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It would be nice if I had something profound to say – but today?  These past few days?  Not a single chance.  I am living.  I probably underestimate how grand that act really is!  How does one gauge the value of simply being alive?  I have no idea.

I travel north to see my family in less that two weeks.  Preparing for that journey is all I can do right now.  Preparing to journey – and making it through these days of mystery until more is known about the deteriorating health of my dear, dearest friend.

I see the image of sitting alone on the shore of an empty beach – doing nothing but listening to a sound coming from the waters that seems to fill every nook within me – at the same time it leaves me feeling distant and very, very small.

The rising swell of waves that move forever into shore only to be sucked back out again in a timeless, seamless pattern of coming and going, of up and of down, of in and of out – over and over again – like breathing.

It’s all both profound and insignificant – at the same time.  There is no system of weights and measures to use to determine the value of one’s life – of another person’s life.  Sometimes everything just feels like movement.  Not random.  Mundane?

What does preparing one’s self for traveling have to do with the journey itself?  Whether the traveling remains upon this planet – or permanently away from it?  Is all of life really only a preparation for leaving this body we are so familiar with behind, to travel forward in a form we cannot imagine or begin to understand?

How bound up are we with the passage of time?  I feel the season changing, the sunlight beginning to lean toward shortening days and lengthening nights.  Plants in the garden have borne their fruit.  Leaves are yellowing here and there – soon to fall.

We are not outside the bounds of time any more than we escape the bounds of gravity except by conveyance in something human made.  I feel myself moving more slowly, unable to know what the future might hold at the same time I am always preparing to join those mysteries in a time that does not yet exist in my world.

“Time will tell.”  What a saying.  I am caught in the movements of time as if I am but a tiny drop in some gigantic ocean.

Time will tell……

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I am making a new friend with a woman I have met at our local laundromat cafe who I will call ‘Marge’.  Among the many interesting aspects of getting to know this woman as I share my own self with her is that I have a fresh person to tell my trauma story to.  That is always an inevitable occurance now.  Because I was completely blind to what happened to me during the first 18 years of my life throughout so much of my adulthood THIS part of who I am never came up in those old days.  But it sure comes up now.

Part of the reason this happens is that everyone’s view of the world and of other people in it is colored by what they understand about how earliest experiences shape how one lives the rest of their life.  The initial trajectory of what and how early experience was set into motion is determined — I guess I could most simply say — by how many early safe and secure attachments a person had — and by how much of what kind of trauma was present during their most vulnerable, formative years of life.

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This woman did not have an ‘easy’ childhood (she’s 68 now), but neither did she have an early life so chock full of trauma that it overshadowed everything else that happened to her.  She thus hears my story from a perspective of “OH MY GOSH!  How could such things have HAPPENED to you?”

Thankfully Marge is savvy enough not to doubt a single word I tell her.  Her initial shock at some of the very basic components of my early life that I tell her is equally balanced with her willingness and ability to expand what she knows about other people in her life who she KNOWS had difficult traumas in their life — that NOW she understands changed them in their early development so that lifelong difficulties were inevitable because of their early sufferings.

Marge is one of those voracious readers it is always a pleasure for me to meet.  On a personal level, I am thrilled to meet someone who is willing ‘down the line’ to be a reader of my writings.  Marge unequivocally assures me that my story is both unique and fascinating.  She has no doubts that there is at least one ‘best seller’ in me – and I have no doubt that as our friendship grows and matures that she will support me in my book writing when I am ready to turn again in that direction.

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Putting all of this in perspective as it becomes now almost a pleasant background sound like a gently running water fountain I can attend to in my thoughts and feelings — or ignore as I do whatever else I need to be doing right now — is giving me a renewed sense of, yes, the blessing of a growing ‘safe and secure attachment’ in my life that we all so deserve and need.  These kinds of friendships are, I find, most rare.  I NEVER take them for granted.

In the perspective I mention at this moment I am adding information back into my story, like carefully folded-in egg whites that make tapioca so deliciously light and fluffy, Marge’s clear reaction to the place my father has in my early story and hence in my life.

Marge can stretch her thinking as far as is needed to comprehend the mental psychosis and illness of my mother that led her to perpetrating such incredible insane abuse against me.  Marge CANNOT, however, stretch her mind in any direction that would let my father off the accountability hook.

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Marge’s clear reaction to my father’s role in the 18 years of abuse from birth my mother did is strong and clear.  There was something terribly wrong with my father that he knew the abuse was happening and did NOTHING to help me or to stop my mother.

I found myself adding all the extraneous words I find myself always adding to my story in explanation and therefore in defense of my father.

No matter what, Marge states back to me, my father could have picked me up and driven me to the nearest police station or hospital and LEFT ME THERE.

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Without detailing thoughts at this point about my father except to say that for all my healing work, all my inner research, all my studies about infant and child abuse, I have never achieved a solid HONEST idea about my father or about the role he played in my abuse.

I choose to say “Father was a mystery to me.”

