I was stunned, several weeks ago, to hear from a very old friend of mine, out of the blue. I mean a really old friend, whom I had not seen in almost 50 years, longer than many of my readers have been alive, and I had not thought of her in almost that long. I suppose she was shrouded over by a whole chapter of my trauma story that I did not realize was still shrouded from view and memory. Strange how trauma memory can be, where we feel as if we have been working, working, working on it for what seems like forever, and then a whole “new” piece, in this case, a whole new chapter of my intergenerational transmission legacy, barges in completely uninvited and unanticipated.
This dear friend was from when I was barely 23. In fact, until we recently spoke, I only had two memories of her. The first was a vivid one I could feel in my whole body. Sitting on the floor in her Berkeley apartment, a block away from mine, and talking for hours on end. Hours and hours as only 20-somethings can, drinking our unending coffees, while she chain-smoked. I can viscerally remember I loved her so much. Now, I felt it all over again. Her voice on the phone sounded the same, and I wanted to cry. We could not get the visuals of Zoom or FaceTime to work that day, so it was only voice. It did not matter. I only had that one memory and one other, the time I met Whoopi Goldberg at her apartment. I guess they were friends. It was way before Whoopi was famous, but somehow, I remembered that.
Strangely she remembered something else, which I barely recalled until she spoke of it. She felt so much sorrow, remorse, shame, and regret ever since. She remembered some sort of betrayal of me with a boyfriend. I barely remembered him at all, and the betrayal was an almost non-existent memory. But I guess I was pretty upset at the time, and thinking on it now, any sort of betrayal would have probably undone me, being a trauma trigger, even though it was all long before I really remembered much of any of my trauma at all. This was a blessed reunion, and although I have not gotten together with her yet, I think about her every day and plan to contact her, even if I have been perhaps a wee bit afraid to do it…
It was also curiously serendipitous that the next book in my queue was the recent memoir by Whoopi Goldberg! Appearing only weeks ago, and I have been eager to get to it.
It is rare for me to literally laugh out loud when I am reading a book. In this book, it was particularly striking, as this (Bits and Pieces, Blackstone Publisher 2024) is a book largely about grief. I guess a really good comic can make a joke out of almost anything, and even do it tastefully, in this case even brilliantly. What a great writer!
Whoopi, whose given name was Caryn Johnson (!) lost the two most beloved and essential people in her life: her mother Emma, and her brother Clyde, recently and within very short proximity of each other, and both way too soon. It is a story of loss. But also, a story of much fun and much joy, as well as a vivid history of being African American and poor; and finding her way in the complex world of stage and screen. I was completely drawn in and somewhat mesmerized. Admittedly it made me think, because, on one hand, she described her life in the most idyllic ways, somehow Emma, as poor as they were, managed to take Caryn and her brother Clyde to the movies, the theater, the circus, and museums, where young Caryn fell irretrievably in love with that wide world. Simultaneously Emma worked long and grueling hours as a single Black mom would have to do. Caryn and Clyde were textbook latch-key kids, and inseparable. Clyde had the strength and character, and the depth of love, such as even to allow his little sister to not tag along but actually join him and his cool friends, even as they ventured into adolescence. And of course, she loved it.
So, in many ways, standing back from it, and viewing it through my trauma and neglect, lens, it was very much a neglect story. But those kids did not feel abandoned or lost. At least according to this account. Emma worked night shifts and somehow was able to cover the main areas of care and presence, at least from Whoopi’s point of view. And although Emma had an odd style of answering any of her daughter’s questions with a question, somehow Whoopi found in that the curiosity and the drive to seek her own authentic answers, which she unquestionable and doggedly did. And yes, she did develop into what I would consider a fiercely self-reliant character, with all the accompanying relationship challenges. Like many the self-reliant, Caryn/Whoop was rather proud of all that she did make happen on her own steam. And as is typically the case, she made pretty much a mess of the relationship world – except of course with Emma and Clyde.
When Caryn was eight, she lived the terrifying trauma of seeing her mother swept up by the whirlwind of some kind of psychotic state, that the child of course did not know how to understand at that tender age. An ambulance came and removed Emma from her and Clyde’s lives for two years. Poof! There was no contact and she and Clyde did not know where their mother was, if or when they would see her again, for that whole time, meanwhile being carted between various relatives. It is unimaginable from an attachment standpoint, however, when Emma returned, their life together was slowly restored to the one of fun, adventure, and creativity that most of the book is about. As it turned out, her mother, for her part, had been whisked off to a draconian New York mental hospital, where all the nightmarish” treatments” (tortures?) like cuckoo’s nest-like drugs and electroshock therapy were administered in the ungodly and decidedly non-consensual, seemingly arbitrary or “experimental” dosages that one would expect for a poor woman of color. Emma spoke little of that story, much as my parents never talked much about theirs. But much like me, Caryn knew it was bad.
Caryn had severe learning problems and hated school. When she wanted to drop out of high school, her mother did not prevent it, and so she pursued the other avenues, at which as we know she was wildly successful, although it clearly was not an easy road. So, this book made me stop and re-think my neglect perspective, and reminded me that some might prefer not to rock the boat, or see it in the way I do. Always a good reminder that being dogmatic and orthodox in my thinking is rarely a good idea. And for some, things might seem very different than they do to me.
Where I began to have problems with the book however, was when we got to the “intergenerational transmission” part of the story. At 16, Caryn got pregnant and wanted unambivalently to have her child. Emma, being a marcher for choice, disagreed but did not interfere with her decision. But between being barely a kid herself, and breaking into a world of theater and film, she was compelled to follow opportunity and be absent for large swaths of her daughter Alexandria’s life. The girl moved between her father’s and Emma’s care, and although Whoopi, perhaps defensively, felt as if she was entrusting her daughter to the person she trusted most in the world, still her young daughter was bitter and certainly would fit the neglect profile.
In this part of the book Whoopi flip-flops between, denial, defensiveness, profound remorse, and sorrowful guilt and empathy on her daughter’s behalf. Perhaps a poignant part of the story, at least for me, is where young Alexandria says she cannot wait to have her own child, because “then there will be one person in the world who does not know who Whoopi Goldberg is” (at least for a time…) I could certainly relate to that feeling as can many who have a very accomplished- (or narcissistic) parent. So, I swam through that final section of the book, perhaps less enamored of Whoopi, but she also made me think.
I speak often of what I refer to as the Bermuda Triangle: the raging storm of anger, grief, and guilt that swirls around an all-in-one cyclone-like force inside the child of neglect, often relentlessly- about the neglectful and/or traumatizing parent. I was certainly racked by it for years, and so many people cling to and resonate with the concept. I had not thought so much about it from the parent’s point of view, however. Whoopi Goldberg had a dream and a gift. She pursued it, created, and continues to create a huge body of brilliant work, and has brought a fair measure of laughter and joy, even inspiration and enlightenment to many. And she neglected her kid. She has to reckon with that and reconcile it somehow. Fortunately, she seems to be conscious and her daughter is still young. So, there is still time, to break or at least alter the intergenerational chain. And I am left with mixed feelings as I finish this book, even if I still think it is a great read, I recommend it!
I knew before I was five, that I would never be a mother. I looked up into the vacant, absent, terrified, anxious, or angry face of my own poor mother, and I never wanted anyone to feel the way I felt. I frankly did not think I could do better. It is an act of great courage, to make the choice to bring a child into this world, and life is filled with hard choices. I think I made a perhaps cowardly choice. But certainly, the best one for me. I have never regretted it.
People often come to me after one of my talks, with their eyes wide and often wet, feeling as if they have done irreparable harm or damage to their kids, young or old. I am not a parent, so hardly qualified to comment: what I know is from other means. I do know, however, that the attachment researchers remind us that the gold standard, the very best of the best of the attuned and good enough parents, get it “right” 30% of the time, 30%! That is less than a third. The rest of the time, it is the endless dance of rupture and repair, rupture and repair (which happens to be the theme of the upcoming Oxford Trauma and Attachment conference in September). It is really never too late as long as one is still breathing. Whoopi’s grief about her precious mother and brother is palpable. But Alexandria is still breathing. That is good news for all.
