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Wednesday, February 12, 2014.  I didn’t just wake up one day as an adult and end up “gifted.”  I was a gifted child.  My mother HATED my intelligence!  True, she hated me no matter what but the fact I was smarter than her drove her even crazier in her abuse of me from the time I was very young and she figured it out that part of the reason she could not break me was because I was free in my intelligence in ways she could never reach or touch me.

Yet when I read this article today I began to think that giftedness for severely abused infants and children is probably as much a risk factor for troubles throughout life as it is a resiliency factor.  I am posting this in case it rings BIG BELLS for others of this blog’s readers, and I am betting it will.  How does being gifted complicate the abuse survivor experience?

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This comes from an Australian website – Davidson Institute for Talent Development

 — Emotional intensity in gifted children

Gifted and Creative Services, Australia 2001

This article by Lesley Sword explores and explains emotional intensity in gifted individuals. A number of traits of emotional intensity are described. Strategies for parents are suggested to help their emotionally intense gifted children to accept themselves as they are.

Giftedness has an emotional as well as intellectual component. Intellectual complexity goes hand in hand with emotional depth. Just as gifted children’s thinking is more complex and has more depth than other children’s, so too are their emotions more complex and more intense.

Complexity can be seen in the vast range of emotions that gifted children can experience at any one time and the intensity is evident in the “full-on-ness” about everything with which parents and teachers of the gifted children are so familiar.

Emotional intensity in the gifted is not a matter of feeling more than other people, but a different way of experiencing the world: vivid, absorbing, penetrating, encompassing, complex, commanding – a way of being quiveringly alive.

Emotional intensity can be expressed in many different ways:

•as intensity of feeling – positive feelings, negative feelings, both positive and negative feelings together, extremes of emotion, complex emotion that seemingly move from one feeling to another over a short time period, identification with the feelings of other people, laughing and crying together

•in the body – the body mirrors the emotions and feelings are often expressed as bodily symptoms such as tense stomach, sinking heart, blushing, headache, nausea

•inhibition – timidity and shyness

•strong affective memory – emotionally intense children can remember the feelings that accompanied an incident and will often relive and ‘re-feel’ them long afterward

•fears and anxieties, feelings of guilt, feelings of being out of control

•concerns with death, depressive moods

•emotional ties and attachments to others, empathy and concern for others, sensitivity in relationships, attachment to animals, difficulty in adjusting to new environments, loneliness, conflicts with others over the depth of relationships

•critical self-evaluation and self-judgment, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority

Many people seem unaware that intense emotions are part of giftedness and little attention is paid to emotional intensity. Historically the expression of intense feelings has been seen a sign of emotional instability rather than as evidence of a rich inner life. The traditional Western view is of emotions and intellect as separate and contradictory entities, there is however, an inextricable link between emotions and intellect and, combined, they have a profound effect on gifted people. It is emotional intensity that fuels joy in life, passion for learning, the drive for expression of a talent area, the motivation for achievement.

Feeling everything more deeply than others do can both be painful and frightening. Emotionally intense gifted people often feel abnormal. “There must be something wrong with me… maybe I’m crazy… nobody else seems to feel like this.” Emotionally intense gifted people often experience intense inner conflict, self-criticism, anxiety and feelings of inferiority. The medical community tends to see these conflicts as symptoms and labels gifted people neurotic. They are however an intrinsic part of being gifted and provide the drive that gifted people have for personal growth and achievement.

It is vitally important that gifted children are taught to see their heightened sensitivity to things that happen in the world as a normal response for them. If this is not made clear to them they may see their own intense experiences as evidence that something is wrong with them. Other children may ridicule a gifted child for reacting strongly to an apparently trivial incident, thereby increasing the child’s feeling of being odd. Also sensitivity to society’s injustice and hypocrisy can lead many emotionally intense gifted children to feel despair and cynicism at very young ages.

The most important thing we can do to nurture emotionally intense gifted children is to accept their emotions: they need to feel understood and supported. Explain that intense feelings are normal for gifted children. Help them to use their intellect to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Parents need to exercise appropriate discipline as this helps develop a sense of security that leads to the development of self-discipline and a feeling of emotional competency. Appropriate discipline is the consistent application of values, rules and behaviours that are held to be important in the family. Explain the benefit of rules to the child and enforce them through consequence of behaviour.

Discuss feelings openly; the negative as well as the positive. It can be helpful to use an “emotional thermometer” to initiate discussion eg “on a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling today?  “Take time to listen to children’s ideas, opinions and feelings. Be non-judgmental: don’t interrupt, moralize, distract or give advice.

Appreciate their sensitivities, intensities and passions. Don’t try to minimize their emotions because you feel uncomfortable with their pain. It doesn’t help to say “you’re too sensitive” or “snap out of it” or “it’ll be OK”.

Reassure them when they are afraid and help them to find ways of expressing their intense emotions though stories, poems, art work, music, journal entries or physical activities. Realize that they become frustrated when their physical capabilities do not match their intellectual ability and help them to deal with this. Reward the process of effort and not only the outcome. Emphasize strengths and don’t dwell on shortcomings.