Yesterday while in conversation with Marge something began to dawn for me that I’ve never even allowed myself to think before!  MY FATHER HATED ME — BY CHOICE!

Mother hated me because she was psychotically mentally ill and deeply, deeply SICK and more than troubled.  My father hated me because he chose to.

I have never accepted Mother’s hatred of me as being REAL.  Hers came as I say from factors that put her ability to actually CHOOSE out of her reach.

The ability to CHOOSE to hate me belonged to my father.  He made that choice and not only RAN with it, but STOOD with it.  I have very clear memories as recorded in my trauma stories of Father being present — of him WATCHING — and of him doing nothing at all to help me.

I have a sense that the level of trauma reaction all the way down to the center of my being that my father’s support of my mother’s abuse created in me is so massive that I have always protected myself from knowing about his hatred of me because I suspect on a deep BODY level that this knowledge — should I ever know it in its fullness — has the power to destroy me.

Being destroyed is NOT a good thing.  It certainly has nothing to contribute to my moving forward in my life in the best way possible.  At least not up until now when at age 61 (turning so in less than 3 weeks) I MIGHT — through this newest friendship in my life with an entirely objective woman — when I might be willing to be able to look more honestly than I have ever been able to do in my life hence far — at the crime my father committed against me.  (And, no, this has nothing to do with sexual abuse that I know of.)

Yes, with the power of her mental illness Mother was able to create an entire universe in which it was REALLY TRUE that I was not human, that I was the evil child of the devil.

My father’s crime, it seems to me at this moment as I peek through the tiny crack that appeared yesterday in the wall of denial and evidently of self-protection that I maintain around the truth about my father, is that he BELIEVED Mother!!

My father chose to hate me because it suited him to do so.

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I don’t want to deal with any of this right now.  So the only thing I will add here is that last week I again watched the movie, “Forrest Gump.”  I wanted to see if I could detect what I resonated with in that story so deeply 20 years ago when I first watched it that I cried all the way through it as if I was hemorrhaging tears.

I will still say that that movie remains one of the most deeply disturbing ones I have ever watched — for all kinds of reasons.  But I did NOT cry through it this time.  I was able to remain far enough away from the ‘resonation points’ in the story to see the bigger picture for myself:  I so desperately needed to be loved the way Forrest loved Jenny.

Obviously my emotional connection to the lifelong suffering Jenny experienced because of her father’s abuse of her (and evidently due to the absence of a  mother in her life) struck me both times I watched the movie.  But at this moment, after yesterday’s conversation with Marge, I am realizing that the abuse by Jenny’s father IS what that entire movie is about on the personal level — added onto by the profound and powerful emotions that resonating with the events that occurred during those years covered in that movie can create in those of us of the generation that lived through those massive social changes.

Gump’s depleted ability to add the depth of consideration for all the events portrayed in the movie, both personal and social, allow for the emotions connected to the events outside of him to carry their emotional powers to touch compassion and comprehension of the audience untampered by the story being told by a complicated speaker.

The stories of the movie simply RING — and resonate — according to the experience of members of the watching audience’s personal experience.

We take our own self to a story that anyone else shares with us – no matter what the medium used to convey it.

In my case it has taken me 20 years to be strong enough to watch that movie a second time because of the depths of my own sorrow that resides in my heart and that was triggered in resonance with this movie’s stories.

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It takes no time at all for ongoing comments and replies on this blog to disappear into the past.  They unfortunately appear on the side bar of the main page only for the briefest of time.  I am currently in thought about comments and replies at these posts – I hope these links here will go to those words:

alchemynow on+WHEN ONE’S WORLD E…

alchemynow on+SOMETIMES THERE IS CRAP

alchemynow on+WHEN THE GOODNESS APPEARS IN …

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When it comes to memory retrieval, the experience of remembering especially NEW and powerfully traumatic memories of terrible things we have lived through – I will forever in this lifetime recommend extreme caution!

Those experiences in hell that happened to us when we were very small and most pure, innocent and vulnerable (which for me was a state that lasted for me long after I left home into my early 30s), DO NEED TO BE REMEMBERED.

At the same time it is important to understand that what we are looking for is positive change – HEALING.

Anyone who ‘is attendance’ at this Stop the Storm blog is here for a reason.  It is my task to be as honest as I can be in every ongoing moment of time that leads me – and this blog – through each ongoing moment of time into the future.

In doing this I will again say here right now that the creation of as an exact a time line of your history as you can possibly create is necessary for working with new – and with older, more familiar trauma memories — BEFORE you begin to let information from ‘raw’ contaminated and toxic memories into your current ongoing experience of conscious reality.

Trauma wrecks a person’s ability to tell a coherent narrative of their life.  This is NOT a simple task – to heal our story as we heal the telling of our story.

Why are we doing this work?

What do we hope to accomplish?  What are we aiming for?  What are our hopes?

What is contributing to ‘pressure’ to do this work NOW?

Who are our support people?

What are the questions you would personally add to this list?

