One of the charming differences between my husband and me, (and admittedly not all of them are charming!) is that he is happy to pack and schlep a massive 575-page volume as vacation summer reading, while I prefer to travel feather-light. I am happiest to fill my suitcase with almost nothing. One of the few, if not only occasions when I truly don’t mind, even enjoy (!) washing clothes is at the guest laundromat in our Kona hotel. In Hawaii, like San Francisco, you can wear really anything, and (even almost nothing in these climes!) So, where he packed a comprehensive, in-depth, (weighty in more ways than one!) history of the Hopi people of the American Southwest, I selected a petite volume from the groaning pile, which happened to be one I was eager to read anyway: the brand new Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, by Salman Rushdie (Random House, 2024.) Light but not lite!
I have always liked Salman Rushdie, I know a lot of people don’t. I have not read many of his numerous books, although one truly memorable one, about the same size as my husband’s Hopi book, is his Joseph Anton, (Random House, 2012) which is a stunning work of autobiographical fiction. (still, I would not tote that one on a trip!) It chronicles his years of “fatwa:” a “moral,” authoritarian decree, issued by Ayatollah Khomeni of Iran in 1989, which declared his novel Satanic Verses, to be blasphemous. The fatwa called for the execution of Rushdie, which resulted in some 20 years of exile and traumatic fleeing and hiding. It is no wonder that his son, then only 10 years old, even now still has a ferocious flying phobia, and had to travel by ocean liner from London to New York to be with his father following the recent attack. Who knows what other trauma and neglect symptoms linger, especially after this? Those fatwa decades were nightmarish, and a triumph of not only trauma survival, but also passion for justice, freedom of speech, and art. The story is brilliantly told in the weighty novel, I recommend it. I guess I had not read anything else of his in twenty years until this recent memoir.
Since Rushdie’s heroic wife, Eliza, is a key figure in his story, I was curious about her. It is decidedly a love story, and a testament to the ultimate healing power of not only dogged determination but the unshakable anchoring provided by attachment and community, at both an intimate and mass levels. Admittedly one beef I had had with Rushdie, or certainly a curiosity, was that the short, squatty, rather odd-looking Rushdie always seemingly promenaded tall skinny, elegantly drop dead-model-gorgeous, young white partners or wives on his arm. One might expect and forgive that of Mick Jagger, but this political and brilliantly gutsy, literate intellectual? Of course, I had checked out all the women, via Google images. (So who is shallow?) True to form I had a look at Eliza, who it appears has broken the mold, and absolved him of whatever prejudice I had harbored against him (especially after reading this book!) She is also gorgeous but in a very different way. Not tall, not thin, an African-American, published poet and author; filmmaker and photographer, all in her own right. She turned out also to be an angel, as far as I am concerned, and the Robin to his Batman in the story.
Knife is a brilliant story not only of trauma, and neglect, but the power of love and support. It is also an accounting of near death, apparently without significant memory loss. For 27 seconds, Rushdie was face to face with his knife wielding would-be killer, who almost “succeeded” in his vicious intent. It is a powerful documenting of trauma, and intergenerational transmission, very much from the inside. Surviving was most certainly nothing less than miraculous, nor was the way, Eliza stayed by his side like glue, through every grueling day and night of his two months of hospital and rehab, draconian procedures and surgeries, and unspeakable pain throughout his multiply pierced and slashed body. She witnessed and even partially filmed the protracted nightmare.
It is a worthy read for anyone, but especially those of us, like me, who are passionate about trauma, neglect, intergenerational transmission, social justice, art, and of course determined and untiring persistence and love. Do be advised, however; a slender volume it is graphic and hideously explicit- certain to be triggering for some. Still, it is indeed an inspiring story of attachment and love. The dedication in Eliza’s first-after-this-ordeal, new book release (quoted in Rushdie 2024, p. 178) reads:
Salman, let our love show this impossible world that nothing is impossible. I love you with every heart and story that has ever lived in me and every story that is to come. Salman— my joy, my home, my joy, my dream, and my miracle—Always.
We purposely selected last week’s “summer re-run” to set the stage for this week’s “update.” If you missed it, please do, to get the back story. A year after our serendipitous, accidental heroism on the sacred mountain, Hualālai, our friend and trusted Native guide, Kimo took us back up the mountain, where he in deep gratitude and we with equal gratitude and honor, planted a Koa seedling on the mountain.
Koa as you probably know, is the gorgeous marbled hard wood we are most familiar with as expensive salad bowls and furniture, art and even I recently learned, ukuleles. A sacred tree, the Koa is illegal to cut down. Only the fallen trees can be harvested, only with special permits; then sold to artisans and such. The Koa, like everything else Native, suffered terribly from colonialism, as did Kimo’s large family, although he remains open hearted. Kimo’s family, once the keepers and inhabitants of the mountain – “lost it” due first to exorbitant land taxation, then to greedy land-grabbing developers. Kimo has made it his mission to reforest the mountain. Our little seedling was our modest opportunity/privilege to participate.
For a variety of reasons and crossed wires, we missed out on going to see how our little tree was getting on, on our last visit. So, it had been nearly two years since we’d ventured up the mountain, our little guy must be entering tree adolescence by now. It took even Kimo, who intimately knows the mountain, a while to find its spot. When we did, I was crestfallen to see it was but a twig, with a couple of pathetic attempts at leaves sprouting from skeletal joints. Oh dear! The poor little thing rather reminded me of Rushdie following his attack. The ravaging of our little tree was hardly as cruel intentioned, if perhaps nearly as brutal. “Sheep!” Said Kimo. They eat everything right down to the barest bones, only goats being more rapacious. Apparently, the colonialists in their zeal brought too many. Goats became so overpopulated that there was a need to mass exterminate. As a cheese maker, I love sheep and goats, as well as trees, I was horrified, while also knowing that the culprits were of course not the critters themselves!
I was saddened, but Kimo said not to worry. Our tree will be back. Because the root system is strong and it will like him, like Rushdie, like many of us most likely not only survive but prevail. We all took pictures of our little weed and promised to be back in December. More indomitables.
Kimo said it takes a good eight years for the mighty Koa to get stable and reliably established. Wow! I thought cheese making takes patience, interminably waiting 4 to 24 months! This is more like trauma and neglect healing. Reforestation too is the work of years and decades, of a lifetime.
I don’t listen to much news here in Hawaii, but this morning I tuned the computer to stream my favorite public radio station, probably more than anything force of habit. The first and only thing I heard was that Dr. Ruth Westheimer died this morning at the age of 96. “Dr. Ruth” as everyone referred to her, -I don’t think I even knew her last name for years-, was a tiny, (4 feet 7 inches; 1.39 m tall) proper looking, German lady, and I always remember her as being an “old” lady, although that certainly changes as we move along that path ourselves. Although I have always been somewhat reactive to Germanic accents, from a young age I remember we all affectionately giggled at her heavily accented, famous words, “You hef to tell your partner vot you vant!” Dr. Ruth was a pioneering, early sex therapist.
Come to find out, we had more than a name in common she and I. Both of us had a Nazi Holocaust background, although hers was much more terrible. At the age of 10, her parents sent her, much like my Uncle Hans, to safety in a Swiss orphanage, while themselves staying behind to care for her elderly grandmother who was too frail to leave. Both parents were killed in at Dachau. Somehow young Ruth, alone, kept herself going and ended up emigrating to what was then British-controlled Palestine. In spite of her diminutive size, she joined the army and trained as a sniper, although she never engaged in combat. On her 20th birthday Ruth was seriously wounded in a mortar attack where she almost lost both of her tiny feet. She slowly recovered, and through working odd jobs, completed degrees in psychology and sociology at the French Sorbonne, and later earned her PhD, at the age of 42, at Columbia University in New York.
