Tag: bonding

+OWNING THE BURDENS CREATED BY CHILD ABUSE

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I’ve been thinking about my mother all morning as I worked out in the heat adding onto my adobe walkway.  I am trying to define my feelings about her and about her life.  I thought about ‘pity’, ‘compassion’ and ‘regret’.  I can’t become clear about my feelings or define them until I understand more about what these three words actually mean in our language.

I have always shied away from using the word ‘pity’ even in my thinking because, to me, the word has a tinge of a self-righteousness, a stance and perspective that I consider to be connected to a personal shortcoming rather than to an asset.  I looked this word up online and Webster’s defines the word this way:

PITY

Etymology: Middle English pite, from Anglo-French pité, from Latin pietat-, pietas piety, pity, from pius pious

Date: 13th century

1 a : sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy b : capacity to feel pity
2 : something to be regretted <it’s a pity you can’t go>

synonyms pity, compassion, commiseration, condolence, sympathy

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With this clarification I can tell that my concern about taking a ‘self-righteous’ perspective IS tied to how I feel about ‘piety’ and ‘pious’ in general.  I don’t like either of those words for some reason I can’t quite grasp.  Yet words by themselves do not contain either negative or positive.  What is it about this word that causes me to want to shudder and run?

PIOUS

Etymology: Middle English, from Latin pius

Date: 15th century

1 a : marked by or showing reverence for deity and devotion to divine worship b : marked by conspicuous religiosity <a hypocrite—a thing all pious words and uncharitable deeds — Charles Reade>
2 : sacred or devotional as distinct from the profane or secular : religious <a pious opinion>
3 : showing loyal reverence for a person or thing : dutiful
4 a : marked by sham or hypocrisy b : marked by self-conscious virtue : virtuous
5 : deserving commendation : worthy <a pious effort>

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The word ‘pious’ is a young word in our English language, and no doubt directly entered our cultural awareness through the influence of ‘the church’.  Knowing my mother’s focal obsession with ‘good versus evil’ was also tied in some vague yet powerful way with ideas contained in Christian religion does not make me eager to embrace this concept.

Yet while the definition of ‘pity’ does coincide with the thoughts I have been having about my mother and her life today, it is not a word that ‘rings true’ to me about how I feel in response to her and her life today.  So I will look further into this synonym for ‘pity’:

COMPASSION

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French or Late Latin; Anglo-French, from Late Latin compassion-, compassio, from compati to sympathize, from Latin com- + pati to bear, suffer — more at patient

Date: 14th century

: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it

synonyms see pity

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This word, ‘patient’ did come into my thoughts as I sloshed wet mud into my adobe mold this morning.  I don’t know which way this word is connected to compassion – as a suffering ‘patient’ or as one who needs to ‘be more patient’?

When this word appeared in my thoughts it was connected to my thinking that nobody who has not suffered infant and/or child abuse can EVER really have a clue what ‘it’ is.  Most people in our culture have some sort of understanding about what ‘child abuse’ is, and yet if anyone had ever asked my mother or my father if there was ‘child abuse’ going on in their home they would have said “NO!”  If anyone had asked my mother’s mother if ‘child abuse’ ever happened to my mother, she would have also said “NO!”

My thinking about how ‘everyone’ assumes that they know what child abuse is at the same time that those who are committing child abuse are mostly NOT EVER going to accept the reality of the abuse they commit led me to the word ‘patient’.

The ONLY way the truth about what child abuse IS will be really KNOWN is if the public LISTENS to what infant-child abuse survivors have to say.  Yet there’s even a very big problem with THIS approach.  Just as child abuse perpetrators are not likely to NAME or OWN the abuse they commit against children, MANY, MANY infant abuse and child abuse survivors are not going to NAME what happened to them, either.

My mother certainly NEVER used ‘child abuse’ in her description of what happened to her in her infancy and childhood.  Do we think if we don’t NAME infant and ‘child abuse’ that IT NEVER REALLY HAPPENED?

This line of thinking led me again to the word ‘patient’ in terms of how ‘patient’ the public needs to be in supportive and affirming ways so that those who have OBVIOUSLY suffered greatly from ‘child abuse’ can be encouraged to KNOW the reality of what happened to them in their childhood, and to speak about it!

Now I wonder about someone who is sick, injured, wounded and is a ‘patient’.  What does this word actually mean?

PATIENT

Adjective

Etymology: Middle English pacient, from Anglo-French, from Latin patient-, patiens, from present participle of pati to suffer; perhaps akin to Greek pēma suffering

Date: 14th century

1 : bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint
2 : manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain
3 : not hasty or impetuous
4 : steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity
5 a : able or willing to bear —used with of b : susceptible, admitting <patient of one interpretation

Noun

Date: 14th century

1 a : an individual awaiting or under medical care and treatment b : the recipient of any of various personal services
2 : one that is acted upon

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WOW!  How many ‘child abuse’ survivors had any choice BUT to bear the pains and trials of their lives ‘calmly’ and ‘without complaint’?  Did we have any choice other than to ‘manifest forbearance under provocation and strain’?  We could not act hastily or impetuously in any way that would have altered the course of our abusive childhoods.  We could not speed our childhood up like fast-forwarding a movie so that we could escape our abuse any sooner.

We had no choice but to be ‘steadfast despite opposition, difficulty and adversity’.  We HAD TO BE ABLE AND WILLING TO BEAR our suffering from what was done to us.  The alterative would have been death.  And, yes, we were turned into ‘patients awaiting care’.  We were wounded, hurt and suffering from the ways that those who had power over us ‘acted upon us’ – in the opposite of a healing way.  And we sure were not ‘recipients of any personal services’ that would have helped us.

++

This topic is obviously ABOUT suffering:

SUFFER

Etymology: Middle English suffren, from Anglo-French suffrir, from Vulgar Latin *sufferire, from Latin sufferre, from sub- up + ferre to bear — more at sub-, bear

Date: 13th century

Which goes directly to what we had to ‘bear’:

BEAR

Etymology: Middle English beren to carry, bring forth, from Old English beran; akin to Old High German beran to carry, Latin ferre, Greek pherein

Date: before 12th century

++

There’s the old word – ‘bear’ – literally in its roots connected to carrying.  And that IS what we did.  As I have mentioned over time the afflictions caused to us by infant and child abuse actually built themselves into our body as we grew and developed and changed us.

But what I am thinking about today is  the difference between silently carrying what happened to us – often while we don’t even KNOW the truth ourselves about the infant and child abuse we suffered – versus KNOWING the truth, having words for the truth so that we can, as survivors think thoughts in words and communicate our truth about our abuse to others and to our perpetrators if appropriate.

If I think about my mother and her life in terms of ‘patient’, she was patient until her dying breath.  She bore and carried what had happened to her as an infant-child and to my knowledge NEVER was able to KNOW the truth.  This kind of continued patience, a pattern set up early, early in life, does not help a person to heal.  It helps them to become an increasingly ‘sick’ and suffering patient who cannot ask for or receive the healing help they most need to ‘get better’.

As hard as it might sometimes be for me to understand that what my mother did to me was caused by what was done to her, I want to understand that all my mother truly knew in her lifetime was suffering.  Her suffering increased with every breath she ever took, and led to her terrible suffering at death.  As for me, I would rather ‘suffer while I bear the burden of compassion for my mother’ than not.

My personal mission is to KNOW what happened to both her and me – to give this knowledge words – and to encourage every single person who suffers from infant abuse and child abuse and the burden this abuse creates to speak their truth while the rest of us patiently listen.

This process, to me, is where ‘child abuse’ prevention begins.

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REGRET

Etymology: Middle English regretten, from Anglo-French regreter, from re- + -greter (perhaps of Germanic origin; akin to Old Norse grāta to weep) — more at greet

Date: 14th century

transitive verb 1 a : to mourn the loss or death of b : to miss very much
2 : to be very sorry for <regrets his mistakes>intransitive verb : to experience regret

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

+HAVING A VERY BAD TIME – MOTHER’S 1957 LETTER

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By the time my mother reached a month and a half of being in Los Angeles with my father in Alaska, my mother was at the end of her rope.  As I transcribed this letter this morning I can see that ANYONE would have been feeling the way that she was.

Unfortunately, all four of her children paid a price right along with her.  I can tell things had deteriorated and were REALLY bad for her to be ‘spanking’ her precious 2-year-old baby and her beloved 4-year-old – right along with me (nearly 6).  My parents should not EVER have taken on their ‘Alaskan adventure’ with absolutely NO resources.  My father headed to Alaska on the Army’s expense and had to wait for his paychecks to come in before he could even rent a house for his family to join him.

My mother, as she describes in this letter, was broke.  She had no car or home, and was staying at her mother’s house.  My parents had counted on a large check to arrive from my father’s Los Angeles place of employment that was SUPPOSED to have arrived no later than mid-June.  Here it is nearing the end of July and the check was still missing.

