I haven\u2019t posted anything in a long time because I\u2019ve been having such a bad time.\u00a0 I still don\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on well enough to talk about it.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t the faintest idea how to heal the gap that\u2019s become obvious between the \u201creal me\u201d and the person Mother taught me I am.\u00a0 I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s going to take years.\u00a0 So I\u2019m feeling scared and vastly discouraged.\u00a0 This is the first time I\u2019ve wanted to die since I started work with Erica, which is an indicator of how miserable I am. \u00a0I know it’s\u00a0more than a month since “Mother’s Day,” I wrote something at that time, and I’m not sure why I didn’t post it, but I didn’t. \u00a0So here it is now because I think it’s relevant.<\/p>\n
Mother\u2019s Day.\u00a0 Barry suggested we write things about our mothers and send them to him or bring them to church.\u00a0 I thought about telling the truth, and then spaced it out.\u00a0 Hearing people talk about how supportive their mothers had been was painful.\u00a0 Two of them talked about gardening this morning, and I felt painfully jealous.\u00a0 Gardening is something that I would love to be able to do, but the reality is that if I go outside and try to work with the soil, with plants, I quickly get breathless and have to stop.\u00a0 I believe this is a result of PTSD, though I don\u2019t know exactly why.<\/p>\n
I was traumatized as an infant, I don\u2019t know what happened, I expect that I was left alone too long and too often.\u00a0 Unfortunately, an infant can be traumatized very easily because it has no defenses.\u00a0 Its brain and nervous system have not been fully developed yet.\u00a0 Early traumatization\u00a0 means that the development of the brain and nervous system is negatively affected by the trauma.\u00a0 When I was born, my father was across the Atlantic fighting a war.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure this was extremely hard for my mother, but I also know that she dealt with her pain by abusing me.<\/p>\n
My mother was also alcoholic and probably a narcissistic personality disorder.\u00a0 She said a lot of very damaging things to me, such as \u201cNobody wants to listen to you,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re too sensitive,\u201d \u201cNo one will love you if you act like that,\u201d etc.\u00a0 She did her best to squash my creativity (\u201cdon\u2019t make a mess\u201d) and my enthusiasm (\u201cdon\u2019t think you\u2019re so great\u201d) and only much later did I understand that she was really jealous of me.\u00a0 She did her best to ruin my life, and I\u2019ve spent all of my life trying to heal.<\/p>\n
The last time I saw her was when I went to see her at the nursing home on my way to the airport to come back to New Hampshire.\u00a0 It was about 8AM, and she didn\u2019t try to wake up.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking that this could be the last time she would see me, and she doesn\u2019t care enough to wake up.\u00a0 Then the nurse came in, and Mom woke up immediately for the nurse.\u00a0 I never went home again, except for her funeral.\u00a0 The casket was open, so I went in.\u00a0 I told my inner child that she was really dead, even touched her to make sure.\u00a0 Since then, whenever I get scared that I\u2019ll do something wrong and get punished, I say to myself \u201cMother is dead.\u00a0 She can\u2019t hurt us any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sitting in Church, thinking about how badly I was wounded, I think of how I have used my wounds in creating a better world.\u00a0 I was part of \u201cJourney Into Courage,\u201d a theater piece about domestic violence.\u00a0 I know that we woke up a lot of people.\u00a0 And I created Neskaya, where people say they feel completely accepted when they walk in the door. \u00a0I tried to give others what I never got myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I haven\u2019t posted anything in a long time because I\u2019ve been having such a bad time.\u00a0 I still don\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on well enough to talk about it.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t the faintest idea how to heal the gap that\u2019s … Continue reading