In the many years that I have been studying childhood neglect, I have often been struck by how many clients, particularly men, come in toting a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. To them, and also their frequently impatient or frustrated loved ones, it seems accurate, with their loose or sluggish focus, perhaps forgetfulness, failure of agency, and disorganized brains. Never fond of diagnostic labels nor a fan of amphetamine drugs, I have remained skeptical and curious. What is really going on here?  

I know early on in my anecdotal scavenging, I coined a trilogy of neglect symptoms I came to call “the Three P’s” of neglect, primarily showing up in the interpersonal domain, but not exclusively. The P’s are passivity, procrastination, and paralysis. For many, it seemed to fit and stick. I have held on to the paradigm as I sought more information as well as developmental and neuroscience underpinnings for my “theory.” 

I hypothesized that, given that the infant brain develops in resonation with the brain of the primary caretaker (usually, at least at first, the mother), if that little brain is reaching to resonate with a brain that is depressed, terrified, angry or most of all absent, it fails to develop and learn to regulate in a consistent, calm and essentially safe and healthful way. What does happen when there is no one there to resonate to, or not nearly enough resonation? Well, we certainly have the extreme example of the Romanian orphans, who appear nearly catatonic. But what about the more “garden variety” that we are more likely to encounter in our offices? That has been my question for many years.

I have heard many trauma stories about little kids panicked and terrified as they went to school each day, in dread of reading circles where each child had to read a passage. Some would count and calculate when or which segment would be theirs in the rotation so they could practice, or slide out to the bathroom to avoid it (and sometimes to vomit,) feeling such shame, confusion, and self-hatred about why it was so hard for them. 

Meanwhile, some got in trouble with their parents for poor grades; some were held back a grade or two, and many simply disappeared under the radar, invisible and unhelped, concluding that they were stupid in addition to feeling invisible and alone. Many, amazingly bright, found their own workaround strategies for reading. Others discovered a sport like rock climbing which takes incredible concentration, focus, and patience to train their brains. Still, others sank into a haze of drugs to get away from the whole thing. I have seen many iterations, all originally coming from neglect.

In the 1980’s it seemed that ADD and ADHD became the diagnosis du jour. Suddenly kids were being slapped with that label right and left. And they were met with a parade of amphetamine drugs. Oy vey! 

The first drug of choice I remember was Ritalin, which always somehow reminded me of the sinister and scary villain the Riddler on the Batman show. Suddenly it seemed we had a whole generation of children on speed, which gave me a Riddler-like chill, thinking of what this does to our gene pool, let alone providing a possible “gateway” to other, less manageable kinds of drug use. But it also seems there was little curiosity about what causes this problem, and if there was a way to move upstream in addressing it. Meanwhile, in many cases, the drugs were something of a nightmare for the kids, with sleep problems and other kinds of dysregulation causing plenty of conflict between parents and kids about taking their pills or not.

Weaving

I really only remember seeing our dad cry once. Our family all piled into the old Chevy wagon, driving in a torrential New York City downpour. I don’t remember what he was upset about; it was rather a flashbulb image of his face, framed in the rearview mirror, with a backdrop of the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Finding it unbearable to see him that way, I focused on the rhythmic back and forth of the wipers, slap, slap, slap.

That sudden flash of recall unleashed a chain of other snippets of time in the car, which were rarely much fun. Our mom was perennially anxious, and what I recall most about being in an enclosed energy field of her pulsing hyperarousal was a gripping in my stomach, which I can feel just thinking about it. Our dad loved looking at airplanes, and he sometimes seemed even to be teasing her by enthusiastically following their flight with his eyes clearly not on the road. I remember her saying, “Achh.. do me a favor…” with her fingers spread wide like rakes, nails dug into the sides of her seat. She was similarly rattled by some random driver recklessly “weaving” back and forth across multiple lanes, grabbing an extra car length this way and that to gain speed and time. She was jumpy and also convinced we would all meet up at the next signal anyway.

I rather disliked the harsh association between reckless driving and “weaving.” I loved sewing from an early age and so loved fabrics and textiles. As I got into my early teens, I was fascinated with weaving, particularly Andean weaving. I had a small wooden frame loom and tried my hand at simple designs, never getting very good at it. My childhood boyfriend had a Greek friend named Thalia. She was a ”real” weaver and had an enormous floor loom that took up much of a room. I remember being enthralled watching the shuttle fly back and forth, back and forth, creating beautiful patterns. I still have a deliciously warm blanket she wove over fifty years ago. That steady toss back and forth of the shuttle made for a durable and strong mesh that still warms me almost daily.

