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I will be left off by my dearest family at the Fargo, North Dakota airport for my return flight to Arizona next Wednesday, September 26th at 5:30 in the morning.  Many adventures still need to be lived through here before that moment arrives.  One of these anticipated experiences for this coming weekend involves a second visit in a week’s time with a woman who was my closest friend from the year I left home at age 18 until a time 30 years ago when a ‘rupture’ appeared in this relationship that I did not understand back then and have never had any hope — until now — of repairing.

There will probably be much I will have to write eventually not only about these friendship patterns emerging now in my current life after lying dormant (I thought dead) all of these years.  But I need to get home.  I need to ‘repair’ my own self from the tiring aspects of this kind of travel.  For the moment I wanted to mention (mostly to myself, as this kind of writing so adeptly allows for) the first new glimmerings of insight that are percolating their way nearly up to the surfaces of my various awarenesses.

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I haven’t written for a long time about what it feels like as an infant-child abuse and trauma survivor when this kind of (I find myself at this moment walking around my daughter’s living room motioning with my hands through space as I search for the words I need) —

turning

of

critically important

‘energy’

transpires.

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As I HAVE written of more recently on this blog, I had no solitary inner clue, no self-indication, no self awareness that I had even been abused as a child until I reached the age of 29.

This abuse awareness came to me in tiny snippets of pieces.  It came gradually through time, over time — as I was pushed, pulled, swayed, influenced — out of the shadows of hiding my own reality from myself – and most certainly from others – as I began to detect my own words – and to express them – a process I will probably be actively engaged in for the rest of my life (I just turned 61).

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Right now as I open doorways again after these 30 passing years into the value that my friendship with this woman I mention meant to me (a very great deal!) – and to how much I have missed her —

I had a flash, vaguely yet tantalizingly so, of tiny returning memories from our long-ago friendship – of my interaction with not only this woman but also with her older sister during ‘that’ era of my life.

I ‘do believe’ at this moment that it was to these 2 women that I first voiced any – ANY – mention of the horror of hell I had spent the first 18 years of my life in.

I vaguely understand at this moment that as I voiced words to these women about the first tiny aspect of my abuse history (I don’t exactly remember what I described) – what came back to me was a STOPPER — an absolute SHOW STOPPER – that many if not most severe early abuse survivors will recognize:

“Get over it!”

“Nobody has a perfect childhood.”

“Get over it!”

“Grow up!”

“Get on with your life!”

Of course I am paraphrasing a flitting fleet of memory here.

Did I stand up for MYSELF?

Absolutely NOT!

(I can barely barely barely stand up for myself – ever – even now – actually…..)

At those moments I found myself speaking to my friends something about the truth of the horror of my childhood experience – I was (as far as I can tell) speaking those words I spoke to THEM — for the first time — to my own self.

When their reaction came – I shut up.  I could not carry any of my own energy forward to speak again EVER to these friends about what was real and true in such a HUGE and important way to me.

As it was that I first spoke my truth in words to THEM

So also did I first speak them to myself.

And as I was ‘shut down’ by them (if not in important ways ‘shot down’)

As my VOICE stopped speaking

I again returned to absolute silence inside of my own self as far as being able to voice my own truth to ME – the one who REALLY needed to hear them.

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That little tiny voice.

That all but invisible whisper to the world about what 18 years of insane torture and abuse did to me – who could hear it?

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It took YEARS for that door to open again!

YEARS!!!!

I don’t blame those to whom I tried to first speak.

I don’t blame anyone for my own silence.

I am today just suspecting that this experience is extremely common for abuse survivors.  These patterns ARE harmful.  They allow the corrosive toxic destruction caused by ‘prior’ abuse to continue unchecked, unabated, unaddressed — for far, far too long.

For today – enough said.

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I would write this as a poem

if I thought there was any poetry in this

What to say about The American Family on the go, always on the go?

Small children make sure this is so

Finally Mommy, with no choice, being exhausted from night after night without long sound sleep

Drops her two-month-old into the magic battery baby swing next to Grandma (that would be I – or is that me?)