In 1980 she became “Dr. Ruth” via her pioneering syndicated sex therapy radio talk show, “Sexually Speaking,” which rapidly became wildly popular. I learned all this history only today, after being punched in the gut, by the grief. I have always admired Dr. Ruth, without even knowing the attachment as well as incident trauma story behind what had always seemed to be this gutsy character. 96 years, a grand survivor, teacher, and harbinger of pleasure. May she rest well.
Many who know me, have heard my little diatribe about how nobody talks about sex, even in our field it is all too rare. Is it prudishness, shame, ignorance, or moral tabu? I don’t know. It has been part of my mission for 20 years, to cross-pollinate the sexuality and trauma fields, beyond our of course necessary attention to sexual trauma. I will spare you my little tirade just now, I have way too much to say! For now, let me say, Thank you Dr. Ruth!
Ever since becoming a certified sex therapist in 2000, I always wanted (among multiple other reasons!) to get my PhD, so I too could be “Dr. Ruth.” She got her doctorate at age 42, I am 69…with all these stories of indomitability, I guess now I had better really do it!
The blog is a little long today. Perhaps it is my way of saying, hang in there with the healing journey, don’t give up. Let’s all remember Dr. Ruth’s immortal words! … And enjoy!
Today’s song:
I do love words. I asked my husband, does everyone read books with a massive dictionary at their elbow like I do? I am fairly literate, but I don’t want an interesting new one to get by me. He usually knows them all, so he doesn’t need to, but he knows far less than I do about what “everyone” does. So we both don’t know that. I rarely remember the ones I look up, at least the first time through. I find out what they mean to make sense out of the passage I just read, and then they may vanish instantly as if in a computer crash. Sometimes I am even dismayed to find I have to look up the same word twice in one chapter, but I console myself that perhaps the repetition will help me remember it this time. I rarely use these new-to-me words when I write, partly because I don’t want to pretend to be more erudite than I am, but mostly because I don’t want you to have to read my stuff with a dictionary at your elbow if that is something that you do. And most often I don’t like them that much. But sometimes I encounter a winner, and will probably write that one down.
Being a wordsmith, however, I love to write and I enjoy working and playing with words. I especially like double entendres, or creating funny or new-to-me meanings out of known or laden existing combinations like “make America grate again, always a melting pot…” being my cheese-making handle. But I rarely make up words. That is a higher order of creativity than I can claim.
About a week ago I hit a jackpot of learning two really excellent, related and even useful-to-my-purposes new words in one weekend, and both were home grown, meaning uniquely made up by the speakers. The first was in a conversation with my friend and colleague, Lars. Lars is the rockstar who runs the education program for my neurofeedback community and is probably uniquely responsible for my not going rock stir crazy from the professional isolation at the start of the Pandemic. Lars rapidly started producing webinars and recruiting the best of our brains to teach and keep me company in those wee insomniac hours where there was only BBC news to talk to me. The news was particularly, and frighteningly bleak then: thousands dying every day and “new” wars starting as well. Some of our webinars were even fun and funny, but all were enlightening, enriching and comforting. I will be ever grateful as I recall those rough days. Thanks Lars!
This was a purely social zoom with Lars. We live in sunny states on opposite coasts of this big country, I haven’t seen him in person in some years. When I sked him about his adorable little daughter, he lit up and began telling me about how she is learning to swim. He sent me the sweetest photos of his gorgeous little fish. He described how with all of his busy work life, he does not get to spend nearly as much time with her as he would like, but every Saturday is their special day together. They call it “Dadderday!” I said, “Wow Lars, what a great word!” For an attachment hound like me, I immediately asked him, “Can I use it?” “Of course!” he quickly and delightedly replied, his delight being the sheer delight he, and I am quite certain she as well, feel about those precious days.
“Dadderday!” I remember Saturdays when I was her age, and really for most of my childhood. Our dad, being a cantor, performed services every Saturday morning. He was nervous in the morning and rushing to get out of the house. Often services were followed by a bar mitzva luncheon or some sort of congregant special occasion. Then he usually went by the local hospital to fulfill the mitzva of “visiting the sick.” By late afternoon he got home, tired, and hit the bed, his firm credo being that “if you don’t have a good nap on Shabbat, the day of rest; you will be tired all week.” So we had to be quiet if we were at home. He slept all afternoon and often in the evening my parents went out to some other social or professional grown-up event. So much for “Dadderday…” I was duly moved by Lars’ special connection to his little girl, and his palpable love and authentic joy. That little girl is truly blessed.
For some three decades, I have been an eager follower of the work of Sue Carter, long before the word “follower” had the meaning it has now in social media. (Interestingly in cheesemaking, the “follower” is the cover of the cheese making mold, that holds the press in place. Oy vey, don’t get me going on this word thing!) Sue is sometimes affectionately referred to as the “Oxytocin Queen.” As a biologist she has spent these decades seriously studying teaching and writing about love, sex, and attachment across the lifespan and across the animal kingdom. These are all favorite subjects of mine, as by now you know. She also happens to be married to Steven Porges of the Poly Vagal theory, of which I am sure you also know. I have always been annoyed by the fact that many people referred to Sue simply as “Steven Porges’ wife as if she were not a luminary in her own right. That continually irked me.
Growing up as the “cantor’s daughter,” our dad would routinely ask when I might have met a new-to-me person, “Do they know who you ARE?” Meaning did they know I was his daughter. As far as he was concerned (and I certainly bought and believed it,) there was no me. I was either identified as a satellite of him, or I was nothing, I did not exist. Poof, like smoke, which was how I felt anyway. So it has always bugged me when anyone is known only as “so and so luminary’s wife.” My husband retired some years ago from a long career in tech. I never once in three decades had to masquerade as a “corporate wife,” never once attended a corporate event that would require that. Although to be honest, being a child of neglect, he rarely went to work social events himself.
Interesting to me is how many attachment researchers and neuroscientist teams are spouses working together, most notably Mary Main and her husband Erik Hesse, although in their case the more famous one, certainly to me, was her. Well I had the privilege of a private interview with Sue, that momentous weekend rich in words. I had prepared a bit watching a recorded recent talk she had given at a big international conference, so I would have more articulate questions for her. I was struck by how proudly and collaboratively she refers to her “wonderful husband Steve” of 53 years. Describing their respective work she noted “we are really talking about the same thing, [meaning the attachment system] he from a nervous system standpoint, I from a hormonal one.” Interestingly she described the two systems working very much in tandem. “The nervous system is faster, and the chemical system is more enduring.” Hmm. That gave me a lot to think about. In conjunction with that notion, she quotes an African proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.” A tough but important lesson for the solitary, self-reliant child of neglect.
Here is the wonderful new word I learned from Sue: “Sociostasis.” I had written it down from the webinar I watched. What does that mean? “I made that one up,” she laughed. She explained infants, all of us really are physiologically regulated in relationship. There is no physiological homeostasis, no bodily balance, in isolation. “sociostasis” is the return to a stable baseline. It is in a relationship that we can do that. What a splendidly streamlined way to explain regulation which I tend to be so clumsy and wordy in trying to teach. “Sociostasis.” It is a grand word. Thanks, Sue! Those are two I won’t forget. Not in any of my hefty print dictionaries- yet, but already in use.
