Tag: disorganized disoriented insecure attachment

+MY REACTION TO THE MOVIE, ‘PRECIOUS’

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I started watching the movie, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire last night and finished it today.  This post is not about the movie itself although there’s plenty TO say about it – and plenty that HAS been said.  This post is about my personal reaction to it.

My horrendous infant-child abuse history does not include incest or any other overt sexual abuse that I know of.  My history does include an insanely abusive mother.

I make no effort to alter my reactions to this movie from the way I first wrote them down.  They appear in three parts:  Comment, Description and Comment.

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COMMENT:

Precious:  “Someday I’m going to be normal.”

I had zero concept or normal, no idea how strange I was because my life was so strange.  I had no idea of how strange my life was.

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Brutal

Brutality

A world no one outside can imagine

There is nowhere to go but forward through it all – one instant at a time.

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No point of reference outside of the home.  No possible reality check

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Twisted mentality

No way to know what is true.  No possible way.

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Hate

Being hated

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Being brave

Not the same thing as courage

It’s trying, continuing on

Trying

Because there’s no other option and no other choice

Brave

When things are hard

Being strong and tough

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Precious:  “Sometimes I wish I were dead.”

I never got to that point.  I never knew it existed.

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I had advantages.  Being white.  A working Dad.  Good health.  No sexual abuse.

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No possibility of fighting back.

Zero.  A reality.  A fact of the situation.

Not the same thing as being a “victim”

When we react as a part of the reality of our environment, that’s not US – our self travels with us through all kinds of situations.

A situation can be victimizing – that does not make us a victim or mean we are one.

We can’t invent the wheel all by ourselves growing up.  We need help from someone for comparison –in this way, we are born as a blank slate.  If we’re isolated enough we can’t somehow magically know there are alternatives.

That’s what deprivation does.  It limits what we can conceive of.

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Who gives us a chance?

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Who can we tell our truth to?

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So many obstacles.

I never imagined.  No ability to fantasize.  That’s a pretty big thing to have stolen from me.  Even being powerless otherwise, the power to imagine is something.

I was forced into a literal world.  One time in 2nd grade mother left us with a baby sitter at the apartment building in Anchorage that we had recently moved out of.  I actually took the liberty – naturally – to involve myself with play with my siblings and with the other children present.

We made a hospital with a blanket draped over a card table.  I was sick.  I was drinking water from a soda bottle in the pretend hospital when my mother arrived back from her plastic-selling party.

Twisted my reality.  Why was I pretending to be a baby and why was I drinking from a baby bottle?

“No mother.  It was a soda bottle.  It was pretend medicine.”

No.  It was a baby bottle and for the next eleven years this incident, added to my mother’s abuse litany, proved that I did not want to grow up.  That I wanted to remain a baby.  And, of course, that I was a liar.

This is my only memory of myself DARING to imagine, to fantasize.  It is one of thousands of incidents where my mother distorted, overwhelmed and devoured my reality and then used her distortions to brutalize me over and over and over and over……. Again.

She distorted everything – hurt me (damaged me) that she distorted the reality I lived in and hence MY reality.

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I never wanted anything different.

I didn’t know it was even possible.

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DESCRIPTION:

Before the break came in the wall that confined this girl in her world of hell, her entire life was ‘small’ and it had made her ‘small’.

A severely abusive home-life removes nearly all opportunities for discovery about the self and the world.

A confinement box.

A cage.

Captured.

Captivated by the madness.

A captive of it.

A prisoner of war.

It makes self-based reactions and actions all but impossible.

The ability to fantasize and imagine is a sign a self exists, but it’s not enough.  It doesn’t indicate a self is present as a whole entity.  The fact that I lacked even this rudimentary skill simply means that during my childhood I never even ‘made it that far’.  Not even in my imagination could I escape ‘the box’.  The ability to fantasize and imagine is tied to an early ‘play stage’ of pretend – a stage of HATCHING related to exploration.

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Simple human kindness has to be present somehow, somewhere, in order for a self to recognize that it is human – that the self even exists at all, let alone that the self is a human being.

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If one can imagine-fantasize from within the barely cracked ‘egg’, this ability, because it exists, can be exercised once escape happens.

But nothing is ever going to be able to let all the blank places fill in where early development was missed, interfered with and aborted.

These blank spots are missing links in the chain of development.  A loved and properly parented child will express itself through an integration of self and the world in ongoing, continuous action and interaction.  When this chain is missing (and in pieces), when it is broken, those unintegrated fragments exist as dissociations in the continuity of a self in the world.

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I think of a wooden plank boardwalk.  Experiences that come from a developing child-self being able to interact successfully with the world (with power) create solid planks.

As these planks are naturally created and laid in place, an entire continuous (and contiguous)  walk way is built in an ongoing way.

When an abuser introjects their madness (and meanness) into a child’s life – which is always inappropriate – the child misses out on laying a solid plank down.

Even when a child does the very best that they can do to ‘handle’ these abusive encounters, the board they are forced to add onto their continuously expanding (lengthening) boardwalk will still be in effect a rotten one.  It will be faulty and unsubstantial because the ratio of their own self influence in the encounter compared to the overwhelming influence that the abuser contributed makes it so.

In extremely abusive childhoods when no adequate early caregiver is present that helps the child to lay substantial solid boards into their growing boardwalk, there can be sections that are empty.

These gaps create problems that are permanent and last for a lifetime.  When attachment experts state that the inability to follow Grice’s Maxims in the telling of a coherent life story is the primary symptom of an insecure attachment disorder, they are describing what is missing.   They are pointing to the broken sections of a person’s life-experience boardwalk where past opportunities to connect one’s own self to the world have been ruptured and never repaired.

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Because most extremely abusive parents traveled through their own infant-childhoods and into their adulthood with one of these completely faulty boardwalks themselves, one way or the other they are stealing the life force of their children and are, in effect, robbing boards from their children’s boardwalk and adding them in some fashion to their own.  Every time a caregiver abusively overwhelms an infant-child they are preventing that child from being able to lay down their own self-motivated and self-involved (appropriately) next step in development.  Every time these abusive transactions occur some variation away from healthy, normal and substantial is taking place.