When I was in training to become a couple’s therapist in 1998, after experiencing the transformation of my own marriage, I seem to remember we had to choose a nickname for some reason. I always liked that my initial was “R” as that was what the Chilean revolutionaries painted in red on the walls in a circle, to prove that the Resistance, the outlawed political parties reorganizing underground, were still breathing. I chose the nickname Relationship Repair. I still like that!
This week’s song:
Perhaps I am one of the few who has not been watching the Paris 2024 Olympics, but that notwithstanding, I could not help but hear the news. Simone Biles crowned the “greatest gymnast of all time.” Such excitement and national pride. I respect and admire Biles for her history-making courage in bringing concerns about athlete mental health to the Olympic podium. No small feat in a world that worships strength, indomitability, and single-mindedness. But watchdog of the neglected, a voice reared up in me. What???! Greatest of all time? No!!
I backflipped to 1972. That would make me 17, fighting my way back from a near-fatal run of what I now think of as suicidal anorexia. For some reason, at the time of the Games, I had had all my wisdom teeth pulled at once. Chipmunk-cheeked, and decidedly weakened, I hunkered down in the basement, forgotten and alone, with the full-time company of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Enter the then-new gymnastics sensation Olga Korbut, who literally turned the sport on its head. She was my same age, 17, a tiny little firecracker of a body. 4 ft 11 in (150 cm) she weighed in at 84 lb; 38 kg (6 st). Not so very different than me, although I was taller, and she hopefully arrived at her weight in a much healthier way. She wore two little pigtails, making her look a little girlish and adorable.
Although Korbut hailed originally from Belarus and competed for the then-Soviet Union, she became everyone’s darling and shooting to world stardom. My little sister, who occasionally wandered downstairs to watch and hang out with me, and I were transfixed, and in love with Little Olga. In fact, somehow, I don’t remember how, she nicknamed me “Little Olga,” a name that stuck for years, although my sister was the only person who actually called me that.
Korbut decidedly transformed the sport and was indeed the greatest of all time. And what happens when a child or some brand of superstar, is somehow eclipsed, replaced, lapses into invisibility, forgotten history, nothing? Like an older sibling over-shadowed by the new baby? She now quietly resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, mentoring and coaching gymnasts. Being my age would make her 69. She did not cease to exist, but having felt that way so much of my life, I feel protective of her legacy, her achievements, her courage, and her mettle. I wonder what she thinks of Simone Biles, and the hyperbolic words about her. I remember with gratitude how Little Olga, in flight, kept me company and somehow comforted me at a hugely difficult time.
Gender is a delicate issue nowadays and I am grateful to clients and friends who have gently corrected and educated me when I have confused gender with sex; or made thoughtless binary assumptions. I was horrified to hear an interview with a former Olympian from 1968, recounting her experience of “gender testing” in the Olympics. In those days apparently, in order to compete, female athletes had to be “tested” to verify that they were in fact, female. Herded into large halls, they had to remove their pants and prove that they had a vagina. When one incensed female discus thrower asked why, IOC officials explained it was because many of the female athletes “didn’t look like women.” The experience was humiliating and insulting for the women, who informally referred to it as the “nude parade,” or the “strip and poke.” We would now consider it not only gender discrimination but sexual abuse. The practice persisted until 1999! And now with the increasing transgender awareness, renewed and different prejudices and fears are again emerging relating to the interplay between hormones and strength, and concerns about fair sporting competition. It erupted again this very week, when Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif after taking the gold medal was accused of “not being a woman…” Clearly, this saga is not over… Meanwhile, the world of sports has become steadily more economic and political. Whatever happened to old-fashioned fairs, even fun sporting competitions? And do we begin to see a whole “new” category of sexual trauma?
This past March I closed my Oakland office, after inhabiting my block in that Rockridge neighborhood for nearly 40 years. Much trauma and neglect walked in and out of those rooms, and much sweat and tears, (thankfully no blood!) flowed there. In 2011, when my first book, Coming Home to Passion, appeared, I was still pretty introverted. But I did do one public reading and book-signing event at the beloved independent bookstore up the street, then called “Diesel Books.” It was a highly revered local treasure already in the days when independent booksellers were becoming endangered. Not only did the good folks at Diesel sponsor my event, but they carried and sold my book for the decade that followed.
In 2017, as the species became closer to extinction, Diesel almost had to close, only rescued at the last minute by generous donors and an employee named Brad Johnson, who re-incarnated it to become East Bay Booksellers where it continued as a neighborhood gem, until last month. Then our cherished bookstore burned to the ground. Although no humans were hurt, it is almost as heartbreaking, and painful to imagine all the books that went up in smoke. The store is again struggling, raising funds to recover and hopefully rebuild. Sad condolences eternal gratitude, and hope for a future: for a place that will always be precious to me.
As ever, let us close with something positive. While things are winding down in Paris, I have had the good fortune that France came to me. I had a visit from rock stars Florence and Marc, founders and producers of Quantum Way, a wonderful and enlightened organization that works to take Trauma and Neglect, theory and practice to the French speaking world, which is in fact quite sizeable, and extends far beyond the First World countries I am more familiar with. I first met them when I had the privilege of participating in their global Trauma, Attachment and Resilience Summit this past April. When I logged on for my interview at 4:00AM San Francisco Time, I was amazed to learn that there were over 40,000 people in attendance from around the world, in this all free, online event. I was so moved and thrilled to be part of a world-wide movement for healing. I knew for sure I loved Florence, when she introduced Bessel in their interview, as “The Beatles and the Stones of the trauma and neglect world.” Right on all three counts!
Although my Spanish is pretty darn good, I only know a couple of words in French, mostly the ones I learn from cheese-making recipes. I am excited, inspired, and grateful to think of my work going out into new places in that lovely language. Meanwhile, I have been watching the recordings from that conference, mostly when I am stirring the cheese vat. This time, I was reviewing Florence’s conversation with Daniel Siegel, a long-time favorite since his groundbreaking book, The Developing Mind, first appeared in 1999. It is still on my shortlist, as it made the neuroscience of attachment digestible to me even when I was very newly exposed to it.
In the interview, Dr, Siegel, in talking about attachment and connection, makes reference to the Pando Aspen tree found in Utah, USA. Utah is one of my favorite places on earth. He describes seeing a massive forest of 48,000 of beautiful trees, only to discover that all are connected and nourished by a single root ball. In effect, they are all one tree! What a marvelous metaphor, and what a spectacular vision of unity and hope. Precisely what, I think, the Olympics were originally designed to be.
My best friend is a Francophile and she loves Paris. I have not been there yet, although it is also on my shortlist. I can forgive Simone Biles for taking the new GOAT (Greatest of All Time) title. After all, history does march on… as long as we don’t forget Little Olga. And Biles is in fact another bold and talented African American athlete to break into the top echelons of a traditionally white girl’s sport. I do hope Paris didn’t get too trashed! One of the only words I know in French, I have learned from overhearing my husband avidly watching the Tour de France. “Allez, Allez,” cheers the spirited crowd, “Go! “Go!”. That is what I say to the Pando, and to Quantum Way! And to all of us in the trenches of trauma and neglect. Allez!
Today’s song:
I am often fascinated by what things stick or don’t stick in my memory from the near and distant past. I’m not even talking about traumatic memory, although that definitely fascinates me, but rather simple “declarative”, ordinary narrative memory. My husband can tell you all the restaurants we have been to and even what I ate and how I liked it. I may not even recall having been there. Fortunately, he is gracious about my “disability”, and does not take advantage… Similarly, of the probably thousands of books I have read in the last 50 years, I am curious about which ones I remember in detail, including what may have struck me about them at the time- and how they might be similar or different in their impact now.
