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When those times come when we survivors are tempted to disregard the impact of the early stress from abuse and trauma in our childhoods — it can help to take a look at the following information to keep our perspective clear.

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• RESOURCE: A must see new infographic from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) examines how adverse childhood experiences affect our lives and society.
• Click the link above or this one to check it out: http://bit.ly/aceinfograph

“Simply put, our childhood experiences have a tremendous, lifelong impact on our health and the quality of our lives.  The ACE Study showed dramatic links between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and risky behavior, psychological issues, serious illness and the leading causes of death.”

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Another powerful graphic display of information from this study is available here:

The CDC ACE study pyramid

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In a better world I would be able to talk to an excellent therapist when I needed to.  I do not have access to therapy and I have no hope that even if there was therapy around where I live that I could access that I would have any hopes of finding anyone who could really help me.  I am left trying to figure things out on my own.  I have to play both parties:  Me in need of insight and me being the only one who can possibly help me discover the insights I need.

Kind of like the blind leading the blind, it seems to me.

Not working on my books put me squarely in line for being hit with my own uselessness.  My own lack of productivity.  My own sense of worthlessness that only goes away when I am working on something through which I feel worthy.  This is a vicious cycle for me because of the very disabilities I live with that came from the severe abusive traumas I suffered for the first 18 years of my life that so limit where I can go and what I can do.

Relaxation, any sense of serenity, peace, fulfillment, peace of mind, even leisure.  I barely know what these states feel like.   My inner reality tells me a person has to EARN these things.  They have to DESERVE these things.  They have to be WORTHY of them.

I am too young to be “retired.”  I am too young to have been forced out of a productive life because of these disabilities.  Talking about anger, THIS makes me angry!  And the whole mess is very, very real.

I know I am extremely fortunate to be receiving disability income that keeps me with food and a roof over my head.  I AM grateful.  Grateful like starving to death and at least finding bugs to eat to stay alive.  This is NOT what I deserved.  This is NOT fair.  It’s all wrong and it always has been wrong ever since I was born to that psychotic mentally ill Borderline Personality Disorder mother — that nobody took me away from.

I try the best that I can to make the best out of what I have available to me.  Nobody forced me to take a break from working on those books.  I HAVE to take a break.  But even then — I struggle continually with my feelings of being completely inadequate as an adult.  Useless.

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Because I have to be my own therapist and my own client all I can do is try to open the doors to whatever might come through within my thoughts to help me understand “my condition.”

I think about how the horrors of the abuse I suffered throughout my whole childhood included extensive periods of isolation and confinement in corners and in my bed — completely alone — always after severe beatings.

I was “let out” — to work.  Every kind of chore Mother could invent was my reward for “being punished enough” — or enough of a reward to be granted a temporary pass, a temporary reprieve from the solitary confinement — only — the person I was then allowed to be in the presence of was MOTHER!  Not other children, not my siblings — my mother who was my abuser.

In a prisoner of war situation the work became the reward.  The only one.

I cannot begin to disentangle my present reality from the deep pervasive patterns that formed me if I cannot gain some clarity about the things that happened to me — and then how they affect me. 

It dawns on me that some of this is about “culture.”  I was raised within the culture of my having been the sole chosen target of horrendous abuse as the evil devil’s child all-bad projection of mad mother.  I escaped her with my mind intact.  I am lucky for that.  But all is not well in every area of who I am or of how I am in the world — how could it be?

A sense of impending doom is my perpetual “balance point” all of the time.  I knew very little during my first 18 years other than disaster — and that disaster came most of the time at me out of absolutely nowhere.  Because Mother was psychotically mentally ill, I could not predict, plan for, predict, control for — attacks.  That sense of threat and danger is with me always.

Work, then, as the reward — is my chance of sidestepping that reality for some periods of time.  When I was working Mother’s rage was diminished, although I still had no way of knowing when she would be displeased and attack me again even when I was trying my hardest to please her by doing things perfectly, doing things right.

I wish I could say none of this matters to me anymore.  It doesn’t matter so much if I am doing something that might be remotely productive, i.e. work of some kind.  Of course I live alone with everyone I love a long, long ways away from me.  It’s not like I am going to have genuine reprieve as they walk into my home or I walk into theirs.  I am on my own with “this.” 

Severe trauma made me “unfit” and unwell.  It gave me serious limitations that fortunately I did not truly understand were present until after I went through cancer treatment five years ago.  I also did not have to face how I feel now as long as I had dependent children in my care.  As a mother I was ALWAYS being productive!  I was raising human beings.

That phase of my life is past, and even if I did live in close proximity to my little grandsons I do not have the stamina or inner resources any longer to care for them in the ways I could fortunately do when I was younger with my own children.

I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, and because I have a firm agreement with myself to leave the book writing alone until May 3rd I am facing many of these feelings, thoughts and concerns.  Just as I refuse to go out and snag someone to engage in relationship with — because I know that would be a disaster — I am not at this moment going to grab my book writing and dive in any sooner than I have agreed with myself to do. 

Agreements are agreements.  I guess I don’t have anyone else around here to make any agreements with – so I make them with myself – and then I honor them.