These were stressing and distressing times for our family.  It seems strange to find myself empathizing with my mother as I read these letters — placing in context her stated ‘spanking’ of her children.  One BIG problem with my mother’s version of spanking is that she always ‘lost control of her rage’ while she pounded on her children.  She was a big and powerful woman.  Her children were very small.  Her ‘spankings’ were beatings.

Although her violence was usually reserved for me as her chosen target, it is clear from this letter that this period of time was one in which all of her children were ‘fair game’ (though she does not specifically mention here ‘spanking’ my brother).

My mother was still waiting for Army orders that would allow her to take us to my father, but the house he had rented was not available for occupancy until the first of August.  As far as I can tell there are six more letters remaining to be transcribed that cover what happened up until the time we actually left California – and not one of them is from my father.  I have a feeling that at some point my mother destroyed them.

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July 25, 1957 postmark – California

Dear Bill,

I just got home from a ride to Fontana to get your letter.  I received yours telling me about it the day I left Crestline but knew it couldn’t have reached Fontana on Friday (?) so thought I’d call and have it forwarded.  Only they must have a signed request to forward mail so all the children and I went there today.

I am not going to pretend we’re enjoying ourselves now – we’re not.

Bill I tried so hard – believe me and I think I succeeded in keeping them happy in Glendora but ever since I joined Mother I’ve been plain miserable.  It isn’t all her fault – we just can’t be together constantly and live together.  I always knew it was an impossibility.  You can love a person and still not be able to live with them.

Now, today, the children have been TERRIBLE.  Tonight both Cindy and Linda were spanked and put to bed when we got home.  I tell you everything is haywire.  If only we could’ve left before – – – .  Cindy has constantly misbehaved and was so good all summer.  Grandma just doesn’t get along with her and now openly admits it.  Cindy and Linda had a grand time together and now fight constantly.  John hasn’t any toys or anyone to play with.  Sharon has been spanked twice (hard).  She’s more spoiled and fresh every day.  I try to forgive and overlook but I can’t any longer.  Tonight Cindy cried herself to sleep.

We’re all miserable.  You see if Mother was relaxed and a homebody and we could find peace here it would be different but as it is – well, it’s terrible and Mother can’t get her work done.

People call constantly for reports and she’s upset by all this too.  That’s why I took all the children today but they’re tired of travelling [sic], tired of sitting and being quiet.  Linda and Cindy haven’t been out-doors all summer and now even their dolls and toys are packed.

I tell you this is it!

I’ve inquired at Motels and can’t afford it!  I have no linens, no car, no money.  I am broke, Bill, broke.  Today you sent me 75.00.  I owe Mother so much $ it isn’t even funny.  The last 10 she gave me I paid 7.00 out of it to Parent’s Magazine or would’ve had to pay them full.  I got a notice your Life Insurance has expired – two payments are due.  Out of the $ you sent me I had – *Important – to pay Mayflower cash for these checks – you sign them and return them to me and I have to bring them back to Glendora for the money.  So return them immediately please.  Both signed!!!

The $140 I had to return – Bill that large check better come.

I agree with everything you said in your letter.  I will not buy a car.  I will fly and have made all inquiries – everything set – all I need (I checked with Miss Davies or son today at MacArthur- is [the Army] orders.  Bill she says they figure 30 days for furniture – I can’t wait.  I tell you I am coming as soon as I get the money and orders.  If I can’t come to Anchorage I’ll go to Seattle and wait there – I must get out of here.  If I stay at a Motel here Mom will feel awful so I’ll at least come to Seattle and wait there.

You said your letter was mixed up – well so is this but it’s 9:45 and I haven’t had any dinner.

I am more upset every day.

Mother is at her wit’s end.

The kids have been good, patient and sweet through all this and it hasn’t been fair to them and now they too, without knowing it, are fed up!  And I am not patient any more.  I too am tired —.

Besides missing you so I think I’ll die, I’ve been constantly in a state over money – as usual.  I can’t be independent and still constantly ask Mother for money.  It as usual, gives her the feeling of a Matyr [sic], “After all I do for you,” the right to tell me what to do and interfere with the children.

It’s all wrong – we were wrong many years ago and I have paid and paid and paid and I am still paying!  [lots of underlines here].  To have bought a new car would have been all wrong.  I want to be independent and leave here and I want a new car for us (but I’ll wait).  The only way to be really independent and proud again is to pay our bills off and stand on our feet again!

But meanwhile all of these things exist –

Must I spank the kids for 30 days now, fight with my brother and Mother – bear up with a smiling face while I wait – I can’t.

I am all alone, Bill – I need you – I must come to you – I can’t wait.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

Please, you haven’t explained your money situation to me.  I know nothing.  Last pay day I had the car money but paid it all out – I sent you the list – I’ll check later but I paid Edison about 50, the water, gas, Tolleson, McMahans, Sears, New York Live etc.  – Bill  I wondered if you had enough to pay the two months rent – you only sent me a small amount.

I thought this pay-day — I counted on at least 150.  Why, I have to eat, pay all those payments – especially Budget, Milk, and Phone – – – etc. – – – until I receive the large check.

Did you pay some of the rent out of the check?  Enlighten me and I’ll send you a list of what I owe Mother and what I’ve spent.

Today, for instance, I had to by shoes for Baby, Linda, Cindy and John.  Theirs were gone, really gone and so is my money.

Return these small checks and the 140 and tell me when I can expect more.  I realize now that my night letter last night is hopeless – but Bill as soon as the orders arrive can I come.  Must I wait until the furniture arrives to start?

The woman today said you have to authorize the furniture to leave, you may have already, but just in case she’ll send to me and I’ll send to you – papers to sign – and you return them to me.

– – –  Hum-m.

Long involved procedures – do they ever end?

I had to laugh a saleslady I’d known before said today “Well, you’re staying at your Mother’s – isn’t  that nice that you have your mother to take good care of you.”  I almost spit in her eye.

Oh Bill – I missed you terribly in Glendora but inside I felt good, right about things and now I feel mean to everyone.  All this business and strain here has finally told.  We all feel it.

Do you realize I haven’t been away from the children once (except for quick business) since you’ve left.  You don’t have that strain and it’s a strain, believe me!

We all feel it.

Bill tonight I’m not going to answer your letters – I am too weary and I’m too full of all this other.  It breaks me to have to be mad at the children and I don’t know what to do with them.  As I said before everything is gone to storage – I had no choice and the rest I take over tomorrow.  I figure it might leave Thursday or Friday and I have 2 or 3 more loads, which means trips and I have no idea how to get those trunks over there (loaded) and no $ to pay anyone to do it.  [Linda note:  These were the large wooden old steamer trunks.]

After I paid market $10 I had 65 – 3 pairs of shoes at 4.00 per pair = 12, 53 left (not even enough to pay Budget).

Please answer all this immediately.

Oh Bill I need you so!

As I figure last pay day you received 200.00 and gave me 50 leaving only 150.00.  Then you had to pay 304.00.  So from this pay-day you must’ve used another 150 for the rent.  Is that right and how much do you have now – enough to get by on, I hope, until that cused [sic] $ arrives from Water and Power.  [Linda note:  They were still waiting for the check to arrive for my father’s unused vacation when he left his job there with the city of Los Angeles.]

But you can understand I haven’t spent any money on recreation – it only cost 1.50 or 2.00 to go to the lake once and only about 1.50 for a movie yesterday.  All the rest has been living expenses.  I’ve paid bills with all our money and some of Mother’s and borrowed alot from her.  [letter ends here]

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<!–[if !mso]> <! st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } –>

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July 25, 1957 postmark – California

Dear Bill,

I just got home from a ride to Fontana to get your letter.  I received yours telling me about it the day I left Crestline but knew it couldn’t have reached Fontana on Friday (?) so thought I’d call and have it forwarded.  Only they must have a signed request to forward mail so all the children and I went there today.

I am not going to pretend we’re enjoying ourselves now – we’re not.

Bill I tried so hard – believe me and I think I succeeded in keeping them happy in Glendora but ever since I joined Mother I’ve been plain miserable.  It isn’t all her fault – we just can’t be together constantly and live together.  I always knew it was an impossibility.  You can love a person and still not be able to live with them.

Now, today, the children have been TERRIBLE.  Tonight both Cindy and Linda were spanked and put to bed when we got home.  I tell you everything is haywire.  If only we could’ve left before – – – .  Cindy has constantly misbehaved and was so good all summer.  Grandma just doesn’t get along with her and now openly admits it.  Cindy and Linda had a grand time together and now fight constantly.  John hasn’t any toys or anyone to play with. Sharon has been spanked twice (hard).  She’s more spoiled and fresh every day.  I try to forgive and overlook but I can’t any longer.  Tonight Cindy cried herself to sleep.

We’re all miserable.  You see if Mother was relaxed and a homebody and we could find peace here it would be different but as it is – well, it’s terrible and Mother can’t get her work done.

