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If I were to argue with God

stage a debate

would I so blithely say

“It is better to be more oblivious than I”

because I choose to complain

about whatever suffering

I might know of firsthand?

What would I begin to know, then

about the so many so-wounded walking

crawling sitting dying spinning

through the span of their lifetime?

Humility, having known nothing else through all of those years

Mother used me in place of herself

to keep her own devil away,

now comes to me through a hot

pinched

hose.

Given that unknown to most these are the darkest hours

of humankind’s history

Given that suffering belongs to all of us

equally

Given that suffering now serves no purpose I can think of

except to awaken the sense that nobody suffers alone

although

it is most hard to know this

I forgo such debate.

I would appear most ungrateful

most undignified

most uneducated

should I attend.

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An article not to be forgotten!!!

+Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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I awoke today with a slightly new take on my current conundrum– “something hard to understand or explain” – a great word for the pervasive and multiple-multiplying experiences related to being survivors of extreme infant-child abuse!

My new take today includes a relevant term known as “emotional flooding.”  A simple Google search of those two words brings up in response some intense and ‘conundrumish’ topics!

The truth is that nobody except perhaps the best of the developmental neuroscientists can truthfully find a handle on the continuing experience of the abuse most of the readers of this blog know intimately from their own lives.  Yet even these doctors, not being survivors of such severe trauma themselves, cannot actually understand the very real experience of living in a body that was so changed during its early development in response to severe early trauma.

We are for the most part on our own in finding ways to identify what is going on within our body that can so ‘dis-equilibriate’ our senses of being a self in a body in the world.

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These past few weeks I have been overdoing IT.  IT = living AS IF I am OK – because I so WANT to be OK!

Suddenly I fell blindly into a sink hole –

Suddenly a different version of me appeared

Suddenly I lost my equilibrium

This is more than losing any hope of being in touch with a sense of inner peace at my core.  This is an experience of someone else appearing upon the stage of my life-as-I-want-to-live-it – and this someone else is the person who holds billions of memories of what trauma is and what it has done to me – whether I like to be reminded or not.

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Overwhelmed and overwrought

Any adequate mother (or substitute early caregiver) easily recognizes the signs in an infant that these two conditions are in motion

This adequate mother will respond to her infant as if the little one is in a state of emergency

This mother will do everything in her power to re-stabilize the infant – to calm it down by comforting it appropriately – by blocking all incoming stimulation (be it too much good or too much bad) – This mother will calm the infant down TO ITS CORE.

This is safe and secure attachment in action, in motion – as the caregiver performs the required role for the infant of resetting the entire body of the upset infant in its nervous systems which include the infant’s rapidly developing right limbic social-emotional brain.

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Because the abuse that happened to me began when I was born (and because I am fortunate enough to know this!) – I understand that when I go awry in my body it is to these most basic, primitive and important central-control levels that I must look in order to repair whatever current-day disequilibrium has toppled my sense of being an ongoing-self-in-the-world.  Toppling.  Losing inner balance.  Losing sight of, losing touch with, anyone ‘in here’ that has a rock-solid grasp of what in the world is even going ON HERE!

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I picture a 3-D pyramid or a 2-D triangle.  Safe and secure healthy early attachment interactions build a body-brain from the ground up that has a wide solid grounded base in reality (as it becomes built into the body-brain).  Early neglect, abuse, trauma puts so much stress into a little one’s body that this base is never built right.

When ongoing interactions of increasing complexity happen in an early trauma survivor’s life the tendency for being overwhelmed results in this pyramid/triangle flipping over so that we are – in our body brain – trying to remain stable while attempting to maintain balance on the precarious tip point – hence – our repeated experiences of reaching a tipping point and losing our inner equilibrium along with our sense of being a central-stable-self-in-the-world.

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I cycle through patterns of being relatively OK – and of being NOT OK.

It is my wish to be able to increasingly prevent the toppling – but it is also difficult to live anything like what I might like to think of as a ‘normal life’ when the amount of trauma I experienced during the first 18 years of my life so changed HOW I am in this body in this world.

If you Google search (recommended) ‘emotional flooding’ you will notice even from scanning the titles that appear on the result page that ‘emotional flooding’ is most often associated with the ACUTE stage of traumatic experiences.

Survivors of severe early infant-child abuse have a body-brain so built in the environment of acute trauma that we are able to know little else.  ACUTE TRAUMA was ‘normal’ for us in our early malevolent environment.

Our body will remember this fact any time we take too big a step without being completely conscious of what we are doing and how we are experiencing each little tiny step we take along the way.  I know this.  I took a long stride and strolled through my experiences of the past few weeks acting AS IF there would be no repercussions.

