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May 18, 2016 – The list you will see below in this post is here without my comments:

+LIST OF 43 CHARACTERISTICS OF bpd

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Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul Mason MS and Randi Kreger(Jan 2, 2010)

I only have in my possession the 1998 edition of this book.  It is from there, pages 16 – 18, that I am copying the following information (for educational thought only) into this post.  I am in the process of ordering the latest edition and hope to contact the publisher for permission to comprehensively include the updated list of this information I am working with in this post in my books to be published about my mother (deceased 2002) based upon her own writings.

Until l figure out how I am going to continuously protect my work toward publication from viral contamination or loss, I will be storing my ongoing process at this link which is located on the ‘About’ page accessed from its tab at the top of this blog:

++”The Demise of Mildred” – (her story in two parts)

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 The following list of characteristics common to people who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (This list is NOT the formal diagnostic checklist of criteria for BPD) could be used as a readers’ guide to my mother Mildred’s writings as I intend to publish them.

Here I will duplicate these characteristics as a precursor to my renewed editing of Mildred’s writings.  I will be adding comments in ITALICS.  I am putting my ‘yes’ and my ‘no’ at the front of these statements taken from Stop Walking on Eggshells at the front of each one as I present them here.

The most obvious discrepancy I can note at this moment concerning how Mildred’s patterns fit these descriptions is that in many cases even among the ones that fit her, she DID NOT DISPLAY THE ‘ALTERNATING’.  Hers was a one-way street.

I find this fascinating.  At this moment I am not prepared to suggest what it was about Mildred that created this perhaps unique (if not rare) aspect of her ‘practice’ as (I believe) a BPD individual.  I suspect that it was the severity of Mother’s illness that created her fundamentally extreme presentation of these characteristics.

Writing this post today has taken away from me any possible denial I have held onto about Mother suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.  I hope to find an interested qualified professional willing to make as an authoritative postmortem diagnosis of Mother as could be possible.

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Thoughts That May Indicate BPD

Does this person:

 (1) — Alternate between seeing people as either flawless or evil?  Have difficulty remembering the good things about a person they’re casting in the role of villain?  Find it impossible to recall anything negative about this person when they become the hero?  — (YES) [Note:  Mildred’s belief that I was an ‘all evil – Devil’s Child’ and nearly always her belief that her chosen child, my younger sister was an ‘all good – God’s Child’, did not alternate or fluctuate.  These two beliefs were central to what I have come to call Mother’s ‘inner core of madness’ which had to permanently take the form it did so that she could function (at all!) with her ‘outer core of madness’.]

(2) — Alternate between seeing others as completely for them or against them? — (YES)

(3) — Alternate between seeing situations as either disastrous or ideal? — (YES)

(4) — Alternate between seeing themselves as either worthless of flawless?  — (YES) [Note:  I respond ‘yes’ to this, but how this pattern operated within Mildred is not at this moment crystal clear to me.  I suspect that Mother had lost any ability to ‘see’ or ‘know’ any truth about herself – she could not and did not exercise ‘self reflection’ on any level of depth.]

 (5) — Have a hard time recalling someone’s love for them when they’re not around?  — (YES) [Note:  This is a classic characteristic of people with Insecure Attachment Disorders]

(6) — Believe that others are either completely right or totally wrong?  — (YES) [Note:  This pattern was clear concerning both her ‘public’ and her ‘private’ human contacts.  Her need to maintain a fantasy world of denial about those who had hurt her in her infancy and childhood as she ‘pretended’ that another reality had existed rather than face the one that did exist was probably essential to her continued survival.  In her inner madness however, I was permanently wrong while my sister was permanently right.  My father was entirely battered back and forth between these extremes, as was her own mother to a much less extent (although if Mildred had not left her mother behind in Los Angeles to move to Alaska I suspect their relationship would have become brutal).]

(7) — Change their opinions depending upon who they’re with?  — — (Not clear to me yet) [NOTE:  At this moment I am tempted to say that Mildred so lived in her own reality that other people did not exist to her as ‘real’ people.  She did not, therefore, care a twit what anyone else thought or felt about anything – so why would she change her opinion to fit anyone else’s?  I have to ponder this one as I examine her patterns within her writings.]

(8) — Alternate between idealizing people and devaluing them?  — (YES) [Note: Clearly related to these other comments I am making about her polarization patterns.]

(9) — Remember situations very differently than other people, or find themselves unable to recall them at all?  — (YES) [Note:  While this is absolutely true I would add a qualifier:  Mildred did not find herself “unable to recall them at all” because if she had a different memory from others or did not remember, in her universe there was not a SINGLE chance that she was involved in ‘the wrongness’.]

(10) — Believe that others are responsible for their actions — or take too much responsibility for the actions of others?  — (YES) [Note:  My first reaction to this characteristic beyond ‘yes’ is puzzlement.  I find my response interesting.  It immediately gives me a red flag concerning my inner contamination with Mother’s thinking.  As it applied, for example, to ME, Mother psychotically believed that I was forever responsible for ‘my behavior’ of being born breech so that I could fulfill the devil’s intention of using me to kill her while I was being born.  Whether or not she took ‘too much responsibility for the actions of others’ seems at this moment to be a statement whose clarity lies in such a gray area that I cannot think ‘into it’ at this moment.]

(11) — Seem unwilling to admit a mistake — or feel that everything that they do is a mistake?  — (YES) [Note:  I’m not sure that Mildred ever admitted to making a mistake in her life or took responsibility for anything.]

(12) — Based their beliefs on feelings rather than facts?  — (YES, ABSOLUTELY) – [Note:  Again I would say that Mother’s feelings appeared to have shifted into areas of psychosis that placed them at a fundamental extreme from what most people would be able to recognize as being ‘feelings’ at all.]

(13) — Not realize the effects of their behavior on others?  — (YES, ABSOLUTELY)[Note:  I don’t think it’s possible to be more narcissistic, selfish and self-centered than Mildred was.  But, then, human beings close to her did not really exist as separate beings to her — so none of this mattered in her universe.  The question comes to my mind as I consider this characteristic, “How ‘real’ to Mildred were people she encountered outside her own family?  Mildred had no conscience regarding those she hurt.]

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Feelings That May Indicate BPD

Does this person:

(14) — Feel abandoned at the slightest provocation?  — (YES) [Note:  This is a complex pattern that includes a sense of self-righteousness, being unjustly treated by others and wounded by them, being misunderstood, not being appreciated, perceived slights, not getting what Mother wanted and/or thought she deserved — in other words, this area was rampant with sick control and manipulation of all kinds including tantrums.]

 (15) — Have extreme moodiness that cycles very quickly (in minutes or hours?) — (YES, ABSOLUTELY AND FUNDAMENTALLY)

(16) — Have difficulty managing their emotions?  — (YES, ABSOLUTELY AND FUNDAMENTALLY)[Note:  Mildred’s ‘inner core’ where she placed and kept me operated to contain the most intolerable of her feelings.  How she treated (abused) me was how she managed those ones.]

(17) — Feel emotions so intensely that it’s difficult to put others’ needs — even those of their own children — ahead of their own?  — (YES, ABSOLUTELY AND FUNDAMENTALLY) [Note:  So true that any thought that Mildred could have operated differently becomes ludicrous.  Mother’s children were dolls to her.  They were not children.  They were not individual people.  Most simply put – I was her ‘enemy’ and the other five were her ‘friends’.]

