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Why Abandonment is an ACE

I found out the father I never knew died. I wrote two pieces about the grief, sadness, relief and rage.

 

One of the things I love about the ACEs community is that all of the individual ACEs are equal and matter.

 

There are adult survivors of abuse, adult children of alcoholics, people with grief from early loss and those who have suffered abuse and neglect and dysfunction. We share many things. Sometimes the groups divide and support us or make us feel that all our issues are related to one thing and one thing only.

A lost parent.

 

Sexual abuse.

 

Neglect.

 

What being a parent taught me is that the attachment, attunement and feeling seen and fed, with food and love and affection, is critical and not having that makes children vulnerable to abuse.


ACEs give me a wider and bigger lens for the ways all of the issues flow in and out of one another.

 

Anyhow, from my own perspective below, I wrote two pieces for Elephant about abandonment as a child but from the adult perspective.

 

I know why abandonment is an ACE.

 

Forget Me Not Father

http://www.elephantjournal.com...orget-me-not-father/

"

I hate the way the truth I didn’t create feels like sandpaper on ears and how if I speak it I feel mean or insensitive or inconsiderate. I hate how the water evaporates in the pan, but the heat of shame is still in my cheeks and face. It’s too hot to touch, but nothing gets cooked, prepared or made that can be savored or shown. Even the handle is too hot to touch. That’s how I feel sometimes.

Until I write.

It’s not what she wants to hear, though, what anyone wants to discuss. Especially when it comes to veterans. I get it. Those coming back from Vietnam, like my father, were treated so badly that now even the truth of my own experience feels inconsiderate, insensitive or critical. It isn’t. The war causes wounds that bleed into generations.

The war of combat, violence, mental illness and addiction—there are fights still raging today.

That truth is a form of remembrance, too.

It doesn’t mean I don’t care or don’t support veterans. Or the homeless.

I, too, wanted to help, and have tried. I worked at a shelter for homeless families while in college.

There, I wrote vouchers for five dollar meals or buses to emergency shelters that would keep people warm when our beds were filled. Our shelter was for the “long-term homeless” who would stay for six weeks at a time.

Homelessness is something I care about. Know about.

Sometimes I feel like I’m related to homelessness. The daughter of homelessness."

What the Obituary Didn't Say

"

Did he put sugar in his coffee? Did he like mashed potatoes with some of the peel still baked in? Did he butter them up and consider them the bounty of Thanksgiving as I do with the apples, or was he a turkey lover like my daughter?

I’ll never know.

He’ll never say.

He never shared a meal with us.

Now even hope is gone: For sobriety. A miracle. A shared smile or meal."

http://www.elephantjournal.com...-obituary-didnt-say/

daddy frank

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Robert and Cissy,

Trying to catch up and this school semester is winding down...Robert, thank you SO much for sharing your family history and personal story.  You are right: our circumstances do not have to match in order for us to understand each other's trauma and pain.  Your resilience is amazing and I agree: this is a wonderful place of connection, understanding, and compassion.  My doctor once told me that if we all threw our stories out on the street for everyone else to see and know, chances are, we'd pick up our OWN story and continue on with it because it's what we know and how we lived.  I tend to agree.  As horrific as your story sounds, you own it.  And in owning it, that empowers you to change your life now.  I feel the same way.  As a counselor-in-training, I believe that once we own our story, it empowers us to change.  Again thank you so much for the sharing.  Your struggles were mighty and yet here you are today doing wonderful work. Brenda

Cissy,

     I seem to recall some mention, somewhere, about the greater challenge, when children deal with the death of "the opposite sex parent". It may not be "greater challenge", but I think you've addressed some of the tasks you dealt with, in both your father's absence from your life during childhood, and with his passing under those circumstances.

Last edited by Robert Olcott
Dear Robert,
Thank you for your reply. I'm so sorry for the loss of your mother, the way you lost her, finding her and the betrayal you faced so soon after. There's so much loss, so much grief. And yes, also community and healing. Those things too. Our stories don't have to be identical for us to understand what many aspects of a high ACE life can be. 
And also to share hope and practical tools as well. I for one haven't heard from many who've found EMDR helpful for Developmental Trauma so I'm glad to hear that. 
Thank you for writing. And opening your heart too. 
Warmly,
CIssy

Thank You, Christine Cissy White.

The night before my mother took her own life, she came out in the backyard to talk to my sister and I. I looked at the flowers in the garden she tended meticulously. My mother said she wanted to apologize for being such a lousy mother. I said: "It sounds like you're going away, and I don't believe you'd do that, so I refuse to forgive you." The following morning as my father was preparing to take me to summer school in the car, I looked in the back of the car, and saw his on-duty gun belt with his duty pistol in it. I asked him why his gun was in the car. We both knew he had two handguns: his duty gun, and his off-duty gun. His off-duty gun wasn't there. He never answered my question. Later, when I returned from summer school [morning session]...I found my mother, in bed, with my father's off-duty handgun in one hand, and the Bible in her other hand...I'll defer on describing the gory details. I went downstairs and stoically called the police to report what I'd seen, and I went outside to wait, and prevent my younger sister from seeing what I saw. I had already called my father's second job, trying to reach him, but couldn't. (In NY State, it was a felony then, to aid or abet a suicide attempt, but apparently nobody thought a [politically appointed] Deputy Sheriff would do such a thing. .... 

