Be patient, I’m going to RANT

A lot of us in Texas, and I suppose, around the world are shocked and amazed at the public turnaround on the decision to remove the 440 children from the FLDS compound in West Texas. I mean, I am glad that if CPS acted without proper authority the Supreme Court overruled them. CPS in my experience has seldom done things correctly. I have seen them remove children from parents who loved them because their spouses or boyfriends who were then incarcerated had abused their children. I have even had cases where bruised and battered adolescents were told to “Go home and mind your parents”. I’ve seen them investigate cases where kids were clearly being abused and send the child to treatment and let the parent remain in the home to have the child rejoin them with no consequence or follow up after returning from treatment. I’ve seldom seen CPS do the right thing, so it is no real surprise to me that they screwed this one up, too.

What about the kids?

My dismay is that these poor kids have had such an awful ordeal. First, they are brought up in a culture that cuts them off from any knowledge or exposure to the modern world. Then they are taught obedience to an authority that dictates to them who and when they shall marry and have children, no matter their tender years. I understand there were dozens of children under the age of 17 who were “married” mothers. The boys were taught that they, too, were to grow up and marry someone the “authority’ selected for them and to have sex with their “underage wives.”

These kids have been yanked from everything they knew, exposed to the “outside world” and given sanctity and safety for a month or so and now they are being returned to the world they were torn from. I suppose it is hard to know who the abusers are since the members of the sect deny any “abuse”. Oh, I suppose girls get pregnant by divine intervention. At least that must be how the Texas Supreme Court sees it since I have never seen more clear evidence that SOMEONE is abusing a child than that they are under age and pregnant in a cult where the BOYS never marry under age 17.

This is the biggest mess I’ve ever seen and I don’t understand what in the world is going to protect those kids from further abuse.

The New FLDS Policy

The newest thing is that they say they no longer will have a policy of letting under age girls marry. HELLO they were NEVER legally married in the FIRST PLACE. What is to prevent them from continuing an illegal practice that was never overtly practiced???

Don’t misunderstand, I don’t think these cult members who have been practicing their perverted version of Mormonism for over a hundred years. This is NOT a matter of “Religious Freedom”. It is a matter of CHILD SAFETY. Oh, and of course, polygamy itself is illegal in Texas, too.

Maybe the authorities are just stepping back to make a better case later, but in the meantime these children continue to be exposed to further abuse. What of the girls who are under age and “married” to their older cousins and uncles? Wont they go right back into the subjection of forces sexual relations with their “husband”? What is to prevent it? It is what they “believe” to be their rightful place.

What other abuse situation would we let this happen in?

In other situations where children are in a home where abuse is clearly taking place the child is NOT RETURNED because the odds are that they will be abused again. WHAT IS DIFFEREN HERE????

It is our job as a community to protect these children. We have let them down. I am disappointed and grieved that these poor kids don’t have anyone who will protect them. Their mothers and their grandmothers and their aunts and uncles all grew up believing that it is right for them to be subjected to this kind of treatment. Clearly none of them are going to protect their kids, boys or girls.

Man o’ man that CPS

CPS, “bless their hearts” are “doing the best they can”. They are going to “teach” these parents to parent??? How can they pretend that this somehow will protect these children. As long as the “husbands” have access to their “wives” the kids will be abused. It’s their “God given right” according to the FLDS beliefs.

A better solution?

From the beginning of this mess I have thought it was all handled badly. CPS went in with guns, armed to remove the kids from their “dangerous” family. It was heavy handed and frightening to participants and viewers alike. What I believe should have been done is that a number of CPS workers, social workers and psychologist should have gone in and taken charge of the kids on the compound itself. They should have separated the men and the women and began teaching them about child development, the law, and parenting. This would take months and they could continue to practice their religious beliefs while being taught a more humane way to treat children. Prosecuting the “polygamist’ marriages as they were discovered through financial penalties and incarceration only in the most hardened cases. In cases of men who have developed pedophilia as a result (we do have tests for this) remove them from access to any child (as we do in the case of other child abuse offenders) and even incarcerating those most likely to re-offend in the greater community.

What do you think?

Any other approach denies children protection, and traumatizes all the individuals involved without helping anyone only criminalizing the whole bunch as we did that fateful day we went in armed and bussed their children away from them.

What do you think? Was it right that we sent them back? What should we do? Comment below.

Cult Abuse of Chlldren

What might have happened if the mothers and children of the Branch Davidians had been captured instead of slaughtered that day in April, 1995? Would it have been that different than what is happening today? A cult that uses women and children as their sex slaves in the name of religion is one that cannot be allowed to continue.

