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Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go: A Documentary of the Mulberry Bush School
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Children Need Real Health System Reform Now
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Category: Trauma and Its Consequences
I do not believe that there is any more important action to be taken in this lifetime than the healing of the effects of trauma — both individually and globally.
+SUGGESTED BOOK ON BRAIN HEALING!
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I am still in the middle of traveling (went 4-wheeling and horse back riding today), and leave northern Minnesota tomorrow morning for a night’s stay at my son’s in Grand Forks, ND and then back down to my daughter’s in Fargo for another ten days before heading ‘home’ to Alaska to see my brothers and the land.
I could write volumes about my experiences thus far, but there’s only one thing I really want to mention right now. My youngest sister generously sent me a copy of a book she was reading on her Kindle when I visited her in Seattle recently, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Ph.D., Jill Bolte Taylor. I want to mention it here so that any of you who might find her book of value will have time to get a copy to read before I finally get a chance (after my travels) to write here about my own perception of the value of this book.
Although I highly recommend Jill’s book, because of the specific issues I present on this blog regarding the life long consequences of early severe child abuse as it affects — and alters — the development of the young brain, I suggest that readers might wish to actually begin their reading of “My Stroke of Insight” with Chapter 15 that begins on page 138. Of course it would be preferrable to begin at the beginning, but the information that the author presents beginning on the page I mention here is most specifically related to “our” topic.
I have never read in any single book so many clear and helpfully identified suggestions about how to manage one’s BRAIN and therefore one’s quality of life! Jill’s descriptions about how the two hemispheres of the brain operate cannot be matched! As you read this book you will come to understand how hard-won her suggestions about how to live a ‘better’ life are. Yet while it is not my intention to in any way demean, belittle or criticize Jill’s perspectives, I do wish to urge this blog’s readers to practice what I call the ‘cautionary’ approach to her statements about her experience with healing her own brain post-stroke.
Reading the latter chapters in Jill’s book provide an excellent experience in finding the middle road between what people might be able to know and understand about their brains when those brains were formed under benovolent conditions (as Jill’s seems to have been pre-stroke damage), and what those of us whose brains formed under malevolent severe child abuse and neglect conditions need to learn and understand about our altered brain and how to heal it.
Interestingly, Jill’s professional life as a neuroanatomist is intimately connected to Harvard, the same educational and research ‘facility’ that birthed the concept that those of us who were severely abused as children have a changed (‘evolutionarily altered’) brain as a result of our development under extremely adverse conditions. While there is much in Jill’s writing that I can see as being of value to me (on the middle road) I do not get the sense that she knows about the ‘Martin Teicher’s Group’s’ research about child abuse and how it changes brain development. Jill’s book does, however, give an impressive jump-start opportunity to learn valuable information about healing a wounded brain – and a wounded self – and that certainly includes me/us.
I won’t go into any more detail at the moment, but I wanted to get this information onto the blog about this book with the hopes that readers will take a little time to pop on over to amazon.com (at least) and explore the value of this book for themselves. It is a very reasonably priced book and is worth much more for the dime than any book I could possibly recommend!!
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I am far from feeling comfortable using other people’s computers, so will wait for a better and more appropriate time to activate those parts of my own brain and being that wait for a future date — when my current play-visit-self-expansion-challenge time has drawn to a close. I wish you all the very best — and suggest that you read My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Ph.D., Jill Bolte Taylor as soon as you can get your hands on a copy!! I promise — you will be glad that you did! Rarely, in my opinion, does a book appear that more than carries its own weight in VALUE such as this one does!!
Be sure to post your comments here about what you think of Jill’s book once you read it!!
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Step-up to Prevent Child Abuse!Promising Practices for Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect
+PRACTICING PLAY
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Just checking in again. I am back in Fargo until this weekend, and then head to northern Minnesota with my good friend who knows how to play — something I’ve always struggled with (an oxymoron!). I loved the air flight in the Cirrus 4-seater plane from Seattle to the San Juan islands last week — something I’ve never done. Couldn’t have had a better pilot or plane. The Cirrus, made in Duluth, MN comes with its own parachute — for the entire plane!!
