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The topic of this post gives me a most unsettled feeling – as it should.  I am reminded to remind myself that I am not always the best at being able to keep myself safe in the world.  Yet having to trust my well-being to ‘dumb luck’ also makes me feel most unsettled.  As it should.

Let’s see.  How can I most simply describe what in the world I am talking about?

Start here:  I made the 26-mile round trip out to a feed store today – spent $121 on a 6-month stock of chicken scratch, minerals, laying crumble – also ‘meat as first ingredient’ cat food, great dog bones for the pup along with two 120 pound bales of alfalfa.  I needed this feed run taken care of before my upcoming 3,400-mile round trip up north to see soon-to-arrive new grandson and family.  I do not want the man who will take care of my house, garden and animals to run short during the 3-4 weeks I am gone.

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Not too exciting.  Made the trip fine in my ’78 old worn El Camino.  Next comes the job of how to store the feed away from rodents and rain.

Note:  It really really rained yesterday!  Our yearly high desert monsoon has been off to a very slow start, but yesterday’s rain was the real thing.  Thus, our normal humidity of 5-7% jumped today to 35-50%.  Is this the culprit for my unsettled feelings?

I am used to working outside in the heat, often the 100 degree-plus heat — working hard – but today at 88 – sweating like nobody here is used to, dripping like a personal carry-around shower — was I dehydrating out there as I moved in hard-work mode around the yard cleaning out 5-gallon plastic storage pails, hauling the 40-50 pound bags around……

This storage job included emptying a large 35-gallon blue plastic garbage pail I used for soaking cardboard before adding it to the compost bins.  I plan to break the alfalfa bales apart and store the hay in these blue wonders.

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And here is where this small strange (to me) story really began…..

I tipped the blue pail that had spent a year sitting in one corner of the yard to the side — and there skittered for cover a rather large centipede.  I DO NOT LIKE those critters!!!  They give me the WILLIES!!!

And — my dissociational brain………?

Looking back – what exactly was going on at this pail tipping centipede spotting split second of my life?

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Dissociation, I believe, ALWAYS involves a distortion in one’s perception of the ongoing experience of time.

Time can slow down, speed up, seemingly stop completely — and, most uncomfortably, dissociation can create the experience of being in two ‘places in time’ at the same time.  Or, as when depersonalization-derealization hop into the picture of the experience – it can seem as if we cease to exist in time at all — and/or that things are going on of which we are not really a part of — as if we are aside from, apart from, outside of – space and time.

Severe early abuse and trauma creates alternative brain states and ways of processing information during critical early windows of infant-child development.  Duh!  HUGE “OF COURSE” to this one!

How do we survivors experience our life through our different body-brain?

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Back to the tipped blue large tipped pail under which this centipede had evidently been happily living its life.  Back to me staring at this critter who at this second had to decide itself exactly what it was going to do next in its state of surprise ——

And me?

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Now, I have to jump ahead about an hour of hard work later – large sacks of feed emptied into their clean white 5-gallon buckets and stored – etc. – me having stopped several times to consume large glasses of water mixed with powdered red G2 — sweating like I am SO not used to — now stopping to sit for a moment in the shade, take a break, smoke a cigarette — and…….

What NOW at this moment jumped into my thoughts was this – “Did I really see a snake just recently since I returned from the feed store?  Am I remembering a dream that I saw a snake?  Did I make this up because of the picture of the small bright green snake half coiled hanging off a tree branch staring down that hummingbird in mid-hover that I viewed last eve when a facebook friend posted it?”

Into my mental imagery brain slowly came the image of the snake that I MIGHT have seen or not seen – along with a dimly creeping creepy memory that I DID see this snake not long ago – in MY yard – that it was about two feet from my feet, that it had stopped in mid slither because I was there, that it was not coiled — along with a ‘memory’ of its size — not large, stretched about 18″ – not real fat, a young snake —

And here came my backwash of “What it is like to live with an unusual dissociational brain.”

I ‘remembered’ in this memory that did not feel like a memory of seeing a snake that did not feel like seeing a snake – that felt like it had happened in a dream – that felt like it had happened to somebody else – somebody whose memories I HAVE????

