Tag: mothering

+OH GREAT, MY ‘MOTHER’ IN HER 1965 LETTERS – SELF ABSORBED, MISERABLE, WHINING AND ‘DEAD’

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I have to say that as I work with the transcription of my mother’s October through December 1965 letters I can ‘feel’ and ‘see’ and ‘smell’ insecure attachment disorder smeared all over them — well, perhaps rude to say — but like feces.

She is NOT a happy woman.  She appears completely, miserably self absorbed.  She does not seem to be even remotely involved with any of her children.  I get the sense that our mother was, well, DEAD.  We didn’t HAVE a mother present — she isn’t even in her letters.  She doesn’t exist.

None of her children seem to have any more importance to her than would a piece of furniture — if even that much.  She does not appear to have ANY joy in anything, certainly not in us — not even in her 4 1/2 or her 8 month old sons.  I wouldn’t even BELIEVE it would be possible for anyone to whine as much as she does in these letters — if I wasn’t reading it with my own eyes!

Someone stole our real mother, aliens maybe, and left us this empty plastic shell of a mean mother instead.  Is this my depersonalization and derealization that makes my mother herself not feel real to me in these letters — hollow, shallow, empty and without dimension?  No, I think that’s how she really was.

I have completed transcription of as many of these as I can find for 1965 — not very many!  All of dad’s letters to her, and all but one of grandmother’s letters to her are missing — makes me wonder if she destroyed them.   One way or the other, they appear to be lost.

*1965 MOTHER’S LETTERS

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+DIFFICULTIES WORKING WITH MY PARENTS’ 1965 LETTERS

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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…..

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+WHAT DO I DO ABOUT NEEDING TO BE RESCUED, OR NEEDING TO RESCUE?

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++

The real world we all live in is not a perfect place.  Our species knows this.  We have evolved to be able to respond appropriately to threat when at all possible, using any means possible.  I know this.  Yet today something new and different seems to be entering my thinking – through reactions I can feel throughout my entire body.  Surviving malevolent and threatening conditions means that we are able to rescue ourselves.  Because we are a social species, we are perhaps equally prepared through our physiological makeup to rescue someone else.

Nature wants each one of us to survive so that we can reproduce offspring in order than our species endures.  First and foremost our instinct is probably to preserve our own life.  But perhaps preserving the life of another member of our species is also so engrained within us that we cannot – truly – separate the two.

++++

We have a tendency in today’s modern American culture to separate and divide everything into its proper container.  Doing so, however, is not always best for us.  Often we ‘cut off our nose to spite our face’.  Being the abused daughter of a severe Borderline taught me this.  My mother’s brain-mind could not tolerate either ambiguity.  In her ‘either-or’ universe good was always separated from bad.  Godly was separated from evil.  No opposite or duality could exist in the home of her Borderline mind – and because of this ‘all hell broke loose’ in our home, and I paid the highest price.

We often speak of abuse in terms of victim and perpetrator.  Those are among the ‘split archetypes’ where one single whole become split in two, causing serious imbalances of power.  We can also think in terms of the one who wounds and the one who heals the wounds.  Those concepts also reflect a broken archetype of wholeness.  I believe that a split can also occur between one who rescues and one who needs rescuing, a split that can easily occur in homes where violence, abuse and unresolved trauma reign supreme.

++++

Nature has designed our species so that some members are naturally more than others to be able to protect, defend and rescue.  It is under malevolent, threatening, endangering and traumatic conditions that the widest difference between the two can be seen.  Nature does not intend that threat remains a chronic, persistent condition.  That would wear out even the toughest of us – and does, as chronic stress responses tell us even in our modern culture.

The trauma of severe, early and chronic child abuse creates a situation where the most abused child becomes the least able to rescue their self or anyone else.  The lesser abused, or non-abused siblings are left in a chronic state of needing to be rescuers – whether they know it or not.  This ‘split archetype’ of rescuer and one needing rescue will most likely follow all child abuse survivors into adulthood, and will play itself out over and over again in the unresolved trauma dramas of our lives.

++++

How do I heal that split within my self today?  How do I recognize and begin to change this fundamental trauma-related archetypal split within myself?

