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Get some hope here:
+THE BEST VOICE OF REASON: WHAT EARLY TRAUMA SURVIVORS KNOW
October 4, 2012
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Hello All: Please note that EVERY comment to this blog is as confidential as you wish it to be. All are moderated by alchemynow as moderator and cannot post without my prior approval.
If you wish to write to me without your comment being made public just let me know at the start of your writing. In this way I can read what you say and respond to you confidentially.
Please also see this page where I try to keep links to important comments made by readers at the end of various pages on this blog together in one place:
Your Page – Readers’ Responses
Thank you very much for visiting my site! Linda
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Stop the Storm 
Hi again, I am the one who asked for your contact info. I have been married to my wife for 11 years. About 4-5 years ago she shared with me about emotional abuse and neglect from her mother – and also sexual abuse by a same-sex cousin. My wife, from about 1-4 years old lived apart from her mother. The story is unclear, I suspect the mother had depression or something. But my wife lived with her mother’s parents.
When my wife was 7, her younger brother died unexpectedly. At that time, my wife’s mom blamed her, verbally telling my wife it was her fault her brother had died. While this might be conceivably understandable considering her mother’s grief, she repeated it occasionally through my wife’s high school years. My mother-in-law would also often call my wife terrible names. And the corporal punishment would often be out of anger and across the face.
So I would basically say she didn’t have a mom, except maybe from 4-7. And her dad was a politician and rarely present.
Our first 5 years of marriage were difficult physically, but my wife overcame that through relaxation techniques and other things. We have two children, a 5 year old daughter and 1 year old son. Over the last few years, I would call our marriage average, even strong. I would occasionally push for better communication and more frequent physical intimacy, but these things weren’t terrible so I was fairly content. We had weekly date nights, etc. etc.
I know things weren’t perfect, but no one was complaining really.
One month ago she abruptly (from my perspective) told me that she no longer loves me or feels a connection toward me, and took off her rings. She isn’t wearing them. She told me she is leaving with the kids, but I asked her to stay and try counseling or something. She says I have stolen her voice, taken away her independence, and other things. She doesn’t let me touch her, not even a hug or shoulder pat.
I’m not sure I’ve given enough information, but do you think some kind of attachment disorder might be behind this? From the time last month that she shared some things with me, I have begun some counseling and see that I can improve my communication and that I also need to be more affectionate, and that I can unintentionally be controlling with the way I say things. I am up for change. But her extreme reaction of wanting to walk away is horrifying to me.
Your response would be appreciated.
Respectfully,
Tony
Is there a way to contact you through email? I am a spouse of someone who I believe may have this type of thing, and we are going through a tremendously difficult time.
Hi! I do not normally connect from the blog to email, but if you write me a more detailed comment here I will not publish it but from it will determine if email contact is appropriate. Thanks!
Mediaeval greeting written by Fra Giovanni in 1513:
I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not, but there is much, very much, that while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.. Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see — and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look.
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy, or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendour, woven of love, by wisdon, with power.
Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty — beneath its covering — that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.
Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, winding through unknown country, home.
And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and always, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
Thank you. I have been feeling very alone tonight and quite dissatisfied with what I have made of my life thus far. Fearing I am walking toward a dead end with no idea even how to turn around.
This is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read.
I am beginning the 6th chapter of this book about me in my childhood. This….especially, touches me in the soreness of my heart and mind tonight….
“Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.”
Truly amazing, this gift you have shared. Thank you.
[…] CONTACT INFO […]
I’m only beginning to fully realize the neverendingness of early abuse. Time is supposed to heal, and time doesn’t. The labeling of willfully maimed personalities; the hypocrisy — the pretence that ‘love’ is anything but manipulation and reciprocal narcissism — early abuse makes one not a cynic but the bleakest of realists. Despite abuse severe enough to cause fortyfive years of merciful dissociation, I did not in all that while, indeed have not in all my life, seen a family dynamic that made me wish it had been mine rather than my own. ‘Love’ always exacts a return in pandering to a dominant manipulative personality. This seems to me the bleak truth not only of experience but of observation. However, the sadness of that reality never ends.
