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.

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.

Weaving

I really only remember seeing our dad cry once. Our family all piled into the old Chevy wagon, driving in a torrential New York City downpour. I don’t remember what he was upset about; it was rather a flashbulb image of his face, framed in the rearview mirror, with a backdrop of the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Finding it unbearable to see him that way, I focused on the rhythmic back and forth of the wipers, slap, slap, slap.

That sudden flash of recall unleashed a chain of other snippets of time in the car, which were rarely much fun. Our mom was perennially anxious, and what I recall most about being in an enclosed energy field of her pulsing hyperarousal was a gripping in my stomach, which I can feel just thinking about it. Our dad loved looking at airplanes, and he sometimes seemed even to be teasing her by enthusiastically following their flight with his eyes clearly not on the road. I remember her saying, “Achh.. do me a favor…” with her fingers spread wide like rakes, nails dug into the sides of her seat. She was similarly rattled by some random driver recklessly “weaving” back and forth across multiple lanes, grabbing an extra car length this way and that to gain speed and time. She was jumpy and also convinced we would all meet up at the next signal anyway.

I rather disliked the harsh association between reckless driving and “weaving.” I loved sewing from an early age and so loved fabrics and textiles. As I got into my early teens, I was fascinated with weaving, particularly Andean weaving. I had a small wooden frame loom and tried my hand at simple designs, never getting very good at it. My childhood boyfriend had a Greek friend named Thalia. She was a ”real” weaver and had an enormous floor loom that took up much of a room. I remember being enthralled watching the shuttle fly back and forth, back and forth, creating beautiful patterns. I still have a deliciously warm blanket she wove over fifty years ago. That steady toss back and forth of the shuttle made for a durable and strong mesh that still warms me almost daily.

Some time ago, I wrote a blog about the man who cleaned my car windows, knowing I had no cash to give him. After it happened, I tucked a neatly folded twenty in a pocket of my purse and zipped it in, hoping I might see him again someday. For weeks, even months, I craned to look for him as I passed the gas station, but never saw him. Slowly he dimmed from my crowded mind, and the twenty languished and perhaps crumpled a bit as it got buried deeper by time. This morning, rushing, stealing a minute on my way to the office to get gas, a man with a squeegee approached. 

Lo and behold, it was him! The other time he was wrapped in a blanket and was a rather shapeless, assumably human form. Today he was in black jeans and a loose, ragged hoodie, so I could see his skinny shape. His short, sparse hair was graying, his brown skin wrinkly in that ageless way of the streets. He came into focus; I mean, I could see him. I set about pumping gas, he set about cleaning windows, and when I finished, I dug up the twenty I had squirreled away for him all those months ago.

Approaching the man, I said to him, “I want to tell you something…” His eyes widened, startled, as if he weren’t used to being spoken to, or not softly. I said, “a long time ago, I was here. I did not have any money, and I told you I had no money. But you cleaned my windows anyway.” I said it again. “I had no money, but you cleaned my windows anyway! I was so moved!” My throat wavered with emotion, and my eyes filled just a bit. “Thank you.” And for a long moment, I looked deep into the ageless brown eyes, which could’ve been anywhere from 50 to 80 years old. They teared up a bit too. We were just two humans together on this earth. “Thank you,” I said, “you are a good man.” I gave him twenty. With a modest, toothless smile, he muttered, “God bless…” I don’t believe he had seen a twenty in a very long time. He finished making his way around the car, doing an extra good job on the windows, and I drove off into the early morning dark to start my day.

For that one long moment, we were simply two humans connecting in the complex and simple endeavor of being human on this earth. That nameless-to-me man could check how many of the most salient neglect boxes? He was homeless, of color, aged, who knows what else? At the end of the hard workday, warming up the car to go home, the gas gauge lit up “full,” and my heart lit up “full,” too.

When we were kids, every year about this time, a little old man would show up early in the morning at our door, all dressed up in a well-worn dark suit and tie, with a yarmulke on his head and a tattered old prayer book under his arm. He would look up sheepishly from under his bushy brows and mutter with a smile, “Is this the Big One?” Our dad called him “Old Man Horowitz,” or sometimes “Horrible Horowitz.” He was coming to catch a ride to temple for the Yom Kippur service if he had the right day, which he often did not. 

Yom Kippur is one of the “high holidays,” the most important days of the Jewish year: a day of fasting where the service is all day long. Once he got his formal career, our dad was a cantor, and he rather disdained what he called the “once-a-year crowd,” which were the congregants who only showed up on the high holidays and were not seen or heard from the rest of the year. He preferred to sing and have the refrains to his calls be from a full sanctuary. (I grew up to be even “worse” than the once-a-year crowd, and I really don’t go at all.)

