Tag: violence

+EXPERTS LEAVE US KNOWING WE NEED ‘SOMETHING MORE’

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I would like to recommend (with the following reservations) the book

Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem by Kimberlee Roth, Freda B. Friedman, and Randi Kreger.

The authors have created a recovery tool for anyone exposed in childhood to the whims and rages of a parent with this form of mental illness.  The book is clearly divided into sections which cover NEARLY every topic of interest for those of us who had to endure childhoods under the care (or more likely the lack of care) of a parent whose mind never worked correctly.

Yet while the book carries within its pages hundreds of tips for working out our adult ‘issues’ created within this malevolent kind of childhood, it does not, in my opinion, speak to the single most important FACT that those of us who were raised from birth by parents – particularly mothers – who manifested the most severe ‘style’ of Borderline Personality Disorder known within the human species know instinctively about ourselves.

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This book, like most others except The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook–What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz, does not discuss or present the very real brain development changes that occur as a result of an infant being raised in a truly malevolent environment.

I find that altered brain development is a completely ignored consequence of being raised by a severe Borderline parent.  I remain disappointed that the experts in the topic of working to recover a healthy self and a healthy life post-malevolent childhoods do not consider that for every word of their expert writing those of us who HAVE one of these altered brains read, we are still left ‘starving and alone’, bereft of the most important information we need in order to make use of the information all the experts are giving us.

No matter how helpful, how accurate, how comprehensive, how informed or how ‘scientifically based’ any Borderline Personality Disorder recovery book may intend to be, either for the BPD person or for their offspring, if altered brain development is not presented as THE SINGLE most significant consequence of a malevolent childhood, then the authors’ words are missing the point.

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Even though Roth, Friedman and Kreger at least mention insecure attachment disorders in their book, they do not develop the potential that exists within this one crucial sphere of thought to its REAL conclusion.  Insecure attachment patterns from birth, if they are not altered and improved by secure attachment patterns with other adequate early infant and childhood caregivers, result in the development of a changed brain.

These changed brains will NEVER process incoming information in the same way as a securely attached, benevolently formed brain will.  When this fact is ignored in any ‘self help’ book — which I might add currently includes ALL of them – the foundational brain of the person trying to make sense of the ‘help’ and apply it to themselves is left floating around without the information most needed in order to make improvements in their lives.

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This, to me, amounts to a situation similar to one in which instruction is given in how to drive a car safely without anyone ever acknowledging or addressing the single most important aspect of the task – one must not be completely sightless.  It’s like being instructed to build a modern day wood frame house while at the same time NOT being told that one must have something to measure with, cut the wood with, and drive the nails with.

In other words, every ‘self help’ book I have ever read, with the exception of those who specifically begin from the start by identifying the fundamental brain changes that result from infant and child development in a malevolent world, make major assumptions about their readership that leaves those of us with these changed brains flailing around in the dark.  We know from our insides that something is missing.  I am here to say the missing information is not due to any fault of ours.  The missing information is in the writing and work of the ‘experts’ who are presenting THEIR information while ignoring what some of us know absolutely to be true.

‘Un-ordinary’ infancies and childhoods create ‘un-ordinary’ brain-mind-bodies.  Those with severe Borderline Personality Disorder are among such people, and it is likely that without outside assistance during our childhoods that those of us raised by these BPD parents end up with ‘un-ordinary’ brains, as well.

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The tricky part of trying to locate, access and use information helpful to improving the quality of our lives is that those people with an ‘ordinary brain’ and those with an ‘un-ordinary’ brain might both be left needing to build the proverbial modern wood frame house.  The first have the box of tools, the second do not – and may well NEVER have them because the brain that was built inside their skulls from birth was simply not made to be an ‘ordinary brain’.

Yes, the brain is plastic and can accomplish incredible feats of adjustment.  But the fundamental brain regions, circuits, pathways and patterns of operation are built into the brain’s structure before the age of two.   These most fundamental aspects of a brain, once it has been built, cannot be changed in any fundamental way.  It would seem far more helpful to me to have experts tell me what these brain changes are, how to recognize how they affect me, and how to work most constructively in order to try to create a quality life in spite of them.

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Without information about my changed brain, I am left alone deep within a pitch dark cave without a source of light.  The ‘self help’ books can tell me what it’s like up there on the earth’s surface, but they do not describe where I am to start with, nor do they give me a single solitary clue how to find my way to the surface so that I can try to begin the journey they so helpfully describe for those who are already there.

Yet even if I do somehow miraculously make my way to the ‘ordinary surface’, my journey there would STILL be a far different one than ‘ordinary’ because of my brain-mind-body changes.  I would STILL be left trying to translate their helpful instructions about how to ‘drive safely’ even though I lack the sightedness these authors take completely for granted.  Where DOES this quandary leave me?  Let me ‘count the ways’ I know there’s a field on the surface that is not covered with daisies.

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I was raised from birth by a Narcissistic Psychotic Borderline.  At the same time I can say that my experiences were obviously an exception to the RULE, I can also say that this proves to me that what is considered to be the RULE is fallible.  Therefore in my thinking the RULE is not a RULE at all.  It is simply an assumption about brain formation based on what optimal caregiving environments produce.

Similar breaches of this RULE, as I experienced them, produced my mother’s changed brain during her own early development, as well.  Therefore, in my thinking, obviously the RULE cannot apply to my experience as all ‘self help’ authors seem to assume.

My mother and I, as exceptions to the RULE, must therefore exist in a world that operates under completely different rules, and we ended up with a brain-mind-body that resulted from our adaptations to this altered ‘un-ordinary’ world.  Because nobody tells me what these changes really ARE, I am left trying to figure them out for myself.

