++++

Roadmap to Resilience – 23 step flow chart

http://janeellenstevens.com/ACEsRoadmaptoResilience.html

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Monday, February 15, 2016.  Good news!  There is an educational version of Paper Tigers coming available March 15^th for purchase!  (See below)

On my side of the snow bank I am asking….  What is Social Justice – and what does it have to do with “The Big Aces Movement?”

I asked my daughter about this today because she works “in the field.”  She replied to me with this:

++

Laura Porter draws on the term without exactly defining it; I think that this is a fine broad definition, but doesn’t immediately seem obvious why it applies to ACEs even though intuitively I know it does.

The NEAR@Home Toolkit for home visitors includes this information on pgs 9-10:

SOCIAL JUSTICE – PARENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW THE MOST POWERFUL DETERMINANT OF THEIR CHILDREN’S FUTURE HEALTH, SAFETY AND PRODUCTIVITY.

The most powerful people for reducing ACE scores in the next generation are parenting adults.  Parents have the most opportunity and the most potential for changing the trajectory of the public’s health for generations. But parents must actually know about ACEs and their effects in order to realize this potential.

We used to think that a person who experienced one type of adversity – for example, physical abuse – as a child was more likely to pass that type of adversity on to their children. In other words, more likely to physically abuse their children. But, data about ACEs shows that intergenerational transmission is not that simple. Normal responses to experiencing maltreatment during development can, for example, include depression, risk for alcohol dependence, and difficulty with emotional regulation that can lead to relationship problems. These risks, when manifested, become ACEs for the next generation. Parents can do a great job protecting their children from physical abuse, and if they don’t know the importance of also protecting their children from other experiences that generate childhood toxic stress, they don’t have the opportunity to protect their children from the effects of that stress.

Because ACEs can affect emotional state, behavior, and illness, adult history of ACEs can affect the climate inside a family or household. Parenting adults may affect this climate through over-disclosure or through avoidance (including numbing of emotions and avoiding reminders of past experience) or through a chronic illness that can make it difficult to actively engage with children.

Parents who know the impact of ACEs and have a chance to reconstruct personal narrative about their lives can make meaning from their experiences and intentionally choose a more protected developmental path for their children. They also report feeling more self-worth and fulfillment in their lives.

One, parent, after learning about ACEs and having a chance to talk with other parents about her experience reports:  “The ACE Study gave me my humanity – my mind and body adapted to the experience I had as a child just like everyone else’s did. I just had more adversity.”

Another parent reports: “I feel human now. When I want something for my children, people know it’s because I want something better for them than I had for myself.”

When we avoid talking about ACEs, we may inadvertently be sending a message that people should be ashamed of their childhood experiences. Shame can increase risk of intergenerational transmission because it reinforces one of the pathways for transmission: avoidance. A parent may re-create the emotional conditions of past adversity without consciously choosing this path for her children. People need to have an opportunity to appropriately and voluntarily share information about their personal histories as a part of a healing process.

Home visiting professionals have relationships with clients over the course of many years. They are highly skilled in building trust and creating safe spaces for meaningful conversations, and they are practiced in the art of family support. Adopting a protocol of asking, listening, affirming and remembering the life experience of each parent, including her ACE history, can be an important part of strengthening each family.

++

And this

This site seems to have good info; maybe this would fall in the realm of unequal access to health care:

Pachamama Alliance | Protecting the source, inspiring the future

++

And this

This is a decent place for an intro to social determinants of health:

Social Determinants of Health | Healthy People 2020

++

Using these terms for a Google search brings up many related pages – “aces laura porter prisons” and “aces laura porter social justice.”

++++

Here is the info on educational purchase of Paper Tigers –

KPJR Films is proud to present the highly anticipated, educational version of the ACEs documentary Paper Tigers.

Directed by James Redford (The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia, Resilience), Paper Tigers follows a year in the life of an alternative high school that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, becoming a promising model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affect families.

The educational version will feature the original, 102-minute version of the Paper Tigers feature film on DVD with Spanish subtitles and SDH captions; a video toolkit of 5 unique and educational segments including:  “What is ACEs;” “How To Connect With Students;”  “Lighthouse Parenting;” and “The Biology of Toxic Stress.”  In addition, the Paper Tigers facilitation discussion guide developed by Prevent Child Abuse America is available for downloading.

