Category: Dissociation

+A LITTLE NOTE ABOUT ‘DOUBLE WHAMMY SADNESS’

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My daughter emails me videos to watch of my grandson who is nearly 15 months old.  We live 1700 miles away from one another – and I wish we didn’t.  Just life, I guess – but I love the videos!

The one I received yesterday shows my grandson learning to walk and what JOY he has — and showed him pushing the buttons on his toy that plays him songs so he can dance and sing along.  What JOY!

There are no words for how happy I feel for him, or for how happy I am that his parents are taking care of him right!  My grandson has his secure attachments to them and to the other important people who love him right where they are supposed to be — exactly at the center of his body, his nervous system, his brain — and as he continues to make great strides toward growing up all this goodness will be a part of his mind and his self, and at the center of his relationships with this self, with other people and with the world for the rest of his life.

I watch the complete freedom that little one has in his body to move – to express with that freedom the joy in movement that I believe ALL severely abused infants and young children completely miss!  How can a little one move with joy and freedom IN THEIR BODY as they experience their life in a world of joy once that little one — in their body — has been hurt, harmed, traumatized and terrified?

I don’t believe they can.

That just made me think that the sadness severe early abuse survivors feel is NOT only about what trauma was done to them.  It is ALSO about missing WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.  This is a ‘double-whammy-sadness’.

Healing for survivors certainly CAN include ‘body work’ to bring some of these experience of freedom and absolute joy into their body.  I just know for myself that this is hard for me to do.  I am learning something about how hard it really is – and why – as I see the contrast between what my and other abuse survivors’ beginning life was like compared to what it was SUPPOSED to be like.

I’m just ‘documenting’ this today.  That’s all…….

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+THE BOX OF GLOVES (AND IRRITABILITY)

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I went into my little town yesterday, first of the month, Social Security disability check in my bank account, to run errands and pick up essentials.  I only leave home about twice a month now considering my very limited resources  financially, mentally and emotionally.

I was gone from home 6 hours and came home absolutely overloaded, overwhelmed and exhausted both by the moving around ‘out there’ itself and by the patterns of interaction with ‘the public’.  I want to explain (with some humiliation and ‘shame’) how the tail-end of my day’s interaction went at our new ACE Hardware store.

I carried with me the store brand box of 50-count latex work gloves.  I needed more because I use them all day when I am working outside inside my very dirty heavy gloves.  $6.99 per box.  Were there any to be seen on the store shelf?  Nope.  Not a box, not a tag on the edge of the shelf that would let me know there was hope of ever finding them there again.

So what did I do?  Uh-Oh!  A big NO NO!  I actually asked of the 6 or 7 corporate garbed smiling employees standing around in the ‘lobby’ of the store (and yes, this new store is built to look just like a person might find on entering a grand hotel!), “I need some help here.”

Maybe it was because I forgot to say “Please” at the beginning of the encounter.  Maybe it was because I made the mistake of thinking that if I put these gloves from this store on my errand list, drove into town and down their street, parked my car, walked into the store, across the floor and down the long isle where I expected to find the object of my intentions that I could find them.

I didn’t enter the store to socialize.

I didn’t enter the store to eventually receive a very detailed and defensive explanation of the entire computerized ordering and receiving process this corporation uses to ensure that the simple things we customers actually wish to buy will ONLY be on the shelf first thing on Thursday mornings after the once-a-week truck brings new copies of what actually SOLD the week before.

I didn’t enter the store not to be listened to.  I didn’t come to have six people out-shout one another as they explained to me that I had no reason to be upset.  All of these minimum-wage employees, all evidently charmed by the Great American Corporate Logic did not seem to understand that I wanted to buy a simple basic item when they told me, “The store doesn’t want to have inventory just sitting around on the shelf.”

Give me a break!  I’m not upset because I came in to buy a $600 dollar chain saw.  How is this different than a grocery store using this logic and replacing a single loaf of bread on the shelf once a week, being content in the meantime to belittle an upset customer who actually wonders why THEY can’t buy a loaf of bread from an empty shelf?

So, let me get this straight (as I tried to be heard and explain MY logic at this juncture in time and place):  Your store only stocks one box of a very useful and well-priced item.  Someone who wants this box and lives in town shows up when the store door opens the morning after you have restocked this one item and buys it.  Then every other much more ‘polite’ customer than I who enters the store for the next 6 days will NOT buy the invisible box of gloves – and you will hear no complaint.