I am writing this in glorious Hawaii. It happens to be Saturday, for some it’s “Dadderday.” I wonder what Lars and his little fish are doing today. Hope it is a good one! Keep cool everyone! Aloha!
Today’s song:
It is always my intention to be reliable and consistent, so please receive my sincerest apology and regret for being late with this week’s blog.
I think we should all have a course in psychology school about orchids, as orchids are some excellent teachers – admittedly better perhaps than many I had in grad school and (probably “easier on the eyes”, at least while in bloom). I have always loved these grand, often exotic, gorgeous flowers, and would sometimes receive or even buy them for myself, always bursting with color and aliveness when I got them. Most of them tend to bloom extravagantly for a month or even several, bringing great joy and pleasure. I have kept them everywhere: in the office, in the house, wherever I could. When their time had passed, the spectacular flowers would gently fade, wither, and ultimately, softly drop off, but rarely without a good long run of exhibitionism first. My trusted housekeeper of several decades, who cleaned both the house and the office, blessedly was an orchid whisperer, and fastidiously cared for them for me. She even had names for each one. When each finished their show, she would whisk them away to the orchid extended care facility: her home.
When not blooming, orchid plants are not much to look at, if not downright unsightly. At the very least they are most often not particularly ornamental house plants, at least for my taste. Left to my own devices i.e. ignorance, I probably would have had little hope/patience for them and thrown them out. But my whisperer would miraculously, with whatever mysterious modality, restore them to a new aliveness and brilliance, often more beautiful than ever. Granted, sometimes a re-potting was needed, she lovingly did that too. She would return them sometime later, unrecognizable, seemingly re-born.
After over thirty years of a lovely symbiosis of work and friendship, my trusted housekeeper/whisperer retired. Her retirement was a blow. Although certainly well-earned and timely, nonetheless I was heartbroken. Like many a survivor of neglect for whom loss/abandonment is the primal wound and a dramatic trauma “trigger,” (I do hate that word). I wondered if I’d ever get over it. Meanwhile, I had a little cemetery of unsightly lifeless, dissociated orchid ghosts, the barren shadows of whom they had been before. Without her, I felt inclined to toss them, “what would be the point?” I could hear the echoes of the old neglect refrain “I don’t know what to do…” But another voice piped up, I could somehow faintly hear the familiar voice of Tom Petty: “Learning to fly…”
Like trauma healing, we may have had what might seem, at least in the rearview, a run of success, fun, even seeming pleasure, or not. When the trauma, whether it be incident or shock trauma; attachment/neglect trauma, or some undifferentiated combination which it usually is when it finally manifests in some un-ignorable pain, paralysis, some form of agony, we may find ourselves a shadow, or worse, of what we once were or hoped to be. Without hope, color, or life force, like the spiky stick of the barren orchid stalk… barely a skeleton remaining, and gnarly roots. Thinking of abandoned children, and lonely dissociated adults, I was suddenly inspired to do what I could to assist them in restoring themselves. So, I began to educate myself and train myself to help them, not without trusted consultation of course.
I discovered that my little upstairs bathroom, mine, but also the bathroom I share with my clients whom I now see in my home office, is an ideal healing environment. Not the steam from my showers as I would have imagined, although I am sure that doesn’t hurt, but the perfect and copious light. Western exposure, a window that blessedly looks out on a cityscape, and the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. What could better facilitate rejuvenation than that?
To my delight, they began to perk up. What had seemed long dead or at least comatose, first sprouted little spikes that would from one day to the next reach an inch or two, even more, longer, toward the window, and then it seemed suddenly, to sprout little buds, and then amazingly blooms- the spectacular blooms that I had always thought were only for other people. I couldn’t do/have that. I discovered that I could! My little bathroom became Bride of the Hilo Botanical Garden, a special place that I love so much! And a parable of healing work.
The room next door to the bathroom, with similar abundant western light, became the annex. Of course, I started accumulating plants again. And as can happen when we hit success, my reputation spread. My best friend had a little graveyard of collected struggling, near-death plants that she did not quite have the heart to toss, but almost. She asked if she could bring them.
I said, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” That is the inscription on the US Statue of Liberty. I remember hearing them again and again, as my parents both recalled it was the first thing they saw when they arrived in this country, ragged, wide-eyed, traumatized refugee/immigrants certainly both fitting the description. I retch thinking of what the welcome to what was once thought of as a “melting pot” has become. Well, my friend brought a huge drawer-like box of ragged plants. Admittedly I had not known what I was in for when I made the offer. I renamed the “annex” Assisted Living.
So, what does all this have to do with us? Well, my task with all these bedraggled foster children was to shepherd them to healing, rather like what I do all day. I remember when we were accompanied up a sacred mountain with our guide, the Native Hawaiian Kimo, who is engaged in the care, and endless re-planting of the sacred mountain Haleakalā. He told us that initially he thought that when he placed the little seedlings in the soil, they would fare better if they had plenty of personal space around each little plant. He soon discovered, that the plans standing alone, grew much more slowly and with less vigor than the ones that clustered together in social groups. Much as Judith Herman taught us in my first significant trauma book, the timeless Trauma and Recovery, (Basic Books, 1992).
The most healing element in trauma recovery is being in a community, in relationship: precisely what is most absent in the neglect experience. So, loving attention is the most curative of factors for my traumatized and most certainly neglect trauma clients. Of course. And although it is utterly necessary, but most definitely. What is also required is the reliable presence, of the fountain of sustenance and care: skill, time, consistency, and the needed supplies to thrive ultimately. And the company of the group!
Part of the joy of orchid care, is the regular visit to the plants, scouting for new growth. As with trauma healing, often the signs of progress are subtle, or imperceptible, at least to the survivor themselves. And often the wise therapist is better off not pointing it out, because it may sound so utterly off the mark to the suffering client. I have made that mistake far too often! People feel minimized, unseen, or simply annoyed. But I needn’t keep my mouth shut with the orchids. And admittedly they take for f—ing ever, to turn the corner. I know one plant that when I got it long ago, looked like a bee swarm of wild yellow blooms. They did in fact look like a cloud of spectacular and bright flying insects. For what seems like forever I have been daily watching what look to be preliminary buds getting a tiny bit fatter, a tiny bit longer, a tiny bit yellower, a bit taking their sweet time to really take flight again. So much like trauma healing.
I have followed my own best advice and found good counsel, on YouTube, the people in the plant stores, and the flower department of the grocery store. I even learned that watering them with ice cubes is the way to go, it is cooling and gradual, and it gives me time to visit with each one and see how they are coming along. Like shepherding my clients and myself So endlessly slow. But wow eventually we look and something is very different and beautiful. Each month when I see my dear friend, I pick out one of hers, that I have been fostering, and she is amazed at the change. It is my way of saying, “Hang in.”
I remember when I was a little girl and books were my best refuge. I loved the book, Stuart Little, a story about a mouse. I don’t remember the story, except that I loved it. I remember being frustrated and disappointed at the end. Partly because I did not want it to end, but partly because I never found out what happened. It ended with “…somehow Stuart knew he was going in the right direction…” In Memorium: On the day of this writing, another loss. Local treasure baseball legend, Willie Mays passed away at the age of 93. Willie was famous for being perhaps the best baseball player of all time, as well as being a genuinely good guy who loved the sport and through both exquisite athleticism and sportsmanship made it better for everyone. Although I am no sports fan and have never watched Major League Baseball or any other pro game, as you know by now, I have a fascination for the individuals who play. And Willie was another who quietly but doggedly worked to overcome the color bar in the US. After a lifetime of knocking it out of the park, it is his turn to sail off into the sky but not disappear. One last time, “Say hey Willie!” and thanks.
