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Dare I say I am due for a special miracle, one I can state and define — and request?  I want to be able to write my part of the book about my childhood — with my daughter.  I am completely stuck, so it seems.  I ran out of words for experiences that had no words in the first place — and so it seems, have no words now.  It is really tough to write stories and a book without words.

I fear I lack the writing talent I need to tell my own story.  I am disappointed.  Perhaps I am too impatient.  Perhaps this is as an organic process just like growing up was inside of my body during all those 18 years of hellish abuse.

My goal was to have my rough draft part of this writing about my childhood done by October.  It is October.  I am half way through it.  That’s all.  I ran out of steam.  My writing motor broke.  I am stalled.  I am resistant.  Stubbornly so.  How well do I really want to know myself?  I fear not well enough to accomplish this task.

Yet in this ‘stopping’ I wrote about in my last post (+MYSTERY OF THE SELF-OBLIVIOUS-SELF) there would be a natural slowing down state.  I don’t have air bags on my heart.  Perhaps I am moving ahead this slow because there are great dangers in even going near my own self — my own memory — my own experiences — to look for my own story.  I felt this the other night, lying in bed that night.  “I remember this body when it was small.  I remember living in this body when I was young.  This body remembers.”

I fear I have left that young body abandoned with what it knows, what I know, alone.  Perhaps I parked it in some foreign airport lot, lost the ticket, never having gone back to find out what my story was and is all about.  “Who the hell cares?”

That’s the same voice I hear as I continue to battle my way to a new freedom with my fingers on my keyboard.  Continually I hear that voice, and that voice has all kinds of words — none of them helpful.  None of them nice.  All of them scathing and condemning, shaming, humiliating.  Now, THOSE words are life-stopping words!  I push past them in my learning to read music and to play keyboard.

Mostly I can do that because the gift of the perfect piano teacher showed up in my life.  On a piece of paper, on a bulletin board at our local food co-op, there was his name and number.  $12 per hour.  Comes to my house.  One of the sweetest souls I have ever met — full of music, full of kindness, full of hope, full of a perfect willingness to allow me to follow my own pathway at 60 years old into this new fountain of play.

Fingers dripping with the magic from that fountain of learning, invisible nectar, my fingers are getting faster.  On both hands.  Important with keyboard!

I am waiting for the magic moment that will come along with my magic fingers — the moment when my physical ears and the ears of who I truly am — the ears of my soul self can BOTH hear the sounds coming out of this instrument.  Verbal abuse, terrible verbal abuse from the moment I was born washed away from me my ability to hear with both of my sets of ears.

My brain did not form itself with kindnesses attached to sound.

That is also a very long story, and I am not going to worry about finding any words to tell it.  THIS story is in the music.  This music, note upon note — coming into the light of making sense to me on the page and making sound for me on the keyboard.  I am thrilled.

Perhaps there is some special kind of healing going on with the music that is unlocking a door inside of me.  Maybe this music will show me where that door even is, for I do not know that I have ever seen it — that door, to my own Secret Garden.  Maybe I am getting ready to let myself find that door, to stand in front of it — at a full stop — before I begin to open it.

There are secrets in the music.  There are secrets inside of me.  What happened to me might not YET have words for the telling — but it would be MY way to tell it first in sound.  A writer without words is a butterfly without wings.  I will let you know how I grow some.

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Maybe it’s an ‘aging’ thing now that I am 60 that such a thought as I just had would enter my mind.  “I hate writing so much about myself.  I sound so self-centered!  But the truth is that I always hope something I write will mean exactly the same thing — and a good thing at that — after I am dead and gone.”

Dead and gone.  Yet have I yet truly lived?  Have I spent my entire adulthood trying to ‘be something’ or to ‘be someone’ in somebody else’s eyes (including, perhaps strangely, even in my own eyes)?

Do I have a clue who I really am?  How can I be 60 and not?  Is such a thing possible, that I could walk around on this earth for my lifetime, sleeping in between, and NOT know who I am?

