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I have two things I wish to write about.  Here’s the first one:

From today – posted on the Prevent Child Abuse New York blog site

New Report Estimates the Cost of Child Abuse at $80 Billion a Year

“Child abuse and neglect will cost our nation over $80 billion in 2012, according to an economic impact analysis released today by Prevent Child Abuse America. The report, Estimated Annual Cost of Child Abuse and Neglect, assesses a number of factors. Direct costs, which include hospitalization, mental health costs, costs incurred by the child welfare system, and law enforcement, total $33 billion. Indirect costs, including special education, early intervention, adult homelessness, mental health and health care, juvenile and adult criminal justice costs, and lost work productivity, total nearly $47 billion.  

Based on this analysis, New York will spend an estimated $5,264,534,000 to address the consequences of child abuse and neglect. This confirms what professionals in the field have long known: There’s a tremendous imbalance between what we spend on preventing child abuse from happening and intervening in and treating child abuse after it already occurs. New York State, for example, spends $23.3 million on Healthy Families New York and $2.5 million on Nurse Family Partnership, two early childhood home visiting programs proven to reduce abuse and improve outcomes for at-risk kids.

We should not diminish the importance of intervening in abusive situations and treating victims, but we must also recognize the trauma of abuse can not be erased. Abuse and neglect account for many grievous social ills. Victims are more likely to experience chronic health problems, mental health issues, developmental delays, poor educational outcomes, and involvement with the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

We need to prioritize children not only in our policies and budgets, but in our everyday actions,” said James M. Hmurovich, President & CEO, Prevent Child Abuse America. “Wouldn’t it make sense to develop a strategy that focuses on a national commitment to actually prevent child abuse and neglect before it ever occurred? If we could decrease these annual costs by 10% in the next 5 years, think of the great things we could do for children and their families. For example, $7.7 million provides 78,000 home visits to 2000-3000 expectant and new parents at risk of abusing or neglecting their child. Ultimately, this benefits not just families, but society as a whole.””

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There’s no possible way to put a dollar value amount on the cost of suffering – and no way to truly evaluate the lifelong consequences every individual infant-child abuse survivor lives with for their ENTIRE life!!

Leave it to Americans!  Check out this recent post –

+WHO CARES ABOUT OUR NATION’S CHILDREN? THE STATE OF AMERICA’S CHILDREN® 2011 REPORT

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Next I just wish to send an invisible thank you to a gentleman I met briefly tonight through a friend of mine who simply looked my way – and recognized one of my greatest gifts.

Nobody has put words to this gift before, not even me.  Yet as this man turned to me and with the love of his soul for God in his eyes and simply said, “You are an encourager.  I can see it in your heart.  I can see it all around you!”  I knew he was speaking the truth.

How did I know?  Because nearly 5 hours later my heart is still blazing with hope.  Hope for myself.  Hope for those I care about.  Hope for my own future.  Hope for all of our futures.

I needed to hear those words.  Yes, I AM an encourager!

On my way driving home from town afterwards a song came to me.  It has been many weeks since a song has sprung into, through and out of my heart.  It has been many days – moving into months now – since I have even been able to tolerate the sound-pitch-tone of any note on my piano keyboard.

As I am working out the notes for this song now – I can HEAR the notes and the song is beautiful!

It is an encouraging song.  I don’t have the words – not yet.  I don’t even know if the song will even end up having words.  But I KNOW the song is about encouragement – as I recognize how I needed God to speak to me those words of encouragement I needed to hear — through that man.

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I think about my garden in which I have been working many hours in recent weeks.  I love plants.  I love everything about gardening – even in this very harsh high desert Arizona environment.

I realize that what I do is ENCOURAGE plants to grow and to thrive in my garden.  What a new and fascinating way to think about my garden!

I also DO love to encourage people – who WANT to grow and change.  I don’t think everyone can be encouraged.  Some people seem to have the door of their soul slammed tightly shut – as if they have completely forgotten that God (however a person understands the only true God there is) exists at all.  More importantly people seem to have severe amnesia about the fact that all life belongs to our Creator – and that humans are spiritual beings with a soul that exists now and for forever.

It is only through the growth and advancement of our soul that we heal and grow – no matter what we wish as societies full of individuals to believe to the contrary.

It is spiritual living that matters to me, not the particular religion a person understands.  Spirit is power.  Nothing about the changes that survivors of infant-child abuse suffered in their early development particularly impacted anyone’s soul – unless a person has made their own CHOICE (with a few special exceptions as I see things) to pretend to ‘only’ be an animal.

Humans.  In a body that does, yes, belong while we live on Earth to the animal kingdom.  But then there is the part of us that matters.  Truly matters:  our soul!

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This man I met so briefly tonight knows he is a spiritual being – and that I am one, too – even though we do not share the same ‘religion’.  He was therefore able to share one of what must be his spiritual gifts – to see the spiritual person.

