This Land Was Made for You and Me?

Please note: This post is NOT intended to be a political statement. I do not intend to criticize nor acclaim the past nor present Immigration policies. Although political parties are mentioned, it is not in judgement, but rather facts based on facts and information gained in preparation for this post. It is rather a commentary on the issue of Immigration as an act or instance of immigrating: travel into a country for the purpose of permanent residence. …Merriam-Webster

“This Land Is Your Land” wasn’t released until 1951, but the song was originally written in February 1940, when Woody Guthrie first arrived in New York City from Oklahoma. These are some of his original lyrics: “There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property.’
But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.”Hmmmm….sounds familiar?

America has earned its global dominance due to the fact that we excel at importing the talent we need. This is brilliant. Stellar. Remarkable. And just plain SMART. It is OUR way. Fair. Just. Open. And welcoming. It is America and this uniqueness makes our country so special and glorious. At least that’s how I feel. And it is not a tickle. It’s a deep massage kneading my soul. I feel it as true as I know my place here. Yet there is an uncomfortable truth of fear underlying this American value. The fear of the changing face of the American demographic. The anxiety surrounding America’s lingering and contentious Immigration debate. For Immigration strikes the core of one’s identity. It can provoke ‘metathesiophobia’ or fear of change. This anxiety can come from a fear of the unknown or an expectation of loss — loss of one’s own ownership of religion, language, culture and the power and privileges associated with that identification and distinctiveness. And, this discomfort is a natural one. For I know people who balk at eating at an ethnic restaurant! Eating with chopsticks or your hands too ‘foreign’ a concept. Sitting on the floor having a meal ‘just plain weird’, uncomfortable, foreign. See what I mean?

Look at it this way…there is a psychology here. People coming from ‘far away’, living in different ecologies and bionomics CAN carry different pathogens, which we fear. For OUR immunity doesn’t ALWAYS shield us. And we are vulnerable. They look, speak, act, eat differently. We are skeptical and wary of communicable diseases, only ONE kind of natural threat we may realize. This may activate and elicit negative emotions such as anger, fear and even disgust leading to discrimination. Fears against immigrants can be an intractable prejudice because it is seen as firmly attached to our survival. Xenophobia , the fear of strangers, is also a factor, common among most cultures as well. And only when people can realize these new groups as non threatening, especially if they adopt more ‘American’ norms, can they perceive them as Americans. Unfortunately this adaptation in both sides is a part of this psychology of successful immigration. It’s not as easy for some. They need to learn. Be informed AND experience that these perceptions are just that. Concepts and opinions based on fear, doubts, panic, suspicions and ignorance. Good news? Xenophobia can be tamed, trained…by learning to change the perspectives of ‘nationality’ to encompass more than selfish judgments. To see new groups as non- threatening and learn to see that others are not ‘less’ than us.

SOME FACTS: Immigrants are 14% of the U.S. population, but they started a quarter of all new businesses and earned over a third of all the Nobel Prizes in science given to those affiliated with U.S. universities. One of four U.S. tech companies established from 1995 to 2005 had an immigrant founder, CEO, president or chief technology officer, and by one analysis about 71% of Silicon Valley tech workers are immigrants. The numbers are even more impressive at the top: of the 25 biggest public tech companies in 2013, 60% were founded by immigrants or their children, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, son of a Syrian immigrant, and Google’s Sergey Brin, who came from Russia at the age of 6.

We are a nation of laws and if immigration laws are ignored or broken, what other laws are we free to ignore? We need to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration to further discuss the issues. Realistically, only a fraction of Americans are afraid of matters related to legal immigration. What most of our population are truly concerned about is illegal immigration. Necessarily, there are always those who are against illegal immigration for dishonorable reasons. However, for the most part, the vast majority of people who are against it are so for logical and judicious reasonings. Costs imposed on local schools, hospitals, and social services are valid reasons some argue against illegal immigration. People do not want their tax money spent on government programs and services for people who aren’t in the country legally. Fair enough.

