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This article is posted on The Miami Herald website – and copied here for educational purposes only.

Violence and the brain in early childhood development

BY ROBIN KARR-MORSE AND DAVID LAWRENCE Jr. dlawrence@childreadiness.org

Robin Karr-Morse is a therapist in Portland, Ore. and author of “Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease” and “Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence.” David Lawrence Jr. is president of The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and education and community leadership scholar at the University of Miami School of Education and Human Development.

“Though Americans have lived through more than 30 school shootings since Columbine in 1999, few have received extensive coverage in the media.  Until the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when most Americans thought about violence, they might well have turned to the frequent tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Understandably, the Newtown massacre of 6- and 7-year-olds generated almost unprecedented anxiety about threats to our own children.  We cannot remember such a level of anxiety and fear in schools and communities and country.If we cannot protect our children — the most vulnerable among us — who are we?

The confluence of madmen and guns is disastrous.  Following each of the major school shootings across the nation, the conversation about firearms and mental instability has filled the media to the point that strangers passing in a grocery store exchange informal remarks on gun control as if they had all just exited a lecture on the topic.  Harder to talk about is the madmen side of the equation.  But this is where the real conversation needs to take place.  Clearly gun control is a critical issue, and we must do all we can to employ adequate background checks and to keep firearms out of the hands of children and emotionally unstable adults.  The common denominator we too often overlook in these events is the pervasive question of “Why” and the central role of the human brain in the answer.

How and why can a baby develop into a vicious killer?  And what can we do about it?

Perhaps the person who answers this most succinctly is Dr. Bruce Perry, director of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston.  He tells us: “It’s not the finger that pulls the trigger; it’s the brain. It’s not the penis that rapes; it’s the brain.”  Violence begins in the brain, and the brain begins in the womb.

All behavior, pro-social or anti-social, is controlled by a physical organ — the brain. That brain is fundamentally built within relationships, beginning with the mother during gestation. Brains are built through stimulation.  Experiences of all kinds literally stimulate electrical connections among brain cells as well as build gray matter in the brain.

The stimulation a baby experiences before birth and in the first years of life shapes the type of brain the child develops.  Those years are simply for developing capacities.  An inadequate or traumatic caregiving relationship is deeply damaging, especially during those early years when the brain is forming chemically and structurally.  That part of the brain that allows the baby to feel connected with another person can be lost or greatly impaired.

A child can emerge lacking the ability to attach or to resonate in any profound way with others, rendering that child emotionally and significantly damaged.  This part of the brain, built primarily through a caregiving relationship, is central to a child’s ability to modulate fear and other emotions.  Absent adequate nurturing by an emotionally competent caregiver, the baby faces an unpredictable tide of unregulated emotions.

To build this critical part of human function requires time and a quality of care that we too often overlook in our culture.  But know that if a baby’s experiences are pathological and steeped in chronic fear early in development, the very capacities that mitigate against violent behavior (including empathy, the capacity for self -regulation of strong emotions and the emotional modulation essential for complex problem-solving) can be lost.

As these children grow into adolescence and adulthood, impulsive and aggressive behaviors are so often the outcomes.  Moreover, genetic proclivities toward mental illness also are exacerbated. Communities inevitably absorb the consequences.  We ignore the root of the problem at our peril.

While earliest development furnishes the greatest moments to do the most to prevent violence in our communities, there will always be children who slip through the cracks.  For children, like the young adult shooter in Newtown who was so clearly estranged and emotionally needy, the mental health system in our country is almost nonexistent.  Meanwhile, the parents of these children are most often left to fend for themselves in trying to get help.

We watched in horror as the Newtown, Conn. story unfolded.  Imagine.  Twenty first-graders massacred in an American school.  Thus, in addition to conversations about gun control and a mandate to renovate and expand mental health services, it is also time for another conversation — that of building healthy brains from the beginning of life, and nurturing and intervening to prevent developing madmen in our midst.  [My note:  Excuse me!  AND MADWOMEN!!!  See my comment at the end of this post.]

We are learning the hard way that mental and physical well-being are inseparable.  Children who are attached and empathic with other people, who can self-regulate strong negative emotions and can use their minds to focus on complex problem-solving won’t be attracted to aggression and violence, or to using guns to maim or massacre and murder other people.