It took me at least 5 minutes of concentrated thought as I sat on my work-break in the chair to ‘remember’ – realize – where I MIGHT have REALLY seen that snake.

Over there beside the big blue garbage pail…..

“Linda, you have to go back over there – retrace your steps – stand exactly where you were when you MIGHT have seen that snake RIGHT NEXT to where you saw the centipede at EXACTLY the same moment…..”

So I walked over there – and yes – this really WAS a memory – how STRANGE!!

What part of my desert-dwelling brain would have CHOSEN as a consequence of HOPEFULLY assessing RISK to attend to — associate my attention and entire focus — on a CENTIPEDE rather than on a SNAKE???

I KNOW and clearly remember watching the centipede squiggle on the ground while I thought about whether or not it would ‘attack’ me – or even head up my ankle – what would happen if I tried to stomp it as it tried to ……. whatever it would try — my thoughts including an assessment of how fast it could move, how fast my foot could move, how much weight I carry – how soft might the ground be — knowing how DIFFICULT it is to step on and squash and KILL a hard-crusted ugly old centipede….

meanwhile – in this place of all kinds of venomous snakes….

WHAT ABOUT THE SNAKE????

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As I again stood at the spot where maybe memory and real memory coincided – part of me ‘knows’ though cannot CLEARLY own the memory that some dissociated part of me made an instantaneous assessment at the split-second I was in range of both these creatures that the SNAKE was not a threat — I did not see rattles on its tail, though young rattlers of that size might have only ONE rattle, very difficult to notice – young rattlers being aggressive and extremely deadly should they strike because they have to learning about how to and why to control the amount of venom they eject ——–

DID I assess the danger of the snake?  How can I be sure when this entire ‘experience’ feels so surreal and remote from me?

Was there a snake right there?

What part of me decided a relatively UGLY but in comparison to a poisonous snake not one bit dangerous centipede needed ALL my concentration??  Did I accurately assess the risk the snake may or may not have offered?

I do not know.

I did not again look back at the snake.  Nope.  The centipede had all of my associated attention.

I thought about whether or not I would/could kill that creepy centipede as I watched it disappear into a crack in the dry earth where the blue pail had stood – as my brain slowly pondered in its altered state of time and space, “Can a centipede dig itself trenches in the earth?  Tunnels in the earth?”  As some other part of me snapped in response, “Obviously they can, Linda!  Who do you think dug that hole for that centipede to escape into?  You sure didn’t!”

In that slowly moving time I even had time to remember all kinds of memories of times I have had chickens – times I watched them attack centipedes – their favorite food – as they race and dart and chase around while every one of them finally gets a snippet size snack of centipede.  I had time to wish I had a chicken right by me right at that instant?  (And the snake?  Who was paying attention to the snake?  Not me!)

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Great.  How can I trust myself to keep myself safe in a snake zone like this desert is – if…….. ??

Well, I am still here.  I was not attacked by either of these creatures – both of which had no wish to be bothered by me in the first place.

But what about next time?

I do wonder….  I also surprise myself that when push came to shove I would dislike a centipede more than a snake – and, again, what kind of snake was that?

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And I STILL do not FEEL LIKE I really saw that (real?) snake, even though I could draw the exact position ‘that snake’ seems to have been in, and I can point out exactly where on the ground I ‘seem’ to have ‘maybe’ seen a snake because I ‘seem’ to remember seeing one….

Very unsettling way to live…..

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See next post:

+KILLER SNAKE. KILLER MOTHER. EVIDENTLY I HAVE THE MAGICAL ABILITY TO MAKE KILLER THINGS ‘DISAPPEAR’

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If I were to name this post before I write it I would say “FEELING TROUBLED WITH MYSELF.”  Yet because I am writing this post with the hope that doing so will help me order my thoughts and feelings so that I can find the positive in what has been troubling me about myself today I am hoping by the time this is completed I will have a DIFFERENT title!!

As I write, what comes to me first is that my ‘troubledness’ probably stems in part from ‘boundary issues’ that are directly tied to difficulties I have with empathy – both of which are consequences of being raised for 18 years in a severely abusive home that gave me no safe and secure attachment to anyone, not even to myself.

