Tag: child

• How Low are your boundaries…

  “All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection” ~ Alice Miller

  Who knew that in order to grow up, you have to learn how to articulate your feelings and needs?  

  Isn't it funny in a peculiar way, how the parents who abused us believe they know what our needs are.  Really?  You do?

  What is even more tragic is that we continue to believe they have our best interest at heart…really?  Are they not the same ones who lowered who I was, who didn't allow me to self-protect?  

  There is no other crime in the world where the victim and the offender have relationships long long after the crime, where there is no separation…unless, and it is a very small proportion, the child presses charges against the parent.

  In order for the crime to be addressed, the child has to put his parent in jail…and be then accussed of 'breaking up the family'. Really, isn't it really just a crime ring?

  These crimes are snuggled nicely into the family unit, where the other spouse is a knowing accomplice, and the child or children are held victims forever…

  Even the whisper of 'speaking' of this sets off and in motion a torrent of fear that pulls tighter the controls of the patriarchal power…striking the child mute once again.

  The child fears to stand against the offender/accomplice…and is persuaded to return to the 'family' or crime ring.

  What I will never underestimate is the power of the parents to sway the sanity and well being of the family unit…and they have the exact same power to create insanity and hold it tightly within.

  Parents power will either be used to abuse or be used to love…and the children will follow in kind.

  Our family used family as a place for abuse to flourish…it wasn't used to raise and teach us self-protection, in fact it did the complete opposite.

  It is said that my father clothed and fed 14 children, but they fail to report how he didn't raise us, but instead stunted our emotional growth, rendered useless our power to self protect.

  He instead, along with my mother, set us out in the world without a way to protect ourselves, we had to learn this on our own.

  It took me 40 years to figure it out, that first step in the course of self protection was to learn to protect myself from my parents….

  No abusive parent will grant a child its rights to their needs or feelings, it is impossible for them to even consider it.

  Abusive parents are very self absorbed, they don't even know what you need, but the certainly and unequivocally LET You know what they need….and like always, we acquiesce our feelings and our needs to please them.

  What other crime does the victim work so hard and give up their lives to please the offender???

  If we are not standing up for our feelings and what our needs are we are laying down in order to please the one who lowered us.  How low will you go???  It is like insane limbo….and actually it does leave you life in limbo.

  It is my belief that offenders have no low limits, they could care less what is required of you in order to please them….it is up to us how low the bar goes, how low are your boundaries…

   

   

  December 7, 2011

  abuse, Alice, boundaries, child, Miller, parents, protection, self

  ---

• What you Grasp onto…

  "Not grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life."

  My brother feels that this sentence is wrong, that it should instead read;

  "Grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life.

  And actually the key word is grasping or not grasping what is meant by the term truth.  And I feel that the sentence still works for it is in understanding what NOT grasping will mean.

  The key of truth lies in whether you grasp or let it pass…

  We are given the opportunity hundreds a times a day to use this grasping or not grasping technique, even if you live alone, you are faced with this choice.

  Our lives are directly affected by our ability to grasp on or the ability to not move, this is the KEY to all of life.

  I think, we think, that life is very complex, hard and a huge mystery, when it can be boiled down to the very basic of all things, whether you can hold on and follow your own feelings…

  GRASPING is to become nearsighted or innersighted, to honor nothing else but what you feel inside, to hone the skills to recognize all the little nuances of your body, to treat your inside like a precious child, to grasp on to the essence that is alive and moving inside and then live by it.

  The aliveness, the feelings, the energy, the spirit, the hurt, the pain, the sorrow, IS You.  This is what you are not grasping on to. These feelings are you.

  The you is not found in your clothes, your home, your car, your pretty hair, your job, your family genes,  YOU are in the energy of feelings…

  The key to life is whether you grasp on or not grasp on; your life will take a totally different path depending upon what you do and say about your feelings.

  The key to all of your life lies within that small but gigantic act.

  My life totally flipped around by going with my guts, my inner feelings, my sorrow and my tears, my betrayal and horrific fear…it turned me on to me…and what is meant by the term truth.

  For the first 46 years of my life, I shunned my feelings, turned my voice away from them, disregarded and discarded them for the sake of many things, I betrayed myself in order for there to be peace in my family home and to 'get along' with my mother.

  In the end, none of that served anyone, not even me.

  All my feelings of hurt, betrayal, mistrust, fear, anger, resentment of being abused did not go anywhere while I shunned them, they sat like a bomb waiting to explode, to come out…and they did.  

  Each time I would find myself 'out of control', they poured out…usually upon an innocent bystander, my child.

  I couldn't grasp them, hold them back, they literally would spew forth in a torrent of words, feelings, etc…raining all my inner suffering upon my children.

  This out of control raging screaming voice did nothing to heal or address the pain….what it was doing was showing me what lay inside, what my inside world looked like…and sadly, I ALWAYS blamed my children for my tirade.

