Tag: malevolent world

+MISSING IN ACTION: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SELF OF LINDA?

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I went ‘Missing In Action’ in the combat zone of my childhood with my severe Borderline mother from the moment I was born.  That I was still MIA at age 30 should not surprise me as I continue  my forensic autobiographical search for whatever happened to the self of Linda — even half my lifetime ago:

*Age 30 – Journal from January 1982 through April 1982

Here are a few snippets from the journal:

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January 19, 1982

“I was never socialized or given any experience as I grew up in getting along in this “real world.”  I was practiced in being extremely obedient, being isolated.”

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2009:  For most of my life all I was able to do in any of my thinking regarding the reality of the abuse in my 18 years of childhood was to make observations as if I was a mechanical reporter, as per the above.  I never understood the implications or the ramifications.  We take for granted that we are supposed to KNOW things even though nobody ever TOLD us.  I completely lacked any basis for comparing my life to an ‘ordinary’ childhood, even when I was 30 years old.

I’ve always had a sort of “vacancy” feeling.  Nothing about my childhood connected to anything in this “real world.”  It was as if I was hatched out of an egg the day I landed at boot camp at 18.  There was nothing to do with or about what had happened to me before that time.  Everyone was busy with their own lives, lived in their realities, and did not care about one person who appeared in their lives — at any time — that person being me with my past history that nobody cared about, either.  I was either going to ‘make it’ on my own, or not at all, just as it had been in my childhood.

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January 26, 1982

“Received a beautiful cream sweater and a blue skirt from Mom today.  It feels good that she loves me and I need to write thanks and love.”

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2009:  Classic example of my continued delusions about being the daughter of the mother who tormented and abused me for 18 years.  Except for very limited in-school contacts, my childhood consisted of fear, abuse and dissociation.  My internal state was a void, a vacuum.  I lived the days of my life no differently than an android would.  Once I went through treatment and stopped self-medicating myself with pot, the medication was simply switched to prescription antidepressants.  The same purpose was served.  “Zombie juiced.”  Just keep Linda doing what Linda does because she knows nothing different.

My life could have been far worse.  I was safe.  I lived with a reasonable, kind man.  The people in my life were reasonable.  I thought what I was doing was reasonable.  I tried to parent my daughters the best that I could, and certainly I did not abuse them.  But how can an empty hollow shell of a person be a ‘good enough’ parent to children?  I can only believe that with kindness and the best love I could give them, the life force and personality of my children carried them forward as they grew up — but perhaps more like growing plants would than children who lacked a securely-attached mother.

This is where professionals coin the term “earned secure attachment.”  But I KNOW it wasn’t as good as the ‘real thing’.  How could it be, to be raised by a mother who does not have her self intact?

Yet I can see that with my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder I was able to organize and orient myself around a life as portrayed in my journals.  But it was a hollow life.  I was a hollow person.  I did not know what questions to ask anybody about what was ‘wrong’ with me, and nobody offered me the information I needed to understand what was REALLY going on with lost-soul Linda.

How I could I know that what I DO is not who I AM?  Now I would see that what I do is like a reflection of who I am, like light rays from the sun are reflected in a mirror.  I had no sun, no self — not that I knew or knew of, anyway.  Today I’m not sure I’m much better – but I do know the difference.  I can FEEL it, especially now that my children are gone from home.

Humans are not designed to organize and orient themselves around external factors of any kind.  We can, of course, organize and orient how we spend our TIME around external factors, but not our SELF!  Without a clear, strong, healthy sense of a non-dissociated self, I have been left all my life with a nearly unbearable sadness at my center.  That sadness is what the doctor was medicating with those antidepressants, and that I used to medicate with nonprescription drugs.

Is there another way for those of us who have such histories of terrible abuse of one kind or another to MEET, GREET and FEEL our true inner self — a process that is supposed to be firmly in place before we are two years old?

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April 6, 1982

“I don’t question myself all the time anymore on what I’m doing and am much better at getting through days and doing what needs to be done and what I want to do.

I’ll have to watch this as meds change and be sure it’s not something that is really affected by the depression.

My head feels clear and I like that.”

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The doctor was decreasing my antidepressants, and that concerned me.  He was talking about taking me off them completely by summer for a ‘drug holiday’.

