Tag: abuse

+MY LESSON TODAY FROM THE ROSES: WHY MY LOVE RELATIONSHIPS FAILED

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I have been laying an adobe block ring around the Pomegranate tree today, which has placed me in an area of my yard working closest to the Ballerina Rose that is planted at the center of my walkway circle nearest what will hopefully be the door to my some-day adobe chapel.  Perhaps by spending this time today so nearby the roses, I have learned something new so that I can think about myself in a different way.

The Ballerina Rose grows on its OWN root.  It is not a rose that is grafted onto some other rose’s root not its own.  This means, as I’ve mentioned before, that unlike the grafted roses, the Ballerina can be reproduced from cuttings of itself.

As I pondered this difference between the roses I realized that all four of the ‘major’ love relationships I have had with men in my life were doomed to failure all for the same, single reason.  In relationship with each of these men I tried to graft myself onto THEIR root stock because I had no idea how to grow from my own root.

The first man I fell in love with when I was 18, the father of my firstborn child, was a California golden boy.  He was four years older than I was, brilliant, gorgeous  (beautiful tanned skin, sun-bleached blond hair, tall, well built), a popular playboy who knew how to party and enjoy himself, interact with other people, and came from a family with money.

The second man I met around age 20, the father of my second child, was also popular and well-liked.  He was calm and kind and gentle, dependable and a hard worker.  He had ‘roots’ around Fargo, North Dakota and I was convinced of two things:  He would be a wonderful father and I could stabilize my life by tying myself to him and his family as if he was my personal Rock of Gibraltar.

The third important man in my life I met when I was about 35.  He was Native American, and I thought he was ‘spiritual’.  I believed he was anchored into a heritage on this continent and with the earth that meant we could relate to one another from our souls.  He was ‘psychic’ and gifted in many ways, a Vietnam PTSD war veteran, but seemed to me wise and gifted.

The fourth man I met at the end of my 40s.  He is 17 years older than I am, has worked his same job for 55 years and has never left this small town area where he was born.  He seemed solid, wise and also stable and I counted on his perspective and insights on everything I ever chose to talk with him about.  I am still in love with this man though this relationship was obviously always doomed in terms of lack of commitment.

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I married and divorced the first two men.  None of these men are healthy and happy.  With the exception of the second man, the other three all came from very wounding childhoods.

But the lesson I am paying attention to today from the rose plants is that it wasn’t what I might have shared in common with any of these men that led to failed relationship.  I was looking in each case for a root I could attach and graft myself onto that represented what I felt I lacked within myself.  I was not growing from my own root as does the Ballerina Rose.

In my adult life I’ve never been able to ‘get away with’ anything or very long.  I don’t seem to have any kind of ‘luxury’ to fool myself, or wander very far down a ‘wrong road’.  It has been very difficult for me to realize that the abuse of my childhood meant that not only could I not grow my own branches out into the world, but I also had great difficulty growing my own healthy roots – MY OWN roots so that I would not have been misled into thinking I could ‘borrow’ from these men some part of THEIR life and being because I could not find what I needed in any other way.

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+FALSE STARTS AND BLIND INNER PROMISES

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There must be a post that needs to be written this morning that goes along with this title that is resounding within my mind this morning:  ‘False starts and blind inner promises’.  In thinking about the comment made to yesterday’s post about the beauty of tree burls and how as severe early abuse survivors we cannot grow our first early twigs out into the world because we are in continual danger of being attacked, and about how tree burls ARE formed in response to threats in the environment so that the growing tree must form scar tissue into itself – I am also thinking about how I feel ‘at dead center’ here in my home now, and in my yard.  I can only venture out once in a great while and when I do returning home within two or three hours seems to be essential for me to regain any calm equilibrium inside of myself.

I haven’t met my first grandchild yet who was born last March 11th.  I have three grown children all living in Fargo, North Dakota.  They want me to come up to visit them this summer, but the truth is that I cannot find a Linda who can make that journey.  I am not strong enough.  I don’t feel well enough.  Now they are talking about flying down to see me.

This all leads me to thinking about how at 58 years old, as a direct result of all the trauma I survived during the first 18 formative years of my life, I don’t so much not ‘have a leg to stand on’ as I ‘don’t have a limb to go out on’.  Yes, this also brings to mind ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ and what happens ‘when the bough breaks’.

I knew about all of the rest of my ‘knowing’ about the implications contained in yesterday’s tree burl post, but I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t want to write it.  I didn’t want to ‘be negative’ at the same time I didn’t want to be realistic.  I just wanted to END with the beautiful part and not acknowledge the serious ramifications and implications of growing a body-brain-mind-self in such a malevolent environment that most of who I had the potential to become was never able to branch out into the world and grow strong and true.

Being all bound up with my gifts, talents, strengths and abilities, with most of my potential hidden within the inside of me – rather than being expressed and formed and extended out into the ‘bigger world’ is a reflection of the physiological changes that happened to me as I tried to grow and development within the horribly toxic, threatening and truly dangerous world my mother created for me in my infant-childhood.

BUT I went off into that ‘bigger world’ at age 18 without having one single clue about what I had been through or about what had happened to me.  This is where the title for this post appears.  I have lived a life of ‘false starts’ and ‘blind inner promises’ because I had determination, a powerful will to do what it took to survive, to always move forward, to always do the best that I could as I organized my whole life on my most fundamental levels around trying to provide the best care I could for my children.

I was running blind.

I need to go outside this morning and trim the suckers that are growing in great masses at the base of my Pomegranate tree.  When my brother was here in April we completely decked the suckers, but they only came back as fast as they possibly could.  They grow thick and green like a thicket from the underground roots, but they are weak and wild and will not be productive as they crowd out the fruit-bearing branches and suck water and nutrients from the rest of the tree.

I had the thought in contrast to the tree burl image that in so many ways, being as blind as I was when I left home, that I simply set off into whatever direction I saw in front of me as I made decisions about my life and went off and ‘did things’.  Things could certainly have been far worse then they were, but now at age 58 most of what I have done appears to me now to be little more than a ‘false start’ like these tree’s suckers.

I had ‘blind hopes’ because I had no idea about who I was or what I wanted in my life.  I didn’t know what was possible, what was realistic, what motivated me, what I was searching for.  I could not miraculously form good strong fruit-bearing branches upon the tree-that-is-me at age 18.  I did not know about dissociation.  I did not understand that I could create branches in my life by going off in disconnected directions, spending the time of my life and my life force while I THOUGHT I knew what I was doing — but didn’t.

I don’t have a life history now of having continued to build a strong foundation of roots in my life, connected to a good strong self-trunk with wide healthy branches out there soaking in sunlight so I can celebrate my participation in my OWN ongoing life.

I have been burning up my inner resources all of my life and never knew it until now.  The amount of inner resources it took to endure and survive my childhood alone were probably equal to what a safe and securely attached person would use over the span of their entire lifetime.  When I tell my children now that I am ‘too tired to travel’ I know I mean exactly that:  I am resource-less rather than resource-full like my inner bank account is empty.

This, to me, is the long-term consequence that appears in so-called clinical terms as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that has all its own ‘suckers’ within me (depression, dissociation) that siphon off my strength.

Nobody stopped me at the threshold where I left my ‘childhood’ and crossed into my ‘adulthood’ and helped me take inventory of where I was coming from, how I had been formed, what I had endured, what had done to me, what I had to take with me and what I had left over after surviving hell itself.  Nobody then helped me to realize where and how I had to heal before I could move forward.

The major branches that I SHOULD have formed as a growing and developing self in a body were nearly ALL turned within.  I entered adulthood chasing after what I thought was a life as the life that had formed me chased after me – because it was all still inside of me.

While I am thankful I found resources to raise my children so that they are stable and able to continue to grow good, strong branches of self into their world and into their future, I have to say that my ability to take care of myself has been very limited.  Today even the chirping of birds can ‘irritate my nerves’ as I live and breath too close to the edge of continual sensory overload.  The world seems too busy, too fast, too loud, too noisy, too demanding, too stimulating — and far more than I can easily handle.

I live in a rural area.  Yet knowing that even the sound of a crinkling plastic bag irritates my senses as I remove a slice of bread lets me know that the body I formed growing up from birth in an environment of continual threat of harm and of harm itself is very real and has its own very real limitations that I was able to somehow ‘outrun’ during most of my adult life.  But I cannot do it now.

