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Revoking the Pass

Post-Polio
footwear
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"It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it … and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied … and it is all one". ~ Charlotte Wood

 

 

 

Chestnut

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“There is a theme that runs through responses that I receive from children of a narcissistic parent(s). The child is subjected to unbearable levels of ongoing abuse–scalding criticisms, withering humiliations in front of other family members and alone, routine secret physical beatings and other horrendous acts of brutality including psychological and literal abandonment. When the child lets family members know what is happening to him, this person is not believed. When the victim of a narcissist tells the truth about his dreadful pathological parent, he is not treated with kindness or understanding. The family is shocked; the victim is treated with disdain and often told he/she is the sick one or that this is all lies to get attention. The narcissistic mother or father gets a complete pass. A masterful coverup takes place and remains ongoing. The child victims become family pariahs. Often the suggestion is whispered that they belong in a psychiatric institution or are in need of intensive psychotherapy.” (Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D, author of Freeing Yourself From the Narcissist in Your Life) 

 

 

An abused child will often make the mistake of thinking the enabling parent is kinder and more loving than the NPD parent. The child thinks that because she has to think that for the sake of her own survival. (A child’s psyche would hardly be able to bear the idea of two NPD parents.) The truth, however, is that the enabler often causes his own brand of damage.

If you read blogs from ACoNs, they often refer to the other parent (the non-NPD one)

as the “flying monkey.”

 

 

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh

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It is September 1968.  My mentally ill mother has been hospitalized - again - and she is having hallucinations and hearing voices.  I would learn about that forty years later.  I have come home from school, sometime in July or August, without any idea that a storm had been brewing.  I am ambushed by my father who is in my bedroom, wildly and insanely tossing all my belongings into a suitcase. 

 

All my belongings.

 

I say "Where's mum?" and he turns to face me and curtly, sharply spits at me:

 

"In hospital. She needs a rest". 

 

"Why? What's going on? Why?" 

 

"Just...just...just don't ask questions. I'm taking you to your aunt.  Hurry up and grab your things".

 

 

My father is dumping me on the youngest sister of my mother, a woman who is a farmer's wife with three stepsons between the ages of 16-22, and a husband to cook, clean and wash for.  She also works part-time as a cook in one of the country hotels.  She is an alcoholic. She has buried two sons of her own: one a still-birth, the other a cot-death.   She cannot have any more children.

 

My father has dumped his wife into the local asylum for the insane.  He is preparing to dump his only child who is seven-and-a-half years old with an over-whelmed psychotic aunt who has crawled into a bottle and lives 285km away.  That is four hours as the crow flies.

 

Spot the hidden agenda between the lines of this letter my alcoholic aunt writes.  *Names have been changed to reflect my sardonic perspective as this level of breath-taking abject stupidity on the part of so-called grown-ups can only be integrated with a solid dose of humour.

 

 

Tuesday, 17th September 68

 

Dear *Sister-Who-Tried-To-Kill-Yourself,

 

Writing to let you know that as soon as we get to barbeque on Sunday, *Trophy Child met a few of her class-mates from school.  She settled down OK, within seconds she asked could she have a barbequed sausage and a bottle of soft drink. Then she went to look at Uncle Don's pigs; one sow had a litter of young ones, were feeding. Then she went with other children and gathered tadpoles, then she had a chop.  All in all she had time of her life covered in mud same as we use to get when we use to go catching yabbies.  She brought tadpoles home to keep for *Her-Father-Who-Is-Standing-In-The-Way-Of-Me-Keeping-Your-Kid, for fishing bait.  

 

[the letter continues a week later]

 

 

Wednesday, 25th September 68

 

Dear *How-Dare-You-Think-Something-Is-Fishy, Sister,

 

I have been kept on my toes with visitors in one way and another since you was here; as result I haven't posted *Trusting Child's letter she wrote to you and her father.  Also I have had flu. *L. went to Melbourne Show yesterday to buy a couple of stud pigs, which he will be going to collect in Melbourne on Sunday in his trailer.  So if it suits you and *Her-Father-Who-Accused-L-Of-Being-Cold-and-Unfeeling-Towards-His-Daughter, to let us bring *Vulnerable & At-Risk Child home Sunday and save *Her-Deadbeat-Father an unnecessary trip up here Saturday when *L has to go to Melbourne on Sunday.

 

Both of us think you are doing wrong thing by taking her back until you are 100% well as she is so happy at school and everything in general up here.  It is a pity I hadn't posted her letters to you, as having been in bed for nearly a week myself, boys have been battling - anyhow I ended up having to go to doctors yesterday and I have pleurisy as well as flu.

