|
Got questions, concerns, suggestions or just want to say hello? Need someone
to vent to about your situation? Are you feeling very alone? Just send me an e-mail and I'll be here for you if you need someone.
I'm always available to chat or exchange ideas or to just listen!
 
i made the decision to do this exercise because i had such an overwhelming need to know, "WHY.... why did all these terrible things happen to me throughout my lifetime?"
my grown children
had me doing some soul searching as to why they had to experience the things
they did. they began to come up with the nerve to ask me - why didn't i leave my ex-husband who was
physically, mentally & verbally abusive to us all?
why did i divorce their father? i've been married a few times, the ex-husband
above was husband #2. Their father is husband #1.
why?, why?, why? - they had no problem asking me questions concerning what they believed to be the source of their
mental anguishes....
i
found it extremely frustrating that they didn't understand that none of what happened was intentional....
it just happened.. &
i was just beginning at age 46 to understand why it all happened.
i then realized... my parents did what
they knew how to do & they didn't know why they did the things they did to me either....
this may sound like rambling to you, but to me...
well... it was all becoming so very clear...
i felt that the only thing left to do - was to take it all - bit by bit - write it all down - figure it
all out - feel the unresolved emotions, realize the magnitude of the dilemma my mother was in while we were growing up, now knowing that it was exactly what
i had experienced in my own generation, my own time, in my own way.... & eventually begin to heal from it all...
what i found out was how important it was for me to stop all the abuse - all the family dysfunction - for my children - to learn enough myself - take responsibility for my own children & my own life & my own actions. i needed to teach them what my mother & i didn't know, to
end the cycle of abuse, allow them to live a happy & fulfilling life...
so i took the first step: i began writing down everything i could remember from as far back in my life as i
could remember. it took several attempts of getting small glimpses of things i thought i had forgotten, but after the cobwebs
were removed, seemed clearer to me... if you are trying this for yourself.... just read
on & see what else i did to reconcile my past...
yeah, i'm a baby boomer... this may account for the fact that i've been experiencing mental
health issues since childhood!
my mom & dad, like myself, are all from upstate new york. my parents were high school
sweethearts. they played instruments in their high school band. my dad played the trombone & my mom the clarinet.
of course, it was demanded that i play my mother's silver clarinet when i was in
jr. high school. My mother played the piano & i had already started piano lessons in the 3rd grade maybe... around that
age anyway, but it was important to them that we learn how to play music!
as i've heard the story told &
from what i've been able to decipher for myself from the many black & white snapshots i've seen from my early years, i
was born shortly after my parents were married. (i'm not counting months by any means, it's
just that i came along like clockwork)
my father had attended Hobart
William Smith College, thinking maybe he had "a calling" to become a "minister" but he ended up
enlisting in the army before i was born & my mother managed to get in a few years at the community college taking some
kind of secretarial courses. (in retrospect, i have considered the possibility of my father wanting
to become a minister to somehow "please" his father...)
i was a 4th of july baby.
my mother, my grandmother & i traveled by plane to el paso, texas immediately following my birth because my father
had been stationed out there at white sands army base.
from the many snapshots i've
seen, i know that i was always tanned, in a cloth diaper w/fluffy, curly white-blond hair. seemingly as average as all kids,
i was growing & learning as most normal kids do. i can't tell you if my mom worked back then because i have never thought
to ask her.
i can tell you that she resumed her pre-pregnancy 105 pounds in record time. she was tall & thin &
a dark haired beauty. she really was & still is in her 60's a very attractive woman. she has always taken
pride in her appearance.
this fact was bothersome to me as a teen. in
fact, it seemed i never looked good enough for her. i always
had to watch my weight, i was short like her mother, only 5 foot 1 inch & even if she did buy all my clothes at casual
corner, i still didn't look right in them. they weren't me. but my mom bought all my clothes to
take pride in my appearance, after all...
appearances were always very important to her....
i think it was a belief grounded in her time - or generation - that one should always look good - the
family should always appear good, no matter what their true situation
was.
i never saw her looking messed up or like she just got out of bed.
i think that she must have taken after beaver cleaver's mother - june cleaver. she never ran around the house in sweat pants
& a t-shirt either. she always looked really good.
after living in el paso, texas from soon after
birth, we moved back to New York. We lived in Baldwinsville. I hardly remember my dad being around in that house. what
i do remember, i wish i could forget. he loved to hunt rabbit. in the big field behind our house he would hunt them down &
bring them home for my mother to cook. i was horrified, but had to eat what was put in front of me or i would sit there all
night.
the quality of my parents'
marriage was at question from the beginning. i'm not sure why i believe that, except for the fact that i don't ever remember seeing my mother
happy when i was a child. recently she admitted to me that she wasn't
very happy in those days... a definite improvement on her communication skills of the past... & i don't remember
how my dad looked in those days. i know he wasn't home much.
there were a few times i remember my mom & dad being affectionate w/each other in the 2nd or 3rd grade, after
work, she was sitting on his lap w/her arm around his neck, but to tell you the truth - things weren't kosher at our home for the most part. it's just something you always sense. my mother always seemed to have this expressionless face.
my parents never told
us about what was going on in our lives - in "reality terms" in those early years, so what i do know,
i know from the fact that i was the first child of a first child. i have discovered that being raised in the times i was raised
in was the time of - "children were to be seen & not heard."
i was the queen of eavesdropping
because everyone loved me or tolerated me at least. they'd allow me to stay near them, w/in earshot - present
in the room while they chatted & gossiped about whatever it was they decided was the topic of the times. i think that
perhaps i was mistaken in the fact that because of their tolerance w/me that they all loved me as i had thought. besides, i knew how to "be quiet." it served me well to be quiet as much as possible.
i lived on bits & pieces of juicy tidbits about everyone in
my family & formed definite ideas & beliefs on the information that i gathered in this fashion. we were very close w/our extended family - both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles & cousins.
we even lived w/my father's parents for awhile when my father wasn't
around, but i don't know if he was still in the service or what the exact storyline was there.
* blue highlighting
shows this is an article that helps me to understand more about how my past situations, described above, have been proven
to affect children in their adult lives!
Sunday, February 01,
2004 - Page updated at 04:36 P.M.
For your kid's well-being, getting it right early matters
By Marsha King
Seattle Times staff reporter
Babies who won't stop crying & toddlers who bite. These are among the most common dilemmas when child-care
workers call in expert help. In fact, most of the knotty situations child-care workers face have to do w/ behavior.
Addressing such problems positively is a big part of new efforts nationwide to foster young children's emotional
& social health to best prepare them for success in school & in life.
Getting it right early matters. It matters a lot.
In a groundbreaking 2000 report, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed recent research & concluded that
development of children's brains, emotional health & consciences depends on early loving, consistent relationships.
Called "From Neurons to Neighborhoods," the report says attending to young children's feelings is essential for them to get a good start.
That science & evidence of increasing behavior problems among young children are driving a new determination
to give all children good nurturing from birth.
In Washington, initiatives are under way to train parents & child-care providers to provide early loving, stable relationships; screen youngsters for social & emotional competency long
before kindergarten & create public policy that boosts children's chances for healthy development.
Studies show it's especially beneficial to intervene w/children compromised by trauma, poverty or adverse child rearing.
"Let's not wait. Let's start from birth to promote social & emotional health," says Jean Kelly, a University
of Washington early childhood development expert.
All this may seem like common sense, perhaps even a waste of money.
But, "If it were self-evident & everyone was doing this, we'd see fewer problems w/children's behavior,"
said Scott Beers, senior research fellow at the Talaris Research Institute in Seattle, which turns research into tools for
parents.
Research shows most parents don't intentionally guide their children's emotional development, says Beers.
click here and read about attachment parenting to get a clearer understanding
Also, many things that seem like common sense have been proved wrong, says Lenore Rubin, psychologist with Public
Health, Seattle & King County.
People used to say, "He was just a baby. He couldn't have known," says Rubin. "Forget it. That no longer applies.
... Babies are really capable of being impacted in a variety of ways by things going on around them. Even when they're
thought to be sleeping."
It's impossible to quantify the overall cost of the new efforts since they're evolving & so scattered among
public & private resources, experts say.
The child-care setting is a particular target of the new efforts because that's where many young children spend
a significant part of their day.
"Some children are in child care from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. They get home, have dinner & a bath & go to
bed. They may have very little contact w/ their parents," Rubin says.
An estimated 114,000 of the state's children thru age 5: 33,900 in King County are enrolled in licensed
child-care centers & homes across the state. That doesn't account for those in unlicensed care.
Those statistics mean that for many children, developmental milestones, such as learning to trust & to feel good about themselves, often
are guided by child-care providers.
When young children "are tired, hurt, frustrated, they need to know they have someone who will help them manage those feelings," says Kelly. "Little babies can't manage those feelings by themselves."
Learning the cues
Child-care worker Maria Benavente watches herself on video warming a bottle for one infant while calling to
another across the room: "Amanda. Amanda. I see you, Amanda."
That's baby code for "You are safe. I haven't forgotten you even though I'm not right there."
Just days ago, 8 month old Amanda Hugdahl, newly enrolled at Green River Child Development Center in Auburn,
was anxious & hard to soothe. She refused to eat & cried when her diapers were changed.
Now the camera catches a curious, calm look on her face upon hearing her name, then a composed return to play.
Benavente is pleased: "She's feeling OK. Pretty content. Not showing any signs of distress."
The videographer, early-childhood consultant Diana Sandoval, agrees: "You do a great job of knowing what they
need as individuals."
The state-sponsored video session gives Benavente insight on how to build a nurturing relationship w/ Amanda
& all the infants in her care.
Mumps to misbehavior
Child care is a priority for Public Health, Seattle & King County, which created a child-care/health program
in the early 1980's. In the early years, public-health nurse-consultants guided child-care centers & homes primarily on
matters such as infection control & safety.
"When I started out, people were calling me about mumps, diarrhea, the communicable-disease issues that were really preventable,"
says Jan Gross, public-health nurse & consultant.
Gradually, the questions changed. Now, the vast majority are about behavior.
The new approach is to heed closely distress signals, such as crying & biting. Rather than label the child a troublemaker, care providers
are taught solutions grounded in science.
The baby may be upset from having too many different caregivers in a day.
The toddler may not be getting enough individual attention or be temperamentally
unsuited for group care.
"Sometimes the problem isn't about the child, it's about the environment the child is in," says Melissa Jankauskas,
supervisor of the Public Health child-care health program.
When public-health nurse Ellen Flamiatos walks into an infant room on one of her monthly visits, she first checks
the emotional climate.
Are the babies happy? Are the teachers stressed?
If all is well, she chats about the latest in brain research, developmental milestones & the cues babies
give, crying, hiccuping or cooing.
If things are hectic, Flamiatos might model sensitive care by comforting a crying baby.
She recalls one child-care worker feeding a baby but not making eye contact. She told the worker to hold the
baby higher, look into its eyes & smile.
The baby smiled back.
"Stick your tongue out."
Sure enough, the baby did it back.
The worker was thrilled.
"She realized how valuable she was at that point," said the nurse.
Money matters
Barriers to giving this kind of child care are longstanding & familiar.
Child care has never paid enough to retain skilled staff members & turnover makes it hard for kids to form essential, loving bonds. (also see attachment)
State surveys done in 2000 showed that 18% of child-care teachers & 40% of aides had been hired in the previous
6 months. Annual attrition was about 53%.
In 2002, the average wage statewide for child-care teachers was $9.69 an hour; aides made about $8.07. The average
center director earned about $2,300 a month. It's not pay you'd get rich on.
A continuing study by the National Institute of Child & Health Development reported 5 years ago that most
child care in this country is only poor to fair. Cathryn Booth-LaForce, a professor at the University of Washington School
of Nursing, is one of the principal investigators on the study, which is taking place in Seattle & elsewhere.
In general, high-quality child care has workers who are better educated, better paid & who stay on the job
longer. Such care is often costly.
"A lot of the child care in the US needs improvement," Booth-LaForce said. But "many families don't have the means to obtain
the sorts of quality child care that their children really need."
King
County agenda
Last year, a new policy agenda came out for promoting healthy early development in King County's children. Called
"Neurons to King County Neighborhoods," its almost-identical name is the local spin on the national report. And it relies
on the same science in proposing strategies, from education of new parents & developmental screening starting at age 3
to universal preschool & better pay & benefits for child-care providers.
The challenge now is to turn goals into action. It's too early to put a price on any one idea. But over the
next few months, Public Health will urge community leaders to decide which policies are most important.
This spring, Public Health in partnership w/ United Way of King County plans to have kindergarten teachers in
2 school districts assess children for learning readiness, factors such as physical health, social competence, maturity &
cognitive & language development.
The results will be mapped by school & by neighborhood, "so it's very clear neighborhood by neighborhood
where the gaps are in readiness to learn," said Sandy Ciske, manager of epidemiology, planning & evaluation with Public
Health. The data will be presented to parents, teachers & child-care providers, people who can take action.
For example, if children at one site score poorly on the social-emotional scale, perhaps child-care providers
nearby should work on those skills.
Ciske hopes all county school districts will participate eventually.
In Snohomish County, United Way already has launched one of the many "Success by Six" programs nationwide. All
480 kindergartners & preschoolers in the Arlington School District, plus 150 kids at 16 child-care sites that volunteered,
are being assessed for emotional & social health.
Then parents & teachers are setting goals to help a child learn how to calm himself when upset, for example, or to keep trying after a failure.
State efforts
The state of Washington is training public-health nurses, child-care providers & families to address the
social & emotional issues of young children.
One such program, "Promoting First Relationships," was developed by the UW's Kelly & colleagues & first
used to help homeless families. Now it's available to parents, nurses & child-care providers.
Under the program, trainers like Sandoval videotape real care-giving, sometimes in challenging situations, when a baby cries during diapering or a toddler misbehaves at mealtime.
Then the caregiver & instructor view the playback together & try to come up w/ ways to help the child
feel more secure. The instructor reinforces what's going right.
At the Green River center, Benavente has finished watching the tape of herself & baby Amanda.
"It's a very special & trusting role," says Benavente, who earned a bachelor's degree from the UW.
Amanda's mom, who also has an older daughter at the center, is grateful. She's studying to be a practical nurse. After she's employed, her husband, who now
drives a dump truck, may return to school. The couple could not pursue such goals w/out good child care.
If their girls' needs are met at this age, maybe they'll enter school w/a firm footing on which to build successful lives. Perhaps one day they'll come to know what their parents sacrificed.
"Maybe my children will understand later in life why I had to put them in day care," says Lucinda Hugdahl. "So I could
give them a better life."
Marsha King: 206-464-2232 or mking@seattletimes.com
i can't imagine my mother was
content w/that situation, living w/my father's parents that is, however,
she was always & still is a very independent woman.
my mother had 3 younger sisters. i'd always heard
a rumor that my mother had been a twin, but the twin hadn't survived. if he had - he would have been the only boy in her family.
i don't know how anyone felt about this fact,
no one ever discussed how they "felt" about anything. this too, i am guessing, is the way things were when my parents grew
up. it didn't matter how you felt about anything. that's just the way it was.
my father had a blended family to begin with. his father
had been married previously & his wife had died. he had 2 sons from that 1st marriage. my father was the oldest child
from my grandfather's 2nd marriage to my grandmother. he had a brother & a sister. my father's brother married my mother's sister... that's always fun to explain...
my father was an "absent" father no matter what else he was - & throughout my entire life
& because of that he ended up screwing me up more than he could've ever hoped for.
step three: i researched what the
effects of having an absent father would be. i researched the benefits of having a strong relationship with a father figure...
all this so i would understand why i was maladjusted so to speak.