My father remarried one month and twenty days later, to a woman who introduced herself to me, at age 15, as having had an affair for three years with my father....(Should "Betrayal Trauma" be considered an ACE?).... Four and a half months later, I moved out of my father and stepmother's 'house' (as opposed to 'home')....to a very liberal state-run youth home, and transferred high schools....

     If I used the current World Health Organization ACE International Questionaire, I'd have an ACE score of at least 6, and that doesn't include the "betrayal trauma" issue, I don't believe. Nor would it include the toxic stress of being an "Emancipated Minor" working only part time to pay for my apartment, in the last half of my senior year in High School---as the State-run Youth Home asked me to leave after two years--four months before I graduated from high school. If we don't count "Medical Trauma" from an injury, and the "betrayal trauma" of discovering my father had taken me off his health insurance--thankfully, the youth home staff saw to it that he covered my medical bill.

I was fortunate to have a significant [functional] "Extended Family" to enhance my "Resilience Score". Although this is still a "rough draft" of just a part of a "cohesive narrative". 

 

Cissy, I am thankful for your inspiration to write, and share publicly. I am thankful for ACEsConnection being an appropriate forum for such sharing. I am thankful today is Thanksgiving Day, for without this forum, and inspiration, a suitable opportunity to express my gratitude, and release some of my guilt for not having prevented my mother's suicide (aha-was this a contributing factor to my "learned helplessness"?), and why I used to shut down emotionally every year just before Mother's Day, through to the anniversary date of her suicide....for twenty-eight years--until I did EMDR and the flashbacks of her suicide stopped, and I'm grateful to Francine Shapiro for "discovering and developing EMDR", and for Paulsen for further developing the EMDR protocols to address DT/ET (Developmental Trauma/Early Trauma), AND I'M GRATEFUL to all the members and staff of ACEsConnection for a multitude of reasons: A sense of community and connectedness to people with shared goals, a sense of connectedness to all of you....THANK YOU.

     

 

Thank You, Christine Cissy White.

The night before my mother took her own life, she came out in the backyard to talk to my sister and I. I looked at the flowers in the garden she tended meticulously. My mother said she wanted to apologize for being such a lousy mother. I said: "It sounds like you're going away, and I don't believe you'd do that, so I refuse to forgive you." The following morning as my father was preparing to take me to summer school in the car, I looked in the back of the car, and saw his on-duty gun belt with his duty pistol in it. I asked him why his gun was in the car. We both knew he had two handguns: his duty gun, and his off-duty gun. His off-duty gun wasn't there. He never answered my question. Later, when I returned from summer school [morning session]...I found my mother, in bed, with my father's off-duty handgun in one hand, and the Bible in her other hand...I'll defer on describing the gory details. I went downstairs and stoically called the police to report what I'd seen, and I went outside to wait, and prevent my younger sister from seeing what I saw. I had already called my father's second job, trying to reach him, but couldn't. (In NY State, it was a felony then, to aid or abet a suicide attempt, but apparently nobody thought a [politically appointed] Deputy Sheriff would do such a thing. .... 

My father remarried one month and twenty days later, to a woman who introduced herself to me, at age 15, as having had an affair for three years with my father....(Should "Betrayal Trauma" be considered an ACE?).... Four and a half months later, I moved out of my father and stepmother's 'house' (as opposed to 'home')....to a very liberal state-run youth home, and transferred high schools....

     If I used the current World Health Organization ACE International Questionaire, I'd have an ACE score of at least 6, and that doesn't include the "betrayal trauma" issue, I don't believe. Nor would it include the toxic stress of being an "Emancipated Minor" working only part time to pay for my apartment, in the last half of my senior year in High School---as the State-run Youth Home asked me to leave after two years--four months before I graduated from high school. If we don't count "Medical Trauma" from an injury, and the "betrayal trauma" of discovering my father had taken me off his health insurance--thankfully, the youth home staff saw to it that he covered my medical bill.

I was fortunate to have a significant [functional] "Extended Family" to enhance my "Resilience Score". Although this is still a "rough draft" of just a part of a "cohesive narrative". 

 

Cissy, I am thankful for your inspiration to write, and share publicly. I am thankful for ACEsConnection being an appropriate forum for such sharing. I am thankful today is Thanksgiving Day, for without this forum, and inspiration, a suitable opportunity to express my gratitude, and release some of my guilt for not having prevented my mother's suicide (aha-was this a contributing factor to my "learned helplessness"?), and why I used to shut down emotionally every year just before Mother's Day, through to the anniversary date of her suicide....for twenty-eight years--until I did EMDR and the flashbacks of her suicide stopped, and I'm grateful to Francine Shapiro for "discovering and developing EMDR", and for Paulsen for further developing the EMDR protocols to address DT/ET (Developmental Trauma/Early Trauma), AND I'M GRATEFUL to all the members and staff of ACEsConnection for a multitude of reasons: A sense of community and connectedness to people with shared goals, a sense of connectedness to all of you....THANK YOU.

     

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