Today’s song:
Coming home from Boston, I crashed into a colossal writer’s block. I had been on such a high for a week. A lifelong introvert, I had been social and interactive the whole time, probably talking more to people than I have in all my 41 years of sobriety. Coming home, I was reminded that I was not fully unpacked from moving my office – a mess of undifferentiated chaos. 3/4 emptied boxes of memorabilia, chachkies, and important and unimportant “stuff” uncharacteristically strewn in the room where I dropped my returning suitcases. And I had the hubris or stupidity to attempt to hit the ground running and go straight back to full-blast work.
That first weekend back, I indulged in a day of cheesemaking, and during a 90-minute stir, I binge-watched YouTube videos of one of my writing heroes and role models, Ta-Nehisi Coates. (I have read all of his books, but his one work of fiction, The Water Dancer, Knopf, 2019 may be one of my most admired, favorite novels of all time, a must-read!). In one of the videos, Coates told the story of a time writing for the Atlantic, he kept asking his editor for extension after extension after extension. Finally, his ever-patient editor lowered the boom and said decidedly (and not gently…) “NO! You turn it in tomorrow or you are done!” Coates went home and the article flooded out of him and was complete by the morning. Said Coates, “It was just fear…”
I felt only cowering shame, sheepishly showing up to my sessions with my writing angel, embarrassed and emptyhanded, detailing my block. She, without missing a beat gently said, “In all my years and decades in this industry, I have never met a writer who did not have occasional bouts of blockage. You are exhausted!” This is why we hire high-priced experts. The trick, or the challenge is to remember that they do in fact know more than we do, or know better. No small feat for those of us who never had a wise other to turn to! She also said, “You need to take time off from the book! And maybe you even need to have a break from the blogs, go into “summer re-runs” or “greatest hits?” I cringed… And also spun a little. Reviewing…OK, the blockage is fear, natural and common, and also weighted by profound fatigue. However, reluctantly I did agree, that I would take the month of June off from the book.
And as reluctantly, I did submit: for July and August I will go to an every other week “summer re-run blog” alternating weeks with a new one. So there, now I have told you. Meanwhile another diagnostic: twice in about 6 weeks my cheese did not cohere but came out like a bucket of beans instead of a tidy wheel. I have not had cheese failures in a while… there was another humbling clue and an undeniable indicator that she was right… Hooray for having a knowledgeable, kindly authoritative guiding other, protecting us from ourselves, our unbridled inclinations, from crashing and burning. Something we should have had all along.
In one of the interviews, a member of Coates’ live audience asked him something I don’t remember about hope. Coates answered unhesitatingly that he is a journalist, and hope is not his medium, not his paradigm. Journalists deal not with feelings but with action items. The questioner persisted, “Then what?” Coates’ reply was unhesitating, we must work tirelessly to make this world what we would want it to be for our children. For myself I have always striven to do both, probably why I end up periodically in the depleted state I recently have found myself.
By now several years have passed since a client of mine lost her partner to ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). Like most of us, I knew little about it, except that it is a horrible, fatal illness where one gradually (or not so gradually) loses function until the body completely dies. It always seemed unimaginably hideous to me. I did not yet know this client during the two years plus that she lovingly cared for him from his diagnosis to the painful end. Insult to injury, he was a war veteran who was exposed to toxic chemicals while on active duty, so he was failed by government agency after government agency, including the Veterans Administration. Only recently, now years after his passing, she received the bitter news, that in the drug clinical trial they had participated in, he had received the placebo. Tragically, the placebo recipients were given nothing after the trial, not even a “thank you for your service…” (Unlike many placebo trials where after it ends, the placebo subjects receive a round of the treatment). Or they have gotten something. She told me about a new film (I Am ALS)
I am very much not a movie person. Whether it is that I am too stingy with my reading time, or it is unusual for me to find something that holds my attention for the requisite 90 minutes or more. The exception is when I have a long stir of the cheese vat, so I am rooted in one place with my mind free for sometimes 60 or 90 minutes or more. This was a time when my recipe called for 90 minutes plus stirring the vat. So, I looked up the movie, a roughly 90-minute documentary available for streaming on Amazon Prime. It was the quickest 90-minute stir I have ever done.
It was the story of a young man, in his early 40’s as the film begins. You see scenes of him dancing wildly at his wedding, out running, skiing, chasing his toddler son down the beach, vital and athletic, when he finds he has trouble opening and closing his left hand. He walks out of what they imagined was a brief checkup, with a diagnosis of ALS, and a prediction of 6 months to live. Needless to say, he and his young wife were shocked. She was about to give birth to their second child, their first being a lively two-year-old boy. The film is their story.
I have always told my husband, if I ever can’t move, I will want to go to Switzerland and go to sleep. I would not be able to bear having my body go out on me, unlike my Holocaust-surviving father who after being first a chef and then a cantor, at 50 was diagnosed with tongue cancer. The surgery cost him two-thirds of his tongue which was re-constructed with muscle from his thigh, but sans taste buds of course. And a significant reconstruction of his face as well. Always a good-looking man, he looked different. He did re-learn how to speak although his speech was never the same. Then only a few years later he was diagnosed with severe throat cancer, again major surgery and much radiation. Becoming able to sing again took a while, and of course, was never the same. He was unable to swallow anything but blended pureed food. So, for the final 40+ years of his life, he was unable to taste or swallow. Food was no longer any sort of pleasure, and ultimately the last ten years or so he resorted to a feeding tube. Perhaps his history of trauma and neglect trained him for such endurance. Could I have endured that? I can hardly imagine.
ALS is the story of loss, loss of control, function, autonomy, and any real pleasure in the body. For the character in the movie, it was the loss of much pleasure. For many of us taking pleasure in the body is a learned, often hard-earned experience, especially when there is a history of eating disorder, addiction, or some sort of sexual trauma to the body. Imagining the loss of it, is again, hard to imagine for me. Watching this movie, I had to rethink that. The people in the movie had a remarkable mix of hope and grit, positive thinking in the face of tremendous challenges, and tireless determination and generosity.
Ironically, at one point in the film, the couple and other ALS couples lamented and discussed how the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration) had “failed them” with how they regulated and failed to support ALS treatment research. A relatively unknown and under-publicized if devastating illness, it is sadly neglected and underfunded, as are it’s too often quietly lonely sufferers. It was particularly ironic to me because I happened to watch it on the very day that that same FDA had voted down the clinical use of MDMA for MDMA Assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. And the FDA was not the only government agency that failed and neglected the ALS folks. Not mentioned in the movie, was the Veterans Administration, and the recognized link between ALS and some toxic war chemicals such as my client’s partner was exposed to. And the agency of State Disability Insurance incomprehensibly has a 5-month wait period before they start issuing disability checks to ALS patients. As in the case of the film’s protagonist, who had a six-month life expectancy what is the sufferer to do who has no means and precious little time left?
