Tag: dissociative identity disorder

+MY ABUSIVE MOTHER: A PERFECT MADNESS

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Oh, what a last few days.  What a morning, that began when I woke and couldn’t sleep from 3 am onward, and began to address some important and very difficult issues.  Most of it I am not able to speak of right now publicly because it involves siblings — not yet — or perhaps not ever.  Time will tell.

I am hard at work now outside on my adobe work trying to irradiate the nasty pest Bermuda grass, and the process reminds me of how hard it can be to pull the trauma from abusive childhoods out of our life.  Probably it is impossible, not only because of the trauma-created physiological development changes, but also probably it is impossible because everything really is so interrelated and complicated.

The Bermuda runners and tendrils wrap themselves around every root of every ‘good’ plant.  Trying to get it away from the plants completely would destroy the plants I want to keep.  But I am doing my best.

One thing I can mention from a long conversation I had on the phone with my younger sister today came from somethings she described as she made clear to me the difference between the two main arms of my mother’s terrible abuse of me.

My sister uses the word ‘pariah’, or outcast (untouchable), coming into English from India around 1600 from a word that literally means ‘drummer’.  It was always members of the largest and lowest caste who drummed during ceremonies.

All but my older brother who was 14 months old when I was born were themselves born into my mother’s mad universe in which I was two things:  (1) the pariah and (2) the scapegoat (‘pharmacos’).

According to my sister’s perspective, nobody could have done a better job than my mother did — at what she did.  She completely convinced my siblings that I was not the same as they were.

I realize there are avenues for me to explore here because ‘not being the same’ as my siblings — while of course ending up to mean I was different than they were — operated more profoundly, pervasively and conclusively.  ‘Not being the same’ as my siblings was the bedrock basis and condition of my existence — and I was ‘not the same’ as my siblings in every possible way my mother could name.

On the other hand, as my sister describes it, my mother also created another arm of madness that was tied to making sure that all my siblings, my father, and my grandmother understand that my mother NEEDED me to be her scapegoat.  They knew without words from her actions and attitudes toward me that nobody could question what she did to me or said about me.

My sister also described how absolutely effective my mother’s turning me into a pariah was.  By keeping my siblings from having any kind of a relationship with me as their sibling, as a human being, as someone they could not only relate to, but appreciate, value and care about, my mother guaranteed that they would NEVER question her abuse of me and more importantly would NEVER intervene in any way — ever.

In other words, her turning me into a pariah, by removing any common ground I could have shared with my siblings as children, gave my mother everything she needed to scapegoat me — to abuse me terribly, any way she wanted to.

Another aspect my sister described this morning had to do with the biological, instinctual, genetic understanding that mother’s care for children and that without primary caregiving of basic physical needs, children cannot survive.  My mother was supremely effective at making sure there were no other possible adults in her children’s life so that all of us were completely dependent upon her.

Whatever my mother wanted was a fact, and if she wanted to, needed to abuse me, that also was an unquestionable fact.  Needing to be cared for (fed, clothed, etc.)  to stay alive overrode all other young concerns.

In other words, as I think about this all today, our family was extremely primitive.  It seems natural that my mother would gravitate toward a wilderness mountainside to play out her madness.  Nobody evolved to the point where anything could be verbalized, discussed, or willfully changed.

My sister also marvels at how, even though completely unconsciously orchestrated, my mother filled every crack, covered all ground, put together all the pieces that she could so thoroughly convince everyone, within and outside the family, that nothing out of the ordinary happened.  But for that to happen she first had to make her insane abuse of me ‘ordinary’ to my siblings, to my father, to my grandmother — and to anyone else that might possibly have noticed and/or questioned what she was doing.

My mother’s madness, although perfectly terrible, was still perfect.  That, to me, rings profoundly true and equally disturbing.

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On the other hand, the process I am going through right now is very much about whether or not I CAN write my own story — and whether or not I want to.  I don’t know yet.  If I were to look at this on a weighted scale, the weight by far is on the NO end.

If I am going to move forward with my writing, I have to change on the inside of me in ways that are both scary and unknown.  My early day thus far was a walk on the ‘blind side’ — into areas involving myself as a sibling as I begin to explore, ask questions, feel feelings about what it was like to be ME growing up as my siblings’ sibling.

That is different for me from being my mother’s abused daughter, my father’s daughter, etc.  Being my siblings’ sibling is very up close and personal — in ways I cannot yet explain.

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+INFANT-CHILD ABUSE, ACUTE TRAUMA = PERITRAUMATIC ALTERED SENSE OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME

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This electronic article talks about something I wanted to mention today:  The peritraumatic sense of the passing of time.

Acute Stress Disorder Symptoms in Children and Their Parents After Pediatric Traffic Injury

By Winston, et. Al.  (‘and others’) found in PEDIATRICS Vol. 109 No. 6 June 2002, pp. e90

Although the article presents information about the trauma of car accidents, the processes described here apply to everyone of any age.  Yet my major concern (as usual) is with what happens when similar conditions of trauma and its impact create changes in severely abused infants and children.

I am particularly interested in these aspects of the subject:  peritrauma components (dissociation, fear/helplessness/horror, and an altered sense of time)

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Nobody – no body – is designed to operate well under chronic conditions of ACUTE TRAUMA.

And, it is especially the very young growing and developing body that is most vulnerable to the impact that ACUTE TRAUMATIC CONDITIONS create as they alter development of the body, nervous system-brain, autonomic nervous system (ANS), vagal (vagus) nerve system, and the immune system.  As presented on this blog many times, epigenetic changes are likely to occur as the mechanisms that tell the DNA what to do (for the rest of a person’s lifetime and on down the generations) to best ensure survival under truly chronic, malevolent conditions also adapt in a malevolent world.

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Very few people are yet able to discuss the long-range impact that ACUTE TRAUMATIC CONDITIONS create in young abused infants and children as they grow and development in adaptation to these conditions.  Fewer still are able to openly and accurately admit that the risk for so-called ‘mental illness’ in these survivors is astronomically high.  These so-called ‘mental illnesses’ are direct symptoms of the trauma that created them in interaction (most often) with genetic combinations that would NEVER have manifested themselves had these same infant-children been raised in safe, secure and benevolent environments.

What most survivors, myself included, ACTUALLY have is a trauma changed body.  The most accurate description of what these changes did to us, and both ‘gave’ to us and ‘took away’ is NOT within the field of so-called ‘mental illness’ even though our difficulties appear to lie along this spectrum of dis-ease and lack of well-being throughout our lifetime.