A particular book that I read in 1980 when it first came out (long before many of my readers were born!) was Assassination on Embassy Row(Patheon,1980)by John Dinges and Saul Landau. The book chronicled the cold-blooded 1976 car bombing murder of Orlando Letelier, and his assistant, Ronni Moffit, in broad daylight, in shadow of the US national capital in Washington DC. What jogged the memory, by the way, was not all the recent uproar the past week or two, about “assassination” in the US, but rather the imaginary conversation that Salman Rushdie has with his ersatz assassin, in his recent memoir. Rushdie made the point that his almost killer was an alienated, disenfranchised, disconnected lost soul who found his spiritual leadership and affiliation on YouTube, and began his zealotry there. He was in effect a sitting duck for a charismatic opportunist.
Letelier was the Chilean ambassador to the US appointed by the socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende and was successful in advancing both US-Chile diplomatic relations and international banking. When Allende’s government was violently overthrown and displaced by the Pinochet’s fiercely authoritarian military regime, Letelier was one of the first members of the Allende administration to be seized and arrested by Pinochet’s notoriously brutal D.I.N.A., the newly empowered military police, and served 12 months as a political prisoner in a similarly brutal prison camp. But I know you don’t come to me for Latin American political history.
The car bomber was a man named Michael Townley. (Even that stuck in my head…) Townley was, much like Rushdie’s imagined almost killer, a lost soul: disenfranchised, disconnected, untethered, unaffiliated, and relationship-barren young man starving to belong. He was an ideal recruit for the D.I.N.A. In Jodi Picoult’s novel, 19 Minutes, (2007, Atria) the story of a high school mass murder, committed by a high school student, like Rushdie’s attacker, same profile. It seems in too many of the numerous mass shootings we have seen in the US, the “shocked” parents had no idea what their kid was up to, or that they had problems, mental health concerns, or weapons; and most certainly needed. I even recall after one of the mass shootings in the past few years, I can’t remember which one, reading that the mother of the shooter had been convicted of leaving him alone in a locked car when he was two.
How many of these wildly dysregulated perpetrators of violence and havoc, large and small, grew up in a desert of “nothing?” Storyless, they seem to think. It is chilling to me, but shockingly real, how the failure of attachment, the experience of floating untethered in dark and empty space, can give rise to the kind of desperation to belong, ennui or rage, that can make a poor soul ready prey, a waiting recruit to be lured or drawn in by all manner of gurus, autocrats looking for “hitmen,” or belief systems. Why not?
I consider myself a double heiress, well maybe triple. Both of my parents were grievously traumatized and tragically neglected, but my father additionally actively passed on some aspects of his own traumatic past. I hate the word “perpetrator,” but that would be a shorthand. Intergenerational transmission is the devastating sequel to an original blast of trauma that remains unprocessed. It can be bequeathed in all kinds of untoward ways. One of my clients came in the other day and told me he and his son had taken a big load to the “transition site.” He laughingly told me that “transition site” is the new moniker for garbage dump! I affectionately figured it must be the City of Berkeley, famous for coming up with the most creative politically correct new, and euphemistic words and names for things. But no, it was another less renowned Bay Area suburb. We imagined, something akin to pumpkins turning into elegant coaches, old family trash items tossed into this transition site, crossing over into some magical, mystical angelic, perhaps eternal form. We had a good laugh together, all too rare in psychotherapy, at least with me, I’m afraid.
Returning to the serious, in effect we become the sorry, unwitting, certainly unintentional “transition site” for the unrepaired, rusted, or mildewed old junk of our forbears, the “sins of the father…” That is why I am so impassioned about every level of trauma processing and healing so we don’t keep generating and regenerating more, like waves on a pond when a stone falls in, rippling endlessly in concentric circles of agitation. I guess we have the option to transition to something new and different if we are lucky.
My friend in Hawaii is a tomato whisperer. Her yard is a veritable jungle, an Eden of every imaginable and unimaginable tomato plant, in hanging pots, climbing wildly up trellises, and in several crowded greenhouses, which I would call mansions, (not to be confused with the famous movie…) built by her husband. Her husband describes her rapture when the seed catalogs come. Already amazed that she starts her massive plantation from seeds, he describes the scene of the tiny woman, hidden under the sea of heavy volumes. When I was little, living in New York City, the phone books, (yes some of us are old enough to remember those!) were so fat, my mother would use them to build a makeshift high chair, or at least booster seat. I imagined only the tip of my friend’s head, and some of her long black hair flying out, from under the stack. She lovingly starts this lush and delicious paradise, from seeds. Not unlike raising a little creature, a child I imagine. She like, myself, is not a mother of children. But indeed, has many offspring, all colors, shapes, and sizes. And they all begin from these minuscule, these tiny packets of living energy.
Parents of human children often come to me after my talks, alarmed about their own children, and what harm they may have passed down by not getting to their trauma/neglect therapy in time. The fact that they are concerned and thinking about it, that they care, is already an important sign, even a start. I always tell people and don’t mind repeating myself about this, that the attachment researchers tell us the gold standard, the best of the best accurately attuned parents, are getting it right 30% of the time. That’s right, 30%. The rest is a ceaseless dance of rupture and repair. Those are the best of caregivers.
One of the most sorely absent developmental experiences, certainly in the case of trauma and neglect, is repair. I have so many clients who may be of advanced ages and have never known the wonder, the miracle, the joy of relationship repair. They have never received a truly healing apology, and have no idea how to make one. And the answer to hurt is generally to withdraw or cut and run. Learning repair is so valuable that I am often almost grateful (well not quite, or maybe not until they are far in the rearview,) for my mistakes. So, it is not too late to learn repair skills and practice them. To heal with perhaps hurt children, and offer. (Of course, I can’t resist making a pitch for this year’s Oxford Trauma Conference which will be all about this. Please see more information here.
The takeaway today is not new. Nothing is not nothing. And tragically as this exploding world keeps reminding us, sometimes, nothing is lethal.
But let’s end on a positive note:
Today’s Song:
One of the charming differences between my husband and me, (and admittedly not all of them are charming!) is that he is happy to pack and schlep a massive 575-page volume as vacation summer reading, while I prefer to travel feather-light. I am happiest to fill my suitcase with almost nothing. One of the few, if not only occasions when I truly don’t mind, even enjoy (!) washing clothes is at the guest laundromat in our Kona hotel. In Hawaii, like San Francisco, you can wear really anything, and (even almost nothing in these climes!) So, where he packed a comprehensive, in-depth, (weighty in more ways than one!) history of the Hopi people of the American Southwest, I selected a petite volume from the groaning pile, which happened to be one I was eager to read anyway: the brand new Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, by Salman Rushdie (Random House, 2024.) Light but not lite!
I have always liked Salman Rushdie, I know a lot of people don’t. I have not read many of his numerous books, although one truly memorable one, about the same size as my husband’s Hopi book, is his Joseph Anton, (Random House, 2012) which is a stunning work of autobiographical fiction. (still, I would not tote that one on a trip!) It chronicles his years of “fatwa:” a “moral,” authoritarian decree, issued by Ayatollah Khomeni of Iran in 1989, which declared his novel Satanic Verses, to be blasphemous. The fatwa called for the execution of Rushdie, which resulted in some 20 years of exile and traumatic fleeing and hiding. It is no wonder that his son, then only 10 years old, even now still has a ferocious flying phobia, and had to travel by ocean liner from London to New York to be with his father following the recent attack. Who knows what other trauma and neglect symptoms linger, especially after this? Those fatwa decades were nightmarish, and a triumph of not only trauma survival, but also passion for justice, freedom of speech, and art. The story is brilliantly told in the weighty novel, I recommend it. I guess I had not read anything else of his in twenty years until this recent memoir.
Since Rushdie’s heroic wife, Eliza, is a key figure in his story, I was curious about her. It is decidedly a love story, and a testament to the ultimate healing power of not only dogged determination but the unshakable anchoring provided by attachment and community, at both an intimate and mass levels. Admittedly one beef I had had with Rushdie, or certainly a curiosity, was that the short, squatty, rather odd-looking Rushdie always seemingly promenaded tall skinny, elegantly drop dead-model-gorgeous, young white partners or wives on his arm. One might expect and forgive that of Mick Jagger, but this political and brilliantly gutsy, literate intellectual? Of course, I had checked out all the women, via Google images. (So who is shallow?) True to form I had a look at Eliza, who it appears has broken the mold, and absolved him of whatever prejudice I had harbored against him (especially after reading this book!) She is also gorgeous but in a very different way. Not tall, not thin, an African-American, published poet and author; filmmaker and photographer, all in her own right. She turned out also to be an angel, as far as I am concerned, and the Robin to his Batman in the story.