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Now, to get a truer picture of how severe early abuse affects the ongoing life of an infant-child, we need to comprehend that survivors are at the same time being given such a challenging walk through life that their boardwalk will never lay upon anything like level ground.

The world underneath them is being mined away by the abuse.  They, and their ability to live a happy life of appropriate well-being is being undermined.  What should have been their boardwalk becomes a suspension bridge spanning dangerous ravines and abysses.  Their walk through life has always been dangerous.  Their connection to stable ground and to a sense of safety and security has always been inadequate, faulty, and precarious.

What could have become ‘a walk in the park’ has been changed into a blindfolded awkward stumbling waltz over completely unseen and unprepared for hostile territory on a flimsy, shaky, faultily tethered fragile bridge constructed of rotten boards and wide gaping holes.

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All the while this reality is happening for infant-child severe abuse and trauma survivors, those we encounter anticipate that we are just the same as they are.  We are expected to be the same; act the same, feel the same, think the same, know the same information about the world and about ourselves in it – in the same way – that non-early traumatized people do.  “Ain’t possible.”

If we pay attention to how we feel, we know we are aliens in an alien world.  We are like Precious, sitting like an alien stone in the back of her beloved math class, wishing she was animated and normal while having no real clue about how different she is or why.

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On the far extreme, unlike this movie girl, I was incapable of even conceiving of what normal was – or even that it existed.  I had no way of comparing either myself or my experience to anyone or anything.  The ability to have that awareness was a missing board in my boardwalk.

In fact, given what we are shown in this film about the inside of Precious’ life, I would guess that even this glimmer of awareness about normal only happened because the writer of this story took the literary option of giving it to this character.

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COMMENT:

Hope.

Precious:  “I think them was in a tunnel.  And in that tunnel maybe the only light they had was inside of them.  And then long after they escape that tunnel they still shining for everybody else.”

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Encountering our past in our present

Can be like falling into dark holes of the soul

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Finally, she cries.  Finally she shows the pain.  Finally, she feels her pain.  Finally she cannot separate herself from it.  And right here when the doubt for surviving breaks through comes, “I’m too tired……”

A crisis of the soul:  What is love?  Who loves me?

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Sick sick sick mothers

In a sick world where murky is too good a word.

Where right and wrong have to come from the outside

Because there is no hope of any REASON on the inside – where hate remains insanely justified.

The ONLY reason-able thing to do is to turn and walk away

To claim our OWN life

Separate from the madness (like separating an egg yolk from its white)

We are fortunate when things finally get this clear and normal no longer matters –

WE DO!

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See also:  “Precious” and the Oscars

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+ARE YOU A ‘SENSITIVE?’

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I appreciate this link on information about sensitivity being sent to ‘my attention’.  It reminds me of the description of the ends of a ‘personality’ spectrum being like ‘hawks’ on one end and ‘doves’ on another — SEE:  *Allostasis and Allostatic Load for more information, including a presentation about even the differences in the immune system between these two types of people.

(Also this link to articles by Bruce McEwen on the subject)

Throughout human history, there have always been ‘sensitives’ that were specifically geared to gathering plants.  Even their immune system response is specifically geared to fight the kind of pathogens that are more likely to appear within this kind of environment.  These ‘dove’ people’s immune system is different than the ‘hawk’ people’s immune system as the ‘hawks’ are more likely to receive wounds in combat and the hunt for large game that required a different immune system response.

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I am a ‘dove’ person as is my oldest brother.  When ‘sensitives’ are exposed to severely traumatic, unstable and unpredictable early home circumstances, I believe we follow a different kind of ‘suffering’ pathway than do those who are less sensitive and ‘hawkish’ (like my mother).  (Perhaps some are naturally easier prey and others predators?)

This article posted here is interesting, to say the least!

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http://www.livescie nce.com/health/ shy-brain- process-informat ion-differently- 100405.html

Study Sheds Light on What Makes People Shy

By LiveScience Staff

posted: 06 April 2010 08:07 am ET

The brains of shy or introverted individuals might actually process the world differently than their more extroverted counterparts, a new study suggests.

About 20 percent of people are born with a personality trait called sensory perception sensitivity (SPS) that can manifest itself as the tendency to be inhibited, or even neuroticism. The trait can be seen in some children who are “slow to warm up” in a situation but eventually join in, need little punishment, cry easily, ask unusual questions or have especially deep thoughts, the study researchers say.

The new results show that these highly sensitive individuals also pay more attention to detail, and have more activity in certain regions of their brains when trying to process visual information than those who are not classified as highly sensitive.

The study was conducted by researchers at Stony Brook University in New York, and Southwest University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both in China. The results were published March 4 in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

The sensitive type

Individuals with this highly sensitive trait prefer to take longer to make decisions, are more conscientious, need more time to themselves in order to reflect, and are more easily bored with small talk, research suggests.

Previous work has also shown that compared with others those with a highly sensitive temperament are more bothered by noise and crowds, more affected by caffeine,  and more easily startled. That is, the trait seems to confer sensitivity all around.

The researchers in the current study propose the simple sensory sensitivity to noise, pain, or caffeine is a side effect of an inborn preference to pay more attention to experiences.

They first used an established questionnaire to separate the sensitive from the non-sensitive participants. Then, the 16 participants compared a photograph of a visual scene with a preceding scene, indicating whether or not the scene had changed. Scenes differed in whether the changes were obvious or subtle, and in how quickly they were presented. Meanwhile, the researchers scanned each participant’ s brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Sensitive persons looked at the scenes with subtle differences for a longer time than did non-sensitive persons, and showed significantly greater activation in brain areas involved in associating visual input with other input to the brain and with visual attention. These brain areas are not simply used for vision itself, but for a deeper processing of input.

Role in evolution

The sensitivity trait is found in over 100 other species, from fruit flies and fish to canines and primates, indicating this personality type could sometimes provide an evolutionary advantage.

Biologists are beginning to agree that within one species there can be two equally successful “personalities. ” The sensitive type, always a minority, chooses to observe longer before acting, as if doing their exploring with their brains rather than their limbs. The other type “boldly goes where no one has gone before,” the scientists say.

