Fear of Success, Fear of Failure, and the Inner Child

My Inner Child gets really confused about public success and failure. If I fail, I feel bad and humiliated; if I succeed, my Little Girl is afraid I’ll be shunned. I recently had a show of my abstract paintings in my small home town. It was successful in that other painters were interested in my work and people enjoyed it. Great—but it ups the ante, increases the stakes.

Here’s how I learned about success and failure. My older sister Suzie was first-born in our family and she had Down Syndrome. The doctors told my parents to quickly have a replacement child and put her in an institution. They had me only 16 months after Suzie, and a couple of years later, found a boarding school for her. I was under a lot of pressure to be normal and more—to be “smart enough for two.” I certainly tried. I knew my parents were anxious and I responded by succeeding at school, at piano, at most things I tried.

But at school, which was in a working-class neighborhood, I was under pressure to be “normal” in a different sense—to be not too smart, not too quick. Other kids were quick to sense I was different, with my engineer father and my intelligent mother, the books in our house, the radical politic views. When I got perfect scores on homework and tests, kids let me know they disliked me for it.

I learned it was a narrow walk—that success and “failure” (or making mistakes) were both risky. Either way I was liable to be rejected.

So this art show opened up wonderful things for me but also is scaring me in old, deep places. I want the world to be different from that. I want my world to be a place where everyone’s success is valued, where everyone gets a chance to be herself or himself—this person with a talent for spotting birds, that one good at singing, another person just full of heart and goodness. One way to help that along is for me to truly love and value others in their diversity, and I do, on my good days, I do.

The Talk-Funny Girl: a memorable novel of redemption

The Talk-Funny Girl, by Roland Merullo

We first meet Marjorie, the protagonist of this novel, on the day of her 17th birthday when she starts out to look for work. It's immediately clear that her family is a shambles and a scary place to grow up. It's also clear that she has a strength and tenacity at her core, despite mysterious dark circumstances. The prologue also has told us that the narrator survives and lives well, so we have that solid assurance that we need to follow the often harrowing story.

Only slowly do we learn just what her parents are caught up in and the meanings of some of the punishments, "facing" and "boying", that are constantly threatening our heroine. She became dearer and dearer to me as the ugliness of her background was revealed more clearly. How can she get out of here? She's been raised to believe that all the punishments are part of a true system.

The hallmark of the thoroughness of her brainwashing is the private family dialect in which she speaks. "I come for a try for paying work," she says to a possible employer, and “I couldn’t not say on them” to indicate that she can’t lie to her parents. Her teachers try to correct her speech and, sensing a spark in her, attempt to lead her out of the morass, but her bonds to these abusive parents are so strong that she continues to talk funny and endure the taunts of others rather than try to make a break for it--and where would she go? One of the strengths of Merullo's writing is how he convinces us that a child could indeed be sucked into such a whirlpool (as indeed children are, every day, every year).

Only slowly does our heroine find a way to move out, and the dance of this change in her is the core of the book. In addition, the plot involves revelations about family and church that are startling and frightening, revealing just how far Marjorie has to move to escape. This book haunted me with its redemptive, strong story. I recommend it highly.

Moving Beyond Trauma into Creativity and LIfe

You might have noticed I’m not blogging much. This is because I’m living instead, and having a lot of fun at it. It feels odd to say it, but I’m not so interested in trauma any more. I worked so hard for about 15 years in therapy, also writing my memoir of healing (The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse), and letting the world know about the book. I also wrote that little booklet, Caring for the Child Within—A Manual for Grownups.

I’ll always have a tender spot in my heart for people working on healing from abuse, and I do hear from a lot of you from time to time. I always answer those emails and I will continue to do so.

I sit with my Inner Child every day to find out how she is, and she lets me know when she’s feeling sad or vulnerable, as well as happy. I pay close attention to her needs.

But these days I’m putting my energy into poetry about spirit and nature and love. I’m gardening. I’m painting wild abstract paintings. My creativity has continued to unfold, and my spirituality, too.

I think many people find their creativity as they work to heal from trauma and abuse. Poetry, writing, art, music all are wonderful outlets and help us to be seen and heard and to express ourselves. Then for some people, the impulse passes and life simply takes over. For me, the creativity continues to grow and I feel extremely fortunate to have the time and resources to grow with it.

How are you doing in your journey, friend?

Translating the Language of Trauma

The language of trauma is wordless. Whatever words we may have at the time of impact, whether we are well-published professors or toddlers, none of them serve to express What Happened.

What Happened may be named by outsiders—a rape, a car accident, a molestation, a war —but these words merely shape the abstract air around the shapeless primordial reality. Pain is wordless. Betrayal is beyond words. Our reality is shattered—that’s the core. Whatever we depended on—a parent, good health, the rules of the road, the goodness of our neighbors—whatever feeling of safety and stability we had, that is splintered, and with it go the words we used to describe our previously normal world.

How, then, can we convey experience that is beyond words? Normal sentences feel treacherous. Subject, verb, adjective, object, adverb: traitors, all of them.

Fragments, phrases, poetry, images. These come closer.

Toni Morrison did it brilliantly in Beloved, as she described the horror of slavery. The language roils and rebels, scenes and sentences split, spilt, refusing to lie down on the page and make sense. Because what she’s describing is too traumatic for linear storytelling.

All of it is now . .  it is always now . . there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too . . I am always crouching . . the man on my face is dead . . his face is not mine . . his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked

[Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Knofp, 1987. Periods added for internet formatting]

Each of us finds her own way to tell what cannot be told in words.

Review of The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

A Haunting, Redemptive Novel

This gorgeous, well-crafted, tender book is a gift of the heart. Victoria Jones, the prickly protagonist, has just turned eighteen and aged out of the foster-care system. She trusts no one and has no plan, so she sleeps in the Golden Gate Park with her few possessions. Gradually her life moves forward as she is befriended by a flower-shop owner who notices and values Victoria’s knowledge of the language of flowers and her gift for arranging those flowers.

At the same time, Victoria’s past is not gone. We learn slowly about what happened when she was 10, when a woman seriously tried to nurture and adopt her. Those events and misunderstandings form a tragic backdrop to her life, and Victoria is convinced she could never be forgiven and never connect to others with normal love and respect.

Slowly this uncertain life unfolds.

Diffenbaugh’s descriptions of the girl’s loneliness and lack of connection are deep and ring true (the author has fostered several children and bases her writing on those experiences plus her research). We can’t help empathizing with Victoria—because don’t we all have that mistrust somewhere inside us? Especially those of us who were abused in one way or another early in life, we resonate with the paralyzing fear that can keep us from giving our hearts in love.

I’ve been haunted by The Language of Flowers ever since I read it a couple of months ago. I recommend it to all my friends. The slow, imperfect, but deep redemption that develops is healing to read about and warming to hold in our hearts.