Hi – and thank you for your comment. Very thought provoking. I am most fortunate that in spite of the 18 years of horrendous abuse I suffered – I was able to fall in love with the wilderness of Alaska in a way that taught my soul that love is real. I don’t believe that humans are all that evolved – yet – I do have hope that given another 500 – 1000 years humanity will ‘figure it out’!
I saw the most glorious sunset yesterday – colors so brilliant they didn’t even look real – but they were. Earlier in the week two neighbor young teen girls appeared at my door long after dark asking for roses to give to their Auntie for her birthday. WHAT? In the dark?
I could not resist their love desire – dug out my scissors and my dull flashlight and off we went around the yard to cut the last of the fall roses – so sweet in smell, so delicate. Such happiness in those girls – and in my own soul for being able to humbly give something that I only care for – flowers.
I am baking two apple pies to take to a friend’s house tomorrow – going early to peel potatoes – to help in the kitchen ’cause I am not comfortable in crowds. This being a community dinner, open to all, my friend has been doing for years. I am honored to attend. I feel the love in these perfect Honey Crisp apples – feel love in the fact that I can make an apple pie that cannot be beat!
I can’t tell from your name or comment if you are male or female. I do know that abuse affects each gender differently – that we each process all information – and especially trauma information differently. I also believe that what some call healing comes from our own self being able to find our own self – as the pure and innocent perfect little people we were through out all that happened to us.
There is more than sadness. More than bleak. I could not live well in a city – I need to see the sky, the mountains – I need gardens and plants – and even my chickens, my dog, my cats – and my friends.
At 61 I no longer ASK for anything – I think I did through most of my adulthood – I just live a simple life – with hope – somehow always with hope. It is hope it seems you may have lost more than anything else.
I am so sorry for your suffering. For all of our suffering. Your great honesty is appreciated. Thank you.
Female. Fiftysix. Sexual sadism in infancy, consummated with repeated rapes (grandfather/granddaughter) at age four, though ‘only’ for one year. Then a father who hated me for some reason I never understood: if I’d been a better daughter he would have loved me. 🙂 I don’t batter myself with that anymore anyway. Not quite lost of hope. I too live in a beloved (far) northern quiet. (Canada) Lupins, fireweed; unpeopledness, which is calming. –“Snow can burn your eyes, but only people make you cry.” Or not cry, which is worse. I never cried for anything either of them ever did to me. But I manage to be happy. I’ve had accolades for much-loved work in the fine crafts. Just been a bit low for a while; and it’s such an astonishing pain — and catharsis — to find this site, Undoubtedly I’ll survive, eh. 🙂
YES!!!! Oh, I miss the lupine and fireweed! I have been homesick for Alaska since I left in 1969 at 18 – but there was a life for me elsewhere – with a lot of roaming, and lot of adventures. I am so glad to have you visiting here – and hope to hear more from you anywhere you roam on this blog. You – and your home – sound beautiful!!! Love the smiles!! 🙂 to you and all during the holiday season – which can so easily crash our hearts – if we are not extra care-ful during these ‘Hallmark’ seasons!!
‘Love’ is a fervidly negating obsession that contradicts all our known and felt experiences, and ultimately, in insistent pursuit of which, marks a fruitless lifetime of intellectual ecapism and cowardice. Our observed universe is an utter blank of incomprehension, to which we willfully and purposively endow ‘love’ to counter the terrors of nihilism. Teicher cites in his paper the classic study of infant monkeys that cling to terry-covered wire forms in preference to suckling a disembodied teat offering milk. The infant that is fed but isolated is traumatized, yet the infant clinging to the form apparently develops into a monkey psychological norm. So that the normative influence clearly is not a mother, but the *illusion* of love. Your mother — my father — abused and traumatized us, which grieves us utterly. But your father — my mother — and our respective siblings (– and society –), were *necessarily* complicit in that abuse and degradation, by not-seeing, and by silence. So where then is love? Show me familial or sexual love anywhere that is not essentially trophyism; conformity to social and psychological pressure; void-filling; emotional manipulation on every side. Is abuse, then, necessarily abuse? (We’re assuming now that love denied didn’t thoroughly break and defile us, apparently a genetic and epigenetic roll of the dice: nature shows itself over and over to be completely unsentimental and dispassionate.) Teicher says in his paper, “Maltreatment elicits stress responses that organizes the brain to develop along a *SPECIFIC* [my emphasis] pathway selected to facilitate survival in a world of deprivation and strife.” Did you know that the billowing of ‘cigarette smoke’ can be described with a mathematical equation? The universe is imbued with order and symmetries we can’t possibly comprehend:Teicher describes our response to abuse as a “specific” neural pathway. Is this necessarily bad? — (assuming again that the integrity of the personality can be resolute.) I see only strength here. I see the historic fount of creativity — our incomprehensible common pain (no one escapes except in degree) transmuted into a crying out of NO into the void and filling it with art, music, philosophy. We make our universe what we will from the enhancement of pain borne against all odds, and many, many fall by the way and the universe has no tears for that. It only tries again. There are no words for my grief, my pain, my feelings toward my grandfather and father. Do I regret that incest and vicious abuse have shaped the very convolutions of my brain? No. Atomy is the reality of our common existence and the claim to anything else is a lie and self-deception.
