Tag: disorganized disoriented insecure attachment

+”DOES SILENCE HAVE A NOISE” – MORE OF MY ‘GOOD’ MOTHER’S WORDS

alchemynow1 Comment

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

NOTE:  Please always go to my blog itself to read my posts – they MORPH!

I am not ‘out of the woods’ yet on what I can possibly learn from working with my mother’s writings, even though I am GREATLY RELIEVED that the transcription is completed and I will not encounter any more ‘surprises’ because I am now familiar with what is in her words.  BUT, that does not mean I won’t continue to be surprised.  It just means that from now on the surprises I encounter will be INSIDE OF MY OWN SELF!

For example, related to what I am going to include in this post, I am rethinking these same words I posted earlier:

Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD says about BPD that ‘splitting’ is ‘very common’ among people with this disorder.   She is talking about my mother.

“Splitting is very common in people with borderline personality disorder (BPD), and it leads people with BPD to view others and themselves in “all or nothing” terms. For example, a person with BPD may view one family member as always “good” and another as always “bad.” Or, a person with BPD may see themselves as “good” one minute, but shift to seeing themselves as all “bad” or even evil the next.”

++++

What about those words I added bold type and underlining to?

Kristalyn is, I believe, missing an extremely important point here.  My mother never SAW HERSELF as ‘good or evil’.  She lacked the requisite capacity for self observation, analysis or self reflection.  She could not achieve even that high a level of honesty about herself – or see herself AS REALITY SAW HER!  My mother never saw the truth about herself as far as I know.  She never achieved that level of conscious awareness.  To her dying breath she would have promised to anyone that what she ‘did’ to me – I earned and deserved and, as she told my sister, “was nothing different than what any normal mother would have done.”

This did not stop my mother from ACTING ALL GOOD or ACTING ALL EVIL!

Very often the ‘all good mother’ was phony phony phony — and certainly my siblings could see-sense-know this (I’m not sure my father did).

The ‘all evil mother’ was MY particular mother!  How special was THAT?  NOT AT ALL!

++++

I think that Kristalyn’s words are a HUGE soft-sell in regard to severe infant-child abusing caregivers!  They are a great understatement!  Borderlines such as my mother was have no real ability to ‘see themselves’ in the light of reality or real reason AT ALL!

So, as I work with the two versions my mother wrote of the story I include here – one a journal entry and one a letter to her mother – I realize that I did not know THIS version of my mother at all!  In fact, it is this ‘all good mother’ who, with the fewest tiny exceptions, WROTE ALL OF THESE WORDS I HAVE TRANSCRIBED and am preparing to publish!

My guess is that any unsuspecting reader of my mother’s Alaskan homesteading chronicle will probably come to adore her!

Can I adore her?

Kristalyn IS using the word ‘evil’ here  in her contrast – not saying ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but rather ‘good’ and ‘evil’.  She is not describing ‘projection’ which I cannot separate from the SPLITTING that Kristalyn is describing.  So if I take Kristalyn’s words literally, I would say I was cursed with having a nearly all-evil mother — and I have a hard time telling myself that given this fact, I had any mother at all!

I certainly DID NOT have the mother who wrote the following words, which include these words that she wrote waiting alone with four small children in a canvas hut on the side of an Alaskan mountain without telephone, electricity, water, transportation, and barely with food for my father to come home with supplies:

“As I try to go off to sleep I hear a noise – it sounds like the tractor – urging its way up the Mountain road – Does silence have a noise – it’s so quiet I can hear my heart pounding.  Silence, silence.  Where is Bill?  All I ask is for his safety and well being.”

++++

It is obvious to me that I still have a great deal of inner confusion about my feelings about my mother — and about what she did to me.  I do not yet ‘understand’ and therefore I do not yet ‘know’.  There is still something I need to learn and this work still has something important to teach me.  These words of my mother’s didn’t come from an obviously ‘evil mother’.  Talk about SWITCHING!  My mother was a pro!

It’s a riddle of Bat Man story caliber, I would say!  I haven’t solved it for myself.  Not even close.  I will be working my way through THESE aspects of my next stage of work with my mother’s writings.  I ask myself why I don’t let the riddle just go and forget about it.  Then I encounter an internal image of someone (a child!) being murdered over and over and over again – but being left alive – TO TELL ABOUT IT!

For now, I guess I will go ahead and post here both versions of this experience as my mother wrote about it.  I am asking my daughter and sister for their input on how I might handle duplications of stories in my mother’s work.  Do I publish both intact?  Do I find a way to merge them?  If I meld and merge, do I keep the result as a letter?  As a journal entry?  I am not sure about that, either.

I am also posting pictures that can help demonstrate WHERE we were.  Talk about a little abused child having nowhere to run!!!!  This scene – an abused child’s nightmare, an abusing ‘evil mother’s’ dream come true!

You have never known silence if you haven't been in a frozen land alone in winter
That huge beautiful mountain outlined against the sky behind our home was the one my mother named 'Pinnacle Peak'

View toward Cook Inlet, Anchorage lies behind-around the left mountain end - where my father worked

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

°<>°<>°<>°

December 29, 1959 Tuesday

*Notes:  Nice day outside – but bleak inside.  School has started again here on our homestead even if not in Eagle River as we took the week before Xmas for vacation – as I thought the children would enjoy getting ready for Xmas that week and would more easily settle down to school work after Xmas!

I was right.  They are raring to go and eager to get back on schedule of things and so anxious to do good work and not miss their work or be behind their class when they return to school and so am I!  John is busy in his Arithmetic books – both work books and school books and is learning more complicated multiplication and going on to division.  It seems we never catch up with John’s work or get all done we should do – but we keep on plugging away.

Bill never came home!  No water today again – and my propane gas gave out before I could even cook breakfast.  The children had cold cereal for breakfast and bread and jelly.  I tried to get our Coleman cook stove going but it seems to be leaking and a fire started in back of it and below.  I had to throw water on it (a half a coffee pot full).  Then I was going to get the fire extinguisher out – but before I used it I got the fire out by beating it out with a towel.  I had a scare for a minute and made a mess of the trailer with the water but far better than fire.