When we think about stopping child abuse, awareness of this kind of damage that child abuse often causes is what needs to motivate us.  There is long term physiological cost to surviving malevolent childhoods.  Yes, we are beautiful — but our ability to form a body-self that can grow our beauty out into the world with joy and wellness has been greatly injured by all the early wounds we have received.

No, I don’t want to have to say this.  No, I don’t want to have to know this.  No, I don’t want to have to live with these long term consequences that changed the physiology of this body I have to live in for my entire life.  But when any of us think that ‘infant-child abuse is a serious matter’, these changes, along with the difficulties and life-loss they create, are a great part of what we HAVE TO consider.

At the same time survivors of severe abuse deserve to know the degree of harm that was done to them so that they can more fully understand how their development and their entire life has been affected.  There is no magic band-aid to FIX the changes that happened to our body.  But there is information about these changes, how they affect us and how we can live better with the help of this wisdom.

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+SURVIVING MY MOTHER’S HATE – HER WORDS AND MINE

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What can I possibly say in response to or in rebuttal against my mother’s words as posted earlier in +ANOTHER ‘NASTY GRAM’ FROM MY MOTHER TO HER MOTHER RE: 6 YEAR OLD ME:

November 26, 1957 Tuesday

“Dear Mother,

I am glad I wrote my recent letter and hope you fully understand so I won’t have to repeat myself in the future.  You’ve always been far overly concerned with LINDA’S actions anyways.  I am not nearly as concerned with ‘tom boyishness’ which is not as prevalent now anyways as with poor behavior in school and traits and personality.  It takes far more anyways than ‘a pretty dress and a pretty face’ to be nice. ”

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Because I actually FOUND these words written in my mother’s handwriting across a 50+ year old piece of paper the other night, they are now visibly lodged in my waking mind rather than ONLY being carved into my ‘invisible being’.

What these words reflect is my mother’s HATE for me.  They reflect the fact that I was born DOOMED as her daughter to a life in hell.  What these words reflect is the fact that my grandmother was the ONLY person in the universe who knew that fact.  Our move to Alaska effectively removed my grandmother’s influence from my life as I have mentioned before, yet his letter my mother wrote  even further banished Grandmother into the remotest distance away from me.

There is no place far enough away in the universe that I can run to or hide in to make these words go away, as much as I might wish to or think I SHOULD be able to escape them now.  It is the echo of these words within every fiber of my being that bothers me now.  I want to ignore them.  I want to pretend that things were somehow ‘different’ for me from the time I was born – but 18 years in hell, as I tried to grow and develop my body-brain-mind-self is a long, long, long time.

Every time during those 18 years that I tried to grow even the tiniest part of who Linda is – into my self and into the world – SHE was there to bash me, to crash me, to smash me.  HATE is a destructive power nearly beyond imagination, especially when an infant-child is hated by its own mother (and father, in my case).

The fact that I was at least able to access a little tiny bit of my Grandmother’s concern and affection (even though she must have had a major influence on creating the monster my mother was from the start) before I turned six when we left Los Angeles and moved to Alaska was the only life preserver I ever had except for the love my 14-month-older than me brother radiated upon me.

My body-brain internalized my grandmother’s influence on my behalf, but it clear as day that my mother HATED the fact that my grandmother loved me.  How could she NOT, given the fact that much of my mother’s demise was rooted in the ways and times that her mother despised her as she grew and formed.

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I don’t feel like I am standing at the gates of hell gazing at the devouring inferno’s flames as I try to write something in response to these words of my mother’s I just found in her letter.  I feel like I am standing in hell’s inferno itself, and there is nothing I can do to stop that fact because I have the first years’ of my life experience being exactly in that place.

But what about today?  I have a thought about burls growing on some trees in some forests.  I remember seeing those burls carved into bowls.  Those burls hold the most interesting and beautiful patterns of wandering wood grain within them.  I didn’t know as a child what formed those burls.  I guess I don’t really even know now.  But at least I have a glimmer of a grasp on the process.

As some trees grow in the forest, and send out their tiny new branches, sometimes something happens that causes the branch to turn around so that instead of it growing freely in its extension out into the air freely, it turns around and begins to grow back into itself.  That’s where those wandering lines of grain within the burls come from.

I feel like one of those burls this morning.  I can see that the resiliency of who I am and how I am in the world (and have been since I ‘got made’) – coupled with what little support I could glean from my brother and my grandmother – kept me alive so that I could endure and survive my mother.  But I had to grow my branches inward where my mother could not get to them-me – as best as I could.

Knowing that fact, and knowing my growing process was probably very similar to any other severe infant-child abuse survivor’s – I can see that within us is held the most beautiful patterns and lines, colors and swirls, the most spectacular wonder in the tracks of our survival that appear in the ‘burl’ that is us – that anyone could imagine.

A tree branch that turns around and grows into itself cannot be as easily seen as a fully stretched and reaching branch.  It is compact, and less vulnerable.  We (survivors) grew closest to the trunk that contains our very life force within it.  We grew closest to the root source that fed us life then and feeds us life now.  We must ACTUALLY have the very shortest route to take to find out who we truly as are separate, unique and wonderful individuals because we did not get to grow ourselves in any extended far reach into ‘that world out there’.

We perhaps did not lose ourselves in that outside world the way others who could romp and play, grow and thrive while being loved, cherished, supported, encouraged from the time they were born.  We are tough.  The wood grain of a burl is dense and hard, being close to a rock than any vegetable matter.  We had to be that strong, that tough, that endurable, that unbreakable, that self- and inwardly-protected – – and THIS special, unique and beautiful.

Which brings me back in my thoughts to my mother’s few brief words in her letter to her mother about me and my relationship both to my mother and to my grandmother.  There is an unbelievable universe of terrible abuse contained in those few words – as if they contain the terrible dark and destructive seed that was my mother’s hatred.  At the same time I read them, at the same time I can feel all the echoing and resonance within this body-brain-mind-self that formed itself within THAT hell, I also know that nothing my mother ever did to me – or ever could possibly do – could in any way remove from me ANY portion of who I AM as a human being.

My mother’s treatment of me DID change HOW I am in my lifetime because her treatment of me changed the way I physiologically grew and developed.  But she did not change ME.  I just grew into a different kind of branch, one with most of its health and beauty held close within me on the inside – exactly where she could never actually reach me.

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+TRAUMA DRAMA REENACTMENTS CONTINUE IN AN UNSAFE AND INSECURE WORLD

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I remember as a little girl living in the Los Angeles area being in the car when my parents passed road construction projects where steam rollers were being used.  I was fascinated by them, and even though of course I didn’t know it, it is very possible that my imagination recognized the metaphor contained within the actions of this monstrous piece of machinery that was designed specifically to roll over and completely flatten anything within its path.

My Mother the Steam Roller.  That’s just ONE of the things my mother was very good at:  flattening the life out of anyone in her way.  She flattened me, and I must have been aware of how effective my mother was at flattening my grandmother any time my grandmother tried in any way to say something or do something ‘nice’ for or about me.

Actually it never mattered WHO it was who might have tried to cross my mother.  My mother was a predatory fighter and could with ease flatten anyone within her family just like she was this piece of equipment — a steam roller.

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I will need to spend quite a bit of time eventually with the letter I posted last evening in +”GRANDMOTHER GETS A NEW CAR” – AND . . . . . because it contains so much information about my mother and her relationships with family.  From the stories my mother repeatedly told about how mean both her mother and her brother were to her in her childhood, I can see both of them also as if they were steam rollers who steam rolled right over my mother.  She was not empowered to fight back against them when she was young (even all the way into her teens).

But what a way to live.  What a way to CONTINUE to live, always being at war with those a person is supposed to feel most safe and secure with, most loved and cherished and cared about by.  I found myself thinking as I dug my way through the transcription of my mother’s words last night, “Is EVERYONE’S family like mine?  Does everyone have patterns of insecure attachment, of trouble and pain, sorrow and suffering, of war and inner emotional blackmail, hostage-taking, kidnapping of the soul, brutalization of the imagination, blocking and distortion of gifts and talents, destruction of relationships that my entire family and its history seems to have contained within it?

That led me to wondering how many people read on this blog with the words, “That could have happened in my family” ringing in their thoughts?  Different times, different participants, different versions of trauma drama, but trauma drama and terribly insecure human-to-human attachments just the same.