My few complaints about the movie were that virtually everyone was white, with the exception of President Obama, a handful of East Indian doctors, and one patient with a perhaps Spanish surname. The rest were seemingly privileged white folk, who all apparently had partners and or family. Neglected or not mentioned were a vast population of people of color, less means, or no loved one to take on the formidable labor of love, of their care. They did however reference, the success of the HIV/AIDS support community (of which I can boast I was a long-time activist) in succeeding in the fight against AIDS and the development of life-extending, life-normalizing medications.
Rare for me, I highly recommend this movie, and it achieves what I long aspire to: a balance and harmony of hope and grit. Admittedly I could not stop crying, and I did successfully keep my tears from falling into the cheese vat. I did, however, for whatever reason, end up with a bucket of beans… Oh well.
Today’s song
I happened to catch an interview the other day with US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. I had heard him before but I was in the car, and there was nothing else on right then. He wrote a book not long ago about the “epidemic of loneliness” in this country, and when I heard him that first time, I proceeded to order the book (Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, 2020 Harper.) curious to know more about what he might have to say. Admittedly I did not get very far into it, finding it annoying and obvious in a superficial self-help kind of way. I tossed it aside in favor of the groaning pile of what I really do want to get to. However, this time, I did hear him say something that I thought was of value, not that it was profoundly new or different, but that it was validating of my own experience and belief. He suggested that a valuable antidote to loneliness, and a perhaps “endangered species” in the way of general practice/behavior, is the category of “acts of service.” I began to ponder that: the idea that emerging from one’s own self focus and be not only a relief but a gift or blessing that reverberates outward, that benefits all. I remember learning long ago that being pack animals, we are hard wired for interdependence, so acts of altruism and generosity are “rewarded by a dopamine surge, a shot of endogenous feel-good chemicals. As my husband and I enjoy saying to each other, “what a great arrangement!” A win-win. Acts of service are nature’s design.
As we know the nature of trauma is to fixate on the trauma. I also remember a book I read in graduate school, I only remember one thing about it besides the title, (The Body in Pain,) and that is it said, that pain categorically becomes a pre-occupation: when in pain we can’t think about anything else. No wonder the seemingly endless litany or “organ recital” as one of my clients used to call it. It is clearly hard to listen to when it is someone else. I remember my father, ever the stoic and martyr used to say, “no one wants to hear about your bad day!” Clearly, he did not want to hear about ours…
But I do remember that acts of service were a respite for me, and a source of comfort or relief in some ways. I think I was constantly trying to earn the right to existence, somehow compensate for occupying a patch of ground to stand on, on this earth, or balance out the blight or bother that I was. I also recall that in many ways, trying to do things that would help our mom, might “manage” her in some way. Either neutralize her irritability about disorder or burden that she might feel, which may change her feelings or behavior toward me. It was a hope anyway. I remember feeling that the only way she registered my leaving home to go to off college, was that she hired a housecleaner.
I also remember our dad, setting the good example for acts of service, spending many a Saturday afternoon visiting congregants in the hospital, as it is a “mitzva,” a good deed to “visit the sick.” We often felt as if we mattered less to him that they did, a not unusual way to feel for kids of clergy, activists and the like. In effect acts of service beyond a certain point, can constitute another whole category of neglect. I know the kids of many esteemed heroes and martyrs have felt slighted or sacrificed in this way. Nonetheless I do agree with Dr. Murthy, that doing for others is a good way at least sometimes, to climb out of a trauma state, and to feel better.
Getting back to the “yes!” pile: books that I look forward to and do want to read, I turned to To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma, and Transformation by Frank Anderson (2024, Bridge City.) I especially love reading books by people I “know.” I can’t say I really know Frank, I met him briefly in Boston, and I was introduced to him by a friend with a wacky sense of humor, so I can’t say I have really had a serious conversation with him. But like most of us in the trauma world, I have heard his name and seen his offerings for a long time, and have always been drawn to know more about his work. I was pleased to see his book was also a memoir, so it incorporated not only information but his own personal story, which I always love.
In a not unusual way, although perhaps less so than in the past, I viewed Frank through a particular lens: a good-looking white guy with an anglo sounding name, an MD, and Harvard Medical School among the fancy letters after his name. I figured he was “not in my league,” and there would be some sort of silver spoon in his story. The book was a good reminder that perhaps we are all in the same “league,” that trauma is a great leveler, and also has the potential to be the seed of the most profound of transformation. Besides being a humble reminder of my still around tendency to compare my insides with other people’s outsides, it was a great opportunity for me to examine my quick assumptions, probably absorbed from my dad, of always feeling not quite good enough, or not as good as… The truth is that Frank had plenty of his own obstacles, apart from a fierce history of abuse and neglect, the additional trauma of being a sexual minority, and the attachment trauma that all too often goes with that in families, plenty of his own immigrant story as Anderson is his married name and the name he grew up with was the unquestionably Italian Guastella, and that his educational laurels were hard earned from slave-like, devoted effort and relentless study and determination.
This is also a story of the power of therapy for healing and moving from despair into joy and satisfaction. In the vein of “acts of service,” Frank’s experience was much like my own in that discovering that “this stuff works, I am getting better…” made me feel as if maybe I could do this work too. It enabled me to find meaning in what had been a great vacuum. And Frank reminds us, that even the most gifted of healers return to therapy perhaps again and again in the course of a lifespan.
Perhaps the most moving part of the book for me, is the significant portion where he details his journey into and in parenthood. Because I lacked the courage to be a parent, so hell bent on not visiting the experience of my own childhood on some unwitting innocent children, I left that endeavor alone, contributing to breaking the chain of intergenerational transmission at least in part in that way. For Frank as a gay man and father, the challenges and the courage involved is multiplied. Our culture is pronouncedly prejudiced in favor of hetero-sexual parents, and significantly biased in the direction of mothers. One of my ongoing social justice concerns has to do with reproductive equality, and the formidable obstacles and expense for same sex couples to become parents, especially men.
Frank takes us through his journey, detailing the emotional, time and financial challenges involved, and the amount of love and grit required to acquire a child or children, let alone raise them. In describing his experience, he makes palpable how much love is involved at every step, especially as he painstakingly monitors his own behavior so as not to replicate his own abusive father, catching it, owning it, repairing it and working on it (including returning to therapy when he sees he needs it-) promptly when he slips. It is a heartwarming account, and reflects such profound love.
Perhaps as the book’s title suggests, what is most salient of all, is the reminder that what is most damaged by trauma is the world of relationship and attachment. Like myself he has the good fortune to find and cultivate deep and rewarding love with a partner in life, and also to bestow and transmit it to a blessed generation. It is a good read! (And it even has a play list of songs!) We are indeed all in the same league. Thank you, Frank.