Well, I am in the repercussion stage now – and restabilizing my entire self has to be my current mission.  Fortunately, I didn’t stride too far off of my what-is-possible-for-Linda-to-accomplish during my activities of recent days.  But I did overdo it.

Sometimes I have to overdo it – or it seems I would not have much of a life at all.  I am severely hampered, confined, restrained in what I can take on in my life – and yes – it makes me frustrated and MAD to be so limited.  But my limitations are very real whether I like it or not – and I am the only caregiver in my life who can do what it takes to get my centered calm self back again — with the love, support and understanding of those who care most about me!

This support, love and care also comes from readers of this blog who stop in with their comments.  Thank you!

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Over the course of my adult life I have fallen on my face, fallen on my butt, fallen to my knees many many times.  I have had to work very hard, honestly, at remaining alive, at remaining hope-full, at remaining convinced that what I do in my life matters.  I have much to be grateful for, obviously, and I also work hard at recognizing all the positives that I can.

But I can no longer deny or ignore the conditions in my body that are the very real and serious consequence of living the first 18 years of my life under conditions of extreme threat, trauma and harm.

That I DESERVE to experience peace and joy remains an elusive guess to me unless I apply great effort at remaining focused on giving myself permission to TRY to be fully human – a condition that was entirely denied to me throughout the very long hell of my infancy and childhood.

I do not like to whine.  I do not like to complain.  I like to get back up, dust myself off, heal as much as I can – and go on living as if…….

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Is healing from severe trauma really the same thing as growth?  Are healing and growth for severe infant-child abuse-trauma survivors the same thing as learning to RECOGNIZE our self?

My journey – today – this day – is feeling like that.

As I raised my three children (without abuse and with lots of love) I had my inner vision focused upon recognizing who they were so that I could help them grow into their own self – to know their own self – to be their own self without compromise – and to LOVE their own self.

A the youngest nears 30 and the oldest crosses into her 40s I can see that my approach worked – exactly.

Nobody did this for me.

I will be 61 this coming August 31st – and it is today that I notice that my struggles are greatly about trying to recognize my self!

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It is all fine and good and worthy for me to try to work toward some nebulous goal of ‘loving my self’ – but how am I really going to do THIS if I cannot and do not recognize myself?

In all the work I have closely studied about infant attachment and brain development done by Dr. Allan N. Schore (Google his name and take a look) it is completely clear that it is the infant-mother face-to-face interactions in the first critical first year of life that set the stage for whether or not a new human being is on the road to recognizing their OWN self – or not.

My mother was a pathological, psychotic abusive Borderline Personality Disorder sicko.  No, her SOUL was good and was something else – but my mother’s disease ate her up so that especially as far as her non-relationship with me – there was NOTHING else present.

My mother never looked with care and adoration into my newly born eyes.  My mother NEVER saw me.  She saw her own projection of her own ‘evil’ in me as ‘the devil’s child’.  She did not even ever see a human being when she looked at me.

Mother did nothing to help me recognize my self – as a mother must – if a new person is going to grow along the ‘right’ path into their own life.

Anything I have I have been given through my soul’s awareness of its/my connection to a God who yes, loves me, and no, did not protect me or alleviate the 18 years of suffering I endured.

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The short end of that long story is that today I am recognizing – TODAY – that me Linda I does NOT need to be judged, criticized, given advice or lectures to, or in any other way be disrespected for who, how, what I am.

Perhaps people I know/have known have found it very easy to push me in certain toxic ways because my own self-recognition boundaries have never truly been solidified – because I have never truly recognized them at the same time I have not recognized my self.

Perhaps TODAY I am shedding that old skin.  Perhaps today I don’t give a wallop of a HOOT what anyone other than those who truly love me think about me – in any single way!

It did me no possible good growing up as a severely abused infant-child to notice who/what hurt me.  I took it.  I withstood, suffered and took it ALL – without complaint, without knowing what was done to me was terribly, tragically WRONG.

Nobody noticed.  Nobody came to my aid or assistance or to my rescue.  I endured.  I survived.  And at 18 I exited my home of origin without a clue about who I am.

I have wandered the byways of my life for another 42 years still not REALLY knowing who I am as I GUESS a lot and consider that ‘good enough’ to get by with.

Today this does not — finally — feel good enough for me!

As I told my daughter this evening on the telephone, who I COULD have been, who I perhaps SHOULD have been – well, it’s like I stand at a railway station watching the train of THAT woman roar on by – and I cannot in any way get on THAT train!