Plus, you can get a sneak peak at “Resilience”, the yet to be released KPJR Film. (www.resiliencemovie.com)

Add the Paper Tigers educational version to your library and utilize it for ongoing educational, individual and public screening use for years to come!

DVD Pricing

K-12 / Public Library: $75
University / Non-Profit: $350

Also Available on Streaming for Your School!

• Use Tugg’s Educational Streaming (EVOD) platform to make Paper Tigers available to all your students, faculty, and staff via our streaming platform.
• Gain access to educator tools – clipping, annotating, playlists, searchable transcripts, and more!
• The Educational Purchase License of Paper Tigers will be available to ship starting on March 15th, 2016 for K-12, University, and Public Library institutions. This license will allow your institution to keep Paper Tigers and host multiple screenings of it in the future.
• Interested in learning more? Contact Tugg Inc. at edu@tugginc.com for a demo.
• http://licenses.tugg.com/products/paper-tigers

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

 

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Friday, February 5, 2016.   It seems I have found what I was looking for on the day in April 2009 I listened to the encouragement of my sister and began this Stop the Storm blog!  Read on….

Please take a look at the website information below if you are interested in partnering with others to form a grassroots community network to affect trauma healing WHERE YOU LIVE.

++

Resilience Trumps Aces

I sent a note this week via the contact email at the Paper Tigers Movie website inquiring about the existence of a community healing trauma group in Walla Walla, WA where this movie was created and impressively received a response providing me with their Resilience Trumps Aces website link (below) within 24 hours.

On their website pages you will find information on healing community through information generated from the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, such as is presented in this video:

How Does a Community Become Trauma Informed?

This page describes The Ten ACEs

This page on Resilience lists two links:  Protective Factors and 42 ways to build resilience — All Roads Lead to Resilience

Moving on along the listing at the top of their website you will find headings such as

+ We are CRI — Children’s Resilience Initiative:

“The Children’s Resilience Initiative™ (CRI) is working to increase the positive, resilience-building experiences in the lives of the children, parents and families in our community.”

“Empowering community understanding of the forces that shape us and our children.”

+ Mission & Vision

Vision: “All young people thrive and parents raise their children with consistency and nurturance to develop lasting resilience in the community as a whole.”

Mission:  “Mobilizing the community through dialogue to radically reduce the number of adverse childhood experiences while building resilience and a more effective service delivery system.”

This page includes —

“What’s New?  New Course Offering!  – Emotional Mastery — Builds on the neuroscience of brain plasticity!”

+ Their services, including Presentations – Other Services including Technical Assistance and Telephone Consultations

+ Webinars — Webinars cover brain development, ACE research, resilience and community response and action steps.

Webinars provide an overview of the ACE study, brain development, and Resilience models, with examples of how Initiative partners have embedded the principles into organizational practice.

Contact Teri Barila at (509) 301-2488

+ Resources – including websites, powerpoints, research, and many other links to vital information related to community trauma healing, vitality and health

+ On this page you will find their research report and the following statement — Resilience in Action

“We are dedicated to bringing resilience strategies into our community and our schools. This page illustrates our partnership with Lincoln High School and The Health Center. Please go back up to “Resilience in Action” on the menu bar to check out our new partnership with our local elementary schools and Head Start Program.”

+ They also have a great healing trauma – healthy community —  Resilience Store (You might wish to open this in a separate tab/window as it does not seem to include a link back to their main webpage – or just hit your ‘back’ button.)

+ And, of course — Contact Resilience Trumps ACEs page!

+++++++++++++++++

I just telephone Teri at the listed contact number with some of my own questions – trying to get a few of my own ACEs info ducks in a row.

++

If you search on YouTube you can find a host of excellent videos on ACEs in Washington along with other talks related to the work In the state of Washington being done by Laura Porter (who resides in Olympia, WA).  Teri just told me that 2 years ago the state of Washington removed all funding for the work being done in that state’s 39 counties along these lines.  Prior to this withdrawal of funding Teri worked with Laura Porter for 18 years.  (It was $2 million that funded the ACE work in Washington state’s 39 counties.  Note there are more millionaires per capita in Seattle than in any other city in our nation….)

