Cutting Her Out

Since the mother is the first,

the basic caretaker,

losing her -in a physical or emotional way-

starts a nightmare of deprivation

for a child.

In a way, it never ends.
Missing Mother Syndrome

Can't help wondering... what you're wondering about?

Some subjects are so broad they defy tackling in a blog post. Child Abuse is certainly on that list. So is child abandonment.

The purpose of most of my posts is simply to raise awareness, trigger interest in learning more, and provide some sources to begin a process.

Nothing more...the rest is up to you.

This is a picture of me and my Mom.

As a child in pain, I cut her out of it.

Still in pain, I taped us back together.

The story that follows was told so many times that occasionally I think I remember bits of it. Mostly I doubt that... unless perhaps on some deep level where emotions linger like silent watch dogs who never make a sound before attacking. In any case, the story goes like this.

Dad was enlisted in the Army Air Corp, stationed in Mississippi, training and waiting to go to war. His young wife, far from her home and family in New Jersey, waited with him. They lived in a rented, furnished room with bath down the hall. They survived on Corn Flakes and Beer.

I was born during that time. They brought me home to that room to spend my first few months in a dresser drawer used as a bassinet. Before I learned to walk, Mom was pregnant again. By the time I was walking, running, learning to climb, she couldn't stand the stress of waiting for Dad to be deployed, being pregnant in the heat and humidity of Mississippi, dealing with an active toddler confined in one room.

Mom wasn't willing to be separated from Dad, so for the good of all, they said, they brought me to New Jersey by train and left me there with family.

His family!

Total strangers!

Abandoned me in an unknown world!

Or so it might have felt to me. The story goes I was inconsolable. I cried so much that Dad claims the extended family felt sorry for me. He always said they did everything possible to turn me into a spoiled brat forever.

Mom and Dad returned to New Jersey a couple months later…just a few weeks before my brother was born. They moved into a room in the big house I'd learned to call home. By then I'd bonded deeply with Dad's Mom, my Grandmother, and with my Aunt and Uncle who lived there. When I wouldn't come to Mom and Dad, Mom said Dad's family had turned me against them.

I was seventeen months when my brother was born. That was the day World War II "ended." Our family war had only just begun.

Related Information:

What is Abandonment?

Specific Problems in Traumatized Children with Attachment Disorders

(at Imaginif...)

Emotional Abuse of Children: A Study of the Narratives in Protective Assessment and Intervention

What is Attachment Disorder?

Neglect in Childhood

The Anatomy of a Trauma

Isolated Pattern

A Child is Waiting,
Take care...be aware,
Nancy Lee