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Friday, January 10, 2014.  Firstly, I want to mention that a friend just sent me this link – and I thought it worthy of sharing!

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How Guilt and Feelings of Selfishness Can Trap You… and Your Whole Family

January 9, 2014 by Cathy

Guilt and shame producing phrases echo through many people’s childhood. Parents, teachers, grandparents, siblings, even complete strangers use those words, and others repeat them. Those phrases are used because they work… at least in the short run. They are great way to “cope” with and manage children. Here’s why…  [Click on title above to read more]

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I think about this topic in terms of a range of actions on a continuum from cooperation to competition for resources that are either plentiful or scarce in their availability.  They can also be considered in terms of resiliency and risk factors.  Safe and secure human attachment relationships, which trump the harmful effects of nearly all traumatic experiences, can be improved through awareness and choice. 

This is where individual consciousness gained through healing from early wounds allows us to make different choices in our caregiving of others  — especially young ones — so that we do not repeat the negative messages that there is not enough available in the environment to support our optimal health and well-being.

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— AGAIN AMERICA IS RIGHT DOWN THERE IN THE BOTTOM RANGES.

AN IMPORTANT REPORT TO STUDY!!! 

UNICEF Office of Research (2013). ‘Child Well-being in Rich Countries:  A comparative overview’, Innocenti Report Card 11

Of the 29 countries included in this report look carefully at how close to the BOTTOM the United States of America is AGAIN!  Where are the riches in our country and how are they spread out in regard to the well-being of all children in our nation?

Scroll down for a simple view to Part Three and look at this table:  Figure 7.0 Limited overview of child well-being

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» Despite a 10 point fall over the decade, the United States continues to have the highest teenage fertility rate in the developed world.

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There are certainly times when guilt is a very appropriate emotion on the “compassion and action” scale as it is meant to generate healthy responses to social situations.  Where is America’s conscience when it comes to the well-being of ALL of our little ones?

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Wednesday, January 8, 2014.  I suppose there was nothing like a major move that could have so blatantly reminded me of the importance of place.  Such a disordering, disorienting and disorganizing experience this move has been.  Partly I blame myself not so much for making this move in the first place but rather for having STOPPED MOVING for as long as I did on the other end.  The 6 years and 11 months I spent within the walls of my humble home on the Mexican border south of Bisbee, Arizona was the longest uninterrupted period of time I have spent in one place in the 62 years of my life.

There was a time for me to live in that place.  Now is the time for me to live in this place.  I am reminded of the comfort I have found all of my adult life from this passage from the Bible:

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Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

King James Version (KJV)

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Finding a way to cram my belongings into a space 1/3 the size of that house is another charming aspect of having made this move.  I am repeatedly finding things, placing them and then losing them as I try to organize myself here.  I have yet to re-find my wireless mouse!

I spend time every day trying to teach this baby to put things he plays with back again!  He wanted to play with the percussion toys this morning — half of them are missing.  In this tiny place where did he put them last time he played with them?  Who KNOWS?  He has perfect pitch and I don’t mean only with his voice!  I find his toys in the strangest places – mine, on the other hand….

I hate being lost, feeling lost and losing things.  Boundaries are involved for me in these concerns.  Not only is orientation of object central to orienting, organizing and ordering one’s life — so also do these patterns apply to our self.  Where does one self stop and another begin?  Certainly my psychotic BPD mother did not have the answer to this question!  (“No, Mother, I was not REALLY the all-evil child replacement for yourself to be confined in perpetual hell!”)

Yet I think blurring of boundaries – the inability to clearly know the place of ONE person and the place of another person – shows up all around us in lots of ways.  My opinion is mine – why on earth would someone else, say, become upset by MY opinion?  Everyone has their own!  Why would ONE person become upset by another person’s feelings?  A mystery to me.