People call constantly for reports and she’s upset by all this too.  That’s why I took all the children today but they’re tired of travelling [sic], tired of sitting and being quiet.  Linda and Cindy haven’t been out-doors all summer and now even their dolls and toys are packed.

I tell you this is it!

I’ve inquired at Motels and can’t afford it!  I have no linens, no car, no money.  I am broke, Bill, broke.  Today you sent me 75.00.  I owe Mother so much $ it isn’t even funny.  The last 10 she gave me I paid 7.00 out of it to Parent’s Magazine or would’ve had to pay them full.  I got a notice your Life Insurance has expired – two payments are due.  Out of the $ you sent me I had – *Important – to pay Mayflower cash for these checks – you sign them and return them to me and I have to bring them back to Glendora for the money.  So return them immediately please.  Both signed!!!

The $140 I had to return – Bill that large check better come.

I agree with everything you said in your letter.  I will not buy a car.  I will fly and have made all inquiries – everything set – all I need (I checked with Miss Davies or son today at MacArthur- is [the Army] orders.  Bill she says they figure 30 days for furniture – I can’t wait.  I tell you I am coming as soon as I get the money and orders.  If I can’t come to Anchorage I’ll go to Seattle and wait there – I must get out of here.  If I stay at a Motel here Mom will feel awful so I’ll at least come to Seattle and wait there.

You said your letter was mixed up – well so is this but it’s 9:45 and I haven’t had any dinner.

I am more upset every day.

Mother is at her wit’s end.

The kids have been good, patient and sweet through all this and it hasn’t been fair to them and now they too, without knowing it, are fed up!  And I am not patient any more.  I too am tired —.

Besides missing you so I think I’ll die, I’ve been constantly in a state over money – as usual.  I can’t be independent and still constantly ask Mother for money.  It as usual, gives her the feeling of a Matyr [sic], “After all I do for you,” the right to tell me what to do and interfere with the children.

It’s all wrong – we were wrong many years ago and I have paid and paid and paid and I am still paying!  [lots of underlines here].  To have bought a new car would have been all wrong.  I want to be independent and leave here and I want a new car for us (but I’ll wait).  The only way to be really independent and proud again is to pay our bills off and stand on our feet again!

But meanwhile all of these things exist –

Must I spank the kids for 30 days now, fight with my brother and Mother – bear up with a smiling face while I wait – I can’t.

I am all alone, Bill – I need you – I must come to you – I can’t wait.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

Please, you haven’t explained your money situation to me.  I know nothing.  Last pay day I had the car money but paid it all out – I sent you the list – I’ll check later but I paid Edison about 50, the water, gas, Tolleson, McMahans, Sears, New York Live etc.  – Bill  I wondered if you had enough to pay the two months rent – you only sent me a small amount.

I thought this pay-day — I counted on at least 150.  Why, I have to eat, pay all those payments – especially Budget, Milk, and Phone – – – etc. – – – until I receive the large check.

Did you pay some of the rent out of the check?  Enlighten me and I’ll send you a list of what I owe Mother and what I’ve spent.

Today, for instance, I had to by shoes for Baby, Linda, Cindy and John.  Theirs were gone, really gone and so is my money.

Return these small checks and the 140 and tell me when I can expect more.  I realize now that my night letter last night is hopeless – but Bill as soon as the orders arrive can I come.  Must I wait until the furniture arrives to start?

The woman today said you have to authorize the furniture to leave, you may have already, but just in case she’ll send to me and I’ll send to you – papers to sign – and you return them to me.

– – –  Hum-m.

Long involved procedures – do they ever end?

I had to laugh a saleslady I’d known before said today “Well, you’re staying at your Mother’s – isn’t  that nice that you have your mother to take good care of you.”  I almost spit in her eye.

Oh Bill – I missed you terribly in Glendora but inside I felt good, right about things and now I feel mean to everyone.  All this business and strain here has finally told.  We all feel it.

Do you realize I haven’t been away from the children once (except for quick business) since you’ve left.  You don’t have that strain and it’s a strain, believe me!

We all feel it.

Bill tonight I’m not going to answer your letters – I am too weary and I’m too full of all this other.  It breaks me to have to be mad at the children and I don’t know what to do with them.  As I said before everything is gone to storage – I had no choice and the rest I take over tomorrow.  I figure it might leave Thursday or Friday and I have 2 or 3 more loads, which means trips and I have no idea how to get those trunks over there (loaded) and no $ to pay anyone to do it.  [Linda note:  These were the large wooden old steamer trunks.]

After I paid market $10 I had 65 – 3 pairs of shoes at 4.00 per pair = 12, 53 left (not even enough to pay Budget).

Please answer all this immediately.

Oh Bill I need you so!

As I figure last pay day you received 200.00 and gave me 50 leaving only 150.00.  Then you had to pay 304.00.  So from this pay-day you must’ve used another 150 for the rent.  Is that right and how much do you have now – enough to get by on, I hope, until that cused [sic] $ arrives from Water and Power.  [Linda note:  They were still waiting for the check to arrive for my father’s unused vacation when he left his job there with the city of Los Angeles.]

But you can understand I haven’t spent any money on recreation – it only cost 1.50 or 2.00 to go to the lake once and only about 1.50 for a movie yesterday.  All the rest has been living expenses.  I’ve paid bills with all our money and some of Mother’s and borrowed alot from her.  [letter ends here]

+GETTING CLEAR ABOUT A DIFFICULT DECISION REGARDING MY WORDS

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If there is one thing that I suspect everyone with the so-called diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is familiar with, it’s the inner sound of what I call ‘the clamoring within’.  What does the word CLAMOR teach me this morning as I contemplate a writing offer that has been given to me – an offer whose aftershocks set off the noisiest inner clamor that I have experienced consciously in my lifetime?

CLAMOR

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French clamour, from Latin clamor, from clamare to cry out — more at claim

Date: 14th century

1 a : noisy shouting b : a loud continuous noise
2 : insistent public expression (as of support or protest)

++

The ‘public’ nature of this clamor I am experiencing happens because ‘all involved’ in the act of clamoring are making themselves present to me, and therefore conscious.  The ‘public’ IS my conscious awareness.

At age 58, I suffer from no delusion that the multiple voices clamoring within are ever going to so-called ‘integrate’, nor do I even desire that.  Every one of the perspectives I contain as grown-up Linda – the noisy and the silent ones – have a right to exist BECAUSE THEY EXIST.  I do not wish to extinguish them.  I do not wish to disrespect any of them.  I do not wish to bulldoze my way on down the road of my life without listening to and honoring what they know and what they have to say – if I pause long enough to listen.

If I give as many of these inner perspective-takers an equal voice and an equal voice in affairs of my life that matter to them, I already know the answer to a question that has been posed to me.  Without disclosing information that I have been asked to keep confidential regarding the ‘offering agency’, I – on my own – after taking a vote among those perspective-takers within me already have my answer.

The answer to the question as it has been posed to me in the present and as it may very likely be posed to me in the future is simply – “NO!”

I will not give any rights away to my words.  Not to anyone outside of The Lloyd Family, and not even to any single member of The Lloyd Family.  Everything that ever happens with my words belongs within an intimate construct that operates through consensus taking.

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The fantastic ‘thought factory’ of my body, my right brain and my left brain has fed me accurate information about my own inner truth about the reality of my word ownership.

Some clear images have appeared to me this morning from my body-right brain information channels.  The first one comes from the memory of a skinny, beaten and abused, lost and alone little girl of about nine years old.  She is gazing toward the edges of the highest mountain tops define where earth meets the deep blue Alaskan late summer sky.

This little girl, this me-memory person, stands frozen in time and space, listening to the approaching yet still-distant call of hundreds of Canadian geese heading on migration south.  There is no anticipation that I can think of that matches the wordless awe of this waiting.

And there they come!  High, high, high above her comes the very first goose sailing along at the front of this “V” over the dividing line of mountain and sky.  Behind this goose come the two separate wings and the air is filled with the wild goose fall song.

I didn’t know, of course, as a child that the head goose is the strongest and flies to cut the wind for the rest of its flock both to its right and to its left.  When the lead goose tires, it falls all the way back in the line and flies without effort at the final back tips of the “V.”  On up moves the next strongest goose – which is, by the time the other strongest goose tires, is now THE strongest goose.

++

In this offer that I was just given, I can see the seeds of a reality as they appeared to me in another image:  The roots of trauma and abuse that are my experience from the time of my laboring with my mother to come into this world, are directly tied to the stout trunk of the tree that is me complete with strong, wide-spreading branches that feed ever-growing twigs.  This tree-of-me is approaching full leaf now, and the manifestations of its hard-worked for health (such as I have been able to accomplish degrees of it) take form in the ‘public world’ IN MY WORDS.

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The next image that came to me this morning is a Sacred one, and I do not write the following words with any disrespect.  What I understand about the Lakota and Dakota women’s participation in the Sacred Sundance is that they peel pieces of their skin from their arms and offer them with prayer in support of their men who are dancing.  The women’s sacrifice adds to the sacrifice of the men, and helps to make both the men and their prayers for help and healing stronger and more powerful.