I checked it and rechecked it and brought it outside to light but gas seems to be spilling out so I put it away.  Now what will we do?  I yearn for some coffee and think I’ll melt some snow and try to heat some on oil heater.  We’re really out of food – except flour, sugar and staples.  I do have potatoes and one more can of Spam if I had a stove going.

Bill HAS to come home tonight [Tuesday] – yet, he told me he would be home Monday and work Tuesday and Wednesday!  This is when I don’t like to be so isolated!!

More later!

Radio says there has been a terrible storm from New Jersey, NY to Boston.  Snow, winds etc. – worst since hurricane years ago I remember so well.  We’re lucky here – not to have storms like that.

10:30 – We relented and I heated our last can of stew over the oil stove (heater) and by then even it tasted good.  I made Kool Aid for the children from melted snow – and to bed.  (Wrote Mom more this evening and will put her letter in here).

It’s now 11:30 – tomorrow we must walk OUT if Bill doesn’t come home.  I just undressed and climbed into bed.  Must stop running to the door thinking I hear the tractor.  My usual evening things tonight hold absolutely no appeal to me.  I don’t want to knit although I’ve started mittens (first time on four needles for Cindy) or read or anything.  I want to know Bill is alright and to have him here – please Bill come!!

I’ll set the alarm tonight (first time I’ve set it since Bill hasn’t been here!) for 4:00 A.M. and we’ll leave here at 5:00!! – Well is that early enough??  And it will be so cold waiting for a ride at the bottom of the mountain.  We are so dependent on Bill – for oil, gas, supplies –

I’d love to homestead way off – if Bill could be with us.  I’d like to hunt our own meat and cache it away – get all our supplies in for the winter early – have a wood cook stove – I’d truly love it.  I tease Bill and urge him to stay and try it here.  He says we could never make out – but if we had our bills paid and raised perhaps sheep – those are foolish dreams.  Still it could be ever so nice and right now he’d be here!!

Golly, what’s wrong with me.  I’ve done so well – it’s expecting him and not having him come – and knowing he would if he could and wondering.

LATER

I just simply can’t sleep.  I’m writing this by flash light – still listening – oh, how I yearn for Bill tonight.  I feel so all alone.

This is really only the second time.  Last time also was when I expected him and he didn’t come.

As I try to go off to sleep I hear a noise – it sounds like the tractor – urging its way up the Mountain road – Does silence have a noise – it’s so quiet I can hear my heart pounding.  Silence, silence.  Where is Bill?  All I ask is for his safety and well being.

°<>°<>°<>°

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

°<>°<>°<>°

December 29, 1959 Tuesday 11:00 P.M.

Dear Mother,

Last night about this time I sat here writing you a letter – listening with straining ears for the welcome sound of a tractor to tell me Bill was coming home.  I waited up until 1:30 A.M. – I didn’t want to be asleep when he got here BUT he didn’t.

24 hours later and still no Bill.  I listened to “Mukluk Telegraph” on KENI on my wonderful radio – a special broadcast where messages are relayed to people like me, living in the bush, but no word.  So, here I sit again waiting.

It seems I’ve done a great deal of waiting since we began homesteading.  I guess it’s a woman’s role all over the world – one which I am now accustomed to but like none the more for it.  It’s hard to wait – especially when you don’t know and tonight I’ve gotten a little worried.  Jeep trouble? – could be – but no message.

Seeing he was home over the long Holiday I would have just as soon he waited several days but we’d been out of water for two whole days again and I’d been melting snow (which is a slow process and laborious but at least I’m grateful for the snow – there was a time when we had neither snow OR water – funny how one becomes grateful for such strange things).

But it was agreed he’d come home last night and work Tuesday and Wednesday and come home again Thursday.  We’re out of water and propane gas.  As of today and I almost started a fire trying to get the Coleman camp stove going – I guess it leaks and I won’t try again.  This morning we had shredded wheat (last of it).  At noon – sandwiches (good thing I saved the bread since last Thursday) – used the last of it and after waiting until tonight at 10:30 for Bill.  So we heated the last can of canned stew (ugh!!) over gas heater!!

I’ve even melted drinking water today – and yesterday gave everyone baths by building a fire in the Yukon stove and melting the big wash tub full of snow.  It was to be a kind of a surprise for Bill – but he never came home.

It’s unlike Bill to cause us concern or leave us when he knows we’re out of supplies!!

Last Thursday he brought food but today is pay day and he was to bring a big order up yesterday.  I almost went down yesterday – it’s been two weeks and one day since we’ve been OUT – but probably will have to walk up late at night or spend three hours on the last mile of road (how well I remember last time) so thought I’d wait until the weekend and go down and come up during day light.

Now I have no choice if Bill doesn’t come home tonight.  Then we’ll have to get up at 4:00 (and just put children to bed – waiting for Bill) and go out with Thomas or Pullen.  I hate to walk down alone and it’s snowing now.

We started school again here as we took vacation the week before Xmas but other schools are off now.  Another reason I hate to go down.

Bill has trouble pulling the trailer up now and is going to buy a flat sled to pull supplies up behind tractor – but we walk!!

The kids are marvelous sports.  Last night John stayed up and worked on the model airplane he and his Dad started Sunday.  Today after school, we worked a big cross word puzzle and I showed Linda how to purl – she knits well.  I gave her and Cindy a knitting set for Xmas – it has smaller needles in it and they can manage them much better.  Today she completed her doll blanket she started on Xmas – just plain knitting.  Cindy finds it harder but two years difference in ages.

She and Sharon played Chinese checkers – then Linda and Cindy – and so this evening passed – with a lollypop treat made by Cindy for each for Xmas and saved because they had so much sweets and so welcome tonight as a morale booster.

She made cups out of egg carton, two together and decorated and put life savers in each cup and two lollypops.  Oh, such squeals of pleasure they brought forth tonight.

I made molasses cookies in Xmas shapes and enormous gingerbread boys cut and decorated in green, red and white –

All eaten!