Legal immigration, executed in order to meet the needs of the American people and to strengthen our economy, can improve our nation on the whole to find enormous support in every section of our country. However this issue has become so politicized and controversial that the point has become lost, confused, irrational. The matter is now viewed through partisan lenses. Why all this passion and anger? It’s a symptom of a chronic underlying disease in our culture. That is, the growing fear that familiar borders and boundaries that give us stabilization, identity and secure structure are crumbling.

One cannot discuss immigration without the concept and role of racism. The boundary between ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ is an undeniable factor, however not as conspicuous as one might think. And, is it not obvious that America would not have made the progress it achieved nor been in the position to accept the Italians, Jews, Irish and so many other immigrants without the free cheap labor and sacrificed lives of the black Americans during slavery and segregation. For America is not merely a nation of immigrants…as each time this is said, are we not disrespecting and ignoring the histories of both Native Americans and the blacks on their sacred land. That said…It is a fact that the vast majority of immigrants now and the foreseeable future do not and will not emanate from ‘white’ Europe. They are and will be people of color. This necessarily leads into the topic of racism in America, best indicated for the topic of another post.

Immigration also fuels the economy. When immigrants enter the labor force, they increase the productive capacity of the economy and raise GDP. Their incomes rise, but so do those of natives. In fact, they contribute to the U.S. economy in many ways, by working at high rates and comprising than a third of the workforce in some industries. Geographic mobility enables local economies to overcome worker shortages, solving problems that could otherwise hurt the economy. Immigrant workers help support the aging population, increasing the number of workers as compared to retirees reinforcing the Social Security and Medicare. And, it has been shown that children born to immigrant parents tend to be upwardly mobile, promising better futures for their families, which benefit the U.S. economy overall.

Immigration is a net positive, even for those who don’t move, but the gains are not distributed equally. The next step for policymakers is to structure immigration reform to take advantage of immigration’s many benefits while mitigating the costs.

In the end, it may be time to recognize with our eyes wide open the uncomfortable truth. That Economics DO NOT drive fear and intimidation of immigration. But rather the changing face of America’s demographics that drive that fear. What border line is truly at stake here? It’s the geographical border of the United States….a border that cameras invariably show people jumping, running or swimming across. Keeping the INTEGRITY of our border from invasion. From intrusion. Violation. Breach. Transgression. Change….And this invasion skews our nation’s demographics toward a kaleidoscope of identities more disparate than the European-centered tapestry of the past. And this composition will continue to change, regardless of whether borders are closed or not. Herein lies the challenge. The adaptation to the reality that the future will most assuredly be different than we ever imagined! Can we accept and appreciate this reality? If the answer is YES, and in my heart it IS…then each of us, individually and cohesively, must identify what we can and must do alone and together to make the world a better place. PLEASEREADTHIS🗽

Lynching is now equity, he says….

I try not to ruminate. Yet I think most people understand. Understand me. Understand my utter disdain for Tucker Carlson. That he has ONE friend, ONE fan is an anathema. I don’t understand the reason he is a media celebrity. I don’t understand why people like him.

Would the glove still fit….

OJ became a name in the 60’s and 70’s … playing football in the age of Muhammad Ali’s opposition to the The War and Tommie Smith’s black-power salute at the 1968 Olympics. Not being a football fan I only heard of him through the news. My dad didn’t like him. He was more a baseball fan. Yet he had his opinions. Can’t quote him…for he had his favorites and OJ was NOT one of them. I saw him on TV commercials, variety shows, inane airplane movies. He was good-looking, evidentally talented on and off the field and funny. Very funny. I happened to love those harebrained aviation- themed films, but that’s my problem. The came early June 1994. I was in Nursing school and the weather was hot. Steamy. And on June 12, 1994 the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found in front of Simpson’s condominium on South Bundy Drive in Brentwood California. And in a few days, OJ Simpson became the major suspect in both their murders. And the world changed. In many ways. In other ways not nearly enough.