The sensitive individual’s strategy is not so advantageous when resources are plentiful or quick, aggressive action is required. But it comes in handy when danger is present, opportunities are similar and hard to choose between, or a clever approach is needed.

Copyright © 2010 TechMediaNetwork. com

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http://www.livescie nce.com/health/ shy-brain- process-informat ion-differently- 100405.html

Study Sheds Light on What Makes People Shy

By LiveScience Staff

posted: 06 April 2010 08:07 am ET

The brains of shy or introverted individuals might actually process the world differently than their more extroverted counterparts, a new study suggests.

About 20 percent of people are born with a personality trait called sensory perception sensitivity (SPS) that can manifest itself as the tendency to be inhibited, or even neuroticism. The trait can be seen in some children who are “slow to warm up” in a situation but eventually join in, need little punishment, cry easily, ask unusual questions or have especially deep thoughts, the study researchers say.

The new results show that these highly sensitive individuals also pay more attention to detail, and have more activity in certain regions of their brains when trying to process visual information than those who are not classified as highly sensitive.

The study was conducted by researchers at Stony Brook University in New York, and Southwest University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both in China. The results were published March 4 in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

The sensitive type

Individuals with this highly sensitive trait prefer to take longer to make decisions, are more conscientious, need more time to themselves in order to reflect, and are more easily bored with small talk, research suggests.

Previous work has also shown that compared with others those with a highly sensitive temperament are more bothered by noise and crowds,more affected by caffeine, and more easily startled. That is, the trait seems to confer sensitivity all around.

The researchers in the current study propose the simple sensory sensitivity to noise, pain, or caffeine is a side effect of an inborn preference to pay more attention to experiences.

They first used an established questionnaire to separate the sensitive from the non-sensitive participants. Then, the 16 participants compared a photograph of a visual scene with a preceding scene, indicating whether or not the scene had changed. Scenes differed in whether the changes were obvious or subtle, and in how quickly they were presented. Meanwhile, the researchers scanned each participant’ s brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Sensitive persons looked at the scenes with subtle differences for a longer time than did non-sensitive persons, and showed significantly greater activation in brain areas involved in associating visual input with other input to the brain and with visual attention. These brain areas are not simply used for vision itself, but for a deeper processing of input.

Role in evolution

The sensitivity trait is found in over 100 other species, from fruit flies and fish to canines and primates, indicating this personality type could sometimes provide an evolutionary advantage.

Biologists are beginning to agree that within one species there can be two equally successful “personalities. ” The sensitive type, always a minority, chooses to observe longer before acting, as if doing their exploring with their brains rather than their limbs. The other type “boldly goes where no one has gone before,” the scientists say.

The sensitive individual’s strategy is not so advantageous when resources are plentiful or quick, aggressive action is required. But it comes in handy when danger is present, opportunities are similar and hard to choose between, or a clever approach is needed.

Copyright © 2010 TechMediaNetwork. com

+LINK TO MY MOTHER’S 1958 LETTERS

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It is not a fun process to be back at the job of transcribing my mother’s letters.  I finally finished doing these letters:

+1958 MOTHER’S LETTERS – FINDING LAND

For some reason I skipped this year months ago when I transcribed many, many of my mother’s other letters for other years.  The first day of 1958 coincided with the start of our 6th month in Alaska.  We lived in the rented log house whose lease was up on July 1.

During April and May my father hiked back into the Eagle River Valley and found the land he staked claim to as our 160 acre homestead.  In June my grandmother arrived for her first visit (a month) to the territory.

The cabin (shack) we moved into July 1958 and left October

By the end of July we had moved into a primitive rented cabin.  By mid-October we moved into an apartment in Anchorage.

The Jeep truck my parents named "The Monster" and the apartments we moved into in 1958 for my 2nd grade year

If you read little else of these letters, read the one written December 29, 1958 — it’s a classic mother letter!  It describes what happened – from my mother’s point of view – when my mother took the only outside job with a boss that I ever knew her to have during my childhood.  It was a part-time evening job that she held for a little over a month.  My guess is that her true Borderline colors were flying, and others reacted to her (heaven forbid!).  She could not control her work environment the way she controlled her home and children.  The result was a natural disaster.

After working many hours today on transcription, I am tired and sick of my mother!  Now, I have to decide what I am going to do about the rest of the 1957 letters that I have left until the very last.

I feel like I have spent the day in a place without any light at all, in the complete darkness of my scrambled, devastating childhood — little of which, of course, shows up in my mother’s bizarrely surreal letters.

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Borderline Personality Disorder People with BPD, and their family members, sometimes wonder why certain people get the disorder and others don’t. Sometimes there is a clear environmental cause (e.g., a history of psychological trauma), but research suggest that there are also biological factors.
Genetic Links to BPD
Studies of BPD in families show that first degree relatives (siblings, children, parents) of people treated for BPD are 10 times more likely to have been treated for BPD themselves than the relatives of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Will My Kids Get BPD Too?
If you have BPD, your kids are at greater risk of having BPD themselves. But, there is also a good chance that they will not have BPD. And, there are things you can do to reduce their risk.
Can BPD Be Prevented?
If the causes of BPD are in part biological, is there anything that can be done to decrease your risk for BPD?
BPD Family Resources
Sometimes it may seem like there is help available for the person with BPD, but not for his or her loved ones. Fortunately, there is a growing appreciation for the need of BPD families to have their own sources of information, treatment, and support.

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April is Child Abuse Prevention Month

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 07:54 AM PDT

All children in New York deserve a healthy, happy and safe childhood. This April, it’s your turn to make a difference for the kids in your neighborhood!

To raise awareness of April as Child Abuse Prevention Month, Prevent Chid Abuse New York (PCANY) and its sister chapters around the nation mobilize Pinwheels for Prevention campaigns. As part of these campaigns, New Yorkers make a promise to prevention by distributing pinwheels and hosting educational events throughout the state. Pinwheels are a symbol of a happy, carefree childhood and the belief that getting it right for kids early on is less costly than trying to fix problems after things have gone wrong. Doesn’t every child deserve this opportunity?