(18) — Feel distrustful and suspicious a great deal of the time? — (YES, ALWAYS)

(19) — Feel anxious or irritable a great deal of the time?  — (YES) [Note:  By abusing me and keeping me in her inner hell (so she could escape and function in her ‘outer’ life) most of Mildred’s most harmful feelings were nearly always focused on me.  This would include her minor feelings of distrust, suspicion, anxiousness, irritability – moving all the way through the range of intensely negative feelings such as brutal uncontrolled murderous rage, hatred and paranoia.  (Any deep ‘terror’ Mother had connected to her treatment of me is past any explanation here.)]

(20) — Feel empty or like they have no self a great deal of the time?  — (YES, but complicated) [Note:  This is such a personal, inner characteristic that nobody could accurately guess at it from the outside.  Fortunately Mother does address feelings related to this characteristic directly within some of her letters to her mother — we have her own words on this one.]

(21) — Feel ignored when they are not the focus of attention?  — (YES) [Note:  She was an expert on making sure this never happened in her family.  I suspect that how she isolated herself from public was part of how she controlled this from being an issue in outside relationships.]

(22) — Express anger inappropriately or have difficulty in expressing anger at all?  — (YES) [Note:  NEVER did Mildred have difficulty in expressing anger!]

(23) —  Feel that they never can get enough love, affection, or attention?  — (YES, ABSOLUTELY AND FUNDAMENTALLY)[Note:  It is most clear how the patterns of her childhood set her up for this one directly.]

(24) — Frequently feel spacey, unreal, or out of it?  (YES) [Note:  Interestingly, Mildred does describe this state in some of her letters to her mother.  Personally I see this characteristic as being an aspect of dissociation, depersonalization and derealization — all being physiological responses to trauma.]

Behaviors That May Indicate BPD

Does this person [Note:  Where I mark ‘yes’ below I mean fundamentally and absolutely so]:

(25) — Have trouble observing others’ personal limits?  — (YES)

(26) — Have trouble defining their own personal limits?  — (YES)

(27) — Act impulsively in ways that are potentially self-damaging, such as spending too much, engaging in dangerous sex, fighting, gambling, abusing drugs or alcohol, reckless driving, shoplifting, or disordered eating?  — (YES) [Note:  Her patterns were far too complicated to describe here.]

(28) — Mutilate themselves — for example, purposely cutting or burning their skin?  — (NO) [Note:  These answers are ‘no’ – but there are ‘buts’…..  For example, long after I left home Mildred’s friend knocked on her apartment door and was surprised to find that Mildred had written ‘666’ on her forehead and hands.  When asked why Mildred replied that this way if the devil came to take her he would leave her alone because he would know she already belonged to him.  This directly ties to what I know of Mildred’s psychosis about me.]

(29) — Threaten to kill themselves — or make actual suicide attempts?  — (NO)

(30) — Rush into relationships based on idealized fantasies of what they would like the other person or the relationship to be? — (YES)

(31) — Change their expectations in such a way that the other person feels they can never do anything right? — (YES)

(32) — Have frightening, unpredictable rages that make no logical sense — or have trouble expressing anger at all?  — (YES!!) [Note:  As I already stated, Mother never had trouble expressing anger.  The ‘make no logical sense’ part of this characteristic operated differently for Mother regarding me — It was devastating that as Mother’s psychosis defined my evilness — my father evidently came to BELIEVE HER!]

(33) — Physically abuse others, such as slapping, kicking, and scratching them? — (YES, INDESCRIBABLY SO)

(34) — Needlessly create crises or live a chaotic lifestyle?  — (YES!!!!) [Note:  Add Mildred’s choice to homestead on an Alaskan homestead into this mix and — well, it’s a story!]

(35) — Act inconsistently or unpredictably?  — (YES)

(36) — Alternately want to be close to others, then distance themselves?  (Examples include picking fights when things are going well or alternately ending relationships and then trying to get back together.)  — (YES) [Note:  I chuckle at some of these, so extremely so did Mildred display most of these.  Again, finding a remote Alaskan homestead does tend to distance a person….]

(37) — Cut people out of their life over issues that seem trivial or overblown? — (YES)

(38) — Act competent and controlled in some situations but extremely out of control in others?  [Note:  Mildred was a gorgeous woman whose charm was captivating to many.] — (YES)

(39) — Verbally abuse others, criticizing and blaming them to the point where it feels brutal?  — (YES!!!)[Note:  WAS BRUTAL!]

(40) — Act verbally abusive toward people they know very well, while putting on a charming front for others?  Can they switch from one mode to the other in seconds?  — (YES) [Note:  Faster than seconds.  Interesting that Mother did not verbally abuse her children except for me — if she did so it happened so seldom I have no memory of it happening at all.  She most certainly nearly ALWAYS verbally abused me, and frequently her husband.  I do not doubt that Mildred was verbally abused during her own infancy and childhood.]

(41) — Act in what seems like extreme or controlling ways to get their own needs met? — (YES!!)

(42) — Do or say something inappropriate to focus the attention on them when they feel ignored?  — (YES)

(43) — Accuse others of doing things they did not do, having feelings they do not feel, or believing things they do not believe?  — (YES) [Note:  Absolutely true Mildred accused me of doing things I did not do – a process tied to her psychosis about me.  She did this to my father, ACCUSE was one of her favorite actions.]

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In writing this post I realize that it became very lengthy and would benefit from being divided into two posts.  I apologize that I am not willing to take the time right now to figure out where this break should occur!

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Part of what I wish to accomplish in the writing of this post is a reply to “Lee’s” comment found at the end of my last post —

+THE BEST VOICE OF REASON: WHAT EARLY TRAUMA SURVIVORS KNOW

I am ordering and intend to read ASAP this book:

Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease  (2012)

Robin Karr-Morse (Author), Meredith S. Wiley(Contributor)

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A few days ago my daughter, who is a professional sociologist and researcher, attended a luncheon in the state capitol of North Dakota.  She was able to sit next to and visit with Robin Karr-Morse as they discussed many topics related to the permanent and severe lifelong consequences of living in a body whose development on all levels was detoured by early stress from trauma.

My daughter later relayed to me the gist of an analogy that Robin uses to describe the body-based reactions severe early trauma survivors have.  To them – me – us – there is always a White Tiger in the room.

My exact knowledge of the details of the discussion that my daughter and Robin had is sketchy at best.  A mention was made of research that compared the stress response to a minor kind of disturbance between little ones who had not been chronically traumatized and those who had been traumatized.  When the minor stressor was presented, the trauma-altered kids had a massive stress reaction in their body with a very slow ability to return to a calm state than did the non-trauma altered little ones.  In some cases the non-trauma little people did not even respond at all.

I think the point was that to trauma-altered development people there is ALWAYS a White Tiger in the room.

I will ask my daughter again when she has time to retell this story to me.  In the meantime as I begin my day in this body that is way-too slow to heal this nasty reaction I still have even with antibiotics to a cold I picked up from my 2 1/2 year old grandson (who brought it home from daycare while I was visiting up north) – I am tempted to refine the White Tiger analogy in this way:  The White Tiger threat that I live with is not in the ROOM at all times – it is IN MY BODY.