I can’t really write about the situation my feelings and thoughts are tied to because they involve someone else I know – someone local – whose business is NOT really my business.  I would not care at all what happened to this person except that she is a mother – and I care about what happens to her children.

First of all – that statement strikes me as being ‘mean’.  How could I not care about this grownup?

I am reminded of the years I worked as an art therapist with a caseload of children ages 3 – 10 who were all in foster care because of the terrible abuses they had suffered.  I was told at one point by my boss that I was “too much of an advocate for children.”

Although I have to work very hard at turning my thinking around into a direction where I can understand what my boss said to me – even though the therapy work I did was the children was amazing and VERY helpful TO THE CHILDREN – I did not in my heart give any break to the grownups who had – in my world – been responsible for what happened to these children.  Even when the parents had not been directly responsible for abuse, I ALWAYS hold adults accountable for being responsible for meeting the needs of children and for keeping them safe.

In my world, adults DO FAIL CHILDREN!

There is no place I can find inside of myself where I can excuse adult lack of appropriate and adequate protection and care of children.

This brings me around, also, to thinking about my own life – how hard I found it to parent my children RIGHT especially in my younger years right after I left home and did not have a clue (1) about the terrible things that happened to me growing up and how those things affected me, and (2) the slightest idea, really, what being a good parent even was!

But I had instinct – and my instinct did not fail me.

This fact includes another critically important fact:  As I grew into the light and into increased healing for myself I ACCEPTED HELP!  I sought out help.  I asked for help.  I listened to everything people told me in their wisdom.  I WANTED to get ‘better’.  And I most certainly wanted to learn how to be the best possible parent I could be.

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Evidently this might not be true for everyone who is trying to change their life.  Evidently many people just want to do it THEIR WAY – while ignoring the truth and while only listening to those who pat them on the back, make them feel OK even about those things that are actually hurting these people’s children.

I don’t buy this.  I don’t.  I don’t.  I don’t.

My only option is to refrain from contact with such people because there is nothing I can do to change a person who wants to take the ‘easier, softer’ way into their own future.

Children are NOT put into this world to meet the needs, wants and desires of their parents.

In my universe this means that children are not in a parent’s life to take away their loneliness, to be their best friend, to parent their siblings or to parent their parents.

Selfish, self-centered parenting HURTS CHILDREN.  Very often their might not be any sign whatsoever that there is outright abuse present – but I cannot look the other way when in the face of situations where the needs of children for the CHILD’S healing is being ignored because it might make the parent uncomfortable to take their own steps into the light of truth about how their own past actions have harmed their children.

Putting the cork in the bottle, throwing out the hardcore drugs, stopping anti-social and illegal activities is – certainly!!  Taking steps in the right direction — but they are not enough.

Nobody who received ugly parenting can parent their own children without essentially going to the school of “I want to learn what my children need and learn how to provide that for them more than anything else in the entire world!!!”

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I can see I am not really making progress here in my thinking.  I ask God to forgive me for where ugliness lies inside of me – leftover from the truly horrible childhood I had – that skews and biases me when it comes to passing judgments on other people that I have no right to make.

Because I know I do that!!

I am trying to become more positive today – but there feels to be something gnarling away in my gut.  It’s as if I can see down the road of the children of this person I had some contact with again yesterday.  I can see 10 years from now that the steps that I THINK this parent needs to take NOW and are not being taken — will create yet another whole river of intergenerational trauma that will be passed along along along.

It is already happening.  This mother ‘caught’ most of her troubles from her parents (especially her mother).  I hate to see this.  I hate to know what is missing and be so powerless to make things better.

There is nothing I can say.  This person wishes to hear nothing.  Very good, she wants to pray and go to church.  But that is NOT ENOUGH!  There are very real problems that can have very real solutions.  But a lazy approach to changing one’s life and the lives of one’s children will not work – because healing and growing – especially in the beginning stages – is HARD WORK!

To not do this work when it needs to be done is a tragedy that leads to tragedy – on down the generations.  Extremely important first steps have been made in this family — but I can ‘hear the crash’ in the future if the rotten foundation of trauma carried within this family is not entirely rooted out and replaced with a truthful acknowledgement of what has been wrong, what is still wrong, and what is being actively worked on toward making a lasting firm and good foundation that will stand true far into the future of everyone concerned — even for those who have not yet been born.