Everyone has a role to play in preventing child abuse and supporting families. You can get involved by planting pinwheel gardens in a public place, wearing pinwheel label pins, displaying car and storefront window clings, hosting events for families, and signing a promise to prevention. Businesses, schools, community-based organizations, civic groups, educators, volunteers, decision-makers and families participate.

PCANY offers you the tools to be an active part of Child Abuse Prevention Month. Please contact us to learn more about how to mobilize a campaign in your community. It’s your turn to make a difference for a child!

For more information about mobilizing a Pinwheels for Prevention campaign event near you, please visit our web site or call 1-800-CHILDREN.

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+SPRING DREAM

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Although I know I had dreamed what had happened first, it is only the end of the dream I had last night that I can remember now.

I knew who the visitors were when I heard them coming down the road from the distance.  I lifted my head at the first sound of them, and plugged the tip of my shovel into the earth.  It stood there as I left the work I was doing preparing an irrigation ditch for the upcoming planting.

Dressed in flowing garb of every color, texture and fabric I could imagine, this group of men and women angled off across the wide field.  Laughing, talking to one another gaily, they stepped so lightly in all the right places as they moved they nearly danced their way toward me.  Tiny puffs of dust lifted from their footsteps, but never once did one of the twenty trample in what would soon be a planted row.

Some wore straw hats.  Some wore dark amber gilded turbans, and some wore lavender and sea green veils.  Some wore boots.  Some dainty slippers.  And some wore plain old shoes.

“We have come for her today,” their lilting voices sang.  “We have come for the one who sees today.  We have come for the Seer today.”

I next remember the banquet in the farm house.  Platters heaped with sumptuous food in all its true color filled the long table.  In the seats of honor, side-by-side sat the young woman and the man the Troupe had brought with them, for he had been found and brought forth some time ago.

It was this Seeker who now sat beside the radiant Seer, who had finally found her.  Both of them together had more patience than the stars.

I observed what was happening here as some passed plates, some sipped soup, others were teaching the Seer and the Seeker how to remember the stories of the generations.

I watched their hand motions that looked to me like a secret and specialized sign language.  I especially remember one particular gesture.  With palm of the left hand raised and held facing the face, the fingertips very lightly tap back and forth,  quickly and gently, along a line of forehead just higher than the eyebrows.

This Troupe, these Troubadours, intended only to instruct the Chosen two.  Once taught, these two would become the intermediaries between those who have no formal corporeal form and those that do.

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This post is dedicated to the creator of the SeerSeeker Yahoo Group

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+THINKING ABOUT COMPASSION

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Maybe I think about things too much, but I am not sure I know what compassion is.  Sometimes I think I ‘have it’ and then I find myself looking around at other people and judging them for NOT having it!

I am thinking in specific about a man a little over 55 who worked a Title V job at our local thrift store and quit two weeks ago.  This man had a shady past, true.  He had shady behaviors while working at the store that probably would have gotten him soon fired if he had stayed.

The workers, all friendly acquaintances of mine over these past 10 years, strongly suspected that this man kept out the best of the donations to the store and figured out ways to steal them.  It was suspected that he was using a fraudulent identity.  He was known to concoct intricate stories about his life that were not true.  Someone in town had seen him selling drugs to young people.  Nearly everyone believed that after a few years clean from using drugs himself, that he had returned to his old habits.

A week ago today he walked in the back door of his girlfriend’s house where he also lived, grabbed a gun, and blew his brains out.  His girlfriend, who I’ve never met, was in the front room at the time this happened.  Over this past week I have listened to everyone I know who knew him talk about his death but only one spoke about him with compassion.  The rest seem to both judge him and want to hold him somehow accountable for the questionable way he lived his life.

I have someone whom I love very much in my life, a family member, who was able twenty years ago to kick the chronic and destructive use of alcohol, heroin and meth.  I spent time with him at the end of his active disease simply loving him because I could see how terribly sick he was and there was nothing else I could do for him.  I saw how the meth created the incredible web of lies, a complex, sinister and unfortunately almost believable arrangement of his life that he spun with his words that I eventually found out had absolutely zero basis in reality.

I see the death of this ex-thrift store employee in this light.  He died from a terrible disease.  His disease affected his living and it led directly to his death.

I find myself right now confused about arrogance (ignorance?), self-righteousness, judgment and criticism.  At the same time that I evidently recognize a whole other level to the demise of this man that many others don’t seem able to, perhaps I really am not exercising compassion because at the same time I have to fight with myself not to judge ‘the others’.

I don’t see this man as a ‘bad man’, and yet from other people’s accounts maybe he was.  I think he was sick and ACTED bad at times, but he’s dead now.  I want to say, “Give the man a break!  He suffered the ultimate crisis and he paid with his life.”

I want ME — and THEM — to be able to pray for him.  I believe he deserves to be blessed out of this life now by everyone who knew him and held gently and kindly in thought and in word, if some continue to be spoken about him.  I feel disappointed with these people I know and like — while at the same time I am, myself, judging them — and then judging myself.

I guess sometimes life can seem so tragic and complicated.  Then I remember what I believe – though I can’t say that I understand this either:  There is a God so much bigger than I can ever imagine and that God is, as my son told me emphatically when he was four years old, “the boss of all of us.”

Many times today I have thought about this wisdom.

Sunset photo compliments of http://www.FreeFoto.com

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Oh, and here’s a mothering note.  One of the nurses caring for my grandson told my daughter that studies have shown that unlike men, mother’s bodies automatically adjust their temperature to stabilize the temperature of their newborns!  My daughter had noticed this as she cuddled and nursed her premie.  She happily told the nurse, “Yes, that’s what my mother always tells me, that mother’s are physiologically specially designed to care for newborns and young infants in ways that men ARE NOT!”

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+TWO STATES OF BEING – PERPETUAL SADNESS VERSUS COMFORT

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Survivors of severe trauma and abuse know sadness, I believe in a way that non-survivors never really can.  Where is our comfort?