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It might seem like an odd connection, but this information is not randomly dragged into this post.  If you Google search for the terms ‘Israel genetics dance’ you will find some amazing research about the new discoveries about how there IS a genetic link between ‘professional dancers’ and their genes evidently related to this very ancient human activity –DANCE.

I mention this in connection with my mother’s letter I posted last night because I wish I could discover research about genetics and drama like I accidentally discovered the research about genetics and dance.  If there truly IS a genetic ‘loading’ for dramatic abilities just as there is for dancing, then I would suspect that my mother, as the amazing trauma drama specialist that she was, had those genes.

After all, human expression through gesture and sound, movement and pantomime, and reenactment of experience belongs to our species way back to our ancient beginnings – way back to before we had the ability to speak to one another with anything like a word.  Stories were transmitted, told, expressed, conveyed in all kinds of ways without words, and today we STILL watch this happen or participate in these trauma dramas if we happen to have been born into a family where the WORDS expressing the truth about trauma resounded in their empty silence.

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This leads me to the important insight that came to me last night about the trauma drama reenactment patterns in my mother’s life as they operated around her nearly continual moving around.  I have noted before that I think my mother projected ‘imaginary friends’ and ‘the imaginary enemy (me)’ onto her children.  She resonated with her infants as being her play baby dolls.  But what I didn’t GET until last night as I transcribed the letter I posted is that IN HER MOVING SHE WAS PLAYING HOUSE.

I had a “Duh, Linda!” moment!  Of COURSE that’s what she was doing.  I only SAW this last night because I was working my way through a collection of letters I had saved separately in a ziplock bag throughout the years that I have been ordering and organizing my mother’s collection of writings.  As I’ve mentioned before, it strikes me as being so unbelievably strange that all the while my mother wrote these letters over the years she ALWAYS intended to ‘put them into a book’.  Yet NEVER did she actually DATE a single one of them!

Often she put the day of the week on the letter, and most letters are at least contained in an original envelope with a post mark.  But this ziplock bag collection contained letters and parts of letters that had NO indication of date for me to work with.  I had to wait until the entire body of my mother’s letters was put into the best order I could make of them before I could add these letters into the newly coherent story I am forming of my mother’s words (and of her offspring’s childhood).

So, the letter that I posted last night was one of these ‘floating’ letters.  As I added it into the main body of the sort-of-coherent story of my mother’s life contained in her letters, I was FINALLY able to GET IT.

If you were to read through this collection of letters as I have transcribed them thus far (and there still might be missing letters to add into these files), you will see the pattern of my mother’s playing-house-by-constant-moving-around that I am talking about:

While I am not going back at this moment for the exact late June-early July letters where she begins to tell my father that she is moving herself and four children out of the one-room motel living situation into a rental house that she found in Glendora, you will see those letters as they describe her ‘playing house psychosis’.

She describes how she can NOW make a temporary cozy home (meaning safe and secure for herself) in that rented house.  But it doesn’t take long after she’s managed to accomplish the MOVE itself into that house that her whole fantasy begins to disintegrate, crumble and fall apart.  As this begins to happen my mother summons – as she ALWAYS did no matter WHAT household move trauma drama she was enacting – all the supposedly LOGICALLY BASED reasons why she HAS to make the move.

As readers it is time to take our stand and begin to understand that my mother’s madness was NEVER about logical reason.  My mother was not reason-able.  At least in this letter I posted of hers last night she is able to plead with and beg my father to help her.  Most often she so completely disguised her ‘mission’ that she fooled even my supposedly ‘reason-able’ father to move right along with her.

Because (even though I lived through 18 years of moving with my parents) I ONLY saw the pattern last night of the Fairy Tale nature of my mother’s PLAYING HOUSE with her imaginary friends, enemies (which came to include members of her family and other people other than just me), and doll babies exactly as I dropped this very important letter I was transcribing into its ‘coherency slot’ within her story I can finally say, “I get the whole picture.”

Human beings are born with the genetic capability to use our specie’s dramatic imagination in the process of becoming people who live within a massive web of drama that includes all of life.  We are supposed to develop a stable-self-core that allows us to make good sense of the constant interactions that are going on as we are forming within our earliest caregiver-attachment environments.

When these interactions, when our earliest body-brain forming attachment environment is malevolent, the nature of trauma drama begins to form itself into the patterns of our body-brain – and therefore into the life we live.  We can ‘clinicalize’ and ‘sanitize’ and ‘legitimize’ how we choose to talk about the end results of forming a body-brain-self-life within malevolent early environments, but in the end we are simply being prepared in a trauma-drama world to live a trauma-drama reenactment life – UNTIL WE LEARN THE LESSONS THE TRAUMA IS TRYING TO TEACH OUR ENTIRE SPECIES, not ‘just’ the individual members who ‘play the parts’ in this great drama that is the ongoing life of our species.

A trauma drama life is not a coherent one if the lessons contained within the drama itself are never learned.  It is only as we learn these lessons that words can begin to dissipate the vague fog of illusion that envelope the ongoing dramas themselves.

My very young mother, already as an infant being neglected if not also abused, was left isolated and all alone in a world with her dolls and her story books to try to figure out what SHE and her life – as well as that of other people – meant and how it all fit together.  Yet when I think about how in our specie’s ancient beginnings there were no warnings about keeping children away from the ongoing reenactments of trauma drama that the other members of our ‘family’ and ‘tribe’ were demonstrating, I realize that there is no corresponding magical line within the human brain-psyche that says ‘this dramatic reenactment belongs to childhood’ and ‘this dramatic reenactment belongs to adulthood’.

All the story telling and story acting belongs to the same mythic imagination that IS human life.  The psychologist Carl Jung might have divided the main characters in human drama into what he called archetypes, but in the end all the individual parts that CAN be played by humans in human drama simply either act themselves out in ongoing dramas OR are talked about in ongoing stories.

The evolutionary advantage for our entire species is the same one that operates for us each as individuals:  Trauma has something to teach us.  If the lessons are not learned they will continue to act themselves out until somebody ‘gets it’.  The GETTING of the lessons of trauma happen when we get to the more evolutionary advanced level of being able to USE WORDS to convey to our own self and to others what the traumas ARE and what they are teaching us.

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In the case of my mother – as I am now quite convinced is the case for every single human being – the MAIN theme of every drama and story of our life is about how safe and secure the world is for us to be living in.  The ongoing drama-story of our life IS about degrees of safe and secure attachment in the world – or degrees of its opposite.  The kicker is, though, that the messages are NEVER JUST meant either for the individual people who endured and survived traumas, or even for the immediate peer generation that individual is a part of.

The messages of degrees of trauma, of degrees of safe and secure attachment to and within the world are telling about the STATE OF THE WORLD, the condition of the external environment because it is THAT state of the world that the future generations are going to be left to survive in and better know something about.

We have to learn how to ‘read’ trauma and the dramatic reenactments trauma creates when it remains unresolved.  In its unresolved state the critical information about continued survival of the individual AND the species to which it belongs is NOT being understood.  Without learning something from trauma about survival the trauma will simply continue to be included in the patterns of life itself as these patterns repeat themselves like persistent and obvious nightmares until somebody pays attention.

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Nobody looked from the outside (or from the inside) at the patterns of trauma drama that unfolded within my family of origin and recognized what was going on.  Nobody said, “Gee, that family moves around too much, what’s wrong?”  Nobody said, “Gee, those children are not happy, what’s wrong?”  Nobody said, “Boy, that one little girl named Linda is the absolute picture of being lost, frightened and forlorn, what’s wrong?”

Nobody pierced through the smokescreen illusion of make-believe justification for all of the abuse, all of the moves, all of the madness that WAS the trauma-drama reenactment that WAS our family’s life.  Did any of it matter?  Did it matter that lives were being flattened within my family?  Did it matter that potential for joy, health, self-directed expression of talent and potential for a lifetime of well-being had been destroyed and continued to be destroyed within the horrible trauma drama reenactment that WAS our family?

No, evidently it didn’t matter.  Nobody saw any reason to pay attention, ask any questions, become involved, find a way to STOP what was going on.  It evidently wasn’t anyone else’s business.