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Because I am not and will never be anything like a ‘mental health professional’ I am not limited in my ability to combine information I glean from multiple sources into my own assessment of how I am in the world.  I can only offer guesses about what life in a trauma-altered body is like for anyone else.

When it comes to trying to use knowledge that DOES fit our condition by using existing language-words to describe our survivor reality, I suggest that what our true ‘condition’ is remains at this point in time — unknown.

If I would be asked to say on-the-spot what is ‘wrong’ with me I would simply say, “I have nearly the most severe kind of insecure attachment disorder possible.”

Now, experts might describe what is ‘wrong’ with me as an adult version of “Disorganized-Disoriented Insecure Attachment.”  Yet there is one other ‘more severe’ category infrequently mentioned in the research literature called “Cannot Classify.”  Maybe I fit that one.  I don’t specifically know, and at this point at my age of 61 I don’t care what anyone – including myself – choose to name how my body is in the world.  I don’t think anyone can even accurately name ‘my condition’ – so it hardly matters except as a ‘diagnosis’ is needed to let those on one side of the abyss I mentioned communicate with those on their own side about how they might understand me.

Most importantly, there is no way to FIX what is ‘wrong’ with me.  I know that now.

Everyone with an insecure attachment disorder – which Dr. Allan Schore mentions is approximately 45% of our population – also has what he calls ‘an empathy disorder’.  I strongly believe that some version of an insecure attachment disorder, created through unstable, inadequate and usually traumatic early attachment relationships, lies at the origin of every known ‘ mental illness’ we might name.

Most certainly the most severe insecure attachment disorders such as Disorganized-Disoriented are directly related to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and to Complex PTSD.  Those of us with the most early-trauma-altered development are also probably related in the ‘family tree of physiological consequence’ to what can be called Reactive Attachment Disorder.

What matters most to me is that those of us who find our way to the gate of new understanding through which we enter to discover that ‘what is wrong with us that cannot be fixed’ is ultimately about nearly complete failure of the adults in our earliest attachment environment during the first 33 years of life (conception to age two) to take adequate care of us.

In cases such as mine where active, terrifying and terrible hatred and abuse was directed at us from the time we are born — the only reason we are alive, and are able to function with any kind of competence, is that some kind of miracle occurred to preserve us that it seems NOBODY is yet able to identify or describe.

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I realize that my use of the world ‘miracle’ to describe my own preservation within a personal hell nearly beyond imagination from the time I was born smacks of a shady version of either ‘faith’ or ‘witchcraft’ where MAGIC is assumed to accomplish unexplainable ends that are understood by no one.

I am content with this.  I would rather salvage what I can of myself in this body in my lifetime with awareness that what happened to me and how my physiological development was altered is a complete mystery to everyone at this point in our human evolution than to completely shortchange myself by stopping short with some made-up explanation by ‘someone’ that is not remotely true or accurate.

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Years ago my brother who is very successfully in the business of making money with his used bookstore told me that the writing I do lies within the genre of ‘forensic autobiography’.

I think that is what all survivors of severe early abuse and even of later traumas they experience without having been traumatized during their most formative years are ACTUALLY involved in.

We are gathering every single minuscule and larger fact that we can find in an attempt to solve a mystery so big it covers generations.

We survivors cannot afford to join the gangs that scamper around the ‘killed beasts’ revealed by ongoing research in many fields of study about what early infant-child trauma, neglect and abuse DO to the BODY of tiny victims.  If we are going to concern ourselves at all with the carcass of at these research kill sites we need to AT LEAST join the flying scavengers while they scan for the bigger picture.

Proprietary information might serve those who stand to make fortunes through inventions in the business world, but for those who need the truth in order to heal and to remain alive, it is the combined truths we can glean from all possible sources of information that we need to find as they intersect and overlap.

We will know we are on the right track for ourselves when this information, as we discover it, RINGS TRUE for us IN OUR BODY.  The resonance of truth within us is unmistakable.  We do not need to worry about what is true for anyone else, not even about what is true for any given ‘expert’.  We need to pay attention to the truth that rings and resonates within our own self because it will be those truths that will lead us to freedom.

Of course our study is not a random one.  We have to head toward ‘attachment’ and ‘developmental neuroscience’ related fields of research to find what we are looking for.

For example, two books that I highly recommend for clue exposure to the bigger picture we need to see are these:

The Oxytocin Factor: Tapping The Hormone Of Calm, Love, And Healing by Kerstin Uvnas Moberg, Roberta Francis, Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg and Translated by Roberta Francis (Sep 16, 2003)

This book describes the ‘other half’ of the stress response system’s function.  Why do nearly all experts leave this half out?  Whose purpose does it serve to be ignoring the most important parts of this stress response puzzle?  This neglect does more to keep the White Tiger present in people’s lives than we can imagine – until we read this book.

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This book addresses another area of fact-gathering toward accurate information we need, as well.  Early severe distressful trauma during the first 33 months of life does not, for example

– ‘just’ change the way our right brain – the emotional regulatory and social interaction part of our brain develops

– or the way that our left brain develops

– or the way the corpus callosum that processes information between our brain hemispheres

– or even the well-recognized changes early trauma causes to the formation and operation of the brain’s amygdala as it handles learning and fear responses

– or our brain’s memory processing hippocampus

to name just a few of the changes in physiological development that distressful insecure and unsafe attachment earliest human interactions create.

I recognize for myself that every possible change was made in my development that could be made – because I could not endure and survive without these changes — was made.  This includes changes to the way my DNA manifests, the way my Central Nervous System (CNS) including my brain (of course) developed, the way my Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) developed (of course including my stress-calm response system), the way my immune system developed — and on and on.

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Once we can identify that the conditions of the first 33 months of our life were hurtful to us — a fact that we can easily know if our life has been problematic to us in ways we never intended and did not know how to prevent because — as we are learning — we COULD NOT — we can KNOW there was something wrong with our early attachments during those most critically formative stages of our earliest physiological development.

The common ‘believe what I say about how broken you are because you were born a flawed and inadequate human being from the start’ professional and often public response to the problems early trauma survivors live with is meant to turn us away from healing, not assist us toward it — no mater what anyone pretends to the contrary.

It is my personal stance that until proven otherwise, at least 95% of all ‘mental illness’ and physical problems such as books like “Scared Sick” describe, are all due to one process that I name as —

Trauma Altered Development (TAD)

That’s it.  It’s that simple.  To me, it’s that specific and that accurate.

It has long been my hope that the books I intend to publish — both as they describe what is known about what happened to my mother to turn her into a severely mentally ill monster capable of committing infant-child abuse, and as they describe what I know of what happened to me — are about Trauma Altered Development.

Trauma Altered Development happens in our BODY — which then, of course, affects every single aspect of our existence over the course of our lifespan.  TAD is an inclusive experience because we are a whole being.  Everything about our being alive is connected and is subject to influences we experience being alive within a living environment.

It is not ‘just’ our ‘mind’ that becomes ‘ill’.  That is as ludicrous an incrimination to me as it is inaccurate.  When a White Tiger sets up residence in our life, there is no part of us that is not threatened and that will not respond in any way possible to keep us alive.