A few days ago someone commented in response to a response I made to one of her blog posts about my perpetual sadness:  “It sounds like what they call Weltschmerz, Linda. That’s a condition where you are melancholy because of the suffering in the world.”

Some days I feel like I am on the bottom of a very large body of water, and though I feel fortunate that I can see light on the surface, it can be extremely difficult if not impossible for me to ‘get up there’.  I also find that I have emotion invested in many things that I don’t believe most people even notice.  Destruction of the natural world as plants, animals and the soil is torn up for never ending so-called progress and development is a big one for me.  I suspect this happens to me to a large extent because of my attachment and bonding to the pristine universe of the Alaskan wilderness I grew up with on our homestead.

I haven’t been writing much lately because my relationship with words is very weak right now.  Words seem mostly to belong to that surface place of light and not to the darker places deep within the large bodies of water or deep within the earth where my sadness seems to take me.

But there is a story I discovered over a month ago that I want to post.  I am going to share this story with you, written by someone else, because it is a story that resonated with two important states of my being.

The one state, as I mentioned, is the sad one related to the places in my heart and soul that have been stretched and exercised by nearly unbelievable sadness from the 18 years of abuse I suffered from my mother and within my home of origin.  This sadness is touched by suffering of others, and greatly by the silent suffering of the wondrous life of our planet that is so vulnerable to human caused destruction.

The other state I want to mention must run a parallel course for me with this first one, but in some way it is its opposite.  This second state is unfortunately often remote from me.  Yet when this state is activated, I feel I have found something so beautiful that if I can find ways to keep this state close to me it helps me carry on in spite of the sad one.  At this moment I don’t have a name, a word, for this second state, but perhaps by the end of this post I will.

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With minor editing, here is the story I found in one of the first year’s editions of our local weekly paper which began in 1985.  I will post the obituary for this author at the end of this post.  Grace McCool was published in The Bisbee Observer with a column she titled ‘Out of the Past’ for seven years:

“The first Christmas known to be celebrated in Cochise County was on Dec 23, 1697 when Fr. Eusebio Francisco Kino, came north across the desert from Mexico and presented Coro, the chief of the Sobaipuri [soh-BY-per-ee or soh-by-poorh-ee] tribe of Indians who were then farming along our San Pedro River, a gift of 10 blue, grey, and black, needle-hoofed Andulusian breeding cattle.  These tribesmen had long heard of the cattle the Spaniards had brought to the New World and they were so delighted with this gift they presented the priest with corn, dried squash, and epary beans from their gardens.

On Christmas Day, Fr. Kino recorded in his diary, he said mass in the mud-walled village called Quiburi.  Within a few months he had baptized all of the 1,850 Indians living in 390 houses within the area and farther south along the river.  He re-named the town San Pablo de Quiburi.  [Quiburi — or “Many Houses” in the O’odham language of the Sobaipuri — The Sobaipuri Indians  were an Upper Piman group who occupied southern Arizona and northern Sonora (the Pimera Alta) in the 1400-1800s.  They were a subgroup of the O’odham or Pima, surviving  members of which include the Tohono O’odham, the Akimel  O’odham, and the Wa’k O’odham. They were one of several  O’odham groups present and the O’odham were one of  several indigenous groups present.]

These peaceful Indians (whose chief, Coro, wore three egret feathers in his headband as his badge of office) made a living from gardens cultivated with stone hoes and watered by small irrigation ditches from the San Pedro River.  They wore homespun garments laboriously spun and woven from the wild cotton which still grows in this area.

Outside of conflicts with the Apaches, who in the end wiped out the Sobaipuris, there seems to have been no meanness in these Indians at all.  Strangely enough, they had some idea of the Christian faith and they told Fr. Kino the legend of La Senorieta Azul, one of the prettiest stories of the Southwest.

[I have tried to discover where McCool acquired her information for this story, and cannot.  Nowhere does there seem to be recorded fact that the Apaches “wiped out the Sobaipuris.”  True, Apache aggression seems to have forced these peaceful farmers to leave their grounds along the San Pedro river, but forced migration is not the same thing as annihilation.  Nor does it seem clear exactly who the Sobaipuris were the ancestors of – possibly the O’odham (the tribe’s name for themselves rather than Pima.  The Apache people were very recent newcomers to the Southwest, arriving not much sooner than the Spaniards.]

A beautiful woman, dressed in a blue nun’s habit, came walking barefoot across the desert to them some 50 years before.  She carried neither food nor water.  She told the Indians of the Christian God and good luck always followed her several visits.  The Indians said she told them about the precious Baby in the Manger who was born to bring peace into the world.  At this time these people had never seen any Europeans.

This Legend of the Lady in Blue was known and believed by other tribes of Pima Indians.  Some whisper she still comes at Christmastime to bring blessings to lonely and desperate Indian women and children.  So widely known was this legend that nearly 200 years later Mangas Colorado, a feared and frightening Apache chief, had complained to Tom Jeffords, “Why does the Lady in Blue never visit our Apache camps?”

The only explanation ever given of the legend was made by Marie Coronel de Agdreda of Spain, head of a blue-robed order.  Although believed to have never left Spain, she said she spent much of her time visiting the New Spain Indians who she was able to describe in minute detail.  And on these supernatural visits she ministered to their spiritual needs.

Fr. Kino, the missionary to the Indians, was not a Spaniard.  He was an Italian, born in the Tyrolean Alps near Trent in 1644.  He was not only a great missionary, but he was also responsible for introducing stock-raising to our area with his Christmas gift of cattle to the Indians.  He was also a great explorer and cartographer.

When he was 21 years old, he became a novitiate in the Society of Jesus, following a bout with plague when he believed his life was spared by divine intervention.  He studied at Frieburg and Ingolstadt and became a distinguished scholar.”

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Obituary for Sarah Grace McCool published in The Bisbee Observer on January 30, 1992:

Sarah Grace Edgerton Bakarich McCool, 88, died Saturday, January 25, 1992 at her home, the Lazy Y-5 Ranch on Moson Road near Sierra Vista.

Her weekly column, “Out of the Pat,” has appeared in The Bisbee Observer for nearly seven years.