There sits the shelf spot empty.  There are all these employees stalking customers who can’t buy what they want.  There they go out the door having wasted their time with their money still in their pocket.  And nobody thinks this through?

What if the store changed their inventory replenishment system so that, say, five boxes came in on Wednesday night’s truck.  Then all five boxes could sell, four more customers would be happy, you make money, five more boxes come in the next week — etc!

Nope!

One male employee actually said to me, “I’ve been shot at in my life.  I’ve been shot, and you are upset because you can’t buy a box of gloves?”

Me?  In my increasingly overloaded state of, yes, emotional dysregulation by this time turned and responded back to him, “All right!  Go ahead and shoot me if it would make you feel better.  But that wouldn”t change the fact that I came here to buy an item I actually need and it’s not on the shelf!  I need to know if this space is going to remain empty or if more of these boxes are coming in.  Can you tell me if they have been permanently deleted from your inventory?”

(By the way, no doubt the man who offered this inappropriate response is also a severe infant-child abuse survivor himself.)

I was not displaying anger yesterday.  I was displaying irritation and dissatisfaction with a focused intensity of determination to be listened to.  All I asked for was that one person hear what I was saying and consider my suggestion that someone look into adding another few boxes of gloves into the inventory system so that more boxes could show up on the shelf so more people could buy them over the span of any given week’s time (by the way, this is NOT the first time I’ve faced this same empty shelf).  Did my heretical wishes tip over THEIR boat?  Evidently so.

Well, another moment of these interactions and I’m quite certain I would have been permanently 86-ed from their store.

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Yes, my disability DID come into play.  A far more adequately emotionally regulated person (from infancy thru adequate infant-caregiver interactions – secure attachment – that build the emotional-social brain in the first place) would NOT have had this ridiculous interaction go this way!

Warning to self:  “Do not EVER actually go to that store expecting to find what you need!  Do not EVER go to that store as the last stop after a day of errands!  Do not EVER try to use logic in talking to those employees again!  Do not EVER expect to be listened to!  Do not EVER expect them to care one single bit that what you wanted to spend your money on is not in the store even though it COULD have been!”

There aren’t enough shopping options in this town to boycott stores on a regular basis.  I don’t have a reliable car or the gas money to make the 50 mile round trip in one direction or the 75 mile round trip in the other direction to get to a larger shopping area.

I have limited income and I’m sorry, folks!  But why should I spend 2 – 4 times as much money to buy smaller packages of gloves that are 1/5th the quality of the ones I have found before and wish to buy again?  Why should I waste gas money returning to the store when I only go to town twice a month?  And when would I need to show up, anyway?   Only when the store opens on a Thursday morning so I and some other customer who also needs that one box of gloves can argue for it?  Fight over it?  One person buy the box and both of us go out into the parking lot and exchange money between us so each purchases half of the one box’s contents?  (I guess we’d have to decide which one of us ended up with 24 gloves and the other with 26.)

POINT OF STORY:  For every person who experiences emotional dysregulation there is likely to be a process that leads up to these difficulties.  Increasing irritability is a sign that OVERLOAD is taking place that will lead to OVERWHELMING unless some way is found to ‘down-regulate’ this pattern.

The reason I am on disability now is that I CANNOT modulate incoming stimuli well, my senses and my ability to filter them out are shot.  I have spent most of my life ‘getting along’ in the world using up resources that I have never really had!  I am quite simply — burned out.

I have to be very very careful now of how often I leave the sanctuary of my own home and yard because I DO NOT carry the calm peacefulness of ‘sanctuary’ in my own body.  This is a condition that is often referred to as ‘complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)’ but I don’t care what it’s called, it came from being completely overloaded and overwhelmed with violence and trauma from the time I was born until I was 18.

I have, essentially, NO TOLERANCE for irritation.  I have an allergic reaction to most people I encounter, I swear!  If I were rich I would string a Personal Assistant along with me everywhere I go — or send that person ‘out there’ instead of me so I could avoid what I very often experience now.

I only vaguely understand that the kind of overload and irritation I can often feel in the midst of ‘too much stimulation’ and ‘too much of the wrong kind of stimulation’ is related to right brain ‘limbic kindling’.  It’s like having a burn that hurts if ANYTHING including water touches that wounded and unhealed skin.  This is irritability!  And if I ever find that I want some more of it I know exactly where to go to find it!

