+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This link is to a letter my mother wrote to ‘people’ who she believed were denying the fact that we were living on the homestead for our required period of time to receive title to the land in December 1959:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Found 091109
[enclosed old piece of paper with April 22, 1959 homesteading letter mother had written to her mother, and that grandmother had returned to my mother. The writing of this story on this paper is in my grandmother’s handwriting.]
Grandmother’s note on the bottom of the page says:
“Dictated by Mildred Cahill Lloyd when about 8 years old”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Laughing Brook
Once there was a beautiful, gurgling Brook. Its name was “Laughing Brook.” The animals in the nearby woods gave its name to it because the wind came and wrinkled it up and made it murmur, and gurgle, and smile all the way down the hillside.
The animals came to drink at this brook, never knowing it was a fairy brook. Some animals were good and some were bad. Those that were bad turned into snakes after drinking the water from the brook, but those that were good stayed as they were, beautiful and kind to each other.
There was one good fairy that lived in the Black Forest where this Laughing Brook flowed by. That fairy had a firefly that lived with her near a waterfall. The fireflies lit up her way as they flew about the country.
There was a lovely meadow near the brook where daisies and buttercups and clover grew. In the meadow there was a big red barn where the farmer kept his cows and hens and pigs and horses.
One night as the fireflies were flying around with the fairies watching over the good people they saw a fire in the hay in the barn. At once the [written they] fireflies and fairies flew in the window of the farmer’s bedroom and flash their lights so brightly and after that the farmer and his wife woke up, saw the fire from their window, and rushed out in time to save all the animals and most of the barn.
Ever after that the farmer and his wife watched every night to see the fireflies at work and play.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Although I cannot at present access this article, in light of my mother’s childhood writings I find the following to be a fascinating concept, as reflected in this article:
The following seems to be all that is available as an abstract for this article, found in Questia, Vol. 17, 1994.
How, but in custom and ceremony, are innocence and beauty born?
— W. B. Yeats
The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast certain prevalent contemporary pathological symptoms — parasuicide (especially impulsive “self cutting” or wrist cutting and other forms of self-mutilation), anorexia/bulimia, substance abuse, and a predisposition to frequent transient psychotic episodes, all of which, as a constellation, combination, or in some cases individually, are identified by clinicians as presumptive signs of “borderline personality disorder” (BPD) — with those same behaviors in tribal societies. The focus is anthropological and cross-cultural; it is a study of rites of passage, many of which involve food deprivations (fasting and purgations), body mutilations (circumcision, scarification), accompanied by episodes of altered or nonordinary states of consciousness (visions, loss of boundaries). It is argued that there is a relationship between BPD and the failure of Western culture to provide context and myth for meaningful rites of passage. The typical symptoms of borderline disorder have neither an appropriate cultural channel nor symbol system to provide direction and consequently are not fully appreciated by clinicians. However, these “symptoms” may actually be attempts at self-healing gone astray in a culture bereft of an integrative spiritual and ritualistic context, and therefore without an education for transcendent states of consciousness.
Cultural Bound Syndromes (CBSs)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Peters’ writing seems connected to a field of study called ‘The Anthropology of Consciousness.’ The work of Dr. Larry G. Peters, a Tibetan Shaman, presents the most accurate link I have yet found between my mother’s Alaskan homesteading obsession, her spirituality, and her mental illness.
A child has a different consciousness than an adult does. I have always been able to sense my mother’s childhood consciousness within her childhood writings: +MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD STORIES.
Having tonight discovered this additional piece of her childhood writing confirms for me that her mind, even by the age of 8, was already grappling on a profound – though unconscious – creative level with archetypal issues related to death and destruction, salvation, punishment and consequence, transformations, relationships with the natural world, and with the fundamental issues related to GOOD and BAD, RIGHT and WRONG that connect to the Borderline Personality Disorder spectrum of symptoms.
I absolutely believe that my mother had child onset pre-borderline conditions that are reflected in her childhood writings – if anybody then could, or even anybody now can make those connections. I know a lot about my mother. I was the victim of her insane severe abuse for 18 very long years.
My mother’s inner mental structure was built from very early childhood and probably from her earliest infancy upon a BROKEN understanding of good versus bad. Whatever psychotic break occurred during her delivery of me was enough to toss her completely over the edge.
I was not saved from the fire as her child. She used the term ‘snake’ in reference to me. She believed I was not human, that I was the devil’s child. I was the outward personification of everything BAD she could not accept about herself. The OTHER mother, the OTHER Mildred desired to live with the fairies and the fireflies.
I believe the homestead became the outward objectification of the good world her “Laughing Brook” existed in, and the act of homesteading itself became a perpetual rite of passage for my mother as she sought what could not ‘follow her around the bend’. Homesteading was about her need for healing. Even her abuse of me was about her need for healing (because if she could ‘deal’ with me her own projected badness would be healed).
The most amazing thing is that Alaska DOES have the power to heal. It even now remains mostly pure and that natural purity is what raised-up humans throughout our evolution, and it does have the power to heal. In my mother’s case, however, it was not enough. (Read PRESENTING THE HOMESTEADING – her letters.)