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I am 3 weeks away from my 61st birthday.   Who I am today – and what I would tell of my life story is different now than it has ever been before.  Life is a guarantee of change.

Unresolved trauma most often manifests its presence in a kind of mantra, a litany, a chanting to self and/or others of repetitive motifs that we recognize as OUR STORY — and therefore connect most deeply and personally to our ongoing senses of self (and often of multiple selves).

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A true story is appropriately told in a fluid and beautiful manner.

How do we take experiences of hellacious content, of very real overwhelmingly terrifying and painful things that were done to us – and make a beautiful story of our very own life?

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I do not want to hear myself tell myself about the really bad things that happened to me.  I at my current age have done the work so that I know my memories inside and out, backwards and forwards, and – most importantly – they NO LONGER HAVE ANY NEGATIVE HOLD OVER ME.

Yes, occasionally a twinge might appear of sadness, of confusion, of rage, of whatever FEELING might be connected to memories I KNOW – but it is the memories I DON”T KNOW that have really saved me (in my opinion).

Knowing about myself, and trusting about myself, that I remembered exactly what I CHOSE to remember – for a very good reason – lets me pat myself on the back in cheerful, self-affirming and self-sustaining ways.  What I chose not to remember no doubt is about horrors that serve me absolutely NO good purpose to remember.

At the same time, as I have written here before, within the memories I do have, which are awful enough, I was taught to understand what my healing process is all about.

I named the trauma, named the wreckage as NOT MINE in any possible way (not then, not now).  The horrible parts of my story belonged to the adults (alive and dead) who acted out their unresolved trauma in really bad ways against me.

Yes I suffered, etc.  Most importantly I LIVED THROUGH those experiences without dragging hatred along with me, but rather a great curiosity about how this all happened to me in the first place.

My goal has always been about gaining informed compassion for self and for perpetrators.

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My memories do seem to exist in a darkened sphere of shadow and twilight, half light, gray – sometimes when I locate my OWN self in the middle of these memories I see glorious colors!  But NEVER do I ‘wallow in’ those memories.  I made it through those experiences.  The trauma I experienced changed my physiological development in many critically important ways.

But when I consider any memory I have connected to traumas in my earliest years (18 of them) – I MOVE as I approach those memories with a kind of freedom that happened to me gradually as I began to line those experiences up — and the memories that contain them — along the time line of my growing-up years where they belong.

This kind of ‘remote ordering and organizing’ heals our insecure attachment patterns in our body brain in important ways.  It is NOT enough to randomly entrance our self with the trauma drama included in our memories.  Once we know the facts, we are free in important ways to explore the deeper reasons we have chosen to keep these memories.

We are looking for our perfect beautiful SELF inside the wreckage and the rubble (as I have said before).  The horror of what happened was NEVER ours – and is not ours now (in my thinking).  That trauma was ugly then.  It is ugly now.  I want nothing to do with it.

This is ultimately what detoxifying and decontaminating trauma encapsulated in memory is all about.  This is resolving trauma – which is our ultimate goal.

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(Please note:  The formatting on this blog does not let me space these words in the way I want to – frustrating – but IS so, hence the little marks “^” on the left to keep my spaces!)

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Unresolved trauma equals

accumulated trauma

^

Where are the breaks

in between?

^

We’re doing our best

when times seem better

^

in between the really hard

times

^

The really hard times

that would be hard for

anyone

everyone

^

We never had a warning

no yellow light

no warning

^

BAM

(not even exclamation marks can help describe this one)

^

What little bit of peace

we’d found

^

GONE

^

in less than one heartbeat

^

GONE

^

Where did our peace go?

We don’t know

our self ran after it

^

BOTH GONE NOW!

^

how to find either one?

Our peace

our self

our peaceful self?

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there are tears

in between

tears

from being torn

ripped from our

childhood

^

into a grownup’s

world

We could not escape it.

^

ten thousand thousand times

We could not escape it.

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the glue that binds

one’s self to one’s self

a wet glue

a slippery salty water glue

^

tears

self

peace

^

Where?

How?

When?

^

because life is full of

slip ups

and blunders

^

We were supposed to be

a self in trouble

and in peace

^

not one or the other

^

not losing our self

when

THE BIG TROUBLES CAME

(THE BIG TROUBLES COME)

^

so no peace

could be found

(can be found)

^

or our self

^

blown up

blown away

^

so when the threats come

(and life will make sure that sometimes they do)

^

tears find us

standing more than naked

no legs left to stand

WITH

no body at all

so it

seems

^

again

and again

and

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“Come back to your body,

Linda.

Come be in your body

tears and all

^

Yes, your world

appears to be quaking

^

Yes it could eat you up

and leave

nothing

behind

at all

^

POOF

^

A puff of mist

^

But now people see you

not like long ago

when so often you

vanished

into the mist

nobody noticed

nobody found you

(nobody even found out this was happening to you)

^

Split apart

smaller than the parts

of an atom

^

Those big people

did that

to

YOU!

^

NO MORE!

THIS

is not the same.

^

You can remember

your self

NOW

Re-member!