And, yes, I admit that at almost 60 years old, being worn out to a large extent, it is my ‘fault’ that I can no longer gracefully and ‘appropriately’ handle BS like I used to.  I just don’t have it in me to be ‘nicey-nice’ anymore in the midst of what feels like insanity and chaos.  Yes, I am an ‘accident waiting to happen’ with my overloaded body-brain and my resulting extremely short fuse!  And I suspect that during the time frame I am in as I return to the earliest years of my life in the writing of my book I will have to be very, very, very careful of myself – and evidently of other people as well.

That was a high price to pay for a non-box of work gloves!

And never mind now that as I go to actually publish this post my cable internet is on the blitz again for the second time in a week.  I CAN handle this one – blissfully!  I think……

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I have to say that all of this contrasted most sharply with my next experience at Safeway (our only grocery store in town).  There I received a $10 coupon at checkout because I had just spent over $75 – and I was delighted to head to the vegetable isle for all the fixings for a wonderful spinach salad — cost?  Absolutely FREE!

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+QUESTION #4 IS ANSWERED

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I just finished writing my response to Question #4 for the book – 15 more questions to go.  Tomorrow I receive #5 from my daughter, go through the next four days ‘in waiting’ as I prepare myself to answer it, and begin writing again next Tuesday morning.

I had yet another amazing ‘discovery’ today that came to me as I wrote that shook my body in a terrible way that I could not have imagined as a full-blown body memory from something that happened when I was 22 months old made itself known.  Only in such a disconnected culture such as ours is could anyone ever suggest, let alone believe, that our body does not store a memory of everything that ever happens to us.  (More than that – I believe our DNA is ancestral memory, as well.)

But enough for now – time for a well-earned BREAK!  I pray for everyone’s protection and safety as the season of massive storms is upon us.

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+LINK TO ARTICLE ON MUSIC, EMOTION, MEMORY AND THE BRAIN

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Interesting article on music, memory and the brain:
Study Finds Brain Hub That Links Music, Memory, and Emotion

“A lifelong music buff, Janata had earlier created a model for “mapping” the tones of a piece of music as it moves from chord to chord and into and out of major and minor keys. By making tonal maps of each musical excerpt and comparing them to their corresponding brain scans, he discovered that the brain was tracking these tonal progressions in the same region as it was experiencing the memories: in the dorsal part of the medial pre-frontal cortex, as well as in regions immediately adjacent to it. And in this case, too, the stronger the autobiographical memory, the greater the “tracking” activity.”

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+INFANT-CHILD ABUSE AND PERMANENT CHANGES TO THE ‘STARTLE RESPONSE’

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Yet again I must remind myself about the special characteristics of my life, my infancy and childhood, my story and of my body as it had to change in its development within an 18-year environment of trauma as these characteristics are unique and extraordinary (out-of-the-ordinary).  As I begin today to allow words about ‘my relationship with my father’ to take form on paper and digitalized screen I am coming around full circle to thoughts that came to me in 2006 when I first began my ‘developmental neuroscience’ research into my experience of life – and how it got to be the way that it is.

I started then and I am back there today thinking about brainwashing, mind-control and thought-control that was first formerly identified in 1950 related to techniques the Chinese used to alter the lives of people in drastic ways through trauma, torture, terror and imprisonment.  In 2006 I read stories written by survivors of these Chinese brainwashing efforts, but even as I did so I found not ONLY the similarity between what was done to these survivors (and their experience of surviving them) but also began to understand at the core of my being that every one of these survivors seemed to have had access to a tool that saved them.  I understood that I never had this tool.

What allowed these survivors to retain deep within their brain-mind-self at least a tiny corner of resistance and self-identity that the brainwashing could never touch was a sense of having BEEN a self prior to their torture experiences.  That self was directly tied to memories, very often of deep love and secure attachment to others, from their life prior to these terrible times.  I never had the opportunity to experience anything before my mother’s torture of me began because I had suffered from the same kinds of brainwashing patterns the Chinese used on their prisoners from the moment I was born.

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These thoughts are tied to my beginning response to Question #4 about my father that is a part of the book my daughter and I are writing about my infant-childhood.  I have no reason to believe that my mother wasn’t able to brainwash my father.  But at the moment that is not my concern.  What I am thinking about still is my response to the snake on my door yesterday.