The rites of passage that Peters makes reference to occur within a healthy brain, mind and psyche. The sick psyche of my mother’s could not have been saved past the age of 8 no matter what culture she had been a part of. My mother was born an extremely fragile, at-risk child. The conditions within her childhood environment from birth might have been adequate to a less sensitive and vulnerable child. I believe that the conditions of my mother’s childhood conspired to destroy my mother. She, in turn, very nearly destroyed me.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This work that I am doing with my mother’s letters does seem to be about retrieving a life of suffering from the ‘lost and found’ — both hers and mine.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mother’s letter to Grandmother May 23, 1959 about the homestead:
“I told Bill I hope to live to be 90 and never leave here. (I want to be buried here!) I told him I even yearn to be a child again and live here – such a kingdom….”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I would think that in their own way everyone in our great nation recognizes today as the 8th anniversary of one of the most terrible crisis that ever occurred within the boundaries of our country. Our hearts continue to go out to all those who suffered terror and unimaginable trauma as a result of the destruction brought upon them by the acts of terrorists whose own agendas allowed them to kill and destroy wantonly. At the same time we remember each person and their loved ones whose lives have been touched in the aftermath of war, destruction and bloodshed that has followed 9-11 and the World Trade Center attacks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The most devastating consequences of trauma to humans can never be measured in financial terms. Neither do we yet know the true reality of the way humans respond to extraordinary traumatic stressors. Continued research into the ongoing, intergenerational consequence of the Holocaust’s traumatic effects shows that trauma can be CLEARLY passed down to offspring.
Researchers will be working to uncover the long range consequences of trauma caused by 9-11 for a long time to come. They know that babies of women pregnant during the 9-11 terrorist attacks have been found to be born with the ‘markers’ for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of their mother’s exposure to the attacks.
We are learning more and more both about how resilient humans are and about our fragility. Every-day people do not usually pay attention to the results of millions and millions of dollars spent on research about the consequences of trauma to humans, and yet this research can inform our thinking in new and more enlightened ways.
The Atlanta study looked at genetic potential as it interacts with children’s responses to trauma. It found, among other things, that a child’s safe and secure attachment to ANY adult in its life influences to the positive that child’s ability to overcome traumatic experiences. In another corner of the world researchers have discovered the same thing. Although exposed equally to unimaginable terrors and traumas, the children of South Africa end up with severe longterm traumatic responses while the children of Kenya do not.
The more damaged South African children live in a country long torn apart, in fact all but dismantled by generations of influences that have destroyed the secure social attachment fabric of their culture. Kenya has not suffered this intergenerational destruction of its ongoing cultural strengths so that their children have the benefit – in spite of current terrible traumas and tragedies – of being ‘held’ within a culture that still has its social supports and secure attachment systems somewhat in place.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We cannot realistically consider the long range consequences of traumatic experience without considering the attachment contexts that form and support (or don’t) the members of any human society. These attachments begin before birth, as the responses of infants still very much physiologically attached to their mothers during 9-11 demonstrated.
Children are held and supported by the fabric of the attachment support net that their parents either do or do not have in their lives. Without firmly safe and secure human attachments from the beginning of our lives, we are at astronomically increased risk of suffering long term devastation in our adult lives from any traumatic experience that we might later have. It is time that all of us realize that attachment is the single most important aspect of our lives because we are a social species.
What this means to me is that all of us, including and perhaps most importantly any mental health expert that works with troubled people of all ages, must begin to include attachment disorder understanding, concepts and vocabulary into our cultural base of knowledge about what makes our lives ‘good’ and what makes them ‘bad’. I doubt that more than a small handful of mental health experts EVER talk with their adult clients about insecure attachment disorders.
We reserve any discussion or awareness of secure and insecure attachment disorders ONLY as it might relate to ‘troubled’ children. Where do we think child attachment disorders disappear to once someone magically crosses some invisible line into adulthood? They go nowhere. Our attachment orders or disorders are as much ingrained into us as any other physiological response system our brain, body, nervous and immune system has.
We HAVE to begin talking about our attachment system as it operates in our adulthood because it formed who we are and affects how we respond both to the good and to the bad in our lives – at all times! Those who might be having the most difficult time recovering from the devastating trauma of 9-11 are no exception. But has ANYONE ever talked to them about their attachment system?
I am willing to bet that any adult who was formed in an extremely malevolent childhood environment and who did not have the benefit of having a safe and secure adult attachment person in their childhood life, is among those who lack the necessary resiliency to recuperate fully from any traumas that they experience. We are doing nobody any favors by ignoring the absolute, fundamental reality of how our secure or insecure attachment system governs our ability to cope with trauma.
I therefore encourage readers to spend some time investigating some of the information connected to the live-links provided in this post. You might help yourself beyond belief, or be able to assist someone you know in their efforts to deal with any ongoing traumatic consequences in their lives – including their ability to parent effectively.
Trauma is not bliss, and neither is ignorance. It is the response-ability of all of us to arm ourselves with any and all information that can help us understand what we can better do to improve secure attachments in the world – no matter who we are, what age we are, or what we have experienced.
Thank you for reading this post. Comments are welcome and appreciated.
+ATTACHMENT: SMART AND STUPID RESEARCH
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++
I wanted to share something from a book I’m reading, The Body Language of Horses by Tom Ledbetter, Bonnie Ainslie. My brother gave it to me while I was visiting him in Alaska.
I’ve never really had the longed for luxury of being able to spend time with horses. I’ve always been too poor, too involved in keeping my children clothed and fed with a roof over our heads.
I find as I read this book that I feel like the authors are talking about me. How can that be? I am not a horse, yet I am like them. Because of the extreme abuse I suffered from the time I was little, and because of the overall and overriding insanity present in the home I grew up in, I did not grow up to be an ordinary person.
I have tried to fit in. I’ve tried to learn the ‘human language’ that others speak not most importantly with their words, but with their body language and the expressions on their faces. Because my mother was psychotic, because she could not interact with me normally, I simply did not get the same brain circuitry. Not even the regions of my brain developed according to ‘ordinary’ experiences or patterns, as I have been explaining in my writings.