OJ was many things. Most fundamentally, was he a black guy? A white guy? What he was? He WAS a superlative athlete. A football hero. An actor. A sports commentator. He was revered by blacks and whites alike. A role model for all youth, that is, until that day… Yet for me, a hero is NOT a sports figure. Their prowess not important to me. Innate talent for catching and throwing a ball is admirable but this emulation doesn’t serve a purpose for humanity. For posterity. For change. President Kennedy was a hero. Harriet Tubman. Cesar Chavez. Dr Martin Luther King. Shirley Chisholm. Margaret Chase Smith. Clara Barton. And, when the activist Harry Edwards attempted to enlist Simpson in the Olympic boycott, Simpson rebuked him, later claiming that organizers like Edwards only ‘used’ him, stating that protests can only ‘hurt’ Smith and Carlos.

I do not, nor do many others, consider OJ Simpson a black man. For his existence was not the same demographics of Black America. Based not only on his non-existent political consciousness, but also on his own statements…”My biggest accomplishment is that people look at me like a man first, not a black man” it is clear to me his ‘blackness’ is suspect. OJ wanted to be post-racial, non-racial, un-racial, in a world that clearly was not. His heaping accomplishments (premier running back in college, the first NFL running back to rush for 2,000 yards in a season, one of the first black pitchmen for corporate America) were quite notable. But how? To show Americans he can reinvent himself? In changing the world view of a black man? To prove to whites that a black man can succeed in corporate America? Or in helping to destroy the great wall between black and white Americans? No, not to me. It merely noted Simpson’s individual success at jumping over that wall, and landing on the other side. The white side.

Although OJ was a product of San Francisco projects, he clearly transformed himself. Reinvented himself from a football player to a celebrity. He became wealthy. Purchased mansions Fast fancy cars. Hung out with his white groupies. He divorced his first wife, a black woman, and then dated only white women, marrying Nicole Brown in 1985. OJ went on to be responsible for the savage killing of Ms Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994 after YEARS of documented spousal abuse. Simpson was then to be indicted for this crime and subsequently receive the kind of treatment typically reserved for rich white guys. That being said, I venture to explore the Black/White divide as seen in his murder trial and verdict in 1995 and what would or would be different today. Would the glove still fit….

In the course of history, the trial of OJ Simpson happened about three years after the Rodney King trial. This cannot be ignored. The violence following the “not guilty” verdict in the trial of the LAPD policemen, accused of beating Rodney King, was foreshadowed by the identical verdict for a Korean grocer who killed a teenager accused of burglary. A week of rioting followed and LA was still rebuilding when the OJ trial was beginning. OJ appeared unaware of the goings-on in the ghettos, the streets of LA. He abstained from any involvement in the politics that might tarnish him and his quest for wealth. It appeared elementary and too easy for OJ to ignore the world he was born into. Why? Because his NEW world was invested in forgetting. The Simpson Saga became ultimately enmeshed with the saga of black LA and its relationship with the police. The jury – his ancestry. His upbringing. His infrastructure. Or rather it WAS! And, this jury pool was the community that would ultimately decide his fate, his life…

The majority of the black community in Los Angeles had generous reason to doubt law enforcement’s lack of credibility and legitimacy. And this loss of respect transformed victims into victimizers. Watching the video of Reginald Denny being dragged from his truck during the Los Angeles riots, is brutal. But when law enforcement becomes arbitrary and impulsive, citizens can decompose, resorting to instinctual and primary law, rooted in historical impulses, lineal loyalties and vengeance. And… did not this vengeance for Rodney King play a role in the trial and verdict in the Simpson case? I do not see how it could not. When the LAPD arrested Simpson, the police force had ‘GOTTEN THEIR GUY’! Right? So obvious! Look at the evidence. What rational citizen wouldn’t see what we all saw? The memorable detailed record of spousal abuse; Nicole Brown Simpson’s pleading on the telephone to the 911 operator, ‘He’s going to kill me’; the Bruno Magli bloodied shoe prints; infamous bloody glove, and his socks in his bathroom.