This is the link to Laura’s website – Ace Interface – Building Self Healing Communities

Included in Laura Porter’s work is the Ace Interface Master Trainer Education

and the ACE Fitness.org site

++

Jane Steven’s website – Aces Too High – is another critically important source as her work connects the nation along these lines

This is the website where Robert Redford discovered ACE education and healing work that led to the creation of the Paper Tigers movie – about the work with students at Lincoln Alternative High School in Walla Walla!

++

Well, yes, I seem to have come around full circle – and now sufficiently dizzy enough to end this post!!

ANYONE in ANY community who wants to bring together a community to begin to talk about high ACE scores and what that means – along with resiliency and what THAT means – within a community will find all the related links right here in this post!!

NOBODY needs to set off of their own to rediscover the proverbial wheel!!  I would suggest a beginning be made in any community with the organization of a screening of the Paper Tigers movie!  All the information needed to make that happen is at this link!!

++

As for myself and my future, I am very seriously considering a relocation to Walla Walla this coming September.  I can’t really comprehend what it will take for me to actually MOVE there – but “Where there’s a will there’s a way!”

I want to learn from the best – and as far as I can tell that BEST is not only out there in the state of Washington, but is firmly established in Walla Walla itself.

Time – certainly – will tell.  If I make it out there to Walla Walla, I will be content to simply join their community team, begin learning, and go to work on anything they might have for me to do to help with their amazing work!

++++

NOW AVAILABLE!!  IMPORTANT!

Here is the info on educational purchase of Paper Tigers –

KPJR Films is proud to present the highly anticipated, educational version of the ACEs documentary Paper Tigers.

Directed by James Redford (The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia, Resilience), Paper Tigers follows a year in the life of an alternative high school that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, becoming a promising model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affect families.

The educational version will feature the original, 102-minute version of the Paper Tigers feature film on DVD with Spanish subtitles and SDH captions; a video toolkit of 5 unique and educational segments including:  “What is ACEs;” “How To Connect With Students;”  “Lighthouse Parenting;” and “The Biology of Toxic Stress.”  In addition, the Paper Tigers facilitation discussion guide developed by Prevent Child Abuse America is available for downloading.

Plus, you can get a sneak peak at “Resilience”, the yet to be released KPJR Film. (www.resiliencemovie.com)

Add the Paper Tigers educational version to your library and utilize it for ongoing educational, individual and public screening use for years to come!

DVD Pricing

K-12 / Public Library: $75
University / Non-Profit: $350

Also Available on Streaming for Your School!

• Use Tugg’s Educational Streaming (EVOD) platform to make Paper Tigers available to all your students, faculty, and staff via our streaming platform.
• Gain access to educator tools – clipping, annotating, playlists, searchable transcripts, and more!
• The Educational Purchase License of Paper Tigers will be available to ship starting on March 15th, 2016 for K-12, University, and Public Library institutions. This license will allow your institution to keep Paper Tigers and host multiple screenings of it in the future.
• Interested in learning more? Contact Tugg Inc. at edu@tugginc.com for a demo.

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

 

 

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Thursday, February 4, 2016. Ah, time.  Ah, love.  Ah, life.  We tough and fragile beings.  We of a social species so often, it seems, broken off from wider family connections and community in so many ways and for so many complicated reasons.

On Monday afternoon it happened again.  The pounding, racing, thumping booms of wild young children in the apartment above me became more than I could bear after three long and very noisy hours.

I was faced again with a decision about how I was going to react.  Call management again?  This would be the 4^th time apartment personnel would have visited that family above me.  Call the police with a 3^rd noise complaint?

I knew that if I chose either one of those two options that family would probably be evicted – this time.  My 3^rd option?  Drag myself up the stairs and knock on their door.

I chose this option.

I REALLY have believed for these awful months that my own anxiety (disability) would prevent me from being able to be calm, friendly, reasonable should I ever go confront the family on my own.  I COULD not NOT go talk to them this time.

Up I went.

Knock, Knock.

++

King James Bible
Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”

++

I could fault myself, shame myself, for taking the other steps I have taken up to this point.  But I don’t.  I won’t.  Somehow I strongly sensed all along that the process in motion in this continuing situation had its own timing.