I can, therefore, more closely relate to what these authors are saying about horses than I can any book I ever read about people. I might understand a book about all sorts of other kinds of animals if one was written like this one is, but these authors express a rare and comprehensive understanding of how it is to be a horse. I am amazed and I am feeling calmer as I read it.
Ainslie and Ledbetter explain that every time a human overwhelms a horse with human demands and misconceptions, the horse has no choice but to act like less than what it is – less than a horse. I understand. I was not allowed to be a child. The way my mother treated me did not allow me to be a child just like some humans do not allow horses to be horses.
All the many parallels I find between horses and myself create inside of me a sense that I am so much more correct in my understanding of the changed body and brain of a severely abused child compared to how a child is SUPPOSED to have been allowed to develop that I really do feel like I am a member of nearly a completely different species than are ‘ordinary’ people.
And I know I am not alone. Therefore, as I share this single paragraph from this book (so far) I wish readers to understand that human mothers create in their offspring the kind of person their infants and children grow into. I am aware that genetics plays a part in who we become, but researchers are becoming more and more clear that severe abuse alters how genetic potential expresses itself.
Every time an infant and a young child is not given what it needs to develop into its optimal self some life long consequence to the negative is going to appear. Only in situations where the most important resiliency factor of the AVAILABILITY of some other adequate early caregiver’s interference in the harmful influence of the severely maltreating mother is there, in the end, hope that the effects of the mother’s severe abuse will not permanently and seriously alter the person her offspring turns out to be.
I encourage readers to FEEL the following words. Enlarge your perspective and imagine what these words are saying if you think about them in terms of the variances in the quality of human mothering and caregiving. In human terms mothers are not forced, for the most part, to compete with other mothers for what is needed to care for their infants and children.
And yet the end result of a human continuum of living a quality, happy and successful life is still directly connected to what our mothers (or other early caregivers) gave to us. Harm and hatred to infants DOES NOT allow them to develop into fundamentally happy people – and I don’t care how financially well-off such an offspring turns out to be. Look at their relationships as well as financial standing.
+++++++++++++++++
From The Body Language of Horses by Tom Ledbetter, Bonnie Ainslie:
“The lead mare wins dominance by physical and psychological means. She rules as long as she remains vigorous. Her powers serve twin purposes – first choice of food and space (a) for herself and (b) for her young. By natural selection, the other mares organize in declining order of priority, with the lowest and most subservient getting the last and least for herself and her foal. Unless the pasture is inhumanely crowded, everyone subsists. But the psychological effects on the foals are substantially important. As Number One in its own age group, the lead mare’s baby becomes habituated to the deference of its peers and their dams. If well bred, soundly constructed and not too severely disoriented by premature weaning, the Number One foal emerges as Number One weanling, most likely to succeed in what humanity calls the Game of Life.” (P. 64)
+++++++++++++++++
We are not used to thinking about human success, including psychological success, in these terms. We do not FIRST and FOREMOST understand that it is the health and well-being of mothers (early caregivers) that MOST affects the lifelong outcome of her offspring.
In American, in particular, we want to believe that everyone is equal, and that all can “make it” if they want to and if they work for it. We do not want to face the fact that deprivations of a serious enough nature from conception to age 2 (and then through age 7) can so set a person off course that they will never be able to completely make up the difference.
Yes, humans may be far more complicated than horses are. That means to me that we are at an even higher risk for negative consequences from malevolent mothering – not less. Once our culture truly understands this fact, they will be able to give us the chances we TRULY need to find a way to live well in spite of our malevolent childhoods.
In my thinking, we have to be very clear and very careful about how we assess who and how we are in the world made mostly by people who had the benevolent childhoods we all deserved – and some received the opposite of. Most do not become members of the ‘lower hierarchy’ because we choose to be there, any more than a horse chooses to me maltreated by a human being.
+++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Greetings to each and every person who has visited this blog during the seven weeks of absence from writing here. I am home now after more than 10,000 miles of traveling during the past seven weeks as I visited family and friends whom I love and who love me.
The time I spent in Alaska, the home of my heart, was everything I needed it to be in order for me to move forward with the writing of my book.
I will at this point be dividing my writing clearly between my book (which will not be appearing on this blog) and other assorted writing specifically for the blog. As my precious Alaskan baby brother (now 44) told me, if it is my desire and my intention to write a book, then I need to do it. He explained it to me this way:
A person might pick up tools and a block of wood intending to carve an image. Perhaps they are not quite sure what image lies within the wood so they begin carving in process until that image becomes clear and the carving can then give it form. If, however, that point never occurs where the image within the wood is found, shaped and born, all that will result from the effort of carving is a pile of wood shavings and dust.
I heard and understand the wisdom contained in my brother’s words, and I recognize that continuing to pour words out into my blog will not accomplish the creation of my book. I will now separate the words that belong in my book from those that do not.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
As I continue through the process of getting my ‘home legs’ under me, I will at least post a few interesting links here for reader consideration! Please follow some or all of these links – THEY ARE IMPORTANT! Please also join me in my gratitude to every single person who is involved with this quality of work to further our understanding about the impact of severe child abuse on human development – and the work of everyone committed to ending child maltreatment around the globe.
Please also remember the abuse being done to the fragile web of life on our glorious planet and the suffering of so many species being caused by the thoughtless harm of all kinds caused by humans.
And, for a load of Alaskan MOOSE FUN….
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Back to School Tips: Parents Should Get Ready, Too!
Posted: 27 Aug 2009 08:21 AM PDT
Tips for parents on helping their kids succeed in school, adapter from information provided by our friends at Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey.
