I write this in a hunt and peck, one-handed fashion from my perch in paradise: Hilo, Hawaii, where the drama queen volcano Kilauea is wildly dancing and singing, erupting in her fiery, spectacular way. I take pleasure in knowing that when she settles down, or “pipes down,” as my mother impatiently used to say, there will most likely remain a blanket of littered pebbles: the cooling lava hardened into the sea green gemstone Peridot, which happens to be my birthstone. A blazing show of force and fury, a residue of quiet jewels. It is the bottom of an eventful year, that leaves us all with our own blend of anticipation, uncertainty and attempted hope. For so many reasons I am no exception.

A little over a week ago, as I was listening to my wee-hour BBC news programs, I heard an interview with Judy Robles, telling the story of her son Anthony. Raised in a traditional and religious family, much to her shock and shame she found herself pregnant at age 16. It was 1988. Unambivalent in her desire to keep and raise her baby, she knew she was in for a rough ride. She had no idea. Little Anthony was born with only one leg, the other missing all the way up to the hip. There was no stump even; nothing to attach a prosthesis to. But the young mother was undeterred. She loved her little son and undertook the unimaginable challenges of his care and upbringing. Being of color, fatherless and seriously disabled, little Anthony was up against great odds. It was a Hallmark attachment story, where the mother’s indomitable love, presence and encouragement inspired young Anthony to discover, hone his skill and excel as a competitive wrestler. By the age of 23, he rose to the level of US national NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) champion for his weight class. It was a feel-good adversity story of parenting gone right. I thought, “I have to write about this.” Fast forward, one week later.

Balance

One thing I have discovered, to my chagrin and admitted embarrassment, is that one side effect of “spine issues” is irregularity of balance, a fact reverberating with ironies for me. In its literal sense, physiological balance is regulated by the vestibular system of the brain, located in the brainstem and receiving information from the inner ear. I remember only a little of what I began learning from Ruth Lanius about the attachment-developmental significance of vestibular stimulation and function. But I did remember it was significant. And I was humbly reminded that much like the vagus nerve, the spine appears to be connected to everything. Balance, however, in all its ramifications, has always been elusive to me. I remember already when I was about five, my mother impatiently and irritably attempting, clearly without success, to teach me the word and its practical meaning: moderation!! To this day I hate to say I still haven’t “got it.” Back to the present: literal balance.

I have increasingly discovered over the last year or so, that my balance is not good. For this lifelong endurance athlete, it has been a humbling blow that I have intermittently “faced” or been in denial about. Recent experience, as well as visits with various spine specialists have made it increasingly and painfully undeniable…

So last week, we went out with my beloved sister and brother-in-law. After a delightful evening, we were finding our way to the door of the busy San Francisco restaurant, and balance eluded me. Ungracefully I landed hard on my right wrist. Thankfully I did not hit my sorry head, so my few remaining neurons were spared. But it hurt. No, I do not drink or use substances: I was not “guilty” of that. Clearly it was my own raw clumsiness and/or pathology. Already after the brief drive home, my wrist and arm, besides being fiercely painful, were hideously swollen and grotesquely bent out of shape. But worst of all, the fear: Oh no!!! What does this mean, a disabled right arm? And what disability?

My sister, who had seen me go down, was of course worried and sad. They had hosted what was until then, a really nice time. Admittedly it was a rough night. Thanks to the eight-hour time difference, one of my angels in the UK was available at what was 2:00AM to me, and generously stayed on the phone with me for almost two hours, when I was finally able to go to sleep.

Later in the morning, we went to the emergency room. It was Sunday, right before a major holiday, so it was a skeletal staff. The wait in the ER is rarely short. But we were remembering the last time we were there, in the height of Pandemic lockdown, when I had an unrelenting mysterious nosebleed, that my husband was not allowed for COVID safety reasons to wait with me. Thankfully all of that is long past, and I have enormous gratitude and good feelings about that hospital, which is conveniently right down the hill from our house.

Acceptance

The X-rays showed what was no great surprise: my wrist is seriously broken. Yes, it hurts like a MF, but not all the time. I scrupulously declined all pain meds, citing my lifelong love of morphine. And much as I love and admire Keith Richard, I prefer to avoid his little detour. And now I must find my way, for a while one armed and without my ordinarily dominant hand. Thankfully, our trip to Hawaii was planned and in place. Cold and tired, I had been eagerly anticipating it, now more than ever. To be sure, as a one-armed, unaccustomed southpaw, everything, if I am able to do it, takes extra time and ingenuity, and a measure every child of neglect’s nemesis: asking for help. The hardest thing is opening jars or bottles, that require steadying and twisting, so my husband finds himself doing a lot of that.

Fortunately, here in Hawaii, sleeves are blessedly superfluous, as getting anything over the bulky and uncomfortable girth of my “temporary cast,” is an untoward challenge. And at home I tend to be unhappily freezing in what to many are the temperate climes of the Bay Area. When we return, I must see the orthopedic doc who will determine the “next steps,” the ER doc being uncertain as to whether it would be a simple “permanent” cast, or the dreaded “s word.” It is wait and see.

Meanwhile, I must adapt to what I can do and not do. Thinking of Anthony Robles, of course I want to do everything as usual. Even though I am almost 70 years old…Perhaps I must have the humility to scale it down, and most definitely to continue advancing the neglect recovery task of graciously requesting, receiving and appreciating help. Fortunately, I have an angel for a husband, a phenomenal team, and wonderful friends to help me with that. And we have both the resources and availability for good medical care. So far, the hunt and peck is working OK for writing. And for the videos you will have to indulge me the absence of makeup and earrings for a while.

Meanwhile, there are much larger fish to fry in this sorry world of ours. Before all this happened, I was going to write about a wonderfully hopeful turn of events, and thank EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) clinician, Sandy Jardine, and Academy for Therapy Wisdom’s Brian Spielmann for facilitating the delivery of Neglect Informed Psychotherapy to 148 Ukrainian therapists. It is a source of great joy, to make a contribution, however modest, to that misbegotten people.    