Disregarding whether your are black or white, it is clearly conspicuous that racism pervaded this case. The role it played went beyond the evidence on display. Racism was not only revealed in the tapes of the LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman boldly grandstanding his bigotry and boasting of his blatant disregarded for the constitutional rights of blacks. Fuhrman’s racism was exposed most vociferously by his pleading the Fifth in response to cross examination by the defense. For the defense, this man was a gift! “Give us Fuhrman” was chanted on the streets of Los Angeles. Upon completion of closing statements, an acquittal was imminent among blacks. For whites, a conviction was inevitable. For others, a hung jury would have been a prize. Yet, any level of accountability – more than a possibility- was bantered about on the telemetry floor of the hospital where I worked as something punishable! Clearly unjust! Just plain racist. The divide as obvious as black and white. Because it was literally about being black or white. This stage – a microcosm of America….The jury had it. It seemed OVER! For racism clearly formed the foundation of the defense’s case. Whites and blacks looked at the same TV stations for months and came up with different interpretations, expectations, and conclusions. The verdict split the country along racial lines with many white Americans believing OJ got away with murder and many black Americans thinking OJ was innocent.

For the LAPD to frame a black man was totally within the realm of possibility in LA. It was an occurrence more than just a sporadic event. How many black men had the LAPD arrested and convicted under a vague and underhanded application of standards? As stated by civil rights activist Danny Bakewell, “If you can railroad O. J. Simpson with his millions of dollars and his dream team of defense lawyers, we know what you can do to the average African American and other decent citizens in this country.”

O. J. Simpson’s escape from justice will haunt myself and others forever. His unscrupulous legal team instilled doubt into 12 poor souls by playing the race card. The forensic science of DNA was in its youth and was not understood nor planted any roots in the minds of the jury. The technicalities of DNA and RNA only confounded jurors, despite the adroit explanations of Barry Scheck. Mr Cochran, et al, cannot be immortalized for their skills nor candor in my observations and judgments, but rather can be characterized as unscrupulous misanthropes of the law, clearly playing the “race card” for an outcome. A cheap manipulation. Defense attorneys are a necessary cog in the wheel of justice. This is understood. But when one’s ethics are being compromised, jurisprudence is suspect. This case was supposed to be based on forensic science and about science, no matter how misunderstood nor complex it may have been perceived. And, resentment festered that Mr Simpson was afforded the best defense money could buy, in the form of Cochran’ team. As Lead Procutor Marcia Clark stated: “It offended me, he (Mr Cochran) was using a very serious, for-real issue—racial injustice—in defense of a man who wanted nothing to do with the black community.” I believe this says it all..

Alex Johnson, University of Virginia law professor, reflects that the jurors, primarily black, did not see Simpson as a fellow black, as his celebrity, wealth, his expedient separation from much of the black community did not generate sympathy for him. For the Simpson jury understood the LAPD all too well, as conclusions about the department’s derelict handling of evidence were confirmed soon afterwards, when the city’s crime lab was revamped.

Equality is not always a virtue. It does not always signify morality, because equality isn’t always harbored with morality. Equality for Blacks means the right to be treated equally like anyone else—be it doing good or doing evil. OJ’s great triumph was to be indicted for a crime and attain rich white guy treatment. His acquittal portrayed something foreign, worldly, materialistic, nearly inconceivable for blacks. Yet an accomplishment. A Super Bowl victory! Another Heisman Trophy! He thwarted law enforcement who were demoralizing and debauching blacks, the prosecutors and the prisons that housed them . Simpson eluded them all, an escape artiste extraordinaire!

The OJ Simpson trial symbolized America’s relationship with money, power, justice and most importantly, race. As white America could not understand the underlying roots of Mr. Simpson’s acquittal, black America has not grasped how the destruction and. corruption the verdict shaped race relations. Black Americans won this battle but ultimately surrendered on October 3rd 1995.

It serves no purpose to be reminded again and again of the racial component to this trial and verdict. Does it matter now that a black man can play the game and perhaps beat the judicial system as successfully as a rich white man? Does this matter? Does this have relevance anymore? Is this racial progress? OJ was simply a very rich man who beat the system. I wonder how many blacks today have actually had anything change for them. I would love to endeavor the challenge of that study! I truly believe that the one thing that has not changed is that if you are POOR and convicted of a serious crime …. you will most likely be jailed. But, if you are RICH , you will most likely not, black or white.

I believe OJ was guilty. And, as was so PROFOUNDLY demonstrated, so was the justice system and law enforcement. Did the bloody glove ‘fit’? Of course not… NOT because OJ was innocent. But simply because mechanical action caused tension in the fabric to ‘shrink’. NOT because OJ was innocent. But because the extra layer of latex gloves made the leather gloves necessarily TIGHTER – therefore IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT ON! So, NO! The gloves did NOT fit. Never did. But that is all moot now. Mr Simpson may have been acquitted of a double homicide in 1995, but was the trial REALLY about Nicole and Ron? Was it an acquittal of Mr Simpson? And although I doubt that anyone necessarily believed he was innocent, OJ WAS acquitted. However the fact that RACE plays a role in everything in this country is the true accusation and crime. The fact that in 2021 we are still CONSTANTLY and CONSISISTENTLY reminded daily that a black life is a discounted life. Trayvon Martin. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. OJ got off because he could afford high paid lawyers – the same as whites in his position. Unfortunately, justice in America often depends on money, position and connections. So much for Democracy. It remains to be seen if the uprisings of 2020 and 2021 will resolve any of the enduring issues of racial injustice continually played out on America’s streets today. However, it will not be until all races march together rather than alternately, that the curvature of changing racial history will bend toward justice, racial equality and the intolerance of corruption in law enforcement. PLEASEREADTHIS🗽

Disordered Personalities

A personality disorder is a long-term set of tendencies in one’s thinking and behavior that impair the person’s functioning in the world

… Psychology Today

Didn’t want to start off that way but not easy, in fact, useless for ME to explain the concept of a personality disorder. COMPLICATED. Personal. Painful. It ruffles my feathers. Feels like chalk on a blackboard. Sounds like an infant wailing for hours. Looks like that first incision of a scalpel. Something too piercing. Too nocuous. Been too close to it. Many times. And too many times. You know it when you see it, hear it, feel it. And the discomfort it causes reminds you just how lucky you are that you can escape from the ravages this malady can superimpose on your soundness. As noted by Wikipedia: “Personality disorders (PD) are a class of mental disorders characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience…these patterns develop early, are inflexible, and are associated with significant distress or disability…The definitions may vary… American Psychiatric Association‘s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). There are many subclasses of a Personality Disorder. And subclasses within the subclasses with much overlapping among these categories.”

Your history with her rushes into your mind as you wait for one more ring — all the times that you’ve rushed to her side, comforted her, and told her you’d be there for her, somehow knowing your caring would never be enough to shore up her own fragile self-worth. Dr Margaret Rutherford

I do not pretend to be a psychologist. I am no expert on the topic of Personality Disorders. But when you live with one, you become educated. Quickly. The problem is by the time it is realized and verbalized it is nearly too late. Whatever interventions, behavioral or otherwise, the damage to a family can be irreparable. And…coming to terms with this reality IS the therapy. Rationalizing your reactions to it. Accepting them with as little guilt as possible. And, eventually, learning how to forgive… if you can AND if you want to…A process dictated by the knowledge that solving this problem, especially, is almost, if not, impossible.

I think she had friends once. She told me she went to dances, parties, roller-skating, movies. She spoke of roommates, classmates siblings. I’ve seen photos. Of her at a lake, a picnic, a wedding. She had a wedding. A wedding party. A maid of honor. She HAD friends once, dinner parties, day trips, vacations. A seemingly normal life. Or so it appeared. To others. To myself. At first. But that ended years ago because it never really began. That makes no sense. To you. But not to me. Her friends and family, a large one at that, had fallen from her favor consistently and constantly. Bizarre arguments, tales of murky accusations, heated squabbles fueled ALWAYS by some committed ‘wrong’ – her modus operandi – as they all were driven away by her maniputively sinister behavioral procedures: a consistent pattern of destruction to herself, others and most notably to her family. As far back as I can remember, any interactions with ANYBODY, were scattered. Staccato. A set of friends or family coming for a holiday one year would differ the next year. And ALWAYS with a murky ‘reason’… a ‘stolen’ collectible, a late arrival, a negative comment about a dessert being ‘too sweet’. All nonsense! A reason never understood, especially by a small child. Always tinged by anger and resentment. Nervous anticipation ALWAYS preceded SUCH ‘events’ …yet, they were always better than the anxiety ridden monotony of day to day life in a home were ‘things were just not right’. Other people did not know what was behind the scenes. They didn’t know how draining this family relationship can be. That she can often be quite popular and loved in other structured relationships, but not ones that require intimacy, longitude, commitment. They didn’t know …. she has a personality disorder. The sad truth, neither did I. At least for too long a time….

The garden and the kitchen were…..

The garden and the kitchen were her sanctuaries, but they were also her dominion over which to rule. Her ruling domaine. She could exert her wishes over ingredients that had no words or free will . Her cakes were never burned. Plants grew exactly the way she planted them. Pets were safe. They didn’t ‘talk back’. Her furniture invulnerable. However, her children were her victims-vulnerable, compromised, insecure, and always wounded. ‘The damage of {borderline personality disorder}on children can begin in the earliest stages of infancy and disrupt the development of secure attachment and engagement. Studies have found that interactions between mothers with a personality disorder and their infant children are characterized by insensitivity, high levels of intrusion, and low levels of positive response to infant distress. These mothers are less likely to engage in healthy infant parenting behaviors, with researchers noting that these mothers smiled less, touched and imitated their infants less, and played fewer games with their babies. Additionally, these mothers demonstrated difficulty identifying and appropriately responding to their children’s emotional state. These unmet psychosocial needs at critical moments of development increase risk of disorganized attachment and rob children of security, comfort, and safety from the very beginning of their lives.’ …Elizabeth Kvarnstrom

For her diseased behaviors affected everyone and bled into everyone around her…into the family. For she was the sun and we all revolved around HER. It makes you very programmable and unsure; troubled. Instead of being taught that I was a normal person going through normal things…having the power and ability to deal with them, I was taught that what I was thinking or feeling were wrong. I would believe everything that everyone else taught me and wasn’t able to discern my own beliefs. People, on the other hand, she could not control. My mother treated anyone disagreeing with her or disobeying her wishes like an enemy combatant. A soldier. A crazed warrior truly convinced that the world is against her, plotting her future to be a war that has no end in sight.

And so growing up you watch, listen and gingerly ambulate the steppingstones of your life. You are unceasingly damaged by her choices, her actions, her words. She causes a permanent internal distress, blaming others, including you, for the chaos and misery of her life. And as you grow up, you hide it well from your friends, your teachers, your Girl Scout Leaders… Your ‘pretend life’ becomes your soothing reality. You eventually learn to set boundaries against which she constantly pushes, ultimately accusing you of not caring when she senses your fatigue. The tension in such a home is palpable. Miserable for much of the time. She continues to anger easily however curbs the physical abuse…the swollen eye, red hand marks can no longer be as easily muted. In defense, I learned to stay quiet unless she posed an imminent danger to myself or to others. Being non-reactive, depriving her of fodder to fuel an emotional eruption was a handy technique I learned to keep us both on good behavior. However, fear and worry still churned inside me no matter how calm I appeared on the surface. Again and again you hear the wailing..that she doesn’t know how long she can continue like this, continually insinuating the blame of her miserable life on you. A child. A teen. Somehow, you’re disappointing her once more, although you’ve bent over backwards to love her and to cater to her moods. But again…Voila! there are sudden, unexplainable times when you feel that stroking of your hair, her voice transformed into a different language, that love reciprocated in an intense, almost intoxicating way. And you cherish it, placing it in your little pink jewel box with the twirling ballerina, to remember and reminisce. And… just as quickly as it arrives, it disappears into a shroud of sudden misplaced anger and irrational complaints.

As I attempted to describe earlier, as much as she was single-minded, deceitful, and conniving, she was equally passionate, charming, and loving. I felt love when she felt like giving it. But was always in her way. She controlled it. Peacefulness was fleeting and timed. Had a price tag. Always cooking, cleaning, watering and weeding the garden. She cared about her house. But why did she NEED to garden so early! Moaning loudly outside the open-windowed bedroom on a sleepy July morning….she planned this! For she could not allow my ability to enjoy a morning relaxing in bed. Not Fair! Why would she need to change my bedsheets at 10pm on a school night? Or clean out my closet at 1am, heaving hangers and dirty socks around the bedroom as if it were a tornado. Yet! Her cooking could be joyful. O! Those yummy summer burgers and fresh corn. The heavenly pot roast. The broiled chicken only she could so perfectly season. Her holiday meals unsurpassable yet weighted with the exhaustion a child should not feel due to the midnight hours of ‘helping’ bake those precious Christmas cookies…dust the legs of a dining table one never saw? Scrub the bathroom floor for holiday ‘company’ until your knuckles bled? However, paying the price for normalcy was the worth it when you are so young. You did not know any differently and happily eating a leg of lamb on Easter was better than the stomach aches in July at 7am….