No.  What we early severe abuse survivors actually  ‘have’ is more closely and accurately described as an insecure attachment pattern (disorder) that is the NATURAL and also the LOGICAL consequence resulting from what was done to us as we tried to be children growing up.

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Many of severe early abuse and neglect survivors end up with physiological changes from trauma altered development that most closely fit the DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED (D-D) insecure attachment pattern (disorder).  I now know, having only done my research-homework of related research in the last six years that allowed me to figure this out, that this is what I live with in consequence of all that my mother did to me for the first important critical developmental years of my life.

Every other so-called ‘diagnosable’ condition I have – be it major depression, dissociation, and PTSD is actually a manifestation of this D-D attachment pattern.

It is time for severe early abuse and neglect survivors to recognize both the earthquake-trauma of our early environments, and the power that the trauma we survived had to change the core of our physiology.

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In follow-up to the post I wrote yesterday about being ‘broken hearted’ I wanted to add this information today because being fundamentally ‘broken hearted’ in my trauma-altered physiology is very much concerned with the peritraumatic sense of the passage of time.

I don’t believe that ANY DISSOCIATION ever happens without this peritraumatic sense of the passage of time being present.  And this is important because our body does not measure time by any clock or calendar.  Trauma induces conditions within the body during the duration of the traumatic episode that match only ONE thing – how much time does the body have to spend in the ACUTE TRAUMA stage of actually being in the midst of ongoing trauma before the trauma STOPS.

As infants and children endure the many-faceted components of trauma – both as it is happening to them FROM THE OUTSIDE and as it is happening to them ON THE INSIDE OF THEIR BODY – they are at the same TIME experiencing this peritraumatic sense of time passing in a changed-altered way.

Trauma creates a state of immediacy because trauma IS an emergency condition and the body knows it – no matter how old it is.  When left in the ACUTE TRAUMA stage for too long – as severely abused infants and children are – the body has no choice but to adapt to these conditions.  And one of the adaptations the body is forced to make – permanently – is a changed sense of the passage of time that is most often recognized and named – DISSOCIATION.

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When I write about the consequences of living with a ‘broken heart’ from having been formed in infancy-childhood during ACUTE TRAUMA that happened to us in environments where we had no safe and secure attachments to mitigate the traumas we endured – I am ALWAYS writing at the same time about this peritraumatic altered sense of time.

People who were not severely and chronically abused during their earliest developmental stages, and who therefore did not experience physiological alterations in their body-brain in response, do not REALLY know what I am talking about.  When we enclose our personal expressions as survivors about what it is like to live in and with our trauma-changed body, what we can also KNOW and recognize is that the passage of time will never be the same for us as it is for those who developed in safe and secure-enough early caregiver environments.

Having been ‘given’ a D-D insecure attachment pattern (disorder) MEANS that at the same time the passage of time for us could not possibly be built into our body-brain in any ordinary way.

Therefore, when it comes to ANYTHING in our life, or about us, that involves threat of harm or actual harm during ‘later on’ in our lives, this altered sense of time will hop right up to the forefront within our trauma-altered body.

“Leaving the past behind” or “letting go and moving on” or “forgiving and forgetting” does not operate in the same way for severe early abuse survivors.  We are in effect at risk for being caught in what I will call a ‘TIME LOOP’ that does not match ordinary time perception.  Our TIME LOOP has at its center an ACUTE TRAUMA, perpetual peritraumatic sense of time passing – or NOT passing.

Having a Disorganized-Disoriented Insecure Attachment Pattern (disorder) built into our body (in my opinion) ALWAYS includes BOTH dissociation and this peritraumatic sense of time passing.  Only when healing can happen surrounding the traumatic experience as described in this article I mentioned at the beginning of this post will a survivor NOT be ‘doomed’ with permanent body changes that mean these disorienting-disorganizing dissociating experiences of peritraumatic time become continual underlying patterns of ‘being in a body in the world’.

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Naturally those of us survivors who were not given an adequate reprieve from the pain and terror of severe abuse as our body-brain grew and developed had no choice.  Adaptation to perpetual ACUTE TRAUMATIC CONDITIONS became a part of our body, and hence both of who we are in the world and HOW we are in the world.

Researchers and other professionals who ‘deal with’ so-called ‘mental illness’ both in children and in adults need to understand these facts.  Trying to apply ‘healing’ information and strategies to physiologically trauma-changed people is both ridiculous and harmful.

I know that I am ‘ahead of the curve’ on this topic, but I have to be.  I have to be.  Otherwise it is far too easy for me to get caught up in the societal loop that says there is something WRONG with me, when the truth actually is that there is something DIFFERENT about me.

Learning what this ‘different’ actually is means that at the same time I have to learn about what happened to me as my body-brain developed, and how what happened to me changed me.  And one of the changes that I DO have is a nearly continual altered sense of the passage of time – acute trauma — peritraumatic time – altered sense of the passage of time.

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All this having been said, I will add that we were blessed with a wonderful soaking rain yesterday early evening, and the ground where I am beginning to work my adobe magic is perfectly moist and soft to receive my efforts.  So, out I now go to place myself in ADOBE time – time connected to the most ancient of us all – the earth itself.

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+WHAT CHILD ABUSE, ADOBE-MAKING AND NAT KING COLE HAVE IN COMMON

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This post is an honest one about what I don’t let myself think about – or lately to write about – choosing when I can to work without words to try to distract myself instead:

From Mirriam-Webster’s online dictionary:

ANOMALY

1  : the angular distance of a planet from its perihelion as seen from the sun

2  : deviation from the common rule : irregularity

3  : something anomalous : something different, abnormal, peculiar, or not easily classified

First Known Use of ANOMALY

1603

The origins-roots of the word showed up under this form of the word:

ANOMALOUS

Origin of ANOMALOUS

Late Latin anomalus, from Greek anōmalos, literally, uneven, from a- + homalos even, from homos same — more at same

First Known Use: 1655

1  : inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected : irregular, unusual

2 a : of uncertain nature or classification b : marked by incongruity or contradiction : paradoxical

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I would not be exploring this word ‘anomaly’ if I didn’t have to.

For weeks I have avoided writing.  I work instead, trying not to feel or to think – at all if I can help it.

Today this word has appeared to me along with a realization that I have my nose to a wall, in another corner not unlike the ones my mother stood me in for many, many thousands of hours during my childhood.

