Tag: witness abuse

+BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER – LEARNING ABOUT MY MOTHER’S BRAIN-MIND

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Several years ago when I first began research for my writing I had no intention of focusing on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  The more I work with the transcription of my mother’s Alaskan homesteading letters, the more I realize that it is impossible for me to avoid the subject.

According to the statistics at the bottom of this post, approximately 1 in 50 adult Americans suffer from BPD disorder.  If I think about how BPD affects our population, I realize that the offspring of these people are severely affected.  From that ‘contagion’ the grandchildren on down are affected, as well as every person intimately (and even not so intimately) connected to the BPD person.

My mother’s letter that I present here is simply another tiny slice of the words she expressed from within her own psyche, from within her own perspective of the world.  Having been her abused child for 18 years, I can read a universe of twisted darkness not only behind the words she chooses to write, but in all the spaces between those words and between those lines.

Taken together, my mother’s letters (once I have completed transcription of them) has the possibility of being the single most comprehensive ‘case history’ of a severe Borderline Personality Disorder person ever collected.

++++

My mother intended to write her book about her story — her way.  She could not do it.  I believe her true story is ABOUT the mental illness that kept her from doing so.  In her September 26, 1959 letter to her mother she states:

“Please now send back all letters and this – it’s my only record and I’m determined – a book I will write!!  — I will — !!”

This letter this sentence is taken from is longer and perhaps sheds more light on her psyche than does the one I post below, and is well worth reading.  It can be found at:

*September 1959 Mother’s Letters

I cannot personally imagine any scenario in which a BPD parent can be a truly adequate parent.  I see that all such a parent’s offspring are in danger of being used in the twisted inner psychic reality world that the Borderline condition creates — used as pawns and props of an externalized psyche of a parent that has no idea what “ordinary” reality is.  These children will not be recognized as the individual actual people that they are, and will not be related to as such by their BPD parent.

Nor do I believe that Borderlines as severe as my mother was ever have the capacity to understand “ordinary” people or reality — ever.  It is an admirable effort should these people seek therapy and desire to change — and some progress might be able to be made IN THE DIRECTION of ordinary — but they will never get there.

BPD individuals do not have “ordinary” brains.  Part of their condition is that they will NEVER understand how different their thinking and acting is.  From the outside — such as from the position of readers of my mother’s letters — the difference in their thinking is almost imperceptible.

But it IS there.  Hopefully by the time I complete the job of transcribing my mother’s letters I will be able to CLEARLY pinpoint and point to examples that will make these differences as clear as possible.  In addition we can more clearly discern the insecure disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder that lies at the root of the Borderline Personality Disorder’s condition.

So how do those of us who had such a parent, usually a mother, begin to untangle for ourselves the twisted childhood that has confused us at our basis from the time we were born?  I urge readers to take a long, close, hard, thoughtful look at these letters my mother wrote, both the one copied here below and the one at the end of the link to the September 1959 letters provided above.

But most importantly, pay attention to your body as you read them, particularly to your gut. Note any sensation that your body, through your right emotional brain sends you — not what your left brain very limited logical side might wish to convince you is real.

We also have hosts of cultural admonishments not to ‘think badly’ about other people.  I learned a long time ago that by looking for the truth about my mother I am NOT judging her.  I am trying to understand the devastatingly cunning and destructive mental illness that consumed her, and therefore her life.  My mother’s was an insidious disease.  My mission-possible is to offer some small insight into how to recognize both the conditions that contributed to its onset (almost always through childhood traumas) and the damage that it does particularly to the BPD’s offspring — especially to THE CHOSEN ONE for abuse such as I was.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

October 22, 1959 7:15 PM

Dear Mother,

Just a short ‘Hi’.  Bill is only working 10 hours now and I’ve been getting children’s meals and then he arrives and another meal to get so – tonite I’m waiting for HIM – so thought I’d write a note while waiting.

Just read your long letter – so nice and informative and interesting.  It’s funny how things work out.  Now you’re $ tight and we got that loan and can start paying you back.  Thank God.  We are watched over – for certain, for certain.