Before closing I wanted to mention that Monday is Memorial Day in the US, where we remember and honor the veterans, and generations and misbegotten history of war and its many its many repercussions. I remember the grainy old black and white films of hobbling men returning from war with the label of shell shock and battle fatigue and back before we had the nomenclature let alone treatment for PTSD. Many of the veterans I worked with in the VA hospital back in the 90’s still wander around talking to their buddies, invisible to us, in Haight Ashbury near our home, and sleep in Golden Gate Park. Thank you for your service…
Today’s song:
(Apparently a fave of Frank’s)
It was 2020, the COVID 19 Pandemic hit, and like everyone else, I could not meet face to face, and therefore could not practice neurofeedback with my clients. All of us were making every imaginable adjustment to the changing times. It was also quite soon after my father died, and I was trying to write a book, so all this is to say, it was a time of great stress and transition. I was no whiz at technology so Zoom was a whole new universe to me as with so many of us. And “surprisingly,” at least it seemed so initially, all of my clients chose to continue their sessions remotely, so I had to learn. Of course, it was no surprise. All of us, and certainly all of my clients, were scrambling for how adapt to every imaginable and unimaginable sort of change. Thinking back on it now, it seems surreal, and distant, like remembering a science fiction movie viewed long ago. Occasionally I have that same feeling when I walk over faded sidewalk markings that say “six feet…”
Blessedly, we have a big enough house, so there was a room that readily adapted to an office for me. It was enough out of the way that I did not bother my husband and our then two dogs with my Zoom sessions. I set up shop at home, something I had never imagined I would do. In reality, the Pandemic was very kind to us. We stayed healthy, were able to stay pretty much “undisturbedly” employed, and had the resources to discover the vast universe of having things delivered. I missed doing errands, but really never wanted for anything, except of course freedom, and freedom from worry. And I was not in a great state of mind. I don’t remember if it was that I was feeling out of sorts physically, from being couped up, or if it was feeling a relentless pressure from deadlines. But I needed something. I remember somehow it came up in a consultation with my esteemed colleague Ruth Lanius, that there was a modality, new to me, called DBR, Deep Brain Re-orienting, that could be administered remotely.
I had never heard of DBR then, now it is somewhat ubiquitous, at least in the growing neurofeedback and trauma communities. Originated by Scottish neuroscientist/psychiatrist Frank Corrigan, it is a somatic therapy procedure targeting deeper and more primitive brain structures than what we had previously been working with. I was most familiar with the trauma responses in the over-active right amygdala trauma activations. Frank’s work went even earlier, even further outside of conscious awareness to reptilian brainstem regions, with unpronounceable names like periaqueductal grey (PAG.) These areas, located in the area at the foot of the scull, implicated in what Frank called “attachment shock,” a vivid and powerful nomenclature for attachment trauma that resonated intuitively with me, and with my work. So, I was intrigued. And I also needed something.
Perhaps due to the times, I had the good fortune of being able to do a series of sessions online with Frank himself, a privilege that I am sure would be much harder to come by today. For a number of months we had nearly weekly sessions that were at the interface of somatic and psychological. To be honest, I don’t remember them well, except on the sensory and emotional level. I remember that Frank was so utterly kind and gentle. Although he did not go as far as to sport a cardigan sweater, there was something attractively Mr. Rogers-like in his bearing and his care. I remember that the sessions were “hard,” kind of reminding me of when I was wildly anorexic and way too weak, and trying to work out with the junior high school water polo team. I lasted two weeks because during the workouts, unable to keep up, all I could think about was wanting them to be over. It was not quite that bad, but somehow that long lost memory was jarred loose. And I discovered what I had not really experienced before or allowed myself to feel, which was physical pain. Particularly my neck and back ached.
I remembered the work of Allan Schore, the first attachment researcher that ever compelled me. He talked about the essential need for the infant’s head to be supported. It is far too heavy for that scrawny little neck, certainly at the beginning. I remember him describing how that lack of early support, even in that blatantly physical expression, results in a flopping back, a disorientation, even dissociative experience for that unformed creature. I don’t know if that was my early experience, but my neck and emotions seemed to be telling such a story as I worked with Frank. It was enlightening, although admittedly not much fun, during an already difficult time.
When the pain continued mounting, and again, I was unaccustomed to consciously feeling, let alone acknowledging physical pain, Frank in his undying and merciful kindness, suggested we bring in his colleague and often collaborator, Martin Warner, an advanced practitioner of the longstanding modality of Alexander Method body work. I had some familiarity with Alexander from graduate school years ago, but had probably never experienced it. For a period of months I had the luxury of online sessions with Frank and Martin together, e rather remarkable arrangement with Frank in Glasgow, Martin in London and myself in San Francisco. Again, the memory is blurry, so I honestly can’t describe what happened, but I do remember coming away from the probably six months of work feeling inspired to study DBR when I can clear the time and band-width. Meanwhile, there had burgeoned a growing bandwagon in the neurofeedback community and admittedly I suffer from FOMO, not being able to join the important study at this time. But at least I am learning some version of regulation in not hopeless and self destructively overloading myself with yet another compelling undertaking.
That does, however, bring us to the present. In recent months, increasingly I began to notice, the pain in my neck and back, rearing up again, but much more than before, I became aware, it was harder to turn my head, harder to straighten up my back, and a seizing up in my neck seemed sometimes to even wrap around to the front. It was suggested to me, among other things, that perhaps Alexander work would help. Fortunately, I knew who to call.
In my first reunion session with Martin, as with many a potent somatic methodology, while working with the body, an awareness came to me, right out of the neck pain. My neck spoke to me and said since my father’s death at the end of 2019, I have become much more public and self-revealing about his/our story in my writing and speaking. In a way, I have “stuck my neck out” differently. My there be ambivalence, relief, guilt, the shipwreck of the Bermuda Triangle all thrashing around in y neck and back? Some part of me impelled to constrict, collapse, hide again? Curious again how the body throws out these profound questions. In my first return session. Oy vey! What would be next?
In our second session, I had the water polo feeling again. It was hard. Martin had me doing a sequence of movements in my neck and shoulders that were not necessarily strenuous, per se, and yet something about them made me unable to think about anything else but “when will this be over?” Martin asked, “Have you ever been diagnosed with scoliosis?” No, I answered. The he proceeded to describe that there was a pull backward and leaning forward at the same time. He instructed me in putting my attention toward the weight going forward. I was however, so very struck by his words, pulling forward and back at the same time, sounds insidiously like, you guessed it, the old Dilemma Without Solution, so much the heart of neglect trauma, where the source/object of comfort, longing, love; and the source/object of terror, loss, distress, are the same person. So the infant, child, even seasoned adult are in a tug of war between the simultaneous impulse to reach toward and pull back. This dilemma is at the heart of my teaching work, here it is again, at work in my own body.
The saga continues. Clients ask me, when is this work ever done? Maybe never? But that is OK. The journey is fascinating, much more so than painful. Thanks Martin!
Today’s Song:
My mind has been swimming with so many thoughts, and so much inspiration since I returned from Boston. I can’t honestly say I have really returned. I wish I had time to stop and watch all the recordings of the many invaluable presentations. Or even time to think about them. I guess this is all to say, I am sorry to be late with the blog! I have prided myself in never missing a week, and I don’t want to fall down on my commitment! I certainly want to be true to my word.
Sunday was Mother’s Day in the U.S., and neither my husband nor I have living mothers, although both of us have plenty of living memory of our mothers that made us feel gratefully off the hook on this day. Other than sticker shock at the jacked-up prices of the week’s flowers; and sticky memories of Mother’s Day brunches from my waitressing days, getting dipped in Hollandaise and splashed with Mimosas while tending to dutiful families. Oy vey, happily, for us it was simply another Sunday. Yet in the world of attachment, the mother is so profoundly important, that not addressing her/them. at least in my blog would seem a glaring oversight.
It has also been on my mind that it will soon be the fourth anniversary of the unforgettable murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. It is hard to believe that four years have passed already. Although Floyd’s death is not particularly unique in the history of this country, there is something iconic about it, and about him, at least for me. And most especially his haunting cry as he struggled for his dying breath of “Mama”, it occurred to me that perhaps a way to acknowledge both of these dates, would be to see what I could learn about this mythical Mama.