It struck me today that being cut off from contact with the man I love leaves me without reprieve from my fundamental overwhelming sadness.  Although neither he nor I realized at the time what was happening when I was with him and experienced peace and joy in his presence, I am beginning today to realize that when I was with him, he rescued me.

The overwhelming pain and sadness within me was put there as a result of early, severe and chronic child abuse.  It has remained an essential part of my deepest physiological body and being ever since.  I felt peace and joy I had never felt before when I was with that man.  Being with him banished my pain.  But if I wasn’t split within myself between the ‘one who needs rescuing’ and the ‘one who rescues’, I know I would not have experienced that relationship with that man in exactly this same way.

++++

How do I achieve a balance between these two aspects of the archetype of being ‘O.K. in the world’?  Where is the confidence, and the competence I need to rescue myself?  How do I find my place in a safe and secure world, as a safely and securely attached person, so that I no longer carry the traumas of a malevolent, dangerous world of threat and deprivation within me?

Quite frankly, I don’t think I can possibly ever achieve a full balance such as I am describing, because the trauma not only built my body, but built itself into me.  The best I can hope for is probably to be able to recognize what is happening to me as it is happening.  I see that someone who has always been in the rescuer role is probably equally as split off from being weak, needy, vulnerable and NOT confident and competent.  So the healing must be to aim for the balance between these two extremes – no matter where and how they originated in our bodies, brains and lives in the first place.

We CAN become more consciously aware of being in the kind of a world that makes ‘being rescued’ even an issue.  Living in a primarily safe and secure world means that the need to be rescued or to be a rescuer can remain mostly invisible, to be called upon only in time of current crisis.  I suspect that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder keeps the archetype present in the first place, and then contributes to its fundamental split in the second place.  To know this, I believe, is an important step in finding ways to alter these powerful patterns.

+++++++++++++++++

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

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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…….

+++++++++++++++

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)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

++++

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.

++++

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……

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+LINK TO WHAT I CAN FIND OF MY MOTHER’S 1964 LETTERS

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

There are very few of my mother’s letters for 1964 – I guess they disappeared somewhere over the years.  This is the year she found herself (at 39) pregnant with her sixth and last child.

*1964 MOTHER’S LETTERS

++++++++++++++++++++++++

+A MEMORABLE DAY – AGE 12 – THE GREAT ALASKAN EARTHQUAKE AND MY MENARCHE

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

These three letters my grandmother wrote to my mother have been stored in the same envelope together for over 45 years.  The first one was written on the day that turned out to be the great Good Friday super earthquake, the Alaskan earthquake of March 27, 1964.  In this letter grandmother talks about her own professional work including her writing, and about how she was going to type-transcribe my mother’s homesteading letters for her — a job that was not done — until now, these 45+ years later by me.

*Grandmother’s 3-27-1964 Letter to Mother (written day of great Alaskan earthquake)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The second letter was written March 28, 1964 the day after the earthquake.  Grandmother has heard nothing from us, and has no idea what is going on with the people she loves.  In this day of internet, twitter and cell phones most younger people cannot understand what it might be like to not be able to instantly connect with loved ones when wanted or needed.  My grandmother had no way to know if we were dead or alive when she wrote this letter.

*Grandmother’s 3-28-1964 Letter to Mother the Day After the Great Earthquake (she knows nothing)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Again, in this third letter written on Easter Sunday after the earthquake, grandmother has still not heard from us and knows nothing.  I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for her!  I know many, many other families divided by miles similarly shared my grandmother’s thoughts and feelings on this day.

In this letter grandmother writes:

“I’ll try to be good and sensible.  But tell me what you want me to do from here – dear ones.  I always knew I loved you heaps and heaps – but never knew how much until now!”

She says she saved her sanity while she waited for word from us by cleaning the kitchen — what do men do in place of cleaning when they are hyper-concerned, worried or just plain MAD?