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While I have been busy with projects inside the house and outside I have been waiting to see if I will wish to take back my words from my last post. No.  Not so far.  Those words stand:  I cannot find my self-love.

Given the choice – not that such a choice actually even exists – between being able to love myself and being able to love other people, I would take the other people love.

I realized as soon as I posted that last post that what I have described as my inability to feel what it feels like to be loved by other people is directly a consequence of not having been able to build self-love ‘circuitry’ into my body-brain from birth due to abusive trauma.

I know that feeling of NOT being able to feel loved has seemed deeply connected to a perennial loneliness that I think many early abuse survivors live with all of their lives.

I am working on one of three baby blankets right now – they are bigger than I thought they would be – which is nice ’cause the little boys will be able to use them way after their babyhood!  One is for my nearly born newest grandson, one is for my 28-month-old grandson who is soon to have a brother, and one is for one of my nieces who is due with a boy Oct. 5th.

So, not complaining – just pausing.  The sewing has been a lot of work – good thing it was a cooker of a day outside today or I would have been out there working much longer – and missed this great sewing-work day.

So, until later…….

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There are some wonderful comments and replies accumulating with this June 29, 2012 post:

+SEVERE TRAUMA SURVIVORS: WE LIVE IN A DIFFERENT WORLD THAN ORDINARY PEOPLE DO

What if some magical entity had whispered in my ear as I grew up as a child in a universe filled with violence, assaults, chaos, absolute madness, that single – to me now – most important piece of information I wish I had known all of my life?

I needed to know that I did not stand a single solitary chance of growing up to be ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’.  Every single time I was attacked in some way, which happened every single day – often multiple times a day – for the 18 long years my mad mean mother had complete and total access to me – I did the only thing I knew how to do.  I did the only thing that even now looking backwards from age 60 that was possible – not only during those 18 years but every single second since then:  I moved forward in time the best and the ‘goodest’ way that I possibly could.

I am feeling some aftermath feelings to the reply I just made to today’s comment to the above post.  It is as if right now I hear my own voice echoing along the corridors of every second I have been alive.  “You are a good person, Linda.  You have always been a good person.  You have always done the best you can do.  And AS A CHILD – you WERE A GOOD PERSON THEN.”  I was a good child.

I was EAGER to be good.  This eagerness, I see now, did not come from wishing to avoid the scourge of Mother’s wrath at me.  She was insane.  She was psychotically and viciously MAD when it came to me.  There was NEVER any way I could anticipate what would make her ‘go off’ at me.

Therefore I was left with that only option – which is a combined effort, really:  I moved forward in time the best way that I could and that way was ALWAYS a good way.

Nobody ever affirmed that to me as a child when it mattered most.  Sure, adults seem quite willing to remind other adults that they are ‘good’ people and that they ‘should’ love their self.

I was thinking of that recently.  If someone told someone else in a very self-assured (I am right absolutely) way to go into their house to search it for the valuable diamond that lies inside — where do we get to say back, “You might have such a diamond but I have NEVER had such a diamond.  And furthermore, I will no longer believe your reality as my own.  When I say I have no diamond anywhere in my house – I mean that exactly!  Now, leave me alone about this diamond thing!”

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What diamond thing?

This diamond to me is this one:  “I love myself.”

No.  I do not have that diamond.  Nothing in my infancy and childhood ever happened to me that would have given me this diamond of self love.

I – again at age 60 – am only now reaching a point where I am beginning to know this.  I don’t believe self love, this diamond that others evidently take so for granted – that because they own one everyone else does and can — is GIVEN to us by the people who we were born to – the people who were supposed to love and care for us, keep us safe and secure, help us find our inner self love (the real kind!) from the moment we were born.

THEN and only then could we have carried this diamond with us all of the rest of our lives.  THEN – as ‘normal’ and ‘ordinary’ people can, we would benefit and appreciate in gratitude the reminder from these same people that at those times the diamond is forgotten or lost that it can be found again.

I no longer believe this diamond ever existed for me.  I did not lose it!  My diamond of the POTENTIAL for self love was stolen from me primarily by my mother – with lots of assistance (enabling and complicity) by my father.  All of society around our family stole my diamond as well by not noticing or caring about the suffering going on in my family of origin – especially to me.