Fathers matter in child's
development
Last Updated:
2002-03-11 17:42:32-05
Results
of a new study sends a strong message to fathers. The research finds fathers have a big impact on everything from their child's mental health to
their risk of committing a crime!!
Researchers
followed 17,000 children thru adulthood. The study found girls whose fathers were involved in their upbringing
were less likely to have mental health problems as grownups, for boys dad's involvement reduced the risk of committing a crime or being homeless.
The study found boys & girls who grew up feeling close to their fathers during adolescence were more
likely to have happier love lives.
The research also found that a good relationship w/dad
or father figure helped protect adolescents from psychological problems in
families where the parents have separated.
The bottom line say researchers
- fathers count.
Researchers say an involved father
is one who reads to his child, takes outings w/ his child,
is interested in the child's education & takes an equal role
in managing his child.
They note that the research
showed that the positive influence came thru even if the father didn't live w/ the child's mother or wasn't
the child's biological father.
The study also found that a father's involvement
at age 7 is strongly related to children's educational achievements as they grow up.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Department
of Social Policy & Social Work at the University of Oxford. The research was presented at National Science Week (8-17
during March 2002)
step four: now i compared how my father really was - absent - with
the trends of the times. if you read about fathers in the right hand column you will see that it was thru no fault of his
that he believed he was doing what every other dad was doing -
my mother's mother had married my grandfather
when she was only 15 years old.... and she was a wonderful grandmother...
she would always take care of me & i loved to stay w/her. we would have hot
tea and these little powdered doughnuts in a bag, called Spaulding Doughnuts. We always had them. Never fail. And my grandma
& I would watch Petticoat Junction & Bewitched on television at night while we had our tea & doughnuts.
my earliest feelings of anxiety stemmed
from the fact that i'd overheard "certain people" (my grandmother & my aunts i think) talking about the fact that my mother was so unhappy about having another baby.(my sister is 5 years younger than i am & i also have a brother who is 3 years younger)
i was anxious because it seemed like my sister
was always in her crib crying. although it would have
been impossible at the age of 6 to understand what that statement had really meant, i had a sense that what they had said was the truth. (although...
somewhere my mother had learned that it was good for a baby to lay in the crib & cry its lungs out because it was exercise.)
i remember
my mother sitting on the sofa (as
they called it then) looking out the window, listening to
her albums as if she were pining away after her freedom or her happiness - listening to the ballads of the kingston trio & harry belafonte or maybe she was pining
for the love she thought she would have in a marriage.
the
whole time my mother seemed entranced
in her thoughts, my sister at 1 year old was standing in the crib sobbing. i didn't know whether to laugh
& sing w/my mother or go into my room & cry for my sister.
it
was an anxiety producing atmosphere, to say the least. (i
never had an urge or the feeling that i should try to calm or nurture my
sister or go to her aid though. that kind of bothers me, but it makes me wonder about my capacity for compassion when i was young or the fact that i
always felt detached from the very beginnings of my life.)
i came in the door from kindergarten, a full day of school back
then. our school was within eye shot from our backyard.
there
was a huge grassy field behind our house between us & the school. i was never anxious about going to school because you could see my house out the window. but anyway, i came in the
door & my mother was holding a bloodied rag over her hand & was bleeding severely.
she'd been
washing the dishes when a glass broke on her hand. she spoke to me to tell me she was okay, but i turned & bolted out
the door, as i began bawling in a terrifying howl. i ran out the door then down the lane to the neighbor's house. i was afraid my mom was going to die. that was my main concern.
what
is a relatively new remembering about that situation is that my neighbor held me in her arms. i allowed her to squeeze me
tight in the safety of her arms. i was strangely calmed by the feeling of that embrace. she convinced me my mom would be okay. so that's
why i ran out the door upon needing reassurance to the neighbor's house. i knew that there was a safe embrace waiting there for me.
That
trauma was followed by soon another. for some reason, perhaps my mother's unhappiness, she seemed to prepare some canned foods that i just couldn't eat. one of them, good old franco american canned spaghetti.
i was about 5 years old then. it was the long awaited night of the airing of The Wizard of Oz. anyone my age knows that this
was a landmark night. it aired only once a year.
it's an important factor to understand... attachment relationships...
i just couldn't eat that spaghetti.
every mouthful caused me to gag. i was having a horrible time eating it. i was dragging it over my plate, picking at it, every
kid knows how long dinner time seems when there's something you just detested on your plate.
long after my mom &
dad, brother & sister were done & away from the table; the dishes were done as well, & i sat there pushing
it around as if i could somehow wish it away. my father was very upset with me. he laid down the law. "if you don't finish
that plate of food in ten minutes, then you're going to bed with no Wizard of Oz!"
Oh my heart sank. I looked
at my mother in pain, agony really, how could he say that to me? No Wizard of Oz? That was unheard of. I had taken a bath before dinner & already
had on my jammies & was ready to lay down in front of the television to watch the most wonderful movie ever made. I spooned
up a big mouthful & slowly let it go into my mouth.
I started to gag. big mistake!
when my father saw that move, he ordered me straight to bed. no ten minutes - no Wizard of Oz! Oh this must have been
the worst day in my entire life! I wailed as i marched off for my bed. I heard him scraping off my plate of food into the
trash. I cried & cried. This was just horrible. I would have to wait an entire year for the next show. I heard the movie
begin from my bed. As i wimpered i could picture the scene.
Soon Dorothy wouldn't be
in Kansas anymore. I continued to sob until i heard my mother's footsteps. she came into my room & with a very sour tone
told me to go ahead & watch the movie, but i had better not cry anymore, not even one more tear. the damage was done.
i would have never believed my father would hurt me so deeply. - so goes, the life of a girl who hated franco american canned spaghetti. the rule of the house was to eat
everything on your plate no matter what. it wasn't the last time i sat at the table by myself for a long time.
doesn't sound like trauma to you? what kid doesn't get punished like that for not eating their dinner? i agree... except for the fact that my temperment
was so fragile... i took every admonishment or punishment as a personal attack on me from my father...
it just seemed like he took great joy in punishing me when he could. he knew how much this upset me. he seemed to enjoy his power & control over me, even at this young age & somehow i felt it, although i didn't know what intimidation was... i just knew he was frightening to me & i needed to be extra careful around him.
Okay, now that my mind is sharper, I'm free of some anxiety & depression symptoms, at age 46, I went back in time to examine these situations in my childhood. That's what this exercise
is all about.
I already wrote it all down, w/out stopping. The timeline of events now
exists in black & white - for me to sit down, sit back & ponder on.
after looking
over those paragraphs...i realized how i knew those stories by heart... w/out having to think hard about what happened...
i knew suddenly that i had always felt that
sadness in our home.
i knew that i wasn't
sure how my mother felt about me my entire life, not just as a teenager. i had heard that she didn't really want my sister
thru my eavesdropping in conversations between adults & because she always looked so sad, i thought it was true & that maybe she hadn't really wanted me either.
i didn't have many thoughts about my brother who was 3 years younger than me. we didn't play w/each other that often.
i could remember that my mother
seemed like the "perfect home maker, wife & mother, but inside she seemed hollow & lack of any emotion."
those were the beginnings of
what would be an entire childhood & teen years longing to hear "i love you" from my parents' lips. i just wanted to know that they loved me. it just never happened - it was just never said or expressed. there were no hugs, no
playful touches, just stoic & empty expressions on their faces...
i began to study about what these types of situations
can do to people. i researched everything i could find & read endless articles, forums & journals. i've read
government studies, mental health evaluations & have shared this information w/all of you in all of my websites to
make it easier..... it's helpful for me to understand - logically - how & why things happen...
What
if she or he isn't Loving, not nurturing?
What
if she or he is a void of compassion, absent, what if they're destructive & dangerous to self-esteem & torturous to self worth?
Instead of feelings of worthiness, they instill a fear of life, fear of love, as your relationships mirror theirs plus creating rivalries &
jealousies between siblings.
After
seeing many examples of this kind of damage, from both clients & family, I've found it important to bring to mind, this fact, if you're living w/ this kind of past, you're living w/a
time bomb.
We learn to express Love from
being loved. Thru the example of receiving love, we blossom into beings of health & beauty.
If
we've been at the receiving end of a mother or father who is uncaring, distant, abusive, angry or bitter, we may appear unscathed from the outer appearance, but from an inner
level, we could be scarred beyond recognition.
click here to read about the importance of attachment relationships....
another important consideration was that i never had a role model of a normal happy & health adult. i never saw what a married couple should be like. i never saw affection or felt it. i didn't know what normal was. i just wondered things all the time in my own little head, but i never got any
answers. i was for some reason, "afraid to ask my mother anything that might upset her even more."
geez... could that be some of that "fear of life" that i was experiencing in not being able to talk to my mother?
i had the german measles when we
lived in this house & the chicken pox. with both of those childhood illnesses i was very sick. i remember the measles
especially though. the room had to stay dark. i was so feverish. i had never been a very sick kid. i was always pretty healthy,
but this sickness was just terrible.
i stayed in my bed &
my mother had to keep me away from my brother & baby sister so they wouldn't catch it. she placed cool wet cloths
over my forehead & eyes from time to time. she was in & out of my room, but i can't remember a cuddle, or an
"i love you" or an I'm sorry you're so miserable.
but she did her duty. she
took care of me.
my first rememberings of being fearful came from
my first recollections of the repetitive childhood nightmares i experienced.
my mother grew all of our vegetables in the backyard.
it was amongst the many things that my mother seemed to know how to do perfectly. that garden had tons of frogs & snakes in it
though. i hated reptiles & still do.
i was so afraid of both frogs & snakes that i had
difficulty being around that garden for any length of time. i believe it was a true phobia because i still suffer from
intense fear, only recently have i been able to watch television shows that have snakes on them or look at a picture
of a snake.
the
memory of hearing my grandmother screaming from the hallway where her old-fashioned roller washing
machine was located because while checking the pockets of my brother's trousers (as she called them) she had pulled out a
handful of dead frog carcasses - passes thru my mind from time to time.
i ran
to see what the only loud sound i'd ever heard emerge from her vocal cords, to spy the "dead
& dried up froggies in her hand." it was violently repulsive to me. i dreamt about that forever.
i believe
it was my extreme fear of those varmits that led me to become one of the best tree climbers of my time.
i could scale any tree in record time to the top & comfortably recline & sometimes even drift off to sleep. i
was very comfy in the trees.
thus were the beginnings
of me getting along better w/boys than girls. i could climb a tree better than any of them & i would rather hang out w/the
boys because they weren't so stupid.
but, my problem w/snakes & frogs began to affect
my sleep.
my earliest recollections
of sleep / fear association - the beginnings of my interrupted sleep cycles - i'm positive! I've experienced sleep problems
my entire life. i believe that my night eating problem began in these early childhood years when my mother & father didn't
respond to me when i was so frightened - i would go to the kitchen and get a handful of cookies and take them to bed with
me.
i
had terrible nightmares about snakes being under my bed & frogs jumping up on me. we had a rule in our house that
we weren't allowed to go into our parents' bedroom. when i woke up crying &
sure the dream was real, from those nightmares, no one ever came to help me.
now, i'm a mother. i know that there had to be many
times that my mother came to rescue me, but i do believe whole heartedly that because i couldn't go & get her, that i
was not only offended by her lack of availability to me.... but the fear that she just didn't care about me because she really didn't love me loomed more heavily than the fear from my dreams.... i think back & realize i had lots of fears...
when i dared to stand by her door & cry,(which
always annoyed my father into yelling out, "get back to bed!") she'd tell me that everything was okay, but she never
ended it w/"i love you."
i did what he said, but i was scared to death. (somehow facing my fears at that time of my life was not an identifiable
option as it has been for my youngest child since she was about 7 )
it's my sincerest memory thinking that my mother was a very lonely person. i was always thinking about her. i was always wondering about her. it
wasn't really identifying the "emotion of being 'lonely'" that i thought about, of course, because there weren't emotions & feelings in the days of baby boomers, but it was a very definite feeling of "bad or wrong." i definetly
thought she was serious & then so was i, a serious child.
parents' common sayings to kids back then were:
- if you think you're unhappy now, give me a minute & i'll give you something to be unhappy about. (a spanking)
- parents were not put on this earth to entertain their kids
- if you're bored, you can dust the furniture or wash the floor
- play outside because children should only be seen &
not heard in the house
we walked around like zombies, because fear & common sense told us it was just the best way to be. but my mom, seemed sad. my dad was almost never home.
my mom used to talk on the phone to my grandmother much of the time. she just seemed
really unhappy. she had the house clean, she sewed all our clothes, the garden was tended, the meals cooked, the laundry done, everything
was tidy, the kids were clean & she was just a listlessly unhappy & lonely cinderella of a mom.
i can tell you that now, because i know what it means now, but when i was a child....
emotionless was the mode everyone seemed to be in most of the time.
i didn't know the word, "stoic" then, but's that what it was - everyone was stoic
if they knew what was good for them anyway, stoic & quiet.
Posted:
03/11/2003 06:52 pm
Last Updated: 03/12/2003 10:01 am
New research finds even a brief bout w/ depression in a mother can increase her children's risk
of battling the disease later in life.
Several studies have shown
that children of depressed mothers have double the risk of suffering depression themselves, so a recent study looked at how much maternal depression it takes to increase a child's risk.
Researchers found that children exposed to as little as one month of acute depression or one-year of mild depression had a higher risk of the disease than kids whose mothers
weren't depressed.
Your happiness may impact your baby's health
Posted:
03/30/2004 03:31 pm
Last Updated: 03/30/2004 03:31 pm
How happy you are when you're pregnant may impact your baby's health.
Researchers polled low-income
expectant moms about their feelings toward their pregnancies.
The study found that happy moms have a smaller risk of having low birth weight babies compared to women who're unhappy about their pregnancies.
Low birth weight is the #1
cause of death in newborns in the US. It can also lead to developmental & neurological problems in babies who do survive.
A hug now may protect your child later
Posted: 03/22/2004
03:39 pm
Last Updated: 03/22/2004 04:59 pm
A hug you give your child may now protect their health when they grow up.
A new study suggests that lack of parental support during childhood may increase the risk
of a number of health problems during adulthood.
Researchers surveyed about
3000 people, ages 25 to 74. In the people that were surveyed there was a higher incidence of depression & chronic ailments from those who
say they didn't get enough support from their parents during childhood.
Researchers say the results
are important because they show how parental support helps shape a person's emotional & physical health.
A number of studies have
found a connection between emotional
support & health, but this is the first one to look at the impact
of support during childhood.
let me review:
- i had a serious side in my personality which was of the predominant measure. i'm just not sure that
it was seriousness, it may have been a huge sadness.