I just did a Google search of the terms “child abuse startle response,” and encourage readers to do the same and spend some time poking around with the information that appears on the screen.  The single word that pops out to me on this search page is this one:  “obligatory.”  Everyone’s body is ‘obliged’ to respond one way or the other to perceived threat to well-being and life, but if a body has been built within environments of severe trauma from infancy the entire process of obliged-to-response will have been changed during earliest development.

I believe it pays all abuse survivors to become familiar with some of the information presented in the Google search I mention because we LIVE in and with a body that has been changed in development and will ALWAYS respond differently to the stress of trauma (real or perceived).

I suspect nearly everyone would experience a startle response to suddenly finding a great big snake wrapped around their doorknob of a door they just approach.  But for someone like me the reverberations from my initial startle reaction lasted for hours and hours, long past the actual experience with the snake.  Unlike what a nonabused person’s reaction would have been, mine involved and included a reawakening of many of my body’s old traumas along with my body’s ‘obligatory’ reactions and responses to them.

I doubt that I will ever look at or touch my front security door again without having the thought (and the image) of that snake’s body wrapping and twisting and slithering itself all over it.  I also know that my body-brain-mind-self never formed any procedures to release trauma from the present moment so that it doesn’t become added onto the entire massive collection of trauma that I have physiologically been ‘obliged’ to remember.

At the same time I understand that I am certainly not in any exclusive club when it comes to reactions to snakes, I also understand that the startle response I had yesterday and all the feelings I am STILL feeling in my body as a result are the SAME ONES I was forced to have in response to my OWN MOTHER on most occasions I was forced to endure my encounters with her – in one way or the other.

These patterns of startle, trauma and pain built themselves into me in such a way from the moment I was born that I most often experience some degree of ‘startle’ and resonating discomfort when I am in the company of nearly ANY human being other than those people, like my children, with whom I share my closest love-attachments.

These are the kinds of lifelong difficult consequence that infant abuse in particular creates.

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+MY DAY IN THE HOOD AND “THIS UGLY FEELING”

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I forgot that today was a holiday.  There’s nobody around me to celebrate it with.  So I was dumbly going out my front door to run over to the post office to check my mail (too small a town for door delivery).  I opened my solid wood inner door, reached for the knob of my outer security door (wrought iron bars with steel mesh) and turned it.

Because the holes in the mesh are quite small and have been painted several times, with the way the sun was hitting it I couldn’t see outside except to notice from where I stood on the inside heading out that there seemed to be a new and additional CURVED piece of rod visible at the height of the knob.

It wasn’t until I had the door opened about six inches that the loops of a large snake with diamond patterns on its back came into my view as it enclosed my outer door knob completely with its wrapped body as it slid itself across, up and down my screen door!

Panic.

Not a reasonable thought in my head as I stepped backwards and slammed shut my wooden door without shutting the outer door, reaching into my pocket for my cell phone.  My friend, no doubt alarmed by my alarm, told me to call the sheriff’s office.  I did.  Waiting for the deputy to arrive I watched with prehistoric revulsion from my picture window as the snake undulated its way all over that door.  It began to drop itself through the air and I knew it would be on the ground and gone before help arrived.

In my state of alarm I didn’t see its head or its tail clearly.  I did see it taking off in a straight line across my yard (after it obviously negotiated the five steps that lead up to my front door).  I watched it crossing the road.  I now gingerly stepped from my door and kept my distance so I could see where the snake was once the deputy arrived.

This man didn’t like snakes any more than I do, but he relaxed when he spotted the narrow rather than arrowhead shaped head – and eventually saw the tail that he already knew would not have rattles.

I only felt very mildly stupid.

Growing up in Alaska where there are no snakes, I will NEVER respond to them like a south-of-the-snake line native.  The deputy assured me I could “leave now and have a nice day” while he and his soon to appear buddy would snare the snake and relocate it.  I didn’t watch.

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I am STILL not OK – many hours and much reasoning later.  My body, having spent 18 years living in an extremely abusive home, does not tolerate a full-blown stress response well.  Not well at all.  But the warning to watch ALL OF THE time for hazardous creatures came with today’s experience at the same time the reminder came that my nervous system and stress response system had to develop from infancy with a super overload that means today that trauma affects me differently than it does ‘ordinary’ people.