Knife is a brilliant story not only of trauma, and neglect, but the power of love and support. It is also an accounting of near death, apparently without significant memory loss. For 27 seconds, Rushdie was face to face with his knife wielding would-be killer, who almost “succeeded” in his vicious intent. It is a powerful documenting of trauma, and intergenerational transmission, very much from the inside. Surviving was most certainly nothing less than miraculous, nor was the way, Eliza stayed by his side like glue, through every grueling day and night of his two months of hospital and rehab, draconian procedures and surgeries, and unspeakable pain throughout his multiply pierced and slashed body. She witnessed and even partially filmed the protracted nightmare.
It is a worthy read for anyone, but especially those of us, like me, who are passionate about trauma, neglect, intergenerational transmission, social justice, art, and of course determined and untiring persistence and love. Do be advised, however; a slender volume it is graphic and hideously explicit- certain to be triggering for some. Still, it is indeed an inspiring story of attachment and love. The dedication in Eliza’s first-after-this-ordeal, new book release (quoted in Rushdie 2024, p. 178) reads:
Salman, let our love show this impossible world that nothing is impossible. I love you with every heart and story that has ever lived in me and every story that is to come. Salman— my joy, my home, my joy, my dream, and my miracle—Always.
We purposely selected last week’s “summer re-run” to set the stage for this week’s “update.” If you missed it, please do, to get the back story. A year after our serendipitous, accidental heroism on the sacred mountain, Hualālai, our friend and trusted Native guide, Kimo took us back up the mountain, where he in deep gratitude and we with equal gratitude and honor, planted a Koa seedling on the mountain.
Koa as you probably know, is the gorgeous marbled hard wood we are most familiar with as expensive salad bowls and furniture, art and even I recently learned, ukuleles. A sacred tree, the Koa is illegal to cut down. Only the fallen trees can be harvested, only with special permits; then sold to artisans and such. The Koa, like everything else Native, suffered terribly from colonialism, as did Kimo’s large family, although he remains open hearted. Kimo’s family, once the keepers and inhabitants of the mountain – “lost it” due first to exorbitant land taxation, then to greedy land-grabbing developers. Kimo has made it his mission to reforest the mountain. Our little seedling was our modest opportunity/privilege to participate.
For a variety of reasons and crossed wires, we missed out on going to see how our little tree was getting on, on our last visit. So, it had been nearly two years since we’d ventured up the mountain, our little guy must be entering tree adolescence by now. It took even Kimo, who intimately knows the mountain, a while to find its spot. When we did, I was crestfallen to see it was but a twig, with a couple of pathetic attempts at leaves sprouting from skeletal joints. Oh dear! The poor little thing rather reminded me of Rushdie following his attack. The ravaging of our little tree was hardly as cruel intentioned, if perhaps nearly as brutal. “Sheep!” Said Kimo. They eat everything right down to the barest bones, only goats being more rapacious. Apparently, the colonialists in their zeal brought too many. Goats became so overpopulated that there was a need to mass exterminate. As a cheese maker, I love sheep and goats, as well as trees, I was horrified, while also knowing that the culprits were of course not the critters themselves!
I was saddened, but Kimo said not to worry. Our tree will be back. Because the root system is strong and it will like him, like Rushdie, like many of us most likely not only survive but prevail. We all took pictures of our little weed and promised to be back in December. More indomitables.
Kimo said it takes a good eight years for the mighty Koa to get stable and reliably established. Wow! I thought cheese making takes patience, interminably waiting 4 to 24 months! This is more like trauma and neglect healing. Reforestation too is the work of years and decades, of a lifetime.
I don’t listen to much news here in Hawaii, but this morning I tuned the computer to stream my favorite public radio station, probably more than anything force of habit. The first and only thing I heard was that Dr. Ruth Westheimer died this morning at the age of 96. “Dr. Ruth” as everyone referred to her, -I don’t think I even knew her last name for years-, was a tiny, (4 feet 7 inches; 1.39 m tall) proper looking, German lady, and I always remember her as being an “old” lady, although that certainly changes as we move along that path ourselves. Although I have always been somewhat reactive to Germanic accents, from a young age I remember we all affectionately giggled at her heavily accented, famous words, “You hef to tell your partner vot you vant!” Dr. Ruth was a pioneering, early sex therapist.
Come to find out, we had more than a name in common she and I. Both of us had a Nazi Holocaust background, although hers was much more terrible. At the age of 10, her parents sent her, much like my Uncle Hans, to safety in a Swiss orphanage, while themselves staying behind to care for her elderly grandmother who was too frail to leave. Both parents were killed in at Dachau. Somehow young Ruth, alone, kept herself going and ended up emigrating to what was then British-controlled Palestine. In spite of her diminutive size, she joined the army and trained as a sniper, although she never engaged in combat. On her 20th birthday Ruth was seriously wounded in a mortar attack where she almost lost both of her tiny feet. She slowly recovered, and through working odd jobs, completed degrees in psychology and sociology at the French Sorbonne, and later earned her PhD, at the age of 42, at Columbia University in New York.
In 1980 she became “Dr. Ruth” via her pioneering syndicated sex therapy radio talk show, “Sexually Speaking,” which rapidly became wildly popular. I learned all this history only today, after being punched in the gut, by the grief. I have always admired Dr. Ruth, without even knowing the attachment as well as incident trauma story behind what had always seemed to be this gutsy character. 96 years, a grand survivor, teacher, and harbinger of pleasure. May she rest well.
Many who know me, have heard my little diatribe about how nobody talks about sex, even in our field it is all too rare. Is it prudishness, shame, ignorance, or moral tabu? I don’t know. It has been part of my mission for 20 years, to cross-pollinate the sexuality and trauma fields, beyond our of course necessary attention to sexual trauma. I will spare you my little tirade just now, I have way too much to say! For now, let me say, Thank you Dr. Ruth!
Ever since becoming a certified sex therapist in 2000, I always wanted (among multiple other reasons!) to get my PhD, so I too could be “Dr. Ruth.” She got her doctorate at age 42, I am 69…with all these stories of indomitability, I guess now I had better really do it!
The blog is a little long today. Perhaps it is my way of saying, hang in there with the healing journey, don’t give up. Let’s all remember Dr. Ruth’s immortal words! … And enjoy!
Today’s song:
I do love words. I asked my husband, does everyone read books with a massive dictionary at their elbow like I do? I am fairly literate, but I don’t want an interesting new one to get by me. He usually knows them all, so he doesn’t need to, but he knows far less than I do about what “everyone” does. So we both don’t know that. I rarely remember the ones I look up, at least the first time through. I find out what they mean to make sense out of the passage I just read, and then they may vanish instantly as if in a computer crash. Sometimes I am even dismayed to find I have to look up the same word twice in one chapter, but I console myself that perhaps the repetition will help me remember it this time. I rarely use these new-to-me words when I write, partly because I don’t want to pretend to be more erudite than I am, but mostly because I don’t want you to have to read my stuff with a dictionary at your elbow if that is something that you do. And most often I don’t like them that much. But sometimes I encounter a winner, and will probably write that one down.
Being a wordsmith, however, I love to write and I enjoy working and playing with words. I especially like double entendres, or creating funny or new-to-me meanings out of known or laden existing combinations like “make America grate again, always a melting pot…” being my cheese-making handle. But I rarely make up words. That is a higher order of creativity than I can claim.
About a week ago I hit a jackpot of learning two really excellent, related and even useful-to-my-purposes new words in one weekend, and both were home grown, meaning uniquely made up by the speakers. The first was in a conversation with my friend and colleague, Lars. Lars is the rockstar who runs the education program for my neurofeedback community and is probably uniquely responsible for my not going rock stir crazy from the professional isolation at the start of the Pandemic. Lars rapidly started producing webinars and recruiting the best of our brains to teach and keep me company in those wee insomniac hours where there was only BBC news to talk to me. The news was particularly, and frighteningly bleak then: thousands dying every day and “new” wars starting as well. Some of our webinars were even fun and funny, but all were enlightening, enriching and comforting. I will be ever grateful as I recall those rough days. Thanks Lars!