Therefore – this man could and did encourage me!  Encouraging is really even what my blog is all about!  I like this concept.  There is nothing about encouragement to me that smacks of any effort to control or to direct another person in any way.

I entirely missed out on encouragement as I struggled to endure and survive my 18 year childhood so full of terrible abuse, torture and trauma.  Nobody encouraged me.

‘Encourage’ is evidently a young word in modern English, appearing in the 15^th century.  It can’t really be understood at all without considering the word, ‘courage’, around which encouraging occurs.

Definition of COURAGE:

mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty

Ah, but look:

Middle English corage, from Anglo-French curage, from quer, coer heart, from Latin cor — more at heart

First Known Use: 14th century

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It is HEART that lies at the center of this entire idea!  True heart, I know, is about SOUL.

I hope I can in small ways help people who are searching for new goodness, growth and healing recognize that their strength and power lies in their own heart, and that it is with our heart that we can reach out for assistance and courage from the greatest power for love anyone can even begin to imagine:  God.

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Those with severe abuse histories – like I have – from an 18 year childhood of trauma – where do we go to tell our stories when something ‘comes up’?  Calling our ‘need’ a ‘mental health – mental illness’ need is a JOKE!  But, then before I bother to get my proverbial dander in a fluff I remember, as much as we Americans might like to pretend we are an advanced representation of a civilized society – well – that assumption is also a JOKE.

A friend of mine (who is poor) had a tooth pulled nearly two months ago.  She had a dry socket, had that treated, but a month later the hole in her jaw has not healed.  While she has no pain, splinters of her removed tooth are still coming to the surface – something does not appear right here.

As we spoke yesterday my own memory of my difficulties with dentistry that no doubt originated with my experiences at age 17 came to my mind.  I did not speak of them to my friend.  I didn’t need to – doing so was not necessary or appropriate.  BUT ….

This first link leads up to my dentist story, I believe.  I wrote it some time ago and have no desire at this moment to reread this piece.  This second link follows this part of my story up to the minute I walked out of my home or origin a final time.

*Age 17 – What My Parents Taught Me About Racism

*Age 18 – LEADING UP TO GONE FROM HOME

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In thinking about the difference between a so-called ‘mental health’ center providing assistance of one kind or another to people who have nearly ALWAYS suffered from inadequate parenting and early childhoods of extreme trauma, I believe that naming these people as SICK as a result of how traumas affected and changed them during their early critical windows of development is the wrong way to go about helping create positive change in people’s lives.

If I ran the world – and what I envision as the direction a more advanced society will move toward – a network of what I might call Community Compassion Centers could better serve the needs of survivors (and everyone becomes a survivor of some kind of trauma throughout the span of a lifetime).  These centers would have no stigma attached to them whatsoever.  They would be grassroot centers that are designed to meet the everyday needs of PEOPLE.

In my reality, with my history, wishing yesterday that I had such a center to stop by so that I could have talked a bit about my own dentistry story would have been for me simply an everyday need.  Dealing with the residues of severe early trauma and abuse is an everyday process for me.  Nothing about my need is a ‘mental illness’ issue.

If people need prescription drugs – those people do need medical attention and no difference need be made between those needs and any other medical need.

As far as so-called therapy goes, the older I get and the more I look around (I am 60) at society, the more I understand that nearly every single person I encounter would benefit from some specific forms of EDUCATION about how to be a healthier, happier person – and thus a better person within the society they live in.

There ARE a few people who I meet who were NOT abused, neglected or traumatized as children.  In this small town area I live in, it is many of these people who are the best resources for this entire community.  They CARE and they ACT to help others in effective and healthy ways.

Then there are a whole lot of other people who are suffering – even if they do not think about their life in this way.  So many people cannot possibly afford or access so-called therapy – and I am not convinced that it is therapy that very many people need.

What we need are LISTENERS.  Because my thinking is grounded in ‘attachment theory’ I would say what we need are RESONATORS!

A resonator to me is a person who is capable of listening with appropriate empathy (healthy empathy) coupled with compassion and an ability to communicate to the person they are listening to – resonating with – that they FEEL (appropriately) what the ‘talker’ is saying.

There would be no outside belief that anyone needs to ‘be changed’.  People change because they want to and because they believe that they can.  People change for the better as their heart grows – like a beautiful flower opening to fantastic new possibilities.

Humans give these hopes to one another.  We are designed to do this.  We are a social species.  Many of us do not know how to be in direct, open and entirely honest caring relationship with one another.  Many people are – quite frankly – allergic to knowing the truth about their past and how that past is influencing them in the present.

No games.  That is my best motto.  I never had a chance in my first 18 years of life to learn how to play games.  Truth is truth – and I always function best with people who know their own truth and are not one bit shy about being who they are – without trying to change anyone else.