- i was well behaved, clean & well raised & taught w/a strict hand to be respectful of adults,
my parents & other family members
- i knew all my relatives, closely because extended family was very important to my parents, besides,
we were either living w/grandparents, aunts & uncles or staying w/them continually
- my father was absent most of the time thru my entire life
- my mother was unhappy most of the time
- i had experienced my first trauma while in kindergarten & followed a path of continual traumas
from then on
- i had experienced my first fear/sleep interruptions while in kindergarten w/the nightmares about snakes
& frogs & from that point on, my sleep habits were poor, nightmares always being a factor in awakenings
- while i remember my sister crying in her crib a lot, i barely remember my brother at all - i have
no recollections of playing w/him to this point, we were not taught about a strong sibling relationship
- i ran to the neighbor for consoling w/a physical embrace because there were no feelings of physical
attachment to my parents
perhaps our move to corning was the result of my mother feeling abandoned by my father as
well as terribly depressed. we moved in with my father's parents, but still, i don't know where my father was. i think he
was still in the service.
my mother got a job though. i had to go to a new school. for the life of me i can't remember
anything about going to that school except eating lunch in the cafeteria. i didn't know anyone there & i ate alone
everyday. my brown paper bag lunch was the same peanut butter & jelly every day.
i was allowed to buy milk to drink & it was chocolate! i enjoyed the lunch even if it
was the same everyday, but i had trouble with the milk. although i loved chocolate milk, it was always lukewarm. i had a horrible
time drinking it.
i don't remember a single recess or classroom or teacher at that school. I remember walking
there & walking back to my grandparents house, but nothing else but eating lunch. strange...
after school i would play cards with my grandpa. i loved that. i listened to his stories with
full attention. he had great stories. he was always at the house to take care of us. he had retired from the railroad. in
the morning when i left for school he was sitting in his rocker on the front porch reading the newspaper.
everyday as i left, he smiled to say, "get a hundred today susie Q!"
i would say, "i will grandpa! see you after school!" and i was off to school. around the corner,
down two blocks & across from the baptist church where my other grandmother would of gone if she went to church. i went
to vacation bible school there every summer.
i walked on the curb all the way around the playground everyday the same way - i don't remember
anything else till lunchtime.
domestic violence & child abuse was an accepted
norm
within the next few paragraphs i'll be explaining my exposure
to domestic violence. it's important to remember that domestic violence is often a multi-generational problem. mine was... domestic violence affects all children
& teens exposed to it...
More than
half of the school-age children in domestic violence shelters show clinical levels of anxiety or post traumatic stress disorder (Graham-Bermann, 1994).
Without
treatment, these children are at significant risk for delinquency, substance abuse, school drop-out & difficulties in their own relationships.
Children may exhibit a wide range of reactions
to exposure to violence in their home. Younger children (e.g., preschool & kindergarten)
oftentimes, don't understand the meaning of the abuse they observe & tend to believe that they "must have done something wrong."
Self-blame can precipitate feelings of guilt, worry & anxiety. It's important to consider that children, especially younger children, typically
don't have the ability to adequately express their feelings verbally.
Consequently, the manifestation of these emotions are often behavioral. Children may become withdrawn, non-verbal & exhibit regressed
behaviors such as clinging & whining.
Eating & sleeping difficulty, concentration problems, generalized anxiety & physical complaints (e.g., headaches) are
all common.
Unlike younger children, the pre-adolescent child
typically has greater ability to externalize negative emotions (i.e., to verbalize). In addition to symptoms
commonly seen w/childhood anxiety (e.g., sleep problems, eating disturbance, nightmares), victims within this age group may show a loss of interest in social activities,
low self-concept, withdrawal or avoidance of peer relations, rebelliousness & oppositional-defiant behavior in the school
setting.
It's also common to observe temper tantrums,
irritability, frequent fighting at school or between siblings, lashing out at objects, treating
pets cruelly or abusively,threatening of peers or siblings w/ violence (e.g., "give me a pen
or I will smack you") & attempts to gain attention thru hitting, kicking, or choking peers &/or family members.
Incidentally, girls are more likely to exhibit
withdrawal & unfortunately, run the risk of being "missed" as a child in need of support.
Adolescents are at risk of academic failure, school drop-out, delinquency & substance abuse. Some investigators have suggested that a history of family violence or abuse is the most significant difference between delinquent & non delinquent youth.
An estimated 1/5 to 1/3 of all teenagers who
are involved in dating relationships are regularly abusing or being abused by their partners verbally, mentally, emotionally, sexually, &/or physically
(SASS, 1996). Between 30% & 50% of dating relationships can exhibit the same cycle of
escalating violence as marital relationships (SASS, 1996).
on some of the many visits to my
grandparents, my cousins would be there also. my mother's sister who was married to my father's brother had children that
were the closest in age to me, yet they were still very young - not playmate material at all for me.
i was exposed though to
their interactions very frequently in those days. my father's brother just happened to be my favorite uncle. he treated me
extra special & would sing with me when we went on car trips together. my mom often sent me to their house to spend overnight times
with them. it was really fun except for one thing.
my uncle drank a lot of
beer. lots & lots of beer. he was also very abusive to his children. when he got drunk from all that beer he would lose control totally & get really mad at his kids. he especially picked on his oldest son. i felt so bad for him. every remark made
was sarcastic & cruel to him. if my cousin didn't act quickly enough for him, he would throw him down on the ground &
oftentimes kick him around w/the heavy boots he wore.
he was always ordering the
kids around & one time chased one of my girl cousins down the stairs because she had made him very angry. on the stairway he got a hold of her hair & she kept running. she was so afraid of him. he pulled out a huge chunk of her hair. it scared me when he got so mean, but he would turn around & be so nice to me in the next breath after abusing his own kids.
i couldn't understand it at all. all my grandparents knew he acted like this as well as my aunt & no one would do
anything about it. his older son began to act strangely, often rocking back & forth on his feet when he talked.
he was very afraid of his father. all the kids were, but he was the most affected because of the sharp cruel comments being made to him continually.
he was a very sad boy most of the time.
i was allowed to walk across town to my other grandmother's
house as soon as i was able to remember the way. at first, it seemed so far. it was a journey. i remember my grandmother saying
to me upon my arrival, "oh murder, kathleen! i thought you would never get here!"
i had met my landmarks tho. i walked past my grandfather's brother's house and i believe that
his wife would call my grandmother to let her know that i had passed safely without getting lost. they didn't fear kidnapping
or getting hit by a car. they feared i would get lost. besides, my mother's mother was always nervous about things.
she told me that she took little nerve pills. i believe she was one of the first to be addicted
to valium. who knows what she took before valium, but no wonder she was always so pleasant and even tempered. she never got
mad at me, not once in her whole life, except once when i was eighteen. i had moved in with my boyfriend, who would become
my first husband and she was totally against that.
she wrote me a letter to tell me so.
this one of my grandmothers was my "love connection." it was
here that i received all the love & affection i could soak in. i was always ready for it. i would sit on her lap and she
would rock me in her recliner chair and sing to me.
"oh pretty playmate, come out and play with me, climb up my
apple tree, hee hee hee hee hee, climb on the rain barrel, slide down my cellar door, and we'll be jolly friends, forever
more."
"can she bake a cherry pie, billy boy, billy boy, can she
bake a cherry pie, charmmmin billy? she can bake a cherry pie, quick as you can wink your eye, she's a young girl, who cannot
leave her mother."
over and over these songs were whispered in my ear as i laid
my head against her chest and listened intently. i never wanted to leave her lap. she rocked me like that until i was too
big to sit on her anymore. i was at least ten years old when that stopped. but there were always hugs and always cuddles in
her bed in the morning if i had spent the night with her.
she let me get into bed with her and she would put on a record.
usually some cowboy record, she loved country music. we would lay in bed together and she would let me touch her things in
her nightstand. my favorite was her penlight flashlight. i would hold it up against my hand on the inside and be able to see
my veins through my skin! i loved doing that.
she would laugh at me and we would talk and tell secrets with
each other. she was the best grandma in the whole world.
we moved to syracuse, new york when i was in the 3rd grade.
that's when all hell broke loose.
yes, syracuse....
my dad had gotten a job
at general electric. when we moved to syracuse, my mom quit the "stay at home" job she had & she got a job at some kind
of catholic girl's school or orphanage - something to that effect.
there were nuns there. when
we were sick, we had to go there w/my mother & stay in the infirmary & get taken care of by the nuns, who by the way,
wore the customary black & white habits. they scared me to death. they looked & sounded very mean.
i was in the 3rd grade.
while i remember my kindergarten teacher's name was miss valentine, i can't remember any of my teacher's names there after.
we went to lincoln elementary school & i lived on shuart avenue. so any of you who lived there in the 1960's - you were
my neighbor!
we rented a big old house
that had 2 stories & then an attic. the basement always frightened me because it had a cabinet
in it on the wall that had a picture of president kennedy in it. he was shot to death soon after we moved there. i felt like
he was staring at me by proxy or ghost each time i went downstairs & that cabinet door seemed to slowly open up.
it was totally spooky.
lots of things happened
when i lived in syracuse that traumatized me. really. living in the city was far more exciting than the country. although the excitement was usually abit negative,
there was never a dull moment.
the kennedy assasination was a really big deal. we were let out of school. everyone was talking about it. the news came
over the loud speaker at school. everyone was shocked, crying & almost hysterical about it upon hearing the news.
death was a mystery to me.
my mom didn't think that kids needed to be thinking about it.
kids weren't allowed to go to funeral homes or funerals either.
i went to stay at my grandmother's house because we were out of school.
i watched the funeral w/my grandmother. everyone kept saying, "those poor little kids...." i was intrigued w/the ceremony
of it all. the shooting part of it was completely frightening to me & i can remember thinking about the President's brains
blown out all over his wife in that convertible.
Caroline Kennedy & i have the same birthday. that's right, even the same year. we were the exact same age. Little John John, what everyone called him, saluted to
his father's coffin. That made me cry. I didn't cry much, because my father would threaten us about giving us something
to cry about when we did.
while i could write volumes about living in syracuse new york...
i have to keep it short
my best friend, lois crounse, her father was a baptist preacher,
(not a minister) wasn't allowed to play outside on sunday. (we've
come a long way from that haven't we?) i was allowed to play w/lois in her house occasionally
on sunday.
one particular sunday we had the great blessing of being allowed
to play on her porch. we were playing baby dolls. it was great fun. i was laying on the concrete side
of the porch on my back w/my baby dolls stuffed underneath my shirt.
i called out, "lois, lois! call the doctor! tell him to come
operate to get this baby out of my stomach!"
i didn't know what happened
then. suddenly the front door swung open wildly slamming against the house. lois' mother grabbed me up by my shirt & sternly instructed
me to go directly home.
she scolded me for
"talking like that" & "lois can't play w/you anymore! nice girls don't talk like that!" she told me, "go home kathy!
go home now!"
i looked over at lois &
she looked scared to death. her mother was madder than ever. it was a sin to be mad on sunday i thought. we weren't the right religion anyway
lois had told me. we were episcopalians & they might as well be catholics according to the baptists.
i cried all the way home.
i was in the 4th grade i think. i never brought my baby doll back over there. lois wasn't allowed to play barbies
because her mother thought they were sinful.
it cut short the things
we could do together. lois didn't go to my school, she went to a christian school, so my first best friend was taken from
me over the birth of a baby doll on a quiet sunday afternoon & i experienced the sharp bite of humiliation for the first time.
(i just have to jump ahead for a sec....
it's because of the subject matter.) when i was 13 years old, i still believed that the doctor had to come to get
the baby out of the stomach. i didn't know how babies got in there or how they got out.
i experienced another huge jolt of humiliation that i'll never forget, when my friend across the street called me to come over & watch her cat have kittens. i was so
excited. i asked her, "when's the doctor getting there? i'll be over then!" there was a long pause
on the line when she started laughing hysterically. as i saw the first kitten being born...well, the rest is history....)
i never had anyone to talk
to about that incident. i considered telling joey kellogg when we were up in his apple tree, but i reconsidered & kept
quiet. i didn't trust anyone when i was a child. i was so afraid that Lois' mother was going to call my mother up & tell her that i was rude or nasty or something, something bad anyway,
because i really didn't understand what i had done wrong.
waiting to get in line for
a spanking wasn't very fun & all i was so afraid that i would get royally spanked over the lois crounse affair. my dad would sit in a chair & we'd have to pull down our
pants, even our underwear, which was totally embarrassing & then lean over his lap to receive several spankings w/his hand on our bare butt.
i was so convinced that
the next time i walked into the house that i would be receiving a royal spanking for upsetting Lois' mother. it was the worst
thing you could do in our house, embarrass my parents, that is... my mother never did tell me about the facts of life, or periods, or how babies were born. she let
me learn it from the brief movie we had at school. i never saw that movie until i was 14 for some reason. i had already gotten
my period & was afraid to tell my mother about it.
that put me in such a huge
dilemma because i had to use my mother's pads. she was noticing that they were missing. one day she started interrogating me about getting my period. i locked myself in the bathroom until she went away. i was really
embarrassed about that whole thing.
Bump to the brain can cause depression
Posted: 01/06/2004
03:54 pm
Last Updated: 01/06/2004 03:54 pm
New research shows a severe bump to the
brain can trigger depression & other mental health problems.
The latest study of nearly 100 head injury
patients finds 1/3 suffered a major bout of depression during the first year after their injury. The rate of depression among the brain injury group was much higher than the rates of people
who hadn't been injured, but was suffering depression.
It's not completely clear how head injury
is linked to depression, but there are many theories.
It's thought the injury causes inflammation
or lesions in parts of the brain that control mood.