^

tears in your present

taste them.

They are salty

^

as they have always been

^

they belong to YOU.

^

Remember this:

YOU

ARE

YOU!”

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A survivor’s task is essentially the same as everyone else’s:  to find the coherent narrative of our life story.  A survivor’s story is a far tougher story than most.  It has been broken into billions of billions of pieces by the continued experience of interruption of ongoing inner experience – often from birth – by trauma. Where is OUR story hiding?

Each of us is living our story with every breath we take.  Sometimes, however, even our ongoing story is not one we are enjoying.  Are there ‘bad stories’ or are there just good stories, some of them with some really tough and ‘bad’ things in it?

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I am living a part of my life story right now that is not feeling very pleasant to me.  I am trying really really hard to keep what troubles me from my past from totally overwhelming what I am living through in my present.

I have been in a very complicated relationship for 12 years with a man I love with all my heart who recently turned 75 and has had diabetes (which he pays serious attention to trying to ‘live right’) for many years.  Six months ago tests showed his kidney and liver function to be at 70%, three months ago at 40%, and a week ago at 25%.  What does this mean?

Difficult times ahead.  My dear friend is not showing symptoms yet of either condition.  He states that he has no intention of ever taking kidney dialysis treatments.  There is nothing that can be done for the increasing deterioration of his liver.

My friend.  My dearest friend — life is getting very complicated and is likely to increasingly become so.

I have MANY intense feelings, thoughts and reactions to what is going on right now in his life.  Trying to tease apart and become more clear about what I am feeling for my own self and what I am feeling for him — as well as what I am feeling from what he is feeling — would be a full time task for me right now

With a few diversions…..

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Firstly, the 1,700 mile trip up north to see my children and grandchildren was planned before the latest medical news appeared on the radar for my friend — and for me.  Change the ticket?  Don’t go?  Conflicts…..

On top of this with our increasing humidity I have discovered what is to me a TERRIBLE condition within the walls of my own home.  I cannot ignore this problem.  I cannot run from it.  Facing it and dealing with it — beginning yesterday — is one of the STUPIDEST and nastiest things I have ever had to work my way through.

Most housing construction down here in the high desert of southeastern Arizona, right along the Mexican borderline, is pathetic by most current standards.  No insulation, single pane windows that can only be sealed against winter cold and drafts and our long season of blowing DIRT, few studs in the walls, etc. present a challenge to all of us (it does get cold here in winter, elevation a mile high).

As I have been cleaning my house during this very brief monsoon season in which the dirt has been settled by rain, I have discovered a water-cockroach infestation in two of my closets such as nobody I have spoken with has ever heard of or seen.  (These people are not especially helpful as they speak quietly of “signs” and of Stephen King.)

Yesterday I moved aside some of the hanging clothes in the one closet only to have LARGE roaches, eggs half the size of pinto beans, and poop scatter to the floor at my feet!!  I cleaned this closet completely less than 6 months ago.  The other bedroom closet that shares a wall is also completely infested.

Of course, me being me, not one minute of effort I put in yesterday to cope with this problem could be disentangled from what I know about how unresolved trauma, passed down to some of us from GENERATIONS in the past within our families, contaminates our lives.

I thought about this as I grabbed hangar bunches of clothes yesterday and raced out of my house with them, tossing them in absolute disgust onto the sidewalk at the east side of my house as I then did the cockroach stomp dance trying to smash to death every single large bug that scattered from my CLOTHES!  I hosed every piece of clothing inside and out, then dragged them all off to the laundromat for thorough cleaning (which cost me more money I had not planned to spend this month – and I am far from done.  Even my SHOES were infested).

All the time I felt I was in the twilight zone!  Why after 6 years in this house have these bugs (that fly) moved into my closets?  EVERYTHING in the closet has been affected.  These two closets share a wall where a porch, long ago enclosed, was added onto the south end of the house.  The infestations is currently confined only to these closets.  Of course my fear is that now as I disturb them and try to kill them they will spread all over my house!

I ran to our local hardware store and spent nearly $50 on POISON which I normally do not use on my property.  I talked to everyone I could find who had information for me about what the hell is going on and how to cope with it.

I have roach boxes and traps and hotels, sprays, powders and bombs.  (I am still trying to decide about people’s recommendation to throw mothballs in the crawl space under the house.  Seems to me all the bugs of all kinds down there would just as soon then run up INTO the house.)

I have to launder and seal in bags everything I own, bleach the coat hangars, and after all the spraying and bombing I have to caulk every conceivable crack in that wall I can find.

Meanwhile, my desire to eat and my ability to eat in my own home has dropped below zero.

ALL of my sewing supplies and fabric still need to be dealt with today in the other closet.

Needless to say, these are not FUN DAYS!

But still I found reason to be grateful.  At least I LIVE in a house, have a home, have clothing, have a hose connected to water, and at least it’s not freezing winter out there!  And, as several town folk reminded me yesterday, “At least they can’t hiss at you like the roaches in the southeast would!”

