We went to adopt our two little dogs, Button and Angel, in 2009. I had recently begun writing my first book, so I warned my husband that I would not be much of a co-parent for a while. But it had been long enough since the second of our two beloved shelties had passed. Never one for being dog-less for long, he was willing to sign on as alpha, primary trainer, and “chief bottle washer.” He began eagerly poring over the rescue sites like I imagine many of the lonely do with dating sites. He finally landed on a couple of terrier mutts at a shelter in Sacramento. I remember years ago, a speaker at a conference said, “All terriers have ADD.” Being high enough strung and high enough energy myself, the quieter, and seemingly “monogamous” type shelties were the match for me. But being the primary caregiver licensed my husband to choose. So one wintry Sunday, we piled into his old VW MR2 and set out for Sac.
It was a sweet little shelter, and I remember cruising the various well-kept cages until we found the selected litter. There were about seven of them. Button was a tiny, mostly mushroom-brown puppy with a curly piglet-like tail and expectant, pleading eyes that seemed to say, “Pick me! Pick me!” She reminded me of myself. And although she later grew up to be a mischievous little rascal who would, as the Grateful Dead song said, “steal your face right off your head,” we did not know that then. Angel looked more like a terrier with a squarish jaw. She had serious, almost sad-looking, wise eyes and scruffy whiskers that reminded me of Einstein. I don’t remember the other sibs; I was pretty taken with Button. And I was also amazed at how these littermate sisters could look so vastly different.
Button and Angel continued to be inseparable throughout their/our life together. Roommates in the womb, they never had any intention of doing anything different, and indeed they lived up to the ADD prediction. The pups had a good long run together until deep in the pandemic when I was now locked down and home all the time. Button began to have many serious health problems requiring much medical attention, and then twice-a-day fluid infusions. My husband would do the difficult medical part at the back of her ever-skinnier little body, and I would entertain the front end with little scraps of homemade cheese. We did all we could to keep her with us, but her little legs got more and more wobbly, to the point where they would collapse under her. Her heroic and devoted dad diligently carried her up and down the stairs and outside to do her business.
Button finally succumbed in 2020. Admittedly it was somewhat of a relief, as well as being so sad. It had become pretty unbearable to watch her suffer, and for Angel as well. When she died, Angel became inconsolable. They had always been together. She could not stop crying. She reminded me of the research I heard of years ago about the “blighted twin.” When twins were initially together in the womb, and one failed to develop and ultimately dissolved away, the other went through life with a deep sense of “something” being missing. If we ever had to leave her alone, which thankfully during the lockdown year was rare, Angel wailed, like in some of the mourning rituals I remember seeing in movies at school. Always shy anyway, grief-stricken Angel cleaved to her dad, making a nest at his feet during his long hours in front of the computer.
Finally, after perhaps a year and a half, Angel is finding a regulated, calm state. And when her dad goes out, she even has the courage to come upstairs to my home office and, with consent, of course, attend a client session. I recently learned that 2015 research showed that human twins in the womb begin reaching toward each other and touching 14 weeks after gestation. The longing for contact has already begun.
I recently learned that 2015 research showed that human twins in the womb begin reaching toward each other and touching 14 weeks after gestation. The longing for contact has already begun.
Attachment is indeed our most profound and foundational survival need, which is why neglect is the most pervasive and destructive injury of all, certainly to humans. Although massively unacknowledged (and I am doing my best to change that!), it quietly wreaks its devastating damage, especially in the realm of relationships, which of course, has unspeakable ramifications in both individual and collective life. Trauma therapists are well aware that loneliness and interpersonal pain are what drive people, often with deep ambivalence, to our office doors. Most certainly, with neglect, survivors really don’t want to need us or our help. But the sense of deadness and isolation, pandemic or not, becomes unlivable.