I cannot move out of this corner in any direction until I DO think about and give words to what I have been experiencing – actually for my entire lifetime.

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I could say that after over ten years I remain ‘love sick’ for a certain man that I have never in all that time deviated one fraction of an inch from feeling the same way about that I do not only at this moment, but at every moment of my life.

I cannot escape my feelings, no matter what I do.  Working as hard as I do at distracting myself accomplishes only one thing – if I can do it:  no thinking.  The no thinking is an exercise that consumes horrendous amounts of my life force.  I know that it does.  And although I convince myself the best that I can that not thinking IS actually helpful and productive, it really isn’t.  I know that.

The problem is that I cannot make myself feel any differently than I do.  I miss this man.

But there is more to the problem.  Unfortunately, a lifetime of more.  A more that began when I was born and has so changed me down to my molecular levels that I have no hope that I really CAN change and adapt ‘better’ to the only very sporadic, undependable, and pitifully inadequate contact that this man now chooses to have with me without having what I do have – a broken heart.

I was not born with a broken heart.  My mother’s abuse, and my father’s neglect of me and support of my mother’s abuse, broke my heart.  This trauma changed my development in all the ways I have described in the past on this blog.

So what can I possibly add today to my descriptions of what the terrible abuse of my childhood did to me?

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Not only did my mother treat me as the nonhuman devil’s child her Borderline Personality Disorder psychosis believed me to be from the time of her labor of me forward HURT me and CHANGE me, it created physiological patterns in my body-brain-mind-self that I really do not believe I can alter.

That’s where this word ‘anomaly’ came from today.  My existence within my physiological reality IS an anomaly.

Yes, I was treated in ‘irregular’ and ‘unusual’ ways that were extremely traumatic and abusive.  But more than that, it was built into me that I was an ‘irregular’ and ‘unusual’ child from my birth – and that was NEVER A GOOD THING.

I was permanently convinced from birth that I WAS NOT THE SAME as any other human being – as can be seen in the root origins of this word I have to accept into my thoughts today if I am going to make any progress now – in any direction.  I was not even a member of my species – and I was completely unacceptable and a failure – not as a human being, but as a — WHAT?

Origin of ANOMALOUS

Late Latin anomalus, from Greek anōmalos, literally, uneven, from a- + homalos even, from homos same — more at same

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And then there’s this information connected to this word:

a : of uncertain nature or classification b : marked by incongruity or contradiction : paradoxical

There was nobody LIKE me.  I was unique in my family, unique in my mother’s psychotic abusive mind.  Where does one go to meet another ‘born of the devil’ child like one’s self?

I was told the entire 18 years of my childhood that I was this not-human devil child.  And yet there I was – caught in this state of being ONE of this family, though hated and not wanted.  An incongruity, a contradiction, a paradox I could not possibly handle.

This paradox has never left me.  I hope that this link on the consequences of infant-child abuse as it places the little one in the face of an ‘unsolvable paradox’ as Dr. Allan Schore describes it is active HERE.  If not, Google search these terms:  allan schore child abuse paradox.

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No infant-child asks to be severely and malevolently treated.  The survivors do not ask to have to live the rest of their lives with the physiological changes that happened in their growing and developing body-brain for the rest of their lives.

This broken heart that I live with constantly is NOT ‘just about’ this broken relationship with this man I love.  My disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment pattern-disorder has been severely triggered, and I cannot make the pain of it go away.  It is tied into the fundamental changes that the abuse I endured created in me – at my core.

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Take a look at the pictures here of what was left of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge after a 1989 earthquake.  This is what I feel like inside nearly all of the time.  And just as it wasn’t any fault of the bridge that it reacted to the severe trauma that changed it, a severe infant-child abuse survivor is not at fault for the changes our body had to make during the traumas of our childhood, either.

I can avoid feeling and thinking about how I AM inside – nobody wants to listen to me whine about it – least of all ME.

I have also been avoiding writing about how I feel.

Coming ‘up’ from the word ‘anomaly’ the other word that is stuck in my thoughts if I don’t distract myself most of the time is ‘wrong’.

WRONG

Middle English, from Old English wrang, from *wrang, adjective, wrong

First Known Use: before 12th century

NOUN — 1 a : an injurious, unfair, or unjust act : action or conduct inflicting harm without due provocation or just cause b : a violation or invasion of the legal rights of another; especially : tort

2  : something wrong, immoral, or unethical; especially : principles, practices, or conduct contrary to justice, goodness, equity, or law

3  : the state, position, or fact of being or doing wrong: as a : the state of being mistaken or incorrect b : the state of being guilty

ADJECTIVE — 1  : not according to the moral standard : sinful, immoral <thought that war was wrong>

2  : not right or proper according to a code, standard, or convention : improper <it was wrong not to thank your host>

3  : not according to truth or facts : incorrect <gave a wrong date>

4  : not satisfactory (as in condition, results, health, or temper)

5  : not in accordance with one’s needs, intent, or expectations <took the wrong bus>

6  : of, relating to, or constituting the side of something that is usually held to be opposite to the principal one, that is the one naturally or by design turned down, inward, or away, or that is the least finished or polished

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That was me, all right.  Eighteen years of having this beat into me in every possible, conceivable way.  Nobody EVER told me my mother was wrong, or that there was something wrong with my childhood.  By the time I figured that out – beginning when I was 30 years old – it was far, far, far too late to have this information help me where it mattered most.

By the time I began to understand how wrong my childhood was, how wrong the things done to me for 18 years were, how wrong my mother was that I was not human, that I was evil, that I was the devil’s child – all the physiological changes in my development had already taken place – a long, long, long time ago.

Nobody ever told me for those 18 suffering years that my childhood was the reverse of what most people’s were — turned inside out — nobody read the ‘wrong way – do not enter here’ signs of ‘thou shalt NOT NOT NOT do this to any child, certainly not your OWN’.  My body changed its development in such a WRONG world — and in its (my) essence it learned to know as a fundamental fact that there is something WRONG with me — in this world.

And in part, the powerful effects of the enduring isolation imposed on my by my mother in my childhood:  there is something WRONG with me that these people who I so wanted/want to love me do not even miss my presence or my company.

(I am trying to articulate some of the body-based information that I know and feel because I believe for survivors of severe infant-child abuse our concerns are much more profound, deeper, and physiologically based than anything that can be covered by such trite, overly simplified and inaccurate terms such as ‘addictive love’.)