This was a purely social zoom with Lars. We live in sunny states on opposite coasts of this big country, I haven’t seen him in person in some years. When I sked him about his adorable little daughter, he lit up and began telling me about how she is learning to swim. He sent me the sweetest photos of his gorgeous little fish. He described how with all of his busy work life, he does not get to spend nearly as much time with her as he would like, but every Saturday is their special day together. They call it “Dadderday!” I said, “Wow Lars, what a great word!” For an attachment hound like me, I immediately asked him, “Can I use it?” “Of course!” he quickly and delightedly replied, his delight being the sheer delight he, and I am quite certain she as well, feel about those precious days.
“Dadderday!” I remember Saturdays when I was her age, and really for most of my childhood. Our dad, being a cantor, performed services every Saturday morning. He was nervous in the morning and rushing to get out of the house. Often services were followed by a bar mitzva luncheon or some sort of congregant special occasion. Then he usually went by the local hospital to fulfill the mitzva of “visiting the sick.” By late afternoon he got home, tired, and hit the bed, his firm credo being that “if you don’t have a good nap on Shabbat, the day of rest; you will be tired all week.” So we had to be quiet if we were at home. He slept all afternoon and often in the evening my parents went out to some other social or professional grown-up event. So much for “Dadderday…” I was duly moved by Lars’ special connection to his little girl, and his palpable love and authentic joy. That little girl is truly blessed.
For some three decades, I have been an eager follower of the work of Sue Carter, long before the word “follower” had the meaning it has now in social media. (Interestingly in cheesemaking, the “follower” is the cover of the cheese making mold, that holds the press in place. Oy vey, don’t get me going on this word thing!) Sue is sometimes affectionately referred to as the “Oxytocin Queen.” As a biologist she has spent these decades seriously studying teaching and writing about love, sex, and attachment across the lifespan and across the animal kingdom. These are all favorite subjects of mine, as by now you know. She also happens to be married to Steven Porges of the Poly Vagal theory, of which I am sure you also know. I have always been annoyed by the fact that many people referred to Sue simply as “Steven Porges’ wife as if she were not a luminary in her own right. That continually irked me.
Growing up as the “cantor’s daughter,” our dad would routinely ask when I might have met a new-to-me person, “Do they know who you ARE?” Meaning did they know I was his daughter. As far as he was concerned (and I certainly bought and believed it,) there was no me. I was either identified as a satellite of him, or I was nothing, I did not exist. Poof, like smoke, which was how I felt anyway. So it has always bugged me when anyone is known only as “so and so luminary’s wife.” My husband retired some years ago from a long career in tech. I never once in three decades had to masquerade as a “corporate wife,” never once attended a corporate event that would require that. Although to be honest, being a child of neglect, he rarely went to work social events himself.
Interesting to me is how many attachment researchers and neuroscientist teams are spouses working together, most notably Mary Main and her husband Erik Hesse, although in their case the more famous one, certainly to me, was her. Well I had the privilege of a private interview with Sue, that momentous weekend rich in words. I had prepared a bit watching a recorded recent talk she had given at a big international conference, so I would have more articulate questions for her. I was struck by how proudly and collaboratively she refers to her “wonderful husband Steve” of 53 years. Describing their respective work she noted “we are really talking about the same thing, [meaning the attachment system] he from a nervous system standpoint, I from a hormonal one.” Interestingly she described the two systems working very much in tandem. “The nervous system is faster, and the chemical system is more enduring.” Hmm. That gave me a lot to think about. In conjunction with that notion, she quotes an African proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.” A tough but important lesson for the solitary, self-reliant child of neglect.
Here is the wonderful new word I learned from Sue: “Sociostasis.” I had written it down from the webinar I watched. What does that mean? “I made that one up,” she laughed. She explained infants, all of us really are physiologically regulated in relationship. There is no physiological homeostasis, no bodily balance, in isolation. “sociostasis” is the return to a stable baseline. It is in a relationship that we can do that. What a splendidly streamlined way to explain regulation which I tend to be so clumsy and wordy in trying to teach. “Sociostasis.” It is a grand word. Thanks, Sue! Those are two I won’t forget. Not in any of my hefty print dictionaries- yet, but already in use.
I am writing this in glorious Hawaii. It happens to be Saturday, for some it’s “Dadderday.” I wonder what Lars and his little fish are doing today. Hope it is a good one! Keep cool everyone! Aloha!
Today’s song:
It is always my intention to be reliable and consistent, so please receive my sincerest apology and regret for being late with this week’s blog.
I think we should all have a course in psychology school about orchids, as orchids are some excellent teachers – admittedly better perhaps than many I had in grad school and (probably “easier on the eyes”, at least while in bloom). I have always loved these grand, often exotic, gorgeous flowers, and would sometimes receive or even buy them for myself, always bursting with color and aliveness when I got them. Most of them tend to bloom extravagantly for a month or even several, bringing great joy and pleasure. I have kept them everywhere: in the office, in the house, wherever I could. When their time had passed, the spectacular flowers would gently fade, wither, and ultimately, softly drop off, but rarely without a good long run of exhibitionism first. My trusted housekeeper of several decades, who cleaned both the house and the office, blessedly was an orchid whisperer, and fastidiously cared for them for me. She even had names for each one. When each finished their show, she would whisk them away to the orchid extended care facility: her home.
When not blooming, orchid plants are not much to look at, if not downright unsightly. At the very least they are most often not particularly ornamental house plants, at least for my taste. Left to my own devices i.e. ignorance, I probably would have had little hope/patience for them and thrown them out. But my whisperer would miraculously, with whatever mysterious modality, restore them to a new aliveness and brilliance, often more beautiful than ever. Granted, sometimes a re-potting was needed, she lovingly did that too. She would return them sometime later, unrecognizable, seemingly re-born.
After over thirty years of a lovely symbiosis of work and friendship, my trusted housekeeper/whisperer retired. Her retirement was a blow. Although certainly well-earned and timely, nonetheless I was heartbroken. Like many a survivor of neglect for whom loss/abandonment is the primal wound and a dramatic trauma “trigger,” (I do hate that word). I wondered if I’d ever get over it. Meanwhile, I had a little cemetery of unsightly lifeless, dissociated orchid ghosts, the barren shadows of whom they had been before. Without her, I felt inclined to toss them, “what would be the point?” I could hear the echoes of the old neglect refrain “I don’t know what to do…” But another voice piped up, I could somehow faintly hear the familiar voice of Tom Petty: “Learning to fly…”
Like trauma healing, we may have had what might seem, at least in the rearview, a run of success, fun, even seeming pleasure, or not. When the trauma, whether it be incident or shock trauma; attachment/neglect trauma, or some undifferentiated combination which it usually is when it finally manifests in some un-ignorable pain, paralysis, some form of agony, we may find ourselves a shadow, or worse, of what we once were or hoped to be. Without hope, color, or life force, like the spiky stick of the barren orchid stalk… barely a skeleton remaining, and gnarly roots. Thinking of abandoned children, and lonely dissociated adults, I was suddenly inspired to do what I could to assist them in restoring themselves. So, I began to educate myself and train myself to help them, not without trusted consultation of course.
I discovered that my little upstairs bathroom, mine, but also the bathroom I share with my clients whom I now see in my home office, is an ideal healing environment. Not the steam from my showers as I would have imagined, although I am sure that doesn’t hurt, but the perfect and copious light. Western exposure, a window that blessedly looks out on a cityscape, and the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. What could better facilitate rejuvenation than that?
To my delight, they began to perk up. What had seemed long dead or at least comatose, first sprouted little spikes that would from one day to the next reach an inch or two, even more, longer, toward the window, and then it seemed suddenly, to sprout little buds, and then amazingly blooms- the spectacular blooms that I had always thought were only for other people. I couldn’t do/have that. I discovered that I could! My little bathroom became Bride of the Hilo Botanical Garden, a special place that I love so much! And a parable of healing work.
The room next door to the bathroom, with similar abundant western light, became the annex. Of course, I started accumulating plants again. And as can happen when we hit success, my reputation spread. My best friend had a little graveyard of collected struggling, near-death plants that she did not quite have the heart to toss, but almost. She asked if she could bring them.
I said, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” That is the inscription on the US Statue of Liberty. I remember hearing them again and again, as my parents both recalled it was the first thing they saw when they arrived in this country, ragged, wide-eyed, traumatized refugee/immigrants certainly both fitting the description. I retch thinking of what the welcome to what was once thought of as a “melting pot” has become. Well, my friend brought a huge drawer-like box of ragged plants. Admittedly I had not known what I was in for when I made the offer. I renamed the “annex” Assisted Living.
So, what does all this have to do with us? Well, my task with all these bedraggled foster children was to shepherd them to healing, rather like what I do all day. I remember when we were accompanied up a sacred mountain with our guide, the Native Hawaiian Kimo, who is engaged in the care, and endless re-planting of the sacred mountain Haleakalā. He told us that initially he thought that when he placed the little seedlings in the soil, they would fare better if they had plenty of personal space around each little plant. He soon discovered, that the plans standing alone, grew much more slowly and with less vigor than the ones that clustered together in social groups. Much as Judith Herman taught us in my first significant trauma book, the timeless Trauma and Recovery, (Basic Books, 1992).
The most healing element in trauma recovery is being in a community, in relationship: precisely what is most absent in the neglect experience. So, loving attention is the most curative of factors for my traumatized and most certainly neglect trauma clients. Of course. And although it is utterly necessary, but most definitely. What is also required is the reliable presence, of the fountain of sustenance and care: skill, time, consistency, and the needed supplies to thrive ultimately. And the company of the group!
Part of the joy of orchid care, is the regular visit to the plants, scouting for new growth. As with trauma healing, often the signs of progress are subtle, or imperceptible, at least to the survivor themselves. And often the wise therapist is better off not pointing it out, because it may sound so utterly off the mark to the suffering client. I have made that mistake far too often! People feel minimized, unseen, or simply annoyed. But I needn’t keep my mouth shut with the orchids. And admittedly they take for f—ing ever, to turn the corner. I know one plant that when I got it long ago, looked like a bee swarm of wild yellow blooms. They did in fact look like a cloud of spectacular and bright flying insects. For what seems like forever I have been daily watching what look to be preliminary buds getting a tiny bit fatter, a tiny bit longer, a tiny bit yellower, a bit taking their sweet time to really take flight again. So much like trauma healing.
I have followed my own best advice and found good counsel, on YouTube, the people in the plant stores, and the flower department of the grocery store. I even learned that watering them with ice cubes is the way to go, it is cooling and gradual, and it gives me time to visit with each one and see how they are coming along. Like shepherding my clients and myself So endlessly slow. But wow eventually we look and something is very different and beautiful. Each month when I see my dear friend, I pick out one of hers, that I have been fostering, and she is amazed at the change. It is my way of saying, “Hang in.”
I remember when I was a little girl and books were my best refuge. I loved the book, Stuart Little, a story about a mouse. I don’t remember the story, except that I loved it. I remember being frustrated and disappointed at the end. Partly because I did not want it to end, but partly because I never found out what happened. It ended with “…somehow Stuart knew he was going in the right direction…” In Memorium: On the day of this writing, another loss. Local treasure baseball legend, Willie Mays passed away at the age of 93. Willie was famous for being perhaps the best baseball player of all time, as well as being a genuinely good guy who loved the sport and through both exquisite athleticism and sportsmanship made it better for everyone. Although I am no sports fan and have never watched Major League Baseball or any other pro game, as you know by now, I have a fascination for the individuals who play. And Willie was another who quietly but doggedly worked to overcome the color bar in the US. After a lifetime of knocking it out of the park, it is his turn to sail off into the sky but not disappear. One last time, “Say hey Willie!” and thanks.
Today’s song:
What do Arthur Ashe, Tiger Woods, Serena and Venus Williams, Jackie Robinson, Robert McFerrin Sr., Raven Wilkinson, and Misty Copeland have in common? No this is not a joke or a trick question. All are objects of great admiration of mine, not only because of their brilliance, but because all of them are or were African Americans who had the courage and perseverance to be trailblazers and be the first of their race to break into decidedly white men’s fields and in the cases of all but Robinson, unquestionably elite, rich white men’s fields Ashe rose to the top in men’s tennis; Woods in golf; the Williams sisters in women’s tennis, Robinson in baseball; McFerrin Sr. (father of “Don’t Worry Be Happy” Bobby); the New York Metropolitan Opera Wilkinson and Copeland new to me, Ballet.
This has long been on my mind, but what made me think of writing about it now, was reading the autobiography of Misty Copeland, the first African American woman to be a principal dancer in the American Ballet Theater. I had never heard of her until catching an interview on public radio where she was interviewed for her then-upcoming autobiography, The Wind at My Back, (Grand Central Publishing 2022) In my customary way, I pre-ordered it many months before it appeared, and pleasantly surprised when it came. Still, it somehow migrated to the bottom of the ever-growing pile, until now. In it, she described her childhood with what I would call the quintessential “neglect mom.” Misty was the 4th of six children; and her mother had a “knack for choosing the most inappropriate of men.” She and her siblings never knew when they would be uprooted, piled into the car, and dumped out to live in yet another different place, in some unknown location. She/they were constantly on edge.
Copeland early in her life, developed a love of dance. From the beginning as a young child, she could never stop dancing. At about age five, she had the opportunity to attend a ballet, and it was love at first sight. When she got a little older, she found a way to take ballet classes.
From the start, she learned that any sort of serious foray into the unquestionably white world of ballet was met with not only exclusion but a clear message “this is not for you.” I remember my own feelings as a child, certainly not comparable, but I always thought of ballet as something “not for us.” I remember the girl who “stole” my first-ever best friend in fourth grade had straight blond hair in a perfect flip. She had a princess phone and a canopy bed, all the trappings of an American girl with privilege, and she went to ballet. I could not imagine finding a place there, even if my parents had made it available. I remember being proud to know that pro baseball player Sandy Koufax, (born Sanford Braun) was Jewish. I was proud both that a Jewish guy might be an athletic star, but also for knowing the name of an athlete! Sports and pink lacy arts seemed unquestionably out of my reach, as beautiful as I felt they were. I remember how I loved Tschicovsky’s Nutcracker, even though it was a Christmas story and not “ours.”
Well, Copeland had the determined passion and the talent to pursue a career in ballet and reached the level of “soloist” in the American Ballet Theater, which is certainly not nothing! But she felt she had hit a glass ceiling as a Black woman dancer. There was nowhere to go, she felt stopped. The gateway to the next prima level of “principal” felt elusively out of her reach. At age 27 she sank into that well-known-to-us neglect feeling of “nothing matters.” Her passion to keep at it, even to keep dancing, waned fearfully quickly into the familiar to us ennui. That was when serendipitously and just in time, she met Raven Wilkinson.
Wilkinson was old enough to be Copeland’s mother, the first African American woman to be a principal in the internationally acclaimed Ballet Russe. She had broken in at a historically earlier, even harsher time. Copeland had always admired and idealized her from afar. Apparently, Wilkinson had been following and applauding her dance career from a distance, without her knowing it. So, they had a mutual admiration before they met. As my husband and I often say to each other “What a great arrangement!”
Meeting Wilkinson was the turning point for Copeland. And these words that Wilkinson said to her, stayed with her and became her touchstone throughout her dancing life and her life in general. Wilkinson said to her “I will be the wind at your back!” And she became Copeland’s loving mentor through the rest of her life and certainly became her north star and loving usher to the top of her art. Raven Wilkinson was the vehicle of healing the attachment void much as for many of us, the therapist must be, at least for a time. And those of us who are therapists strive to be that.