Mrs. McCool was born March 16, 1903 in Waterloo, Iowa to Frank and Etta Page.  She came West in 1929 with her husband, Michael Bakarich, and three children to settle in Bisbee.  They later filed the last homestead claim in Cochise County – in Horsethief Draw, next to the Clanton Ranch.

Much of the home building and daily chores at the Quarter Circle B Ranch, as it was known then, was done by her and the children since her husband worked in the mines.  During those early years, she gave birth to five more children and taught school.

In 1948 Michael Bakarich was killed in a mining accident, leaving her to raise eight children alone.  At about that time, she began her career as a writer.  Her interest in  history and the pioneers had been fueled by her search for her great uncle Al “The Kansas Kid” George, who came west in 1878 with a cattle drive and mysteriously disappeared.

She questioned many of the oldtimers and was rewarded with many tales worthy of recording.  Her research led her to write her first western history article for the Chicago Tribune.  She continued to write articles for the Bisbee Review, Douglas Dispatch, Tombstone Epitaph, Arizona Republic, Arizona Daily Star, and The Bisbee Observer.  She eventually found her uncle buried in Boot Hill, Tombstone.  He had been killed by Indians at the Black Diamond Mine.

Mrs. McCool met her second husband, Dr. M.M. McCool while writing an article on his work as a soils analyst.  They were married in 1950.  Dr. McCool died in 1954.  She continued to write and has published four books about the history of Cochise County and has had more than 1,500 articles printed in 16 different publications.  She was also a licensed local preacher in the Methodist Church.

At the time of her death she lived in the ranch house she helped build in 1935, but today the ranch is called the Lazy Y-5 and has expanded to 6,000 acres and incorporates the old Clanton Ranch.  Three of her children live on the ranch and most of the family lives in the area.  [The rest of the obituary lists survivors including seven of her children, 33 grandchildren, 38 great grandchildren and 10 great great grandchildren.]

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I located the telephone number of one of her sons who still lives on the ranch and left several telephone messages about my interest in digitalizing his mother’s writings which are currently contained in two fat three-ring binders at the local Bisbee museum.  My calls were never returned.

I realize that what I strongly knew once I encountered a few of McCool’s stories in the 1985 editions of The Bisbee Observer is that she writes in the oral tradition.  She is a storyteller.  My sense of her writing style was confirmed when I read her obituary.

I traveled to the amazing and beautiful Amarind Foundation’s museum last week when my brother was visiting, seeking to discover if McCool had utilized their resources for this article.  I don’t think she did.  I have asked around locally and cannot find a single person who knew her or anyone who seems even remotely interested in putting a collection of her stories into a format that will help insure they continue to be preserved – and appreciated.  I am considering contacting the University of Arizona to see if they have any interest in this project.

McCool’s writings are not necessarily historically accurate.  She wrote stories based on history of the southwest whose facts may or may not have validity.  The oral tradition is actually a preliterate (not nonliterate) skill and gift more highly developed among some members of our species even today.  Accuracy is not required for a story to be worth preserving, and this story of the Blue Robed Nun has survived – one way or another, one teller after another in the southwest desert regions for 350 years.

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This story captured my imagination and touched my heart.  At first I thought about posting the story in connection to a topic on denial.  I realize that as I read the story, as each word of the story unfolded to my eyes, I believed it absolutely, unequivocally, and without any tiny shred of doubt.  I FELT the truth of it.  I can’t say why that is true for me.  I understand that no matter how profoundly true the entire story is to ME, it could also be as profoundly and entirely NOT TRUE for some other people.

I think denial does operate in some similar way.  Some people know something to be true while others know the opposite to be true.

But this story is far too important to me personally to subject it to so limiting a topic as denial.  This story is about me.

When my brother was here last week I convinced him to take a drive to find an approximate location along the San Pedro River not far from Tombstone that was a settlement over many hundreds of years to assorted and various groups of people.  The San Pedro is protected as a National Riparian Area.

This picture doesn't show the high banks from the 'old' river - this is taken further south

Ancient groups and cultures found their homes along the shores of this north flowing river.  How long ago the Sobaipuri lived there nobody actually knows for sure.  But when my brother and I walked upon the rich soft soil that used to be the river’s bottom before the earthquake of 1887 drove the river mostly underground I could feel, through hundreds and hundreds of years of time, that ‘my people’ were near by.

I felt comforted, so I guess this is the word I can use for my other (infrequent) state of being.  Somehow knowing very clearly that these ancient people existed, that they lived peacefully and well growing food, weaving cloth, telling stories, working and walking along what are now high banks above the nearly vanished river, I felt connected because if I could miraculously be transported backward in time, well before the ravishes and violence that the Apaches brought with their raids and attacks and butchering, back to that place before these people were driven away so that I could live among them as one of them, I know I would be home in a way I NEVER am in this world around me today.

I felt comforted because for those few minutes I wandered among the tall grasses and between the bare dark branches of wizened desert trees not yet touched by the true warmth of spring, I actually felt that the problem, the trouble, is NOT ME.  The problem is that I feel I have lost my people.  My people, those people, lived too long ago and I live too recently.

If I could go back to them, somehow travel back through 500 years so that I could pick the wild cotton with my sisters and spin it and weave strong soft cloth, if I could dig the sharp point of my ancient hoe into the fertile soil, care tenderly for irrigation channels so they could carry the mountain snow pure water runoff  from the south into our gardens, I would not feel this sadness.  I know this for myself just as surely as I know the story about the Blue Robed Nun is true.

Unfortunately I have lost my mobility.  My income is very low.  My car is very old and wearing out.  I cannot afford any extra costs for gas that might let me traverse this land in the protected places like I got to do last week with my brother.  I know nobody to take me, nobody to go with me.  But having placed my feet upon that soft soil and having walked silently where these ancient ones once lived I carry that memory now within me as closely as I do my own blood.

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+MORE WORK OUTSIDE ON MY NEW BOUNDARY FENCE

alchemynow2 Comments

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I spent the entire day outside working on the far southeast section of the fence I am building.  All the face boards were in this section previously — really in a big heap!  It felt good to work so hard today.  Every emotion was circumvented in my focused determination to complete this project by sundown.