Why did I believe that questioning “myself all the time…on what I’m doing” was a BAD thing?  I had a lot of questioning that needed to be done — a life time of questioning!!  Did I need stasis or did I need to make real and legitimate changes in my life?  Nobody supported me in asking the questions, or in trying to discover who I was or what I needed.  People did support me when I was ‘nice’ and did not rock the proverbial boat.

Obviously, I believed that I liked myself better that way — why would I want to FEEL FEELINGS and learn the truth about myself?  Yet, there was a Linda in there somewhere, hiding in the shadows of my life, who needed to peek herself out and begin to ask questions about her self in the world.  I needed answers.  It has taken me a very long time to begin to get some.

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April 21, 1982

I found a poem-story of my daughter’s father and her birth written on this date here in this journal.  I wonder what I meant by

“I had a child to catch

my man”

I sure don’t remember that being the case at the time!  It’s a whole story I have yet to tell, the story of being pregnant and giving birth and what followed.  But this poem is an introduction.

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I do not wish to leave the information contained in these links behind as I continue with my posting.  Please consider them for your study:

+ALL OF ME. I DON’T HAVE ‘A CHILD WITHIN’

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In the words of Alice Miller

— Articulating the child’s authentic voice —

from

Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-Six Watercolors and an Essay by Alice Miller

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“Only when I make room for the voice of the child within me do I feel myself to be truly genuine and creative.  I use every means now at my disposal…to help this child to find the appropriate way of expressing herself and to be understood.”  (Page 17)

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“Those who take a stand in today’s world on behalf of workers, women, or even mistreated animals will find a group to represent them, but someone who becomes a strong advocate for the child and opposes the lies society has tolerated in the guise of child-rearing practices will stand alone.  This situation is difficult to understand, especially when we consider that we were once all children ourselves.  I can explain it only by suggesting that unequivocal advocacy of the child represents a threat to most adults.  For when it becomes possible for children to speak out and confront us with their experiences, which were once ours as well, we become painfully aware of the loss of our own powers of perception, our sensibilities, feelings, and memories.  Only if the child is forced to be silent are we able to deny our pain, and we can again believe what we were told a children:  that it was necessary, valuable, and right for us to make the emotional sacrifices demanded of us in the name of traditional child-rearing.  As a consequence of the adult’s arrogant attitude toward the child’s feelings, the child is trained to be accommodating, but his or her true voice is silenced.  Another arrogant and blind adult is the result.

Is it not senseless, then, to let children speak, to help them to become articulate in an arrogant adult world as long as there is so little hope of their being listened to by adults and when the danger exists that their authentic voice will be silenced as soon as it it heard?  I do not believe it is senseless; it is essential to let their voices, the voices of those who have been afflicted by silence, speak if we hope to prevent the total disappearance of the springs of knowledge and creativity concealed in every childhood.  In this regard, the published reports by former victims of child abuse will be particularly beneficial in exposing the distortion of the truth so widespread in many areas of our life.”  (pages 18-19)

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JUST FOR FUN – LISTEN HERE

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In my own words:

Blasphemy!  I do not have a “child within me.”  There is only ME within ME.  I am today totally the full sum of every experience I have ever had.  The memory I have of them, consciously or not, and the impact they had on me are all contained within this body that is ME — right here, right now.

Because I have suffered from dissociation since I was born into a malevolent world of abuse, chaos and madness, I cannot afford to pretend there are any more stray parts of me floating around ‘somewhere’ than there already — legitimately — are.  And there certainly isn’t ‘one in there’ I would ever care to name ‘the child within me’.  How silly is that idea?

I believe we do ourselves a great disservice in suggesting that we have some ‘alien’ life force or form within us that we might even begin to think about as our ‘child within’.  We have all integrated our experiences since conception into our bodies, including our brain.  What is the purpose of denying this fact?

If cohesiveness and coherency are the goal that any of us with less than an optimal safe and secure infancy-childhood might be aiming toward, what good does it do us to pretend that some magical, mysterious part of us is supposedly missing from the action of our living, breathing body at exactly this present moment in time?

Not only does the concept of an ‘inner child’ or a ‘child within’ feel demeaning, disrespectful and dishonoring of who I AM as a person no matter what hell I have survived in my lifetime, it also seems blatantly ridiculous.  It’s just too Twilight Zonish for me.  It’s too Alice in Wonderlandish, too Through the Looking Glass weird to me.  I spent the first 18 years of my life in the Twilight Zone.  I don’t need another split second of it now.  No way.

