Another remarkable BBC story in the wee hours inspired and compelled me; an interview with an Afghan refugee speaking about his narrow escape from the death grip of the Taliban, actually from death itself. Knowing he was in perilous danger, of survival necessity he had planned his precarious flight from the country. He describes his painful good-by to his dearest friend. His friend, understandably desperately worried about him, had wrapped his own passport in a little case. In the course of their heartfelt exchange he placed it securely in the speaker’s left side chest shirt pocket. The speaker tried to decline, but his dear friend, insisted that he might need it, and gently patted his friend’s left chest pocket. Hugging goodbye, they did not want to let go, not knowing if they would see each other again.
Sure enough, the protagonist was apprehended by a band of Taliban, badly shot up, left for dead, but he wasn’t. He woke up in a hospital, badly injured and not knowing quite what had happened. He had lost an eye and numerous bullets had to be excavated from various parts of his body. But no bullet had penetrated his heart. His friend’s passport in its little case, however, was riddled with shrapnel. By tucking the passport securely in his left chest pocket with great love, is friend had saved his life. Obviously, he recovered and healed enough to find his way out of the country to tell this story of angels on BBC. Moved, almost to tears, I was grateful to be up in the middle of the night to hear it.
When I was a little girl, I use to love to watch Queen for a Day. It was not exactly a “game show,” but had real life contestants competing for some larger than life prize. They were all women with tragic, hard luck stories. The winner would be crowned with a sparkling tiara, and handed a huge bouquet of red roses. The band played Pomp and Circumstance as she cried, walked ceremonious across the stage, and went to accept the prize: the much needed home when she teetered on the brink of homelessness; the desperately needed surgery for a sick child, or whatever her tremendous winnings were to be. I would cry as I watched her. Sometimes I would hold a small pillow in the crook of my arm pretending it was red roses like hers, and march with her. I loved that show. And I cried because I was so lonely, and because nothing like that would ever happen to me. Or so I thought. Now I know that is not true. Angels are all around, if we are paying attention.
When I was a recently certified sex therapist, I was pretty shy and withdrawn. As I always did with everything I would take all the trainings I possibly could, to try to fortify myself with knowledge, which as we all know, only helps so much if one has the integral sense of worthlessness that comes with neglect. I could never quite know enough to “break even,” or be as good as or as smart as the others. It was news to me when I heard in a training that we all become sex therapists because we “think about sex 24 hours a day.” And we all think we have sexual “dysfunctions” because no one ever speaks aloud about such things. Except, as I was to learn, in sex therapy trainings, or some of them anyway. There I might discover that I was not the only one.
I met Gina as she was a senior clinician who gave workshops all over the country. Sometimes I could attend one without even having to travel. I had read all of her books, at that time, I guess there were about 5 of them. I liked her 4-prong approach to sexuality which included body, mind, emotion and spirituality. She was a lovely, kind person and I learned a lot from her.
Some years later, Gina was vested with producing a special issue of the Journal of Marital and Sexual Therapy on “Extraordinary Sex Therapy.” I dislike academic journals so much that I am not proud to say, I avoid them for the most part. Probably because it was Gina, I took a chance and submitted a manuscript. Lo and behold it was accepted. With Gina’s help I landed my first ever academic journal article. It was followed by a few more over the years, although admittedly I have never particularly sought out that genre. That special issue of JMST was later published as a little book.
Fast forward to 2017, I was beginning to gestate the book that became my recently released book on neglect. I sought out a good solid consultant to help me with my book proposal and I found Waverly. She was a pro: extremely knowledgeable and experienced with helping people write book proposals that bore fruit into published works. She was no-nonsense and said exactly what she meant- not always what I wanted to hear but I knew I could trust her, which goes a long way with me. And although she was not warm and fuzzy, she was patient and I knew she wanted the best for me. We hammered out a proposal, and she taught me about resilience and persistence with the many drafts required to come out with something good, which I think we did. I was so grateful.
When the proposal was done, then I needed to find a home for the book, ie a publisher. I thought to write to Gina, and ask her if she might have time to look over my proposal and perhaps have any ideas where I might send it. Gina responded right away. She was generous and welcoming as ever. She also told me she really could not take anything on now. Then she told me she was in an advanced stage of terminal cancer and was getting ready to die. This news was so sad to me. But a deeply spiritual person, Gina was quite peaceful about it. 80 years old, she felt she had had a very good life. Content, she was spending her remaining time with her partner of many years and with great equanimity and even joy, getting ready to go. She did, however, offer me the name and contact information of her publisher at Routledge, where she had published all of her by now 6 books. She said “Just tell her I sent you; my name is gold over there.” So I did.
Shockingly, I got a return email within the hour. Gina’s publisher told me that she headed the sexuality department at Routledge, but that she had forwarded my proposal to their trauma editor. The trauma editor also responded immediately, and told me to send my proposal along. No joke that Gina’s name was gold! And everyone at Routledge was so prompt, responsive and kind to me. I did not know if that was because Gina had prepared the path for me, or because that is the culture of the organization, but it was a surprising and spectacular relief and joy that even my often-distorted perception could not deny. It was not long before I received a welcoming acceptance. We were good to go.
When I went to tell Gina the good news, and to thank her again, she had already departed.
Waverly and I had done so well together. She was delighted that our proposal had been successful. As I thought it through, I thought I would like to work with Waverly through the whole writing process. I like to write with an additional pair of eyes, chapter by chapter, to keep me accountable and on schedule, and also to help monitor my output as we went along. Re-writing is never easy for me, and doing it in smaller chunks, or sometimes what seemed like “wads” was somewhat easier. I wanted to hire Waverly to be my coach.
When I contacted Waverly to inquire, uncharacteristically she did not respond. I re-sent the email several times, resorted to text and finally even the old-fashioned telephone. Still silence. Then I began to wonder, was she OK? I knew she had not been feeling well.
I called the organization where I had found her and asked her colleague, “Has Waverly changed her contact info? Is she OK?” He paused and softly responded, “Oh Waverly, she passed away.” Apparently much like my own mother, she had been feeling mostly fine, then too late, an advanced and metastasized cancer became detectable, that precipitously and rapidly whisked her away. How very sad. Waverly was close to my age, and unlike Gina, she had had not time to prepare for the journey.
Both of these two precious women, delivered me safely to a worthy publisher before they took their leave. The book is at least in part, the work of angels.
The little girl with the imaginary roses never could have dreamed it, that such grace, such miracles “could happen to me?” I once found a simulated-antique large wall hanging that prominently reads “Work hard and be nice!” It has been hanging in my bathroom for many years, to keep me mindful. If I do that and pay attention, I will notice all the angels, and even perhaps better yet, sometimes be one.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on the 31st August. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Early in my career, when I was in a post-graduate training program and just beginning to see clients, I remember when one of my first clients gushed hyperbolically about how wonderful I was. I was dazzled and delighted. “Maybe, just maybe I will be good at this!” I thought. When I proudly told my supervision group what she had said, a woman in my group, a year ahead of me in the program sarcastically retorted, “Isn’t transference grand?!” I went silent, feeling deflated and ashamed. And although at the time I thought she was snotty and mean, I never forgot her words.
Transference is the projection onto the therapist of feelings for a real or longed for important other, commonly but not exclusively a parent. What my colleague was reminding me, or telling me, was “It’s not about you, Dummy!” Also, we invariably come crashing down from the proverbial pedestal, to become worse than scum. I have since come to understand, how these projections can be some of the richest sources of information about a client’s often unremembered past. Neglect leaves such gaping holes in interpersonal memory, that other media of communication than the spoken word become the requisite vehicle for the telling and reconstructing of personal narrative.
I remember one client telling me, “I really don’t remember anything about other people. When I try to remember my childhood, I just see bushes, and maybe our various dogs.” We slowly began to learn her story by studying her present relationships, and dynamics she did remember.
It is curious to me, that as I find with many of my neglect clients, although I have blank or spotty memory about my childhood, I have vivid memory of books. I remember from second grade Sunday school a picture from a Bible Story picture book of Abraham smashing the idols. We were learning the Ten Commandments and the concept of “One God.” In Jewish synagogues there were to be “no graven images” meaning no images or statues of human subjects who might be attempting to upstage the One God. Abraham, in the picture, a young boy, not that much older than me, in his little toga with a stick thrashing the white marble statues to the sanctuary floor. I remember thinking this was very strange. The lesson was, we were not supposed to worship idols. Somehow I did not quite get it.