Most simply put, I do not receive ‘ordinary’ information in an ‘ordinary’ way.  From those beginnings, I do not process the ‘un-ordinary’ information I receive or act on it in an ‘ordinary’ way, either.  Just taking these simple facts into account, I cannot read any ‘self help’ book and make any ‘ordinary’ sense out of it unless I understand that those books are not addressing the altered reality that I was forced to grow up adjusting to.

Let me give you a few examples.  Because from the time I was born I had no way to count on a ‘good mother’ appearing in response to my infant needs, my brain’s processing systems had to expand themselves to accept that incoherent malevolent chaos was just as equally likely to respond to ME as was coherent benevolent niceness.   Well before the age of three months my brain would already have changed from ‘ordinary optimal’ development as a consequence.

When an infant ordinarily needs something and that something is out-of-sight, it can ordinarily begin to form brain circuits that allow it to WAIT HOPEFULLY because it can TRUST that its caregiver is going to return to take care of it.  If incoherent malevolent chaos is just as likely to appear as the alternative, it seems perfectly obvious to me that this tiny forming brain is not going to have the ‘ordinary’ experiences required to build an ‘ordinary’ brain – from the start.

Most simply put, because my mother lacked the capacity to respond to me as my own self, nothing inside of me was able to respond back to her from my own internal ‘self place’.  I simply have what I can most clearly describe as blank spots in my brain where ‘ordinary’ patterns and circuits were supposed to develop.  As a consequence I am NOT an ‘ordinary’ person and never will be, no matter what good use I try to make out of information contained in expert self help books.

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As a result of my development within the malevolent conditions my mother was just as likely to provide for me as her periodic – and undependable – benevolent conditions, my brain did not build within itself any ‘ordinary’ potential to process human interactions.  This is a complicated condition that I will not cover in detail here.  But I will say here that as a consequence, my right brain did not grow to include ‘ordinary’ processing of social or emotional information.  Its connection with information in my body is different.

Once the major development of the right brain is completed before the age of one, it is time for the left brain to begin going through its major developmental stages.  Under extreme malevolent conditions, there is no way that the left brain can develop ‘ordinarily’, either.  It is not possible for the corpus coliseum, the region of the brain that transfers information between the right and left brain for processing, to develop ‘ordinarily’, either.

That’s just the very earliest beginnings of what I know about changes in my own (and my mother’s) brain development.  We could move on in our understanding of how the development of an infant’s left brain ‘happy’ center’s neurons are affected, how the ability to process social cues is affected, how the brain’s ability to form understandings about trust and hope is affected, how the brain’s neurological information processing about the self is affected, and about how all aspects of communication from the molecular to the verbal are affected as a result of a brain’s ability to adapt a human being’s development to and under malevolent environmental conditions.

There is absolutely no way that the higher functioning cortical areas develop in any ‘ordinary’ fashion, either.  As a result, future planning, decision making, and the ability to understand consequences with cognitive flexibility are affected.

I personally know that my brain does not even process the fundamental concept of TIME in an ordinary way.  Yet I am even here only describing the proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’ of how extreme early infant and child abuse changes the fundamental ways a survivor’s brain-mind-body changes.

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In other words, even if we take every single expert self help book and put them together in one volume, the OTHER volume that some of us most need to read simply does not exist – yet.  We are left trying to find a fit for ourselves as we attempt to understand ourselves in relation to the more ‘ordinary’ world we were hatched into as adults.

I’m not saying that we can’t make good use of information found in books that do not recognize our ‘un-ordinary’ reality or what our changed brains are really like.  I’m simply making a point that no matter how hard these self help books might try to help us a create a more ‘ordinary’ life, they are evidently unable to address the specifics of what actually happened to some of us.

For any of us who have ever had the attempted-recovery-based feeling of “YES, but……..  “ when we try to apply what seems to make sense to everyone else but not QUITE to us, we are absolutely correct!!  There IS something missing – but the trouble is NOT with us.  The trouble is that what happened to us has yet to be truly recognized for what it is – the creation of ‘un-ordinary’ individuals who were able to adapt physiologically on our most fundamental levels to endure unimaginably malevolent early developmental conditions.

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We are truly extraordinary people, and it evidently remains for us to identify and describe exactly what that means!!  Nobody else seems able to do that for us!

We don’t have to look beyond ourselves to know what living with a changed brain is like.  We’ve made that quantum leap in understanding.  We were forced to, or we would not have survived the malevolent world we developed in.

The rest of the ‘expert’ world just has to catch up with us.  We know what we are talking about.  We are our own living proof!

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+AMAZING DISCOVERY – YET ANOTHER OF MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD STORIES

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Found 091109

[enclosed old piece of paper with April 22, 1959 homesteading letter mother had written to her mother, and that grandmother had returned to my mother.  The writing of this story on this paper is in my grandmother’s handwriting.]

Grandmother’s note on the bottom of the page says:

“Dictated by Mildred Cahill Lloyd when about 8 years old”

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The Laughing Brook

Once there was a beautiful, gurgling Brook.  Its name was “Laughing Brook.”  The animals in the nearby woods gave its name to it because the wind came and wrinkled it up and made it murmur, and gurgle, and smile all the way down the hillside.

The animals came to drink at this brook, never knowing it was a fairy brook.  Some animals were good and some were bad.  Those that were bad turned into snakes after drinking the water from the brook, but those that were good stayed as they were, beautiful and kind to each other.