It is time to make the connection.”

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My comment:

Because of the work I am currently engaged in as books of my mother’s writings and one of my own books are being prepared for publication, my eloquence has left me.

I will simply point out that the kinds of unsafe and insecure early attachment circumstances that lead to developmental brain changes affect also all aspects of an infant’s physiological development, including the way their genetic material manifests.

I believe that due to the inherent differences between boys and girls (men and women) the kinds of changes early traumas create find their way into the adult mainstream in differing ways.

Males are predisposed to take their troubles out into the bigger societal sphere while females are geared to wreck havoc on their own children and in the familial environment.

As I have highlighted on this blog many times in the past, it is imperative that we consider such facts as are presented at these blog links:

+Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

at

https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/a-book-being-born/dr-teichers-article-on-trauma-altered-development/

and

*Notes on Teicher

at

https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/about-stop-the-stor/our-earliest-start/notes-on-teicher/

Early traumatic attachment histories create what Teicher calls “evolutionarily altered” individuals who have been designed within early malevolent environments to survive in that same kind of environment — for the rest of their life.

When primarily males cause violence that catches mainstream attention, it is exactly to the facts this article and these links present that we MUST look if we wish to consider the troubles that face us realistically.

That these troubles begin in the infant-mother relationship should surprise no one.  That these troubles pass down the generations — and impact wider society should also offer to surprise to anyone, either.

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Posts that follow this one:

+ROMANTICIZED VIEWS ON WOMEN AND MOTHERS BLOCKS US FROM ACCEPTING MOTHER HARM TO OFFSPRING

+BLINDED BY OUR BIAS THAT WOMEN NEVER GROW UP

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I want to be on the other side.  I want to be among those whose early beginnings did not punish them for being alive, did not punish them through abuse and trauma for being a child, for things that had nothing to do with them.

I want to be among those whose lives travel backwards through time in a flowing way so that who they are is directly connected to what made sense to them from the time of their beginnings.  Not that every childhood is perfect.  Perfection is not what a person needs to get a ‘good enough’ shot at life so that their very body does not have to remember severe trauma every nearly time a person turns around.

Fortunately for me throughout most of my adulthood I did not really know the truth.  I watched other people.  I figured that anyone could live a life OK if they just did what seemed to be ‘the right thing’ to do.  I didn’t understand anxiety.  I didn’t understand dissociation.  I didn’t understand depression.  I didn’t know that how unsafe and insecure my early beginnings were directly impacted not only the choices I made — but the choices I COULD make.

I want to be on the other side, the side of those who look like winners to me.  Those whose thoughts do not disappear out of their heads when some unforeseen threat tips their ongoing experience of self in their life right over.  When the boat tips.  When it lurches, when it falls apart, when it can’t seem to get righted again.

When there’s something missing and it seems to not have a name.  When every time we try to name it ourself or hear someone else try, we know that something is still missing.  But what?

I think about the early times of my personal research that began in 2004 as I knew that what I suffered from did not HAVE a name.  I studied the complexities of developmental neuroscience.  I studied ‘attachment’ research.  I have not had the luxury of looking the other way, of hopping on a 12-step band wagon and fleeing off into a joint ‘recovery’ future with people who all agree what their problem is — and its solution.

How nice that would be.

And how difficult it is to live life within a body that the experts now know was directly altered in its physiological development through early abuse and trauma.  We have no words for this, no right words.  “Evolutionarily altered” is the best that the best of the scientific experts have to say about what ails us right now.  Live with it.

But I don’t WANT to be this way.  I want to shake it all off.  I want a different body-brain, the kind I would have had should I have ever been anyone’s ‘darling child’ as my five siblings were to my parents.  Take the damage and run with it?  Take the damage and carve out the best life I can?  I’ve done that.  I do that.  But I WANT to be on the other side — to walk away from this kind of a wound-changed body from the inside out, from the top down, that so few understand.

And heaven forbid I ever hear myself complain about myself in my life.  How dare I wish I were different than I am.  And I am not talking about a kind of difference that I have any power to change.  That’s the really hard part.  The ways severe early trauma changed me are profound and permanent.  That’s the legacy of surviving severe child abuse – the legacy nobody wants to hear about.