(This removal was permanent for this lifetime.   I further believe that self love is directly connected to degrees of safe and secure attachment ‘circuitry’ that is built into our physiology during critical windows of early growth and development that cannot be later changed in anything other than peripheral ‘non-primary’ ways.)

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I can act-as-if I have a diamond of self love available to me.  But I will no longer run around anywhere looking for what I know does not really exist in my life.  I can work to learn what it might be like to have such a precious diamond of self love, but the best I think I can do is to try to KNOW myself and to LIKE and appreciate myself, and to attempt to treat myself as kindly as I ordinarily try to treat other people.

But I DID NOT get to grow my own self love diamond.  Therefore it is a silly waste of time to run around looking for it at this point in my lifetime.  My self love – in my belief system – has always been held by God.  I will be given it back when I reach ‘the other side’.  Meanwhile – I want to know my own TRUTH!!

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Anyway – this again is a post that I don’t expect ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ people to comprehend.  I am increasingly liking this fact – actually!  We survivors do have our own reality!  We really DO!!!!

Survivors’ lives are not better or worse than ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ — but our life is very very different!!  How could this not be true given what we have experienced?  Giving myself permission to learn about the ways my life is different because I am different is absolutely empowering to me!!

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Of course I normally delight in waking to head out into my garden to tackle a project for the day – BUT there is a limit!  As I mentioned in my post yesterday there is one area of my garden I was content on leaving the way it is – until months ago my neighbor on the west tied her large Bull Mastiff up by her front door so she has no choice but to make her ugly, stinking messes right by the fence.  I see this every time I exist my back door on this narrow side of my house/garden:

It gets much worse than this as time goes on.  Often it builds up for months before one of the grown children clean it up – which seems to be happening less and less often.  There is NOTHING physically wrong with this neighbor woman that she can’t clean this up herself!  I imagine her kids must be disgusted and sick of the part they have been playing in this crappy dysfunction!

This woman walks directly past this crap every time she goes in or out of her house – and does not care.  I am not about to try to have a civilized conversation with her to try to ‘manipulate’ her into doing what I want – CLEAN THIS UP AND KEEP IT CLEAN!!!

Nope, I am stuck dealing with this myself on my side of the fence.  This is NOT a project to delight me!  Work, much work, expense — time I would much rather spend on other more friendly projects —

AND YET

I am so reminded of survivors of infant and child neglect and abuse.  We had the CRAP from our abusers dumped onto us from the time we were so little NONE of it belonged to us.

But who is going to FIX the horrible rotten stinky mess?

WE ARE if anything is going to be improved at all.  And this includes building our own boundary fences in the present when we need to between our own beautiful life and the toxic dramas that belong to others.  It also includes detecting and repairing-healing the messes inside of our own self the best that we can that are directly in consequence to the evil treatments we received during our most vulnerable developmental years of infancy and childhood.

So – I will try to keep my attitude positive as I tackle this stupidly necessary job.  The hotter it gets outside the stinkier that ugly mess becomes!  The more it rains now this time of year the more the crap steams when the sun comes out.  There will be no time for the poopdy-doo to petrify in the heat – it just plain is NOT going to go away!

Yes, I feel angry and disgusted at my neighbor!  But I will not change her!

I have a rediculous waste-of-time-and-money job to do and I best get to it.

No complaining in the world, no pointing fingers, no amount of negative emotion, resentment, wishful thinking is going to block out this ugliness.

For as beautiful as the entire rest of my large yard is becoming as I transform it into garden – this sight of CRAP is what first greets me outside my own door 20 feet away.  Trying to find a solution is up to me.

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That’s the American-Mexican border fence behind the adobe chicken coop – the adobe pathways control weeds, divert water, create and define garden spaces and ELIMINATE the Bermuda grass I despise

More front garden….

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The more I think about it as I reflect daily on what my experience of being a self in a body is like in the world, the more I realize that what others might choose to attach individual labels to seem to operate as a single ONE THING.

I am referring to (1) Disorganized-Disoriented Insecure Attachment Disorder (DD), (2) Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) (again, an insecure attachment disorder, (3) dissociation which is an integral part of the physiological operation of both these two (which are probably the same Insecure Attachment Disorder in my thinking), (4) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (complex or otherwise).