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I suppose there is more I could write on this topic, but the day is gorgeous and I want to be outside in my garden.  Best hopes for everyone’s fantastic day!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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In reading THE STATE OF AMERICA’S CHILDREN^® 2011 REPORT it seems to me that any caring, intelligent adult might wonder if America is falling apart, unraveling not at our seems but at the core of who we are as a nation.  These statistics break my heart.  Who is crying for America’s children?  Who turns their back and walks away?  Who suffers?  Who helps those who are suffering?  And most importantly, WHAT ON EARTH is wrong with our nation and how do we make things right for the children who are NOT receiving what they need?

Are Our Children Ready to Compete in the Global Arena?

How America Ranks Among Industrialized Countries in Investing in and Protecting Children                                   

1^st in gross domestic product

1^st in number of billionaires

1^st in number of persons incarcerated

1^st in health expenditures

1^st in student expenditures

1^st in military technology

1^st in defense expenditures

1^st in military weapons exports

17^th in reading scores

22^nd in low birthweight rates

23^rd in science scores

30^th in infant mortality rates

31^st in math scores

31^st in the gap between the rich and the poor

Last in relative child poverty

Last in adolescent birth rates (ages 15 to 19)

Last in protecting our children against gun violence

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Personally, I don’t think COMPETING in the ‘global arena’ should be our top concern.  How about ethical care for our most important resource – our nation’s children?  How about ensuring equitable chances of having a quality life of well-being at all?

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“Children’s Defense Fund’s (CDF) new report The State of America’s Children 2011 finds children have fallen further behind in many of the leading indicators over the past year as the country slowly climbs out of the recession. This is a comprehensive compilation and analysis of the most recent and reliable national and state-by-state data on population, poverty, family structure, family income, health, nutrition, early childhood development, education, child welfare, juvenile justice, and gun violence. The report provides key child data showing alarming numbers of children at risk: children are the poorest age group with 15.5 million children—one in every five children in America—living in poverty, and more than 60 percent of fourth, eighth and 12th grade public school students are reading or doing math below grade level.”

View this year’s interactive report or download the document.

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These are the areas covered in this report – PLEASE CARE ENOUGH TO TAKE A LOOK!

INTRODUCTION

KEY FACTS

CHILD POPULATION

FAMILY STRUCTURE

CHILD HEALTH

EARLY CHILDHOOD

CHILD WELFARE

GUN VIOLENCE

CHILD POVERTY

FAMILY INCOME

CHILD HUNGER

EDUCATION

JUVENILE JUSTICE

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More here:

WE the U.S. and the WORLD

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Please click here to read or to  Leave a Comment »

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Information from The National Center for Children in Poverty – Columbia University

How are the little people in your state faring?  How many are ‘at risk’ on these meaningful measures?  This tool is not about abuse or neglect – just life well-being indicators that increase risk for a difficult life based on the factors presented at this site.

NCCP | Young Child Risk Calculator

www.nccp.org

“The risk factors used in this tool are known to increase the chance of poor health, school, and developmental outcomes for young children.   Economic hardship paired with any of the listed risk factors may indicate a greater chance of poor outcomes.   Children with three or more risks are exceptionally vulnerable. Information about the prevalence of young children experiencing these risks can inform policies aimed at improving outcomes for vulnerable children and reducing the number of children experiencing early risks.”

This link covers demographics for older children, as well –

http://www.nccp.org/profiles/

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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I very strongly credit my success in surviving the 18 years of abuse I experienced from my BPD mother in large part to the fact that my mother was healthy and happy being pregnant with me.  (Our big troubles began with my mother’s difficult labor with breech-me.)

I just found this article – it’s a great one!  This information concerns the front end of what experts refer to as the critically important first 33 months of our life – conception to age two!

The Role of Stress in Brain Development – The Gestational Environment’s Long-Term Effects on the Brain

By Claudia Buss, Ph.D., Sonja Entringer, Ph.D., James M. Swanson, Ph.D., and Pathik D. Wadhwa, M.D., Ph.D.
April 25, 2012

“Interestingly, a mother’s biological response to stress is dampened during gestation. Several investigators, including some in our group, have shown that pregnant compared to nonpregnant women experience a lower increase in heart rate in response to the same stressor, and cortisol increase in response to awakening is lower in pregnant women than in nonpregnant women.^22-24 The degree of reduction in biological stress responses over the course of pregnancy varies from one woman to another, and adverse birth outcomes are more likely in children of women showing a lack of dampening (and thus greater biological stress responses) during pregnancy.³⁸ Also, a generalized reduction of maternal immune responsiveness occurs during pregnancy, presumably to tolerate the fetus, a foreign body, and not to the extent to suppress maternal immune responses that would increase maternal or fetal susceptibility to infection.²⁵”

Read More!

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Click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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My mother had only one sibling, a brother two years older than she was.

Click  HERE for pictures Mother drew of her brother when she was about ten years old

Mother repeated many stories to her own children about her childhood.  Unfortunately Mother could not allow herself to truly know how painful her childhood really was.  She ‘forgot’ the truth.  She believed many lies about her fantastical version of her ‘idyllic’ childhood.