  If only they would do this or that.  If only they would behave here or there, if only they would listen to this or that, etc.

  Righteously I stood, the towering inferno out of control, blaming the child…never knowing the truth that was me.

  The truth that was me, that I had not grasped on to, was a very wounded, hurt, child.

  I then grew up to be an out of control adult with a neglected hurt child inside.

  The first glimpse I had of this child, was when my niece spoke up and I took on this visceral knowing of who she was, how she felt and what she needed….before 24 hours was up, I was sobbing uncontrollably knowing I was her.  I was her completely. I was her, I too was an abused child by my father.  I also knew, it was much worse for me, so bad that I had no memory…all I had was the fear that would bubble into slight terror at being alone with my father.

  It seemed this was my final exam, the day of reckoning, could I see me in her and her in me?  Will I once again, pass by and not grasp on to my feelings, when my feelings echo those of a child who is so small and so innocent, who is now brave enough to speak her feelings, to say what happened?

  When my sister said, "She said Grandpa touched her…" all it took was a half a heart beat and I said, "She is telling the truth." 

  And right after that my body began shaking, shivering and trembling out of control….It knew that I knew.  I was grasping on.

  The truth came to me in the form of a little girl.  A little girl sexually abused by her grandfather.  It came to me in sorrow so wide and deep I thought I would drowned.  Yet I grasped on to her little hand and knew that I had to be the BIG one, the brave one, to speak and to say, what perhaps she could not articulate.

  I spoke for her and in doing so I spoke for me…I took her truth and held on.

  Not grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life…  All of life's abuse.  

  If you don't hold on to the little girls truth, you are holding the hand of the OFFENDER.

  Pick one…and your life will be steered by what you grasp onto…

   

   

  December 1, 2011

  child, FALC, feelings, molested, offenders, truth

  ---

• Listening.

  In the book, "Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child" by Thich Nhat Hanh, he writes about Listening.

  "When we speak of listening with compassion, we usually think of listening to someone else.  But we must also listen to the wounded child inside of us.  Sometimes the wounded child in us needs all our attention. That little child might emerge from the depths of your consciousness and ask for your attention.  If you are mindful, you will hear his or her voice calling for help.  At that moment, instead of paying attention to whatever is in front of you, go back and tenderly embrace the wounded child.  You can talk directly to the child with the language of love, saying, "In the past, I left you alone.  I went away from you.  Now, I am very sorry.  I am going to embrace you." You can say, "Darling, I am here for you. I know that you suffer so much.  I have been busy.  I have neglected you, and now I have learned a way to come back to you."  If necessary, you have to cry together with that child. Whenever you need to, you can sit and breathe with the child. "Breathing in, I go back to my wounded child; Breathing out, I take good care of my wounded child."

  "You have to talk to your child several times a day.  Only then can healing take place.   Embracing you child tenderly, you reassure him that you will never let him down again or leave him unattended.  The little child has been left alone for so long. That is why you need to begin this practice right away. If you don't do it now, when will you do it?"

  "If you know how to go back to her and listen carefully every day for five or ten minutes, healing will take place.  When you climb a beautiful mountain, invite your child to climbe with you. When you contemplate the sunset, invite her to enjoy it with you.  If you do that for a few weeks or a few months, the wounded child in you will experience healing."

  "With practice, we can see that our wounded child is not only us.  Our wounded child my represent several generations.  Our mother may have suffered throughout her life.  Our father may have suffered.  Perhaps our parents weren't able to look after the wounded child in themselves.  So when you're embracing the wounded child within us, we're embracing all the wounded children of our past generations.  This practice is not a practice for ourselves alone, but for numberless generations of ancestors or descendants."

  "Our ancestors may not have known how to care for their wounded child within, so they transmitted their wounded child to us.  Our practice is to end this cycle.  If we can heal our wounded child, we will not only liberate ourselves, but will also help liberate whoever has hurt or abused us.  The abuser may also have been the victim of abuse. There are people who have practiced with their inner child for a long time who have had a lessening of their suffering and have experienced transformation. Their relationships with family and friends have become much easier."

  "We suffer because we have not been touched by compassion and understanding. If we generate the energy of mindfulness, understanding and compassion for our wounded child, we will suffer less. When we generate mindfulness, compassion and understanding become possible, and we can allow people to love us.  Before, we may have been suspicious of everything and everyone.  Compassion helps us relate to others and restores communication."

  "The people around us, our family and friends, may also have a severely wounded child inside.  If we've managed to help ourselves, we can also help them.  When we've healed ourselves, our relationships with others become much easier.  There's more peace and more love in us."

  "Go back and take care of your self.  Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you.  The wounded child in you needs you.  Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.  Go home and be there for all these things.  Practice mindful walking and mindful breathing. Do everything in mindfulness so you can really be there, so you can love."  Thich Nhat Hanh 

  I know that we are not truly listening If we only listen to others and neglect hearing what our wounded child needs.  Unhealed wounded children are the source of all the pain on this planet…

  Each of us can end the pain and suffering by learning how to hear what our wounded child needs.

