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In this update about the progress of my life’s process I will first say that I have not identified the source of the stink in my house – so I am still working on that.  Next I will say that spring is fast approaching and a great deal of much-loved labor related to the flower and vegetable gardens are in progress.  Then I will say (also related to recent posts) that since I stopped dead in my book-writing tracks early last November I have now as of 2 days ago swung myself around in a full circle so that I am back at that writing work.

Thanks in a large part to my dear sister’s comment of support and encouragement on my post about wanting to do something helpful that can matter to other people, I am understanding that of all the little things I might be able to do in that direction – which includes my efforts toward the failed Congo drum group’s performances in my community — are NOT what I either want to or need to be concerned with at this time.

I have something to offer that is uniquely mine.  I have a story of severe trauma from infant-child abuse to tell — along with what I have LEARNED about and from those experiences.

So – unable evidently to waste much time in sleeping last night I was awake and hard at research well before the crack of dawn today.

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I believe my daughter who is involved in writing our book with me, and I, will increasingly be involved in what I call today “fast track thinking.”

I picture a vast freeway – the internet one – which includes a commuter lane.  With the voluminous amounts of information available to us we can move in research directions at near-lightning speed — IF we know what we are after and how the pieces fit together.

The direction of thinking being built this morning is related to what is most unfortunately becoming a slang word:  RESILIENCY.

The word itself refers to a concept that is unclear to nearly everyone using it today.  It is important to become as clear as possible about the ideas and realities that are related to this word.  What I have found and will continue to find about RESILIENCY is accumulating at this link

WELL-BEING

at which the following sub-pages are appearing

• HEALING WOUNDS
• +RISK, STRESS AND DISTRESS
• *RESEARCH LANGUAGE ABOUT RESILIENCY
• +RESILIENCY – ARTICLE LINKS ON FAMILY COPING STRATEGIES

While there is much I could write in this post about this topic I have too many other things to attend to today.  I am preparing the soil to start my jalapeno seeds indoors today.  I need to go prepare the beds for the 100 Texas Sweet Onion starts that need to go into the ground today and upgrade/check the drip irrigation.  I need to rework the compost piles — etc.

So what I have to say about the connections between lifelong quality of life and well-being (and its lack), the degrees of security vs insecurity of earliest caregiver relationships, about how the signals our body receives during critical early stages of development from our attachment relationships determine how our genes manifest and how our body-brain develops (and greatly influences our physical and emotional health for our lifetime), and about how all these signals are actually our Reproductive Fitness Indicators personally as we ourselves are representatives of the quality of the environment that formed us, and about resiliency as it is created by a combination of risk and protective factors — all has to wait for another time.

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It is with a balance between humor and resignation that I must report there is something rotten in my house – in my back room, to be specific.

All kinds of parallels spring to mind between all that was truly rotten in my parents’ abusive home I raised myself in and the obviously very dead something that is stinking up the back half of my house.  But I will not dwell on these connections because I evidently have an unpleasant task ahead of me for this afternoon.

I began to notice the stink yesterday as I was preparing to leave for the afternoon to run errands – which happened to include a great deal of fortunate and very pleasant visiting with friends in town which lifted my rather glum spirits noticeably.

I wanted to believe the odor I was detecting was coming from something that had died in the very shallow crawl space under my house.  I decided yesterday I could do nothing to improve the situation but let time go by while the dead whatever mummified itself.

Well, the stink is today too close to home to fool myself any longer.  Something is dead IN MY ROOM.  (Appropriate explicative can be imagined here!)

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So, off I am soon to go into the netherworld of long ago moved furniture with high hopes my efforts will be rewarded with the discovery of something I can remove without puking along the way.

In the meantime, I chuckled as I found and read the following online.  Again the parallel between the scenes being described here and the bizarre, chaotic and insane madness of the home of origin for severe infant and child abuse survivors is obvious.

Shakespeare Quotes

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Horatio:
He waxes desperate with imagination.

Marcellus:
Let’s follow. ‘Tis not fit thus to obey him.