Fruit cake devoured.  Children and I made spice cookies and sugar cookies and each had a whole tray to do themselves in Xmas shapes (I think I told you) and then each decorated as they pleased.  They took their prettiest and did up for Xmas presents for Daddy.

But all is gone now and mince pie, apple pie, chocolate pie I made yesterday.

Still we have little up here in way of fresh fruits, vegetables etc. and mostly canned meat.  Last Thursday Bill brought up lettuce and tomatoes and oh, such a treat you can’t imagine.  We haven’t had fresh milk since we’ve been here – all canned and powdered – and now we’re OUT of all but flour, sugar and oatmeal!

Well, it’s 11:30 P.M.  I guess I better stop!  I just keep listening and listening.  Will enclose a note tomorrow to tell you what happened!

°<>°<>°<>°

Donned my coat etc. and thought I’d go outside to get some fresh air and listen intently.  It’s really snowing now.  The weatherman said ‘no snow’ but I found out weeks ago that we have our own weather here in the mountains – and it IS SNOWING here.  It is lonely tonight – not a light or sign of habitation.  Usually I like this but tonight I don’t.  I want Bill at night – I’ll never get used to that.

I could easily stay here all day – all winter – if I thought he’d be home come night – it’s our highlight of the day.  Even then – I don’t worry if I don’t expect him – Oh, I know he’s alright but —- —-

The children look so sweet and peaceful asleep.  Thank God they trust me and I can make them happy up here — !!

P.S.

I keep forgetting that I haven’t written oftener.  I must tell you how much your radio has meant to me – a voice – music – it means so very much to us!!!

And during Xmas the music was beautiful.  We heard Dicken’s Xmas Carol and all the stories.  It really made Xmas for us and I think especially for Sharon who couldn’t remember the songs from last year.

You’re my Xmas angel!

Love, Mildred

Later

Bill got home at 6:15 in the morning!  I was going to walk out and decided to wait until tonight –

He tried Monday night and tractor wouldn’t make first hill – battled it for three hours and then went back to log house where he arrived at 4:00 A.M.

Spent all night battling hill last night – has had no sleep – ate breakfast and now is leaving again.

He’s safe!!  How he keeps awake I’ll never know!!

Happy New Year

P.S. Only one month to go. [for the required residency time for proving up on the land to gain title under the requirements of the Homestead Act]

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

+’FREE OF ALL ARCHETYPES’ = ‘DISSOCIATION WITHOUT HAVING AN IDENTITY’

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

I have not escaped thinking about some information I posted yesterday in two different posts.  Some of that information was about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and some was about the human psychological archetypes.  I need to take a minute and tie these two batches of information together from my perspective as a survivor of terrible and long-term infant-child abuse.

Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD says about BPD that ‘splitting’ is ‘very common’ among people with this disorder.   She is talking about my mother.

“Splitting is very common in people with borderline personality disorder (BPD), and it leads people with BPD to view others and themselves in “all or nothing” terms. For example, a person with BPD may view one family member as always “good” and another as always “bad.” Or, a person with BPD may see themselves as “good” one minute, but shift to seeing themselves as all “bad” or even evil the next.”

When Joshua David Stone writes in his book, Soul Psychology: How to Clear Negative Emotions and Spiritualize Your Life that

“The true self-realized being uses this archetype as its main theme but is not identified with it; such a self-realized being lives in a state of consciousness as the Fair Witness or Observer, free of all archetypes.” (page 263)

he is writing about me.

++++

While the psychologist Carl Jung’s writing about human psychological archetypes is far too complex to describe in this post, it is enough to know that seldom does any human being escape the operation of one or more of these archetypal psychological patterns from operating in their ‘psyche’ at any given moment.

Around the time of our birth is one of ‘those times’ when archetypes are NOT playing their roles across the dramatic expression of our life.  Obviously, we have to grow a body-brain before we can DO much of anything.  It is during the earliest months and years of our lifetime that we grow and develop the physiological circuitry and pathways in our body-brain that we will use to express our self for the rest of our lifetime.

When Stone talks about this Fair Witness-Observer NON-archetype he is describing a state that I believe we are born into.  From that point we develop our body-brain that will eventually be able to express a self along with all the complexities of life that a self is capable of.

Yet, when severe abuse like my mother did to me happens – exactly BECAUSE she had SPLITTING so entrenched within her own physiological body-brain-mind-self – I as her victim did NOT get to develop my own body-brain-mind-self as I would have done had I not been forced to grow up within such an unbelievably toxic environment.

We have all seen film footage from one story or another where someone breaks through a brick wall and finds within it human bones.  Dead or alive?  Yet I KNOW because I have psychologically been there that growing up with a BPD parent who has no choice but to SPLIT their entire world into insane patterns related to GOOD versus BAD results in our own psychology being sealed behind a massive brick wall.

Brick by insane brick my mother severed my own connection with myself in interaction with the world every step throughout my infant-childhood.  As a result I DID NOT get to move off of my born-into condition of being at dead center without any psychological archetypes of my own!  I stayed, as I described yesterday, in that place-of-psychological-origin:  Being an Observer-Fair Witness which by definition MEANS there are no archetypes present.

++++

The Wickipedia entry for Carl Jung and archetypes lists the following:

++

Jung outlined five main archetypes;

  • The Self, the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuation
  • The Shadow, the opposite of the ego image, often containing qualities that the ego does not identify with but possesses nonetheless
  • The Anima, the feminine image in a man’s psyche; or:
  • The Animus, the masculine image in a woman’s psyche
  • The Persona, how we present to the world, usually protects the Ego from negative images (acts like a mask)

Although the number of archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images:

++

Yes, there ARE more, and the exist within the human psychological realm like constellations of stars in the sky.  They ‘come into being’ when certain human patterns of  feeling, thought and action repeat themselves TOGETHER within a psychological constellation that is recognizable enough to be named.

OR – they do not.