I figure I am going to learn something useful by honoring this break time I have chosen to give myself.  I have lots of yard work, housework, etc. that I can do.  My depression makes doing that work difficult for me because none of it seems to matter.  None of it makes any difference.  There is nobody (but me) to care if those things get done or not.

If I had a great therapist I would go talk with that person about these things.  As it is I do the best that I can — as nearly all severe early abuse and trauma survivors do.  I don’t like being stuck with old wheels a’turnin’.  At least I can pay attention to them — but then what?

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During these days until May 3^rd as I take a break from my book writing I am practicing care and discipline in my thoughts to leave all concerns alone in connection with that work with the exception of considerations about only one process related to how I feel:  ANGER.

I understand why it would be now as I work through writing my own story of 18 years of child abuse from my Mother for the first time I would come upon the fiery intensity of this emotion.  Although there are other reasons why I need a break right now it was my concerns about my hitting my flashpoint of anger as I worked through the last chapter I was writing that stopped me in my tracks.

I have consciously chosen many thousands of times in my adult life not to contaminate my life with anger at my mother – or at anyone else.  I understand that there is a kind of positive, constructive anger that motivates people to work toward stopping injustices, but I also feel personally that any time I experience anger I need to stop what I am doing to examine myself as honestly, closely and carefully as I can.  I do not wish to be an angry person.

I am also currently being faced with a person I dearly love declining through advancing stages of active alcoholism.  The extent of the hate, resentment and attacking anger this disease can bring with it can be unbelievable unless information about the disease itself is kept clearly in mind by all people in the life of the sufferer.  This is no different than how I view child abuse that is caused by mental illness.

In both cases the rage that can be sent out through attacks upon others is, to me, exactly like the forces of nature that bring great storms that can wreak great havoc in the lives of people.  We can protect ourselves the best we can from strong winds, earthquakes, tidal waves – but we cannot stop them.  Nor do we willingly step out to receive harm when we don’t need to.

There are tragedies in life.  There are many diseases that create tragedies.

In my book writing I am working my way in great detail through the tragedy that was my mother’s life and my life with her as her targeted all-bad child projection of her own unresolved and unrecognized hatred of herself.  As I poked around online this morning to ground my thinking in words that are related to these processes, I gave myself more information to use in my own thoughts about my own choices.

Once the blanket of denial and its fog has been removed from the awareness of severe abuse survivors it could be easy to become entranced with anger, resentment and hatred.  These can become hypnotic (reactive) sentiments that are deeply and primarily based in the body-brain most primarily as a distress/stress reponse. 

They GROW.   They CONSUME.  They DESTROY.  And they can trap any survivor and any active alcoholic in their grasp in such a way that escape appears unlikely if not impossible.

This is why I am extremely grateful that I have faith in powers so great and so kind that miracles of healing can happen and do happen.  Just being human puts us at risk for being swept away by the Tsunami of our powerful survival-based emotions.  Personally, I don’t want to be swept away in my life.  I want to make informed choices in every way that I possibly can.  And as I examine anger, my OWN anger, I will include in my awareness the complexity of what is connected to anger as it is expressed in the word study I am working through today.  I do not want to be consumed by the rabies of rage – or by any related version of this state of being.

What a fascinating interplay of words, meanings, origins, meanings of origins and interconnectedness between these concepts “trapped” within the English words intended to communicate about states of being along the road, path, way and journey of life.

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Interestingly there is nothing very helpful in definitions of anger or of rage.  The terms mean exactly what they say.  Word origins are far more illuminating to me —

Origin of ANGER

1150–1200;  Middle English  < Scandinavian;  compare Old Norse  angr  sorrow, grief, akin to Old High German  angust  ( German  Angst  fear), Latin  angor  anguish

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Origin of RAGE

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin rabia, from Latin rabies rage, madness, from rabere to be mad; akin to Sanskrit rabhas violence

First Known Use: 14th century

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Definition of HATE

1a : intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b : extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing

Origin of HATE

Middle English, from Old English hete; akin to Old High German haz hate, Greek kēdos care

First Known Use: before 12th century  (When Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary gives “before 12^th century” as the date of the first use of a word in Modern English this is the earliest date any word in our language is traced to for its entry into our language.)

Definition of HATRED

1: hate 2: prejudiced hostility or animosity

Origin of HATRED

Middle English, from hate + Old English rǣden condition — more at kindred

First Known Use: 12th century

Origin of KINDRED

Middle English, from kin + Old English rǣden condition, from rǣdan to advise, read

First Known Use: 12th century

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Definition of RESENTMENT

: a feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury

Definition of RESENT

: to feel or express annoyance or ill will at

Origin of RESENT

Middle French resentir to be emotionally sensible of, from Old French, from re– + sentir to feel, from Latin sentire — more at sense

First Known Use: 1596

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Origin of SENSE

Middle English, from Anglo-French or Latin; Anglo-French sen, sens sensation, feeling, mechanism of perception, meaning, from Latin sensus, from sentire to perceive, feel; perhaps akin to Old High German sinnan to go, strive, Old English sith journey — more at send