My rallying cry for 2025 continues to be GIVE PEACE A CHANCE! And who know, perhaps I will be able to bake my sourdough with one hand? Or make cheese, if in smaller denominations? Let’s see!

Hope and Health, and Happy New Year to all!

Today’s song:

 

(WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS EXPLICIT REFERENCES TO CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE, AND OTHER SEXUAL REFERENCES)

For many of us with sexual abuse trauma, our first “knowledge” of sexual stimulation, eroticism, or any kind of sexual experience, was likely to be frightening and most likely confusing. It is painful, not to mention distasteful to think of eroticism and childhood in one sentence. The very idea of eroticizing children is unbearable. But the truth is that stimulating even a young child in certain body parts will be arousing in some way, and for some even pleasurable. It is unbearable to even consider this. The fact is, however, that certain body parts, like the clitoris for example are bestowed with an uncanny number of nerve endings. According to the International Society for Sexual Medicine, the human clitoris is composed of over 10,000 neurons, although it does not specify the age of the person. Messing with that or other erogenous body areas of anyone, including a young child will be in some way arousing, and for a young child especially, more stimulation than that under-developed little nervous system is designed to process in its customary way, which is of course precisely the definition of trauma. So clearly from the start, any incident of sexual stimulation of a child is an “overwhelming experience,” and categorically traumatic. This means that the child starts out with wires crossed. The accompanying emotions may vary, and generally do, as many of us know from our own or our clients’ experience.

I remember when I was a teenager, freshly starting college, and certainly no stranger to sex by then. I volunteered with a community organization in my college town, that visited the women in the County Jail. I can’t remember if we facilitated support groups or brought books and discussed them, or what we did in there. I spent two hours each week locked in with the women in conversation. Early on, after I had only visited a few times, the women were all introducing themselves, and one woman said “I am a ‘sex-change,’ I used to be a man.” I had never heard of that before. Actually, I had heard of something similar, the “castrati sopranos,” somehow curiously, talked about by my dad when I was pretty small. This was the practice of castrating young male singers before puberty in order to retain singing voices equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto, begun in 16^th Century Italy. I had not thought about this again until that moment in the jail. My reaction was identical, a full body chill went through me and I was terrified. I had no idea why, but I was haunted, especially being locked in for rest of the session. I had nightmares for some time, afraid to do my next shift in the jail, afraid that she would still be in there. I never saw her again, but I never forgot it.

Now that there is a growing awareness about transgender and all manner of non-binary sexualities, I am terribly ashamed to have reacted that way. I take seriously the mandate as a therapist, a sex therapist and a human being, the mandate to educate myself about a whole world of sexuality that I was ignorant about. I have made mistakes in my language, sometimes in cases where a parent has gently corrected me, sometimes less gently by an angry client. But my point is that trauma skews reactions, assumptions and feelings for a long time to come. Duh!! And I do hope my recounting of this story does not hurt or offend anyone!

Neglect

Many mistakenly believe that explicitly sexual trauma is the sole cause of sexual “problems” and if there is no known history of sexual trauma, one must either fish for it, or has no “excuse” for the difficulty. I answer with a resounding NO!! Sex, as we know, involves a delicate balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is arousing, the parasympathetic is calming. Harville Hendrix, founder of Imago Relationship Therapy describes this as Safety and Passion. We must feel safe, i.e. relaxed in order to enjoy sex, and we must feel some level of excitement in order to have a pleasurable experience. Without the balance of both, sex is no fun at all. Even mammals in the wild know this. They will stop their sexual activity immediately if they perceive a predator in the field, drop and run.

This means that neglect which involves a profound over and/or under-arousal of the nervous system of the child, particularly a young child, is categorically dysregulating, thereby destabilizing of any kind of balance. The failure of mirroring and reflection, the absence of feeling seen and known, the experience of nothing results in an under-stimulated little brain. In turn, as we know from neuroscientist Ruth Lanius, “the withdrawal, loss or absence of the mother is experienced by the infant as life threatening.” It feels like lethal danger, pitching the young nervous system into hyper-arousal. The entire nervous system may be thrown off balance and in effect dysregulated, which can of course show itself in any aspect of the function, including of course the delicately balanced system of sexuality. In any gender.

In our work as Neglect Informed therapists, we will encounter sexual challenges of many a stripe, including perhaps in ourselves. Again, no need to probe for overt sexual trauma, or dismiss or minimize the problems in its absence. For years I tried my damnedest to cross pollenate between the trauma and sexuality fields, as the trauma field seemed to have a narrow focus around the explicitly sexual. Now at long last it is slowly happening. Please join me in bringing a neglect informed perspective to sexuality!

Healing

I first trained in couples work in 1998, when I discovered Imago Therapy. After firing five therapists and wasting untold quantities of money, time and hope, my husband and I landed there and got some help. I am infinitely grateful. I knew I wanted to study and practice that because it works. One aspect of deep attachment work, which is so central both to my own work and my own journey, is the attachment relationship with the therapist. It is in effect where I learned or became capable of authentic attachment that I have since been able to replicate, filling my life with wonderful relationships. That was never true before. So, the relational aspect of trauma and neglect healing is perhaps its most powerful aspect. One of the ironic and assuredly frustrating aspects of that relationship is that if successful, we become able to fly away from therapy; often and certainly in my case after a very long time, by design, we lose the person! How weird is that?

What I discovered in Imago, and in deep couple’s therapy for trauma and neglect, is that partners can heal in therapy while learning to attach, and take the healing relationship home when they finish. That is another reason why I find couples therapy as so potent and rewarding a venue for healing the core attachment wounds left by trauma and neglect. And certainly, the optimal place to work on sexual difficulties. Invariably both partners bring their own share of dysregulation to the mix, and there is never only one “problem child.”