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Dr. Martin Teicher refers to evolutionarily altered development as I mentioned in my December 22, 2009 post —

+CALM THE CRYING BABY — IMMUNE SYSTEM STIMULATES VAGUS NERVE TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

There are obviously consequences to these changes – and living with a constantly broken heart – or more accurately a constantly activated insecure attachment system – HURTS.

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So all I know today is that I can’t work hard enough today to avoid the truth about how I feel, or avoid the words that go with both these feelings and my inner physiological reality.  A member of a species KNOWS when they are exiled, for whatever reason their ‘flaws’ have been discovered.  LOGICALLY trying to use my so-called (and evolutionarily altered in development) ‘higher executive functions’ to try to CONVINCE myself of anything other than what my body knows is useless.

No amount of self talk, no amount of great affirmations, no amount of logic, NOTHING changes this perpetual state I am in of a broken heart except being exactly in the presence of (physical or verbal) of my most important attachment ‘figures’ – and that includes ‘this man’ – whether I like it or not.  There is something wrong with me that the man I love does not love me in return — and that my parents did not love me, either.

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Which leads me around to music – something ELSE besides work that does sooth me – usually.  My musical nephew in Seattle was very kind to help with some guidance on reading ‘Coda’ in music, and he transcribed these lyrics to a song I found and LIKE –

Here’s a version with Nat King Cole singing it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kd1A0zVK9Y.

IF I GIVE MY HEART TO YOU

Words and music by Jimmie Crane, Al Jacobs and Jimmy Brewster

Copyright 1954 by Miller Music Corporation

If I give my heart to you

Will you handle it with care?

Will you always treat me tenderly?

And in every way be fair?

If I give my heart to you

Will you give me all your love?

Will you swear that you’ll be true to me?

By the light that shines above?

And will you sigh with me when I’m sad

Smile with me when I’m glad

And always be as you are with me tonight

Think it over and be sure

Please don’t answer ‘til you do

When you promise all these things to me

Then I’ll give my heart to you

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Which leads me to say in conclusion that had I known ten years ago when I met ‘this man’ what I clearly know now about my Trauma Altered Development and the incredibly high risk my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment pattern-disorder puts me in for GREAT PAIN that does not end because it is connected to all that HURT me as my body-brain developed – I would have known that I needed to KNOW what this simple song says.

Yet even if I ever actually had asked anyone to do what this song suggests, I also have a corresponding disability – I cannot often tell if someone is lying to me or telling me the truth.  I cannot ‘read’ social cues well enough to know.  (Another consequence of early severe abuse changing the development of my right social-emotional brain.)

But give the song a listen – Nat King Cole is my piano playing role model!

All for now – thanks for giving a read!  I wish I had better news to report – but I think that will happen in ‘the next world’ when I am free from this body with its trauma-forced developmental changes.

Now I must go back outside, though it is baking-hot out today, and prepare three good holes to put the three remaining plants I have left in pots into before they die.

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+WORK WITHOUT WORDS: THE FRONT YARD ADOBE LANDSCAPING

alchemynow4 Comments

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These are some pictures that show what I have been doing lately– this amazing work I love that requires no words and lets me think in an entirely different way…….

Before I show you what I have been working on, I will show you about what I started with. This is the west side of my front yard, and ALL of that is wicked Bermuda grass -- as my sister describes it, 'the cockroach of the plant world'.

Of course with the monsoon rains at their end, all green grass will dry and turn brown.  Our world down here on the Mexican border will remain mostly brown for another ten months.  How to work with that brown-red dirt?

By-the-way, in the corner of the yard in this picture (above) is a Honeysuckle on left and a Jasmine on right with a lovely Lantana starting here, buried in the grass…..

That is a thriving medium-size Pompas Grass -- more on the south west front to be done next

The little purple tips of this fall blooming sage coming into its showing time gets rain from the gutters, packed full at the roots with Bermuda grass that can NEVER truly be eradicated once it gets a hold — only pulled, cut, dug out the best I can.  There’s the adobe form, an array of junk I always seem to collect around me as I work and move move move forward until a project nears completion —

This yellow bell bloomer is a gorgeous plant once it gets rooted and begins to send up its branches -- getting quite large. My idea out front to control weeds including Bermuda...

I dug 8″ – 10″ ‘holes’ around and in between my newly planted perennials, sloshed some cement into a soaked mud slurry, leveled it off and randomly placed in stones — sort of like a creek bed.  I doubt either weeds or Bermuda can perk their way through this ‘pad’ once it hardens.  All the water that collects in these pads will flow onto the perennials when summer rains come.

My little wall around the perimeter is made from the adobes I showed pictures of last summer stored against the wall of my house.  They are too sandy and fragile to use to carry much weight, but are perfect — again — for a Bermuda defense wall.  There is creeping Bermuda outside my fence, but hopefully I can catch its nasty little runners as they come OVER the top of my little wall before they can take root on my GOOD side of the fence.

I have a colorful rooster picture I found somewhere years ago hanging on my kitchen wall by my microwave.  As I have studied that brightly colored picture over time, I found a perfect blue tucked in among the rooster’s tail feathers.  I took the picture to our local hardware store the other day and perfectly matched it with an outdoor paint.

Again (as I did with the turquoise on the back wooden fence), I mixed about a quarter cup of paint with two cups water and made a stain for my boards I am experimenting with in the front landscaping project.  Once the boards are stained, I wipe motor oil on them to bug and waterproof the wood.

Taken in the back yard, but this is the same gold trumpet flower getting its start back there
The flower trench --

This trench forms the ‘U’ around what you will see next.  That ‘dirt’ is a red clay, very dense, that turns into ROCK when dry.  No plant roots can penetrate its depths.  I have removed it from my trench as I did out back, and today’s work will be to remove weeds from the area in my back yard I get refill dirt from — that will also get hard when wet if not mixed with organic matter, but that contains far more sand and is Bermuda free.  I figure it will take about eleven cubic yards today to refill this ‘U’ trench.

I am working, also, at figuring out how to install drip irrigation.

The tree....

There are two silver Texas Ranger plants along this little wall — this next picture shows one I have started in the back yard.  They are a rain-prophet plant, gaining and losing their beautiful, delicate lavender flowers many times in a season as they predict the coming of moisture (though I haven’t seen a drop of the rain they are prepared for now!)