Let those with the luxury to afford to buy this myth — well, buy it.  Not gonna be me….  I work hard to give myself permission to be the whole of who I am, the one who has followed THIS life path from the moment of my conception to this instant in time — there is no possible way I left any part of myself behind, and I know it.  I am.  I am, most grandly, wholly ME — even if the whole of me exists as a thousand dissociated parts, they are MY ADULT parts.

The great thing is to find moments I can actually have fun being ALL OF ME!

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*Age 58 – October 28, 2009 – Dollar store paint, crayon and marker images

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+’RED HIGH ALERT’ EMOTIONS AND ASSISTANCE FROM ASTROLOGY

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Well, I had to cook up something entirely different today.  I found yesterday that going back to my age 29 journal was an incredibly difficult and painful experience.  There is nothing easy about any part of my life thanks to the treatment I received at the hands (and mouth) of my psychotic severe Borderline Personality Disordered mother.  So how do I live with, process, understand and begin to heal the powerful, intense and nearly overwhelming emotions I experience — frequently — as a consequence of my childhood?

My emotions reached the ‘Red High Alert’ stage yesterday.  I knew I had to find some way to ‘self sooth’ them down as many notches as I possibly could.  That meant I had to reach for some external resource for help, but which one?

I found and played a tape recording of an astrological reading I had done for me last March of 2009 specifically about the difficulties I have with my emotions by a man I consider to be a blessed and extremely talented and knowledgeable astrologer:  Zane (see Zane’s Page).

I learned a long time ago that because of the severity and extent of the child abuse I suffered, which began at my birth and lasted until I left home at 18, I have to consider and access the best of the best help I can find — anywhere I can find it — in order to live with and try to heal from the consequences of that torture.  Astrology is one of those avenues of assistance I have turned to in some of the toughest times of my adult life.

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I believe it takes a full lifetime of study coupled with incredible efforts at self-healing, and a whole lot of gifted talent for any individual to truly practice astrology.  I barely know enough personally to begin to understand the influences that the natural world exercise over me in this lifetime so that I can begin to gain assistance and insight from the best astrologers I can find.

Some people find it helpful to have ‘daily’ sorts of readings through which certain influences on their lives are made more clear as their lifetime progresses.  I am not interested in accessing that kind of astrological information.  I simply need to know what forces operated at my birth, throughout my childhood, and continue to operate during this very difficult lifetime I seem to have found myself in.  Zane is the most skilled and qualified astrologer I have ever found.

The internet provides a wealth of information about the basics of astrology.  There are websites that provide a free natal chart.  As with any search on the web, consumers need to pay careful attention to the information they obtain, but time spent considering the topic is, I believe, time well spent.  If you choose to consult with Zane at Zane’s Page, you can email him with specific questions or to set an appointment with him should you choose to purchase one of his readings.

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It is not my intention to either explain or defend astrology in this post.  Today I simply transcribed the reading I had with Zane last March.  I find the information helpful to me, and where I have differences of opinion with Zane, I note them within the text.

If you are interested, please follow this link to the whole report text:

*Age 57 – March 2009 (whole text) Astrological Reading About My Emotions

Transcribed from tape of telephone consultation

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Or refer to individual sections of the reading here:

MY EMOTIONS

MY DIFFERENT KIND OF LOGIC

MY FEELING DIFFERENT FROM OTHER PEOPLE

MY MARS AND JUPITER:  BEING A TEACHER

POTENTIAL AND PSYCHOLOGY

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

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+SUBSTANCE P – IT’S OUR BODY’S BIOLOGICAL LINK TO FEELING EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL PAIN

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What do we know about pain?  What do we know about the connection between physical and emotional pain responses in the body and brain?

It took me many months of online research before I finally came up with what links our physical and emotional pain responses (and our pain thresholds) together.  I found it in

SUBSTANCE P — a small peptide (protein) released upon stimulation in the nervous system and involved in regulation of the pain threshold.  Substance P (P = pain) works the same in our body whether we have a broken bone or a broken heart.