I can’t completely neglect the bombardment, certainly in the US, of this madly dysregulating season of consumerism, congestion and pressure to have an idyllic family to be with and lots of money to spend. Sadly, much if not most of the world has neither. But we all have a body, and I can certainly wish calm and comfort and joy to all. Best wishes to all and a desperate wish for peace!

Today’s song:

You are receiving this on what in the U.S. is Thanksgiving Day. I am writing it, however, on the 22^nd of November, a sad day in 2022, when we lost one of my great heroes, Pablo Milanes. He was 79 which seems increasingly young to me as I rapidly approach 70 myself. Milanes was one of the two great icons of La Nueva Trova Cubana, the “new” Cuban song movement that filled the air waves and certainly the background of my life, in the 1960’s and 70’s, and the airways in my various homes and certainly in my head, ever since. He is also the buttery, sweet voice of my favorite song of all time, which happens to be a song about gratitude: Tengo. As I ponder gratitude, accompanied by that timeless song, I feel the grief again, about his passing. I don’t know his story, except that he ended up in Spain and died of blood cancer. I hope he did not suffer too much.

Thinking about his age and our loss, brought to mind another developmental issue that, certainly in my country, we don’t talk about, or not nearly enough. Rather, like many essential topics, we somehow manage to comfortably ignore it and then are painfully shocked and blindsided when it intrudes into our lives, as if unexpected. It may be in the context of our abusive or neglectful parents, or even benign and beloved parents in those rare cases: the gnarly and largely taboo, unspoken subject of aging. It is as if we don’t see it coming, and then we are knocked down by it. The U.S. is a youth crazed culture, and our denial and rejection of age and aging, is glaring.

I remember several years ago I read a book called Elderhood (by Louise Aronson, Bloomsbury, 2019) probably prompted by the changes I was beginning to observe in my then aging father. The author, a local San Francisco physician, commented that we in effect have two words for life stages, in our impoverished language: childhood and adulthood. Childhood is birth to, what, 25? And adulthood is 25 to 100+? As if these are monochromatic, stable phases of development. As one who has navigated several of the post-25 decades, I can surely attest, they are anything but steady and unchanging! Many of us are first visited (invaded?) by these issues when our parents start to fail or become more difficult or decidedly ill. Others of us begin to encounter distressing changes in ourselves or our partners. There is such silence and often alarm around all this. Certainly, the child of neglect never had anyone to ask and was always expected to simply know. All too often in the case of parents, the dreaded “Bermuda Triangle” makes its stormy appearance or reappearance. For now, I will say, that the essence of neglect is loss: essential life experiences that were withdrawn, erratic, or never there at all. And to some extent, aging involves a compendium of loss.

The Bermuda Triangle, Again

You have probably heard me talk before about what I call the Bermuda Triangle, the fierce internal shipwreck that all too often accompanies neglect. The seemingly violent collision is of rage, grief and guilt in a storm of crashing conflict, all at once and all authentic and understandable, each in its own way pretty unbearable. The rage is about all that was lost, or never there, the lost years, the thousands spent, the pain and anguish of years of therapy instead of “living.” All that we miss spending years climbing out of a hole. Righteous indignation! How could they have done (or not done) what they did or did not, how could they fail to do the work, after all, we are doing it! Why on earth not?! The grief, about our own colossal losses, all the missing experiences, the failures at connection and love. The way so many of us with early neglect, right from the start, began the “race” at a disadvantage; the grief about all that our parents suffered, that “explains” (does not justify or excuse!!) but makes sense out of their tragic failures with us. My parents went through unspeakable trauma, and most of it never was spoken of, although a lot was in dysregulated eruptions of rage and out of control behavior on their part. Most of us have the devastating stories of these episodes and are haunted by them. And then the guilt. Guilt about the rage, guilt about the impulse to blame, guilt about anger at victims who had suffered so much as many of our perpetrators did. Guilt about privilege, I have so much, how could I…blah, blah blah. You know what I mean. The Bermuda Triangle is a kind of torment in itself, apart from all of its various origins.

So why do I bring that up again here, when we are talking about aging? Well, I see it often, certainly in this country where there is a large generation of adults whose parents are hitting the stage of “elderhood,” where they are starting or rapidly continuing to fail, and may be asking for, requiring more care, more attention, more intervention. I have had clients called upon to provide levels of care and support that exceed their natural emotional impulse. A sense of duty, obligation, morality or plain fear compels them/us to do more. And so, the Triangle rears up again. I had the good fortune to have my father living in reasonable driving distance. That I have two sisters who all live in the area, so we could work together collaboratively, and that our dad had his own resources, so we were not in a position to have to make hard financial decisions that would directly affect us and our own families. Many are not so fortunate.

And I will also say I was challenged. Because as he got older, he began increasingly to resemble the worst of the father I remembered from my childhood, when there “was no me.” I would arrive for my weekly visits and his wife would say loudly into his ear, “Ruth is here! Ruth is here!” But he would not look up, did not register my entrance, my presence. Now it was based on his function, his fading awareness and his dimming brain capacity. But it was chillingly familiar. And I find with clients going through it with aging parents. There is massive trauma activation, painful triggering, more work to do. I don’t want to tell you it is inevitable. But rather I am naming something that like neglect and sexuality, is not talked about enough, and is essential to be aware of to stay regulated through the vicissitudes of life’s journey. It is nature’s design, and more work for us.

Some psychologists and philosophers believe that our terror or denial about mortality are at the root of many other problems. I don’t know if I agree with that, but I know it is out there for all of us, and is the price of loving. Someone will alas, go first.