Is their another train for me?  Today I say yes, of course there is!  My train might very likely not be a train that many I know would even recognize as mine.  I haven’t even recognized it as mine!

I suspect I have been too busy in some unrecognized ways at being the person I ‘should’ or ‘could’ have been – at least trying my hardest to put up that phony front – though never until this moment have I recognized those  silent efforts I have pursued to betray my own self.

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I have lived for nearly 7 years in this little Arizona border town in a neighborhood full of children.  I listen to them PLAY – I listen and listen and watch them – while I recognize that not ONCE in my entire childhood was I free – truly FREE – to be a child in play.

NOT ONCE did I play – or laugh freely.  Not once was I safe enough to trust that no harm was about to come to me.  Not once was I truly safe from my mother’s rage and hate filled – usually psychosis based – attacks of me.

How could I begin to think I could come out of that childhood being anything like NORMAL?  I have always been on the outside – and today I am perhaps more clear than I have ever been that ‘trying to fit in’ to regular people’s world is NOT going to happen – and it is toxic for me to try.

Maybe I am done with all of it!  Maybe I am shedding a skin.  Maybe I am transforming — into WHO I don’t know!  Into – ME?

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I have taken

by an invisible bidding

my heart and my soul and my self

deep under this peaceful water

where I have no ears

to hear

the human-made tumult

above

So little quiet waking slumber

so few paying attention

lost arts outnumber

those that are known

Exchanging heartbeats

of the living

for the clamor of

mechanical clunks and roars

Making the night we have come to

believe

is day

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Somehow somewhere along the line of my adult life I made a decision evidently that I did not know I made.  I disrespect myself.

I do not respect who I am!  I am never good enough to please myself.

My latest?  What is WRONG with me that I don’t like people?

I really, really DON’T like people any more than I would like sitting down hard on a very prickly cactus!

Do I have the right not to like people?  What does God think about me not liking people?  “Shame on me for not liking people?”

People – for the most part – seem to me to be yakking squawk boxes.  How dare I say this?  How dare I think it?  How dare I believe this?

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I consider an image that gets to reappear in my thoughts over these past 20+ years — because I was blessed to witness it — a group of Dine (Navajo) men sitting in the shade of a few ancient Pinon trees on a hot New Mexican spring day – talking by not talking, speaking by not speaking.  One would say something — a LONG time went by – a long time went by – half an hour or more — and someone would say something else.

Quiet voices.  Undemanding-of-attention voices.  A different pace.  A different music.

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The pages of this blog are packed with stories of my history.  Enough at the moment for me to mention that people were so little a part of my first 18 years of life – except as shadows of lives lived that had NOTHING to do with me as I suffered under the insane mad-woman abuse of my mother — that people as people did not exist for me at all.

Truth?

I can’t go back and change anything about my childhood – including the isolation and solitary confinement.  Yet how hard it is for me to accept – to respect – my SELF as I AM.

Am I getting closer?  If people are for the most part toxic to me – and even if I feel so often terribly lonely – but being with people does NOT make the loneliness go away but rather exhausts and confuses me — I really do need to stay away from nearly ALL of them!

As I mentioned in my recent post, I am hoping to complete a goat pen for miniature goats – and a bunny cage or two will be in the mix – so I can have friends I can relate to.

It is seeming increasingly clear to me that if God wanted me to be able to tolerate people – to understand or to like them – He could have given me some worthy studies in being one of the more ordinary people during the first 18 years of my life — where the lessons most mattered.

But, no — my lessons were of an ENTIRELY different kind – and they turned me into an ENTIRELY different sort of person.  Dare I accept and respect this fact — no matter what ANYONE else thinks or feels about me?

On a soul level, I am hoping my condition is temporary and will last only as long as I am in a body in this world.  In the next world I hope my soul will be strong and good and forgiven – so that I will not be forced (again) into a kind of permanent loneliness that I NEVER asked for.

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In the high southeastern Arizona desert plants are in their resting stage at this time of year.  People who have spent many years living in more northern climes are familiar with springtime as a time of bursting growth and bloom.  Spring in the desert?  A time of building heat toward the eventual appearance (hopefully) in early July of our annual season of blessed rains.

I have decided as my aging past 60 moves on that I wish to be able to visit in my yard some innately peaceful, kind and gentle – quiet – friends.  Due to the generous free-cycle gift of required weathered lumber and pallets I finally have what I need to complete my project.

This series of pictures includes the planting of one of my jalapeno beds, the end blooming of my much-appreciated perennial snap dragons, and my womanly art of making something wonderful out of virtually nothing much at all.  (All of these did not post in exact order – I have no idea why not or how to adjust!!)