In my world: The light of love is all that exists. All else that appears to the contrary is simply the absence of light.
Thank you for your thoughts – !!
Good Morning, Kunigunde – I am still thinking about your words. I find a long string of adjectives flow through my mind in response. All of them seem feeble and inaccurate. The only one that is sticking is this: What you know, what you tell of what I call ‘the bigger picture’ – is important.
Your grasp of Teicher’s facts is beyond what I suspect even those researchers can understand.
I am left with a deeper understanding of how each of our perception that is intimately tied to our anatomy is – to me – so much bigger than what I think any human can really understand at this point in our shared evolution.
I see at this moment each one of us standing together in a great circle that includes all those who have ever lived on this planet – taking into account that at this point in time there are more of us breathing here on earth now than have ever stood on this earth breathing throughout history combined.
We each, if we choose to and according to our capacity, know something unique about the stream of life within which we exist. Few, in my estimation, have the capacity to conceive of a picture bigger than what lies within our own intimate sphere – which is perhaps mostly defined by the limiting perception of what could be called ‘ego’.
To have suffered greatly when physically powerless against forces that harm us – and then still come out with the powers of our mind to reach to the edges of what can be known about life as a whole – is, I believe, a great gift – and you have it.
I don’t think we need to name love – love. When I left home at age 18 – looking back – I see I was already deeply in ‘search mode’. I was oblivious to my own self-past. I moved forward – yes, like a leave on the surface of a great flowing river.
But I had NOT lost myself through what I had been through. I just did not ever THINK about my past. My anatomy had been formed to LIVE – to move forward in time – breath by breath. I carried no conscious weight of pondering what had happened to me. I look back and know how much having done so would have slowed me down. It probably would have destroyed me because nobody, anywhere, helped me by giving me the information I needed to even begin to conceive of how what had been done to me for those horrifying 18 years had affected me.
Hence, the blessings of having continued to survive – even against advanced, aggressive breast cancer 5 years ago – to the moment I am in today. Research had to advance ‘the facts’. Technology also had to advance so that I – if I can say, we – could receive ‘from the cosmos’ what we so profoundly and positively DESERVE to know about our true reality.
To be a trauma-changed person IS a reality we live with. And, NO – this, as you mention it – is NOT BAD:
“The universe is imbued with order and symmetries we can’t possibly comprehend: Teicher describes our response to abuse as a “specific” neural pathway. Is this necessarily bad?”
It is beautiful.
I need to say also, that while our trauma-changed physiological survival is beautiful – we need to decide as a species if this is the way we want to force unfortunates to exist. My choice is NO – we can do so much better – and we owe the future generations MORE. We can choose for every one of us to evolve FORWARD!
Sharing one of my favorite songs –
Hi,
I just had a quick question in regards to your website. If you could email me at your convenience that would be great!
Thanks,
Katie
I prefer communication about the blog on the blog – if question is personal just state so when you leave me another comment and I will not post it – thanks
Hi there, Linda!
Thanks for the good laugh I got from your ingenious “rake curtain rod” on your article dated 12-6-2011. You seem like a clever, creative person. I’m enjoying reading your blogs and checking out your site here.