As bicyclists, my husband always loved tailwinds. He of course equally passionately and bitterly hated headwinds. I always said I was pretty neutral about wind, joking “I can’t see it.” I think I have learned a lot about wind, and my life has been truly transformed by the various and powerful helpers who have come behind me and carried me, as I discovered that there is something better and even more effective than the old “doing it all myself”, the default of neglect trauma. Yes, I still joke about how “I am a little OCD but I get a lot done!” but the fact is I get more done by having a team who not only knows more than I do about certain things, but they know what to do, often before I not only realize I need them done, let alone ask them. What a concept, having a tailwind, and my husband, lover of tailwinds is in fact another one. How am I so fortunate? Well, it did start with dogged and unceasing years with a good therapist. But now, with tremendous gratitude, I have the wind at my back.
In the US and some other countries, today is Father’s Day (the day I am writing this blog.) Of course, I think of my own father, and with great love. Thanks to the great blessing of forgiveness, I can really feel it. Hearing Frank Anderson’s short interview on Good Morning America, and reading his book, reminded me that I must sometimes write my forgiveness story because it is the story of one of the most important experiences of my life. My father, although not the wind at my back that Wilkinson was to Copeland, directly and indirectly, was the source or role model of my most cherished and important strengths. Although he was also the source of my worst and most scarring trauma, without that trauma, I most likely would have never landed in this treasured work that has become my career and my passion. So, I can immensely appreciate both. He died thankfully before the Pandemic, and also before this tragic Gaza crisis. I am also grateful for that. Thanks, Dad.
And I also want to honor and grieve the passing of another father, Lennart Jonsson, father of my beloved angel Araminta. He died last week. He was a brilliant and compassionate businessman and a profound influence on his daughter creating the business which is lovingly the wind at my back, and to many others dear to us all as well. He was a wonderful role model and teacher and left us way too soon. Deepest sympathy to all his loved ones, and certainly deep gratitude from me, although I never knew him. May he rest well, and all of his loved ones be comforted. And to all who have fathers, living or not, and who are or have become fathers, a belated Happy Father’s Day…
Today’s song:
Coming home from Boston, I crashed into a colossal writer’s block. I had been on such a high for a week. A lifelong introvert, I had been social and interactive the whole time, probably talking more to people than I have in all my 41 years of sobriety. Coming home, I was reminded that I was not fully unpacked from moving my office – a mess of undifferentiated chaos. 3/4 emptied boxes of memorabilia, chachkies, and important and unimportant “stuff” uncharacteristically strewn in the room where I dropped my returning suitcases. And I had the hubris or stupidity to attempt to hit the ground running and go straight back to full-blast work.
That first weekend back, I indulged in a day of cheesemaking, and during a 90-minute stir, I binge-watched YouTube videos of one of my writing heroes and role models, Ta-Nehisi Coates. (I have read all of his books, but his one work of fiction, The Water Dancer, Knopf, 2019 may be one of my most admired, favorite novels of all time, a must-read!). In one of the videos, Coates told the story of a time writing for the Atlantic, he kept asking his editor for extension after extension after extension. Finally, his ever-patient editor lowered the boom and said decidedly (and not gently…) “NO! You turn it in tomorrow or you are done!” Coates went home and the article flooded out of him and was complete by the morning. Said Coates, “It was just fear…”
I felt only cowering shame, sheepishly showing up to my sessions with my writing angel, embarrassed and emptyhanded, detailing my block. She, without missing a beat gently said, “In all my years and decades in this industry, I have never met a writer who did not have occasional bouts of blockage. You are exhausted!” This is why we hire high-priced experts. The trick, or the challenge is to remember that they do in fact know more than we do, or know better. No small feat for those of us who never had a wise other to turn to! She also said, “You need to take time off from the book! And maybe you even need to have a break from the blogs, go into “summer re-runs” or “greatest hits?” I cringed… And also spun a little. Reviewing…OK, the blockage is fear, natural and common, and also weighted by profound fatigue. However, reluctantly I did agree, that I would take the month of June off from the book.
And as reluctantly, I did submit: for July and August I will go to an every other week “summer re-run blog” alternating weeks with a new one. So there, now I have told you. Meanwhile another diagnostic: twice in about 6 weeks my cheese did not cohere but came out like a bucket of beans instead of a tidy wheel. I have not had cheese failures in a while… there was another humbling clue and an undeniable indicator that she was right… Hooray for having a knowledgeable, kindly authoritative guiding other, protecting us from ourselves, our unbridled inclinations, from crashing and burning. Something we should have had all along.
In one of the interviews, a member of Coates’ live audience asked him something I don’t remember about hope. Coates answered unhesitatingly that he is a journalist, and hope is not his medium, not his paradigm. Journalists deal not with feelings but with action items. The questioner persisted, “Then what?” Coates’ reply was unhesitating, we must work tirelessly to make this world what we would want it to be for our children. For myself I have always striven to do both, probably why I end up periodically in the depleted state I recently have found myself.
By now several years have passed since a client of mine lost her partner to ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). Like most of us, I knew little about it, except that it is a horrible, fatal illness where one gradually (or not so gradually) loses function until the body completely dies. It always seemed unimaginably hideous to me. I did not yet know this client during the two years plus that she lovingly cared for him from his diagnosis to the painful end. Insult to injury, he was a war veteran who was exposed to toxic chemicals while on active duty, so he was failed by government agency after government agency, including the Veterans Administration. Only recently, now years after his passing, she received the bitter news, that in the drug clinical trial they had participated in, he had received the placebo. Tragically, the placebo recipients were given nothing after the trial, not even a “thank you for your service…” (Unlike many placebo trials where after it ends, the placebo subjects receive a round of the treatment). Or they have gotten something. She told me about a new film (I Am ALS)
I am very much not a movie person. Whether it is that I am too stingy with my reading time, or it is unusual for me to find something that holds my attention for the requisite 90 minutes or more. The exception is when I have a long stir of the cheese vat, so I am rooted in one place with my mind free for sometimes 60 or 90 minutes or more. This was a time when my recipe called for 90 minutes plus stirring the vat. So, I looked up the movie, a roughly 90-minute documentary available for streaming on Amazon Prime. It was the quickest 90-minute stir I have ever done.
It was the story of a young man, in his early 40’s as the film begins. You see scenes of him dancing wildly at his wedding, out running, skiing, chasing his toddler son down the beach, vital and athletic, when he finds he has trouble opening and closing his left hand. He walks out of what they imagined was a brief checkup, with a diagnosis of ALS, and a prediction of 6 months to live. Needless to say, he and his young wife were shocked. She was about to give birth to their second child, their first being a lively two-year-old boy. The film is their story.
I have always told my husband, if I ever can’t move, I will want to go to Switzerland and go to sleep. I would not be able to bear having my body go out on me, unlike my Holocaust-surviving father who after being first a chef and then a cantor, at 50 was diagnosed with tongue cancer. The surgery cost him two-thirds of his tongue which was re-constructed with muscle from his thigh, but sans taste buds of course. And a significant reconstruction of his face as well. Always a good-looking man, he looked different. He did re-learn how to speak although his speech was never the same. Then only a few years later he was diagnosed with severe throat cancer, again major surgery and much radiation. Becoming able to sing again took a while, and of course, was never the same. He was unable to swallow anything but blended pureed food. So, for the final 40+ years of his life, he was unable to taste or swallow. Food was no longer any sort of pleasure, and ultimately the last ten years or so he resorted to a feeding tube. Perhaps his history of trauma and neglect trained him for such endurance. Could I have endured that? I can hardly imagine.
ALS is the story of loss, loss of control, function, autonomy, and any real pleasure in the body. For the character in the movie, it was the loss of much pleasure. For many of us taking pleasure in the body is a learned, often hard-earned experience, especially when there is a history of eating disorder, addiction, or some sort of sexual trauma to the body. Imagining the loss of it, is again, hard to imagine for me. Watching this movie, I had to rethink that. The people in the movie had a remarkable mix of hope and grit, positive thinking in the face of tremendous challenges, and tireless determination and generosity.