We’re tight too and eat beans and potatoes (Carrs gave us 100 pounds) but at least we can keep those D – vehicles.

I just finally got truck started.  All week it wouldn’t run but today it’s warmed up and now it’s raining and then will freeze!!!

Anyways went to garage to see about jeep and called Bill at work and he talked to mechanic.  I’ll know when he gets home.  It will cost but we’ve GOT to get it fixed.

Took truck up to get Linda at Brownies and J. at Cub Scouts.  I feel they need that.  {Linda note:  Brownies didn’t last long in my life, but it was at least something positive while it did.}

Those D – Vanover boys still don’t like J. and Julie came over and told him and that they say “none of the boys like him” and did I tell her.  I told her.  I told her they don’t even know HIM or his friends etc. etc. and I told her they were impolite and unmannerly to say such a thing and I knew plenty who didn’t like them!  [Linda note:  Chuckle!  Oh, great mom!  Look who’s talking!]

He felt terrible but I felt worse.  [Linda note:  That sucks having a mother like ours was!  She could only care about herself!] He must play baseball, ice skate, ski etc.  He MUST – we need $ for those things.

Oh Mom, it’s not easy to be a child – or a Mother.

They got report cards.  Linda got all B’s, J. got D in spelling and otherwise B’s.  I can’t understand it and wrote her a note about it.  She said when I visited school it was his arithmetic and he got C+ in that and all other B’s.  I’ll drill him now in that too!

Work work work

I worry over our 2 months [proving up time on the homestead].  Our neighbors – Pottle, Gunter etc. say “Who will know?”  Oh, I hate that.

I say We Know!  We’re Honest.

Spring is not good, roads are impassable – mud and all.  Remember?  Must be Nov, Jan, Feb or 2 of these.  Unless you come up in March and April.  I hate to depend on that.

Still no children – just Gracie.  I don’t feel she’s good publicity.  [Linda note:  Terrible thing to say about the “artist’s retarded daughter” in her Happy Time Nursery School, and read below!]

She’s a moron but easy for me!  She does say 20 words, plays dolls etc. ? But what do others think?

Oh Mom – I want a home and to live like other people.  I’m tired of all this mixed up MESS.

Tell C and C ‘Hi’ I’ll write Carolyn this week.

You come up in March and April and I’ll go back with you for a month – kids get out of school May 15th.  I could — ?  Love, Your Loving Daughter

+++ [in same envelope – says Friday]

Dear Mom,

Enclosing your scarf – I never wear it.  It just looks like YOU – please wear it again.

Also Bill forgot your letter so you’ll get 2.

No new news!  It’s rainy today.

I’m going to try and take children out of school for 2 months.

Seriously could you come up for 2 months or would it completely throw you?

Jo Anne just was over – told me not to tell a soul – nobody – just sold 80 acres he homesteaded in Mountain View for 150,000.

Imagine!

But Jerry got 3 F’s and is on 3 week trial.

Oh Mom – she’s so interested in our place I’m suspicious and sick until I get back [there]!!!  Love, Me

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

The rest of October 1959 letters here:

*October 1959 Mother’s Letters

The rest of the 1959 letters here:

*1959 MOTHER LETTERS

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Prevalence and incidence statistics for Borderline Personality Disorder:

See also prevalence and incidence page for Borderline Personality Disorder

Prevalance of Borderline Personality Disorder: 2 percent of adults (NIMH)

Prevalance Rate: approx 1 in 50 or 2.00% or 5.4 million people in USA [about data]

Incidence (annual) of Borderline Personality Disorder: 3,019 annual cases in Victora 1996 (DHS-VIC)

Incidence Rate: approx 1 in 1,510 or 0.07% or 180,074 people in USA [about data]

Incidence extrapolations for USA for Borderline Personality Disorder: 180,074 per year, 15,006 per month, 3,462 per week, 493 per day, 20 per hour, 0 per minute, 0 per second. Note: this extrapolation calculation uses the incidence statistic: 3,019 annual cases in Victora 1996 (DHS-VIC)

Prevalance of Borderline Personality Disorder: BPD is more common, affecting 2 percent of adults, mostly young women. (Source: excerpt from Borderline Personality Disorder: NIMH)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

alchemynow1 Comment

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”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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….”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT TRAUMA?