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Which reminds me….  Monday night my daughter and I ran through Wal-Mart around 9 pm and the RUDEST man was berating, swearing at, belittling – oh AWFUL and TERRIBLE the way he was speaking to and about the young woman there with him who seemed to be his partner.  ABUSE!  Yet what could an outsider DO?  Yes, his feelings, actions taken in words DID upset both my daughter and me and made us think about similar kinds of situations in public when an adult might be treating a child that way.

There ARE times when we do need to be upset by others’ actions but here again, there is a time – and a place?  What could we have done that would not have made the situation worse for this young woman who left this man – at his command – standing in line at the cashier’s – to fetch a forgotten onion.  She “took too long” and came back with a tomato as well – and paid a terrible price for NOTHING!  But this is another topic – –

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And, although this is a doubtful time to mention it, we went to Wally World to replace the two 38 cent goldfish I had bought and accidentally killed last week.  I had been creative upon reading the advice printed on the plastic bag those fish had been transported to my home in that said they need plants to hide in.  I pulled some kind of houseplant of mine that I was rooting in a glass of water and dropped it into the gallon jar with the fish.  Evidently a bad idea that greatly shortened the time span of the life of THAT pair.

The second pair?  What was my tired mind thinking when I go them home?  I set the bag with the fish on the counter, snipped it open without otherwise supporting the bag and SPLASH the 1/2 gallon of water was instantly on the floor as I tried desperately to keep the fish in the bottom of the bag rather than allowing them to join their water elsewhere.

Then what?  Well if the goal was to get their water to room temperature I had to take a shortcut and produced exactly that in a bowl and quickly dropped the fish into it so I could take the time to figure out how to assemble the 3-gallon tank with air pumps and filters I had bought for them.  Those little guys, however, lived less than 2 hours due to the shock I put them through and now I have the prettiest tank on the counter by my fridge where my grandson can watch the LED changing bubble light display – but no fish.

Dare I buy more?

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Tuesday, January 7, 2014.  Perhaps it is because of the years I have spent studying my abusive, mentally ill (Borderline Personality Disorder with psychosis) mother’s writings as I worked to sort, organize, transcribe and prepare them for publication that I so strongly believe in the importance of being able to experience the fullest range of human emotions without having to cut them apart to deny some,  to split some off and project them, to bury (“stuff”) some, repress, twist….  Well, the possibilities are many in the ways humans can limit their emotional existence and deny other people the right to express theirs.

Life is complex and I see no reason to believe that the range and intensity of emotions we experience would not directly reflect the life we are living.  Same with the commentary we might wish to express about our experience.  Life is not a “one thing.”  We do not necessarily feel one way at any given point in our ongoing life if we pay attention and notice as we move along with it.

I notice that my 17 month old grandson always wakes from his morning nap full of joy and good cheer and wakes from his afternoon nap often with the opposite emotions.  A pitiful little weeping lost boy often greets me as I hear the first signs of his afternoon waking.  Big sorrow-filled sobs then erupt not long afterwards.

His mommy told me he is “practicing” the full range of his emotions as he is growing his body and self (nervous systems and brain included).  I think she is right.  I am there for the little guy in the whole range of his emotions, often sitting with my arms wrapped tightly around him as he buries his little face under my chin while I rock him especially in the afternoons — for as long as it takes for him to move on in his experience of life into a more freeing set of emotions.

Nothing in particular seems to trigger the afternoon blues for this little one.  He IS practicing!  For all the complex reactions I have to living again in this northern, flat, frigid city of a place (my daughters needing to know how happy I am to be here with them and NOTHING else “to the negative”), holding this little boy is the clearest I can probably ever feel in my life — being anywhere doing anything — that I AM in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

My extensive emotional reactions to all the rest of my life simply wait for me and do not visit me as I smooth the way for this new little human to live his life with all his emotions for the rest of his life.  I think life is a poignant affair.  It is rich and varied and asks of us the courtesy of replying back to it with all we’ve got.  To watch such a happy child as this little guy is “practice” his expression of sorrow with his entire body and soul is humbling and fills me with awe at the same time it gives me a great sense of honor to be here to share it with him.  