Next week comes the 4-wheeler and the kayak — never experienced either — either!! Then the canoe, some horse back riding, mosquito swatting, woods walking, gabbing with friend, pigging out on fresh baked cookies, etc. ANYTHING, really, at this point but WRITE!!
Tonight marks my first night playing trivia — am going with my daughter, her hubby, my son, their ‘group’ — I hope I know something COOL that makes me think for an instant I’m…….well, SMART!!
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+CHECKING IN FROM BEAUTIFUL SEATTLE
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Just stopping in to say hello! Visiting family. Touring around. Going flying with my daughter and son-in-law’s friend tomorrow over water and forests. Missing nearly 100 degree heat in Arizona without the arrival of monsoon rains. All is well!
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+HOMESTEADING NEIGHBOR’S BOOK
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For those readers who are following my childhood Alaskan homesteading story that was as integral a part of my childhood as my mother’s mental illness and terrifying capacity for committing crimes of child abuse against her offspring was, I want to recommend the following book written by one of our neighboring homesteaders, Dorothy Pollard Price.
I was able to follow her story of homesteading in the Alaskan Eagle River Valley at the same time our family did from a ‘safe distance’ as I read this book. I can picture this piece of history because I was very close to it. Dorothy’s story contains the flavor of the homesteading experience minus our family’s additional experience of abuse, and gave me a small idea of what being in that place and time could have been like for me and my family had my mother (and really my father, also) NOT been so devastatingly mentally ill.
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Eight Stars of Gold: Notes from a Mid-century Alaska Homestead Journal by Dorothy Pollard Price (Paperback – Oct 6, 2008)
Buy new: $14.95 $11.66
12 Used & new from $7.95
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Another book that has been an important part of my traveling reading material is Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel. I discovered it in the local thrift store near the town where I live (and can be purchased very cheaply online used). Combined with my own experience of homesteading and with the experience of homesteading that Dorothy describes, Schlissel’s book allows me to find both similarities and differences in the ‘wilderness experiences’ of women who traveled uncharted territory a hundred or more years ahead of my mother and Dorothy.
In the case of my mother, Schlissel’s book makes me think about the vestiges of Victorianism that remained firmly implanted in my mother’s experience of life because she was so affected by her Bostonian upbringing as it was transmitted to her through the important women in her life — her own mother and her grandmother.
I will be writing more about this in the future!
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+CHECKING IN FROM FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA
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It is a scary realization to know that, at least in the ‘olden days’ of the 1960s, people as nuts as my mother was could actually run day care centers. I was too young then to realize what, if any, problems arose regarding the children under her care (I don’t believe she abused any of them) or with the children’s parents. With so many mothers needing to or choosing to work today, how would anyone know if a daycare provider was ‘off their rocker’, potentially dangerous, or actually dangerous?
It is a known fact that particularly with Borderline Personality Disorder the alterations in perception of reality and resulting actions are extremely difficult to recognize and detect — especially from the outside. This is part of the purpose and goal of my writings, to help us learn more about what makes these people tick so that we can recognize them better. I believe our improved understanding of personality disorder, depression, bi-polar and other sometimes-hard-to-detect-in-others brain change-mental illnesses is necessary to keep all children safer!
Free Webinar For Parents: Will You Know High-Quality Child Care When You See It?
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+TRAVELS!!
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Today’s the day. Leave house at 5:30 AM — please ‘shop around’ the site if you stop by to visit, will be checking in on my travels. All the best!! Off to the airport and on to Jacksonville, IL.
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+THE INSECURITIES OF TRAVELING
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How do I go traveling and leave behind my perfect weight woven cotton soft summer blanket, my perfect fan aimed perfectly at just the right angle when I sleep. I am used to the feel of that blanket, used to the sound of that fan, used to the feel of this carpet brushing across the bottoms of my feet.