I still found reason to chuckle last night.  For the emerging and escalating fear I have for what is coming for my friend and for me as I lose him, and for my increasing sorrow that could so easily overwhelm me if I do not work very hard to keep it separate from all the other sorrow I have had in my life, I realized that my horrible, disgusting, incredibly EERIE cockroach problem DID take my mind and feelings off of the BIG ISSUES in my life right now.

It WOULD take something as massively overwhelming to all my senses as this MESS I have to deal with to accomplish this feat.

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Today is another day.  Armed with every weapon at my disposal I will continue to fight my war against bugs.

I still think of trauma – how it infests and infects and contaminates early abuse and trauma survivors’ lives.  Or not?

How do we get rid of the ICK ICK ICK and still keep what belongs to US, what we want, what we own, what we need??

I do not have the resources to call some outside person in to deal with this problem in my home.  I don’t have the resources to run out of the house waving my hands frantically and pathetically over my head squealing helplessly.  I can’t throw out everything I own!

There is nobody but me to work my hardest to solve this problem.

Darn it all anyway.  But as my dear friend calmly said to me yesterday, “You’ll get through it.”

Yes.  My point exactly.  The ‘getting through it’ is the substance of life itself, and the living provides us with the stuff of our story.  If we are most fortunate after we are gone someone will remember our stories.

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I do not want to drift away from what I want to write although I have no idea what I actually wish to say until I say it.  I am reacting to having heard news in our local small town (pop. 5,000) as I did laundry at the laundromat cafe.  I am thinking about so many invisible people.  I am thinking of those those who have killed and those who have been killed.  I am thinking about how hardships can soften the heart and give a person important perspective about how things COULD be better — and will — when all of us are ready to help this to happen.

I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about how early traumas change physiological development, but rarely do I attend to the ending of life.  I am thinking about my bias that nobody is conceived or born to become a bad person who does evil.  Nobody is born to inevitably suffer from unnecessary traumas in life.  (See:  *NO MATTER WHAT – HAVE NO ENEMY)  Nobody is born to become one of the ‘untouchables’ of our society.  Nobody should ever die completely alone.

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Two weeks ago a woman seemed to disappear in our small town.  A week has now passed since her disappearance was deemed due to a wrongful doing.  A man she used to date kept appearing at her apartment.  When neighbors in the building asked about this lady they were always told, “She went to Tucson to have some dental work done.  I am house sitting for her while she is gone.”

People who knew this woman were suspicious.  She was known to use drugs, but also known to be reasonable about her affairs of life.  She would have told someone she was leaving.  She would not have simply disappeared.

In the end as this man dragged off and sold everything this woman owned an insistent neighbor confronted him with “I am going to call the police.”  The man stole another of the neighbor’s cars and vanished.  Only two kitties were left behind.

(This man is also tied to four recent break-ins and thefts at our local nonprofit thrift store whose proceeds subsidize rent for low income and homeless people.  His son is in prison for murder.)

In the FINAL end a few days ago police entered the apartment looking for clues about this woman’s obvious disappearance.  They found her 3-week dead body in her bathtub.  She was covered with blankets soaked with rug shampoo and other cleaners.  Piles of clothing further hid her carcass from view.

I hate to use the word ‘carcass’ – and yet once this predator was done with his despicable business that is all of her he left behind.  It is up to those who knew her, loved her, cared about her, appreciated her to honor her carcass back from the pit of despair she died in.

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And another woman.  Another woman who was well past her young years, who suffered from schizophrenia, who lived alone in a subsidized apartment, who all of us who live in this area often saw walking and walking and walking and walking — from sunrise until dark — across parking lots, along the shoulders of the highway — always walking and walking and walking.

This woman always wore a coat and winter stocking cap even when the temperatures were over one hundred.  She talked to herself continually.  I never saw her carry a bottle of water.  She walked and walked, up and down the town, back and forth — always and forever alone.

Those who have lived in this town a very long time know that this woman never hurt a living soul.  And yet a week ago a hit-and-run driver bashed her off the shoulder of the highway into a wide, deep wash that runs down from the mountain.

Her autopsy showed being hit and knocked far out of sight where she could not get up did not kill her.  She died when an evening’s rain sent torrents of water down the wash to drown her.

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I wish to honor both the life and the death of these two women in this post.  I wish to honor even the man who is still on the run, having been imprisoned 7 times so far in his life, who came to our town with a warrant for armed robbery in Louisiana, who is suspected though not tried for killing an innocent woman.

I wish to honor whoever it was who hit and ran from the scene causing the death of the innocent woman who drowned.

We are not born to take the animal road through life.  We are not born to suffer from conception, from birth, all the way through childhood so that some survive those horrible attacks of war when they were little — but did not really make it out of their childhood alive — even if their body is walking and walking and walking and walking around.

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Both of my parents survived the wars of their early years.  Both of my parents lived a miserable life and died alone.  I have no reason to suspect that these local people (with the exception of the hit-and-run driver who remains anonymous and shouldn’t be) had any kind of kind beginnings at all.