I’m not sure it helps when we HURT from any pain to say to ourselves, “Oh, that pain is just me feeling Substance P.”  But it might help to realize more clearly that there is a direct and definable link between our ability to experience emotional and/or physical pain in our body-brain.  Emotional distress, including sadness, loneliness and anxiety,  is as real a pain in our body as is any physical pain we can ever experience.

And when terrible physical and emotional pain was forced upon us from early child abuse and neglect experiences, I believe the entire balance of how all these complex pain response systems in our body is altered for the rest of our lifetime.

And I also find it fascinating that Substance P is connected to our ‘puke center’.  In our early evolving brain-mind, what was toxic needed to be vomited out ASAP for our continued survival.  As we became increasingly complex beings, we eventually could not puke out mental, emotional and psychological toxins, poisons and traumas.  We had to find ways to endure in spite of them.

(Epigenetic changes are one of the ways we do this – see yesterday’s post.  These changes have a lot to do with where so-called ‘mental illness’ comes from.)

Substance P is connected to our immune system.  That doesn’t surprise me one single bit.  It is intimately involved with maintenance of our well-being – including the healing of all of our wounds.  Once we truly accept the fact that emotional wounds ARE physical wounds, I believe we can better get on with the business of healing.

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Substance P has effects on mood, memory and sleep, and has been implicated in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

It is involved with depression and the actions of antidepressant drugs.

Substance P is involved with sadness.

Substance P is also involved with anxiety and stress responses and disorders.

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FULL ARTICLE (abstract below) CAN BE PURCHASED ONLINE OR ORDERED IN FROM A LIBRARY:

Psychol Bull. 2007 Nov;133(6):1007-37

Substance P at the nexus of mind and body in chronic inflammation and affective disorders.

Rosenkranz MA.

Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI 53705, USA. marosenk@wisc.edu

For decades, research has demonstrated that chronic diseases characterized by dysregulation of inflammation are particularly susceptible to exacerbation by stress and emotion. Likewise, rates of depression and anxiety are overrepresented in individuals suffering from chronic inflammatory disease. In recent years, substance P has been implicated in both the pathophysiology of inflammatory disease and the pathophysiology of depression and anxiety by 2 parallel fields of study.

This review integrates the literature from these 2 parallel fields and examines the possibility that substance P dysregulation may be a point of convergence underlying the overlap of chronic inflammatory disease and mood and anxiety disorders.

First, the involvement of substance P in peripheral inflammation and in the immune events associated with chronic inflammatory disease is discussed, with a focus on inflammatory bowel disease and asthma.

Next, the function of substance P in the communication of peripheral inflammation to the brain is considered.

Finally, to complete the bidirectional loop of brain-immune interactions, substance P expression in anxiety and depression as well as its potential role in the neural regulation of peripheral inflammation is reviewed.

PMID: 17967092 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

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From Wickipedia:

In the field of neuroscience, substance P (SP) is a neuropeptide….that functions as a neurotransmitter and as a neuromodulator.[1][2] It belongs to the tachykinin neuropeptide family. Substance P and its closely related neuropeptide neurokinin A (NKA) ….Substance P is released from the terminals of specific sensory nerves, it is found in the brain and spinal cord, and is associated with inflammatory processes and pain.

Function

Substance P is an important element in pain perception. The sensory function of substance P is thought to be related to the transmission of pain information into the central nervous system. Substance P coexists with the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate in primary afferents that respond to painful stimulation.[11] SP has been associated with the regulation of mood disorders, anxiety, stress,[12] reinforcement,[13] neurogenesis,[14] respiratory rhythm,[15] neurotoxicity, nausea/emesis,[16] pain and nociception.[17] Substance P and other sensory neuropeptides can be released from the peripheral terminals of sensory nerve fibers in the skin, muscle and joints. It is proposed that this release is involved in neurogenic inflammation which is a local inflammatory response to certain types of infection or injury.[18] …. Substance P receptor antagonists may have important therapeutic applications in the treatment of a variety of stress-related illnesses, in addition to their potential as analgesics.

Vomiting

The vomiting center in the brainstem contains high concentrations of substance P and its receptor, in addition to other neurotransmitters such as choline, histamine, dopamine, serotonin, and opioids. Their activation stimulates the vomiting reflex. Different emetic pathways exist, and substance P/NK1R appears to be within the final common pathway to regulate vomiting.[19] Substance P antagonist (SPA) aprepitant is available in the market in the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea / emesis.