Earlier studies have suggested that even
milder brain injuries like concussion can increase the depression risk.
throughout my entire childhood -
another form of discipline was used by my father...
we were always driving somewhere
so it seemed when we were all together. we traveled to my grandparents' or aunts' & uncles' houses as well as took frequent
sunday drives as a family.
my father was a chain smoker.
we would go on car trips for hours sometimes with the windows up & the smoke from his cigarettes would choke us all. it
seemed that i was the one always complaining about it. in return for my complaints - i would always receive a whack on the
top of my head from my father. it seemed he had the longest arm i had ever known.
he would hit us on top of
the head & he wore this ring on that hand that would "clunk" loudly when it connected with our heads. it hurt like crazy. but you'd better not cry about it. he could stop the car to administer a spanking on the spot should we carry
on about anything after a warning.
of course the "whacks" on
the head were also used to calm down our arguing in the back seat when one of us, "touched" the other or just a childlike argument about a toy or who would
sit where.... later on in my adult life i would injure the top of my head badly, but years of "clunking us" couldn't have
been good for us...
the other reason i was having
trouble trusting anyone was that it seemed like my mother was always fooling me, in her own special way. i had trouble brushing
my hair like most girls in the 4th grade. it was very long. i had always wanted hair down to my waist.
my mom said she wanted to
brush my hair and i wouldn't let her. so... she told me
to get a chair & put it out on the front porch. i never thought of disobeying - although i had just made a huge mistake
by not letting her brush my hair - & after i got the kitchen chair out on the front porch she told me to go sit there
& wait for her. so i did.
next thing i knew - i had
a pixie haircut. all my hair was completely gone. i cried my eyes out. i was appalled at what she had done. she told me to
stop crying and that it was my own fault for not letting her brush my hair. all my hair was gone & she cut it all off
on the front porch for all the kids in the neighborhood to see. it was horrible.
i looked horrible. i went to school the next day & everyone
called me a boy. then there was the time that i was being bad. i got a kick out of ringing the neighbor's doorbell & then
running away to hide in the bushes to watch them see no one was there....
this doorbell game that gave me such a thrill, was getting
me in trouble & i didn't have a clue about it. the neighbor knew it was me. they were old & it was difficult for them
to get up and answer the door. i guess they told my mother about what i was doing.
so one fine day, i was getting ready to go outside and my
mother on a rare occasion was laying on the couch. i think she had a bad headache. she asked me to come over to her and she
pulled me down to sit on the couch with her arm around me. it was an unusual move on her part. i was taken aback by her showing
affection to me. i remember it like it was yesterday.
she asked me to lay down next to her, so i did. she quietly
spoke to me. "if i ask you a question will you tell me the truth?" i gulped hard. thinking to myself i wondered what the mystery
was. i answered her. "will i get in trouble if i tell you the truth?" she said, "of course not."
so suddenly it hit me. i was in trouble no matter what. then
she said, " the old man next door called me and told me that you have been ringing his doorbell and then running away. is
it true?" my head began to spin. i was really going to be in trouble. again i asked my mother, " will i get in trouble if
i tell you the truth?"
again she said, "of course not." so i fessed up. instantly
she sat up and looked sternly at me. she told me to go next door right away and apologize to the old man. i was petrified
of him. his basement light was always on and i thought he was performing mysterious experiments on animals or something down
there because he looked so creepy. i started to cry. she scooted me out the door. i wouldn't go.
so....... i had set my own
fate. my father found out. then i got a spanking & then i had to make chocolate chip cookies & go over to the neighbor's
house w/my mother to apologize personally.
i was shaking like a leaf
because i was petrified of that old man & because i was of course, embarrassed. my mother kept on reminding me how terrible i was for doing that to those people. so the time came.
it was the weekend and i had to do it. i grabbed the plate
& walked over to the neighbor's house w/my mother. the old man was ugly & scary looking & their house was very
dark & smelled bad. we went in & i instantly had to go to the bathroom i was so afraid.
i told my mother i had to go to the bathroom & she asked
the old man if i could use his bathroom. he told me where it was & i went it there by myself. i shut the door &
it was very dark. i was looking for a light switch & there wasn't any. for some reason i looked up & there was a string
hanging down from a light on the ceiling. i couldn't reach it.
so i stood on the toilet & jumped. i got the string
alright. it broke in my hand. it broke in two. i went to the bathroom in the dark, crying the whole time. my heart was beating
wildly. when i finished going to the bathroom, i opened the door, just a crack & called out to my mother.
she came into the bathroom & asked me why i didn't turn
on the light. she looked around for the switch & realized there wasn't one. then she looked up, just like i had done.
the string was above her head now because i had broken in half. i had the other half in my hand & i held it out while
i choked back the tears.
oh great. now i had to apologize for breaking the light
string. she was so mad at me now. probably another spanking i thought. last time i tell her the truth.
i know....
this seems like - don't sweat the small stuff to most of you - but you don't understand. i was a "good girl." we never talked back to our parents. we never thought about it, for if we did, we might as well have done it. we walked to church every sunday morning together as a family, in
our homemade clothes. my mother sewed all our clothes, even our coats.
there was quiet in our house.
there were certain hours that we watched television. we went to bed at 7:30 pm & didn't complain or we'd be in trouble;
even in the summer when we could hear our friends playing kick the can in the streets. we had on our homemade jammies, had
our baths & were tucked in. we got a kiss good night every night on the cheek. both parents.
my grandparents & aunts
& uncles almost never spoke a harsh word of reprimand towards me. it wasn't until i was 17 years old that my maternal
grandfather spoke rather firmly to me about an incident i was involved in that didn't make him too happy.
i had been sitting at the
bar w/my grandmother, having a drink at their country club. this man walked up to us & he knew who i was because i was
w/my grandmother, of course & besides, everyone said i looked just like my mother. he had gone to high school w/my mom.
i got alittle pissed because he was flirting w/me. i had just been dumped by my fiancee' - dropped off at my grandparents
by him. i wasn't a happy camper.
he kept on telling me what
his wife wouldn't let him do. i turned to him & said, "well, it looks like you're just one big pussy whipped husband!"
he looked at my grandmother & looked back at me & then walked away. sorry mom. i didn't know he was the assistant
district attorney.
being in trouble at my house was big business. there was
one thing that you didn't want to do. that was to get my mother mad at you -because then you were a member of the "silent treatment" committee - the receiving member that is & most likely you'd be receiving the right hand of the law, my dad.
since the incident w/lois
crounse & the baby doll humiliation, my life on sunday afternoon was pretty boring. sometimes i can recall, if it was raining out, my brother & sister & i would play together. i don't remember playing
w/them very much at all, except for these far & few between sunday afternoons.
we'd watch a movie while
we positioned our little wooden rocking chairs on their sides on the braided rug in the living room. it was the era of scary
movies that had creatures in them. there were the creatures from the lagoon, huge ants & spiders, king kong & more
& more frequently there were space aliens.
we'd pretend that we were
on a boat while sitting on our rockers & the braided rug was the water surrounding the lagoon. if we stepped on that rug,
the creature would come & get us. we had the typical kind of black & white television that people had back then. it
was a zenith television i believe. my father seemed to be an expert at rabbit ears, that's what he called them, that were used so we could get a picture on
the television. it was something like an antenna he had explained.
one sunday afternoon the
television kept getting fuzzy. my mother called to him to come & see if he could fix it. he was always in the other room
by himself reading a book. my father boasted of reading a book a day for as long as i could remember. he told me he was trained
to "speed read."
so my father went to the
kitchen & got this very long knife. he pulled out the television & crawled in behind it. my mother was knitting on
the far end of the living room while all of this was going on. my brother & sister & i were watching from our "ships"
so that we didn't touch the braided rug.
suddenly there was a loud
noise from behind the television. my father let out this really strange noise & appeared to be frozen. all of a sudden
that big knife in his hand went flying across the room. it was aimed right at my mother & she wasn't really paying attention
to it. the knife whizzed right by her & stuck into the wall. she looked up at the knife. then she looked at my father.
no one said anything. my father could have killed my mother just then, i thought to myself.
he never said he was sorry.
i guess when he got shocked it hurt because he was mad & told us to turn off the television. after he left the room, my mother mumbled something like, "that'll
teach you to not use a screwdriver." she was shaking her head.
i picked up my rocking chair & went to my room. i laid
on my bed thinking about what would have happened if that knife had hit my mother. it made me really afraid. i didn't like that sunday afternoon at all.
one night there was a lot of commotion on our street. a man w/a machine gun ended up in our front yard, crawling around on his belly, our yard
surrounded by policemen, he was shooting out the windows & tires of the cars parked on the street.
our yard was lined w/small bushes which protected him enough that he wasn't going to
give up easily.
i ran to the front window from my bed after being woken up by the noises. standing in
the shadows, i watched it all. neighbors down the street were standing behind police cars & on their porches trying to
see what was going on.
the gun was loud. the glass breaking had its own distinctive frightening crash. my parents pulled me away from the window. i asked if he could get in our house. we hardly ever locked our door.
after i was deposited back into my bedroom, which was
in the back of the house, i could still hear it all happening clearly. the lights were still shining & flickering shadows upon
my walls. i heard the police speaking into the loud speaker to talk to the sniper. it was really frightening when i heard the sound of the gun. i kept thinking he was going to get into our house. i was so afraid that i couldn't move, cry or hardly even breathe.
i dreamt at least once a week for almost 4 years about that night. i dreamt that the
sniper crawled up our drain pipe by the bathroom window & crawled into our window w/his machine gun. my father was giving
us a bath. all 3 of us had to take a bath together. the sniper ordered our naked bodies out of the tub & into the hallway
upstairs. my mother & my grandmother were in my dream as well. we were all line up, w/us kids all naked as jaybirds.
he shot each one of us. i had to watch it all because i was last. when he shot me, i
always woke up. i heard that you can't die in your dreams.
we never, not even once
mentioned that night again in our house.
the confusing part of my life was - as traumatic, stressful & unsatisfying it all was to be part of my family, it was equally gratifying at times.
it was all a level of measure
as to what you would be satisfied with, i guess. we always had nice clothes, toys & birthday celebrations. we always had easter baskets, santa claus &
thanksgiving dinners with extended family.
my mother baked everything
from scratch & i was allowed to teach myself to bake & cook. i loved to read, ride my bike & play with the neighborhood
kids. we ate dinner together every night. we ate breakfast every morning & were well cared for so we weren't sickly or unbehaved.
i had a healthy cross section
of friends. friends from church, friends from school & friends from the neighborhood. there was a catholic population
on our street who attended the catholic schools, which i believe at the time were still segrated by gender.
we were fortunate to go
places, know our extended family & there was always music in our house & in our car when we traveled. my father's
favorite holiday was halloween, thus we always had a great homemade costume.
so - it seemed that there
wasn't widespread abuse & neglect in our family. it was the insidious kind that lurks beneath the bed, coming out sometimes to bite at you when no one is looking.
it was a long slow, tortuous journey in fear, loneliness of heart & sometimes despair, but we were healthy, came from a good family & things always "looked good."
What events cause PTSD in children?
A diagnosis
of PTSD means that an individual experienced an event that involved a threat to one's own or another's life or physical integrity
& that this person responded w/intense fear, helplessness or horror.
There are a number of traumatic events that have been
shown to cause PTSD in children & adolescents. Children & adolescents may be diagnosed w/ PTSD if they have survived natural or man made disasters such as floods; violent crimes such as kidnapping, rape
or murder of a parent, sniper fire &
school shootings; motor vehicle accidents such as automobile & plane crashes; severe burns; exposure to community violence; war; peer suicide & sexual & physical abuse.
National Center for PTSD
on shuart avenue, in
syracuse, new york both sides of the street were these huge maple trees. it was beautiful.
in the fall, it was great fun to run down the street
as a kid, jumping in all the piles of leaves. i got one good spanking one saturday afternoon, for going down the street &
"around the corner" to jump in my friend's extra large pile of leaves. we weren't allowed around the corner. it was beyond
our boundary. my mother & father had been calling me & i didn't know it because i was, of course, around the corner.
anyway.... one night some kids, teenage kids, set
fire to all those piles of leaves that were gathered up beneath each of the maple trees. not many people had garages in the
city, so most everyone had to park their cars on the street. it wasn't a good thing to have all those fires right next to
all those cars.
again i woke up to sirens & lights flashing,
people yelling, panicky people were crying, it was chaos! after the sniper thing, i was devastated. it was just too traumatic
for me to handle. i just laid in my bed & didn't move.
neither of my parents talked to us about these
incidents... they didn't explain anything about them - they just never talked about it again.
when my parents did that - ignoring an extreme something that had happened - we didn't dare bring it up again. i am not sure why we had this fear inside of us, but we were actually afraid to speak to them. questions just weren't a good thing - it seemed like anyway - or we were so conditioned to their usual
response of, "because i said so," that we didn't attempt to ask anything.
there were some other extreme anxiety situations that took place while i lived in syracuse, a city-wide
blackout, a blizzard that shut down the city.... it was
a really amazing stay...
what struck me most about that time in my life was, an increasing expectation that my parents had for me to be independent. it seemed as if i felt a huge amount of pressure to "grow up." i can remember my mother giving me bus fare to go to the library alone. i was in
the 4th grade. syracuse is a pretty big city & i just seriously can't imagine a 4th grader going such a distance
alone, but i did it.
she'd give me some money & i would stop at this donut shop & have a donut &
a lime rickey as well. i remember the trip so well, because i'd sit at the counter & converse w/the older people that
would spend hours sitting there drinking coffee & chatting w/the waitress.
i was obsessively worried about diabetes back then
as i had heard mention of my grandfather possibly having diabetes. there was a huge sign on the front door of the library
about "going blind" from having diabetes.
i was really concerned about that for him. this was a problem that i have only recently recognized as many of my beliefs & concerns were based on my ignorance of the facts... i had no one to talk to about my fears that were being formed w/a false beginning...
after awhile i learned to love to walk. i liked going on those little excursions alone. i just could never understand my parents' logic. how could they think i was old enough, responsible enough, to go downtown by myself - even to my dentist appointments alone & yet i was still a kid - remembering standing in the first position in line, waiting to pull my pants down,
bend over my father's knee, so he could spank our "bare bottoms," as he would always put it; all because i had gone around
the corner to jump in a leaf pile with some kids from school.
we also walked several blocks to go to school. kids always picked on me then. sometimes
we would go home for lunch. my mom would meet us there on her lunch hour & it was in those very pleasant times that i
remember her teaching us to dunk our grilled cheese sandwiches in our chocolate milk! i still love to do that.
she did that because i had been terrorized in school by some older kids throwing their jello cubes around in the cafeteria. i was so afraid of getting in trouble that i was actually afraid of the fact that some jello from the food fight had gotten on my new green dress my mother had made for me. i was so terrified about eating lunch at school that my mom let me come home for awhile & she made a point of telling me she had to drive
there & back in one hour - her lunch hour. so i began to experience feeling guilty for taking up her valuable time off.
then on the way home from school the kids were treacherous as well. those older kids
would try to take my shoes off - to tie the laces together & throw them up over the electrical wires. there were remnants
of sneakers hanging there all the time. i was so afraid i would get in so much trouble from losing my shoes that i ran home most of the time - literally ran.
my mom hardly ever spanked us. we'd get chased by her waving a yard stick around trying
to swat us with it. she would usually break it against the wall when she missed hitting us. that would always make me start
laughing. then she would get real mad & say, "wait until
your father gets home young lady!" then the remaining hours of the day were anxiety ridden & dreaded.
How many children develop PTSD?
A few studies of the general population have been
conducted that examine rates of exposure & PTSD in children & adolescents.
Results from these studies indicate that 15 to 43% of girls & 14 to 43% of boys have experienced
at least one traumatic event in their lifetime.
Of those children & adolescents who have
experienced a trauma, 3 to 15% of girls & 1 to 6% of boys
could be diagnosed w/PTSD.
Rates of PTSD are much higher in children & adolescents recruited from at-risk samples. The rates of PTSD in these at-risk children & adolescents vary from 3 to 100%.
For example, studies have shown that as many as:
- 100% of children who witness a parental homicide or sexual assault
develop PTSD.
- 90% of sexually abused children
- 77% of children exposed to a school shooting
- 35% of urban youth exposed to community violence
develop PTSD.
i was a reader. i read all the nancy drew books, as
well as the bobsey twins. my mother was happy about that.(i never thought about it, but maybe that's why i loved to read so much, my mother would actually smile about it) she supplied me w/all the books that i asked
for. i would spend hours & hours in my room, laying on my bed, reading. i loved having my own room for the short time that i had it.
i did write my first creative writing project in the 4th grade &
i discovered that i loved to write. my father actually complimented me on my story. i wrote a story about one of my dreams. i have always had
the strangest dreams. i still do.
i played hopscotch, jump rope, both single & double dutch &
rode bikes. we were allowed to be outside as long as we wanted without reporting in for as long as we wanted as long as we
didn't stray too far, like around the corner. that was incredibly hard for me to understand.
my mother even sent me to the dentist - downtown - on my own. i took
the bus there after school, but i couldn't go around the corner to play with those kids. it was strange & it made me mad.
the other thing i always hated was my father gave us our baths. we had to take a bath together, all three of us. i was in the 4th
grade when i began to complain about it. i just didn't want my father washing me.
i had chores to do.
i washed the dinner dishes every night, clearing off the table, washing off the table & putting away the leftovers. after
i washed the dishes & they were allowed to drip dry, i would have to put them away. my elbows barely made it to the counter
top when i started that.
every saturday i had to wash the
kitchen floor & the kitchen chairs, table legs & change the sheets on my bed. i had to dust the furniture as well.
this was the only preparation for adult life that was important for my parents to teach me, by the way. Housework & Cooking.
i taught myself how to bake chocolate
chip cookies when i was 9. i remember it well. the first batch came out like rocks. i gave my father a handful of them on
his way out the door to go to work. about a few months later i was riding in the front seat of the car w/him, i opened the
glove compartment, like kids always do & there were the cookies - still rock hard spilling out on the floor. i looked
at him, he looked at me - no one said a word. i was heart broken.