I remember when I was quite young, our mom’s stern voice and annoyed expression, saying, “You are always walking around this house with a long face. You need to have more fun!” As far as she was concerned, I had no reason to be anything but cheery and bushy-tailed. Although I subsequently had plenty of overt trauma, the “nonexistent” wound of neglect was what the wilderness outerwear people would call my “base layer.” So, I figured she was probably right. I had no right or reason to feel bad. Thinking on it now, I am struck that there was no curiosity, interest, or concern about a sad child. Rather I was left to conclude I was entitled, ungrateful, or simply “bad.”

She, of course, was no icon of levity. And she had good reason to have perennially sad eyes and a stern, critical, and generally anxious demeanor. She had a dark and scary history that I knew only so much about and a cold, Northern German intellectual mother who left her mostly in the care of nannies until Hitler blew the whole thing apart. 

I also remember both of my parents having a rather contemptuous attitude toward American-style “fun.” I don’t remember details, but things like amusement parks, cartoons, comic books, and spectator sports, although it was perhaps not explicitly stated, were petty, commercial and “below us.” I could feel that attitude, and what was most evident was that our family never partook in them. So, to be honest, I had no idea what “fun” meant, and I believe the whole repetitive litany made me pretty angry if I had known how to recognize that emotion. What I was most aware of was feeling guilty, ungrateful, and clueless. 

However, I had another algorithm working also, certainly outside my awareness. Because I explained my “unimportance and invisibility” as being because I was a blight on the planet, I developed a calculous of a handful of worthy endeavors, purposeful activities, that were worthy of time and energy, to “justify my existence.” Oddly I remember that little term as going way back, fairly big words for a young girl to come up with. I needed to earn my keep, to somehow rightfully claim the patch of earth I occupied. Oy vey, a seemingly Sisyphean undertaking.

The acceptable activities in my protocol menu were: 

• Work – which later came to mean work that earned income.
• Service – helping Mom, which would actually be a service to all of us as it made her a little calmer; and later service to the world, preferably of a self-sacrificing nature.
• Study or learning – a hallmark of our cultural heritage and identity. 

Later, when I was ruled by anorexia, exercise featured on this list too. 

Clearly, there was no category and certainly no available time for pleasure. And I was busy, certainly lacking awareness and discipline of my facial expression. So, fun? Play? Who the hell knew what that was? Well, the American kids seemed to know.

Some time ago, I wrote a blog about the man who cleaned my car windows, knowing I had no cash to give him. After it happened, I tucked a neatly folded twenty in a pocket of my purse and zipped it in, hoping I might see him again someday. For weeks, even months, I craned to look for him as I passed the gas station, but never saw him. Slowly he dimmed from my crowded mind, and the twenty languished and perhaps crumpled a bit as it got buried deeper by time. This morning, rushing, stealing a minute on my way to the office to get gas, a man with a squeegee approached. 

Lo and behold, it was him! The other time he was wrapped in a blanket and was a rather shapeless, assumably human form. Today he was in black jeans and a loose, ragged hoodie, so I could see his skinny shape. His short, sparse hair was graying, his brown skin wrinkly in that ageless way of the streets. He came into focus; I mean, I could see him. I set about pumping gas, he set about cleaning windows, and when I finished, I dug up the twenty I had squirreled away for him all those months ago.

Approaching the man, I said to him, “I want to tell you something…” His eyes widened, startled, as if he weren’t used to being spoken to, or not softly. I said, “a long time ago, I was here. I did not have any money, and I told you I had no money. But you cleaned my windows anyway.” I said it again. “I had no money, but you cleaned my windows anyway! I was so moved!” My throat wavered with emotion, and my eyes filled just a bit. “Thank you.” And for a long moment, I looked deep into the ageless brown eyes, which could’ve been anywhere from 50 to 80 years old. They teared up a bit too. We were just two humans together on this earth. “Thank you,” I said, “you are a good man.” I gave him twenty. With a modest, toothless smile, he muttered, “God bless…” I don’t believe he had seen a twenty in a very long time. He finished making his way around the car, doing an extra good job on the windows, and I drove off into the early morning dark to start my day.

For that one long moment, we were simply two humans connecting in the complex and simple endeavor of being human on this earth. That nameless-to-me man could check how many of the most salient neglect boxes? He was homeless, of color, aged, who knows what else? At the end of the hard workday, warming up the car to go home, the gas gauge lit up “full,” and my heart lit up “full,” too.

When we were kids, every year about this time, a little old man would show up early in the morning at our door, all dressed up in a well-worn dark suit and tie, with a yarmulke on his head and a tattered old prayer book under his arm. He would look up sheepishly from under his bushy brows and mutter with a smile, “Is this the Big One?” Our dad called him “Old Man Horowitz,” or sometimes “Horrible Horowitz.” He was coming to catch a ride to temple for the Yom Kippur service if he had the right day, which he often did not. 