Realize that sensitivity does not mean weakness. Give them responsibility that is age appropriate and do not over protect them from the world and from the consequence of their actions. Remember that they are children first and gifted second. Don’t expect them to be little “adults”. Play, fun and leisure activities are essential for strong emotional development.

Finally, seek preventative professional counseling where appropriate; it is important both to support healthy emotional development and to prevent social and emotional problems.

We can help our emotionally intense gifted children to accept their inner world of experience and value it as strength. This often means we have to accept and value our own emotional experience and feelings so that we can be a positive role model for children. Speaking about and valuing our emotions can be very difficult to do in a society that values rational, logical thinking and sees emotions as the opposite of rationality. However, if emotional intensity is seen by parents and teachers and presented positively to children as a strength, children can be helped to understand and value this gift. In this way emotionally intense children will be empowered to express their unique selves in the world and use their gifts and talents with confidence and joy.

References

Piechowski, M.M. (1991) Emotional Development and Emotional Giftedness.  In N. Colangelo & G. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of Gifted Education. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon

Piechowski, M.M. (1979) Developmental Potential.  In N. Colangelo &T. Zaffran (Eds.), New Voices in Counseling the Gifted. Dubuque, IA : Kendall/Hunt.

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Gifted Exchange Blog
The blog about gifted children, schooling, parenting, education news and changing American education for the better.

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Book:  Genius Denied

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover probono – what a gift and thank you Ben!o Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to  Leave a Comment »

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Wednesday, February 12, 2014. 

Handspun wool – variegated – dyed in oven

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The warp is half wool, half cotton – I liked the ‘surprising’ way the warp shows up as it adjusts around the variation in the bulk of the handspun warp

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover probono – what a gift and thank you Ben!o Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Wednesday, February 12, 2014.  Buying a plastic life all wrapped up in plastic with a plastic card!  Who saw THIS coming?  (Yes, Sandy.  I know YOU know who did!!  lol)

With the best of intentions right before Christmas I marched myself in the frigid darkness over to the only store I could get to without a car – Home Depot!  Walking around thinking about Christmas – which as a whole I detest as a “holiday” – I found a display with sticks of fake tree scents that people could buy to help them pretend their plastic trees were ALIVE!

Well, I bought a small live tree in a pot, wrapped it in multiple layers of plastic bags and hauled that poor thing home with me.  It survived just fine!  But I also bought a SPRUCE tree plastic container of scent sticks.

I laid one of these on top of my old 1980s television set and did not think about it again until I moved the TV across the room.  I was shocked to discover that I could NOT lift that fake tree scent stick off of the TV!  It had eaten a groove into the plastic as it sunk in and became a part of the TV’s casing.

That was SPOOKY!  What poison lurks in our modern world around us?  Do we want to know?

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In my thinking people who have suffered wounding to their hearts are more like actual living breathing growing trees deep in a forest whose life span is recorded in beautiful rings within them.  Some rings wide and far apart – times of relative ease and plenty.  Some rings narrow and so close together a toothpick could not be laid between them.

But PLASTIC people in a plastic shallow trivial embarrassingly EMPTY and pretty dang surface and meaningless life — WE ARE NOT!

Does quality mean anything anymore?  How much of our daily suffering as survivors of a So Real world of horrendous early trauma comes from a mismatch between the quality of who we have become in stark contrast to a plastic world that displays barely any SOUL DEPTH at all?

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If you look along both sides of the image for “Imagine” at the top of my blog you can see some mosaic pieces that came from the Bisbee dump that was closed in 1954.  That dump is off limits but during the horrible months I was undergoing chemo in 2007 dear friends and family took me on the 1/2 mile trek into the dump (a test of endurance in my chemo-weakened state!) on Sundays as we trespassed on mining property on the day there were no guards and hauled out heavy buckets of treasure.

I bring this up because the pieces of old dishes and glass delighted me then and delight me now.  However, it is the little figurine of Mary and Jesus that I want to highlight in my post here.  They were made in Japan in the era of my childhood – before the China implosion of merchandise into the US anything “made in Japan” was looked down upon by many people.

Yet as I retrieved this little piece from under a foot of soil that day at the dump and rubbed the soot off of it from the many dump burnings it had gone through – I was thrilled to discover this delicate image:

I found the broken tea-cup on that same day – Mary and Jesus on a tea-cup still tickles my fancy!  I can relate to this version of spiritual expression!

I did intend to keep the tea cup mosaic – but not the rest of these.  What to do with them?  They were heavy to haul with me – and I find they solace my heart in this @$*%Y(# place!

This one and the next one hang above my kitchen sink on one of my MANY WINDOWLESS WALLS!  And, yes, this piece is about homesickness for my desert home

Pieces of people’s history are in these dish remnants!  Beauty has very little to do with plastic in my world.

Latest batch of butterfly wing weavings!  Once the edges are knotted off the pieces are handwashed without agitation in HOT water in my sink – dried – pressed with my cheap old iron and brushed until they are soft and fuzzy.  At that point the white warp has been tainted by the residual dyes in the handspun yarn and everything blends together into a beautiful whole.

I liked these dancing clouds the other day.  As I watched them I could hear their music.  I could hear them talking with one another, with the sky and earth and with me.