When she does lash out, and this could be quite unpredictable, she would later rewrite history and deny any wrong-doing in the first place. This is due to a psychological defense called “splitting,” which causes people to see themselves and the world as either all good or all bad. And as a child, it necessitated me to learn to adapt to her use of ‘splitting’ and therefore I found it difficult to trust my sense of past events. To question what I DID to cause the upset. Did I have the right to be angry? Was it my fault? What really did just happen? I would then often avoid attempting to hold others accountable for their actions and remain in this modus operandi for many years to come…

Being a child of a parent with a personality disorder, I tend to routinely become overly sensitive to the moods and needs of others. I can be needy, shameful, easily guilted, protective. I am quick to wound and can be overly critical of myself. The tools I have cultivated and flourished in dealing with this family member cost me the capacity to navigate conflict effectively. I lack a healthy ability to stand up for myself, to allow someone else to take care of me when I needed it. Educating myself about her struggles, working with a therapist, and becoming aware of her effect on my behavior finally would set me on a path to build the much-needed emotional resources I lacked. I learned to take responsibility for what was in my control and release what wasn’t.

It took a very long time for me to grasp the idea that ‘something was TRULY wrong’ with her. It was a process. With maturity, education and leaving home, little by little I was able to realize that my attempts to hide her didn’t really work. It was thought she was ‘odd’ and ‘mean-spirited’. But it took years, until I was in college, that I realized that the ‘what was wrong with her’ might actually an ‘illness’. A bonafide ailment with a name, instead of what I referred to as her homemade recipe for ‘crazy’. But it took many more years, until I had young children and was in therapy, that I truly understood her disorder and the contamination it precipitated throughout my lifetime.

I guess you can say, over time and by this I mean a very long time, my mother started to make sense to me. In the framework of her craziness and my craziness in response. Nearly a folie à deux. Not to be misunderstood with an empathy I wish I could feel. It IS there, somewhere, to some degree…hiding for fear of allowing forgiveness. And that is a whole other story. Another lifetime..

She’s gone now. Nearly 10 years. And, even with time, self-awareness and insight, I’m left feeling lost again, and with more questions than answers. Was there anything more I could have done for her? Did anything I did make a difference? Did I enable her to cause more hardship? Why didn’t I provide more medical services? Or act more aggressively upon suggestions from my therapists in dealing with her behaviors? Ignore her more? Listen to her more?

The basic problem in this kind of family- this disorganized diagram of a family -is to try to oversimplify its complicated foundation. Why does it seem parents in such families see the role of being parents as the one and only reason for their existence? And this conflict over the ‘parenting role’ leads to a pattern in which the parents seesaw between contentious hyper-involvement with or without abuse, and contentious hypo-involvement with or without neglect. It appeared to me that subconsciously my mother hated being a mother. Did she see me as a handicap to a different…a TRUE ambition? Or that ‘motherhood’ was just too onerous? Too thankless? Too unrequited?Most likely all of these. And the teetering inherent in this pattern can and DOES lead a child to perceive a confusing and DAMAGING message from their mother that translates into “I need you, but I resent you’. This polarity can become a model for the child, ME, to learn to interpret either as a design to emulate or one to discard due to the destruction it can generate…

Yet, in the end…,I can finally talk TO her without the fear of being chastised for ‘talking back’. And I find myself doing it often . After her death I was overtaken by another kind of sorrow. The sadness that I would never again see the person I had spent most of my life trying not to become, and without whom I would not be who I am today. Painful, but oh! so very true. PLEASEREADTHIS🗽