Occasionally, I read a book because it has been hanging out on the NY Times Bestseller List for so long that I feel I need to know what “everyone” is reading to keep up with the times. No, I am NOT talking about The Body Keeps the Score, which has been a fixture on the List for seemingly ever! (I was probably one of the first people to read that!) I did read 50 Shades of Gray (all three volumes!) only for that reason. Sometimes I do it also because the book was recommended by someone I am very fond of. Recently a very intelligent, young friend recommended a book that has been persistently hovering out there for quite a while, so I decided to go for it: the memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.

Never much of a TV watcher, and also of the wrong generation to be familiar with her, McCurdy’s story was all new to me. Born in 1992 and becoming a child TV star by eight, I had never even heard of the many shows she appeared in. But I found the book interesting because it is an exquisite portrayal of an often unrecognized and devastating form of neglect. 

Growing up in a Mormon household, she was the youngest of four, the only girl, the most adored child, and wildly idealized by her clearly troubled mother. McCurdy’s mother, Debra, had always dreamed of being a movie or TV star herself, and already in early childhood, Jenette was painstakingly molded and sculpted to become the child star of her mother’s own lost aspirational dreams. Right from the start, Debra dressed, coiffed, and shaped Jennette’s appearance and even play, to be Little Debra 2.0, but the deluxe version that had never materialized.

Until her earlyish adulthood, Jennette experiences her mother’s “attention” and focus as the epitome of love. They were “inseparable,” and Jennette lived to please her mother, while her mother busily doted on and prepped her to inhabit the illusion. They did everything together, including creating and sharing perversely disordered eating that would train little Jennette to aspire to anorexic weights and sizes, well before she even received that indoctrination from the larger world. It was their little shared ritual to go out to lunch and split a “chef’s salad,” with the dressing on the side, no cheese, no meat, and no egg. Debra was able to locate and ultimately enlist the connections and the professionals that would connect little Jennette with first extra, then “guest,” and then starring regular roles in ongoing TV shows. Debra was thrilled, triumphant and proud, as well as relieved by the ways that Jenette’s income took the financial pressure off the otherwise struggling family.

Meanwhile, having survived, at least into remission, a serious bout of cancer, Debra was able to utilize the “cancer card” to win sympathy and the occasional “pass,” both inside and outside the family. Debra was the super-nova. Jennette was but a satellite. This kind of neglect, where “there is no you,” is one of the most devastating and insidious. The child is told and imagines she is so “loved” that the annihilation and, in effect, “soul murder,” not to mention the extreme of intrusion, are indiscernible to the young person. It takes a while for the rage to register, the authentic, inaudible voice of “what about me?” Or who is “me” anyway?

It is only when Jennette is sidling into adulthood that she begins to feel tired and resentful of living out her mother’s dream, of being her mother’s alter-ego. By then, she is completely dysregulated, struggling with severely disordered eating, well on her way to alcoholism, and of course, has every kind of relationship and sexual confusion. It is a devastatingly brilliant portrayal of a profound, unrecognized form of neglect/attachment trauma. 

It would have been unthinkable for Jennette to imagine herself being neglected, as the attention, preoccupation, and obsession with her was unrelenting. Like many who are nominally “loved” even with less extreme of intrusion, it is challenging to identify the loss of self and the profound destruction of not being known, understood or seen.

Back when I was in college, I remember the Maoists used to say, “Women hold up half the sky.” Although I was never a Maoist, I always loved this image of women, muscled arms upstretched, supporting at least half of this wide world of ours. As we approach International Women’s Day, it continues to shock me that girls and women can still be prohibited from going to school; imprisoned and even killed over what they wear, or their reproductive decisions in 2023. In some parts of the world, perhaps more than others, the sky is falling.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I want to memorialize a quiet and powerfully important woman who equally quietly slipped away on February 3, 2023. She was only 79, and I say only because the numbers seem smaller and smaller as I approach them myself. And I say quietly because after hearing through the grapevine, that she had passed, I systematically combed the web and all my accessible resources, turning up nothing: no obituary or substantial biographical material. Finally, an article written by her husband made the rounds and landed in my inbox. The woman is, or was, Sue Othmer, the valiant matriarch of neurofeedback. 

I am moved to write about Sue, not only because neurofeedback is so powerful as a way of working with developmental trauma, neglect, and many other afflictions, but also because she epitomizes the polar opposite of the neglectful mother. Her life and career were inspired, shaped, and compelled by her fierce attention and commitment to the thriving, healthy, and safe development of her children. 

Born in Boston, Sue, then Fitzgerald, grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and later Bethesda, Maryland. A superior achiever in school, she later studied physics and then neurobiology at Cornell and then at Oxford, where she met her husband and later professional partner, Siegfried Othmer. They were married for 52 years. In 1968, their first child, Brian, was born, followed in 1973 by their daughter Karen, and then in 1975, their youngest, Kurt.

What I remember best about John F. Kennedy’s assassination is the looping image of the president’s little son, “John-John,” saluting. In 1963, I was eight, and we lived in South Bend, Indiana, where the winters were fierce and long. I was hunkered down in the basement, with the heat blasting and unending coverage of the memorial and the national tragedy on TV non-stop. That image of John-John must have replayed a million times – or maybe it is the distortion of my young memory and my profound identification with the grief-stricken child. I don’t remember much else about John Kennedy Junior through the rest of my life, but I never forgot when he was, I guess, three. What happened to him?

The Kennedys were iconized, as tragedy and martyrdom often are, and it was years before I knew some of the unsavory politics and aspects of JFK. I was surprised a few days ago when I heard a story memorializing his sister Rosemary Kennedy on the 18th anniversary of her death. I did not know there was a Kennedy sibling who had been lobotomized for being “slow.” It got me thinking about the neglect, even seeming annihilation, that often comes with political or other kinds of “greatness,” large and small.

Our dad was not a major celebrity or famous, but in his way as a religious and community leader, he was a figurehead or centerpiece of sorts. I remember when we were growing up, sometimes when we met someone new, someone he knew, or someone noteworthy perhaps, he would say, “Do they know who you are?” The emphasis on “are” meant, “Do they know you are my daughter? The cantor’s daughter?” Evidently, that was all that I was. There was no me.  

When our mom died, we each had a list of people to call and notify, and one of the people on my list was the teacher of Dad’s autobiography writing group. He had been in that group for perhaps five years, writing and sharing his memoir. Everyone loved him. Apparently, the group format was that participants would read aloud and comment on each other’s work, so they knew each other quite well after that long. When I identified myself to the teacher, she said, “Oh! I didn’t know he had a daughter.” Rather shocked, but not really, I said, “Yes. He has three.” As ever, my existence was an ongoing question. In this case, it was all three of us, I guess. 

I remember early on feeling I had to justify my existence somehow, earn my right to occupy a patch of ground to stand on, on this earth. Much of the time, I felt like a puff of smoke or shadow that was perhaps punctuation in his screenplay. Or a prop or extra in his movie. Perhaps that is why I excised the word “deserve” from my personal lexicon, and to this day, I bristle when I hear it. There really is no such thing in this world as “deserving,” or perhaps more accurately, getting what one “deserves” – so I believed.

In the mind of the neglected child, existence is a mystery, or it was to me. Worthiness, merit, privilege, specialness, responsibility, “luck,” – how do they all fit together? How is it determined who gets what? And why me? Or why not me? And what on earth to do about it? I remember early in my exploration and study of neglect, I could spot a child of neglect quickly by the signature shrug, deep as the ocean, of “I don’t know what to do!” Or, “There is nothing I can do!”

The child of neglect, often virtually from the point of conception, floats in a sea of solitude. Like a fish, the water may not even register, as it can seem “natural” or the norm, the absence of attachment being all that is known. Attachment, however, is not only a birthright – it is nature’s design. To be connected is a survival need, and in effect, nurture is nature. To be left alone and adrift is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned. 

As the child grows older, solitude may become the default, seemingly “preferred” state, most likely not consciously. The less familiar state of being in company or connected with anyone may feel like a strain at the very least, if not foreign, impossible, even terrifying. More than a few neglect survivors I have known found the isolation of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic barely noticeable or even a welcome “permission” to simply lay low. Often, I have heard their partners complain bitterly of feeling perennially rejected. 

When I first started my anecdotal study and data collection about neglect and began to formulate the outlines of what I came to think of as the “Neglect Profile,” I noticed what I perceived as a seismic shrug, often accompanied by the words “I don’t know what to do!” or “There is nothing I can do!” Going back probably to the beginning of time in their relationship world, they felt that they had no impact at all, so the experience of powerlessness seems to rumble and quake from deep in their core. Often, these people are extraordinarily accomplished and proactive in other ways, be they professional, creative, athletic, or some other significant pursuit. 