I'll eventually surround this plant with adobe blocks to help fight the enemy Bermuda grass -- This will grow into a tree if left without trimming (can be shaped into all kinds of hedge forms!)
Still wet mud

This is looking north east.  The stones I embedded in my adobe walkway are mostly buried, but add strength and durability to this area where the heavy monsoon rains are going to rush.  I moved and moved and moved the gravel (sifted from the dirt in the back yard when I was working back there) until I knew where I wanted it.  The blue board laying on its side is meant to contain the gravel so it doesn’t get kicked here and there where I don’t want it to end up.

Once I am done with the adobe work, including doing my best to create drainage ‘channels’ to let the water run off when it rains and not flood the colored boards, I will try to scrub and clean the boards so that their color shows more brightly.

In the left corner of this picture is a yellow climbing rose.  I bought it four years ago and didn’t remember it was a climber.  Every year I have trimmed it incorrectly, so now that I understand how to maintain a climber I am hoping to restore this one.  I have plans (again, cheapest possible on my budget) to build it an arbor over the end of the sidewalk.  Currently there is no gate on that end, but I plan to build one after I tear down the broken old shed in the back yard so I can use its wood.

North bed

This is the most light (morning) that this area gets, but I decided I can find something to put here next summer — hopefully begonias and geraniums.  This is where I ended last night, so these bricks are still quite wet.  In a few days I will be able to add bricks to either end to add some sculptural height and interest to this little wall without cutting much light.  Unfortunately my much-moved-around-gravel is very dirty and lots of it is sunk in wet mud — but…..

Again, the water runs off of the front house roof line here (no gutters).

And, just a quick shot — the back adobe walkways survived the monsoons just fine!

There are lots of pomegranates ripening.  Right in lower center is the little cedar tree my sis brought me!  AND, without the amazing garden cart my other sister gave me for my birthday I could not be doing the front project as hauling all the dirt in 5-gallon buckets all the way to the front yard would be more than I could do!  ‘Harvey’ the garden cart is a miracle on wheels!

ALL the plants will do so much better on drip — long story why that is — saving it for later!

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+SCIENCE ON THE SIDE OF MUSIC THERAPY

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Thanks to a Yahoo group I ‘attend’ this article on music therapy popped into my email box today.  I especially appreciated it in light of the fascination I  have with my keyboard playing-learning to read music process in the hopes that I can help heal my severely verbally abused (plus) musical brain:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-11233452

Study to develop ‘musical prescriptions’ for patients

Patients could be prescribed music tailored to their needs as a result of new research.

Scientists at Glasgow Caledonian University are using a mixture of psychology and audio engineering to see how music can prompt certain responses.

They will analyse a composition’s lyrics, tone or even the thoughts associated with it.

Those behind the study say it could be used to help those suffering physical pain or conditions like depression.

By considering elements of a song’s rhythm patterns, melodic range, lyrics or pitch, the team believe music could one day be used to help regulate a patient’s mood.

Audio engineer Dr Don Knox, who is leading the study, said the impact of music on an individual could be significant.

He said: “Music expresses emotion as a result of many factors. These include the tone, structure and other technical characteristics of a piece.

“Lyrics can have a big impact too.

“But so can purely subjective factors: where or when you first heard it, whether you associate it with happy or sad events and so on.”

So far the team has carried out detailed audio analysis of certain music, identified as expressing a range of emotions by a panel of volunteers.

‘Emotional content’

Their ultimate aim is to develop a mathematical model that explains music’s ability to communicate different emotions.

This could, they say, eventually make it possible to develop computer programs that identify music capable of influencing mood.

“By making it possible to search for music and organise collections according to emotional content, such programs could fundamentally change the way we interact with music”, said Dr Knox.

“Some online music stores already tag music according to whether a piece is “happy” or “sad”.

“Our project is refining this approach and giving it a firm scientific foundation, unlocking all kinds of possibilities and opportunities as a result.”
BBC © MMX

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+CHILDREN BEAR TRAUMA SCARS IN THEIR GENES – IN TODAY’S NEWS

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In today’s news — something I figured out two years ago on my own — because it makes ‘body sense’ — and I was right:

View this article on Time.com

Genetic Scars of the Holocaust: Children Suffer Too

By JEFFREY KLUGER Jeffrey Kluger – Thu Sep 9, 4:45 am ET

The Holocaust is a crime that never seems to quit. Even as the ranks of survivors grow smaller each year, the impact of that dark passage in history continues to be to be felt. And it’s not just the victims who feel the effects; it’s their children too.

Psychologists have long been intrigued by the emotional profile of so-called second-generation Holocaust survivors. Parents who lived through the camps were forever changed by the horrors they witnessed. In the 21st century, many – probably most – would be recognized as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Back then, the absence of such a diagnosis meant the absence of effective treatments too. As a result, a generation of children grew up in homes in which one, and sometimes both, parents were battling untold emotional demons at the same time they were going about the difficult business of trying to raise happy kids. No surprise, they weren’t always entirely successful. (See photos of Auschwitz after 65 years.)

Over the years, a large body of work has been devoted to studying PTSD symptoms in second-generation survivors and it has found signs of the condition in their behavior and even their blood – with higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, for example. The assumption – a perfectly reasonable one – was always that these symptoms were essentially learned. Grow up with parents afflicted by the mood swings, irritability, jumpiness and hypervigilance typical of PTSD and you’re likely to wind up stressed and high-strung yourself. (See more on how children are also vulnerable to posttraumatic stress.)

Now, a new paper adds another dimension to the science, suggesting that it’s not just a second generation’s emotional profile that can be affected by a parent’s trauma, it may be their genes too. The study, just published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, was conducted by a team headed by neurobiologist Isabelle Mansuy of the University of Zurich. What she and her colleagues set out to explore went deeper than genetics in general, focusing instead on epigenetics – how genes change as a result of environmental factors in ways that can be passed onto the next generation. (See pictures of an army town coping with PTSD.)

To conduct their work, Mansuy’s team raised male mice from birth and continually but unpredictably separated them from their mothers from the time they were one day old until they were 14 days old. Thereafter, the animals were reared, fed and cared for normally, but the early trauma took its toll.

As adults, the subject animals exhibited PTSD-like symptoms such as isolation and jumpiness. More tellingly, their genes functioned differently from those of other mice. The investigators looked at five target genes associated with behavior – most notably, one that helps regulate the stress hormone CRF and one that regulates the neurotransmitter serotonin – and found that all of them were either overreactive or underreactive.