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We all have to live in this world one way or another.  Me?  Evidently more hermit than not, and not because I was BORN this way.  Eighteen years of abuse and solitary confinement made me this way.

So I am most grateful for my yard and my home.  I love living in the high southeastern Arizona desert because more months than not outside is the better place to be.

My garden is finally completing itself (with my work, help, play, enjoyment, creativity) along the neglected east side of this property.  For nearly three years I have viewed ‘the mess’ over there with no vision of what ‘it’ wanted to transform itself into.

Inch my inch I KNOW now — and thanks to a generous ‘free-cycle’ gift of much twisted-weathered 2′ x 6′ give-a-way lumber and as many wooden pallets as I can haul home (and play house with) I will soon have at least 100 feet of solid fencing — for…..

A herd of miniature whether goats

A miniature rabbit

A big rabbit!

I have to make THEM a house – so time to get to the task – after saying…..

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AS A CHILD I NEVER WAS ALLOWED TO PLAY!

I listen to the freedom of children’s laughter and their continual banter and chattering with one another.

How could I have survived NEVER being safe enough to have this freedom or this companionship all the way through my 18 years of childhood?

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MAYBE GOD WANTS US TO LOVE ALL PEOPLE.  IF HE HAD WANTED US TO LIKE PEOPLE I THINK HE WOULD HAVE MADE THEM NICER.

I have lived in this house in this trailer court-neighborhood on the Mexican-American line long enough to have seen the 7-year-olds since they were in diapers at less than one year.  I watch those that were old enough to come visit me and hang around in their little groups who are now in their teens begin to have those looks in their eyes – those looks that are so strange to me – the looks of the adults they are soon growing up to be.

I know for a fact I can trust all children before they reach about age 9.  After that the look begins to appear in their eyes that lets me know they are critical now (as they should be as they are most able to socially (at least) soon join the adult world).  I can tell they now have a boundary line of their own that operates as they lose the ability to trust anyone over their own age.  Why should I then trust them ‘in return’?

I am also not one bit a fan of ulterior motives – conscious or unconscious – I don’t care.  I grew up with a BPD mother with nothing BUT her own ulterior motives regarding me.  I, in direct opposite to Mother, never had anything like an ulterior motive until I was 17 (and that was to sneak out of the house to see ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘Rosemary’s Baby’).

I was never allowed – and therefore was not able to – gradually pass through the social-emotional developmental stages that everyone else I have ever met (having never yet met anyone abused in so many ways and under such insane conditions as I was) naturally went through so that the RULES of upcoming-and-arriving adulthood naturally fill up the gaps within people so that so little of the genuine child-of-integrity continues to exist.

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UPPITY ME?  A LESSON IN HUMILITY?

What’s a missing front tooth?  Fine at age 5-6-7, but not at 60.  Not when suddenly out of nowhere a front tooth vanishes from one’s top denture!

Where did the tooth GO?  I have no idea!  Strainer in the sink did not catch that tooth as I cleaned my dentures yesterday morning.  Gone gone gone!

Toppled my illusion world of all’s-OK-with-the-world in a big hurry.  I don’t have the $$ to run to a dentist to have this all fixed.  A friend of mine took my top denture ‘over the line’ to a dentist in Mexico to see what can be done.

Meanwhile?

I know I was taking too much of my own opinion too seriously.  Thinking my older friends need to ‘lead the way’ and get old with their increasingly crappy bodies with GUSTO – with pride!  Get a golf cart to ‘run’ down to the horse corral to greet, visit, groom their horses!  Don’t be ashamed!  Age happens to everyone!

Yeah, right.  And me now with no top teeth?  Eating alone becomes a huge burden.  Forget smiling with confidence in front of others!

Where was I scoring on my uppity-vs-humility (reality) spectrum?

Did the angels (tooth fairies) snatch my tooth to teach me some lesson?  Seems so…..

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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I found this easily this morning via a Google search.  I am surprised and thankful.  I wanted to post this back to a recent commenter, but decided also that this information is so important I need to post it again on the ‘front page’!

+CAREGIVING IN ADULT ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIPS

Every adult has times when their need for attachment overrides their ability to caregive to another person.  It is vital for people in committed relationships with infant-child abuse and trauma survivors to clearly know about the patterns described at this link!

Becoming informed and therefore conscious about how attachment patterns operate helps us be able to understand self and others better so that we can work toward making different choices about needs in relationships.

This is fascinating and important information – please take a look at the writing at the above link.

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Please click here to read or to  Leave a Comment »

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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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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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