Shelley from Ohio
Thanks! Sometimes I have to find humor along with my gratitude! I hung a chili ristra from chilies I grew in the garden last summer from the rake head. It can all come down when the warm weather returns!!
Refers to this post: +USEFUL INGENUITY (with a sense of humor!)
at
https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/useful-ingenuity-with-a-sense-of-humor/
THANKS FOR YOUR KIND AND WARM WELCOME
AGAIN, I AM EXPECTING MY FIRST GRANDCHILD
IN CASE YOU CANNOT RECALL WHO I AM WHICH IS LIKELY
IT IS IMPERATIVE TO END THE DRAMA 🙂
PLEASE CAN YOU RECOMMEND BOOKS FOR ME TO RESEARCH AND READ – I WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT RECOVERY FROM POST TR STRESS DIS – WHEN I REALIZED THAT IT WAS THAT “POST TR STR DIS” THE BELLS WENT OFF – I BELIEVE I CAN LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT THE DRAMA WITH SOME HELP AND GUIDANCE
KAREN BECK AWAITS YOUR RESPONSE
LOVE AND THANKS
Hi there again, and “YUP!” I remember!!
Trauma drama – I believe that’s what we get caught into when the actual traumas don’t have words! We ACT them out – or rather the trauma acts itself out on the stage that just so happens to be our own precious lives – and the lives of those we love.
I will FIRST recommend this book — and hopefully you can either get it from your local library, find it in a local bookstore — or click on the link after this title and order it from Amazon.com. It is
Parenting From the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell
available at
This is NOT an easy read book, but I know you can do it! It covers ALL the BASICS about where the drama comes into our lives (and builds our body and our brain – at the same time the trauma BUILDS ITSELF right into us!) from the time we were very little, and it describes how we can change all of this for the next generation!!
PLEASE see if you can get this book! Dr. Siegel is a developmental neuroscientist — and knows his stuff!
The trick is NOT to overwhelm yourself as you read it. Keep a journal handy as you go and give yourself the time you need to write things down that you FEEL and THINK as you read. If at all possible, have someone be there for you for support. A therapist would be great, but most of us don’t have one of THOSE — so a close friend or family member who will NOT interfere with your own learning!
You mention post-traumatic stress (PTSD) – well, that’s in our BODY big time — our STRESS RESPONSE is on ONE END and our calm-connection response is on the other end! (I picture this just like a tug-o-war with a rope and pull this way-that way on the ends of it). We hear a LOT about the stress response, but not about the other end of it — the calm-connection end.
The connection part means our safe and secure attachment people in our lives! If the same person we sometimes feel safe, calm and connected to is ALSO the one that (in our trauma dramas) hurts us in ANY way — then we can get really, really ‘messed up-mixed up’!
So, for a great start try to get this book I mention — as soon as possible! How dos that sound?? let me know!!!
i would like to learn as much as i can about how to end the trauma – my first grandchild is about to be born – without going into detail, i feel that it is God sent that i learn about you now
namaste
karen beck
Glad to hear from you, Karen – and welcome!! There is so much information on my blog — and please feel free to ask any questions via a comment here! You can also ask that I not publish your comments, and I will keep them private and respond to you back via your email if you like. That way perhaps I can find certain posts and pages on the blog that I can recommend in response to any particular questions you might have.
At 59, I am just now a grandmother to my first grandchild — and I have been so relieved and so proud of my daughter and her husband! They are NOT passing trauma down to their son, the next generation!!
Sometimes you can type words into a Google search to find things on the blog – I have even had to start doing that myself! So I put in “stopthestorm” along with say, “attachment” and then find posts here that way.
Again, I am so happy you have found this blog – and thank you for your comment! All the best, Linda – alchemynow
Dear Linda,
I am a trauma specialist with the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. I train advocates, child protective service workers, mental health professionals and others how to enhance their work with survivors of interpersonal trauma.
I was doing some research on brain development in childhood and the effect of trauma and stumbled upon your blog. I would love to be able to just write a paragraph about your blog and then link to it on a blog posting on the blog that I use to disseminate information on trauma and the project I am working on here in NH. Please let me know if this would be acceptable to you.
Thank you so much for being willing to share your experience and your knowledge. This is very valuable information that I hope the people that I work with will also pass onto survivors.