What they are brought up to believe

Yet the children, male and female alike, in this bizarre sect have all been brought up to believe in their “faith” s as a natural, precious, and fundamental part of what it is to be a human being. They go about their lives believing, as they have for generations, that this is truth and the way to God’s Kingdom. Each and every one of them is raised to accept this view of themselves and others. They each believe in what they were conditioned to believe since birth. Their accepted worldview rejects or technology, and our modern ways and the knowledge of psychology and the acquired wisdoms of the past 150 years. Ignorance was their choice. It is always the way of cults in general. Outside knowledge of other’s beliefs is not only discouraged but punished. No new knowledge can be allowed into the closed system because new knowledge would destroy the system.

Who is going to be prosecuted?

Do you prosecute the women who were brought up to believe that marrying off your children to much older men is acceptable? Do you prosecute these same women for abandoning their young sons that were thrown out of their “families” because there were too many of them? Do your prosecute the men, who were brought up to believe it is their rightful place to have many young wives and force them to have sex with them as they please?

Clearly Criminal

Clearly all of the above constitute legal abuse and crimes that are normally punishable by law. Yet what happens when we begin to view this case as a case of programming, not unlike that of Patty Hearst? All of the members of this sect were programmed from birth to see their lifestyle as the only choice acceptable by God as they understand him.

Is it our role as a legal community to imprison them for their crimes, as we did Patty Hearst, or is our responsibility to them something entirely different? What if we could view them not as perpetrators of horrors upon innocent victims, but as victims themselves worthy of our compassion?

The Travesty

Some people already are seeing the travesty that is likely to occur to these people and have been protesting outside the courtrooms where we attempt to find “justice” for those our courts are attempting to protect. Unfortunately there are no “bad guys” here to prosecute. The system was the problem, not the people involved. All of these people were caught up in a system that was dangerous and just plain wrong. But there are no bad guys are there?

A different perspective

It changes everything when you try to look a situation from the prospective of compassion rather than the old egocentric view of seeing everyone as a good guy, a bad guy or a victim. When we impose our legal system on these people by prosecuting them for doing what they earnestly believed was the righteous way of living, we become what our forefathers fought against. We as a community become the perpetrators by prosecuting this group for their religious practices.

Clearly abuse is abuse

But what they were doing to their children was wrong. There is no question about that is there? Raping children of the age of 12 or 14, abandoning children (boys) who were not going to be useful in continuing their patterns of multiple marriages to one male is all wrong. Morally and ethically we cannot let it continue, but we have to stop it in a way that does not make anyone a criminal.

Practicing Empathy

We have to put ourselves in their shoes and practice empathy for their situation. There are those in our culture (among whom I count myself) who oppose the everyday practice of circumcision as genital mutilation of our baby boys. It’s as wrong as the genital mutilation of girls that we have outlawed in this country, even when practiced for religious reasons. Yet we continue to practice this primitive mutilation of baby boys on a daily basis all across our nation. It’s okay to do it to boys, but not to girls. I don’t get that at all.

When we consider that the practice of genitally mutilating boys is a natural normal practice in our culture, it makes it hard not to step into the shoes of a cult that sees raping 12-14 year old girls as a natural and normal practice in theirs.

It changes everything when we begin to have empathy for their beliefs and understand that, like us, they have been brought up in a culture which finds some very bizarre practices to be normal and natural.

What do you think?

Is there a difference between taking innocent babies and mutilating their genitals and taking a 12-13 year old girl into a forced marriage and raping them? Can you find empathy for their strange beliefs or do you see them as a sick, perverted culture that needs to be punished? Tell me what you think. Comment below

Pope Benedict XVI Steps Up

In a landmark event Pope Benedict XVI met with several survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic Priests. Over 4,000 people have sued the church for their part in allowing the perpetuation of abuse by priests throughout the world. The church has paid out more than $2 billion in damages to survivors and many dioceses are in bankruptcy as a result of the suits. The sexual perpetration of children put in the care of the church has been a travesty that no amount of money can begin to repay. Raping children, in Louisiana, is now being considered as a crime punishable by death.

The Cycle of Egocentrism

Most victims of such abuse are rightfully angry at what was done to them, and considered the church a part of the abuse because of their negligence in removing known offenders from priesthood. The church became the target of their anger and their blame. The church became the “bad guy” in their drama just as surely as the offending priests themselves.

The Cycle of Compassion

But as of Thursday, April 17^th , 2008, the Catholic Church began the process of taking ownership of the horror the church condoned by it’s neglect over the course of history.

Over the course of the past ten years of victims of the pedophile priests coming out into the public with their stories the church has denied their part in the abuse. Church officials have either turned their heads away or flat out denied any responsibility in these crimes. The self-protective stance of the church led these now adult victims of this horror to attack back by suing the church, thereby becoming self-protectors themselves.

Owning Up

Pope Benedict XVI took the historic step to meet with a few of the victims to begin the process of owning up to what the church has failed to own up to in the past. By apologizing to the victims of the abuse, the Pope has demonstrated the practice of compassion in his papacy.

The Practice of Compassion Changes Everything

When we begin to practice compassion by taking ownership of our part in a wrong we are not taking the blame for what has occurred, we are simply stating that we are responsible for our part in it. This is what the Pope did last week.