I honor the SOUL of people.  I honor the fact that people can lose their connection with their soul so that they never find their way back again in their lifetime here on earth.

These tragedies — there is a day coming in the future of our species when lives will not be snuffed out in these manners — whether people be dead when they’re dead from hardship and crime — or be dead while they are still alive — and walking.

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I recently read a newspaper article about obesity now being the #1 health problem in America.  An important contributing factor to the increasing weight of our population is that people with a high ‘body mass index (BMI)’ are producing children with other people who also have a high BMI.  This genetic selection process is alone and by itself swaying the direction of our literal growth as a nation!

Similar patterns, I believe, happen among people who have unresolved trauma in their history (personally and in their family lines).  Unresolved trauma survivors choose to mate and to produce offspring with others who also are unresolved trauma survivors.  Troubles upon troubles are transferred down through the generations of these people.

The TROUBLES are clearly present in the patterns of the lives these unresolved trauma people live in the ‘form’ of TRAUMA DRAMA.  Most simply put – the stories match!

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I believe that readers who find their way to this blog have recognized these unresolved trauma patterns in self and family and are dedicated to finding ways to reverse the downward spiral.  The first steps to be taken in creating positive changes happen on a deeply profound level at which we have all taken this stand:  “NO MORE TRAUMA!  There IS a better way to live and I am going to find it!”

We can’t beg, push or drag anyone else along with us on our healing journey.  We simply begin to find our own way to let the light of a better way of living begin to creep into our own reality.

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Somewhere in this process there comes a time when all the dark and dismal cards that represent the deck of unresolved trauma coming down the generations of our family are laid face up on the table.  We will play this deck out until there comes a time where we can find no more secrets, hide no more pain, and deny no more misery.  At this time in our honest truth discovery process we realize trauma is NOT the whole story — and it is certainly not the END of our story.

No matter how awful our experiences have been — often clearly so since our conception and birth — if a person is still alive there has been goodness present all along the way — and there still is.

I believe in the natural process of healing there comes a point where we are ready to equally accept THIS fact.  There is no need to rush the process.  Being ready to deal out the cards in the deck of goodness happens after the bulk of the AWFUL truths about our life have been discovered.  Perhaps it is only then that we are ready to find the goodness that had AWESOME power to save us.

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From my own experience I can say that as I discovered the goodness that existed right along with the terrible wreckage of my abusive childhood, I realized that trauma survivors live in a universe that uses different ‘weights and measures’ from ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’.

What was good in our lives carried immense weight!!!

When it comes to accepting this fact we find that we cannot EVER compare the weight of the goodness we experienced to anyone else’s.

As an example, the two hours I spent in caring, friendly, compassionate, kind interaction with my Brownie scout leader when I was seven was the ONLY safe and secure attachment experience I had between the ages of 6 and 18.  It therefore carried weight in its powers of goodness beyond what most people could begin to imagine or comprehend.

In an ‘ordinary’ childhood such a brief interaction probably would have been so insignificant as to not be remembered at all.  In my early life of trauma this was the brightest shining star — and at age 60 I still credit it greatly as giving me what I needed to stay alive.

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Although it is essential to our healing that we clearly track, identify and name all that has harmed us in our life, this is not enough.  No matter how massively dark and overwhelming early trauma was in our beginnings, goodness DID exist or we would not still be here.

In our work toward healing we will eventually be ready to track, identify, name — and KEEP — this goodness at the same time we loosen our grip on what we know of the trauma.

Can we ever let the traumas GO?  We don’t ever pretend they did not happen.  Trauma DID happen to us!  Of course our experience of trauma changed us on every level in the development of our body-brain.

I suspect that resolving unresolved trauma happens as we begin to clarify what we WANT and what we do NOT want.  We never wanted those horrors to happen to us.  We DID WANT good things to happen.

We might not believe that goodness ever happened in the darkness of our infancy and childhood.  We might not understand yet how critically important it is to us to understand that it DID exist in our life (and still does).

There are times our healing work demands that we melt into our pool of despair as if we are sinking into the earth itself.  There are times it demands that we lay curled in a fetal position with our arms bent so tightly into the curve of our body our fists only fit under our chin.

There are times in our healing journey we must pull our power into our body to rail against what wrong was done to us as we pound our way out of the darkness of our past.

There will also be times as we lift up our palms to the warmth of the sun that memories of goodness begin to appear in our openness.

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Please also see some related comments and replies at this link:

REPRODUCTIVE FITNESS INDICATORS

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I don’t care what our background of abuse, neglect and trauma is, there are times when we simply need to make a decision and a choice – to make the decision and choice – to grow as human beings or not to grow.

As survivors, is our ability to grow hampered by the changes that happened to our physiology because of the adjustments our growing body-brain had to make in order for us to stay alive?

I don’t know the answer to this question.  It has to vary from individual to individual.  And yet I suspect it is part of accepting the gift of being alive that automatically gives all of us with the exception of a very few the ability to exercise what it takes to pick up and run with ‘our fighting chance’ of being better that truly matters.