I bring this up today in part because I had a very bad sleepless night last night.  I could not name exactly what triggered my ‘state of being’ THE ONE WHO CRIES AND DOES NOT SLEEP.  Yet I also know that what was triggered resulted in me tumbling into this one of my ‘nameless identities’ that is part of what is called my Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

Because my mother had such control over me and my life, I was not allowed to develop ANY identity during the first years of my life.  The physiological circuitry and pathways did not develop within me that would have allowed even ONE solitary LINDA to come forth.  I was always, consistently and overwhelmingly the CONTAINER for my mother’s BAD split-off self.

The first step as I understand it that a human being takes from birth to becoming a self with identity is to have its FEELING states recognized by its caregivers and mirrored back to it.  These early interactions BUILD the circuitry and pathways within the body-brain that allow a fully developed psychologically whole human to develop so that the human archetypal patterns of existence can go out into the world, interact, and form an individual’s life.

When that doesn’t happen, like in my case, something ELSE happens instead – and that something else has at its core the same non-archetype Fair Witness-Observer state that we are born with.  I believe that if ‘experts’ took a good, long look the roots of Dissociative Identity Disorder this alternative pattern of ‘being a person’ would become clear.

How this infant-child abuse pattern leads to DID for people who ACTUALLY have separate, definable identities operating is well beyond me to understand.  That is NOT my condition.  I simply dissolve into a non-identity state that is primarily unnameable EMOTION like I did last night without any clear and definable identity to process it.

My part in the ‘mess’ is to find ways as soon as I can to ‘pull myself out of it’.  Much of the abuse and horror of my childhood happened at night (and this is especially true because during the years we lived in Alaska ‘nighttime’ itself has a different meaning because of the extremes in daylight hour shifts).  But also because my mother’s insane splitting-related abuse of me happened from the time I was born, when laying down was ALL I could do – the laying down trigger is perhaps the most ancient one I suffer from when something happens that causes me to ‘dissolve-dissociate-disorganize-disorient’.

(This state is also tied for me to the thousands upon thousands of hours of being made to lay in my bed, alone, immobilized and unable to escape or to ‘do’ anything throughout my entire childhood — but suffer and usually — not sleep.)

This is all I want to say about this today.  It is not laying down time now, and there are things now that I need to do now in the daylight.

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

+WORDS FROM MY MOTHER’S CHRONICLE: WHERE IS THE CHILD ABUSE HERE?

alchemynow11 Comments

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

Now, would you ever say that these words sound like they were written by a severely child-abusing mother?

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

°<>°<>°<>°

December 7, 1959 Monday

*Notes:  Our Family Is Never Bored!

The children spend many happy contented hours now working on various Xmas projects.  Cindy has made individual baskets for each member of her beloved family made out of egg carton sections, each wrapped in aluminum foil with a pipe cleaner handle and a marshmallow (how hard they’ll be by Xmas) and a lollypop in each one.  They’re secretly hidden and each day Sharon teases to see hers – it’s a constant thing to talk about, to whisper about and to be excited about for Xmas is coming.

Our Xmas books – we buy two each year — has grown to quite a collection.  These are taken out during the first week of December and read each day until Xmas. This year John and Linda can very expressively read them aloud!  It thrills me to see the younger two – eyes wide with wonder – listening in rapt attention to their older brother or sister read the magic words to them.

Yes, Xmas is coming.

No mention is made of money – we all know – it just isn’t there.  We will do what we can but the days of borrowing money for Xmas presents that we can’t afford are over!!  There will be Xmas presents though.

I’ve bought at half price knitting sets – with yarn and tiny needles for two girls and a needlepoint set for one – I hope John will get his skis and Grandma will buy his boots.  The girls will get a flying saucer from Santa to share and a tea set.  The 5¢ and 10¢ store and ingenuity and imagination and love will make a Xmas – you just wait and see….

What is important!!

More and more every day I realize what’s really important in life!

Being together – being a family unit and being loved and loving – these are the important things.

Health – to be healthy and well and to know that the ones you love are well.

(I hope my loved ones never suffer – how terrible it would be to see them hurt or sick – how terrible to ever think they might need me – and I wouldn’t know).

How thankful I am to be here writing this and know our family is safe and together on this night –

Dearest God in heaven above, I thank you for our family and our homestead and for the opportunities we have here to create a home for our loved ones in a land such as this.

I am content tonight – tomorrow we will plan and work for our future but I intend to fully enjoy each day as it comes – to work hard but to be content to wait – material things are really of such minor importance.  I feel we already have what really counts and must never lose it in hurrying and working too hard to get THINGS.

I see so many people – even up here in Alaska – doing just that, living in far too expensive houses – beyond what they can really afford to pay and working so hard to live there and meet the payments that the house as beautiful as it may be, holds no happiness for the occupants and they live separately in it.

No, no – never – we’ve had our share of money worries – no, no, no.

I’ll be content with less – Bill and I are so close now – never, never to be apart mentally and spiritually – nothing is worth that!

Our little hut and trailer mean more to me if we can be all together and happy and close here!!

The other – I pray God – we’ll be content to wait for.  If we can manage fine – if not, so what!?!?

°<>°<>°<>°

December 8, 1959 Tuesday 10:30 P.M.

*Notes:  How quiet and serene and peaceful it is.  Everyone is asleep.  Even our two kittens, Dixie and Pixie are curled up in Cindy’s bed.  I don’t approve but haven’t the heart to move them.  One is tucked under her arm with covers pulled up under it’s chin, all the world lie a toy.  The second is on the foot of her bed.

The dishes are done and the trailer is tidy and neat.

Everything looks cozy and cute and serene in the light of the single kerosene lamp I am writing by.

Bill went to bed – absolutely exhausted after a 24 hour ordeal of futile attempts to return here which finally terminated in his having to walk the last mile.  Even poor ‘Oliver’ our faithful tractor found this 10° to 20° below zero weather too cold!

I just went outside for a moment and it’s really cold and really beautiful.  The stars are so close looking you feel as if you could pick them out of the sky and the moon is so bright that you can see all the Mountains and the valley below.

How I truly love this place – no words can aptly describe how I feel about this land we hope someday to own.  It’s really an almost HOLY feeling.  I know it sounds silly but it’s the way I feel.  If only you could see it – you would see what a Shangri-la it is! – and what’s more we have created a home – be it ever so humble here!  It’s quite a grand feeling!!