First Known Use: 14th century

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Origin of SEND

Middle English, from Old English sendan; akin to Old High German sendan to send, Old English sith road, journey, Old Irish sét path, way

First Known Use: before 12th century

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April 22, 2013.  This is the third spring for my Adobe Peace Garden.  Last year there were two very hard freezes after the plants put out leaves and buds.  They stayed alive but refused to bloom for the rest of the season.  This year we had fantastic high desert Arizona winter rains, and the roses appreciated the boost.  These are their first blooms of the year to be followed by full blooming after our monsoon rains come in mid-July.  THEN they will have leaves and more flowers than a person could count in one season.  Most of these roses were a Mother’s Day gift from my oldest daughter, to be enjoyed every year as they continue to grow and flourish.

Our soil down here is very poor and extremely alkaline.  Roses like sweet low Ph soil, so it takes some time to give them what they want.  Our water rates in this small town are the highest in Arizona.  I so gratefully thank my younger daughter and her husband for providing the water the extensive system of drip irrigation feeds to these plants.

All of the pathways were dug up and mixed into adobe and poured to create weed-free (and snake visible) areas that require no care but for the occasional sweeping.  This is the garden in bloom today!

This climbing rose-bush is undoubtedly one of the farthest south U.S. displays.  Behind this fence lies the double Mexican-American border fences.

This is another picture of the far south rose.  It sits beside my adobe chicken coop.  When I finish getting the gutter on the coop roof enough water should fall on the roots of this rose throughout the summer to sustain its roots long, long into the future.

This is one of my all-time garden favorites — a blue Salvia sage.  It’s glorious blue reminds me of Alaska’s Forget-me-not state flower.  It is a hardy low-water plant that will bloom continuously with a little dead-heading until late, late fall.  It will propagate from a cutting only 1/2″ long.

There are two separate bushes in here, and so far I worry about them!  I can’t tell what it is that bothers them, so far they have not taken off like I wish they had.  I have not given up on them yet!

The climber on the left has the better quality flowers with lovely scent.  It is years younger than the one on the right of the picture whose flowers last week — as it is the first to bloom in the spring — hid the green of its leaves.

This is the younger of the two yellows out front.  Hopefully I can find the perfect balance to help it reach its fullest potential in that spot.  It is one of the most exquisite in the garden.  I do not grow tea roses or rose trees — my desire is to train and trim the climbers right so that eventually they will create over-arching displays that people can walk under so it will be like breathing inside the roses as if a part of their life.

This another of the best so far in that it seems hardy and blooms thick and often.  It is considered a small climber growing only 10′ long canes.  I have not decided how I will treat it once it stretches itself out.  It sits outside the fence at the front gate.  The following is another picture of its blooms.

I wish there was a way I could find out where all the southernmost rose gardens are in America.  Often this borderline is protected within an atmosphere of animosity and fear.  This garden as it sits right on this international boundary is meant to heal and to lend blossoms toward the growing appreciation of the beauty of this world in flowers as well as in people.

This is a tough little flower island on minimal drip.

This is a long shot of the southwest side of the garden outside my back door.  The American double border fences dividing us from Mexico is visible at the south behind the garden.

I set myself up with a challenge when I planted this Mermaid climbing rose in the middle of my adobe walkways.  I discipline it!  Here it shows early blooms, and as summer progresses it greenery will flourish along with its continual blooms.  It is considered a large rose, could cover a shed or an entire fence line if left to its own preferences.  It is an “own root” rose meaning it is not hybridized upon a graft root.  It can be propagated.  After sunset the back garden soothes with the sweetest scent from this humble, sturdy and beautiful rose.

All of the roses became infested with aphids as soon as temperatures warmed.  Far too large a garden to spray with soap water, all that was needed was an aggressive spraying with pressure from the hose to knock the aphids to the ground.  They cannot climb back up!

This is a Nearly Wild, lovely tri-color blooms – just budding – very hardy.

This is another flower island on minimal drip with two native sages and petunias that both reseed and grow as perennials here.

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“When I was about twenty years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time.

“But one day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking — the first in his life.  And she told him he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with.  The boy was gone a long time.  And when he came back in, he was crying.

“He said to her, ‘Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock you can throw at me.’  All of a sudden this mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view:  that if my mother wants to hurt me, it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone.

“The mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried.  Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever:  never violence.  Because violence begins in the nursery — one can raise children into violence.”

— From a peace prize acceptance speech given by Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978

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The statistics regarding the sad plight of America’s children and youth is not really news.  We have not bettered our standing among other rich nations.  Conditions have been getting worse.

+LATEST UNICEF REPORT – AGAIN U.S.A. RANKED NEAR THE WORST AMONG WORLD’S RICHEST NATIONS

I found someone from another nation today and asked them what they thought.  What are the reasons for America paying no attention to the suffering of their children?  1,825 confirmed cases of abuse and neglect per day is not a small, insigificant number of children.  Well, I need to rephrase that.  It evidently is an insignificant number.  Too minor to pay attention to, to be bothered by.