However, some things about Yom Kippur do appeal to me. It is a day of reflection, a day of taking stock or accounting of who I have been through the year, and what I may have done or not done. I generally do a lot of that anyway throughout the year, a conscious review of all aspects of myself. But I respect and appreciate assigning specific days of the year for that essential practice.

The first Monday in September is Labor Day here in the US. It was always the last blush of summer before school started when I was growing up. Now the kids go back to school in August, which is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned. Labor Day originated as a national holiday in 1894, designed to honor and appreciate the efforts and the contribution of the working class who, in the words of the founder of the American Federation of Labor, “from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.” 

Although our family was not exactly working class, our dad had many sweaty jobs up until our adolescence, and I always felt an affinity and identification with work. When I started college in 1973, Cesar Chaves had just begun organizing the United Farm Workers. Picketing the local Safeway Store, marching and chanting the iceberg lettuce and grape boycotts was the weekly Saturday morning social event throughout my first year. I loved it.

I started washing the neighbors’ cars for $2.00 or babysitting for 50 cents an hour before I reached my teens, and by the time I was fourteen, I had my own little housecleaning business, where I amassed the small fortune that would eventually put me through school. In those days, the University of California tuition was $234.00 a quarter, so $1,000.00 would cover at least the tuition part of a year.

Like many a child of neglect, although the relationship was in most ways beyond me, I was a star in the sphere of work. I could out-effort pretty much anyone, and was just OCD enough to maintain an impeccable standard. Of course, those rich people whose mansions I cleaned loved me, and whatever the job, I took great pride in being the best I could be. Years later, I came across an antique-style framed sign in a little collectible shop that said in bold letters, Work Hard and Be Nice. I bought it, and some 25 years later, it is still prominently displayed in my bathroom. Words to live by.

Doggedly committed as I am to therapy modalities that diverge from the “talking cure” I must admit that I love words. In the last few years, maybe since the internet became such a rapid-fire vehicle of fad and fashion, I have noticed with curiosity how certain words and phrases seem to be echoing everywhere, suddenly out of the blue. About a year or so ago, I noticed first with one client, almost every utterance ended with…”do you know what I mean?” At first, I thought she must feel uncertain about whether or not I am hearing or understanding her, a typical neglect issue. Then I began noticing those words everywhere, and still do. I have heard something similar with the term “gaslight,” which has become a household word. I don’t recall hearing it bandied around until somewhat recently. 

I remember the old classic movie, Gaslight, from which it emerged. Always a Hitchcock fan, I loved it, although it was not Hitchcock, but similar in vintage and style. For those who have not seen it, it is well worth watching, the story of a beautiful, wealthy young woman being swindled into believing lies that cast her perception/sanity into question, enabling her handsome and conniving beau to viciously rip her off. I won’t spoil it here, but rather say that “gaslight” has evolved into a verb meaning deception such as to confound one’s own perception of reality, even sanity, into confusion, doubt, or outright disbelief. It is truly “crazy-making.”

An undeniable factor in what the lasting impact of trauma and neglect will be, is the response, or not of important caregivers or important others, to a child’s distress. Parental, or authority denying, ignoring, minimizing or outright blaming for the child’s experience may be even more injurious than the original injury. Sadly, we know how much this happens.

In the case of neglect, where there is often “nothing” to point to, it can be all the more confusing. The child may wonder, “why do I feel so bad?” or so hated, worthless, forgotten, excluded… all the ways that a child of neglect will feel. It is insidious. And the more we learn as a field about developmental trauma including neglect, because it defies perhaps our deepest human and mammalian need: the need to be attached and connected, is perhaps the most devastating trauma of all. 

I had one client who struggled to make sense out of her history, and when she finally did, and tried to talk to her mother about it, her mother’s retort was “Unless you say that did not happen, we simply can’t have a relationship.” The young woman felt ripped apart, rather like “Sophie’s Choice.” She felt in a position to choose between herself and her own integrity; and her essential longing and need for her mother’s love. She could not resolve it, her mother ultimately died, and she was left haunted with the pain, remorse, guilt and confusion.  This is a big part of why I am on a mission to “correct” or re-cast the story of “nothing happened to me.” Not in a gaslighting sense, but rather in a “fact-finding” sense.

As a very young child, as far back as I can remember, I felt, and I believed, that somehow I had no right to exist. I don’t know if it was because six million had perished in gas chambers or children were starving in Europe, but I was convinced that I must earn the piece of ground my feet occupied on the planet and ceaselessly justify and compensate for my probably mistaken existence. 

Quite early on, I had my own particular calculus of worthy utilization of time: service to others like housework and cooking to relieve my mother’s burden, or being “good”, service to the world like collecting record-breaking amounts of money for UNICEF instead of collecting candy on Halloween, study, and later earning money for college, and exercising more and more and more as my eating disorder evolved its own unique ledger. It was as if I entered the world in debt, and life was a ceaseless attempt to pay it off.

How does a child come to have a sense of self-worth or self-esteem? As a stalwart student of Attachment Theory, I believe it is by (as an infant) looking up into my mother’s or primary caregiver’s face and seeing a loving reflection of me! It is through the early resonance, largely through the gaze, where my right hemisphere and theirs lock into a rhythmic dance, which registers deep in my primitive brain, and my default mode network, which will grow to house my sense of Self is stimulated to develop, grow and ultimately thrive – or so we hope.

How does a child come to have a sense of self-worth or self-esteem? As a stalwart student of Attachment Theory, I believe it is by (as an infant) looking up into my mother’s or primary caregiver’s face and seeing a loving reflection of me!

And what happens when I look up into a face that is terrified, or angry, or grief-stricken, or ravaged by depression, hunger, violence or just plain fatigue? What if there is a blank face? Or no face is there at all? The image I am left to have of myself will be some sort of reflection or self-reflection of that. I can only imagine what I looked up and saw as a tiny being. I knew that my mother was too young. She had a lively two-year-old already, a hard-working, largely absent and traumatized husband, and a terrible story of her own. I must have known early on that she really needed a mom. Of course, I don’t remember. But I do clearly remember the relentless drive to justify my existence. And sometimes, when I am in the presence of a client who talks from a familiar sounding place, I am visited by such an image and have to wonder what they looked up and saw. 

Today I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that said, “Children Are to be Seen and Heard!” I thought, “Wow!” As I watched him pass hand in hand with his lively young son in tow.

Money was another mystery. There was never much, and it was a taboo subject. One never asks how much things cost or how much someone makes. I have never to this day had any idea of what either of my parents earned at any time. We were never to touch our mother’s purse. Our dad always had multiple jobs, and work of all kinds was highly regarded. Our dad was a chef, a waiter, sang in cocktail lounges and later taught and became a cantor. There was no shame in manual or service work, and my parents were always very respectful of working folk. Our mom’s family was well to do and intellectual before losing everything to the Nazis, but they, and certainly my grandmother, who was one of the first women ever to graduate from Oxford, never lost the sense of superiority that came from their class. I think they quietly or not so quietly believed that the US culture was superficial, materialistic and petty. Emotionally they all were quite impoverished, and life, certainly in our family, seemed like zero-sum. 

Many children of neglect, in their dark, lonely, scared hyperarousal, discover masturbation as a source of comfort, regulation or simply a way to get to sleep. Many are quite young and make the discovery well before they have any idea what they are doing. 

They might before very long, get “caught” and reprimanded; or learn in some sort of religious or moral education that it is wrong or bad, or even in some way damaging. Orgasm itself may never be spoken about. Until they are older and learn of it as a mythical power that we should all be able to manufacture, and that makes us “hot”, powerful and sexy. 

Originally a source of comfort, it might become a source of shame, pressure and power struggle between couples and a great mystery. And it is another of those taboo topics that no one really wants to be candid around or ask questions about.

Many people outside of the sex therapy field have never heard of woman pioneer Betty Dodson, a heroine worth honoring. In the Bay Area, March has been dedicated to women’s history, and I thought of Betty Dodson and her seminal work, an essential gift to women, and everyone really. She died in 2020 at age 91, healthy and vital until the end.

Many people outside of the sex therapy field have never heard of woman pioneer Betty Dodson, a heroine worth honoring.

Betty Dodson viewed part of her rich longevity to be a result of her viewing regular orgasms, along with sleep, good food and other exercise, as fundamental self-care practice right up until the end of her life.

I “discovered” Betty Dodson at my first sex therapy training in 2000. I was attending my first “SAR” or Sexual Attitude Reassessment. The SAR is something of an initiation, where the clinician is exposed to every imaginable and unimaginable variation of sex and sexuality and challenged to both examine and discuss what they/we think and feel. It is an effort to de-sensitize us so that we will not be shocked or scared by anything that might walk into our offices and also, to unearth what unconscious biases or attitudes we might have.  

My first SAR was seven days long, in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York, a spectacular setting for our long days that stretched from about 8:00am to 11:00pm of watching explicit movies, listening to speakers of every sexual ilk, and participating in small group processing after each presentation. We affectionately referred to this intense total immersion experience as “Sex Camp”.

Late one night, I was wandering around after hours, way too wound up to sleep, and I stumbled on one of our instructors watching a video in a classroom. On the screen I saw a circle of women covering a wide range of ages, shapes and sizes, all completely naked, and a leader who was teaching them how to have orgasms. That was Betty Dodson; at the time, she was “only” about 70. She also was wearing nothing but a beautiful pendant. That night, it became a bucket list item for me to attend one of Betty Dodson’s groups. I wanted to learn how to teach women to discover their orgasms.