Asleep on the living room couch on call for such an occasion at 5:46 in the morning

As the alarm rings off where Daddy sleeps on the couch downstairs.  Out the door he races to work early

As Grandma changes the poopy diaper (a celebration of small sorts ensues as today would have brought day 3 without same)

While 2 1/2 year old calls for (barely back to sleep) Mommy to lift him from the crib (he wakes crabby, still with the nasty cough, a daycare-caught cold he shared with Grandma and Baby)

(Did you know?  No longer is Vicks rub safe for children’s chests, nor can cough medicine be given to little ones under age 6?  How did my children – or others – survive before so much helpful DON’T-DOs arrived on the parenting scene?)

Just saying……

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Of course toddler wants to wear the fishbones pajama shirt for his day that nobody has yet washed the chocolate ice cream from yesterday out of yet

Speaking of which….

“No chocolate ice cream for breakfast.”

SAY WHAT????  Toddler?  Unhappy.

Adults?  Insistent.

And on goes the too-early-in-the-morning breakfast war

As Mommy nurses the baby

As Grandma stuffs the books to be donated and the two tomato cages and the strange black umbrella which will all share that fate

Into the back of the sturdy (bought used) red Subaru along with many awkward pounds of to-be-recycled cardboard and a heavy box of magazines – again, to share a fate

While Grandma then packs Mommy a lunch, adds the frozen block into the ‘twice to pump at work today’ nursing bag, cleans the PB&J from the hands of said toddler who at least ate the toppings and took a sip of milk

As Mommy dresses the toddler now, as Grandma counts the to-be-donated ‘don’t fit Mommy anymore’ quality clothing — must add all to the detailed list for tax deductions

Just in case

Just in case America elects a leader hell bent on destroying what is left of any small and possible remnant of America’s middle class – “NO NO NO!  No more tax deductions for YOU!!”

As Grandma hurries to make Mommy a toasted English muffin with extra PB – wrapped hot in a paper towel, delivered out to the garage as the toddler is strapped into his super-duper car seat (Did you know you CANNOT MUST NOT reuse one of those carseats?   Experts insist!  The plastic is ROTTEN once it’s time to pass one down to the next in line or to somebody’s little one.  Tell me, at what point does the ROTTEN begin?)

Of course Grandma doesn’t quite notice that the paper towel is saturated with warm melted butter dripping PB – until it’s finally handed to Mommy through the front car window 2 seconds before that Subaru was to be put into reverse at 8:44

So it can all drip onto Mommy’s professional outfit

So Mommy must rush into the house and (you get the picture)

As Grandma follows her inside pathetically whining, “This is why I am not a short order cook!”

And prepares for a day with the baby.

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Well, Baby was sound asleep safe safe safe SAFE

So Grandma thought she/I could snitch the tiniest of SHOWERS – but of course as soon as the shampoo lathered my head the baby HOWLS!!

How did he KNOW???

And on life goes………

While the North Dakota wind jumps up from nowhere

or so it seems

to bless this day of possible sunshine

with such YOWLING

just because

it can.

(While I wonder, “How will Mommy manage once Grandma retreats again far south?”)

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This being published just a day after the dishwasher threw up its plastic parts which chose to land on the hot drying burner to melt themselves into uselessness – while nobody smelled this sabotage in progress?

And just now – after Grandma turned off the water to the downstair’s toilet – so she can return later to see if there’s hope for repair for the now-intent-on-permanently-leaking parts to the sacred inner porcelain pool of “DANG SHUT YOURSELF OFF ALREADY” hidden parts of same.

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I left home to fly the 1700 miles north to visit my family on Thursday August 30th – and I am still here.  There are probably 100 posts I could write from what I have and currently am experiencing on this trip.  I figure all that can wait until I get home again.  The long and the short of it is that I barely have the inner resources I wish I had to manage my visit comfortably.  I don’t.  “Too much stimulation” is just plain noxious to me (as it is for a newly born infant) no matter the source or the positive/negative direction the stimulation comes from.  I just cannot easily handle ‘stress’.