There was one good fairy that lived in the Black Forest where this Laughing Brook flowed by.  That fairy had a firefly that lived with her near a waterfall.  The fireflies lit up her way as they flew about the country.

There was a lovely meadow near the brook where daisies and buttercups and clover grew.  In the meadow there was a big red barn where the farmer kept his cows and hens and pigs and horses.

One night as the fireflies were flying around with the fairies watching over the good people they saw a fire in the hay in the barn.  At once the [written they] fireflies and fairies flew in the window of the farmer’s bedroom and flash their lights so brightly and after that the farmer and his wife woke up, saw the fire from their window, and rushed out in time to save all the animals and most of the barn.

Ever after that the farmer and his wife watched every night to see the fireflies at work and play.

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Although I cannot at present access this article, in light of my mother’s childhood writings I find the following to be a fascinating concept, as reflected in this article:

Rites of Passage and the Borderline Syndrome: Perspectives in Transpersonal Anthropology By LARRY G. PETERS

The following seems to be all that is available as an abstract for this article, found in Questia, Vol. 17, 1994.

How, but in custom and ceremony, are innocence and beauty born?

— W. B. Yeats

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast certain prevalent contemporary pathological symptoms — parasuicide (especially im­pulsive “self cutting” or wrist cutting and other forms of self-mutilation), anorexia/bulimia, substance abuse, and a predisposition to frequent tran­sient psychotic episodes, all of which, as a constellation, combination, or in some cases individually, are identified by clinicians as presumptive signs of “borderline personality disorder” (BPD) — with those same behaviors in tribal societies. The focus is anthropological and cross-cultural; it is a study of rites of passage, many of which in­volve food deprivations (fasting and purgations), body mutilations (cir­cumcision, scarification), accompan­ied by episodes of altered or nonordi­nary states of consciousness (visions, loss of boundaries). It is argued that there is a relationship between BPD and the failure of Western culture to provide context and myth for mean­ingful rites of passage. The typical symptoms of borderline disorder have neither an appropriate cultural chan­nel nor symbol system to provide di­rection and consequently are not fully appreciated by clinicians. However, these “symptoms” may actually be at­tempts at self-healing gone astray in a culture bereft of an integrative spiritual and ritualistic context, and there­fore without an education for tran­scendent states of consciousness.

Cultural Bound Syndromes (CBSs)

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Peters’ writing seems connected to a field of study called ‘The Anthropology of Consciousness.’  The work of Dr. Larry G. Peters, a Tibetan Shaman, presents the most accurate link I have yet found between my mother’s Alaskan homesteading obsession, her spirituality, and her mental illness.

A child has a different consciousness than an adult does.  I have always been able to sense my mother’s childhood consciousness within her childhood writings:  +MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD STORIES.

Having tonight discovered this additional piece of her childhood writing confirms for me that her mind, even by the age of 8, was already grappling on a profound – though unconscious – creative level with archetypal issues related to death and destruction, salvation, punishment and consequence, transformations, relationships with the natural world, and with the fundamental issues related to GOOD and BAD, RIGHT and WRONG that connect to the Borderline Personality Disorder spectrum of symptoms.

I absolutely believe that my mother had child onset pre-borderline conditions that are reflected in her childhood writings – if anybody then could, or even anybody now can make those connections.  I know a lot about my mother.  I was the victim of her insane severe abuse for 18 very long years.

My mother’s inner mental structure was built from very early childhood and probably from her earliest infancy upon a BROKEN understanding of good versus bad.  Whatever psychotic break occurred during her delivery of me was enough to toss her completely over the edge.

I was not saved from the fire as her child.  She used the term ‘snake’ in reference to me.  She believed I was not human, that I was the devil’s child.  I was the outward personification of everything BAD she could not accept about herself.  The OTHER mother, the OTHER Mildred desired to live with the fairies and the fireflies.

I believe the homestead became the outward objectification of the good world her “Laughing Brook” existed in, and the act of homesteading itself became a perpetual rite of passage for my mother as she sought what could not ‘follow her around the bend’.  Homesteading was about her need for healing.  Even her abuse of me was about her need for healing (because if she could ‘deal’ with me her own projected badness would be healed).

The most amazing thing is that Alaska DOES have the power to heal.  It even now remains mostly pure and that natural purity is what raised-up humans throughout our evolution, and it does have the power to heal.  In my mother’s case, however, it was not enough.  (Read PRESENTING THE HOMESTEADING – her letters.)

The rites of passage that Peters makes reference to occur within a healthy brain, mind and psyche.  The sick psyche of my mother’s could not have been saved past the age of 8 no matter what culture she had been a part of.  My mother was born an extremely fragile, at-risk child.  The conditions within her childhood environment from birth might have been adequate to a less sensitive and vulnerable child.  I believe that the conditions of my mother’s childhood conspired to destroy my mother.  She, in turn, very nearly destroyed me.

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This work that I am doing with my mother’s letters does seem to be about retrieving a life of suffering from the ‘lost and found’ — both hers and mine.

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Mother’s letter to Grandmother May 23, 1959 about the homestead:

“I told Bill I hope to live to be 90 and never leave here.  (I want to be buried here!)  I told him I even yearn to be a child again and live here – such a kingdom….”

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+HEREIN LIES THE MONSTER HOMESTEADING OBSESSION SEED

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*Age 7 – Mother’s Letter (#2) April 14, 1959 – The Homesteading Obsession Grows

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I was seven when this letter was written.  I am still in the transcription process for the homesteading era this letter belongs within, but in this letter my mother’s fanatic obsession with homesteading begins to show itself clearly.