But if we think we want to help prevent and STOP infant and child abuse we will have to cross that imaginary line between giving a damn and not giving a damn about the messages that trauma drama reenactments continue to convey within child-abusing — within ANY abusing — environments.  We have to allow ourselves to understand that the messages contained in these traumatic dramas are for ALL of us, not only for those who are captive within them.

The messages trauma conveys are ALWAYS about the degrees of safety, security and well-being that exist in the whole world, and are NOT SIMPLY messages about the conditions within any single family.  The human drama, the good and the bad of it, involve and belong to every member of our species.  Trauma itself is like a steam roller smashing the joy and well-being out of every member of every generation that remains in its path until somebody, somewhere, at some time FINALLY notices, pays attention and reads the signals contained within the trauma drama reenactments that tell us all what is WRONG in the world so that we can ALL do something to make what is WRONG in the world we all share  – well, quite simply, RIGHT.

This healing will not happen unless and until we find and use WORDS to think about and to talk about what needs to be changed to end as many traumas as we can so that we can make everyone’s world a safer and more secure place to be throughout everyone’s life span.  Is this too much to hope for, too much to ask for?

Nope.

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+”GRANDMOTHER GETS A NEW CAR” – AND . . . . .

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Minimal background for this 1957 letter:  My father went to Alaska ahead of his family in June 1957 to work, get enough paychecks to rent a house so he could send for us.  Mother remained behind with four little kids in Los Angeles area.  They had NO budget to make this move.  All depended on a check my father was supposed to get for unused vacation pay from the job he left behind in California which did not show up when promised.

This is a classic Mother letter to my father (who did not let her buy a new car OR drive to Seattle).   The state of mind my mother was in when she wrote this letter and while she experienced the events she described was a common one within our family.  [fyi:  Charles is my mother’s brother, her only sibling, two years older than she was.  The four children she’s hauling around here are ages:   just turned 2, just turned 4, almost 6 (me), and just turned 7.  Geeze, a little ‘trauma drama’ going on here, perhaps?]

A note on my mother’s constant moving:  Best I can figure my parents made 5 major moves in the first 7 years of their marriage.  Then they sold their house in Glendora prior to my father’s move to Alaska and we moved into a motel.  Father went north.  Mother moved from that motel with the four of us into another motel, then into a ‘cute little house’ she is moving out of in this letter (stayed about a month there).  She moved into Grandmother’s (in this letter), then (in this letter) up to a mountain cabin for a week, then back to stay at Grandmother’s (where more hell breaks lose), and then I think into one more motel – all in the 8 weeks since my father had exited the California scene until she and kids flew to Alaska July 31, 1957.  (I had an fascinating insight into my mother’s life of moving – but too tired now after work on letters today to ‘tell’ – later!)

Grandmother’s car — and yes, she was The Little Old Lady from Pasadena

— and in case you are wondering, this letter is a wonderful example of a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder in full motion!

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July 14, 1957 Sunday [This letter is undated, does not begin with a greeting, is written from Crestline the night we got up to the mountains for a week]

I wish I could write you everything that has transpired with me since I started seriously moving but once again it’s far too late – I went to bed at 2:00 last night and it must be at least that by now!

Vacation?  Ha, ha, ha.  Will I ever get settled again — ?

We had dinner – the poor darling children – at 10:00 P.M. tonight in Crestline and that was hours ago.  (I’ve spent the last hour busily spraying ant poison around).

I waited upstairs (?) it’s really more of a loft – until the children fell asleep.  We were so crowded (ha, ha again – sardines have nothing on us) there was not enough room for us let alone the play-pen (in the car) and Sharon is on a big bed – Anyways when I came down poor Mother had fallen asleep and was so tired she never knew she soon would’ve been eaten alive and owes her very life to me as there were hundreds of large ants all over her.  (The children had gone to the cupboard in fact the poor baby had passed out graham crackers to the starving children at 9:30 P.M.) and I guess the ants were attracted.

I found a spray and have been spraying all over – they’re even in the bath-room.

Oh – where can I start.  We have had such a time!

This is a disconnected letter as I read it over and it’s no wonder.  I am dead on my feet from tiredness but still want to write you.

I’ve lifted and hauled for days – I never saw so much stuff.  I thought I’d been so smart getting everything over to Mom’s by degrees – trunks etc. but when I finally got to the actual moving I still had carloads.

Mother was so busy two days before I moved I couldn’t use her car but sent things over with her.

As I wrote I decided to stay one more night in Glendora but still had to make another trip Saturday to Pasadena with the car loaded.  There wasn’t room for any of us – John, Cindy and Linda were on their knees all the way and we had to keep stopping the car so they could stretch!  L  Really I have never seen such a load – and that was after the things went to storage.  Moving!  Ugh!

I was so upset Friday night with Charlie’s nastiness that I had lost all of my enthusiasm for coming up here – or going away with Mother.  I am tired of her excusing him – there’s no excuse!  I know she’ll soothe me and then him. – and it just doesn’t work any more and only provokes me more.  I see so little of my brother and speak so little to him, he knows he won’t see much of me and to have him talk to me like that – was awful.  I reacted in 100 ways – none of them complimentary to him, I assure you.

It makes me so mad to think I can’t depend on him at all to help me or to lean on and not even to be courteous!!

I could go on and on but what’s the use.  I only wanted to leave.  I told Mom I didn’t want to go away now with her that she better stay with them and make things up because after all I would be leaving soon.  It didn’t bother her or Carolyn abit – I have no respect any longer for them!!  How can they let him act that way and go on so sweetly.  I can’t.  No wonder I’ve been on the defensive with you, my darling, times when you meant no harm – I feel as if I cannot take that treatment – I had so much I put up with before I was married from him and always Mother giving in, giving in to HIM.

Oh I’ll be so glad to come to you – I ache for you my darling, will I ever be close in your arms again.  I want you to hold me tight again.  I’ll never be happy here or anywhere until then.

I had no choice but to come here.

No money, no house, no car – It’s an awful feeling, I hate it.

I don’t want to be in debt again – but I am so tempted to buy a car and start driving to Seattle as soon as I get that check.

I’m not having my mail forwarded.

We didn’t even get here until 8:00 tonight – and started out at 9:00 this morning.  What an awful miserable time.  I would be blissfully happy to leave now for Alaska – how will I wait.

Well, at least you now know of my move – it took almost all day Saturday to get that house emptied, the children of course are harder to manage when Mom is there – oh, it was awful.  Then I had to clean it – and it was late afternoon when we got to Mother’s.

Then I had to unload everything – the car full.  I gave the children baths and went down to look at Riviera couches and as I wrote bought a set – returned, put the children to bed (oh, I did feed them) and stayed up until 2:00 working on that stuff.

I packed and sealed six large boxes and one extra large and put them in Mom’s cellar.  Packed our suitcases, the large trunk over, and have more boxes to do when I get back.  One of her upstairs closet [sic] is full and locked!

Where does it all come from?

I had to return to the Riviera store to change my fabric – as I noticed it was too thin and wouldn’t wear well.  I got a heavy knobby fabric now in grey, black and brown for couch and coral for the chair.  It sounds dull but it’s very nice.  I’ll put bright cushions on it and the coral is lovely.  I thought they’d fit in our Alaskan home better – blend with the house – environment and still fit anywhere later.  It’s very heavy and washable, I think the extra cost will be worthwhile as we know how much reupholstering costs!  I’m so anxious for you to see it.  It was so hard to decide I brought it home and returned it today!  I looked and looked – really I must’ve spent hours deciding.  It’s partly what kept me up so late last night!  I know how you must’ve felt about the house I think and hope it’s what you would have picked for our house.  The other fabric had gold threads too, which made it too dressy.  * Be sure to send me the room size right away for a rug.

The furniture will be added in two weeks to storage.  Maybe I should send you a night letter when it’s already.  Let me know.

Now I’m faced with a greater uncertainty – that of buying a car.  I would like to get one – as much as I hate the cost – as soon as the check arrives, use it for business here so I can be independent and drive it to Seattle right after things are completed here – altogether one week or six days after check arrives.  Until then I can’t do anything.

To get on with the events changing my mind – I must write you as tired as I am so you’ll know all this.