I hate this about my condition.  Part of me says that if I do not NAME what I know about what I am experiencing here then it cannot hurt me.  I am doing my best to ‘skip over’ the hard parts, wanting only to keep with me moment to moment the marvels of being with my grandsons and my daughters – no matter what else might be involved in this experience.

Life as we know it IS experience — ongoing and continual.  Experience is so intimately connected and intertwined with every other experience we have ever had that they cannot be teased apart, this ‘present’ from that ‘past’.  My past exhausted my resources.  In my essence I feel exhausted.  “I am tired out” is the refrain that repeats in my awareness — and at 61, that MAKES ME MAD!

Part of this process is about accepting my ‘disabilities’ – and because these ‘disabilities’ exist in direct proportion to the severe insane abuse I suffered from my birth – they are not minor ones.

I don’t want to name them right now.  I want to go on with my day as if they do not exist.  (Yeah, right!)  That’s all I really know how to do.  It’s what I have always done.  Tired out or not, exhausted or not, I always reach for MORE resources, even when I can’t imagine where they are inside of me.  I am greedy that way, I guess!

So be it.  Life is NOT fair.  Ask any human!

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Tomorrow I fly.  From my point of view I might as well be preparing to leave for outer space.  Not that I don’t know where I will end up, and don’t know that being with my children and grandchildren will be wonderful beyond belief.  It’s just the days and minutes that lead up to this adventure that seem torturous.  When ‘all is said and done’ I have turned into a chicken.  A big grounded chicken!

It’s not like I have a gargantuan farm or ranch that needs to be cared for in my absence.  A large garden, 5 hens, 2 cats and a small dog.  Yet relying on someone to care for this end of my life while I am not here to do it has been a difficult journey.  And it’s not over yet.  I have lost telephone contact with the woman who is to stay here.  I don’t know where she lives.  My car is still in the shop being worked on where it has been for the better part of two weeks.

Of course the worst of the worst that might happen in these next hours is all in my imagination.  If I did not have the gift of imagination I would probably be unable to worry.  Yes, imagination is a gift of the soul — but, oh!  To only use that gift wisely!  Am I doing that?

I have written a small book of details and instructions for the caretaker – should she be the one to actually arrive at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow as arranged.

“Don’t push on the DVD player without holding onto it or it will slide down behind the TV.”

“The cats will come when they hear the sound of their food clinking against their dish.”

“Shut down the laptop and unplug all the cords in the back of it at the first sound of thunder.”

“Don’t put vegetables or fruit on the top right refrigerator shelf or they will freeze.”

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I find myself wondering briefly what it would be like to have gone through life, to go through it now with a detailed instruction book in hand that could be referred to and relied upon to contain the truth about how to manage one’s self in one’s life.  For all the billions of people on this earth, for all that have passed this way before, how is it actually possible that each and every single one of us still encounter so many continually new situations for which the only wisdom about how to get through them the best way possible only lies within each of us individually?

This is a creative — co-creative — universe we live in!

We are all continually creating and re-creating a slice of life that follows us around all of the time.

“Snip off the zinnia flowers below the second set of leaves so they can bloom again – the butterflies love them.”

Yet within the maze, the labyrinth of life, there is assistance and there is forgiveness and there is mercy.

I just received the news from my dear friend about the doctor’s report yesterday.  Everything of concern has miraculously improved!  Another appointment is set not for one month from now, but for three months from now!  How does one begin to thank the God Who made us, Who loves us, and Who hears our prayers?

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So in the middle of being a human being on this earth I try to pause and remember what matters most.  We are not given the power to foresee the future or to control it.  We are given the power to choose how we move through each present moment, about how we reach for the powers human beings have been given to communicate with our Creator – and with one another.

In the end we will each be able to report the one thing we all share in common:  “I have lived the best I can, and it was the greatest of adventures!”

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I find this absolutely fascinating!!

Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us

“An international group of prominent scientists has signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they are proclaiming their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are — a list of animals that includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus. But will this make us stop treating these animals in totally inhumane ways?