Which brings me to the second experience of my day I wish to write about.  I am getting to know my neighbor L, a woman I liked and trusted instantly from the moment I met her.  L grew up in a stable and loving home and did not suffer from abuse or trauma.  I can tell that about her – really just read it in her body language.  Her easy smile, her natural confidence that shows in her relaxed movements — she just feels HEALTHY to me.

Today when I stopped by to tell her about the snake that came a’knocking (L HATES snakes and has a true phobia about them) we ended up visiting for quite awhile.  L lost her husband of 25 years to cancer less than a year ago, and as L talked about how she relies on prayer to help ease her through the most difficult year – one holiday, one birthday, one anniversary – at a time she placed both of her palms on top of one another right in the center of her chest.

“Sometimes the ugly feeling builds up right here.”

I asked L how she handles that feeling, and if the prayer helps it go away.

“Oh,” she said, “Sometimes I have to really cry and when I do then this ugly feeling goes away.”

L had also told me about a friend of hers whose husband died, too.  L asked her how long she had cried after his death.  “For a year,” the friend told her.  “I cried and I cried so hard I thought I would never stop, but I’m finally getting a little bit better now.”

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Sometime when I am visiting with L I want to remember to ask her again about her friend – most particularly about what L knows about her friend’s early infant-childhood years.  It would not surprise me one bit to learn that this woman did not have the kind, loving and good childhood that L had.  In fact, just from the description about these two women crying I would be most surprised if the friend HAD a happy childhood.

L described to me something I will never be able to experience.  She described her feeling of deep sadness and grief as “this ugly feeling” that is obviously (to me) not a feeling that L has experienced as a chronic state of her life.  In fact I doubt it showed up at all until her tragic loss.  Crying is SUPPOSED to make what really IS an ugly feeling go away.

Now, for L’s friend the crying seems to have gone on a long long time and did not make the “ugly feeling go away” after a reasonable period of crying.  L can cry, the ugly feeling leaves her shortly and she can go about her day still missing her loved husband — but NOT captured in the essence of her being by “this ugly feeling.”

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Perhaps this is true for other severe (especially when it starts in infancy) abuse survivors as it is true for me.  Such stress and such sadness built themselves into my growing little body that “this ugly feeling” became my normal state.  It’s at the center of my nervous system where peace and calm is supposed to be (as the ‘set point’ for homeostatic equilibrium of the stress response and nervous system).

L and I have very differently-developed bodies – I know this now – so as she describes her ability to cry a cry and have “the ugly feeling” vanish from the center of her chest, and as she tells me about her friend who cried continually for a year I know where I fit in along this continuum – and I know why.

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+ABUSE: IN THE ABSENCE OF EITHER MODESTY OR THE FEAR OF GOD

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Tomorrow I begin my writing of response to the book’s question #4 (about my father) – so I shouldn’t be surprised that today I feel far from chipper!  I found a passage today that I wish I understood – but I don’t.  Not really, not in any way but the most superficial fashion:

“Truly, I say, the fear of God hath ever been the perspicuous protection and solid fortress for the whole community of the world.  It is the greatest means for the protection of mankind, and the chief cause of the preservation of humanity.  Yes, there exists a sign in the being of man which guards and protects him from that which is unworthy and unbecoming.  That sign is called modesty.  But this virtue is assigned to a few; for all are not endowed with this station.” From Baha’u’llah in “Bahai’I World Faith:  Selected writings of Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdul’l-Baha” (out of print) page 180

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This would suggest that for the bulk of humans it would be the fear of God that would keep us in line with living a truly good life.  Modesty, in a culture so pervasively materialistic, is often considered ONLY in this light.  But when I went to Webster’s online dictionary I found that the first definition of ‘modest’ is this one:  “placing a moderate estimate on one’s abilities or worth.”

I feel today as I prepare to write tomorrow for the book that I have a sinkhole of sadness and of DISAPPOINTMENT inside of me that seems at this moment to circle around a center that this word ‘modest’ represents.  I see that within this small and not-often used word might be a deep connection to both the essence of empathy and of compassion both of which were entirely missing in the severely abusive home of my origin.

Oh, no doubt both of my parents would have claimed if asked that modesty was one of their most ‘prized personal possessions’, but that would have been a lie as big as all the others their patterns in living represented.

It didn’t seem to be my mother’s ‘fear of God’ that was the straw that broke her, but rather the ‘fear of the devil coming to get her’.  I am not interested in arguing any points about how these two perspectives might be similar or different from one another.  I just sense at the core of my body that it was not any light that the first might carry that was present in her but rather all the darkness contained in the latter.