Horatio:
Have after. To what issue will this come?

Marcellus:
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Horatio:
Heaven will direct it.

Marcellus:
Nay, let’s follow him. [Exeunt.]

Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 87–91

This is one time when the popular misquotation—”Something’s rotten in Denmark”—is a real improvement on the original. But you ought to be careful around purists, who will also remember that the minor character Marcellus, and not Hamlet, is the one who coins the phrase. There’s a reason he says “state of Denmark” rather than just Denmark: the fish is rotting from the head down—all is not well at the top of the political hierarchy.

There have been some hair-raising goings-on outside the castle at Elsinore. As the terrified Horatio and Marcellus look on, the ghost of the recently deceased king appears to Prince Hamlet. The spirit beckons Hamlet offstage, and the frenzied prince follows after, ordering the witnesses to stay put. They quickly decide to tag along anyway—it’s not “fit” to obey someone who is in such a desperate state. In this confused exchange, Marcellus’s famous non sequitur sustains the foreboding mood of the disjointed and mysterious action. And it reinforces the point and tone of some of Hamlet’s earlier remarks—for example, that Denmark is “an unweeded garden” of “things rank and gross in nature” (Act 1, scene 2). When his father’s ghost tells him his chilling tale in scene 5, the prince will realize just how rotten things really are in Denmark.

Citation:  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Macrone. Cader Company, 1990. eNotes.com. 15 Mar, 2012

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Well, I am off to have the time of my life, no doubt!!  Cleaning the stink out of one’s home, mind and life is, after all, a one person job!  Grrrrrr!!!

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This blog originated three years ago next month.  In its beginning I never thought about censoring what I wrote here.  I wrote with passion then.  I wrote believing in what I had to say as it expressed what I was learning.  I believed that what I had to say had value to myself and to other severe infant-child abuse survivors.  I wrote with hope.

Today?  I could almost say that more than 100% of the time I make a decision that what I could write here on any given day has no value to anyone.  Somewhere along the line in time I crossed an inward line of self-judgment that keeps me from freely expressing myself here because I can’t find any value in what I think during most of my days.

Self-judgment.  Self censorship.  I don’t even know where that came from, or when it entered my blog writing process – but I do know it’s here.  Somewhere along the line I began to believe that life is too complex, too complicated, for me or for anyone else to have any ‘answers’ about anything.  Therefore if there are no answers then there is no value in anything I have to say?  Evidently I believe that…..

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I do think it is hard to self-examine one’s beliefs – at least it is hard for me to do this.  In this blog’s beginning I did not worry about feeling vulnerable or about being open to criticism.  I did not worry about saying something ‘wrong’.  I did not worry about ‘making mistakes’.  I did not worry about any reader judging me.  I had confidence.  I did not judge myself.

My guiding thought seems to be, “If I don’t have anything useful (positive) to say then it is best I don’t say anything at all.”  This blog is therefore beginning to be full of “nothing to say.”  Which does leave me thinking about words words words.

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My daughter, who lives 1,700 miles away from me in the north, told me on the phone yesterday about difficulties she had with her day yesterday due to difficulties her little son, who just turned 2 last Sunday, had with HIS day.  I think mostly due to the hour change in time which is makes a HUGE difference to a little person’s schedule, the start of the day followed into difficulties all the way down the line for the little person.

By the end of the day when his mother picked him up from daycare he was in tears – the stiff-as-a-board yelling like there is no tomorrow kind of tears.  Momma couldn’t get him to even bend his body enough to strap him into his car seat for the ride home.

Throughout the conversation with my daughter I found myself telling her that for all the experiences her son has through a very busy day, he is at a disadvantage because he has no words to TELL her what he is feeling – or why.  At the same time I mentioned this I realized he ALSO has, therefore, no words to THINK himself about his own life.  Imagine that!  No words.

I also know from remembering the growth and development of my own children that when my grandson does grow a vocabulary large enough to begin to TALK about the complexities of his own life that he will not censor what he says or thinks.  When does that self-censorship process enter the language-using process?  And once it does, what purpose does it serve?