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++

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.

+++++++++++++++++

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)

+++++++++++++++++

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.

+++++++++++++++++

+SOME FANTASTIC LINKS ON CHILD ABUSE AND BRAIN CHANGES!

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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….

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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……

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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….

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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…..

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Child abuse marks genes, affects ability to cope: Study

By Margaret Munro , Canwest News Service

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

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….

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

+CHECKING IN FROM FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It is a scary realization to know that, at least in the ‘olden days’ of the 1960s, people as nuts as my mother was could actually run day care centers.  I was too young then to realize what, if any, problems arose regarding the children under her care (I don’t believe she abused any of them) or with the children’s parents.  With so many mothers needing to or choosing to work today, how would anyone know if a daycare provider was ‘off their rocker’, potentially dangerous, or actually dangerous?

It is a known fact that particularly with Borderline Personality Disorder the alterations in perception of reality and resulting actions are extremely difficult to recognize and detect — especially from the outside.  This is part of the purpose and goal of my writings, to help us learn more about what makes these people tick so that we can recognize them better.  I believe our improved understanding of personality disorder, depression, bi-polar and other sometimes-hard-to-detect-in-others brain change-mental illnesses is necessary to keep all children safer!

Free Webinar For Parents: Will You Know High-Quality Child Care When You See It?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+I AM THRILLED! I WROTE MY 1ST FICTION STORY!

alchemynow1 Comment

++++++

Directly as a result of my having just processed a ‘quantum healing leap’ experience related to becoming crystal clear about the difference between writing a trauma memory and writing ABOUT a trauma memory, I finally realized that there is absolutely no reason on earth why I can’t write fiction.  I want to thank my dear friend who talked truthfully about how she responded to my writings, as well as also thank those commenters who gave me the gift of their observations and insights as well this morning, because without this amazing inter-personal sharing, I would not have received the incredible gift that has come to me — the gift of being able, for the first time in my life, to safely access and play with my own imagination!

True, it’s almost beyond belief that my childhood was so terrible that I was forbidden to play.  Many abuse incidents happened because my mother caught me playing!  Not any more!  Not any more!

I’m not sure when that realization would have hit me if just after my quantum leap I had talked to my sister who told me she had just discovered the writing links I posted earlier today.  I rushed to the helium.com site and began to poke around through that overly-cluttered frenetic mess of a visual information display (my opinion!).

I found a contest I can enter for a nonautobiographical fiction short story under 1500 words.  “Well, why not?” I asked myself just as a massive thunderhead forced me to turn off my computer.  I grabbed a pen and a stack of paper and wrote

my very first fiction story –

DADDY’S GONE

I don’t think I could be happier if I won the Olympics!

++++

I hope there are many more stories to come.  What I realized is that I now know how to keep my own many, many abuse memories separate from my imagination.  My imagination is MINE.  It is MY gift, to use and enjoy and bring to full bloom in any way I choose to USE IT!  How cool is THAT?  Today I discovered that I can go anywhere I want to in my imagination, and that does NOT mean I am at risk of ‘bothering’ my trauma memories!  I can imagine safely!

I could NEVER do that as a child.  I could not wonder, I could not imagine, and I could not PLAY.  Today I discovered that allowing myself access to imagination is (drum roll please!) –

PLAY!  By golly, it is FUN!!

It was discovering the doorway into a wide open universe that I didn’t even know I didn’t know existed!

(I guess I chose my blog heading picture for a reason I did not even realize at the time I put it there!)

I have always believed until today that I cannot write fiction.  I mean, I absolutely believed that to be true!  Somehow I believed that the developmental changes that happened to me as a result of 18 long years of that severe child abuse somehow made me into someone that could not imagine.  Imagine that!!  Now that false belief is gone.  It vanished as completely as a light mist would in bright sunshine.  I swear it’s like discovering that I can fly!

I’ll find out over time where the stories take me.  Maybe they’ll be like this one.  Maybe not.  It will take a little time for me to gain confidence that I won’t return to my former state of doubting myself.