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Any new paradigm shift (the world is not flat, earth is not at the center of our solar system) requires growth of the ‘group mind’ in order for new truth to be ‘accepted into evidence’.  Before this social shift of consciousness happens, those who hold to the new truth – as it IS the truth – are thinking with ‘uncommon sense’.  If we understand what Trauma Altered Development means, we are currently thinking against versus thinking with the ‘common sense of the masses’.

As I think about the abyss I mentioned with those who experienced TAD on one side and those who did not experience TAD on the other side, what currently keeps us apart could most accurately be called NONSENSE.

Most simply stated at this moment I would put it all this way (Well, that was interesting.  The battery in my wireless computer mouse died at the instant I finished typing the word ‘way’.  I am certainly glad I had another battery on hand!):

– The continued evolution of the human species demands that we continually transfer what was previously considered ‘nonsense’ contained within ‘uncommon sense’ to a position of ‘common sense’ when a new truth is discovered.

– This process underlies advances in human civilization.

On a personal level of advancement it is that which rings true to us in our body that we can learn to recognize as truth that helps us.

Those of us who have suffered TAD, and who have tried so many different avenues toward healing to no real effect, have always been able to recognize ‘untruths’ when we have encountered them.

The communications about what causes TAD (traumatic stress from inadequate attachment environments mostly in the first 33 months of life) and about its lifelong consequences needs to be put into accurate language so that those of us on each side of this abyss I mention can talk to one another effectively.

Personally for me, the many years of gobbiltygoop that was fed to me through every avenue of so-called ‘recovery’ channels I approached in therapy and in self-help books did not ring true to me.  The truth is that all of it FELT like nonsense to me.

But because I was only one person lost in the commotion of the ‘common sense’ of the masses I could not recognize or honor my own ‘uncommon sense’ that there was far more to the story than everyone knew, myself included.

Now I know I was right from the beginning.  The first clue I had came in 1980 when I entered a 7-week in-patient treatment center for addiction treatment.

Marijuana was my drug of choice.  At that time nobody discussed how this drug is so often used to self-medicate depression.  I had to translate my entire experience through the treatment jargon of ‘alcoholism’ which by itself was a very difficult process for me.

Because treatment program I entered followed a 12-Step protocol I was introduced very early to the idea that if I ‘did things right’ I would be ‘restored to sanity’.  When my gut told me instantly that this could not possibly happen because I had NEVER experienced what ‘sanity’ was before so I could not have it ‘restored’ to me — all the therapists literally ganged up on me so that I was ‘brow beaten’ into accepting (A) That I was resistant to treatment, (B) That I did not really want to recover, (C) That I was using the defense mechanisms of ‘denial’ and ‘rationalization’ and ‘intellectualization’ to avoid the truth about myself, (D) and that I was therefore shamefully a ‘bad’ person, doing this ‘wrong’, that I had to change and accept their way which my gut told me was nonsense — ETC!

I detected this pattern of mismatch between what rang true and felt wrong about what I was told about myself and ‘recovery’ in every self-help book I read, and in no direction did I find validation for my own experience of reality.  True, I worked hard with determination and willingness to change myself and therefore change my life the best that I could using the ‘nonsense’ available to me.  I could find no other option.

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But back then in 1980 the diagnostic category of Borderline Pesonality Disorder which I think best describes my mother on its extreme end, did not even exist yet.  Back then technology had not advanced far enough for the most accurate details about how early infant attachment interactions form the body-brain to be discovered.  Back then computers and the internet were not available to find the latest information, either.

We are all advancing together in these days of rapid planetary growth, healing and change.  I accept this.  I honor it.  At the same time I will no longer tolerate what I know to be nonsense as it applies to my circumstances of life.  My uncommon sense has led me to the truth about what happened to me through severe early trauma.  Validation of my uncommon truth is coming daily as the common sense of the masses increasingly recognizes

– that Trauma Altered Development DOES happen through trauma caused my unsafe and insecure early attachment relationships in the first 33 months of life

– that Trauma Altered Development causes the greatest damage no matter what other traumas and abuse happens after these earliest developmental windows have closed

– that Trauma Altered Development negatively affects a human being on all levels over the course of their entire lifespan

– that no adequate assistance can be given to a Trauma Altered Development person unless and until the truth about our reality has been recognized, accepted and validated.

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The scope of what I seem to consider as I work out the details in my being about the work I do brings me around to thinking about a big picture that includes looking backward toward the very beginning origins of humankind as we began to leave the trees in search of food and needed to move upright to survive — as well as to the far, far distant future when the new race of humankind we are in the process of becoming inherits the earth.

The massive cycles of human evolvement have not been without purpose.  Without a doubt this new race of humans is already beginning to be formed.  When anthropologists look backward from the far distant future to this point in time they will detect this quickening happening among those of us occupying time on earth now.

The damage that is being done at the start of life to so many people has to stop.  The purpose of ‘mothering’ must be recognized so that as a species we will be able to guarantee to everyone born that their life will be what it needs to be in order for them to grow a healthy body-self.

Inadequate early beginnings – depending on the severity of deprivation and trauma – guarantees that altered physiological development will occur.  Currently we throw into the trashbin everyone who suffered from birth as we blame them for ‘being a worthless mess’.

Enough is enough.

Enough is MORE than enough!

As we sit at the cusp of the new world that is coming, as we make it through our days taking care of business, it is easy to lose sight of the vast changes that are happening worldwide at an increasingly speedy rate.

Technology has not been given to our species by God for us to use to entertain ourselves or to further accumulate power and money.  Technology is given to us as an extension of the human mind to peaceably bring us together in new ways — as we heal.

Technology now shows us exactly what infants must have in their earliest human interactions to grow a healthy body and self.  It shows us what happens when these needs are not met.  Experts now know that early deprivation in infancy literally creates a trajectory of physiological development for its victim-survivors that is ‘evolutionarily altered’ in adjustment to a malevolent world.

Why should this surprise us?  Do we really naively believe in the face of all global information to the contrary, that this world is currently a benign one?

The thing about infant need is that it’s personal.  Each individual human being that is built in safe and secure early attachment environments then has the foundation built into them to live an optimal life.  One by one.  One by one.  Each of these little people scoot into their future intact.

What each of these people then choose to do with their intactness is their own — although greatly influenced by the civilization they are a part of.

Infants who do not get what they need are intact in a different way.  They are limited by the physiological alterations in their development that deprivation has caused.  They are intact to live in a malevolent, not a benign or benevolent world.

In our Western cultures these altered people – thrown into the trashbin of the culture who allowed deprivation to swallow them up in the first place – most often end up swelling the ranks of the criminals, the violent offenders, the infant-child-spouse abusers, the homeless, the battered, the hungry, the lost, the most lonely, the most poor, the misfits, the sick – and the ‘mentally ill’.

So what?

Who needs them?

Who cares?

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There was a time a few million years ago when the upheavals of the earth’s surface changed the climate enough that the forests in Africa that fed our ancestors began to disappear.  Had ‘nobody’ been able to lift up their head – and in some way expand what they had of a mind, albeit a mind fed by instinct — enough to MOVE ONWARD — we would not be here today.

Somebody had to dare to figure out a way to find food elsewhere outside the diminishing, vanishing forests.

Out into the grasslands they ‘snuck’ on all fours.  Out into the unknown.  Out into the only direction available to search for continued survival.

What?  Stand up to see something over the top of tall waving grasses?