Amid the shopping trips for sharpened #2 pencils, crisp notebooks and new shoes, parents should start thinking about what they can do to become the best possible support system for their child this school year. The beginning of the new academic season is often the most important, as it sets the tone for a meaningful and successful year. Research shows that students are more equipped to thrive academically and socially when parents are actively involved in their child’s education.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Going Big: Harlem Children’s Zone on This American Life
Posted: 18 Aug 2009 02:17 AM PDT
Hats off to This American Life for shining a spotlight on the solutions to the many problems that plague our nation’s impoverished families. Going Big, this week’s episode, profiles Geoffrey Canada, a pioneer in the fields of child and family support and poverty prevention. His organization, Harlem Children’s Zone, boasts tremendous outcomes for the families and community it serves, including:
Listen to the This American Life podcast.
Below is a five-minute video of moms talking about the challenges of raising children in Harlem and the difference HCZ is making in their lives.
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Brain Development Altered by Violence
By Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 1999; Page A3
LITTLETON, Colo.—More than a week had passed since Krystie DeHoff felt bullets and bombs explode all around her, since she ran in horror past young, dead bodies to safety. Now she was inching toward normality, shopping at King Soopers grocery, when the most innocent sound–a baby crying in his mother’s arms–set the Columbine High School massacre in motion again, this time in her mind. Her heart raced, her muscles coiled. She heard not a baby, but her classmates, shrieking. “All I could think was: MAKE HIM STOP!” she said.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
ScienceDaily (June 30, 2008) — The cognitive strategies humans use to regulate emotions can determine both neurological and physiological responses to potential rewards, a team of New York University and Rutgers University neuroscientists has discovered. The findings, reported in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, shed light on how the regulation of emotions may influence decision making.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Neural Self: The Neurobiology of Attachment
By Phil Rich, Ed.D., LICSW
It is its basis in biology that makes attachment theory unique among theories of psychology and child development. From the biological perspective, attachment is simply an evolutionarily-evolved process to ensure species survival, and is thus as much a part our biology as that of any animal.
From this perspective, cognitive schema and the resulting mental map is not merely a psychological phenomenon, but a physical entity, hard-wired into neural circuits and reflected in neurochemical and electrical activity within the central nervous system.
The mental map into which our experiences and memories are imprinted is thus a neurobiological structure, the result of synaptic processes, out of which human cognition and behavior emerges, resulting in LeDoux’s (2002) description of our “synaptic” self.
Siegel (2001) describes the pattern and clusters of synaptic firing as “somehow creat(ing) the experience of mind” (p. 69). He writes that “integration” reflects the manner in which functionally separate neural structures and processes cluster together and interact to form a functional whole – in this case, our selves.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
By Margaret Munro , Canwest News Service
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
The neurologist Paul MacLean has proposed that our skull holds not one brain, but three, each representing a distinct evolutionary stratum that has formed upon the older layer before it, like an archaeological site – he calls it the “triune brain.” MacLean, now the director of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behaviour in Poolesville, Maryland, says that three brains operate like “three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So far none of these stories are getting any easier to write, but fortunately my determination to write them more than matches any reluctance I have to do so.
Each memory that leads to each story seems to be difficult in a unique and unforeseen way. Some I can write about with more immunity that others. The one I wrote today has been the most difficult, and having done so I feel a quivering inside my gut because the story STILL scares me.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I think again about M. Scott Peck’s book, “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil” that I referred to in my story about how I abused my little son that was also directly connected to my being able to finally disown my mother. I wonder about the entire web of my childhood, even as it is presented in the words of my mother’s own writing. It was all a lie.
Nobody on the outside of our family could have possibly believed the lie– BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO! This was a fact by default. Only those of us on the inside of my family had to believe it. They had no choice. We were all forced to play our part, one way or the other.
At what point does free will and conscious choice on the part of such a distorted family members enter the picture in any meaningful way? How can that freedom even be allowed to exist in a family that depends on living the lie for its very existence and survival? Can we trust that telling the truth always means that we are on the road of healing?
I don’t know that I know the answer, but I wrote this story in spite of that fact. Did doing so in any way contribute to an increase in my freedom from the hold that my horrendous child abuse history holds over me? After all, today is the 4th of July, and we are supposed to be celebrating what it means to be free.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++
This page has just been completed and published under MY CHILDHOOD STORIES. This page contains a ‘MAY TRIGGER ABUSE MEMORIES’ tag, so please be careful, cautious and considerate of yourself if you have a personal history of sexual abuse.
In this page I also wrote about how factual memory of trauma differs from emotional memory of trauma. Our emotional memory is processed through the amygdala region of our brain and is ALWAYS stored in our body even though the factual memory might not be. (When the facts are remembered this is called an ‘explicit‘ memory. When only the emotions and body memory exist without specific facts, this is called an ‘implicit‘ memory.)
The ‘semantic, autobiographical’ factual part of our memories are processed through a different region of our brain, the hippocampus. There are times particularly in very early childhood when all memory is preverbal and can only be accessed in our body and not through fact. These memories will govern our unconscious behavior for the rest of our lives. There are also times when facts related to memory, particularly of trauma memory, is ‘forgotten’ and invisible to us — sometimes forever, sometimes until it is triggered.
It is also important to realize that the stress hormone cortisol can so heat up our hippocampal memory cells as they try to process trauma-related facts that they are fried to a cinder and the facts of a memory will never be recorded – and therefore will never be available to recall. When and if this happens — and it can happen both to victims and perpetrators-in-the-act — the emotional memory is ALWAYS stored and retained within the body.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I am trying to think of another word other than ‘renaissance’, or rebirth, to describe what I wish was happening now among those of us ordinary people who are trying to live the best lives we can without necessarily having the kind of safe and secure attachment background we needed to get along better in life.