*Grandmother’s 3-29-1964 Letter to Mother After Earthquake (still hasn’t heard from us)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My mother hated my father’s parents, and I don’t know why.  This is the letter they sent to dad and mom after the earthquake as they, too, were worried and without word of us:

*My Father’s (disowned) Parents’ Letter After the Earthquake 4-1-1964

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here is my own story of the Alaskan Earthquake — the March 27, 1964 day that my first period came in the middle of —

*Age 12 – My Story of the Great Alaskan Earthquake March 27, 1964 and My Menarche

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This link (below the scan) is to my transcription of my mother’s story of the earthquake.  I am including here a scan of what she wrote about finding her children O.K. at the baby sitter’s house where she had left us before she and dad headed into Anchorage for a dinner out – which is where they were when the quake happened.

This is what I call the “perfect chink” in my mother’s borderline story of her life.  It is the hole in the wall of her nearly perfect facade she presents of herself in her letters and writings.

It is reminiscent of the Medea story, a play written by Euripides and first performed in 431 B.C., about a mad woman mother, who sounds just like a severe Borderline, who killed all her children in the house with a massive butcher knife while they screamed for help.  Their father and the listening public, standing outside, did nothing to stop her.

This, to me, shows the truth behind her Borderline reality lies:

1964 - from mother's account of her Alaskan earthquake experience - here writing about picking her children up safely at the baby sitter's where we had been staying -- the "hole" in my mother's nearly perfect Borderlin facade - wrote "killed' -- meant "kissed" -- but we are seeing in this one 'word slip' her inner, unconscious true reality -- certainly not something hidden from me as a child
1964 - from mother's account of her Alaskan earthquake experience - here writing about picking her children up safely at the baby sitter's where we had been staying -- the "hole" in my mother's nearly perfect Borderline facade - wrote "killed' -- meant "kissed" -- but we are seeing in this one 'word slip' her inner, unconscious true reality -- certainly not something hidden from me as a child

*Mother’s Story of the 1964 Quake

+++++++++++++++++++++

I feel so heavy and so sad after writing this post today, as if the weight of 2,500 years is in my heart.  What Euripides recognized and wrote about all those many, many hundreds of years ago happened to me, happened to so many people.  Maybe not the literal, physical butchering, but certainly the devastation of a childhood and of a self.  Yet the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder is today overused and underused and misapplied — and today it seems that absolutely nobody even cares.

So, the victims of these Borderlines either survive or they don’t.  Yet how is it that I can so clearly connect the story of my life, of my mother’s life to Euripides’ ancient story?  It seems so clear to me, but this is not a battle we survivors can fight alone.  It makes us heavy, sad and so incredibly tired.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

INFORMATION LINKS ON BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER:

  • For Family and Friends of Individuals with BPD
  • Borderline Personality Disorder Resources
  • Borderline Personality Disorder Frequently Asked Questions
  • Glossary
  • Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder
  • Treatment of BPD
  • Living with BPD

    •   BPD on the Internet
    Learn more about how to navigate the world of BPD on the web.

    The Quick List – Books on BPD to Get You Started
    If you don’t have time to do the research and are overwhelmed by the shear number of choices, check out this quick list of recommended books. These can get your library started.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    THIS FROM:

    Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog

    The Future of Children: Focus on Child Abuse and Neglect

    Posted: 12 Oct 2009 03:26 AM PDT

    The latest issue of The Future of Children focuses on child abuse prevention. Contributors to the volume present the best available research on policies and programs designed to prevent maltreatment. They examine the gradual—and still partial—shift in the field of child maltreatment toward a “prevention perspective” and explore how insights into the risk factors for maltreatment can help target prevention efforts to the most vulnerable children and families.

    They assess whether a range of specific programs, such as community-wide interventions, parenting programs, home-visiting programs, treatment programs for parents with drug and alcohol problems, and school-based educational programs on sexual abuse, can prevent maltreatment. They also explore how CPS agencies, traditionally seen as protecting maltreated children from further abuse and neglect, might take a more active role in prevention.

    +TRANSCRIPTION COMPLETE FOR MOTHER’S 1963 LETTERS

    alchemynowLeave a comment

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    The transcription of the 1963 letters is complete:

    *1963 – Mother’s Letters

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    +RUPTURE IN RELATIONSHIPS ALWAYS NEEDS REPAIR – MY MOTHER’S REPAIR LETTER

    alchemynowLeave a comment

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    The saga continues.  Dr. Allan Schore writes in great detail about how patterns of rupture and repair are built into an infant’s developing brain — either under optimal conditions or under malevolent ones.  Nobody can ever be completely ‘in synch’ with others all of the time.  Ruptures are to be expected.  It is critical that healthy patterns of repairing these ruptures get built into the new brain through safe and secure early care giver interactions.