Why Intergenerational Transmission Matters
Larcenia Floyd, George’s mother was already two years deceased by the time of George’s death. Like many a martyr, she is somewhat “beatified” in the literature that I could find, and portrayed in an idealized way. But she was also the quintessential, overly burdened single mother with the additional weighty burdens of poverty, racism, and the profound social injustice endemic to the American South. She was not unique but also remarkable in raising five children alone, working at a burger stand. Active in her community, she also did what she could to help her neighbors’ kids. She supported George in his superior athletic achievement and got him to college. According to autopsy reports, Floyd had his mother’s name tattooed on his stomach.
George Floyd’s attachment story from what I can piece together, or at least hypothesize, was that he was the victim of a “neglect,” that was a function of his, his mother’s, and his family’s circumstances. It was precisely because of her superhuman effort, to be everywhere and cover everything, that her children could not have possibly gotten enough of what infants and children need. I am guessing that her self-reliance was of necessity and probably lifesaving for herself and her family, well until it wasn’t. It is no wonder that so many people come to me after learning about my work, and what sticks with them so pronouncedly is the violence of what I call the “Bermuda Triangle;” the shipwreck of crashing emotions toward the parent/s who did not or could not provide enough: grief, rage and guilt. Devoted to his mother I can imagine that somewhere inside, perhaps beneath the disguise or comfort of drugs, George Floyd must have wrestled with all three.
How much attachment trauma, how much neglect, how much “nothing”, and how much trauma of all the iterations is the product of social, political, and economic forces? How can we possibly imagine healing trauma one survivor at a time, without at least attempting to look and work upstream? How can we hope to really proliferate healing, when the world continues to be so cruel and unjust, victimizing and abandoning, even brutally murdering young and old? My entire life has been plagued by these questions; how to find balance, realistic ways to focus my energy, humility, time… It is an endless puzzle.
My mother was a “poor little rich girl,” before her family lost everything in the war. Her upper-middle-class intellectual Northern German mother was cold, distant, and anything but affectionate. I am guessing she was raised by nannies in those early years, although she did not talk about much. But she was certainly cold and distant, critical and unaffectionate, at least that is my recollection. It was that extreme of loneliness that informed my decision before I was five, “I will never be a mother.” I did not want to make anyone feel like that. And I did not think I could do better.
Our mom loved Mother’s Day. She loved breakfast in bed and began describing her hopes and wishes for gifts and for the day, well in advance. This year, my husband and I have a lovely and gentle Sunday.
Prairie Voles
Prairie voles are adorable little rodents that look like guinea pigs or hamsters. I have never known much about them, except that they are monogamous and mate for life, which is highly unique among mammals and certainly many of us! At the Boston Conference, I had the pleasure of spending a bit of time talking to someone whom I have followed and admired for years, but never gotten this close to: biologist Sue Carter, also affectionately referred to as the “Oxytocin Queen!” is also a high compliment, certainly in my world. Oxytocin is the bonding chemical, secreted in moments and interactions of attachment and connection. I have plans to have some in-depth conversations with her as her biological research sounds like precisely the evidence basis I hope to be able to put underneath my largely anecdotal work about attachment trauma and neglect. I know there is much more out there that I have yet to read and understand, but what she seems to be uncovering is fresh and striking.
Sue is a long-time student of the prairie vole, and in her most recent work, she made a powerfully interesting and important discovery: one incident or event of neglect, attachment shock, be it withdrawal, abandonment, loss, or absence of the beloved other, leaves a profound, enduring, even lifelong impact on the behavior and physiology of our furry little cousins. Said Sue, “We discovered years ago that disrupting prairie vole families by simply picking the family or offspring up one time for a few minutes on the first 1-2 days of life was followed by periods of intense care and lifelong changes in social behavior… I look forward to continued conversation with Sue, and to reading her important research as well as that of her collaborator Jessica Connelly.
Meanwhile, I look at the upcoming anniversary of George Floyd’s murder with the entire Bermuda Triangle of stormy emotions. Intense, grief and rage, and a measure of guilt and shame that my country is still capable of committing such atrocity. Rest well George and Larcenia too. You are not forgotten.
This week’s song:
I’ve just returned from the 35th Annual Boston International Trauma Conference. What is lodged in my head is the very old song by Pete Seeger and the Weavers:
Wasn’t that a Time! You are probably tired by now, of hearing me brag that I attended almost all of them. And until the Pandemic, all of them were live and in person, so my pilgrimage to Boston was a regular recurring event. I am also proud to be a veteran of the trauma field having come in virtually at ground zero. The PTSD Diagnosis arrived in 1980, and I was graduating and starting out as a therapist in 1988. So, I feel as if I grew up in this field, both as a clinician and concurrently as a healing person. I am so grateful. That conference was something of a North Star for me because every year I learned not only about the research and methodologies that were emerging in labs and consulting rooms around the world but also rubbed shoulders with people who became professional icons and mind-opening champions in my world. Every year I could not wait.
This one was very different for me, though. Historically I was a silent lurker. I felt so small and under-educated. Without fancy letters and schools after my name, I felt like a hungry sponge. I have always bristled against popular jargon like “impostor syndrome”, but admittedly it fit. I certainly felt out of my league, and that I had no right taking up space, but that was how I had always felt anyway. I floated around silently and unobtrusively like a billow of thin smoke. In the mornings I would slip in as early as the conference rooms opened, and stake out my seat, front, and center, or as close to the front as I could. Usually, the first row or two was reserved with signs or paper memos on the chairs, for speakers and other important people. So, I would reserve my seat with a notebook or jacket and silently slip out. I always wanted to be as close to the front as I could, so I would not miss a word or a breath. I knew if I did not get up at the crack, and claim my spot early, the world would crowd in and I would end up in the back.
This year I found myself for the first time, a speaker myself. There was so much to do, that I was unable to get to the meeting room early. I rushed in almost at the very minute that the first session I attended was to start, and the monitor who let me in said, “There are some reserved seats for faculty in the front.” Ambling in at the last minute, I was in the very first row, center, sitting on the reserved sign. I did not even remove it from the chair. What a strange, ethereal, and wonderful shock. I thought this must be what they meant by a “place at the table.” But I knew what I was really experiencing was the years and decades of doing my own trauma work, and how that truly transforms the organism, the self, and certainly identity. They say “self-image is the last thing to change.” But feeling that piece of paper under me that said Reserved, felt like another somatic therapeutic modality.
A few weeks ago, listening to Public Radio in the wee hours, I came in late on an interview with a local neuroscientist, so I did not catch her name. She worked at UCSF and specialized in psychedelic research. She said, with all due respect for neuroimaging research and already existing findings, she questioned whether she agreed with the assumption that psychedelics interact in particular ways with specific brain regions or if as she hypothesized, they interact more with brain chemistry. So she had the idea of testing her hypothesis on an organism that did not have the brain regions we have. She selected a distant cousin, the octopus! She recruited seven octopi and administered MDMA to her slippery subjects.
Lo and behold, the octopi responded much like humans, not only did they become more playful and social, but they reached for and touched each other. I was tickled and fascinated. Admittedly had one of the proud moments ofwhere else but San Francisco would someone study octopi and psychedelics. Imagine my surprise when I found the neuroscientist who did the research, Gul Dolen, who was a speaker at the Boston Conference! I had the honor of meeting her the night before she spoke, and I eagerly asked her, “Will you be speaking about the octopi?” She said she was not sure. Hadn’t really planned to. I said, “You must!” And happily, she did.