I thought about my mother’s brother today when an old Alaskan neighbor and friend sent me a letter than included a news article about the American space station’s science potential.  I sent these links about Mother’s brother to my friend:

Caltech’s Newest Shining Star:  The Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics

Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics

My uncle has made it clear that he will leave his entire fortune to Caltech’s space program.

There are things I suspect about how Charles treated his sister.  In fact, I have often seen how my own 14-month-older brother treated me as being perhaps THE most important saving factor of my childhood in hell.

I equally suspect that Mother’s brother served the opposite role in her life.  In fact, her brother might have been the only person that could have saved my mother as my brother saved me — only he DID not.  He was mean to her in ways that I believe contributed importantly to the breaking of Mother – and to the onset of her terrible Borderline Personality Disorder disease.

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I only wish to simply present the only directly autobiographical piece of writing I found within my mother’s papers after she died.  Mother would have been very nearly my same age when she wrote this.  I find here the only intact mention of mother’s perception that her brother hurt her.

I also note that Mother’s description of her own grandmother who came to live with her and her mother after her parents divorced as probably not being the truth.  I believe her grandmother was NOT the kind loving person Mother always pretended to herself that she was.  In fact, I think great grandmother was yet another person who helped to break Mother.

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Written by Mildred Anne Cahill Lloyd

[born December 21, 1925 in Boston, MA – died March 2002 in Anchorage, AK]

In St. Albert, Alberta, Canada

February 28, 1974

Her version of her

Family History

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When my Mother passed away sadness engulfed me to such a point I could not look over some papers on our family’s history that I came across.

Now after moving to Canada (January 1974 – Bill arrived September 1973) and sorting things out I’ve come across these again – some notes my Mother made years ago and others from Uncle Howard etc.

Lat night about 9:00 P.M. I started sorting events, dates, names out and seeing if I could re-construct family history and events.  At 2:00 A.M. I was still up and today here I am again.

Noting all the while how we all hurry through life never taking the time to record important events and occurrences, I’ll see what I can do and record these results.

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I have one brother, Charles Hunter Cahill, whom I loved dearly always but he went on a different path and I followed Jesus as My Saviour [sic], accepting him when I was 40 years old in Tucson, Arizona after reading my Bible and being convicted in my heart I was a sinner and needed Him.  I was engulfed in His LOVE.  I knew at once I was HIS child and I loved HIM with a love greater than any I had ever known.

Yet, it took many years for me to die to SELF.  I wanted to give my life wholeheartedly but found it very difficult.  I had many trials and unhappinesses [sic] and God dealt with me through each succeeding lesson until at last I could thank Him for his [sic] enduring mercy to me as His Child and say “Here I am God – completely, absolutely yours.”

After becoming converted to true Christianity – and accepted as a child of God into His Family – I was filled with God’s love and I wanted to undo any wrongs I may have committed.  I knew God had forgiven me but still I wanted to ‘right’ what ever I could.

This is a story in itself but it led me to my brother in California and I’d hoped a complete reunion with him and I prayed to His Acceptance, also, as Christ as His Saviour.

On December 23, 1973 he and his new wife Anita invited me and Sharon and David and Steven to their house for my Birthday (December 21) and Christmas.  I was overjoyed and eagerly accepted.  On the above date we were hurt beyond all belief by the cruel, heartless words and treatment received by him and were put out of his home.  We spent Xmas with his former wife, Carolyn Cahill and Bill came to her house to drive us to Edmonton, Canada.  We were ‘en route’ at that time to this destination as he had accepted a new job with an engineering firm there.

The heart break is still with me.  I’ve searched my heart to see if I had malice towards him when growing up and the answer is No.

I trace alot of his bitterness and resentment to our Mother’s divorce and her career as a Psychologist and especially the fact that she turned us so completely against Our Father and the family name “Cahill” and all of our relatives on his side of the family.  Oh, such injustices we humans commit.

It’s taken me weeks to be able to truly forgive him for the untruthful hideous things he said.  But now I do forgive him for God’s word commands us to forgive ‘our brother’ and our enemy and to love and pray for them.

I wrote to my Father while in Pasadena, California and our correspondence, though not frequent or too personal, was immensely gratifying and made us both happy.

After he died, his brother, Uncle Howard, wrote me for many years.  His long, beautifully eloquent letters told of his great love for his country, his wife and family.  He elaborated in great detail on what a wonderful man my Father had been.  I tried to tell my brother about all this but he’d been so completely ‘brain washed’ he refused to listen at all.

Uncle Howard died a few months ago, leaving his wife Jean all alone, with no immediate family in Sun City, Arizona.  I have just written her and several other members of my family back East on my Mother’s and Grandmother’s side of the family to attempt to trace our family history.

I wrote Uncle Howard once to ask him and his answer was mostly ten pages defending ‘the Irish’ in general.

I thank God I know Our Heavenly Father and it’s to Him I turn and Him I trust and put my FAITH.

The human race is so frail and full of animosity and mis-understandings.

My Hope is in The Kind’s returning.  Thank God we have hope in Him.  Praise His Holy Name!!

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My Mother’s name was:  Annie Beatrice Hunter but she went by the name Beatrice Hunter Cahill and it wasn’t until her death that I knew her name was “Annie.”

Mother was born in Massachusetts 1895 and died May 20, 1971 in Pasadena, California.  She married Charles Harold Cahill on June 25, 1919 and was divorced 1931.

(What, I ask myself if this had never happened – the divorce.)

I realize my Mother was a very intellectual, brilliant woman and a sensitive human being – loving and kind.  She contributed a great deal to the world and helped many people find ‘their place’ this world BUT what if she had buried her desires and followed God’s Commandment Thou Shall Not divorce.  If she could have followed HIM and been happy how different my brother’s life and mine would be today!

I can hardly remember my Father.  I remember the home we lived in – I loved it and the gardens and surrounding hills and beauty of New England.

But I was without a father, and my mother worked – had a career, was a Professional woman.  In those days very few people got divorces and very few women worked, let alone had a career.  How different!  I grew up different – and so did Charles.  We were drawn together and used to pretend at times we were twins.  I looked up to him so and he was so much fun.  He cared for me and protected me and sometimes teased me and even hurt me so I would do exactly as he wanted.  I often got spanked but I doubt if he ever did and as he grew older he was the adored ‘male’ in our family of 3 women.  My grandmother, Mildred Jane Hunter (maiden name WOODSIDE) came to live with us and keep house after her husband, William Thomas Hunter, died of cancer [1929].  Her one son died about the same time (Mother’s adored older brother) [professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN], and Mother’s divorce.  How traumatic for my Mother.

She so loved her father and used to tell me how they went camping and hunting together.  They raised bird dogs (setters and pointers) and even Mom handled a gun and loved the out-of-doors.  Her brother, Hammett was so much older and so she was a companion to her Dad.

From what she told me Grandpa was a great out-doorsman, an Engineer but Grandma loved the city.

Grandma – my precious Grandma, how I loved her.  She was kind and sweet.  She loved to read and had educated herself through books she read.  She could answer any andevery question – was virtually a walking encyclopedia and so full of WIT and charm.

She kept her snow white hair curled with an electric curling iron and was always so pretty and feminine.

I can’t remember her ever getting angry or upset – even with us kids (Mom did!)

She loved to cook and sew.  She baked our bread and pies and kept the house spotless although she suffered greatly from arthritis and rheumatism.  Bless Her Heart.  She was indeed the ‘heart of our home’.  Always present.  She never went any where unless we took her and had no life but ‘our family’ and how she loved us.

She did all this and yet was in her seventies when she came to live with us.

She came across country with us in 1945 to California and returned to the East Coast to Florida in 1946 and six months later by bus to Pasadena, California again.  She would not be left.  But these trips and the subsequent hardships and Mom’s series of illnesses and our giving up our secure family home and not being able to relocate right away (due to war conditions, World War II ended while we were first in California and lack of enough money) left its mark finally on Grandma – and all of us.

But she surprised us all, recovering from a broken hip due to a fall, and a partial stroke too.  I cared for her in our home in California before she died at I believe 96.

[Linda note:  Mildred Jane Hunter, born Prince Edward Island, Canada, passed away December 30, 1952 – services held January 2, 1952]

She still had all her faculties and was extremely mentally alert but completely in-active and unable to care for herself.

I wish I’d had her tell me stories of her past, her married life and childhood.  But somehow we’re always too busy with our daily life to take time to do this.  We always think there will be ‘a tomorrow’ or ‘another time’ and suddenly many years have passed and our dearly loved ones have passed away and it’s too late.

If only we could always realize and take time to love, appreciate, talk and above all to listen.

How much the older members of the family would enjoy telling tales of their lives to avid listeners and how much they have to offer and we could learn from them!

Both Grandma Hunter and Grandpa Hunter, my mother’s parents, were born in Prince Edward Island, Canada!

My Grandfather Hunter secured his U.S. Citizenship in Boston after his marriage to Grandma and I have no proof she ever obtained hers.

I plan to do research on all this and make records for our six children and their children to have.

In love of my family and its members, I close for now.  [signed] Mildred C. Lloyd

I’ll never forget or stop loving My Mother.  God Bless My Mother.  I loved her dearly. – I will add here that my own Mother was a dear woman and a wonderful Mother to me.  We became very close on our trip to California and through the many hardships that followed.  She dearly loved our children and was always thoughtful to them in every possible way.  We kept in close touch, even after moving to Alaska and grew closer every year.

I married William Dennison Lloyd in the Chapel of the Roses on June 11, 1949, Pasadena, California.

* This very day I received a letter from Bill Hunter, my cousin – my Mother’s nephew – my Grandmothers grandson who I’ve only seen once in my life and he’s only written twice before.  Such a coincidence.  It was his sister, Joan Pudvan (maiden name Hunter) who got my Mother to record notes etc. on the family history.  I just wrote her asking her to send me any information she may have!

[This is the end of all letters about Mildred’s homesteading saga.  What follows in the second part of this book is the collection of Mildred’s writings going all the way back when she was nine and ten years old, and includes all that exists of her own mother’s personal written history.]

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Mother’s writings specific to her childhood are collected specifically HERE

All of Mother’s writings are transcribed HERE

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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I am working today to get my drip irrigation system in perfect working order as our high desert southeastern Arizona summer heat is nearly upon us.  I put the system in last summer – but I am not an expert so I am constantly learning.  I don’t have the money I need to do a professional-quality job, either.  I don’t have adequate pressure regulators.  I do not have timers for the 6 zones of line.  But I can get this system working ‘good enough’ (as the experts call adequate parenting) to do what needs to be done to keep water bills down and the health of the many plants in my yard happy and healthy.

The first concerns in the drip system is to make sure there are no unwanted holes from which water can leak before it ever moves on down the line to where it is needed.  Pressure has to build up inside the line – all the way down the line.  That required pressure eventually forms a balance in the system that keeps water moving along and ending up where it is supposed to be.

I am thinking (in response to a reader’s comments) about how devastating it is to have been raised by anyone with serious Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  I am thinking how little understood BPD illness really is, how often it is entirely missed in diagnosis, and even how often it is misdiagnosed.

While we allow similar ship-shod approaches to parenting, for example, we don’t want these approaches used when we take our automobile to a mechanic’s shop to have it fixed.  We would be outraged if we opened a box of cereal we bought and found inside nothing but dried peas.

Yet when it comes to the extremely serious consequences of being raised in a malevolent early environment – well, hit’n’miss seems to be OK with almost everyone concerned.

And then we wonder why survivors of early trauma don’t thrive in their lives?  We wonder why these survivors continue to be SAD if not also really really MAD?

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There are leaks all over inside of us if we were tortured, terrified, terrorized, traumatized from the time we were born by a mentally ill BPD parent – especially our mother.  Nothing is working right – and we continue to suffer often feeling like we are hemorrhaging inside, bleeding to death from the core of our being.

How do we begin to find the leaks?  How do we begin to repair the line?

I believe it is important to realize that while a culture might seem to be doing well materially this same culture can itself be bleeding to death at its heart.  We cannot allow ourselves to be fooled into believing cultures are as advanced or sophisticated as they wish to believe that they are.

When it comes to the delicate inner workings of humans who have suffered from the instant they were born (and many even since their conception) — our American culture really does NOT know (1) what is really going on, or (2) what can be done to help people heal.

For all the greed of pharmaceutical companies who pick and choose which parts of which research they wish to focus on in their efforts to create their costly drugs that they can push to ‘the sick ones’, most of what is being done is to place the focus on what is WRONG (supposedly) rather than on what is RIGHT within any ‘labeled and diagnosed’ person.

Nobody wants to admit that mystery abounds.  Nobody wants to admit that the directions we most need to be turning toward for healing have nothing at all to do with either drugs.  Nobody wants to admit that their are conditions within human beings that cannot be healed at all — and I believe for the most part BPD is one such disease.

I won’t say a BPD person can’t improve their quality of life.  But I am saying that perhaps BPD is massively undiagnosed because it is NOT a disease that responds to drugs-as-a-cure-all.  BPD is a terrible disease that has its burgeoning roots in INFANT AND CHILD maltreatment!!

Few want to believe so simple and accurate a truth!

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I am not having any fun trying to tweak and repair this drip irrigation system today.  Yet feeling frustrated and angry, or even hopeless about my task, will not get me to my goal.

I need dedication, perseverance, willingness to tackle a job I don’t REALLY have the skills to do, or the $ resources to do right.  I have to believe in myself.  I have to believe I can DO this!  I have the water running into one of the zones’ lines right now – waiting patiently for the plants along it to receive water — and NO water yet!

Where IS the water going?  If there’s a leak, where is it and why can’t I see it?  How long do I have to wait for the water to appear in drips at the end of this line?  How can I fix this if I can’t figure out what the problem is?

Patience.  I HAVE to be patient!

This is no different a process in many ways than is the process of healing. Nobody will fix this line but me.  Nobody will find my self-healing except me.

I have to work on both tasks with what inner and outer resources I have – and make ‘this’ work – or give up.

In both cases I have to admit that I believe the efforts I make are worth it. I believe all is not hopeless.  I believe I am doing something nobody else has ever done in exactly the same way before.  I believe solutions are not only possible, but are most often found along the way in the journey itself.

I also believe in the case of being a survivor of severe insane abuse by a mad-woman BPD Mother — that it is most likely that what I need I will find out myself and from other survivors who are doing their best to move forward on their own healing path.  There are no magic answers.

I believe that BPD is probably preventable – but that prevention has to happen way before the age of 10.  For those of us who survived a severe BPD mother, what happens for us NEXT?  How do we begin to find the leaks inside of ourselves – one leak at a time – so they can be healed?

We are strong!  We will NOT bleed to death inside our heart-soul-self-core.  That would have happened a long, long, long time ago if it was going to happen at all.  In the moment we need to find PEACEFUL CALM, true peaceful calm, in any way and at any time that we can.

This is – I suspect – our deepest need.  We need to be as gentle and positive and hopeful with our self as we can manage to be!  This gentleness – in thought and in emotion – provides the clearest road to peaceful calm we will ever find.

It’s a hard journey for us.  My mother made sure that peaceful calm was just about the LAST feeling I would ever have during the first 18 years of my life.  It has taken me most of my adult life to even begin to know what peaceful calm even feels like!

I am starving for that feeling — and I am the ONLY person who can find my way to that state of being inside of myself.

I believe it is from that PLACE that my healing happens.  It is from that place that I can find what I need to do the rest of the work that I need to do in my life — as it is the place from which any true joy I can find springs forth.

Yes, peaceful calm is connected to safe and secure attachment patterns within our body-brain – that we never had – but can begin to DISCOVER and CREATE inside our self now.  This is a state that many call a state of grace.  It is my most important goal.

Yes, I realize at this moment – I have to treat MYSELF just as I would treat a little baby I loved with all my heart and soul.  It is SO critically important not to allow a baby to over-escalate in excitement.  This is true going in BOTH directions — toward too much joy — AND — toward too much sadness.

It is a healthy mother’s task to know when her infant is in a TOO MUCH state – the baby MUST be calmed down.  This is so essentially true throughout all of our lives that a state of peaceful calm is the most necessary, most desirable and healthiest state we can aim for in our healing.

See post:

+CALM THE CRYING BABY — IMMUNE SYSTEM STIMULATES VAGUS NERVE TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

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In following my last post – +LEAVING WHAT BELONGS TO OUR ABUSER ALONE! I am thinking about a teeter-totter.  I see my BPD mother sitting alone on one end alone as an infant-child with nothing but her caregiver’s ‘crap’ being piled up around her while very little goodness is being piled on the other end.

My mother’s end became very very heavy.  Eventually (I believe by the time she was 10 years old) her Borderline Personality Disorder had already built itself into her body-nervous system-brain.  From there is was only a matter of time before her ‘symptoms’ exploded into her full-blown devastating illness.

My mother was overwhelmed by the neglect, abuse and trauma that came at her in her young life.  A natural human tendency is to throw up toxic poisons.  Mother’s BPD illness operated like that regarding me.  If Mother had not had me to receive what she could not tolerate inside herself – all that black toxic poison that had been piled up on her – I do not believe she could have ‘functioned’ at all.

So, as I said in my last post, her stuff was dumped on me.  Somehow (a whole other part of the story) I was strong enough not to need to swallow Mother’s poison no matter how much of it she vomited through abuse onto me.  Any residual memories I retain of that darkness do not belong to me, never did, and I have become very clear about my ability to let them go back in the direction they originally came from – Mother.

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Another thing that comes to mind is that all insecure attachment disorders, along with all trauma related changes in our development due to early severe abuse and trauma, are actually developmental complications.  They are not diseases of their own.  Most of the time our lifelong ‘symptoms’ are not actually ‘mental illnesses’, either.

We are just plain trauma altered individuals.  More later (of course)…

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April 28, 2012

Dear survivors raised by abusive Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) mothers,

Off the top of my head and from the depths of my heart I would say, “Don’t be fooled by so-called mental illness diagnoses you have received that lay the SICKNESS you have been exposed to – to the insides of YOU!”

There is nothing WRONG with US!  We have to live in a body that was changed in its development due to the terrible TRAUMATIC STRESS-DISTRESS that our abuser created during the most critically important developmental stages our body-brain would ever go through.

We don’t need to learn what is WRONG with us, we need to learn about how the powerful biochemicals stress created in our developing body-brain changed us.  We are changed beings — but we are not in any ordinary sense of the word SICK or WRONG people!

For everyone just now or recently coming into the light of discovery that abuse and severe trauma you experienced was perpetrated against you by — yes — a very sick BPD parent, especially by your mother, please consider the fact that in your essence YOU ARE PERFECTLY FINE!  You are beautiful!  You are WELL in your essential self!

BUT…..

The beginning of our real work comes as you realize we were/are likely to come out from under the burden of the abuses our BPD perpetrator did to us nearly covered up with stinking sticky inky black ugly rotten toxic CRAP that DOES NOT BELONG TO US!

When it comes to “what to do with the memories we have of abuse done to us” — there is only ONE thing we can do – one healthy, wise, necessary thing we can do.