Pain

Substance P is involved in nociception, transmitting information about tissue damage from peripheral receptors to the central nervous system to be converted to the sensation of pain. It has been theorized that it plays a part in fibromyalgia.

Cell growth

Substance P has been known to stimulate cell growth in culture,[20] and it was shown that Substance P could promote wound healing of non-healing ulcers in humans.[21] It has also been shown to reverse diabetes in mice.[22][23]

Vasodilation

Substance P also has effects as a potent vasodilator. ….As is typical with many vasodilators, it also has bronchoconstrictive properties, administered through the non-adrenergic, non-cholinergic nervous system (branch of the vagal system)

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+WHAT HAPPENS TO US IN CHILDHOOD AFFECTS OUR BODY FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES

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I WANTED TO MENTION THIS:

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Epigenetics is some serious stuff!  I know this information appears technical, but when we consider it we can see that this information is talking about changes in the ‘DNA control mechanisms’ rather than in the DNA itself that causes all kinds of serious disorders.

Epigenetic changes are often adaptations to toxic, threatening and malevolent conditions in our environment, particularly our early one.  Severe child abuse and neglect constitutes such a condition.  While the DNA itself is not changing in these epigenetic cases, the mechanisms that tell the DNA what to do — every single second of our lifetime — changes and THESE changes can be passed on down to future generations along with the physiological changes they cause.

This is a very new field of study.  Epigenetic changes are one of the reasons that early childhood severe stress and trauma is so dangerous.  The passing-down of these ‘directional mechanism’ changes means that we have a whole new level other than actual DNA code to consider as we look at how genetics influence development – including the development of adult-onset diseases including many so-called mental illnesses.

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from Wickipedia:

Epigenetics

In biology, the term epigenetics refers to changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence, hence the name epi- (Greek: over; above) –genetics. These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell’s life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism;[1] instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism’s genes to behave (or “express themselves”) differently.[2] ….

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The following is an example of how this information looks in the research.  This is an abstract coming from research on epigenetics.  I thought about this topic today after a friend of mine whose husband has Parkinson’s disease told me today that his mother never wanted him, and that he was orphaned from birth.  I thought about the kinds of stressors on his developing body and how they probably correspond to his adult-onset Parkinson’s.  I thought about my cancer, which I will always believe was triggered by unimaginable stress during my childhood.

Epigenetic adaptations and changes are among the very real problems that originate in malevolent childhoods that are a part of what we would hope to alleviate as we work toward intervention and prevention of child abuse.

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Lancet Neurol. 2009 Nov;8(11):1056-72.

Epigenetic mechanisms in neurological diseases: genes, syndromes, and therapies.

Urdinguio RG, Sanchez-Mut JV, Esteller M.

Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Program, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

Epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation and modifications to histone proteins regulate high-order DNA structure and gene expression. Aberrant epigenetic mechanisms are involved in the development of many diseases, including cancer. …

Moreover, aberrant DNA methylation and histone modification profiles of discrete DNA sequences, and those at a genome-wide level, have just begun to be described for neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease, and in other neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

In this Review, we describe epigenetic changes present in neurological diseases and discuss the therapeutic potential of epigenetic drugs, such as histone deacetylase inhibitors.

PMID: 19833297 [PubMed – in process of publication]

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+I FOUND ANOTHER ‘BROKEN’ DOLL PIECE MY MOTHER WROTE IN 1955

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Dangers of Doll Play — In My Mother’s House

From mother’s 1955 – May 22 writings about Cynthia

“Every day she adds 5 or 6 new words to her vocabulary without realizing that she’s doing it…..[including]… , boo-hoo, boo-hoo” for her beloved doll’s make-believe crying….

She plays beautifully and is especially fond of “doll play.”  Her pet is Linda’s big doll with hair.  At first she wasn’t allowed to play with it but Linda finds no enjoyment in playing with dolls and leaves it on the floor so – Cindy has adopted it.   She talks to it, she scolds it, she spanks it – saying “naughty, naughty doll” and then picks it up and cuddles it loving and kissing it.  She brushes the hair and sticks numerous hair-pins in it and then says “There.”  She gives them all a bottle or some imaginary food off of a toy plate, puts them to bed, covers them and kisses each and every one and says “Night.”  She’s a real “little mother” – it just seems to come naturally to her.  She loves the carriage, beds, etc. – it’s so sweet to watch her play!”