I am thinking especially about what little information we really have about our bodies and how they operate. Sometime in our first year of life people begin to teach infants about their body — and most of us never progress much past that point! We are taught to point to our eyes, nose, mouth, ears, limbs, etc.
Eventually we learn through our public education and then through osmosis over time about the major organs of our body, and make little progress past that point unless we get sick and then learn the minimum we need to in order to understand what is happening to us. We seem to prefer to use only one syllable words to think about the only body we will ever have to live in for the rest of our lives.
Yet while we would rather leave anything more complicated than what we consider essential to the ‘experts’, at the same time I do believe our platform of information concerning our bodies is making advancements. We hear about things through the general media and that information will eventually ‘stick’ if we hear it enough and somehow we begin to understand it is important because it applies to us.
As we are doing this learning, as unintentionally as it might be, we are at the same time expanding our vocabulary. It’s no different than teaching an infant the word for their nose. We are learning to name what is going on inside of us. Yet at the same time we are learning meanings for words like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, allergies, arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer, learning disabilities, addiction, anxiety, depression, serotonin, dopamine, reward system, we less likely to learn how these kinds of ‘events’ are all connected within us to who we are within our own body.
++++
We all know we are dependent upon and would rather support a medical model that prefers to respond only to symptoms, prescribe every kind of expensive test to diagnosis illness, dish out every imaginable kind of drug to treat sickness than we are to put forth the effort ourselves to learn any more complicated information about our body than we have to.
Why is that? When and how did we learn to accept that we don’t need to learn anything more than a 5th grader could learn about how our body operates? Did someone tell us we are too dumb to learn anything more complicated? Looking backward, maybe this kind of thinking has worked for all of the generations that have gone before us.
Today there are more of us living longer than ever before in history. But taking material goods out of the equation, what is our quality of life? Particularly, what is the quality of our human attachments — our own attachment with our self included? As a social species, it matters. We have the desire to live our years better, last longer, and suffer less. Understanding how our attachment system operates, what has hurt it and what can help it can help us live a better life on every level because it operates on every single level of who we are.
Those of us who suffered from extra-ordinary trauma and abuse during our developmental stages especially need to learn the words that will let us be able to understand how that abuse changed our bodies. I see it as being no different than any healing process of disclosure. Any improvement we can make to talk about the effects our traumas had on us is empowering. Trauma changed our bodies, and we don’t even know — on the most vital and profound levels — what that means.
We need the words. We need them badly. A securely-attached-from-birth person has all that good-safe information built right into their body-brain-mind. They don’t have to think about it. They don’t even need to talk about it. They just live it.
Those of us who were so abused that we are the insecurely-attached-from-birth, however, have to learn NOW what these ‘others’ learned when they were supposed to learn it — as infants and young children. Our communication signals between our body, brain, mind and self are all scrambled up. We have to learn NOW what those ‘others’ learned from the time they were born. We cannot efficiently and effectively learn NOW what we have no words to talk about.
++++
I think at this moment how strange it seems that I, of all people, would be writing about attachment. Looking back at the strangeness, the unpredictable, escalating, irrational violence and abuse, looking back at the extreme isolation I was forced to endure through my childhood, I can’t help but say that of all the people I can imagine writing about attachment, I can be good at it because I am so bad at it.
Suffering from the long term consequences of an extremely abusive childhood can make us feel so alienated from what ‘ordinary’ people seem to now about living ‘ordinary’ lives that we might be tempted to simply throw in the towel, give up and quit. Yet as I work my way through the volumes of technical, even molecular research information about our own internal cannabinoid (‘cannabis’) (and opioid) attachment systems, I realize that by my just being alive I HAVE to know there are things about my attachment system that went right from the beginning or I most simply — would not be here.
I was attached enough to life from the beginning that I was conceived in the first place, implanted onto my mother’s uterine wall, received nourishment from her body, and made it through a difficult birth — just to GET here and to BE here. Through all the terrible traumas, through all the pain, suffering, sorrows and sadness of my childhood I was still attached enough between my inner, true self and the world to STILL be able to find, recognize, appreciate and value beauty — wherever I found it as a very small child — even in bubble shadows reflected on the bottom of a toilet bowl, even in the shimmering reflection of water on my bedroom ceiling when I was so punished for doing nothing but being alive.
I am amazed as I work on the endocannabinoid file regarding human reproduction. Perhaps because I cannot take any kind of safe and secure attachment either lightly or for granted I marvel at the very essence of the miracle of life that was each of our beginnings. How can such a perfectly ordered system like our attachment system is, be sent off into such difficult directions through insufficient if not outright malevolent circumstances of traumatic early childhood experiences?
I understand that given the requirements of staying alive — if at all possible, in the very worst of situations –that we could not make the adjustments we had to make to survive THEN and necessarily be ‘ordinary’ NOW. Yet at the same time I also understand that all of it was and is about signals of communication on the molecular and genetic level between the environment we live in and the self we live in it with.
That is the same process that happened when I was conceived, the same process that is happening in each present moment I am alive, the same process that connects every moment of my life together with me in the center of it.
++++
If I did not have a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder I doubt that I would have ever been motivated to go looking for the big multiple-syllable words that I know I now need to understand the ‘extra-ordinary’ way my body-brain-mind was forced to adapt, develop, and the way it works now. It is not by looking at all the ways I am dissociated, fragmented and disconnected that will make me feel more safe and secure in my own body in this world. It is by looking at the ways I am associated, connected and organized that helps me to know that things can never be all that bad! After all, I am a participant in some kind of miracle here! We all call that — LIFE!
++++
So maybe ‘renaissance’, or rebirth, is the word I need. Maybe as I go back all the way to my very first beginnings I can bring a new kind of understanding about my own place in my own body in my own life into my present. I find I need to know new things and I need to know new words to know these new things. I am sitting in the middle of a tragic relationship breakup, not far into a new future of cancer recovery, completely unsure of who I really am, of what I want, or of what is even possible for my future.