What are the risk factors for PTSD?
There are 3 factors
that have been shown to increase the likelihood that children will develop PTSD.
These factors include the
severity of the traumatic event, the parental reaction to the traumatic event &
the physical proximity to the traumatic event.
In general, most studies find that children &
adolescents who report experiencing the most severe traumas also report the highest levels
of PTSD symptoms.
Family support & parental coping have also
been shown to affect PTSD symptoms in children. Studies show that children & adolescents w/ greater family support & less parental distress
have lower levels of PTSD symptoms.
Finally, children & adolescents who are
farther away from the traumatic event report less distress.
There are several other factors that affect the occurrence &
severity of PTSD.
Research suggests that interpersonal traumas
such as rape & assault are more likely to result in PTSD than other types of traumas.
Additionally, if an individual has experienced a number of traumatic events in the past, those experiences increase the risk of developing PTSD. In terms of gender, several studies suggest that girls are more likely than boys to develop
PTSD.
A few studies have examined the connection between ethnicity &
PTSD. While some studies find that minorities report higher levels of PTSD symptoms, researchers have shown that this is due to other factors such as differences in levels of exposure.
It's not clear how a child's age at the time of exposure to a traumatic
event impacts the occurrence or severity of PTSD. While some studies find a relationship, others don't.
Differences that do occur may be due to differences in the way PTSD is expressed in children & adolescents of different ages or developmental levels (see next section).
one thing we always did as a family was take a two week vacation
to go camping in the summer. we always went to wilderness
state park in michigan. it always rained when we went there. i had a terrible experience once. i was sleeping in the car alone because the tent was wet or because we had extra people there or some reason i can't even remember..... but, there was a horrible thunderstorm. when the lightning hit, the sky would light up & all the trees would
be silloutted against the rain filled sky. i was terrified. i thought i was going to be struck by lightning. i cried for hours.
i screamed for my mother to come
& get me but no one heard me. after awhile i just sat there staring out the window at those trees as they imposed
themselves, tall, scary, like the trees in the wizard of oz almost. i was sobbing & shaking. i got cold. i was miserable. it seemed like morning would never come.
after this night, everytime a lightning storm visited our
neighborhood in syracuse, new york, i would look out my window at the back of our house & see the biggest tree in our
yard, sillouetted against the stormy black sky w/each flash of lightning. i was convinced that the tree would be hit by lightning &
fall into our house, right on top of me in my bed. i was litterally petrified with fear. i laid there watching, unable to close my eyes. sometimes i would get so scared i would actually attempt to get my mother up even though i knew i would get in trouble for it. of course, every attempt at
that failed throughout my childhood, but i cried, frozen in fear with each storm thereafter.
we quit going to wilderness state park when in the middle of the night, we all woke up & were floating on our air mattresses inside the
tent.
it was raining so hard that the tent was flooded. my dad was outside digging
a trench around the tent, but to no avail. the tent was still flooding. my mom & dad got into a fight over it. she packed
all 3 of us into the car.
it was a blue plymouth i think. my sister was a toddler
& was really upset with the noise from the thunderstorm, getting soaking wet in the tent & she was crying her lungs
out.
my brother was complaining about being cold & wet, too. my dad decided that we were
going home. i think it was my dad. between the two of them fighting & yelling at me to keep my sister quiet, it was hard
to tell who made the final decision to pack it all up in the middle of the night & the thunderstorm to go home. we weren't
supposed to be leaving for a few days, but my parents were pulling up muddy tent stakes & throwing all the camping paraphenalia
into the trunk & the backseat w/us kids.
i didn't dare say a single word on the way home. we were told to shut up & that wasn't
allowed in our house. i knew my dad was dead serious. i didn't want to feel that ring of his
smack me on the top of the head, the way he always did when he wanted us to be quiet in the car.
i was gagging on his cigarette smoke & my mom was furious about it. he wouldn't put the window down at all
because of the driving rain.
it was a long ride that night from wilderness state park to syracuse, new york. we never
went back there though. never.
okay, now this may seem
very bizarre & silly to some, but it happened in syracuse, new york at this time in the sixties. it was a real thing to
all of us kids. maybe i was the only one in the gang on our street who took it seriously, because i was so naive & gullible, but it seemed like the other kids were scared to death about it too.
somehow we all got the idea
that aliens were coming to the earth to steal all the kids off the earth. they were going to kill all the parents & destroy
the earth after they kidnapped all the kids. it was supposed to happen on a certain date. stories began to circulate about
how they were going to torture us kids & make us their slaves.
the aliens would do experiments
on us & we would be eventually put to death at a certain age. they would never allow us to become adults. we would die
first. i had heard that this story had actually been reported on the television news. i may have asked my mother about it
once. she probably laughed at me & never answered my concerns.
i was totally afraid to bring it up again. so each day, as the date became closer & closer my stomach tightened & knotted harder. i had
endless stomachaches & i was so worried i could just start crying at the drop of a hat. everyone was talking about it.
we tried to imagine how it would all happen & compared stories. as the weeks, then days continued on to the actual date
this was supposed to occur on, i was weak w/fear.
of course, it never happened.
we were relieved but we never thought it was a lie. we just thought that the government had found a way to stop it from happening. oh & by the way - lost in space was our favorite television
show at the time. "it does not compute, will robinson..."
7/2005
a few more incidents happened that i had forgotten about...
one day i was thinking about something that had happened at
our house that was a real bloody mess and i couldn't put it all together. after a few days i remembered. one of the kids that
came over to our house to play, was running in the house, which was a big "no no."
we had hardwood floors, which i can attest to the fact that
they could cause serious damage to you if you fell on them. i cracked my chin on the floor one night when i was sliding on
the floor in my socks and because i had my hands in my pockets, i fell chin first to the floor. that was horrible.
but anyway, the kid that was at our house ran towards our
front door and the big door was open and the smaller glass door in the front was closed. the kid was sliding so fast that
he slid right into the glass of the front door. his hands got all cut up. there was glass everywhere and my mother and father
were furious with us for running in the house. it was really bloody. it was a big mess. we spent some time in our rooms for
that. alot of time.
i thought about it and remembered thinking that it was like the time my mother had cut her
hand doing dishes. there was just so much blood everywhere.
then the huge debacle occurred....
my mother & i'm not
sure about my dad's input in this venture, decided that we would have a foster child come into our home. my mom worked at
that catholic girl's school or orphanage or whatever it was & i think that that was the origin of the idea.
we were episcopalian's as
i mentioned before. we walked to church together as a family every sunday morning. we wore the special clothes that my mother
always seemed to have time to sew for us. i was proud of them though.... it was my own little feeling of caring that she must have had in making the dress, just for me.. or so it seemed.....
the foster child idea
seemed okay to me, but it was just a mystery as it was never explained any further than, "you'll
have to give up your bedroom & share a room with your sister!" that made me mad. i was really really mad....
turns out she was older than me. alot older & that was
a problem.
the foster child turned
out to be an 18 year old big sister. she was blonde, cute & ba ba boom! a go-go dancer!!! she had piles of 45's &
introduced me to the beatles. i picked up my still favorite song, "red rubber ball" from her & i won a dance contest at
a birthday party learning how to do "the pony" from her.
it was fun for abit, but
then the proverbial shit hit the fan. of course, i only know what happened thru eavesdropping skills, but i think my father was a bit too interested in our "foster child." back then the legal age was 21 & she eventually turned 21 &
i remember her getting her own apartment; the result of a huge fight between my mother & father & her. my mom was
really mad because she was giving everyone the silent treatment.
there was alot of chaos & negative vibes happening between my mother, father & our foster child. the next thing i knew, we were moving from syracuse, new york to new hampshire! new hampshire
was really far away!
this whole situation was extremely confusing to me. i didn't
understand what all the fuss was about. i was just getting used to things being slightly different at our house. new subjects
were coming up that i had never heard of before.
there was this thing hanging in our shower one saturday morning,
a hot water bottle with a hose on it. i simply asked what it was and my foster sister told me something like, a "douce." my
mother went ballistic!
i had to leave the room without ever finding out what
that thing was for. these were the days that the only advertising for tampons was a black and white character drawing in the
magazines or newspapers of a girl on roller skates. no one ever said the words, tampon, pad, period or "douce" in our
house before. this was all new stuff for me.
it didn't seem like a big deal to my new sister but it
made my mother nuts. i felt excluded. i felt like i didn't matter. i was missing out on something and i desperately wanted to
know what it was but i was... guess... i was afraid to ask ... i was afraid i would get in trouble if i asked too many
or even one question about that stuff that got my mother so upset.
it was at this time that i was horrified once more. early
one morning, very early because it was still dark out and only the hall light was on. my father had gotten up and
was going to the bathroom to take a shower. he was naked. i saw these two giant things hanging down as i watched him
walk into the bathroom. it was so disgusting looking and i didn't know what it was. i never wanted to see him naked again
or any other man. they had some weird stuff down there.
What does PTSD look like in children?
Researchers & clinicians
are beginning to recognize that PTSD may not present itself in children the same way it does in adults (see What is PTSD?). Criteria for PTSD now include age-specific features for some symptoms.
Very young children may present
w/few PTSD symptoms. This may be because 8 of the PTSD symptoms require a verbal description of one's feelings & experiences.
Instead, young children
may report more generalized fears such as:
- stranger or separation anxiety
- avoidance of situations that may or may not be related to the
trauma
- sleep disturbances
- a preoccupation w/words or symbols
that may or may not be related to the trauma
These children may also
display posttraumatic play in which they repeat themes of the trauma. In addition, children
may lose an acquired developmental skill (such as toilet training) as a result of experiencing
a traumatic event.
Clinical reports suggest that elementary school-aged children may
not experience visual flashbacks or amnesia for aspects
of the trauma.
However, they do experience "time skew" & "omen formation," which
aren't typically seen in adults. Time skew refers to a child mis-sequencing trauma related events when recalling the memory.
Omen formation is a belief that there were warning signs that predicted
the trauma. As a result, children often believe that if they are alert enough, they'll recognize warning signs & avoid
future traumas.
School-aged children also reportedly exhibit
posttraumatic play or re-enactment of the trauma in play, drawings or verbalizations.
Posttraumatic play is different
from re-enactment in that posttraumatic play is a literal representation of the trauma, involves compulsively repeating some
aspect of the trauma & doesn't tend to relieve anxiety.
An example of posttraumatic play is an increase in shooting games
after exposure to a school shooting. Posttraumatic reenactment, on the other hand, is more flexible & involves behaviorally
recreating aspects of the trauma (e.g., carrying a weapon after exposure to violence).
PTSD in adolescents may begin to more closely resemble PTSD in adults. However, there are a few features that have been shown to differ.
As discussed above, children may engage in traumatic play following
a trauma. Adolescents are more likely to engage in traumatic re-enactment, in which they incorporate aspects of the trauma
into their daily lives.
In addition, adolescents are more likely than younger children or
adults to exhibit impulsive & aggressive behaviors.
so many small traumas transpired & no one explained anything to us about the move...
i had grown quite fond
of my foster sister. i liked living close to my grandparents & aunts & uncles & cousins. i had just gotten used
to having an older sister & now i'd probably never see her again. now we would have to drive for 8 hours to visit my grandmother.
now i wouldn't be able to see my family for long periods of time. i was devastated.
i began to have dreams of my grandmother dying almost
every other night. i dreamt that i would find her dead in a casket. i had never seen a casket or a dead person, but this is
what i dreamt about continually. i cried each time i left my grandmother's house & we only lived a couple of hours away
from her. i'd get this huge lump in my throat & then cry silently to myself in the backseat, so my dad wouldn't hear me
& get mad at me for crying.
i had to say goodbye to Joey Kellogg & Donald Huff
in the old neighborhood, where they still played kick the can in the street.... & we moved on to one of the "New England"
states, New Hampshire....
We ended up at a bed & breakfast, Pettingill's Farm
(a bed & breakfast in the country), until we could close on our house & move
in. It would be the first & last house my parents would own together as husband & wife. I would spend my 12th birthday
on Pettingill's farm dealing w/my first big crush on a farmboy.
i can barely remember those days at Pettingill's
Farm.
it just seems like so long ago... it was... & the
events that transpired there were so insignificant & normal that my memory is faint. no big impressions were made there
in the beginning years there anyway; life was slow, they all worked hard & unfortunately for me they owned a huge mother
hog, named, "Kathy."
My brother wouldn't leave me alone about it.
I still have no memory to speak of concerning my siblings & the
last years in Syracuse. I don't know what they did w/themselves because I stayed as far away from them, most of the time,
as I could.
We did play together on rainy days up in the attic of that tall city house, jumping on a full bed mattress
up there & peering out the small window paned windows in the front of the house. it seemed like we were a mile high up
in the sky up there on the 3rd floor. i always loved it & wanted my bedroom to be up there.
I have faint memories of playing sea monster on the living room rug, pretending our wooden rocking
chairs, placed on their sides were our boats & the braided oval rug was the ocean.
we watched the television movie, the creature from the dark lagoon & we squealed w/fear watching
his scaly body walk up out of the water to "get" someone!
Now that we were in New Hampshire, I spent less & less time, actually no time, w/my brother & sister
as they were just annoying to me most of the time. I had
to share a bedroom w/my sister & she always made the annoying comment, "I'm learning from your mistakes!" like she never
did anything wrong. it was just plain annoying.
My father had landed a job at Raytheon. It was in New Hampshire that I realized his intelligence level.
He had decided to get his college degree finally at the University of New Hampshire, while he was working full time at Raytheon.
He had to go there for 3 years. He did it alright. We just had to stay out of his way, which back then,
meant out of the house.
The weekends we were shipped out to the roller skating rink, movies & bowling alley on a rotating
basis. I learned about candlestick bowling in New Hampshire & about taxes. Something about living in New England, where
everyone came to New Hampshire to buy things to avoid paying taxes, meant it was always busy in our little town of Plaistow,
on the weekend.
Our liquor stores were always packed, I knew this fact because ours was an "alcohol" interested home.
Both of my parents were drinkers & kept a fully stocked bar at all times for entertaining.
We had lots of room to roam, run & explore. There were open fields, woods & pathways between
streets through groves of gigantic pine trees. The ground beneath those pines covered w/slippery fragrant long pine needles
was so soft to lay on & peer up through the treetops to see the fluffy clouds floating by.
Our house was surrounded w/pine trees. It was a great place to live.
Besides PTSD, what are the other effects of trauma
on children?
Besides PTSD, children & adolescents who've experienced traumatic events often exhibit other types of problems.
Perhaps
the best info available on the effects of traumas on children comes from a review of the literature on the effects of child sexual abuse. In this review, it was shown that sexually abused children often have problems with:
These problems are often
seen in children & adolescents who have experienced other types of traumas as well. Children who have experienced traumas also often have relationship problems w/peers & family members, problems w/ acting out & problems w/ school performance.