Well, today after returning fabric (I forgot to mention I still had too much for the car – six people today) we returned home and repacked suitcases.  Please visualize four children, two adults plus food (big item) and I want to use up my left-overs now!  Plus typewriter and Mom’s papers (You know that quantity) plus record player plus records plus bedding plus pillows plus linens plus toys!  Plus clothing for six and more too of course plus the turtle (the bird’s at home) thank goodness.

Finally after an hour of so more lifting and loading we were almost ready.  But, now I want you to know my brother and I had no angry words but I told him he was selfish to be so disinterested (it was late that night, the children were up – we still had to go to Glendora and I called to be thoughtful even though tired and see how they were and to say good-bye) and that I did not intend to bother him again if he felt that way and wouldn’t call or go up again!  I had hoped to visit with them alot next week and now it is all SPOILED.  I won’t even show them the pictures.  (Carolyn wasn’t much better).

Mom’s excuse this time is that he can’t bear to talk of Alaska etc etc.

— (This is all to explain the extra lifting) – but still he was cold-steel that night and there’s so much more and I am frustrated it takes so long to write and I’m tired.  But I got the feeling he would come to Mother’s.

I hate to say it a [sic] Mom was shocked I’d even think it – and destroy my (our) things – all my boxes, trunks – as he used to when he was a child and was mad [at her].

I couldn’t rid myself of the thought –

Mom says his work is slow, and Mom’s been talking of getting a new car and says he’s jealous of that etc. etc.

Well, I finally followed my terrible hunch and brought everything down cellar [sic] and locked the upstairs closet.

Of course that made Mom angry!  Oh D – I wish I were there with you.  I don’t feel now as if I’ll ever return here!!!

This has all hurt and upset me more than I can say.  Everyone is more interested in us than our families – that’s not love.  He can’t love ME – no matter how Mother twists it.

WELL we did get started (and arrived) as you can see but I wondered at times.  I feel I could never have had a more terrible time on the Alcan Highway then today with HER!

I told you she also has been looking and pricing cars.  She’s been told by her own garage man the last week that it would burn out her engine to drive up here etc, then she took it to Doran’s and he said it was alright and charged her 7.00.

She too has been torn between buying a second and potential trouble or a new one and large payments.  When Doran said it was O.K. we decided to take it up (she did all of the checking and only reported to me).  I hated to see her get a new car when she drives so little!  (She says she’s also ashamed of her old one in front of her clients) whereas I feel we will really get use out of one, dependability, comfort if we got one!

Well, we filled up on gas at Doran’s (darn Him) plus oil (it wouldn’t hold oil and a short time before I noticed a burning smell – I know zero about cars).  We asked him again but he said just to keep putting in oil.

It got so hot later I stopped and noticed a pool – flood, rather – of oil and drip, drip continued under the car.  We went to several garages – and they said we couldn’t drive it up [the mountain].  It needed a complete overhaul – so Mom (to my amazement) decided there and then to buy her new Ford.

Most all places were closed but we finally located one in Fontana where the poor tired, hot, disillusioned (they expected to be here yesterday, then today) and I waited.  We were there three hours just waiting.

She did buy one and traded in her old one.  It’s a dream – white and mint green – sedan!

But I was really stymied.  I didn’t want to drive up with her and wouldn’t touch her new car.

[“We” is crossed out]  I unloaded all those D – things again trying to watch four children too, and reloaded (it was awful) and my back kills me now and the real nice, young salesman drove us clear up here.  His wife who’s expecting in two weeks and his mother followed and drove him back.  (We didn’t even know how to drive it – he showed us but it’s different and takes some getting used to).

Oh, Bill we laughed over it all but with tears close!  There sits the car!  I don’t want to drive with her and I don’t feel free to go anywhere now, even to the Lake.  She’s so nervous anyways but NOW – ye Gods!

I have umpteen errands to do when I get back, stuff to take to storage etc. and how?  Oh, Bill – will all this ever end.

After all this 0 those darling children were angels – no lunch, no nap – nothing but upsetting experiences and still good.

I know the slightest childish noise disturbed her when we got here.

I’ve tried to get her to return to Pasadena and come back and get me but she won’t. – What will I do now?  And who will drive us back to Pasadena?

Her car is smaller in the back seat and between the seats and the stuff won’t even fit back in.  He (the salesman) had to bring some up.  Maybe with the good gone there’d be enough room.

I know she’ll be upset if I drive it and mad if I take a bus home.  Oh Bill – I am desperate.

I had an idea then and went in after she was through and talked to him about a station wagon.  He will give me ‘a better deal’ even without a trade-in than any other deal offerred [sic].  (I think he feels sorry for me – now!)

With only $350 down and 85.00 a month – Balance 2,490 (less than others) after down payment!

Why I couldn’t get any of the other dealers (I’ve been to over six) to give me that good a thing with a trade-in.  He’s just discounting.

What do you think?  If I had the check now I could order it, if I knew you haven’t bought one and think it’s right and will let me drive to Seattle (how can I stay at Mother’s now?)

I can’t even drive her car to the park – she’ll have appointments.  You can see the picture – please let me buy it and drive it.

Golly, we’re better off than her and still can give her some $.  I’m so mixed up – please advise me!

I would rather drive to Seattle alone than stay at her house now with the Cahills and her new car – situation as it’s.

She tells me she wants me to enjoy it and drive it but I know she’d have a fit if I did and there was a scratch on it!

I hope I am explaining everything.  I am so tired.

But as I said he could, providing I had down payment and he could get my color, deliver it here and I could drive myself home and then to Seattle.

I could and would.  (Mom can call down and see and would go get check if it was there)

Or I don’t know what.

Tonight I tried to drive it to the restaurant we have food but nothing for supper (things were so mixed up).

We decided to go – to drive with her.  It starts so fast and quick and the brakes stop so suddenly.  It’s automatic shift and is big.

Well, she persuaded me and I reasoned – it’s our four children’s danger against damaging only her car so I did!

I love the car, it’s truly a dream.  It glides, is easy to drive, beautiful to look at but big, different and frightening as it’s not mine.

We got there and back with no mishaps but what now?

Oh Bill – I feel so dependent now on the wrong people (I want to depend on you) when I want to be INDEPENDENT of them!  (I have no $ with me and have to ask her to loan me every penny and she write [sic] it down (so do I)

I HATE IT

We laugh at our craziness but underneath I feel a lack of something

Dearest Bill, I am miserable.  I love you so  — darling I wish you could fly to Seattle  and we’ll drive up together.

(You couldn’t could you?)

* Can you check to see how long it would take for space to ship the car from Seattle and how much for sure the cost would be?

Could you buy a jeep for yourself – or are they expensive?  Perhaps we could have both! –

Questions, questions –

I’ve gotten so I’m afraid to trust my judgement [sic] any more after all the past mistakes.

I’ll mail this tomorrow – somehow – I feel stranded and it should reach you Wednesday or Thursday.

If you want to give me permission to get a car wire me.

I could stay in Fontana a few days (car town) at a Motel and wait for delivery there.  (I’d rather).

I’ve had a bad taste of car trouble with ours and her old clunkers and I’m terrified of more up there.

You decide!!

If you wire me at post office (I’ll keep checking) Crestline – then I’ll have Mother bring me $.

I’ll pay 350 car and go to Pasadena, tie up loose ends and

LEAVE for SEATTLE and you.

Darling don’t worry I would rather be alone plus the children then anywhere else until I’m with you.

I have talked to many women who have gone on trips alone.  The other day I talked to a widow in Glendora, a school teacher who drove to California with three babies after her husband died – to the dismay of her family.  That was six years ago and she has made out fine.

Don’t worry and I wouldn’t if I had a new car and – I’d love the trip!

I love you!

(I might send this special delivery)

I’ll write you all about the cabin tomorrow.

I can’t wait to be with you!!!!

I love you

I love you.

Ben Wright promised this week it [check from Dad’s vacation pay at job he left in L.A.] would get here – It’s a shame we missed time we’re paid for here but maybe it’s just as well.  I love the mountains but there’s no yard, just hills and no transportation, really, now!

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+IN THIS 1957 LETTER – THE WORDS MY FATHER WROTE ABOUT HIS MOTHER

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It seems easier to focus my search light for understanding on my mother’s earliest beginnings in my efforts to see if I can learn anything useful about how she ‘got made’ to be the Borderline abusive mother that she was rather than spend the same effort looking at my father’s early beginnings.

Part of this neglect on my part of attention to my father’s early history is that we did not have his family AT ALL in our childhoods as we had my mother’s mother.

I’m not going to go into detail about this right now, but did just find this statement my father made about his parents – and his mother – in this June 17, 1957 letter he wrote to my mother.  Evidently my mother had definitely had ‘words’ with my father’s parents, and my father states here that he supports my mother:

“I wrote a note to my parents yesterday.  I told them I wasn’t sorry for anything you said to them, that my only regret was that I’d failed to do it myself a long time ago.  Don’t think that I have any idea of making up to them – I simply wanted to put them straight.  I don’t want them to have any idea that this was your doing.  I think that woman has things just the way she wants them and to H – with her!”

In considering the profoundly critical influence that mothers (and other early caregivers) have on infant-child body-brain development – including attachment patterns – these words my father wrote seem to indicate that he DID NOT have a warm, easy, loving, caring attachment relationship with either of his parents – including his mother.

What influence did my father’s mother have on the way he developed that led eventually to my father’s ability to be such a ‘perfect match’ for such the abusive and ‘unstable’ woman that my mother was?  I would have to include a lot of thinking in my forensic autobiographical study to try to figure out as specifically as I might be able to – what on earth happened early on during his development TO MY FATHER that made him so willing and able to support my mother no matter what she EVER did – during all the years of my childhood (and beyond, though he finally divorced her after 37 years of marriage).

I am too tired to go off on THAT search.  But neither could I ignore my father’s words in this 1957 letter I am transcribing today…..

[We do know that my father’s only brother and his only sister both died of alcoholism as did my father’s father.  How happy could his mother have been?  In 1990 my father told me that while he was growing up his mother never left her house except for required shopping and never had anyone come over to visit.  I strongly suspect depression – and if she was depressed from the time my father was born (he was not a wanted child), her depression would have greatly impacted my father’s body-brain development.]

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+ANOTHER ‘NASTY GRAM’ FROM MY MOTHER TO HER MOTHER RE: 6 YEAR OLD ME

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Here’s the next letter that follows the one I mentioned in the last post.  When I write about ‘where was my grandmother to protect me?’ – even after our move away from her to Alaska – my mother’s attitudes are clear in her words here.  This battle ‘over Linda’ between my mother and her mother had been going on since the day I was born.

November 26, 1957 Tuesday

“Dear Mother,

Bill brought home ‘the letter’ last night that you addressed wrong – isn’t it funny how you can do something like that.  I did it many times last summer.

I am glad I wrote my recent letter and hope you fully understand so I won’t have to repeat myself in the future.  You’ve always been far overly concerned with LINDA’S actions anyways.  I am not nearly as concerned with ‘tom boyishness’ which is not as prevalent now anyways as with poor behavior in school and traits and personality.  It takes far more anyways than ‘a pretty dress and a pretty face’ to be nice.  She does wear pretty dresses to school and looks like a Princess in her beautiful jacket (when it’s clean!!)  I no longer wish to discuss it with you and I will appreciate no further comments and psychological theories from you!  Save them for the Cahill’s [her brother’s family] – I’m sure they’ll welcome them – I never have and I especially don’t now.

We feed, clothe and love our children and we will discipline them and reward them as WE see fit now and in the future!!!!!  They are our responsibility – we brought them into the world – they’re NOT your children ‘only your grandchildren’.  PERIOD.

* * * * *

The weather has turned cold here but we like it.  The temperature has gone down to 18° nights and 20° and 22° days.  There’s no snow on the ground – although weather report predicts it today.  But it looks as if it’s snowed as the ground has a thick white coat of frost which remains all day now and the trees are also heavy with frost.  The creek is partially frozen and has widened considerably.  Parts of the surface are ice but the water still runs swift beneath and around the ice.  In places there are big chunks of ice and icicles hand around edges and from trees where water has splashed.  It’s fun to watch the changes – it looks more like a pond now, in places and although rough in spots will be good place for children to learn to ice skate when frozen solid!”

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Talk about crazy making!  It was like  the terrible abuse did not exist.  My mother could wave her magic wand and VOILA!  We are NOT talking about the terrible things done to me, we are talking about the marvels of today’s Alaskan weather!  See:  *AGE 6 – FIRST GRADE — NIGHT ON THE STOOL

My mother would probably have ACTUALLY liked to KILL her own mother for her interfering ‘on behalf of me’ – but she didn’t have to.  My mother simply CONTROLLED her mother.  Like a baseball mis-hit that disappears out of sight – nobody bothers to look for it – life just keeps on going.  In cases of severe infant-child abuse, that’s mostly what I believe DOES happen.  (These are NOT easy letters for me to read.)

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At the end of this November 26 letter, mother adds a postscript, which in my thinking is a complete sham.  The  concern for my mother actually has nothing to do with money.  Her concern is that my grandmother be prevented from ever ‘interfering’ with how my mother treated me, as she had made clear at the beginning of this same letter.  Everything in this postscript is a deflection away from THIS fact:

“P.S.  I hope I never have to mention again about children.  I don’t want to feel I can’t tell you about children or say something without a barrage of letters of advise following.

So once and for all:

We want no financial assistance in any way from now on.

Only birthday and Xmas etc. gifts and those inexpensive and no more spent on our children please by you than we can spend on them!  I don’t want Grandma giving them expensive gifts – love and thought count just as much.

We’re tight financially now and will be for two years but even if I were a millionaire I want children to learn the value of $ and saving and spending own allowance etc. – also to be considerate, polite and thoughtful.  I want to bring them up the way WE see fit – it’s one reason we wanted to come up here.

* In order to bring up our children in our own way – as we see fit!!!

I don’t want them to be materialistic or have false standards – I think it will be far more possible here than in Southern California.

We intend to scrimp and save and don’t want you (please) influencing them in any way!

You’re their grandma – their only one now – and they need grandmotherly love and we need love too.

Use your well-earned $ $ on yourself.  Take trips, buy pretty clothes for you.  Do things! – Go places!

From now on let’s limit your Birthday gifts to children to 10.00 or under and Xmas 5.00 a piece.  NO MORE!!”

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+A RARE ‘MORE HONEST’ 1957 LETTER BY MOTHER TO HER MOTHER INVOLVING ME

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Part of a November 20, 1957 letter Mother wrote to her mother – probably in reference to what happened with the white ruffs on my parka the year I was in first grade (having just turned 6):

“Also please let’s straighten out matter of Linda once and for all.

No. I I did not write to you for advise!!!

No. II  Linda has always been dressed feminine and given as many (if not more) advantages as any girl!!

No. III  I did buy her more clothes this year and a prettier and more expensive jacket on purpose to make her feel feminine – with NO AVAIL!!  She still wears dresses to school and always does look nice! – when she leaves home!

No. IV  She looked nice up until two because she was in a play pen and stroller!!  — So does Sharon NOW!

ENOUGH SAID except please don’t pass on unwanted un needed advise air-mail please, concerning children – I only mentioned it to let you know that she is not taking care of her clothes and I feel should not wear expensive clothes until she takes care of what she now wears!!  For no other reason.

Linda always was kept nice and still is.  Her hair has always been clean and shining (no child of mine will ever have a permanent in first grade!) and her nails have always been manicured.  I have three girls and you had one – I think I am capable of caring for girls – thank you!  If you want to give advise and must why don’t you give it to Carolyn, seems Sandra [my mother’s only brother’s daughter] needs it, Linda looks feminine and always will just hasn’t matured fully but in time I’m sure she will – and never could or would be like Mimi, Diana or boyish girl you mentioned (but Sandra may – dancing lessons or not).  Probably dieting and less fussy, expensive clothes would do Sandra more good than dancing lessons at 4!!  See I have my ideas too only the difference is I keep my suggestions to myself unless asked for and usually then too as most people don’t relish advise asked for or not asked for (your clients excepted!!)

WHEW – well that’s off my chest.  You’ve always interfered with Linda and probably more reason I’ve had difficulties with her in past than her wearing levis in Glendora.

Sorry if this hurts but next summer I don’t want fusses such as in past over your well meant but unwanted suggestions.

Remember I’ll be 32 in December – not 2!  [all written very large on paper]

Love, Mildred

P.S.  I  When my temperature simmers down in a few days I’ll write a letter.”