The domain of relationships confronts the child of neglect with their core paradox: the central conundrum that plagues them, whether or not they are aware of it. It is what local treasure, Berkeley attachment researcher Mary Main, calls the dilemma without solution. If they allow themselves to feel their natural longing for connection, they are faced with a story and the ongoing threat of agony and, at the very least, vulnerability. What is to be done? Most likely, the only viable adaptation is to freeze or avoid. Often this also is the complaint of their partners: numbing, avoidance, even paralysis.

From seemingly out of nowhere, into my mind popped the theme music from Captain Kangaroo. I have no idea why; I had not thought of it in years – certainly not as long as I can remember. I always have a song in my head, but usually I am aware of the stimulus. I never even really liked the Captain. With the remembered whistling tune came a rather painful memory I don’t recall having before, when my sister was a baby, being parked in front of the Captain while my mother was with my sister. I felt lonely and left out, but also the spectrum of typical neglect feelings: rejected, unimportant, less loved/lovable, hurt, mad, and jealous– and most certainly unaware of all those feelings. To be sure, I had no language for any of it, but it all swirled in my little body and wafted faintly back with the snippet of musical recall.

I was two and a half when our little sister was born. I have always, and continue to, adore her. And admittedly, I was jealous. She was the pretty one, with great big beautiful eyes. People stopped on the street and remarked about those gorgeous eyes. Our mom was plain and non-descript-looking, but the new baby looked like our dad, who was proud and rather vain about being decidedly handsome. We recently found an ancient, dog-eared black and white of him flexing his muscles on the beach when he was in his twenties. Dad called our new sister his ”Little Monk” or “Little Monkey Baby.” Of all of us, she did not have a biblical name, so it seemed the wheels were greased from the start for her to be more “mainstream” or “American,” which I always rather envied. But long story short, her arrival meant greater scarcity of the already meager emotional resources in that house. So whatever neglect I was feeling was heightened and multiplied. Thankfully it never turned into resentment of her.

Our oldest sister was always more popular than I, or so I thought. I remember kids often saying to me in junior high, “Oh! You’re Becki’s sister!” And I bitterly thought but did not say, “NO! I’M RUTH!” But by then, I already doubted if, in fact, there was a distinct me, if I did exist, let alone had a right to. Existence is often a question that accompanies neglect. If I existed, would I not exist in the mind of the other? Oy vey, a child cannot think such complex thoughts. I just knew unquestionably that I did not matter and needed to find a way to compensate for it. (I have often wondered, how does Venus Williams do it? How does one continue to live and perform with such grace and dignity, even with immense talent in her own right, in the shadow of such a legendary sister? Kudos to Venus!)

Often neglect is a function of simply too many kids. How on earth could parents, especially single, traumatized, impoverished, enslaved by impossibly long and depleting work hours, or otherwise disabled parents possibly attend to more than a couple of children, especially in light of a western atomistic, individualistic, lacking a “village” culture of parenting? Neglect is yet another expression of all of these. And, of course, this makes it more difficult for the child of neglect to name their experience as traumatic, viewing the parent as the afflicted one, and trying to compensate for that. 

Many a neglect client of mine has been the younger or youngest of “too many” children when often there was not enough to go around to begin with, and jealousy is often the shameful and/or painful byproduct. In fact, whenever I encounter, particularly in couples, an extreme of jealousy, the first place I will want to look is at the history related to siblings. We often find the answer there. It may even be a case of a sibling with disabilities or illness that requires a disproportional amount of parental emotional energy or attention, making it even more challenging to feel worthy or to own the embarrassment of resentment.

Whenever a client laments a jealous partner or their own jealousy in general in the world, the place to look first is at the sibling story. Some profound neglect arises from the fact of simply too many kids. There was never enough to go around and with each additional birth, even less.

I envied not only my sisters but others too. I was always perhaps too aware of who got what and how much. I perennially seemed to come up short, hungry, explaining it as proof that I was not enough, and of course, the infantile lament, “It is NOT FAIR!”. I worried and envied about money for years, and when I finally became solvent enough to pay taxes without worrying about floating checks and holding my breath that they would clear before they bounced, I probably became one of the few people I know who actually took pleasure in paying my taxes – which I still do!