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Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains  – The connection between mother and child is ever deeper than thought

By Robert Martone

Published on the Scientific American website

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Sometimes it seems to me that the future waits for us.  I see this no differently from the fact that when we come into this world as tiny babies a future waits for us – waits until we grow enough to move into that future.  When I see scientific research such as that presented in this article I feel excited for that future of our species.  I believe there are wondrous new things in store for us there.  Personally if it were up to me I would spend all available resources to figure out how to get to that fantastic future ASAP.

Alas, very little is up to me.

My daughter forwarded the link to this article to me this morning.  How amazing!!!!

The following is added to this blog post for educational purposes.  Please click on the above article link to read the original:

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“The link between a mother and child is profound, and new research suggests a physical connection even deeper than anyone thought. The profound psychological and physical bonds shared by the mother and her child begin during gestation when the mother is everything for the developing fetus, supplying warmth and sustenance, while her heartbeat provides a soothing constant rhythm.

 

The physical connection between mother and fetus is provided by the placenta, an organ, built of cells from both the mother and fetus, which serves as a conduit for the exchange of nutrients, gasses, and wastes. Cells may migrate through the placenta between the mother and the fetus, taking up residence in many organs of the body including the lung, thyroid muscle, liver, heart, kidney and skin. These may have a broad range of impacts, from tissue repair and cancer prevention to sparking immune disorders.

 

It is remarkable that it is so common for cells from one individual to integrate into the tissues of another distinct person. We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as singular autonomous individuals, and these foreign cells seem to belie that notion, and suggest that most people carry remnants of other individuals. As remarkable as this may be, stunning results from a new studyshow that cells from other individuals are also found in the brain. In this study, male cells were found in the brains of women and had been living there, in some cases, for several decades. What impact they may have had is now only a guess, but this study revealed that these cells were less common in the brains of women who had Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting they may be related to the health of the brain.

 

We all consider our bodies to be our own unique being, so the notion that we may harbor cells from other people in our bodies seems strange. Even stranger is the thought that, although we certainly consider our actions and decisions as originating in the activity of our own individual brains, cells from other individuals are living and functioning in that complex structure. However, the mixing of cells from genetically distinct individuals is not at all uncommon. This condition is called chimerism after the fire-breathing Chimera from Greek mythology, a creature that was part serpent part lion and part goat. Naturally occurring chimeras are far less ominous though, and include such creatures as the slime mold and corals.

 

 Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in an organism. This was first noticed in humans many years ago when cells containing the male “Y” chromosome were found circulating in the blood of women after pregnancy. Since these cells are genetically male, they could not have been the women’s own, but most likely came from their babies during gestation.

 

In this new study, scientists observed that microchimeric cells are not only found circulating in the blood, they are also embedded in the brain. They examined the brains of deceased women for the presence of cells containing the male “Y” chromosome. They found such cells in more than 60 percent of the brains and in multiple brain regions. Since Alzheimer’s disease is more common in women who have had multiple pregnancies, they suspected that the number of fetal cells would be greater in women with AD compared to those who had no evidence for neurological disease. The results were precisely the opposite: there were fewer fetal-derived cells in women with Alzheimer’s. The reasons are unclear.

 

Microchimerism most commonly results from the exchange of cells across the placenta during pregnancy, however there is also evidence that cells may be transferred from mother to infant through nursing. In addition to exchange between mother and fetus, there may be exchange of cells between twins in utero, and there is also the possibility that cells from an older sibling residing in the mother may find their way back across the placenta to a younger sibling during the latter’s gestation. Women may have microchimeric cells both from their mother as well as from their own pregnancies, and there is even evidence for competition between cells from grandmother and infant within the mother.

 

What it is that fetal microchimeric cells do in the mother’s body is unclear, although there are some intriguing possibilities. For example, fetal microchimeric cells are similar to stem cells in that they are able to become a variety of different tissues and may aid in tissue repair. One research group investigating this possibility followed the activity of fetal microchimeric cells in a mother rat after the maternal heart was injured: they discovered that the fetal cells migrated to the maternal heart and differentiated into heart cells helping to repair the damage. In animal studies, microchimeric cells were found in maternal brains where they became nerve cells, suggesting they might be functionally integrated in the brain. It is possible that the same may true of such cells in the human brain.

 

These microchimeric cells may also influence the immune system. A fetal microchimeric cell from a pregnancy is recognized by the mother’s immune system partly as belonging to the mother, since the fetus is genetically half identical to the mother, but partly foreign, due to the father’s genetic contribution. This may “prime” the immune system to be alert for cells that are similar to the self, but with some genetic differences. Cancer cells which arise due to genetic mutations are just such cells, and there are studies which suggest that microchimeric cells may stimulate the immune system to stem the growth of tumors. Many more microchimeric cells are found in the blood of healthy women compared to those with breast cancer, for example, suggesting that microchimeric cells can somehow prevent tumor formation. In other circumstances, the immune system turns against the self, causing significant damage. Microchimerism is more common in patients suffering from Multiple Sclerosis than in their healthy siblings, suggesting chimeric cells may have a detrimental role in this disease, perhaps by setting off an autoimmune attack.

 

This is a burgeoning new field of inquiry with tremendous potential for novel findings as well as for practical applications. But it is also a reminder of our interconnectedness.”

 

 

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Now that I have cleared my mental desktop with the writing of my two previous posts this morning I am going to write the one I WANT to write.  For background I refer to a few earlier writings on this blog –

+NEEDY PEOPLE AND BUMPY CONVERSATIONS (GRICE’S MAXIMS, AGAIN!)

+ENCOURAGING A READ OF THE ADULT ATTACHMENT ASSESSMENT INTERVIEW (protocol link here)

*Attachment Simplified – Organized Secure Attachment – Earned Secure

*Attachment Simplified – Disorganized Insecure Attachment – Cannot Classify

+SIEGEL – ANTICIPATION, TIME AND COHERENCE OF MIND

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I also draw from my simple understanding of the work of Dr. Stephen W. Porges (search for his name with polyvagal theory online for articles) – his recent and upcoming books:

The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation (2011)

Clinical Insights from the Polyvagal Theory (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) [Kindle Edition] (2014)

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I also refer at a minimum to the writings of Dr. Allan N. Schore as briefly mentioned in this post –

+BEING A PHYSICAL BEING IN AN IMPERFECT WORLD

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Now, talking in context of the critically important work of ‘developmental neuroscientists’ my thinking this morning seems to be taking a slightly different line of approach to what it is that can so powerfully communicate to a newborn and very young infant what the conditions of the world are like as those conditions are communicated to it directly through the interactions the infant has primarily and firstly with its mother.

I understand that an infant is used to the feel of its mother’s motion, the sound of her voice, from birth the continued and ever more clearly defined sound of her, the prosody (music) of her voice, the smell of her, and hopefully even the taste of her.  I understand as Porges certainly specifies that it is the highly evolved ability of humans to communicate through eye-to-eye, face-to-face interactions (as Schore details in his work) that especially builds the rapid-growing infant brain (primarily the right social-emotional regulatory right limbic brain region) in the first months of life.

But today I am thinking about what a mother communicates to her infant through her HANDS.

Porges does a very good job in describing how our polyvagal system connects everything our BODY knows to our brain.  I am thinking this morning about what a massive amount of information the feel of a mother’s hands communicates to her infant.

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There is another stream of related information on this blog I need to refer to here –

+HOOKED ON ‘D’ SMILES – THE HAPPINESS CENTER

I am thinking that just as researchers have discovered that REAL smiles and REAL laughter cannot be faked (DUH!), love, safety and security transmitted to an infant’s body through the hands of its mother (and other caregivers) cannot possibly be faked, either.

Nobody has to TEACH a human being to be able to read the genuineness of a smile or of a laugh, nobody has to teach an infant about the truth of the feel of itself in its mother’s hands.  In fact, nobody HAS to teach these things because it is not POSSIBLE to teach these things.  We know.  We know a great deal, and we know this from at least the instant we are born.

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Now, in my thinking this morning as it is also connected to my earlier post today about being carriers of stories that is intimately combined with our urge to transmit these stories, that how researchers can assess adult degrees of secure/insecure attachment patterns through the specific telling of our life narrative story (according to how coherent or incoherent our telling is) has to do with HANDS in a very direct/indirect way.

If you poke around in those links at the start of this post that have to do with attachment, narrative and Grice’s Maxims of polite conversation you will be able to follow what I am going to say next. 

Because I know that the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is the tool designed to assess adult attachment patterns, I know that it is a breach of ‘communication etiquette’ that signifies a person’s life story narrative is broken – in other words, is in need of repair (healing).

So I did my perfunctory online definition scan this morning to look at what ‘polite’ might mean.  When I found that this word did not appear in modern English until the 15^th century I decided to search further.  In following my own train of thought I browsed next through ‘civil’ only to discover that this word has only belonged to the language I speak since the 14^th century.  Not good enough.

So I traveled next in the direction of ‘manners’.  Oh, I LIKE this one!!! 

Some might say it is ‘bad manners’ to say something ‘bad’ about someone else.  Some might say that ‘dirty linen must not be aired in public’ and that ‘skeletons belong hidden in closets’.  Some might say that to tell a story that involves horrific instances of harm, trauma, neglect and abuse is ‘bad manners’, too.

Yet when people cannot tell the true whole story they carry – if there IS trauma in that story its absence in the narration of the story will create a broken story.  These broken story narratives are directly linked to the presence of unsafe and insecure attachment patterns (disorders) in adults.

What fascinates me about using the word MANNERS in relation to Grice’s Maxims is that this word came into English before the 12^th century.  For lay scholars like myself we can’t travel back any further to find what my art therapy professor referred to as ‘the animal image in the word’.

And what IS the animal image in this word, manners?  Look at its origins:  Middle English manere, from Anglo-French, from Vulgar Latin *manuaria, from Latin, feminine of manuarius of the hand, from manus hand — more at manual .

Feminine – of the hand.

Where does civility, civilization, anything we might think of as ‘polite’ begin to be taught to a human being?  In the hands of mothers.  What manner of world is an infant told through the hands of its mother that it has been born into – and thus must adjust all levels of its physiological development to in order to survive?  A safe and secure world?  An unsafe and insecure world?  A world that is full of adequate resources?  A world of scarcity and deprivation?

Take a brief glance at the word ‘cognate’:  To be born, related to kinship.  ‘Cognition’:  To come to know, to become acquainted with.

Communication from its mother’s hands teaches the truth to an infant after it has been born about all it needs to know about the condition of the world.  The story told to her infant through her hands cannot lie.  And most importantly this earliest information transmitted to an infant directly through the hands of its mother travels exactly through the infant’s body to build the infant’s body in response to the message received. 

Safe and secure world = safe and secure attachment = one kind of body-brain is built for life in a benevolent world.  Unsafe and insecure world = unsafe and insecure attachment = a different kind of body-brain is built for life in a malevolent world.  Hands do not lie and a developing body cannot be fooled.

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I would guess that many people who find their way to this blog know what therapy is from the inside of the process.  My first toe-wetting experience with therapy happened in 1980 right after my 29th birthday.  I did not enter that stream willingly.  I entered therapy only after I realized something was terribly wrong inside of me and I needed help.  Where else could I go to for THAT?

I spent the decade of the 80s in one kind of therapy session or another.  The therapy I am thinking about today was conducted by a wonderful man named Stephen Bergstrom.  I don’t believe it is possible for anyone to care more than he did, to believe in the powers of healing more than he did, or to be so devastated when circumstances turned themselves against him.

Bergstrom was an addiction expert who understood the need for healing the deepest wounds to the soul through horrors especially of severe and prolonged child abuse.  His clientele depended upon insurance to pay for the services they desperately needed.  I last spoke to this wise, kind, dedicated man on the telephone in 1998.  I urged him to write some kind of a manual to help other therapists understand the work that he did so that they could do their own work better.

Bergstrom was perhaps stubborn, perhaps too busy, perhaps too stubborn.  He never wrote that manual.  In that telephone conversation Berstrom explained to me that state regulations for insurance payment for ‘treatment’ were locking out any mention of God or of spirituality.  He told me he could not continue his work with his voice silenced.  I heard very shortly thereafter that Bergstrom had died during a gall bladder operation.  I think this friend of mine chose not to live without his work.

I also think about some therapy sessions I went through with him as he had me ‘place Mother in a chair’ so I could talk to her.  This morning I realize that in spite of how well-intentioned this technique was, it didn’t/couldn’t really work for me because the essential element of Duck Tape was missing.

Well, I do have to refine my image here.  I have always been a big fan of Duck Tape.  Years ago when I was taking college art courses I heard someone say, “Give a woman a roll of Duck Tape and she can fix and repair anything.”  I recently discovered that the newest version of the fantastic product has been ruined.  The sticky isn’t sticky and the backing has less strength to it than does a generic small band-aid.  Now I would have to say, “Use Gorilla Tape.”  But my mind’s image still involves tape with feathers rather than fur.

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The recipe seems to go like this:  Take one abuser and as many rolls of tape as needed.  Tape mouth shut.  Arms behind back, tape hands together, tape as far up the arms as you need to.  (Don’t hurt the abuser.  That’s not required.)  Tape abuser’s ankles together.  Tape legs together.  You get the image.

Now, to a little person such a trussed-up abuser would not be so mean.  Had Bergstrom let me use this process, I bet there is a lot more I could have said to Mother.

I think this could be like a sourdough starter recipe.  I think I can use this image to silence anyone who would like to make me feel there is something wrong with me because I have a trauma-source story to tell and I tell it.  Maybe we survivors could invest together to buy stock of whichever tape company we select to get our product from.  I’m all for that.

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Some people are carriers of story.  We are challenged by our life to transmit that story we carry.  When the thought first hit me last night that I am a ‘carrier’ of something that demands to be ‘transmitted’ I felt an icky kind of fear as if what I have is some kind of disease.  Well, truth is, it is exactly a story of dis-ease that I do have to transmit.  That fact does not taint me.  That fact does not mean I am flawed, contaminated.

I ask this early morning, “What pressures do I receive from the culture I live within that would make me first feel that carrying a story that I am deeply moved to transmit makes me ‘less than’?”

I have written all over this blog that I believe trauma does not let go of humanity until we learn its lessons about how to keep that kind of trauma from ever happening to anyone among us again.  I believe that as the story contained within any experience of trauma is both told and listened to with care so that a resolution for that trauma can be found, the trauma will resolve itself.  The trauma will heal.

For severe early abusive trauma survivors the portion of healing we can experience by telling the story we carry is realistically limited in many ways.  Our body on all levels including our brain has been ‘tampered with’ by trauma that changed how we physiologically developed.  There is no magic in this world that will restore our body-brain back to what it SHOULD have been had trauma not grabbed us into its ‘awe-full’ talons when we were born.

Which leads me to tell of the image I ‘feel’ inside my body this morning:  This story I have to tell sits inside of me like a waiting eagle.  As I give the story words that eagle stretches out its wings and rises from its perch of rest to soar so high I can no longer see it soaring.

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I mentioned something someone I name Q emailed to me recently:  “The point is, I don’t wish to be involved in your book writing process…. I have a full life and do not wish to be involved with the process – whatever it is.  If, on the other hand you ever have anything positive to say about anyone do not hesitate to write me.”

Perhaps if I did not have to justify to myself that I am a carrier of a story that demands I transmit it, I would not have been bothered in the least by what this person had to say.  In my next post I will have more to say about “Duct tape for the soul.”  That image comes into my thoughts here because I know that my culture struggles with what version of ‘the truth’ we want to hear, want to pay attention to, want to honor, want to listen to, want to learn from.  Our culture distracts us or stops us from telling stories it does not want to hear.

At the back-end of a story is an audience.  Separating the telling of a story from the reactions of the audience can be a difficult process.  At the front-end of a story is the teller-writer.  If the story is like this eagle perched within, all I need to do is free the eagle to soar where it will.  I do not direct its flight.

It takes courage to let a teaching story out.  In my own self-image of the story I carry I draw upon the courage that exists in the story itself.  This story I carry comes complete with the courage it takes to tell it.  We accompany one another.  We are a part of one another.  It is my job to set that story free.