The rest of her letters (as they are being transcribed) can be seen here:

PRESENTING THE HOMESTEADING

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+WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT TRAUMA?

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I would think that in their own way everyone in our great nation recognizes today as the 8th anniversary of one of the most terrible crisis that ever occurred within the boundaries of our country.  Our hearts continue to go out to all those who suffered terror and unimaginable trauma as a result of the destruction brought upon them by the acts of terrorists whose own agendas allowed them to kill and destroy wantonly.  At the same time we remember each person and their loved ones whose lives have been touched in the aftermath of war, destruction and bloodshed that has followed 9-11 and the World Trade Center attacks.

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The most devastating consequences of trauma to humans can never be measured in financial terms.  Neither do we yet know the true reality of the way humans respond to extraordinary traumatic stressors.  Continued research into the ongoing, intergenerational consequence of the Holocaust’s traumatic effects shows that trauma can be CLEARLY passed down to offspring.

Researchers will be working to uncover the long range consequences of trauma caused by 9-11 for a long time to come.  They know that babies of women pregnant during the 9-11 terrorist attacks have been found to be born with the ‘markers’ for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of their mother’s exposure to the attacks.

We are learning more and more both about how resilient humans are and about our fragility.  Every-day people do not usually pay attention to the results of millions and millions of dollars spent on research about the consequences of trauma to humans, and yet this research can inform our thinking in new and more enlightened ways.

The Atlanta study looked at genetic potential as it interacts with children’s responses to trauma.  It found, among other things, that a child’s safe and secure attachment to ANY adult in its life influences to the positive that child’s ability to overcome traumatic experiences.  In another corner of the world researchers have discovered the same thing.  Although exposed equally to unimaginable terrors and traumas, the children of South Africa end up with severe longterm traumatic responses while the children of Kenya do not.

The more damaged South African children live in a country long torn apart, in fact all but dismantled by generations of influences that have destroyed the secure social attachment fabric of their culture.  Kenya has not suffered this intergenerational destruction of its ongoing cultural strengths so that their children have the benefit – in spite of current terrible traumas and tragedies – of being ‘held’ within a culture that still has its social supports and secure attachment systems somewhat in place.

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We cannot realistically consider the long range consequences of traumatic experience without considering the attachment contexts that form and support (or don’t) the members of any human society.  These attachments begin before birth, as the responses of infants still very much physiologically attached to their mothers during 9-11 demonstrated.

Children are held and supported by the fabric of the attachment support net that their parents either do or do not have in their lives.  Without firmly safe and secure human attachments from the beginning of our lives, we are at astronomically increased risk of suffering long term devastation in our adult lives from any traumatic experience that we might later have.  It is time that all of us realize that attachment is the single most important aspect of our lives because we are a social species.

What this means to me is that all of us, including and perhaps most importantly any mental health expert that works with troubled people of all ages, must begin to include attachment disorder understanding, concepts and vocabulary into our cultural base of knowledge about what makes our lives ‘good’ and what makes them ‘bad’.  I doubt that more than a small handful of mental health experts EVER talk with their adult clients about insecure attachment disorders.

We reserve any discussion or awareness of secure and insecure attachment disorders ONLY as it might relate to ‘troubled’ children.  Where do we think child attachment disorders disappear to once someone magically crosses some invisible line into adulthood?  They go nowhere.  Our attachment orders or disorders are as much ingrained into us as any other physiological response system our brain, body, nervous and immune system has.

We HAVE to begin talking about our attachment system as it operates in our adulthood because it formed who we are and affects how we respond both to the good and to the bad in our lives – at all times!  Those who might be having the most difficult time recovering from the devastating trauma of 9-11 are no exception.  But has ANYONE ever talked to them about their attachment system?

I am willing to bet that any adult who was formed in an extremely malevolent childhood environment and who did not have the benefit of having a safe and secure adult attachment person in their childhood life, is among those who lack the necessary resiliency to recuperate fully from any traumas that they experience.  We are doing nobody any favors by ignoring the absolute, fundamental reality of how our secure or insecure attachment system governs our ability to cope with trauma.

I therefore encourage readers to spend some time investigating some of the information connected to the live-links provided in this post.  You might help yourself beyond belief, or be able to assist someone you know in their efforts to deal with any ongoing traumatic consequences in their lives – including their ability to parent effectively.

Trauma is not bliss, and neither is ignorance.  It is the response-ability of all of us to arm ourselves with any and all information that can help us understand what we can better do to improve secure attachments in the world – no matter who we are, what age we are, or what we have experienced.

Thank you for reading this post.  Comments are welcome and appreciated.

+ATTACHMENT: SMART AND STUPID RESEARCH

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+”I WANT MY LETTERS NOW PLEASE”

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I can’t help but stop and ponder the portion of my mother’s letter I copied below.  My ‘sick’ mother would no doubt be turning over in her grave at the thought of her daughter, Linda, DARING to be so audacious as to take on the ‘coveted’ task of working with these ‘coveted’ letters.

My mother was cremated, so no grave to turn over in.  Her ashes were spread over her beloved homestead.  I was not there when this was done.

But I am here with this collection of 50-year-old letters, and for whatever reason it seems that I BELONG to this task that my mother could never complete herself.

I believe that in the next world our sicknesses are removed from us.  In that world, my mother can love me.  She can love herself.  In that world I do not believe that my mother minds that I am working on the task of putting order to this disheveled collection of envelopes, mixed up undated letters, journal fragments and thoughts that she wrote those 50 years ago.  And in both worlds, I can love my mother.

