Wednesday, October 10, 2012 @ 11:40 am
Good morning … or what’s left of the last 20 minutes of it. We were skimming through the pictures of
something that we might add to the top of the blog and we came across this one
and thought …we’d never posted it before so might be a good time to do so. I believe the picture is from a Google Earth
search. This seems to be then where we
live – in case anyone ever wanted that kind of image. Sometimes we’re not overly proud of still
living in an apartment, but then at other times think … hey! It’s not us snowplowing and lawn-mowing! We like to think of us being on the penthouse
level. That seems to make the steps (no
elevator) more acceptable. Do you know
what we mean? All in all though it
really is a nice place to live and we’ve now been here twelve years – and five
of those years Rich has lived with us too so we can be pretty darn happy J Would we like a house? Hmm, at this point maybe more like we’d
appreciate a condo … did I mention snow?
Ok, maybe being a little silly this morning. Not really in a good or bad mood, maybe
somewhere in-between. We always have a
lot of work to do in front of us so it doesn’t seem to matter much on what to
be doing next. It is just more work –
WHICH, fortunately is like play too … so we’re doing ok J Have a sense of purpose.
I’m not sure if you got a chance to look at the last entry,
but we feel very comfortable with a decision made over the weekend to write a
book called, “NEWS Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality
disorder: Real States of Personal Identity
within Curation and Blog Culture of Multiplicity.” Pretty darn cool, hmm?
We’re still getting over the shock of it though we know that
time will prove or disprove our esteemed ability to do what we’ve intended. So many things come and go from our plans
that only the ones making it against our timeline are really great ideas. BUT, we like that this particular one is very
well-based through the curation of the Multiples’ Blogs. I suppose there is always a vague idea of
looking for what could be the next best book, but it’s usually on a back range
spot. This one has moved to the front of
the stove.
We didn’t have very much time to talk it over with Dr.
Marvin, but last night there was about 15 minutes put toward it. The bulk of the other 45 minutes went to a
situation that happened a couple nights ago.
Apparently someone had exhausted our system AND had forgotten to take
medicine and so after reading a bit, we got suddenly tired, and then Rich helped
us with the medicine and getting to bed, but apparently we’d started to hit our
head. Fortunately, Rich had come back to
check on us and then stayed with us until we fell asleep proper. It has been a LONG time since anything like that has happened. We didn’t understand it, but obviously
brought it up with Dr. Marvin. In
general, he’s leaning toward being over-tired, without medicine, and having
been over-stimulated by what we were reading.
So then as part of that process we stayed younger (middle-aged), but
talked about actually quite a bit that we were remembering.
We are on the 8th chapter of Dell’s book on DID (about
11%) and there is a lot of information as to the actual things happening at the
infant and toddler age of people being traumatized and then neglected through
bad parenting – who end up dissociating. I think that most of that is that even though
there are too many big words – mostly biological – to count, that some of the
understanding is getting through a LITTLE and we’re finding it over this last
couple days a little harder to hide from realities of our past. The book breaks it down one simple biological
process after another so this causes that, which causes this, etc. I think in some ways we are glad that we don’t
understand all of it, because right now it seems to be stinging a bit and could overload us easily. We are having little snapshots of the past
which are appearing to confirm most of the reality that they reflect. Little things are falling into
place like cogs and wheels – though we could safely guess - there are a million more to confirm and discuss with Dr. Marvin. The images are fleeting - just seconds of our life at one time.
Dr. Marvin said that usually not too much is remembered of
the very earliest years, but we still have some images of being in the crib,
being in the crib and looking at my sister’s crib in the same room, or being in
the playpen.
Took a popcorn break here.
Ok, have to rethink this … where are we?
Can we say just one more thing?
We had been talking to Linda and then at the very end, we thought of the
quilt we wanted her to sew the back to
before Christmas. We decided to
give our star and stripe quilt to Austin for Christmas this year. We’re a little worried because the red
stripes on the quilt are big flowers, but it is the best thing I have done that
I have made (can afford) to give. I am
banking more on the stars and stripes theme being something that would connect
me to Thom as his father and me as the grandmother. I don’t know what Austin’s thoughts are
toward patriotism, but we’re pretty sure that if he knows at all what his
father does for a living, that he would be pretty proud of him.