When an infant and young toddler, not to mention a child pursuing growth and development through all its further stages, is repeatedly attacked, abused, terrorized and traumatized — that little person’s ongoing reality of self-in-the-world is disrupted and turned into chaos with each attack.

Such a little person does not get a chance to develop what I am thinking about today as being a smoothly functioning transmission system that would allow the child to be able to transition between different states of being — especially between one traumatic state to and through the next one — OR between a state of child-reality interest and peaceful calm while pursuing their life into and through a state of terrorism and trauma.

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I had another rather innocuous experience yesterday while in conversation with a good friend in which I was asked a question ‘out-of-the-blue’ that required of ME some amount of time passing so that I could look within myself to sort through the vast amount of information that appeared within me in response to this question.  The question surprised me, thus I was not prepared to answer instantaneously – so I could not.

This other person, not being a person that was overwhelmed with early traumas was a person that appeared TO ME to be exceedingly impatient wanting a response from me ASAP — which meant in ‘ordinary person time’.  This person did not – and probably could not – possibly understand that in my body I have to MANUALLY shift my gears!  I have to work my way through what appears to me sometimes – and what would appear to most other people — as WAY too much information!

Today, thinking about this interchange, I realize that how ordinary people process sudden shifts in being must be so smooth, so practical-for-ordinary-existence, so hidden and automatic — that they simply never have to pay attention to HOW they respond – to anything (much).

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I picture a state of acute trauma that might happen to someone on a (hopefully) rare occasion such as having to react to a vehicle at full speed on the highway swerving into one’s lane — HOW does someone react – in response to all possible outcomes of actions that COULD be taken?

This, to me, is a far more similar example of what ongoing life is often like to severe early trauma survivors.  The reaction of the ‘rest of the world’ to us does NOT help us.  NOW is what ‘they’ want.  Super NOW!!

We don’t have a super now in those situations when some kind of inner deliberation of information being presented by our environment is needed.  We operate in ‘acute trauma time’ which might oddly seem to be very SLOW time compared to other people’s very RAPID time.

Yes, most frequently when a traumatic threat actually appears and is very real RAPID reaction is what is going to save the day rather than long ‘higher cortex’ higher thinking which is very slow compared to the automatic reaction of the stress response system.

But our body-brain never got to develop a ‘transmission’ appropriately to be able to distinguish between our physiological reactions.  We are always in a mode of operation that is accumulating A WHOLE LOT OF INFORMATION – more than ordinary people can imagine — so that we can ALWAYS be prepared to survive in worst possible situations — whether they really exist in the present moment or not.

There was absolutely nothing in my friend’s question yesterday that was threatening or traumatic.  But the way my body-brain was built in the midst of 18 years of terror and trauma — does not know the difference because it did not get to build within me an ordinary response-to-life.

The worst insecure attachment disorders (DD and RAD) (which again are probably the same thing) were built into us because we were developing within extremely harmful, toxic, traumatic and malevolent environments. We cannot go back to the beginning of our life and build a different body-brain.  We have to make it through ALL situations we encounter for the rest of our lives with this trauma-altered body we were forced to develop.

If the world around us, meaning ordinary people, cared enough to learn what life is like for us, and then gave us the time we need during those times we are presented with our too-much-information to sort it all out consciously so that we could DECIDE and CHOOSE the way were were going to respond-react — our own experience of life would be a whole lot easier – and smoother.

But ordinary people run the world here, for the most part.  This is a very good thing, actually.  This means that the REST of the world around us was NOT malevolent – as ours was and appears to be on some level for us the rest of our lives.

So, to me, it is vital that when at all possible especially in relationship with our intimate friends and family members, that we be able to identify when these overwhelming moments happen to us verbally or in some other way using signals that communicate I NEED TIME to process what you have said to me, what has happened here, what is being asked of me, sort through the information I just received in this situation, etc. so that I can find my OWN way through this as smoothly as possible.

What overwhelms our ‘systems’ and when will never truly make sense to non-survivors.  Yet their empathy and compassion, care and patience can help US — and therefore our relationships with others — much easier.  But this will require a different standard of time-passing that will allow us to find our way out of our automatic and often extremely confusing traumatic stress reactions into actions that come from our inner place of peaceful calm.