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There has to be as many reasons for writing a book as there are writers who write them.  As I sit alone on this New Year’s day with my children thousands of miles away from me, as yet another day dawns with my precious grandsons also being nearly two thousand miles away from me up there in the frozen north, I think about what would set me free.

It is not the final telling of the saga I did not choose to become a part of as abuse targeted me out of the six possible choices my mother had in our family that would free me.  It would also be some money coming into our family that would give me a freedom I do not have.  My oldest daughter told me the other day as she spent time with the youngest of my grandsons that his newest ability to laugh and laugh and laugh made her laugh so hard that her cheeks hurt.  I want to be a part of that joy!

I want to be a part, now and then, of the goodness that is flowing along in the river of my family’s life. 

Oh well.  Another day of patience, of trust that the book publishing process is taking whatever time it needs to get itself done – and to get itself done right.

Meanwhile, I focus in my thoughts on this sunny morning as the frost melts and drips from the world outside toward the continued work of creating a title for this first book.  If I ever thought that naming a newborn was a difficult job, I am finding that task pales in comparison to naming a book!

An unanticipated difficulty for me…….

So today I think about the greatest common thread between my mother’s childhood of abuse and my own:  We were both the child in our family chosen for abuse.

The choice was made by our mothers.

That choice and its consequences changed my mother’s life, and her same choice regarding her abuse of me changed mine.

Maybe on its most essential level this is the essence of what my book, ‘Story Without Words’, is about.  I was going to use the word ‘chooses’ — but at this moment that choice feels like ‘targets’.

A choice is a choice, but targeting someone for abuse conveys more of the actual reality of what such a choice is about, what it is meant to do, what it does.

I am the kind of person who always begins a project and works through that project until it is done.  Then I move on to the next project.  Being in limbo in the midst of a project is obviously very difficult for me, primarily because I am not the one who can complete it!  And yet a book stuck without a subtitle does involve me.  It’s my book.  I SHOULD know what the dang thing has for a title!

But I don’t.  And I want the day to come soon when I DO know!  Is today that day?

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First in this post I would like to thank each and every person who has visited my Stop the Storm blog over the years of its existence.  On this last day of 2012 the count of readers has crossed over 200,000.  More than any other accolade, any other ‘expression of approval’, the blog count itself assures me that many people are questioning the existence of trauma in their past and in their present life.  What matters most to me is that each of us is coming to the very correct conclusion that most trauma that we experience does not NEED to exist.  What continues to keep trauma present in our life is that we, as members of the great human family, have not yet learned how to make trauma stop.

It is my belief from my own abuse experience in childhood that the trauma that was passed down to me came from somewhere — somehow.  It is my best guess that this is the reality for all infant and child abuse survivors.  Where did that abusive trauma come from?  And why?

What turns along the life path of our abusers led them to return violence, violation, harm, terror, abuse and trauma to the next generation of little ones?  What alternative route did those of us who have so suffered take that led us to NOT pass down the trauma directly to our own children?  What are these patterns connected to if not to the conditions — both internal and external — that carried us each into our own future?

While it might seem silly for me to state that everyone who finds their way to this blog is alive.  This fact is true.  Obviously.  But I mean ALIVE in a very important way.  People who find their way to this blog have kept their hope alive.  They have kept their belief intact that there is some kind of underlying if not overriding reason why the suffering in their life and in the lives of those they care about ever happened in the first place.  This makes us all fellow travelers along the pathways of the villages we live in — and along the pathways that connect our villages — in a journey to understand what ongoing, unresolved trauma has to teach us.

Of all the purposes behind the writing of my book Story Without Words, it is my purpose to find a way to conduct myself most productively through my search for the origin of the horrible abuse that fell onto me from my mother that has motivated me most profoundly.  No amount of anger would have led me where I needed to go.  No desire for revenge or for retailiation, no scant idea that by exposing the flaws within my mother I could find a freedom in the least from the lifelong consequences of what Mother’s abuse did to me would have motivated me to write the exact words I did for this book.

Surviving horrible trauma, especially abusive trauma that was perpetrated by the very people in our earliest life who were supposed to love and care for us, leaves us with troubles untold at the same time it leaves us with a gift.  It was obviously not our abusers who possessed the gift to search everywhere and every way possible to find out what creates patterns of ongoing suffering in self and in families.  It is those who find their way to this blog and to all other helpful information they can find that DO have the gift motivated by a desire to find a way to MAKE RIGHT what has gone so WRONG.

We might not be able to find all the answers to the questions we are asking, but we know we are on the right track.  All the answers do not exist yet because it will take all of us to both discover the right questions and to create the solutions.  ALL of us.  That means those of us who have suffered must be joined in our concerns with those who have not suffered.  If we raise our eyes and our hearts and our thoughts up high enough to see more and more of the bigger picture our search for an end to suffering throught trauma will increasingly include the suffering of people of all ages that live all over this amazing globe we name our home.

Perhaps it is egotistical of me to say that there are sojourners along the journey to find truth who are moving in the right direction compared to people who are not interested in the truth and could not care less about the suffering of others and thus are moving in the opposite direction. 

It is therefore some kind of compassionate bond that the truth-seekers have with one another that keeps us in flow with finding ways to build a better life for ourselves and for others (including all life on this planet).  It is an honor for me to be accompanied by everyone who cares — and I know this includes everyone who has ever passed over the pages of this Stop the Storm blog.  Thank you!

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 82,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Perhaps at no other time in my life have I needed to focus so hard on saying exactly what I mean.  Fortunately my upcoming book is not held in the grip of a butchering big publisher who I know would not only kill my title but would kill my book, as well.  Yet while my book is not in the hands of strangers, it is under the critical editing eye of my very knowledgeable and skilled daughter, Ramona.  And she asks questions, tough questions, for which I have to dig deep to find answers.

A main question at this point has to do with my book’s title.  There are many versions flying back and forth via email right now.  I am awaiting Ramona’s response regarding these.  At the moment this is my latest version:

Story Without Words – A forensic study of my family’s unresolved trauma

(Oops?  Subtitle may be morphing again to – A forensic study of family trauma)

Is this even close to the title we will publish this book under?  I am adamant about the main title, Story Without Words.  This IS the book I have written.  I can defend my choice even to myself in many, many ways.  I know I could write an entire new blog under that title and would not run out of things to say.

If any direct reference to ‘abuse’ is dropped from the subtitle I have to ask, “Is the intention of my book being diluted?”  I don’t think so.  At this moment I think what I most MEAN to say is that it has always been exactly the unresolved trauma coming down through my family that has fed, fostered and fueled all that has gone wrong. 

Some of what went wrong turned into abuse.  Some of it turned into patterns that allowed the abuse (of me) to continue unchecked.  Some of it turned into patterns that allowed people to turn the other way (my grandmother, my father), to believe as reality the delusional madness of a psychotic Borderline Personality Disorder woman (my severely abusive mother).

Some of what went wrong turned into a frozen kind of perpetual despair that paralyzed joy in members of my ancestry.  I would be willing to bet that not one of my most immediate ancestors was able to get through their lifetime without unresolved family trauma eventually overtaking them and beating them into the ground.

I see some kind of pattern of people in my family being able to turn all the way around to look the other way while the real truth, the actual truth about what had hurt and continued to hurt people flew right on by and disappeared.  Why?  What purpose does it serve for people to IGNORE the truth about trauma in families?  Do we think ourselves weak if we name the truth when what is true doesn’t quite please us?  Even when what actually happens is that these unspoken silent invisible truths end up destroying us?

I don’t know right now what I think of the implications of my title.  I don’t need to know right now.  I know the book itself has been written and now is being turned into a book — well, whatever a book actually IS in today’s epublishing market.

Today I am honing in on my title in such a way that my wording feels right.  In spite of the 18 years of horrendous and bizarre abuse I experienced, it is not the abuse itself that matters to me at this point.  I want to understand the trauma that bit my mother in the first place, that infected her so that she became the brutal raging crazy monster she turned into.  I know she was not born that way.  Something in the conditions of her own childhood MADE her that way.

And whatever that something was, my best guess is that it had to do with unresolved trauma that had been in her family — just as had been in my father’s family — long before either one of my parents were born.

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