It is now only a couple days away before we meet Laura and
we’re very excited. It turns out that
she has staked out a career in childhood abuse.
She has a Masters and had worked five years previous with emotionally
disturbed kids for a school. I don’t
know all of what has been learned in real life or learned from academic, but I’m
very positive that she knows her material.
She was a very “strong-minded” person.
I never would have guessed though that she would choose an area so close
to my interests. I had thought she went
more toward nursing. We’re just really
proud of her. We’re meeting about this
time on Friday.
Just thinking a second.
Although, we had contacted last when she’d come over to our apartment to
see Thom, we really had first met her when we came back 13 years ago to live in
Chicago. This means she’s actively been
in our life, but much to a back burner, for a long time. Just remembering thoughts of first meeting
her. We had been at the old apartment
and Thom and Laura we’re just letting us know that she was pregnant. It was such a long time ago … and all these
years … just that we are going to meet her and Austin again … and we’re just so
excited!
*sigh*
Ok, pushing through to other thoughts, I know gotta let that other excitement rest. We were still back at Dr. Marvin’s
appointment. I think as to the longer
session of parts being out talking about the abuse from the past there was some
discussion on the neglect parts – which is newer to us to be talking
about. Usually, the sexual abuse gets
most of the attention. From what we are
reading, it seems that the neglect has more to do with the likelihood of becoming
dissociative then a lot of other things.
I think it has more to do with not only having suffered the trauma of
the actual abuse – is that something is added to the value of not having anyone
to trust to take down that level of anxiety and fear and being overwhelmed. There seems to be a very problematic thing to traumatized kids with certain susceptibilities and being also neglected in that the kids are forced through a dilemma where they can only go toward their abusers who SHOULD have protected them, but the abuser IS THEIR parent so also is very threatening to the child. It locks them in a nowhere realm of being defenseless. There is a lot about the infant/toddler
trying to calm herself and they even talked somewhat about the child going into
a real state of helpless or hopelessness where they compare it to dying … in
that some of the bodily systems close way down like the heartbeat and the
automatic nervous system. Much more into
the biology, I am just not getting yet, but we talked to Dr. Marvin about what
we’ve always called the “Dead Zone” and he agreed that it had relevancy.
We can also see more of the differences between Crystal and
Gracie in that the infant at first would be terrified to the degree of feeling annihilation
… as we’ve said many times before … Crystal (8 months) kicks and waves wildly,
but Gracie (1 1/2 years) coming immediately after Crystal is very stiff and
catatonic. We think that Crystal is more
like 2 ½ now and that Gracie is more like 4 years old. But, one way or another two parts are still
with us … and we’re thinking have a lot more they need to say. We’re afraid that their lives are more based
in the negativity of their traumatic situation.
I have no doubt at this point that the part out hitting herself the
other night was Crystal. Maybe what we’d
been doing in being triggered back through some of her images was upsetting to
her in a level she needed to make us stop.
We’re going to do that right now again … because we should
learn something from the experience as to not be pushing things. Dr. Marvin also stated that we have plenty of
time to go through it and that the book might trigger a lot of mental
processing, but that we needed to balance it with other things including times
in-between to talk things over, or maybe even quilting. At least
that’s our interpretation. Dr. Marvin is
just too good of a tool psychologically speaking not to appreciate his skills
in handling this situation. I have to
admit though once again … we’re really curious as to what Laura is dealing with
working at her crises center. I just can’t
believe how excellent it is that she cares for so much around her. We’re thinking she had a good childhood, but
she’s gone so much further in supporting others who haven’t … Just really proud
of her. I'm hoping she feels comfortable in talking of what she's doing with kids. It will be so heart-welcoming to know what's being done out there.
I think we’ll jump things a little bit here. As to Dr. Marvin’s there was about 15 minutes
left on the end of the hour. He had been
15 minutes late due to another meeting, but he had left a note for us so that
we could deal with it properly. I’m
proud to say that we didn’t have a bad experience with it … though still
remember it the day after. The nice
thing was that he gave us the extra 15 minutes we might have lost and he then
let us go an additional minute after so we could complete our thoughts of
excitement.
After the younger parts had been out … the next parts were
talking about their sore neck and how they could see Dr. Marvin’s eyes
again. The initial parts had looked away and
cower their necks as if undeserving. I
think we read something in the staring away from others eyes as being cowardly of
the other or fearful. We’ve known this
about ourselves for so long, it doesn’t seem time to go into that again
now because we're still not getting past it. Just to say that we recognize the
behavior. Usually, when we are dealing
with those range of experiences, we’re talking to Anniemi or one of the two
Casies (Casey & KC). Anyway after
that … we knew that we wanted to spend some time talking about “the book.” We asked Dr. Marvin if he’d seen the work,
and he just smiled brightly and showed us on the table were two copies of it so
that we could talk about it. We were
soooo happy to have almost 15 minutes left!
The conversation went by pretty fast. There was a part where we were trying to
figure out what Dr. Marvin knew about what was written and where he needed to
be brought up to speed. We very much
appreciated several complements paid forward.
He liked the outline, he liked that the exerpts were so closely aligned
with the outline, and when we asked him … he said that he seemed to understood the
title. I think there was more like it
was a great title, but we maybe looking more into that then was given. We’re not sure. We could have used the entire time to talk
about the book ideal through our excitement, but part of that since other parts needed time too, was just knowing not that Dr.
Marvin had to spend too much time with it as a completed project, but rather this
was just the first inkling of an ongoing work/project and did it make sense to him? We’re taking that at this time as a big yes.
Anything else was just us being a little flighty. Did you see this, did you see that? I’m not sure if he had immediately figured
out that the most of the outline came to us from just reading the first seven
blog entries (about 3 weeks’ worth for each blogger), but I think he understood
afterward. He’s pretty quick. If he was anything like us … it was if this
was just an inkling of what is out there to mine … just imagine how good this
could actually be. His letting me know
that I was very accurate with my judgment on where things could go was a big
deal. We also added on a little of the
process like the part of getting from the online curators – seek, sense, and
share, as well as the information about finding the mind mapping system of
pearltrees. I know by the end we were
pretty choppy in getting information out, but we were just swimming in all our
newfound glory. I know sounds a little
silly, but sometimes being with Dr. Marvin who really understands our
experiences … it is like being high!
I know … calm down girls calm down.
I think then that was the gist of our experience. Looking back as to a time trail … I think we
added the Curation Outline to the blog on Monday, and yesterday we went through
about 15 blogs, and then Saturday and Sunday we’d gone through the outlining
process and fine tuning it. We had
discovered PKM before we did the major work, and then the last entry before
that was on Friday, but posted on Saturday.
At that time we had started with quilting thoughts and had done an outline as to
what we had been doing loosely over that last bit of time. So, I’m thinking pretty much that you are
caught up. I’m thinking I’m going to leave the past now to
get some work done on present and future thoughts. There is one thought on Maury … I think we
met on Sunday. We treated to Panera’s. Yay Blackberry Smoothies! It was great to talk to him about things, and
now he’s in Florida with his girls and Lady and they are going to be seeing the
girls grandparents. I’m afraid they
might be divorcing though so there will be some uncomfortable parts too. I don’t know how the girls are going to
understand grandparents divorcing and it might bring up some frightening
thoughts as to not being connected to them properly. There's always something to worry about through "abandonment" real or imagined. I’m really glad that the kids decided to see both grandparents even
though right now they are in different states.
We hope the best for that situation.
We also have some time coming up with Joe maybe over the
weekend. I’m not sure if Cari will be
there too, but either way is fine. Just
thinking Joe was going to find some time.
We’ll give him a call toward Friday to see if anything has loosened up
as to schedule. I’m not sure when it is,
but I think Joe and Cari are going to California pretty soon though it seems
right now they are still here. Cari is
talking about kickboxing and they are both talking about Herbalife
Products. The Herbalife is why they are
going to CA.
Hmm, Rich just called.
He got behind in his schedule so will be going directly to his Mom’s
without coming home first. I think he
plans on spending a few hours with her and then will head home … YAY FOR US! Rich has been tossing and turning as to going
fishing with the guys this weekend. It
is up at that same lake in Madison, WI.
He’s worried about having enough money or getting his business work
in. There’s also a complication in that
he had a partner and the guy cancelled out.
When that happens the club will pick-up half of Rich’s expense, but now
there is someone who MIGHT come with him from the club. BUT, the guy is not sure yet which with all
these variables being out … Rich has been sitting on the fence shakily. I think he really wants to go … is nervous
again because of the money, but also because he’s not sure of fishing on his
own for so many days. I think it could
get cumbersome for him. Partners share
fishing, travel, eating, and rooming, so not to have a partner has far flung
consequences. I think already he’s
deciding to skip Thursday and maybe go on Friday, but his partner might only be
there Saturday and Sunday. Least that’s
the most up-to-date version we have.
Linda is also out for awhile. She was working on quilting, but then decided
to get her hair done today. We’ll
catch-up later in the afternoon.
So, then knowing about where people are at … so what comes
next? Ok, we’re good there we just
caught up our social media through email, Twitter and Facebook. Just gotta run all the Pony’s right?
I think if we get this blog in … we’ll go back to the
reading of blogs. There was some time
this morning spent rereading and rereading the information given to Dr. Marvin
last night. It really helped he had read
– or at least skimmed some of the material before we got there. There are a few pearls I would like to move
around, but we needed to consider something which will change the architecture
of what we are doing. I think the question
comes down to referencing. So far the
greater majority of the referencing of other peoples blogs has been done
through their central page with obviously the newer blog entries toward the
top. And, all that’s fine, but when
people click back on their blogs name through links, because we are collecting information from the center page and not individual entry pages … we are losing information as to
perhaps the date (or about that range), and we are losing direct connection
back to the specific entry which would seem more the right thing to do from a
reference point of view. One way gives the blog writers a little more privacy, but then on the other side - if I were a psychology researcher studying what we were writing about, I would like to resource back to the quote directly to get a better feel of the blog writer's written effort.
I’m not sure though how that would affect the way Diigo has
been aggregating our information. Maybe
it would be for the better, maybe not.
Right now it’s a crap shoot of which links appear when I’m ready to look
in the Diigo library for my highlighted annotated quotes. Sometimes they appear and sometimes not, so
since I can’t get to the bottom of anything logical to do with that, we’ve
decided to take the attitude that the right things will show up at the right
time whether I’m part of making that decision or not. Sort of like believing in … shoot forgot the
word. We always mentally attach it to a
picture ohh PROVIDENCE! Yes, that is it …
the picture we attach that word to is a picture of a stormy looking cloud while
we were at the homeless shelter. Funny
how that kind of stuff turns out in the turning of one’s mental processes. So, though basically, we do the work – and whatever
results – hopefully good … we just keep doing the best we can and hope for good
results - because that is Providence. I think that Harold Jarche is
correct when he says that doing the curating increases serendipity.
I will all make sense somewhere down the line. No telling what’s going to happen, but if we
weren’t doing what we are doing, then we would never know the potential of
something special coming from it. Right?
I would like to write some more, but we’re running out of
things to talk about. The cat sitting
next to me staring at me because it wants to be petted … just might not be
newsworthy. SOOOO, I guess we’ll move on
… that be just the thing J Our hats off to you! Thanks for sharing a bit of our world :)
(5,665/817)
Let's give this one more try, I haven;t read the above yet but do want to get to it soon.
ReplyDeleteLOL - YAY you got it! Don't worry about the top one (this one) too much ... It does have some good information as to Dr. Marvin's Tuesday meeting .. we're working on Thursday's meeting now :)
ReplyDeleteOur love, AND THANKS FOR THE EFFORT!
Ann