Our Bodies

As I navigate the crooked road of issues surrounding my spine, I am aware I must at least mention the personal losses, and for many of us “insults” we may experience with aging bodies. I for one have always had the hubris, denial and determination to some how feel indestructible. I was an endurance athlete, and I always said “I don’t have any talent, but I can outlast or “out-endure” anyone.” I simply would not quit. And I insisted to myself, that if there was something I “could not do,” I was “lazy” and not trying hard enough. And everything was my fault. The voice reared up quickly in my head, “don’t be lazy!” And I hate to tell you this, but now there are things I am stopped by, that I used to not even think about. And the voice might say, “you are pathetic!” But I’m learning about the natural course of nature.

So many things I was never warned about, or never learned about. Clients may come to me with shame “admitting,” too embarrassing to them, changes in their sexuality that they did not foresee or know about. I was not aware of how bladder control might change when we get into our 60’s, across gender lines. Energy, strength, vitality, intensity, all things I took shamefully for granted. Not to mention wrinkles, fatigue, bruising, unexplained spurts of bleeding, hearing loss, vision. Tech ineptitude…Oy vey! I now must have the humility and courage to face and deal with, maybe accept more help. And being a generation (or two!) ahead of many of my clients and readers, perhaps I can help, at least to diffuse the shock/surprise factor. Like the changing seasons, it is natural…

I will close with one last thought, a “tool” of sorts, if you will. Back to aging parents and the torment of the Bermuda Triangle. When we are at those painful crossroads or decision points figuring out how much we can authentically give, that is in proportion and consonant with our feeling, in response to aging parent’s needs: I ask myself, “How will I feel ABOUT MYSELF when they are gone, if I do “X”? How will I feel ABOUT MYSELF when they are gone, if I do “Y?”  Then I decide. The one I will have to live with, is me. We don’t want to betray ourselves, or “fake it” anymore by over giving. And as ever, as with raising children, we cannot do any of it alone! And my grandmother used to say, “The golden age is not so golden…”

Here in the U.S. we learned we could get a lifetime senior pass to enter all the national parks in the country for a one-time fee of $20.00, simply for being over 65. A good deal for all that beauty! I am grateful for that!

Best wishes of the season to all!

Pablo Milanes sings about the passing of anos, years, change and loss as we age. Rest well, Pablo. Your music lives on and on.

Today’s song:

As I reflected on the upcoming domestic Thanksgiving holiday, it occurred to me that I have so much more to say about food and eating. Eating disorders are a lonely and seemingly endless tyranny, not uncommon for those with any sort of trauma, but I think even more for those of us with attachment trauma. And while pondering what to write, I ran across an article that had grabbed my attention a while back with the header John Lennon and Yoko Ono were Obsessed with their Weight, according to their old friend Elliott Mintz, who recently wrote a book, (We All Shine On: John, Yoko and Me, Dutton 2024) about his long and close friendship with them. Apparently, John journaled daily, and recorded that day’s weight, and the couple kept a rotating rack where they hung their clothes in order of varying waist sizes. I was amazed.

I remembered when I lived alone in a tiny apartment in South America, at the age of about 24. I was desperately lonely but my obsession with being ever thinner was a constant companion, preoccupation and ghostly authoritarian presence. With that I was never truly alone. In those days, I probably subsisted mostly on the cheap, local Gato Negro white wine. I remember I had a picture I had clipped of John and Yoko, the skinny iconic couple I so admired. I thought they were of that coveted species of “naturally,” “effortlessly” or “perfectly thin,” what I later learned some people wildly imagined about me. Little did I know they/we were comrades in this agony. 

My eating problems began probably from the beginning. I was always a “bad eater” with my mom chronically annoyed with me. I hated most meat, but had a special and violent aversion to liver, and the second worst was hot dogs. The house rule was, I had to at least eat a piece the size of a quarter, or I would never be released to get up from the table. More than once I was whacked with a serving spoon, or chased around the table. My dad would terrorize us all, bellowing about his traumatic history of going hungry, or subsisting on “bread and worms.” And Aunt Gertrud, my elderly great aunt, called me a “dickkopf” (fathead) for being so unreasonably “difficult.”

I became decidedly anorexic in the middle 1960’s. In 1967 I was just turning 12. In those days it was still a relatively nameless, mysterious, unknown pathology. I remember only much later, finding one book: Hilde Bruch’s, Eating Disorders, that I swiped from the library and hid in my closet. It had pictures of little half undressed, emaciated girls with their faces blocked out, and a brief, unintelligible to me at that time, psychoanalytic analysis that did not help me at all.

Anorexia provided a confusing illusion of control, in a life where I felt profoundly out of control in every imaginable way. My chaotic mood swings, widely pitching me between what I only much later have come to understand as the hyper and hypo-aroused traumatized nervous system. However, anorexia was a strangely contradictory kind of control. Because I had no control over it. When I would have intermittent bouts of terror and guilt, that perhaps I was starving myself to death, I could not stop. And as mysteriously, suddenly I would be bingeing uncontrollably on sugar. For years at a time, I nightly consumed half a gallon (roughly 2 liters) or more, of ice cream, directly out of the carton, standing at the kitchen counter in the silent solitude of the night, until numbed and catatonic, bloated and racked with shame I would stumble off to bed. No one ever spoke about it, but the freezer was always stocked. And I was completely out of control and could not stop.

Although thankfully, I never became bulimic. I discovered endurance exercise as a seeming solution, at least to keep me from gaining weight. So, the other half of the secret was the compulsion to sneak out of the house in the wee hours and run marathon distances, sneaking back in, hiding my sweaty sweats in the far reach of the closet, and creeping back into bed pretending I had never been gone. This unwavering regimen of compulsive control kept me completely and utterly out of control for years, accompanied by the obsession described by gloriously slender John and Yoko. And the obsession was exquisitely effective in keeping my trauma story out of awareness for decades.

Regulation

Now after years and decades of searching, futilely trying every diet and regimen under the sun, to no avail, I have become that elusive “naturally thin” person I never thought could be me. And I have come to understand, why we do all that, why we put ourselves through that protracted agony, and cycle for years and decades on a carousel of despair. Too many people die or make themselves very ill in the process. I am one of the blessed few who came out of it without brain damage (as far as I know!) or medical consequences that I am aware of. Although admittedly I have a huge rage and resentment about a (certainly in the US) profit driven eating disorder treatment industry that is largely useless; and the domestic food production industry which pedals largely processed and unnatural, “junky” foods, that appear to sustain the cycles and keep themselves in business. This is not to disparage or discourage those in our field who have found effective treatment approaches, but grief and bitterness for the many of us who suffered too long, or may not have had the positive outcome that I have had.

Especially from my experience of the eating obsession alternating or operating in tandem with my alcohol addiction, it was a no-brainer that both served a similar function: a flight from pain and consciousness, an effective way to not feel and not remember, and to be preoccupied with something else. The obsessions became the primary relationship in a nervous system unable to sustain a human relationship. So, the healing of course was a long course of relationship and regulation work. I was blessed with a brilliant, tenacious and infinetly patient attachment-oriented therapist who I stayed with for decades, to work the attachment piece, and many and varied modalities of regulation work. For me, neurofeedback and sensorimotor work were the most effective. But the relationship work was the most important, long, hard and unspeakably rewarding and worth it. I don’t work with eating disorders per se, although sometimes it creeps into my practice, and I use what has worked for me. I am always interested to know what others are finding that works. I know in our field, there are clinicians that do. I applaud them, thank them and wish them well.

Gratitude

So, I am immensely grateful for the way my journey has left me healthy, and very much the joyful “foodie.” I live in a town obsessed with delicious food, and in a region blessed with wonderful abundance. I can eat what I want and don’t stress about it. I am a home cheese maker now, which is another kind of regulation, the calming rhythmic movement of stirring, the protracted waiting while cheese ages, and the joy of sharing the wealth are all huge rewards. And for this non-mother, the fact that the medium is milk, seems to have meaning to me. I am also a sourdough baker, another living breathing food, that takes less time to grow and cultivate, but similarly is a source of joy to both produce and share. Perhaps On Thanksgiving I will celebrate stirring a large vat of Cheddar, or some other wonderful bequest of the world’s gastronomy.  A day of quiet, peace and immense gratitude. Thankfully my husband does not mind the scrooge in me, and he reminds me almost daily how much he appreciates the cheese and bread, and all the sweet aromas. He is one of those “perfectly” slender folk that I had imagined to be among the illusory, magically effortlessly so. When I first met him in 1991, I asked him, “have you always been thin?” He answered unhesitating, “No! I’ve always been fat!” He suffered as a chubby little kid and a fat adolescent. Somehow lost weight in high school and has worked to maintain his seemingly “perfect” weight ever since. But even many decades later, he still sees that fat kid in the mirror. It is true what I learned from one of my great mentors, “Your self image is the last thing to change.” Best wishes of the season, whatever they are for you. And practice gratitude!

Today’s song:

When I was preparing for my recent talks in Oxford, I actively reviewed my historical roots as a therapist and especially in the trauma field. One of my theoretical heroes was the (at least now) little known attachment researcher and somatic therapist, Stephen M. Johnson. Johnson hailed from the field of Bioenergetics, a seemingly forgotten theoretical ancestor of the somatic therapies, that came out of the work of Wilhelm Reich. I have always been fascinated with Reich as he linked two of my most passionate interests: politics and sexuality, and he was a brilliant, quirky and adventurous thinker. Johnson worked out his own nomenclature and characterizations of attachment patterns that he called character styles, and I still have and cherish all of his (now probably out of print) dog-eared books in my collection. My favorite of his is Character Transformation: The Hard Work Miracle (Norton, 1985) but I love them all.

It was from Johnson that I inherited the conviction about spine and voice. Johnson’s equivalent of the “avoidant” attachment style (and I dislike that designation as I do most labels!) is what he named the “schizoid character” (another to me unsavory name). I however, utilize the descriptions of both of those as most closely adapting to what I understand as the attachment pattern of the child of neglect. Admittedly my own language is lacking as well, and I am constantly in search of better words. Neglect as it is at least vaguely understood/acknowledged by ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences Standards) continues to be deficient. But the most accurate description I can come up with is “Nothing,” which would be an unlikely category in the DSM!

All that being said, Johnson identified the main tasks of recovery for his “Schizoid,” to be “getting a spine and getting a voice,” which most likely you have heard me say many times about the child of neglect. In my desire to give credit where credit is due, I went to look up biographical information about Johnson, and found to my sadness that he had recently died. However, there was a link to making a donation by planting a tree in his loving memory. I thought, “how fitting!” I love trees. And a tree, tall, strong, usually straight and upward reaching, and elaborately rooted, is very spine-like. I made my donation accompanied by a message stating my appreciation for and continuing practicing and teaching of his valuable work and words over many years and decades. When my little tree planting certificate arrived some weeks ago, I posted it in our kitchen where I can continue to see it and remember him, and the continuing refrain of spine and voice.

Connections

When the Pandemic of 2019 struck, I was introduced, or came to appreciate in a new way, the webinar as a way to stay somewhat connected to colleagues and continue to learn and grow. The increasing availability of good stuff to watch, at any hour and in the quiet and solitude of my own kitchen, was both a comfort and a way to ease the loneliness, seeming stagnation and anxiety of those early years. I remember one of the first ones I watched over and over again, was by Ruth Lanius, the trauma and neuroscience researcher luminary; her webinar on the brain, and the vestibular or balance system in particular. I remember at one point in the session on shame, Ruth presented an image of the somatic organization of shame in the posture of the body. It was stooped forward, head down, constricted as if hiding. I remember thinking in horror, “Oh wow, that is me!” Perhaps the only feeling worse than shame, is shame about shame!

I had the privilege during that time of doing remote sessions with Frank Corrigan and his colleague and collaborator Martin Warner. Frank practiced (what was then new to me) DBR: “Deep Brain Re-orienting,” which by now many more of us are familiar with; and Martin practiced the Alexander Method, a somatic approach that I remembered learning about in graduate school but had never really experienced. In combination it was quite an elixir and did uncover some shame memories in a different way. So, I learned more about my shame, but I did not quite realize that my postural shape was not changing very much. Only that I seemed to increasingly have more pain. I remember my mom telling me I was a “pain in the neck,” but that did not really help with the undeniably growing pain in my neck shoulders and back, which was clearly getting worse.

I remember Martin asking me if anyone had ever told me I had significant scoliosis. I said, “No, what is that?” Martin answered “that is when the spine is essentially pulling forward and pulling backward at the same time.” I was amazed. The dilemma without solution was inhabiting my spine, telling its story there.

As a lifelong endurance athlete, and as a child of two parents both of whom had histories of tremendous and dramatic suffering, I was most accustomed to enduring, denying, and concealing pain. Mine would most definitely be viewed as minimal by any comparison with theirs. I also was consistently responsible somehow for any complaint I might have, so if in fact I felt bad in some way, it did not do me any good to talk about it with anyone. Being blamed was considerably more unpleasant than the original problem, whatever it might have been. So as pain worsened, as was my custom, I kept it to myself.

I was also distressed to notice other changes. My balance was increasingly wobbly and unreliable. I felt like a doddering old woman who needed to hold on to things to stay steady. When I saw myself on video, however, I realized things were even worse than I had realized. I saw just how stooped and bent forward I was. If I did not feel shame before, I certainly did now. I assumed I was lazy and clumsy, and simply not standing up straight. Finally, I did what I would likely suggest to anyone else. I went to the doctor.

Renewal

The neglect story, and often the incident trauma as well, expresses itself in many wordless ways. Where I have come a fair way finding my voice, in written and even spoken word, perhaps there is more to be done in the way of spine. My spine is apparently compromised, discs between vertebrae are worn away and nerves are compressed which causes the pain and constriction, limits movement and interestingly causes problems with balance and spatial perception on one side. Like the vagus nerve, the spine is connected to everything else. Some kind of serious attention and procedure will be necessary. If not, said my doctor, I am “at risk for paralysis….” Again, I am amazed by the echoes of attachment trauma, the body wordlessly telling the story. So now I must indeed and at last, truly get a spine. I still don’t know exactly what that will mean.

My dear friend and colleague who you may know, grief expert Edy Nathan, however, wisely reminded me of something I had not thought of. Edy was describing to me the wreckage wrought by Milton, the recent storm who tore through Florida, USA. She said, we must be a sycamore, not an oak. Oaks are strong and solid, but met with ferocious force they break apart. The sycamore can sway and bend with the gales. They are shaken and perhaps lose balance for a time, but they bend and continue to grow. I also know, that the most profound transformations of my life, have come on the heels of a complete falling apart…Tall and straight, upward reaching, strong and flexible. So yes, I have been growing my voice, in writing and even speaking. I keep learning more about what it means to get a spine – especially as we age.

Today’s Song, Arboles, means trees in Spanish. This song is sung by a favorite singer of mine, Roy Brown of Puerto Rico. Especially at this moment in time, I want to celebrate and honor that beautiful little island. Brown speaks briefly before the song begins about the beloved Puerto Rican poet who wrote the lyrics, Clemente Soto Vélez, who died in 1993:

Next week’s Jewish High Holiday Yom Kippur brings many thoughts. My childhood memories of that day are spotty and mostly painful. Our dad being the cantor was more nervous and irritable than ever, as that was the day when he had the fullest house of the year, meaning the “once-a-year-crowd” showed up. The sanctuary would be opened out into the social hall, and set up with chairs; the place would be filled with throngs of dressed up people. The Yom Kippur service was literally all day long, for me an endurance event. I always tried to be super “good” and sit in front where my dad from up on the pulpit, and my mom from her spot in the choir loft could both see me, if they should be looking. I would will myself to stay glued to that seat all day long, even though most of the kids were hanging out in the parking lot socializing (and probably smoking cigarettes).

Yom Kippur is considered a day of “fasting,” which to my anorexic mind hardly counted as a fast, given that once the sun goes down, there is a ceremonial meal. That made it seem like more of a cheat in my lexicon of fasts (which sometimes spanned up to fourteen days with only water. That was my idea of a fast). But at least I didn’t have to deal with breakfast and lunch that day. And Yom Kippur is the “Day of Atonement,” meaning it is meant to be a day where one takes stock, reflects on the year reviewing all their deeds and misdeeds, whatever needs to be cleaned up or repaired. For me, being in a constant state of uncertainty and critique, I did not need a special day devoted to that, as it was on the order of a natural if not constant habit. All that being said, I do deeply value and respect a process, even a tradition, of reviewing, owning and hopefully healing hurts I may have caused and mistakes I may have made, whether or not I could have controlled them. And relationship repair is an area dear to my heart, my work and my teaching. I consider it endemic to keeping relationships safe and strong. So, although I am pretty much a scrooge for holidays of any kind, it does feel timely to make it the topic of this week’s blog. And to begin I must apologize for being so late with the blog! I know some of my readers count on me to show up promptly every Thursday, with something to say! And I did fail you this week. I am sorry!

Why Apology Matters

Sadly, apology appears to be an endangered species, at least in the cultures that I know best. Certainly, apologies that “work.” Most of us with histories of trauma and neglect, never ever heard an apology from a parent or perpetrator, or anyone for that matter. I know I never did – quite the opposite. Absolutely everything was my “fault.” I was convinced (or they were!) that both of my parents were completely and utterly blameless and without remorse for absolutely anything. Of course, under those circumstances a child not only does not learn about fallibility and repair, but gets the message that being perfect is the only way to be in any sort of relationship. And it is a recipe for blame and defensiveness. Mistakes, mis-steps, even accidents are an unfortunate fact of life. If we learn how to make repair, they are simply no big deal. Without it, we must be flawless in every way. Or the interpersonal world becomes a wasteland of wreckage. My childhood was fraught with both.