Whatever factors a human being might need to have been exposed to in their earliest life so that a healthy self could form that could have healthy relationships was missing from both of my parents’ experience.  They must have both been denied whatever it takes to develop “a moderate estimate on one’s abilities or worth.”  There is NOTHING moderate about infant-child abuse!  There IS NOT SUCH THING as ‘moderate abuse’.  Abuse is abuse, and I cannot imagine a human being who HAS “a moderate estimate on one’s abilities or worth” ever committing it.

Yet if modesty, according to this quotation is a rare virtue not common among humans, then there must be a whole lot of people who do, in their innermost essence, at least have a healthy fear of some kind for God – however that relationship is defined and experienced.  (I imagine the rare modest people have both.)  This passage suggests to me that to live a life of well-being ONE of these two factors must be present.  My parents evidently didn’t have either one – and oh the suffering and abuse that was fostered and perpetrated in their absence!

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+TWO CUTE STORIES I HEARD TODAY – CLEVER IS AS CLEVER DOES

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I am so enjoying sitting on an upside down 5-gallon empty pickle bucket out in the chicken coop watching the baby chicks turn into hens.  Relaxes me – learning from animal intelligence – and here are two stories I heard today that make me smile.

One woman had a friend in New Hampshire that fed a family of raccoons in her back yard on a daily basis.  5 pm on the dot and there appeared the crew to devour whatever goodies had been left for them as the humans who fed them watched with caring delight – only always the biggest and the oldest managed to grab for himself the best of the best.

Then one day at 4:55 there appeared one of the younger members of the masked-faced family who seemed to understand a brand new plan.  Five minutes later when the rest showed up there was a little battle as the biggest and the oldest wrestled away the choice loaf of bread.

Next day at 4:55 again appeared the younger one who had just enough time to rip open the plastic bag containing the stale bread donated from a local bakery.  The raccoon not only pulled off the wrapper, but did so in such a fashion that the entire loaf of bread slices remained in a stack.  The younger one had one of its feet planted firmly on top of this stack by the time the bigger and older arrived along with the rest of the raccoons.

The human family watched in amazement as the older came, took a look, assessed the situation and moved on to munch away on something else while the younger one simply lifted its foot off the stack only high enough and long enough to snatch one slice of bread at a time as it planted its foot back down on the shortening pile firmly – thus gaining for itself the entire loaf.

Daily 4:55 arrival and very clever bread stacking, that’s all it took and the rest of the raccoons showing up at the dot of 5 never figured it out.

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The other story was told by a woman whose male friend frequently house sat for another friend of hers.  There were specific instructions given for the daily routine:  First water the garden, second feed the dog, third feed the 250 wild quail that lived in the draw behind the property.

One day the man watered the garden, fed the dog and then mowed the lawn.   Involved with his task the hungry quail were completely forgotten.

As he sat on an old bench beside the garden shed busy adding new cord to the weed-eater a small movement caught his attention out of the corner of his eye followed next by a little tap on the toe of his tennis shoe.  Looking down he saw one quail.  Just one little quail.  One quail, that’s all it took, and the entire 250 soon had their supper.

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I thought about my six little chickens yesterday when I brought them out a large piece of watermelon rind with plenty of juicy red pulp still attached.  Oh, what a commotion among the sisters when I laid it on the ground in the shade of the adobe chicken coop where they had been passing their hot afternoon napping in peace!  What on earth was THAT?  Food or foe?

They ‘chit-chatted’ away in great confusion, excitement and concern until finally one girl dashed up to the strange object, scooped a beak full of luscious watermelon in mid-run and still racing in a wide circle headed back to her little flock hiding in the corner.  But before this brave (chosen?) volunteer could put on her brakes her five sisters rushed past her in the opposite direction to happily devour what they now all knew wasn’t going to devour them.

Ah, the clever side of social life.  It sure doesn’t belong to just humans!