Two young women answered the door.  One beautiful young woman with her 3-year-old son beside her and her precious 4-week-old infant in her arms.  She is married to the cousin of the husband of the other slightly older woman standing beside her (who lives in an apartment across the street and was visiting) with her 3 1/2 –year old daughter and son who turned 5 last Thanksgiving.

Scary.

This was one of those times where there is nowhere to go but forward, so forward we went in spite of anything else – and in fact – because of everything else.  I stood just inside the open door of the upper neighbor’s apartment for two hours talking to the women and to the wonderful little children.

Both of these women came up to Fargo to join their husbands who had come several months earlier to get sheet rocking jobs.  The mother of the infant is from Albuquerque.  The other woman from Las Vegas, Nevada.  They only know one another.

The truth (just as I had sensed it) really has been that the mother of the newborn misses her huge family down south terribly.  She is very sad here.  Very lonely.  And after having just spent 14 years living on the Mexican-American borderline I know how close those families are!!  NO new mother should be without her family where the relationships are strong and happy and full of love.

And that baby, and his little brother, need to be in the arms of grandmas and grandpas and aunties and uncles — as does their mother.

So this woman, even as she admitted it to me, had WANTED to be evicted.  She WANTS to leave and GO HOME to her family, to the sunshine.  There are no jobs down there, and this woman has known she could not ask her husband to give up his job to leave with her.  So I was SUPPOSED to get them thrown out!!

Either way, evicted or walking away from the lease, she told me that they would have had to pay every month’s rent until the lease ran out and lose another $300.  (They found another alternative, it seems!)

Once this became very clear, in the words of the young mother, I could look her straight in her eyes and say, “Well, dear!  It looks as though we are BOTH stuck here so we better figure this out together.”

And we have.  By the time those two hours had gone by the 2^nd woman and the three children were down in my apartment checking out my grandsons’ collection of toys.  The next day I found the church in town that has a Spanish mass and an outreach nun named Sister Lucy who I have heard is an ANGEL with people.

Yesterday I went upstairs to give the young mom that info.  As I was leaving I told her I would be back soon to bring her flowers.  I told her that because of her precious newborn she CANNOT be sad.  She HAS to be happy!

It has been very quiet and peaceful up there.  But even then the mother hen part of me worries that perhaps that momma is TOO SAD trapped in this place.  I KNOW what that’s like – but her case is so much more important – in the bigger picture of ongoing life – than mine is.  She is the mother of a newborn.

In my simple way of seeing things, there is really very little more harmful to a newborn than to have an anxious/depressed mother.  According to “developmental neuroscientist” Dr. Alan N. Schore, among the incredibly important and very rapid key brain growth processes birth to age one is the development of the left brain “happiness center.”

The neurons that WOULD be marshaled to build that brain region in an infant’s brain will either DIE or be recruited in other brain areas during that year – IF!!!!!!  Depression prevents a newborn’s mother from even being able to SEE the “bulk” of the joy in her infant’s face and actions.  She will therefore be unable to respond to her infant’s joy as needed to build that happiness center in the best way possible.

The building of that center happens during one of those “critical window” of development.  Once that stage has passed, that’s that.

Hence – my bringing her flowers.  Hence – evidently – the timing of this odd intervention of mine.  Today the young mother invited me in.  I stayed a short time, long enough for her to tell me that her husband “is not really that happy with the way things are working out with his job.”  In two weeks, she told me, they will be returning to New Mexico – perhaps not to come back up here.

++

Joy won.  Sometimes the pathways through our lives are not all laid out from our point of view.  In God’s world?  Oh, yes, they are!

I was able to tell the momma today something that has been “in my heart” to say to her.  Beautiful, absolutely beautiful perfect young mother that she is.

I told her that someday she will be the matriarch of her family.  We never know what life is going to bring us.  Sometimes times get hard.  Really really hard.  And we need to be really really strong.

I told her that it was, to me, a very good and courageous thing for her to come up to this place with her husband.  I told her that by being here she is getting stronger, and she is finding out more about how strong she really is.  She smiled and nodded her head.  She agreed.  I also told her that there is nobody on God’s glorious earth more important that mothers!

Oh, and Walmart had small herb plants in their fresh vegetable section!  I bought a small mint which I now have repotted and sitting under its own desk lamp bright light.  Then I found a little plastic applesauce cup (I save all such things.  Being a crafter there is always something I can use anything and everything for!), put a little cold water into the cup, snipped off the newest leaf tips from the mint, put them in the water and brought them to momma.

“Here!  You can just squish a little of these leaves and smell them if you want to!  They smell just like summer!”

Yup.  We are both smiling.  And I betcha anything that lovely little family – is going home!

+

There is another man of the family living up there who will continue to work in Fargo and will stay in the apartment.  Perhaps others they know down south will join him in the future.  There are LOTS of jobs in this harsh place.  I now call the people who come here to fill them from American places “economic refugees.”  There are also LOTS of international refugees and immigrants coming here.  All of them, I have no doubt, with HORRIFIC trauma histories.

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

 

 

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Saturday, January 30, 2016.  I am so grateful that somehow the timing of my need to know the truth about how what happened to me – the trauma of it for the first 18 years of my life – affected me that the SCIENCE was in the process of not only learning these kinds of facts but also that the miracle of the internet made the information accessible to me!!

And now I am refining my gratitude to include how amazing – and GOOD – it was that I had spent those 4 or 5 years studying what I could find about trauma and developmental neuroscience before I began to encounter the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research study and its findings.

I think this is all part of MY destiny.  I think these new learnings are a part of the destiny of the entire human race!  We are in the early years of the global maturation of the human race toward building for ourselves a peaceful, equitable world civilization.

++

I just watched (yet again) what I believe to be the best presentation of the CDC ACE study research and application of those findings to healing – well – most ALL OF US that I think can be located anywhere on the planet!  Adverse Childhood Experience: ACES — Laura Porter

I just paused a YouTube video presented by the Institute for Safe Families of a talk given by the doctor who designed the CDC ACE study so I could write this brief post.

PLEASE at least watch Laura’s video!  There is nothing more important for us to know about intergenerational trauma and its healing!  Laura’s talk is clear and easy to understand – and if you are not already aware of the ACEs info along with ways to implement healing changes – you are in for a treat!

Need to know info!

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

 

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Tuesday, December 22, 2015.  I feel I need to apologize for writing so few posts during these months of my tenure up north here in North Dakota, but I also know no apology is needed.  There are simply times and seasons of life.  At least now we have passed in this hemisphere into the time of growing day length.  I am happy for that although several months of winter still lie waiting ahead.

This winter has been very warm.  That is a good thing.  Yet it may also be a bad thing.  I am not one who knows about such things.  I am a wonderer.  (A wanderer, too, I must admit.)

I am into my third year away from my adopted Arizona-Mexican border land that was so kind to me for fourteen years.  I still have no real idea what lies ahead for me in my life.  Will I return there next September after my lease here is up?  Time.  It will tell.

Meanwhile I continue to battle with the noise from the apartment above me that is so unsettling to my so-sound-sensitive ears.  Things seem to be better – most of the time – and I have not yet had to call the police with a noise complaint as the apartment managers suggested that I do on November 9^th.  It is not the children’s fault up there who are not put to bed before midnight and who are allowed to sleep until noon.

I have contacted Head Start to see if they will send me some information I can anonymously slip under the door up there.  It has been suggested that if a time approaches when my own well-being means a noise complaint must be made that I call social services first.  I don’t want to do that, either.

I do pray for myself – and for that family up there – and for the world – and for EVERYTHING!  Which brings me to the point of mentioning what has inspired me to finally attempt to place a few words on the blog this evening.

Someone on my Facebook feed posted this quote.  “Star of the West” was an early magazine published in the United States.  I don’t know how to access those to see if I could find the volume the following appeared in.

What I do know as a very high ACE score, terrible child abuse survivor for the first 18 years of my life, is that trauma seriously impacted every stage of my early development so that now I am a Trauma Altered Development person (my friend calls this being a tadpole).

This means that my nervous system/brain, stress response system, immune system, etc. is different – entirely different – than would have been the case if someone had intervened, stopped that abuse, rescued me and my siblings from our severely mentally ill psychotic mother.

This means – in regard to this quote I am posting – that very often it is impossible – IMPOSSIBLE for me – and for many ‘tadpoles’ like me – to “simply” change our “mood.”  We experience our life differently than other people do through absolutely NO FAULT of our own!!!

In my older age I am experiencing cumulative effects of the traumas in my life and am now “on disability” for them.  I cannot simply “forget the past” and “be OK.”  I cannot will myself to “be happy.”  I work every moment of my existence to endure – and endure some more – and endure….

Some moments and hours, some days, are better and easier than others are.  Being down south, as readers mostly know, was very much better for me than is being up here in an apartment, in a city, in this climate, etc.  I can’t get out to see friends, work in my garden, more etc!!!!!

So – here is the quote!!  This is what I do in every way I possibly can.  It includes why I came back up here, so that I could help my daughter and my little grandsons in any way that I can, especially now at this juncture in the family’s lifespan.

But – still – there is NOTHING easy about my life right now.  True, “things could be much worse,” but knowing that is no panacea for tadpole people!  THIS helps my heart!!  THIS feels realistic to me and within the realm of possibility!!

And – at this “holiday season” there can be many complications for people and for families!  I thought these words might be helpful to people who might be struggling with extra difficulties – realize they are NOT ALONE!!!!!  We care!!!

++

“Be not the slave of your moods, but their master.  But if you are so angry, so depressed and so sore that your spirit cannot find deliverance and peace even in prayer, then quickly go and give some pleasure to someone lowly, or to a guilty or innocent sufferer!  Sacrifice yourself, your talent, your time, your rest to another, to one who has to bear a heavier burden than you – and your unhappy mood will dissolve into a blessed, contented submission to God.” –

By Abdu’l-Baha, in Star of the West (sometime prior to 1921), a Baha’i publication

++

Certainly an ongoing and repeating process!!

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase –

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

 

++++

Wednesday, November 24, 2015.

I cannot kill these pansies

Little bit of life

That they are

+

As winter’s cold and darkness

Settles outside my door

+

I hauled them inside

In their five gallon plastic buckets

After I left them out there

Long enough to freeze

Several times

+

Their blossoms have given up

Yet not their buds

And not the emerald green of their leaves

And certainly not their tenacious roots

+

I MUST love them

I MUST care for them

I MUST

I will

It is a part of who I am

+

April through November they have blessed me with their beauty

They did not ask for life

They do not crave death

Theirs is a certain kind of bravery

Courage to the end

+

And these earthworms

Are they as silent as they seem?

+

What, my dear, can I give to them

Remnants from a summer garden confined

Gathered in a gelatinous mass

Having seeped themselves down through and out of the bottom holes of these buckets onto the plastic beneath them

Only to have found no real possibility of escape?

+

Do they live?

Are they dead?

+

I bury them again in now warm so-black bucket dirt

I can wait

We will see

+

I must apologize

I am so sorry for my own confusions

My uncertainties

+

I, too, share this life and death cusp

With all of you

+

This seek for safety

This holding on to life

This approach to death

To transformation

First

+

O worms!  I feed you water soaked cardboard and bits of paper for a winter in these buckets

In this apartment

Stashed so cleverly in a spare corner

On my kitchen floor

+

Unlike my species

If there is even one of you left alive

You will reproduce.

More.

+

I

Would be glad

For that.

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Note:  I cannot create my chosen spacing here without using “+” as markers

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase –

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

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Leave a Comment »

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

 

 

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Tuesday, November 24, 2015.  These few words came to me last Sunday at a time when the horrible stomping romping wall and ceiling shaking so threatening my peace from the apartment above me had abated for a time.  For the past two years I had neighbors up there who were quiet adult men.  I NEVER in ten billion years would have renewed my year’s lease if THIS family had been up there.

I really do NOT know how I can endure and survive a long North Dakota winter being trapped in here with them up there.  I am losing entire nights of sleep.  Scary.  Hard.  Very, very disturbing having people up there with no pattern to their life I can detect, little children romping hard until 2 am….

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Right on the surface of the glass

Looking inward

Looking outward

That’s where our psychology will be

+

Where on a spectrum does light become sound and sound become light

To humans?

+

There is a quiet there – at these places.  In these spaces.  A kind of pause – the quiet both before and within the storm.

Calmness.

Life, though, is never easy.

+

There is a pause

Where darkness turns into light

(and the other way around).

+

When a flying bird’s wing beats downward

That point just before the wing

Turns up again

There is an instant of

Perfect peace.

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase –

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame