One of my few childhood memories is from when I was probably not quite three years old. We were on some sort of family outing, walking through a park in New York. We reached a spot where the path led to a green area. I took a closer look at what had initially appeared to be a bright spring carpet of fresh grass, and I saw that the whole patch was moving, swirling around like some kind of optical illusion. I bent down and looked a little more closely, and shrieked. It was not fresh spring grass as I had initially thought, but an undulating mass, a crowd of creepy crawly bright green caterpillars, squiggling all over each other. I was horrified, and terrified, realizing I could not take a step in my little Sunday shoes without squashing them. I am sure my older sister was there somewhere. I have no idea how she felt about them. I have never thought to ask her. She was always a little bolder and wilder than me. What I do remember is screaming, “Daddy, carry me!” I guess he must have, but I don’t remember. The scene goes dark, leaving behind only a creepy, slimy feeling about the multitude of little squirming creatures.
Fast forward about 50 years to 2017. My older sister, yes, the very same, had stage four ovarian cancer. For two years, I precariously hovered in a delicate balance between fierce and tenacious hope alternating with immobilizing fear and grief. All I could do was bake bread, and be with her. I changed my whole schedule, and we probably spent more quality time together, including in the chemo room, than we had spent together since we were kids.
My sister has a beautiful garden and yard. She and her husband not only have a paradise of flowers, vegetables and fruit growing and thriving out there, but they draw a wealth of all kinds of birds. We would sit out there together, and watch the birds. There was a whirring of hummingbirds, and I learned about the white-tailed kites who when they partner, the pair spends the season flying together as they build and prepare their family home. In my sister’s garden was a couple that visited often, we would watch their graceful pas de deux. They seemed to be building a nest in the peach tree. It seems now a blessedly long time ago. Seemingly miraculously my sister pulled through. She got well and before too long had a wild head of hair again. She is still going strong, although admittedly I can never forget those two long years of the pain of hovering in the in between.
One the most devastating sequelae of neglect trauma, is the loss of hope. Many therapists and loved ones, or survivors themselves might be disheartened and even impatient or judgmental about what seems like a reflexive pessimism or hopelessness, criticizing them for being a downer, or having a “negative attitude.” Perhaps however, they truly cannot help it. The core of neglect trauma is loss, in one or another of its iterations: the caregiver fails to be present whether it be a function of distraction, dissociation, preoccupation, abandonment, death or simple absence in the first place, the earliest infant experience is life-threatening terror. The source of their very survival is gone. Lacking the brain development to make coherent meaning, only the emotion, sensation, somatic experience, the implicit memory is logged. In the future, plagued by activations, they may very well not “know” what sets off the cascade of dread. Only that the world becomes charged with dangerous uncertainty, the unknown is unlikely to hold anything good. Paired with an accompanying sense of helplessness, it is not surprising that proceeding with suspicion, vigilance and low expectations of others, would become a ready default. It does make sense, however unsavory and tiring it might be. I understand it to be part of the neglect informed therapist’s job description to be a willing and able carrier of hope.
Increasingly over the last few years, I have heard more and more about the majestic monarch butterfly being endangered. I love symbols of transformation of all kinds. After all, transformation is all of what this dramatic endeavor of healing from trauma and neglect is about: literally becoming a person out of the unformed mass we seem to have been before. I love the image and the idea of spinning a chrysalis, inhabiting it for a time, and emerging a glorious and beautiful creature that can then fly free. The idea that the monarch might be disappearing from the planet was a sad one indeed.
My sister and her husband intentionally made their garden a refuge and then a breeding ground for monarchs. They planted milkweed, which is what the caterpillars love most to eat, and as in the vintage baseball movie, the caterpillars came. They began to proliferate and then there was a flurry of flapping orange and black in the very garden where my sister and I had sat and hoped and nourished her transformation. It was beautiful.
It has now gotten to where when we go out to dinner, my sister shows the grandma pictures in her phone, while her husband’s phone is filled with dramatic green and squirmy shots of various developmental stages of caterpillars. I have had to “update my files” from the terrifying slithering creatures of my memory, to a generative and essential part of the transformation process. The ugliness is indeed a part of the transformation. Admittedly, I prefer the butterfly or baby pictures over dinner, but it is a wonderful continuation of the transformation that unfolded out in that yard. And I understand that the monarchs are doing better out there in the larger world. In 2024 they advanced from endangered to “threatened.” Better, but we are not there yet, their transformation is incomplete. Meanwhile, they continue to be a powerful symbol of transformation.
I recently heard a lovely program on BBC (https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3ct6wht) which featured three stories about monarch butterflies; all three beginning with loss, that was transformed into something new. One was the story of a woman who lost her mother to cancer, far too soon. Her mother had been a prolific gardener and the two had spent some of their most precious time together working in and enjoying her mother’s copious herb garden, often accompanied by a gaggle of monarch butterflies. As the beloved mother was dying, she consoled her daughter, “whenever you see a monarch, it will be me, reminding you of my love for you.” Sometime later, as young woman was working through her grief, her overzealous young cat somehow swiped the chrysalis of an emerging monarch, resulting in a tragically torn wing. Of course, especially in light of her mother’s dying words, the young woman was again bereft. But somehow, she found the inspiration to undertake a delicate surgery, and with an embroidery needle, contact glue and tiny tweezers, she repaired the rupture. At the end of the story, the healed, transformed butterfly disappears in the spring sky.
The second story was of a woman, this one with early father loss. After a lonely early childhood, the abandoning, alcoholic father she had never known, reappeared when she was 13. That was when she first met him, and her experience of him was an angry, erratic and abusive man. Much later after his death, she learned he was an accomplished naturalist who even had a butterfly species named after him, a discovery that inspired her subsequent and exquisitely satisfying career in photography.
The third story was about a young man, also a photographer, who in the throes of a serious cancer, developed an elaborate methodology for photographing butterflies in flight. No small feat, and another powerful transformation.
I was going to make these three stories, the essence of this week’s blog, this my final blog of 2025, until I was startled to hear that Jimmy Cliff had died at the age of 81. I always loved him. Once again, I take loss very hard. I was terribly sad, replaying some of my old favorites.
Scratching the surface of Cliff’s life, I learned that he had plenty of trauma and loss. Born in Jamaica, the eighth of nine children. Soon after his birth, a major Jamaican storm, not unlike the one that recently swept through Jamaica, blew away his childhood home. His family escaped, but his single mother from what I could piece together, was most likely overwhelmed. By the age of 13, young Jimmy ventured off to the “big city” on his own and was pretty much independent and from then on, and began playing music. His transformation was dramatic. He became a world phenomenon, introducing reggae to the whole world. He won accolades and awards, and brought much liveliness and joy to all of us, certainly to me.
At this time, when there are so many raging storms, torn wings, disease and loss, we must “…try and try, try and try. We’ll succeed at last.”
Growing up I wondered if everyone has a constant musical backbeat playing in their heads like I do, a DJ who never takes a day off, always keeping me company. I rather enjoy the accompaniment, and rarely have a complaint about the choice of songs. Interestingly, the sense of hearing is one of the earliest developing sensory brain areas, preceded only by the sense of touch. And we now know that the unborn are soothed even in utero, parents should be starting the lullabies and gentle melodies early. My memory of Harry Belafonte crooning Day-o, the Banana Boat Song and Burl Ives’ Waltzing Mathilde go back as far as age two. I am not aware of what came before that!
Since I have been working with neglect trauma where there is no known narrative, clients have no story to verbally tell, and I must stay keenly attuned to whatever might be going on inside of me, as it might be some sort of nonverbal communication from them, through the “field.” Perhaps this kind of communication sounds a little “woo woo” or magical, but the psychoanalysts wrote about it decades ago, with the psychobabble designation of “projective identification” (eg Melanie Klein’s 1946 paper “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27:99–110 – I am certainly not suggesting you read it!). I am not sure what the neuroscience is of these communications, but they do resemble the wordless discourse between infant and caregiver, before they share a verbal language. Although my early classical clinical training was not always resonant with my own developing thinking, it was like practicing scales and classics on the piano as scaffolding before I got to play the music I liked.
Projective identification is powerful stuff. It is non-verbal experience in the therapist’s own body, emotions, sensations, images, spontaneous memory of one’s own or of something the client might have told me previously, and yes, for me songs. In retrospect I am grateful for having had to wade through those mind-numbing texts, because the processes are so relevant to neglect-informed work. Of course, this all requires the therapist to be vigilant, ever on the watch to sort out what is mine and what is not. A central missing experience of survivors of childhood neglect, is “simply,” and accurately: being and feeling heard, let alone remembered. Recently, out of seemingly nowhere, I found myself repeatedly visited by an old favorite song that I had not heard or even thought of, in years. It did not seem to come from a client…
I have always loved Latin music, especially starting in my 20’s when Latin America was an important part of my world, Latin music was what I listened to most, and it was the burgeoning time of what was then called the “New Latin American Song” movement: music that was very political and included folkloric instruments and influences. I loved it. Especially I loved Puerto Rican and Cuban music, and I still have groaning shelves of battered vinyl that I have no phonograph to play but will never throw away. The song that was recently inhabited my internal air space was an old Puerto Rican song called Temporal, which means tempestuous storm. I could hear it clearly in my head, but I could not even remember correctly who the musician was. Thanks to the wonders of modern search engines, I was able to find it, after repeatedly looking under the wrong musician’s name. I had no idea why it was lodged, on repeat, in my mind. And this started before the recent catastrophic “Melissa” battered Jamaica, another Caribbean island struck.
I found a video of the song and watched it. Perchance the video I found on YouTube included a little re-enactment which I also curiously watched. The rhythmic bouncy accompaniment begins, as the narrator walks along knowing a big storm is coming. He arrives at a gathering where a group of women, perhaps some sort of a party, dressed in matching traditional costume, are happily dancing. He proceeds to describe all the predictable disastrous impacts of a big storm: homes blown apart, lost crops…tragedy. The refrain repeats “todo es ansiedad…” All is anxiety. “Que sera de Puerto Rico?” What becomes of Puerto Rico when the big tempest arrives? Yet, all the while the people continue dancing. Their facial expressions may change and change again. The words describe battening down, trying to secure the buildings, people huddling together, holding on to each other (also enacted) as the lively music continues. The people keep dancing. Finally, the wind and rain begin. The dancers cover their heads and begin to scatter, some holding onto each other. Yet the music continues sounding bouncy and joyful, ultimately fading out. I watched it again and again, trying to understand it. What was it trying to tell me that was relevant to my own process? What was my inner DJ trying to get me to understand?
Yesterday I heard on the news of the day, the unsurprising but nonetheless jarring and terrifying “executive order du jour.” It seems to be a daily contest here in the US, what outrage can shock even more than the last. We must carefully regulate our news consumption here, so not to be paralyzed by it. At least I do. This time, although not yet a “done deal” the order proposed that the US courts would only recognize two “legitimate” and therefore legally recognized genders: male and female. US passports would only be issued stating the bearer’s gender “assigned at birth,” essentially boiling down to a travel ban for the non-binary of this country. I thought of the trans and non-binary friends and acquaintances that I have met in Oxford over my last three years of going there. Would those from the US simply disappear from the conference? Let alone all the other non-binary individuals that I don’t know…Already a population poorly understood and underserved by our field, they would be even more invisible, less heard and understood and learned about and from?
I, a lifelong sex positive, inquisitive and fairly well-educated citizen of San Francisco, USA, still have a ton to learn. I felt my stomach and then my whole body seize up with a familiar feeling of enraged powerlessness. The age-old infantile cry of “It’s not fair!!” This time, it was neither infantile nor even injustice against me personally. But the feeling is primordial in this old body. I remembered it since time began. And it revisits all too often these days, hearing the absurdities, the daily injustices coming down from “up high.” Like the child of neglect, the ignored, uncared for and unprotected are most at risk for subsequent trauma and abuse. Many of our clients who come in presenting incident and shock trauma, have a base layer of early neglect that left them more vulnerable to attack. And the neglect brain, prone to the freeze response, collapses into powerlessness.
It is a familiar refrain of the child of neglect, including our adult clients, to lament “I don’t know what to do! What do I do? There is nothing I can do!” I have learned over the years that in therapy these clients are not in fact asking for our suggestions, even though we may think we have some very good ones. What they are really pleading for is understanding of the despair, of having nowhere to turn and no one to ask. I also know that these rulings require more than a collapsed freeze response. But my insides were still frozen in outrage.
A little while later, I heard a report of US NBA hero Magic Johnson partnering with a major health organization to promote mental health (CBS News.) Although I truly have no interest at all in professional sports, I have an inexplicable fascination with professional athletes. I remembered Magic Johnson’s winning smile, which I had never taken notice of before his appearance on the cover of Life Magazine, with the “shocking” headline that he had tested positive for HIV. It was November of 1991, almost 34 years ago to the day. The AIDS scourge was in full “bloom,” referred to as the “gay cancer.” Of course, Magic was immediately assumed to be gay, although he wasn’t/isn’t. But that did not work in his favor either. Nor did the sensational allegations of his supernumerary sexual exploits. As I listened to the story today, Magic seemed to be smiling again.
My mind wandered back in time; I remembered the AIDS epidemic here in San Francisco in the 1980’s. Initially I only knew of one friend I had lost, my childhood best friend Donny, who had later “grown up” to become an internationally acclaimed fashion model. Donny died at age 24. I had felt the same enraged helplessness. However, after gathering myself up from the freeze, I scrambled until I found what I could “do.” First, I found a local therapist AIDS project, where we provided free therapy to people with AIDS. I was not so good at that, loss being the core of neglect trauma, I was not a good candidate for working with a person I would likely lose soon, as in those days, AIDS was a virtual death sentence.
Ultimately, I found the California AIDS Ride, which later became AIDS Life Cycle. It was a 545-mile (877 KM) fundraising bicycle trek from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Like a traveling party, pedaling down the coast together, 3,000 of us eating, camping, sweating together for seven days. We were like the Puerto Rican dancers, who, not ignoring the impending storm, kept the beat. It reminded me of the 1975 song by Holly Near, where she referenced the murder of New Song Movement icon Victor Jara, by the military junta in Chile in 1973. First, they cut off his fingers, so he could not continue playing his guitar, but Victor continued to sing while they “shot his body down…” As protest singer Holly Near sang it, “You can kill a man, but not a song, when it’s sung the whole world round…” (It could Have Been Me, 1975 Anthology What Now People? Volume 1).
The Ride became an annual fixture of our lives for ten years, taking up months of weekends consumed with training. A straight, monogamous, married couple, my husband and I felt a vital connection and sense of belonging to this diverse and motely traveling community. We raised about $16 million dollars a year and funded much of the city’s AIDS research and services. We can proudly say that AIDS is pretty much history here in this town with the Ride being an important part of that victory. Sadly, in many parts of the world it is not over.
So, what is the message of song mysteriously playing and replaying? The dancers who keep dancing as the storm nears? Maybe that we must band together and keep dancing and keep pedaling, keep singing? And not collapse in cringing outrage and let the storm sweep us away. That is easy to say as I sit here in my cozy San Francisco home with power and internet and food, not a war torn, or storm ravaged battle zone. I certainly do not mean to minimize or over-simplify the complexities we all face. Nor am I willing to sit by idle and let my trans and non-binary friends be banished form a larger world cast back into the darkness and nothingness of lonely neglect. Perhaps the dancers are harbingers of hope. Perhaps that is what I can hope to be…
I rarely work with eating disorders, if I can help it. My own history was so painful, shame-ridden and protracted, that I fear I will not have the patience or sufficient compassion to bear witness to its agonies. In my long life, I have seen progression in the larger world of food fads, diet and weight loss programs, “treatments” and often costly and lucrative products and regimens, claiming to be a magic bullet, for what in my experience was a trauma dysregulation symptom. I will start with the happy ending: that I have for the past 25 years or so, been blessedly free of the tyranny and the 24/7 nightmare of food obsession and compulsion. I am infinitely grateful. It is one of those things that I always remember how it was.
Beginning when I was probably three or four, I was always referred to as a “bad eater.” I did not like meat and it was a perpetual fight to get me to eat it. I remember scenes with my mother chasing me around the table brandishing a large serving spoon which she occasionally used to give me a whack. My great Aunt Gertrud, who took care of me when I was small, called me a “dickkopf,” which roughly translates to “stubborn mule,” for being so impossible around food. My parents both had histories of true hunger. My dad told us stories of “bread and worms,” and of how when he first got to the US he was overcome with awe and wonder at the abundance on grocery store shelves. He told us he could not stop drinking milk, simply because he could. Of course, I felt terrible guilt and shame about my privilege, and about my unreasonable insistence on eating and not eating what I wanted. In those days it was common to say to children “Clean your plate! Children are starving in Europe!” And like many kids, I wondered how eating all my food would help them…
By the age of 11, I discovered, unconsciously of course, that not eating was an effective way to numb out or even experience a kind of light-headed high. It was also 1966, when the super-model on all the magazine covers was Twiggy, the rain thin sensation. Her extreme androgenous skinny-ness and copious eye lashes, made her the icon of the “London look,” which was compelling to adolescent girls. So, besides the self-regulation which I never really noticed consciously, it was rather cool getting skinnier and skinnier. And because I was invisible anyway, no one noticed that made little body was rapidly disappearing…until quite late in the game. I had hit 79 pounds (5 stone, 9 pounds,) which on my then five-foot, four-inch frame was pretty Twiggy-like. Passing out in a public place was unavoidably conspicuous, and my parents were compelled to notice. I could not stand on my feet, let alone walk down the hall to the bathroom, from my bedroom where I convalesced for about a month. Then they were upset with me for doing this to myself, and to them. In those days there was really no awareness of anorexia or eating disorders. I scoured the library and the card catalog for any crumbs of information, and found one lonely book that had about half a page about anorexia, and from a psychoanalytic perspective. In effect, and certainly in my family, I was just a “bad girl.”
My mom had a little bottle of Sucaryl, tiny pills of low-calorie sweetener, that were taken off the market by 1966 for containing “cyclamates” which were found to be carcinogenic. Until then, I had no awareness of weight loss aids. In 1963, Weight Watchers (WW) came on the scene. My Aunt Irma was a champion of WW. For me, simple starvation worked “great.”
The confusing thing about anorexia, or my anorexia anyway, was that on the one hand it seemed like a miracle of “self-control,” except it was a completely out of control form of self-control, I really had no choice about starting and stopping. It was completely and utterly compulsive. And the terror of gaining weight was so extreme that it took over my mind, thoughts and behavior like a fierce and threatening dictator. The obsessive thoughts about eating and not eating, food and weight, was a full-time occupation. Amazing that I was able to do my school work. And I felt like some sort of an alien. On one hand I “did not need to eat” but on the other, I did not “get to eat” like other people did. I was fascinated by what was in their shopping carts and on their plates.
And then as mysteriously as the starving had begun, to my horror and shock, I began to ferociously binge. At night, standing at the kitchen counter alone, I would ravenously consume whole cartons, usually at least a half-gallon (about two liters,) maybe more. Mint chocolate chip, butter brickle, caramel swirl, it was my secret world, except somehow the freezer was always stocked. I guess my parents bought it, a grand unspoken collusion. And in the wee hours of the morning, I would sneak silently out of the house and run marathon distances through the dark streets, stealthily creeping back into the house, hiding my sweaty clothes in the back of the closet, and crawling back into bed as if I had never been gone. I was like a rat on a wheel. There was no getting off. I don’t know how many years this went on for. When I broke my leg with fatigue fracture, I turned to swimming, which I did not like nearly as much, and I could not keep it hidden. At the time, I had no idea about regulation and dysregulation, self-medicating and altering my state. But it worked. The sugar and the activity had me in my own, distant world.
Sometimes I spent hours going to stores and trying on clothes. I had no intention of buying them. I would load up the dressing room with piles of clothing of the smallest sizes, trying to figure out how big or small I was. Like the old Talking Head song belted out, “…Changed my hairstyle so many times, I don’t know what I look like!” Beset with shame, I would slink out of one store and move on to the next one. I had no idea who I was, and I was miserable.
Like every other girl and probably other genders as well, I watched the parade of books, programs, gimmicks and products, food fads and trends, and tried everything except the residential program, although I would have loved to. The idea of having someone else managing my intake, and being my regulator, was a perfect match for my longing for a real caregiver. I also learned that alcohol had a similar effect, so I could binge on that. The two analgesics became interchangeable. Thankfully I never tried to purge. When I finally stopped drinking, I started starving again. In AA they call changing from one substance to another, “switching seats in the Titanic.”
As I came to understand trauma and my trauma, and to study both, I began to learn about dysregulation, self-soothing, and flight. The first somatic work I ever encountered was in 1979 or thereabouts. It was called Self-Acceptance Training, and it combined sensory awareness with Gestalt. I don’t really remember much. But I remember sitting in those groups and hearing others talk about eating issues in the past tense, and could not imagine that could ever happen to me. Around the same time, I had the experience of being Rolfed. My very skilled Rolfer was able to help me recognize when I “went away.” I had no idea how dissociated I was. Just as I had when I was trying every imaginable diet and weight control approach, I tried, studied and practiced every new trauma and somatic approach. I was dogged. And as I went along, between an intensive, deep, long-term attachment-based psychotherapy, I gradually began to heal, in all the various ways, not just this one. My journey took many years, and a ton of hard work. But joyfully I became eventually quite free of the whole thing. I eat whatever I want, and seem to prefer good food. I have not eaten ice cream in maybe a decade. It simply does not call to me anymore. I have no “rules.” And some years later, with the help of a longtime beloved personal trainer, I was able to think of myself as an athlete, rather than my physical pursuits being nothing more than chasing calories.
Food is a complex substance: so wound in with attachment and regulation, there is bound to be something very integral about it, either hormonal or genetic. It is certainly a vehicle of regulation. I find cheese making and sourdough baking to be immensely regulating, joyful and yes, healing. Both are alive and growing. And I love the making, the waiting, the eating and the sharing. I truly have not understood my journey, but I have come to understand my eating history as very much a trauma story, and its healing being very much that.
When the new weight loss drugs burst on the scene, certainly in the US, I was skeptical and suspicious at best of pharmaceutical wonders, especially when there appears to be what might seem like a massive fortune to be made…by someone. Even more so about weight loss where I have seen miraculous snake oil of every ilk march by in fabulous processions, make millions for someone’s gain, and tons of weight lost and gained by the sufferers. This one, only the “blessed” few can afford.
I have been confused and mystified, hearing testimonials, even from people I know and respect, that with these new medicines “food noise” and compulsivity’s vanished, poof! The obsession…gone. Hard to imagine. The hitch being that like every other “diet” and remedy I have known about, like Cinderella, when the medicine is discontinued, one “turns into a pumpkin once again. So, one is chained to another costly ball, but at least it is a more pleasant one. Oh well, in this country it is the season of pumpkins!
So, I am mystified, or gobsmacked, as my British friends say. Having come to associate eating disorders, even though some families seem to share the propensity for them, as manifestations of dysregulation, or symptoms of incident trauma and attachment trauma, and serve the same kinds of soothing functions as many other compulsive behaviors and addictions. Although my healing was a protracted agony, I have not regretted it once it was behind me, as I understand this affliction better. But I never have quite understood the complexities of the physiology, chemistry and genetics, the interplay between body and experience. So, I surely don’t understand this! What do you think?
When I asked one of my esteemed colleagues at the Transform Trauma Oxford 2025 Conference if he would be in the Bay Area (where I live) any time soon, he said he goes there quite often, to go to Laguna Seca, the local racetrack. His son is a race car driver. I was duly intrigued. This big shot intellectual luminary in my field, not only accepts but proudly supports his son in an unusual, non-academic, and at least to my mind rather high-risk profession. I have never known a real race car driver, although sometimes my husband seemed to be something of an aspirer. I thought, “what a great dad.” In my brief teenage foray into the world of competitive bicycling, neither of my parents ever came to a single race, showed or even had the vaguest interest, let alone regard, for such a pursuit. As long as I got “everything else” done, they tolerated it.
My time in Oxford was filled with moments of reverie. Many extraneous memories floated up, not forgotten, simply not remembered in years. They showed up unbidden, like uninvited guests from a distant past. In one of our restaurant meals, they had tiny, almost doll-sized jars of catsup on the table. I recalled the passion I had as a child, for catsup. My scrambled eggs with catsup, besides being a feast of color, were probably more catsup than eggs. I delighted in it. My dad would menacingly warn me that it would burn holes in my stomach wall. Of course that put a damper on my pleasure. Similarly, he told us if we watched TV, we would get “television eyes.” In those days television screens were rectangular with curved corners; our eyes would become the shape of television screens he warned. So much for non-sanctioned pleasures. At the Oxford restaurant I deliciously scoured three of the little jars.
The conference was filled with sensory and emotional abundance. Oxford is a beautiful little town: picturesque, almost museum-like. The university which elegantly stands pretty much intact, was built mostly in the 15th and 16th centuries. Walking through town or in the elegant halls feels much like dropping into history. I am always proud to brag that my grandmother was one of the first women to graduate from the prestigious Oxford University. Born in 1887, I am guessing she attended college there from about 1907 through her graduation. My grandmother died in 1978. I was at that point too young and self-centered to learn her story. Now when I am there, I feel almost as if I am walking through her story.
This is my third year at this conference; my third visit to Oxford. Like other events or rituals that repeat at roughly the same time each year, it has become a milestone of sorts, like birthdays or turns of the seasons or years. I reflect on what might be different or the same from prior cycles. How have I changed? How has it changed?
Shortly before the conference I turned 70. I have never been one who thought much about age. To be honest, I never really imagined I would make it to 30. Once I got through the worst of my trauma and was more confident and committed to sticking around, I moved through the years without thinking about the numbers too much. Once I hit 60, however, I found myself thinking more about my age and how old people are and how old they look. When I began receiving the offer of “senior discounts” for things, on one hand they were nice little perks, but on other I was horrified. I look like a senior? As if that were a bad thing. Well in the US it kind of is, or at least it’s one of those things that we all try to avoid.
At the conference I found myself thinking about time in all kinds of ways. I was thrilled to be making or consolidating friendships, real friendships, some with people who live far away, but whom I feel so very kindred with. I know that we will see each other and have the blessings of technology to help us stay connected when we are not able to travel across continents or oceans for the wonderful direct contact. Fortunately, most of us have the means. I was struck by the fact that most, if not all of my new close connections are vastly younger than me. But it seemed/seems to not matter.
As a person who thinks developmentally so much of the time, I was deeply heartened by the numbers of young people from all over the world who were there. Interested and committed to healing trauma and learning from the old timers like me. I was aware of my 40 years in this field. My husband often comments that he came into the computer world on the ground floor, when the computers were as big as a room, and used those cards with holes in them. I came into the field when the DSM designation of PTSD was brand new, which gives me a long view. My understanding of trauma and my own story evolved with the march of history and my own healing. And I even have something to teach.
Age is a privilege. Way too many people do not have the luxury. And I have the good fortune of being able to share deeply with these up-and-coming bright minds and hearts that will carry it on. It continues to amaze me that I have lived this long, and also that healing is possible and that I can be this happy in a life that for too many years seemed like something to endure or try and find a way out of. One thing I wanted to say to all those young developing therapists, researchers, coaches and healing souls, is that I never thought I would be the one up there. I was always the silent one sitting in the front row nodding and scribbling. How could this have happened?
Since I was a little girl, I have had a profound conviction about justice. I am supremely curious and fascinated with how the experience of intergenerational trauma transmits into this passion for righting wrongs. Life only seemed to have meaning insofar as I could do something about this cruel world. For years, without my awareness, the idea was to die a glorious martyr’s death in the process. When I had the great breakdown that landed me in therapy in my twenties it was the crash of that existential crisis and not knowing how to keep living. As I re-constituted myself, healed over many long years, I focused my energies of helping individuals, couples and families, working in the sphere of the micro. It seemed an act of humility to not try and save the whole world. That has certainly been consuming and there has been plenty to learn and do.
However now the world is increasingly becoming a place where the feedback loops of trauma and neglect begetting trauma and neglect is on the micro and the grandest scale. We have no choice but to do both, or so it seems. I found that the new friends that I most deeply connected with at the conference and beyond, are those who seem to be dogged about both. I am finding company, support and comradery with them, and with that part of me, that has been heart-broken, outraged, and quiet. I was happy to discover a kind of re-awakening and coming out to “play,” of that integral part of me. That was another perk of the conference. And it is good to be home! This old introvert has been practicing spine and voice, and I am ready for some of quiet and the sweet regulation of stirring my neglected cheese vat.
Way back when I was in graduate school, which seems like eons ago (it was the middle 1980’s), I studied the work of an attachment researcher named Stephen Johnson. That is Stephen M. Johnson, apparently there are many Stephen Johnsons. He was also one of an early wave of somatic therapists that began to appear in the 1970’s and even then, before I really knew anything about attachment, I loved his work. He had his own version of the attachment styles that all had a somatic component. Probably my favorite of all is called Characterological Transformation: The Hard Work Miracle (Norton, 1985). The very title moves me as I remember it, and I still have my dog-eared copy, and all of his other books as well.
Johnson, as every school of thought seems to do, renamed the attachment styles. I am not fond of any of them really. The attachment style that most correlates to neglect trauma in formal attachment theory is the Avoidant, which I do not like at all. It sounds so very intentional and blaming to me. Johnson’s title was not much better, he called that group the Schizoid. One aspect of his work with Schizoid, that really stayed with me, and those who are familiar with my work, have heard me talk about it: “spine and voice.” Johnson always said, “the ultimate recovery tasks of the schizoid are to “get a spine and get a voice!”
About a year ago, I was feeling so grateful to Stephen Johnson for his vast contribution to my development, that I thought I would like to contact him and thank him. I could not find any information about him, and ultimately, I found a death announcement of a Stephen Johnson. There was really not much information about him at all, except a fund where you could plant a tree in his honor. I figured I could at least do that, and I included with it an inscription of gratitude. Somehow, when I got the certificate about my planted tree, I figured out that I had planted a tree for a different Stephen Johnson. I can’t remember how I knew – perhaps the middle initial was not quite right. Oh well… how can it be bad to plant trees? Tall and upward reaching, like a strong, healthy spine. His contribution to me continues to stand immeasurable.
Only recently, in the effort to find the merits of ChatGPT, I have been searching out questions like this, and I discovered that Stephen M. Johnson is in fact still living and resides and teaches locally, in my area! So, I can find and thank the “right” one! Thanks, ChatGPT!
In all somatic work we learn the foundational significance of feet- grounding, connection to the earth, rootedness, presence. “Feel your feet on the ground…” was a constant refrain, especially when “triggered”. As a kid, I was always ashamed of my big feet. Where the dainty ballet girls with their pink slippers were tiny sizes, I had big clod hoppers, particularly wide widths – so inelegant.
My mother had reasonable sized feet, but had many problems with them. I think by the time I was in junior high, she had a pretty severe set of bunions. A bunion is a bump of bone that starts at the base of the big toe, where it meets the foot. It starts its growing bulge when the bones at the front of the foot shift out of place, causing the tip of the big toe to lean toward the second toe. Over time, this misalignment grows into and increasingly unsightly and then painful bulge. My mother, who never did where pretty shoes or stylish heels, was progressively stuck with increasingly unsightly, unstylish “sensible” shoes and at home slippers as the bunions mushroomed on both feet. Ultimately, she resorted to surgery to have them all removed. The whole experience was pretty awful. I can’t remember how many years it spanned.
My mother died precipitously in 2001. It was very fast and truly unexpected. She seemed so healthy to everyone. I was caught by surprise and although I had done so much work on my trauma, I was not “ready” for her to pass, if one ever really is… And until recently I always said, I only have one regret in my life: that I did not get to make my peace with my mother before she died. I say “until recently” because only now, nearly a quarter of a century after her passing, do I finally feel I have completed my grieving and repair with her. Certainly in 2001 I was far from it. And shortly thereafter, I began to find to my horror, looking down, that my feet were starting to look like hers. On NO! I saw and felt the pressure and pain of growing bunions on both feet. Little by little my pretty, stylish heels migrated to the back of the closet, replace by nothing but clogs. Shoes became a necessary evil, and came off as soon as possible everywhere. I rarely wore them anymore. I don’t remember which was worse, the visual or the physical discomfort.
Meanwhile, I continued to do my work about my mother, doggedly. As we all know, that primary, foundational work is not easy! In 2009, I discovered neurofeedback. Admittedly I was pretty obsessed with learning and practicing the “new” to me modality – practicing on myself and whomever else would lend their head. It was an exciting adventure. I certainly began to forget about my sorry feet, in my flurry of beeping. Until I gradually began to notice something: don’t ask me how this happened – I have never been able to replicate it. Please don’t ask me to replicate it! The bulging bunion began to shrink. Apparently with all this work about my mother, the swollen bones slowly began to melt and return to their previous healthy sizes. The clogs migrated back to the back of the closet, or even to the recycling. The bunions healed and vanished, never to return. True story! Go figure!
In the last couple of years, I have suddenly had problems with my neck and back. My woes of pain and disfigurement have surely intruded into my life and work. Many have heard, certainly noticed the stiff, shrinking constriction and forward stoop in my carriage and bearing. It has been painful and humiliating, surely a source of “narcissistic injury” for this lifelong endurance athlete. It was not lost on me, to my horror again, that I have become increasingly “stuck” in the universally acknowledged embodiment of shame. I have pursued many avenues: Western medicine and alternative, with little progress or hope. I have become much more sensitized to issues of disability although admittedly this is a minor one. And have been admittedly more fearful about my compromised balance, and breaking my right arm this year was a painful and inconveniencing reminder that I must be much more mindful than ever before.
Only recently, as I have continued as ever to do my trauma work, that I began to connect some dots. The problems with my neck and back, seem to date back about 2020. Right at the turn of the year, my father passed. Thankfully he missed the Pandemic, and certainly that he is not around to witness the world nightmare going on now! Back then with him gone, I slowly became more able, freer and more willing to speak openly, even publicly about my personal story. In effect, I began to get a voice, like never before. I now am starting to believe, that my father – or my own ambivalence, my own “Bermuda Triangle” of anger, grief and guilt, began to take up residence on my back. Weighing me down. Pulling me forward, attempting to silence or at least slow me down. It occurs to me, that maybe with hard work, or to again use Stephen Johnson’s words, “the hard work miracle.” I have healed bone before, perhaps I can do it again. I do plan to continue giving voice. In Oxford next week I will be speaking about things I have never spoken about publicly before, and stand as tall and upright as I possibly can, like the trees I planted for an unknown Stephen Johnson. Reaching upward: voice and spine in Oxford. I am nervously excited, inspired. Perhaps I will meet you there!
PS In my flurry of uncharacteristic extroversion in Oxford this next week, we may have to suffice with “re-runs” the next week or two. I am sure you will understand! Back in regular rhythm as of 16 October.
When I was in ninth grade, my English class planned a field trip to the theater to see Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Strange how all this detail has endured in memory. My teacher was a grumpy, curmudgeonly guy with a “toothbrush” or Charlie Chaplin style mustache. ChatGPT says he passed away in 2013, but I still don’t feel free to use his name. Most of my teachers have faded from memory, but not him. I have two lingering memories of him. Most notably, he told our class in no uncertain terms, that those of us with talent, ability and/or special strength are vested with the responsibility to do more, simply because we can. These words, and I often quote him, have been very important to me as I move through life.
The other memory was about this field trip. We were all excited to go to the theater. For me live theater of any kind was a rarity and a treat. We spent a couple of class sessions studying the play, which of course I remember nothing about. I do remember getting ready, changing my clothes three or four times before being satisfied about what to wear, like any adolescent will. The plan was that our teacher was to be the driver. I guess not everyone was going.
I was ready to go at the appointed time, waiting for him to pick me up in his minivan with the other kids who were going. On the front step in the dusky light of early evening, I waited, and I waited, and I waited. He did not show. When the play’s curtain time came and passed, I realized he probably was not coming for me. Wistfully I trudged back indoors. Like the proverbial “all dressed up like a circus horse with nowhere to go”, I took off my outfit. We did not have cell phones then of course. I missed the show. The next day I learned (“oops!”) that our teacher had forgotten me.
Later that year when I collapsed from a near lethal anorexia, I was absent from school for a month. Not one student called to find out where I was or how I was. I received one call that month from my drama teacher Mrs. Gordon. She noticed that I was missing and wanted to know if I was OK. Caring, kind, it was a simple gesture, and it meant so much to me to be remembered. I had to wonder, what is it about me, that I am so invisible, forgettable, non-existent? I tell these stories not to invite pity! But rather out of curiosity. The neglect experience leaves its mark in mysterious ways. Does being and feeling unseen and unheard, unimportant and “unfelt” (to use Daniel Siegel’s language) from early in life, make us look, seem, appear (or disappear?) ghostlike, translucent, transparent, I wondered?
And early on, I pondered questions of existence. Did I have a “right” to exist? Especially in light of my parents suffering. Do I need to compensate for my existence? Somehow earn the patch of earth that I occupy? Or do I in fact even exist at all. Heady questions for a skinny young kid.
Although the mystery remains unsolved, I have come to discover that this quality of invisible and unforgettable is sadly a signature or marker of neglect. When I have shamefully forgotten, double booked or somehow overlooked a client, invariably they are neglect survivors, and this is my cue. It has not happened often, but it is unbearably instructive. Another reminder of why we must be exquisitely self-aware in this work.
Fast forward to my clinical life. Like all of us I have been dutifully learning about dissociative parts for years and decades. Thankfully I have come far since those sorry days of adolescence. And my adolescence and growing whole, was and is a long and slow developmental process. Mysterious how even now, although thankfully not too often, when I am “triggered” (I hate that word!) back into old and miserable trauma material, I can be back in those now distant times and places occupied by different iterations of me. They are wildly visible and audible, tangible at least to me. In florid existence they burst forth. And when I settle, I can contemplate the journey. Indeed, they did all exist in their time.
Only in more recent years did I come to realize that somehow in the legacy of intergenerational transmission, I had inherited a profound ambivalence about existence, a question about whether only dying a martyr or an innocent victim made one worthy of existence. What did it take to be good enough in the material world? Good enough in my father’s eyes? Even exist in his eyes? I think my father was plagued with the questions, perhaps some convoluted version of survivor guilt. It seems he bequeathed them to me, and I had not even suffered enough to be in his league.
The intrusive old parts occasionally make grand appearances into what is now a truly charmed and wonderful life, at least from my point of view. I live indoors in a comparatively diverse and inclusive if not exactly equal town, although who knows how long that will last? I have wonderful, meaningful work, I am relatively safe and relatively able bodied, I have a wealth of wonderful food that I can make and eat, and most of all I have a wealth of love and people who I love and who even see and love me. And so much healing that truly never ends. Can you beat that? I hear songs and read or re-read books that reference or belong to past times in my life, and it is hard to hold them all together. It reminds me of the old game show from the sixties, where the contestants must guess, and at the end the big drum roll and booming moderator voice proclaim “will the real ‘so-and-so’ please step forward…” I have to ask myself, which is it?
It stuns me to be visible and audible now. Technology has made all the world truly a stage, and I can talk to people and write to people, “meet” people all over the world. And they respond to me. That invisible young girl could have never imagined it, as it is similarly hard to imagine that she was me. And the other seemingly discrete stages, the fearless activist aspiring to be a revolutionary warrior; the conquering, tireless athlete, these seemingly different people may seem to be a collection of others, like a discontinuous thread of beads with knots between them. Or a Picasso face where the features don’t quite fit together into a coherent countenance. What a blessing to have two wonderful sisters, who are local, and who were witness to at least some parts and some aspects of my journey. They have their own renditions of course, but may even have old photos, that help to jog or validate my tattered memory.
My local public radio station has been showcasing a podcast called Not Born Yesterday. On the program they interview a diverse panoply of older people, all doing remarkable and interesting things in their advancing years. They point out how the aging population is often missing, neglected by the DEI dialog, somehow replicating the familiar invisibility, disposable worthlessness of neglect. They remind me of the blessing of the idealism that I had the good fortune to grow up in. I am saddened by the sometimes doomsday backbeat that today’s youth are developing in.
The show has pointed me to some wonderful recent writings. I am currently reading Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America by Robert Reich, which takes me back to pivotal and often inspiring historical moments in my lifetime. Heartening reminders of events of past heroes and heroines that I have not thought about in some time, and in some cases even known about. I am always moved to see those of you who could be my kids and grandkids, taking up the gauntlet of carrying forward the study and practice of trauma, neglect, and sexuality when I can no longer keep up with all that I am trying to do! I won’t tell you who is going to be the rockstar guest on my next All About Nothing video. But I was astonished and delighted to learn that I am old enough to be his granny!
And I continue to learn from and revere those who came ahead of me, some still around and some not, on whose shoulders we still stand. And I still can’t quite believe that I have a platform now to be seen and heard. All of those other fractured parts, and memories were in fact editions of me that were real and existed, as do I.
Perhaps one of the great tasks of reaching more advanced ages is that of integration. I think I am on that path now. Meanwhile, I am trying hard to integrate what Daniel Siegel, another important presence in my development, and also “not born yesterday,” taught. He said “there is a reason why we are called human beings, not human doings!’
Let’s live well!
I remember the first time I went to New Orleans. It was probably 2000 or thereabouts, for a sex therapy conference. What a perfect venue for a crowd of sex therapists to get together. You know what they say about sex therapists: “people become sex therapists because they already think about sex 24 hours a day.” I certainly could not deny it at the time. For me it was love at first sight in New Orleans. From the moment I got off the plane, it seemed the place was vibrant with primary colors, like walking into a Diego Rivera mural, but with much more upbeat faces. Lively music, spicy delicious food. It was alive! I loved wandering around the bustling French Quarter on our breaks from the conference, visiting the wide range of unique and interesting shops. I even bought clothes: a little jacket embroidered with peacock feathers in primary colors, a pair of fancy jeans with a camo print; I called them my “chic Sandinistas.” I thought I was so cool. I still have them. This week marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina assaulted New Orleans.
I don’t remember much from when Katrina happened. Terrible, sad photos of people trapped on rooftops watching cars float down river-like streets. The news was an endless barrage, as is often the case when there is a dramatic life event somewhere. What I remember best, was that I was seeing an SE (Somatic Experiencing) therapist adjunctively at the time. She suddenly became very busy and then absent for a while, which of course triggered me. I was hurt, mad and confused, with the abandonment rage of an unrecovered neglect survivor. I did not know what was going on, until I later found out that the SE community had sent a cohort of volunteers to help with the trauma of Katrina. Of course I was beset with the Bermuda Triangle of emotions: I continued to be angry. But also felt grief for missing her, and grief for the massive destruction and loss of the countless victims of the tragedy. And I felt guilt for being so “petty” as to be angry. It was admirable that she and the SE community stepped up in this way. Loss is the core of neglect trauma. Planned and unplanned losses of any kind can unleash the cascade of feelings, like the water flooding down New Orleans’ canal-like roadways.
The news world being what it is, we were inundated with news of Katrina for a minute, and then it was no longer news. As is regularly the case, once the shock and drama are less acute and thus “newsworthy,” and the long arduous healing and recovery begin, the story and its people fade from our screens, essentially forgotten.
Several years later our sex therapy organization returned to New Orleans for another conference, to help the city get its mojo back, to help the handicapped tourist industry recover. The city was like a shadow of what I remember, like a semi-healed trauma survivor, dolled up in clothes and makeup but still with the hollow eyed, shocked face of trauma. I have not been back since then.
Aging also contains a lot of loss. Shortly after I discovered distance cycling in high school, I was dubbed the “Fastest Girl Uphill,” a far cry from the nearly dead anorexic girl who could not even walk down the hall to the bathroom by myself a mere 5 years prior. My mom gave me a little bell at the time, to ring when I had to go to the bathroom. I still have it, although it has a piece missing now, almost 60 years later.
When I was 19, I loved going to the gym and outlifting the men. It was the height of the women’s movement of the 1970’s here, so we all had something to prove. I felt so strong and so hot in that tight little 19-year-old body. I could lift five times my body weight on the leg press then. Now my weight is about the same, but I hate to think… and it is hardly the same body, or so it seems.
In my middle thirties, in my fervor of weight training, my beloved trainer said to me, “pound for pound you are the strongest person I have ever known.” I never forgot that. He was quite an accomplished athlete himself, so his words meant a great deal, and he actually helped me discover my identity as an athlete. Up until then, I had simply thought of myself as an obsessive compulsive trying to calm down.
As time went on, being an endurance distance cyclist became a cherished identity. My husband and I traveled all over doing bike trips and it was a glorious way to see more of this vast world. Beginning in 1998, the California AIDS Ride cum AIDS Life Cycle became a centerpiece of our lives. It was a 565-mile fundraiser where 3000 of us pedaled down the California Coast as a traveling village, riding, eating and camping together for a week, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The ride raised approximately $16 million a year for AIDS charities. San Francisco was a leader in AIDS research and has proudly managed that lethal epidemic, at least locally. We did the ride 10 times and were training ride leaders for about seven of those. It was perhaps my first real experience of being part of a community, and I always said, “I am hetero-sexual, female and married, and I have never felt so much a part of something.” This year the ride pedaled its last. We were not on it, and although it was somewhat of a triumph that it retired, I think I don’t know the whole story. But I believe the number of new cases of AIDS here in SF is close to zero. Still, it feels like a loss, even though we have been away from it now for some years.
The aging body is replete with losses. Somehow neurofeedback made my gray hair disappear, although I honestly cannot explain that, and please don’t ask me to replicate it, but it is true. But my body has grown crooked in ways that I never expected, my balance has changed, and my energy is different. Hearing aids, blood pressure pills, seeming insults. One can forget that old age is a privilege. I never dreamed I would make it to 20 and here I am at 70. Yes, there are losses.
And I could have never imagined all of the gains. My treasured long-time therapist gave me a card for my 35th birthday that said, “those of us who travel further than the obstacles, will have a different kind of life from that time on.” I could not have dreamed it. I still have that card…somewhere. And interestingly, even though I don’t work out anything like I did in the old days, I still have something of the definition of that long-outlived body.
I remember some years ago I read a book, The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older, (Gotham Books, 2006) by Elkhonon Goldberg. I don’t remember much, although it is still on the shelf. But I do remember that one of the brain capacities that does improve with age, is pattern recognition. And I have found that to be true as I get older, which is of course a wonderful advantage when working with couples and looking for their repetitive patterns of activation and escalation. And I am sure it helps me as I observe myself as well. So yes, I grieve the losses. Even needing a hand with something as simple as hoisting my bag into the overhead bin on the plane is a humiliation. But thankfully now I am able to accept, even graciously, the help. That is a gained capacity.