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The clamoring voices of the perspective-takers within me have let me know that the words that I write, the final messages contained in these pieces of who Linda is, do not belong to any ‘big’ or ‘old’ or ‘single’ or ‘adult’ Linda.  They are part of a whole and they cannot be owned by anyone – not even the Linda that supposedly writes them.

I seriously doubt that any public agency representative or any other version of an outside publisher, is going to understand that the whole of who Linda is owns my/her words collectively.  That my story, in the end, is a strong one that can take a place with the lead geese of great migrating flocks of trauma-healing people, does not mean that it exists as an object, or as a thing that can be bought, sold, bartered or owned in any ordinary way.

My words do, however, BELONG somewhere.  I was deprived of my words for myself in my life (and their accompanying thoughts) throughout the 18-years of my torturous abusive childhood.  As these words are now being born, as my words open their wings and flap their way like butterflies out into the cosmos beyond my computer’s keyboard, they simply become what they are:  A part of Linda and her family’s living story.  These butterflies are sacred and do not wish to be captured in any way at any time along their pathway into existence by anyone else for profit.

My words are, therefore, not actually mine.  There is no single all-knowing, all-powerful Linda person who can ultimately determine the fate of my words.  They belong with and to an entity that does not LEGALLY exist yet – but I am becoming quite clear that the legal entity of The Lloyd Family Publishing Trust needs to be formed in THIS material world before any of my words leave my Stop-the-Storm blog.

How that is going to happen, where, who is going to help me with this next step is at present unknown.

There.  That being decided and said the clamoring settles.  If anyone wishes to publish anything I write in any format they will need to have my permission to do so from The Lloyd Family Publishing Trust – CERTAINLY it cannot happen the other way around, no matter how well-intentioned or enticing any outside publishing offer might be.

I am free to leave this keyboard and go outside to continue making something out of earth-mud.

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

+EXAMPLE OF MY MOTHER’S BORDERLINE ‘GOOD VERSUS BAD THINKING’

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Although it might not seem to be much of a major ‘thing’, this little excerpt from my mother’s July 7, 1957 letter to father (he’s in Alaska, we’re still in California) paints a very big picture of the contrast in the way my mother felt toward me (nearly 6) and my sister who just turned 4.

This dynamic my mother created with Linda being the BAD child and my sister being the GOOD child existed throughout our childhoods.  There was NOTHING I could do to change how my mother felt about me.  To my mother, I was as innately, inherently and completely a BAD child as my sister was a GOOD one.

My mother wrote:

I was hoping I could tie up our shots here tomorrow but Cindy still can not [sic] have hers.  She’s well (or better) one day and sick the next.

Now she has developed a very bad glandular condition.  On the same order as Linda’s (suppossed [sic] mumps) only much worse!

The big difference is with Cindy.  She never complains and is such a good girl!  Linda would have fussed all over the place.

Today we decided to go out to breakfast for a change and Cindy said she wasn’t hungry.  (She seldom is anymore.)  She looked listless and just not well.  I felt her and she was truly burning up – but it was another ‘scorcher’ of a day!!  But I felt the others and they were not as hot to the touch and I knew Cindy’s heat was not all due to the weather.  She wouldn’t eat so I ordered her some peaches, which she enjoyed.

I felt her glands and her left one under her ear was the size of a small egg!

I brought her right home and took her temperature = 104 [degrees].

This afternoon I brought her to Hankins Medical Group in Azusa.  The doctor gave her a very thorough exam and said it’s a bad cold (or virus) which has settled in her glands.  They gave her a shot and she’s to have two more for the next two days.

Poor darling Cindy!  She never even winces – how I love and adore that child of ours!  She’s such an angel – I die when she’s sick.

I gave her some birthday presents and she was better tonight — .

Oh, Bill the other day All On Her Own she made the sweetest picture, which I’ll send you, of you.  I [sic] when we got married, holding hands.  She did us very well, even – hands, arms feet etc.  The thought was so sweet – she’s our “own love child.”

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+SILLY EGG IMAGES AND PARENTING – CONTINUED

alchemynow2 Comments

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Well, at least I slept last night, though I woke numerous times with odd thoughts in my head!  One of them is related to parenting and eggs.  How?  Think:  Pickled Eggs.

If I picture the early caregiving environment an infant-child is born into as being ‘trauma-toxic’, and then think about pickling eggs, I can better picture how the effects of early trauma changes a little tiny developing body-brain in parallel ways to how soaking an egg in vinegar (with or without spices) will completely change an egg!

Not the same kind of eggs!

When I woke up from whatever odd dream about parents and eggs that I was having last night, I also ‘saw’ one of those nifty hardboiled egg slicers.  If I were to peel a pickled egg and an unpickled egg, and then submit their nice oval shape to the effects of an egg slicer, I would find that what the environment did to the egg completely permeates its constitution.  While the eggs would still equally be eggs, they would be very much changed from one another through and through.

How early maltreatment, trauma, neglect, abuse can stimulate trauma-altered early development is very much like this process.  In cases like my mother’s was, the changes that her body went through in her earliest development (certainly from birth through the age of six) completely changed her through and through.  By the end, nothing was left of her original egg-self.  Influences from her early environment, which also affected the way her genetic code manifested itself, resulted in an entirely different egg-self – through and through.

When I refer to MY mother as ‘My Borderline Mother’ I am referring to this fact.  I had a trauma-changed mother.  If I look at what I know about her very, very closely, I can see the true-egg part of my mother present in her love of the natural world.  That part of who she was born as was not lost.  That part of who she was, I believe, existed so close to the core of who she was that nothing (no one) could change that, in the same way that all the maltreatment my mother did to me never took away from me my love of nature, of plants, of beauty, or of artistic expression through creative use of my hands.

Trauma in infant-childhood CAN and DOES create body-brain changes in development that last a lifetime!

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+A SILLY IMAGE FOR GOOD VERSUS BAD PARENTING (AND STRESS)?

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

For some reason tonight is not turning out to be a good night for sleeping.  I’m awake and thinking about the pressures that unsafe and insecure attachment conditions create upon a growing infant-child.  When a human being’s earliest development cannot follow the best possible pathway due to early traumas, stress and distress in its relationships with its earliest caregivers, related changes can easily contribute to continued distress for that person for the rest of their lifetime.

So-called mental illness, including Borderline Personality Disorder, and the whole rest of the gamut of brain and nervous system difficulties are being found to often happen because of severe distress and stress during these earliest and most critical ‘windows of development’.  For some reason at this moment this makes me think about early pressure and an egg.

So I looked up the instructions for how to ‘distribute stress just right’ – thinking that this might be an image-experiment that might be like how the stress of life can be handled so much better by a body-brain that was built right from the start in an adequate parenting, safe and secure attachment environment versus how it’s handled by a body-brain that was deprived of these opportunities

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I found the following in an article on the wikiHow website:

How to Squeeze an Egg Without Breaking It

originated by:Sondra C, Krystle, Jack Herrick, Ben Rubenstein

SteveSpanglerScience.com – More instructions on this experiment and the source of this article

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Here's my pretend newborn baby in its parent's hand - "If you don't do it right - you break it!"

Is it possible to squeeze an egg as hard as you can without breaking it? The answer is – yes! We’ve all learned the hard (and messy) way that eggs can be fragile, but despite their reputation, eggs are amazingly strong. Amaze your friends and yourself by doing this easy experiment.

STEPS WITH ONE HAND:

(1)  Place an egg on your fingers.

(2)  Close your hand so that your fingers are completely wrapped around the egg.

(3)  Squeeze the egg by applying even pressure all around the shell.

(4)  Look at everyone’s amazement (mostly your own) as the egg remains whole and your hand remains dry!

STEPS WITH TWO HANDS:

(1)  Lace your fingers together.

(2)  Place the egg lengthwise between your palms.

(3)  Squeeze your palms together as hard as you can on the points of the egg.

TIPS:

(1)  If you’re a little nervous about the outcome, try sealing the raw egg in a zipper-lock (plastic) bag before putting the squeeze on it, or hold the egg over the sink if you’re in the super brave category. Or go outside and try it.

(2)  Eggs are similar in shape to a 3-dimensional arch, one of the strongest architectural forms. The curved form of the shell distributes pressure evenly all over the shell rather than concentrating it at any one point.

(3)  By completely surrounding the egg with your hand, the pressure you apply by squeezing is distributed evenly all over the egg. However, eggs do not stand up well to uneven forces which is why they crack easily on the side of a bowl.