 

*Your-Daughter-Who-I-Have-Been-Exceedingly-Cruel-and-Nasty-to had her sports yesterday and her team came second. Make sure you get *Your-Loser-Husband to let me know for sure if he intends *The-Child-He-Said-You-Got-Pregnant-With-On-Purpose-To-Trap-Him-Into-Staying-With-You to go home on weekend so I can ring headmaster and get her transfer fixed up.

 

If I am OK by Sunday I will be going down for trip as *L's sister E. is suppose to be coming up for a holiday.

 

Your loving sister,

*Barfly

 

PS: I haven't told her she is to go home on weekend: in case you may change your minds.

 

PPS: Please excuse *Dutiful Daughter's letter as she is at school and I don't know which is correct letter.

   

This aunt would dictate what to write in my letters to my parents.  You know...the same way that terrorists tell their hostages what to write.  I survived the sheer insanity, utter stupidity and pig ignorance of my parents, their friends and my mother's siblings.

 

 

I am not so sure I am going to survive the therapy ~

at least, not without a lot of comedic help because

I just cannot believe what a

fucking cliché my life has turned out

to be.

I was an only child too.

Epic suck!

 

 

  

 

 

Things of Water, Fire & Wood

Fire opal growth rings in fossilized wood
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Article and Book References

 

1. An Age for Lucifer - Predatory Spirituality and The Quest For Godhood, Robert C. Tucker,1999, Holmes Publishing Group.
2. People of The Lie, Peck Scott, 1983, Simon & Schuster.
3. Disarming the Narcissist - Surviving and Thriving With The Self Absorbed, Behary Wendy T., 2008, New Harbinger Publications.
4. Healing with the Devil: Psychopathic leaders and Self Development Cults, Ransky O., 1998, Visage Publications.
5. The Art and Practice of Family Constellations - Leading Family Constellations as Developed by Bert Hellinger, Verlag Carl-Auer-Systeme, 2003, Private Publication.
6. The Spiritual Universe, Wolf, Fred Allen, 2003, Sounds True publications.
7. "The Lessons Unlearned", Fox Catherine, Australian Financial Review, Dec 29, 2009, pg 20.
8. Understanding the Borderline Mother – Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship, Lawson, Christine Ann, 2000, A Jason Aronson Book,  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, Lanham..

 

Likenscapes: Remembering Mr Muggs

Mr Muggs
919th victim in the Jonestown Massacre
November 18 1978
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Unable to cope, some chimpanzees resort to self-mutilation, including biting themselves, attacking a limb that they dissociate as being their own, pulling their hair out, rubbing their skin raw, or hurting themselves in other ways—behaviours that in humans would be described as having “gone crazy.”


Building an Inner Sanctuary… analyses case material of two chimpanzees rescued from research, Jeannie and Rachel. Diagnosed with complex PTSD, Jeannie and Rachel demonstrate that chimpanzees, like humans, suffer when confined, stripped of agency, repeatedly physically injured, and subjected to constant fear and stress. Their symptoms—hypervigilance, dissociating, violent self-attacks, insomnia, ritualistic behaviours, inability to tolerate touch and limited social sills—are representative of human trauma survivors as well as other chimpanzees from research.

“The paper challenges a system that likens chimpanzees to humans when attempting to justify their use to study human biological disease, but refuses to acknowledge the full extent of their emotional, behavioural and cognitive similarities since that acknowledgement argues vehemently against their use,” says Dr. Theodora Capaldo, NEAVS president, psychologist and co-author or the papers

Project R&R: Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees is NEAVS’ national campaign to end the use of chimpanzees in invasive biomedical research and provide them permanent release and restitution in sanctuary. The historic work of Project R&R will lead to the first non-human species being afforded legal protection from use in harmful research.

 

Likenscapes: Dreamer

Karni Mata

"Jai Mata Ji..."

 

 

The following is a partial transcript of the death tape which appears in Mark Lane, The Strongest Poison (New York: Hawthorn, 1982), pp. 199-206

 

 

 

JIM JONES: I tell you I don't care how many screams you hear, I don't care how many anguished cries, death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you. If you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad that you're stepping over tonight. Death, death, death is common to people – the Eskimos, they take death in their stride. Let's be dignified. If you'd quit telling them they're dying – if you adults would stop some of this nonsense.

 

Adults! Adults! Adults! I call on you to stop this nonsense.