Time for bed.  Good night!

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

IN MEMORY OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER:

From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder You may not be familiar with the term “splitting,” but it is a phenomenon that many people with BPD, and their family members, will recognize. This week, learn how to cope with splitting when it happens.

[Linda note:  IMPORTANT – THIS IS WHAT MY MOTHER DID – What you just read above was from the ALL GOOD side of the split!]


What is Splitting?
Splitting is very common in people with borderline personality disorder (BPD), and it leads people with BPD to view others and themselves in “all or nothing” terms.
How to Handle Splitting
What should you do when a loved one is engaged in splitting? There isn’t always an easy answer — the best way to manage the situation will depend the nature of your relationship with your loved one, the intensity of the splitting, and the impact it is having on the family.

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

Divorcing a BPD Spouse
Does BPD mean that your marriage should end in divorce? Some couples do make their BPD marriage work, but sometimes the relationship can’t be saved.
Family Therapy for BPD
Can healing from BPD be a family affair?

Must Reads
What is BPD?
Symptoms of BPD
Diagnosis of BPD
Treatment of BPD
Living with BPD

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

+FROM THE CHRONICLE OF “MILDRED’S MOUNTAIN”

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

I do not understand this ‘thing’ my mother had about ‘dreams’!  Is this because I have never really had one of my own?  Was this ‘dream thing’ of my mother’s related to her Borderline split between what is/was real and what is/was not real?  Between the ‘darling’ version of her world and ‘scary one’ as reflected in her inability to tolerate the real world with its fully integrated good and bad’?

The following is why I am NOW bending toward this as a title for the book(s) of my mother’s writings:

Mildred’s Mountain –

A City Woman’s Chronicle of Living Her Alaskan Homesteading Dream

OR should I put it this more accurate way:

Mildred’s Mountain –

A City Woman’s Chronicle of Living In Her Alaskan Homesteading Dream

I will have to think about this.  Adding that little tiny word “in” into the title really IS a reflection of my ‘analysis and interpretation’ of my mother, of her life and of her homesteading venture.  My use of the word ‘chronicle’ in the title (as mentioned in last night’s post) is supposed to MEAN that I am doing neither of these two actions in relation to her work – either analyzing or interpreting it!

And yet I do suspect that the way my mother’s brain-mind worked did mean that she was unable to tell the difference!  Was she ‘living her dream’ or was she ‘living IN her dream’?

I do suspect the latter.

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

°<>°<>°<>°

November 24, 1959 Tuesday

*Notes:  Why do we struggle so hard for our homestead on the Mountain –  Here I’ve had the children out of school for going on three weeks – still no credit for living on our land – Obstacles so great – can we, will we overcome these new obstacles?

Yes, yes, yes – we must but why?  What is it I hold onto so dearly – certainly not – our humble hut on the Mountain.  It’s not this that I cling to so desperately.

No, no, no – it’s my dreams – still so dear, so dear, so bright and untarnished.

I remember when we first filed on our homestead – ah, how great our dreams were then – and still are –

A neighbor of ours was over two years ago when we were living at the log house and mentioned our homestead claim.  I felt like a new parent with a brand new baby – beaming and proud – bring forth slides of our lovely one.  But all the neighbor sees is LAND.  “Aha,” she exclaims, “You’re eager to get hold of this land for speculation.”

“No, no I cry!” – but how can I explain our tender, sweet dreams to someone like this?  I try but to no avail.

She puts me down as ‘land hungry.’  How hurt and angry I was – she said, “You’ll never be satisfied with 160 acres.  You’ll want more and more.”

Oh how cruel – and oh, how untrue.

But yet – well, how simple if that were the case.  For then I would not struggle for that land.  We would never have climbed through mud, mosquitoes and carried burdens on our back.  Not for land alone – land for speculation.  Time and money is too dear.  Our family and their comfort are too great.  Would we now do what we’re doing just for land?

No, no, no.

We would have relinquished our claim soon after filing.  But we can’t relinquish our dreams.  It’s our dreams that brought us here to Alaska –made us sell our home and leave our family and friends.  It’s our reason for being here and our very reason for homesteading in the first place.

When – if ever – I see that our dreams cannot and will not materialize, then and only then will I give up.

This summer there was a time when our dreams were faint.  We were never together and always worried and tired – “But it is temporary.”  I said.  “We must always remember our dreams and make them come true.”

Our family must always be first – and our dreams for our family – they all center around our homestead and the life we have planned there.

I never want to sell that land or any part of it.  It would be like selling a member of our family.

Yet, Sunday when I saw that glacial ice on our road – standing thick, slippery and full of ridges – so bad even the tractor couldn’t pass over it and we slipped and could have broken our necks.

Can it be true?

Will we ever be able to live there? – all year round or will it always be a continual battle —  wearing Bill out?  And making him old before his time.

The road has always been our trouble from the beginning and yet our land so peaceful and beautiful is always there beckoning us on and on and on –

to our dreams!!

++++

+BEING MY MOTHER’S ‘FAIR WITNESS-OBSERVER’ – I WANT TO OWN MY CHOICE

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

It gives me great comfort this morning as my thinking moves forward along the lines established in my previous two posts and in my reply to the comment included with the first of these two posts to find pages coming up in my Google search directly connected to the words “archetype fair witness.”

I never thought about it before these last days as I finished the process of organizing and transcribing my mother’s writings that in some – still seemingly bizarre way — I WAS BORN TO BE MY MOTHER’S FAIR WITNESS.

For all the billions of moments I spent as a child during my 18 years of suffering abuse from this woman, I was at the same time being her witness.

Is that something that happens as a PART of being an abused victim?  Are we at the same time we suffer the abuse being the witness to our perpetrator’s OTHER SIDE?  Do we come, as a direct result, to know our perpetrator’s truest reality (in their body-brain in this lifetime)?

According to this author of this book – I might be right on track:

Soul Psychology: How to Clear Negative Emotions and Spiritualize Your Life by Joshua David Stone

It would be logical and reasonable to accept that I was, along with the mountain and the homestead, an embodiment of what my mother needed for her healing.