Certainly this child will, as all children do, first go through the stage of chattering constantly.  I remember going through the stage with my children of helping them understand that they do not need to SPEAK every word that they THINK.  But what an amazing step in human development it is to be able to use language!  What a miracle!

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And then, as I can see so clearly now for myself, there can come a time when as an adult one can judge nearly every thought that goes through one’s mind.  Too many words?  Too many thoughts?  Too many of the ‘wrong’ thoughts?  How do I really know what I think – or what I might be able to say, to write – is NOT productive?

Certainly nobody in my entire childhood ever cared about what I had to say.  Nobody cared about what I felt.  Given that terrible severe abuse was ongoing throughout all of my childhood, I never learned THEN that there was any benefit whatsoever about being able to talk about myself to anyone else.

This is tied to what I find myself thinking about quite a bit lately:  What is it about my being in the world that really matters or has value to anyone else?  On this level my self-judgments are about far more than what I think or say – the judgments are about what I do, what I am doing in a day, what I can do – and most importantly the judgments are about what GOOD I have to offer to anybody else.

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I realized yesterday that the great difficulties I experience with being disappointed are directly tied to words I use such as ‘depression’, ‘ sadness’ and ‘loneliness’.  I realized that because I live alone in a very limited small life, I most often feel I lack the ability to MATTER to anyone.

As a mother, for the 35 years of my life I had children under age 18 in my home to take care of, I never thought about things in this way.  Of course what I did MATTERED.  I was a mother who was raising my children.  Anything else I did along the way paled in comparison to the important impact I always believed that I made regarding the short- and the long-term well-being of my children.

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I have been working outside in my garden in recent days as the weather warms.  What I do matters to my plants.  Caring for my chickens, dog, 2 cats and parakeet matter to them.  But what of human beings?

I realized that the struggles I had with the cancellation of the Congo drum group events I had planned (scan back for recent posts) was mostly about my frustration with having thought I could do something useful that could matter to other people in some small way.  This is no different than what I wanted for my writing efforts on this blog.  It is no different for the hopes I had for writing a book about the traumas of my infancy and childhood.

I am limited financially and emotionally and physically in many ways that keep me living a quiet life – which I DO need.  Yesterday I found myself wondering if I don’t have some kind of ancient memory in my DNA that reminds me of what it was like to live intimately in community with other people.  Loneliness was probably unheard of in those days – un-experienced, un-thought of, and therefore not an experience to be expressed in words.

In today’s world with 7-billion of us on this earth, and in this American culture I live in, it seems to be that ‘independence’ has led to isolation and compartmentalization of experience – it is so easy to live in ‘pieces’ while being deprived of the experience of finding oneself mattering in the bigger picture of the ‘whole’.

Unless, I suppose, one can be creative enough to find some way to connect in social circles.  Me?  A part of a social circle?  What does THAT mean?

A big part of the ongoing abuse I suffered was, as I have mentioned here many times before, about extreme isolation from EVERYONE – my siblings, my father, any other relatives, and from any hope of friendship (except for a very brief time spent in Brownies).  My grandson lives a very very social life.  He is loved and tenderly attended to by his parents, by their friends, and spends most of his days immersed in a social environment of day care.  He is being created to be a social being.

Given that the species of humanity IS a social species – my grandson is being given very real advantages that I never, never had.  Once I left home when I was 18 – I began – through force of circumstance – to PRETEND to myself and to everyone else that I had a single clue about what being a social being in a social world was all about.

Over the years these efforts have exhausted me.  This doesn’t mean I have ever stopped having social needs.  That I can no longer experience the ‘social’ experiences that I did even as a mother raising my children, and given the fact that I have no mate and am not likely at my age of 60 to EVER again have a mate, and given a whole LOT of very real limitations of place and finances, etc. – I really don’t know how I am going to find a way to MATTER to anyone except, of course to my children and friends I am closest to.