But maybe I do not know because I cannot know. I have to wait for the signals. The ones I need are not going to come from anywhere else other than from within my own body. On the most tiny, minute level of who I am — right where my own molecules are constantly interacting with my genetics — something interesting is ALWAYS occurring. It is that inner world that guides what happens to me as I interact with this great, big wide outer world.
I want to be amazed. I want to be more attached. Safely. Securely. Peacefully. Whatever it takes for me to get there I will try to do. This isn’t about whatever the Buddhist concept of detachment is. I have been forced to be detached from my own self in my own body all of my life. Terrible, terrifying, insane abuse put me in THAT place. I want something new and different, something I think non-abused ‘ordinary’ people can take for granted all of their lives.
I want to know, without a single shadow of any kind of doubt, that I have a right to be here and do so willingly, if not eventually happily. That was the destiny of the fertilized egg that was me in my beginnings. How could it be anything but my destiny today? I did not become lost to the path of that good journey on purpose (I had a great deal of help through a great deal of harm), and while it is taking the better part of my life to find my way back, it is not a journey I am making alone!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++
Fixing things. That seems to me to be an interesting pattern some people have when faced with another person’s life circumstances. It makes me wonder if all the fixing work has to do with someone else’s reaction to another person’s pain and discomfort. Ah, this social network we live in — one way or the other.
Fixing things. Giving all sorts of helpful advice, as if I haven’t already ‘thought about that’. It makes me wonder, because I guess I am not naturally a ‘fixer upper person’. I don’t think I naturally give advice. I don’t think I know what another person is feeling. Well, looking at it from my insecure attachment disorder and nearly complete lack of socialization opportunities when I was a child, I guess I would have to pretty much say I only know what another person might be feeling by tuning into my ‘sense’ of feeling what another person feels.
I listen, but not so much with my ears. I watch, but not so much with my eyes. This seems to be leading into a story I haven’t written yet — and I mean — yet, because it is probably one I need to write. So, here goes —–
++++
Once upon a time this really happened. I was finishing my art therapy masters degree program’s requirements for internship at an adult out-patient chemical dependency treatment center that specialized in treating people with extremely severe child abuse histories. I remember this one day clearly that I worked with a wispy woman I’ll call Nora, who seemed more to float across the carpet than walk upon it.
On this day she was silent as she entered the art therapy room for her hour and a half session. I greeted her gently. I had two 8 foot tables arranged end to end with four chairs placed evenly, one at the center of each table’s long side. I could sense her mood when she walked in the door, so after she entered I turned the light dimmer switch down to take the edge off of the room’s brightness. Then I stood quietly near the counter along one wall where the art supplies were laid out and waited for Nora to pick a chair and sit down.
Nora’s quietness led me to select the art medium for her, and I picked up a large glass of water I had ready, a pre-moistened tray of tempera paint cakes, a 2 inch paint brush, and several newsprint sized pieces of paper. I made no sound as I laid the items on the empty table beside Nora. She did not look at me or at the art supplies. I stepped off to the side, slightly behind her back, to watch what Nora chose to do next.
I did not jump in there, noisy or steer her with questions. I made no demands and no other intrusions into her ‘space’ other than to lay those art supplies within her easy reach. I watched to see if it made her uncomfortable that I was behind her. Would she turn in my direction? No. She didn’t show that she recognized I was in the room at all.
Nora picked up the paint brush, moistened it with water, and began moving her arms, free from the shoulder, from paint to paper to water to paint to paper. Her movements were slow but steady, as if her inner rhythms washed across each page without effort. Her work was silent, but she paused when a page was filled and I stepped to the table, took each finished image and quietly laid it on the floor to dry while she started another one.
++++
Nora felt to me to be very young as she painted. Very quiet, very young, so young that I wasn’t sure she could even talk yet. Nora was diagnosed with what was then called Multiple Personality Disorder. It was not my job to do anything other than facilitate her art expression. I did not need to know what was what, which was which, who was who. My job was to let her communicate with something other than words or symptoms. And that’s exactly what I did.
I watched intently as each image was created. I noticed which colors were placed where on the paper in what order. There were absolutely no definable, recognizable pictures taking form. Yet the images that she was creating began to speak to me — not to my eyes, but to my sense of smell. As Nora swished and washed each page I began to smell the unmistakably sweet flowery smell of bath powder. Before long I began to see a lavender colored round powder box with a smokey-clear lid with a yellow soft fluffy fuzzy powder puff inside it.
I had absolutely no idea where that smell and the image of that box of powder came from, but after awhile I could see it so clearly that I could nearly have reached out both of my hands and snatched it right out of the air. I needed to decide whose information this was. Nora’s? Mine? Did it have anything at all to do with what this art therapy session was all about?
I answered my own questions and knew that I next had to find a way to introduce this image to Nora that had come to me so clearly. How could I introduce words and my speaking voice into this well of silence that Nora seemed to be so comfortable in? I didn’t want to surprise her or jar her or disorient her.
I walked out in front of the table where Nora was so intently working and into her range of vision. If I had been a bird I would have flapped my wings a bit to stir up a slight breeze to catch her attention as I settled onto the chair across the table from her.
“Nora,” I began quietly as if that one word was the most important one in the world. “An image has come to me while you’ve been painting. It surprised me and I wonder if it has anything to do with what you are painting. Is it alright if I tell you what it is?”
++++
Nora agreed and as she listened to me she transformed into an entirely different mind-state person. What I sensed in that silent room was important, so important that I will never forget it. Every time I think about this it amazes me even though it happened 20 years ago.