Which I did – and here are the series of pictures from this project.  Again, those two walls behind me are the American-Mexican border wall.

Garbage thrown and left
Border wall looking east
Getting started
I put old boards on the ground behind my fence and covered with dirt - hopefully to prevent critters from digging into the yard. I planted Ice Plant, I can water it and it spreads as a blooming very succulent ground cover.

Fence done by sunset. All recycled boards are very old and very dry. I evened off their tops and drilled holes and used screws rather than nails so the wood wouldn't split. In the spaces between boards are some sticks to fill the gaps.
See the angel up there on post? The furthest post has a smashed salvaged pinwheel on it (no longer spins).
Here she is. Flattened cookie cutter rescued from buried garbage.

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+WORKING ON MY OWN BOUNDARY WALL

alchemynow4 Comments

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I am feeling neglectful of my blog — because I have been.  My oldest brother was here last week for a visit and left today.  He got me started on a boundary-fence building project in my back yard so I can claim my positive space away from a very negative neighbor (and his piles and piles of stinking garbage).  Budget is extremely limited, so am tearing apart a broken down shed in the back and reusing every scrap of material for the fence.

It’s good to be outside in this warm spring weather.  I’ll be able to sit in my back yard now and gaze at the sky as the brilliant moon glides westward.  I plan to make some adobe blocks to add to my building project, and hope to create some garden space.

Truth be told, I am battling sadness and sorrow.  I refuse to call it ‘depression’ though I know that it is.  I have been watching my dreaming time, and true to my post, +DEPRESSION EVEN GETS OUR DREAMING TIME, my dreaming and my sleeping are not ‘right’ — or at least not like ten years ago.  That fact is hitting me pretty ‘close to the bone’, and is not something I can tell myself I am imagining.

If, somehow, my dreaming-sleeping can improve, I will know it.  I am hoping that I can find ways to be more peaceful with myself, more gentle, more accepting.  I am working in that direction, anyway.

So, I just wanted to make the effort to write something here, even something small.  I’ll include a picture of what I am ‘walling off’ as I set my back yard boundaries, claiming some private, peaceful space for myself where I can be outside, which is good for me and healing.  I’ll post more pictures as the job progresses!

My east neighbor (family of seven) piles weeks' worth of stinky garbage until it falls through this shabby fence, and over it, into my back yard.
My brother showed me how to set up the 8' sections to cover with rusted corrugated roofing the wind blew off of my (quite poor) shed. But getting this wall started is giving me HOPE for something better - HOPE is something I am struggling with lately BIG TIME (That's the Mexico border there with 2 fences now and a Border Patrol road between them. I'm listening to drug enforcement choppers fly over my house as I write this - but no matter what, I love it here and it is my home. I am grateful.)
The American-Mexico border fence is visible - actually those are 2 parallel fences running alongside one another there.
Well, my fence won't be fancy, but it's a 'step up' and will give privacy. My brother says Texas BBQ places love the rusted tin look! We priced new and it will be $200 to do 16 feet. I have enough rusted stuff to do 32 feet. Not to complain, but being poor is hard on projects - I am glad to have a large yard, and look forward to growing some food.
Laying out the line for holes to continue my own border wall - time for some clear boundaries here! Lots left to do, but even with my brother back at home in Illinois, I have confidence that I can do the rest even if it takes time to do it step by step as I can afford lumber and STUFF!

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+FEELING LIKE THIS

alchemynow2 Comments

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Sometimes I feel like this

Barely hanging on

To the main trunk of humanity

While those others blossom together

I remain attached

Because I too belong

To the spring time.

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My plum tree -- bloomed over night

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+DEPRESSION EVEN GETS OUR DREAMING TIME

alchemynow2 Comments

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I have known that what is called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep is related to dreaming.  I didn’t know until now that those of us who suffer from depression HAVE TOO MUCH REM sleep and not enough Non-REM sleep (NREM).  Because I woke up at 2:30 this morning and cannot go back to sleep, I thought perhaps this might be the time to take a look at this topic.

I have been thinking about this information regarding the link between depression and disturbances in dreaming from a ‘streaming’ Netflix film I watched.  I found this synopsis of the program which describes another blogger’s reaction to the movie.

From ‘Radiant Recovery’, posted by By:  Arwen, 3/18/2010:

“For anybody who watches Netflix, on instant view there is a documentary about sleep called “What Are Dreams?”. It’s a NOVA special. I watched it last night and heard this interesting tidbit. If you watch it the part I’m about to mention starts roughly about 12:30.

Researchers used to think that dreaming happened in REM sleep only (where your eyes are darting about under your eyelids.) It turns out that is not true, that we all also dream in non-REM sleep. They know this from waking dream study participants up during both REM and non-REM sleep and asking them if they had been dreaming, and if so, what they had been dreaming about.

Here’s the interesting part – when asked to describe their feelings coming out of both types of sleep, the words used to describe how they felt after non-REM sleep were positive. The words used to describe their feelings after REM sleep were negative.

The researcher describing this says that these results are surprisingly reliable and consistent among a variety of participants. He mentions that the amygdala, a part of the brain, is highly activated during REM sleep, and the amygdala specializes in processing negative emotions.

Now, here’s where I sort of sat up a little bit – he goes on to note that normally people fall asleep through non-REM sleep. But people with serious depression and depressive disorders – they invariably go right into REM. And “they stay in REM and they spend too much time in REM.”

I have no idea of the connections between the potato/serotonin and any sleep science. But I do know the difference between a potato-night and a non-potato night for me. On a non-potato night I feel like I fall like a heavy rock into a dark place. I feel like I’ve had a heavy sleep, but not necessarily a deep or a sound sleep. More like something has descended on me and I can’t move. But a potato night for me feels almost like I’ve been out running errands mentally, and for the first few minutes after I’m up I feel slightly, barely disoriented. Then I feel strong and vibrant.

Again, no idea if and how any of the stuff we talk about here fits together with any of this. I just thought it was a fascinating tidbit of research and wanted to share it.”

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Then, of course, I wanted to take a look at some research about this interruption in the sleep cycle related to depression and located the following:

Human regional cerebral glucose metabolism during non-rapid eye movement sleep in relation to waking (2002)

“Sleep is an essential human function. Although the function of sleep has generally been regarded to be restorative, recent data indicate that it also plays an important role in cognition. The neurobiology of human sleep is most effectively analyzed with functional imaging, and PET studies have contributed substantially to our understanding of both rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. In this study, PET [measures levels of brain activity] was used to determine patterns of regional glucose metabolism in NREM sleep compared with waking.

“Whole-brain glucose metabolism declined significantly from waking to NREM sleep. …The reductions in relative metabolism in NREM sleep compared with waking are consistent with prior findings from blood flow studies. The relative increases in glucose utilization in the basal forebrain, hypothalamus, ventral striatum, amygdala, hippocampus and pontine reticular formation are new observations that are in accordance with the view that NREM sleep is important to brain plasticity in homeostatic regulation and mnemonic [memory] processing.”

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Conditional corticotropin-releasing hormone overexpression in the mouse forebrain enhances rapid eye movement sleep

This 2009 study used mice that were genetically modified in regard to production of a hormone that is involved in sleep cycles and dreaming states:

“Impaired sleep and enhanced stress hormone secretion are the hallmarks of stress-related disorders, including major depression. The central neuropeptide, corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), is a key hormone that regulates humoral and behavioral adaptation to stress. Its prolonged hypersecretion is believed to play a key role in the development and course of depressive symptoms, and is associated with sleep impairment.

“To investigate the specific effects of central CRH overexpression on sleep, we used conditional mouse mutants that overexpress CRH in the entire central nervous system … or only in the forebrain, including limbic structures ….CRH hypersecretion in the forebrain seems to drive REM sleep, supporting the notion that enhanced REM sleep may serve as biomarker for clinical conditions associated with enhanced CRH secretion.”

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I found this link to a Text of PowerPoint slides used by Dr. Leibowitz that includes some basic facts about sleep and dreaming.

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Depression deprives us of our Non-REM positive sleep stages and drops us into the highly negatively charged amygdala-driven (fear and stress response brain region) REM dream state for most of our sleeping time:

Post by Jen Robinson — “Oct 27, 2009 … Not only do most of our dreams occur in this stage, but REM dreams are also more vivid and emotionally wrought than non–REM dreams. … studies conducted during REM sleep also show increased activation of the amygdala…”

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Are trauma and abuse survivors continually called to TRY to process overwhelming emotional memories?

Emotional Memory Formation Is Enhanced across Sleep Intervals with High Amounts of Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (2001)

“Recent studies indicated a selective activation during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep of the amygdala known to play a decisive role in the processing of emotional stimuli.

“[Study] Results are consonant with a supportive function of REM sleep predominating late sleep for the formation of emotional memory in humans.”

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“Serotonin is thought to be intimately involved in the regulation of sleep and waking in humans….”

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REM-OFF & REM-ON NEURONS

“It is now well known that the visual-emotional hallucinatory aspects of dreaming occur during REM, whereas more thought-like and verbal ideational patterns are produced during NREM.”

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When the Brain Disrupts the Night

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Does amygdalar perfusion correlate with antidepressant response to partial sleep deprivation in major depression? (2006)

“One night of total sleep deprivation (TSD) or partial sleep deprivation (PSD) produces temporary remission in 40–60% of patients with major depression….”

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{I still believe that so-called depression is an immune system response to stressors.]

Stress and Depression: Preclinical Research and Clinical Implications (2008 – Italian and Swedish authors – excellent list of references at this link, many of the cited articles are available online)

“Major depression (MD) is a severe, life-threatening, and widespread psychiatric disorder having an incidence of about 340 million cases worldwide. MD ranks fifth among leading causes of global disease burden including developing countries, and by year 2030 it is predicted to represent one of the three leading causes of burden of disease worldwide [1], [2]. MD is also a risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and a major risk factor for suicide [3]. Despite extensive investigations, the exact mechanisms responsible for MD have not been identified…”

“Stress is usually defined as a state of disturbed homeostasis inducing somatic and mental adaptive reactions, globally defined as “stress response,” aiming to reconstitute the initial homeostasis or a new level of homeostasis after successful adaptation, i.e., allostasis [31]–[34]. There is wide consensus and support from preclinical and clinical data that stress exposure conceivably plays a causal role in the etiology of MD and depression-like disorders [11], [27], [31], [34]. However, no specific mechanism linking stress exposure and stress response to the occurrence of MD has yet been fully elucidated. Growing evidence indicates several classical candidates, including neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, as well as conceptually novel immune and inflammatory mediators, as likely intermediate links between stress exposure, depressive symptoms, and MD [9], [21], [34]–[38]. ….

“One of the hallmarks of the stress response has long been considered the activation of the HPA axis. Hypothalamic CRH activation is a pivotal signaling molecule in the regulation of the HPA axis in particular and of the stress response in general. Therefore, comprehension of the mechanism responsible for the negative feedback regulation of CRH is of paramount importance…..”

“Knowledge on the functioning of the HPA axis under acute or chronic challenge is also a key to understanding the intimate link between stress response and the pathogenesis of depression [40]. Indeed, in all MD syndromes, a certain degree of HPA-axis disturbance is often present, visible either at the baseline or with functional tests. Despite the fact that observed changes of HPA regulation are so far not specific for the diagnosis of depression or for any of its clinical syndromes [8], altered HPA-axis parameters are considered important biomarkers, particularly in preclinical studies. Increased circulating hormones such as adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and cortisol/corticosterone or increased adrenal gland weight are considered biomarkers of stress response in preclinical models [41], including in several papers in this Collection [19], [29], [42]–[46]. Despite the bulk of data available, surprisingly current knowledge has not yet been developed to a point where HPA-axis reactivity can be rationally exploited for targeted drug treatment, as opposed to the major achievements of drugs targeting the CRH receptors [47]….”

“The link between stress and depression is not novel, and several authors have aimed at identifying new subtypes of depression based on their functional link with stress exposure (e.g., [70]–[72]).”

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BBC film, “Why Do We Dream?”

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