Does it help me to begin to clarify in words that what could so easily be named depression, sadness, frustration, disappointment, loneliness is ACTUALLY directly tied to my sense of not mattering on the bigger SOCIAL level?  Do I feel any ripples I might make in the universe are so infinitesimally tiny that NOBODY but God will ever notice?

Does any of this matter?  Is there a solution?  Can I find it?  Can I stop censoring my writing because I have THESE thoughts and feelings?

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*ABOUT OUR TESTS AND DIFFICULTIES

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The Hard Part of Flying

We sat on the banks of a river gently flowing by

And watched an Eagle Mother teach her young one how to fly

She stood by her child on the edge of her nest in a tree

Spread her wings as she floated away calling “Follow me.”

When Eagle’s child refused to fly Mother began to scold

She screeched across the river “Child, do as you are told!”

Her child called back “I’m safe right here!  I can’t fly!  I’m scared to!”

Mother answered her child “You will fly because you dared to!”

Finally Mother gave up and as she yelled a great shout

She dove back to her nest and with a swoop shoved her child out

Yes the young one flew with its Mother following after

As the wind carried back to us the sounds of their laughter

As we watch Eagles circle high above us in the air

We know it was their Mothers who pushed and shoved them up there

All the love and noisy coaxing that we don’t often see

Is just a part of helping children learn they can fly free

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Dedicated to Prairie Rose and to all of her children

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© Linda Lloyd Danielson, March 11, 2012

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Important new book:  Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease by Robin Karr-Morse (Jan 3, 2012)

“No one explains better than Robin Karr-Morse…how toxic stress triggers problems that have created a major public health crisis – the research, the risks, and the results. Highlighting case studies and cutting-edge scientific findings, the authors show how our innate fight-or-flight system can injure us if overworked in the early stages of life, triggering diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression, and addiction later in life.”

[And many more health problems including anxiety, asthma, other autoimmune diseases including arthritis, many cases of cancer, triggered genes for suicide — and many more]

Book Description

The first years of human life are more important than we ever realized. In Scared Sick, Robin Karr-Morse connects psychology, neurobiology, endocrinology, immunology, and genetics to demonstrate how chronic fear in infancy and early childhood— when we are most helpless—lies at the root of common diseases in adulthood.

Compassionate and based on the latest research, Scared Sick will unveil a major public health crisis. Highlighting case studies and cutting-edge scientific findings, Karr- Morse shows how our innate fight-or-flight system can injure us if overworked in the early stages of life. Persistent stress can trigger diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression, and addiction later on.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
“information-packed….the authors do make a very persuasive case that preventive measures should be taken to eliminate or mitigate early trauma” 

Kirkus Reviews
“A wake-up call? Absolutely.”

Daniel J. Siegel, MD, Executive Director, Mindsight Institute, Clinical Professor, UCLA School of Medicine, and author of Mindsight

“Karr-Morse and Wiley have done it again! Scared Sick raises many profound and urgent questions about how stress during the earliest moments of our lives—in utero and out in the world—can create lasting negative impacts on the health of our bodies and minds. While many of the exact details remain to be clarified with further research, this book’s summary of the science of stress creates a call to action that is quite clear: We need to awaken ourselves to the importance of both preventing toxic stress early in life and helping the many who have been affected during these early years to have the healing support that is available in the form of social connections and mindful reflective skills that can lead us in new and helpful directions in our collective lives.”

Vincent J. Felitti, MD, Founder, The California Institutes of Preventive Medicine

“Scared Sick is useful, highly readable, scientifically advanced, and relevant to all of us in better understanding our lives, especially how our earliest life experiences can translate into health and disease over the decades. Another impressive book by Robin Karr-Morse with Meredith Wiley.”

David Lawrence, Jr., President of The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and former publisher of The Miami Herald
“Ghosts from the Nursery helped me decide—more than a decade ago—to retire to devote all my energies to ‘school readiness’ issues. The thesis of Scared Sick energizes me further. Within is an abundance of information and wisdom—about fetuses who feel pain, prenatal depression, trauma and the Unabomber, the mixed blessings of child care, and much more. The book is a splendid blend of sense and science.”