With best regards,
Linda Douglas
I am happy you passed through this blog’s doorway — and post away, would love the company coming to visit! How trauma changes physiological development — especially birth to one — is nearly beyond belief! But it’s real, so very real.
Thanks so much for your note, and hope to see you here again!!!! My best to you for the important work you are doing!
Linda, I have come across your blog while beginning my research for a paper on Dissociative Identity Disorder. Specifically, I am looking for primary source documents regarding the neurobiological underpinnings of the disease, but these have proven quite difficult to locate. Frustrated with my lack of progress, I did what any college student would do in my position and I began arbitrarily Googling. I came across your post entitled “Early Trauma Builds Dissociation into the Brain,” and I found your description of the earliest onset of dissociation in a young brain quite interesting. It seems to be the beginning to the basic direction I am hoping to go in with my research. I realize that a lot of the content comes from your own personal experience and subsequent conclusions, but I am wondering if you may be able to offer me any further insight, or suggest a source where I can find a bit more depth in the topic? Either way, I enjoyed reading the article and I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Thank you!
– K. O’Brien
Hello there. I apologize for my delayed response, have been dealing with a horrible computer virus!! My first in 12 years, and very nasty!
You don’t say what level of coursework you are writing for — so not sure how detailed you wish to investigate. My first suggestion (if this works) is to search here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
It brings up 2602 research articles.
I do not believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder EVER happens without a person having a history of infant-child abuse. Any Google search on child abuse-infant abuse-brain development-dissociation will bring you to useful info.
Please stop by here with specific questions should you have some come up — I do not trust my computer at the moment though the virus is not appearing on my screen — have lots of emails yet to check in case it’s hiding in the wings! Many thanks for stopping by! There’s lots of info on this blog about dissociation, also!
Linda,
Have you written a book? Is your website a series of blogs…sorry to sound ignorant, I just had trouble navigating the site and figuring it out. Would love to read more of what you have written.
I am writing a paper on RAD and came across you website as a result of a Google search. I am fascinated with attachment disorders, particularly since I have been diagnosed with clinincal depression and disorganized/disoriented attachment.
My mother was a screaming maniac when I was a kid. I was physically little- and she was an Amazon, 6 ft tall and 300 pounds. She terrified me and then sometime later would want me to be physically close and affectionate. I couldn’t do it- leading to more maniacal rage. To this day, I tolerate her and love her but I do not touch her. Reading your information has been very helpful in understanding this problem even though I have discussed it interminably with my wonderful psychologist of 18 years.
Thank you for letting others know…so they can understand too.
No book yet — I openly admit I need HELP in organizing material into some kind of succinct, linear format. All the information is at present simply in blog format. Perhaps a book(s) will grow eventually out of a question and answer format — with my sister’s and my daughter’s help.
My inability to format information is connected to my own RAD, disorganization-disorientation, dissociation, etc.
Sounds like you mother was no more able to regulate her emotions (and behavior) than my mother was. No doubt her mother was NOT able to do her job correctly with your mother, either. There is LOTS of information on this blog about what this did to us.
You can use the search feature on the blog and then scan through the results that pop up. Dr. Allan Schore’s work is central. I would recommend Dr. Bruce Perry’s book, “The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog” for best readability on developmental brain changes.
I would say you are completely on the right track if you already know about adult insecure attachment!!
WOW, I had no idea that my “monster”, I mean “mother”, (that constantly told me I cost,$10,000.00 of her hard earn’d $, she’d wasted her entire retirement fund on me & my adoption) told me almost daily I should’ve never been born! She adopted me when I was 3 days old along with her 13-year younger husband that was an alcoholic since his early teens. She was in her mid 20’s when she had an etopic pregnancy& in those days(1940’s)she was given a complete hysterectomy. Her husband & she had tried to adopt once before my adoption.
They had the baby Laura for almost the full 6 months when the young parents decided to get married & they came and took their daughter back to be with her biological parents(NP)/with only a few days left for Mary Ann (my adoptive Mother)& Kelly (my adoptive Father(AP), by law they had to give the baby back to the natural parents(NP).