Perhaps most importantly, prompt and effective repair is the royal road to relationship safety. I often tell the story of a most poignant moment in my marriage. My husband turned to me and with earnest, almost incredulous eyes, said to me, “Wow I feel safe with you! Because I know that if we have a rupture, which of course in real life is inevitable, we can get back together. It is not fatal.” What a difference from both of our childhoods of trauma and neglect, where when there was a disconnect, which certainly with children is a regular if not daily occurrence, there was no help to reconnect. No comfort, empathy or understanding, but most of all no modeling of how on earth to get back together. For the child, and especially the young child, the experience of loss is devastating, terrifying and wildly dysregulating. The very young infant will experience the withdrawal as life- threatening. They are at sea, flailing desperately to figure out how to retrieve the lost connection. For my husband this meant endless “performing,” and being the perfect and silent “fur coat.” Silent, invisible and presentable “arm candy.” For me (and for many of us) it meant being the ceaseless caretaker. Both false selves. Both never able to simply be, let alone comfortably and authentically be in relationship. What a difference. In effect, repair may be the most powerful tool not only for attachment, but also for regulation. So, apology matters hugely! I can’t say it enough!

What Heals?

I also remember painfully, in the “bad old days” my husband saying to me, with great frustration “Hey I told you I was sorry! Why do you continue beating me up?!” I do spend a lot of time these days working to help people learn what makes for a “successful,” healing apology, that actually heals the injury. I once read a book called The Five Languages of Apology, by Gary Chapman (Northfield, 2006), which I in many ways liked. But I find it a bit religious and moralistic for my taste, so I summarized it in an article which can be found on my website for those who are interested (Amending Our Process: Crafting Apologies that Heal). However, since I wrote that, I have honed my ideas and identified some key elements that I think account for why some apologies do, and others do not, produce the desired result, even magic.

First and foremost is empathy. The apology must be primarily, even uniformly for the benefit of the injured party. I need not “agree” that what I did was “wrong” or “bad,” “that bad,” or bad enough to warrant the outsized reaction I got. If I want to make repair, I must have the humility and the compassion see it through the eyes of the other, and apologize for that. Even if the apology is well intentioned and sincere, if I am apologizing for the “wrong” thing, i.e. not what hurt you, it simply won’t work.

Along those lines, it rarely works to make an apology under “duress.” I.e. if one party says, “I deserve an apology!” or “you owe me an apology!” it is highly unlikely to receive a heartfelt apology. An empathic starting place, and a genuine desire for repair is a necessary ingredient for success.

The 12 Step Program of recovery which I consider to be both brilliant and lifesaving in so many ways, includes an “amends” process, steps 8 and 9:

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Of course, these steps are part of the program because unhealed guilt and shame about regretted harms and hurts committed, are likely to rear up and compromise recovery. So clearly the amends process is for the benefit of the apologizer. What I have found, however, is certainly in my own experience if someone comes to me with an apology that seems too much for their own benefit, and not really about my hurt, about harm done to me, it may feel somehow “cheap” to me. As if I am once again being used. In making amends, even for a recovery program, we must come from a genuinely empathic place.

Perhaps most of all, however, and I have made this mistake plenty, is the terrible trap of “explaining.” So very often our mistakes are well intended, or come out of our own trauma, or simply our own bad day. If my apology is followed by a “case” for how I could have done this, and all the evidence of why what I did was “innocent” and not so bad, or because I “meant well” or “couldn’t help it,” once again it is all about me! Which for so many of us, is at the heart of the trauma experience: there was no you and only me.

Apology and forgiveness are central to relationship safety and regulation in general. We will take up the forgiveness side next week. For now, best wishes for the New Year for those who observe these holidays, and a good week for all. Thanks for your understanding about my tardiness!

This week’s song:

I woke up with a start after my unheard-of, third-in-a-row, almost eight-hour night of sleep. Amazing. I am not sure if it is sheer and total exhaustion from all the excitement, stimulation and phenomenal energy output, or relief and joy that enabled me to truly rest. No need to question, I am infinitely grateful and awesomely refreshed.

I wake up at 5:19AM in London, realizing it is Tuesday. I realize I have a blog to write. And I have invited so many new people to join our mailing list and promised them a weekly blog or perhaps video sent to their inbox. What on earth to write about?

Well in spite of all the half-baked blogs and blog ideas floating around in my hippocampus, I figure the only real place to be, and the place to write from, is this living moment. I have never liked people’s often group-threaded, usually way too long (for me) missives from their vacations, recounting all their wonderful experiences and high points. I will do my utmost to make this more than that, but rather of use to my readers.

Spine and Voice

Stephen Johnson was a little-known attachment researcher coming out of the Bioenergetics movement. I sadly only now learned that he passed away this past year, at the age of 69 (my age…) Bioenergetics was one of the early body psychotherapy approaches stemming back to Wilhelm Reich, another rarely talked about giant upon whose shoulders we all stand, who wrote the quirky and brilliant, also largely forgotten Function of the Orgasm (1975.) I love that book and find it fascinating and compelling, and not only because I am fascinated and compelled by all things sexual. But because Reich tied sexuality not only to psychology and body psychotherapy but also to larger social justice themes, which landed him in prison and ultimately, to die in a draconian mental hospital. Johnson taught me way back in the early 1980’s about Spine and Voice. I never forgot it, and it has become a backbone of my work on neglect.

Johnson taught that the ultimate recovery tasks of what he called the “schizoid” character style, which although I am not fond of the pathological sounding term, most closely correlates to my child of neglect attachment style. Johnson wrote, (and frequently I echo his words, using my own) that the neglected infant ceases to cry, because nobody comes, ceases to reach, because there is no one there, and collapses with exhaustion from the futile effort. The result is silence and a crumpled spine, which coagulate into a character style where that child is unable to stand up for themselves and speak out on their own behalf. As I ceaselessly preach, some of the main tasks of healing from neglect, are getting a spine and getting a voice! Admittedly a tall order!

Fast forward to Oxford, 2024. I had the privilege of standing up on the podium and voicing the message of spine and voice while also continuing to discover my own! Hard to believe. In my effort to Neglect Inform a larger world I continue to heal myself, and indeed our own healing is endless, and our work requires it!

Interdependence

Anyone who knows my work, knows that the most common default from the collapse of neglect, is the often ferocious defense: self-reliance. The child of neglect disavows interpersonal need, because it is simply not to be trusted. The experience that no one can be relied upon, makes our natural order, dependency, simply way too dangerous. Yes, interdependence is nature’s design. But add to that the way self-reliance is highly regarded and esteemed certainly in Western cultures, it is hard to want to learn something different or to even believe that something different could be better. Perhaps the most challenging task of neglect healing is slowly and gently first puncturing and then carefully relinquishing the lonely safety of self-reliance and have the humility to accept and receive help. Ironically there is a kind of grandiosity (even if I feel like nothing!) in believing I can do it better myself.

For me Oxford was another whole jump in my learning to receive and utilize help. And much as I fight and deny my age, there is no question that a little help from my friends, many of whom are young enough to be my kids or even grandkids, is a worthy and rewarding lesson. With the help of my amazing team, and my amazing husband, I could achieve so much more, and admittedly much better, quicker and more gracefully. If not for them, none of this could have been possible. Without all that I gain by learning (and continuing to learn) this lesson, my mission of Neglect Informing this sorry world, would not reach further and further which I think we are, and which has become a true meaning and purpose for me, since I emerged from my terrible breakdown of “nothing matters.”

I also had the privilege of discovering an incredible resonance with my new twin, Aimie Apigian. Although I had previously met and was fond of Aimie, only now did I learn that her work fits hand in glove with my own. Aimie, a brilliant and skilled physician, has the biology that explains the somatics of neglect. Everything that I am trying to teach and learn, Aimie teaches in the world of science. Including not only how to understand some of the ever-challenging autoimmune dysregulations and symptoms suffered by trauma and neglect clients, but how to target them with specific somatic approaches. Amazing!

Even more amazing for me, is the very idea of a collaboration, which I do hope to be able to do! But even the very idea of a collaboration, without terror or without that gnawing sense of competition, actually working interdependently together, is a breakthrough (Another interesting idea that I learned this week from speaker Michael Ellison, is that competition is essentially fear. I never thought about it that way! And he works with high performance competitive athletes!).

I might add, again to those who are new to my work, that being a therapist is the “ideal” calling for the child of neglect. It offers the possibility to be both invisible and to feel needed, i.e. that we “matter,” to be some semblance without (hopefully!) dependency, in the shadows, to “exist” and with purpose. Many therapists discover, often with shock and surprise, sometimes that they (you?) themselves are survivors of this unseen “big T” trauma. If that is you, and sometimes the discovery brings with it not only relief, but activation (“triggering”) please, you know what to do: get the necessary support for yourself! Do what you need to do to regulate and titrate what may come up for you! Know you are not alone! And believe it or not, you don’t have to do it all yourself!

Repair

The theme of this year’s conference was rupture and repair. To me, the concept of repair is profoundly important both personally and professionally. So many of us, and all our client survivors of trauma and neglect, never learned or experienced repair. Understanding that repair is right in there as a survival need, as part of regulation, both of the nervous system and capacity for relationship. How many of us have ever experienced, or been the recipient of authentic repair/apology, from a parent, perpetrator, partner, anyone really? Blessedly few I am afraid. To hold the value of repair, and the cycle, the dance of rupture and repair, in high enough esteem, as to make it the theme – that in itself has healing value to me.

Years ago, I first learned from Peter Levine about the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi. It is a ritual whereby the pottery is broken, and the cracks and ruptures are cemented with powdered gold. The healed and repaired piece is then more beautiful and precious than before it was broken. I love that idea, because it makes it not only safe but beneficial, to make the inevitable mistakes and missteps that are endemic to being human. Having the humility and heart to truly apologize, advances not only the recipient, but even more the forgiver. All of us are better and the world is safer for it! Frank Anderson beautifully also makes this point.

And the worried parents who come to me, fearful about what kinds of unspeakable damage they have done to their own kids, I am quick to remind them that the attachment research tells us that the best of the best accurately attuned parents, the gold standard of secure attachment, get it “right” 30% of the time. 30% percent, which is less than a third!! The rest of the time is an endless dance of rupture and repair! We must indeed make of it a rhythmic and graceful dance!

On the order of repair, which I think of as “updating my files,” meaning becoming humbly more realistic and learning from experience, I had the opportunity to meet – not with idolatry or hero-worship, not with self-effacement, but with dignity and spine – and thank some of the icons, luminaries in our field, for the immense contribution they have made to all of us and to me! John Gottman, Daniel Siegel, Terry Real, Sue Carter, and of course Janina and Bessel… people who have been big in my life for decades, real people who are getting older, much like me. I could with humility and voice say thank you!

And I also had the opportunity to share and interact with the up and coming, the younger and growing generation. Like the amazing staff at Khiron House in Oxfordshire whom I had the privilege to meet and spend time with. They have the courage, the tenacity and the patience to work with the most complex and challenging of trauma and neglect clients. Many, as I said, could be my grandkids, and who like I did, need reassurance and confidence that it is a day at a time. I never dreamed I would be up here, but most importantly, I could never have done it alone, and that is for sure! Thank you all!

This week’s song:

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.

LOL

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.

The Bermuda Triangle Revisited

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.

Three R’s

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: