+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Again, a big thank you to my oldest daughter for the collection of climbing rose bushes she gave to me last Mother’s Day! Today, June 16, 2010 two of the plants showed their first blossoms! Once the summer rains come all plants enter an impressive growth stage, and it will be fantastic to watch these plants REALLY take off!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
I just finishing transcribing another version Mother wrote about the decision they made to move to leave Los Angeles and move to Alaska. I like this one better. There is no indication of when it was written, but I think it was written before the one I posted last night.
It leaves me thinking that no matter how genuine and authentic their ‘dream’ was, my mother’s undiagnosed and untreated severe mental illness did actually destroy any chance our family had to ACTUALLY ‘live happily ever after’, which is something I believe my parents both hoped for when they made this HUGE move. That tragedy is real, even if I cannot find even a glimmer of it in this piece she wrote:
*Probably written October 1958 about leaving Los Angeles
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sometimes I wish I could talk to some ‘mental health professional’ just about the moving around that my mother did. As she mentions in her piece of writing that I transcribed yesterday and posted the link to in *October 1958 – DREAMS CAN COME TRUE, my mother believed that my father provided a kind of stabilizing counterweight to her impetuousness. But I wonder what would have happened to her in her life if my parents had not yoked themselves to one another?
I still have not completely delineated and visibly lined up the number of moves that my mother arranged and that mostly my father accomplished during their married years prior to my leaving their home when I was 18. Some part of me this morning wants to stop and take account of the moves that had already happened before my mother had written her October 1958 description of their Alaskan ‘venture’, as she called it.
My parents married June 11, 1949 and as far as I know they lived on/at Almont in Los Angeles at least until their first child was born on June 15, 1950. Then comes a move. I don’t believe I was born while they were living there, so probably by August 31, 1951 they were living in a rented house on Calavaras (wherever in LA that was).
So, from Almont to Calavaras to a rented apartment by July 10, 1953 when my sister was born, then probably to a house my parents bought in Altadena that they did not sell until they were moving to Alaska even though my spring of 1956 they were in another new house they purchased in Glendora (still in LA area).
We must not have lived in this location of the 4th move for much more than a year, but that would have been four moves in the first seven years of their marriage. The move to Alaska, which involved my father leaving first and being gone from us for two months in June and July of 1957. According to mother’s writing, they sold the Glendora house (and the Altadena one) before my father went to Alaska and moved into a ‘court apartment’.
From this apartment, after my father had left, my mother then moved us into a motel, out of the motel into a rented house, out of the house into her mother’s, up to the mountains for a week, back to her mothers, and then probably into another motel before she left for Anchorage.
So, adding up these longer and shorter term moves and locations, let’s see – that’s around 11 moves that were made with children in tow before mother reached Alaska and the infamous Log House in Eagle River on August 1, 1957. The log house was probably move number 12.
We stayed ‘all cozy’ in the log house until June 1958, by which time my father had already located the 160 acres spot of our homestead and had staked claim, or filed on the land. We moved out of the log house into Bockstahler’s ‘shack’ or ‘cabin’ (its title depended on mothers move moment to moment) where we stayed until October 1958.
At that point the six of us moved into an apartment on Government Hill in Anchorage area where we stayed until about the following March, and by April 1, 1959 we were off on our homesteading adventure.
So by the time my mother wrote her *October 1958 – DREAMS CAN COME TRUE piece she (I’m quite certain it wasn’t my father) had orchestrated, staged and managed to accomplish 14 moves. I was 7 when this piece was written, and already by then I had been dragged around through probably 13 moves with my parents, and that was only the beginning.
So, talking about ‘life’ and ‘childhood’ in attachment-related terms, right along with the incredible vacillation and instability of my mother’s moment-to-moment mental-mood states and the insecurity they caused in the lives of all around her came the physical moving from place to place that even further guaranteed a complete environment of lack of safety and security for my parents children.
My mother wrote *October 1958 – DREAMS CAN COME TRUE from within the small enclosure of a massive, ugly apartment complex. True, the move ‘to town’ was no doubt simply seen as ‘as step in the right direction’ toward accomplishing fulfillment of their Alaskan homesteading dreams, but I still find the contrast in location and place interesting as I read her written piece.
By the time my mother was actually on the homestead, and had her ‘dark rainbow dream’ about the horrific wind storm contrasted to how it stopped in her dream when she met the right ‘person’, she had already in her lifetime experienced probably close to 30 moves.
If I could talk to this ‘mental health professional’ I would like to ask what this kind of moving is seen to represent in a person’s life. That the moving, at least in our family, seemed to be connected to and integrated with this ‘pioneering’ drive makes me suspect that it was then connected to the genetic undercurrent that MANY immigrating ‘pioneers’ had within them as they traveled to America in the first place.
But it is hard to feel a part of the mainstream American current with this kind of ‘traveling’ background – and I have certainly done my share of moving around in my adult life, as well. I still haven’t counted my own moves, but I do know that right now being here and staying here in this little house I live in now is the single most important aspect to my own current life.
So when I work in my yard on my adobe projects it is in part the grounding I experience as I work with the physical DIRT that helps me right now. As I looked around me out in my yard this morning I just had this thought: I wish I had thought beforehand that I could have actually encased my mother’s individual letters I have completed transcribing right into those bricks – where they also would have finally met their final grounded end — because they probably would have remained within those bricks for a very, very, very, very LONG time without GOING anywhere.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
I have spent too many hours to count on the job of transcribing my mother’s writings today. No adobe work. Just this work. I am nearing the end stretch but not done yet.
This is a link to my mother’s words written about why they decided to move to Alaska and what that process was like. I am glad I found it – it will certainly be near the front of one of the books of her letters. I really hoped she didn’t spiral out into orbit as she wrote this piece – and thankfully she didn’t. She actually seemed to stay on target, which surprised me! You might be interested in taking a look:
*October 1958 – DREAMS CAN COME TRUE
++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++
My mother’s journal entries during a period in January 1960 when my father went to work out of town and we had to leave the homestead and stay in the rented log house in Eagle River during the time he was gone. She is missing her husband, and the mountain.
I know the feeling she is talking about in the January 23rd entry. I used to call it my ‘wild’ feeling, like the wind could blow right through me. But it’s a longing, a certain inexplicable kind of longing in the soul……
Have you ever felt it?
+++++++++++++++++++++++
January 10, 1960
We had to leave homestead.
January 11, 1960
Baths and children rested and got ready to return to school.
January 12, 1960
Children returned to school. Bill left for [work in] Paxson. Sub-zero weather all week 20 to 25° below – good thing we came down.
January 13, 1959
I’m lost without Bill and children. Jeep won’t start so every day Sharon and I walk to store [staying at log house in Eagle River], mail box etc. – Cold – Br-r – but nice. We bundle up and except for our face we don’t mind. I put a scarf over Sharon’s mouth and we don’t talk – it’s too cold.
January 21, 1960
Cold weather ended days ago! Now between 15° and 20° above. Children – Cindy and John got report cards – Cindy all s’s and John all B’s. I’m pleased.
January 22, 1960
Be so glad when Bill gets home. I miss him terribly. I plan to go to homestead on Monday with Bockstahlers.
January 23, 1960
I can’t explain it to anyone, least of all to myself – this burning aching inside of me that seeks fulfillment – and I only find this peace and serenity and wonder – on our homestead. There I’m happy and here I’m lost – it’s as if I’m meant to be there – high in the mountains – alone with Alaska’s beauty all around me –
Today – I’m going through the motions of keeping house and all but inside I feel as if I want to free myself from bondage – I feel held and I yearn to be loose – free –
Schools, close to stores and all – still not worth it to me [to be in Eagle River] – I yearn to be home – next winter I wish I could stay.
John is uneasy here – he wishes he were home –
Oh, how I miss Bill – I feel he probably doesn’t miss me in the same way – one letter, only one – oh how I wish he were here with me now –
I wish, I want – WHAT?
I wish I could write – really write – and paint, really paint – like the Goodalls – oh, how great that would be —
+++++++++++++++++++++++
I wrote this note to myself when I transcribed these journal entries a few years ago:
That’s scary that I know this feeling also. James Hillman writes in ‘The Soul’s Code’ about the longing of the soul. He writes about it in reference to loneliness and longing.
Is this longing especially connected to the experience of a soul that, in childhood, did not get to “grown down into the world” or into the child’s body/brain/self correctly?
In a way when this book is published my mother’s words will be published with it, and her wish will become a reality. It is as if the healing had to come first, and the waiting had to happen before that – so that I, her daughter, could commingle my words with hers.
Too bad she was a witch to me! But, then, this book sure wouldn’t be being written if she hadn’t been – all things necessary, as Hillman says.
Some of us are literally lost souls, very lost souls without a home. If we are meant to come to earth and become integrated into a world and into our bodies, and trauma inhibits that process, we are never truly at home in this world. I am almost 56 years old now, and I still am not at home here. Just barely here.
+++++++++++++++++++++
January 1960
The Jeep Road
As we wend our way home – I drink in the beauty I see around me and think – “Finally, I’m going HOME.”
I never thought I’d miss a place so remote and strange as this. I remember when I first came and I though “I cannot live this far away! – from people, bright lights and city things. I’ll surely be lonely and afraid.”
But instead a peace came tome – I relaxed and was unafraid.
The road to our homestead is full of bumps. It’s a rough one and has many jolts. But I wouldn’t trade it for a freeway. Smooth, easy riding, swift and modern.
— surely things would not remain the same
The moose and beaver, the squirrels and bear would soon hasten to find new homes. They would be afraid to stay.
Would the sun shine so brightly? If the cities came to us – or would it’s ways be filtered through the city dust.
Would the skies be so clear and blue if the traffic came right through –
Would the air be like wine or would it be choking and would my eyes sting all the time?
I could not bear to stay and see it change –
From a place so serene to one of hustle and bustle – to one of modern ways.
I once thought “I cannot leave the conveniences behind.”
But I found so much to replace them and came to understand . . . .
The beauties that surround us – for all to enjoy – I think of all these things as we wend our way HOME –
I drink in the scenery. I was so thirsty –I’ve been half-starved – since I left this wilderness area.
My heart cries out “Don’t leave again!”
My soul is nurtured and so is my brain.
I look around me – oh, such peace envelopes my body as I sink into bliss –
We’re going HOME
The mountains are etched in rose – just as if a small child – or God had outlined them with a pink crayon –
The sun is setting – so early indeed – as this is Alaska in winter – a scene so different than any I’ve ever seen.
The trees bend down with their burden of snow.
The world is all white except for the sun setting in crimson and gold.
We ride on – and I’m grateful to be going HOME!
– – –
Written by a woman who had come from the city to homestead and although had loved the wilderness had an unaccountable desire to return to the city. She left in the fall and returned in the early winter – never to live elsewhere again.
[Linda note: Not sure if she means with her second reference to ‘city’ it being the log house in Eagle River?]
++++
See: *1959 Homesteading Photos
++++
June 24, 1959 Wednesday – letter from Mother to her mother
Dear Mom,
Just a note to enclose with Sharon’s precious drawings. She loves to work with her pencil and paper and I think does very well. She especially loves to draw houses, people, and Humpty Dumpty and Jack-O-Lanterns – these she brings to me and says “Doesn’t it scare you?” She always writes on her things [scribble lines] very industriously and then reads it to me!!
I’ve been inside for three days – today they’ve been so good and sweet. Bill stayed home to help me – He had a severe case of diarrhea Sunday and yet had promised to bring Pollard up with our tractor to bring down Buttner’s things and went anyways. Oh, Sunday was ‘a peculiar day’! Bill spent all day on that and when finally got home he collapsed on the bed for first time – he never takes time to even sit any more – just go, go, go – I worry over him he’s so THIN now – but anyways – he’d no sooner gone to sleep then I heard a car. Now no car or jeep has ever been up here since we moved back here. I felt like a desert person in search of water – oasis and all – only me, imagining cars – but sure enough it was a jeep and Pollard driving it so proud to have been the first to make it. He had a couple – oh 45 or so – who had planned to homestead beyond Thomas and land office refused so he was to show them Buttner’s place.
They stopped here and loved it!! She’s quite a character – one boy senior in high school. Both work on base. She kept saying “What will you do in winter?” “Aren’t you afraid of bears?” – And Mom, I felt like a ‘real sourdough’ and old timer as I heard her talk.
They had an old dilapidated looking jeep only paid $150.00 for so didn’t care whether hurt it or not. I sat in back – open with her and went up to Buttner’s. Wanted to see it again.
We thought he’d never make it and were laughing so hard but that old beat up jeep got there!!
All the land is teriffically [sic] scenic on way up and many perfect spots for cabins but it’s all our land.
You don’t get to Buttner’s til you dead-end against mountains and drop off to creek. His was a tiny valley with hills on both sides and view of dead-end of mountains below. Pretty but gives me claustrophobia – which I have lately anyways. (I hate being shut up in this D – HUT!!)
Many bear droppings up there at Buttner’s and it’s scary! I’d want you close to us on your visits not a half mile up there, I’d worry myself sick over you!!
You’ll see when you come. Anyways, her working and all I doubt if they’ll file on it and I bet Buttner wants $ back for his road.
All of Buttner’s land is really mountain – different than ours.
Well, then Bill not feeling well and all he went to bed at 10:00 for first time. I couldn’t sleep (I have terrible insomnia here – all six of us in one room and so light outside and so much on my mind). Anyways again I heard a motor. This time I was really flabbergasted. 10:00 visitors? I rushed to door and sure enough it was Barbee. We got up and I was scared thinking maybe forest fire or something but no, just came for a visit. Now isn’t that something – a freeway no less and Bill didn’t think a jeep could make it. As he says it’s too bad for one and Barbee was shocked at road but didn’t know we didn’t drive it. He’d been out horse back riding and when returned decided he’d stop up to see us – at least four miles of bad road.
Well, I made coffee and we had crackers and cheese. Thank goodness for my redwood furniture for visitors to sit on outdoors as I can’t bring them in with all four children asleep in one room.
He left shortly and we undressed and went back to bed.
Well, Bill tried to drive last night but too tough on our jeep.
Bill stayed home Monday – still didn’t feel well.
I planted some more vegetables (really too late now and Oh Mom, tomatoes can’t be grown here except in hot house – nor can cucumbers or corn). It’s a shame! But thanks anyways.
Monday late we had rain – had our first real thunderstorm here in Alaska Saturday and rain! Torrents of rain.
I had stomach aches. Tuesday Bill returned to work and I felt weak and poor. John had stomach aches and Cindy poor darling, had RUNS all day! – and No bathroom. You just can’t imagine how terrible and pouring rain outside and all our wood wet. Terrible day. Poor Sharon was sickest and scared me so. She went every 15 minutes and threw up even water at same time and then went into deep sleep. I don’t know what I would have done without John and Linda. They helped me gt meals and read stories to Cindy and poor Linda even helped me gather wood and empty ‘potty’. She never was at all sick but tonight said had a stomach ache so tomorrow she’ll probably have it too.
Last night I was sick, discouraged, lovely and blue. This Damn hut got me down. I had fixed place up and cleaned up before Bill got home but then Cindy threw up buckets and I didn’t have heart to cook dinner and was too weak by then.
I got to thinking and all I wanted was to see all of you. I’d been blue for days anyways.
Mom – not even a battery radio here – I haven’t even heard the radio or seen T.V. since March!!!
Oh, it will be worth it and on sunny days it’s nice but I do get lonely and I can’t go anywhere myself – I don’t even dare to walk for fear of bears.
The grass and all is four feet tall now!
Yesterday we were in a fog and cloud – I couldn’t see at all and even hated to go off to empty potty. Very depressing, scarey [sic] and blue.
Last night for first time I cried and cried. I truly hated it here then and knew you must never try it alone. Last night I felt imprisoned with a seven month sentence! It’s rather like that.
We’re so financially strapped and can’t even go to a movie alone. I hadn’t been since January first and other day – last week we took kids and went. I was so tired by time it was over and couldn’t enjoy movie knowing we had 14 mile trip to Eagle River and 14 miles ‘back in’ and then the damn tractor ride. We were all dressed up and it’s pretty awful to have to stop and put on old clothes and mosquito repellant and all on for last one mile stretch and then sit in two-wheel open trailer –
UGH!
Well last night I’d had it. I told Bill I’d pay 1,000 to see you and Charlie and Carolyn.
I wanted to go to Carolyn’s [her sister-in-law in Los Angeles] and have a peanut butter sandwich (hers are so delicious always!) and iced coffee and sit on her patio like we used to.
I planned how I’d come and surprise you!
Well, Bill said O.K. I could come – Air Force would pay but I’m scared to fly – imagine me being here and I’m scared to fly and then I’d lose one month here and have to stay longer in winter and I’d need $ for a few clothes for kids and Bill would be all alone (he’d probably accomplish far more!)
Well today I had the RUNS and weak? Oh, OH, OH. I’ve been so sick to my stomach you’d swear I was pregnant.
Bill stayed home and helped. He did dishes (first time here and now can sympathize with me having to heat water and all) and got breakfast and lunch. I couldn’t eat.
Tonight I’m better and the runs have stopped.
We can hear the creek, the waterfalls and the river – they’re all so full after the rain. The clouds have lifted and all is sweet and beautiful outside.
I love it here and someday we’ll have our road and house – but oh, how lonesome I am for all of you. It’s all I want – to see you and then return.
It’s been a big change – moving here and living like this – it piles up on you!!
Well, this turned out to be a long letter and I feel better for writing it!
I miss YOU and love YOU!
Shall I come?
I could OR would you rather come here.
I hate to travel with all four.
Bill won’t have vacation now until next summer.
His two years are up now and if he reenlists [with the civilian Army Corp of Engineers] (signs up for two more) then we’re entitled to come to California and back free – and then in another two years – otherwise he loses it.
Help me decide.
Probably I should stay here!
Love
Children’s books arrived but I’ve been too sick to look at them but will. Thanks!
P.S. I’d like to drive down and Bill says NO!
P.S. II We’ve had glorious weather and I’m tanned and so are kids. We needed the rain – hope we’ll have more sun though.
Hope you can decipher – written hurriedly by kerosene lamp you sent.
Can you send me some sleeping pills?
++++
I wonder if we didn’t often suffer from food poisoning from lack of refrigeration. I’ve NEVER had a stomach ache since I left home like I (and the rest of the family) had while we were growing up.
The ‘hut’ was the canvas covered Jamesway like a Quonset – I have a disk of slides my brother sent down from Alaska that I have yet to take a look at, will post those homesteading pics when I do
++++
++++++++++++++++
Still ahead of the hoped for, planned for summer rains of July! Adobe work continues and here’s a little guided walking tour for today – after reading my mother’s letters about TOMBOY me as a little girl, I suppose I should post here a sign WARNING TOMBOY AT WORK!
++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++
I bet we could accurately say, “A family that neighs together, stays together!”
I already know that this will be a light-weight post to write, which is a welcome change to the last ten or so posts I have created here on my blog. In addition, I am happy to note that the source of this post must have come from some non-REM sleep time dreaming, something that I welcome because I carry so much of my dream time weight (evidently) during REM sleep – far more than what is either ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’ (a by-product of my depression).
In the non-REM dreaming state we process current life-related information between our two hemispheres toward integration of our experience in an ongoing way. And THIS topic – neighing and neighbors – is directly related to the last season of the Australian television series I am watching, ‘McLeod’s Daughters’.
The show is worth watching alone just for the horseflesh that trots, gallops, neighs and whinnies its way across my TV screen. In the middle of this last season there’s a show-jumping Olympic status gigantic gray spotted mare that shows up, and I’m quite sure that it was she that stimulated whatever it was that made its way into my non-REM ‘self-integrated-with-life’ dreaming last night. Or, perhaps my two-brains were also engaged in processing my listening experience last night to the soundtrack from the movie, “All the Pretty Horses!”
I woke up very clear about the connection between horse relationships with one another and human parallels in our relationship with our ‘neighbors’. The connection has to be in these two words that neighed themselves into my waking consciousness this morning. I’ll take a look – and I’ll VERY SURPRISED if my dream information was wrong.
Well, look at this! My Google ‘Webster’s define neigh’ search brought up neighborhood, neighbor and neigh!
NEIGH
Etymology: Middle English neyen, from Old English hnǣgan; akin to Middle High German nēgen to neigh
Date: before 12th century
: to make the prolonged cry of a horse
NEIGHBOR
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English nēahgebūr (akin to Old High German nāhgibūr); akin to Old English nēah near and Old English gebūr dweller — more at nigh, boor – [a boor is nigh? I’ll leave this word connection ALONE even though I certainly have one PIGGY neighbor – hence creation of my fence!]
Date: before 12th century
1 : one living or located near another
2 : fellow man
NEIGHBORHOOD
Date: 15th century
1 : neighborly relationship
2 : the quality or state of being neighbors : proximity
3 a : a place or region near : vicinity b : an approximate amount, extent, or degree <cost in the neighborhood of $100>
4 a : the people living near one another b : a section lived in by neighbors and usually having distinguishing characteristics
++++
Well, OK, so their root word origins are different – but they don’t look THAT different to me – so anyone who knows High German and/or Old High German (or ANY German at all!) please feel free to prance in all your origin-of-neighing-neighbors glory and drop a comment. What do you think?
For me, I guess because of the way I was raised — including my time spent in childhood in the ‘wilderness’ where there were no neighbors and no fences to poke our neighborly heads over to neigh to one another – it makes perfectly good sense to me that the human right early forming social-emotional brain might rely upon a similar network of neighing-neighborly joint-speak to get along and to appreciate one another — because both horses and humans are members of a social species.
Maybe horse whispering isn’t so far away from what all humans do as they chat, banter and gossip with one another (and to mix literalized metaphors as they tweet and twitter with one another) – and maybe TV’s talking horse Mr. Ed really DID cross the fence between species and talk to both!
++++++++++++++++++
FYI:
I believe this is related to the spectrum of “Are you a sensitive?” – and to the ‘hawk’ and ‘dove’ allostatic load hypothesis by McEwen:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness
The most common hypothesis for the cause of motion sickness is that it functions as a defense mechanism against neurotoxins.[7] The area postrema in the brain is responsible for inducing vomiting when poisons are detected, and for resolving conflicts between vision and balance. When feeling motion but not seeing it (for example, in a ship with no windows), the inner ear transmits to the brain that it senses motion, but the eyes tell the brain that everything is still. As a result of the disconcordance, the brain will come to the conclusion that one of them is hallucinating and further conclude that the hallucination is due to poison ingestion. The brain responds by inducing vomiting, to clear the supposed toxin.
++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The comments that have grown at the end of yesterday’s post, +WHAT MY MOTHER FORGOT TO WRITE IN HER NOVEMBER 1957 LETTERS, are about a kind of ‘borderline’ that I believe exists within the mind of most members of ‘the public’. If the kind of abuse parents like my mother was cannot be imagined, conceived of, or even BELIEVED by ‘the public’ there will not be much hope of true recovery for survivors of this kind of abuse or protection for its current victims.
Although I posted an allusion yesterday to this type of parental abuse as being more closely related to War Crimes (see +THE GENEVA CONVENTION – WE NEED WORDS TO PROTECT ABUSED CHILDREN) than it being related to the ‘species’ of child abuse most members of ‘the public’ might imagine, abuse (which is in itself far to minor a descriptive word) perpetrated against infants and children by parents like my mother was is, in my thinking, even so far PAST war crimes that if it hadn’t happened to me I probably wouldn’t be able to imagine, conceive of or believe it even could be possible myself.
Members of ‘the public’ are, by and large, reasonable (reason-able) people. They exist on one side of this ‘borderline’ I mention in regard to coming to terms with the possible ranges of infant-child abuse (as well as with the far ranges of ANY kinds of abuse humans can perpetrate). On the other side of this ‘borderline’ are people like my mother was who have what Dr. Martin Teicher’s Harvard research group names ‘an evolutionarily altered brain’.
But it certainly isn’t JUST their brain that is altered. It is their ENTIRE physiology. Once this kind of abusing adult has been created within the malevolent environments of their own early developmental caregiver relationships, the degree of change that might be possible down the road of their lives (much past the age of three, I believe) is minimal — and WILL NEVER make these people magically into SAFE infant-child caregivers.
The kinds of crimes they are capable of committing against their offspring are so far past what ‘the public’ could even begin to imagine as being even ‘war crimes’ that reason-able people cannot usually conceive of them.
No matter how despicable, how devoid of ordinary human conscience any ‘war crime’ might be, if the crimes are committed against adults they are of a different nature than the kinds of infant-child ‘abuse’ that I am talking about. The kind of trauma altered evolutionarily altered brain that Teicher refers to IS one adapted (along with all the rest of a survivor’s physiology) to continued existence in the worst kind of malevolent world possible. When this adapted-to malevolent environment does not contain within it even the most essential resources to ensure continued survival – elimination of offspring can very easily be the end result FOR MOTHERS.
This is, of course, not a consciously recognized aspect of the kind of ‘mind’ my mother had, but this obliviousness to FACT does not make the FACT any less real.
On this level I would say that we are not talking about ‘ordinary ranges’ of infant-child abuse. We are not even talking about ‘ordinary ranges’ of war crimes.
The only closest collection of information that ‘the public’ might be able to reach for, accept and rely upon in their consideration of the kinds of parents I am talking about and the ‘outside-the-range of ordinary’ treatment of their offspring would be to include in their consideration all information currently available about both GENOCIDE and INFANTICIDE.
Such a ‘trauma changed mother’ operates with a physiologically-based biological imperative to eliminate offspring (one or all) in the same way an animal in the wild would (or our ancient ancestors) should life within a hostile, malevolent environment be just about as hard as possible. The BODY that took this evolutionary detour in its earliest development CANNOT BE CHANGED BACK AGAIN to become at some later date a benevolent-environment body-brain-mind.
(It seems entirely possible to me that the genetics behind suicide and well as perhaps genetic combinations (not yet identified) behind self-harm and eating disorders might also be connected to the permanent ‘evolutionary alternative developmental changes’ related to the influencing physiological (epigentic?) factors that are involved in adaptation to early malevolent environments.)
(Another critically important factor to consider is what Tomkins describes when he says that a human infant’s adrenal gland ‘system’ is 2 1/2 times ‘more powerful’ during the earliest developmental stages in proportion to its body size than it is in our adulthood, making sure that stress-related responses to malevolence within the early environment that require adaptations-changes to best ensure survival happen as FAST, as early in development and as permanently as possible.)
That human infant-children do somehow OFTEN manage to in fact physically stay alive and survive the malevolent treatment that was done to them does NOT exclude the range of ‘abuse’ from the arena of considerations related to GENOCIDE and INFANTICIDE. In cases such as my mother’s was, the ONLY reason she did not actually eliminate my body from the world of the living is because of her narcissistic desire to avoid reprisal for her actions.
When an infant-child is NOT actually physically killed, this means that the level of suffering from torture, terrorism, ‘abuse’ and malevolent treatment continues on and on and on and on…….. The fact that these survivors did indeed survive in NO WAY lessens the reality of the acts toward GENOCIDE and INFANTICIDE that these ‘super abusing parents’ commit.
Perhaps, I mentioned in one of my replies connected to yesterday’s post about what my mother ‘forgot’ to tell my grandmother, ‘the public’ is perfectly fine with allowing for a range of ‘acceptable losses’ related to allowing the worst of the worst possible infant-child abuse to continue – in effect, right under our noses.
When thinking about Universal Human Rights of Children we must at the same time consider that when these rights are massively denied and the reverse of human rights is what is actually happening to infant-children, we need to begin to understand that we need the equivalent of a Geneva Convention’s rules for what is to be done on behalf of these ‘super survivors’ of ‘super abusive’ parents — and what is to be done to, with and about these parents, as well.
NOTE: I nearly always add to my posts over time once they are published – best to come directly to this site to read the up-to-the-minute versions!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
