Certain words I have torn out of my personal lexicon and just tossed. One of those is “stuck.” It is not allowed in my office either. True, sometimes progress is so slow as to be frustratingly imperceptible, but I don’t believe it has stopped and is certainly not cause for giving up.
I was once riding my bike up a hill so steep that I just went splat and fell right on my side. It was not that I had stopped moving completely; I was just not quite a match for that grade yet. I picked myself up, dusted myself off sheepishly, and with embarrassment walked that final stretch. I needed to get a little (maybe a lot?) stronger to tackle that hill again.
Sometimes clients will lament feeling or being stuck, and I know there is nothing I can say in those moments. If I try to disagree and point out the progress that is still slowly being made, they just feel frustrated and not understood or not heard. I have no choice but to just be quiet and empathic and hold the faith. I do remember how miserable and hopeless those moments can feel. And yes, they are moments.
“True, sometimes progress is so slow as to be frustratingly imperceptible, but I don’t believe it has stopped and is certainly not cause for giving up.”
The road to healing can be long and steep, and often interrupted by surprises. I recently heard a radio story about a prison “lifer” who was released on parole after completing twenty-three years of his life sentence. He’d had a tragically traumatic childhood as a ghetto boy: his parents having divorced, he lived with his father, who committed suicide when he was 8. He returned to live with his mother then, who was “more or less homeless.” At age 16, he and some friends had robbed a store, and one of his friends had shot and killed the store clerk. Tried as an adult, our young man had landed a life prison sentence. All of this detail is to illustrate how completely and utterly alone – uncared-for – he had almost always been. And his sentence was in effect, forever… His story of course is sadly not an unusual one when poverty is involved.
Trauma healing often does feel like a life sentence, and like one we will never be free. For some reason, our young man chose to spend the time behind bars working hard to transform himself.
He studied, educated himself, earned a degree, stayed out of trouble, and somehow succeeded, to his own disbelief, in winning a release date.
At 42, he had never worked an honest job. Coming out of prison, he was completely “dazed” and alien, rather like Rip van Winkle. At any moment he expected to be yanked back and locked up again. And as he described it, one is immediately about $25,000 “in the red.” You need a place to live, a car, clothes, basically everything. Most of all, you need a job, which is no small feat, because application forms can legally inquire if one has been convicted of a crime, and no one really wants to hire an “ex-con.”
Our man pounded the pavement, applied “everywhere” including all the current gig type jobs, but kept meeting with the same slamming doors until he happened to wander into a small Kosher bakery in the outer avenues of San Francisco, owned and operated by a young Israeli man named Isaac Frena. Frena, whose Eastern European family also had a story before getting to America, decided to try him out.
Our young man turned out to be the hardest working, most competent baker ever. He loved learning all the Kosher laws, even learning Hebrew. Why did Frena decide to do this? “Kosher is not just about food;” he said. Kosher is a way of life. The first fundamental rule of Judaism is that everyone deserves a second chance.” I for one, had never quite thought about “Kashrut” that way. Our young man gave his all to that chance. “It is the hardest work you could hope to find – high pressure, timing, accuracy. Bread is like… it’s a living organism. I compare it to a baby. It’s growing. if you don’t intervene into that child’s life at the right time, it’s going to grow up to be a monster.”
He began to tell others, and Frena gave others that chance. And before too long there were over twenty-five former “lifers” of all ages and races, working harmoniously together in the Kosher bakery. Of course, it was not smooth always, but here is the most important part: “Frena genuinely cares about people… They gave me love and a sense of security and they were giving love and a sense of security to all the dudes that were around me. That kind of kept snowballing.” Love and security, feeling seen and cared about are the most important ingredients for life: for growth, and for healing. That is why neglect is so devastating.
I once worked with a couple, who seemed to be having the same dialog every week. “I feel hopeless,” said one. “It makes sense that you feel so hopeless.” Then the other would reply “and I feel hopeless too.” The other responded “it makes sense that you feel hopeless too…” And it went on like that, round and round for months. But they kept showing up. And I for one, was still hopeful. Because the main ingredient was in the room. I genuinely cared for them and they still genuinely cared for each other.
After some months, week after week like that, they broke through. They were amazed. How do we keep going? I don’t know. They proceeded to be a happy long-married couple, and I have seen them again over the years from time to time.
Sometimes, when it seems as if there is no progress, like nothing is moving at all, what is happening is that “something” is slowly growing, like yeast rising in the space where that secure attachment never was. One is growing the capacity to metabolize the steady care of a consistent other. In itself, it is regulating. It is really the most important thing in the world.
Baking is a great metaphor and I do love to bake. I started growing my sourdough starter in 2014. That is where you mix a ratio of flour to water, and find just the right conditions, where it eventually begins to bubble and in effect ferment. It becomes natural or “wild” yeast. It took me six tries before my starter “took” so to speak. I had to try different locations with different temperatures, light, draft, etc. Finally, I found a cabinet, of just the right size and temperature, free of light and breeze, where my little jarful could thrive, and it has been ever since. Of course, I have to feed it and clean it every day. I have never thought of it as being like a baby, but certainly a pet. And I continue to find baking with it regulating and calming, not only because dough is tactile and it feels good; but because something that grows does provide that additional missing experience, that even if slow, there may be subtle, even imperceptible movement. It is hard to hold hope sometimes. That is where we may most need the presence of another.
Competent therapy, a variety of regulating modalities and consistency are requisites for good trauma healing. And the solid base of authentic care does keep things moving. That is why I am rather insistent about the combination of neurofeedback with deep psychotherapy. Both are necessary but not sufficient, but the combination is the charm. Sometimes the greatest challenge is to keep showing up, keep pedaling. Meanwhile, everyone seems to love the bread!
On February 5th, 2022, Trayvon Martin would have been 27 years old. February 26th marks the 10th anniversary of his tragic and senseless murder in Sanford, Florida. It is hard to believe a whole decade has passed.
It is Black History Month in the U.S., and in a way, my awakening of an aspect of Black history certainly began with Trayvon: the massive systematic and traumatic setup for injustice, failure and all too often death faced by any dark-skinned male in this country.
I don’t mean to ignore women and girls by any means, but as any parent of children of color knows, boys and men are at particular risk. Young Trayvon was pursued and shot dead by “concerned” neighborhood watch representative George Zimmerman for the crime of “looking suspicious,” wearing a dark-colored hoodie, and looking around at the houses in the neighborhood as he walked by. He was 17.
Increasingly, I am compelled and sometimes gobsmacked by the inextricable entanglement between trauma and social justice. I have always been deeply driven and motivated by the urgency of both. Somehow, it hits me even deeper that, of course, parents who are traumatized by war, poverty, genocide, racism, drugs and sophisticated political and economic systems will fail to attend and may even re-enact their own trauma on subsequent generations. How could it be otherwise? It can sometimes seem too complex to know where to begin to devote one’s energies, like the hydra of San Francisco’s homeless problem. Too many monstrous heads! Which one to target, or target first?
Increasingly, I am compelled and sometimes gobsmacked by the inextricable entanglement between trauma and social justice. I have always been deeply driven and motivated by the urgency of both.
Since the nature of trauma, as many of us confusedly know, is remembering and forgetting, remembering and forgetting, I want to be sure to remember Trayvon, who fell in a long line of young Black men whose deaths punctuated the last decade of my life.
Next, I remember Michael Brown, gunned down in Ferguson, MO. It was 2014, just before my first visit to Saint Louis for a sex therapy teaching gig. Ferguson was just minutes away. Brown was 18.
Then, Eric Garner, whose infamous words “I can’t breathe” were on all the T-shirts some six years before George Floyd devastatingly gasped them again. Because feeling forgotten, unimportant and ignored is such a silent and insidious hallmark of neglect, I want to remember them all. And there are countless others whose names I don’t even know.
In Latin American revolutionary movements, I remember how fallen heroes were memorialized by the rallying call and response of their names followed by a chorus of “Presente!”
Trayvon Martin, Presente! Michael Brown, Presente! Eric Garner Presente! George Floyd… There are so many more.
Perhaps many of my readers are too young to remember much about Shirley Chisholm. The tiny dynamo of a woman with a huge bubble top hair-do to rival only my then Barbie doll was the first African American woman member of the United States Congress, where she represented New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1968-1973.
She was the first African American woman to seek the nomination and fight discrimination to run for the presidency in 1972. She set a dramatic precedent. She was renowned for exhibiting phenomenal “guts”, which was ever her aspiration. Setting an example for bold and defiant action, one of her many famous quotes was:
“I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people…”
A role model for women and girls of any race, she was unstoppable. In the presidential race, she fought all manner of inequalities. Blocked from televised presidential debates, she was somehow allowed only one speech. But working within the bounds that she could muster, she left epoch-making tracks. When George Wallace survived a disabling assassination attempt, Chisholm surprised many, including Wallace himself, by visiting him in the hospital. She said to him, “What happened to you should not happen to anyone,” bringing him to tears.
Chisholm left us with a writer’s treasure trove of wonderful quotes, perhaps culminating with “I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.”
That she did! Shirley Chisholm, Presente!
One of the racist demons of my generation was Alabama governor George Wallace, an icon of segregation. He was famous and infamous for saying, “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
That was his mission.
Wallace ran for president in 1972, and during his campaign, an assassination attempt left him paralyzed from the waist down, as referenced above. Now 75, being riddled with pain and sentenced to living out his days in a wheelchair must have wrought some sort of unimaginable reckoning and remorseful change of heart. Wallace made several surprising appearances at churches and civil rights gatherings. Most notably, he approached Black community leader John Lewis.
Lewis was a devoted and dogged civil rights activist and leader, chair of the pioneering Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, and later serving in the US House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020. We might all remember the massive outpouring of grief and esteem from far and wide when he died not that long ago.
Part of his remarkable legacy was his being sought after by iconic racists like former Ku Klux Klan member Elwin Wilson and the Alabama segregationist George Wallace who approached Lewis with apologies.
Apologising for heinous and destructive acts is a complex, challenging and relevant topic and is very important to me. Without repair, how do we change relationships and change the world? And in turn, how do we make whole victims and family members of the myriad of Trayvons, Michaels, Erics, Georges, and all the nameless ones, including my ancestors and probably yours – even many of ourselves? How do we begin to assess and achieve reparation, restitution and healing? These are big questions for the traumatized.
John Lewis left us with these words:
“When you can truly understand and feel, even as a person is cursing you to your face, even as he is spitting on you, or pushing a lit cigarette into your neck, or beating you with a truncheon – if you can understand and feel that your attacker is as much a victim as you are, that he is a victim of the forces that have shaped and fed his anger and fury, then you are well on your way to the nonviolent life.”
John Lewis. Presente!
Several years ago, in observance of Black History Month, local treasure Jerry Rice appeared at an event at Macy’s in Downtown San Francisco. Jerry was the renowned, by then retired #80, Wide Receiver of the SF 49er’s football team. Although I am no fan of football and have literally never watched even part of a game in my entire life, I always loved Jerry. I always identified with his fierce commitment to work harder than anyone else and make his headway by sheer force of will. I can relate to that.
He always said, albeit with excessive humility, that it was not natural talent but rather grit that got him everywhere he got. I feel that way too. But Jerry is a brilliant athlete, and I wanted to see him. So I rounded up my most loved 49er fans: my husband, brother-in-law and nephew, and we all trooped down to Macy’s as early as possible to score a good seat.
Jerry grew up poor in the deep south, the son of a bricklayer. He started helping his father and catching bricks when he was five years old – no wonder he had the biggest hands I have ever seen!
The most memorable moment in his talk was when an 8-year-old boy stood up in the Q&A shyly asked a question. He said, “I don’t play football; I play soccer, but here is my question. I am the only non-white player on my team. I feel very self-conscious and left out. I often just feel like quitting because I feel so bad. Do you have any advice for me?” Jerry did not miss a beat. Obviously, this feeling was well known to him. He said, “Just play your very best game. Work hard, and show them what an asset you are to the team. Just do that, hold up your head and give it time.”
That is exactly what Willie Mays did when he first broke into virtually lily-white MLB. His book recounts how lonely and ashamed he felt in his early games where the whole team would be staying together in a nice hotel, and he would be quartered in a poor boarding house across town that accepted “coloreds.” But he persisted at playing his best game over and over, ultimately becoming a standout player and a well-loved team member and friend to many.
Viva Jerry Jerry Rice! And Willie Mays Presente!
Let’s celebrate Black History: Remember if we can, forgive if we can and play our best game. And as Shirley Chisholm said, “If they don’t give you a place at the table, bring a folding chair!”
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is You Can Get It If You Really Want by Jimmy Cliff.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When I was a waiter in a fairly high-end place, it was the only time I ever found any use for Valentine’s Day. Usually, there was an overpriced special menu, lots of champagne, and I made a ton of money. The restaurant was mobbed. Best of all, I had a good excuse to avoid the whole thing myself. Valentine’s Day always seemed to me to be a recipe for the single and lonely to feel more than the usual shame, grief, and despair about being alone and about the morass of relationship and couple-hood.
It still seems to me to be one of those commercial nightmares perfectly designed to benefit and bring joy to few, while leaving most to feel aberrant and horrible about themselves. I remember long ago – perhaps my last attempt to “celebrate” it with a boyfriend – having a huge fight at the table after he had sat alone for an hour in a crowded restaurant while I sat alone on a crowded freeway trying to get there. Oy vey. Relationships are hard enough, especially for those with complicated attachment histories like trauma and neglect, without a day that makes us all imagine it is supposed to be all easy, breezy hearts and roses.
Valentine’s Day always seemed to me to be a recipe for the single and lonely to feel more than the usual shame, grief, and despair about being alone and about the morass of relationship and couple-hood.
Some years ago, I heard anthropologist Helen Singer speak at a conference. A specialist in sexuality, she talked about how in the human brain the grief and pain of heartbreak looks identical to a brain crashing from a large hit of cocaine. The devastation is an undeniable physiological reality, alongside the obvious emotional shattering.
We all remember the first time our hearts were broken. I believe for me it was when I was 10, the first time I had ever had a best friend. She dumped me for another girl who had a canopy bed and a princess phone. I always felt that fourth grade was my best year ever, and it was all downhill ever since. Seriously, however, for mammals designed for attachment, rejection by a beloved other constitutes a massive injury.
We saw the same with our precious dog Angel. We adopted her from a shelter in 2010, along with her sister and littermate Button. After being together in the womb, they continued to be inseparable throughout their lives. When Button got sick and precipitously died in 2020, Angel was inconsolable. She simply did not know a world without her sister, friend and companion. Months later, we still have a very hard time leaving little Angel alone, as her agonizing wailing follows us out the door and into the street.
So, imagine the little vulnerable brain of a human infant, left alone too much, rejected, abandoned, neglected. It is the same crashing brain, but perhaps worse, as this child lacks any nascent resilience that might accumulate from experience. And, of course, has no other resources. Interestingly it similarly looks like the brain of a prisoner enduring the punishing agony of solitary confinement.
Science journalist Florence Williams recently published a book called “Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey.” She examines the literal reaction of the human heart to relationship loss, citing serious cases of heart attack and other heart diseases. Similar data appeared in “The Beat of Life: A Surgeon Reveals the Secrets of the Heart.” Heartbreak and relationship loss truly are no joke.
The first love, the first attachment, is of course, the mother. We experience a kind of oneness we will never have again. It is nature’s design to have warm, nourishing, enduring containment inside the mother’s body for a good long time, and we continue to need something like that for many years after birth. It is no wonder that the attachment aspect of psychotherapy is so critical and essential. It is not sufficient, but definitely necessary, and even with the most effective therapeutic modalities, a safe attachment and the possibility to process ruptured or missing vital attachments are requirements of regulation and healing.
That first attachment also becomes the template that defines the subsequent ones, particularly the important ones. My most unrelenting heartbreak ever was from an intense and dramatic young adult relationship that spanned ten years from my early 20’s to my early 30’s. It took me four years of breaking up and getting back together to finally leave. For two years afterwards, a day did not pass without wrenching tears of loss. It was five years before I stopped thinking about that man every single day.
Some years later, after learning much more about trauma and neglect, I realized that the depth of grief about that relationship loss was much deeper than I had realized. I was really processing something profound about my mother and my own earliest attachment.
I have since learned that when a client comes to me with unremitting grief about relationship loss, the mother relationship is an important place to look, for at least part of the work, and that work is the work of years I am afraid.
Even years later, with all that dogged processing about my mother seemingly well behind me, I still found that hearing George Floyd’s calls for his mother with his final breaths, for many reasons, brought uncontrollable tears.
In 1996 Eve Ensler rocked and awakened the world with her ground-breaking Vagina Monologues, a one-woman theatrical show exploring female sexuality in its myriad aspects: consensual and non-consensual sexual experience, body image, menstruation, sex work, and much more, internationally, across the lifespan, and through historical time.
It took the world by storm and has become an invaluable tool for sex education. Ensler herself became a vital historical icon in the worlds of feminism and sexual justice.
In 1998, Ensler proposed an alternative observance of February 14th: V-Day.
In her words: “V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against all women, girls and the planet.” It continues to this day. What a brilliant idea to transform or repurpose an all too often retraumatizing holiday into a vehicle of justice, equality and health!
In conjunction with the publication of her most recent and perhaps my favorite of her books, The Apology, Ensler changed her name to V. Now I can wholeheartedly say “Happy V-Day” to all. Enjoy your February 14th however you spend it, and Thanks V!
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Instantly a tight pit seized up deep in my stomach, hearing the heavily accented 92-year-old voice on the radio. I did not realize it was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. The voice belonged to Eva Schloss, the step-sister of Anne Frank, whose famous diary has captivated the world for decades since it was discovered.
Like most everyone, I have read the book several times over the years. But for the most part, I have kept my distance from Holocaust stories, figuring I “know enough.” I remember nightmares of “army men” stomping through the house, grabbing everything, their heavy black boots booming in my ears when I was two.
In third grade at Hebrew school, they showed us grainy black and white newsreels, of piles of bones and lines of emaciated skeleton-like people pushed stumbling into smoking showers; my father bellowing, “Bread and worms are what we had to eat! You just don’t know what it’s like to go to bed hungry!”
Our mother was mostly quiet. The story I most remember about her was of her best friend Gikka from one day to the next, turning on her, rejecting her upon joining the Hitler Youth. Our mom’s heart was broken. Although the stories were not my own, they lived in my body and inhabited my dreams as if they were. Only many decades later did I learn there is a term for this: “intergenerational transmission of trauma.”
Although I always retained a profound sense of justice and injustice, and compelled by human suffering, felt a keen desire to “do something” to help Jewish history and causes, Israel and Zionism, I stayed away from all of it. When I was older, I was compelled by Fascist dictatorships terrorizing, torturing and overtaking Latin American countries and the resistance movements that sprang up to fight them. I fixated on the hideous torture stories that were different, but not really. Of course, our dad did not like that or what he knew of it. But that was the way his trauma inhabited me.
Intergenerational transmission of trauma or “vicarious” trauma is a powerful force. It can live in the body in much the same way as one’s own lived experience. Parents’ trauma can also be a wellspring of neglect because, as we all know all too well, the nature of trauma is to “fixate” on the trauma; trauma is not “remembered, it is re-lived.” All these hackneyed truisms of trauma therapy that everyone is so tired of hearing.
But of course, a parent who is thus preoccupied will not be attentive to me and may even appear to forget all about me. It certainly made it easy for me to feel forgettable and like I did not matter. And also that my relatively placid life left me no reason to “feel sorry for myself.” The refrain of neglect: But nothing happened to me! I have no business feeling so bad! is probably also its greatest challenge.
I also believe, certainly in my case, that I suffered from “survivor guilt.” I had not earned the noble badge endowed by terrible persecution and victimization. I, therefore, lacked the virtue, entitlement, and value of one who had. What an irony that if one hasn’t been the butt of sufficient devaluation and worthlessness, one is unworthy. But I definitely swallowed that and spent decades trying to “make up for it.” In later years, I wondered if my father felt somehow similarly guilty or unworthy for not dying in those showers too.
Intergenerational transmission of trauma or “vicarious” trauma is a powerful force. It can live in the body in much the same way as one’s own lived experience.
It is only recently, in the last two years that I learned about a category of trauma that was new to me: “moral injury.” This is when a person is plagued by guilt, shame, remorse and agony about horrible acts that they themselves have committed, perhaps against their own will, or having had no choice. Like emergency health workers during the COVID 19 Pandemic, who had to make fatal decisions about who got the ventilator, or soldiers who were forced to commit atrocities in the line of military duty and are haunted by the memory.
Their trauma healing work is as deep and difficult as one who has suffered overt trauma to their own body, or maybe even more so. Because like the survivor of neglect, they can imagine, “Nothing happened to me!” We are now having to find protocols and methodologies for healing for them too.
The challenges of social justice and healing the world stand seamlessly alongside or within the larger umbrella category of trauma. We cannot keep up with the already seemingly endless task of assisting survivors of trauma and neglect if we simultaneously continue producing and reproducing the conditions and the environments that spawn endless cycles of “new” trauma or continue to bequeath our own to subsequent generations.
Healing our own trauma and neglect injuries is actually a way we contribute to the world, as is participating in the work of social justice, a way that we advance the work of trauma healing. And yes, what a lot of work we have to do.
Yet as Eva Schloss reflected on her long life, she still remembers daily with grief, her lost loved ones from now nearly eight decades ago. she rejoices in her own three grown children and many grandchildren and still enjoys dancing and singing with them. Let’s work hard to liberate all the literal and figurative, individual and collective Auschwitz’s of the world.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Imagine by John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers).
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
“Are more famous people dying these days, or am I just more aware of it?” I asked my husband the other day. I had just heard the news of the passing of Vietnamese Buddhist luminary Thich Nat Hanh. Although I am not a student of his, several very close friends are, and I have always admired the way he brought social justice and activism into spirituality, which means a lot to me.
Granted, he was 95, and his international spiritual community had been preparing for it for some time, but still, it was a tremendous loss. The day before, it was rock musician Meat Loaf, again, not a favorite of mine, but he was only 74. Well, rock n roll is a rough life. “No,” my husband replied. Although COVID has taken many lives, “these deaths are part of the natural order.” Perhaps I am indeed more attuned to people’s passing.
For those with a history of neglect, loss can be complex, even abstract, or mysterious. A profound sense of sadness or emptiness that seems to make no sense. There may be no obvious cause to point to for the profound sadness, which can then readily turn to shame, or the self -recrimination of “self-pity” or “self-indulgence.” Grief for what never was, however confusing, is very real. There may be profound sorrow and loss upon the death of a profoundly disappointing, neglectful or even cruel parent. The door is closing. There is no more hope.
Several of the deaths I learned of this week were of people who overcame great trauma and loss of their own before making significant contributions in the world. They became very visible before they took their leave.
For those with a history of neglect, loss can be complex, even abstract, or mysterious. A profound sense of sadness or emptiness that seems to make no sense.
I have always loved clothes. Admittedly it is not exactly politically correct. When I had the privilege of visiting Milan, one of the world’s great fashion centers, visiting the showrooms of the fanciest designers was like a fantastic museum show. I loved it. Although I pride myself in only buying clothes when they are marked down to “almost free” and wearing them for three and four decades, I am still somewhat embarrassed. Two years ago, I heard an interview on the radio with an icon of the fashion world I had never heard of, who had just published his memoir, The Chiffon Trenches: Andre Leon Talley.
He got my attention because he was the first African American man to break into the decidedly rich white world of fashion. Of course, I had to read the book. Like Arthur Ashe and Tiger Woods, he had the talent, the courage, the determination and the guts, not to mention the ability to endure discrimination, at least at first, to make a name and become visible, not only in a high-class white male but also female-dominated industry.
Talley was born in rural North Carolina and was skinny, black, poor and gay. He always loved beauty and has been prolifically quoted for lamenting a “beauty famine”, which he always did his utmost to remedy. Born in the Southern US in 1948, being gay was not easy or safe, and although the memoir does not detail much about his childhood, he was sexually abused as an adolescent, which scarred him for life. He later self-medicated liberally with food, and although he associated closely with Yves Saint Laurent, played tennis with Louis Vuitton and was the darling of Karl Lagerfeld, he never had a lover his entire life, or at least as of the 2020 memoir. He seemed to charm everyone. Close with Diana Vreeland, editor in chief of Vogue, he loved women, he loved elegant and ornate grandeur, and never ceased to love beauty.
When he was close to 40, Talley suffered the indignity and greatest horror imaginable when one is central on the fashion stage, he gained over 100 pounds, which, even on his large frame, made him enormous, and all the more larger than life. His close associates twice sent him to high end “fat farms” to lose weight which he was unable to maintain, invariably gaining it back and more. Clearly, it was related to his unprocessed trauma. Ultimately, he settled into largesse and created for himself a signature style of brightly colored caftans in the most exquisite and exclusive of luxurious fabrics and made grand sweeping entrances wherever he went. This continued until his recent death. And although he has been criticized for not doing enough to blaze a trail for a rising generation of African American aspirants to the editorial and design cliques of a highly lucrative industry, nonetheless by his willingness to be visible, brave and stand tall, and visibly endure the mantle of his trauma, he broke a barrier. He is a hero in my book. Au Revoir Andre and thank you.
The same day I heard about Andre, I heard another story from another corner of the world. The “Madonna” of Asia, Anita Mui, had died at 40. Born in Hong Kong very poor, by the age of four, living with her single mother and little sister, Anita found herself singing in the public plaza to earn money for food. Already at that age, people loved her. Again, through hard work and gritty tenacity, she rose to become the pop sensation of the East. Although I had never heard of her, I was struck by the outpouring of public respect and grief that seemed on a par with International spiritual and political leaders.
Many of my readers may have attended the recent Trauma Research Foundation Social Justice Summit, a powerful and timely meeting of many great minds, where the hugely relevant interface between trauma and social justice, essentially world trauma, was skillfully and colorfully presented.
One speaker named Alta Starr, a social justice and somatics practitioner, told a story about an experience she had with one of her students many years ago. He was a dark-skinned African American young man, about six feet five inches tall. Starr’s class was doing a somatic practice which involved stretching all the many muscles of the back and reaching one’s full height. While doing the practice, this healthy young man collapsed and fell to the floor in a dead faint. Of course, Starr was terribly worried as well as dismayed and puzzled as to what she herself may have done. The young man came to and, although confused as well, quickly recovered.
Returning to class the following day, he had been busily processing. His whole life experience had taught him that to be visible as tall and dark, and to appear threatening, would endanger him. In order to be safe, he had to shrink and hide, be small and invisible. Stretching into his full stature had been too terrifying, which is why in the practice, he had disappeared from consciousness.
Andre and Anita had the courage and the stamina to stay present, work hard, become visible, captivate the world and make more than one tremendous contribution before taking their leave.
Well, I do prefer to end, even these short blogs, on a positive note. Because I have an affection for all things Chilean, the story caught my attention about Brownie. Brownie is a Border Collie mutt puppy who languished in a Chilean animal shelter in 2016, longing for a home. According to shelter staff, he was difficult to place because he had some sort of congenital problem with his back legs that made him disabled and therefore less attractive. A young couple found him adorable and happily took Brownie home.
Six years later, Brownie became a centerpiece of the political campaign of his owner 35-year-old Gabriel Boric, the newly elected president of the Republic of Chile. Brownie has become a social media sensation and a national hero. Standing tall, risking going from invisible to visible, from disability, poverty, trauma and neglect, to presence, adding beauty, depth and joy to a hungry world – well, these are all good reminders. Thank you to Thich Nat Hanh, to Andre, and Anita. Thank you and goodbye for now.
And you Brownie, well hopefully we’ll be seeing you for a while.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Certain words I have torn out of my personal lexicon and just tossed. One of those is “stuck.” It is not allowed in my office either. True, sometimes progress is so slow as to be frustratingly imperceptible, but I don’t believe it has stopped and is certainly not cause for giving up.
I was once riding my bike up a hill so steep that I just went splat and fell right on my side. It was not that I had stopped moving completely; I was just not quite a match for that grade yet. I picked myself up, dusted myself off sheepishly, and with embarrassment walked that final stretch. I needed to get a little (maybe a lot?) stronger to tackle that hill again.
Sometimes clients will lament feeling or being stuck, and I know there is nothing I can say in those moments. If I try to disagree and point out the progress that is still slowly being made, they just feel frustrated and not understood or not heard. I have no choice but to just be quiet and empathic and hold the faith. I do remember how miserable and hopeless those moments can feel. And yes, they are moments.
“True, sometimes progress is so slow as to be frustratingly imperceptible, but I don’t believe it has stopped and is certainly not cause for giving up.”
The road to healing can be long and steep, and often interrupted by surprises. I recently heard a radio story about a prison “lifer” who was released on parole after completing twenty-three years of his life sentence. He’d had a tragically traumatic childhood as a ghetto boy: his parents having divorced, he lived with his father, who committed suicide when he was 8. He returned to live with his mother then, who was “more or less homeless.” At age 16, he and some friends had robbed a store, and one of his friends had shot and killed the store clerk. Tried as an adult, our young man had landed a life prison sentence. All of this detail is to illustrate how completely and utterly alone – uncared-for – he had almost always been. And his sentence was in effect, forever… His story of course is sadly not an unusual one when poverty is involved.
Trauma healing often does feel like a life sentence, and like one we will never be free. For some reason, our young man chose to spend the time behind bars working hard to transform himself.
He studied, educated himself, earned a degree, stayed out of trouble, and somehow succeeded, to his own disbelief, in winning a release date.
At 42, he had never worked an honest job. Coming out of prison, he was completely “dazed” and alien, rather like Rip van Winkle. At any moment he expected to be yanked back and locked up again. And as he described it, one is immediately about $25,000 “in the red.” You need a place to live, a car, clothes, basically everything. Most of all, you need a job, which is no small feat, because application forms can legally inquire if one has been convicted of a crime, and no one really wants to hire an “ex-con.”
Our man pounded the pavement, applied “everywhere” including all the current gig type jobs, but kept meeting with the same slamming doors until he happened to wander into a small Kosher bakery in the outer avenues of San Francisco, owned and operated by a young Israeli man named Isaac Frena. Frena, whose Eastern European family also had a story before getting to America, decided to try him out.
Our young man turned out to be the hardest working, most competent baker ever. He loved learning all the Kosher laws, even learning Hebrew. Why did Frena decide to do this? “Kosher is not just about food;” he said. Kosher is a way of life. The first fundamental rule of Judaism is that everyone deserves a second chance.” I for one, had never quite thought about “Kashrut” that way. Our young man gave his all to that chance. “It is the hardest work you could hope to find – high pressure, timing, accuracy. Bread is like… it’s a living organism. I compare it to a baby. It’s growing. if you don’t intervene into that child’s life at the right time, it’s going to grow up to be a monster.”
He began to tell others, and Frena gave others that chance. And before too long there were over twenty-five former “lifers” of all ages and races, working harmoniously together in the Kosher bakery. Of course, it was not smooth always, but here is the most important part: “Frena genuinely cares about people… They gave me love and a sense of security and they were giving love and a sense of security to all the dudes that were around me. That kind of kept snowballing.” Love and security, feeling seen and cared about are the most important ingredients for life: for growth, and for healing. That is why neglect is so devastating.
I once worked with a couple, who seemed to be having the same dialog every week. “I feel hopeless,” said one. “It makes sense that you feel so hopeless.” Then the other would reply “and I feel hopeless too.” The other responded “it makes sense that you feel hopeless too…” And it went on like that, round and round for months. But they kept showing up. And I for one, was still hopeful. Because the main ingredient was in the room. I genuinely cared for them and they still genuinely cared for each other.
After some months, week after week like that, they broke through. They were amazed. How do we keep going? I don’t know. They proceeded to be a happy long-married couple, and I have seen them again over the years from time to time.
Sometimes, when it seems as if there is no progress, like nothing is moving at all, what is happening is that “something” is slowly growing, like yeast rising in the space where that secure attachment never was. One is growing the capacity to metabolize the steady care of a consistent other. In itself, it is regulating. It is really the most important thing in the world.
Baking is a great metaphor and I do love to bake. I started growing my sourdough starter in 2014. That is where you mix a ratio of flour to water, and find just the right conditions, where it eventually begins to bubble and in effect ferment. It becomes natural or “wild” yeast. It took me six tries before my starter “took” so to speak. I had to try different locations with different temperatures, light, draft, etc. Finally, I found a cabinet, of just the right size and temperature, free of light and breeze, where my little jarful could thrive, and it has been ever since. Of course, I have to feed it and clean it every day. I have never thought of it as being like a baby, but certainly a pet. And I continue to find baking with it regulating and calming, not only because dough is tactile and it feels good; but because something that grows does provide that additional missing experience, that even if slow, there may be subtle, even imperceptible movement. It is hard to hold hope sometimes. That is where we may most need the presence of another.
Competent therapy, a variety of regulating modalities and consistency are requisites for good trauma healing. And the solid base of authentic care does keep things moving. That is why I am rather insistent about the combination of neurofeedback with deep psychotherapy. Both are necessary but not sufficient, but the combination is the charm. Sometimes the greatest challenge is to keep showing up, keep pedaling. Meanwhile, everyone seems to love the bread!
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Don’t Give Up (ft. Kate Bush) by Peter Gabriel.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
I remember once, I had a garbage can-sized bin full of old papers, tax records, client files much older than the seven-year legal time requirement, junk mail, newspaper clippings, and who knew what else. The very idea of shredding and disposing of them completely overwhelmed me. I would walk into the room with the closet housing that bin, open the closet door, see it there and run, not quite shrieking from the room, flinging the door shut behind me. I just could not face it. The insurmountable pile; the task seemed truly interminable.
One day I had the flashbulb thought, “what if I just did ten minutes a day? I dragged our old shredder into the room thinking “let’s just see what ten minutes is like. So, I fired up the shredder and loaded it for ten minutes. That wasn’t so bad… enough to give me a kind of rhythm with it. The timer went off after ten, and I calmly left the room. “I can do that.” Amazing. So, each day, I set the timer for ten minutes and fulfilled my quota. It became routine, until one day, it was all gone, the pile had gone away! In AA they figured this out years ago. Thinking of a lifetime barren of drinking is too much to imagine, even for a minute. But twenty-four hours? Well, I can probably do that, so a day at a time becomes my now 39-year sobriety.
I have a vague visual memory from when I was very young, probably not much more than two. We used to go to the Catskill Mountains every summer, and our dad worked in one of those fancy resort hotels to get us out of the City in the unbearably hot and humid New York summers. Our dad worked about sixteen hours a day, waiting tables and singing in the lounge at night. We stayed in a little bungalow on the grounds. On this particular afternoon, I woke up from a nap to find myself in the darkened bungalow alone. Where was everyone – where was my mom? It was of course wordless, like a bottomless pit of dark terror. It may have been only minutes. I don’t know. For that tiny child it was eternity. Sometimes when I am sitting with a client who seems to have no story, I am visited by that image, an iconic symbol of early neglect. I imagine something unremembered, that is perhaps communicating itself in some unspoken language from the client’s brain and body to mine.
I first started thinking about neglect, now over thirty years ago. It now boggles my mind to find myself remembering things that happened thirty, forty, fifty, even sixty years ago. These are such big numbers, years that passed a day at a time, some of them interminable. Back in the beginning, all my “data” about neglect was anecdotal observation of clients. I had no science then. The brain was nowhere near my radar yet. I noticed that these clients found things like boredom and insomnia excruciating, even lethal. I remember one man in couple’s therapy with me, who when he got too bored in a session, would lob a known inflammatory remark sure to get a rise from his hapless wife, just to get energy moving in the room. Waiting in lines for things, lying sleeplessly in bed at night, were like dying. I could only imagine a child left alone too much or too long.
I remember reading the trauma story of a political prisoner in a book once. I don’t even remember what book or what country it was about. One of the tortures used to deprive the man of sleep was playing the song Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, really a quite good song, over and over again for nine days. Time was interminable. I can never hear that song without thinking of him. And trauma knows no time. In both incident trauma and developmental trauma like neglect, time stands still and does not move, which makes it that much more deadly. I have since learned that all the somatic therapies have some component of noticing “What happens next? What happens next?” The idea being to become aware of change or time moving and passing.
Again, when I was first collecting observations and compiling what I later came to call the “Neglect Profile”, I identified the “Three P’s of Neglect: Passivity, Procrastination and Paralysis.” I wrote about it in my first book. At the time, I was simply aware of the pattern, that survivors of neglect seemed to have a hard time initiating and completing purposeful action and then collapsing into despair about it. I assumed that it was due to the absence of the life-sustaining other, who first demonstrated and, in effect taught, and also rewarded such behaviors. If no one is there to teach me, how will I learn? And without feedback, how will I know I am on track? The child is adrift in a sea of lonely uncertainty. Crying, reaching, lashing out into the empty space is all futile at best, if not devastating. Ultimately collapse, passivity, freeze, become a default, even a baseline.
Both sense of time and agency are prefrontal brain functions: they are mediated by the most “highly evolved” executive neocortex areas of the brain. This area is where the initial resonance between infant and primary caregiver brains is supposed to occur in the earliest weeks and months of life. When that does not occur, or not enough, the little developing brain is under-stimulated, under-aroused. This later can coagulate into three P’s, and then all the shame, self-blame and self-hatred that accompany it. “Of course it is my fault; who else is there?” The prefrontal cortex is also the brain area that goes offline when the brain is overwhelmed by stimulus greater than what it is designed to process in its customary way. That by definition constitutes traumatic experience, such as the infant overwhelmed by drowning in a solitude of abandonment way too early.
Ironically, attention issues also have the origin of under-stimulation. Even though the brain flitting from thing to thing might feel like hyperarousal, it is faster brain firing that creates focus and ability to concentrate, and under-firing that makes for the clutter of attention deficit. Again, the early under-stimulation of the infant brain, the lack of attention received makes for the subsequent deficit. I used to think that ADD and ADHD were neglect markers, as I saw them so often in neglect survivors. We now know that these diagnostic categories are far from precise or diagnostic. They are rather a collection of observed symptoms that might have a variety of origins, like many of the other codes. What to me is compelling is that some of the most brilliant, creative people I know or know of have struggled with these issues and also developed the most ingenious workarounds to compensate for them.
Before March 20, 2020, I used to fill my Prius with gas every week. Commuting from my San Francisco home to my Oakland office every day, and whatever extraneous other driving I did each week, did not use up nearly a whole tank, but I always felt most secure with the car on full. In August of 2021, I found myself at the gas station. I barely remembered how to put gas in the car, it was the first time I had done so in seventeen months! (It hadn’t been washed either, oy vey!) My hair was ragged, my husband had a ponytail now. I had been hunkered down day after day, as we all had, in the house with my husband, then two (now sadly just one) dogs, and my on-screen clients. How did this happen? Time had somehow evaporated like the old time-lapse photography. Groundhog Day. The repetition, the sameness, made for a strange complex of endless time and split-second vanishing. Suddenly it is gone, where did it go and what do I have to show for it? Depression is like this; this intolerable slogging, getting through the day, and then looking back on an embarrassing expanse of “nothing?” Very strange.
I think early neglect had to be like this, which is why the child becomes so expert at dissociation: numbing out, “going away,” and is also traumatized by emptiness. Waiting in a long line can evoke that hideous traumatic sensory memory that is coupled with what the child often comes to associate to rejection. Of course, time and its passing or not become a sort of enemy, and altering one’s state is a welcome relief. And this blurry relationship to time or to “nothingness,” has become a window and often an indicator of early neglect – or at least something to wonder about when considering whether one might be a child of neglect.
“The repetition, the sameness, made for a strange complex of endless time and split-second vanishing. Suddenly it is gone, where did it go and what do I have to show for it? Depression is like this; this intolerable slogging, getting through the day, and then looking back on an embarrassing expanse of “nothing?” Very strange.”
Don’t ya hate it when well-meaning people (like therapists) say rather glibly or cheerily, “this too shall pass…”? But you know what? It does. It turns into history and might even become interesting. As a home cheesemaker, I continued making cheese every weekend through the Pandemic years. With all the wheels of aging cheeses dated in the caves, I would suddenly be astonished to find that wow – this cheddar is a year old already! Healing is like that too.
When I first went to therapy at the age of 23, my therapist literally seemed like a blur of colored fog in the far corner of the room. It took some years before she actually coagulated into human form, even though I went to multiple sessions per week. Early sobriety was the same way, I have no memory of sitting in meetings, except the clock on the wall, and the billowing of tobacco smoke, as in those days, people smoked openly everywhere. And now, looking back, my relationship to time and to life is like, well, night and day. There is never enough, certainly for all I want to do. And I have to keep reminding myself, “No! Sleep is not a waste of time!”
“And now, looking back, my relationship to time and to life is like, well, night and day. There is never enough, certainly for all I want to do.”
As we age, now in my advancing years, the passing of time seems to be a kind of foe, if I am not careful. I slip into animosity with nature. I hate the wrinkles, the undeniable physical pains that I never had before and always rather had contempt for, limitations of fatigue, losses that will not be returned. It is something to befriend if one is wise or in harmony with nature’s design.
Admittedly I am not there yet. And there is no getting back that time that slogged unbearable, emptily, and then was gone. But at the risk of being annoying, I can say it does pass. Hang in there!
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is All Things Must Pass by George Harrison.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When I first heard of Chef Jose I felt a surge of excitement, awe and longing. Jose Andres, born in Spain, and immigrated to the US as a young man, soon made a name for himself as a celebrity chef, opening several highly acclaimed restaurants and winning prestigious awards in the highly lucrative world of gourmet food. Certainly, in the Bay Area, food is almost at the status of a religion. In 2010, perhaps having his fill of money and adulation, he founded the World Central Kitchen, established to feed masses of people left hungry or displaced by some sort of large-scale disaster, be it a natural or political one. He sets up traveling kitchens providing free meals to large numbers who need it. Hunger itself is a form of trauma, let alone the trauma of hurricanes, wildfires, war or crazy immigration policy. My longing was to grab my husband, drop everything and go join his team. I even found he has a local team right next door to me here in Oakland. Of course, I wouldn’t do that. But the idea of helping the traumatized in that way grabbed me hard for a minute. Admittedly, one of the things that makes me happiest, is making food for people I love. I realized that only in the past few years, and probably it has not been true much longer than that.
Like many survivors of childhood trauma and neglect, I have a long and troubled history with food. Starting when I was a little girl, for whatever reason I did not like meat, and it became a power struggle between my mother and me, with my occasionally being spanked with a serving spoon. I was known early on as a “bad eater,” and I was. My parents had their own wartime history with food. I remember our dad talking about when he first came to this country and saw the bounty at Safeway, he could not believe how much food there was in the store! He simply could not stop drinking milk, because he could. My mom used to always say “Mahlzeit” before we ate. (My little sister thought it was “mouse-ite” or something rather cute!) That is German for “Enjoy the meal,” which I really never could. To this day I feel a little spark of anger in my belly when someone says “Bon Appetit” or some such, remembering the regular unpleasantness of mealtimes.
By the age of 12 I had a full-on eating disorder, being severely anorexic. At 5 feet 2, I weighed 79 pounds, and in typical neglect fashion, no one really noticed. By then I had taken over much of the cooking for the family which was a way to control what we ate, and also gave me an excuse to be jumping up and down from the table during mealtime, so what was going on with my own plate might be less obvious. It was 1967 so anorexia was not recognized, nothing like the household word it is now. When I finally collapsed and could not even walk to the bathroom, I got attended to, but mostly with anger, blame and coercion. The nightmare that went on for decades ensued.
As with many survivors of trauma and neglect, food becomes another form of the “dilemma without solution” identified in attachment theory, where the source of comfort and the source of terror are the same, be it the parent or the food – most likely both. In reality the comfort sought by the child in both forms, and in general, is regulation. The desperate attempt to calm the agonizing hyperarousal of the nervous system. Ironically there was something calming about the numbing of starvation. I do remember the mild state of euphoria and power I had when I was 20 and embarked on what I called “the Long March” which was a 14-day fast where I literally took in nothing but water. I felt somehow super or sub-human, but definitely different if not special. That is one I remember, but I am sure I felt it long before that.
I have always bristled when I heard people who struggled with their weight, envying anorexics. First because it is such a relentless and devastating tyranny. But also because my 12 year old anorexia slid amoeba-like into a new form, I am not sure when. Suddenly I became compulsively driven to eat. It was terrifying. I began a routine where I ate sparsely through the day, but after dinner and washing the dishes, when everyone in the family was in bed, or where were they? I consumed between half a gallon and a gallon of ice cream, standing up and straight out of the cartons. I guess my parents kept me supplied, I don’t remember. But I could not stop. Each night, completing my routine, completely numbed out and bloated, I stumbled off to bed. In the mornings, I would get up and secretly run twenty miles in the dark, also a compulsion. The peril of gaining weight being the whip. I stayed on that merry go round, probably until I discovered alcohol which had a similar numbing/regulating effect. So, anorexia was no free ride to thinness for me.
“As with many survivors of trauma and neglect, food becomes another form of the “dilemma without solution” identified in attachment theory, where the source of comfort and the source of terror are the same, be it the parent or the food- most likely both. In reality the comfort sought by the child in both forms, and in general, is regulation.”
I became a waitress as a way to earn money for college and graduate school. I was really good at it, discovering that if I got a lot of saliva in my mouth, and a sparkle in my eye when describing a pricey special, I could get people to order whatever I wanted them to. In that way food was an ally. In my activist days I became a cook in a community cultural center and restaurant that supported refugees and exiles from Latin American dictatorships. I cooked ten-gallon pots of soup, and learned all kinds of Latin specialties that I still love to make. And it was an opportunity to lend my preoccupation to something socially useful.
At a young age I became very interested in the interface between body and mind. I knew my terrible eating obsession was a confused tangle of both. I just had no idea what to do. The simple recipe of “eat less and exercise more” was surely not the answer. And the worst of it, was how my mind was always crowded with thoughts, worry, anticipation, terror, hope, fear and self-hatred about food and weight. It really was 24/7, and so boring, not to mention the shame and loneliness, and utter waste of time of the secret world, and of being constantly “on the run.”
“And the worst of it, was how my mind was always crowded with thoughts, worry, anticipation, terror, hope, fear and self-hatred about food and weight. It really was 24/7, and so boring…”
So what is the answer? I will start with the “ending.” I can joyfully say I have a wonderful, pleasurable, healthful and spacious relationship with food today. I only think about it when I am deciding what kind of cheese to make this weekend or appreciating something delicious I just ate. I am grateful that I can eat whatever I want and it is not a struggle to know how much is enough or too much. I remember seeing people like that with envy and despair, and thinking “that will never be me.” Kind of a “homestead girl” I make all the bread and butter and cheese in our house. I aspire to grow vegetables but I have not quite cleared the time for that.
How did this happen? As with every other aspect of trauma and neglect healing, the magic is regulation. I believe the winning elixir is a healing attachment relationship, in my case with a truly wonderful therapist, and regulating modalities of therapy also. I did “everything” but I do like neurofeedback best. I am not saying neurofeedback is a “cure for eating disorders” nor would I tout any non-evidence-based solution for anything. I know there are some neurofeedback providers who specialize in eating issues. They are an often-seen component of the constellation of trauma and neglect symptoms, so one must search out the trauma therapists that have a somatic modality to offer, (but one should do that anyway!)