Find our own self in the memory — inside the abuse — we were FINE!  If we did not come out of our abuse having the terrible, tragic disease of BPD our self — we can – we CAN and MUST locate our own self in the middle of the memories.

I would NEVER advocate dealing with the emotions we might believe belong to any memory.  Those emotions were part of the in-the-moment abuse experience – true enough.  But those emotions, any emotion that was not about joy and peace and calm – belonged to our BPD abuser and NOT to us!!

Inside the memory we existed then and still exist as perfect beautiful children!

Nothing about the abuse we received had ANYTHING to do with us!  NONE OF IT!!

Nothing that was said to or about us belonged to us!

Not one part of the condemnations, the allegations, the miserable contaminating experience belong to US!

ALL of it came from the place of original pain within our BPD abuser that was NEVER healed on their inside.

We did not know this as infant-children – as little people being made to suffer on levels most people cannot ever begin to imagine.

We CAN know this now!!

This healing journey for us is in essence a kind of sorting-out-the-silverware process.  What goes in that slot?  Forks and spoons and knives — each into their slot — but only so we can find that when all of what happened to us is sorted out and put away into its appropriate slot, there is NOTHING of the abuse we suffered left in our hand.  Close the silverware drawer and walk away.

There is NOTHING LEFT of the abuse that belongs to US!

None of it.  None of it belonged to us THEN – and it does not belong to us NOW!  Sorting it out serves this one purpose:  We are removing from ourselves every single LIE that was told to us along with any emotional impact those memories might have for us today.

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I am NOT saying we can ever remove all of the emotion from within our body.  Unfortunately – and realistically – the emotions were remembered within our body – because that’s what bodies naturally DO!  They retain the memory of our lives from the past – but only so those memories can serve to protect us from similar experiences in our present and future.

Once we are SAFE in the present, that information is not necessary for us to be – or stay – aware of.  Personally I live with such a deep painful sadness in my body that I nearly continually have to recognize its presence and then live NOW in full recognition that the pain is real and very present in my body – but it does NOT define or control me.

My pain does require very focused effort on my part to live each moment ANYWAY as if the pain does not exist.

But at the same time I no longer carry the inky terrible blackness that belonged to my mother.  I do not allow myself to entertain the lies as being a part of ME.  They are not.  They never were.

Someone mentioned ‘guilt’ as a residual emotion carried from an abusive BPD mother past abusive history.  NEVER have I felt this.  NEVER!!  True, my abusive history was so extreme, so insane, so abusive – that if I had EVER picked up Mother’s own guilt and carried it as my own I do not believe I would be alive today (I am 60).

I won’t even bother myself with thinking about the negativity contained within the abuse Mother so expertly perpetrated against me.  It’s not mine.  It never was.  It never will be.

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This is a rather strange thought that just popped into my mind.  If I think about what the word ‘voyeurism’ is said to mean, “the practice of obtaining sexual gratification by looking at sexualobjects or acts, especially secretively,” I realize that this concept applies (to me) to much deeper aspects of invading another person’s boundaries that have nothing to do with ‘sex’.

In fact, in its origins, I see that I am correct:  “French, literally: one who sees, from voir  to see, fromLatin vidēre“

THINK ABOUT THIS!

My BPD mother SAW in me was HERSELF!  She had NO boundaries between herself and her daughter, Me.  Mother had no boundaries between her inner self and me.  I was she – although of course she would never have understood this.  I was a figment of her sick mind.  I was her projection of all badness within herself.

She WATCHED me invasively – always – and hated what she saw – and then tormented me for the inner torment of her own she could not tolerate.

Because these patterns are so centrally a part of the changed BPD brain’s functioning – I most definitely DO NOT WANT TO PARTICIPATE in this part of mother’s sickness!

I do not want to WATCH her sickness inside of ME!

Once I sorted out what was hers of my childhood and what was me and mine – once I can leave what was hers behind me as having never been mine in the first place – I can completely stop WATCHING her — inside of myself.

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This is a complicated concept – yet a simple one.

Mother was mother.  Linda was and IS Linda.

BPD does not allow this distinction to be made within an abusing Borderline.

Our own healing requires that WE make this distinction, that we separate our SELF from our abuser.

Then we can experience that we were/are fine – and that what belongs to our abuser (then and forever) is their PRIVATE inner world – and has nothing to do with us.  We have to leave THEIR stuff alone and keep it OUTSIDE of us!!!

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As my present moment moves into my future right at this instant, I find this to be an interesting thought to appear in my mind as I have been thinking about writing my mother’s story in book form FIRST rather than finalizing the writing of my own story at this time.

So I will be doing exactly what I am advising against!

Yet I also accept that I am in a very unique situation in that at Mother’s death all her papers – childhood stories, pictures, diaries, her Alaskan homesteading journals and letters – found their way into MY hands.  Perhaps for a stunningly powerful reason!

I now know very clearly whose story is whose.

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