I was always a hero worshipper. I could not seem to find real people to connect to, I just did not know how. But I would create them out of some raw material that I found in the environment, and invent the relationships I did not know how to have. When I was about 12, my “first love” was Thomas Wolfe. He was an author who wrote mammoth 500-600 page novels, known to be autobiographical, where the protagonist was depressed, intense, insatiable, creative and desperately alone. Wolfe the writer died at 39. So even though he was dead, I believed I had found my match, he was like me, I was not the only one. Wolfe was from Asheville, North Carolina. It was on my bucket list to go to Asheville, see his home and the birthplace of all these stories that filled my world.
In 2012 I had the opportunity to go to Asheville for a Neurofeedback training. I was delighted! By now it was 45 years later. I had a different brain and a completely different relationship landscape, thankfully. I booked a hotel across the street from the Thomas Wolfe House, the boarding house Wolfe’s mother ran, that featured in all the books; and where the real people had lived. I spent a day taking pictures of everything there.
In the gift shop I bought a little miniature of the marble angel made famous in the title of his book Look Homeward Angel; and a 560-page biography. After the training I eagerly devoured the biography in the same devouring way that Thomas Wolfe the man had related to most people and things. I learned from the biography, that he was a misogynist, he was an alcoholic, he was antisemitic, he was racist. What was I thinking? Who was that young girl?
I recently heard Bessel van der Kolk say, “idealization is a defense against terror.” I was terrified that I was a different species, that there was never and never would be anyone like me. In my quest for a partner or twin, I had to make someone up. Wolfe was the clay. The void left by neglect is so gaping, it terrifies. We have to fill it with something besides bushes or book illustrations.
In my twenties I became politicized. By then I had given up on being seen or known by my parents. My father’s suffering and his hero story or overcoming his suffering and making a successful life, became the model. But I also was angry and rebellious. I wanted to get his attention and approval, but I also disavowed that wish. So, I chose something that would perhaps outrage or anger him. At that time democratic governments were tumbling all over Latin America, smashed by military dictators not unlike Hitler. I adopted an identity as freedom fighter, out to overthrow fascist rulers, and perhaps even die doing it. The ideal was Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Originally from Argentina, Che grew up with privilege and became a doctor. But he sacrificed everything to be an internationalist fighter, who led the Cuban people to freedom and died doing it. Perfect! That was who I wanted to be. The new female version of Che. Ever trying to fill the empty void left by neglect, find an identity, a way to be like my father, but not too much. To be seen and known, respected and loved. And with luck to die doing it, a noble way to end the pain. I tried to do this and had a terrible psychological crash doing it, which ultimately led me to psychotherapy.
The child of neglect, lacking a mirroring other, has no self to be. I have shown Ruth Lanius’s shocking brain scans of the child of neglect, whose brain is firing faintly if at all. The default mode network which is the home of the sense of self, is virtually missing entirely. “Without a self” as Lanius reminds us, there is no other. So we continue to create some version of relationship, but being distorted and alienating, they don’t last. Like many survivors of neglect, I left a trail of relationship wreckage behind me, until I finally attached to a therapist, and stayed for many, many years. I am happy to say I now have very fulfilling and mutual relationships, a partner of 35 years, and dear friends. But I did not grow the circuits in the way we were designed to. That is the task that neglect leaves us with. And that is why we must learn to become the therapists that can heal this.
In Cuba I saw a billboard that said “Seremos Como Che,” This means we shall be like Che. The emphasis is mine. We will aspire to emulate, but not to be him. The void of self is devastating. The tragic impact of neglect. Getting a spine, getting a voice, big tasks. And big tasks for the therapist to learn all the possible access routes to assist. We must also resist the temptation to buy into the inevitable projections, positive and negative, or even to recognize them when they occur. Another reminder of why the therapist who works with neglect, perhaps even more than any other therapist, must do their own personal work. We don’t want to miss that boat like our clients’ parents did!
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on the 31st August. 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!