Well (my Obstetrician), Dr.Frank Norris, somehow knew both sets of my NP & old AP, he put, “the wheels in motion.” He called Mary Ann & Kelly,(AP)& Bradford&Josephine (my100%Natural Parents) Lagomarsino, who had my older brother Dino & my 2 yr,1month,1day older sister Gina, I equalled #3 in the gene pool. Gee Thankx Dr.Norris, for such a great background check on family substance? He delivered me into the hands of a woman that never once physically touched me but I will go to my grave with the scars she gave me over a 14 year span of time then I moved out to get away from her vicious constant comments & manipulation games along with sick guilt games, “why don’t You love me? I’ve done nothing but love you and all you do is hate me?? What did I ever do to deserve this?”
And cry,boy,could she cry. I had learned at a very early age that when introduced to new comer’s , “This is my “ADOPTED DAUGHTER, Lee Ann.” It felt as though, it was the judge, handing out a death sentence, it just sounded so cold to a small child. So insignificant,it made me feel as if I was an object, purchased! for her to try an vicariously live her obviously bane existence through me.
Her marriage on the rocks now, with me age 5 or 6 yrs old, I lost my 2nd dad (since birth)& we left Pacifica, headed up to Lake County, to live with Mary Ann’s mother who was around 80 yrs old. By the age of 7, a creepy old man & his wife had befriended Mary Ann & Babka. They invited us over to their place just a dirt road away from where we lived, they had a Winnabago, well 2 make a short story, even shorter, I was molested N’ that, “big barbie mobile”
I was so excited to get to look inside of (I was 7yrs old), I couldn’t even talk about it because I had been raised to always respect my elders, and have manners if nothing else. I at 7 had some how convinced myself that I had obviously done something to make that old man do those gross things to me? Finally 3 days later after cry’n lots of day, I told Mary Ann: she simply told me, “That never happened!!”
What kind of a mother would brush her child off like that? Or, answer me this question?! Why or what type of deviant personality, would tell a small child that their real mother tried to abort them with a coat hanger? I didn’t even know what an abortion was till school and talking to other kids?
Ok, I am exhausted, and kind of feel ill. Mary Ann’s passed away 12/28/2001 but I still feel all that guilt she raised me with when I speak upon her name in a bad light. How can she still have such a hold on my feelings of guilt & shame? She’z in her grave?? I’ve put myself through anger management class’s and pray’d about it tried to forgive everyone that’s done bad things to me in my life? Why is this wicked woman still infecting my life? and why??
Above all I would hope today that when people with an infant-childhood such as yours find this blog that they have at least some small sense that they have found a home within a family that can not only hear what you are saying, but both understand you and feel the greatest kindness, compassion, love and respect in response to you and to your words.
I hope you don’t mind that I included some spaces as pauses in your writing, meant only to give us room to take a breath within your powerful story.
I think I can assure you, being the daughter of an insanely abusive mother who hated me from the time I was born, that my mother will never leave me completely within my lifetime. Researchers are finding that of all the forms of infant-child abuse, verbal abuse by itself can be the most devastating. Add on top of that all the horrors of torture and torment, there is absolutely no way that we can ever expect ourselves not to be processing what was done to us and how that changed us for the rest of our lives.
I never think in terms of forgiveness. I think in terms of what I call INFORMED COMPASSION. People say that “Knowledge is power” and “The truth shall set you free” and I believe this.
You were in my thoughts while I wrote my post today (long-worded as it is), and I hope that perhaps there might be something in there that can be of use to you today. I titled it +THE LIFE ENHANCING NATURE OF SHARED THOUGHTS and you can click on this link to get there from here:
https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/the-life-enhancing-nature-of-shared-thoughts/
Traumas keep their hold on we humans for a reason. We are supposed to be able to learn something from trauma that can be used in the future to help ourselves and others to stay alive. One of the biggest problems that comes from histories with severe infant-child abuse is that NOTHING USEFUL CAN BE LEARNED from it — at least not in the OLD ways of thinking.
There are NEW ways to begin to think about infant-child abuse trauma, and we can find that information, knowledge, freedom and power on the internet. I hope you will have some time in the future to click around on this site and read whatever seems to relate to what you have been through and about what you KNOW — and that’s A LOT!