We are worth this!

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I posted a music video in the comment section of my last post titled

+IMAGINE

My thoughts expanded after listening to this song several times to include what I remember of my father’s tenor voice and his singing.

Musical memories from our infancy and childhood can inform us even further about the state of health or sickness within our homes of origin.  Just like the existence or absence of communication as a whole, of personal equity and encouragement of personal story telling by all members of the family from the first words a child understands and speaks, and the quality of play within the family, the patterns of musical appreciation and expression also can guide us on our journey toward understanding the bigger picture of where we came from – our ORIGINS.

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The stories about my parents’ singing were repeated for as long as I can remember – and they were not particularly pleasant.  In fact, these stories spoke of the ‘culture’ each of my parents came from, and of their youth and inability to understand how hurtful words are when used as weapons against anyone else no matter how old they are.

The great musical divide between my parents seemed to have happened very shortly after their marriage.  My father tactlessly – who knows?  Perhaps even aggressively told my mother that she sang through her nose.

NEVER after the instant that those words passed out of my father’s lips (according to Mother) did she ever sing in the presence of her husband again.

NEVER, also – perhaps by some strange and sorry arrangement, did my father ever sing in the presence of my mother after that, either.

SO SAD!

Such a reflection of the deep woundedness (in my opinion) carried within each of these two people right into their marriage was this unrepaired rupture in my parents’ musical relationship.

Using the idea that the prosody – the rhythmic and musical component of spoken language – speaks of personal songs within us with every word we speak — and speaks of the personal songs within someone we are hearing every time they speak and we listen — there is no dividing line between attitudes expressed about a person’s voice, their singing, their speaking, and the content of what they say.

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I will never be able to remember anything about my mother fondly as abusive to me as she was – and as psychotically insane – though I wish her no harm wherever her soul may be.  This includes any positive remembrance of her singing — though I do not especially project my truthful negative assessment of Mother to the actual songs that she sang.

She was a fan of singing:  “One flew over the rainbow,”  “The white cliffs of Dover,” “The man on the flying trapeze,” “Que Sera Sera,” or the “Aleutian lullaby,” “Don’t fence me in”  — etc.

Father sang his mountaineering and cowboy songs.  He had a flowing perfect-keyed lovely tenor voice though never did I hear him sing from his gut.  His singing was melodic in my memory.  Mother’s – in my memory – singing was narcissistic, on the edge of where old memories become hysterical, invasive to the listener as in “I am singing you darn well better listen to ME,” sharp and saturated with unhappiness just past the edge where most people could hear it.

I could hear it as a child or I would not be telescoping my adjectives about my parents’ singing in the way that I am at this moment – though I have no intention of moving my memories of either parent any closer to that morbid, toxic past that was my infancy and childhood.

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I write of this because a longing for my ‘other’ father arose within my heart yesterday listening to the tenors sing (as posted above).  I know that my memories, my BODY memories, of the sounds of my parents’ voices are as old as I am.  I listened to them before I was born – and after that, most unfortunately, most of my listening TO my parents’ voices no doubt turned into listening FOR the sound of my parents’ voices.

The forced isolation and seclusion that was a massive part of Mother’s insane abuse of me (keeping me in hell in place of her) led to me being in danger and under threat of danger from Mother from the time of my birth.  Being left in a crib, alone, behind a closed door — I KNOW I listened into the silence for sounds that could help me understand what was dangerous when — when it was coming – where danger did not seem to exist — such as when I was alone and the sounds of my parents and my 14-month-older-brother in other areas of the home and yard were mulling themselves around in sounds that floated down the hallway in my direction.

The sound of Mother’s stomping footsteps, for example, the sound of her hand turning the doorknob and pushing open the bedroom door – included with the sound of her brutal and brutalizing voice and body movements – well, not a non-music any infant-child should ever hear.

But the sounds of that rich and gentle tenor voice that belonged to that man who I belonged to as his daughter.  That voice never hurt me.  All that I have later come to understand about how that man did not protect me — did not did not did not ever intervene against the monster he married that attacked me — I don’t in my memory evidently ever wish to attach/associate the sound of Father’s voice to that man.