The third major ingredient, I must add, is time. Because most of these conflicts go back so far, and neglect often goes back to preverbal ages, this rewiring does not happen in twenty sessions, unfortunately. My healing journey took maybe four decades? Oy vey, I don’t want to tell you it will take that long. Most of what we now know about the brain and about regulation emerged since the 1990 decade of the brain. And I know I am not the only one devoted to speeding up the process of healing.
I discovered cheesemaking at the ripe age of 63. I am 66 now. It bit me like a bug, out of nowhere. I found it to connect me to people all over the world, and across time, all of whom discovered that letting milk “rot” in effect, makes a glorious, nutritious food that enables fresh milk to last longer. I feel connected to cows, goats and sheep, and all milk producing females. And cheese is a living thing, requiring regular attention and care like a pet.
Perhaps most valuable of all, is that it has taught me to wait. Not passively. But taking the time, doing the daily practice of care, and waiting months for it to be ready, or at its best is the lesson. It is a hard sell, but like the work of healing, it is well worth the wait.
Meanwhile, I think I will go send Chef Jose another donation!
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. This is a favorite of mine, a Cuban song sung by Silvio Rodriguez.
When I complained that other kids got money for doing chores or even getting good grades, I remember our dad used to say, “I want you to be good for nothing!” He thought it was funny. I didn’t think so and soon started going out and finding babysitting jobs. In those days the going rate was 50 cents an hour. I think a lot about “nothing” when I ponder and write about neglect.
The early world of neglect is a desert: an empty, cavernous and howling loneliness where nothing seems to happen. When I was anorexic and eating nothing, I would take note of the passing of each “meal time that wasn’t, as a way of knowing that the vacuous time had elapsed. The more I think about it, the more meaning “nothing” seems to have. And as I often say, one of the greatest myths surrounding neglect is that “nothing happened to me, so I have no business feeling so bad.”
I recently heard an interview with a successful young South African textile artist named Billie Zangewa, a Black woman who grew up in Apartheid. As I began to pay attention, I heard that her medium is patchwork, making collages out of bits of silk. She was presently working on a commission, a portrait of the fashion icon Christian Dior. She was pleased to point out the irony, or the synchrony of creating a “painting out of silk, of a man famous for his work in silk.” Looking up her work, brought back a flood of memories for me, about sewing and patchwork.
I have few happy memories of my mom, my favorite one is from when I was nine, and my mother taught me to sew. I loved to sew, it became a godsend, a way of regulating myself: focusing my attention on very fine and precise movements, and creating beauty. I was of the belief that “ugly people need to compensate by making beautiful things.” So, I made a project of that, and I was making clothes for everyone before long, with my mother’s vintage 1950 Singer “Featherweight.” My other happy memory, was my 15th birthday when my mom gave me the best gift ever: my own little sewing machine, a tiny little portable thing called a “Lotus.” I still have both my mom’s Featherweight and the Lotus. Thanks Mom!
I accumulated so much leftover fabric that I too discovered patchwork. Having little money, it was a way of creating something new and beautiful without having to buy anything, in effect it felt like “making something out of nothing.” I made my parents a large patchwork bedspread with an elaborate design that I made up, which they had on their bed for many years. I now have it in my home office, and you can see it below.
I did notice since I have been a trauma therapist, that I have had many clients who work in patchwork, as if trying to organize all the fragmented parts of themselves into a coherent, even beautiful and colorful whole. I have received several as gifts over the years, and I love them. Sometimes I think my mind is like a patchwork quilt, a random smattering of different shaped and colored thoughts, stitching themselves together into designs that may be interesting to me. Being a lonely child of neglect, most of my life it was a solitary bunting. I could hardly imagine that anyone would want to see it.
It was a way of creating something new and beautiful without having to buy anything, in effect it felt like “making something out of nothing.”
I have always loved ricotta, its simple fresh and light flavor and cool, both smooth and course texture that can lend itself to both sweet and savory. I was fascinated when I learned how to make it. Most people know that the biproduct of cheesemaking is the whey. The curd or milk solids that set and become cheese, separate, and the liquid that remains is the whey. It is amazing to me that when I make an 8-gallon batch of cheese, and end up with an approximately 8 pound wheel, I still somehow wind up with a good six gallons of whey. Many people, and probably most manufacturers just toss it, although there are many things you can do with it. Certainly, body builders know this. Well one thing you can make with whey is ricotta.
I learned that slowly heating up the whey, causes a cap of residual milk solids to rise to the top of the pot, becoming gradually thicker. It is an adventure to watch it form, the pressure of the rising heat, driving the thickening mass up. Smooth and bulgy, it takes its time, rising, rising. You don’t add anything to it, it is the simple whey. Watching the energy build, to my sex therapist mind, is reminiscent of the building energy of an orgasm. It begins rolling and roiling, and the finale is when the bubbling, mass breaks through into a boil. Then you quickly turn off the heat, cover it and leave it overnight. In the morning, I uncover it and skim off a thick layer of ricotta, drain the remaining liquid through cheesecloth and there is another layer in the cloth lined colander. Nothing added, just the simple whey that many discard: a good pound or so of ricotta. Again, like something out of nothing. I now have a treasure trove of recipes of delicious things to make with ricotta: cookies, muffins, scones, as well as all the most known uses like lasagna.
Taking it even further, I sometimes use the second generation of whey, after draining the ricotta, for bread baking, or even for boiling bagels. And I am told that tomato plants and lemon trees love it. So, there is great value in what seems like “nothing.”
I learned that slowly heating up the whey, causes a cap of residual milk solids to rise to the top of the pot, becoming gradually thicker. It is an adventure to watch it form, the pressure of the rising heat, driving the thickening mass up. Smooth and bulgy, it takes its time, rising, rising. You don’t add anything to it, it is the simple whey. Watching the energy build, to my sex therapist mind, is reminiscent of the building energy of an orgasm. It begins rolling and roiling, and the finale is when the bubbling, mass breaks through into a boil.
Clients often lament about all the “wasted” time. There is no denying the loss, and there is tremendous grief involved. The loneliness and vacuousness are no joke, nor are the many years lost to addiction, suicidality, depression, and the like. During the seeming eternity, required to heal, others appear to be getting on with career and family. There is no justice in it. However, I cannot deny that everything I have ever been through serves me, the supply of ricotta seems endless. Something valuable and beautiful can emerge from “nothing.” Zangzewa added in her interview, that the caterpillar works long and hard to create the cocoon in which it sleeps. The grand transformation is when the butterfly emerges. The cocoon is then cast off, tossed away like trash. The cocoon. however, she reminds us when spun apart, provides the thread from which silk is made. My ricotta chocolate birthday cakes are the best that its recipients have ever had! And I now know not to waste time, because I have a choice.
The song I have chosen to accompany this blog is:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.