This is just another reference to my mother’s opinion of doll play.  The fact that I did not want to play with dolls was brought up to me thousands of times during my entire childhood – of course, as added proof that I was BAD.  The fact that Cindy did like to play with dolls was just another proof in my mother’s reality that she was GOOD.  Today I take this as further evidence that my mother’s psychosis was anchored in her very young childhood play with dolls.  I believe her dissociative disorder, with her imaginary friends and ‘enemy’ originated there.

That’s a whole other level of crazy-making for her to have expected me, being the one she abused, to want to, or even to be able to play with dolls.  I can ‘smell’ dissociation here.  There would have been no possible way for me to have confronted anything to do with so-called mothering and so-called baby care without having the abuse hit me square – in my entire being.

I was not quite four when mother wrote this, right around the time of *Age 3 – THE TOILET BOWL.  Cindy witnessed this horrific event.  How could trauma not enter her play?  I don’t have to imagine how this 22 month old little sister of mine learned to include scolding and spanking into her play.  And mother thought it was cute?  Sick.  So terribly, terribly sad and sick!  Little bitty trauma dramas enacted by a little bitty child who had witnessed her sister being attacked by the same mother they shared.

Yet neither my sister nor I grew up to become mothers who abused our own children.  We somehow knew we had been given the chance to parent right, and we did.

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this comes from whole page posted here:

*1955 – May 22 – Mother writing about 22-month old Cindy

see also related links:

+MY LITTLE POEM ABOUT MY CHILD-SELF MOTHER

*MY MOTHER NEVER OUTGREW HER DOLLS

+BEING MY MOTHER’S IMAGINARY SWORN ENEMY

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MORE INFO —

About.com:  Borderline Personality Disorder

from from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD
Why is it called “borderline” personality disorder? What exactly does “borderline” mean? This week, learn about the BPD name controversy, and weigh in. Do you think the name “borderline personality disorder” should be changed? And to what?

Why is it Called “Borderline Personality Disorder?”
When BPD was first named, “borderline” referred to individuals who did not fit neatly into the two broad categories of mental disorder: psychosis or neurosis. But now that we have a better understanding of mental illness, many people think “borderline” is a misnomer.

Weigh In: Should the Name Change?
Now that you know a little more about the controversy, what do you think? People from all angles: people with BPD, their loved ones, clinicians- weigh in!

Should BPD Remain on Axis II?
Another controversial topic- should BPD remain an Axis II disorder in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?

More Topics

+THE MOST IMPORTANT LETTER I’VE EVER WRITTEN – WHEN I DISOWNED MY MOTHER

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After these pages and their links are posted here, I am going outside to recreate my flower beds.  I made a special 50-mile round trip to a town near here to buy flowers last evening.  It will never cease to please me that I can actually recreate flower beds now, in mid October, with flowers that will last until spring, even if they have to slow down their growth and blooming during the ‘colder’ months of our Arizona high desert winter.

This reminds me of how so much of my life is like tending a garden, trying to rid myself of weeds, changing with the seasons.  Now, if I can learn how to see the re-creation of myself as recreation rather than being a chore, I could definitely have more fun with this whole process!

Celebrate the seasons.  I try to do that.  Sometimes it’s just a little harder to celebrate the seasons of my soul.

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POST AND THE LETTER AND JOURNAL ENTRIES LINKED TO HERE ABOUT MY DISOWNING MY MOTHER

MAY TRIGGER — PLEASE BE CAREFUL OF YOURSELF!

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Once I completed my process of disowning my mother I never went back on it.  I never spoke to her again [she died in 2002] , and only saw her like the flash of some fading shadow as she entered my father’s hospital room after his disastrous surgery in Alaska the fall of 1990 and instantly turned and left.

I did not find this letter I wrote disowning my mother among the few of my letters she had saved that were with her other papers.  I went searching for my copy of this letter because I knew I had made and kept one.  I also found my journal entries for the days surrounding the writing and the mailing of this letter and they are included below the letter itself in the following link.

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*Age 36 – My May 10, 1988 Letter Disowning My Mother

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I am including this link to the letters I wrote my mother in the year prior to my disowning her.  These ones she saved, and I found them among her papers.  They provide a context and a contrast to what eventually followed their writing — my ‘disownment’ of my mother.