The person I spoke with told me, well, who is surprised?  Certainly no other nations.  It’s the American personality, I was told.  ARROGANT, self-centered — I forget all the adjectives used to describe what I guess many, many other nations agree on about Americans.  None of them were positive. 

So, are we a nation with a personality disorder? 

That’s what it sounds like to me!  Take a look at some of those statistics about kids in that link up there if you haven’t already.  Sad state of affairs.  As this person told me today, nobody likes Americans and they haven’t for a long, long time.  We may like to boast and bully — but when it comes to our kids?

Take a look for yourself.

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I had a dream, a long wonderful dream last night that I was relaxing with loved ones, friends and family alike, on the shores of a brilliant turquoise sea that seemed to be along the west coast of Mexico.  I’ve never been to such a place in my life!  I could feel the healing of that place and of our time there.  So while I can’t get there from here literally, I have decided to create as much of that feeling and that state of relaxation right here — all by myself — the best that I can.

No more thoughts of book writing until the 3rd of May.  I don’t know if I will post here on the blog or not.  The point is I have been working in such a dark arena of toxic ooze all the way through the contruction of these ten current manuscripts that I am worn out.

Makes perfect sense to me!  Time to let go and let the love of the universe heal what only can be healed that way.  For now, I let go. 

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According to a Unicef report issued last week — “Child Well-Being in Rich Countries” — the United States once again ranked among the worst wealthy countries for children, coming in 26th place of 29 countries included. Only Lithuania, Latvia and Romania placed lower, and those were among the poorest countries assessed in the study.

According to data released last month by the Children’s Defense Fund, each day in America:

2 mothers die in childbirth.

4 children are killed by abuse or neglect.

5 children or teens commit suicide.

7 children or teens are killed by firearms.

67 babies die before their first birthdays.

892 babies are born at low birth weight.

914 babies are born to teen mothers.

1,208 babies are born without health insurance.

1,825 children are confirmed as abused or neglected.

2,712 babies are born into poverty.

2,857 high school students drop out.

4,475 babies are born to unmarried mothers.

That is a supremely sad list of numbers, and it’s only a small sample.

This says nothing of the violent society that we have created for our children. We have the third highest homicide rate among developed countries, according to Unicef. And according to a December Gallup poll, a third of parents fear for their children’s physical safety at school, and most believe it’s likely that a shooting like the one in Newtown, Conn., could happen in their communities.

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The Dark Side of Mildred’s Mountain series – Angel book 2 beginning with the POP!  Goes Alaska letters – chapter 37

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37.  The turquoise coat – Part four:  Once and for all

The two letters of her mother’s that Mildred responded to here were not in her collection of papers.  My guess is that she destroyed them.  Those would have been the letters Mildred set her mother up to write so that her daughter could respond back to her in exactly the way that she did here.  Minion Grandmother, kept as no more than a pet to Mildred, could exist as a 3,400-miles-away outsider to our family just so long as she kept her mouth forever shut and pointed no fingers at possible maternal flaws in her daughter most centrally regarding Mother’s treatment of me.

Very, very little indication of Mother’s abuse toward me or even of her great rage appeared in her letters.  All-good Mildred wrote about her all-good world with me remaining invisible in her all-bad hell.  No need to speak of THAT – unless Mother had a psychosis-serving purpose for doing so. 

That she so specifically detailed her feelings about my clothing in her letters was an invitation to her mother to arrive at her own slaughter, or at least at her own castration.  Grandmother took the bait, which is what Mildred’s illness planned all along exactly so she could write these letters and put her mother in her place.  These are some of the phrases that appear throughout the following letters.

“Also please let’s straighten out matter of Linda once and for all.”

“You’ve always interfered with Linda and probably more reason I’ve had difficulties with her in past than her wearing Levis in Glendora.”

“Sorry if this hurts but next summer I don’t want fusses such as in past over your well-meant but unwanted suggestions.”

“You’ve always been far overly concerned with LINDA’S actions anyways.”

“It takes far more anyways than ‘a pretty dress and a pretty face’ to be nice.  She does wear pretty dresses to school and looks like a Princess in her beautiful jacket (when it’s clean!!)  I no longer wish to discuss it with you and I will appreciate no further comments and psychological theories from you!”

“We feed, clothe and love our children and we will discipline them and reward them as WE see fit now and in the future!!!!!  They are our responsibility – we brought them into the world – they’re NOT your children ‘only your grandchildren’.  PERIOD.”

“I want to bring them up the way WE see fit – it’s one reason we wanted to come up here….  In order to bring up our children in our own way – as we see fit!!!”

“You’re their grandma – their only one now – and they need grandmotherly love and we need love too.”

How did Mother define love?  Grandmother followed the only choice she knew how to.  Her lips became sealed after these letters.  There could have been no greater love shown to me by anyone than for someone to have confronted the truth and have gotten me out of that home forever.

In the end, and by the time this correspondence was completed, Mother had won the war.  Her mother was the only “grandma” in our life because Mildred had disowned her husband’s family through her hatred and made sure he disowned his family, as well.  Although in the final of these letters Mother implicates money as her concern, nothing about that was true.  As will become obvious throughout later letters loan after loan from her mother financed Mildred’s homesteading obsession.