What?  Stand up increasingly more often to move more swiftly on unfamiliar land away from dangers and toward some new source of food?

A new world.  A new being.

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What do we see as we look around us at the world over today?  Over 7 billion of us now all walking around.  Do we see the landscape we have been familiar with for so many millenia is changing?  Can we imagine the evolutionary changes we are going to have to make in our body and our being to live peacefully with fairness and justice together in this new world opening up around us even now?

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Those of us deprived of safe and secure attachment in our own infant beginnings DO have an evolutionarily altered body, as Dr. Martin Teicher’s Harvard researchers describe.  I have one of those bodies, altered by trauma to survive in a malevolent world.

It has not been the society I live in that has given me the answer to what the trauma that changed me from my birth has done to me.  My society has shamed and blamed me – would call me ‘mentally ill’ and throw me in the trashbin as a useless if not worthless castoff among the fortunate.

It is my access to technology that includes access to the important infant-child developmental neuroscientific research that has answered my complicated questions, that has led me to stand up on my own two feet to leap out and away from any trashbin I may have ever known.

In the end, as we survivors find out the truth we will begin to comprehend that the evolutionarily altered nature of our being is not so much a BACKSTEP into a body designed to function in the hostile, primitive world of our earliest beginnings as a species.

No.  Our evolutionary alterations have given us gifts of perception, of insight, of knowledge about what being human is about.  It has given us the capacity for the deepest forms of compassion and understanding.

It’s a sad thing to have to tell civilization what we all need because we survivors never had it.  But if this is where the best voice of sanity, reason and conscience must come from, then we best shout this out.

We have a voice for reason.  The reason why we suffer so much in our lifetime, the reason why we are not like the ‘haves’, the reason why we are different, why we are evolutionarily altered, is because those with the power to guarantee that the needs of infants and children are met did not do their job.  Their turning away from us created the climate that allowed what happened to us to happen in the first place.

As those people who had their earliest needs met continue to swing around in the forests filled with trees of plenty – it is the rest of us who are out shrugging through the unknown grasslands in search of a new future and of continued survival.

The world, at least in our culture, may very well be in the midst of a transition that, yes, does include a widening gap between the HAVES and the HAVE-NOTS regarding so many very real and tangible assets and resources.

But it is the transition that is happening regarding THIS widening gap that matters far more — the growing gap between those compassionate, informed and wise people who CARE and those who DO NOT CARE.

If growing up in a lush forest, glibly swinging my way through trees laden with plenty would have turned me into a person who did not care, I would much prefer to have been among those who struggled through foreign, dangerous grasslands learning to walk upright on two feet.

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Woke five a.m.  Best sleep in ages.  Went to doctor yesterday, treated for the daycare bug I caught from my grandson – bad it was, I am better now.  Needed steroid treatments against inflammation with antibiotics.

Woke with words streaming in my head

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yesterday afternoon before the sun dropped

behind the long mountain lines in the distance

two neighbor preteen girls

sitting on the hood of a dead car in the parking lot

next door

in this trailer park

that runs exactly along the Mexican-American borderline

borderwall

behind us

fixing one another’s hair

so pretty

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preteen girls I’ve known now over 6 years since I’ve lived here

ninety five percent of this town of 700

legal immigrants from Mexico

most now American

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Small slim three to four year old boy sticking close to the carhood salon

Quiet

Shy

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I must have felt better already

from the antibiotics

I had the thought and followed through

two paper bags with handles, not the BIG ones

i bought a week ago at Safeway, our only grocery store in town 4 miles away (we have none in this town)

apples a week ago – ten pounds for ten dollars

best price, shiny apples, hard and crisp

BUT ABSOLUTELY TASTELESS RED DELICIOUS

(i don’t think so!  not delicious.  spooky what ‘they’ve’ done to most of our food – oh, will we pay a price for our greed, our stupidity.  ever hear of epigenetics?  look it up)

too sick since back from my travels to decide about the fate of the apples.  was going to dehydrate them, but no taste

stepped to my garden gate.  i called out:  do you kids like apples?

“Of course we do.”

i fetched them from my kitchen.  delivered.

Yet, from the white anglo culture within which I mostly have to

(I feel rocks in my belly as I write this)

because if I say what comes to me now, a sort of truth

because I am anglo white

i mostly have to transact icky sticky nonsense with my own ‘crew’ – and with others – I am always guilty by association – except

when carrying apples to children 100 yards from the Mexican line where we live

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I wanted to offer an apple to the small slim quiet shy boy

I did not dare

I had to ask the girls, “Can I give him an apple?”

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The girls’ tone of voice as they instantly snapped, “Of COURSE you can give him an apple!!!” triggered shame in my gut

but not shame for myself

shame for my piece of the human race, my pinkish-white section of the race

That I would no more walk up to a child in our mainstream culture and offer a child who is young and in the care of someone else (ESPECIALLY if that ‘else’ were an adult)

and offer that child

FOOD!!

no food without permission in ‘our’ culture

so different

who owns the children?

who owns the apples?

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given that 27% of american kids are now known to go to bed hungry at night

probably more now with our trickle down rich person’s economy that does not work

with any kind of compassion

multi-national untaxed corporations owning 51% of our globe’s wealth

getting richer

and given that Republican Congress – beginning next month – without any warning to foodstamp recipients

has found an evil sly underhanded terrible way to further steal the food away from our american poor (I am too ashamed and disgusted to even grace a capitol letter to our nations’ land borders!)

Even with the very known (unless Congress contains idiots – wait – they do?)

rapid increase of the price of staying alive

on all fronts

including cost of utilities

with winter coming on

many – most – families needing to pay high heat costs

no matter

no warning

congress just came up with a lump sum amount to be used to calculate income – to dole out the foodstamps to families – next month – with no warning – significant drop in benefit amounts.  Congress just changed their own law

fixed utility costs amount

do NOT begin to match the reality

of what anyone is actually paying

“Not enough hardship?  Not enough suffering for our children?  Hell no!  Let’s make more.  Let’s grind the poor down into oblivion.  Let’s start with the children.  We like things this way.”

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what do I care?  My little benefit amount just dropped from $59 to $38 per month – but I am an old lady – I am not a preteen on a car hood or a slim shy little boy standing in the dust

wrapping his small hand around the wide girth of a darkly red apple

OF COURSE HE COULD HAVE if I chose to share

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I have no answers.  Humanity is going to find its own way into the future – into such a perfect future few can even begin to imagine it from this darkest point in the history of our species.  We think we are so smart.  We are indeed so spiritually sick

so sick

so immature

stubbornly immature

this won’t last, this darkness in our species

We live at the darkest point in time our species has ever known

or will ever know again

(this makes us special)

(we are evidently choosing to pound ourselves so hard that eventually we will all shine)

God says to the rich, the poor are My trust among you – take care of them

God did not make us to be like this – we’ll make it all much worse

before we – together – in loving unity – around the globe – make things better

we are alive in the darkest time of our evolution

and we don’t even know it

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back

to the damn

apple

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the next time around?

we WILL get it right

God is not going to allow us to make the kinds of choices that we make now

for much longer

(Was I born too soon?)

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Again, a note to blog followers-subscribers:  I am a process writer which means I very much enjoy the interactive potential of editing posts – changing them – after they are first published.  Please click on a post TITLE when it appears in your email box and read the post directly on the blog where the edits are continually ‘live’.  Thanks!