WARNINGS:

  • Be careful not to wear a ring while squeezing. The uneven pressure of the ring against the shell will result in an amusing display of flying egg yolk.
  • Do not attempt this experiment near carpet, curtains, or any other hard-to-clean item. If this experiment fails, egg yolk will fly in all directions.
  • This only works if you perfectly apply even pressure. Read the discussion page for examples of successful and failed attempts on this trick.
  • One reason why this trick often fails to work, is that even an almost-invisible, hairline crack will cause the egg to break easily, no matter how evenly you apply pressure. The 3D arch structure is indeed very strong, but it only takes one minor flaw to weaken it dramatically. Read up on the Paris Airport Terminal collapse for a larger-scale example of this phenomenon. So inspect the egg very carefully before you try it. If there’s even a hint of a crack, use another egg.
  • Don’t try this in the store before you buy the egg. The storekeeper will not be amused.

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ONLY the affects of infant-child trauma, severe stress and maltreatment during early critical windows of body-brain development are not fun or funny:

Traumatic Childhood Can Reduce Life Expectancy

A difficult childhood reduces life expectancy by up to 20 years according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The study found that participants who were exposed to more then five different types of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were over 50 percent more likely to die during the 10-year period of the study. On the other hand, people who reported fewer than six ACEs did not have a statistically increased risk of death compared with the control group.

Listen to a podcast Adversce Childhood Experiences and the Risk of Premature Mortality.

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

FROM GALLUP:

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Take the assessment today to see how your Career, Social, Financial, Physical, and Community Wellbeing compare with others.

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

Introducing the Wellbeing Finder, a revolutionary program for measuring, managing, and improving your wellbeing.

Take the assessment today to see how your Career, Social, Financial, Physical, and Community Wellbeing compare with others.

+MAKING IT CLEAR: MY SYMPATHIES ARE NOT WITH BORDERLINE PARENTS

alchemynow4 Comments

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I believe that these blog comments posted in the past few days about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (and how I use the term ‘Borderline’ to describe my own mother) are worth a careful, thoughtful read.  If you follow the live links posted below with the comments you can see the original posting the comments were made to and my replies.

Before I launch into my discussion of some of the points of view expressed in these comments, I want to mention some facts as they are appearing in the scientific community about what I call ‘The Borderline Brain’.  Each of these live links below leads to related information in a Google search – and represent the very tip of the proverbial iceberg about how different a Borderline’s brain, nervous system, mind, self, are changed from ‘ordinary’:

(1)  Difficulties in early caregiver infant-child interactions create developmental stress that can lead to a person developing BPD.

(2)  BPD involves a developmentally ‘changed brain’.

(3)  These changes affect all interactions in the brain regarding ‘self reference’

(4)  BPD most often involves an insecure attachment disorder

(5) BPD affects memory

(6)  BPD brain and nervous systems do not process emotion in ordinary ways.  These changes affect someone with a Borderline brain in significant ways that include:

– their brain’s self-referencing resting default mode

– their ability to regulate emotion

–  their ability to experience empathy for others

– their ability to process their life experiences and interactions with others because the development of their Theory of Mind is altered

– their ability to use a human-social skill called ‘mentalizing’ is affected

– all these alterations affect how the Borderline brain-mind operates – and their ‘mind sight’ abilities

(7)  Epigenetic factors that change development are beginning to be recognized in BPD – that affect the way the genetic code manifests (see phenotype and genotype)

(8) All these changes are known to affect a BPD mother’s interactions with her infant and her ability to form safe and secure attachment with her offspring

(9)  The BPD central nervous system is involved, their autonomic nervous system, their vagus nerve system, their stress response, their oxytocin connection system, their immune system, their hormones, and their neurotransmitters – to name just a few of the major influences that Borderline Personality Disorder can create in the body

(10)  BPD can involve delusional disorders and dissociation

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Would you place YOUR well-loved child in the care of someone with life-disorder complications like those described above?  We have to use our common sense – not a BPD strong suit.

When I use the term, ‘my Borderline mother’ I am describing a woman whose physiological existence was probably entirely influenced by the kinds of changes I mention above.  My story is about my life as the abused daughter OF my Borderline mother.

I make no claim to be an expert about BPD.  I am, however, an expert at being the daughter of my Borderline mother.  I had nothing like an ordinary mother.  I had a mother who was a Borderline mother – and a severely disturbed one.

My concern in writing for this blog is ONLY about people who have BPD physiology as it might relate to their ability to safely and securely parent their children.  My concern is WITH THE WELL-BEING OF INFANTS AND CHILDREN.

I do not believe that my mother had any CHOICE about how she behaved toward me and the rest of my family.  The only CHOICE that could have influenced positive change for my mother would have needed to come from the outside and would have needed to be court ordered and professionally enforced.

In essence, I firmly believe that in cases like my mother’s, her children needed to be permanently removed from her care.  Any contact she might have then been able to have with her children would have needed to be strictly (professionally) supervised.

In today’s world of not wanting to be ‘politically incorrect’ we put ourselves at risk for leaving infants and children in dangerously abusive, unsafe and insecurely attached environments with Borderline parents – especially mothers.  There is no comparing – as the commenter below suggests – between an inadequate and/or dangerous BPD parent and a ““lesbian mother” or “over-eater mother”.”  My Borderline mother had no problem with bashing my 4-year-old head in the toilet, for example.

The very last people on this great green and blue earth that we can afford to listen to about the dangers to infants and children of Borderline Personality Disorder parents are PBD parents, themselves – for ALL of the reasons I just pointed out above.

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Comment posted by reader to:  MY BORDERLINE MOM

Hi,
It is okay for me if you want to post my comment and also okay if you don’t. Mostly I would like to express my personal feelings about your blog (basically one particular thing).

First, I read your blog on occasion. I am DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder] and can relate to what you write about. I think you do a wonderful work with your blog and it does help others (at least it helps me).

The thing that bothers me is how you slam your “BORDERLINE” mother. I know everything you went thru was terrible (I have my terrible experiences) but as a BPD [Borderline Personality Disorder] mother it really hurts me how you always refer to her as “Borderline Mother” as if all borderline mothers are terrible monsters. I am DID and Borderline and anorexic and . . . . I have 4 outside kids who belong to a 14 yr. old alter who no longer wants them because they are not “babies” any more. I have stepped in and am working really hard to be the best mom I can be. Most of the time my BPD is contained inside (comes with a lot of “inner self-harm” because it does not get released). I do not want that crap released onto these kids.

When other people read your site and are not real familiar with BPD they will assume all BPD moms are out right crazy. Then if they come across my blog and read that I am BPD they will assume I unleash that same crazy stuff onto my kids and I do not. I wish you not refer to your mom as terrible, crazy “Borderline” mom (though I am sure she was). Maybe you could mention she was (is) borderline once or twice and then just refer to her as “crazy, horrible, terrible” instead of slamming the borderline word around when referring to her.

I cringe somewhat when I come to your site, though I like it, because I believe all borderline moms do not behave as such on the outside. I have begged my psychiatrist to remove that label from me but I know I have it. I just hate the way people out there slam it so frequently.

Thanks for listening to me rant! I only wanted to point it out to you. I will still read your site anyway I just do not need to be reminded about how terrible I am.

Thanks

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Next comment posted by this same reader to:  +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

Hi, I appreciate you listening to my feelings, posting my comments, and leaving it open for others to post also. I am not sure what you are saying in this new post. It seems like you are still saying bad things about borderline mothers, borderlines in general. But I could be totally wrong. When I see borderline and “yanking out the jugular” that does not feel good. Yank YOUR mom’s jugular, not all borderlines behave that way. Why can’t you just say “My Mother” instead of always attaching the BPD with it? You can mention her detailed issues, BPD being one of them, in another place where you explain more about you and your family.

I do not know where I am on the spectrum of borderlines but I can tell you it has to be a conscious effort on my part to think through things before I react. It is a work in progress. I am not the best mom and I lose it at times. I believe any mom can admit that.

One of the beliefs of Dr. Colin Ross (DID expert in Dallas) is that all DID people first split into BPD (that is the FIRST split) then DID comes next. The more I think about it the more I can see this making sense. Some in our system ARE BPD while others are not.

I wonder how others would feel if you were referring to your “lesbian mother” or “over-eater mother”. I do not think it is necessary to continue slamming the BPD label down with the abuses your mother did to you. It is like saying BPD is completely uncontrollable and all of us are crazies who should be in a mental institution.

My mother launched BPD stuff on me all of my life but I would not refer to her as my BPD mom repeatedly. She is my mom and she had a choice not to behave that way but she chose to. I have a choice NOT to behave that way. I am learning a new way.

I understand your anger, your frustration. It just seems you are SO focused on just BPD and not all of the other ways moms abuse their kids. If you abuse kids you abuse them no matter what your diagnosis.

Anyway I am sure my therapist will recommend I stop reading this blog as she does a lot of the blogs I read because it upsets our system. I am thankful to be able to speak up for all of us and express how we feel when we read the BPD references.

Post or not I am okay either way.

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Followed in time of posting by this comment by another reader also to:  +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

Linda, In reading your blog, I would assume that your mother was on the severe end of the borderline spectrum. Borderline personality can manifest itself as extreme anger and violence–it is what it is! The label itself explains much of your mother’s bizarre behavior. I know not all borderline’s are like your mom just like all depressed people don’t stay in bed all day or commit suicide. It’s a matter of degrees but it is what it is!