These mice, for the purposes of the study, were the equivalent of first generation of Holocaust survivors. The same mice then fathered young and, like most males of the species, had nothing to do with their upbringing. The pups were raised by their mothers with none of the trauma and separation their fathers had suffered, and yet when they grew up, not only did they exhibit the same anxious behavior, they also had the same signature gene changes.

“We saw the genetic differences both in the brains of the offspring mice and in the germline – or sperm – of the fathers,” says Mansuy.

Mouse studies, by their definition, are limited, particularly when the animals are being used as stand-ins not merely for human biology, but for human behavior. Still, in this case, the nonhuman models were actually an advantage, since you could hardly run a control experiment in which second-generation survivors of the Holocaust were separated from their fathers, ensuring that you were studying inherited – not acquired – traits. What’s more, says Mansuy, “with animals, you can study the brain in detail.”

That doesn’t mean that some studies couldn’t be conducted in human subjects that sought similar findings. Straightforward analysis of blood, plasma and sperm from volunteers could reveal signs of genetic changes similar to those seen in mice. And a deeper analysis of the mouse genes should yield other target genes to study in people. “We’re now doing a high throughput study of hundreds of genes that go beyond the first five,” says Mansuy.

The Holocaust is hardly the only life crisis that can shape behavior and genes. Survivors of Afghanistan, Iraq or Darfur – or even those who grew up in unstable or abusive homes – can exhibit similar changes. But Holocaust survivors remain one of the best study groups available because their trauma was so great, their population is so well known, and so many of them have gone on to produce children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Humans, alas, may never run out of ways to behave savagely toward one another. But the better we can understand the price paid by the victims – and the babies of the victims – the better we might be able to treat their wounds.

See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2009.

Buy reprints of TIME’s health and medicine covers.

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+THE PROCESS OF RUPTURE AND REPAIR NEED REPOSE AND RESTORATION

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Well, here I am at mid-day and I am not outside working in my yard.  It’s very hot outside, but that by itself is not what is stopping me.  I have lymphodema in my left arm after cancer in my lymph nodes on that side, and today my arm is swelling from my work outside these past few days, and I am always worried when I see puffiness beginning to move down into my left hand.  THAT will not do.  Today my arm needs to rest and I cannot WILL it any other way.

This leaves me with some free mental time to think further about my observation about whiners and workers.  As usual, my thoughts turn upon their own invisible fulcrum and in that expanding spectrum I ran into two recently found friend-thoughts:  Rupture and Repair.

Yet because of the past days I have needed to work on some repair for myself, my thoughts have slowed down enough that I can see some of what lies between these two big “R’s”.   And as I do, I look outside into my transforming front yard and because of the clearing, simplifying and patterning of my new layouts I can see something I never noticed before.

My brother and I planted a desert Sycamore tree out there while I was taking my chemo.  This is a fast growing tree, and I have been trimming off its lower branches as it stretches up in height and now I can see that this tall trunk with its bunch of neat branches at its top is actually working like something I have always wanted in my yard for a long, long time:  A sundial.

Within my new landscape plan I figured out yesterday how to dig 8″ deep rectangles between each of the perennial plants.  In these holes I wet and stir the mud with a little cement, and then place stones in them so they look like the bed of a stream.  I figured out that the weeds and Bermuda grass is not likely to be any more able to sprout through these ‘spacers’ than it does through the actual adobe bricks I have been making my walkways out of.

In addition, after watching the downpour the other day I can see that these ‘stone pads’ between the perennials will also be able to accomplish another important job.  They will create water runoff streams that will now go exactly where I want them too when the rains come — seldom and hard — right onto my perennials!

But as I looked outside today, somewhat begrudged that I can’t healthily be out there furthering my working plans, I see that those pads as they lie at the outside of my newly created garden give the shadow of my tree a place to land on as the sunlight scoots across the landscape.  Each of those stone pads now looks like a marker on a sundial!  How cool is that?

And in between the pad-markers are the plants themselves which of course vitally depend on the sunlight to reach them and NOT be overly shadowed by the tree leaves as the light passes them.  It seems to be working out OK.

And this whole visual experience this morning, combined with my ‘freed time’ to think helps me understand that in between the two fundamental poles that living in an ever changing and often challenging world creates — patterns of rupture and repair — are shades that can be named more specifically.  Because patterns of rupture and repair are what build our ‘operating system’ of secure or insecure attachment in and to the world from our conception, it is helpful and important for me to understand that in the cycles of living there is more detailed and specific information I can learn, name and use in my life.

Because of the severe abuse I survived, that altered my entire body’s development permanently in my early years, I understand that my resulting insecure attachment (along with the other Three Sisters I mentioned previously, depression, PTSD and dissociation), all happened to me because patterns of rupture and repair did not follow one another in supportive ways in my early years.

I have never found ‘functional’ or ‘dysfunctional’ to be useful terms to my thinking when I look back on my severely chaotic, traumatic, dangerous and harmful infant-childhood.  These terms do not name anything I can relate to, so I went searching for more accurate and useful terms.  Rupture and repair are REAL processes.  Yet as I think about them today I see some of what lies along the spectrum between them, and those things add more detailed information that I can use to think with.

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I have a collection of those little “Y” shaped hose end attachments, some metal, some plastic, some older, some new.  They all cost me money, all cost the planet resources, and they all eventually seem to fail for no reason I can determine other than planned obsolescence and shoddy craftsmanship.  Yesterday as I was working away on my project outside the one I have been using for several months at the watering end of my hose (I then have one ‘spigot’ open for running water and the other has a sprayer attached to it) simply fell apart.

I had been adding water in the shower formation to my adobe mud mix one minute, had dropped the hose end to the ground to stir, and when I picked the hose end back up the water could not be turned off on one end of the “Y.”  What on earth had happened in that split second?

It turned out that the tiny screw that held the turn-on-off on one side of the “Y” had fallen off and vanished!  I tried another “Y” I had on hand, it was flawed also.  I twisted on a new one I bought last week, and for no reason I could understand, my hose end had decided to spring itself a major leak also!  The washer was fine.  I ended up having to use the super (and very effective) Rescue Tape the hardware store people had convinced me to buy last week — along with a hose clamp (which I found out last week now costs $1.29 for one of the smallest ones they make!) to FIX the end of the hose before I could even screw on the new “Y.”

All said and done, I never expected to find the tiny pieces that fell off the first broken “Y” as they fell down somewhere between the tangled masses of Bermuda grass, the dug-up dark, damp earth and the mud.  But they DID appear!  A tiny rubber ring about 1/4″ inside diameter, and then suddenly the little turn-off handle itself!  Seemed like a miracle to me!

Well, to make a long story even longer, all of this fed into my thought channels about rupture and repair, and about the four things I mentioned in a post last week:  Make, Use, Fix, and Break.

I never until yesterday realized that there is maintenance required on some of those hose “Y” attachments.  I didn’t know that eventually the tiny screw that holds the little handle on that turns the spray on or off loosens — and then falls off!  Maintenance.  Obviously connected to FIX and to REPAIR.

Yet maintenance is more closely connected to another word that appeared to me yesterday, one that lies within my more finely-tuned understanding of the spectrum between Rupture and Repair.  The need to MAINTAIN something keeps it working BEFORE it needs to be repaired.  Maintainance is a form of RESTORATION.

As I mentioned, I never knew that these “Ys” needed to be maintained so that they would continue (at least some of them) their functionality.  Maintaining the proper tension on the little handle screw by checking it periodically would have RESTORED it to its ‘factory specs’ and kept it working properly.  The whole minor mess I encountered yesterday could have been avoided if I had both known this, and done it.

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Which now leads me on a minor diversion here.  I have instinctively known, as I have mentioned before, that the term RECOVERY did not have the same meaning to me as a severe infant-child abuse survivor that it has for others who did not have a severely traumatic childhood.  I do not have very much at ALL to go back and ‘recover’ of myself from ‘back then’.

What I do as a severe abuse survivor is something else — not recovery.  If I had maintained my “Y” over time, and adjusted it to RESTORE it back to its original operation, I would have been assisting that little piece of hardware to RECOVER what it once possessed.  To me this is a FINE and an important distinction!

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To get back to whiners and workers — to rupture and repair — to sunlight being marked by my growing single tree in my yard as the minutes of the day tick themselves along — and to the words and terms we use to explain the important processes of life — I will now add yet another concept here.

This word that came into my mind has virtually nothing to do with the mechanistic metaphors used to describe human experience such as ‘functional’ and ‘dysfunctional’.  It has nothing to do with a functional or dysfunctional “Y” watering attachment.  But it has everything to do with what happens to living organisms that are required to go through natural cycles of rupture and repair to stay alive.

The word is REPOSE.

My broken (ruptured) “Y” is, true, reposing in a bowl of vinegar water to remove the calcium within it so that I can try to repair it now that it’s broken and I miraculously found its tiny pieces in the muddy mess of my yard.  Will the repair actually restore it to use?  Time and effort will tell.

In the meantime, I am thinking that in my severely abusive home of origin, with my continually working father and my chronically whining mother, rupture without repair — or hope of repair — was the chronic state of our environment.

Along with all the ruptures without repair REPOSE was entirely missing.

Looking at it today, REPOSE and REPAIR are essentially tied together.

REPOSE only happens when safety and security are present.  REPOSE happens at the same time a safe and secure attachment in and to the world is possible.

REPOSE lets restoration that leads to repair happen.

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When it comes to understanding that our ‘stress response system’ in our body, the same one that is permanently altered and damaged as we grow and develop under malevolent infant-childhood conditions, is ALSO our ‘calm and connection system’.  They are THE SAME SYSTEM.

Without safety and security REPOSE doesn’t happen, REPAIR doesn’t happen, and our entire body-brain-mind-self lands smack on the STRESS end of things rather than on the CALM end of things.  We pay the price physiologically — and then in every other related way — for the rest of our lives.

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So in the sundial movement of the circle-cycle of life between ruptures that need repair, and the repair that either does or does not happen, lies MAINTAINANCE and  RESTORATION that only happens when REPOSE is possible, attainable and present.

Trauma does not offer repose.  Repose is an essential requirement for repairing a rupture (healing) so that both growth and an ongoing life of well-being can happen.

Neither continual working or continual whining allow for repose, and hence the cycle of rupture and repair is broken.

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Just as I did not know I needed to maintain my “Y” neither of my parents were able to maintain their own self.  I had to assess what went wrong with my “Y” yesterday (not hard when I saw pieces missing).  Neither of my parents ever knew the truth about what happened to them during their infant-childhoods that robbed them of well-being.  They never knew what happened to MAKE them BROKEN, so they could not either USE their full abilities or FIX what was wrong.

And REPOSE, what is supposed to be formed at the center of our physiology as our body-brain grows from conception forward, was completely missing.  REPOSE ability was missing because neither of my parents ever truly knew what safe and secure attachment even was.  Neither of them had it formed into the center of their body-brain as they grew up.  Repose, which lets restoration repair the ruptures life creates, was completely left out of the recipe both my parents used to create their life — and the life of their offspring.

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Just as rest and repose is what my swollen arm needs today — not whining without end, not work without end, it is what ALL of me needs — nearly all of the time.  So much trauma-based rupture without repose and restoration that leads to repair makes heavy demands on me, as it does for every severe abuse survivor whose life did not offer to them the opportunities to be safe and secure in the world.

But at least now I am beginning to find the words to think the thoughts that are more closely aligned with what I need.  I do not think in terms of ‘functional’ and ‘dysfunctional’ and I am glad for that.  I also know that my need for REPOSE is beyond great.  And I am learning why that is so.  I have to live in and with this body my mother so drastically affected in its development, but as I do so I hope to continue to understand what I can do to live a little bit better every step of the way.

No this isn’t easy.

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+WHINERS AND WORKERS. HUM……

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Today I accomplished some catch up with myself.  Yesterday we were showered well with a late monsoon rain — a real soaker!  The adobes I had made for my newly forming front yard walkway were aged enough to survive it, but I sure got to see how and where the rain off of my gutterless roof pounds down on some of them.  Today I did some repair in those spots, adding stones for the rain to beat upon — and let it come!

The ground was wonderfully wet.  I could dig away anywhere I wanted to without hard caliche (in Arizona, a layer of soil in which the soil particles have been cemented together by lime) to stop my shovel and demand a hose soaking before I could have my way with it.  And today the clouds obscured the punishing sun.  I worked all day out there — and now I feel better.

Only twice did I have to detour my thoughts away from the negative patterns that can crop up so quickly — and so unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere.  When those thoughts came today I could do one of two things:  (1) say a simple prayer, and/or (2) redirect my thoughts to the next physical action required of my task.

It worked.  Then five times after I told myself, “That’s enough for today. Your body is tired.  There’s always tomorrow,” I perched my sweat soaked rubber work gloves on the handles of my upright shovel and hoe — after sunset.