I don’t feel sorry for Grandmother.  She helped to destroy her own daughter.  In the meantime, however, in the thickening ooze of their adult relationship my grandmother was the only hope I had ever had for an ally or a rescuer.  I would have added my grade school teachers before I read what they said about me even on the backs of my report cards that were saved among Mildred’s papers.

Like some brave but errant Ponty Python knight about to have his appendages whacked off at the bridge Grandmother marched right into her daughter’s trap to have her power to hold her own in any way against my mother regarding me completely destroyed.   By the time Mildred finished writing these letters Grandmother’s influence over her grandchildren was dead.  This was ultimately what Mildred’s move to Alaska was designed to accomplish.

Here it comes Grandma, with both barrels.  By the time Mildred completed these letters the isolation of our family was nearly complete.  All Mother had left to do was move us up the side of a remote mountain out of reach of anyone.

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November 20, 1957 Wednesday

Dear Mother,

Received No. I and No. II letters today – no real need to number them, as I’m certain I receive all of your letters!!  Thanks so much for the very generous check and of course I could use it but then I could really spend a million if I had it!!  But it’s far too generous and I cannot and will not accept such a large amount so I am mailing it back.  The thought was sweet but we’re all trying far too hard to get caught up to be so overly-generous!  Please understand and $10.00 would be marvelous!  (Anyways I’m 32 in December!)

We’re really trying so hard to get caught up and will have a tight two years in doing so but can’t see accepting $31.00 for Birthday – just can’t.  Why we won’t spend more than $50 on Xmas for children and Bill and Me!!!

Also please let’s straighten out matter of Linda once and for all.

No. I.  I did not write to you for advice!!!

No. II. Linda has always been dressed feminine and given as many (if not more) advantages as any girl!!

No. III. I did buy her more clothes this year and a prettier and more expensive jacket on purpose to make her feel feminine – with NO AVAIL!!  She still wears dresses to school and always does look nice! – When she leaves home! 

No. IV. She looked nice up until two because she was in a play pen and stroller!!  – So does Sharon NOW!

ENOUGH SAID except please don’t pass on unwanted unneeded advise air mail please, concerning children – I only mentioned it to let you know that she is not taking care of her clothes and I feel should not wear expensive clothes until she takes care of what she now wears!!  For no other reason.

Linda always was kept nice and still is.  Her hair has always been clean and shining (no child of mine will ever have a permanent in first grade!) and her nails have always been manicured.  I have three girls and you had one – I think I am capable of caring for girls – thank you!  If you want to give advice and must why don’t you give it to Carolyn [Mildred’s sister-in-law], seems Sandra needs it.  Linda looks feminine and always will just hasn’t matured fully but in time I’m sure she will – and never could or would be like Mimi, Diana or boyish girl you mentioned (but Sandra may – dancing lessons or not).  Probably dieting and less fussy, expensive clothes would do Sandra more good than dancing lessons at four!!  See I have my ideas too only the difference is I keep my suggestions to myself unless asked for and usually then too as most people don’t relish advice asked for or not asked for (your clients excepted!!).

WHEW – well that’s off my chest.  You’ve always interfered with Linda and probably more reason I’ve had difficulties with her in past than her wearing Levis in Glendora.

Sorry if this hurts but next summer I don’t want fusses such as in past over your well-meant but unwanted suggestions.

Remember I’ll be 32 in December – not 2!  [all written very large on paper]

Love, Mildred

P.S.  I.  When my temperature simmers down in a few days I’ll write a letter.

P.S. II.  Weather is warm and rainy here, thanks!

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November 26, 1957 Tuesday

Dear Mother,

Bill brought home ‘the letter’ last night that you addressed wrong – isn’t it funny how you can do something like that.  I did it many times last summer.

I am glad I wrote my recent letter and hope you fully understand so I won’t have to repeat myself in the future.  You’ve always been far overly concerned with LINDA’S actions anyways.  I am not nearly as concerned with ‘Tom Boyishness’ which is not as prevalent now anyways as with poor behavior in school and traits and personality.  It takes far more anyways than ‘a pretty dress and a pretty face’ to be nice.  She does wear pretty dresses to school and looks like a Princess in her beautiful jacket (when it’s clean!!)  I no longer wish to discuss it with you and I will appreciate no further comments and psychological theories from you!  Save them for the Cahill’s – I’m sure they’ll welcome them – I never have and I especially don’t now.

We feed, clothe and love our children and we will discipline them and reward them as WE see fit now and in the future!!!!!  They are our responsibility – we brought them into the world – they’re NOT your children ‘only your grandchildren’.  PERIOD.

* * * * * * * * * * [Mildred put these stars in her letter – notice how easily and thoroughly she dropped the subject having assured her complete power of control over me.]