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Relates to my “Night On the Stool” experience in these stories –

and this post:  +ONE OF MOTHER’S 1957 LETTERS – INVOLVING MY GRANDMOTHER

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+DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED INSECURE ATTACHMENT – AT THE CORE OF ‘BORDERLINE’

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When I wrote my reply to the comment at the end of my last post, saying that with my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder I feel BETTER when I am outside organizing the dirt in my yard, feel better when I am oriented during daylight hours with my massive adobe yard project – I meant exactly what I said.

Now I had to take off my sweaty gloves and stand my shovel up against the tree so I could take a little break and come in here to my computer to write these words:

While I am not a ‘professional expert’ and cannot make any statements of fact about insecure attachments or Borderline Personality Disorder unless I dig around to find what the ‘legitimate’ researchers are saying about both conditions, I do know an awful lot about my dead Borderline mother and about myself as the survivor of her 18 years of terrible abuse.

While I believe it is possible to have a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment ‘disorder’, or pattern set within the very early developing infant-child body-brain WITHOUT ending up with the particular constellation of physiological body-brain patterns that we name Borderline Personality Disorder, I believe that EVERY Borderline HAS a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment ‘disorder’-pattern built within their body-brain.

I do not believe it is incorrect to say that Borderlines suffer with the following (please follow these active links for the source of these words):

“The Abandonment Wound in and of Borderline Personality Disorder

At the heart of Borderline Personality Disorder lies abandonment. Abandonment trauma, abandonment depression, abandonment fears, and the deep and most primal narcissistic intra-psychic injury a human being can ever hope to survive – the core wound of abandonment.”

I do, however, believe that the best hope for understanding the dynamics of this kind of wounding and the best hope for healing is naming this ‘disorder’ by the closest name we REALLY have for it – a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder.

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I am becoming more clear every moment I am alive now about how my attachment disorder creates the patterns by which I organize and orient my self.  This serious attachment disorder, I believe, originates when early caregiver interactions harm a developing infant-child in an unsafe and insecure attachment environment so that the development of a healthy, stable, whole autonomous SELF cannot possibly happen.  Rather than being organized and oriented within our own body-brain with good strong super highways of information flow back and forth between the world and our SELF, we pattern our lives by attaching to person, places, things, and processes that we can ASSOCIATE with rather than DISSOCIATE from.

Through this process we create our ongoing existence as we find meaning in our life.  This is what my mother did as she organized and oriented herself around her babies and children (for good and for bad), around her super housewife activities, around ‘friends’ and ‘neighbors’ who she first loved and then hated, around her husband, around the many, many locations she moved herself to – including Alaska and ‘her’ mountain homestead.

But my mother had no ability to consciously reflect upon her insecure attachment disorder.  I can now see how this same disorganized-disoriented attachment works within my own self, but I cannot make myself WELL.  Fortunately I manage to not harm others.  Fortunately I can turn my need to connect to my version of a self through work with my hands – organizing cut strips of cloth into crocheted rugs, organizing shards of old dishes I find in the abandoned city dump into mosaics, organizing letters on my keyboard into lines of text, and by organizing the dirt in my yard so that I can then organize little plants out there that I will orient myself to take care of.

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It is, then, this disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment ‘disorder-pattern’ that I was forced into developing within my own infant-child growing body-brain as I survived my mother’s terrible abuse of me that I ‘inherited’ from her (with my father’s involvement in her abuse).  Yet while I have this insecure attachment as she did, complete with all the dissociations and re-associations that it brings, I did not develop the patterns of Borderline Personality Disorder within my growing body-brain as she did.

I am very lucky, more fortunate than words can ever possibly tell, that this did not happen to me.  At the same time my life of well-being was ‘stolen’ from me, just as my mother’s was.  Until we actually NAME the insecure attachment patterns that are at the physiological foundation of Borderline Personality Disorder, I do not believe we can truly address the source-cause of BPD or recognize the damage it does to the offspring of these parents.

I can at least tell that people exist as entities unto their own self.  My mother could not do this.  She could not detect where the ‘borderline’ was that keeps people separate from one another.  She could not keep her continual and massive projections within her own mind out of the world around her.  We ALL need to understand what this really means, because it matters.

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+WHERE WAS THE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IN MY FAMILY?

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WARNING – THIS POST MAY TRIGGER:  Anyone with a history of sexual abuse, especially of childhood sexual abuse, may find this post extremely difficult to read.  Please take care of yourself and either don’t proceed one word farther in your reading here today, or be certain that you have the safe and secure support that you need to keep yourself safe if you CHOOSE to read further!

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First of all, I need to say that I do not in any way WANT to be here at this moment with my fingers on this keyboard writing the words that evidently need to be written here today.  I want to say, “This isn’t MY story!  It has nothing to do with me.  These words that want to be said, that want to be written THIS morning do not even belong to me.”

I want to run away, go outside, mix up my vinegar-water mix and pour it on my rose plants.  I want to don my dirty work clothes, put on my sunscreen, sweat band and broad rimmed straw hat and go chop the dirt away from where I know the next step has to be laid in my adobe walkway.

Yet at the same time I have to admit to myself that the story that wants to be told this morning is NOT going to go away.  It is not going to vanish.  I cannot banish this story outside of the boundaries of my yard, my house, or even out of my thoughts.  The words that must belong to this story are sticking in my mind like flies on flypaper.  The ONLY way I can stop what is growing into an inner cauldron of madness within me is to do one thing – and one thing only.  I have to write this story down.

I have very little confidence that I can tell this story right or that I can tell it well.  I think some stories don’t give a ‘rat’s ass’ about how WELL they are told.  They just demand that they be told by someone, sometime – and much too late is better than never.

All this being said, I know what I have to do next.  I have to launch into the progression of words that belong to a story that did not start with me.  Family stories.  Some family stories are easily told.  They flow along throughout the family like warm butter spreads itself across a freshly toasted piece of good bread.

Other stories, like this one, are so far beyond even being a story that its words are lodged within trauma like boulders embedded in the sides of a steep cliff’s side.  If I move even ONE SINGLE boulder from that cliff, if I begin this story with even one single world, I cannot tell what will happen next.

At the same time I believe that nothing at all is going to happen next except that I, personally, am going to be free from the talons of this story that have me grasped so firmly that I cannot get free.  I cannot move forward in time with my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own healing.  A story with claws – that’s what this one feels like.  And for some reason that I will probably not understand in my lifetime this story has found its way to ME for its telling and will not let go until I do my best to set this story – along with the words that belong to it – free.

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In 1989 my father began to lose his vision.  The world began to look like it was on the other side of a foggy shower door.  The result of medical examination of his condition revealed that he had a pituitary tumor that was the size of an egg.  My father did not seek any advice from his grown children who would have made certain that he got himself out of Alaska and down at least to Seattle for surgery.  He simply called us all on a Sunday evening to tell us that he was going under the knife on the morning of the next day.

My father assured us that the surgery was not going to be “any big deal.”  By the surgery was finished and my father did not then come out of intensive care ‘on time’, we all knew that something had gone terribly wrong.  After a week without any improvements, knowing my father was lying incontinent, unable to talk, not knowing who or where he was and tied to his bed, I flew from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Anchorage, Alaska to see what in the world was going on.

My father had already divorced my mother by this time, but he still financially and emotionally supported her.  My mother went even more haywire after my father’s surgery than she had ever been before.  My father had – obviously – absolutely NOTHING to give her and my mother went into a tailspin that she never pulled out from.

All I know is that during the first week after my father’s surgery the hospital and my youngest brother who lived in Anchorage were about ready to forbid my mother from entering the hospital or from ‘seeing’ my father.  One evening while I was at my father’s bedside my mother sailed into his room with words tumbling out of her mouth that I did not hear.  I ignored her, and once she saw that I was there she turned around and nearly raced from the room.

I had already ‘disowned’ my mother two years prior to this time.  This encounter with my mother was the only one I ever had after I had written that ‘disowning mother’ letter to her.  My attention was on my father.

The rest of the story that belongs to my father’s condition and what happened to him next does not belong in this story except to say that eventually the family was able to get my father out of Alaska where there were no brain trauma rehabilitation services down to Albuquerque into a new advanced facility that was able to help him improve.  What had happened to my father, primarily as a result of him not ‘bothering’ to tell the brain surgeons that he had a Factor K bleeding disorder, was that he had suffered massive brain hemorrhaging from which he could not, and did not fully recover over the remaining ten years of his life.