    Without healthy, safe and securely attached rupture and repair patterns, insecure attachment patterns will predominantly ‘rule’ the brain — and a person’s resulting actions.  The dominant patters will be of rupture without hope of repair.  Humans do not do well with that scenario, and thus adapt as they find ways to accomplish the needed repair.

    I DO believe that my parents were doing the best that they could do with one another — given what they knew and what they had to work with.  This letter gives us some clues about how the ‘repair after rupture’ part of their relationship worked.

    *1963 – September 9 – Mother’s “repair” response letter to dad

    In context:

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Please don’t rush by the active link I put up there in the post!  This link leads to important insecure attachment information: 

    patterns of rupture and repair

    This information describes how in early infant-caregiver interactions, the infant is never the one who causes the rupture.  It is always the caregiver, and it is vitally important that the one who causes an infant-caregiver  rupture is the one who repairs it.  Once an infant can move around in the world by itself some distance from its caregiver, rupture and repair patterns already built into the brain begin to expand their affects — and these expanded patterns begin to build what we can call the

    ‘shame reaction pattern’.

    The increasing complexity of the brain-mind and nervous system are fundamentally tied into how the rupture-repair patterns were established in early infant development, and continue to be ‘directed’ by information the growing infant-child receives throughout the ‘shame reaction’ stage of early human development.  As this new stage of mobilization within the wider world is safely and securely negotiated with others, what our body-brain knows about rupture and repair can be expanded to include our every more increasingly complex interactions between ourselves and other members of our social species.  — see

    shame and the nervous system

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    +UNEQUAL POWER BETWEEN CLIENTS, PATIENTS AND MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS = DANGEROUS!

    alchemynowLeave a comment

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Healer, Heal Thyself!

    Digest for Power In The Helping Professions

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    I would like to recommend a book that is used in the training of the best psychotherapists and analysts.  I believe it should be a required study for anyone in any branch of the medical professions!

    If you are of curious mind and don’t mind stimulation of your thinking, I would suggest this book not only for medical professionals, but for anyone who has ever had the feeling that medical treatment can be inhumane in terms of the attitudes of the supposed helpers – including those who consider it their main job to dish out drugs!  Clients and patients BEWARE.  If your ‘professional’ does not KNOW the information in this book – there’s a problem!!

    I think these professionals are around sickness so much, their own minds and attitudes get sick, and they can be so cocky and sure of themselves and their power that they can become extremely toxic when they are ‘out of balance’!  This book has information that can help professionals be accountable for their biases, attitudes and often their stupidity and rudeness.  It will help consumers to be more responsible for their own care.

    Beware, be-wary, be-aware.  If you ever walk out of any professional medical appointment of any kind and feel icky, disrespected or even contaminated, it is NOT you that’s the problem.  I guarantee it!!  Take a look at this book — get a copy from your public library — order yourself a copy — it is worth every penny you will pay for it!!

    Power in the Helping Professions by Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig (Paperback – Feb 23, 2009)

    And, yes, something happened to me today that instigated the posting of this title — but I am too mad to write about it now!

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog

    October is Parent Involvement MonthPosted: 09 Oct 2009 02:41 AM PDTToday’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders. Their success, in and out of the class room, is the foundation of a prosperous future for all of us.

    October is Parental Involvement Month, a time to highlight various ways parents can work with their children’s school to accomplish a shared goal—helping children learn and be successful.

    Studies have continually shown that students from families of all different backgrounds and incomes who have involved parents are more likely to: earn higher grades and test scores and enroll in higher level programs; be promoted; pass their classes and earn academic credits; attend school regularly; have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school; and graduate and go on to post secondary education.

    Quite simply, research shows that students learn more, have higher grades, and have better school attendance when parents are involved.

    Tips for becoming more involve in your child’s education:

    • Look for school activities or events that you could be involved in.
    • Attend Parent teacher meetings at your child’s school
    • Eat dinner together as a family.
    • Help your child with homework.
    • Take your child on regular trips to the library.
    • Have a family game night. Have your child keep score.
    • Have a family reading night. One person can read aloud, or everyone can read silently.
    • Talk with your children about their day. What was the best part?