Along w/ associated symptoms, there are a number of psychiatric disorders
that are commonly found in children & adolescents who've been traumatized.
One commonly co-occurring disorder is major depression. Other disorders include:
My mom got a job as a
legal secretary. i do believe that she did typing in the evening at home for money, too. we went to the elementary
school on Main St. in Plaistow & like i said before, things were very quiet there. we were living in the country, after
all.
unlike
the city... places were miles apart from each other, although you could ride your bike down the road even though
there were no sidewalks, hopscotch was definetly out of the question, unless you played directly on the road. There were no
more heels of shoes laying around anymore anyway. Shoes had begun to be made differently anyway & the heels didn't come
off when they were worn out.
Although my mindset
was that of a child, still not understanding the reproductive cycle, not knowing about getting a period, not knowing anything about boys & kissing &
such, i was very interested in boys...
i was also very
interested in this new place we lived in. i was interested in the history of new england. i still read books, not quite as
avidly as i had in syracuse, but i had begun to read adult novels & listen to the radio & read the Boston Globe.
Every Sunday I woke up, went to church, worked in the nursery & came home to read the Boston Globe in my room on my bed.
My
bedroom was always my refuge if I was in the house.
We were supposed
to leave my father in "quiet" so we all had to scatter to our own little corners of the house when we had to stay inside.
The rest of the time we were outside, wandering, exploring & enjoying the great outdoors & the feelings of freedom & independence for the first time in our lives.
Our parents were
so consumed w/whatever it was they were doing that they let us go all day if we wanted without checking in, w/out having to
tell them where we were, as long as we left my father alone, in his "quiet" little world.
things
calmed down for us in the country for awhile. although we didn't have any input from our parents, we did what we wanted. i, especially,
adventurous & extremely intrigued w/nature, people & all aspects of life. i loved to cook. i baked & baked. w/out any help from my mom, i could make anything i wanted to. there always seemed to be groceries
to bake with, so i just continued to bake.
my mother quit making our clothes slowly but surely weaning herself
from her vigil over the sewing machine; as my dad began to make more money & she wasn't typing in the evening any more
because her job had become better paying. it was as if the adults had their own separate life in our house. the kids did what
they wanted to. There was no input into our daily lives from our parents as long as we behaved ourselves.
the accident
happened on our 1st or 2nd year in new hampshire, i can't quite remember, but i think the first thanksgiving that we had to
travel the 8 hour drive to my grandparents house. it was a cold & icy & snowy morning that we set out in the wee hours
of the morning to drive to New York from New Hampshire.
we packed in the car &
everything was quiet as it usually was in the beginning hours of a trip, when everyone was still dozing in & out
of consciousness. no singing, just the news on the radio. the weather was horrible though.
it was a mixture of snow
& freezing rain. my mother looked very tense as she watched the road ahead. as the morning progressed & we were on the New York Freeway, the weather turned worse.
i could hear the concern in my mother's voice as she spoke to my father.
i watched out the window,
seeing cars sliding off the road. we were going pretty slow now & my little sister had begun to color in her coloring
book & had her crayons in her lap. she always sat in the middle to separate my brother & i from each other. he aggravated me & i aggravated him so it was better that way.
suddenly
i heard my mother gasp. i couldn't see what was happening but she called out my father's name loudly & i saw her hold
onto the dashboard. i looked out the side window but couldn't see anything. then i looked out the back window. my mother was
looking out the back window too.
a semi truck was barrelling
down upon our car. it was like it was in slow motion, but it actually happened pretty quick. it was jack-knifing. i heard
my mother say, "bob, he's going to hit us!" i saw the driver's face as the big truck hit our car. then our car began to spin
in circles.
we hit another car that
was stopped ahead of us. we kept on spinning & hitting cars & then i saw that we were on an overpass because we hit
the side guardrail. for a moment i thought we were dead. i thought we were going over, but somehow another car hit us &
we began to spin the other way again.
metal was hitting metal
causing a strange loud crunching sound. the crayons had flown up in the air & my sister was crying. we didn't have on
seat belts, i don't even think we had seat belts in the back seat. we never wore seat belts. so we got thrown around in the
back seat & i hit my back on the arm rest of the door pretty hard & it hurt. suddenly we stopped moving. there were
cars & people everywhere on that overpass & the truck had gone off the road to the median.
we all just sat there quietly
for a few seconds & then we all started to cry in the backseat. it was a horrible accident. my mother asked if we were
okay & we all cried & nodded our heads. my dad told us to, "shut up!" & we did because we knew he meant business
when he said, "shut up."
None of us kids had on shoes or
coats. they were all in the trunk. the trunk that almost didn't exist anymore, that is. my mom said she had hurt her neck.
my dad said he was sore, too, but he never said another word about it. It got really cold - really fast. It took awhile for
the police & ambulances to get there. my dad was outside talking to the truck driver to see if he was okay. we all just
sat their in silence.
none of us dared to make
a sound. it was a nightmare in the daytime for all of us. we ended up getting a rental car. we were in the middle of
nowhere though, so it took forever to get our car towed to a garage & get a rental. they finally pryed open our scrunched
up trunk & i kept hearing all the adults say how lucky we were that the truck jack knifed & hit us w/his mud guard
- otherwise - we would have all been killed. we got our shoes & our coats, but all the christmas presents we were bringing
for everyone got all tore up. we also had a baby bassinet in the trunk for one of my aunts who was having a baby. it was pretty
crunched up too.
we got a tiny little car
as a rental. it was really cramped in the back seat. it was still snowing like crazy. it was blizzard conditions they said
on the radio. it was so bad that my dad couldn't see anything. when we got to Binghamton, New York we got off an exit &
just drove to some street & parked on the side of the road. it was snowing so hard.
my parents were exhausted.
they were sore & mentally drained. i was so scared about everything that had happened but i didn't open my mouth. i wasn't
stupid.
so now we were lost because there was
so much snow. my dad was exhausted & couldn't figure out where we were. my mother was complaining
about running the car because we were cold. my dad had completely shut it off. he was in a horrible
mood. they were almost arguing, which they had never done before in front of us.
finally at about 3am we
rolled into corning, new york at my grandmother's house. i was never so glad to see that place & my grandma. we had thanksgiving
dinner the next day & then got back into our tiny rent a car & drove back to new hampshire. the car was totalled they
said. we just left it there i guess.
i've been petrified w/fear over those big trucks ever since. the trip home was horrible. i sat next to the window & as my father would pass those
big trucks or those big trucks have passed us, my stomach would knot until it hurt & my knuckles would turn white from
clenching my hands together in fear. i remember holding my breath & squeezing my eyes tightly shut until the truck would
pass.
i continued to have these symptoms until almost 30 years
old. still i cringe as the trucks pass, but at least i can keep my eyes open.
the next year we went to
new york for thanksgiving, we didn't get into an accident. we all got food poisoning instead from thanksgiving dinner somehow.
we all had barf bags in our laps the whole way home.
there was a huge transitional phase, leaving elementary
school & going into jr. high school. in my small little town, the jr. high school had to be lumped in w/ the high school
because we had an unanticipated growth spurt in that area.
this meant of course, that i'd be thrust into the "realm of hippiedom"
to take my part amongst the "flower children" of the times. it was a complete makeover for me once i got there.
when after all those years of longing to wear a bra, of course, no one was wearing bras amongst the flower children... "freedom"
was their theme song....
somehow however, i managed to get along w/every single person
in school, young & old alike... the seniors were fascinated by my deep concern for political subjects & intellectual
abilities in coversations & the boys, no matter what age were interested in just "being close" to me for some
unknow reason...
yes, i was a popular girl which felt very good inside to
me. people liked me & they showed me that they liked me by accepting me. my studies suffered slightly here in 7th &
8th grades. i was just too busy enjoying my recognition as a person & being accepted by people to care about homework.
i was particularly needy at this time in my life.
my home life has gotten very cold & unfriendly. my dad did his thing, my mom did her thing... who
knows what my brother & sister were up to because i was too involved in what i wanted at that time & wasn't
getting.
there was no communication between anyone in the
house. my mother turned extremely stoic, a switchover from her mildly stoic mannerisms previously & i knew whatever had
transpired in new york before we left there, was having a huge impact upon the situation.
of course it was time for me to experience puberty, but i didn't know anything about it. my mother had been dreading talking to me about the "birds & the bees," according
to my grandmother, who drilled me on each visit as to if my mother had "talked to me yet!"
she often told me that she had asked my mother for permission
to tell me herself, but my mother had told her, "no," because she wanted to handle it. the strangest thing was, it was after
we had seen a movie at school for just the girls that was shown by the school nurse, that my mother came to me one day to
ask me if she could talk to me about something important.
i was mad at her, because i knew exactly what she wanted to
talk to me about. i was angry that she didn't have the courage to talk to me about something so important. i was enraged that
she had allowed me to be humiliated because of my ignorance about how babies were born. i told her that i had seen the movie
at school & that i knew about my period so she didn't have to "go there."
she was really relieved.
she never wanted to talk to me again about anything
though. she didn't want to talk about sex, birth control or choosing to be abstinent. too bad, i guess. i remained ignorant
about those topics.
at the same time...
my father had graduated from college after three years at
the University of New Hampshire. he was traveling around the world with his entourage of bomb, missle & radar engineers,
"playing all kinds of war games" he used to say.
my father had a thing for the frauleins in Germany though.
I think he made no bones about exposing that fondness and left tangible reminders of them in his suitcase, which caused my
mother to get mean when she unpacked his stuff. she would be so angry that she didn't talk to anyone for days. we all began
to noice that "the silent treatment" was her punishment of choice.
another thing was happening with my mother though....
she was experiencing some pain in her face.... she never talked
to us kids about it & i'm not sure how much she talked to my father about it, but it was causing her so much pain that
she was beginning to drink abit more alcohol, relying mostly on martinis, to help cope with the agony that she was in.
the only time she spoke to me about what was wrong with her,
she explained that any little sensation in her mouth or face caused her excrutiating pain. brushing her teeth was almost impossible.
smiling, chewing, squinting, just any movement of her face was painful.... in years later, when examining my personal inventory
for the first time, i found i could no longer be angry with my mother (if i ever was, i didn't realize it) because i could
identify with her illness. i had myself encountered pain in the panic attacks that i would chronically experience in my 20's
and 30's.
i now understood "why" she often remained silent in our house.
to keep from being in pain was a main concern to her that she had not fully explained to us, her children, who lived with
her constant look of lips pursed tightly and no sound anywhere around her. she just didn't talk unless she had to.
along w/the added consumption of alcohol, my mother began to have some car accidents. i always seemed to be the one that answered the phone when the police called
to say, "your mother has been in a car accident. she's okay, she's pretty bruised up, but she needs someone to come &
get her."
i can remember the feeling to this day. your stomach jumps
up & gets stuck in your throat, the tears automatically begin to spring from your eyes.... your heart stopped for just
a few seconds....well... my mom owned every telephone pole on our street.
in plaistow, new hampshire, if you knocked over a telephone
pole w/your car, (maybe it was because she was intoxicated)you had to pay for them.... she used to think it was a joke, but
it wasn't funny to me.
my mom was going thru some experimental treatments for
her trigeminal neuralgia. the disease was usually found in older people. it was rare that someone in their late 30's would
develop it. sometimes she'd have to go to the hospital for some time. sometimes my mom didn't come home at night & my
father was so angry that instead of telling us that he knew where she was to calm us down, he would say that he had no idea
where she was.
we would be so worried that she was dead from a car accident.
i researched trigeminal neuralgia - this is what i found out
about it....
What is Trigeminal Neuralgia?
TN (Trigeminal Neuralgia)
is a pain that is described as among the most acute known to mankind. TN produces excruciating, lightning strikes of
facial pain, typically near the nose, lips, eyes, or ears. It is a disorder of the trigeminal nerve, which is the fifth
& largest cranial nerve.
TN (Trigeminal Neuralgia /
tic douloureux) is a disorder of the 5th cranial (trigeminal) nerve that causes episodes of intense, stabbing, electric shock-like
pain in the areas of the face where the branches of the nerve are distributed - lips, eyes, nose, scalp, forehead, upper jaw
& lower jaw.
By many, it's called the "suicide
disease". A less common form of the disorder called "Atypical Trigeminal Neuralgia" may cause less intense,
constant, dull burning or aching pain, sometimes with occasional electric shock-like stabs.
Both forms of the disorder
most often affect one side of the face, but some patients experience pain at different times on both sides. Onset of
symptoms occurs most often after age 50, but cases are known in children & even infants.
Something as simple & routine as brushing the teeth, putting
on makeup or even a slight breeze can trigger an attack, resulting in sheer agony for the individual. Trigeminal neuralgia
(TN) is not fatal, but it is universally considered to be the most painful affliction known to medical practice.
Initial treatment of TN is usually by means of anti-convulsant drugs,
such as Tegretol or Neurontin. Some anti-depressant drugs also have significant pain relieving effects.
Should medication be ineffective or if it produces undesirable side effects, neurosurgical procedures are available to relieve
pressure on the nerve or to reduce nerve sensitivity.
Some patients report having reduced or relieved pain by means of
alternative medical therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic adjustment, self-hypnosis or meditation.
the yellow line in the center is the trigeminal
nerve
The History of TNA . . .
TNA: The Trigeminal Neuralgia Association was founded in Barnegat Light, NJ in 1990 by TN patients & their
families. Prior to its formation, most TN patients suffered in isolation & knew very little about the disorder & its treatment.
TNA's founding mission was to improve the quality of life of TN patients thru programs that empower patients
to become knowledgeable about their condition & treatment options, that aid patients w/chronic pain, that educate non-specialists
on matters of diagnosis & treatment & that encourage appropriate medical research.
To achieve these goals, TNAs
established the following objectives:
- Act as a liaison between patients & qualified medical &
dental practitioners, physicians & treatment centers that diagnose & treat TN
- Facilitate a network of support groups in regions throughout the country;
- Promote greater visibility, awareness & understanding of the
disorder within the medical profession & broader public arena;
- Coordinate a centralized database of TN patients & other information
about medical advancements in the treatment of this disorder &
- Advocate for medical research needed to determine the cause, treatment
options & cure for TN.
In 2002 TNA expanded its
mission because more & more TNA patients had neuropathic facial pain conditions other than TN. For the most part,
these were patients diagnosed w/atypical TN or atypical facial pain, a wastebasket definition for those presenting neuropathic
facial pain w/out the symptoms of classic TN & for whom standard medical or surgical treatments are, for the most part,
ineffective.
Such patients needed answers
to help their condition. They attended support group meetings & national conferences looking for answers but, for
the most part, there was no good news to give them.
Many practitioners, even
those well versed in the treatment of TN, believed that the pain of such patients is in their head. TNA believed that
a better response should be developed for such patients & that TNA was the most appropriate patient-centered organization
to address the issue.
Accordingly, after consultation
w/the MAB, representatives of NIH, researchers & other practitioners, the Board of Directors of TNA adopted a resolution
at its March 2002 Board Meeting to expand its Mission Statement to include patients w/TN as well as patients w/ other related
facial pain conditions.
This occurred at a time when
the mechanisms of neuropathic pain in general were becoming better understood.
In recent years a dramatic
increase in research on the physiology of neuropathic pain has been undertaken & the advent of functional neuroimaging
has demonstrated alterations in brain activity associated w/neuropathic pain.
TNA believes that it's time
for a patient-centered organization to focus on neuropathic facial pain & the plight of those who suffer from it.
This will yield important dividends for those w/classic TN as well as those w/other related conditions.
The new mission also changes
the way in which TNA looks at pain itself. For the most part, practitioners regard TN as an acute pain syndrome because
they believe that thru medication or surgery they can treat the pain.
Whether or not this is the
correct view of the nature of TN is debatable but by embracing other forms of neuropathic facial pain, for which no adequate
medical or surgical response presently exists, TNA has gone squarely into the chronic pain management business.
Key principles in chronic
pain management are that to treat chronic pain, one must understand chronic pain; that pain is a lonely & subjective experience & that those concerned w/ the plight of chronic pain
sufferers must provide understanding & hope. TNA believes that these principles are poorly understood by those who treat
facial pain & by the patients themselves.
Accordingly, these principles
must be woven into TNA's goals & objectives, if it's to meet the challenge of its expanded
mission.
To address the needs prompted
by an expanded mission, TNA determined that it must implement the following measures, focusing on increased research &
outreach:
1. Establish a TN & Related
Pain Research Fund. TNA will appoint a Scientific Advisory Committee, composed of key research investigators, to facilitate
research in areas of key importance epidemiology, heredity, ethnic factors, dental implications & utilization of the TNA
Patient Registry information.
2. Establish appropriate
classifications for those neuropathic pain conditions said to affect or arise within the trigeminal system.
Currently, conditions not
falling within the definition of classic TN are designated as Atypical TN or Atypical Facial Pain. These wastebasket
definitions give rise to 2 stereotypical responses: that no medical or surgical option is available to treat such conditions
& that such conditions exist solely in the mind of the patient.
3. Identify new treatments
for neuropathic facial pain conditions, once classified.
4. Recognize the chronic
nature of neuropathic facial pain, including classic TN & how that impacts TNA's constituencies. If TN is a progressive
disease, for those who decline or are unsuitable for surgery, a lifetime of pain is likely.
The same may be true for
those w/failed surgeries. Recognizing the chronic nature of neuropathic facial pain suggests the need for evaluation
of lifestyle, behavioral patterns & of the role of alternative & complementary therapies. Those who provide medical
& surgical treatment for TN need to be sensitized to its chronic nature.
5. Encourage pharmaceutical
companies to participate in a dialogue w/TNA, MAB members, NIH & the Comprehensive Pain Research Dept. at the University
of Florida in order to stimulate expanded research in the use of existing medications for treating neuropathic facial pain.
6. Using similar techniques,
stimulate research in the relationship between neuropathic facial pain & conditions susceptible to treatment by those
drugs that impact neuropathic facial pain, e.g., epilepsy.
7. Encourage pharmaceutical
companies w/off-label use of their products for treating TN & other neuropathic facial pain conditions to seek FDA approval
for these indications. TNA must redouble its efforts to obtain anecdotal evidence of such use by encouraging patients to complete
questionnaires for inclusion in TNA's Patient Registry.
8. Expand the Medical
Advisory Board to include representatives of other disciplines concerned w/the treatment of pain.
i.e., the role of the anesthesiologist should be evaluated.
9. Explore opportunities
for cooperation w/other non-profits & institutions concerned w/ the treatment of pain. This would include
the Chronic Pain Association, the Neuropathy Association, the TMJ Association, the Acoustic Neuroma Association & VZV
Foundation.
10. Produce new materials
to inform patients of new pain classifications, treatment options, the nature of chronic pain & the skills to live a productive
& fulfilled life.
In January 2002 TNA moved
from Barnegat Light, NJ into new headquarters in Gainesville, Florida. Gainesville is in a university setting, has access
to a young, well-trained workforce & is a low cost environment.
This location also allows
TNA easy access to the McKnight Brain Institute, the Parker E. Mahan Facial Pain Center & the Comprehensive Pain Research
Dept., all located at the University of Florida. TNA can now play an even more active role in promoting research & has
the opportunity to co-sponsor lectures, forums & conferences w/these institutions to further educate the scientific community.
With a professional staff, TNA is prepared to reach the goals set by the Board.
the perfect example of misjudgement or reasons
for "not blaming" one's parents...
i must admit,
after researching trigeminal neuralgia, my previous concerns for not placing blame in my
parents were obviously justified.
when you haven't
been walking in their shoes, it's just not right to blame them for something that may have been out of their control.
for sure, my
mother could have handled the situation differently, but what is it that they say about hindsight?
who can say what
they would do if they began to experience excrutiating pain in their face & there was no known cure or treatment for it?
what would you do if you were faced with the possibility of living in horrendous pain for the rest of your life?
going back thru your
life, performing this personal inventory practice, examining factors that you knew were present, but you didn't know
much about with your parents & their life situations - can help you put your life into a better perspective.
Once you reach an extremely disruptive unexpected experience in your life - like the diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia
for my mother - or in your immediate family - it's time to write it down, untangle details to, examine
clearly & fairly without bias & finally ask yourself -
"what would i have done if i was faced w/this
problem or this crisis?"
"What would I have done in my late thirties
if I had fallen victim to a disease like trigeminal neuralgia?"
How would I have handled
the diagnosis, prognosis & the fact that I was experiencing the most excrutiating pain possible for a human to experience?
My mother had also lived
at least, 9 hours driving time, from her mother & father & any of her siblings. She did have a few close friends,
but my father was of no support to her emotionally or physically.
He was simply not available
to her in a physical sense in helping w/house work ( he never did a single household task
) , taking care of myself, brother & sister & truly not available emotionally for her at all.
If anything he was just
an added negative to my mother's equation in life as I honestly believe that he was physically abusing her long before
the only "known" beating he gave her when I was 18.
He had the temperment for it, he was almost
always under the influence of alcohol, he had a violent temper & some strange thoughts about what life should be.
i didn't understand any of this though, in my early teenage years....
first of all, i didn't know much about my mom's illness because it took me years to get any information out of her. she just didn't
say, "i have a disease & i'm in a bunch of pain." she just didn't say anything at all, giving me the impression that she
was angry w/me for something.
then she began asking me
to clean up the house, do laundry & put dinner in the oven. she would ask me to keep an eye on my brother & sister
more often. all these things annoyed me because i was under the impression that she was out partying
afer work w/ her friends from work.
my dad began to travel
for weeks at a time. he was traveling all over the world. when he was at home, he would sit in his chair w/ a book. he read
a book a day on the weekends. he was always drinking though. some kind of "old grand dad" stuff. just on the rocks i would
see him pour it. he kept in in a strange place because we had a bar in the family room, but he put it on the left side of
the kitchen cabinets, underneath where there was mostly holiday stuff stored.
he'd leave it out on
the counter until he went to bed. he never went to bed first of course. he didn't talk to us. he just drank & read his
novels. the few times a week he would talk to you, he seemed irritated. it wasn't worth it to stick around in hopes that he
may have something nice to say, because it just wasn't going to happen.
the few
times my mom would play the piano in those days, he would still sing if he was home. in his loud tenor voice he sang the songs
that my mom played from the green Reader's Digest piano book. it was our favorite one. i wondered often if his singing aggravated
my mother. i knew he was horrible to me, so i just quit talking to him at all.
any semblance of a "family
life" we had - by now dissolved into almost nothing. from time to time we still sat at the table together for dinner.
it was always an anxiety producing scenario, w/my father's nasty & negative attitude, my endless talking which aggravated my father was labeled, "diarrhea of the mouth;"as well as my mother's tense look on
her face - when she was there anyway.
one day we were having my
favorite dinner, a hot beef dinner (cubed steaks actually) that had onion gravy. my father insisted upon serving us our
meat portions & when i put my plate out in front of him, somehow he managed to pass by the plate & plop down the piping
hot gravy covered cubed steak on my forearm.
it was incredibly hot &
the pain was searing. instantly i screamed out - jumped up - shook my arm off - began running for my room - crying -
i ran to the kitchen sink
instead to rinse off my arm under cold water. my father was yelling at me to sit back down & stop crying & if
i couldn't stop crying then to go to my bedroom. he never stopped serving thru the whole scenario. he never asked me if i
was ok.
i couldn't sit still the
pain was so intense. i ran to my room & laid on my bed, crying & rocking myself, blowing on the burns, they were turning
into blisters before my very eyes.
my mother crept into my
room to check out my arm. she told me that she knew it hurt me, but she panicked & ran out to rejoin the rest of the family
at the dinner table because my father was having a yelling fit in there.
to this day i still have
the small circle scars in about a 2 1/2 inch area on my forearm where the worst burns were. they never took me to the doctor.
it took forever to heal. he never apologized to me. he didn't even acknowledge my injury.
and then something really drastic happened if everything else wasn't enough. the real problem
was that at the time, when i was a teenager, i didn't know the enormity of the problem. the fact was, my father was in the
hospital. there was something horribly wrong with him. my mother had to take him to the hospital in the middle of the night
because he was in so much pain. i remember seeing him in the dark, leaning on my mother in the hallway, scrunched over, holding
onto the wall as she helped him out to the car.
then a few days turned into a few weeks. my mother went to visit him every day. to be honest,
at first, none of us cared that he was gone. it was quiet, happy and relaxed at home. he wasn't yelling or being mean to us.
my mother would go to visit him and we would ask how he was and she would just say he was very sick.
well the time passed and it turned into almost a month that he was in the hospital. i don't
remember getting very concerned though. i am not sure if i felt guilty for that or not. i don't think so though. my mother
told us one day that my father had to have an operation. she told us that our father was very very sick at that point.
the truth of the matter was, my father almost died that day he had the operation. they opened
him up as a last ditch effort to see if they could find out what was wrong with him. they never knew that whole time what
was wrong with him. ended up he had a growth wrapped around his intestines. it was growing and growing and squeezing his intestines
closed. he hadn't been able to eat for the whole time he was in there. they removed the growth and then in a few weeks he
came home. we hadn't seen him in over a month and i didn't miss him.
my mother got into another car accident. i was waiting for
her to get home because i had a band concert. i answered the phone and it was the police. she had tried to avoid hitting a
pack of dogs crossing the street and she rolled the car over numerous times because once the car hit the shoulder, it
went out of control my mother was bruised from head to toe from hitting the steering wheel so many times.
everything went in slow motion as i listened to the police
on the phone. i didn't remember what they said when i hung up the phone. i told my father that mom was in an accident and
he had to go pick up my mom. he was mad. i didn't know how i was going to get to the concert. i just kept thinking about her
in that car.... the car had been totalled. the whole thing was horrible.
things in our household deteriorated slowly but surely. i
was involved with church and we had met an old lady there that ended up giving my sister art lessons. she was a single woman
who had never been married in her whole life. that intrigued me. i liked her although she was blunt when she spoke and didn't
spare your feelings when she spoke to you. she said what she believed. she began to spend more time with our family and before
we knew it, she had become like an adopted grandmother. she had this old dog named, rusty. the dog was fat and old and always
shedded a whole lot. her whole backseat of her car was covered in dog hair. the lady's name was lucy. lucy farnsworth.
she was a staunch old new england lady with a hook to her nose. she was an artist and lived
in a small apartment not too far from our house, in haverhill, mass. she lived upstairs. she did so many things that i thought
were strange, but i really liked her. she would take me for drives in her car and tell me the history of the area. we would
find the "hole in the wall" ancient restaurants that had the best "fried clam rolls." fried clams with their bellies in tact...
oh they were so delicious.
lucy popped in and out of our home whenever she wanted and was very much a part of our family.
we were also friends with our minister in our church and their
family. his name was Mills and i thought he was so cool. we had youth group meetings every sunday afternoon at his house.
i was teaching sunday school on sundays and my parents were still active in the choir, until the flood hit upstate new york
that is...
the susquehanna river had overflowed its banks and corning,
new york, where i was born and both sets of my grandparents lived. it was really bad for my dad's parents because they lived
only a few blocks from the river. my father left for new york immediately. when he finally got through on the phone, he told
us that my grandparents would have to move out of their house.
we were all devastated. my grandparents had always lived in that house. my grandfather was
already in his 80's. my father reported that the whole event was horribly devastating to my grandfather especially. he had
lost his photographs, cameras, typewriter and my grandmother had lost all her china, salt and pepper shakers she collected
and the house was filled with mud.
over the next few weeks we got reports of things they had found now and then in clearing out
the house. it was a miracle that anything had survived because the water went up to the second floor.
when my father returned home he was a different person. he was irritable, mean and impatient.
he was almost impossible to live with. he was drinking more and more every night. we all avoided him.
the sunday after my father's return from new york, he made
an announcement. he wasn't going to church. he told my mother and my mother told us. he was so mad at the church. i didn't
understand it all at the time, but through the years, i finally got a handle on it. my grandparents had been members of the
episcopal church their entire marriage. they gave a lot of money to that church and supported the church whenever they could.
when they needed help from the church during the flood, it seems they denied my grandparents help.
my father was furious with them. he never went to church again
until i got married a few years later.
things were crazy at our house. my mom was still drinking
heavily. my father was drinking heavily. i was fifteen. it was like living alone in a house full of people. no one talked
to anyone. what i left from our beginning years in new hampshire was that my mother decided she wanted to be a foster parent
again, but only for newborn babies coming straight out of the hospital, waiting for placement. it seemed we always had a baby
in our house. i got lots of experience taking care of babies though. i felt totally comfortable with them. the only part i
couldn't stand was that my mother would put the baby in a portacrib in the living room to cry its lungs out for long periods
of time and we weren't allowed to pick it up.
what's that all about i used to think. i remember it brought
back memories of my sister standing in her crib, crying her eyes out wanting to get out of her crib, and my mother not going
to her. she always said that babies had to cry to exercise their lungs. that was her reason. it really sounded stupid to me.
i never bought it.
but at fifteen, she had stopped taking babies because
of her illness, but i remained the baby sitter everyone wanted because of my experience with babies.
i was always babysitting. my school was crazy too. going from
the wonderful little small town elementary school into the seventh grade, we had been thrown into the high school instead
of going to junior high. our high school was a regional high school for several small country towns. they were growing quickly
and the old junior high wasn't big enough for us. so we went to school with the high school kids. that was an eye opener for
me.
at fifteen the older boys were cuter than ever and they paid
alot of attention to me. i was in the band, playing first the clarinet, but then the alto saxaphone. i went to all the football
games, playing in the band, and all the away games on the bus. i wasn't very good at it, but i practiced and tried. there
was an older high school boy that i sat next to in band and i got a mad crush on him. he didn't really think much of me because
i was in the eighth grade then.
he was in the ski club, so i joined it too. my mother got me all outfitted for skiing. she
thought it was great. i wasn't very good at it and had to be sledded down the mountain a few times in the first aid toboggan
but i didn't give up. i liked that boy sitting next to me in band and i made it clear to him that i liked him.
i began to "bug" him. i bought him little presents and left them in his band locker. i pursued
him with everything i had until finally on a band trip somewhere we began to talk. before long i had a steady boyfriend.
my mother wouldn't let me date. she was so mad that i had a boyfriend that was in high school.
i didn't care though, i was madly in love. with everything falling apart in my home it was so good to have someone caring
about me, someone liking me. i was sure he liked me and that was something i had been hoping for forever it seemed.
our church life was suffering. we didn't go to church regularly anymore. my mother couldn't
drive us sometimes because she was suffering so much. she was working alot too. she was hanging out during the week after
work at some chinese restaurant bar. she and her attorney office friends went to happy hour and then ordered poo poo platters
and ended up dancing the night away. i went there once with my mother.
when the waitress came to take drink orders, i ordered a martini just like my mother and my
mother went along with it and told the waitress i was old enough. at first i thought i was going to have some fun, but after
awhile i was drunk and tired of dancing with old men.
one of the men handed me a napkin with a note written on it around closing time. i'll never
forget the feeling of disgust i had felt. the note said that he wanted us to join him and his business friends at the hotel
across the street. i handed the note to my mother, who then smiled at the guys and nodded her head.
i was appalled!!!! i started arguing with my mother about meeting them in their hotel but
she told me to be quiet. we went out to the car after last call and got into my mother's blue mustang. she waited for the
guys to get into their car, and she began to follow them. i was sitting there speechless until we pulled into the parking
lot of the motel. i began to protest again, loudly this time.
my mother just started laughing and then said to me, "watch this..."
as the men started to go into their motel room, she stepped on the gas and peeled out in the
parking lot, circling the motel and leaving the back entrance. i sighed this huge sigh of relief. it was really disturbing
thinking that my mother was doing this kind of thing though. i was always worried about her.
the announcement was made at church one sunday morning. Mills
and his wife were getting a divorce and moving back to new york city where they had come from. i was so sad. he would only
be there for another month. i was almost sixteen now and still with my boyfriend from band. we had been seeing each other
every day either at his house or mine. that was okay with my mom as long as parents were home.
we were so upset that Mills was leaving. then i got the mumps.
that was horrible. one of the kids in my sunday school class gave them to me. i woke up with them the morning we were supposed
to be driving the 8 hour drive to new york to see my grandparents. it was cold and rainy outside and i was miserable. my mother
told me we were going anyway.
i could hardly move. i got into the car in the back seat and
my sister and brother shared the front seat with my mom. i covered up in blankets and slept off and on but i felt like i was
going to die. i had mumps on both sides. i woke up to my mother talking to someone through the open car window because the
rain and cold air were coming in.
she was getting a speeding ticket. figured. my mother always
drove fast it seemed to me. she scared me half to death sometimes the way she drove in the weather. i spent the entire weekend
at my grandparents in bed with my grandma taking care of me. i was so sick. it takes a long time to get over those mumps and
i couldn't see my boyfriend because he never had the mumps before. it was really a bummer.
amidst all this madness going on with everyone, my father
was traveling now all over the world, my mothere was almost never home either, i was a teenage girl that felt ignored, unloved
and horribly deserted. i am not sure if i felt like it was my fault or not, but i yearned for those words, "I love you." or
even "I care about you."
i got that with my boyfriend. and so i departed for awhile
from my hopes and dreams of hearing those words from my parents, and lived hearing those words from my boyfriend. as i got
closer to sixteen years old, my mother became lax on the rules and allowed us to go to movies and other places for short amounts
of time.
she wasn't home much anyway so i did what i wanted anyway. we were inseparable. it was the
closest relationship i've ever had in my life until my present marriage. he accepted me for who i was. i was so happy with
that. the only problem was that i was getting more and more adventurous sexually. It was as though i thought that sex was
love. i am not sure how i got that idea, but i believed it with everything in me. i was addicted to sex before i knew it.
i wanted to feel that touch, hear those "i love you" words, and be close to someone.
i wanted to languish in bed all day, having sex off and on, just being close because it made
me feel safe and cared for and loved. the only problem was, we never used any birth control and soon i was pregnant. one of
the biggest traumas of my life in a big way revolved around this teenage pregnancy. i am still affected by it today although
i look at it in a different light than i did when i was younger.
it was the beginning of my end....
i told my mother. she yelled and had a fit. she made me tell
my father who really didn't say much of anything. he was sitting in his chair reading his novel, drinking his bourbon, he
really just shook his head while my mother stood off to the side. she was furious. just furious.
so of course, she told me that i would have to have an abortion.
there were no options for me except that one. it was around 1972 or 1973, geez i can't remember, and abortion was illegal
in new hampshire still. i remember roe vs. wade happening but i was a kid... a teenager... i didn't know what that was all
about...
i was furious with her for even suggesting that i have an
abortion. my boyfriend and i wanted to get married and have the baby; of course we did, we were in love.
there were some words that my mother kept repeating over and
over again. they were cutting, slicing, murderous words that i can't forget. it was then that i realized my mother did think
that she ruined her life when she got married and had us kids.
she kept saying with such adamant force....
" i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
when i closed my swollen puffy wet eyelids to try
to go to sleep all i could hear was....
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child."
so it was the beginning of my end....
it was the initial stages of my numbness....
my eternal numbness....
from where i have just recently emerged, at age 48 years old.
if you've read thru the page until now, you may think to yourself...
why is this woman saying her life was so horrible?
my answer to you is...
horrible is relevant to each person as a different experience, don't you think? after all,
with each little trauma, graduating into bigger traumas, living in an emotionally dysfunctional family, moving so many times,
the accident, my mother's behavior with her illness, my father's behavior in college, then after the flood, then travelling
everywhere in the world, then my mother drinking too much, the whole thing - thinking my own parents didn't want me... from
the beginning of my life.... then the teen pregnancy... and .....
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child...."
so without any other recourse, i submitted to my mother's wishes. she never spoke
any more words to me, except for when i dared to protest again to the abortion the few times i dared to. every time i protested
- she would reply....
"i refuse to let you ruin your life with a child...."
she scheduled the abortion at massachusetts general hospital.
we got up really early that day....
we drove in to mass general. i had never been there before. it was a giant looming structure.
it was almost surreal, gazing upwards at the grey building soaring up into the heights of a very grey overcast day. little
would i know that the inside of the building was just as grey, just as looming with an eerie, greivous feeling.
it seemed as though my mother knew just where to go. she led me to a doctor's office inside,
not saying a word, she gave them my name at the cloudy glassed sliding window with a very serious looking lady sat inside.
the woman glared at me, as if to say, you slut! now look what your mother has had to do... pay for an abortion....
it was as though i saw her reddened lips mouth out those words, and her glare felt icy cold.
the waiting room was very cold as well and i remember beginning to shiver. i remember feeling chilled to the bone as a matter
of fact. i couldn't get warm. she called my name almost immediately. opening the door for me to pass thru i left my mother
sitting in the waiting room and followed. i was so afraid of what was happening to me. i was so mad, furious that i had to
do this.
i believe the whole day i was standing outside of my body, watching myself go thru motions.
i didn't talk. i didn't make any facial expressions. i was numb. very numb. the woman threw a cloth gown at me and told me
to put it on. she told me i could leave on my knee socks. i did exactly what she told me. i just stood there then, in the
room, afraid to touch anything, afraid to make a sound, afraid of everything around me....
the doctor came in shortly after that. it was a woman doctor. she was short with me. by that
i mean, she spoke gruffly, in short stabbing sentences. she was cold, icy cold, she was rough, she was oblivious to my feelings,
my fear, my frozen numbness... she told me to get on the table. i did.
then came the stirrups... she told me to put my feet in the stirrups. i didn't know what was
going to happen to me..... i had no idea. she startled me with a stupid little laugh. she spoke out as she pried my legs apart,
" knee socks and pregnant, now isn't that just wonderful for your mother!" i didn't care how my mother felt about it. it never
occurred to me that his was hurting her. not once. i knew she was angry and i knew she didn't want me to ruin my life with
a child. that's what i knew.
as she began the exam, the doctor told me to relax. it really didn't register to me. nothing
was registering to me. it was a big blur. it was like i was outside my body, looking down at myself. i wasn't numb enough
yet though, i could still feel fear. i could still feel an overwhelming sadness coursing thru my blood. with every exhale
came despair, grief, and anger. i heard nothing else from the doctor. i didn't hear anything until later on when i heard a
woman crying.
they had taken me away from my mother and sent me into this long corridor of dressing rooms.
the curtains were grey - everything was grey - and i heard this soft moaning and crying from behind one of the curtains. as
i walked down that corridor, i looked into each little room, behind each partially closed curtain, to see who it was that
was crying. then i saw her. a woman, her head drooping down with her chin resting on her chest, as i began to pass her, she
looked up.
her face was so pale. the tears streaming down her cheeks left small stained lines on her
cheeks, her makeup, i thought and she was holding herself. i remember her hugging herself as if she was going to leave herself
if she didn't hold onto herself tightly. her gown was draped down over one shoulder. she was sitting on the small bench each
cubbyhole had. it was the saddest expression i had ever seen in my life. i just saw it though. i was too busy with my own
pain to feel hers too.
i kept floating down the corridor... it felt like my feet weren't touching the floor. it felt
like i was floating like a ghost, down this long thin corridor, avoiding the curtains that hung down precariously close to
the center of the aisle. i sat down on a bench, listening to the crying, listening to her desperation. i couldn't move. i
couldn't cry. i couldn't feel anything.
someone came to get me. they put me on a hospital bed. the woman was a nurse. she was talking
to me and pushing the bed down another hallway. the sounds echoed. i don't remember what that woman was saying to me. i couldn't
tell you any of it. all that registered now in my mind was the screaming i could hear. it sounded as if someone was purposely
being hurt, badly hurt... it was a girl, i knew that, but i didn't know where it was coming from until we turned the corner.
then i saw her.....
a young dark haired girl. she was obviously pregnant. her swollen belly was exposed, i think
it was the first time i had ever seen a naked pregnant belly. still i floated above my body observing the nurses that were
surrounding her. at the end of her bed was a bucket. the nurses were putting her feet in those stirrup things, she was screaming,
screaming as lound as she could.
i don't know how or where the words came from, but i asked the nurse who was doing things
around me what was wrong with that girl... and she told me.
"she didn't come in like you, when she was just pregnant, she waited too long and now she
has to abort her baby like this, we had to put her in labor, she'll have to give birth.... she's not happy about it..."
and as the words came matter of factly out of the nurse's mouth, i pictured in my mind a tiny
baby plopping out into the bucket. crying, arms and legs moving, and no one responding to it.... no one caring about it....
no one helping it until there was silence.... no one was crying anymore.... i just heard the echoes of the beds, and the instruments,
and then the nurse who was attending me told me to take a deep breath... as she put in a large needle into my arm... it really
hurt... i watched the blood squirting into some device .... she looked at me and said,
"blood work."
soon enough it was my turn. my turn to scream, my turn to cry, my turn to suffer...
i was in an operating room and it was really cold in there...
there were nurses all around me, then the doctor came in, no one said a word. they started
working on me. then the nurse spread my legs far apart putting my feet in those stirrups, but this time - they tied them in.
with long pieces of white fabric they wound around my legs, they tied me in. i gasped.
the doctor was there looking at me. shaking his head. he told me to take some deep breaths
because it would probably hurt. it did hurt. from the first time he touched me it hurt. only one moan escaped my throat, and
the doctor said, "don't complain about it, if you hadn't of gotten yourself pregnant, you wouldn't be here right now."
i shut my eyes and squeezed someone's hand. one of the nurses i guessed. screams were being
screamed from the deepest part of me... silent screams of horror. i was terrified. this was the most humiliating thing that
ever happened to me. i didn't make a sound though.... not until they were done and they wheeled me into a recovery area behind
a curtain.
i began to cry then. uncontrollable crying. soft and uncontrollable crying..... it would last
for days.... and days.... then years and years.... i hated my mother for doing that to me. i hated her.
|
 |
|
step two: for any of you attempting this personal inventory for yourself...
i researched the ways & the feelings of the times in which my parents were raised. i wanted to see
why they thought the way they did & believed the things they did. so i researched it on the internet.
Learning about the 40's & 50's was crucial in understanding how my parents had been raised, why they believed what they did & where they got some of their strange ideas from....
below is a description of the 50's & 60's & soon i'll add to it a few paragraphs about the 40's to make it complete!
i'm really glad i did this part of the exercise - it's helped me w/much more than just remembering my
own personal inventory....
step three: and then i researched what the results of being raised
in the family i was raised in - in the times i was growing up - did to me. the article below about the central nervous system
goes on to explain to me - why certain emotional injuries took place in my life. a biological explanation for one reason why
i have experienced anxiety disorders & depression my whole life....
How the Central Nervous System
Gets Damaged
It's
the business of the Central Nervous System (CNS) to contain the powerful buried material of childhood in order to prevent suicide or homicide.
The CNS does this by allowing
the slow leakage of these pressures in a highly disguised form. e.g., the rage of one child may become the cutting knife of the surgeon, thus containing it & leaking
it out across a lifetime in a highly constructive way. In another child it may become the cutting edge of a knife during a
street brawl. Yet again, it could become the cutting article of a professional critic.
Whatever the disguise, the impulses come from the same place, the white, hot inferno of the unconscious which is shaped
& channeled by the mental mechanisms of defense into all the
shades & textures of adult behavior. We're the
living disguise of a primitive & powerful childhood self.
When
we seek depth therapy, we
ask the therapist to penetrate & remove our outer civilized self so that the wounded & infected parts of our being
may be laid bare, drained & thus permitted to heal.
Therapists work at different
depths; each depth has its method & its necessities. Only a few of us attempt to handle the white-hot stuff of
the unconscious directly. Most therapists remain near the surface while the sharks remain asleep in the
depths.
Therapy is impelled forward, by the same thing that impels all behavior:
the need to finish what's unfinished & to obtain whats needed. What therapy patients seek more directly than others, in
ordinary society, is to uncover & express aloud
this early pain, the situations that caused it & the results in adult life.
When the
patient connects with unconscious material & brings it across the great river of defensiveness into conscious awareness, healing begins.
Previously
frozen processes melt, enter the mainstream of mental phenomena & become integrated, losing the power to warp human thought, feeling & behavior from a hiding place inside of us that we can't
see.
Let's look at childhood damage
& see what it is were trying to heal.
There are only 2 ways that
an adult can hurt a child.
In the first way, an adult can withhold itself,
its presence, its empathy, its physical & verbal support. From the child's point of view this is called, in the jargon
of our profession, object loss. The
parental object is missing. The child begins to starve slowly & inexorably, the tree of its life, without nourishment,
stunting & twisting like a plant when nutrients are withheld.
The second thing an adult
can do to hurt a child is to intrude into its world with verbal,
physical or sexual abuse. In the jargon
of our profession this is called object intrusion & once again the tree
twists.
Most childhood damage contains
both of the above elements. A beaten child, e.g., is intruded upon & also suffers a major loss of empathy.
Trauma doesn't
have to be sudden & dramatic. It can happen in small ways over a long period of time. The inability
on the part of parents to properly listen to
their children, without inserting their own thoughts & feelings into the child's mental life, is one of the most damaging kinds of
parenting.
This interrupts the growing self with a constant denial of the child's inner reality & feelings. This failure of empathy & the endless application of rules & beliefs that override & don't honor the child's own processes can, over the years, destroy the intrinsic self-balancing mechanisms of
the growing brain.
This failure of empathy can leave, in the end, as much pain & disability as actual
physical harm.
- Mommy, mommy...the teacher was unfair to me today.
- Now dear, the teacher was only trying to do his best.
This lack of allowing the child to explore its feelings, when they occur, tens of thousands of times
across the growing years, seriously disables the supple processes of the young mind.
The finest book I know which deals with this issue is Parent Effectiveness Training by Gordon.
When negative influences impinge upon the child, how does the tre
| |