The weather has turned cold here but we like it.  The temperature has gone down to 18° nights and 20° and 22° days.  There’s no snow on the ground – although weather report predicts it today.  But it looks as if it’s snowed as the ground has a thick white coat of frost which remains all day now and the trees are also heavy with frost.  The creek is partially frozen and has widened considerably.  Parts of the surface are ice but the water still runs swift beneath and around the ice.  In places there are big chunks of ice and icicles hand around edges and from trees where water has splashed.  It’s fun to watch the changes – it looks more like a pond now, in places and although rough in spots will be good place for children to learn to ice skate when frozen solid!

We haven’t gone out lately – not since last Saturday.  Second concert is this Friday so we’ll plan to go to that.  Oh, yes – we did take the children into Anchorage Saturday to see “Perry” Disney’s production about wild life in forest.  The scenery was identical to woods and creek near here and we enjoyed that plus music plus pictures of change of seasons BUT I squirmed and so did John at pictures showing animals chasing, hunting and devouring one another.  The poor frightened, frenzied animals still haunt me.  Sharon woke up at least four times during the night crying – I think she had bad dreams after it – she’s so sensitive.  She never ordinarily awakens during the night.

This Saturday Santa comes to town and there’ll be a parade – I hope we can go.  We’ve told Cindy about SANTA this year.  Our Xmas is going to be zero this year – except for tree, dinner and 10¢ gifts and some clothing SO – thought I’d better explain.  The thoroughly understands and feels big knowing.  Anyways her questions were getting too involved.

The days pass fast – almost too fast – there’s so much to be done each and every day.  The girls play very well together and Sharon says anything and everything.  She’s cooperative, good and plays like a four year old – they have fun!  Cindy likes being a big sister and is patient and good and also a Big help to me.  She picks up her room, wipes dishes etc.  I’ll be lost when she does go to school.

John and Linda are doing perfect in reading etc. – they work hard in school and their hours are long but they’re learning a lot!!  They watch TV at 5:00, at 6:00 we have dinner, any reviewing, a story – it’s usually 8:00 by the time they get to bed – although it should be 7:00.

The days are so busy!  My sewing got me behind.  Yesterday I washed windows and cleaned walls in living room, washed curtains and rehung them.  I have lots of ironing to do today and am writing this with my wet shampooed hair wrapped in a towel and better get to work!  And also get my hair dried before I catch cold.

Before I close I must remember to tell you that big hat arrived and one smaller one.  We opened them – of course didn’t unwrap Xmas packages but guess the smaller ones were books you mentioned and large one contained two quilts.  (1) John’s quilt (beautiful!) and pillow THANKS – I only hope he’ll take care of it!  And he needs a good pillow and (2) Sharon’s quilt and pillow (Mom may I return girls’ pillows to you).  Remember I made those tiny pillows and just finished more pillowcases and embroidered on them.  They’re very attached to them and those are too big for now.  I could use rompers etc. so badly needed instead OK?

You did say you were sending four quilts and see only two came.  Will others be in another box or what?  We were worried but maybe put on another boat or something.  Certainly everything got here SOON ENOUGH!!

Let me know about pillows please or can we return them here – I think we should mail them to you direct.  They’re beautiful but just can’t use them now!  And need other things SO BADLY!

This is my last piece of paper.  I’ll form a few articles and have them reading in case he wants them.  OK?  Love, Mildred

P.S.  I hope I never have to mention again about children.  I don’t want to feel I can’t tell you about children or say something without a barrage of letters of advice following.

So once and for all:

We want no financial assistance in any way from now on.  [What a joke.  As future letters describe, Mildred and Bill continually benefited from Bea’s financial support.]

Only birthday and Xmas etc. gifts and those inexpensive and no more spent on our children please by you than we can spend on them!  I don’t want Grandma giving them expensive gifts – love and thought count just as much.

We’re tight financially now and will be for two years but even if I were a millionaire I want children to learn the value of money and saving and spending own allowance etc. – also to be considerate, polite and thoughtful.  I want to bring them up the way WE see fit – it’s one reason we wanted to come up here. 

* In order to bring up our children in our own way – as we see fit!!!

I don’t want them to be materialistic or have false standards – I think it will be far more possible here than in southern California.

We intend to scrimp and save and don’t want you (please) influencing them in any way!  [What a confused sentence along with whatever the thoughts were that made it.]

You’re their grandma – their only one now – and they need grandmotherly love and we need love too.

Use your well-earned money on yourself.  Take trips, buy pretty clothes for you.  Do things! – Go places!

From now on let’s limit your Birthday gifts to children to $10.00 or under and Xmas $5.00 apiece.  NO MORE!!

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An aftermath comment from Mother to Grandmother appears in the next chapter in a letter dated December 6, 1957:

Your letter arrived last night.  So sorry you’re “low” – please don’t be.  I should be able to mention one thing (as a Mother myself) without your getting like that.  I’ve never criticized YOU as a Mother and I’m not now – you’re wonderful!!  It’s only that I don’t want a lot of advice on the children – no more, no less.  I have to rely on my own judgment in bringing up the children.

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35.  The turquoise coat – Part three:  Darker than night

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Commentary

April 18, 2013.  This is the 62^nd time in my life I have lived through a date of the 18^th of April.  I am surrounded by the blooming beauty of the many roses and other perennials in my high desert Arizona garden as the morning light pushes away the shadows left by the last nightfall.  Although I sit outside writing wearing my knitted winter hat and long black down coat I know by the time night shadows are gone I will be warmed again by that magnificent orb we call the sun.

I think about many things including the dreams I had last night about two of my brothers and the bush of pink roses whose blush has never been matched by anything I have seen in my waking life.  I think about the many disadvantages I have because I was given so few opportunities as a child to learn to be a social being among others of my species.  Flowers in my garden take care of themselves as long as I make sure their roots don’t dry out, as long as I trim off old growth and shape them when needed.

People, on the other hand, seem to need perpetual care and mostly I don’t understand what they are asking for.  I think of a chapter I read several years ago, Responding to need in intimate relationships: Normative processes and individual differences, whose lead author was Nancy Collins (Department of Psychology, University of California in Santa Barbara).  (See note below.)  I found information about human relationships in this writing that I needed to know. 

Because we are members of a social species we have built within our body a sophisticated collection of interrelated physiological systems that are all geared toward modulating our attachment to life that includes other people.  Of course, as the Teicher article I mentioned in my previous chapter makes clear, abuse and early relationship trauma changes how our physiology develops so that these systems then operate differently from ordinary.

An ordinarily-built attachment system is designed to turn itself off and on.  Those of us with early relationship trauma have built into our body what can be simply termed an insecure attachment disorder.  One of the consequences of having been built this way is that our on/off switch becomes essentially broken.

In Collin’s description our body also grows within it an interactive caregiving system that is also based upon physiological abilities in our body that come into play ONNLY when the operation of our own attachment system is turned off.  People whose physiological development was changed through chronic exposure to early relationship trauma and deprivations can have an attachment system that never turns itself off.  Those people therefore experience detriments in their ability to genuinely and appropriately “give care” to others.

How all of these systems work together to balance our ability to have our own needs met “good enough” so that our attachment system CAN and periodically DOES turn itself off so our capacities to caregive to someone else is very complex.  Understanding what these systems are supposed to accomplish is part of what we need to know before we can accurately figure out how to make positive changes.  As long as we blindly allow ourselves to follow along the attachment-caregiver routes our physiology dictates for us we lack the capacity to consciously modulate how we are interacting in our relationships.

People who were given the opportunity to grow the best possible body-brain in a resource-adequate predominately safe and secure early attachment relationship environment can trust that the operation of these two main systems is working “good enough” to give them opportunity to both take and give in their relationships in a balanced and healthy way.  Those of us raised in early environments scarce with resources and deprived of safe and secure attachments will spend most of our lives struggling in ways that safe and securely attached people never will.

For us the shadows of nightfall are never fully chased away by a new day’s sunshine.  I could even say that we are walking stress response systems that never had a chance to build the physiological ability to experience the counterbalance state of peaceful calm into our body.  We can easily be in a chronic state of unmet need which means our attachment system cannot turn itself off.

I would suggest that for any “psychological” or “psychiatric” or even sociological approach to be effective (or even rational) it must set its beginning point of thought at the beginning point of human life.  Recent advances in technology now take the guesswork out of what truly makes us the same and what makes us different in terms of how our physiology is forced to accommodate itself to a life of woe versus a life of ease.  The essential changes that happen through adaptation to stressful trauma during the first 33 months of life (conception to age two) determine the trajectory of any individual who experiences them.  NOBODY, for example, can be spared degrees of debilitating change to their physiological development during those first 33 months of life if chronic stress-related biochemical reaches toxic levels in their body-brain.  On the other hand, being spared the flooding of these toxic hormones would benefit anyone.

Taken to extremes it is specifically the difference between the levels of toxic stress (distress) that infants are exposed to through the presence or absence of trauma in their earliest attachment relationships with their caregivers that creates the physiological body-brain that is designed for a lifetime of either plenty or of scarcity.  Degrees of change directly affect all social-emotional interactions a person has with self and with others for the rest of their lives.  The operation of and the balance between their attachment need and their caregiver systems will be impacted.

Rather than getting lost in an abyss of confusion about what I am attempting to describe I will ground my writing in the life experience of my mother whose attachment system had been formed in an early environment of such stressful trauma that only in the strangest ways in the rarest of circumstances could it ever be turned off for even the briefest periods of time.  Mother, as I study what patterns I can see of her life, more than ran on empty.  She ran on a perpetual vacuum that meant not only could she not caregive, but she sucked the life out of anyone she was around if they could not stop her from doing so.  Certainly Mildred’s dependent children had no capacity to protect themselves from her appetites of need except as they were able to preserve the inner integrity of their own mind.

I doubt there is any greater potential for child abuse than that which exists in a mother who is left alone with her children to suck their experience of childhood out of them by creating such an environment of continual trauma that any safe and secure attachments are prevented from forming.

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Life is in me and life surrounds me.  Life itself is a “one thing.”  It is tenacious in all of its variety of expression in form.  Life has a voracious, insatiable appetite essentially for one thing:  More life.