Her talk was more importantly about work with “critical periods” which I found fascinating. Apparently, there are developmental periods where there is a window of plasticity, where change or “manipulation” can be facilitated. For example, if a baby is born with cataracts, there is a critical period where if cataract surgery, a commonly successful surgery that resolves cataracts, is performed, the cataracts will be healed as cataract surgery most routinely does. However, if that period is missed, and the window closes, the child will likely be blind for life. Researchers are finding that MDMA can reverse critical periods, and reopen closed windows!
What excellent news! As ever, I find new avenues of hope for seemingly “lost causes,” to be profoundly inspiring and exciting.
As a sex therapist, I encounter many “closed windows” of various kinds. I had to wonder if MDMA has properties of both stimulating and activating connection and touch, and re-opening windows, I wondered about sexual function long locked- even with hopelessly thrown away keys, could open again! I have the good fortune to live in the same town as Dr. Dolen. I have requested a consultation. Hope she can tear herself away from the octopi. I would like to ask her what if anything has been done in the area of MDMA assisted sex therapy.
During the conference, while sitting in the front row, I read the news about a hero of mine: the iconic First Nation athlete Jim Thorpe. I have written about him here before. Thorpe was the super-athlete who, after miraculously winning an unheard-of streak of gold medals in the 1906 Olympic Games in Sweden, was unjustly stripped of them all. It took 50 years before, until some time after Thorpe’s death, his medals were restored. On May 3rd, while I was in Boston, the president of the US posthumously awarded Thorpe the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Recipients of the medal are “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” a press release from the White House stated.
Yay!! Isn’t it about time?!
This past week in Boston, our ancient ancestor, the under-estimated octopus, Jim Thorpe and I all got our place at the table! Wasn’t that a time indeed?!
This week’s song:
I remember back in 2013, being in a book signing line with my three copies of the then-new book Cooked, by Michael Pollan. Pollan, a local treasure, was/is one of my great heroes, the author of one of my favorite books of all time, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. If you have not read it, you must, although it is not a trauma book. In those days, you could go to a Pollan reading for free and even get a parking space, which is no small thing in my town of San Francisco, USA.
When I got to the front of the line, I was able to tell Mr. Pollan, that it is a rare occurrence, certainly it was then anyway, for me to read a book that truly changes my mind about something, that leaves me thinking about things in a whole new way. Michael Pollan could change my mind! For someone who reads as much as I always have, that was a meaningful and all too rare experience.
Some years passed, and in 2018 Pollan’s blockbuster book about psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy hit the stands. I was delighted, and even more so when I learned that it was entitled How to Change Your Mind! I had only recently first heard of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD at the Boston Trauma Conference, where it is not at all an uncommon experience for me to get my mind blown wide open by whole new-to-me paradigms. protocols and possibilities. As I excitedly anticipate this year’s conference, I find myself visited by memories of standout presentations by practitioners, researchers, writers and thinkers, of whom I most likely never would have heard, and some I have never heard from again. But amazingly my not always reliable hoary old memory has retained mind-changing ideas and even names. Some of them, I often refer to, teach and/or practice. And I still have their books that I would buy from the cherished and eagerly awaited conference bookstores. I will call up a couple of remembered highlights, as I imagine or fantasize that maybe I could leave a similarly lasting mark on a least a few people’s brains.
Many a client has come through my practice, survivors of trauma and neglect who have spotty, unreliable or simply “unbelievable” memories. Perhaps they don’t understand or know what “happened to them.” Or “it” fades in and out of being credible to them and finding its place in the autobiographical narrative. Since I heard Jessica Stern speak at the Boston Conference, probably around 2010 as that is when her remarkable book Denial (Ecco, 2010) was published, I have been able not only to recommend her book but even sometimes help them with their confusion.
Stern and her sister suffered a brutal violent sexual assault together when she was a young teenager. So, her trauma was closely witnessed, shared, later reported to authorities, and documented. Still, with all that living evidence, she was able to completely “forget” that it had occurred. Although she for “some reason” developed a fascination and ultimately made an academic research project and later career in the study of terrorism, she still did not remember the trauma for many years, and when she started to suffer from symptoms and later fragments of memory, it took years for her to believe herself. Even with that much-proven history.
Stern was racked with doubt and shame about the thoughts of it. I found her story and the well-written book to be of help to many. If even with concrete and unquestionable evidence of her traumatic experience, she could doubt herself, and doubt the veracity of her terrifying recall, my clients’ confusion about their memories did not mean they “made it up,” or it didn’t happen. I never forgot Stern’s name or talk. And her dusty book is still on my shelf.
Another Boston speaker whom I had never really heard about before nor have I since, was James Gilligan, a psychiatrist who spent his career working with maximum security prisoners. These were mass murderers, serial killers, perpetrators of the most heinous acts of violence imaginable or not. These are people I imagined never wanting to get near, let alone have compassion for or help. In fact, before hearing and then reading Gilligan’s book, I could not imagine a shred of empathy for anyone capable of what they had done, let alone being locked in with them to do the work. Gilligan found, not surprisingly that without exception these people, these patients were victims and survivors of some of the most hideous trauma themselves, I found his book and his work moving and surprising in that it even evoked some compassion and empathy for such people, in me. I could never do what he does and that is for sure. But I have deep gratitude and admiration for a man who has the heart and stomach to do the work I could never do, and he painfully reminds us, should we even need to be reminded, about how essential it is to break the insidious chains of intergenerational transmission of trauma and neglect. Thank you, Dr. Gilligan. His then-new book, when I heard him speak in Boston, is called Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic (Vintage Books, 1997), I have not read it again since I got it, but it is on the shelf and maybe I should.
Spoiler Alert: I do Reference This in My Own Boston Talk
I have no idea what conference year it was, but I remember the name and the presentation of this crusty old guy with a thick Irish brogue: Seamus Sinclair. I remember him because his work was so striking that I have made use of it readily over the years. Sinclair worked in the San Francisco County Jail with convicted domestic violence perpetrators, and it was ironic that I had to go to Boston to learn of him! He showed videos of his work with the cons in their orange monkey suits, large, strong, menacing-looking guys. I shuddered to think what they had done to their partners and families, that landed them there. Sinclair, was teaching them to learn to track the impulses in their bodies, the mounting sensations, and arousal that lead up to an episode of violence. If the men could learn to notice and feel the preliminary communications in their bodies, they could prevent the loss of control that resulted in the abuses. The videos showed the men practicing: when they felt the first indicators of that arousal in their bodies, he instructed them to place one hand on their heart and one hand on their belly, and breathe, with a long exhale. Here were these burly guys doing that in the jail, and calming themselves down.
When a parent holds an infant to comfort and soothe them, the child’s body makes contact with the parent’s body in those areas: the heart and the belly. For somatic therapists, this practice is a no-brainer, but utilizing it with that population seemed radical, and seeing the men take him seriously and settle right down, stayed with me all these years. I wonder how many spouses and children were protected by their learning this. It certainly stayed with me, and I have taught it many, many, many times. I don’t know if Sinclair is still around. He was not young then, whenever that was.
As I have said, I first learned of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy at the Trauma Conference some years ago now and was amazed by the films of veterans with seemingly intractable trauma symptoms, recovering so powerfully and quickly. Not to mention Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Neurofeedback which became staples of my work. So many years of invaluable memories, I am so excited about this 35th year, and I wonder if I can leave a memory with even one person, But I am certain the memory will be indelible for me! Perhaps I will see you there!
Today’s Song:
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