I do not believe that any daycare center can do this for a little child.  There is no time for it.

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Sunday, January 5, 2014.  Even if I had had any role modeling on how to be a healthy mother from my mother I would probably still be forever learning how to apply that information in my own life with my children who are now grown to be ages 28, 37 and 43.  Having now moved to the city where my two oldest girls live for the first time in our lives I am finding it a struggle to establish an equilibrium in the new version of the relationships we have. 

I am finding that at this point in time their needs are not unlike they were when they were three.  Looks — and age — can be deceiving.  It is MY job as their mother to clear the air and to make changes in myself that will support increasing health rather than increasing negative complications as I move forward in my new life here in the northland.

Information I posted several years ago that can be accessed through this link +CAREGIVING IN ADULT ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIPS applies just as much to my relationship with my children as it does to a “mate” relationship.  When needs exist in one person in an attachment relationship the needy person cannot fully caregive until those needs are met — somehow — or be healthily set aside long enough for the necessary caregiving of the other party to be implemented in the current moment.

What happens when BOTH people in an attachment relationship are needy at the same time which is most often the case even between adult caregivers of very young children?  What governs the prioritization of need-meeting?

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I KNOW I have most greatly complicated my life and my experience of myself in my life by making this giant move north.  No matter how thoroughly I evaluated my inner resources, no matter how clearly I tried to anticipate what this move would entail there is never a way for humans to fully grasp what is actually going to happen when a change is made.  The point of being as healthy as we possibly can be is that flexibility allows us to apply the widest range of adequate solutions to problems that confront us. 

Being early trauma survivors greatly complicates the range of our flexibility, the range of our coping skills and strategies, and the range of our needs.  What I am finding is that either I gain the clarity I need about “what is going on here” or my relationships with my daughters will suffer and I will, too.

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I scamper for resources as I talk with my savvy friends and think about information I have encountered through my own past searching and researching that can help me now.  I consider the work of Canadian Dr. Gordon Neufeld to contain critically important attachment-healing information.  I am hoping he will soon publish much of his work that is currently only available through costly purchase of dvds.  While I have been trying to learn how his knowledge regarding the attachment needs of the pre-schooler age group applies to my grandsons I had the profound insight last night in a conversation with a very enlightened friend that this information applies just as powerfully to my grown children.

In essence in attachment relationships of any kind during the needy phase one person needs to depend on the other person to be ALPHA so they can safely be dependent.  Now with most adult relationships the parties involved have many kinds of choices they can make about how they will get their needs met.  With very young children those choices DO NOT exist and the adult caregiving attachment person is under moral obligation to meet the needs of the little ones who are under their care.

And of the big ones?

It of course will depend on the workings of the internal gyroscope within a parent of adult children as it helps determine how the attachment patterns are going to play themselves out.  In my case I simply now have figured out why my daughters do NOT want to hear me express any of my FEELINGS, thoughts, observations, perspectives, etc. about how this move north is affecting me.  That puts ME in the position of (my guess) them feeling they need to caregive me at the same time they need me to be their ALPHA so that they can in some way rely upon me..

It is not my task at the moment – or perhaps to ever figure out what their exact specifjc needs are in the present moment.  All I needed to know to begin to balance out the complexity of my life right now with my girls in it is that just as Dr. Neufeld explains that all young children need their adult caregivers to be the core strength and ordering and organizing factor in their lives – to “be the answer to all of their needs and questions” – my grown girls need the same thing from me.  Because I have always taken my mothering very seriously I will respond without any questioning of them.

I simply have to put and keep the spotlight of my attention when I am interacting with them entirely upon THEM and not myself as much as I possibly can.  Just as I tried to do with all of my energy when they were young I need to NOT depend on them for “friendship.”  I need to get my own needs met elsewhere (which is very hard for me right now as I have given up all that is familiar and sustaining to me as I left my “old” life behind) and NOT depend on my girls now any more than I did when I was raising them.