Recently at a conference, I met a charismatic super couple, a physician and an attorney. The doctor, Laurie was her name, had recently won a national award in her country, and in the past, might have been someone who intimidated me. But she was so approachable and delightful, as was her partner of 36 years. They sat across from me at breakfast, so making conversation, I asked if they had children. Like myself, they had long ago opted against it, but somehow ended up telling me the story of when they accompanied a close friend to China to support her in adopting a baby girl.
When the three roamed the orphanage, not unlike my own experience in Sac some 13 years prior, they met up with baby “Anna” (not her real name.) For some unknown reason, and to the surprised dismay of the prospective adoptive mother, the 18-month-old orphan magnetically reached for Laurie. It was as if she had found the missing part of herself. I remember, years ago, reading about adoption, that after nine months of inhabiting the mother’s body, living with her rhythms, her voice, her chemistry, the climate of her energetic and emotional vacillations, they profoundly know her. When they are passed, even at birth, to the adoptive parent, they seem to profoundly know, “This is the ‘wrong’ one!” Well, little Anna, drawn almost as if by a vacuum aspirator to Laurie, felt as if she had found the “right one.” Now in her twenties and recently married, that never changed.
Anna’s legal mom has had to live with the primary and primal love that the child, and now the young woman has had and continues to have for Laurie, and secondarily Laurie’s wife. Laurie proudly showed me pictures from Anna’s wedding not long ago, the two beaming together. And Laurie, her wife, and Anna’s legal mom have graciously navigated this challenging configuration over now decades; it remains mysterious. This indescribable, inexplicable, and super-glue-like attachment. What is that?
Attachment is indeed our most profound and foundational survival need.
Shortly after that deeply emotional breakfast conversation, I went for a walk through the chilly, idyllic grounds of the quaint New England conference site. The beautiful trees were bare, and it was blessedly quiet. I knew there was a labyrinth on the grounds but did not think much about it, swimming in my feelings about Laurie and Anna. When I stumbled on the labyrinth, I thought perhaps I might try walking it, something I had never even thought of doing. I have always said, “You know how they say a leopard can’t change its spots? Well, I can!” I change my spots every chance I get. So I entered the maze.
It was an interesting experience; I thought it was like trauma recovery. I feel like I am going around in circles, getting nowhere, hitting dead ends… But if I “stay the course,” the path takes me out into the open again. It was remarkable, just like Laurie and Anna have circled, hit dead ends, and kept going, ultimately finding their way out into the open world, again or for the first time. Attachment is the ground upon which it is all built: connection, love, and a measure of patience. Anna’s adoptive mom heroically gave her a chance and graciously shared the road with Laurie, moving aside to allow space for extended family. What an angel. And all of them, all of us find our way to the opening and out into the world.
Today’s Song: In honor of Grateful Ed, who I think is the one who diagnosed all terriers years ago.
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.
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!”
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?
Nelson Mandela was quoted as saying, “I have often wondered whether a person is justified in neglecting his own family for opportunities to fight for others.” Mandela’s daughter, Maki, much as she admires her father, recounts painful memories from long before her father was in hiding or imprisoned, of not knowing if he loved her or not. She is torn by grief and bitterness about her devastating neglect, tugging against profound feelings of admiration, respect and pride. “I had a father who was not there – which was how I saw it through the eyes of a child – who chose politics over me or even my brothers, my family.” I heard similar sentiments expressed by her brother in an interview some years ago, but I can’t seem to find it now.
Fidel Castro’s oldest son, also named Fidel, a prominent physicist and accomplished researcher, died by suicide at the age of 68. I don’t know the details. What are the unique costs and conflicts of being the child of “greatness?” Of being eclipsed by the world’s suffering? How does a child make sense of, or peace with that, through their lifespan?
Our dad did much good in his own particular sphere. On weekends, I wished he would come home, but he was often running to the hospital to visit congregants. It is a “mitzvah,” a good deed, to visit the sick. And indeed, a noble and generous act of charity, so to speak. I honored and respected, even learned from that. But I, guiltily, hated it. Like Mandela, he was “never around.” And, of course, I could not begin to compete with the sick, dying and grieving multitudes. But shame on me for feeling that!