I got a call from my beloved now long retired therapists some weeks ago. She said “you are turning 70 next week. Let’s have a Zoom.” So, a few days later we had a call. We stay in touch so it was not so out of the ordinary, but I guess I did not realize how long it had been. Maybe close to a year, I am not sure. She is about to turn 96, and I must say she looks great. To me she looks the same as ever.
Remarkably she lives alone, still drives, swims daily and is very active in a community of aging and retired people in town. I had to admit, that I still have the terrified avoidance of losing her. I think I am so unwittingly terrified of losing her, that I stay out of contact. The whole thing is unbearable, and admittedly, mostly unconscious. I feel the same way about my husband. Like the whole world of neglect survivors, healing from that primordial original loss, unwittingly I avoid the whole thing like the plague. She helped me to identify it, again. So even though I am no longer her therapy client, she knows me so very well, that she can point things out to me and I can see. And she reminded me “I’m not dead yet!” And I could certainly see that. She proposed, how about we have a Zoom once a month. I gulped, “yes! Let’s do it!” so we scheduled our next call.
A couple of dear friends both gave me similar gifts. One was the scaly shed skin of a snake. It is nature’s design for the proverbial snake to shed its skin, implicit is that there will be a new one. Similarly, the other friend gave me a pair of shed deer antlers. I had not known it, but young deer have adolescent antlers which as they mature, they shed, no longer needed, as they grow new adult antlers. I have the scaly shed snake skin in a little bowl beside the antlers, alongside the little bathroom bell from my mom, all on my little altar-like table. They all remind me of cycles of life.
When I was a child, starting back as long ago as I can remember, our mom always said, “you should always kiss everyone goodbye before you go out, because you may never see them again.” What a frightening message for a little kid, although I can certainly understand where she would get that idea. And for many it was and is, tragically true. She also always said “We have to live well. We simply don’t know what will happen.” And she was right. She died precipitously when she was not much older than I am now. Although she seemed to be the picture of health, she surprised us all, not least herself, with a lurking metastasized cancer. Five weeks after diagnosis she was gone. So yes, we must live well. And not waste time.
Long out of sight, the recovery of New Orleans is not over, even as many other disasters and tragedies have and continued to abound. With all my mixed feelings about it, I asked ChatGPT where New Orleans got the name The Big Easy. It replied in its customary, astonishingly friendly way:
Not so much anymore, am I afraid. Not usually so keen on my mother’s advice, let us strive heal this sorry world and remember to live well!
I had a hard time choosing a song for today. Ringo Starr, who recently turned 85, has a wonderful song called “It Don’t Come Easy.” At 85 he is still touring, and cherishes his friendship with the one other remaining Beatle, Paul McCartney, who is the only person who can truly share his memory. Then there is my favorite song of all time, “Tengo” by Pablo Milanes, recounting all the blessings that I do have. I ultimately settled on this one by Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, a favorite singer of mine who died in 2009. I recently heard about a new book, which I have ordered and not yet received, about the grandmothers of the disappeared political prisoners in Argentina, now 50 years ago. They still grieve and mourn for loved ones who were never found.
Like most of us who were young women in the early 1970’s, I was swept up in the fervor, passion and perhaps euphoria of the Women’s Movement and the “Free Love Generation,” while also admittedly swept up in my own sexual compulsivity. Like most survivors of neglect and trauma, I was on a never-ending quest to regulate my ever amped up nervous system. And those were potent sexual times. In the US we got Roe v. Wade in 1973 legalizing abortion, the year I started college we got “the pill,” and it was an arena of idealism and ferment. The US – Vietnam War ended in 1975, the AIDS Epidemic had not yet begun, and I had finally left the parental home.
1973 also brought the blockbuster book Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong. It was on the order of a “basic text” for all of us liberated US women at that time, I don’t know about other countries. For us it was tantamount to “required reading”. Years later my friend and sex therapist colleague, the late Gina Ogden, wrote a book called Women Who Love Sex, which could very well have been its sequel. I can’t say I have thought about it in years, and to be honest, I don’t remember a thing about the book, except the cover, which showed a lascivious image of a semi-unzipped zipper; and the also the catch phrase (what would now be called a meme,) introduced by the book: “the zipless fuck…” I think it meant an unencumbered free-wheeling expression of the female sexual impulse and desire, with no strings. But I am not even sure about that.
Not long ago, I heard the tail end of an interview with Jong’s daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, about her recent memoir. Given my insatiable appetite for memoir, I heard just enough to know, I was interested in reading it. As it turned out, the book was even more interesting than I might have imagined, exquisitely and with wit, (and even well written!) addressing some major neglect issues. It is called How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir (Viking, 2025). I recommend it!
One category of neglect that I have not explicitly addressed much, is the neglect resulting from a narcissistic mother or primary caregiver. Probably because I tend to resist diagnostic labels, and their loose and often damning over-use. But there is certainly a category of neglect where the problem is a parent so self-concerned as to literally crowd the child out of existence. My father used to say fairly immediately if I met someone new, “Do they know who you “are?” which of course meant did they know I was his daughter. Of course, I concluded that that must be my only identity or existence, an extension of him. I remember reading in Whoopie Goldberg’s memoir, that her daughter dreamed of a world where no one had heard of her illustrious and charismatic mother. My husband described his mother very simply: his only identity growing up was as a “fur coat” for his fashionable self-obsessed mother. Erica Jong, however seemed to make all these others pale by comparison: she was of suddenly and wildly famous, and in a way that garnered every kind of attention. What was particularly confusing to Molly and to many children of these self-absorbed parents, is that they might describe and effusively express how they adore their child, but the hapless child simply cannot feel it, in Molly’s case not at all. And she readily got lost in the parade of her mother’s husbands and boyfriends; and exhibitionistic tendencies. Molly added that probably every friend she ever had, had seen some version of her mother semi-clothed, if not naked. Of course, she stopped bringing anyone home.
Similarly, Molly, perhaps in spite of herself, idealized her famous, spunky and even in some ways elegant mother, who was also a prolific and continued to be a popular writer. I could certainly identify with that confusion. My own father who probably hurt me more than anyone else in my life, was also in many ways a hero figure in my psyche. I credit him with all the most prized aspects of my character: strength, determination, relentless drive, intensity, endless curiosity, responsiveness to music, and identification with the “downtrodden.” He raised us with the ready advice: “You should always go to sold out concerts. You’ll get in!” I proceeded to make that my practice, and I mostly have! He became, at least in some ways, a role model, as well as the template for my long and uncanny attraction and often obsession with very smart, narcissistic and somewhat mean men.
However, my father also never felt quite good enough. He suffered in that way too, which I also absorbed. I imagine, it is the underside of the narcissism. Jong had it too. She wanted to be more famous, and ever wealthier, which kept her endlessly striving and thirsting, never satisfied. And Molly, like myself, was never quite sure if she existed, or had any reason or right to exist.
Like many of us, certainly in my generation, Molly watched her mother age and observed her cognitive decline. It is painful, frightening and can also be immensely frustrating to watch and go through with any aging person, but particularly a parent, and a parent who was both brilliant, and also wildly inattentive or absent. When my father started to disappear into dementia, I would go and visit him weekly. His wife would get right in his face and loudly call his name, and exclaim “Ruth is here! Ruth is here!” He might not even look up. There was a way that it was hauntingly reminiscent of my childhood experience of feeling invisible, unseen, unheard, non-existent so much of the time. Molly’s experience was similarly annihilating. Again, she questioned her own existence, but by now could feel her anger, as well as her grief. As with many of us survivors of trauma and neglect, the Bermuda Triangle: the irreconcilable confluence, internal shipwreck of anger, grief and guilt that storm and roil around inside. One of the painful legacies of aging parents.
The core of neglect trauma is loss. The withdrawal, abandonment, unreliability or simple absence of the primary attachment figure, are all variations on that theme. For the infant, that loss is not only experienced as, but in fact is life-threatening. That primary other is in fact survival: the natural source of sustenance, protection, safety and regulation – if we are lucky. Without them we experience a profound and lethal terror, which is why neglect is so utterly devastating and enduring. And why attachment researcher Karlen Lyons-Ruth has named this early neglect trauma as the “primary threat.” It is like the base layer, leaving its scars on the most primitive “survival brain,” the brain stem.