Both of them are extremely caring and generous in giving to me as they can regarding physical, material and tangible needs to help me get THOSE needs met.  The deeper far more complex “emotional” needs that are in play here are the ones I am describing.

So, I have some adjustments to make.  I will need to monitor my entire patterns of interactions with my girls on every level and in every way.  I will make “mistakes,” no doubt, as I figure this out.  I write about this here but I have no intention of talking to either one of my girls about this as THAT would even be me making a bid for something from them.

Just saying….  Being a parent never ends in this lifetime!

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Friday, January 3, 2014.  Readers who have been following this blog for some time are aware that I have ten book manuscripts awaiting my daughter’s time for edit.  TIME?  In her life a most precious and nearly invisible asset.  She made it through a nearly final edit of the first book, Story Without Words, last June and only during her days off of her regular job last week was able to complete her edit so the manuscript could be moved along to two readers who will feed back their comments on this book which is the fulcrum point around which all of my other books swirl.

In the meantime there is a segment I have written within the 10th manuscript that I am frankly too lazy to go look for at this moment that is connected to the topic of this post.  Somehow, in spite of my great care in packing all my techy belongings as I left Arizona, I did not put my wireless mouse anywhere I can find it.  I detest the arrangement for “mousing around” on this old laptop so have my old wired mouse plugged into the only USB port on this machine.  My manuscripts are on one of my flash drives and without easy access to both a port and a mouse I can tolerate — well — this will have to do.

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I write in that book about how I see the stress response system in operation for humans.  Most simply there is a progression from startle-alert through anger, fear and sadness as we try to reestablish equilibrium so that we can continue on with our ordinary life.  I describe the energy and intent of each of these powerful survival-based emotions.  If we CANNOT cope immediately to resolve a “conflict” we leave the train station that sits at the edge of ordinary life and hop onto the trauma drama train.

I am used to thinking of trauma drama as being something we can always do without.  Not so.  It is often the nature of trauma drama reenactments we find ourselves in that contains the information we need to “get it” regarding the lessons that trauma has to teach us.

There is, however, a time when we are “beating a dead horse,” when enough is enough!  When we COULD have learned the lesson and COULD have exited the trauma drama train and instead whirl around endlessly in stuck patterns of refusal-to-deal, what is going on?

Again because my energies are currently rather depleted I am going to take the shortcut through this blog.  I cannot speak for anyone else and am too lazy at the moment to even speak of myself when it comes to patterns of endlessly circling through old trauma.  What I do want to say is that when I listen to another person who is stuck on their own trauma drama train cycling through the cars that correspond to the progression of survival emotions — and I have listened to the story before — and before that — and…..?

Well, I have discovered that I have an inner physical response to my own continued involvement in someone else’s TD!  I feel SLIMED!  Just as though I have been tarred with ICK and am sitting around waiting for the feathers to fall.

NO!!  I do not like this feeling.  When there is no helpful purpose for me in listening I am going to become brave enough to say, “I understand this is very important to you but I no longer wish to hear the same story repeated again.”  (Thanks but no thanks?)

I have some personal issues going on as I have returned to the scene of a failed marriage and after 30 years am now in the presence occasionally of my children’s father.  I never processed one single feeling at the end of that marriage.  I simply walked on with my life and he walked on with his.  The only thing I took with me (other than our wonderful children) was the belief — as I have found since returning here — that I was 100% responsible for the troubles that led to that divorce.

New me?  HOGWASH!  I think it’s fair to say that all difficulties in relationships are split 50-50.

So when I hear someone retreat back to obsolete (seems to me) rehashing of old relationship issues I want to know how that 50-50 is split.  In cases where the OTHER person is given 100% of the fault I wonder where the story teller’s 50% is.  In my case regarding my ex-husband it is the OTHER person’s 50% share that needs to be repositioned.