I sometimes wonder, is the price of heroism, martyrdom, or “goodness” the sacrifice of one’s kids?
Neglect is fraught with searing, seemingly irreconcilable ambivalences. The mixed feelings of jealousy versus guilt, rage and resentment versus social and political responsibility, grief versus gratitude, love versus bitterness, self-care versus greater good, gratitude versus tail-chasing confusion. I am still flummoxed about the balance between my commitment to the larger world and looking out for my little and aging self. Oy vey. Admittedly that is part of what keeps me awake at night. My feelings about our dad are in a similarly vacillating both/and. He perhaps hurt me more than anyone, but he also bequeathed to me all of my most cherished traits, qualities and many skills. How do I resolve that? How do I make sense of it? What do I call it? That, of course, complicated my feelings further as his life drew to a close, now almost three years ago. But thankfully, I do not suffer about it anymore – it is more a contemplation.
I sometimes wonder, is the price of heroism, martyrdom, or “goodness” the sacrifice of one’s kids? As ever, kids have no say, no voice. Are they/we part of the deal? Sadly, it is on the unconsenting child to “figure it out,” to deal with the fallout of the neglect. Perhaps the conundrum that plagues a lifetime?
I was always puzzled by the Bible story where God instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son as a show of faith. Dylan eloquently expressed my sentiments in his timeless missive, Highway 61: “Abe said God, you must be puttin’ me on!” I didn’t get it. How is that a good thing? I don’t know. I have had a similar conflict with an occasional client who had a famous parent whom I had always iconized and admired, until being jarred by a back story, a casualty that I had not known about before; or a memoir by the child of a hero figure who may have caused devastating harm. Steve Jobs’ first daughter Lisa, asked, “Was I named after the computer or was the computer named after me?!” I don’t know if she ever resolved it. And I still struggle with the ongoing choice between my own interests and the “larger good.” Perhaps it will always be one of those chicken-and-egg scenarios…
Today’s song:
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 hate it when I don’t follow my own advice, and even more, I hate admitting it. Way back when we got the Trump government in 2016, it seemed as if everyone went out of their minds daily, experiencing some variety of trauma activation from some latest news item. The restimulations were neverending. I urgently admonished everyone, including myself, to regulate their news consumption! But one thing I never stopped doing was tuning in to the BBC first thing after waking up. I managed my quantity pretty well, but the timing, well, not so much. First thing in the morning is a delicate moment. On November 22nd, shortly after awakening, I flipped on the news to a passing clip of literally seconds, announcing, “…Pablo Milanés has died. He was 79.” It hit me like bricks and then an immediate avalanche of memory.
Pablo, along with his colleague and often collaborator Silvio Rodriguez, was the founding voice of the Nueva Trova Cubana, the New Cuban Song Movement emerging in the late 1960s. A mix of traditional and folk rhythms and instruments with political, social, lyrical, and popular themes, the “trova” was the soundtrack of some of my loneliest, most painful, and at the time, inexplicably difficult post-traumatic years. Pablo’s honey-like baritone was the ever-available company and comforting accompaniment to the darkest of times. His song Tengo (I Have) is the epitome of gratitude: a musical accounting of all the precious things one has. It became my favorite song of all time.
Pablo also introduced me to the exquisite poetry of Jose Marti, which he even more exquisitely transformed into glorious song. I keep only two CDs in my car for those times when I am completely addled by the Bay Bridge traffic: Pablo’s Versos de Jose Marti and Silvio’s Mujeres. They unfailingly get me over the bridge and home. It was on my bucket list to see Pablo in person. I did manage to see Silvio in Oakland once. But Pablo – it never came to be. Now it never will. I was heartbroken.
Attachment trauma makes relationships such a minefield, a Rubik’s cube of challenges.
Attachment trauma makes relationships such a minefield, a Rubik’s cube of challenges. Loving and often idealizing iconic figures I had never met was a way to populate a lonely world—an illusion of a relationship, certainly company in the bittersweet solitude. I say bittersweet because being alone was a refuge: a cozy, comfortable, safe place, like my carnation pink weighted blanket, where, when swaddled in its soft and caressing velvet folds, I find restful peace. But at the same time, it was the gnawing echo of being left alone too much, the punishing, unchosen, agonizing solitude that defies nature’s design and evokes something else. We cannot “remember“ our infancy. But the aching heart and disproportional, unrelenting pain of loss that feels like dying is usually an undeniable clue that the core injury was interpersonal and usually unimaginably early. Even if all the family lore might tell us that there were people there who loved us, hidden in the deep recesses of brain and body is a story of parents who, for whatever reason, simply couldn’t.
“Hero worship” became a middle ground for me. There were important people in my life who I did not have to worry about whether they liked me; they taught and influenced me, became my beloved role models. Sometimes I made an effort to learn about their real lives, which was much harder before we had Google, Wikipedia, and other technological avenues of inquiry. Other times I did not, and often, in fact, ignorance is bliss – finding out who the real person is can be a disappointment or even a blow. I did not want to know if there was animosity or competition between Pablo and Silvio in real life. I wanted to get lost in the harmony. Reading the recent memoir by Bono is a case in point. Although he is not on my shortlist, I have always admired and appreciated him, and still do. But I don’t “like” him very much. Just as many solve the conundrum of intimacy by creating a fantasy cyber sexual world, a “relationship” that is quiet, interior and inherently safe fills a certain void – sort of. Thankfully, now on my own Tengo accounting, I have both. But the loss of Pablo is still a blow.
Trauma has no time sense, no time stamp, as it were.
For the child of neglect, loss and disappointment seem on the order of life-threatening. In their own minds, the intensity is completely normal, even “reasonable,” like ambient air. Often a partner or loved one simply cannot understand why experimentation, or even moderate risk, is not an option. What is the big deal? Hope and disappointment are to be avoided like the plague, because the primal loss was in the domain of survival. An infant alone will die, and the early, unremembered experience of being left, even the later remembered experiences of inexplicable invisibility or abandonment, strike way too close to feeling fatal.
Things never did change in that family, or not in a good way. The very notion that someone would change who or how they are out of love for me? Out of the question. It is what makes relationship therapy such a hard sell for so many adult children of neglect. What’s the point? Things don’t change, not for the better, and certainly not in relationships. The risk of disappointment is simply too great, not worth it. Where, on one hand, disappointment is a fact of life, as familiar as an old shoe, that it is almost like a companion on the trail for many the child of neglect, it is to be avoided at all costs – which can also be a sticking point in couples. Often, I struggle with those close to me being “hope averse,” or I am impatient with their hopelessness. I have to work hard to stay empathic and compassionate; perhaps it strikes too close to my own mostly healed trauma.
Certain catchphrases from years of training in whatever discipline have always stuck in my mind. One that is indelibly etched is “the amygdala knows no time.” Trauma has no time sense, no time stamp, as it were. I used to wonder why in my art therapy drawings and paintings I so often produced a clock stopped at 4:10. I don’t know why. But I do know that trauma feels interminable, like it will never end, while also being at dizzying, breakneck speeds. In a split second, the world has crashed irreversibly into something else. I remember being told that the “nature of the beast,” in this case, the beast being depression, was that while in it feels like it will never end. However, in the rearview, it is hard to imagine or even remember how or why it felt that bad. “Pandemic time” is kind of like that…
All the trauma treatment modalities I studied seemed to have a protocol or practice for awakening a sense of time, a sense of movement. In EMDR, it was “what happens next?” In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, it would be following the sensation as it morphs into one and the next iteration of itself and moves through the body. In some relaxation approaches, there would be counting. The intention is to activate a sense of movement, of time passing, of a possibility, a seed of change, of something different being possible. That is perhaps one reason why we measure anniversaries and orbits around the sun. We need to know that there is some forward movement and a reason to keep going. That is what I like best about the changing of the year. Something old is closed; something new will open in its place. Grief, if not ending altogether, will diminish and change over time. Something else will take its place. Cheesemaking, gardening, pregnancy: these are endeavors that we can only undertake if we believe there will be a future. Why else would we spend hours and sometimes backbreaking effort for something that takes months or longer to come to fruition?