  November 24, 2011

  child, Child” by, healing, Healing the, Inner, Reconciliation, thich Nhat Hanh, wounded

  ---

• I took my life back, by walking away.

  On my last blog, I received a comment and a line struck me that I want to share. 

  “It was an error to not stand in front of your house and scream or picket or whatever else until your dad admitted it.”

  What I feel most families believe is that it is their job to be the law, that they had to have an admittance of guilt in order to go to the police.

  It does seem absurd, but I am sure that most people don’t want to get the police involved unless they are sure.  And that means him admitting it.  Since they have the one side, the little girls side, they are expecting to have a complete picture and they need his co-operation.

  This sentiment needs to be changed. It is not our job to get the admittance of guilt from the perpetrator, that is the job of the police.  It is your job to press charges, to stand with your daughter/son and walk through the court process.

  What I can only surmise, is that the realness of it all would come front and center and your lives would change if you pressed charges.

  And from what I am hearing your lives did change, were forced to change and deal with a girl who now needed therapy, couldn’t stay in reality, etc.

  I get it, I understand completely.

  It seems you are either going to deal with the abuse one way or another.

  I believe to the bottom of my soul, that IF adults in the lives of the abused children would believe them and support them and press charges and face this full on, there would be little residual negative results.

  The NEGATIVE results come from NEGATIVE actions.

  I wish I could imprint this upon the eyelids of parents.

  It isn’t the abuse that is so damaging, it is the negative results of the non abusing adults around us.

  While the commenter speaks of how broken hearted the minister was upon learning of his own daughters abuse, his failure to respond positively greatly affected MANY girls.

  Just in my time frame alone, three girls were affected.  And what I know is that he was summons time and time again.

  His negative reaction resulted in mental breakdowns. 

  It isn’t the abuse alone.  I am sorry to say.  My father’s abuse was the first punch.  The second and more fatal blows are the negative responses. 

  Being treated negatively after is so damaging and you have confirmed this by your comment. 

  The positive response is extremely hard to do.  But the results are completely the opposite of the negative ones.  

  The positive response is to step away from your father, cut all ties.

  The positive response is to step away from anyone who supports him by not moving away.

  The positive response is to put up boundaries against family members to isolate your self from any contact with this abuse.

  I have done the positive thing and I am standing outside of my family with one brother.

  Doing the positive thing is the path of most resistance. 

  It is a very hard road, but it carries the most gifts along the way.  While I am hearing that living with the negative results is horrible, I am here to tell you while it seems extremely mean, THAT is the easier way.

  That it is easier to deal with the negative results than it is to stop the world and go in a completely different direction.

  We can dialogue this out.

  But I feel…negative response will give you a negative result.

  The same goes for positive….

  I took the road less traveled and I have not regretted a moment of it.  I took my life back, by walking away.

  September 27, 2011

  abuse, child, FALC, minister, negative, response

  ---

• It is not how you say it, but that you say it.

  It seems that I am not the only one who is unsure of what to bring to the Authorities and what is considered ‘evidence’ or if you have the right knowledge or if it is not first hand but rather hearsay.

  What I want to impress upon all who read this blog, is that we each carry a parcel of evidence, and each part whether it be large or small, first hand or was told to us by victims or friends of victims, we are all carrying some evidence.

  Evidence we believe in.

  It doesn’t have to be bold and in detail, it can be that you too have heard about the character of this man or this woman.

  They are all, as we are all, presumed pure until told otherwise, until enough folks can say something to the contrary.

  Each of us has a ruler to gauge people and each of us have bumped into unsavory characters, and what most of us fail to do, me included is follow through and speak up, alert not only friends and family, but authorities.

  The authorities we have to presume are NOT knowing or hearing what we are, they are in the dark and it is up to us to show them were to shine their lights, to investigate and look into the well being of the people, we are fearful for.

  If someone had pressed the issue way back when my father was molesting his daughters and all of our friends, it wouldn’t have taken a great detective to canvas our neighborhood and collect evidence from the girls living there.

  We keep thinking we need to work this from the bottom up, to find a child willing to say something, but that is not our job.  We are not the investigators; we don’t have to have a complete file of evidence to alert the authorities. 

  Our job as citizens of the world is to alert the authorities of folks we have information on, whether it be first hand or second, but if you believe it…it needs to be handed over to authorities.

  As the saying goes. “All it takes for evil to continue is for good folks to do nothing.”

  It matters not if you are articulate, if what you have heard seems small, it all adds up to the complete story; a story told from a variety of angles.  It can be your personal experience or how you heard.

  They need Not just one viewpoint or one age, not just from folks within the church, but from those on the outside.  Not just the family and friends, but friends of family and friends.  We all have a thread that will make up the tapestry of who these people really are.

  They have created an elaborate shield that deflects their criminal behaviors. We each can tug and pull on one thread that will reveal to all just who lies beneath.

  Somehow our minds have us convinced that we will spot this action happening, that we have to see it with our own eyes, before we can pass on information. You need not have the whole picture, but one piece of the puzzle.

  Again, we are not the detectives; we can’t arrest them, or take them to the court of the land.  It is our job to help the detectives.  We know what they don’t know.

  And if you know enough to believe it and you don’t share it, you are adding and abetting the crime. 

  The only ones who are free from guilt in this are the ones who don’t know. 

  If you don’t know, you can’t know.

  But, once you know, you can’t not know.

  And if you know and are holding it safe within, you are doing each pedophile a great big favor.  Their sickness breathes on your silence.  

  I was even more devastated by mother, for she was okay knowing and doing nothing for me.  Nothing.  I was left alone to tend my wounds, to make right my upside down world.   For I have very little memories, but I do have one, me showing my mother my hurting bottom.  I was little, way little.  I didn’t know why I kept that one odd memory. But now I do.  I showed her and nothing was done. She didn’t leave him.  Forty years later, my niece says her Grandpa touched her.

  Silence and doing nothing kept him going from girl to girl. 

  If you believe it, believe that your silence will deliver to him/her another child to abuse. For my experience with my father shows the trail.

  I had evidence that his sickness began years ago.

  The detectives need past histories, not just what is going on today, they need to see a pattern emerging.  The more who come forth, the more chances his/her case will go to trial.  They need to hear that this ‘story’ is being told far and wide, it comes from people of all ages…

  The less that comes forth, the more chances his/her reign will be like my fathers…40 years and way too many little girls!

  What I know for sure is that I will not be the one sitting holding my evidence while a child’s innocence hangs in the balance.

  I will not be like my neighbors or other members of the church and withhold evidence.  What I heard will be passed on.  Not in the rumor mill, but to the ones who have the power to help the children.

  No matter how my evidence is taken by the law, I know that I have done my part.

   It is not how you say, but that you say it.

   

  August 28, 2011

  abuse, alerting, authorities, child, FALC, silence, speaking

  ---

• A Pedophiles Nest

  There is only one human race, but there are many small sprints or similar roads we travel and our travel companions often times are running silently with us, unbeknownst to either of us.

  We feel alone and separated, when in fact our road is quite packed and overrun with folks of all ages.

  As refugees of our own secret war we hide our battle scars, for it is not a war we are proud to be in, it is more like we are prisoners of this war.

  Wartime prisoners walking free in chains of guilt and confused of who our real enemy is and fearful of those we love.

  To frighten to speak of the war crimes, we soldier on in silence, while our behavior displays great cover-ups and covert actions.

  Are we soldiers or are we prisoners?

  Who are we fighting for, whose side are we on?

  In the war of abuse the lines get fuzzy, our enemy lines are blurred by images of father, uncle, brother, sister, mother.

  The enemy looks and sounds too familiar. We can’t tell ‘friendly’ fire from those of our enemies.

  The war against abuse becomes the war against the family, a family’s civil war.

  This family civil war begins when a parent abuses a child or allows a child’s abuse to go untreated. The family home then becomes a war zone, where you’re living with the enemy, a prisoner of war.

  The war has been waging for generations and many lifetimes…and yet we feel that we are the ones who start the war by speaking of it, when if fact we are trying to end it.

  Ending this war means ending the ‘family’ as it stands.

  The insanity of it all, is what they call family is really a civil war, where children are born prisoners and in order to be free, have to leave the family.

  I am not sure I can articulate this correctly, but we are born into the land of the enemies and we are supporting a war machine while being the land it occupies.

  It is like we are on the team of our enemies fighting against ourselves.

  And to me, the reality of this was the beginning of an out and out war, for as long as I was a silent and well-behaved prisoner of war, a family’s image remained intact and the monster remained behind the façade of father.

  The near impossible task is to see the enemy of the family’s civil war, to feel the love evaporate, the trust turn to fear, and face that you lived in the middle of enemy territory.

  The refugees of this war come stumbling out of their families…lost, confused and alone or in the company of siblings in the same condition. In order to win the war, we’ll have to fight against the family, become its enemy.

  What is seen, as a family civil war is actually the war against abusive behavior, is a fight for the innocent children, a battle to begin healing from criminal acts in childhood.

  For all the new refugees and soldiers who have switched sides, I applaud you and your bravery and courage to stand up against enemies.

  The good news is that you have been fighting to keep a monster in power, and now you are fighting to take him down and all the energy, strength and endurance you have used to live within enemy camp can now be used against him/her.

  The family civil war can only be won in tearing the family apart and display it as it is, a pedophile’s nest.

  June 4, 2011

  abuse, against, child, children, civil, enemies, parents, refugees, sexual, war

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• Children will suffer.

  From Alice Miller’s book “The Body Never Lies,” she writes…

  “My attempts to persuade the Vatican of the importance of early childhood experiences have revealed how impossible it is to arouse feelings of compassion in men and women who right at the beginning of their lives learned to suppress their genuine, natural feelings so mercilessly that there is no trace of them left in their conscious minds. All curiosity about the feelings of others has been stifled. It seems that people who were physically mutilated in early life immure themselves in a fortress deep inside themselves, where they can only pray to God. It is to Him that they delegate all their responsibility, and they carefully obey the precepts of the church so as not to be punished by this “loving” God for any sins of omission they might commit.”

  “Shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein in late 2003, the Vatican was largely instrumental in orchestrating the sudden increase, all over the world, of voices expressing compassion for the unscrupulous tyrant who had been such an object of fear and loathing while he was still at large. But in my view we cannot simply allow ourselves to base our judgment of tyrants on ordinary compassion for the individual, if that means disregarding things they have done.”

  “As biographers Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie tell us in their 1990 book “Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf”, Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937. He grew up in a peasant family living in penury near Tikrit. They had no land of their own. His biological father died before his birth. His stepfather, a shepherd, constantly humiliated the boy, calling him “son of a whore” and “son of a bitch,” beating him mercilessly and tormenting him in the most brutal way imaginable. To exploit young Saddam’s working capacity to the full, he forbade him to go to school until the boy was ten. Instead, he would wake him in the middle of the night and tell him to guard the flocks. In these formative years, children develop and image of the world. Ideas take shape in their minds about the values that are worth upholding in life. At the same time, they begin to cherish desires and dream of their fulfillment. For Saddam, the slave of his stepfather, these desires all centered around one thing; limitless power over others. In his brain the idea presumably took shape that he could regain the human dignity he had been so radically deprived of only by possessing the same power over others that his stepfather had over him. Throughout his childhood, there were no other ideals, no other examples to live up to, only the omnipotent stepfather and himself, the defenseless victim of the terror inflicted on him. It was in line with this pattern that the adult Hussein later organized the structure of the country he ruled over. His body knew nothing but violence.”

  “Every dictator denies the suffering of his childhood and attempts to forget them by indulging his megalomania. But the unconscious mind of an individual has completely registered his biography in the cells of the body, it will at some point urge that individual to confront the truth. After the coalition invasion, despite the immense financial resources at his disposal, Saddam sought refuge precisely in the vicinity of the place where he was born, the place where all help was denied him as a child, a highly precarious spot that could not provide real protection. The fact that he should have chosen this place to “go to ground” reflects the desperate plight of his early years and clearly illustrates the power of compulsive repetition. His return to his childhood was the return to the place where he had no chance to escape.”

  “there is conclusive evidence that the character of a tyrant will not change as long as he lives, that he will abuse his power in a destructive way as long as he encounters no resistance. The point is that his genuine aim, the unconscious aim concealed behind all his conscious activities, remains the same: to use his power to blot out the humiliations inflicted on him in childhood and denied by him ever since. But this aim can never be achieved. The past cannot be expunged, nor can one come to terms with it, as long as one denies the suffering it involved. Accordingly, a dictator’s efforts to achieve that aim are doomed to failure. Compulsive repetition will always reassert itself. And an endless succession of victims is forced to pay the price.”

  “With his own behavior, Hitler demonstrated to the world the kind of person his father was and the kind of treatment he suffered at his hands when he was a child: destructive, pitiless, ostentatious, merciless, boastful, perverted, self-enamored, shortsighted, and stupid. In his unconscious imitation he was faithful to his father’s example. For the same reason, other dictators like Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Ceausescu, Idi Amin, Saddim Hussein behaved in a very similar way. Saddam’s biography is a striking example of how extreme humiliation in childhood is avenged on thousands and thousands of victims at a later date. The refusal to learn from these facts may be grotesque, but the reason for refusal are not difficult to identify.”

  “ The fact is that an unscrupulous tyrant mobilizes the suppressed fears and anxieties of those who were beaten as children but have never been able to accuse their own fathers of doing so. Their loyalty to these fathers is unswerving, despite the torments suffered at their hands. Every tyrant symbolizes such a father, the figure whom the abused children remain attached to with every fiber of their being, hoping that one day they will be able to transform him into a loving parent by being blind.”

  “This hope may have been what prompted the representation of the Roman Catholic Church to demonstrate their compassion for Hussein. In 2002, I turned to a number of cardinals for support when I presented the Vatican with material on the delayed effects of spanking and asked authorities there to do what they could to enlighten young parents on this subject. As I have said, not one of the cardinals I approached with this request showed the slightest interest in the universally ignored but crucially important issue of physically abused children. Nor did I come across the slightest indication of Christian charity or compassion in connection with this issue. Today, however, those same representatives are eager to show that they are indeed capable of compassion. Significantly, however, this compassion is lavished not on maltreated children or on Saddam’s victims but on Saddam himself, on the unscrupulous father figure that the feared despot symbolizes.”