If it is shame based in self that disturbs the process of ending trauma drama cycles that shame — in my thinking — is attached to one or all of the primary stress response emotions (anger, fear, sadness).  It is not possible for me to work any of this out for another person.  I have a hard enough time managing my own swirling around versus STOP I WANT TO GET OFF patterns regarding drama that has turned into a retraumatizing experience.  Just saying…..

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Friday, January 3, 2014.  At 62 years of age I can truthfully say that never until I read this book have I had any soul-level connection to what anyone has ever told me about FORGIVENESS.  Was I finally just ready to gain some tiny glimmer of understanding about this process now or is there something special in this book I read recently and recommend highly?

The Wind is My Mother by Bear Heart and Molly Larkin

If Bear Heart is still living he would be in his 90s.  What I understand about what he said about forgiveness is that IT IS FOR GIVING!

Well, how simple is that?

I think about how up until the moment I read his words I have always framed my thinking about the insanely (literally) horrible 18 years of abuse I suffered from birth by thinking that I know my mother’s and my father’s sickness of the body interfered with the ability of their soul to make informed choices in their lives.  In such cases I have always encouraged what I call “informed compassion.” rather than forgiveness because I suspect there are human-caused traumas that are so huge that forgiveness may simply not be relevant in any ordinary way.

A different light flipped on as I read Bear Heart’s take on forgiveness.  On all but the most HUGE and horrendous hurt-filled levels forgiveness is called for — and the need for it can be simply recognized — when any possibility of giving to the “guilty” person has been nullified.

Well, thinking about my mother I can still say that I cannot scan my being and find any sense that I ever did want to give anything to HER.  She doesn’t live in this world anymore anyway.  (Same with my father.)  What I DO see is that what I learn about her illness and about what she did to me I feel the desire to make something good out of to give out in any way I can.

This all then filters to how I interact with others around me and I am practising being able to notice when I block the feeling of wanting to give to someone because I have not forgiven them for some real or perceived injury.  Bear Heart states that forgiving and loving are part of the same reality.  If one loves they will forgive because one does not exist without the other.  Love is for giving as is life!

 These new insights and thoughts have opened a door for me into a wider and richer, more in-formed consideration of what it means that God, the Creator loves AND forgives me.  Just saying….

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Friday, January 3, 2014.  Good morning readers wherever you are!  Some of you have chosen to subscribe to this blog during my absence due to my recent major move.  I am affirming to myself that should you now choose to unsubscribe I can choose not to take this personally as some shame-filled reflection on my flaw-ness as a writer or as a human being!  Thank you for visiting here!

When a person embarks on healing the changes that then follow can be “dysregulating,” disorienting and disorganizing to our sense of ourself in our life because all of us with early relationship traumas during our most-rapid developmental stages of life suffer from some sort of insecure attachment disorder.  I believe it is important for us to define ourselves from our core self point of view when we can as we live our life even though our “symptoms” may make it most difficult to even know who we are — let alone anyone else.

In order to Stop the Storm of intergenerational transmission of trauma we must include a perspective on the degree of health and lack of health that exists within the community we reside in — and that includes ever-increasing circles of culture and society that powerfully influences how all of us see ourselves and the world.

I am going to backup and publish the collection of blog post notes that I have accumulated on my white legal pad of paper so that those words are retained here while the paper itself is recycled through the indoor worm compost containers I am trying to establish in my tiny apartment!  Yes, I can FEEL the wonderful life of those humble and most important creatures within my current living space.  My hope is to create soil to place in buckets on my greatly reduced garden space — and 8′ by 8′ cement slab outside my west-facing sliding glass door.

That soil is also feeding my motley collection of plants in here which include walking onions and grass garlic along with many aloe plants that will find their way into my green vegetable juices.  Flowers?  Well, as space allows.  My gauge on light health in this far northern place is the health of my plants which reflects the health of the environment I am trying to grow myself in along with my grandsons.  (It is again minus 30 degrees outside with windchill this morning.)

I certainly have no answers to the complexity of life that everyone faces.  I am most gratified that I found an apartment complex that is at least 75% full of refugees from around the world.  They have found their way to American sanctuary from Samoa, Sudan, Haiti, and Cambodia.  There is thus a flower garden of humans surrounding me and I hope eventually to meet some of these people personally.  So far they have all been most friendly and considerate when I encounter them around the place. 

In spite of the wickedness of this northern Plains winter they have found hope and safety probably for the first time in their life.  I am reminded of the fact that when I left home at 18 and escaped the psychotic abuse of my mother toward me by entering Navy boot camp I thought and felt as though I had died and gone to heaven!  I recognize that feeling even as I sense it pervading the giant Wal-Mart store where many of these refugees work and shop four blocks from where I live.

I am reminded of the depth and of the breadth of trauma around this world.  I am also now completely savvy to the fact that it is the quality of human attachments that most greatly determines the success of surviving trauma.  Without safe and secure attachments to other humans trauma WILL change our physiology at any age but most definitely during the critical developmental years of infancy and childhood.

All of us as early severe trauma survivors — and many with later severe trauma experiences — live daily with the reverberations of terror and threat in our physical body.  We have plenty of opportunities during any given day to work toward stopping the inner storm that our trauma survivorship has left us with.  Each encounter matters.  Each moment we can congratulate our self on still being here with our good intentions in life counts toward making the world a better place for all life now and in the future.

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Thursday, January 2, 2014.  “Limbic kindling.”  I think of this as “limbic irritability” as it is literally a consequence (most of the time) of early child abuse during early brain/nervous system formative stages that results in injury and wounding.  I often think of skin irritation after a burn.  An extreme sensitivity to events in the environment that touch it or send reverberations that escalate like resounding trauma echoes into areas that we have no way NOT to feel if we are on a healing journey.

A few years ago I learned that “depression” is an “anxiety disorder.”  Depression is known to be complemented with irritability.  Anxiety, at least for me, certainly follows those same pathways.  I believe these are both directly tied to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as well.  Add to this pot of horrors a big dose of dissociation and its complements of depersonalization and derealization, and – well – those who KNOW know the patterns that result.

For 14 years I limited my life to a small town rural area where the climate and the culture suited me like a comfortable second skin.  Like a comfortable outfit of clothing that place only chafed me when the wind blew dirt into my house and when my poverty made it difficult for me to adequately heat my uninsulated house.  People there were easy-going.  Nobody in all the time I lived there ever breathed the words “low income” although many residents certainly were.

No, the place was not perfect but within that arena I knew clearly what my limits were and could live a life that avoided conflicts with the world-at-large.  I may soon write of some of the bizarre encounters I have met here in Fargo in situations that could not possibly appear where I just moved from.  I have NO PATIENCE with ….  well, if I were to begin writing of those scenarios and situations now this post would move to another level I don’t intend for this one.

Enough to say that my limbic irritability has not won me friends in the arenas I am referring to — nor does my irritability contribute to me caring.  How the irritability interacts with the stress within my family is another matter and one of great complexity that I DO care about.  Although the physiological connections to all my irritability — and I know this because I remember myself very well as a different far calmer and nicer person throughout most of my adulthood until my Reactive Attachment Disorder was triggered in the past ten years — resides in my nervous system itself, it is far from only anger that rebounds within me when it comes to family and that history. 

I was thinking yesterday that humans did not evolve to for a life that moves this fast!!  I find it impossible to keep up with the pace of interactions that people have with one another.  In this light I know that once my life settles down, and my home is put back together as much as it can be here, I hope some inner peace returns to me in place of much of this irritability that leaves me with a heart pleading for forgiveness for my emotional state from the universe that did allow the injuries to happen to me in the first place!  So many mysteries.

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Monday, November 25, 2013.  Time seems to stretch out behind and in front of me – slowly – as if these recent huge changes in my life have shifted the way things appear in my own rear-view mirror of life and in front of me as I anticipate horizons I move along toward.  I have been in Fargo, North Dakota at my daughter’s house since October 12.  The skies hang heavy and gray above this flat landscape nearly all of the time.  As winter approaches the winds often slice at life harshly.  Much to adjust to.  Much that is wonderful.  Much that is hard.  Just plain MUCH sometimes!

It is wonderful beyond words to be with my two grown daughters and with my little grandsons (ages 17 months and 3 1/2 years).  I have been staying where the babies live but have finally secured a one bedroom apartment beginning December 1st.  I am a country (wilderness) woman, not a city dweller by nature.  Neither do I do well in apartments but that’s where I have placed myself — by choice.  Careful choice.

I often think now about the complexities of life lived as a human being — which is of course all I know.  I think about the range of the complex emotions I feel.  If I give myself permission to just LIVE with and through them I understand that ALL emotions are life.  There are not “good” ones and “bad” ones.  Not even “positive” emotions versus “negative” emotions.  I watch my young grandsons LIVE their emotions — and at their ages, at their stages of development, living only ONE emotion at a time is what they do.

It is going through these stages of early development being loved and safe and securely attached that will allow these boys to grow to increasingly more advanced stages of being able to feel MANY EMOTIONS AT THE SAME TIME!!  Feel them, live them, live with them — be alive to each moment whatever it brings.

The little ones cannot make the kinds of choices an adult or an older child can make about how to name feelings, change them, act upon them, let them go, rearrange them — and all the other kinds of more mature things humans can do with their emotions.  Of course for people like me and for many of this blog’s readers, we never had ANYTHING we needed to move through those early emotional-developmental stages in “ordinary” ways.  That certainly doesn’t stop us from FEELING!

Fargo is kind of known as a STOIC region of the country.  Well, that ain’t me, babe!!  I am working on toning down my comments and complaints tied to how much I detest cold winters (!!!) — but I will not deny my reality on the one hand in favor of a fancier, more “user-friendly” reality on the other hand!

Physical life on the material plane is temporary.  Transitory.  At 62 I suppose I think a lot more about that then I did when I was considerably younger.  I am going for the bigger gold now!  I wish to have a positive impact in the lives of my grandsons that might — should they ever have children — travel into the future along with shared DNA.  At the least I hope to help them in some ways to have a better life that will positively impact everyone they are ever in contact with.  I couldn’t do that sitting down there on the Mexican border in that place of mountains and so much milder climate!

I do worry about myself living in a 702 square foot apartment that has one small west window in the bedroom and one sliding glass door facing west in the living room — and the rest is just plain a CAVE in my universe!  I have much I am adjusting to, and complexities of PTSD, anxiety, well – all the rest of it – don’t make these kinds of adjustments “a walk in the park.”  But I needed this change.  I needed to grow stronger again not just more complacent.

My girls and I love one another – and have missed one another for YEARS.  They help me in every way that they can.  I am working to be balanced in what I expect of myself as these changes continue — but I will not settle for STUCK!!

This is the first blog post I have written for what seems like years (in that odd time-stretching sort of way).  I am NOT USED TO these kinds of heavy blanketing gray cloudy days!  Where is the brilliant Arizona blue splashed with the brilliance of sunlight?  Left behind me.  Left far, far behind me as I reach for a different, inner sort of warmth and light.  There is MUCH to be had of ALL of it!  That which is hard.  That which is easier.

Everything IS OK!  Everything WILL BE OK!!  I reassure myself nearly continually.  I CAN do this!  I AM doing this!  (The 17-month-old is no longer in daycare and is in my care.  He’s fussing about afternoon nap.  My anxiety level goes up like a thermometer!  I assure myself, “This is NOT a big deal!”  And – in such small ways – I am being useful!)

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