Sometimes We Cry and We Can't Name Why...

Today my son cried at a cartoon that seemed really to remind me of a situation he went through as a child before he could talk.  I asked him if he remembered one of his friends from that time and he cried even harder.  He couldn't name why he was crying.  We store some memories of our development in the reptilian brain, the part of the brain that has no words.  It is our primitive reptilian brain and where our earliest memories are stored.  I said sometimes we cry and we don't know why, but it doesn't mean its not really important to cry.  It was an awful chapter in his life.  I thought he didn't want to go to the sitters house, because he didn't want to be separated from me.  I thought after talking with the pediatrician that his sadness at separation was all developmental.  The clue should have been he was always happy before. We didn't learn the truth until a couple of years later after taking to someone who reported abuse to us.  I can't change that time in his life.  I thought he was better off in a home, because he got so sick in daycare.  He wasn't.  Abuse can be prevented by ensuring your child is not left alone in the care of other adults.  Something I learned from the darkness to light campaign to prevent abuse.  I'm just glad we made it through together.

Women and Work

As a woman in the workplace, it has always befuddled me when other women don't like me.  Today I have some clarity after talking to an executive.  We were discussing the general hierarchy of life, how men dominate the workplace usually.  That's not unusual, well except at my job where the executives are primarily female.  We were discussing racial inequities in the workplace and how people protect the status quo.  That wasn't unusual to my ears.  What was really interesting was that she said women attack other women, because they are not male.  Well, this was new to me.  I would think the first instinct of a women would be to support and build.  When this doesn't happen, I have been taken a back.  Like way back.  It makes me quiet and anxious.  So anxious that I try to make myself somehow different, taking that micro-aggression personally.  So, as a woman that has questioned the status quo in the hiring process in general; I wonder how I can push female co-workers to recognize their own biases?  Maybe some environments do this naturally, because I love the way it feels in the workplace I'm at.  It feels equitable and fair.

13 Reasons I Won't Watch...

So I told her I wouldn't be watching 13 Reasons Why and she proceeded to tell me how she was forcing herself to watch it.  She then began to describe with little affect the way that she died in graphic detail to me.  In that moment, I thought do you know that I have lived with serious suicidal thoughts at one time in my life?  Do you know that I purposefully refraining from watching because of that.  I felt little tiny step closer to death just listening and it made me a little angry.

I don't watch violent programming on purpose, as a trauma survivor it is deeply upsetting.  As a woman, why are we so obsessed with broadcasting violence against women?  I can't watch.  I won't watch.

Why won't I watch?

1. I want to live.
2. I want to celebrate my life.
3. I want to survive.
4. I want to celebrate survival, each and every day.
5. Survival is cool.
6. Survival is glamorous.
7. I deserve love.
8. I am love.
9. I am loved and if love fails, there is millions of more people waiting for the chance to love.
10. I love my life, and I didn't always, but I have surrounded myself with the life I deserve.
11. I'm not going to let anyone stop me from living the life I deserve.
12.  I'm a seasoned survivor, it wasn't always that way, but the more I read, the more I learn, the better
       I live.
13. I don't need to watch drama to get through life, life has enough drama in itself.

Its okay to love life, seems strange that I would have to say it...and you don't have to watch!

And don't forget the Lifeline, if your putting all of life together and you just need help making sense of things: 800-273-TALK.  There is nothing wrong with talking to professionals, I have and found them to usually be helpful in gearing up for facing life.  And keep talking, because it is through connection and relationships that we heal.  Peer Support can also be a great place to start really talking, learning, and carving out the life you want.

Recovered Memory is at the Heart of Debate

I feel great energy around my hands I told him.  I haven't been able to draw hands since I was a child.  You could if you practiced he said.  I said when I was in my twenties, I wrote a letter to myself.  My therapist had me draft it with my left hand.  I said in that letter that my mother sexually abused me.  Did she?  I don't really think so.  I mean the topic was never explored with my therapist, I didn't tell her.  I definitely have memory of being sexually abused by my grandfather, but not my mother.  My mother was hostile and intrusive.  She was controlling and bitter, but I don't remember feeling that "ick" about her.  My current therapist told me a story of an induced memory and we closed the topic that this was the heart of great debate.  So, I'm trusting that gut feeling on this one.