  “As a rule, beaten, tormented, and humiliated children who have never received support from a helping witness later develop a high degree of tolerance for the cruelties perpetrated by parent figures and a remarkable indifference to the sufferings borne by children exposed to inhumane treatment. The last thing they wish to be told is that they themselves once belong to the same group. Indifference is a way of preserving them from opening their eyes to reality. In this way they become advocates of evil, however convinced they may be of their own humane intentions. From an early age they were forced to suppress and ignore their true feelings. They were forced to put their trust not in those feelings but solely in the regulations imposed on them by their parents, teachers, and the church authorities. Now the task facing them in their adult lives leaves them no time to perceive their own feelings, unless those feelings happen to fit in precisely with the patriarchal value system in which they live and which prescribes compassion for the father, however destructive and dangerous he may be. The more comprehensive a tyrant’s catalogue of crimes is, the more he can count on the tolerance, provided his admires are hermetically closed off from access to the sufferings of their own childhood.” Alice Miller.

  What a brilliant cycle this abuse is, for the circuitous madness not looking creates. How nature creates ways in which our mind can overrun our realities for survival and yet this very technique is what allows it to continue.

  The hurt child ends up hurting children and the hurt children who don’t want to feel their pain ends up seeing the ‘heroic’ adult and not the monster.

  It takes Herculean efforts to go with the body of truths and swing wide of society, church and family to see reality.

  Imagine a world full of delusional adults who carry a false picture of their formative years, they will not be able to spot a monster in their presence?

  No matter not how detailed his catalogue of crimes are, what matters most is that his followers, family and friends, haven’t discovered their own box of crimes of childhood…the sightless followers, the ones who love to live in the land of denial will not see his crimes.

  It is incredible to me, it isn’t that they are not seeing what is going on today, but the long ago blindness that makes them unconscious supporters of evil.

  You simply are incapable of seeing in the present if you didn’t see in the past.

  And the sheer volume of people refusing to deal in the past wrecks havoc on today’s reality.

  While I screamed loudly about the present, they clung to the vestiges of their ‘happy childhood’.

  Who knew that holding tight to a ‘happy childhood’ could cause so much pain!

  By not seeing who you really are you are incapable of seeing the truth in others…and this works so well for the monsters among us.

  Who will stop them?

  What will make the blind see, how much destruction has to be spread around the planet, before we can begin to see that children are not born this way, the parents are the cause.

  As long as we don’t see the suffering children, children will suffer.

  May 30, 2011

  abuse, adults, Alice, as, blame, body, charged, child, childhood, denial, destruction, fear, guilty, happy, lies, Miller, never, parents, sexual, The, to, tyrants

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• Survivor Self.

  The Drama of the Gifted Child – The search of the true self, by Alice Miller.

  Here is what she writes on the back cover of the book.

  “Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs and memories skillfully in order to meet our parent’s expectations and win their “Love.” Alice Miller writes, “When I use the word “gifted” in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb…Without this ‘gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.”

  These few paragraphs explain my great power to know what others need, but really have no idea my own needs.

  “In my work with people in the helping professions, I have often been confronted with a childhood history that seems significant to me.

  · There was a mother who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurities from her child and from everyone else behind a hard authoritarian, even totalitarian façade.
  · This child had an amazing ability to perceive and respond intuitively, that is, unconsciously, to this need of the mother or both parents, for him to take on the role that had unconsciously been assigned to him.
  · This role secured “love” for the child – that is, his parents’ exploitation. He could sense that he was needed, and this need guaranteed him a measure of existential security.

  This ability is then extended and perfected. Later, these children not only become mothers (confidantes, comforters, advisors, supporters) of their own mothers but also take over at least part of the responsibility for their siblings and eventually develop a special sensitivity to unconscious signals manifesting the needs of others. No wonder they often choose to become psychotherapists later on. Who else, without this previous history, would muster sufficient interest to spend the whole day trying to discover what is happening in other people’s unconscious? But the development and perfecting of this sensitivity – which once assisted the child in surviving and now enables the adult to pursue his strange profession – also contains the roots of his emotional disturbance: As long as the therapist is not aware of his repression, it can compel him to use his patients, who depend on him, to meet his unmet needs with substitutes.” Alice Miller

  I lived as a great servant for my mother’s needs for at least 40 years and never fully developed my own. This is an odd substitute for being ‘needed’ for our own self, but rather what we can offer to them.

  In a section called, The Lost World of Feelings, she writes…

  “ On the basis of my experience, I think that the cause of an emotional disturbance is to be found in the infant’s early adaptation. The child’s needs for respect, echoing, understanding, sympathy, and mirroring have had to be repressed, with several serious consequences.

  “One such consequence is that person’s inability to experience consciously certain feelings of his own (such as jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, helplessness, or anxiety), either in childhood or later in adulthood. This is all the more tragic that we are concerned here with lively people who are often capable of deep feelings. It is the most noticeable when they describe childhood experiences that were free of pain and fear. They could enjoy their encounters with nature, for example, without hurting the mother or making her feel insecure, reducing her power, or endangering her equilibrium. It is remarkable how these attentive, lively sensitive children, who can for example, remember exactly how they discovered sunlight in bright grass at age four, at eight were unable to ‘notice anything’ or show any curiosity about their pregnant mother or were ‘not at all’ jealous at the birth of a sibling. It is also remarkable how, at the age of two, such a child could be left alone and ‘be good’ while soldiers forced their way into the house and searched it, suffering the terrifying intrusion quietly without crying. These people have all developed the art of not experiencing feelings, for a child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother’s love or the love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress her emotions. She cannot even experience them secretly, “just for herself”; she will fail to experience them at all. But they will nevertheless stay in her body, in her cells, stored up as information that can be triggered by a later event.”

  “Throughout their later life, these people will have to deal with situations in which these rudimentary feelings may awaken, but without the original connection ever becoming clear. The connection can be deciphered only when intense emotions have been experienced in therapy and successfully linked with their original situation.”

  “Take, for example, the feelings of abandonment – not that of the adult, who feels lonely and therefore turns to alcohol or drugs, goes to the movies, visits friends or makes ‘unnecessary” telephone calls in order to bridge the gap somehow. No, I mean the original feelings in the small infant, who had not of these means to distract and whose communication, verbal or preverbal, did not reach the mother because his mother herself was deprived. For her part, she was dependent on a specific echo from the child that was essential to her, for she herself was a child in search of a person who could be available to her.”

  “However paradoxical this may seem, a child is a the mother’s disposal. The mother can feel herself the center of attention, for her child’s eyes follow her everywhere. A child cannot run away from her as her own mother once did. A child can be brought up so that it becomes what she wants it to be. A child can be made to show respect; she can impose her own feelings on him, see herself mirrored in his love and admiration, and feel strong in his presence. But when he becomes too much, she can abandon that child to a stranger or to solitary confinement in another room.”

  “When a woman has had to repress all these needs in relation to her own mother, they will arise from the depth of her unconscious and seek gratification through her own child, however well-educated she may be. The child feels this clearly and very soon forgoes the expression of his own distress. Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the therapy of the adult, they are accompanied by intense pain and despair. It is clear that these people could not have survived so much pain as children. That would have been possible only in an empathic, attentive environment, which was lacking. Thus all feelings had to be warded off. But to say that they were absent would be a denial of the empirical evidence.”

  “Several mechanisms can be recognized in the defense against early feelings of abandonment. In addition to simple denial, we usually find the exhausting struggle to fulfill the old, repressed, and by now often perverted needs with the help of symbols (cults, sexual perversions, groups of all kinds, alcohol, or drugs). Intellectualization is very commonly encountered as well, since it is a defense mechanism of great power. It can have disastrous results, however, when the mind ignores the vital messages of the body. All these defense mechanisms are accompanied by repression of the original situation and emotions belonging to it.”

  “Accommodation to parental needs often (but not always) leads to the “as-if personality” this person develops in such a way that he reveals only what is expected of him and fuses so completely with what he reveals that one could scarcely guess how much more there is to him behind this false self. He cannot develop and differentiate his true self, because he is unable to live it….” Alice Miller.

  The last few words, ‘because he is unable to live it…is the root reason it never develops, instead the only self we know is the survivor self.

  May 28, 2011

  abuse, Alice Miller, centered, child, drama, false, gifted, mother, of, self, survivor, The, true

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• Our Abusive Parents Loved Us.

  Tinogona, It is Achievable! Tererai Trent

  Sometimes it is hard to grasp the how or to figure out the way, but all that is needed is the faith in that it can happen.

  Surrendering the details up to the Universe and just keep our energy and focus and feeling in ‘it is achievable’ for Who is on our side.

  As I sit and begin to hear and know more of the abuse that is running rampant in families and how their legacy goes on for generation upon generation, I feel an overwhelming weight of not just turning one person, but their whole pathology.

  A child sits so young and malleable, so impressionable and is being taught the pedagogy of his ancestors most of which have suffered as he is, having been raised by adults who have failed to see their own pathology.

  To reach the child, it seems we have to sway the adult, to appeal to the wounded child within, to get the fearful hurt confused essence to hear our words.

  What I must remember, is that I heard… I was able to resonate with the words one brave little girl spoke, so perhaps, the children will lead this parade.

  Alice Miller speaks of an enlightened witness and the word enlightened means,

  1. rational: free of ignorance, prejudice, or superstition
  2. well informed: having a sound and open-minded understanding of all the facts, or based on such an understanding
  3. having achieved great spirituality: having achieved the realization of a spiritual or religious understanding.

  I love the first two meanings, for without them, you can’t achieve spiritual understanding, for I believe that real spirituality is having an open mind that understands all of the facts.

  Being an Enlightened Witness for a child means that you will report to the Authorities so that they can question the child. Sadly, our system is set up so that the child has to be the one to start this ball rolling, and perhaps it is they that are the strongest among us, the least ignorant to the lay of the land within their homes.

  By being a parent who is willing to say, that the legacy of abuse begins with me, is to free the child from having to point this out. Children are dying and suffering all to keep an image of a good parent, even when all evidence is to the contrary.

  It is achievable to stop the legacy of abuse, if we all stand up and speak the truth of what is going on in our homes, for the shame to fall upon the adults and leave the children to be free and innocent.

  As it stands now, the children are suffering silently due to the silence of so many knowing adults.

  What is your pathology? How was it being a child of your parents? However you were treated as a child, you will ‘naturally’ parent that way, for it was what was taught to you.

  In order to change this pathology, you have to see that the parents who raised you were wrong, they did not teach you love, they taught you evil.

  It is by becoming enlightened to the facts and by seeing the truth, which you can then stop this insidious disease.

  It is spread by ignorance alone…we simply were taught that our abusive parents loved us.

  It is achievable to know real love.

  May 24, 2011

  abuse, Alice, child, ignorance, Miller, oprah show, parents, pathology, speaking, tererai trent, witness

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• Unable to Heal.

  Here is another part of Alice Miller’s book “Banished Knowledge”…again from the chapter, Wicked Child.

  “Reactions to new insights reflect not only training but also the tragedy of unequaled chances: A loved child receives the gift of love and with it that of knowledge and innocence. It is a gift that will provide him with orientation for his whole life. An injured child lacks everything because he lacks love. He doesn’t know what love is, constantly confuses crime with good deeds and mendacity with truth, and hence will continue to be subject to new confusions.

  (Had to look up the meaning of Mendacity…telling of lies: deliberate untruthfulness)
  “This confusion also became apparent to me in a discussion of an actual case among experts: A woman who had not been subject to achievement pressure in her childhood and had been much loved took into her home a nine year old autistic boy, who she later adopted. She was able to give him plenty of warmth and physical contact, react to him positively, confirm feelings, sense needs, pick up his signals, and eventually understand them too. In her arms the boy learned how to show emotions, to experience anger at what had been done to him in the past, and to discover love. He developed into a healthy, intelligent, very lively, and candid youth.
  “I recount this history to a group of experts in the field of autism. The doctors among them said that autism was an incurable neurophysiological disease and that the history in the case showed that the boy had not been suffering from autism; in other words there had been a wrong diagnosis. The psychologists, family therapists, and analysts said that this history was probably a crude simplification, for they knew many cases in which years of psychotherapy had brought no change in autistic patients (which incidentally, I am perfectly willing to believe). They went on to say that such a history could be of no help to parents of autistic children; on the contrary, it would give them guilt feelings because not all parents were in a position to devote that much love and time to their child. The parents usually had several children, had to earn a living, and, after all, they were only human. I said it seemed to me irrelevant whether a parent acquired guilt feelings when it was a matter of uncovering such an important truth.”
  “The history of the nine-year old boy confirmed something I had long suspected: A child’s autism is a response to his environment, sometimes the last possible response open to a child. Whether autism is curable depends on the extent to which the people in a new environment can become aware of the truth of the child’s past. The reaction of those expertss showed how difficult it is to find such people. Their resistance prevented them from realizing how greatly this boy’s history could help us in our dealings with children.”
  “Later, after many years, I heard of similar though still rare cases of autistic children being cured. A technique was developed, the ‘holding’ technique, aimed at the need of the lost, lonely alienated child to be held. Unfortunately this technique was once again coupled with pedogogy, and that is where I see its great danger. If the mother has gained the child’s trust by holding him and proceeds to place pedagogic demands on him, the child will do anything in his power not to lose his mother’s affection again. I has actually been shown that children treated with this technique do brilliantly in school. But since I wrote my first book in 1979, I have known that this is not necessarily a genuine cure. The mother’s complete physical and psychic devotion to the autistic child can no doubt work miracles, provided she refrains from making pedagogic demands; otherwise she will create the drama of the gifted child – the very thing the child is warding off with his autism.”
  Alice Miller

  What I am finding so intriguing as well as being affirmed, is that the child and its wellness is often times sacrificed for the comfort of a guilt free parent.
  I believe that her definition and the other definition of ‘Gifted Child’ must be different. I must read her book called “The Drama of the Gifted Child”.
  Her books are wonderful in showing the costs to the parent and child…and in my humble opinion, it is the voiceless child who is overlooked most often…and it is that child who continues the legacy of what it suffered and was unable to heal.

  May 22, 2011

  abuse, Alice, autism, Banished Knowledge, child, Miller, parents

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