About the Author

Robin Karr-Morse is family therapist and a veteran of child welfare and public education systems in Oregon. Formerly the Director of Parent Training for the state child welfare system, she was the first executive director of the Oregon Children’s Trust Fund, a consultant to Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s Touchpoints Program and a lecturer on the Brazelton Seminar Faculty. She has worked with county, state and national officials across the country to create social policies which support families in children’s earliest development. Currently, she is working with a group of colleagues to build “The Parenting Institute” to provide parents with state of the art developmental knowledge, skills and support which focuses on building emotionally competent children from conception through adolescence.

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Scared Sick Lecture and Book-signing with Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith Wiley, April 2 in Albany

Posted: 08 Mar 2012 10:17 AM PST

Toxic: extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful. Stress: a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation.

Toxic stress is a regular companion for children living in families where abuse, neglect, and dysfunction are part of everyday life.  The impact on children and on our communities is profound and far-reaching.

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Meredith Wiley is a former prosecutor and currently state director of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids New York, a crime fighting organization of law enforcement leaders and victims of violence who work to educate policy makers and the public on what works to get kids off to a good start in life and keep them from ever becoming criminals. Meredith is a former prosecutor.  She has been appointed to the New York State Children’s Cabinet Advisory Council, the Early Childhood Advisory Council, the Governor’s Task Force to Transform Juvenile Justice and the Juvenile Justice Advisory Group, and also is on the National Board of Advisors for the Nurse Family Partnership Program and the National Board of Advisors for the Parent Child Home Program.

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See also TIME Magazine article:  +THE MOST IMPORTANT 9 MONTHS OF OUR LIFE

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Some weeks ago a blog reader left me a comment related to my learning to play keyboard, to read and to write songs.  I’ve had this project idea on a back burner these past few weeks – but today I am beginning to investigate what this blog commenter mentioned might be a program that I can write songs for.

All I know is that ‘hospice’ and ‘bedside singing’ were mentioned.  As I begin my online inquiries I find links to stories such as these:

Bedside Choir Provides ‘Threshold’ Comfort

Harbour Singers – “The Harbour Singers was formed in 2008 to support persons in end of life care settings at a hospice, hospital, nursing home, or at home throughout the Southern Maine region. We offer a gift of song at bedside from a small group of caring volunteers.
“The Harbour Singers is a non-denominational chorus with non-profit status under the umbrella of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco & Biddeford. The choir is open to all who wish to sing. Any person, whether they come with a religious affiliation, spiritual practice or social concern, is welcome to join.”

The Bedside Singers

Singing for Hospice and Healing

Bedside Songs Help Ease The Pain and Sleep Better

Music Therapy Hospice Volunteers

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Well, I don’t know where this line of thinking will lead me – I DO NOT SING!  But I might be able to write songs that someone else involved in programs such as these listed might be able to use in singing at bedsides elsewhere.  If any readers have any info for me related to these ideas please drop a comment here!

Today I am putting a little waltz tune I wrote last night to words:

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Fallen Butterfly

When you find a butterfly that’s fallen to the ground

Listen to it carefully.  It speaks in quiet sound…

I tell you a tale of glory

Alpha and omega story

Blissful I began my life wrapped in a warm cocoon

Next I was a caterpillar, yet I changed so soon…

Two wings I was given to fly

Through the air so free, far and wide

My job was to pollinate.  I did my job so well

‘Til my wings beat slower, I flew lower and I fell…

Living on nectar from flowers

Peaceful was I all my hours

My days were full of colors so glorious and bright

I gracefully folded my wings in prayer every night…

I have been delicate and strong

My life full of beauty and song

Nothing I did was harmful.  I made no being sad

I never wished for anything more than what I had…

But no forever-soul have I

My time is over when I die

This lovely butterfly is all I could ever be

I cannot rise to the kingdom of humanity…

God gave to me this life vernal

And to you a soul eternal

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(note pattern:  1/8, 1/8, 1/4, 1/4 – with an 1/8, 1/4, 1/4 pattern sounding at the end of some lines as notes without words)

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