 

My Family Garden

I ate a sugar pea pod from my mother's garden and my stomach turned.  The experience reminds me of my experience of family growing up.  We looked great on the outside, but inside was just toxic.  There were wonderful experiences too - horseback riding, ballet, jazz, piano lessons, and vacations.  They tried so hard, but at home there was so many arguments.  There were family reunions and I'm not sure I learned much from my extended family; hate speech on one side and sexual abuse on the other. As a caring person, I suffered.  These beginning layers only taught me how to find some really toxic friends and partners.  It took years to unlearn the negative thoughts, self hatred, shame, and guilt. How much has this foundation affected my experience of living a truth others can't sense?  I am really pondering the layers underneath my visions, voices, and sensory experiences that have haunted me.  My initial reaction to hospitalization was shock no one was recognizing my experience as a crime victim; and now 14 years later I'm feeling that emotion again.  I'd filed it away, but with one taste of her garden I'm there again.  Time to reread my book "Falling Into Peaces" and reflect:  Falling-into-Peaces

I was one of the few that made it.

My story of human trafficking is one of escape, but I believed I escaped because I was an outsider always flirting with the flame, but never getting too close.  I had dreams, dreams of becoming a psychologist that I held tight to.  I worked one or two days a week, then went to school.  I was miserable but I had a dream to hold on to.  My therapist recently said that they had never met an x-club dancer that wasn't a addict.  Well, I was there for a while drinking to stay stuck but I moved beyond with therapy and eventually an antidepressant.  What I'm trying to say is that not everyone is so lucky.  They break you down bit by bit slowly till they have you as property.  I can remember this clearly as new management came into the Gold Club.  First it was "you need to lose weight".  Then it was referring to us as "f-ing whores".  Then its "dance on stage or this billionaire that is having a party and see if he likes you".  Then its "get in our limousine".  Something clicked I refused and I was fired.  This is a story I forget frequently, due to the trauma of the build up.  I went to the state of Georgia Dept of Labor and they took their side.  How long till we realize the gravity of these clubs?  How long till we recognize the women being slowly brain washed into submission?  Well, I'm not suing anyone, I just want to say it because really no one is.  I just had to say it.  This is not my story of where or who is responsible for my human trafficking experience.  There is more to say, but this is as much as I can.

Why the 21st Century Cure Act is at the Heart of Everything

I have heard the words cure and mental health only one time before, in the Presidents New Freedom Commission Report.  I can hear this report in my head, "envision a future when everyone with a mental illness will recover, a future when mental illness can be prevented or cured...."  Are we at that day with this legislation, I don't know really.   I do know with some maverick legislative moves NAMI advocates version of a bill usurped a painfully crafted compromise bill that involved a broader spectrum of advocates.  There is a spectrum of mental health advocates, this is very important to note.  We don't all agree easily.  Where we seem to disagree is at the heart of this word "choice".
Key components of the Cure Act's mental health components are centered around the civil right to choose treatment, or choose whether or not I want my mom to know where I am.  I have had my civil rights taken many times and during these times I always take away my mothers visitation rights.  My mother makes me very angry when I am ill, which just leaves me more ill.  
The first time my civil right were taken, I was obsessed on the loss of freedom for months as I languished in 4 hospitals in 2003.  I hated the notion of taking medication.  There was a man that told me, "You will take medication for the rest of your life."  Well, I was determined he was wrong and he was.  I came in contact with the consumer movement.  There are leaders within the movement that claim their recovery does not include medication.  They claim the oppression of psychiatry is wrong, that it is wrong to force treatment.  Well, when there are beautiful alternatives like peer support that made sense to me.  I came off my medication with a psychiatrists assistance so I could give birth to my son.  I went four years med-free.  I loved my life, but the truth was I was a little fearful of others during these years.  See I am a victim of many crimes, and when I am not on medication fear is really an exaggerated experience.  This experience of fear snowballed and exploded at a time where I almost lost everything.  I was hospitalized against my will again in 2011.  I was sure my coworkers had put nuclear waste in my water supply.  I drove my whole family to Georgia, thinking the nuclear waste was following me in the trucks passing.  I took my son to Children's to treat him for radiation.  They were so kind to assure me that he wouldn't have his fine motor coordination in tact with the stickers they gave him, if he had radiation damage.  They quickly moved me to a hospital and I became sure my entire family was being crucified on the roof of the hospital.  I was sure this was being broadcast on the TV.   The whole experience was traumatic and horrible, but the truth is if I had driven my car to a peer respite I helped design, they would have turned me away as being too serious.  
What I am trying to say is in that moment, I chose medicine.  I would do anything in the world to make that experience go away.  The medicine has kept it away and I am glad I was hospitalized that day.
So, I was talking about cures, the Cure Act is promising as its titled.  The problem is the mental health reform legislation that is being folded in is a early version.  The compromised version that included the voice of all advocacy groups was trashed.  I am not saying one is better than the other, but I am saying that all voices belong.  If it weren't for the consumer movement, I wouldn't have had support in choosing to have a son.  My life would be so different without his laughter.  If the hospital had not forced my treatment the second time, my son might not have the mother that he does.  I think that until our world is very different, we need both to exist.  Real choice can not exist, without all the voices at the table.