I leave this coming Thursday, July 9, 2009 for my seven weeks of traveling and visiting lots of wonderful family.  I am going on a wonderful adventure, even though a part of me remains incredibly sad about the loss of my relationship with my best friend.  But I can do nothing to heal whatever the wounds are that sent down a lightning bolt to cut us off from one another except to work on healing myself.

In the meantime, thanks to the miracle of computers and the internet, I will be able to stay in touch while I’m traveling, so that I can – write –

and write FICTION stories!!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+SIBLING PARTICIPATION IN CHILD ABUSE

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So far none of these stories are getting any easier to write, but fortunately my determination to write them more than matches any reluctance I have to do so.

Each memory that leads to each story seems to be difficult in a unique and unforeseen way.  Some I can write about with more immunity that others.  The one I wrote today has been the most difficult, and having done so I feel a quivering inside my gut because the story STILL scares me.

*Age 14 – Gardening and the Sabotage

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I think again about M. Scott Peck’s book, “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil” that I referred to in my story about how I abused my little son that was also directly connected to my being able to finally disown my mother.  I wonder about the entire web of my childhood, even as it is presented in the words of my mother’s own writing.  It was all a lie.

Nobody on the outside of our family could have possibly believed the lie– BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO!  This was a fact by default.  Only those of us on the inside of my family had to believe it.  They had no choice.  We were all forced to play our part, one way or the other.

At what point does free will and conscious choice on the part of such a distorted family members enter the picture in any meaningful way?  How can that freedom even be allowed to exist in a family that depends on living the lie for its very existence and survival?  Can we trust that telling the truth always means that we are on the road of healing?

I don’t know that I know the answer, but I wrote this story in spite of that fact.  Did doing so in any way contribute to an increase in my freedom from the hold that my horrendous child abuse history holds over me?  After all, today is the 4th of July, and we are supposed to be celebrating what it means to be free.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+LINK TO NEW PAGE ADDED TODAY – FIGHTING BACK?

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+Age 14 – SCRUBBED IN THE TUB

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We have to be more careful than words can describe not to either blame others for their victimization or to blame ourselves for the harm that was done to us.  How realistic is it for us to expect that any long term violent, consistent, severe abuse survivor EVER had a chance to fight back?

By suggesting that it is the victim’s fault that abuse ever happened in the first place, let alone continued to happen, creates an unattainable illusion within our social consciousness that we don’t — as outsiders — REALLY need to step in and stop abuse.  We are saying that if only the victim had done THEIR JOB to stop the abuse none of the rest of us would have to be involved at all.

Sound extreme?  Read this page.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+LINK TO NEWLY ADDED CHILDHOOD STORY

alchemynowLeave a comment


+++++++++++++++++++++

*Age 10 – NIGHTMARES AND BED WETTING

+++++++++++++++++++++

This page has just been completed and published under MY CHILDHOOD STORIES.  This page contains a ‘MAY TRIGGER ABUSE MEMORIES’ tag, so please be careful, cautious and considerate of yourself if you have a personal history of sexual abuse.

In this page I also wrote about how factual memory of trauma differs from emotional memory of trauma.  Our emotional memory is processed through the amygdala region of our brain and is ALWAYS stored in our body even though the factual memory might not be.  (When the facts are remembered this is called an ‘explicit‘ memory.  When only the emotions and body memory exist without specific facts, this is called an ‘implicit‘ memory.)

The ‘semantic, autobiographical’ factual part of our memories are processed through a different region of our brain, the hippocampus.  There are times particularly in very early childhood when all memory is preverbal and can only be accessed in our body and not through fact.  These memories will govern our unconscious behavior for the rest of our lives.  There are also times when facts related to memory, particularly of trauma memory, is ‘forgotten’ and invisible to us — sometimes forever, sometimes until it is triggered.

It is also important to realize that the stress hormone cortisol can so heat up our hippocampal memory cells as they try to process trauma-related facts that they are fried to a cinder and the facts of a memory will never be recorded – and therefore will never be available to recall.  When and if this happens — and it can happen both to victims and perpetrators-in-the-act — the emotional memory is ALWAYS stored and retained within the body.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++