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+THE TURNING OF MY FATHER

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What happened (and how it happened) to turn the man who holds me in this baby book picture (top right) into the one that appears in the pictures in my previous post – +MY LIFE IN HELL – “SET MY PEOPLE FREE!!!”?  Read the book to find out!

from my nonexistent baby book

MY BABY BOOK
Goosebump time

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+WHAT MY PARENTS DID TO ME WAS COMPLETELY EVIL.

alchemynow1 Comment

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I have been outside piddling around in my garden doing activities that need to be done but are on the lazier end of work.  I have known since I created the newest flower bed on the east side of my house that the tubing I used, given to me by a neighbor so I used it with consideration of ‘repurposing’ and conserving $$, was too stiff and too old to hold any pressure and instead cracked and leaked.  I knew I needed to replace it with new tubing, but doing anything with the irrigation irritates me!  So I postponed the repair and just now finally DID it!

In that process — and because I am INTENSELY involved with thoughts about writing my book — I learned something simple that connects these two jobs.  What I did just now was REPAIR a ruptured and faulty section of my irrigation.  What I am doing as I write my book and tell my story is repairing the ruptured and faulty parts of myself as I repair my life story!

I am following two story lines as I book-write.  One is my mother’s and the other is mine.  These two stories have been so intertwined, meshed and fused together from the time my mother was in labor with me that distinguishing between her story and mine is an arduous and at times excruciating process.

I realized just now as I replaced the faulty irrigation line so the drip will work correctly that the ONLY tool I actually have to use in order to distinguish between my mother’s story and my own is THE TRUTH.  Her story is a lie.  My story is the truth.  And as surely as M. Scott Peck writes in his book, “People of the Lie” I will be able to make the minute distinctions between story lines that must be made by FEELING MY WAY ALONG IN MY GUT!!

Bless his cotton socks, that’s exactly what Peck is saying.  We know EVIL because we can FEEL it in our gut.  It dawns on me this morning that the other side of this — MY SIDE — is that I can tell THE TRUTH the same way:  I feel it in my gut!

Because I Netfilx stream lots of British TV shows I am becoming more and more familiar with their term, “sorting things out.”  They use it a lot.  That’s what I am doing, sorting out the truth from the lies as I write this book – and although the POWER is in the TRUTH I hold to no delusions that there isn’t incredible power in this world all tied up in EVIL.

Because I understand the spiritual truth that God exists and is good, and that what humans might call the devil and evil only exists when God and good is absent (shadow without light).  The LIGHT of God’s love is real.  The shadow of evil and of hatred is the absence of that light.

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As I prepare to continue responding to the next question #4 my daughter has given me for this book, I am spiritually waking myself up for that task.  This is not an effort on my part that will be a success if I am sloggy or half-awake or only half paying attention.

I am approaching the Great Divide.  On one side will go GOOD and on the other side will go EVIL.  EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT BOTH OF MY PARENTS’ RELATIONSHIP WITH ME WAS EVIL.

I am naming that with a clarity and power that has alluded me before today.  It is not mine to judge their souls.  That is God’s job.  I am naming WHAT THEY DID as evil.  All of it.

Now how that evil came to permeate and contaminate each of them as people is not my business.  Humans have that special dual nature:  animal and spiritual.  God wants humans to chose to live according to the spiritual where all goodness and human virtues lie.  But humans have free choice and choosing to act worse than an animal is our free option every moment we breath.

The BEHAVIOR of my parents was evil, belonged on the dark-ignorant-selfish side of human nature — whether their choices were made consciously or not.  When enough trauma happens during earliest stages of development the resulting adaptations and changes can so remove a human’s ability TO ACT CONSCIOUSLY that the automatic animal-survival-based INSTINCT to survive runs the show at all costs.

It doesn’t matter to me whether the evil happened consciously or not at this point.  It is my concern that EVIL is what my parents did to me.

So in thinking about the ‘warrior’ comment yesterday to my ‘hero’ post I have been facing today my inner WHINER who wants to just quit fighting and relax in the glory of a job well done and battles well fought and won.

“Give me a break, Linda!” I tell myself.  “Who are you kidding?”

The evil that exists in this world, with all the combined force of the life force that is tied up within it, is VERY REAL.  Enduring as a hero in the moment with no thought of the future except to survive that moment is one thing.

Giving a damn about the future of US ALL is another.  Fighting against ignorance is a battle I will not escape fighting as long as I am in this body.  Acknowledging infant and child abuse and then fighting against THAT GREAT EVIL is what I am about.

“So on with it, Linda!  No matter how intense, no matter how difficult, no matter how much you might rather have had a different life, this is the one you got and the one you are living.”  Within THIS LIFE I have everything I need to make something beautiful out of something that was evil and ugly nearly beyond imagination.  And that task is what I want to be all about.

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