“While it might not sound like much for scientists to declare that many nonhuman animals possess conscious states, it’s the open acknowledgement that’s the big news here. The body of scientific evidence is increasingly showing that most animals are conscious in the same way that we are, and it’s no longer something we can ignore.

“What’s also very interesting about the declaration is the group’s acknowledgement that consciousness can emerge in those animals that are very much unlike humans, including those that evolved along different evolutionary tracks, namely birds and some cephalopods.

“”The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states,” they write, “Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.”

“The group consists of cognitive scientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists, and computational neuroscientists — all of whom were attending theFrancis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and Non-Human Animals. The declaration was signed in the presence of Stephen Hawking, and included such signatories as Christof Koch, David Edelman, Edward Boyden, Philip Low, Irene Pepperberg, and many more.

“The declaration made the following observations:

• The field of Consciousness research is rapidly evolving. Abundant new techniques and strategies for human and non-human animal research have been developed. Consequently, more data is becoming readily available, and this calls for a periodic reevaluation of previously held preconceptions in this field. Studies of non-human animals have shown that homologous brain circuits correlated with conscious experience and perception can be selectively facilitated and disrupted to assess whether they are in fact necessary for those experiences. Moreover, in humans, new non-invasive techniques are readily available to survey the correlates of consciousness.
• The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated with affect are concentrated in subcortical regions where neural homologies abound. Young human and nonhuman animals without neocortices retain these brain-mind functions. Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus).
• Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African grey parrots. Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex. Magpies in articular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins, and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition.
• In humans, the effect of certain hallucinogens appears to be associated with a disruption in cortical feedforward and feedback processing. Pharmacological interventions in non-human animals with compounds known to affect conscious behavior in humans can lead to similar perturbations in behavior in non-human animals. In humans, there is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical activity, which does not exclude possible contributions by subcortical or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness. Evidence that human and nonhuman animal emotional feelings arise from homologous subcortical brain networks provide compelling evidence for evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia.”

“We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that  non-human  animals have the neuroanatomical,  neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with  the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence  indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

Read more here!

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The image in my mind’s eye this morning is of me living my life is of stained glass.  The big picture of myself in my life – along with all others who are a part of my life (and in some way that includes all who are alive, all who are connected to the stream of my life by their contributions in the past) — is of a massive picture created with meticulous beauty — of what exactly?  I cannot tell because it seems most pieces, though cut to fit this picture, lie around me disconnected in a state of readiness to be placed where they belong — but aren’t.  (Could they be?)

On any given day, at any given moment I can collect an assortment of shaped pieces, all possessed of inherent individual beauty, all with edges that could be dangerous if I handle them wrongly, round about me.  These pieces stick with me throughout a waking day as if we are bound together with powerful static electricity.

I can move the pieces around, hold them up the the light, admire their exquisite beauty — but I cannot put more than a very few of them together where they belong and make them stick there.  If I could, then I could get up the next morning with part of the picture in front of me, surrounding me, and add a little bit more order and understanding to the pattern of experience that is my life.

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Today is a perfect day.  Recent rains have washed all visible dust and pollutants out of the air.  Distant mountains seem closer.  Every particle of life glistens and shines.  Humidity in our high desert air has plant life thriving in it.  The sun is shining.  Temperatures most related to coming fall engulf us.  Life is beautiful.

But I have to work to let that feeling of peace invade my own self.  The pressure of having yet another day of life to live – to live rightly the best that I can – to live a day that is unlike any that has ever been on this planet before, that will disappear moment by moment into the past taking choices along with it as time has come and gone — knowing that life is going on for people all over this planet under all kinds of different conditions — and that for so many that life is nothing but suffering.

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I nearly perpetually carry the sense I had all during my so-abusive childhood that if I could ‘just do things right’ life would be perfect.  It would be paradise.  There would be nothing to be ‘punished’ for.  There would be no mistake made.  There would be no regrets.  There would be no need to ever feel I did something wrong, that there is something in existence that now needs to be up-righted, to be fixed, simply because I am alive.