Nora was sexually abused from a very young age by multiple perpetrators. The only safe person in her child life was her grandmother. It would make sense, then, that it would only be at this safe person’s house that Nora could finally act out her pain and her rage — one single time.
When I described the powder box and the powder puff to Nora it was as if I had passed it from my hands to hers. She went instantly to a memory of being five years old when she locked herself in her grandmother’s bathroom and began screaming and shouting and tearing that room apart. Everything thrown out of the medicine cabinet. The shower curtain ripped down, objects smashed on the floor, thrown hard against the walls and the bathroom door. All this time her grandmother was pounding on the outside of the bathroom door, yelling at Nora to open the door, to let her come in.
Other adults joined her grandmother in pounding on the door. Someone found a way to open it. The instant the door banged open and Nora looked up and met her grandmother’s eyes was the instant she was dumping the powder, puff first, into the toilet.
The look of shocked rage and betrayal on her grandmother’s face was enough to let little Nora know that she had just lost the only ally she had in the world, the only person she ever trusted or felt safe with, the person she adored, the one that never hurt her. She was sure her grandmother hated her as much now as the people did who hurt her. Zing! Zap! Crash, bash, bang! Done!
That was the end of the trusting girl Nora. She disappeared to any ongoing Nora at that instant, at that toilet, with that powder box in her hand. She reappeared at that art therapy table, in that dimly lit and peaceful room, brought back to life through an hour’s work with a paintbrush sliding across pieces of paper.
++++
Along with all the other difficulties I might experience about how my brain did not form under ordinary conditions and is not, therefore, an ordinary brain, I can appreciate this gift that I seem to have to pay a particular kind of attention to signals that are being communicated on the subtlest of levels. I was not feeling threatened in that room. It was my job to be the one providing safety, security, and an appropriate art therapy experience.
So I could have my senses open in ways that I rarely can when out in the ordinary world. Most of the time my heightened sensitivities create clash and conflict for me in that ordinary world. But on that particular day, in that particular setting, the gifts could fly — both Nora’s in being able to transmit that image-message and in mine for being able to receive it.
++++
I do believe that as severe child abuse survivors we have some amazing and particular gifts that have come to us through enduring our traumas. Yet in this ordinary world filled with mostly ordinary people, we can feel out of step in time and place, not able to modulate, moderate, or regulate how these gifts affect us — not when, where, or why.
In spite of my best intentions, and lots and lots of work to perfect my skills in my chose profession, I cannot pursue it. Over time more of the reality of what was done to me and how I was affected by that severe and long term trauma, settled into my awareness. It moved from an intellectual level into a very real emotional place connected to my body. During this process of healing, the more I realized what a risk it was for me to be working with troubled people — both for them and for myself.
I would have to be in a more perfect world to do that kind of work as employment, not in an ordinary one. My gifts were honed in trauma and do not translate into the mundane world on a regular basis. This treatment center I served this part of my internship in could not hire me anyway, because I was not a licensed addiction counselor (which required a high school education and special training and could then be billed at $90 per hour) so insurance would not cover my services. But finances, in the end, have nothing to do with the work itself.
This kind of work happens in a sacred space. If we want to talk about this kind of sacred in terms of ‘religion’ it needs to be connected to the root of that word: ‘Religio’ means to tie and bind together. What we can truly hear if we can allow ourselves to listen to one another can amaze us, and it has NOTHING to do with fixing anything or giving advice, no matter how well intentioned it might be.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++
So far, what did I learn about my falling into the abyss of sorrow yesterday? That is one of the strongest assets I have going for me: I always want to try to learn something new, like a tool, that I can use to ‘be better’ and ‘do better’ in the future. Days like yesterday was, I cannot learn anything. I was too much in the thicket of the bramble bushes and in too much pain. It took all the resources and certainly the strength of my sister to get out of it.
Today I have a day to try to do something different. Because I have no idea what triggered such depth of my sorrow yesterday, it is hard to know how to walk through today differently so I can lower my risk for that happening to me again. Yet even that realization is important — how fragile and vulnerable to upset I am right now. Because I live with an inner mine field and an inner fire swamp, the very quality of my life — if not my very life itself – means I have to learn as much as I can about my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder and how it operates.
Today I am being as careful as I can be to consciously orchestrate not only my actions, but the exact condition of both my inner mind’s environment and the external environment I am spending my day in.
I am not strong right now. Thankfully I have some income from social security disability because of how the added stress of cancer and the complications of chemotherapy impacted me, so that I can remain within the safe and secure boundaries of my house. Yet because my breakup with the man who owns this house now threatens my home, my inner base of safety and security is additionally threatened by the circumstances I am surrounded by.
But for today I will do everything I can to control what might potentially trigger that sorrow that nearly overwhelmed me yesterday.
++++
The essence of what I learned so far today from what I went through yesterday is that I cannot handle surprises. Because I am experiencing so much attachment-related stress right now, anything that might be a minor surprise for an ‘ordinary’ (safely and securely attached-from-birth person) translates into a total shock to my entire being for me.
What would stress an ‘ordinary’ person distresses me. What would distress an ‘ordinary’ person — like an abrupt, unforeseen major breakup and threat of losing my home with no resources to move and no idea where I’d go, etc. — translates into my dissociated PTSD inner world as nearly a state of panic.
An ‘ordinary’ person has gradually built within themselves from the time of their birth an inner platform of safety and security that ALSO means they have built a cohesive SELF that they can count on to be with them ALWAYS. If a person’s early world was chaotic, brutal and malevolent, the basis that they were forced to build from includes an entirely different ‘operating system’. This means, as I now know, that I do not have the same inner resources that an ‘ordinary’ person has so that I can use them in ‘ordinary’ times, let alone threatening ones.