By allowing those few victims to face the person who is now, ultimately, responsible for the actions of the entire Catholic church, Pope Benedict XVI has chosen to move out of the dark ages of egocentrism and into compassion thereby changing one of the patterns long ago established by the church. That changes everything for the now adult survivors of the churches negligence.

Have you been affected by a pedophile priest?

Do you have a history that you would like to tell here? Has someone you love been affected? I’d love to hear from you. Comment below.

Cycles of Dysfunction

One of the biggest stories in Texas for the past couple of weeks has been the story about the “Fundamentalist” branch of Mormons who lived on a 700 acre compound in south Texas while practicing their beliefs of polygamy as a valid, spiritual practice allowing all members to experience closeness to God through their patience. This practice has as a centerpiece of its practices the pre-arrangement of marriages of older men (40-50 years old) to girls when they turn 13. The girls are then supposed to become one of their husbands many wives and bear children from which other men will choose their future 13-year-old wife.

Twisted Faith

The members of this sect are loyal Christians believing in the Book of Mormon from some “fundamental” perspective that ordains their behaviors as sacred. All of the children are brought up in this system, and as a part of this system are indoctrinated into believing that they are doing what is right and spiritual, including the males. It’s easy to think of this sect as a group of perverted individuals who prey on young girls and subjugate the women into sexual slavery, because, by our standards and beliefs, that is exactly what is occurring in fact.

Perpetrators?

Of course, this is how the legal system addresses this issue as well, treating the men as wicked perpetrators preying on innocent young girls. We love to look at things in black and white terms in our world, and our legal system is organized to support a clear-cut right and wrong view of the world.

Is legal perpetration any better?

But what if we could step back from the Victim-Perpetrator-Rescuer mentality long enough to consider the wholeness of what has occurred. The practice of polygamy in the name of religion is at least as old as our country. Generations of children have been brought up believing in this practice as a part of their spirituality and taught, through this twisted view of Christianity, that it is the right and proper actions for all involved. Members of the religion believe it is their right to have the most basic of our US Constitutional rights, to practice their faith as they see fit.

In fact, other religions have been honored in their spiritual practices and given rights to do things that would otherwise be considered illegal. Native Americans are allowed to gather and possess Peyote (a psychosis-inducing plant that is classified as an illegal drug). Other religions have allowed the mutilation of children for thousands of years and it is practiced as an accepted part of our culture without question from authorities: circumcisions of male infants.

What is so different about what this sect is doing? Forcing sexual intercourse on anyone, married or not, 13 or not, is rape. But I also think its atrocious to cut on the genitals of infants…

Where is our line?

We must look at the rights of children and certainly forcing them in to marriage and sex at 13 is wrong, but the entire sect believed this to be an honorable spiritual practice, even the men. Their cult, along with all others, is base on a the Cycle of Egocentrism and can only be positively addressed by using the Cycle of Compassion.
We become the perpetrator

Law enforcement swoops down and grabs up over 400 children, many of who are already mothers themselves, and sent them off to overcrowded facilities with caregivers from an entirely different world. This traumatized the children even further and certainly did nothing to help them perceive this new world in which they found themselves seem safe or inviting. So in trying to rescue these children our community becomes the perpetrator, harming them even further. The people they love are now being seen as criminals and the children, then put in a place to want to protect the only family they know, and in spite of what may have happened to them, they want to “rescue” the people we perceive of as their perpetrators.

What is right?

In the “cycle of egocentrism”, which involves viewing the cult members as “evildoers” and criminals, from whom their victims need rescuing we remain caught up in a system of pain and misery. What if we could see these people as wounded individuals who need our help in discovering more productive ways to live with each other and in the world? What if we had some empathy for their worldview and, while taking ownership of protecting the children, and gave them respect for the fact that each of them was doing what they believed to be correct (no matter how ill conceived)? Wouldn’t that change everything?

What do you think?

Whether you understand the bizarre practices of this South Texas cult, you certainly have some opinions about both the cult and our response to it. Let me know what you think.

Comment below. Use the security key – I’ve been being spammed lately…

New Study on Anger

Validation

Wow I feel validated! I’ve been preaching for years the importance of expressing your anger and not shying from conflict. Now research validates its importance to the quality of our lives. Holding back our feelings has dire consequences, it seems.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we have license to attack each other, it just means we are encouraged to speak our angry feelings out loud.

Confusion between anger and violence

Those of us who grew up in homes where angry outbursts accompanied hitting, verbal abuse, throwing things – or worse – are often frightened of anyone expressing their anger, no matter how benignly they do it. Some of us are down right anger phobic, both of our own and others.

In my family growing up, the only people allowed to have their anger were the adults. If one of us kids smarted off or expressed our anger we were punished by being shamed with laughter, sent to our rooms and told we were being “ugly”. But the adults were allowed to hit us with belts, “green switches”, hairbrushes and their hands and to yell and scream as long and as abusively as they choose.