As I read these later letters, I can see how much healthier and happier I was overall than I was at age 20 — but boy, did I go through a LOT in those ensuing 15 years!  What I see NOW, another 20+ years down the road of my life, is that my entire self was organized and oriented around being a mother.

When my baby left home nearly six years ago I suffered a crash I could NEVER have imagined — and I HOPE I am rebounding (very slowly) now though I still feel like whatever SELF I had when I wrote these letters was crushed nearly beyond recognition or retrieval once the major self-organization factor of being a full-time mother vanished.

Perhaps in part because being the best mother I could be (as a counteraction to my mother’s treatment of her children) occupied so much focus for me, and because I didn’t really have much of a SELF to start with thanks to my mother, being a mother myself put me in ‘orbit’ around the ‘sun’ that my children were to my existence for 35 years.

Did my organizing-orienting sun explode or implode when my children left home?  That’s sure what it STILL feels like to me.  I believe that if I had been able to develop a clear, strong and healthy SELF in the right way during the right developmental stages, that ‘crash’ would have been a minuscule fraction of what it has turned out to be for me.  I will be extremely grateful until the moment I leave this world that I was able to let my children go — and take their wonderful selves with them.  I did not create a trauma bond with my children.  I am completely clear that any problems I have in dealing with them being gone are my own to deal with and have nothing to do with them.

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How many times in a lifetime do ‘ordinary’ people reinvent themselves?  Again — and still — I have no ‘ordinary’ points for comparison.

*Ages 35 – 36 – My 1987 Letters to My Mother

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+SHORT AND SWEET — ALL THE MISSING 1966 LETTERS! HERE’S ALL I HAVE….

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Can’t beat this — this is all there is of:

*1966 Mother’s Letters

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+DIFFICULTIES WORKING WITH MY PARENTS’ 1965 LETTERS

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I just want to record here how difficult it is for me to move forward in transcribing my mother’s and my father’s 1965 letters.  I would rather burn them.  I spoke with my daughter about this, and she encouraged me, saying that there is no reason to expect these letters to be any less significant or important to the work I am doing and to the story of my childhood that were any of the previous letters I have worked with.  She also suggested that this part of the work is probably especially important because it is so difficult — there must be something here and in this process that I need to know within myself.

I seem to feel something like a wild animal might who gets a foot caught in a trap and cannot escape without gnawing its own leg off.  I was 14 years old when these October through December 1965 letters were written.  I was at the age when all the following occurred, and I’m sure many others that I do not remember:

I have for some reason I do not yet understand found it more difficult to work with correspondence between my mother and father than I do with correspondence between my mother and my grandmother.  It’s like I am faced with two realities, mine and the one that BOTH of my parents shared.  In their reality, I was all but obliterated.  When I work with their letters, that obliteration seems to threaten to swallow me whole, or to snap me up in a trap some part of me fears I can never get out of.

So, it all continues to be an experience of facing myself as I was and as I am.  It takes courage.  It takes hope, that somehow I am changing myself now for the better, and hope that something I discover — and then write about — can help someone else.  I am going in where angels fear to tread…..

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+1965 LETTER MY MOTHER WROTE TO DAD – THIS TIME WE ARE IN TUCSON WITHOUT HIM 1965

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While I am amazed that so many of my mother’s letters have survived, and am grateful for the window into our childhood that they provide, I am at the same time disappointed to find that the only letters that remain for 1965 are the ones written between October and December.  The events surrounding mother’s pregnancy with her 6th baby, the events of the following winter, spring, summer and fall seem to be gone.  All that remains are the few that I will transcribe and post at

*1965 MOTHER’S LETTERS

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Our family went south to Santa Fe, New Mexico the fall of 1963 and back to Alaska that same fall.  This time, in the fall of 1965 we went to Tucson, Arizona — again without my father who stayed in Alaska to work.  This was my 9th grade year of high school.  We started school late, and stayed in Tucson for the school year.

My parents had another son in between these two trips south.  Not enough money remains a monster issue.  Here again in this letter my mother talks about her needs — now that she’s 40 — with no idea how to get them met.