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Followed by yet another reader to +FOOLED BY AN ABUSIVE BORDERLINE? – MY MOTHER’S EXPERT DISTORTION OF REALITY

Linda,
There would be a quite a lot of people who would call it a bluff. But rest assured, I completely agree with you on this count. Your assessment of BP (borderline personality) is just about perfect. In my case however it is my father and his mother (my grandma) who appear to be the culprits. It appears that BPs are compulsive control-freaks and their entire life revolves around a desperate and somewhat diabolical obsession to take charge of everything and everyone around them. The best option for a non-BP in most situations would be to walk-out on these scheming maniacs without prior warning. As I have observed trying to warn these people of dire consequences if they do not stop their abuse is usually counter-productive. It simply strengthens their resolve to find more innovative ways of abuse. It is only when they [have] no fall-guy left to flog, that they are faced with the terrifying reality of their madness and usually break down irreversibly.

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Infants and children born to a Borderline Personality Disorder parent DO NOT HAVE THIS CHOICE:  “The best option for a non-BP in most situations would be to walk-out on these scheming maniacs without prior warning.”

It is up to outside informed and compassionate adults to protect ALL children.  In my opinion, we cannot trust those with Borderline Personality Disorder to parent their infant-child appropriately.  While this fact might not be true in SOME BPD parent cases, my strong suspicion is that as long as we continue to turn away with our blind eyes to the possibilities for severe distortion of reality with a BPD parent’s brain-body-mind that can lead to their offspring’s’ maltreatment, we are risking being contributors to this infant-child maltreatment.

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Prevalence:

BPD has a higher incidence of occurrence than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and is present in approximately two percent of the general population. BPD has been evidenced in all cultures. It is estimated that between 10 percent of clients in outpatient clinical settings and 15 to 20 percent of those in inpatient psychiatric settings meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD.

Thirty to 60 percent of those presenting with a personality disorder have BPD.

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+SILENT TRUTH – MISSING FROM MY PARENTS’ 29,000 WORDS IN THEIR JUNE 1957 LETTERS

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

Having just completed the transcription of the nearly 29,000 words contained in the *JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER I now face the most difficult task of all.  Do I do what I suggest in the title I have found for the collection of my essays if I ever publish them, “Breaking the Silence that Binds,” or do I let the silence of the words NOT written in my parents’ letters remain intact?

First of all, I know about the silence because I was there, and because 53 years later I can feel that silence now.  I know I feel it, because it upsets me.  “How dare I speak about what I know?”  “DARE” is a word my mother frequently used against her children, especially me.  “How DARE you look at me that way?”  “How DARE you – blah – blah – blah…..?”

How DARE I, 53 years later, speak my own truth about what I know about what went on in my family?  Well, do I dare?  Can I dare?  Will I dare?  It’s as if I stand at a silent, invisible boundary line at which I need to summon my courage, my willingness, my commitment to my own self (and to those who suffered abuse within a family similar to mine), and all of my ability to differentiate myself from both of my parents so that I CAN break this binding silence contained within these letters.

“Dive in, Linda.  What is most troubling you?”  I find it hard to think at this moment.  It’s like I am at the center of a powerful vacuum that sucks all my thoughts along with my whole version of my own reality away from me.  How do I begin?  I will simply locate the passages within my mother’s writing that I need to use my voice about.

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I can feel my fear.  I can feel the inner experience of DARING to challenge my mother, even now, all these 53 years later.  Where are my thoughts?  Where are my words?

First, there are seeds of my truth within these words from mother’s June 12, 1957 Wednesday letter to my father:

“Darling I can’t stand being away from you.  I must be with you.  I’ll never let anyone separate us again.  Never, never, not even the Army – oh darling, I love you.

We loved your letter and cards.  Linda didn’t get one – I hope you didn’t forget, I know you wouldn’t.  I gave her mine.  They were so proud and happy.  Come to think of it mornings and afternoons aren’t so bad, but far from good.  But from 4:00 on I am SICK!!  All this I’ve heard of mind over matter, I must put it into practice.  Can I??“

++

Second, there are seeds of my truth within these words from my mother’s June 27, 1957 letter:

“Oh darling, my heart never ceases aching for you.  I had ‘the feeling’ this afternoon I should check again to see if there was mail again.  I usually only go in the morning but I had to go again and there was!

It was the letter written before the one I got this morning.  It was written Friday.  It’s funny to read them backwards.  I drove over to the little park in Glendora and let the kids play awhile, took a few impromptu pictures, which I’ll send to you, and read your letter there!  I took one close-up of Linda as she lost her 2nd front tooth today.  Isn’t nature wonderful, right on time?  Tonight the angel will visit her – usually you do that – I know.”

++

Finally, the contrast I am going to speak about relates to this in her ‘fun filled’ descriptions in her June 27, 1957 Thursday night letter:

“I wish you could have seen John when he caught his trout!  He was so excited, he swung his line around and caught it in a tree.  Naturally, he had had several bites and near catches before he actually caught one.  It really was priceless!  He jumped up and down and exclaimed.

Cindy was such a ‘patient fisherwoman’ and soon caught a big one.  I took a picture of her holding the line with the fish on it, with the others standing close, admiring it.  J  I surely hope IT comes out!

Linda caught the biggest and is so proud!  We got home at 8:00 P.M. and so will cook them tomorrow!  Grandma will be here then, as I have errands in Pasadena (what a let-down) to do tomorrow.  I know she loves trout and I’m afraid the children might not eat it.

The only one that minded ‘hurting the fish’ was John.  He couldn’t stand to see it bled and naturally I had to get someone else to pull the hook out.  J  I was glad cleaning them was part of the price and I even had her cut the heads off.“

++

OK.  Step one is completed.  I have used my net woven of my bravery and determination to snatch this collection of my mother’s words out of her letters, out of the context that she wrote them within, and I have moved them into MY universe – 53 years later.

How telling it is to me that the power of my mother’s severe abuse of me, coupled with my father’s unwillingness to EVER stop her or to even recognize that the abuse was happening, makes it this difficult even today for me to DARE to speak about what I know about my parents’ version of reality.

Now, as I try to locate MY OWN SELF, my own feelings, thoughts, words, perceptions in relationship to my mother’s words, I need to distill this down if I can into my own crystallized words about these letter passages.

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(1)  My mother’s Borderline reality began to take shape from the time she was very, very young.  The neglect, abuse, trauma and malevolent conditions that she was born into influenced the body-brain changes that led to her condition.

(2)  My mother’s Borderline reality was already well in place before she ever met and married my father on June 11, 1949.  They knew one another six months before the marriage took place.

(3)  My the time my oldest brother, John, was born on June 15, 1950 my mother’s Borderline reality had expanded to not only include the existence of her ‘perfect husband’, Bill, but also had grown to include the appearance of this firstborn ‘perfect son’.

(4)  A healthy, balanced relationship between my mother and her mother had been trashed beginning with my mother’s birth.  While I became the victim-pawn within the complex interplay of the disturbances between my mother and her mother, I was not the cause of them.

(5)  Patterns of chronic and severe abuse in a family happen because these patterns both grow into the family dynamics and shape them.  These patterns are especially well-disguised within a Borderline-based brain-nervous system-mind-self focused home.

(6)  These patterns are at the same time NOT detected because their disguise is perfect and because they have shaped every single interaction and transaction that occurs over time between the people that are part of the close family.

When my mother writes to my father in one of her June 27, 1957 letters, “We’re not ordinary people – we’re a close knit family and should never be separated!”  I believe she is recognizing within herself that her entire reality depends upon the ongoing patterns that were not only established within her own Borderline mind when she was a little girl, but also is recognizing that her ongoing reality is completely intertwined with my father’s presence in her life.

(7)  The patterns that formed the fabric of the ongoing interactions within our family worked because they were silent.  The silence of the truth about what was really going on was as completely necessary to maintain ‘reality’s existence’ as was the presence of my father.

(8)  The key point I know about the passages I selected above is that it wasn’t just the presence of my father in my mother’s life that was required for her reality to remain intact.  It was absolutely essential that my father completely understand my mother’s version of reality as it regarded me as the kingpin of her mad illusions.

My mother very effectively, efficiently and expertly manipulated how my father saw me throughout my entire childhood.  My mother had to convince my father of her mother’s love for me so that she could then justify and defend her abuse of me.

The pattern of the dynamics of my mother’s abuse of me with my father’s acceptance if not approval happened over time because:

(a)  My mother could ensure that my father knew she had undying love for him.

(b)  My mother could ensure that my father’s entire life involved his love for her at its center.

(c) My mother could ensure that my father could not understand what she did to me in any way than I ‘abused my mother’ by being such a terrible child.  My mother was ‘put upon’ by a ‘curse child’ – she bore her burdens with glorious magnanimity.  My mother created a pattern of reality that meant my father never questioned her version of the truth.

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In the two first passages I include here from my mother’s writings to my father, I know the truth is invisibly included in her words.  Both of my parents, whether they made the choices consciously or not, DID exactly choose what words they included within their letters.

Although my mother does mention their other three children in her letters, it is exactly and specifically Linda that she draws attention to in terms of her magnanimous ‘good mother’ actions toward me.  In both of these incidents she includes about me in her letter, she directly hooks my father – and his role as my father — into ‘the story’.

(a)  Father evidently ‘forgot’ to send Linda a card.  Magnanimous ‘good mother’ gives me hers.

(b)  Mother makes sure to mention that she took a picture ‘close up’ of just Linda as she hooks in my father by also drawing his attention to his usual role as the lost tooth routine.  Magnanimous ‘good mother’ takes his place and performs his job for him.

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In the third passage I included above a different dynamic is operating (from my point of view).  As mother describes the fishing adventures of her group of children, she does include Linda as one of the group.  This mention, to me, is not one that involves the kind of husband-father-conning-manipulation that she used in the first two passages.  In the fishing scene, she actually ‘forgot’ to separate me from the rest of ‘the pack’.

The problem with this thirdly-mentioned experience is that any time I was ‘accidentally’ left out of my mother’s psychosis regarding me at the same time I was ‘accidentally’ included as a member of the sibling group, I never, never, never knew when to expect my mother’s psychosis to reappear in some random violent extreme outburst against me.

I mention this fact here because these ‘happy Linda as part of the group’ experiences did as much to create major dissociational patterns in my ongoing experience of my life in the world as did the violence.  I never could anticipate ‘which was going to be which’.  I could not predict, I could not prevent, I could not understand any of it.

So when something good actually did happen, when I actually was allowed to be a child, it always happened not because I WAS a child, but happened because mother was in one of her “giddy-happy let’s-do-something-fun isn’t-this-fun” moods that NONE of us could understand.

NOTE:  My mother seems to have some peripheral comprehension of the difficulties her shifts of mental state, mood and attitude had on her children when she described this in the same letter where she talks about the fishing trip:

“Next door to us there’s a beautiful trailer court (I don’t think they allow children).  Mostly, the people seem to be retired.  It really is nice.  They have a lovely swimming pool, shuffle-board etc.  Some of them have their patios fixed so nicely with ferns, tropical plants etc.  We all enjoyed seeing it.  You can’t imagine how much I enjoy the children – they’re truly fun to be with – if no other adults are along.  When we’re alone I treat them more as adults.  We talk and laugh and have fun.  When other adults are there or in the car they’re treated as children and resent it.  I can’t blame them.  It must be hard (Pals and friends one minute and a mere child, the next).“

But it is obvious to me that even as she wrote these words, even as she noticed the process she described here, it doesn’t MEAN ANYTHING TO HER.  My mother remained consistently at the center of her own universe and everything that happened always happened to us with her at this center.

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With the exception of the simple report that I caught the biggest fish and I was proud (she doesn’t’ describe to my father what her reaction to my pride might have been), the other two examples regarding me have nothing to do with Linda.

In both of the other two events mother is the star player.  Father becomes the blind, manipulated hooked-into-my-mother’s-version-of-reality player.  All I am is the actress-prop being used to continue the solidification of the pattern-dynamics that HAD to be protected and maintained in the family even though my father was not physically present in the home.  There could be no lapse of pattern.

My mother had to SHINE.  My father had to see her SHINE.  My father had to stay entranced.  He had to see my mother SHINE as his wife.  He had to see her SHINE as a mother.  And, for the overall, overriding, overarching dynamic of my mother’s psychosis – with me at its center – to continue to operate as my mother’s Borderline madness HAD to have it happen, my father ESPECIALLY had to see my mother SHINE as MY magnanimously good mother.

My mother had to so comprehensively control the pattern-dynamics in her home that when she acted viciously toward me, even her insane, mad violence would be seen by my father as just another aspect of her SHINING ability to be this terribly BAD child’s magnanimous good mother.

To say that ‘my mother as martyr’ was an aspect of the pattern-dynamics of our home is such an understatement it’s almost ridiculous.  At the same time, my grandmother did the ‘martyr thing’ to near perfection.  Adding another bizarre twist, it was a part of my mother’s abuse litany against my father that HE played such an excellent martyr role!

All the while these dynamics were slithering around among the only grown-ups in my child life, it was ME that was being sacrificed.  I was not ‘a martyr’, I was martyred.

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I need to take my word-search detour here for a moment:

MARTYR

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin, from Greek martyr-, martys witness

Date: before 12th century

1 : a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion
2 : a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
3 : victim; especially : a great or constant sufferer

MARTYRED

Date: before 12th century

1 : to put to death for adhering to a belief, faith, or profession
2 : to inflict agonizing pain on : torture

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As an infant-child I certainly had no ability to volunteer as a martyr.  At the same time, I was accused from birth of being sent as an agent of the devil to kill my mother, I was not given any means of defending myself.  I could not ‘renounce’ the devil!  I had no principle or religion to denounce.  I had been assigned a religion as being ‘the devil’s child’.

Yes, I witnessed.  Yes I sacrificed.  Yes, I greatly and nearly constantly suffered.  But this truth only appears in my parents’ letters by its silence.

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Letters: 

*JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER

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

+LINK POSTED HERE TO COMPLETED JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MY PARENTS

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

I just completed transcribing what exists of the June 1957 letters written between my parents after my father flew to Anchorage, Alaska to start his new job and look for housing so that the rest of his family could join him there:

*JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER

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+WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

alchemynow4 Comments

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No reader of the autobiographical writings of my mother, Mildred Ann Cahill Lloyd, is going to be privy to what the readers of this blog already know as the truth about Mildred.  I haven’t quite worked my own self around this new turn of events, my intention to allow my mother to speak to anyone who wishes to hear her words – just in her own words.  But I do suspect that the process I might go through as I prepare her manuscript might be something akin to forgiveness.

I had a strange realization overcome me last week.  That’s exactly how it happened.  I was overcome with a thought that seemed quite unusual and odd to me.  I had no idea how it showed up in my mind.  I tried to track its origins.  I looked backwards at my thinking for the day to see if I could find what this new thought about my mother might have been connected to in my earlier thinking patterns.  Nothing.  I could find not one single lead-in line of thought that put me where I ended up.

Suddenly, out of this nowhere that I could find, I had this thought:  “What if when we get to the other side and meet our Creator, and are faced with the truth of our actions in this lifetime including what we have done that has truly HURT other people – what if our Creator blankets us with forgiveness and washes all our transgressions completely away as if they have never happened — and it’s not enough?”

Suddenly I was crying.  There I was outside with my raggedy dirt covered clothes, wearing mismatched rubber work gloves because each of the other glove in the pair had already disintegrated as I worked in the yard.  There I was, walking across the yard with a 5-gallon dirt smudged plastic bucket full of rocks (I have no wheelbarrow), when this thought hit me like an apple had just fallen from the sky and knocked some unfamiliar new sense into my head.

“What if my mother is on the other side, having been granted complete forgiveness by her God, but is still as sad as a soul can be because, stripped of the physiological changes and sickness of her mortal flesh and bone body, she now understands what she did to me how terribly she hurt me and the rest of her family.  What if she cannot be free, cannot be happy, cannot move on in her new life, without my forgiving her?”

Suddenly at the instant this thought came to me I understood what forgiveness might be for me, what it mean, and what it might be needed for.  The thought was so foreign that I sloughed it off like I might a bug that just appeared on my shoulder.

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But I woke up this morning remembering the trace of something I was dreaming last night that had something to do with thinking very hard about finding exactly the very best thing to do for people I have met in my life that I could never quite stand for something they did – something that I could not stand by them for, something that did not let me stand to have these people in my life.

My sense this morning about this dream is that for all of the people that I have decided I could not stand – not stand what they did, or who they were in my life – I found a way to make what the 12-steppers might call an amend.  Of course in the dream world different rules about who and what is safe or not safe are different.  In the dream I was safe to find my own way to – essentially – forgive them, I guess.

As I awoke this morning I knew I came out of a dream where I was standing with a palette of oil paint colors in my left hand and a 1/2″ paintbrush in my right in front of one of these people’s canvas of a painting they had wanted to complete all of their lives but could not.  In the dream I knew exactly how this person wanted the painting to look, and I was completing it for them – perfectly.

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There is something about this discovery I had last night in conversation with my daughter that contains some element of my forgiveness of my mother.  I guess what struck me hardest on the head last week as the invisible apple clunked me into the realization that God’s forgiveness of our transgressions in this lifetime might NOT BE ENOUGH to remove terrible inner suffering from the people who have hurt others was my awareness of my own understanding that IF this might be true, IF my mother needs my forgiveness to be set free I would find a way to do that for her.

Maybe my act of publishing my mother’s words exactly as she wrote them will not ACTUALLY or REALLY be an act of forgiveness.  Maybe it will not ACTUALLY or REALLY set her free or remove her great sorrow.  I ACTUALLY know nothing about what goes on in the next life.  But for me, in this lifetime, it feels like an act of my forgiveness of her – to me.

It feels like an action on my part related to mercy toward my mother to fulfill a wish of hers she always had to publish her story of her Alaskan homesteading adventures.  Her sickness and her madness stole away from her all of the truest hopes for her lifetime.  Writing and publishing was perhaps, from the outside, one of the least significant of the losses of her life due to her illness.  But I am the one that ended up not only with her writings that survived her death, but with the motivation to transcribe them and to publish them.

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I am still framing in context my relationship both to my mother and to the word she wrote in terms of us both being Word Warriors.  I think about her uncountable acts of aggression toward me while I was powerless, without any weapon, unable to defend myself against her or to escape.

At the same time I think of a conversation I had with a man not too long ago.  I described a scenario to him.  “You are at war with your greatest enemy.  Both of you are expert swordsmen and well armed.  You have both fought your way to the top of a great hill.  Your enemy finally admits defeat, lays his sword at  your feet and stands now powerless against you.  What would you do?”

The man I was talking to replied quite simply, “I would cut off his head.”

I have what could be referred to now as the distinct advantage over my mother.  I am alive in this world with her words at my disposal.  She is dead.  What I do now with my Word Warrior power will determine the fate of my mother’s words.  I  am choosing to set my mother’s story free.

I will not hold my mother’s written words captive.  I will not hold them hostage.  I will not demand a ransom for their freedom.

Because being human involves imagination (that’s the way our brains got made), and because writing is a manifestation of our gifts of imagination, I can say that using the analogy of the image I just presented about the two men in mortal combat, what I will not do is pick up my mother’s Word Warrior sword and chop her head off with it.

In my imagination I am going to use the equivalent of my ‘alchemynow’ powers in regard to my mother’s sword of words.  I am going to transform her sword into a carefully folded elegant rice-paper crane.  All her words are written upon the paper that crane is made from.  I am going to carry that sword across the globe of my mind to the shores of the Ganges River.  I am going to kneel upon the shore, place this crane gently upon the water, say these words, “Mother, I completely and forever forgive you for every hurt you did to me.”

Then I am going to give that little crane a gentle nudge with the tip of my finger to send it out into the current where it can float away.  I will stand to watch it disappear into the distance at the same time I know there is healing for me in letting that crane go free.

Ganges River Dolphin - India’s National Aquatic Animal

This does not mean that I am free of the painful and difficult experience of finishing the process of transcribing these remaining letters.  But this pain is mine, not my mother’s.  For whatever reasons my mother’s body-brain was made in such a way in this lifetime that she could not feel for me what I can feel for her.  The abilities I have are gifts my mother did not have.  I want to use them for good, and I want to use them wisely.

The Ganges is a polluted and wounded river.  My mother was a polluted and wounded woman.  If I think about my mother’s writings as being the river of her words, I am not going to pollute them by adding in my own.   I will simply publish her collection with a blessing:  “Go in peace, my mother.  Go in peace.”

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This comment just in to MY BORDERLINE MOM

chasingfairies

Hi,
It is okay for me if you want to post my comment and also okay if you don’t. Mostly I would like to express my personal feelings about your blog (basically one particular thing).

First, I read your blog on occasion. I am DID and can relate to what you write about. I think you do a wonderful work with your blog and it does help others (at least it helps me).

The thing that bothers me is how you slam your “BORDERLINE” mother. I know everything you went thru was terrible (I have my terrible experiences) but as a BPD mother it really hurts me how you always refer to her as “Borderline Mother” as if all borderline mothers are terrible monsters. I am DID and Borderline and anorexic and . . . . I have 4 outside kids who belong to a 14 yr. old alter who no longer wants them because they are not “babies” any more. I have stepped in and am working really hard to be the best mom I can be. Most of the time my BPD is contained inside (comes with a lot of “inner self-harm” because it does not get released). I do not want that crap released onto these kids.

When other people read your site and are not real familiar with BPD they will assume all BPD moms are out right crazy. Then if they come across my blog and read that I am BPD they will assume I unleash that same crazy stuff onto my kids and I do not. I wish you not refer to your mom as terrible, crazy “Borderline” mom (though I am sure she was). Maybe you could mention she was (is) borderline once or twice and then just refer to her as “crazy, horrible, terrible” instead of slamming the borderline word around when referring to her.

I cringe somewhat when I come to your site, though I like it, because I believe all borderline moms do not behave as such on the outside. I have begged my psychiatrist to remove that label from me but I know I have it. I just hate the way people out there slam it so frequently.

Thanks for listening to me rant! I only wanted to point it out to you. I will still read your site anyway I just do not need to be reminded about how terrible I am.

Thanks,
Haley

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My response:

alchemynow

Dear Haley

I just copied your comment over to the end of the post I just wrote: +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

at https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/word-warrior-news-go-in-peace-my-mother/

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Thank you very much for posting your thoughts and feelings.

When I use these two words in connection to one another, “Borderline mother,” I am always and specifically referring to MY mother. At least that is what I try to do. When I include information on Borderline Personality Disorder I try to do that by referring to expert and professional descriptions and information about the ‘condition’ from the outside.

In reading your response I will make the clearest effort that I can from now on to make even more of an effort to keep these distinctions as clear as I can.

I of course can not tell this for sure, but in reading your words I perceive that you express three things I can see here that my mother never had toward me (and only peripherally demonstrated toward anyone else, including her other 5 children): (1) the ability to self-reflect, (2) the ability to connect consequences with actions, and (3) the ability to experience care, concern and compassion for the well-being of your children.

Without having these three abilities, my mother was a lethal weapon and an extremely dangerous mother.

The shortcomings related to diagnosis of so-called ‘mental health categories’ and the cultural stigmas connected to them is a problem within our society at large: http://www.jwoodphd.com/borderline_personality_disorder.htm and http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/b/borderline_personality_disorder/wiki.htm#wiki_Origin_of_the_term

There is enough neuroscientific research appearing to suggest that before much more time passes, it will be possible to diagnose something akin to what is now called Borderline Personality Disorder far more accurately by watching scans of a person’s brain operating while performing certain specific tasks.

When this time comes, I see that the diagnostic process will be very similar to the ones used now to find and diagnose something as problematic, life threatening and difficult to treat as are breast cancers discovered through mammogram procedures today.

It was not that long ago in the past that ‘having cancer’ was considered as a shameful thing. We are socially removing that stigma.

It was not that long ago in the past that child abuse was also a taboo topic for public discussion.

I make every effort to connect what my mother did to me to the suffering my mother experienced during her formative years that changed her into the terribly abusive mother she became. Nowhere do I EVER say that my mother was a bad or an evil person.

The point you make today is not only an extremely important one, but is one that is appearing at a critically important time in my own writing process. I thank you for this. I will enlist everyone on my end that is involved in the process of preparing my book on the experiences of my childhood to help me consider how best to approach the legitimate and important point you are heart-fully making making here.

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I consider my mother (who was never diagnosed with this disorder first named in 1984) to have been at the severe end of the Borderline Personality Disorder spectrum. My concern so far has been that if a mother as severely abusive as mine was could so completely hide her abuse and so completely manipulate her home environment that nobody on the outside ever suspected the abuse was occurring, how does anyone even today have a chance to intervene and rescue any child living with this kind of abuse?

I consider the entire matter of child abuse to be a life-and-death concern. I would rather not be an inconsiderate ‘bull in a China shop’ and trample all over other people who have been given this diagnosis or help create a stampede of others who would do the same. Yet because I believe that severe Borderline mothers have the physiological constitution that makes them about the most dangerous abusive parents possible, I have as yet not chosen to back off from assigning ‘Borderline’ as a prefix to the term ‘my mother’.

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I make no pretense (at least that I know of) to tell anyone else’s story other than my own. In my most recent process within the past 24 hours, I have even realized that my mother’s own words need to be published without my side of the story being presented at all in connection with my mother’s writings. That is a HUGE step for me because I have always believed that if I could somehow bring the light of the true reality of my mother’s violent, dangerous and consistently abusive nature into the telling of my mother’s story that it might be able to help someone in ‘the public’ rescue a child preyed upon as abusively as I was.

Yet if nobody can ‘read the mind’ of a Borderline, as this article suggests

http://profs.bpdworld.org/articles/The%20Borderline%20Empathy%20Effect.pdf

I will not be able to accomplish what I hoped for, anyway.

I am not yet able to think fully about what you are saying. I obviously retain my own bias in regard to my mother. I know fully that there are readers of this blog who DO have something to say about this topic. Please respond. Put within your comment, as this reader did, your feelings about having your comment published or not – I will of course honor your request. But, your opinion IS NEEDED here! And I thank you again, Haley as I thank other readers for their comments even before they are received.

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