I wish for all that the closing of the year will bring a promise of something different and better. One thing I love about Tengo, is the recounting of life treasures connotes that these are perhaps things I did not have before, or that many do not have. The line that invariably still brings me to tears is when Pablo sings ”Aprendi a leer, a contar, y aprendi a escribir!” I learned to read, to count, and I learned to write!” What blessings!
I close the year with these words translated from Jose Marti’s Versos Sencillos, “Simple Verses:”
Everything is beautiful and constant
Everything is music and reason,
And everything, like the diamond,
Before light, is coal.
Gracias, Pablo. Happy New Year
Today’s song is the beautiful Tengo by Pablo Milanés. I hope you love it as much as I do.
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.
Our dad passed shortly before the pandemic of Covid-19 struck. What a blessing that was, as it would have been hell for him and for all of us to go through. The final couple of years, and worsening over the last months, he was increasingly vacant and absent, barely “there.” It was hard to tell if he was bored and disinterested, if he was hovering on the bridge to the next world, or if his tired old brain cells (those that were left) were not firing anymore. He was almost 93 when he died. When I arrived to visit, his second wife would bellow loudly in his ear “(whatever strange nickname she called him), Ruth is here!” His hearing aids were powered on, intact, and in place, but he usually did not even look up. It was as if I was not there. Sadly, to be perfectly honest, it was not that different from much of my life with him.
I had the good fortune to make my peace with him, so I enjoyed a stretch of a surprisingly happy father-daughter relationship before he began his protracted fade-out departure. Granted, I did all the healing work on my own without his participation, but that is a story for another day. He did participate in a truly loving relationship with me for a time, and I am infinitely grateful for that.
Our dad’s final years, however, were a quiet agony. Thankfully, my sisters and I were a good team. But having my presence or absence not register, questioning whether those long, vapid visits had any meaning at all, was not only interminably empty and boring for me, but a potent reminder of the years of feeling as if I did not matter or even exist in his eyes. They were a living reminder/stimulus of long years of painful and confusing neglect. Admittedly, I lived much of those last two years in various degrees of trauma activation. Being excessively busy and perennially sleep-deprived, the routine visits took a chunk out of every weekend. But for whatever reason I kept them going diligently until the end – not without confusion and unbearable fatigue.
Why? Was I afraid I might miss something if I did not take advantage of every possible moment with him? What might I possibly miss? I could rarely ask him questions about his life anymore. I found I would collect stories and topics and come with a “playlist” of things in mind to talk about, to entertain either him or myself. I honestly don’t know which. Due to his various cancers, he had been on a feeding tube for years, so my stories about cheesemaking challenges, my baking masterpieces, or food-related conversations, which are ordinarily pleasurable and easy for me, were off the table, so to speak. Our best bet on a good day was to sing. Interestingly, although he did not remember much of anything else, he did seemingly remember all the songs and their lyrics. Sometimes we filled the time that way, especially when I had the good fortune to visit at the same time as a sister, who brought his old guitar. She played it, but it did seem to awaken and cheer him.
Secretly, however, I remembered an old Cuban song I used to listen to and love: “La vida no vale nada…” life is not worth anything. And even though the song is about how life is not worth anything if others are suffering, I had to wonder, what keeps him going? What would make it worth continuing to live and breathe that vacuous existence? And when I dared to be really honest with myself, why doesn’t he just go?
When there is a long history of trauma, neglect, hard-earned healing, and profound ambivalence about its perpetrators and purveyors, their final years can be complicated at best. Some of us are too enraged and hurt still to be dutiful; some of us too dutiful to allow ourselves to feel enraged or hurt. If we are glaringly aware of both the parents’ own tragic and unconscionable trauma and misfortune and their own tragic and unconscionable lack of healing, it is even more complicated. Add to that whatever feelings we might have about what others (those mythical others) might think about how we navigate the loss of a parent. Some of us care. And many of the feelings are outside our awareness.
I remember when our mom died in 2000. I was so embarrassed when people expressed sympathetic condolences as I felt nothing but grateful relief – or so I thought. I was driving the day after she passed, however, and my car broke down on the freeway. Much to my own surprise, I fell apart on the phone with the Triple A operator who took my call for emergency road service, crying rather hysterically to her about how my mother had just died. It was as if I and not the car had broken down.
When there has been attachment trauma, especially neglect, when little is “concrete enough” to point to, the final years and days of the parent’s life can be racked with troubling ambivalence.
In his newly released memoir, Bono, who lost his mother as a small boy, recounts a legacy of rock stars who lost their mothers at a young age. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, John Lydon, and Bob Geldof are the ones he names, but there are many more, according to him. He refers to something parallel about father loss in the hip-hop world but does not name names. Interesting. He muses about some possible relationship between attachment trauma (not his language, of course!) and creativity.
After the death of his mother Iris, Bono grew up in a world of men – a much older brother and a stern, emotionless father. He had few memories of Iris at all, probably largely because the three of them never spoke of her, the space she had occupied simply closing up. At least, that is how Bono explains it. Neglect and abundant loss, however, are very often, if not usually, accompanied by a copious blankness of autobiography. In fact, one of the gifts of recovery is reclaiming or even constructing, for the first time, a personal narrative.
Interestingly, Bono did have one perfectly intact memory of Iris. His father was in an upstairs room, doing one of his many typical construction projects, working with a chainsaw or some sort of power saw, which apparently had slipped out of his hand. Loud screams echoed from upstairs, and when Bono and Iris ran up to see what had happened, his blood-spattered father was yelling in terror that he had castrated himself. Iris’ puzzling response was to burst into uncontrollable peals of laughter. She was no Lorena Bobbitt, and his father was not abusive. Bono was simply baffled. Iris must have been an odd bird. Indeed a curious bit of memory in a desert of idealization. (We never do learn what his dad’s injury turned out to be.)
To be visited by confusing, even contradictory impulses, and lots of trauma activation during the dying and death of a traumatic parent, be it incident trauma or neglect, is a natural and expectable response.
When there has been attachment trauma, especially neglect, when little is “concrete enough” to point to, the final years and days of the parent’s life can be racked with troubling ambivalence. One might, as I was, be horrified in shame for feeling such apparent and undeniable numbness around my mother’s passing. Over subsequent years of neurofeedback and other healing work, fragments of feeling come to me that surprise me. For whatever reason, I have her old sewing scissors on my desk. I don’t use them for sewing, but I keep them near. They remind me of her hands… I recall her terrible cooking almost fondly. Little things that she said will come to mind, and I will quote her, often reprimanding someone with a smile and shouting, “Put on a sweater, I’m cold!” or remembering the German swear words I learned from her momentary fits of temper. So, I don’t feel completely void of feeling anymore, and I do regret that I was not able to make my peace before she went. She went so quickly. It is really the only regret I have.
To be visited by confusing, even contradictory impulses, and lots of trauma activation during the dying and death of a traumatic parent, be it incident trauma or neglect, is a natural and expectable response – even the silent, perhaps shameful wish that they take their leave already. I urge all to be gentle and forgiving of oneself, for one’s own swirling inconsistencies or perhaps even incomprehensible thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. If I am to offer one, my best recommendation is to do what will make you feel best about yourself in the long run, so the survivor of trauma and/or neglect can live, and in effect, “rest” in peace.
Today’s song:
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.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!