Nothing plastic about that.

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Those of us who are survivors have honed gifts of sensitivities, perception and of expression.  We are different from ordinary and therefore utilize the powers of our mind in extremely creative ways no matter what our chosen outlet may be (even if it is not a VISIBLE outlet!).

We know how to hold our own or we would not still be here!  Holding our own against a plastic mainstream?  Well, truth be told, as we honor ourselves we just might find this is easier than we think it is!  More importantly — WE CAN DO IT!!  There is a quality to us in our lives that is so rich, so varied, so GORGEOUS!!!

But nobody can tap that source of genuine wealth but us.

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Tuesday, February 11, 2014.  The developmental neuroscientist Dr. Allan N. Schore has a lot to say about how rupture and repair in early attachment infant-caregiver relationships work to build a nervous system including the brain (most essentially the right limbic area) before the age of one.  (Online search his name in any combination with infant mother attachment brain development.)

He tells us that prior to age one, certainly, it is the ADULT who MUST repair any breach in the ongoing infant experience of feeling safe and secure in the world.  Once the infant is old enough, usually after age one, to venture out into the world to actively explore the environment there are then times when the infant intentions and actions must be modulated by the adult’s reactions – and here is where SHAME begins to enter the infant’s world as the nervous system “crashes” when “rupture” STOPS ongoing experience.

Adults “correct” the direction of infant exploration simply by turning down a pleasurable response to the infant.  But this “rupture” cannot be left to carry forward in time without being “repaired” by a caring, compassionate caregiver who knows instinctively how to give the infant what is needed to “repair” the problem.

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Life always involves rupture and repair.  We cannot go forward through life without periods of rest and revitalization.  Caring for all the physical needs of the body is a part of this restoration and repair process.  What is important to me this morning is the fact that because we are human we are also designed to add the advanced process of CREATIVITY into our lives.  It is very hard to be creative if we are depleted and in need of restoration and repair!

Those of us who were neglected, abused, traumatized from the start of our life never had a chance to build a body (nervous system-brain included) that had EASY channels included in it that came to be through happy, loving, safe and secure caregiving. 

(The image just popped into my mind – our experience was sort of like playing a video of a baseball game backwards.  There must be something in this image from my right brain that is about the fact that every step I tried to take forward in my child life and development was met with brutal abuse that did nothing to give me what I needed to go through the patterns of my life smoothly!)

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I believe that as survivors of severe early trauma we need to pay very special, careful attention to how we can meet our needs for restoring our inner (and often outer) resources so that we can repair ourselves from the outgoing expenditure of these resources that is required just to exist (subsist?!).  Where is the “re-creation” in our life?

Yes, repairing ourselves does involve aspects of recreating ourselves – but I think there’s more to this part of our life cycle.  For many survivors – certainly this is absolutely true for me – I never had enough safety in my early environment to PLAY.  Not only that, but Mother’s particular mental illness psychosis demanded that I NEVER play.  How could she keep me in her psychotic hell perpetually if I could at times escape – and PLAY?

In fact to psychotic Mother my playing was a criminal offense.

So – I don’t know HOW to PLAY!  This is one of the great tragedies of my life.  When ‘experts’ talk about the perpetual state of alarm that our body has built into it they are even in that assessment diagnosing a lack of safety ending in a lack of joy AND a lack of PLAY.

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As I see things destiny allowed me two avenues of re-creation within the mad hell I grew up in.  One was access to art materials at the same time I was (mysteriously?) allowed by Mother to use them.  Yes, she abused me often by denigrating what I created (and wrote) but I WAS (miraculously?) able to preserve and protect myself by keeping what I wrote and made PRIVATE, secret, and out of her range of sight.

The second avenue of re-creation allowed to me – and DEFINITELY this lies within the sphere of miraculous!  Our family left suburban Los Angeles, CA when I was five and moved to Alaska.  I was given the gift of access to the wilderness!

I have always ‘been in love’ with both creative expression through “the arts” and with the wilderness.  If I haven’t been able to reach the actual wilderness I have found ways to place myself in regions where my soul is fed by the land and plants surrounding me. 

That this is not true for me where I have landed at this point in my life is amplifying my struggles significantly.  But I still have writing.  I still have work I can do to create with my hands.

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I struggle with all the basics of my life:  Breathing.  Sleeping.  Eating.  I struggle with social difficulties on multiple levels.  Yet I also have the great gift of being near my two daughters and two grandsons at this point.  My questioning often has to do with ME and MY LIFE – my own unique and personal life within myself.  My daughters have their lives.  As I have asked at so many difficult junctures in my adult life, “WHERE and WHAT is my life and HOW to I find and make my own life?”

These thoughts have led me recently to thinking about the term “death wish” as I realize that as a severe abuse-trauma survivor I have always struggled with a “life wish.”  I have always stayed alive IN SPITE of what happened to me at the same time I mostly feel that I have never truly come alive in my own life!  I am 62 and I can still say this!

And as many of us have discovered it is the INFANT abuse and neglect prior to age one – and then prior to age two – that did us the most harm.  The fact that the severe abuse I suffered lasted from birth until age 18 just means — WHAT? 

Certainly it does not mean that I am alone in this kind of predicament!  Knowing this helps me to feel a little more OK.  More acceptant.  More hopeful.  It gives me strength to go forward.  It is one of my most important inner resources I can use to restore, repair and re-create myself at times when life feels difficult to me — which is most of every day these days.

Thank you for being here!

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Monday, February 10, 2014.  It was into the waters of Prince William Sound in Alaska that my brother took me on his boat last June when he brought me up to visit him.  See these posts from June:

+SOME SCENES FROM MY RECENT ALASKA VISIT

+WHAT WAS OUR FAMILY ALASKA HOMESTEAD FROM THE AIR – REST OF MY ALASKA VISIT PICTURES

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Sometimes I wish I knew more about the way thoughts are connected within me.  A friend wrote in response to last night’s post, “I know the kind of loneliness you’re talking about.”  An entire inner chain of images, thoughts and feelings appeared to me because I realized I had NO IDEA that the post he referred to – +LESSONS FROM MY JEWELRY BOX – was even ABOUT loneliness!  I trust my friend absolutely so his response bore the weight that instigated an avalanche of connections for me – that I can only barely track.

How I feel (am) this afternoon seems to be more like dreaming than waking.  I don’t expect my dreams (what few I remember any more) to make any kind of sense.  But I DO expect myself to make sense in this world of waking!  How did my friend’s comment to last night’s post trigger an instant connection to my trip north to Prince William Sound (the site of the massive earthquake I note below during which at age 12 I experienced my menarche)?

My brother took me to the base of a calving glacier last June.  I will always believe the smell at the base of a calving glacier is the sweetest, purest one on earth.  How is purity tied together in my wondrous right brain that has such information connections not only to and through my body and its memories but also to what my soul knows and wants to tell me?

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This is all further connected to something that came through of me/to me while in phone conversation with a dear friend this weekend.  I was describing the weavings I have been creating:  “When they are all finished they feel like butterfly wings in my hands.”

Butterfly Wings.

There is another part of my history-magical connected to butterfly wings.  I have no idea where on this blog I have written about the white butterflies I saw on our Alaskan mountain homestead flutter around me as I sat on the earth, on the land – deeply, deeply wounded child that I was!  I always saw them in the same place, a place where a wonderful lemony tasting little plant grew.  The butterflies were smallish.  Some had purple,  some blue, or red, or orange…..  delicate painted edging on their wings that looked to me as if someone had carefully painted them with the tiny tip of a paintbrush from a watercolor box.

Just as I wrote those words a small connection appeared to me.  Because of the severe trauma of my childhood I could not wonder about life.  My mother was not only insanely abusive to me – I know now she was psychotic in her mental illness.  That fact removed sanity from the main part of my life so I never wondered why ANYTHING.  But I DID experience an appreciation of those white butterflies fluttering light as air around me.  “Who painted their wings?”  I knew painting the edges of butterfly wings like that would certainly be something I would love to do!

While I was speaking to my friend about my weavings I thought perhaps “Butterfly Wings” (Butterfly Wing Creations?  Designs?) belongs somehow in the name of my craftwork endeavors if I choose to have a name.  Not that I need or want a business – but I may be able to see weavings and my sewn bags this summer at craft shows with my daughter (and ironically, sharing a booth also with my ex).

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All of these connections are somehow connected to an aching stiffness at the base of my skull today.  I strongly sense this sensation is tied to a body memory related to being very small and having Mother grip me in her abusive powerfully forceful and painful way to shove me forward further into her rage – at me for….???? 

I don’t want to know what the memory is.  I don’t need to know.  I do know it is somehow connected to these connections!!  As I write this post that tension in my neck is subsiding – just as I suspected it would.

Her illness put her on the side of the horrible.  I was – and still am if I give myself permission to accept this – on the side of the beautiful and pure.  The innocent – still – in many ways.  We all are.

I would rather, if I could, spend all my waking hours sitting in a little dinghy as near as I could get to a calving glacier in Prince William Sound for as long as I live than do anything else “just for me.”

But I can’t do that as lonely as I am for the absolute wilderness I have loved from the instant I met it.  Without my attachment with the land I could not have survived all that happened to me – none of which I deserved. 

Meanwhile — there are connections.  They are like mysterious ripples interlacing and interlocking with one another in ways I do not comprehend.  I am grateful for them.  They are gifts to me.  They are a part of my life force.  Without them I could not continue being.

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1964 Alaska earthquake

The 1964 Alaskan earthquake, also known as the Great Alaskan Earthquake, the Portage Earthquake and the Good Friday Earthquake, was a megathrust earthquake that began at 5:36 P.M. AST on Good Friday, March 27, 1964.^[2] Across south-central Alaska, ground fissures, collapsing structures, and tsunamis resulting from the earthquake caused about 139 deaths.^[3]

Lasting nearly three minutes, it was the most powerful recorded earthquake in U.S. and North American history, and the second most powerful ever measured by seismograph.^[4] It had a moment magnitude of 9.2, making it the second largest earthquake in recorded history^[2][5]—the largest being the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile.^[4]

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Sunday, February 9, 2014.  I thought I would write a rare humorous post.  Kind of like the man I mentioned in my last post who wrote a “happier song.”  My mood has passed.  By the time I rebooted this old computer that was acting too sluggish to write a thing, realized I was hungry so fixed a bowl of organic apple pieces, cheese and crackers, I sit here now having wiped a few more tears realizing that all I have to write about it what I always do:  Just my life.

True, my version of a jewelry box is an upside-down Avon box lid.  True, what I have thrown in there in tangled heap and dirty mess would not fit in the only jewelry box I have ever owned (and certainly still do not own) – a jewelry box that was precious to me as a child with its tiny ballerina dancer who popped up in front of her mirror all tutued and fancy.  I could wind up the music box, which in the era of my childhood made a quality sound as it pinged out “I Could Have Danced All Night,” so I could feel for a few more moments like a fairy princess.  After all, Mother gave me that jewelry box.  I believed this gift meant she loved me.

I have never in my life made a show of cleaning all of my jewelry until today.  I own nothing fancy, most of it coming from thrift stores over these past many years that, as I think about it, all adds up to the fact that I am getting old at 62 to not only have so many earrings and slender chains with baubles on them but to have accumulated so many memories of stages of my life that belong to each piece.

This collection spent the past seven years hanging from a piece of lace thumbtacked to the back of the bathroom door of the house I just moved out of last October 12th.  There are many that never moved from the first place on the lace I stuck them during those years.  My “professional” earrings, the ones I bought during and after graduate school when hope for a new and better life radiated from me all of the time.  Thanks for my trauma-related disabilities there is no more professional me to wear them.  What do I do with those earrings now?

The lovely seed-beaded earrings I made when I still had excellent vision over 20 years ago.  The images of turtles that came from a significant era of my life I never write about (and probably won’t).  That era has past.  Those memories are of times that were precious, of betrayals that ended in danger to myself and more significantly – and nearly tragically – to my children.

When the move out of my house down south was in full motion I did not take the time to carefully pack my loaded piece of lace or any of my hanging necklaces.  I threw them in a box, accumulated desert dust and all.  It feels important to me that I literally straighten out that mess.  I look forward to what I expect to find:  A reflected new small space within me of calm and glisten as each chain, each bead sparkles from my attention now.  A sense of order as each piece again takes a home for itself on a new piece of lace on a new wall in my new life.

I wasn’t prepared for the wave of razor pure sadness that sent tears down my cheeks as I handled a pair of earrings made of cheap metal and turquoise glass beads.  I like this pair although I haven’t had time to wear them since my Mexican neighbor, Antonio, placed them in my palm one night after he knocked on my Arizona door to bum yet another cigarette.  He learned well not to come asking me for things after dark unless he brought me something in trade.  A hot biscuit from his wife’s oven.  Some peaches from his tree.  A pair of earrings.

It makes me cry to write this.  I lived, as many readers know, right on the Mexican-American border fence line in the high desert in a rented house in the middle of a trailer park filled with people from Mexico who had nothing to speak of except a whole lot of love for one another.  I did not say goodbye to any but the one neighbor who appeared as my friend and I were pulling away in the U-Haul truck.  She came to say goodbye to me.

I miss my people down there.  I miss the children who grew from ages of 3 to 10, from 7 to 14.  Children whose lives I shared in so many ways over those years as they were my friends.  They helped me garden.  We did lots of art projects.  We made Playdo.  The very first day I moved into that house I hired a group of those children to pick up all the nails and screws in my driveway.  I kept those nails.  I hung all of my pictures in this apartment with those nails.  I am grieving for that home while I live now in this one 2000 miles north.

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I have never been so aware before as I will be from now on how every piece of jewelry I own and wear, be it so humble, contains such memories of the passing of my life.  I did not say goodbye when I left that little town because a huge part of me did not want to leave.  Could not really believe I WAS leaving. 

I could not face that loss.  It is hard for me now to face that loss — no matter how much I have gained here with my family — a loss is a loss.  (I have lost my appetite in this frigid place, trapped like a living bug in amber within this tiny apartment with day and night and day and night of sub-sub-zero weather outside.  I have lost my muscle tone.  I have become weaker than I have ever been in my life.  I need to come back from that.  I am teaching myself to eat again.  To remember to eat.  That seems so strange to me.  Yet — so human.)

I must live my life with my heart open.  I can no longer find any shortcuts.  No ways to close my feelings off from the flow of my life — at least not for very long.  I want to be in my little home down there.  I want to walk out my door, out my garden gate, across the gravel parking lot to Antonio and his family’s home.  I want to walk up their rough wooden steps to their trailer door, knock and be called to enter.

I want to tell them — not goodbye.

I want to tell them what I never said:  “I love you.  Having you in my life has blessed me so much.  I did not tell you goodbye.  I am sorry.  Please forgive me.”

I would hug them each.  I would cry.

I am crying now.

I guess I just skipped all the rest and went for the tears.  Or they have come for me.

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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 Saturday, February 8, 2014.  Very sweet.  Very humble.  Very kind people.  But no drums tonight.  This was a fundraising chili dinner in the basement of a local smallish Lutheran church that is sahred between congretations, used in the evenings by the Tri-City Haitian Church.  A man did play guitar.  Songs he sang that he wrote.  Songs with care.  With a message.

After he sang three songs he commented that sometimes people tell him his songs are too sad.  So he sang one of the upbeat ones he wrote:  Someday I Want to Know What It Feels Like to Be Happy.

I know what a refugee might feel and mean who would write and sing such a perfect song.

All his lyrics and melodies were haunting – and good.  Very thoughtful.  Very heartfelt.

I could not tell from the crowd of all ages who comes to the church versus who was there to support the fundraising with the dinner.  But I asked.  I and my girls are welcome to attend regular services beginning 4 pm on Sundays.  I have no car.  How to get there?

Not sure.  Not sure of too many things except that this venture-adventure was far from a flop or a failure.  It was WONDERFUL doing something with my girls and little grandson.  I am so grateful they took me and enjoyed being there, too.  It was wonderful seeing so many beautiful youth in attendance.  SOMEWHERE there are drums.  They just were not there tonight.

I will go again.  I know I will go there again.  These seem like exactly the kind of people who will not be bothered by what my soul knows:  I have a gift.  The drum beats are in my hands. 

My daughter has offered her house as a place the drums can be played if need be outside of “church times.”  I cannot play in this apartment.

Time will tell.  So far I am pleased with myself that I have followed my simple dream – so far!!  How this will all play itself out – I do not know.  But I am hopeful.  And next time I go in those doors I will probably just experience a little anxiety rather than trepidation as I felt today! 

This is progress!

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Saturday, February 8, 2014.  I want to write this post quickly before the words that belong to it vanish like a mirage in the desert.  It is not always easy to FIND the words I need to express myself and it is not always easy to hold onto them long enough to express them, either!

I find myself thinking about a time years ago when I asked a professional waitress how on earth she managed to swing through a crowded room delivering full cups of coffee without spilling a drop.  “Simple,” she replied.  “I never look at what I am carrying.  If I do that – what I am carrying spills itself.”

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My word for today is

trepidation

“a nervous or fearful feeling of uncertain agitation“

This is a word that came into Modern English rather late.  The “early” words arrived before the 12th century.  Usually I search around for the origins of these kinds of newer words looking for the more ancient imagery in their word relationships.  Today – because I am PRESSED to trap my words in a post before they disappear to me – I will settle for this:

Origin of TREPIDATION

Latin trepidation-, trepidatio, from trepidare to tremble, from trepidus agitated; probably akin to Old English thrafian to urge, push, Greek trapein to press grapes

First Known Use: 1605

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As I have written elsewhere on the blog I have learned from the work of neuroscientist Dr. Allan N. Shore (and others like him) that early trauma especially during the first year of life in unsafe and insecure attachment relationship environments CHANGES the set point, the middle balance point of our developing nervous system so that it is NOT (and really never can/will be) resting at peaceful calm.  Our set point is something else – and very, very often it is TERROR that resides there.

Once a person responds to any kind of “challenge” in their environment their nervous system is supposed to return to a set point “of balanced equilibrium” that is at rest.  Not so for us….

Today what I want to say is that the older I get the smaller my world is getting and the less tolerance I have for ANYTHING good or bad that would intensify my emotional state.  I am simply exhausted!  Or so it seems to me.

It is very common for anyone with PTSD related difficulties in their body to increasingly narrow their world to control stimulation.  Quieter world = quieter nervous system/brain.

But what about something positive in my world?  Something I desire, hope for and WANT to do?

Same thing.

As I have written before I LOVE DRUMMING!  I have nobody to drum with!

In Fargo, ND (where I recently established myself) there is a Haitian refugee church that is tonight offering a public performance of their drumming that I imagine follows the style shown in this YouTube video:

BOTH of my beautiful grown daughters are attending this 5:30 pm performance with me today along with my 18-month-old grandson.  And I am TERRIFIED!  Filled to the BRIM with TREPIDATION!!

I don’t have to ask myself WHY????

I can no longer mask my true state of being through expert dissociation that kept me functioning pretty darn smoothly while I raised my children.  I am different now – left vulnerable to experiencing exactly how I am inside!!

I could probably list 100 reasons why I am afraid today — but all I am going to do here is say — “Be determined, Linda and be BRAVE!  GO!!”

I am the wrong age, the wrong gender, the wrong culture, ‘race’. the wrong religion to be able to actually DRUM with ANYONE!!  Yet my heart and the depths of my soul WANT to drum with SOMEONE!!  At least tonight we can go LISTEN!! 

My first step is to go bravely where I have not gone before accompanied by the two people (well, 3 counting the short one) I trust most in the universe!  I won’t even give space to thoughts about what disaster I think COULD happen tonight!

Just saying — surviving can be an EFFORT!!  CAN BE?  IS!!!!!

Stay tuned.  I will report upon this adventure — after I LIVE IT!!

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Tuesday, February 4, 2014.  When it comes to considerations of PTSD and the hippocampusthat is a part of our brain’s memory-processing paraphernalia, I suspect we are putting the memory cart before the memory horse if we assume that the risk for developing PTSD in the first place is tied to “something different about” the hippocampus of such people UNLESS we know and consider the presence or absence of early trauma in that person caused by early abuse and neglect (and even of trauma-related distress in the mother while carrying her child).

WHEW!  That was a long sentence which brings me to my morning’s thoughts that my dissociation, as it is connected to my nearly continual sense that NOTHING FEELS REAL to me on an ongoing basis, is probably connected to how my hippocampus was trauma altered in its development even from the time of my birth due to abuse from my psychotically mentally ill mother.

Dissociation is also tied to the sense of “depersonalization” just as it is to “derealization.”  For me this depersonalization aspect applies not only to my own sense of “not feeling real” but also to the sense that other people “don’t feel real” to me, either.

That’s a HELLUVA way to go through one’s life!

These facts are part of what fuels my passion that infant and child abuse MUST STOP!!  In my case I especially believe it was the INFANT abuse I suffered during the very important rapid growth and developmental stages of my RIGHT LIMBIC (emotional-social) brain region – of which the hippocampus is a part – that has resulted in this perpetual sense I have of NOTHING actually FEELING real to me.

Here I am spending at least 10 hours every weekday caring for my perfect, precious little grandson – WHO DOES NOT FEEL REAL TO ME!!  Here I am living near my nearly age-4 grandson, my two precious daughters – and THEY don’t feel real and I don’t feel real WITH THEM.

WHAT IS THIS state, ANYWAY?

Yes, it could be simply called a never-ending state of numbness.  But I am NOT numb on the inside where I fully feel the grief and anger I have about being forced to live my life with this condition that neither I nor anyone else can EVER FIX!  I was BUILT THIS WAY within an early environment of horrendous traumatic neglect and abuse. 

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I am not motivated at this point in my life to spend the hours of my life racing around the internet reading the latest research about nervous system and brain development as I was around the turn of this marvelous century we are now living in.  It would take not only state-of-the-art research but research that is both cutting-edge and “pushing the envelope” to answer the kinds of questions I ask as a survivor of early severe trauma.

I would want to know at what infant developmental stages and by what processes does our brain learn the difference between living beings and inanimate objects.  If an infant is not treated as a human being by someone who is not ACTING like a human being how are we supposed to know that HUMANITY exists with ourselves a part of it?

I want to know exactly WHEN the present moment becomes a PAST moment.  I want to know how fast this exchange happens along with how fast does our brain circuitry work to keep up with it?  I am asking, “When does the present moment become the past IN MEMORY and through what processes?”

I ask because this sense of derealization and of depersonalization is probably happening at that pace.  We are left without there being any time in our present moments to LIVE the felt experience of ourselves and others before our present becomes our past in memory form that is continually being tampered with by the changes trauma created in our brain’s development – and therefore with the way we are left experiencing our lives.

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I do believe that SOUL is involved and that the soul itself has powers of memory that must far surpass anything we will ever discover about the human physiologically-based memory processes.  Our soul will remember everything about our lives when we are in the next world without any physical body at all.  Not only will we (I believe) be held accountable to God for our every thought, feeling and action we accomplished in our physical lifetime but we will also be given spiritual understanding about the entire ball of wax!

That leaves me knowing one thing:  I can only do the best that I can do at every instant of my current life.  I need not feel guilty, ashamed or in any way responsible for the way my experience has been altered through my development under extreme traumatic stress in an unnatural and truly chaotic, bizarre and insane environment for the first 18 years of my life.

I can’t TELL this beautiful baby that I cannot FEEL him when he is laying in my arms or when I hold him close against me in the warmest hug possible!  I don’t even have the words to think about let alone really communicate to anyone else what I am trying to describe!

If the words do not yet exist in neurophysiological language I am certainly not going to be able to find them in the only language that might work – in poetry!

If I were going to try to say what “this is like” for me I would have to say that living in a body that was forced to develop itself within a nightmare world nearly beyond imagination has been left to live in a dream-like world that DOES NOT FEEL real in many important and meaningful ways no matter how I might work to wake up from that dream state.  I will NOT fully wake up – paradoxically – until I am in the next world with no body at all!

I do NOT believe that even the most well-meaning people who work to stop infant and child abuse fully GET IT about what happens to us for the rest of our lives as survivors.  We are condemned to live – DOOMED to live – for our entire life in a body that was CHANGED and made DIFFERENT in response to having to survive what was NOT SURVIVABLE!

As very little people we had to “go on being” in a world that paradoxically did everything possible to prevent us from doing so.  There is a severe price paid for being able to survive that kind of paradox.  It is the researchers who are devoting their entire professional life to trying to determine what that price is that I most admire and respect.

We survivors need to know what those people have to say!!

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Sunday, February 2, 2014.  In light of a mention by a commenter to my last post of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I can only say that I will never live long enough to “recover” from the adaptations my body had to go through to survive the trauma I experienced from birth and for the next 18 years of my life that I suffered from severe abuse.

I instinctively defend against those who suggest that the “self-regulation” that was lost to me due to the trauma I experienced as my early physiological development was altered can ever be restored to me.  It is not possible.  I can gain useful information.  I can learn to gain increasing conscious control over how I experience life in my body.  But I cannot get back again (“re-cover”) what I never was able to acquire in a safe and secure early attachment environment in the first place.

Should I have nothing else to do in this lifetime but backtrack in some attempt to repair what cannot be repaired I would still be doing very little other than chasing my own invisible tail that “professionals” might suggest that I have – which I don’t have – so for me the “point” is a useless one!  I don’t care what “diagnostic label” anyone might wish to use to describe how I ended up living in an entirely different kind of body than I would have if I had not been exposed to the horrific trauma that I was for all those years. 

Yes, I do agree that gaining “understanding” of how a trauma changed body works is helpful.  But to intimate that those trauma changes can be undone is – ridiculous – and therefore dangerous in its misleading deception.

Yes, “PTSD is a radical shift from normal self-regulation to being trapped in a constant state of alarm.”  I might find momentary ways to avert the complete recognition that ALARM is my normal, ordinary state of being, but that is so far a cry from accepting as fact that I can make that ALARM state retreat into near nonexistence that I no longer accept that a state of “non-ALARM” is even a possibility for me to reach. 

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I have not studied Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).  At this point in my life I consider only what I find of what I need to know as it is written directly within the texts of the neuroscientists themselves.  When I read even a few words about C-PTSD, even on an appearing reputable site, my inner self-defender will not let me continue reading.  I am now personally gifted with knowing what personally relates to me – and therefore APPLIES to me – and what would be helpful versus what would be NOT helpful and in fact would be harmful to me.

I am NOT speaking for or about ANYONE ELSE here.  I am talking about myself, and as I mentioned in my previous post I am very much isolated in the kind of trauma I experienced.  For example, I do not believe these words:  “Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a psychological injury.”

I know myself well enough by now at age 62 to know that what I suffer from is due to PHYSIOLOGICAL changes in the very construction of my nervous system-brain, in my “calm-stress response system,” even in my immune system due to severe trauma during the earliest very rapid stages of my development.  Certainly because the severity of the abuse I suffered never let up and lasted for 18 long years nearly all – if not ALL – of my later development was altered by the trauma in very complex ways.

I do not consider ANY of my difficulties to be “psychological” and I bristle and turn away from ANY so-called “psychologically-minded” professional who would claim to know me better than I know myself.  I have a well-honed inner truth detector that works for me.  I know when words ring true and when they don’t.  I do not compromise myself.  I owe no professional courtesy.  I do not NEED in any way to prove myself “right” nor do I need to prove anyone “wrong.”

I simply know what is true for me.

I absolutely encourage EVERYONE to find out what is true for them.  I speak only for myself — with a few cautions to others if they seem to apply.

Yes, I can agree with the whole list of what can “do this” to a person.  But if there is no rock solid trail of facts available about anyone’s earliest life going all the back to the health of their life in the womb of their mother nobody has enough information to complete the picture of what might CAUSE something called C-PTSD.  They therefore have no real clue how to “fix it” or even if it is possible to “fix it” in most circumstances where it might be found.

When something is put forth by any person or group of people as being THE TRUTH – and there is even ONE exception to that “truth” – no truth AS THE TRUTH exists in such a claim.  Researchers refer to “an acceptable margin of error.”  When I am a member of that margin I don’t buy what’s being touted no matter WHO is selling it.

Psychology as a field of study has, in my thinking, so joined forces both with the Western Medical Model and with the pharmaceutical industries that I remain skeptical of any truth supposedly discovered in the arena within which all of these “schools” operate.  Having a PART of the truth is not the same thing as having THE TRUTH – which by definition would require that ALL of the truth is known.

Nobody at this point in the evolution of humanity can claim to know all of the truth.  We only know what has been discovered thus far, and even those discoveries are colored by the societal belief system of those making their claims.  There are biases in “science.”  Those biases create blind-spots that those of us who have been physiologically changed in our development by severe early trauma need to work to pay attention to.

In my universe any time someone uses the term “psychological” to describe the great difficulties we work with as we continue to survive given all that has happened to us even within our very body we live in I heed my own inner alert warning system that tells me I am being judged as being somehow “damaged” and inferior to the person(s) using that term “against me.”

My truth is that I am DIFFERENT than those people are.  The changes that happened in our development make perfect sense.  Without them we would be dead.  It’s that simple.  It is the MISMATCH that we experience as survivors physiologically formed in a malevolent environment between HOW we are in a more benevolent world versus how those who were physiologically formed in a benign environment are in this world that creates the complications we live with.

Any “psychological” information that we may discover on our own or that is given to us by anyone else that does not begin with a thorough presentation of these facts is not honoring us with the truth of what we most need to know.

As one blog reader has so clearly put it, “We fly with a different flock.”  We are not (for the most part and I do recognize some exceptions, my mother being one of them) sick people.  We are changed.  We are different.  We are complicated beyond ordinary due to what we have lived through and continue to live with. 

Our lives have been very difficult and they continue to be very difficult.  We have the right to receive factual information that will help us understand ourselves and one another better.  But more than anything we have to trust our own inner guidance system.  If anything we encounter along our healing journey makes us feel in ANY WAY bad about ourselves there is truth missing.

Honor yourself.  Listen to yourself.  Trust yourself.  Never stop asking questions!  Never give your inner power to anyone!

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment

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