    PSA on parental involvement from our friends at Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    +AFTER 100s OF LETTERS, THIS ONE’S GETTING CLOSER TO SHOWING THE REAL WITCH MOTHER

    alchemynowLeave a comment

    ++++++++++++++++

    (This letter also posted:  *1963 – September 4 – Letter from dad to mother)

    ++++++++++++++++

    Hang onto your hat, the top’s down and we’re going for a ride……

    1963 August 6 - Here for the first time in all my mother's letters we can begin to catch a glimpse of a glimmer of the real Mildred
    1963 August 6 - Here for the first time in all my mother's letters we can begin to catch a glimpse of a glimmer of the real Mildred

    ++++++++++++++++

    This letter is mother’s (to me, shocking) response to dad’s long (to me, thoughtful and honest) letter of —*1963 – September 3 – Dad’s Letter to Mother While the Rest of Us Are In New Mexico.   Here is an excellent opportunity to look at the pitiful and destructive dynamics in my parents’  relationship.  This is a rare letter because in it she is honest about how she felt both about her mother and my father — and neither honesty nor the truth was my mother’s strong suit in these hundreds of letters of hers I am transcribing.

    This letter shows the kind of ‘switching’ that my mother would do, and shows how, even on pieces of paper with a pen as a weapon she would work herself up into a rage filled frenzy.  The best thing for us children would have been — a long time prior to when this letter was written — for our parents to have chosen a place for us to live in so we could get on with some semblance of growing up while having our needs met.

    We were growing up anyway.  *1963 – Trip to Santa Fe – Here at Grand Canyon – mom and kids It was not OUR choice for five of us plus my mother to run over two thousand miles away from my father, or to be jammed into a tiny motel room in a strange town, to start school late in the year, to have no certainty about what was going to happen next in our lives.  And as much as any of us children might have loved the homestead, it was not our biggest need to have ourselves dragged back there as pawns in my mother’s sick, distorted ‘mind games’ with my father.

    ++++

    Another factor that is of course not mentioned in these letters flying back and forth between my parents is the fact that we had lost what might as well have been another member of our family — the log house.  It had been sold.  In order for massive ‘trauma drama’ to be enacted within a family, there must be a stage and a setting.  The dynamics of my mother’s chaos worked prior to this time with three main settings:  the log house in Eagle River, the homestead, and the Panoramic View Apartments in Anchorage.  She had lost the log house, and that fact — like a child growing up and leaving the family — changed how mother’s, and hence our drama was to play itself out after this time.

    (For background on the truth of mother’s actions during the year prior to the time this letter was written in 1963, read particularly her late summer, fall and winter letters here: *1962 – MOTHER’S LETTERS and the letters *1963 – Mother’s Letters written prior to our leaving Alaska in August of 1963)

    In this September 6, 1963 letter she tells dad:

    “I don’t mind if we don’t live there this winter as it isn’t our fault but I’m not the one for you if you feel we should buy a house.  I can’t return under such circumstances.  I simply can’t.  I know I’ll yell, scream and fuss again and I won’t….Bill if we don’t live on the homestead I don’t want to live in Alaska with you.”

    It seems clear to me from letters months and years prior to this that it has always been mother who orchestrated the moves off the mountain and  Dad simply obliged her.

    From my point of view, certainly toward the second half of this letter, mother is writing ‘crazy-talk’!  She tells him,

    “But I don’t, and won’t deliver ultimatums.  You must feel it’s right.  I can’t build my life or our children’s lives elsewhere and if I live there I must depend on you to build our home and work side by side….I’m convinced – always have been – and you’re not!!”

    ++++++++++++++++

    Please follow this link to read

    *1963 – September 6 – Mother’s Wicked Response to Father From Santa Fe

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    In a letter September 5, 1963 she stated about the opposite of her letter 1 day later:

    “You’ll know what you want to do after your trip – live there now or next summer.  I don’t care.

    I want you – I love you – and will work out our problems together.

    I am absolutely lost without you!!

    Write soon and often.  Your ever loving wife, Mildred -”

    ++++++++++++++++