I am used to the feel of this particular coffee cup in my hands every morning. Used to the sounds of this refrigerator, the feel of this chair and this keyboard under my fingertips.
Seven weeks. How long, exactly, is seven weeks? I have to find a different inner sense of safety, security and trust in order to journey away from all that is familiar, even though I know I’m going to see people who love me and that I love in return. My three kittens tumble around my feet in the morning as soon as they hear me open my door. They are so curious; they follow me, galloping after me everywhere I go. My parakeet flaps its wings and sings with all its heart to the strangers singing back to it from outside my front door. I will miss them.
The one I most wish would tell me “Good bye. I hope you have a wonderful trip. I will miss you and will be glad when you are home” couldn’t do that, because he could not even conceive of being able to handle my absence and could not admit that to himself or to me. I understand. I do, but it’s still sad that some of us have to so struggle with how unsafe and insecure we feel in the world that it never takes very much to make us feel threatened. (I suppose the more investment a person has in denying that insecurity and making it seem invisible, the more ‘macho’ they want to appear and believe themselves to be, the harder it is to deal with the truth.)
Sometimes it’s hard to realize that how we handle on the inside ourselves all states of change, separation and exploration, was built into our body and brain before we were one year old. Without there having been patterns of safety, security, trust and hope in our lives at the time our ‘mental representations’ were forming as the basis of our ability to think – which lies where the information from our bodies connects to our minds – we will feel more anxious, more afraid whether we want to realize it or not, and more threatened than we would ever feel if things ‘back then’ had been OK.
It is my attachment to my nest that helps my insecurity. We are supposed to be able to access a ‘safe and secure nest within’ where the self can continue to interact with life and not feel threatened while it does so. If this is not the case, choices are limited, decisions are made with different priorities, and changes are very hard to handle.
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When I was younger I took risks and moved around because I was hopeful, willing and oblivious. It’s harder now. But at least I know what the root source of my anxiety is, and I am willing to take this 7-week trip in spite of it.
I don’t even know if I have to move out of my home when I get back. Time will certainly tell, and there’s nothing I can do in the meantime but hope. I cannot leave or lose or change my home easily, or lightly.
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So now I have to continue to get ready. Take the laundry in off of the line. Clean the floors, sort out whatever it is I am taking with me. I can do this, as difficult and impossible as it may seem to be. At 5 AM tomorrow my friend, Anne, will drive me away from here, and off I go!
This traveling might seem to be a small thing, but it is the small things that can most easily upset the insecurely attached and the severe abuse survivors among us. For us, whatever it is that makes us feel most secure means so much to us that threatening our insecure base within means that changing those things seems to change who we are. I continue to ‘work on that’!
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+SHORT STORY COMPLETED – COMPLICATED FORGIVENESS
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Click on this link for the story that speaks for itself
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+THE WRITING OF A SHORT STORY – ABOUT COMPLICATED FORGIVENESS
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My 3rd short story, which I hope to finish today, contains reference to a Marine who served in the Vietnam War. Of course my story is entirely fictional, so I wanted to share a first hand very real story written by a man who was there:
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USMC, 1st Radio Battalion, Vietnam Veterans
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Here are links that contain history and photographs:
VIETNAM WAR footage in our collection
V I E T N A M W A R S T A T I S T I C S & E X C L U S I V E P H O T O S
Source: U.S. Government (VA Web Site Stats)
THE VIETNAM WAR 1964-1973 and more VIETNAM PHOTOGRAPHS
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Just as the experts use the term complicated grief I also believe there is something we could just as well name – complicated forgiveness. Life is not often a straight forward affair. Rarely do we have ‘enough information’ to be able to make the kinds of decisions, and then take the ‘right’ kind of action that really would have been better than what we actually DID based on what we actually knew.
Could most people do things better than they do? How do we tolerate human frailty — in ourselves and in other people? How do we live with grace and forgiveness?
I didn’t know what my 3rd short story was going to be about until it became clear as I was in the process of writing it. Now I have to clean it up and finish it, and will post it as soon as I can.
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Stop the Storm 
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