Yom Kippur is one of the “high holidays,” the most important days of the Jewish year: a day of fasting where the service is all day long. Once he got his formal career, our dad was a cantor, and he rather disdained what he called the “once-a-year crowd,” which were the congregants who only showed up on the high holidays and were not seen or heard from the rest of the year. He preferred to sing and have the refrains to his calls be from a full sanctuary. (I grew up to be even “worse” than the once-a-year crowd, and I really don’t go at all.)

However, some things about Yom Kippur do appeal to me. It is a day of reflection, a day of taking stock or accounting of who I have been through the year, and what I may have done or not done. I generally do a lot of that anyway throughout the year, a conscious review of all aspects of myself. But I respect and appreciate assigning specific days of the year for that essential practice.

It is hard to believe it has been a year since the horrifying Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Admittedly, I was barely aware of the US’ 20-year “involvement” there until the messy and controversial evacuation. My limited knowledge of the place was only from the novels of Khaled Hosseini, some of which were so sad as to be almost unbearable to get through. I would ask myself: how did it happen that I was born here and those women were born there, and how do they endure such lives? 

With interest, I heard a young American war veteran talking about his experience in Afghanistan, which sounded much like how I remember young soldiers in my youth describing their experience of the Vietnam war. They had no idea what they were doing there or why. I was also surprised and gratified to hear the Public Radio commentator explaining the recently identified category of trauma referred to as “moral injury.” This is the trauma of being forced to witness or commit acts that painfully conflict with one’s own values, morals and beliefs. Often moral injury occurs in the line of duty: military, medical, where the survivor is faced with impossible choices or no choice at all. Of course, we know it also occurs plenty in families. This young veteran, only 20 years old, was talking about that. What a terrible burden to live out one’s days under such a yoke of grief, regret, remorse, guilt, anger and helplessness.

I remember when I was barely old enough to talk, my mother shaking her head and exclaiming, “I hate war!” in the same fierce tone as she sometimes said, “I hate alcohol!” She described herself as a pacifist, so I learned that word early. She loved Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and I remember her having a bumper sticker or a sign (I am not sure) that said “No War Toys.” Even though we were a family of all girls so it was not an issue for us, she was among a group of women opposed to little boys playing with guns, which it seemed like they all did. From an early age, I remember finding war horrifying, incomprehensible and frightening. I rarely watched a movie or read a book about it. In the Vietnam era, I was staunchly antiwar and active, but never quite knew or understood what was going on. Just that I hated it.

The first Monday in September is Labor Day here in the US. It was always the last blush of summer before school started when I was growing up. Now the kids go back to school in August, which is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned. Labor Day originated as a national holiday in 1894, designed to honor and appreciate the efforts and the contribution of the working class who, in the words of the founder of the American Federation of Labor, “from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.” 

Although our family was not exactly working class, our dad had many sweaty jobs up until our adolescence, and I always felt an affinity and identification with work. When I started college in 1973, Cesar Chaves had just begun organizing the United Farm Workers. Picketing the local Safeway Store, marching and chanting the iceberg lettuce and grape boycotts was the weekly Saturday morning social event throughout my first year. I loved it.

I started washing the neighbors’ cars for $2.00 or babysitting for 50 cents an hour before I reached my teens, and by the time I was fourteen, I had my own little housecleaning business, where I amassed the small fortune that would eventually put me through school. In those days, the University of California tuition was $234.00 a quarter, so $1,000.00 would cover at least the tuition part of a year.

Like many a child of neglect, although the relationship was in most ways beyond me, I was a star in the sphere of work. I could out-effort pretty much anyone, and was just OCD enough to maintain an impeccable standard. Of course, those rich people whose mansions I cleaned loved me, and whatever the job, I took great pride in being the best I could be. Years later, I came across an antique-style framed sign in a little collectible shop that said in bold letters, Work Hard and Be Nice. I bought it, and some 25 years later, it is still prominently displayed in my bathroom. Words to live by.

From an early age, I harbored both fascination and perhaps preoccupation with the body. Certainly my own, but really everyone’s. I was curious about sex, obsessed about food and weight, athletics, healing, all of it. I did not think I was smart enough to be a doctor, but I thought about it. In graduate school, I chose a specialization in somatics, even though back then, somatic psychotherapy did not have nearly the foundation of science and neuroscience it has now. I pored over Wilhelm Reich’s Function of the Orgasm because it integrated the essential worlds of psychology, sexuality, and politics in a way that profoundly resonated with me, those being three areas of exploration that consumed me and still do. I am gratified that the body has come to occupy center stage in the field of trauma, and even in a weird way, how the pandemic has forced us all to be mindful of the body and of health. It has also illustrated how profoundly matters of the body affect our mental health and even vice versa and worldwide.