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I have a very clear ‘song stopper’ memory of my own that must tie to my preteen or early teen years.  Somehow the whole family must have been momentarily fooled by a good mood of Mother’s.  We were all in our Jeep heading down the Alaskan mountain one bright and shiny morning – myself and my two sisters feeling safe enough to sing, “Lemon Tree, Very Pretty.”

Uh-Oh!  Like Mother’s permanent ban on Linda ever playing safely within her sphere of knowledge I learned that day that my singing was equally forbidden.  Just as the Jeep made the first turn on the road down the mountain that put our house out of sight, it happened:  “Linda, stop that horrible singing RIGHT NOW!” Mother shot over the back of the front seat into the shared sister space of singing for us 3 in the back seat.

“You have a HORRIBLE voice!  You sing through your nose!  You are ruining your sisters’ beautiful song!”

Whether or not she actually included, “I don’t EVER want to hear the sound of your voice singing again as long as I live,” that was and is the message I have attached to this memory.

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I have one other singing memory from when I had left home and was about 20 years old.  I always felt even as a young adult that everyone else was better than me.  I did not understand normal human bonding, so whenever I was in the presence of groups of people who were solid friends with one another, I felt vastly outside the group and interpreted this in my hidden inner places that this division of me from them existed because I was less of a person than all of them were.

A friend’s friend’s sister – who had left the small Minnesota town where she was born and raised (the one this event happened in for me) for the GLORY of a stage career of some kind in NYC had returned for a Christmas family thing.

There was one of those early-70s coffee house sing-a-long from a short un- embellished stage at the local college taking place one evening – and I attended with the ‘alien group’ of friends.

And – daring of daring – I AGAIN for the first time since the Lemon Tree had crashed and burned, dared to open my mouth and SING!!

Sing I did.

At the end of all this ‘jibber jabber’ in song this big-NYC-woman turned to me and remarked, “You sure have a strong voice.”

Forty years later this scene and this woman’s words still slash me.

“What did she MEAN,” I still want to know – because I am human.

I REALLY do wonder what she meant, and never again since THOSE words have I sung again in front of another person.

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I know enough now that I have my keyboard that I do hear and can hit notes in perfect pitch.

But I feel inside me that the Singing Linda has had all the life-flowing juice sucked and leaked right out of her and there’s nothing left by some dry, shriveled up, immune-to-life-restoration flaky (at best) frail and fragile and ugly bare shadow of a Linda-Self — that COULD have loved to sing.

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I have written more than a thousand posts (this one is the 1201 post to be exact) during the lifetime of this blog, but never so far have I titled one to match the frontispiece image – IMAGINE until now.

Looking toward the past, looking toward the future – my daughter is days away from the birth now of my 2nd grandson.  IMAGINE if that little one came into the world and had no people there to greet him?

And I mean that – children with people – without ‘a people’.

Readers who find this blog and resonate with its words know what that means just as I do – what it means to be born and raised – and then in one’s heart to feel forever more what it is like to always be lonely for ‘our people’.

I say that to myself today loud and clear in my inner places that give silent voice:  “I am lonely for ‘my people’.

Who are my people?  Where are my people?

I don’t know.  But if I did know, and I could find them, I would know THAT because this feeling I always have that I miss them would go away!

I know my people when they post comments on this blog – me and they, we – are one another’s people.  I feel that special connection when a special piece of vast empty loneliness is filled as I see myself reflected back in the words of my people.

Infants – from birth – are meant to see their own self reflected back to them by their caregivers, especially their mother – and their father – the infant’s people!

To be cared about and to be cared for – by our people.  Didn’t happen to those of us so terrorized, traumatized, and left so alone.

We HAD no people – or very few (I had no one – part of my specialty in life, I guess – but I had the Alaskan wilderness – which counts powerfully in my survival).

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Feeling alone in a crowd – said like some kind of familiar cliche – true not for everyone.  I don’t believe that it is.  Those who say it and know what this feels like – well, there’s no doubt something tragic in their early years – they had no people.

I am simply musing.  And imagining.  What would it be like if suddenly I FOUND my people as my people FOUND me?  Will I ever know in this lifetime?

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