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In my mind there is some version of ‘mothering my mother’ going on for me here.  I can never fully explain and can never justify the insane abuse that she perpetrated against me, no matter WHAT the stress level was in her and my father’s life.

I work with these pages with love, care and gentleness.  I offer in my small way the kind of post-loving to my mother’s lifetime homesteading legacy as if she were one of my children.  I was able to love my children in spite of the terrible abuse that was done to me.  I believe a major contributing factor to my ability to love came from being on that mountain.

If she had not loved that mountain, had not, with my father, somehow found what it took to get that homesteading done, my ability to love would not have been exercised enough in my brain to allow those circuits and pathways to evolve, develop and grow.

My mother’s mental illness would have followed ME anywhere during my childhood.  It began with my birth and certainly flourished in its terribly sick way in Los Angeles LONG before I was moved to Alaska a month before my 6th birthday.  My mother’s mental illness was intertwined completely with her homesteading experience.  But the mountain was pure and sustaining.  It did help her.  It helped me.  I know this.

So when I read these following words that my mother wrote to her mother about the letters that she sent to my grandmother and WANTED BACK I understand that they DID belong to my mother during her lifetime.  She is no longer here to claim them.  They were her legacy that has somehow been passed on to me, as ironical as that seems to me to be.

Or is it irony?  Is it some strange kind of opportunity to orchestrate a healing of some kind between us?  How do I set aside the insanity and abuse as I work with these letters she wrote 50 years ago, knowing at the same time that behind the scene of her words existed a brutal, terrifying, dangerous, violently destructive mother toward me — really just me — that does not seem to appear anywhere on these pages that she wrote?

I am not going to waste this opportunity.  I have no solid or clear idea about what good use transcribing these letters is to anybody other than me — and perhaps my family.  I only know that I am MOVED to put them into order, to do what my mother could not do — was prevented by her mental illness from doing in her lifetime.

Somehow through all the progressive years of mental deterioration my mother’s mind went through long after I left home and until the time of her death in 2002, she did somehow manage to retain and protect these letters.

I feel I am honoring my mother in some kind of precious way by helping to construct a more coherent life story for her, and for each of her six children that shared our childhoods with her.  After all, the disorganized, disoriented incoherency of an insecure attachment disorder is more than reflected in this mess of papers as well as in the story they tell.  That does not mean — in spite of the unbelievable suffering she caused me when she threw her ‘fits of rage’ during the 18 years of abuse toward me that she could not STOP — that there is not still something beautiful to be found in anybody’s life, including hers.

Because life itself is a precious gift.  Because once my mother left THIS world I believe she left her terrible illness behind her.  She also left these letters.  Which voice of my mother’s do I now want to hear?

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Monday, May 18, 1959

“Dear Mother,

*I’ll be expecting all letters back in next mail!!  [Linda note:  So that 50 years later I can transcribe them now, put them in order, and let their words tell her story — now!]

Received your latest letter on the way to town.  Idea of book, good, but as you know it’s been my idea from beginning but rush job NO – Please send me back my letters now – I write to you instead of keeping notes – I don’t want a review.  I want my letters NOW PLEASE if you want to really know all that happens this is the only way I can keep you informed but you must send each letter right back so I can put it in my 3 hole note book in order.  So please send my letters back [from] March on –

I have so much to write and my ideas are endless and there were none at apartment so at least the tough homesteading brings release of ideas and who knows, perhaps some day a book or a movie but it must be done in my way or not at all.  You alone can understand that….they are MINE and MINE ALONE…. They are MINE to do with as I want.  You must never use them in any way.  Promise???”

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Read the rest of this letter here:

*May 1959 Mother’s Letters

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+HUMAN AND HORSE MOTHERING – WHAT’S IN COMMON?

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I wanted to share something from a book I’m reading, The Body Language of Horses by Tom Ledbetter, Bonnie Ainslie.  My brother gave it to me while I was visiting him in Alaska.

I’ve never really had the longed for luxury of being able to spend time with horses.  I’ve always been too poor, too involved in keeping my children clothed and fed with a roof over our heads.

I find as I read this book that I feel like the authors are talking about me.  How can that be?  I am not a horse, yet I am like them.  Because of the extreme abuse I suffered from the time I was little, and because of the overall and overriding insanity present in the home I grew up in, I did not grow up to be an ordinary person.

I have tried to fit in.  I’ve tried to learn the ‘human language’ that others speak not most importantly with their words, but with their body language and the expressions on their faces.  Because my mother was psychotic, because she could not interact with me normally, I simply did not get the same brain circuitry.  Not even the regions of my brain developed according to ‘ordinary’ experiences or patterns, as I have been explaining in my writings.

I can, therefore, more closely relate to what these authors are saying about horses than I can any book I ever read about people.  I might understand a book about all sorts of other kinds of animals if one was written like this one is, but these authors express a rare and comprehensive understanding of how it is to be a horse.  I am amazed and I am feeling calmer as I read it.

Ainslie and Ledbetter explain that every time a human overwhelms a horse with human demands and misconceptions, the horse has no choice but to act like less than what it is – less than a horse.  I understand.  I was not allowed to be a child.  The way my mother treated me did not allow me to be a child just like some humans do not allow horses to be horses.

All the many parallels I find between horses and myself create inside of me a sense that I am so much more correct in my understanding of the changed body and brain of a severely abused child compared to how a child is SUPPOSED to have been allowed to develop that I really do feel like I am a member of nearly a completely different species than are ‘ordinary’ people.