Speaking of thanks – my neighbors showed their appreciation – a group of children showed up shortly after with the gift of a most tasty bowl of Mexican Chicken Soup on a red plate with a lime halved beside:  “Our mom says thank you for the apples.”

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A note on my messy punctuation – oh, writers are supposed to ‘follow all the rules’ – like it MATTERS if I ‘write right’ or not — when we are perfectly content to commit global rape of resources, destroy the planet, allow billions of people to suffer, while the politicians and super-giant greed infected multi-national corporations bleed the human race and our precious planet dry!  What rules govern these??

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Through a very pleasant conversation I had today I was reminded of something so important to me that I wish every book I publish to address this concern:

Life is always a risky business.  Many very difficult traumas can pop up in anyone’s life that must be lived through and processed in the best way a person can.

(I was also reminded that researchers know human-caused traumas are always harder for people to experience and get through well – compared to non-human caused ones.)

But the important point that was refreshed for me and moved yet again squarely onto the most forefront burner of my writing stove is that NOTHING is the same in life for people who came out of their infancy with serious insecure attachment disorders as it is for people who DID have safe and secure early attachments.

Most simply put, as I seem to repeat so many, many times, as Dr. Martin Teicher’s research group so succinctly describes, early trauma and abuse changes physiological development.  Readers of this blog know this point well by now.  (See in the Teicher links in this recent post:  +TEETH. ATTACHMENT. SELF-CARE.)

As I stated in conversation today, if someone experienced serious insecure attachment in the first 33 months of life (conception to age 2) – any later severe trauma that happens to them will likely have a profoundly different and far more serious impact on the insecure attachment abuse/trauma survivor than what a person who has a safe and secure attachment-built body and brain will ever experience.

I see it in image-idea as being like this:  Those of us who were abused from birth, with our evolutionarily altered physiological development in response to these insecure and unsafe attachment conditions, exist on one side of a great divide, an abyss — separated forever from those who did NOT suffer severe trauma-altered development.

Those who DID have benevolent earliest years have a different foundation in their body than we do.  They are on the other side of this divide.  THIS MATTERS!  Fortunately we are the minority while those on the other side are the majority.

Some kind of translation between these two realities has to begin to happen.  Who will translate?  Who CAN translate?

Certainly serious neuroscientific developmental experts, and very knowledgeable attachment experts, have the LANGUAGE and the information that is needed for an entirely new kind of dialog to begin between these ‘two kinds of people’ – the trauma-altered development people and the non-trauma-altered development people.

We need to build bridges.  But from my perspective our language needs to be CLEANED UP!

I do not consider PTSD or even depression – and in many cases not even anxiety disorders (PTSD and depression ARE anxiety disorders – so why be redundant?) – are NOT, in my universe – remotely MENTAL ILLNESSES!  They are a physiological response to stress and trauma – a NATURAL and naturally INTENDED response under certain circumstances (that we have not yet matured as a species enough to understand – because we don’t yet want to).

Just because we do not know enough to understand facts like this – does not mean that ‘mental illness’ is remotely a meaningful description!

The issue is the mismatch that Teicher’s article describes between those on one side built for a malevolent world and those on the other side who were not.  But readers who truly understand what I write on this blog are finding ‘their own kind named’.  We are different.  Humans have a long, long way to go to get the important information correct!

Just because any person has a complex, ongoing response to any trauma – at any stage of their life — for any reason — does NOT mean they are sick – least of all mean they are mentally ill.  For crying out loud!

As I have probably said on this blog a thousand times:  Trauma remains problematic only when it is not resolved.  Trauma is only resolved when the information contained in a person’s experience of trauma has been learned.

Most (I believe) of ongoing problematic responses to trauma remain unresolved because NOBODY is willing to learn what trauma has to teach us.  Most unresolved trauma is actually connected to if not deeply embedded within problems that belong to our entire species.  Individuals are not ‘big enough’ to take the full job of resolving so many of the big traumas alone!

Being alive, being human, is a shared experience.  As long as we remain so out-of-touch with how all actions – cultural and social MOST assuredly so — belong not to individuals but to our much larger group, and remain so disconnected (unattached) to the concerns of individuals as they ACTUALLY exist in the world of our species — many individuals that have gone through horrific traumas will remain unable to heal them IN THEIR BODY – because they cannot resolve these traumas by learning ALONE what is meant to be learned BY US ALL!!

We need to honor ourselves and one another by TALKING about traumas.  We need to absolutely understand the super-high risk that especially INFANT ABUSE survivors (whose physiological development was altered due to traumas of insecure attachment) will most often experience far worse complications from all traumas.  Infant abuse survivors have a DIFFERENT kind of body in profoundly significant ways.

We know this.  We really do.  We need to talk about these things.  And we need to know who and how we are as infant abuse (early insecure and unsafe-attached) beings.  We cannot let ANYONE undermine our reality by dumping (!!) their reality onto us.

Early abuse survivors do stand on one side of an abyss – alone with one another.  But it also a great opportunity for non-insecurely attached people, once they have undergone severe trauma later in their lives who STILL suffer physiological problems and who cannot “resolve the trauma and get their old life back” — to be a kind of bridge of translation between the worlds of the evolutionarily altered and the not evolutionarily altered (again, as determined by nature of attachments in the first 33 months of life).

Maybe with humility, compassion and willingness we can build a common ground between these two realities.  We cannot continue to pretend that infant abuse (again, which IS what not providing a safe and secure attachment environment is always about) does not exist.  It does.  Infant abuse.  It changes who we are in ways and through means that SO FEW comprehend!

(For as profoundly important as this subject is — I am equally pitiful in describing it.  Obviously, I need more practice!! )

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It strikes me within minutes of publishing this post that I always feel that I am in so far over my head when writing the truth of what I know that I cannot endure it.  The intensity of my experience when I ‘get close’ to my truth feels to be more than I can humanly bear.

I have no one to talk with on an ongoing basis who will help me downregulate this intensity of my whole-body emotional experience connected to the material both about Mother’s story and about my own.

At this moment I encounter what might be the most difficult aspect of my life:  Why am I here?  How did I survive what was done to me, abuse from birth and continuously forward through the first 18 years of my life?  How did I not come through my infancy and childhood NOT being completely mad?  How am I alive AT ALL?

As I held the most-precious pure body of my newly born grandson my awareness was complete that when I was his age I had already experienced such hatred and brutal, violent abuse from my mother that I SHOULD have – in my thinking – been removed from the realm of the living ALREADY!

My rational self at this moment tells me that in order for me to continue to endure I MUST leave what I can know and do know – ALONE.

From this point another voice within me tells me that it was ONLY possible for me to endure and to survive intact what was done to me through divine, spiritual intervention.

This voice tells me that my being willing to allow this same divine, spiritual assistance to carry me through my writing work is the ONLY way I can publish a book (books) in the same way that this assistance kept me alive and sane in the first place.

Another voice of mine says, “I never wanted that suffering!  I want to keep an impenetrable petition between myself and the truth that I know so that I can remain a person intact and alive even now.”

Another voice says, “Can you trust that there is a greater and a good purpose to ALL OF THIS, that this purpose is far bigger than you are, than your mother was?  Will you accept the job of making sense out of something so awful – and therefore so awesome – that few can as yet comprehend?”

At the same time this me, this woman with fingers on her keyboard writing through tears, cannot comprehend any of this.  What I know, what I can in my own very small way understand and accept, is that I have books to publish that very well have the potential to grant to my beloved children and grandchildren something of value I can understand:  financial well-being through financial freedom.

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This writing work, the BIG writing that I have been avoiding for one full year now, seems to require of me that I step out alone into an arena so vast that I feel like the tiniest speck of breathing life that at any possible millisecond can be snuffed completely out.

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What I WANT, then, is to find some remote, detached, objective armored self that can do this work as if she were a writing robot.  I don’t want to agree to a job that demands of me that I be more wholly present during the writing of these books than I have ever been before in my memory of myself.

This is so intense.  This is so agonizing.  I stand up and pace and pace and pace and pace.  I feel apart from, not a part of this material world that greets me in this body.  The writing – my real writing – seems to exist within a different dimension where time and space and memory hold an entirely different meaning.  Carry a different weight.  Have a different potential to suck me in and never let me out again.

I pace and pace and pace and pace, with my right hand pressed firmly against my solar plexus.  I fear I will bore my blog readers to death as I move forward into this writing direction, into this place where there seems to be no beginning, no end, and only one possible doorway of escape:  The publishing of these books.

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While I was traveling I found and read The Origin Of Humankind by Richard Leakey.  Since the 1994 publication of this book even more ancient human-species bones have been discovered.  I find such information fascinating.

But what’s on my mind this morning – in regard to writing out my abusive mother’s story and in thinking about my own – is that anthropologists can determine from studying a skull of any mammal the age adult teeth erupt.  Given this information they can determine how long that species was SUPPOSED to remain safely within its mother’s womb before it was born (as well as its expected lifespan).

Humans?  We are SUPPOSED to remain unborn until we reach the age of 21 months.

Obviously due to the massive size of our brains and skulls this age range for absolute safety cannot be met.  But this does affirm how fundamentally critical the experiences of our first BORN 12 months of life are to our entire development.  These are the ‘attachment formation’ months — secure vs. insecure.

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As I consider publishing Mother’s writings, as I try my best to form a ‘coherent life story narrative’ of her story, I think today about what Mother was given once she was born.  I KNOW she did not get what she needed, and in fact no doubt (to me) suffered from neglect in massive ways – if not also from direct abusive handling and treatment (as Mother ended up also doing to me).

Birth and earliest caregiving interactions directly communicate to a rapidly developing infant’s body-brain what the conditions of the ‘world’ it is being formed to live within for the rest of its life actually are.  Of course the womb experience also directly communicates this information to a fetus, as well.

Because we are actually born 12 months too early, it is the care we are given by those within our environment that determine — in fact — the bulk of what happens to us the rest of our life.

Those of us who were NOT taken care of will NEVER have a body-brain that REALLY knows what ‘taking care of self’ means.  (This topic has been mentioned in recent blog comments.)

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This connects to what is described as a trajectory of development directed by and for either a ‘malevolent’ or a ‘benevolent’ future by an infant-child’s quality of early attachment, as outlined here:

+Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

*Notes on Teicher

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If I do title the first half of the book about my very mentally ill and severely abusive mother “Born in Shadow,” I understand that I would on the parallel need to title my own early story “Born in Complete Darkness.”

I will give myself permission to mention something here that cannot but fundamentally and most deeply disturb me.  I HATED the intrusion (contamination?) of my own reality into my experience with my perfect grandson.  While I visited my family up north I could not separate the experience of holding my beautiful, most precious new grandson who was 6 weeks old at my arrival and 9 weeks old  at my leaving, from what I know about myself and about my mother.

In my case Mother was already fully within the terrible psychosis that was created in her very sick mind with my birthing, as I have certainly mentioned before.

She absolutely, unequivocally and permanently believed that the devil sent me to kill her while I was being born, that I was not human.  Because we both survived my breech (and evidently very difficult) labor process, she then believed that I was the devil’s child sent “as a curse” upon her life.

Blackness.

Mother, however, was born into an extremely troubled family and into very destructive conditions – but without an accompanying most destructive psychosis to embrace and envelop her from birth.

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Tying these facts in my thoughts to how conditions of the world at birth (and of course before) as reflected by the quality of the attachment caregiving interactions given to an infant ARE about how ‘the self’ is taken care of.  These patterns FROM BIRTH directly become the underlying architecture in our body-brain of how we will later operate to take care of our self.

When I describe how Mother’s abuse of me had a purpose, I can state directly that EVERYTHING my mother thought, felt, understood, believed and DID to me was about how she ‘TOOK CARE OF’ herself.

She HAD no other options.  This is ultimately what true madness is about.

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Telling my abusive Mother’s story, at least what I understand of it and what part of Mother’s story came to me in the collection of her papers after her death, does seem to me at this moment to be an incredibly gutsy thing to do.  At the same time I also feel relief that I doubt the risk to me of having my own full-blown body memories appear out of nowhere to swallow me up — as I know they can do when I work on writing my own story as her victim — does not exist when I ‘just’ work on publishing HER story.

I have the advantage of being clear about a severe disadvantage that I personally have.  All research, including the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) indicates that because I am the survivor of severe infant and childhood abuse, my life expectancy has been greatly shortened.  I do not have any luxury to believe that the writing and publication of the books I hope to write can be postponed.  If it takes all I have left to offer to this world to accomplish this task, I am prepared to spend it.

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I anticipate that in ebook format the two books I intend to epublish before next spring will most likely be titled:

The Demise of Mildred:  A Profile of My Severely Abusive Mother

Book One:  Born In Shadow

Book Two:  Her Alaskan Dream

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In hard copy print these books would be massive.  I will know more about how they might need to be divided into ‘parts’ after their ebook format has been completed.

I currently lack the faith in myself that I can accomplish this task to fruition without help.  But if no help appears to me, I will have to do this all myself — a process that I cannot imagine!!

It is most strange for me to contemplate at this moment the possibility that what may be the destiny of my writing has NEVER been about me writing my own story.  Maybe this is a stance I will need to remain in as I work thoroughly with Mother’s writings so that I can do all possible justice to the power these books will have to help others who live with troubles caused by early abuse.

These books are about a woman who DID grow up to become a monster abuser.  My story is of a woman who DID NOT grow up to be an abuser.  The trajectory of my life took a direction opposite to my mother’s.  At this point it feels most important to me to describe what happened to make an abuser than what happened not to make one.

I am not an objective reader of my mother’s story.  I process everything my mother wrote going back to her childhood stories and everything I know of the stories she told of her childhood through the filter of being the survivor of her horrendous insane abuse.

Yet I KNOW her abuse of me was not random.  It had a desperate purpose, and because I have so thoroughly considered my own story I now know exactly what that purpose was.  My guess is that it is this purpose that will tie Mother’s story and mine together most clearly.

In this way everything I know about Mother is a part of my story.

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September 30, 2012

To my dear siblings:

Hello with love to each of you.  I am writing this morning regarding my plans to epublish Mother’s writings this winter with a print-on-demand option.  If I were to choose a title today it would be, “The Demise of Mildred:  A Profile of My Severely Abusive Mother.”