As I sat perched alone that night on the metal kitchen stool I had what all life yearns for.  I was alive.  I was carried through that night by the same processes that carried me in their current all the way through my life with mother.  I had my life.  I had the greatest powers on my side in existence.  Life itself carried me forward in its grip and it did not let go of me.

That level of attachment cannot be questioned, but it was not an attachment to humans on any but the most basic level of my having received what I needed to sustain my body that my parents “took care” of me.  Mother fed off of me as her (psycho-projected) all-bad child because the cord of her connection to being alive was contorted and twisted.  In very real and profoundly disturbed ways Mother robbed enough from me to stay alive herself and to have enough to give to her other “adored” children to sustain them.

She left me alone in the darkness on that stool all night because she needed to.  How she turned my suffering into cheerfulness to give to her other children is a mystery of psychotic Borderline Personality Disorder that needs to be solved.  Mother’s broken attachment system required that her needs be met through reverse-caregiving me. 

That is exactly, in my thinking, what all adult abuse of children is meant to accomplish:  Take away from a child everything but its very life to get what’s needed to take care of the unmet needs of self.  Additionally in Mother’s case she also took from me enough to minimally take care of her other “adored” children.  What is left over when these patterns are in operation is the great suffering of one that achieves some form of benefit for others.

These are excessively primitive, evolutionarily altered patterns of survival.  It was never Mother’s direct intention to kill me.  I was, so to speak, the perpetual fountain of her “youth” (life).  Her madness needed me alive.  It did not need me happy.

I do not believe any other species has the ability to create and sustain such a distortion of natural systems’ operation.  Because of our innate complexity humans have more to give, more to get and more to spare than other creatures do.  Mental, psychological, emotional and even spiritual abuse happens to children because it can.  Children are alive in each of these areas.  They have within them mines of resources that a deranged needy abuser will simply go after – because they need to and because they can.  (Society lets them.)

It is only to the extent that an infant or child who is under such attack can sustain itself and continue to replenish its inner resources that it will survive.  Without access to protective factors nobody can remain alive.  Certainly not young infants and children.

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I hung onto life because life hung onto me.  I was not uprooted.  Yet seldom in my life have I ever been able to experience true rest.  Perhaps such survivors as I am were forced to stretch a tap root so deeply into ongoing life itself that our continued existence was guaranteed simply because we were able to do so.

But on this my 62^nd experience of the 18^th of April I consider a body of information provided by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) through their Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study research.  This research has shown clearly that the more of these ACEs a person experienced the more likely it will be that they will suffer from difficulties throughout their lifespan that those with a low ACE count will not.  Long-term (longitudinal) research that attempted to follow high ACE count survivors became difficult to pursue because these survivors die on the average of twenty years earlier than low ACE people do.  (Again, basic information on this research and its findings can be found through using “CDC ACE study pyramid” in an online search.)

As a high ACE count survivor who has already survived advanced aggressive breast cancer I do not take for granted that I will have dozens more of these dates to account for.   Between this April 18^th and the next one I am committed to completing the writing of what parts of my story I feel have something useful to offer to others.  I realized this morning that hope itself can so fade into the background as a motivating force that it can seem to vanish altogether.  It is no longer hope that keeps me writing.  It is the extent of my caring.

I realize today that hope is connected to an attachment need that seeks fulfillment.  Caring comes from the quieting of attachment needs that allows for that system to turn itself off.  In all but the most pathological cases when the human attachment system has turned itself off the caregiving system is activated.  This happens when there is an excess of resources one can then release and give away.

The fact that we know there are over three million infants and children suffering abuse in our American nation each year, with millions more suffering under conditions of deprivation, tells me that on the whole there must not be enough Americans living here who have the ability to turn their own attachment system off so that they can begin to take care of these suffering millions of our nation’s offspring.  Perhaps the reason we have not yet stopped their suffering is because we are still too needy as adults to do so.  I have a small suggestion that might be of some assistance.

The more we educate ourselves about the lifelong benefits given to those whose bodies were formed in a safe and secure attachment relationship environment the more we will identify the riches those people have always had in comparison to others who experienced an early life under the opposite conditions.  With this recognition can come the realization that where it matters most there is probably not enough need present in a safe and securely attached person’s life to prevent them from NOT letting their attachment system turn itself off so that their caregiving system can turn itself all the way on.

A drizzle of caregiving done by only a few people will not accomplish what needs to be done to improve the life of the suffering millions of abused and deprived infants and children alive in our nation.  A recognition of the privilege that safe and securely attached people have always known might stimulate an increase in their personal experience of caring – and I mean as in GIVING a meaningful DAMN – about suffering caused to other people’s children.

If caring does not follow into actions of meaningful caregiving it is not really caring at all any more than an empty promise is a promise.

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Note:  Collins, N. L., Ford, M. B., Guichard, A. C., & Feeney, B. C. (2006). Responding to need in intimate relationships: Normative processes and individual differences. In M. Mikulincer & G. Goodman (Eds.), Dynamics of romantic love: Attachment, caregiving, and sex. New York: Guilford.  (pages 149-189)

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The first part of this chapter is in the previous post

+The turquoise coat – Part three: Darker than night (dark side, book 2, chapter 35)

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