So, again, I ask how I would have walked through my life differently starting at age 18 when I left home, if I had know that for me life would often be like walking over a bottomless abyss of pain and sorrow with nothing to stand on but a gossamer thread of spider web silk? Given what I see NOW, but only now, and knowing about my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder — and all the difficulties of being in the world that come with it — what can I do to make my life better?
At least spider web silk is extremely strong, “five times stronger, on a weight-to-strength basis, than steel,” so I have that going for me. But I can never take for granted that I have the kind of inner balance that I need in order to make it through what an ‘ordinary’ person can with seeming ease. I have to be careful, ever so careful. I cannot take for granted what I always have before — that I can go on being no matter what difficulties I might encounter.
++++
I am beginning to see that everything and anything that I do is actually something I have far more of an investment in than should be ordinarily so. This holds true for the people in my life, the places in my life and for all of my chosen activities. A person is supposed to be organized (from birth) around a safe and secure cohesive self that they can access and count on to carry them through all the variations that life might throw at them.
I don’t have one of those cohesive selves, nor do I have guaranteed access to any particularly dependable patterns of reactions — ever. Neither do I have a being that is organized around a personality disorder, such as my mother did (and probably my ex boyfriend). At least the personality disorders, as I see it, have a sort of second self that was locked into place so early in development — through a combination of trauma and abuse interacting with genetic potential — that all the patterns of their ongoing lives are oriented and organized by and because of their disorder.
I also believe that because of the nature of the construction and operation of personality disorders, these people are confined and defined by the structure that the disorder provides for them. In some important ways, they are prevented from becoming consciously aware of the depths of their own pain. I do not believe they were born this way. They were born with the potential to take that detour should they suffer enough during their early development.
For me and others like me, who suffered from terribly abusive and malevolent early-formative experiences and did not have the genetic combination for forming personality disorders, we are most vulnerable and fragile to disruption, disorganization and disorientation BECAUSE we did not have this option available to us during our development.
I suffer from dissociation, lack of a cohesive self, posttraumatic stress disorder and reoccurring major depression along with anxiety that works to trigger all of the above. I do not, however, have a ‘disordered personality’ that can organize all these manifestations of childhood trauma consequences for me.
++++
I cannot walk my tightrope blindly through life. I cannot count on any ‘secondary personality’ to carry the weight of my actions and reactions. I am forced TO BE HERE, right in this body, one way or the other, all of the time. My mother no doubt suffered throughout her life, but she had no way, no possible way, of consciously knowing why. I fell in love with a man who is in a very similar boat. While all of us have a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder, I do not have a personality disorder that could have jumped in and taken over control by organizing my being. My resulting trauma reaction difficulties are consciously mine.
Do I celebrate that I have an option they do not have, to learn, to recognize, to grow? Only at this moment for the very first time in my life I question that the ‘prize’ I got in my Cracker Jack box is anything worthy of envy. My single qualifier at this moment is that I cannot blithely, automatically, unconsciously and devastatingly hurt and injure other people.
If given the choice, would I then choose to personally experience the full impact of my disorder over having a personality disorder that could shield me from my own inner experience of devastation? Yes. I have to say yes. Because I would not want to be able to hurt other people — and not even realize it or be able to change my patterns. I would never wish to overcome other people with my pain, unconsciously or not! Through it all, I would rather have access to a conscience.
++++
In the beginning, the middle and the end of it all, all of it is about surviving unmentionable early traumas that continue to affect us one way or another for the rest of our lives. Because I had enough people around me that wanted me to continue as a part of their lives, I went through my year of treatments for double breast cancer and am still alive to talk about it.
Some powerful inner awareness knew that nobody on the outside could possibly know what that decision to stay alive cost me. I have no access to resources — magical though they would need to be — to change how my brain-mind and entire body developed in an intolerably traumatic, malevolent world. While, yes, my body is still alive I still suffer from invisible-to-others damage that I am just beginning to be able to describe for myself.
Major inner collateral damage that is the consequence of severe, chronic child abuse can never be erased. It cannot be vanquished because it lies within the very body that hosted the experience of the abuse in the first place. Those of us so affected must continue to try to understand in real-time how our disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder operates.
If it is cloaked within a personality disorder the symptoms will be more clear if we know what to look for. For the rest of us, we know on our insides what has made our lives so difficult to live. We cannot afford to underestimate the power that everyone and everything we organize and orient ourselves around has in our lives. We are using external sources and resources to do what an ‘ordinary’ securely attached — or even an organized-oriented insecurely attached — person can do within their own minds and bodies.
Knowing this, today I will be as careful of myself in my world and in my life as I can possibly be. My hope for today is that even if I cannot achieve a state of being happy, at least I must achieve a state of not being overwhelmed with unbearable sorrow, pain and sadness. I will organize and orient myself the best I can and hope that more and more I can learn to do this — better.
At the same time I must realize and accept that the entirety of the pain of my childhood is completely stored within my body and this body will not let go of it until it is dead. That is a fact as I experience my life. I can find ways to circumvent triggering it, but I cannot make the pain go away. That is part of what bothered me most yesterday.
I know it is not possible in my lifetime to cry enough tears to make anything better. It is terrifying when the tears start and I cannot make them stop. I know there are readers who know what I mean. But I believe we each have enough courage, hope and faith — no matter how much the pain hurts us — to keep going through each present moment into our future or we would not still be here contemplating that fact.
We have to know that the pain is there. It is very real. But we have a right to build a life that is MORE THAN THE PAIN, even if we can only do that one baby step at a time.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stop the Storm 
You must be logged in to post a comment.