Molly is faced with her mixed feelings of loss, as she watches her mother losing her mind, and navigates her mother’s demise. She pretty simultaneously navigates the possibly impending loss of her beloved husband, who is stricken with pancreatic cancer while only in his forties. All of these are life passages many of us have faced or are facing now. Here in the US, we neglect, shun or simply avoid both aging and the aged, and advance largely unprepared into “elderhood.” I myself have felt blindsided by some of the indignities and perhaps insults of natural aging, after over 50 years of blessedly good health. I hear stories of age discrimination in the workplace, and I know my husband has had a terrible time attempting to find a knowledgeable geriatric doctor, in a progressive and privileged part of the world, known for quality medical resources. Even as our generation grows to a bulging percentage of the population. Molly touches on the issues of aging and loss as well. All the way around, it was a good read. And in many more ways than I expected.
On the subject of loss, you may have noticed I have been struggling with what has at times seemed to be my own elusive sanity as I attempt to keep up with my various commitments, which of course include the regularity of my blogs and videos. My apologies! I am not sure if it is lost capacity to handle more tasks than I used to be able to, lost humility as to what I could humanly complete, or my father’s example of always striving to do more, particularly when faced with so much need in this sorry world. I am making my best effort to move through the back log, with your indulgence. Thanks!
Looking ahead we will have some pretty cool guest speakers on the YouTube Channel. I am excited about that!
Often, I feel like a large block of cheddar. The day of mixing and stirring, heating and cooling, seems to be the big day in which it is made. But the real artistry, when flavors mix and grow and ferment and magically become the delicious result, when it becomes ready to eat – that all comes in the protracted ripening, aging process. And you can rarely age a cheese too long, most only get better, as long as the conditions are good, mostly keeping it safe and at a healthy temperature, and protected from predators, like unwanted mold, or God-forbid an uninvited rodent. Sometimes homeless roqueforti, the delicious mold that gives bleu cheese its distinctive bite, which is airborne, is floating around perhaps too freely in the “cave.” And it may give a different cheese the unintended stink of Roquefort, which often only enhances or distinguishes it, although it then becomes perhaps transformed into a different genotype. You can rarely age a cheese too long. I once let a cheddar age over a year, and it was amazing. My record was a 26-month Parmesan, which was the best ever. Cheesemaking is an adventure. I miss it as I have been entirely too busy for my own good! But as I was saying, lately I feel like an old (not a “big!”) cheese.
I have been back from Boston barely over a month, and I feel myself metabolizing, integrating, and creating my own distinctive blend of so many ingredients that I heard and learned, that I add to the vat I was already stirring. Much of it was marvelously validating research that confirmed what I have anecdotally observed in the vat, in the trenches over these 30 plus years of studying neglect. Some elements I always intuitively “knew,” and also pieced over time from uncovering and slowly recalling client histories, and tracing intergenerational transmission. But getting the evidence basis, the legs to put under our work, was/is tremendously validating and also reassuring. Not only to me, but to my clients, and I hope also to you. I am infinitely grateful to the researchers! I know I will never be one, and if you are, I hope you will join in studying neglect, as we must work together and also complement and exponentially strengthen the value of our respect and integrally related and interdependent work.
And what was also so strongly validated at the conference, is a coexistence of two essential and indivisible parts, two profoundly, often warring core parts of me, the clinical and the political. I say warring, because there is never enough time, and it seems that the need is ever growing. But I met others, as passionate as me about that integration, and it was also a proclamation of the conference, especially considering the sorry state of this world, that we must find a way to address both if we are to make any headway with either, and of course not destroy ourselves trying to do it all. Or all of it alone or at once! Oy vey! It is why more than ever, we need each other, and the gathering together, especially in person, so we can rub elbows and hug and share meals and meet people we might not otherwise. So, I am slowly metabolizing and integrating it all, and with the help of conference recordings, and conversations live and on screens with others, adding this conference to my autobiographical narrative and my clinical play book.
Intuitively I have always surmised and known, that to bathe in stress hormones has an impact on a developing fetus. It seems like a no brainer. As we explore the world of nothing, and try to reconstruct how it came about, or did not, that is often a ready piece of available information. What I learned listening to attachment researcher Karlen Lyons-Ruth (yes another “Ruth” kind of, I love it!) whose work I have been following for 30 years, when the pregnant mother is in an environment of high and/or chronic stress, and pumping quantities of stress hormones, umbrella term cortisol, that of course permeates the placenta which is what nourishes the developing fetus. What I did not know, was the impact of the cortisol bath is increased amygdala volume. The amygdala, which is the brain’s threat detection system and subsequent alarm bell, is enlarged. What does this mean?
The infant with an enlarged amygdala is born sensitized to danger, coming into the world vigilant and scanning for threat. In effect that infant is born scared. I was born in 1955, roughly 10 years post holocaust trauma. My mother, whose terror and trauma were never really processed as far as I know, was young, and constantly rapidly adapting to what life threw in her way. And I was her second child, the first pregnancy being in 1951, my sister was born in 1952. So, I imagine for every imaginable and unimaginable reason, she was flooded with cortisol. Of course, we are born hypersensitized to a dangerous world, with a fear detection system poised and at ready alert at all times. Starting on day one. Before anything has or has not “happened.”
The withdrawal of the primary other on whom we are dependent for all things when we are born: food, warmth, shelter, protection from predators, all our means of survival, is accurately experienced as life threatening. So, the supercharged alarm bell is then faced with true life-threatening danger, and it is a bundle of nerves, of raw terror: many of our clients, and us, from day one.
Looking around the world we live in, all the babies gestating in a war-torn womb, in environments of war, climate emergency, racist-homophobic, otherist, poverty ridden chronic trauma. I know I needn’t go on and on. And my interest is not to demoralize or overwhelm further. More than anything I am heartbroken, even more than disbelieving, and hell bent on doing all we can. That is another reason it was heartening and certainly empowering to meet and hug and be in the presence of known and new comrades, colleagues and friends. As ever we cannot do it alone! Much as our neglect default tries to pull us back into, we must struggle to resist the impulse to do it all ourselves!
I have the good fortune to have several clients who are professionals in the area of delivering babies. How essential it is to educate parents to be, not only making sure that they get good prenatal care, but that they understand the essentials of attachment. The research shows that the infants most adversely affected by neglect trauma, are those with the disorganized-disoriented, in effect dissociated primary attachment figure. So, helping those parents, both with their own trauma and also with information about what their infants need. Of course, we cannot neutralize the poverty or bombs dropping around them. That is another task. And it is why I am so infinitely grateful to my new comrade, colleague and friend Sandy Jardine, who is bringing Neglect-Informed work to Ukrainian therapists. Thank you, Sandy!
And Allan Schore reminds us, we must train the barely, if at all regulated childcare workers, (certainly in the US) in childcare facilities, where children are too often parked too young, be it out of ignorance or economic necessity, and not taken care of. Often further neglected, or even maltreated. Regulation of day care, and parental family leave enabling parents to have more time to bond and acclimate, soothe the fearful brains of their infants, might be possible. Of course, things are going the opposite direction here in the US, with a new ”pro-natal” slogan and less choice about unwanted pregnancy. Perhaps other countries are ahead of us in these ways.
The good news is we are not alone, many of us are working in our own respective pockets in our own ways, and if we have the humility and generosity, and the good fortune to find each other and collaborate, we have our best chance. Meanwhile we have the science to learn more and more of what to do, and must take care of ourselves sufficiently to operationalize it.
Today’s song (A long favorite of mine, and now more than ever. For welcoming the newborn, and also the imperiled refugee a diasporic survivor, of wherever threat, and wherever they may be. It is now an old song, but timeless and essential as ever):
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!