And I know I am not alone.  Therefore, as I share this single paragraph from this book (so far) I wish readers to understand that human mothers create in their offspring the kind of person their infants and children grow into.  I am aware that genetics plays a part in who we become, but researchers are becoming more and more clear that severe abuse alters how genetic potential expresses itself.

Every time an infant and a young child is not given what it needs to develop into its optimal self some life long consequence to the negative is going to appear.  Only in situations where the most important resiliency factor of the AVAILABILITY of some other adequate early caregiver’s interference in the harmful influence of the severely maltreating mother is there, in the end, hope that the effects of the mother’s severe abuse will not permanently and seriously alter the person her offspring turns out to be.

I encourage readers to FEEL the following words.  Enlarge your perspective and imagine what these words are saying if you think about them in terms of the variances in the quality of human mothering and caregiving.  In human terms mothers are not forced, for the most part, to compete with other mothers for what is needed to care for their infants and children.

And yet the end result of a human continuum of living a quality, happy and successful life is still directly connected to what our mothers (or other early caregivers) gave to us.  Harm and hatred to infants DOES NOT allow them to develop into fundamentally happy people – and I don’t care how financially well-off such an offspring turns out to be.  Look at their relationships as well as financial standing.

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From The Body Language of Horses by Tom Ledbetter, Bonnie Ainslie:

“The lead mare wins dominance by physical and psychological means.  She rules as long as she remains vigorous.  Her powers serve twin purposes – first choice of food and space (a) for herself and (b) for her young.  By natural selection, the other mares organize in declining order of priority, with the lowest and most subservient getting the last and least for herself and her foal.  Unless the pasture is inhumanely crowded, everyone subsists.  But the psychological effects on the foals are substantially important.  As Number One in its own age group, the lead mare’s baby becomes habituated to the deference of its peers and their dams.  If well bred, soundly constructed and not too severely disoriented by premature weaning, the Number One foal emerges as Number One weanling, most likely to succeed in what humanity calls the Game of Life.”  (P. 64)

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We are not used to thinking about human success, including psychological success, in these terms.  We do not FIRST and FOREMOST understand that it is the health and well-being of mothers (early caregivers) that MOST affects the lifelong outcome of her offspring.

In American, in particular, we want to believe that everyone is equal, and that all can “make it” if they want to and if they work for it.  We do not want to face the fact that deprivations of a serious enough nature from conception to age 2 (and then through age 7) can so set a person off course that they will never be able to completely make up the difference.

Yes, humans may be far more complicated than horses are.  That means to me that we are at an even higher risk for negative consequences from malevolent mothering – not less.  Once our culture truly understands this fact, they will be able to give us the chances we TRULY need to find a way to live well in spite of our malevolent childhoods.

In my thinking, we have to be very clear and very careful about how we assess who and how we are in the world made mostly by people who had the benevolent childhoods we all deserved – and some received the opposite of.  Most do not become members of the ‘lower hierarchy’ because we choose to be there, any more than a horse chooses to me maltreated by a human being.

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+LINK TO TODAY’S WRITING: MEETING MY BORDERLINE MOTHER’S FRIEND

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J.V. was probably the calm to my mother’s storm.  J.V. was unshakable.  She was invincible.  She was consistent, steady, not emotionally involved, clear, outspoken and wise.  My mother could not throw the lasso of her insanity around J.V. and yank her in.  She could not employ J.V. to join with her in craziness in any way.  My mother could not cajole J.V. into any role in her ongoing destructive drama of her life.  Somehow J.V. had something rarer than any precious gem.  She had the ability to be a severe borderline’s friend for 46 years.

This link below connects to this piece that I wrote today about my visit in Alaska with my mother’s friend:

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*Age 58 – MEETING MY MOTHER’S FRIEND

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+SHARING LAST NIGHT’S NATURAL WORLD ATTACHMENT DREAM

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I am thinking today about the ‘evolutionarily altered’ brain as Dr. Martin Teicher’s research group describes it, that those of us who were severely maltreated from birth may have developed.

I am thinking about the special gifts, abilities and wisdom (as well as the risks) that having such a brain has given us as we attempt to negotiate survival in the greater, wider world that we ‘hatched’ into once we left our abusive homes.

While I am not presently free to share with you the neighbor homesteader’s email that this one of mine is in response to, I am going to share what I wrote to back to him today (see below).

I am particularly thinking about any relationships with the natural world that those of us so abused might have had in our childhoods that built themselves particularly into our right brains as we grew up.  I am very clear, especially since my recent trip to Alaska, that my experiences with the wilderness were critically important to my development.  As my ‘evolutionarily altered’ brain was developing, information from the wilderness was able to build itself into me in such a positive way that I credit it to the largest extent with creating who I am today.

I suspect that childhood attachment experiences to pets, gardening, anything to do with the out-of-doors in any way fed us as abused children and as a result we have special gifts today that ‘ordinary’ safe and securely attached-from-birth people very possibly do not have.  We very well might have ancient DNA ancestral memories that were activated within us for our very survival that the ‘ordinary’ people did not have any particular use for.

While all people need air, water, food, shelter to survive, our circumstances as severely abused children very well pushed us toward the ‘evolutionary altered’ reality that Teicher’s group describes in more ways than our current thinking has allowed us to realize.

I believe it is worth our thought to consider how our childhood experiences with the natural world not only allowed us to survive, but helped us to do that in the best way possible.  I believe as we define for ourselves who we REALLY became, and shed the shallow half-truths of mental illness diagnostic categories, we will find within ourselves some powerful gifts that belong not only to us, but to the entire human race.  Do we, indeed know a more ancient human reality?