Because early relationship trauma so changed the way I formed during my most formative first 18 years of life (especially 0-2), I truthfully just barely know what a human being is.  I will never have the ‘inside scoop’ on being a social member of my social species.  I am more closely autistic in my right-social-emotional brain regarding ‘all things social’ than I am to ordinary-normal.

So if I simply objectively include myself inside the circle of ‘human’ I could see my overall disadvantages looming over me.  I have far more reasons NOT to know who I am than the other way around.

But I am also thinking about getting stopped on the road in this little town a week ago for ‘sliding’ through a stop sign I consciously THOUGHT I had stopped at — good enough!  Only a deputy was parked right in front of me on the roadside.  I saw him.  So I made EXTRA sure I ALMOST stopped!

I am thinking about that now.  What if I have to COMPLETELY STOP ‘trying’ to be myself before I can begin to know who I truly am?

Completely stopped, like I need to do as I slide around this nearly-always-empty-road town I live in.  Completely stop.  What might that mean?

Can I erase from my consideration all thoughts about what I SHOULD be in other people’s eyes?  My severely mentally ill abusive Borderline mother kept her eye on me as much as she could my entire childhood.  I suppose I instinctively KNEW I was ‘in her eye’.  (When I got into high school she forced me to sit in the center of the back car seat so she could train her rear view mirror directly on my face — she would stare at me, hate-glare at me — turn her evil eye on me any time she wanted while she was driving. SPOOKY — and I could not escape!)

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In part I am thinking all of this because of my living alone and preferring my life that way.  Really, I can’t imagine my life with someone else in MY home!  I don’t enjoy running around looking for a society-fix, either.  I have a few good friends — but the hardest lesson I am learning is that they love me for who I am — even though I really have very little clue WHO that ME is — let alone why they would value me in their lives.

I think this has everything to do with my not having the ability to trust humans.  So I try to practice FAITH in people, instead.  Faith, to me, is about believing when I have no actual proof – although I work to recognize the proof people give me that they care.  It is all a very long story, and is all about how severe abuse created an insecure attachment body-brain for me from birth.

But these trauma changes to my physical development are about HOW I am in my body in the world — NOT about WHO I am.

So I thought, “Maybe part of my need to be alone is about the stopping thing.  Stopping being ‘somebody’ in other people’s eyes.  Maybe if I can completely stop the ways I have always related to myself — as I TRY to be myself — I will actually come to know who I ACTUALLY am!”

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Yet I also know that ‘derealization’ and ‘depersonalization’ are aspects of dissociation — a big part of how my body operates in the world as a result of being formed in trauma.  These states of being are related to being robbed of the FEELING state of FEELING one’s self alive in one’s own body in one’s own life.  It’s all mostly a mystery to me……………………

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I know someone who is now leaving a 20-year relationship with an alcoholic who has made past attempts at sobriety but who is not ‘cutting the mustard’ — and probably never will.  Hearing about this last night no doubt stimulated the dream I remembered when I awoke this morning.

Dreaming about a house often means this symbol is reflecting one’s life — or life in general as it might apply to somebody else.  I recognized even as I woke up in my dream as I was having it last night what was going on.  The house I dreamt was massive.  As such dream houses can be, it was filled with twists and turns, nooks and crannies, room after room after room.  I was responsible for the whole thing.  Which was fine, as the house reflected my life as I might generalize it to somebody else’s.

All fine and good, but everywhere I went in the dream there was a mess.  Flooded rooms, piles of broken objects, rooms full of useless junk — mess after mess after mess.  And there I was spending my entire dream time cleaning messes up.  Until it dawned on me NOT ONE of these messes was mine.  I had not made one of them.  They ALL belonged to somebody else.

That’s when dawn awakened me in my dream in a stroke of insight.  “What am I doing here?  Why do I let these people into my house (life)?  Why am I spending my time cleaning all these messes up when I have NOTHING to do with making them?”

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So I quit.  I quit cleaning up — and immediately quit dreaming!

As soon as I woke up in real time I knew what had triggered this dream.  I knew the actions this person I heard about is taking are designed to free her life of someone else’s messes.  Clear as day.

I also recognized that now that I am 60 I do not have those kinds of messes anywhere in my life, nor will I let them in.  They will not accumulate.  I am not trapped by them in any way.  What a good sense of freedom I have this morning, of being proud of myself considering my traumatic past that I was able to walk into this life I have today — one that is not all cleaned up!  It is clean because I let nobody into my life that can mess mine up in the first place!

Who wants to live their life being a slave to someone else’s trauma drama?  True, my life is not perfect if perfect is measured by material success or even perfect physical health.  True, I suffer from consequences in my physical body that are the direct result of forming my body in the first place for the first 18 years of my life in conditions of a holocaust.

True, there have been times in my life long ago when I didn’t know any better.  I had to follow my instincts to always move forward in my life toward growth and healing so that I could walk my way out of my own messes.  Those times were hard.  They were fraught with emotional chaos.  I could see nothing clearly.  But eventually I found my way increasingly out of the darkness I was born into — that was so dark I had no idea such a thing as light even existed — into the life I live today that is free from every mess except the one piled up in one of my closets.

And even that mess, I realized yesterday in conversation with a friend, is a reflection of something good.  It is there because I am going into my 6th year of living in this house.  Moving continually has never let me keep anything anywhere I have lived in one place long enough for it to need to be cleaned in its own right.  It is a GOOD thing I have a messy closet!

Albeit I am afraid of the Brown Recluse spider in Arizona that thrives in any undisturbed place — and is a TERRIBLY dangerous creature.  I am afraid to clean the depths of my closet.  But that fear is a real one — and the mess in that closet is a legitimate one.  And it is MY mess, and my mess only!  I made it all by myself, and however I end up cleaning it up — I will do that all by myself, as well.

And it is for SURE that I will find NO skeletons in any closet of mine.

Clarity is a precious commodity!

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I think in an ideal world every neighborhood in America would have its own healing social group!  A time and a place where people could come together and talk about how they are becoming better people every day, how they are learning about hard things they have gone through, how all of us can support and care about one another no matter what our difficulties have been and might be now.

We could share what inspires us!  Well, at least I have this amazing blog space, and all the fantastic people who stroll by for a visit.  So today I want to mention another movie I just watched on disc from Netflix.  I L-O-V-E-D it!

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007)

My heart and soul were so warmed by this story I watched last night that I am still smiling inside and out from it this morning!  When we think about “What can one person do to help change the world?” we can think about what Pete Seeger did.  We ALL have gifts!  Most of us not such amazing ones as Pete had – but what if we all went digging around in our inner forgotten closets and cupboards, under our beds, out in the garage – maybe even in our inner junk piles – where we have ACCIDENTALLY misplaced the gifts we have EACH been given?

What if we dug around, found a gift, recognized its connection to something about us we have ALWAYS loved, that has ALWAYS contributed to our inner joy and peace, and then shined up these gifts, made repairs if needed, and then put them to GOOD USE?

This movie, for one thing, reminds us that we ALL have within us the God-given power to SING!!!  That is what Pete did!  He not only reminded thousands upon thousands of ordinary people that humans can SING, he encouraged people to remind others – until the circle ripples of SONG filled the spaces in the air where crying and dead, dead silence USED to be.  At the same time, and greatly through the power of unity and joy that music is a part of, the world began to change.

Singing is about LOVE.  There is NOTHING to be ashamed of in that word, in that experience – LOVE.

When I think how abused and traumatized infants and children receive overwhelming experiences of the OPPOSITE of love – HATE!!  And as I think about how survivors can never escape having gone through trauma that changed them in their physiological development in so many permanent ways – I think about the POWER of song, the POWER of music to awaken the soul to LOVE – inside and out.

Please consider finding a way to watch this movie.  Those of you who subscribe to Netflix can get the movie in on disc.  It can be purchased through amazon.com HERE.

This movie is the only authorized biography of Pete Seeger, a great American musician and hero of generations.  Wickipedia story about him HERE.  Born 1919, as far as I know this humble, good man is still living!!!!  Although many didn’t and might still not agree with his political views, Pete exercised what needs to remain an American right to hold to one’s own self what a person feels to be true.  Pete harmed no one – and helped so many more than a few they cannot be counted.

Hats off to you, PETE!  Thank you for being you!!  Thank you for knowing your gifts and for sharing them.  Thank you to your parents and to others who so guided you in your own right direction!  And thank you to our Creator, the Greatest Mystery of all time, for Your generosity in providing all of us with GIFTS!!!

AND MAY WE ALL REMEMBER TO SING!!

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By the way, as a total beginner to reading and playing music, I am learning this on keyboard – what fun – (work, too) – love it!  Listen here:  Mana- Hechicera

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Whether or not humans choose to believe their own false ideas and vain imaginings that tell them there is no God and nobody has a soul, reality exists otherwise.

I do believe in God and that everyone has a soul.  Therefore I cannot form a coherent or comprehensive view of myself without considering what this means to me.  Today I created another ‘page’ attached to a heading tab at the top of this blog simply called — GOD LOVE.

Being so abused from the time I was born that I could not begin to conceptualize what love might be, or even that it actually existed, has made certain aspects of my living and my healing journey complicated in regard to love.  I may never know in this lifetime in my conscious mind what love is.  That does not stop me from questing for that understanding.

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I wrote a post today that is attached to GOD LOVE.  In it I describe as clearly as I now understand it at my age of 60 what ‘being’ Mother’s ‘devil child’ was about and what it did to me by the time I was 17.  I also describe a bit about my soul’s journey through those years of abuse and out into the world I entered when I left home.  SEE:  *CHILD ABUSE AND THE JOURNEY OF MY SOUL

I will welcome all ‘reasonable’ comments to anything I write at GOD LOVE at the same time I reserve all rights to NOT post what I am not comfortable with and to edit what I do post if that feels comfortable.  Those pages are about comfort, something I new NOTHING about the first 18 years of my life and something I will probably never completely understand while I life on this earth in my trauma-changed body.

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I also posted the contents of a soul-related talk by an expert on the subject that I consider most important at *NO MATTER WHAT – HAVE NO ENEMY.  There is nothing in those words that gives me spiritual permission — or any other kind of permission — to think ill of anyone, including my parents.

This new section and my collection of writings over there are necessary for me at this point in my healing journey because it is my soul that in-formed me as a child.  It is my soul that brought me through those horrendous years of insane abuse.  It is spiritual assistance from God’s unseen realms that protected me from death and disintegration through my difficult first years of life as a soul.

It is my hope that forever in this lifetime I will seek truth, and that forever after my mortal body parts ways with my soul upon my physical death that I will do the same.  I pray to God to teach me love.

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I am really studying that little book I mentioned in my earlier post today on parenting:  When We Grow Up by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani.  My soul’s version of ‘moving forward’ and ‘traveling onward’ very much includes LEARNING anything that I think will help me (and possibly others) accomplish exactly this kind of movement.  In other words, I desire to study things that help me understand myself in the world a little more — one word, one idea at a time.

In reading this little book I am confronting some important concepts about how OTHER PEOPLE are SUPPOSED to be watching out for parents to make sure parents are taking care of their offspring correctly.

My society-culture failed me.  Society-culture is ALWAYS at fault when an infant-child is mistreated, neglected and/or abused.  Society is SUPPOSED to be guarding children by not ONLY watching the little ones to make sure they are OK, but also by watching the grownups in charge of caring for children to make sure the job is being done right.

And, yes, there IS a right way to be a person in this lifetime — and there is a right way to take care of the next generation of little ones who are growing up to take their parents’ place in the circle of humanity.  Knowing that human social order is in a stage of decay so that it can be built up RIGHT starting now and into the future is at least some comfort to me — at the same time that I can see in this little book that those of us who were hurt as little people WERE ORPHANS.

Yup, that’s it.  We were orphans!  What my parents did to me did not qualify them to be my parents, plain and simple.  I was left alone in the hell they created for me — and essentially raised myself.

Human cultures have a long ways to go to get things right.  We are as a species barely at the developmental stage of unruly, selfish teenagers.  I hope we stay on the right road!!!!  And God knows which road is the right one.  Humans just have to figure that out and make different choices.  Taking care of little babes and children would be a very good start in the right direction — and I mean ALL babes and children!

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