did to me to the suffering my mother experienced during her formative years that changed her into the terribly abusive mother she became. Nowhere do I EVER say that my mother was a bad or an evil person.

The point you make today is not only an extremely important one, but is one that is appearing at a critically important time in my own writing process. I thank you for this. I will enlist everyone on my end that is involved in the process of preparing my book on the experiences of my childhood to help me consider how best to approach the legitimate and important point you are heart-fully making making here.

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I consider my mother (who was never diagnosed with this disorder first named in 1984) to have been at the severe end of the Borderline Personality Disorder spectrum. My concern so far has been that if a mother as severely abusive as mine was could so completely hide her abuse and so completely manipulate her home environment that nobody on the outside ever suspected the abuse was occurring, how does anyone even today have a chance to intervene and rescue any child living with this kind of abuse?

I consider the entire matter of child abuse to be a life-and-death concern. I would rather not be an inconsiderate ‘bull in a China shop’ and trample all over other people who have been given this diagnosis or help create a stampede of others who would do the same. Yet because I believe that severe Borderline mothers have the physiological constitution that makes them about the most dangerous abusive parents possible, I have as yet not chosen to back off from assigning ‘Borderline’ as a prefix to the term ‘my mother’.

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I make no pretense (at least that I know of) to tell anyone else’s story other than my own. In my most recent process within the past 24 hours, I have even realized that my mother’s own words need to be published without my side of the story being presented at all in connection with my mother’s writings. That is a HUGE step for me because I have always believed that if I could somehow bring the light of the true reality of my mother’s violent, dangerous and consistently abusive nature into the telling of my mother’s story that it might be able to help someone in ‘the public’ rescue a child preyed upon as abusively as I was.

Yet if nobody can ‘read the mind’ of a Borderline, as this article suggests

http://profs.bpdworld.org/articles/The%20Borderline%20Empathy%20Effect.pdf

I will not be able to accomplish what I hoped for, anyway.

I am not yet able to think fully about what you are saying. I obviously retain my own bias in regard to my mother. I know fully that there are readers of this blog who DO have something to say about this topic. Please respond. Put within your comment, as this reader did, your feelings about having your comment published or not – I will of course honor your request. But, your opinion IS NEEDED here! And I thank you again, Haley as I thank other readers for their comments even before they are received.

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+WORD WARRIOR NEWS: SETTING FREE MY MOTHER’S WORDS

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I shared a long telephone conversation tonight with my daughter about the writing work I am doing, and between us something has become clear for me regarding the ebook I will soon be ready to publish that will contain my mother’s writings.

I have decided to remove any editorializing I might be tempted to do with my abusive Borderline Mother’s writings and let them hit the road of publishdom intact as she wrote them.  That isn’t an easy thing for me to do.  Yet, given the truth that virtually no one can really understand the mind of a Borderline, I understand that at this point it really does me no good to try to convince anyone about what was really going on between the lines of the words my mother wrote in her diaries and letters.  I am not even going to try.

I know what went on between the lines of her writing.  But if I were to try to tell that truth along with her words, nothing good can come out of that.  A book published with what’s between the lines of her writing would literally have nothing to say.  The words between her lines are invisible, and for now I need to leave things that way.  I need to just let my mother’s voice speak from the grave – 8 years now since the day of her passing – in her own words as she wrote them.

Perhaps by opening my hands and letting go of my efforts to convince anyone of the truth about my mother, and about her life the best of what might come out of my efforts might come about in surprising ways.  If I can’t show anyone, can’t tell anyone, if her madness really was unspeakable (to her!), then I give up.  I simply give up and let go.

It seems strange to me that I can say at this moment that my mother has a right to be heard exactly in her own words with none of mine added except for the smallest amount of clarification concerning physical details of her story that might not be clear to readers.  I am making this choice.  I want to publish all of her writings first time around intact.  That means, as those who have read her letters on the blog know, that the text will be bulky.  This makes ebook (kindle, ipad, etc.) the perfect medium for her work.

The pages can ramble and flow.  Readers can scan and scroll in the ebook format.  No tree will give its life.  I can live with that.

Readers will be able to read her version of her life.  Then I will publish my life.  These two versions of reality will not match, as my readers here certainly know.  I will give no clue to readers of mother’s writings about her Borderline condition or about her abusive nature.  Only at the very end, in an epilogue will I introduce the truth and steer readers toward ‘the rest of the story’.

As I prepare to set my mother’s writings free of me, I prepare to set myself free from her.  She had her story, her version of reality within her Borderline world.  I am free to have my own.  There is no way to build a bridge between her world and mine.  There is no way to translate her words or her reality.  I am not going to try.

I do hope to publish a final volume to these letters.  In that volume I will describe and discuss how divided my mother’s reality was from mine – and from others.  But for now I am OK with this.  In fact, I don’t see that her writings can be published in any other way.

Readers will come to their own conclusions.  My mother’s story, and our family’s story is unique all by itself.  I will let it stand, and do my own writing my way.  (Of course I don’t have any idea now what title mother’s writings will be published under, but that will come).  I just need to finish this transcription job, and get her words off of my table.

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+BACK FROM TOWN – TIRED BUT GLAD TO BE HOME

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I’m back from town now (a very little town, very short trip).  I ran into people I know – brought to mind some repeated questions:

“Why do you do this work with your mother’s letters if it hurts you/makes you sick/doesn’t make anything better/when you don’t need to do it?”

I guess suddenly it looks like a sacrifice.  Nothing wrong with making sacrifices.  I believe something in the work I do will help someone else.  So I sacrifice for that.

Also, it is very good to get back here to my very quiet little corner of the world.  I am armed with ice cream, mile and crackers – steer manure, garden soil, sphagnum moss, flower fertilizer – another bag of Portland cement.

I am tired now.  That’s OK.  I added a few little thoughts to my previous post – now, time for a rest.

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