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My email today to fellow Alaskan homesteader who grew up on his family’s homestead at the foot of the mountain in the Eagle River Valley where I spent most of my childhood:

Dear Valley Brother,

Thank you for your words.  I absolutely hear what you are saying.

I went on a 8-mile hike to Rabbit Lake with my brother and his wife, a long one for me as I am out of shape and do not have my same body back from post-chemo.  My left foot has been sore and swollen ever since.  I rubbed an Arnica gel onto it last night, and the pain left instantly.  Yet I wonder if my foot didn’t talk to me in my dream last night.

I so rarely remember my dreams these past 12 years that it seems to me often that they have left me.  Last night I woke many times but could not leave this dream.

I heard that the pristine earth has a language that humankind once knew, but that now is all but forgotten.  I heard that the last person who spoke in that language passed away and I knew in the dream that the language is at present one of human’s lost ancient languages.

Yet in my dream I understood that the language is still spoken by the earth itself in certain places, and when we walk over that land that language speaks to us through our bodies with words that form themselves exactly as our feet touch the land as we walk over it.

I heard many forgotten words, for many aspects of the world.  As I walked in sleep over Alaska in my dream I heard many ancient words that spoke of the ancient world that is itself seeming to pass away as humans change the land in different ways in modern times.

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I am reminded of another dream I had 12 years ago when I lived for two years in Sioux Falls, SD.  The most beautiful black stallion came to me pleading with me to do something to help him and his People.

“We have always before now been able to run and sleep in quiet places on the land.  We can no longer find any place that is peaceful.  Everywhere the land is always noisy now.  It can find no rest and neither can we.  Please help us.”

I knew what the stallion was saying to me.  I felt his desperation and his sadness.  But I could think of nothing I could do to help him.

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My brother and I also went down to Seward while I was in Alaska, and walked down the path to Exit Glacier.  There is a sign post there for where the edge of the glacier was in 1951.  (I hear from your mom that you were born November of the same year that I was).  In my dream last night I knew that where the glaciers are leaving the land there is a quickly vanishing purity still held within the rocks themselves as they lay exposed to the sky, perhaps for the first time.  That is where the ancient words can most strongly be heard.

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I am happy to share these words with you because I know you will understand.

Again, thanks!  Linda

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+SOME FANTASTIC LINKS ON CHILD ABUSE AND BRAIN CHANGES!

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Greetings to each and every person who has visited this blog during the seven weeks of absence from writing here.  I am home now after more than 10,000 miles of traveling during the past seven weeks as I visited family and friends whom I love and who love me.

The time I spent in Alaska, the home of my heart, was everything I needed it to be in order for me to move forward with the writing of my book.

I will at this point be dividing my writing clearly between my book (which will not be appearing on this blog) and other assorted writing specifically for the blog.  As my precious Alaskan baby brother (now 44) told me, if it is my desire and my intention to write a book, then I need to do it.  He explained it to me this way:

A person might pick up tools and a block of wood intending to carve an image.  Perhaps they are not quite sure what image lies within the wood so they begin carving in process until that image becomes clear and the carving can then give it form.  If, however, that point never occurs where the image within the wood is found, shaped and born, all that will result from the effort of carving is a pile of wood shavings and dust.

I heard and understand the wisdom contained in my brother’s words, and I recognize that continuing to pour words out into my blog will not accomplish the creation of my book.  I will now separate the words that belong in my book from those that do not.

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As I continue through the process of getting my ‘home legs’ under me, I will at least post a few interesting links here for reader consideration!  Please follow some or all of these links – THEY ARE IMPORTANT!  Please also join me in my gratitude to every single person who is involved with this quality of work to further our understanding about the impact of severe child abuse on human development – and the work of everyone committed to ending child maltreatment around the globe.

Please also remember the abuse being done to the fragile web of life on our glorious planet and the suffering of so many species being caused by the thoughtless harm of all kinds caused by humans.

And, for a load of Alaskan MOOSE FUN….

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Back to School Tips: Parents Should Get Ready, Too!

Posted: 27 Aug 2009 08:21 AM PDT

Tips for parents on helping their kids succeed in school, adapter from information provided by our friends at Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey.

Amid the shopping trips for sharpened #2 pencils, crisp notebooks and new shoes, parents should start thinking about what they can do to become the best possible support system for their child this school year. The beginning of the new academic season is often the most important, as it sets the tone for a meaningful and successful year.  Research shows that students are more equipped to thrive academically and socially when parents are actively involved in their child’s education.

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Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW

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Going Big: Harlem Children’s Zone on This American Life

Posted: 18 Aug 2009 02:17 AM PDT

Hats off to This American Life for shining a spotlight on the solutions to the many problems that plague our nation’s impoverished families. Going Big, this week’s episode, profiles Geoffrey Canada, a pioneer in the fields of child and family support and poverty prevention. His organization, Harlem Children’s Zone, boasts tremendous outcomes for the families and community it serves, including:

  • l00% of students in the Harlem Gems pre-K program were found to be school-ready for the sixth year in a row.
  • 81% of Baby College parents improved the frequency of reading to their children.
  • $4.8 million returned to 2,935 Harlem residents as a result of HCZ’s free tax-preparation service
  • 10,883 number of youth served by HCZ in 2008.

Listen to the This American Life podcast.

Below is a five-minute video of moms talking about the challenges of raising children in Harlem and the difference HCZ is making in their lives.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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Brain Development Altered by Violence

By Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 1999; Page A3

LITTLETON, Colo.—More than a week had passed since Krystie DeHoff felt bullets and bombs explode all around her, since she ran in horror past young, dead bodies to safety. Now she was inching toward normality, shopping at King Soopers grocery, when the most innocent sound–a baby crying in his mother’s arms–set the Columbine High School massacre in motion again, this time in her mind. Her heart raced, her muscles coiled. She heard not a baby, but her classmates, shrieking. “All I could think was: MAKE HIM STOP!” she said.

