Four years old. Older sister purposely pushed me down a flight of steps. Landed on the back of my skull on the concrete at the bottom of the basement steps. Mom saw the whole thing happen.
Mom does not take me to the hospital. Why?
Hatred.
She has hated me since the moment she found out she was pregnant with yet another kid she didn’t want. Bad marriage, they both want a divorce, she doesn’t want to work and won’t leave. Has to be a good Catholic. God hates her. Can’t leave.
She’s protecting herself.
She is desperate and terrified. If another adult knows that her four-year-old went down a flight of steps on purpose, she will have to deal with someone finding out that she’s a bad mother…
- That she let’s her children be abused.
- That there is all manner of abusive and violent behavior going on rampantly in her house on her watch.
- That her children live in a constant state of terror and fear.
- That every child in the house is afraid of their father.
- That she sends her children to a Catholic school where one of them is being molested. On her watch.
No emergency room. No way.
Eight o’clock that night, stumbling around a dark house, in shock, no equilibrium and no one watching me. I fall head-first into a five-inch piece of moulding on a hall closet frame. Land full- body-weight’s-worth-of-impact directly on the front of my skull, above my left eye, on the moulding.
Second traumatic brain injury in less than twelve hours. Both at home. Both on my mother’s watch.
I went down that flight of steps because of an act of rage committed by an older sister –an inappropriately violent and obviously-abused child. If Mom took me to the emergency room and had to tell the truth about that, Child Protective Services would have been called.
The second injury happened because, despite the fact that two adults were home at the time, no one was watching me.
Her mental illness, that she desperately protected at all costs, would have been exposed. We could have been taken away and she might have been forced into treatment.
I had brain damage for 34 years from that one twelve hour period.
Consider this: the brain damage came solely from the physical effects of the two accidents. That doesn’t include the staggering long-term effects and horrible chaos created in my life from having two abusive and emotionally damaged parents. That’s in addition to the brain damage.
My mother, the majority care-giver and accountable decision-maker, was:
- Mentally ill, and was aware of that fact
- Could not healthfully bond with her children
- Could not form healthy relationships
- Had no ability to process emotions
- Had no ability to form or recognize personal boundaries
- Was completely unaware of healthy, age-appropriate behavior in children
- Had no ability to recognize inappropriate behavior in herself or other adults
It is a danger to place children around an adult with any one those issues. My mother (and to a large degree, my father) had every item on that list. She was placed in charge of the health, well-being and welfare of seven other human beings.
My father didn’t care about any of this. He was too busy covering up so he wouldn’t be embarrassed or look like a loser for any of this. After all, we were only there to make him look like a good man. If he did anything about her, or their marriage, everyone would find out he was beating his children. Couldn’t have that.
Society assigned my mother the task of being primary care-giver and put her in the position of “person assumed to be most able to make mammoth decisions that affect these seven children for the rest of their lives” despite the fact that she could not even responsibly take care of herself.
My question is “why?”
Why would any sane society place two people who were functionally incapable of being responsible for their own health, well-being and welfare in charge of totally separate human beings? Little ones who were completely defenseless, dependent on those care-givers for their survival and whose brain development was entirely at the mercy of the behavior of those two violent and broken individuals?
How could any sane society expect these children to grow up to be healthy, sane, functioning adults?
So why this blog, this website, this book?
Millions of adults in our country currently live with much of the same nonsense I grew up with. Although their situations may not be as dramatic as mine, millions of adults live their lives stuck cleaning up the massive and irresponsible mess their parents created.
I healed my own brain damage. I’m one of the lucky ones! I also healed myself of the majority of the abuse issues born out of living with parents like that.
This blog, this website, this book, my healing services are the gift of my soul, unleashed in the spirit of contribution and wellness for all.
After twenty-three years of neuroscience research and fifteen years as both a professional healer and teacher, I am uniquely positioned to help folks with these issues. I understand, and I’m here to heal you, or help you heal yourself.
“The Most Dangerous Book in America” is a free, self-healing manual for anyone who has had to deal with massively inept and ineffective parents.
No one should have to live with that. If you did, “The Most Dangerous Book in America” is specifically designed to help you get through, over and healed of every bit of what got dumped in your lap. It is a self-healing manual for anyone who wants to take on healing all, or even a portion of, what came out of having stupid or abusive parents who didn’t want their kids.
I am creating a completely new paradigm for the relationship between children and adults. I see a world where children are related to and valued as people equal to adults, even though they are dependent on adults in order to grow and thrive.
The book will be complete in September 2011, but if you’d like to get started on your healing now, or want to see a sample of what this book has to offer, download these two excepts:
Excerpt and Some More Exercises for You