Of course, I didn’t want to be like that myself, and certainly felt ashamed if I ever found myself provoked to anger.

The result is that we think that any time anyone expresses anger they are being violent. We then put them in the role of “the bad guy” and think of whoever they dumped their anger out on as “the victim.”

Choosing to be rational

Many people growing up in very refined homes never witnessed anyone expressing anger directly and they internalize it and rationalize it away without ever having a chance to even let it come to conscious awareness. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist! Just because we renationalize it away doesn’t mean we haven’t felt it, and that it still doesn’t need release.

The physiology of anger

Anger is like any of our emotions, a necessary part of being a human being. We feel anger for a reason, again, like all of our feelings. Anger is there to tell us “Something is wrong. I need to do something about this!” When we fail to express the need to do something differently, we end up locking this “energy-in-motion” (the definition of emotion) into our bodies. The energy of the emotion of anger starts out in our root chakra and moves outward and upward through our bodies. But, if we block the flow of emotion and fight it down using our physiology to stop it (holding our breath, tensing our diaphragm, tightening our shoulders, gritting our teeth) we lock it into place so that it does not get expressed. Then, the effort of locking in that emotion takes its toll on the body. We experience stomach problems, breathing problems, muscular aches and pains, perhaps fibro-myalgia, some say even cancers can be triggered this way.

What I am NOT saying

I am not saying it’s okay to blast people with unbridled attacks, either. There was a period of time when people used “I’m just having my feelings!” as an excuse to attack anyone and to dump their feelings off on others. I am NOT advocating this kind of behavior. What I am advocating is that we all MUST find a way to express our feelings of anger appropriately and consistently if we are to remain healthy and have strong, long lasting relationships.

A paradigm shift

The next time someone appears angry take the time inside to remember 1) this does not mean they are going to hurt someone (necessarily) 2) this person feels something is wrong in their world and may need some help. The shift that takes place when you begin to view anger in this way can change everything for you.

What do you think?

Are you able to handle it when people express anger? Or do you clam up and try to avoid the situation? Is it best to avoid anger and conflict at all costs? Let me know what you think. Comment below.

Eliot Spitzer’s Choices

Ashley Alexandra Dupre is only now 22. Overnight she has become as famous as Monica Lewinski, but much prettier and less seedy. Her now media frenzied experience with former governor Eliot Spitzer has gained her worldwide attention and undoubtedly removed her from ever having to touch another man for money.

Good guys and bad guys

We love good guys and bad guys don’t we? Is Eliot Spitzer a bad guy because he solicited sex from a young beauty? His wife is probably pretty upset, but why the rest of us should care what he did in the privacy of his own home in a situation of consensual sex is beyond my comprehension. I can even understand why those who voted for him based on his professed morals might be angry with him; but did he do anything to betray his trust as governor? Did he do anything as awful as have sex with someone he had authority over (like a intern)? No. He didn’t and he didn’t lie about it. He didn’t take state funds to do it. I don’t see how this makes him culpable. Oh, except that it is against the law to solicit sex. Wait, he didn’t solicit; he bought. I guess that’s illegal, too.

But for the life of me I don’t understand why.

The results of abuse

Ms Dupre is neither a victim nor the perpetrator in this scandal. She was doing her job. Now, personally, I believe anyone participating in this profession has an untreated condition. She even admits this is the case, so in some ways, she is a victim. She was, at least, as a child. When she was (if you believe her, and I do) molested as a child. From my experience, her later vocations are consistent with those of someone who is an untreated survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Unfortunately, when things come out in the media as they often do, it looks like she is using this as an excuse. Though I have not heard anything to say that she feels she needs one. She is happy with who she is, she says, and has no shame about her behavior. I don’t think this is likely to be 100% true, but only time will tell.

Dr. Laura’s take

Then of course, Dr. Laura blamed Eliot Spitzer’s wife for the problem, saying that if she had been taking care of him at home this wouldn’t have happened. Everyone has someone they blame. The public blames Eliot Spitzer himself, though undoubtedly there are plenty that blame Ms Dupre as well. Blame doesn’t really explain what happened or provide us with understanding of the events. All blame does is incite people to take action against the perceived object of it’s focus. We blame Eliot Spitzer so we force him to resign and throw legal charges at him. We blame Ms Dupre and she faces charges herself. Oh, but then we have to blame Mrs. Spitzer, too. The public feels satisfied that all is right with the world.

Underlying dynamics

Taking a closer look at the dynamics underlying the triangle expose a different picture. Like many fundamentalist Christian’s (and politicians) he is forced into a box. If he is unhappy in his marriage he cannot act in his own best interest if he is to maintain his standing in the Christian community or in the public eye. Divorce marks you as a failure. What if you are not getting your intimacy needs met? What are your options? Hiring an escort seems less appalling than soliciting from a bathroom stall. But either way you have more of a chance of getting what you need than if you do nothing.

I don’t believe Mrs. Spitzer is to blame for what her husband chose to do. But I do believe she had some responsibility in it, the same as any woman whose husband strays. Their marital relationship was missing something. I’m not saying that is her fault; any more than it is his. I am saying that they both had equal responsibility in seeing to I that those issues are addressed.

But of course if you are supposed to be flawless (as a person in the public eye is believed to have to be) that makes it difficult to receive the help you need doesn’t it?

Ms Dupre’s only complicity is that she found a way to use the value she was taught she had as a child. Her perpetrator (whoever that was) taught that her value was as a sexual object. She enjoyed feeling special and valuable to men because she never really got a sense that she was the brilliant beautiful person she is because of her abuse. She chose to stay in the Victim role instead of getting help. Look at her hand, thee is an "X" mark on it. That's gang sign. It means she has been involved in someone's death. The girl has not had an easy life and the "Escort" service was undoubtedly the best thing that ever happened to her.

Compassion changes everything

It changes everything when you stop looking for blame and look for a compassionate answer to what happens. Discovering compassion as an alternative to the punitive response our media feeds on allows us to create a whole new way of looking at the world.

What do you think?

Is Eliot Spitzer a vile betrayer of our trust who should be punished or something else? Comment below.

What happens when a parents authority is blatantly being challenged by the newly found independance of a todler? What is a parent supposed to do? She didn't hit her, she just blasted her with high powered water and didn't even leave any marks on the child. Of course, seeing the video recording was startling to see, because the child was obviously upset by it, and it could have potentially hurt her. Naturally Child Protective Services was called in, but what could they do? The child was not physically wounded.

So was this appropriate? That depends on how you view children. What is the nature of a child anyway? Are children incomplete adults? Are they extensions of ourselves that need to be kept under control?

Raising a child is a challenge.

I raised or helpd raise six of them, three of my own and three step children. Believe me some of them challenged my authority on a regluar basis. Trying to be an authority to a child determined to be in charge of their own life is a difficulty. That is, unless you recogize their right to be in charge of their own life. Kids need us to guide them, not run them. Yet because we were "run" ourselves, because our parents taught us that children were "to be seen and not heard" - that's what what we teach our children. But what does this do to a child?

What it does is to teach a chld that they don't matter. It teaches them to disconnect from their own instincts, to lose touch with what they feel, think and how they see things. Children have delightful ways of looking at the world that are untainted by the culture and our media. When we allow them to express their own ways of being in the world.

Obviously we have to keep them safe and teach them about the world and to understand the price of things. Teaching them is not the same thing as "controlling them".

How do you feel when someone tries to control you?

Personally, I hate it and tend to try to get away from that person as soon as possible. What I have observed in kids is that if they have a parent that believes parenting requires controlling the child; the chld does all they can to get away from that parent as soon as they can. That doesn't mean they don't love their parents; it does mean they don't like how it feels to be around them.
Parents attempting to control their children through over protecting them, or forcing compliance on them with brut force and "authority" are locked into a set of rules, rather than being able to be present with their children. The child then is victim to the parents attempts at control and they feel all the things a victim does. They feel powerless, despairing, trapped, incapable and depressed.

So, well, I turned out okay....

You might question this assesment, if you think that most people raised this way turned out okay. But the reality is that drug addiction and depression are on the rise, as are anxiety disorders and attention deficit disorder. The divorce rate has finally eased some, but it's still at more than fifty percent. Children raised in an environment where they were respected as complete human beings are not so likely to end up divorced, depressed and drug addicted.

We can parent differently. We can have different attitudes toward children. When we start recognizing their wholeness rather than seeing them as sub-human deserving of little to no respect, we can start honoring their spirit and raising adults who can believe in themselves. Now, THAT really does change everything.

Let me know what you think

Child rearing is a delicate subject. When I was growing up you never said anything to anyone about how they were raising their child. It was as off limits as religion and politics. Now I am addressing this touchy issue. I'm sure you have your own opionion. I'd love to hear it. Comment below.

Heartbreak Academy 101

Today’s Oprah article, Lessons from 'Heartbreak Academy by Martha Beck was on the homepage of CNN this morning.   I can find no argument in anything she says.  In fact she is right on about our loneliness not coming from our lack of having a partner, but from something inside of us alienating us from other people. 
As a young woman I was always lonely, whether I was married or not.  I did not have a clue how to connect with anyone, least of all myself. 

Indeed we do have to learn a lot of lessons from our heartbreak if we are to have any hope of getting out of the interminable loneliness that we often suffer from. I also agree that the source of that loneliness is a childhood or adolescence trauma or loss.  That event, whatever it was, led us to distance ourselves not only from other people, but also from ourselves.  It left us fearful of the feelings we hold inside, because at the time we experienced them we could not process them fully. We were to immature developmentally to intellectually be able to work through the impact.  So what we do is to separate ourselves from the feelings and sometimes even the memories of the things that stumped us. This leaves us alienated from ourselves, and of course, others. 

What is wrong with us?

It also leaves us feeling that there is something wrong with us.  Children traumatized in whatever way,  always feel “bad”,  the “bad” feeling is pain from the losses that occurred, but no one tells the child this crucial piece of information.  The child internalizes that “bad” feeling; they think THEY are bad.  So then we carry this sense that we are bad forward into our lives and our relationships.

“Positive Thinking”?

Telling ourselves this isn’t true seldom has any impact if it is just words like: “I'm fascinating, I'm beautiful, I'm funny, I'm important,” as Martha suggests. These words have to accompany a feeling of empathy for the child that we were at the time of the loss or trauma.  We have to have a logical understanding that we were not really as bad as we feel we are.  We have to then offer the child part of us the love and reassurance that the adults in our lives didn’t offer for whatever reason. This allows us then to extend empathy toward the little child part of us that is in so much pain. 

The keys are this:

1. Logically know that a child is cannot really be responsible for the things that happen around them and
2. Give the child empathy for the fact that you were a victim at that time.

Our capacity for Love

When we can do this for the child part of it opens up our capacity to love ourselves freely without reservation. That doesn’t mean that we are blind to our flaws, it does mean we are able to own what we do that is not so perfect along with what we do that’s great. It means we respect what we had to do in order to grow up even with the tragedies and losses we suffered. 

What’s the real problem here?

Of course the real problem with doing what either Martha or I suggest is this: in order to grieve the losses and process the trauma’s – we have to know what they are.  Most of us have pieces of our lives that we have repressed, suppressed or dissociated from our awareness.  So then we carry pain we don’t understand. We tell ourselves, “I have nothing to feel bad about.”  One thing can be certain: if you have had repeated failures at intimate connection you have a history of some type of trauma or loss you have not processed. The inability to become intimate with another person is a clear sign of having unprocessed grief or trauma from your past. It changes everything when you go to the source of the problem and stop trying to medicate it with fixes, like "the right relationship."

What about you?

Monstrous Act

This morning CNN reported that a 21 year old father, Travis Mullis, turned himself in for the murder of his infant son. This was no ordinary murder. This young man, already a father of two (of whom he had relinquished parental rights), stomped in the child's head before throwing him off a bridge.

In 1987 I lost my own son to Sudden Infant Death. He was only two months old. The tragedy of this incident will never leave me, nor will the memory of my precious baby boy. By all reports, the young man had loved this child and not chosen to relinquish rights to this child as he had his other children.

What really happened to this man?

When a person flips in this way and does something this horrendous. This young man was adopted himself, and had a troubled adolescence. He has reportedly claimed to have bipolar disorder, though no evidence of this has yet to be uncovered. Just prior to the tragedy, he told a friend he was desperate to leave his live-in wife (the mother of the baby, Alijah). Then, in a related story, he is being investigated for "enticing a young girl".

What we know about Travis is that he was a troubled person. From the sounds of it, he had few friends, and little ability to connect with anyone. Obviously he had been able to connect with women enough to father some children, but he was completely unprepared to manage any kind of intimate or long term connection with anyone.

The real tragedy

The real tragedy here is not just that Alijah is dead, but that this man never had a chance himself. Who was ever there to care for this boy? Being adopted doesn't, of course, mean that he had no one in his life, yet there is no mention in any of the stories of his parents. I can tell you that if one of my children, (my twins are 22) had been involved in something like this I'd be at their side. The news would not have missed my involvement in my child's life.

Clearly this man had no such support from his adoptive parents. From presumedly an early age, this boy experienced the powerful rejection and abandonment from his birth parents. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning the practice of adoption. But in my clinical experience, adopted children become insecure, anxious adults struggling to understand why they were "not good enough" for their birth parents to have kept them. Open adoptions have helped with this issue as it answers the multiple questions a child has about his birth parents reasons for relinquishing their child.

Travis was in need

Being a "troubled adolescent" indicates that this boy needed help and attention long before this tragedy. Why did no one notice or try to get him help? Where were his adoptive parents? If this boy had gotten what he needed in childhood, he would not have become the world renowned stomping murderer of an infant.

Travis knew he was in trouble but who did he have to turn to? In Texas we offer no real help for people in our public health system. Living in Texas if you have psychological issues you cannot get help through the Mental Health and Mental Retardation centers, because only the "severely mentally ill" can receive services.

Where is our empathy?

Where is our empathy for this young man's tragedy? Obviously, he was hurting desperately about his behavior or he would never have turned himself in to the police. He ran after the incident, undoubtedly in a panic and uncertain as to what to do. But then, over time, he realized he had to turn himself in to the police.

This is a young man who needs help, attention to his own early wounding, and most likely, medication to help his mind begin to get put back together. As a culture, we need to take ownership of our own lacking in our responsiveness to the mentally ill. This man is clearly quite ill, and it's a tragedy that no one helped him even though he had been crying out or help at least since he was a teen.

Not a Villain, just a man

Travis Mullis is a tragic figure to me. What do you think? Is he a monster? Should we be able to find empathy for such horrific acts? Comment below and let me know what you think.

Suicidal Soldiers

The army seems to be paying attention to a new statistic that indicates soldiers are attempting suicide at rate of 5 times a day. Yes, that's right, 5 times a day. The suicide rate among soldiers is increasing the longer we are involved in this military engagement.

Recognizing that traumatic events cause untold damage on the spirits of the sufferer is imperative to understanding and treating the condition. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder causes extricating pain to the soldier and to their families. The impact of their natural response to an overwhelmingly traumatic event continues on in their marriages and among the children of those marriages.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder's Legacy

Violence and abuse to the children of soldiers is part and parcel of the PTSD experience. We cannot afford to ignore the problem of Post Traumatic Stress on the lives of future generations.

So many people want to criminalise wife beaters and child abusers. When we see the immediate impact of trauma on these Vets, perhaps we can re-evaluate the need for this type of position.

What are the implications of this for the rest of us?

It is in our DNA to love and nurture our spouses and our children. If a parent or spouse is behaving differently than this, it would be reasonable to assume that something has gone wrong. Moving into a place of having compassion for how these perpetrators became the abusive "monsters" they are, can perhaps allow us to change how we respond to them.

These soldiers did not go into the war with the intention to become self abusing, wife abusing, child abusing maniacs. Yet this is how they often return. How we as a culture respond to their pain can help us, perhaps, expand how we view ALL of these behaviors from ANYONE.

Stopping the Trauma Cycle

It's not a normal thing to beat a child. If a child is being beaten, odds are, the parent was, too. When we can begin by addressing the trauma cycle and not by criminalizing, then perhaps we can stop the cycle altogether.

Can we really view a child abuser with empathy?

What do you think? What is your gut reaction to the idea that perpetrators need our empathy as much as the victims? Do you understand the tie I am making with returning Vets and other parents that abuse their children and spouses? Comment below and let me know.

Madeleine's Left Alone!

In Europe, I understand, it's normal to leave your small child or infant alone in a room while you go out to dinner. A friend of mine told me that while she lived in Germany her friends would coax her to go out for dinner and leave her sleeping infant alone in her apartment. My friend was appalled by the idea. It amazed me that anyone would think that is okay. Well, I thought, cultures are different.

Still, it's difficult to imagine doing it, especially today when we know almost immediately every time someone snatches a child because of our media coverage.

Madeleine is a True Victim

I'm sure that Madelein's parent feel like a Victim of what occurred to their precious daughter. And, of course, they had no way of knowing that, on that particular night, their child would be stolen from them. Are they a Victim?

I don't think so. They do hold some of the responsibility in what occurred. A child is totally defenseless without a parent or other responsible adult to protect them. When horrible things happen to our children, whether we know about or not, we hold some responsibility.

The Difference Between Blame and Responsibility

Madeleine's parents are clearly not "to blame" for what happened to her. They couldn't know this was going to happen, yet because this innocent child was in their charge, they do hold some of the responsibility. This, of course, is the danger of not thinking about our actions.

As the Culture Does so We Do

So much of the time we do as our culture does. We don't think about the long term implications of what we are doing because "everybody does it". There was a time in our history when beating a child with a belt was an accepted, everyday form of child discipline. Now, most parents know this is an abhorrent thing to do to a child.

But if you have grown up in a family where that is normal then it is likely that it is what you will do. If it is normal, in the culture of your family to call a child names, to verbally yell obscenities at your child, then that is most likely what you will do. You don't even stop to think about the effects this has on your child.

Like Madeleine's parents, we have to stop and think about the importance of paying attention to what is responsible behavior, and separate that out from what is the "norm" for our culture. Just because everyone else does, doesn't make it okay.

It's Just Like Scared Straight Santa

It reminds me of the general reaction I had to the Scared Straight Santa complaint I made in December. Most people thought it was a reasonable thing to do to a child. Frightening a child into good behavior is apparently the "norm" in our culture.

Now, it doesn't threaten the life of our child the way leaving a child unattended for an hour or two does, but it is just as irresponsible. When we frighten a child into compliance we are setting them up to have problems later in life.

Why? Because when we care more about the child's behavior than we do about the child's emotional state we are communicating to the child that they don't matter. Ultimately, when a child learns to believe that they don't matter, they start believing that no one matters. The result of this is an adult who will possibly do virtually anything to another person because no one matters to them. This is how the murders on death row feel.

What's Your Opinion?

Does this make sense to you? Is the culturally accepted "norm" an appropriate way to parent our children? Tell me what you think.

