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.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!