Today I made a low three-leveled adobe wall out of bricks I had formed last spring that are too sandy to support much weight without breaking.  The wall encircles the exposed two sides of my north-east corner of my front yard.

Everywhere I work I am hell-bent on digging up gone-wild Bermuda grass trying to clear the soil for planting of something else.  There is no way to eliminate this (to me) terrible pest.  It has roots two feet deep, and with every rain sends out four to six foot runners with little rootlets along it every two inches.  Left on its own, with its tiny little (to me) obnoxious seeds, it takes over everywhere it is planted, and everywhere it can reach.  (One square foot of Bermuda grass, if chopped up very finely, can solidly seed an acre — great if you are bovine or equine!)

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I did have one solid thought as I worked away out there today, sweat pouring into my eyes despite my headband and the cloud cover above me.  This thought, once it appeared, could not be chased away.  Not that it matters, but it is now stuck like it is a part of me.

“What if there are basically two kinds of people in the world, one being whiners and the other being workers?”

As this thought popped up in my mind, like a slice of toast just cooked in the toaster, another slice of toast popped up right along side of it.  “My mother was a whiner and my father was a worker.”

I don’t think I ever heard my father whine.  I BARELY ever saw my mother work.  So there.

“What on earth does this mean?”  I ask myself.  “Useful information?”  I can’t at the moment begin to imagine what possible use this observation is to me — or to anyone else!

What I do know is that I WORKED my way through the 18 years of my childhood!  I have no idea what would have happened to me given how much my mother hated me and how intensely she did work at proving it (Oh!  I see.  She WORKED at abusing me!) if I had been a whiner instead of a worker.  Collapsing in a pitiful heap on the floor with one flick of her finger upon me, or one bash of her fist, or one smack of a belt would not have done me any good whatsoever!

So I guess I, along with all five of my siblings, inherited my father’s working genes!  (Who would have wanted HERS?)

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Which reminds me, part of what I have been doing this past week is sorting through my inventory of all the ‘things’ I have made with my hands that I cannot seem to ever sell.  Some I priced and will send up to North Dakota to my daughter who will take them to a November craft show she exhibits at every year.  Good riddance, STUFF!  I have given away heavy crocheted rugs I made, donated  a bunch more STUFF — and……..  More to go!  I am determined to find this STUFF I have made a home — freely given, most often welcomed!

But I also had the thought appear several times these past days that in long gone days I would have been a valuable asset to some tribe or another for my making-things abilities, drive, ambition and accomplishments.  Whatever happens to people like me, deprived as we are as a true place in the grand scheme of our survival in today’s American world?

I don’t get to be a making-things blessing as my genes have dictated.  I am not a square peg meant for a round hole, or vice verso.  I simply don’t have a slot at all!  I just carry these WORK genes, designed for survival of a whole crowd of people — in a different time, a different world, a different culture than the one I have obviously flopped into in my lifetime!

Well, that’s getting awfully close to being a whine — so I better quit before I go THAT far!

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+TRIGGERED. STOP THE CHURNING

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Sometimes words can be so quiet that they don’t come out at all.  When that happens, I do things.  I just do things and do things and do things — and time goes by and things get done eventually.  The inner times, the waiting times.

Sometimes my thoughts and my emotions just seem like weather.  Inner weather.  Tides coming in and going out.  Inner mornings, days, evenings and night times.  Right now I feel like a tiny speck of glitter in a huge, huge world I am a part of.  A link in a never ending chain.

I guess it’s a kind of ‘world weary’ that I feel lately.  My Four Sisters — my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder, my PTSD, my depression, my dissociation — sometimes it seems they are so busy living my life for me I just have to find a quiet place, be as calm as I can manage to be, strive for contentment and exercise my gratitude — and then wait, do, wait, do — life is guaranteed change.  I just want as little of unforeseen change as possible.

Having spent a great many years in a seriously rocking, topsy turvy boat, I aim for the shallow waters out of the mainstream, out of the wild currents.  I just want to BE.  Just be.  (I just made myself a pot of decaf coffee — without the coffee!)

Those Four Sisters of mine — sometimes they shake the high-wire I am trying to stay balanced on — walking.  Thoughts running too fast.  Unable to sleep.  Skirting my emotions like they are pools of quicksand.  Wanting to run, my ankles are shackled.  No hope of even flying, hands bound behind my back.  (And I am very, very certain that these Four Sisters would not be present in my life if I had not been so severely abused for the first 18 years of my infant-childhood.)

Yes, something has triggered all this STUPID activity, and there’s nothing I can do but let the mud settle to the bottom while I go on — day by day, night by night — the best that I can — waiting while I live, living while I wait.

PS.  I have now moved my adobe making to my front yard — LOTS of work, and I like it.  I have a vision inside of what I want to see come of my labor.  THAT is ME, a sliver of me I can see ahead of me as I feel myself inside of me moving through the present, into the future, changing what was the past, making something new and different and beautiful.

And while I do THAT work, I ONLY think in the immediate present EXACTLY about what I am doing mind, body and soul.  Transformation.  I know it’s really what we all do while we live — alchemy now — turning what this earth gives to us into our self and then giving something back.  I can feel the beauty in that — and I am grateful.

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+INCHING TOWARD FREEDOM

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The last thing I had during the 18 years of my abusive infant-childhood was freedom.  I was born my mother’s captive as much as I was born her victim.  If that had not been so, I don’t suppose I would have such thoughts while making myself a big bowl of guacamole and slicing a bagel to toast as, “Gee, I am choosing to make this food because I want to.  I am free to choose when and what I want to eat.”

This thought led to a next one, “Hum.  Maybe I can learn to pay close attention to everything I do at the same time I notice if I am doing what I REALLY WANT to do.  Is what I am doing more toward being harmful or healthy?”

That process is what inching toward freedom is about.  True, I’ve been out from under my mother’s roof for a good long time, 41 years, actually.  But my inner freedom didn’t come with my step off into adulthood.  I work for it every day of my life.  Every moment.  Every inch.  This is true for all the reasons I included in my previous post about how trauma changes physiological development for the lifespan.

The older I have gotten the more limited my range of ‘motion’ seems to be due to the difficulties these developmental changes have caused me.  But cancer didn’t kill me off and I am still here for another round at this event called life.  There ought to be something useful I can yet accomplish while I enjoy doing it.  I am certainly inching my way in that direction, even if it’s one avocado, one tomato, one bagel at a time!

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