Due to the massive bulk of the material I have transcribed and because of the complexity of this epic tale I anticipate a minimum of two volumes will be needed.  One volume will obviously be devoted to Mother’s Alaskan experiences as she described them in her diaries and letters to her mother.  The other volume will contain what exists of her childhood stories, her age-19 diary, short pieces written by her mother, and my memories of the stories Mother often repeated of her childhood, as well as whatever is provided to me about the circumstances of her life and mental illness as she approached the end of her life.

I welcome any writings in the form of support from my siblings for the legitimacy of this writing work.  I don’t believe that emotional forays into the past are necessary, although such would certainly be included if written.

I am especially in need of information about what happened in the family after I left home October 3, 1969.  Thanks to the detailed telephone interviews that Jo Ann V. has so generously provided I do have access to some of this information from her point of view.  I also have a series of memories and observations that Dorothy P. has provided, as well.

I need the dates of Mother and Father’s separation and the history of their divorce.  A description as anyone would care to provide about continued patterns of interactions with Mother up unto her death would also be useful, as would a description of what is known about the conditions Mother created for herself as she neared the end of her life.

Ramona has offered to do the final professional editing of these books.  Any editing she suggests of whatever you write will, of course, be sent to you at that time for your approval.

My suggestion would be that any of you who care to respond to this request simply open an email to me — and write.  Please trust that whatever comes to you while doing so is exactly what needs to be said.  I have learned over the many years now that I have been working on my ‘story project’ that I can absolutely trust the words that appear while I am in the mode of addressing this vast topic of what happened to Mother to make her do what she did to me.

It is my intention to include in these initial publications as little of my personal assessments and observations about my personal story as I possibly can.  I have — almost mysteriously so — the greatest compassion for our Mother.  I hope to describe in these volumes what happened to her early in her life to turn her into the very sick monster she became.  At this point I believe I know very, very clearly how Mother’s earliest experiences conspired in a very particular way to contribute to the very particular patterns of her severe abuse of me.  I wish to reserve  my expression of this information for inclusion in my own telling of my own story.

I desire that every single possible detail about Mother be printed before I publish my own writings.  This will free me from every having to answer a single question from readers about the contributions of Mother’s past to my story.  Mother could not identify during her entire lifespan that I was actually a human person separate from her, separate from her madness.  It is therefore an essential part of my being able to tell my own story freely that I — NOW — delineate myself clearly from her.

Steve, I thank you for the writings you have already provided to me.  Any further detailed specifics about the time-line history of events post 1969 would be very helpful.

I also want to mention here for general knowledge that I would prefer that Mother’s brother be dead before I publish anything.  From what I can tell he is just as likely to outlive me as not.  I have very strong suspicions about what happened to him in his earliest months and years of life (and afterwards) that created in him a pattern of abusing his sister.  How much of this part of the story I will be able to write remains at this moment a great unknown to me.  I welcome any insights from anyone.  Ideally I would be able to contact him for his ‘side of the story’, but such contact does not appear remotely wise.

Which reminds me — Dave, I would very much appreciate receiving from you an email attachment of the photographs you were able to take of Mother’s houses she lived in growing up in Boston, along with their addresses.

I remain stifled in my publishing efforts by the inadequacies of my computer and software.  I have currently no possible way to repair photographs of the homesteading era.  If push should come to shove, I will publish the pictures as they exist, flaws and all.  This is certainly an overall epistle of ‘flawed’ if ever there was one.  (A mention:  I have sorted the ‘family slide collection’, keeping about one-third of them.  The remainder are in Sharon’s safe keeping.)

Because I know you all have very full and busy lives I will not be making this request again.  If you have questions, please email me!  I thank you all!

With great love, your big sis Linda

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Everything I have been going through for the past month has been processed by me with clear awareness of how my disabilities caused by the way infant-child abuse changed my development impacts on a continual basis how I can – and cannot – live my life.  In a nutshell — this sucks!

Other than the big obvious, that I am completely exhausted by my travels north and back again, I was met with a nasty complication once I reached my home – my sanctuary.  The woman who so kindly and competently took care of my home, my garden and my animals had to sadly report to me that the second night after I left my neighbors’ dogs scrambled over the fence and brutally mangled and killed 3 of my 5 hens.

This woman did not actually witness these dogs – a German shepherd and a pit-bull — kill the chickens.  Neither she nor I will lie so that charges could be brought against the owners of these two dogs.  However, on another day these two dogs were in the yard again.  The shepherd was intent on killing my small dog.  Both dogs came tearing around the corner of the house.  My caretaker was knocked down by the big dog – yet she managed to scream at the dog loud enough it turned tail and ran, jumping back over the five foot chain link fence in the back that my yard shares with its owner.

The wire of my coop is also mangled in two places.  I spoke with both owners.  The immediate neighbor to my west, owner of the shepherd, laughed.  The next neighbor over, owner of the pit bull, at least sincerely apologized.  My caretaker had also watched the pit bull snatch a cat on the street out of the air as it tried to escape over a brick wall and tear it to pieces.

Neither dog was in its owner’s yard on Wednesday when I got home, and neither dog has been seen since.  Nobody has offered restitution to me.  All of this has been very very upsetting to me.

But what bothers me most is that because of the disabilities I in consequence of having been severely abused from my birth until I left home at age 18, I don’t have the ability to stick up for myself.  I really, really don’t.

I have no idea what the ‘right’ thing to do is.  I spoke with the county dog catcher who assured me that because the dogs were witnessed being in my yard that charges could be pressed for this, for the shepherd knocking my caretaker over and for that dog trying to kill my dog.

I can’t press charges.  My anxiety will not allow me to do this.  I could NEVER guarantee that my troubles with dissociation would not completely sabotage any effort I could make to be ‘reasonable’ while enduring the stress of dealing with a court situation.

I have nobody to do this for me.  I can’t follow through and stick up for myself.  I have NO IDEA how to do so, and NO ABILITY to do so even with an option such as pressing charges.

I miss my chickens.  I imagine the horror of their undeserved vicious death.  The two hens left are still stunned.  They are not happy.  My sanctuary has been violated.  I did not need this, not one bit.

And I DO expect people to be NICE!  I don’t understand myself why this is so.  How could I, a person who experienced the horrors of such intense and constant abuse for the first 18 years of my life EVER believe that people are supposed to be nice?

I blame and shame myself for being angry at my neighbors.  “How could you, Linda?  You are never supposed to be angry!!  You are supposed to be NICE!  You are supposed to forgive.”  I guess I think I am supposed to excuse the behavior of mean people.

Obviously, I am all tangled up.  I do believe that people who were raised in good-enough infant-childhoods have the inner resources to deal with such things in far better ways than I can even imagine.  All I can really do is suffer through whatever my reactive reactions are until enough time eventually goes by that this entire experience becomes history.

This sucks.  But at least the dogs appear to have permanently gone away.  I have not seen them since my return.  My guess is that they ran out to the desert and became dinner themselves for some coyote gang.  Or terrorized a ranch and got themselves shot.  “YAY” for small blessings!

I can barely give myself permission to be angry at these blood thirsty dogs!  There are just too many things to think about, too many angles — and I can’t even get ONE OF THEM RIGHT!

My neighbors have always let these dogs run.  I knew that.  I just didn’t ever guess things would get this bad.

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