I was the projection of ‘badness’ for my mother.  I was badness personified.  Hell, literally, of a place to spend one’s infant-childhood!

Yet because 99.99% of what my mother saw in me, what she blamed me for, what she ‘punished’ me for, had NOTHING whatsoever to DO WITH ME, I WAS the ‘fair witness’ of her literalized OWN suffering from inside her own SELF that she dissociated from herself and associated with me.

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

“The true self-realized being uses this archetype as its main theme but is not identified with it; such a self-realized being lives in a state of consciousness as the Fair Witness or Observer, free of all archetypes.”

From  Joshua David Stone in Soul Psychology: How to Clear Negative Emotions and Spiritualize Your Life, Page 263

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

When, such in cases like mine, a human being is born into particularly a mother’s malevolent world of ‘disturbed psychology’, the tiny growing and developing person JUST BARELY MIGHT be able to develop its own self as a separate being from its abuser.  ANYTHING and EVERYTHING else that happens to that little one belongs to the perpetrator and NOT to its own self.

This means for ME that I spent the majority of my infant-childhood NOT being my own self.  For ALL of the time my mother was verbally, psychologically, spiritually, and physically abusing me I was DOING one thing:  Enduring her abuse so I could survive.  During ALL of THIS time, I was in that ‘non-archetypal’ place that I believe we are born into as new and innocent beings that meant I was ONLY being my mother’s ‘fair witness’.

If there had been some other pattern to my relationship with my mother that would have meant at least SOME OF THE TIME I got to be myself, then perhaps I could have moved off of that point of being at dead center as a nonbeing observer of my mother’s madness.  Perhaps then I could have wondered about what was happening to me.  Perhaps then I could have been envious or jealous of the treatment she showed her other ‘darling’ children.  Perhaps I could have THOUGHT for myself.  Perhaps I could have not only FELT the abuse but been able to associate, connect, and string together all the associations belonging to my ongoing experience of myself in my own life – abuse included.

But I couldn’t do any of that.  I never got the chance to.  It is only now at age 58 that I am discovering this NEW information for myself about how being such a victim of such terrible abuse happened AT THE SAME time I was my mother’s primary, intimate WITNESS-observer.

Being at that ‘place’ of what Stone is describing as ‘being without an archetype’ might be fine and good for a person who has been allowed and able to develop and individual clear and strong healthy self from the start.  To ‘get back to’ that place, or to re-achieve that degree of detached non-participation in one’s life might be a goal towards so-called higher spiritual living for SOME.

But for those of us who endured and survived our infant-childhood while being the victim of our caregiver’s UNSPEAKABLE MADNESS this entire process is as reversed NOW during the times of our healing as it was reversed ‘back then’ in the times of our being so hurt and wounded.

I have to find my own choices to BE or NOT to be my mother’s Fair Witness!

As I discover this new level of deep choice, I am beginning to define my own self NOW as I needed to back there from the time I was born.

So if anyone wants to benefit from the experience of actually being able to converse in the here and now with a person who KNOWS what it is like and feels like to be a Fair Witness, talk to a severe infant-child abuse survivor.

During the time we were being overwhelmed by someone’s abuse of us, we were LIVING life as a Fair Witness-Observer being.    Yes, I believe this does mean that all abuse survivors carry the double-sided injury of being not only the victim of the trauma of abuse itself, but also of being a WITNESS ABUSE survivor on the grandest of scales.

In the end, it might be that having our power of CHOICE removed from us is what hurts survivors the most.  I can’t even say, “I want my power of choice back so that I can choose whether or not I want to be my mother’s Fair Witness.”  I never had this choice from the first of my life.  I am only seeing right now what I missed – and when I get this choice, AS I find within myself what this choice IS and how I can make it – I am moving off of this dead center of being a non-person who was the Witness-Target of my mother’s mean madness.

At the same time, these new insights are helping me to realize how FAIR I have ALWAYS been as I consider what my mother (and my father) did to me.  NOW I want the conscious choice to be FAIR or NOT!  I own that ability to be fair or not to be fair!  It was stolen from me at the start of my lie, at the moment of my birth.  So IF I say, “I want my ability to choose to be a remote-viewing observer of my mother’s abusive madness or NOT to be RETURNED to me,” I am saying that I am claiming what must be a Universal Human Right.  This right was mine from within my mother’s womb!    It is that far back that I have to re-turn to re-claim it!!  Look out!  Here I come!

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

+GRADUATION – ON TO THE NEXT STAGE OF PUBLISHING MY MOTHER’S WRITINGS

alchemynow3 Comments

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

I guess in a way it’s time for me to celebrate my ‘graduation’ from the job I assigned to myself to transcribe the complete and utter chaotic mess of my mother’s letters and papers that somehow found their way to me when my mother died in 2002.  I am done.  After working most of this past weekend on two more of her homesteading journals that I found at the very, very bottom of the papers piled here by my computer, I cannot find one more single scrap of paper left to do.

The surprises are over.  Now I am working to fine-tune, tweak, correct spelling and edit format in completion of the process that will finally lead to some form of publication of my mother’s words.  While this is still no simple task, it feels to me to be an entirely different step that could NOT happen until I finally finished sorting, organizing and transcribing her work.

I realized yesterday as I transcribed the last pages that never once in all these thousands and thousands of words does my mother ever write about ME in the same way that she does for her other ‘darling’ children.  That left me knowing that the dichotomy that existed in my mother’s mind between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ let her make the distinction between her DARLINGS and her DEMON child, Me.

What exactly will happen with all this information next I do not know.  Time will tell.  But I look forward to experiencing an every-growing sense both of pride in the accomplishment of the goal I set for myself and a kind of relief in my freedom from this task during these next days ahead.  The work I have to do now is something that ANYONE could do.  It doesn’t even require that I be any more ‘present’ for the task than I would be if I were editing writing that I am completely remote from.

This is unlike what happened to me last night as I worked with the very last of my mother’s letters.  She was describing where we were on the Jeep road of my childhood when we saw our first black bear.  I was actually following that story as I mentally following the startled scared bear as it crashed away from us through the woods when my daughter called me.  The ring of my telephone literally caused me to jump right off of my chair.

No more surprises.  I am glad for that.  I have worn out the plastic carpet protector under my computer chair until it has cracked and broken into little pieces under the wheels of my computer chair.  I have worn the lettering off of many keys on my keyboard.  But I still have work to do here if you should wonder where I am!

I am here working on my mother’s chronicle of living her Alaskan homesteading dream:

CHRONICLE
Etymology: Middle English cronicle, from Anglo-French, alteration of chronike, from Latin chronica, from Greek chronika, from neuter plural of chronikosDate: 14th century

1 : an historical account of events arranged in order of time usually without analysis or interpretation <a chronicle of the Civil War>
2 : narrative

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

Planting beside the Eagle River log house, spring 1958 (I was 6, still wearing the infamous turquoise parka with the white fake fur cuffs)

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

Main Entry: 1chron·i·cle
Pronunciation: \ˈkrä-ni-kəl\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English cronicle, from Anglo-French, alteration of chronike, from Latin chronica, from Greek chronika, from neuter plural of chronikos
Date: 14th century

1 : an historical account of events arranged in order of time usually without analysis or interpretation <a chronicle of the Civil War>
2 : narrative 1

+THE LIGHT FROM WITHOUT MEETING THE LIGHT FROM WITHIN

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

If we are going to survive we have to have the light from within us met by the light from without.  Abused children DO find that light – somehow, somewhere – or they could not possibly survive.  Looking back, where did we find that light?

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

I was wide awake around 4 o’clock this morning and started my day as the first light began to flood the world even though the sun itself was nowhere to be seen.  Filling the outdoor animal’s water dish, sweeping lose dirt from my adobe walkway, watering and turning my ever-growing compost pile, until finally, just now right before 6:30 in the morning the first rays of the sun reach over my eastern neighbor’s trailer, and then just over my tall old corrugated steel fence where the rays begin the day by caressing the ferny tips of the tiny little carrot plants my neighbor children brought me to plant a little over a week ago.

Before long these sun rays will be blazing.  They will challenge with their parching heat every green leaf within my yard at the same time that they feed them.

I am thinking about the amazing experience I had as I transcribed that long letter yesterday that my mother wrote down over fifty years ago:  +A ROAD IS A LIVING ‘THING’ – 1959 HOMESTEADING ‘STORY’.  The more I watched the story contained in her words unfold before my eyes, the more I scanned in the photographs and trimmed them up to add in along with her words, the more my body remembered those days on that mountain road when I was seven years old.

As I remembered I felt something happening inside me that I could not name until just now as I watched these sun rays appearing out of the darkness of the night, bringing a new morning to the world on THIS day, THIS day that cannot possibly ever be exactly like any day that has ever passed over this earth in all of its very long history.

What I now can name is that especially because I was a hated, shunned, usually-frightened and terribly abused child, any time that darkness went away even for a little while the light from without that met and touched my light from within helped me to grow by ‘leaps’ and by ‘bounds’.  As I walked my little, growing feet over the virgin land of that Alaskan mountainside something new and different happened to me.

I felt fine.  Absolutely fine.

I see in my mother’s homesteading letters that she often turns her scathing tone to my slowness as I trudged along with my family up that mountain.  “There’s Linda, so slow as always, lagging far behind the rest of us.”  As if I was some foreign albatross, some anchor around everyone else’s neck that dragged down the rest of them no matter what they were doing and no matter what I did.

But as the light from without touched me yesterday as I transcribed that story and remembered every smell, every sight, every tone of the mountainside itself along with what glorious shows of life that lay along the road that led back to OUR mountain along the valley’s floor, I could feel those same sun rays from fifty years ago lighting up my skin on the outside as my soul and spirit lit me up on the inside as clearly as today’s morning sun rays are out there at this instant nourishing those tiny carrot sprouts that rise above the soil’s darkness into their new life.

++++

At this same moment I know inside of myself that I walked that mountain as slowly as my mother would allow because I was eating it up.  I noticed every step I took, every sound I heard, every wafting sweet-smelling breath of air that swirled around me.  I noticed every twig and branch, every sight of water seeping from the cut earth banks and flowing, the edges of every patch of mud, every freshly cut root from every tree that had been hacked apart by some big caterpillar tractor that had TRIED to make that mountain road.

I heard every bird.  I saw every cloud pass above me.  And for all the meeting of light from without with my seven-year-old and growing light from within that happened to me upon that mountainside I remembered.  I dreamt about those old mountain road switchbacks and the steep walk well into my 40s.  I would travel there in my dreams on a road I knew only I could still find.  And, oh how I grieved for most of my adult life for those days, for those nights.

I grieved for the mountains as the tractors came to strip away the trees and plants to add in the power poles.  I grieved for every freshly cleared strip of land designed to reach someone’s newly built house rising among the trees.  I grieved for that light I felt then, and I didn’t even know it.  Today as I realize how naturally I responded to that Alaskan sanctity of land only newly touched by people, I also grieve for the eagles and bears and moose and beaver that fifty years ago belonged back in that valley and on that mountain before so many people came and scared them all away.

When I returned to that valley and to the place of my childhood last summer I found that the road all the way up that mountain is paved now.  How nice for those who live there, content as they must be with their money, their good vehicles, with the plows that come and clear away all snow trouble before it bothers them.  Nestled in all their houses built on subdivided land they are to me nothing more than signposts of change, of the passing of years, of the continued traveling of people who will go as far as they can around this world until there is barely a single thing left over from long ago and no more far away.

At the same time I am grateful that I was allowed as a small child to be a part of history there in that valley, on that mountain, in that time.  Because there was so very little light allowed to shine for me in my terrified, suffering and very dark childhood, what light came to me in that place, on that land was essential for my very survival.  And here I am today, writing these words, because of my part not only in the horror of my mother’s story that she never truly tells in her written words, but because of the beauty that she also knew — and wrote about.

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

Our own life force is as much our light within as it would be for a plant – or for any other creation.  We are designed biologically to respond to light from without.  No matter how abused we have been, as I mentioned at the start of this post, we DID receive light from without that met our own life force light from within.

Because we are members of a social species we are designed first and foremost to respond to the light in other PEOPLE as our emotional-social brain and our entire nervous system-body grows and develops from birth (and before).  Yet for some of us the human environment was far more toxic than light-enhancing.  That could not possibly stop us from responding to nourishing, life promoting influences in our environment no matter what our age.

Perhaps we could see the love and devotion in a pet’s eyes.  Perhaps a stranger offered us a compliment.  Perhaps we became aware of a miracle of nature around us.  Perhaps we loved to run, or to draw, or to cook, or to hit a ball, or to feel damp grass under the soles of our feet or squish wet sand between our toes.

As long as we are alive in a body supportive and nurturing influences surround and encompass us.  They feed and sustain us every bit as much as air, water, food and sleep.  And in that world we were born into SOMETHING and/or SOMEONE DID delight us – or we would not have survived.

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

+THE DOOMED MOVE UP MILDRED’S MOUNTAIN

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

Well, in the final throes of digging up ‘stuff in words’ I have (unexpectedly) unearthed the last of my mother’s homesteading journals.  Today, if I was going to name her book I would title it something like this:

Moving Mildred’s Mountain — The Road to a Good Dream is Seldom Easy

An Alaskan Family’s Homesteading Tale

Oh - the road - 1959

“Of the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free”

– words evidently written by Mildred around 1933 when she was 8-years-old

SEE: +SOMETHING ODD I FOUND IN MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD HAND

++++++++++

There were nearly more obstacles in my family’s story than a person could count – and moving the mountain to make a passable ROAD was certainly one of the main ones.

But even above all others the Number One Obstacle our family carried along with us throughout all time and over all distance and to and from every place we lived was NEVER identified, recognized, named, accepted or dealt with:

My Mother’s Borderline Personality Disorder

In the end this WAS what doomed The Dream.  The demise of the homesteading dream happened not because of her mental illness itself but because it WAS never recognized, named or healed in any way.  The family was left ‘playing parts’ on my mother’s dream-stage in a continuing downward spiral no matter how hard our family participated in Mother’s ‘drive’ to move up that Mountain and to find a way to stay there.

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

+SOMETHING ODD I FOUND IN MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD HAND

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

Yes, I am working my way to the bottom of my mother’s papers and just found something that strikes me as being SO STRANGE!

In with my mother’s mother’s college graduation information from Boston University 1917 and masters graduation transcript and information for the University of Minnesota in 1918 I found two very old regular size envelopes with ‘Bureau of Educational and Vocational Guidance, 6 Park Street, Boston, Mass. printed on them.  Neither envelope was ever mailed or addressed – but here is what is written in my mother’s child handwriting – evidently before she even knew how to spell her own name (I am going to correct the spelling here in this text):

On the first one:

and presently upon her breast a baby raised and cried aloud.  Her mother was so surprised she wept upon her golden hair which was upon her breast.  She wept and wept until a bride arrived and swept

On the second one:

a ruined city in my heart.  Of the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free as when I rode that day where the bare foot maiden raked the hay.

Mildrid

[actual spelling of her name is Mildred] – ah, my youngest sister solved the puzzle – partly:

“As you point out, very precocious of her to understand the meaning of the poetry.”

++

Famous poet, John Greenleaf Whittier:

http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/maud_muller.html

“Free as when I rode that day,

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”

The strangeness of these two pieces – archetypal image of the mother and baby – but why with the sorrow and the weeping?  – prophetic?
THIS is what I believe took my mother to Alaska. THIS is what called her to homestead.
Archetypal – prophetic of the HUNGER FOR THE LAND, of the ruined city in the heart – reminds me of her dark rainbow storm dream – healed upon the land?

I would think because of the misspelled words that my mother did not copy these words from some other text, which does not mean that she didn’t know the words from some other place.  Of course the context for these writings will never be known, but they definitely have been saved for a very long time – probably since around 1935 (when my mother was 10 or even from an earlier time).

This looks about like an age eight handwriting – even then the seeds of how my mother’s life turned out had certainly already been planted within her beginning with not having her needs met from infancy forward.  The loss of her grandfather, of her father, and the loss of her mother when her mother went to work to support her family once she had divorced when my mother was five.

Whatever all the combined influences were in her very early years, I can’t help but wonder about these images contained upon these envelopes that have probably traveled 25,000 miles and are 75 years old today, June 16, 2010 when I found them:  The a troubled mother with her infant daughter and the yearning for the healing of the land.

How would it happen that a child this young would understand the meaning of these phrases, “a ruined city in my heart” and “the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free?”  I wonder.  I have to deeply wonder.

(And if these are archetypal images with their archetypal figures, whom might the ‘bride’  and ‘the barefoot maiden’ be?)

++++

This reminds me of something I wrote August 21, 2007 on a little piece of paper that I dropped into the ‘mess’ of my mother’s papers and also found today:

Did Mother have to pay the price for “going on being” by leaving the biggest part of who she was and who she could have been and was meant to be — behind?

(Informed compassion) – Understanding frees me to love my Mother — and then to love myself better — as an extension of her (and Dad).  If we “hate” a parent we cannot help but have that hatred carry over to how we feel about our self.

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

+ANOTHER MORE AUTHENTIC VERSION OF MOTHER’S ACCOUNT OF LEAVING L.A. FOR ALASKA IN 1957

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

I just finishing transcribing another version Mother wrote about the decision they made to move to leave Los Angeles and move to Alaska.  I like this one better.  There is no indication of when it was written, but I think it was written before the one I posted last night.

It leaves me thinking that no matter how genuine and authentic their ‘dream’ was, my mother’s undiagnosed and untreated severe mental illness did actually destroy any chance our family had to ACTUALLY ‘live happily ever after’, which is something I believe my parents both hoped for when they made this HUGE move.  That tragedy is real, even if I cannot find even a glimmer of it in this piece she wrote:

*Probably written October 1958 about leaving Los Angeles

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