Who Is Santa Clause Anyway?

But there were various Santas, different traditions by country. St. Nicholas is said to arrive in Holland by boat from Spain, a more prosaic method of transport than the sleigh. But he only leaves gifts for good children and the naughty ones get left birch twigs by an ugly black dwarf.

1. The Finnish Santa was also a pagan figure, named Joulupukki and known for wearing goatskins and horns. But instead of giving presents, he demanded them in return for not causing trouble.
2. The British Father Christmas first appears as a minor pagan figure in the middle ages. Portrayed as a merry old man he was associated with feasting and drinking and the pagan festival of Yule. Disapproving of this pagan revelry in 1644, England’s puritans banned the celebration of Christmas calling it,”The Old Heathen’s Feasting Day”.
3. In Germany, there was the Pelznickel or Belsnickle (”Furry Nicholas”) who visited naughty children in their sleep. The name originated from the fact that the person appeared to be a huge beast since he was covered from head to toe in furs.
4. The Dutch version of St. Nicholas is that he was a lover of the poor and patron saint of children, is a model of how Christians are meant to live. A bishop, Nicholas put Jesus Christ at the center of his life, his ministry, his entire existence. Families, churches, and schools are embracing true St Nicholas traditions as one way to claim the true center of Christmas—the birth of Jesus. Such a focus helps restore balance to increasingly materialistic and stress-filled Advent and Christmas seasons.

Santa as We Know Him

During his time, most Christian saints were martyred, but Nicholas has lots of stories because he lived a long life and he died in his bed.

You can select any number of stories about him, but most have in common his bringing help to people.

It was actually Dutch emigrants had taken the story of a legendary gift-bringer called ‘Sinterklaas’ to America, where he eventually became known as “Santa Claus.”

Eventually, a new figure of Father Christmas emerged, representing a spirit of benevolence and good cheer in medieval England.By the 19th century, he was evolving to more of the European Saint Nicholas.

By the mid to late 1800s, of course, Santa was appearing in Christmas cards. But the image varied greatly, as artists influenced the image.

Aparently, the idea of Santa imposing the the idea of being "nice" is a pagan idea. Imposing this pagan concept on children using an image that is meant to represent giving and even Christ himself is not Christian.

Santa has come to represent giving and the spirit of Christmast which is about JOY and GIVING and FORGIVENESS.

That is the Santa I taught my kids and is a Santa that will not instill fear and anxiety in children. Do we really want our children to obey us for fear of a God-like Santa that judges their every move? How would we feel if we were kept to that standard? Oh, that's right. Jesus cleared us of that kind of God. I guess kids don't get it so easy.

What do you think? What kind of Santa do you teach your kids about? Tell me why and if you think I'm wrong. I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks to the folowing websites for information about Santa:

• http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=35
• http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=611
• http://tada07.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/the-history-and-many-faces-of-the-santa-clause-christmas-card/

Last week I was listening to 102.9 KMIX a local radio station when the DJ came on announcing that he was getting ready to do a bit called "Scared Straight Santa". I thought it was a joke. Unfortunately, I thought wrong. The bit was that he would call up a kid whose parents had turned him in to Santa for being "naughty" rather than "nice". He'd get the kid on the phone and talk to this kid as if he were Santa and knew that he was being "naughty".

While I was listening he called up a little boy about 8 or 9 who had been talking back to his teachers and to his mom and stepfather. "Santa" shamed this boy for his behavior and told him that if he would start being "nice" he would get presents this year. The DJ emphasized that he would "know" what the boy was doing. The little boy talked about his parents being divorced and having to go to a group to talk about it.

Now, here's the thing. This little boy was obviously sad and mad that his parents were not together, and was not happy about his new life situation over which he had no control. The only power a kid has is his behavior. His hurt and anger was being acted out in this way toward his teachers and parents. "Santa" obviously only cares about little boys who have no feelings and behave the way society wants him to behave.

Now the only choice this kid has is to turn his hurt and anger inside. When that happens he will feel bad about himself and treat himself with anger and unkindness. He will become depressed and anxious because he will feel so alone and invalidated.

This abuse by the DJ "Santa" is appalling to me. I called the station and told them to stop it, that they are abusing children. They didn't return my call.

He was abusing the power of Santa at the expense of this little kid. Maybe some of you think this is just silly. You know, that's what I thought at first. That is, until I heard the little boy's voice.

The DJ is Tony Zazza. 102.9 KMIX doesn't get it that what they are doing is wrong. It's a publicity stunt that is getting parents to listen and to "throw their kids under the bus" (as one of the other DJ's called it). Obviously the station manager, and Tony Zazza are hurting themselves. It's clear they didn't have parents who respected them or understood that their feelings are important. Because if they had, they would have known that doing this to kids is wrong. Tell me what you think. Was this wrong? Would you "throw your kids under the bus" but turning them in to "Scared Straight Santa"?