Ironically, at one point in the film, the couple and other ALS couples lamented and discussed how the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration) had “failed them” with how they regulated and failed to support ALS treatment research. A relatively unknown and under-publicized if devastating illness, it is sadly neglected and underfunded, as are it’s too often quietly lonely sufferers. It was particularly ironic to me because I happened to watch it on the very day that that same FDA had voted down the clinical use of MDMA for MDMA Assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. And the FDA was not the only government agency that failed and neglected the ALS folks. Not mentioned in the movie, was the Veterans Administration, and the recognized link between ALS and some toxic war chemicals such as my client’s partner was exposed to. And the agency of State Disability Insurance incomprehensibly has a 5-month wait period before they start issuing disability checks to ALS patients. As in the case of the film’s protagonist, who had a six-month life expectancy what is the sufferer to do who has no means and precious little time left?
My few complaints about the movie were that virtually everyone was white, with the exception of President Obama, a handful of East Indian doctors, and one patient with a perhaps Spanish surname. The rest were seemingly privileged white folk, who all apparently had partners and or family. Neglected or not mentioned were a vast population of people of color, less means, or no loved one to take on the formidable labor of love, of their care. They did however reference, the success of the HIV/AIDS support community (of which I can boast I was a long-time activist) in succeeding in the fight against AIDS and the development of life-extending, life-normalizing medications.
Rare for me, I highly recommend this movie, and it achieves what I long aspire to: a balance and harmony of hope and grit. Admittedly I could not stop crying, and I did successfully keep my tears from falling into the cheese vat. I did, however, for whatever reason, end up with a bucket of beans… Oh well.
Today’s song
June is Pride Month, I think around the world. In San Francisco where I live, the skies are more than ever splashed with the color of waving rainbow flags. I love those flags, and always wanted to get one for our house, partly because I love color, especially the vivid brightness of primary colors; and partly because although I am a straight, long-time- married lady, I have been a card-carrying PFLAG (Federation of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) member, since I learned of it, and since well before we had the alphabet of variations of “queer.” (When I was growing up, “queer” was an insult reserved for the generically un-cool, unpopular, often me. Now it is an acceptable and at least here in SF, a much-used general term for the range of “non-hetero” sexualities.) I was drawn to the notion of justice and acceptance for people of all genders and sexualities not only because I have always been passionate about justice and equality, but even more because the freedom to love and be loved by whomever we want and choose has always seemed so essential and vital to me. Especially being for a long time, a perennially lonely romantic. It was a natural progression, and there were many reasons and catalysts for my subsequent and ongoing fascination with the wide world of sexuality. I thought a fitting celebration of June would be to blog about sex this week, and to broach the topic of Neglect Informed Sex Therapy, perhaps cracking the wall of silence.
I do have a persistent complaint that sexuality is so glaringly neglected in the trauma field, and in the psychology field at large. It is ironic, because going back to our psychological founders, sexuality was originally viewed as the basis of so many things. The trauma field at most, largely addresses sexual trauma, and that through a narrow lens (more about that follows). And sadly, in actual practice, there is a paucity of actual mention of sexuality. I routinely hear from clients that few practitioners of any kind have inquired about sexual matters, from medical professionals, to even couple’s therapists. Is it shame, fear, or tabu that stops us from speaking about it, or ignorance? The outcome of this silence is that our clients wind up feeling as if they are not supposed to speak of such things, or they are simply supposed to “know.” So many walk around not knowing, perhaps wondering anxiously, if they or their partners are “normal.’’ If they do not have an overt “sexual abuse” history, there is nothing to talk about. Oy vey, meanwhile we are bombarded by stimulation of every sexual ilk, including lots of advertising for erection/ desire-enhancing pharmaceuticals. I am on a mission to help us out of this lonely silence; to become more fluent and comfortable at speaking aloud about this neglected topic and learning to actually utter the explicit words out loud, creating permission for more frank and less shame-ridden conversation and inquiry.
When I teach, I like to expand my understanding of the important term regulation. My view is that regulation is the “ground zero” of development and so pivotal to what should happen in the early mother infant resonance. I think of regulation as having two related, distinct, and important lines of meaning/definition. One is in the arousal, and (ultimately emotional) sense, the other in the attachment/interpersonal sense. By arousal, I am referring to the necessary function of the mother or primary parent in helping the infant to recover and return to baseline form the inevitable experience of getting one way or another “upset.” Of course, an infant at times will fuss and cry, if they are hungry, cold, scared, lonely, bored, startled… Getting upset, means their vital bodily signs like brain activation, heart rate, breath, even skin conductance or other functions, will escalate in some way. If the caregiver responds promptly with needed supplies, whatever is indicated be it food, a cozy blanket, soothing comfort, touch company, or stimulation… the infant will settle. The caregiver helps bring the infant from hyperarousal, back to the comfortable base level where all is experienced as more or less, well. In effect, the caregiver regulates the little one, so ultimately, with luck, they learn to self-regulate.
The other form of regulation as I think about it, relates to relationships, and the all-important dynamic of rupture and repair, (which also happens to be the theme of the Oxford Trauma Conference 2024!) This is the essential process of returning to the desired baseline of attachment after a disconnect. Again, ruptures are inevitable, mistakes are a fact of life, one or the other member of a dyad will get upset about something or even “nothing,” and the connection is broken. If the caregiver promptly and accurately responds to the child’s distress, and bridges the chasm of disconnection, the child can recover, and again over time learn how to achieve such reconnecting and ultimately healing repair, themselves. It is safe to be human, to make the inevitable periodic misstep. This experience is of course sorely lacking in the world of neglect. Generally, regulation of both kinds is severely and tragically absent in the neglect experience. The infant is often hopelessly lost at sea emotionally and relationally.
Sexuality, perhaps more than most other bodily functions involves a delicate balance of regulation: sympathetic and parasympathetic, requiring that we be both and simultaneously excited and relaxed. Or as Harville Hendrix puts it “safety and passion.” Even animals in the wild will stop their mating if a predator is anywhere near. The same is true for us. Add to that the profound interpersonal ambivalence endemic to the neglect experience, and sexuality presents a morass of challenges.
The now familiar “dilemma without solution” has a unique expression in the sexual sphere. How do we achieve the sexual union and keep it free/safe for the “risk” of attachment?
I have observed a host of “creative” adaptions including cyber-sex or sex with “inanimate” partners; serial infidelities; serial monogamies, anonymous sex, sex with sex workers, being a sex worker, partnering with someone who is unable or unwilling to have sex, abstinence… to name a few. You get the idea. Often of course, loneliness, ultimate dissatisfaction, or the pain of a “betrayed” partner bring these people to our offices. Or they may have too much shame, fear, or denial to show themselves. I have noticed a trend for people who are entering midlife, the 50-ish-year-old range, “suddenly” being visited by grief about what they have missed, or fear that their window is closing, and wanting to do something about it, or understand it better, or open up the channel in a long sexually dormant partnership. It may be surprising to learn how many apparently committed couples have not had sex with each other (or anyone) in years or even decades. Again, they may be very reticent to speak… That is where again, it behooves us to break that silence, to delicately inquire, or to learn to.
We need to create a whole new field that puts sexuality on the table. Along with neglect, we need to shine to light on sex, and even the two together. Peter Levine’s lovely new autobiography (An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey, Park Street Press 2024) is a must-read. I will put no spoilers here! I will only say, that Peter reminded me of two other categories of sexual trauma, which also readily coincide with neglect. Both are under-rated for their impacts and grossly overlooked: having a parent intrude on or somehow discover innocent sexual play between child peers. Young children will be naturally curious and want to try things with one another. Among children close in age, consensual and mutually enjoying themselves and each other, this is harmless and natural. Being “caught” by a parent (often especially if it is same-gender play) who is shaming, punitive or moralizing can be hideously traumatic, as can the same with regard to masturbation. Impacts can be much greater than one might imagine. I am encouraging us to break the silence, initiate the conversation, say it out loud, and widen our definitions of sexual freedom for all. Happy Pride!
This week’s song:
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