My father lost all his long term memory.  He could not remember his children.  He could not remember my mother.  He could not remember divorcing her.  He could not remember his career, or homesteading, or his childhood.  What my father did recover was enough of his brain to know that he was missing all of his history, and it further broke my father’s heart.

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After six months in the brain trauma rehabilitation hospital my father was released to my sister and her husband’s care.  They built him a large bedroom inside of their house and brought him there to tend to him.  It was this year, exactly Christmas Eve of 1991 that the rest of this story enters into this one.

Several years after this date in 1991 one of my two younger sisters, the one who had cared for my father until he was able to move into an assisted living housing arrangement, told me about the telephone call my mother had made to her on this Christmas Eve.  She also told me that Mother had told her to keep this call secret from her sisters.  Of course not long after this call both of my sisters talked to one another and found out that Mother had called both of them – told them both the same story – and told both of them that Mother said to each, “I am only telling YOU this, please do not tell your sisters.”

My mother did not include me in this dark and troubling telephone circuit BECAUSE I had cut off all contact with her.  My sisters, however, eventually did tell me about these calls.  I was completely unprepared for the information these calls contained to appear within my range of attention this week.  I had simply asked one of my sisters the other night if she had any idea what work outside of the home my mother had done during the summer of 1956.

While I was transcribing my mother and father’s June and July 1957 letters that they wrote to one another during the time my mother was still in Los Angeles and my father was In Alaska working his new job and searching for a rental we could all live in so that his family could join him, I encountered two references in my mother’s writings to this summer of 1956.

The first time it appeared as ‘that terrible summer of 1956’ with no clue what my mother was talking about.  Many letters later another reference appeared to the summer of 1956 as she mentioned that she had been working outside of the home.  I discovered no further mention of what had happened that summer to make it so ‘terrible’, so I decided to ask my sister if she remembers ever having heard anything about it.

I was NOT prepared for what she told me when I asked her this question.  The information my sister included in her answer to me brought back everything about the Christmas Eve 1991 telephone calls my mother had made to both of my sisters.

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Please remember the warning I posted above about the content of what follows next!

This summer of 1956 my mother evidently had taken an evening job (probably retail though none of us actually know what job it was) and left my father to care for his four children – with an age range of a small baby daughter in diapers turning one, another daughter turning three, me turning five, my brother turning six.  According to what my mother told both of my sisters on during her telephone call Christmas Eve 1991 was that during this time my father sexually molested all of his daughters.

My mother said that once she had somehow ‘found out’ (and my sisters have no memory of what she said about this discovery) my father told her that until he married my mother he ‘had never seen a girl’s private areas’, and now he was a very lucky man because he had four girls of his own he could look at and touch any time that he wanted to.

According to my mother he had told her that he had read in books that there are cultures in the world where it is the father’s responsibility to sexually initiate his daughters, and that he believed he had the right to do so himself with his daughters.

I don’t remember what details past this information my sisters told me my mother included in my mother’s telephone call twenty years ago.  What I do know is that I was not prepared to have this topic return with full force as a response to my simple question about what outside work my mother may have done on this ‘terrible summer of 1956’.

I do know that whenever it was that my sisters told me nearly twenty years ago about what my terribly distraught mother had told them in 1991 I could not process this information.  I had absolutely no way to understand any of the implications contained in my mother’s words.  The story has come back full circle now, and I had no way even now to consider any meaning related to mother’s story without talking with both of my sisters about it – again.

It is at this point that I was stuck yesterday as I spent the day digging my way down another level in my adobe walkway project.  It is at this point I am still stuck this morning as I write these words.

Both of my sisters unequivocally believe that whatever my mother’s intentions were when she called them in 1991, the story she conveyed about our father sexually molesting his daughters is not true.  Yesterday I realized that this point alone is tied to patterns of ‘false memory retrieval’.  We most often hear of victims who supposedly fabricate early abuse memories that are not true.  In this case it appears that my mother was the one who fabricated such a ‘false memory’ about her own children and their father.

At the same time while I was out slinging mud yesterday I realized that what my sisters both said in common was that our mother was trying to destroy the love and affection that her daughters had for their father.  At this time, because of the terrible consequences of my father’s permanent brain damage that had resulted from his tumor surgery, my father was completely dependent upon my sister for his care, which meant that my mother had to now adjust to two critical attachment relationship changes.

Obviously she had now completely, absolutely and forever lost her connection to my father in whatever sustaining-Mildred role he had continued to fill even after he had divorced her.  In addition, my mother might have seen that her relationship with her ‘favorite blessed God child’ was also being threatened as my sister now assumed complete care of my father.  With her disorganized-disoriented (dissociative) insecure attachment disorder, my Mother was deteriorating quickly during this time.

But what finally came clear to me as I dug down my next level of hardened clay in my yard alteration and excavation project was that while both of my sisters knew AT THE INSTANT that our mother’s words had spewed out of her mouth (yes like toxic vomit) in 1991, that they were not true, were a wild fabrication and were a lie.  They KNEW our father well enough and had strong enough bonds of trust and affection with him that they could at the same time KNOW our mother was wrong.

Unlike my sisters, I carry doubt.  I include am stuck carrying words like ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ and ‘could he have’ and ‘I wonder’ inside of me attached to this entire circumstance with Mother’s story.  I do not KNOW inside of me that her words were a fabrication and DID NOT happen.

On this level, whether my father molested his daughters or not is not what matters most to me.  What matters to me most is that my father never bothered to form any kind of an attachment relationship with me like he did to his other five children.  While my sisters will still say that the relationship they had with our father never amounted to much more than a breadcrumb trail of bonding, at least they knew with certainty that our father was not the kind of man who could have POSSIBLY done what my mother reported he had done.

This leaves me today being mad as hell at my father that he never chose, for whatever reasons, to have a relationship with me.  True, my mother made every effort to influence what my father thought about me and felt toward me, but HE did make his own choices.  It seems such an almost ironical twist concerning the facts of my childhood that it would bother me this much today that HE is responsible for having created such a nonexistent relationship with me that I cannot eliminate the doubts about his treatment of his daughters the way that my sisters easily can.

It is logical and reasonable to believe that our mother WAS trying to erode the benevolent love, affection and trust my sisters felt toward our father.  I am hit full force in consideration of this whole topic with a blatantly clear fact that I was never given the opportunity to have this ‘benevolent love, affection and trust’ toward Father than my sisters not only had (and still have even though he died 10 years ago), but have always taken for granted.

This realization about what bothers me most about the whole topic is not about the sexual abuse – real or imagined.  It is about ‘something else’ that hurt me far more than I can imagine anything he MIGHT have done to me sexually when I was a little girl could have.  He participated in Mother’s reign of terror and trauma against me – and he did not care ONE SINGLE BIT about me.  THAT is a fact, not a fantasy.

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Which now leads me to mention that I strongly suspect that the ‘story’ our mother told my sisters about our father is about something that PROBABLY really did happen to my mother when she was a little girl.  If my mother was molested by some male or males in her family (or outside it) when she was a little girl, the closest she ever came to knowing about this truth probably happened as a projection of her mind in the form of what she told my sisters in her 1991 telephone calls.  (I have to take my sisters’ word that our Father ‘did not do it’ and ‘could not possibly have done it’ because I have no foundation of trust within me concerning him that could possibly help me to know this ‘fact’.)

If my mother was sexually molested as a small child, which I believe she was, those experiences would have directly influenced the development of the Borderline Personality Disorder that she suffered with for the rest of her life.  That my mother included specifics of not only Father looking at his daughter’s genital area but also of touching and fondling suggests to me that my mother DID have some very real personal experience with some pedophile in her life.  Who?  When?  Where?  How?  These are all questions that nobody will EVER have the answers to.

But given the old saying, “Where’s there’s smoke there’s fire,” I do not believe that any story that is ever told within a family that contains suggestion of infant-child sexual abuse can be ignored.  Somewhere within the whole gigantic mess that was my mother’s brain-mind-life, something terrible had happened to her.  For some reason, if it is only to state this single point in my writing today, The Family Story has demanded that I write it.

Now I ask for the rest of the day today may The Family Story at least leave me in peace.    I may not have told this story right, I may not have told this story well, but at least I HAVE told it.

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