You are an amazingly strong survivor!!! It is an honor to have you come visit, and please feel free to comment whenever you wish. You are not alone!
Merry Christmas Linda. Hope your Holidays are peaceful and Blessed! I will be traveling so might not stop by here untill after the holidays. Wanted to pass on my good wishes!
Thank you! Travel safely, and have a wonderful and happy holiday!!
Hi,
I came across this blog complements of a WordPress feature that suggests blogs that might interest me.
I am taking part in an Amazon parenting forum that recently formed with the goal of gathering grass roots support for a total ban on corporal punishment in our country. Scanning this blog gave me the idea that there was a natural fit between out efforts.
I would like to extend an invitation to people to join our fledgling grass roots group and share your experiences and ideas.
http://bit.ly/5u8Kh1
YES! Thank you, and I’ll be there!! Linda – alchemynow
Please post the link to your petition — where do I find it?
Hi Linda, Welcome back! Hope you had a restful vacation.
Thank you! It was wonderful seeing family and ‘country side’!
I found this amoung my papers today. I purchased it online several months ago. Although it is old, I could relate. It will not add much to your work but you might find it interesting just from an FYI perspective.
Take good care.
Clinical Social Work Journal
Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring 1991
A TOKEN OF LOVING:
FROM MELANCHOLIA TO MOURNING
Gall K. Golden, Ed.D.,
Melvyn A. Hill, Ph.D.
Abstract This paper explores the work of mourning for what was missing in childhood. Specifically, it addresses patients who did not have good enough parents and who present in treatment in a state of melancholy or despair. The paper delineates phases of the treatment process and highlights Winnicott”s token of loving as the vehicle of healing in the therapeutic relationship. Through dreams and case material the paper illustrates the process of recovery.
Thank you. I will take a look at it for sure! Much appreciated, Linda
….Well, I guess I’ll have to wait until perhaps the end of this summer of traveling — and see what happens then — because perhaps I could have the library here call this article in for me!!
Why did you stay with your parents until you were 21 years old? Many kids from abusive homes will leave early and actually prefer living on the streets rather than return to the home.
I had to finish high school and I did that at the age of 21 from Special Education. For many years I was in fear because of the severe abuse. The life was almost taken away two times and I had no memory of that incident until I went into the army of finding that answer in medical papers. In Donora, PA. it’s a very small town with about 100 resident in that area. Pittsburgh, PA. was not that far, but far enough that I was afraid of not knowing where it was located. SEE NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINE ABOUT MY LIFE AND WORKS ON Child Abuse.
Fear plays a big part of not leaving an abusive home. Especialey the severe abuse for 20 years. I was afraid and afraid of being found and returned to an abusive home. After being in the army and stayed in Portland, Oregon, I was looking around me in fear that my abusive mother might be around and to drag me home to be abuse more.
To learn more of who I am and the life I had, please see my web page. Please pass my story to anyone you wish to.
It might be an educational part for other survival to not repeat the abuse they endured as they were children. Have children not to do the gangs, drugs, alcohol, disrespect the parents or abuse their children. Paul M. McLaughlin knows what child abuse is about.
http://www.efn.org/~scan
scan@efn.org
Paul M. McLaughlin
Stop Child Abuse NOW!
298 Hunington Ave.
Eugene, Oregon 97405-4055
Linda, I have 2 completely unrelated questions.
1. Who is Ernie? He is mentioned many times in your writing but I have not found a place where his significance is explained.
2. Why did you stay with your parents until you were 18 years old? Many kids from abusive homes will leave early and actually prefer living on the streets rather than return to the home. I am not suggesting that you should have left–just wondering if you ever thought about leaving as a way to escape the constant abuse.
Ernie is a very real person, 14 years older than I am, to whom I have been (and still am) very much attached for the past 9 years. I do not consider that I will ever be free to write completely about the relationship unless he is no longer living in this world — if even then. I can say that through this difficult relationship I was motivated to research the truth about my inner pain and discovered the infant – 2 year old brain developmental changes as they manifest in insecure attachments as the foundational truth about everything I experience in life. In this way, though I do not live with him and probably never will, Ernie is both the love of my life and my muse.
I will attempt to answer your second question in a separate post because the answer is extremely complex. Thank you for asking the question. It is an important one.