READ MORE……

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Using Mental Strategies Can Alter

The Brain’s Reward Circuitry

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2008) — The cognitive strategies humans use to regulate emotions can determine both neurological and physiological responses to potential rewards, a team of New York University and Rutgers University neuroscientists has discovered. The findings, reported in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, shed light on how the regulation of emotions may influence decision making.

READ MORE….

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The Neural Self: The Neurobiology of Attachment

By Phil Rich, Ed.D., LICSW

It is its basis in biology that makes attachment theory unique among theories of psychology and child development. From the biological perspective, attachment is simply an evolutionarily-evolved process to ensure species survival, and is thus as much a part our biology as that of any animal.

From this perspective, cognitive schema and the resulting mental map is not merely a psychological phenomenon, but a physical entity, hard-wired into neural circuits and reflected in neurochemical and electrical activity within the central nervous system.

The mental map into which our experiences and memories are imprinted is thus a neurobiological structure, the result of synaptic processes, out of which human cognition and behavior emerges, resulting in LeDoux’s (2002) description of our “synaptic” self.

Siegel (2001) describes the pattern and clusters of synaptic firing as “somehow creat(ing) the experience of mind” (p. 69). He writes that “integration” reflects the manner in which functionally separate neural structures and processes cluster together and interact to form a functional whole – in this case, our selves.

READ MORE…..

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Child abuse marks genes, affects ability to cope: Study

By Margaret Munro , Canwest News Service

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Stress

Your Three Brains

The neurologist Paul MacLean has proposed that our skull holds not one brain, but three, each representing a distinct evolutionary stratum that has formed upon the older layer before it, like an archaeological site – he calls it the “triune brain.” MacLean, now the director of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behaviour in Poolesville, Maryland, says that three brains operate like “three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”.

READ MORE….

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+SUGGESTED BOOK ON BRAIN HEALING!

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I am still in the middle of traveling (went 4-wheeling and horse back riding today), and leave northern Minnesota tomorrow morning for a night’s stay at my son’s in Grand Forks, ND and then back down to my daughter’s in Fargo for another ten days before heading ‘home’ to Alaska to see my brothers and the land.

I could write volumes about my experiences thus far, but there’s only one thing I really want to mention right now.  My youngest sister generously sent me a copy of a book she was reading on her Kindle when I visited her in Seattle recently, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Ph.D., Jill Bolte Taylor.  I want to mention it here so that any of you who might find her book of value will have time to get a copy to read before I finally get a chance (after my travels) to write here about my own perception of the value of this book.

Although I highly recommend Jill’s book, because of the specific issues I present on this blog regarding the life long consequences of early severe child abuse as it affects — and alters — the development of the young brain, I suggest that readers might wish to actually begin their reading of “My Stroke of Insight” with Chapter 15 that begins on page 138.  Of course it would be preferrable to begin at the beginning, but the information that the author presents beginning on the page I mention here is most specifically related to “our” topic.

I have never read in any single book so many clear and helpfully identified suggestions about how to manage one’s BRAIN and therefore one’s quality of life!  Jill’s descriptions about how the two hemispheres of the brain operate cannot be matched!  As you read this book you will come to understand how hard-won her suggestions about how to live a ‘better’ life are.  Yet while it is not my intention to in any way demean, belittle or criticize Jill’s perspectives, I do wish to urge this blog’s readers to practice what I call the ‘cautionary’ approach to her statements about her experience with healing her own brain post-stroke. 

Reading the latter chapters in Jill’s book provide an excellent experience in finding the middle road between what people might be able to know and understand about their brains when those brains were formed under benovolent conditions (as Jill’s seems to have been pre-stroke damage), and what those of us whose brains formed under malevolent severe child abuse and neglect conditions need to learn and understand about our altered brain and how to heal it.

Interestingly, Jill’s professional life as a neuroanatomist is intimately connected to Harvard, the same educational and research ‘facility’ that birthed the concept that those of us who were severely abused as children have a changed (‘evolutionarily altered’) brain as a result of our development under extremely adverse conditions.  While there is much in Jill’s writing that I can see as being of value to me (on the middle road) I do not get the sense that she knows about the ‘Martin Teicher’s Group’s’ research about child abuse and how it changes brain development.  Jill’s book does, however, give an impressive jump-start opportunity to learn valuable information about healing a wounded brain – and a wounded self – and that certainly includes me/us.

I won’t go into any more detail at the moment, but I wanted to get this information onto the blog about this book with the hopes that readers will take a little time to pop on over to amazon.com (at least) and explore the value of this book for themselves.  It is a very reasonably priced book and is worth much more for the dime than any book I could possibly recommend!!

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I am far from feeling comfortable using other people’s computers, so will wait for a better  and more appropriate time  to activate those parts of my own brain and being that wait for a future date — when my current play-visit-self-expansion-challenge time has drawn to a close.  I wish you all the very best — and suggest that you read My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Ph.D., Jill Bolte Taylor as soon as you can get your hands on a copy!!  I promise — you will be glad that you did!  Rarely, in my opinion, does a book appear that more than carries its own weight in VALUE such as this one does!! 

Be sure to post your comments here about what you think of Jill’s book once you read it!!

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 Who’s Mother of the Year? 

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Step-up to Prevent Child Abuse!Promising Practices for Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect