Tag: bpd

+”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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+INFANT-CHILD ABUSE: WE NEVER STOP TRYING TO HEAL

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If there’s one thing I have learned from my work with words it is that if words have something they want to say they will not only haunt me, they will swarm around inside of my head like a cloud of busy, nasty gnats that will pester me continually until I write them down.  Who am I to argue?  I have some errands to run and I need to leave the house and go into town, but before I do I choose to give these words their say.

For the resource-hungry among you, I am thinking this morning about something I read in the writings of Dr. Diana Fosha a few years back.  Without taking the time at this moment to explain what her Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy is all about, I will simply suggest that you follow these active links as well as do a Google search about the work that Dr. Fosha is involved in.

What my words want to say this morning is that when Dr. Fosha says that human beings ALWAYS know deep inside of their self at their core what they need to heal and how they need to do it – like we instinctively know which way to tip a picture hanging at a crooked angle on the wall to straighten it out – when early infant-child trauma, neglect and abuse change the way a person’s body-nervous system-brain-mind-self develops from the start, well, we can simply lose ‘our way’.

In the grand picture of life, my mother did no more and no less than any other living organism, on their most basic, fundamental cellular level will do.  Everything my mother did was in effort to correct something within her that was wrong so that she could make it right.  In other words, taken from this perspective, all of life only has one choice if it is going to continue on being alive:  HEAL or DIE.

When I wrote the other day about the human specie’s opioid system as it is designed to help us form our required life-sustaining attachment systems (see post:  +FEELING GOOD AND A FULL TOILET TANK) I wasn’t joking.  Being born as a healthy infant into an early safe and secure attachment caregiving environment means that when we have a need someone appears to help us so that the blissful state that is innately ours (when our opioid system’s receptors are full) is continually reinstated.  That, to me, is what heaven on earth is all about no matter how we want to think about it.

When early attachments to caregivers are NOT safe and secure, something changes inside of our body as we develop and, as Dr. Allen Schore describes, our inner SET POINT that is supposed to be developed to return us to a state of balanced equilibrium and calm (what I call bliss) simply never gets formed in the right way or at the right ‘place’.

So when a survivor of the kind of early experiences during development doesn’t get this calm center set point, it doesn’t mean that the body won’t continually try to balance itself out, anyway.  This, to me, is the fundamental task of any immune system.  A continual, never-ending quest for healing in ones lifetime will happen, but unless there is enough of the right information, healing itself will not happen.

My mother’s life followed this pathway.  Everything she did, although of course she had no way of knowing it, was in some way related to her physiological need to reach this calm, safe and secure balance point of inner equilibrium that was denied her in her earliest development.

I have some things to do right now, so hopefully letting these words line themselves up in order across these pages will be enough to stop them from pestering me for awhile.

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+WORD WARRIOR NEWS: THE TITLE I’VE CHOSEN FOR MY MOTHER’S BOOK

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Perhaps I should feel honored that I had such a central and starring role as a player in the trauma drama that was my Borderline mother’s life.  She was, of course, not only the Leading Lady but the writer, producer and director of this trauma drama.  It is a significant problem being raised as the daughter of my mother that because I was born into my role from before the first breath of my lifetime, there was no possible way I could know that I was in a trauma drama at all!

My mother believed this drama was real and I had no choice but to believe this fantastic lie right along with her.

My guess is in severe Borderline Personality Disorder cases like my mother’s was one of the biggest problems for those whose lives are intimately intertwined with such a mother is that her Borderline constantly shifted.  For all the thousands of hours I have spent researching her ‘condition’ in her letters and writings I still have a nearly impossible task of pinpointing exactly where her Borderline actually was.

Her Borderline did not allow her to define other people (her children and mate included) as being individual and autonomous people separate from her.  ALL of us were HER CAPTIVES.  We were FORCED to play our assigned part in the never-ending trauma drama she enveloped everyone within.

Her children were her Prisoners of War.  For all the shady shifting of her Borderline mind, that fact remained consistent along with one other:  Her nearly constant moving created the shifts between the scenes of her drama.

I suspect that just as my mother projected her own mind-psyche out onto the members of her family so that we were all assigned ‘parts to play’ as characters that we could not escape from, her psyche externalized itself in her continual moving around.  The overall primary theme of my mother’s trauma drama seemed to be a ‘search for a home in heaven’.

The secondary theme that involved me as the irredeemable child of the devil was tied to her primary theme of ‘looking for a home in heaven’ – because if all the BAD in her life could be eliminated, ‘heaven’ would appear.  That all that BAD actually existed within her own mind as she then projected it onto me was simply the WAY the play unfolded.

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So, I have decided that I will most likely title the book of my mother’s writings,

“The Many Moves of Mildred:  Her Alaskan Homesteading Tale in Letters“

or “Mildred’s Many Moves”

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My mother’s physical moves from location to location provide the most obvious single clue that something was terribly wrong ON THE INSIDE of my mother.  The moving around cannot be ignored or rationally explained even though within the family the ‘explanations’ were always built right into the pattern of the moves as they happened.  Nobody could or did ever question her moves – we had no power to do so.

The far less obvious ‘mental moves’ of Mildred are of course much harder to detect because the Borderline that could define what these ‘other moves’ actually were as they were happening constantly moved itself!

I suspect that for every physical move my mother ever made a corresponding shift, no matter how subtle, within her mood and mental state happened along with it.  My mother used moving to regulate her emotions because she lacked the resilient capacity to flexibly adapt, respond, change and ‘move things around’ within her own self.  My mother’s moving was a pattern of dissociating from one ‘place’ to another ‘place’ – externally with an internal echo.

From my point of view, my mother’s life story is probably one of the most profound examples of how an early-forming unsafe and insecure attachment disorder can rob a human being of the ability to EVER feel truly safe or secure.  My mother completely lacked the healthy sense of ‘being at home within’ in a safe and secure way.  As a consequence, the theme of her trauma drama that WAS her life demanded of her that she constantly, constantly, constantly QUEST for her ‘safe and secure home in heaven’ outside of herself.

My mother followed this pattern – alone once her husband divorced her and her children were out of her life – until her lonely dying day in that last pathetic, shabby, run-down, ugly Anchorage, Alaska motel room.

I personally know, even if I do not say a single other word about my mother’s severe ‘mental illness’ within the text of the main body of her own writings, that the title I am assigning to ‘her book’ contains the truth about HOW my mother was in the world because she lacked the capacity to truly be a WHO.  That title describes her Mercurial madness as she blindly followed an invisible Hermes  from place to place to place.

No matter what people might think as they read my mother’s writings, even without my saying one single word to alert readers to the TRUTH about what living with my mother was actually like, my mother’s life was a terrible, terrible tragedy.  From my point of view, my mother didn’t DIE in her infancy and childhood.  She was never actually even born.

And for all the thousands and thousands of words contained in her writings, not one of them names the infant-child abuse, neglect and maltreatment that stole her life away from her as it turned her into a roaring, violent, TERRORIST CAPTOR of a mother.

This is the reason I have chosen the word ‘tale’ rather than ‘story’ for her title.  What is NOT in my mother’s words, or perhaps what barely glimmers a few times here and there, is the true story of her life:  There was early damage done to my mother that meant she never reached any healing no matter how unconsciously and desperately she chased after it.

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This post follows the previous three from earlier today:

(1)  +OWNING THE BURDENS CREATED BY CHILD ABUSE

(2) +TRAUMA AND ABUSE SURVIVORS: TROUBLE WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH OUR PATIENCE TOO LONG

(3)  +TRAUMA WILL NOT SHUT UP UNTIL SOMEBODY LISTENS (TRAUMA DRAMAS SHOUT MOST LOUDLY)

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+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.

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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

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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

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+ASSESS OR DIAGNOSE?

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Why do the ‘experts’ diagnose an individual while they ‘assess’ a family?  Is the distinguishing factor a cultural assumption-belief that a family is made up of autonomous individuals?  Wrong.  Everyone one of us is formed from our start within an environment that influenced our development, and in severely infant-child abusing families it is obvious to me that the abusing parent is ‘spilling over’ into their child’s ‘personal space’ as the autonomy of the child is left out of the developmental story.  If all children were treated like autonomous people all their universal rights would be respected and met, which is obviously so NOT the case when infant-child abuse happens.

I do not believe healthy autonomy exists within unsafe, insecurely attached abusive human relationships and environments that condone abuse.  If abuse is allowed to happen at all, as far as I am concerned it is being condoned:  Allowed = condone.

I do not believe that when considering and/or dealing with MOST so-called ‘mental illnesses’ that we can have it both ways.  We cannot ‘diagnose’ individuals without ‘diagnosing’ the family that formed that individual.  If we are not willing to accept THIS as reality, then we better ‘assess’ individuals while we ‘assess’ the family that formed them.

In my view, assessment is the direction that offers the most factual and realistic opportunity to affect true HEALING.  All other approaches to most ‘mental illness’ problems — which includes abuse because I believe abuse only happens as an expression of ‘mental illness’  — address ‘symptoms’ without assessing or addressing actual cause.

We can continue to believe the old myth and fallacy that ‘mental illness’ is genetic.  Genes manifest themselves through epigenetic processes that happen when our genetic-expression ‘machinery’ detects a need for a body to adapt to a particular kind of environment.  Our genetic well-being (and therefore our overall well-being) is thus directly tied to the conditions of ill-being or well-being of the environment that forms us – during every instant of our lifetime.

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If we were to listen to the best orchestra in the world play the most complex and beautiful song we can imagine (assuming the piece appeals to our cultural tastes), what we would be listening to in any ongoing instant of time is simply a reflection of what has ‘happened in the past’ as it transfers into ‘what is happening in the present’.  Because we would have no reason to be listening along as a part of this musical experience while at the same time anticipating any abrupt STOP in the music in the middle of the song doesn’t mean that all possibilities for what COULD or MIGHT happen in the future don’t exist.

If we included in our symphony experience a conscious awareness of the nearly unbelievable history that has led up to this moment in time, we would be overwhelmed.  All of the billions of decisions that led to our specific birth as listeners, the decisions that were made back in time that led to the existence of every musician, of everyone who made every instrument we are listening to, who wrote the songs, how this ‘event’ was able to exist because ‘it got put together’ is not something we often include in our conscious awareness.  Our excluding of these thoughts and the information they might relate to does not mean that ALL that information is not a part of what we experience.

If we are going to simply say that so-called ‘mental illness’ is a result of ‘bad genes’ we are excluding vast amounts of information related to what we think we are talking about in a very similar way.

If we think about information in a familiar framework today, we can think about binary code.  Because life as we know it, including our own, actually happens on an atomic and molecular basis where information is transmitted through electrical signals and pulses of information, all we come down to is the equivalent of binary code.

If we think about our entire history as a species, our entire specie’s story of our life here on earth as being contained within our DNA, we only have one part of the story.  Somehow this story is continuing on and we each have our part in it.

While DNA contains the story of our past, it is the DNA’s ‘middle people’ that transform the story of the past into the story of the present.  I don’t know exactly HOW this happens, of course.  In fact, there are probably only a very few researchers alive today who are beginning to detect the truth about how our epigenetic processes work.

Right now it is assumed that epigenetic mechanisms are able to detect conditions within the environment so that these mechanisms can tell our DNA genetic codes how to combine with one another, how to operate, and how to express the DNA information.

Right now it is assumed that even though the epigenetic changes that happen in one generation can be passed down through successive generations (and often are), it is believed that these changes are NOT changing our DNA – or our human story.

BUT it is also becoming known that it is probably true that if the conditions that created patterns of change in DNA expression — as contained in the epigentic changes of DNA communication about the environment and hence in our DNA’s expression — remain in existence long enough, our DNA might very well EVENTUALLY change in adaptation.

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This means to me that unlike my symphony image, being human means that the ongoing song-story that we are a part of CAN and DOES change as it goes along, and these changes can be passed down the generations through epigenetic processes that very well MIGHT and CAN change the very essence of our specie’s story within our DNA.

I am coming to understand that this ENTIRE PROCESS is about attachment.  In a great, safe and secure world full of plenty and without toxicity, our epigenetic ‘middle people’ do not have to instruct our DNA to make extreme changes to adapt to trauma.  This version of the picture happens when attachment can happen within a benevolent world.

On the other hand, when attachment is unsafe and insecure within a malevolent environment, our epigentic ‘middle people’ have a much bigger job to do.  They have to tell our DNA about these hostile and malevolent conditions in our environment so our DNA can change its expression to best ensure ongoing life IN SPITE of the traumas and difficulties present.

Playing in an orchestra with well constructed instruments that do not break to pieces in the middle of a song is one thing.  But if, all of a sudden, every instrument develops some kind of critical ailment, the song is going to CHANGE drastically as a result.

If all the instruments remain intact and fine, but suddenly some mysterious sneezing gas is released into the musical arena, the song that was playing is going to change itself, also.

We cannot afford to pretend that the exact conditions of our earliest developmental environment does not profoundly influence the way our DNA manifests itself.  Just because the potential exists of a beautiful song does not mean that within conditions of some environments that beautiful song will NOT be played.

Serious attachment difficulties in early human relationships are obviously far worse than sneezing gas sneezes.  But we have to realize that the nature and quality of our earliest attachment experiences directly communicate to the growing and developing human body-brain what the condition of the world ACTUALLY is – and what it is going to be like in the future.

Our entire physiological systems are designed to tell us – just as clearly as if they were receiving instructions in binary code – what is to be approached and included as life-sustaining in our lifetime along with what is to be avoided and excluded because it is NOT life-sustaining in our lifetime.

This is ATTACHMENT information:  Attach to the good and healthy, do not attach to the bad and unhealthy.

This all begins to be orchestrated (actually from before our conception) through our earliest HUMAN attachment interactions.  In environments of unsafe and insecure early attachment relationships the growing body-brain is fed the information that the world AS A WHOLE is not a good, healthy place to attach within or to!  Epigenetic changes then happen and development is correspondingly altered.  Our DNA code is told about these difficult conditions by our genetic ‘middle people’ – and VOILA!  Changes happen that are as difficult to live with as was the original environment that caused them to happen in the first place.

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Discovering what the range of these changes is can be done either through what we call ‘diagnosis’ or through what we call ‘assessment’.  In the end, we are talking about the same process of identifying what was WRONG in the earliest attach-to-the-world environment that led to these changes happening in the first place.

But we cannot POSSIBLY talk about either ‘diagnosing’ or ‘assessing’ any individual person while we separate their difficulties from the environment that influenced the entire development of all aspects of their body from the start.

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