 

 

I call on you to quit exciting your children when all you're doing is going into a quiet rest. I call on you to stop this now if you have any respect at all. Are we black, proud, and socialists or what are we? Now stop this nonsense; don't carry this on anymore. You're exciting your children. No, no sorrow – that it's all over. I'm glad it's all over. Hurry, hurry, my children, hurry. All right, let's not fall into the hands of the enemy. Hurry, my children, hurry. They're seniors out here I'm concerned about. Hurry. I'm not leaving my seniors to this mess.

 

 

Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly. 

 

No more pain now. No more pain. I said no more pain. Jim Cobb is laying on the airfield dead at this moment. [cheers] That Oliver woman said she would come over and kill me if her son wouldn't stop her. These are people, the peddlers of hate. All we're doing is laying down our life. We're not letting them take our life, we're laying down our lives....

 

 

JONES: Stop all this nonsense. Stop this screaming. All we're doing is taking a drink and going to sleep. That's what death is – sleep. You can have it, I'm tired of it all....


JONES: Where is the vat, the vat, the vat, with the green sea in it? The vat with the green sea in, please?

We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an angry, mean world.

 

In the future, when the Leader of a Reality Distortion Field demands a show of loyalty from followers with an act of suicide, the best defense is to respond with the Words:

 

RIGHT-O MATE, YOU GO FIRST!! 

 

 

Likenscapes: Reader

Roman cat, Torre Argentina
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Jean Fain, a Boston-area psychotherapist affiliated with Harvard Medical School and author of the book “The Self-Compassion Diet,” makes the excellent point that “this is America and the perfectionistic standards are unreachable.” She says that no one is ever fully happy with everything — feelings naturally wax and wane and “to think body satisfaction is an achievable and sustainable state is unrealistic.” Body realities are different at age 20 and 30, 50 and 80. The key, she says, is to not let all of these little body imperfections rule our lives, but rather to notice them, allow yourself to feel them even if they’re painful and then get back out there and live a “meaningful, deliberate life.”

In the 1970s, my mom and I did the grapefruit diet together; she took me to a fat-farm in upstate New York where we fasted for a week; mornings, in the dark, I jogged with her at a track in Red Hook, Brooklyn, when practically no one else jogged (I’m pretty sure we wore Keds). My early desire to be a dancer didn’t help matters; nor did my summer choreography course at Harvard where I learned how effective vomiting and laxatives can be for weight control. Even now, when my mother comes to visit, she tiptoes into my bathroom each morning and asks: “Is your scale right?”

She’s in her 70s; it never ends.

 

 

 

Emily Sandoz, a Ph.D. clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, studies what she calls “body image inflexibility” and has endured her own struggles with weight and bad body image. Her forthcoming book: “Living with Your Body and Other Things You Hate,” details a fairly new approach that’s gaining traction called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The theory behind ACT is that only by actually working through our anxiety and deep anguish and body hatred will we be able to focus on the much more important business of living meaningful, vital and psychologically flexible lives.

 

 

Extracts from Bodily Gratitude, Judy Tsafrir, MD

 

 

 

Holy Rats of Shri Karni Ji
Deshnok, North Rajastan, India
 

 

Likenscapes: Author



Pithoi displayed at the Ophel Site. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority.

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Mental illness IS a medical illness.

Mental illness has a course, prognosis, and mortality rate, like any other medical illness--in most cases, around 20-30%. Which means, 2-3 of every 10 people diagnosed with many mental illnesses will die from those illnesses, either directly or indirectly.

Mental illness cannot be cured by an "a-ha moment," will power, life experience, or a good boyfriend/girlfriend. Ever. Ever, ever, ever.

Really.

Mental illness is cured (or, more often, managed) by combinations of medication, therapy, social skills training, social supports, and environmental structure.

As a rule, people experiencing an acute episode of mental illness are not candidates for romantic relationships. They do not feel sexy. They feel pretty sick and miserable. They are not likely to be interested in real romance (sex is a different story, depending on the diagnosis).

People with chronic mental illness certainly do have relationships, but this is a difficult issue for both the patient and the partner, and can't be glossed over or minimized. It will dominate the tableau.

Most people with mental illness are not criminals, and many are not capable of organizing behaviour and thought enough to form criminal intent. Newsflash: The "Multiple" didn't do it.

Axis II disorders, or personality disorders, distort personality and thinking, but do not excuse people from criminal responsibility.

Reference: fangs-fur-fey
Susan R. Vaught, Ph.D.
Excerpt from: "Mental Illness and Brain Injury: a basic resource for writers."