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Through various circumstances in my present life I have been presented with a truth about myself:  I am seriously lacking in patience.

Having an extremely reactionary body-brain makes it (I suspect) difficult for me to be able to STOP when reactions are at full speed (or even before the reactions happen) in order that I can find my own right to CHOOSE to exercise patience or not.

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The issue of choice comes in here.  I wonder, “Did I exercise patience through all the terrible abuse and forced isolation I experienced during the first 18 years of my life?”

Yes, I endured.  But was I PATIENT?

I wonder, “Is ‘being patient’ only a state of being that truly happens with consciousness?”  If this is true, then what I did as a child had nothing to do with patience.  I had no other choice but to get through the traumas of my early life in any other way than the way I did.

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What does ‘being patient’ mean, anyway?

From online Mirriam Webster’s dictionary:

PATIENT

Definition of PATIENT

1: bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint

2: manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain

3: not hasty or impetuous

4: steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity

5a : able or willing to bear —used with of b : susceptible, admitting <patient of one interpretation>

Origin of PATIENT

Middle English pacient, from Anglo-French, from Latinpatient-, patiens, from present participle of pati to suffer; perhaps akin to Greek pēma suffering

First Known Use: 14th century

Related to PATIENT

Synonyms: forbearing, long-suffering, stoic (or stoical),tolerant, uncomplaining

Antonyms: complaining, fed up, impatient, kvetching,kvetchy, protesting

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Well, certainly I suffered, but I did not have a choice about this part of my life.  Just as I did not CHOOSE to suffer, I did not CHOOSE how I felt or how I reacted to the abuse and trauma that caused me so much suffering.

Was the fact that I bore “pains or trials calmly or without complaint” any reflection on ME as a unique person?  Again, looking back, I see no sign that I HAD a choice which meant that I COULD NOT make a choice to not be patient.  None of what happened to me involved MY ability to choose.

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I wrote a post a few days ago in which I mentioned that somehow I came out of my childhood in hell with a pervasive, clear and very powerful sense of what a perfect – or much more perfect world – would BE like.  This world we are experiencing at this point in human evolution is NOT that world.

True, vast improvements have been made in many ways and in many places around this world – but so much more COULD be done to improve the world – and to improve each of us individually – which would, of course, create better conditions all the way around.

But as my close friend pointed out to me yesterday, I am EXTEMELY IMPATIENT with the way reality actually is at this point in time.  He says it’s like I was born out-of-synch with this time and place, and that my vision of people and of the world belongs to a point far into the distant future.

As I wrote the other day, I was always told from birth that all problems in my family (which was the only world I really knew) happened because I existed in it.  If I didn’t exist all would be perfect.

During the massive amounts of time I was isolated in corners, in bed, etc. because Mother had removed me from the ongoing life of her family I listened and I heard the life of the rest of my family going on — PERFECTLY.

I cannot say that these powerful and long-enduring conditions didn’t influence how I perceive perfection in the world.  But I am all grown up now – and what do I know, what do I practice, what CAN I practice (and practice better) of PATIENCE with the way I am, the way other people are, the way the human species is behaving – NOW in the REAL world in real time – right now?

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I have to honestly say I don’t actually even understand the word ‘patience’.  I don’t actually comprehend what patience actually is.  I could say that what I have always thought I have known about being patient has been contaminated by my trauma experiences – or I could say what I know has been deeply honed so that perhaps I actually know vast amounts of information about what being patient is.

I mentioned this one small example from my childhood to my friend yesterday – what did patience have to do with this experience?  *Age 15 – FORCED TO WATCH AN ALASKAN SUNRISE

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Patience with standing in a super-slow store line when shopping.  Patience when teaching a child something new.  Patience in listening to someone tell a story when they wander around and never get to their point.  Patience with drivers who need to wake up.  Patient with people who are rude and inconsiderate.  Patient when I don’t get what I want, don’t get it soon enough?

It seems to me that the ‘issue of patience’ and with the choice to be patient involves a consideration of one main element that I DID NOT HAVE as a child:  I did not have a SELF-centered point of view.  I did not have an “I” perspective.  I did not exist.  I had no rights.  I made no conscious choices.

So ‘ego’ has to be involved somewhere in the ‘patience’ equation.  So – now that at 60 I can finally begin to see what a difficult time I am having with patience – I equally must admit that I now have an ego that can and does get in my own way.

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Patience is a spiritual virtue that nurtured and cultured and grown becomes one of the important powers of our soul that we take with us to the next world.

I asked my friend about this:  “If there is ONLY GOODNESS in the next world (because it is God’s world and there is no duality there) – why would we ever need patience?  There would be nothing negative there for us to be patient about!”

My friend’s own opinion:  “Maybe we need to learn how to be patient to enjoy joy!”

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Well, if I wasn’t already lost in considering this idea of patience I sure was after THAT part of the conversation!  I only report all this in passing today – because I don’t understand.  The earth is patient as it bears the burdens of providing life.  I can see that.  But again, is patience patience if there is no option to be exercised otherwise?

Are birds patient as they wait for their fledglings to grow wings?  Are ants patient as they struggle to drag items home that are 50 times their weight?

What is patience for?  What does it accomplish?  When would it best be exercised — and when not?  How do I learn to grow patiently more patient?

I sure have a lot to learn!

When do I feel patient?  When am I being patient?  And when am I not?  What can I do to increase my ability – and willingness – to exercise patience?  Am I able to be patient enough to find out?

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Housing Troubles Linked to Increased Child AbusePosted: 02 Aug 2012 12:08 PM PDT Housing insecurity is associated with higher rates of child abuse, according to a new study from researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The study, titledTrends in Physical Abuse and the Relationship with Housing Insecurity, looked at hospital discharge data for 38 freestanding children’s hospitals from January 2000 until December 2009. The findings: Over a ten-year period, hospital admission rates for physical abuse and high-risk traumatic brain injury increased across 38 pediatric hospitals in contrast to the admission rate for all injuries. Within metropolitan areas, 90-day delinquency and foreclosure rates were associated with abuse-related hospital admissions. Within metropolitan areas, the unemployment rate was not associated with abuse-related hospital admissions. These findings stand in contrast to data reported by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), which have shown a steady decline in physical abuse over the same decade. The authors propose that child welfare agencies at the state and local level consider additional methods of tracking child abuse data, including hospital data. They also suggest pediatricians and other professionals working with families be aware that housing insecurity may be adversely affecting families and connect families to the appropriate social services. It is important to be aware of the impact the downturn in the economy has on the health and stability of children. This study illustrates what can happen when the stress of economic hardship collides with the challenges of raising children. Even with the best intentions, parents can be pushed to the breaking point. The best way to prevent this from happening is to provide parents with the support, skills and resources they need to succeed. Our Parent Helpline is a terrific resource for parents looking to ease their burden. Helpline Specialists provide information and referral services for families in New York State struggling with parenting issues, challenging children, the child protective system, housing and basic needs, and more. A trained specialist is available 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. After 10 p.m you can leave your number with our answering service, and we’ll get back to you the following morning. The Parent Helpline is toll free and confidential at 1-800-CHILDREN.

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Ever since writing my last post I have a memory from 30 years ago that keeps popping up for attention.  It is evidently strongly connected to what I wrote about here –

+ACTION, REACTION AND CHOICE

I had known for over a year that I needed to make a decision about my 2nd marriage — to a very good man, but to a man that I could best say I loved as my brother, certainly was not ‘in love’ with as with a mate.

All the thoughts and feelings that had come to me appeared in what seemed to be a random way, and nothing about the pattern in which my ‘in-formation’ came to me happened in a useful, coherent way.  Nothing ‘stuck together’ so that I could begin to see what was my own picture of this marriage, of what was best for me (and hence for my children).  I COULD not make a decision.  I therefore could not make a choice to set change in motion in my life.

This memory contains what seems to be my best self example of how information from my right brain hemisphere trumps information that comes to me through my left one.

One day I was visiting a woman friend I had met a few years earlier in AA. I liked her.  I trusted her.  I resonated with her.  As we sat in her living room discussing the ins and outs and ups and downs and mysteries pertaining to my paralyzed indecision about ‘divorce this man I can’t even stand to sleep with’ versus ‘oh no, I can’t divorce a second time!’ — I saw an image.  It appeared so clearly to me that I could SEE it, HEAR the sound of it — and I still can in my memory.

As this image came to me I was able to describe it to my friend, and by the time the image brought itself fully and clearly into my ‘in-formation’ gathering process, completely consciously — shared with self and other — I had my answer.

As if held in 3-D suspended animation I saw a very large outdoor faucet hanging in the air in one corner of the living room.  (The proper name for this object?  A hose bib, though this has never made any sense to me.)

In the opposite corner of the living room, at the same height from the floor, came the gushing stream of water that SHOULD have been coming out directly from the open faucet.

Instantly I had my ANSWER!

Finally everything made SENSE to me.  This kind of sense involves the senses of the body as they communicate with the self about one’s reality — its experience and meaning — through the right brain hemisphere.  As this image appeared to me my senses of what it looked like, what the water sounded like, what it would have felt like physically to have held my hand under the stream all gave me important information so that this bigger SENSE of what truly made sense to me could finally come clear.  I sensed the sense of the image in every possible way.

My life in my marriage FELT just like that to me.  I was not ‘lined up’ within myself with the life I was living.  I was not living my own truth.  I was ‘off’ center, being pulled further and further away from who I was (though at this time when I was 30 I had no idea what that really meant). My inner core, my inner source of my life was split apart from the life I was living.

I left my friend’s house that day with no doubts about my decision and I have never regretted it.  I knew it was my honest decision and therefore was the right one.

No amount of trying to linearly or logically or rationally THINK my way through making this decision had worked.  I needed to know what I REALLY knew — and this experience was the only way that could happen.

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