I do not believe the married, mothering life suited my mother’s personality — above and beyond the mental illness — I don’t think being responsible to and for others was her “thing.”  I think she felt trapped and unfulfilled in many ways.  Few women of her generation realized that they had the choice to remain single — and selfish.  But for better or worse, not only did she ‘stay’, she kept on having babies.  How much of our lives really IS CHOICE?

Do we have permission to access different choices today than what our parents realized they had?  Nobody ever told me I had a choice not to be a wife and mother — and I sure didn’t figure it out on my own!

Yet at the same time I try from my vantage point today to be ‘fair’ in considering the pressures that might have been on my mother ‘back then,’ I have to be very careful not to reject my OWN reality of what she did to me for 18 years.  I cannot lose sight of the fact that she stole from me my healthy, happy self.  She stole from me my childhood.  The saddest part about it is that I’m not sure she had a choice not to…….

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By the way, have any of you readers read this stunning SHORT book?  Highly recommended.  It does remind me of my mother — but it wasn’t my father who oppressed her.  I’ll write more about this later – –

The Yellow Wallpaper (Forgotten Books) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Paperback – Oct 16, 2008)

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postmarked November 16, 1965

Darling

Just a note – am enclosing Dorothy’s letter – came today – and a receipt for medicine for Steven.

He’s better!  Much!  So is his disposition but he still wakes up over and over all nite.

Oh Bill, I love you so much!  So very much!

Such a sweet letter.  Will you love me and talk to me when we’re together.

Oh, I wish I could write and strike gold.  $ could open up a life of travel, a nice home – so much we need.

I had my Stanley party today.  8 women came – but so old and dull – Oh Bill I feel like flying, sailing – so full of fun, life and music.  Should I at 40?

Some of them aren’t much older!  Awful!

John is working and won’t be home ‘til 8:00 P.M.  It’s on a busy street and a long walk home.  I hope I was right in letting him do it!!!

We have to put that other $ for skiis [sic] and stuff back into his bank.

This is a note only.  So much to say.  I wish I had someone interesting to talk to.

I feel as if I don’t belong to the human race – these people – Oh, Bill, how and why am I so different??

I love you, Mildred

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Here is the next letter she wrote:

postmarked November 18, 1965

Thursday morning

Dear Bill,

S.O.S. My bills are paid now and now I need $ for groceries, gas – Thanksgiving – please!

I’ve stayed home so much I have to do something.  I called Mother, as I told you, and told her she could come.  I can’t be penniless when she comes.

Except for the Dr. bills and I can pay that next pay-day I’m O.K. here.  Dental bills and Linda’s eye exam will wait until after Xmas!!  John has a bad boil and I’ve put off taking him but guess I’ll have to.  The car has to be greased now!

Send me 75 at least.  Even then I’ll have to ration it.

I’ve just had breakfast and only Cindy and Linda get up at 6:15 A.M. with me and I leave at 7:30 to bring Cindy to school.

I froze last nite.  I dreamt I went dancing and danced and danced and danced.  Am I wacky?  I’d love to go dancing.

I just had my – ugh – boiled egg, juice and toast.

No snacks at all!  No sweets or lunch.  I have meat and tomato.  For dinner I had beets, salad and hamburg (no fun).

I am so happy I’m losing and it’s for you.  If you don’t come I’ll leave for home as soon as I can find someone to rent this stupid place.

Bill, write me soon.  Some of your letters are so warm – others are nice but like a stranger.

I wish I could bridge whatever gulf there is and keep it strong.  Help me.

You’ve worked so long you haven’t been lonesome but you’ll know soon.

Love, Mildred.

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postmarked November 19, 1965

Thursday

My Own Sweet Darling,

I love you!  Now and forever and ever and ever – first the beautiful card when I was blue as you’ll see in my recent letters – and I am sorry I tell you but have to, as always and have tried so hard today to overcome it – more of that later – BUT

The flowers.  Oh Bill, how perfectly beautiful!!!!  Thank you – already I’ve enjoyed them more than I can say – every time I glace at them I think of you and send love thoughts by thought wave.

Now … this morning I made myself go to Ceramics, good therapy, you know, for boredom and loneliness I told myself and I did, as always enjoy it – not the people – there’s nobody there I like and my neighbor didn’t go but working with the tools, paints and all.  It always looks so different when fired – I never recognize my own things.

I told you my first completed one got knocked on the floor at home??  60 cents.  I’m making another……

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