Admittedly, I neglected the vast population of disabled or “differently abled” people. I don’t know if out of fear, denial, or simply oblivion. Another population that is invisible and forgotten, abandoned or cast out. I remember telling my husband early in our relationship, “if ever I can’t move, please shoot me.” I simply could not imagine being able to live if not fully “able-bodied.” (I am ashamed to remember it.) Our office has an elevator and a “disabled” parking space. I figured I was “doing my share.” Oy vey.

I recently heard an interview with a young woman introduced as a blind, queer, African American hip hop artist, Young Ant. She was talking about disability in the music industry, and what it is like to be a blind performer – something I had never thought about. Watching her rap and dance on YouTube was eye-opening. I had never considered how a performer finds their way gracefully onstage, dances, and looks cool moving, not to mention the accessibility issues of most or certainly many venues. Ant is on a mission to awaken the world to this.

I was impressed by the recently released movie, Box of Rain, a movie not about the Grateful Dead, but about the culture of Dead Heads, by the mention that way back in the 1970s, the Dead had a little platform in the audience at their shows for wheelchairs. That was radical in its time: the same era in which then-President Nixon killed what would have been the Americans with Disabilities Act. Many species destroy or abandon their “imperfect” young, and sadly, many human parents and fellow citizens are not much better. I am humbled to find another “blind spot” in my awareness, another big point of neglect and injustice.    

A man featured in Box of Rain, a longtime Dead Head, was Jim LeBrecht, who worked as the sound engineer for the Dead for many years. He is also a longtime friend of my best friend. Of course, I was excited to tell her about seeing Jim in this new movie. She asked me if I had ever seen another movie he had produced, Crip Camp, about a summer camp in the Catskill mountains of New York, specifically for disabled kids. I was intrigued.

Rarely have I seen a more moving and graphic depiction of the power of affiliation, what it is like to be in a group of others with a similar experience to one’s own. In the world of trauma and neglect, we are well aware of the power of the group: what it is like to be in the company of others with some sort of similar experience who understand without any words. Some of us have had the good fortune to have been in such a group and found it indescribable. I am not much of a movie person, as I always say, “I am way too stingy with my reading time,” but this one is a must-see (and it is available on Netflix).

The film also makes a powerful point of how (yes, we ever return to it) the original attachment with primary caregivers so profoundly affects the sense of self. The film opens with Jim narrating, 

“When I was born,” he says, “they did not expect me to live more than a couple of hours.” In the visual footage, a grainy old black and white home movie, we see little Jimmy as a toddler, blissfully happy, laughing and ambling, climbing and tumbling on his plump little arms. Although we do not see his parents, it appears that he feels secure and safe enough to explore widely, move and grow, even to become the teenager who has the gumption and grit to imagine and aspire, hope, and actually become the sound engineer for his favorite band. And those parents obviously got him to Camp Jened, lovingly referred to as “Crip Camp.”

At camp, everyone had one or another disability, and for the first time ever, felt free and accepted. They did what all kids do at summer camp: sports, art, music, experiencing nature and the outdoors, and communal living. With a culture of non-judgment and helpfulness, they pushed each other’s wheelchairs, carried those that needed it, and understood each other’s sometimes strained or challenged speech.   

In the larger world, apparently, there is a definite hierarchy or pecking order of disabilities, with the “Polios” at the top rung and the “CP’s” (those with cerebral palsy) at the bottom. Not here. It was moving to see how carefully and thoughtfully the “CP’s” difficult verbalizations were both listened to and comprehended, sometimes “translated” or summarized by a comrade. And my memory was jogged.

I remembered a time, the one time in my long and sweaty waitressing career, that I waited on a really famous person. I worked in a fancy place not far from UC Berkeley and had the honor of serving a large dinner party celebrating the luminary physicist, Stephen Hawking. I watched the tiny man in his wheelchair, fitted out with many super-high-tech devices to help him communicate with the throng of scientists and other intellectuals fawning over him, myself included. What a rarity in today’s “ability-supremacist” world.

My favorite part of Crip Camp was when a “CP” named Judy laughingly told the story, in her somewhat garbled speech, “I was getting older, and I did not want to die a virgin! With a twinkle she declared, “So I had an affair with the bus driver! A week or so later, I had a terrible abdominal pain. I went to the doctor and turned up a diagnosis of gonorrhea. The doctor was flabbergasted, incredulous! He could not imagine that anyone would want to f— me! As soon as I got well, I went back to school and got a master’s degree to become a sexuality educator.” Judy became an activist and vocally championed the cause of disabled sexuality. She also married happily, although she laughingly added, “my in-laws accepted me, but they said to their son, ‘couldn’t you have at least married a ‘Polio?’”