I can’t go back and smooth out all those wrinkles in my beliefs about life.  I can try to recognize them.  But sometimes there just seems to be so many different fronts to pay attention to as I sit with those separated beautiful pieces of stained glass – not knowing where so many of them belong or what they mean or what to do with them – or what happened that I can make so little sense out of anything I recognize about life, my own included.

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Yesterday was a special day for me in an important way:  I chuckled out loud.  I didn’t just chuckle once.  I was surprised and entertained by chuckles that came to me on several occasions yesterday.  I ask myself, “What did you do differently yesterday, Linda, that you got to experience what so rarely comes to you, those moments of clear and simple joy?”

I do not KNOW, and that puzzlement also troubles me, as if I created an accidental puzzle whose solution is as unknown to me as its creation!

I didn’t make any special decision to chuckle yesterday.  I remember what traditional Native American elders up north where I used to live often stated:  “Humor is a spirit.  When we laugh it is because a spirit of humor has passed us by.”

Well, I am grateful.  The relief I felt at being able to chuckle leaves me nearly speechless!  It’s not that the chuckle-worthy pieces of life that visited me yesterday make any more sense than any other piece makes.  It’s just that I felt free from a great burden when the chuckles arrived.  Humor appeared in the words and actions of other people.  Humor appeared in my own actions, as well.

Those chuckle moments seem, looking back at yesterday, to be individual blessings that angels carried into my life — and made OBVIOUS to me.

Yet as I think of it more carefully, more specifically, doing what a Virgo’s Virgo Mercurial mind can do so well — examine the context along with the content of those moments — I see that every chuckle appeared at a moment when a light shone brightly on the humanness of people.

Looking at life as a puzzle where people do the best that they can do – recognizing that things could have been done BETTER — but weren’t.  Yet at those moments there was a recognition that no shame was attached to the actions done.  Rather there was grace and mercy present so that nothing negative was attached to ‘silly’ actions of — just human people.

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Around four in the afternoon a dark and ominous cloud appeared to block out the mountain range (these are more like foothills than peaks) to the north of the little town I live in.  Thundering crashes let us know this storm meant some kind of serious business as it approached us.  Lots of neighbors were outside, children included.  Everyone except the youngest had their eyes on that cloud.

It BOOMED! a few times — and disappeared.  But with its ‘big joke’ it knocked out all power to our town for about 6 hours.  The sun was destined to set, to leave us all in darkness.  I was happy to disperse little candles I have in my saved, stored collection to my neighbors who live in these simple old trailers filled with growing children before the sun set.

Of course we were out of water, so little people with water jugs appeared at my door.  I traded their empties for full ones I had filled at our local water machine for drinking.  I found an extra flashlight and transferred its light to my eastern neighbor.  A long dark tunnel can be intimidating to children trying to find the bathroom.

The neighbors did not disappear into their houses as dark crept for us.  There was nothing to do there.  Off for family walks they sauntered with their hand-held beams of light — squealing in unison as they passed a wakening snake along the side of the roughened pavement.

All these people in this Mexican-American border town of 700 know one another.  Most are related.  When they go for an evening stroll with babes in tow they have somewhere to go.  Not I.

What could busy-me do in the dark with my two candles lit and my flashlight stuffed into my left jean shorts pocket to be pulled out at an instant’s notice?

For days I’ve known I needed to do a pedicure.  Never do I stop from all of my other business long enough to get that task done.  So filling a pan with water from a gallon jug, flashlight in hand, I sat down long enough to do my nails — and to chuckle at how silly I (and others can be) — well – simply because we can be!  We are human!

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The power came back on.  Life resumed ‘as usual’.  The ‘dark moments’ that turned into calm and pleasing ‘pressure-free’ times had passed.  (I spent much of my childhood living without running water or electricity – but boy am I used to those amenities now!)  Everyone returned indoors leaving the brilliant half moon turning the sky to white peace-filled light outside

Yet another piece of the stained glass pie:  Maybe it doesn’t really matter one tiny bit what individuals make of our collective moments.  What might only matter is that they passed at all – and together somebody noticed.

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