Requiescat in Pacem, Zachary Dutro-Boggess

In my past, I came to learn a thing or two about child abuse. I deduced that my Aunt Helen and Uncle Frank were mentally retarded (sorry I don't know the most recent correct term for this). I know for sure that Aunt Helen was a victim of shaken baby syndrome. It became most apparent to me that there is a history of severe child abuse, perhaps even infanticide in my father's family of origin.

I shudder to think that if I had been born and raised in China, and once having been defined as "bad", I would have been subjected to severe abuse, even more so that I actually experienced as being raised in America. I suspect that with the appellation of "bad", I could have been killed. In China children were considered property, and therefore dispensable.

I have worked hard to heal from the trauma I was subjected to. My therapist thinks that I am pretty heroic to have gotten so far into recovery as I have. She admires that I chose never to continue the pattern of abuse, and that I committed myself to be a force for good in my students' lives.

 I think it's time for me to move beyond the pain of the past. I am almost done with it, I hope.

 The only reason I am thinking about my past abuse today is that Jon has written a poem in tribute to four year old Zachary Dutro-Boggess, who was murdered by his mother and her boyfriend in 2012. I think the link to me is that in his pictures, he looks so much like me when I was young.

Weight Loss & My Self-Esteem

I have lost a big amount of weight since my highest poundage 20 years ago. I was nearly 400 lb. back then. Now I am over 140 lb. less.

As I was walking toward Trader Joe's yesterday, I caught my full length reflection in the window, and I saw myself full length. What I saw surprised me. I was actually good-looking.

This realization is actually groundbreaking in that I always thought of myself as ugly. I know that the source of this belief was that I as raised to see myself as having no value, i.e., ugly, stupid, lazy, bad.

I remember when I had lost a lot of weight before, in the 70s, and I could not look at a full length image of myself and see myself as anything but ugly. I have been doing a lot of work for improving my self-esteem in the past decade. And instead of buying into the impoverished view of myself, I can actually see that I am not ugly, stupid, lazy, and bad. Paradigm shift is an accommodative learning; it requires a total readjustment of all I had previously believed about myself, and then adopt more accurate concepts about myself that I am now ready to embrace.

Tim's New Clothes

I remember when I taught in Bremerton some thirty years ago, there was a sad little boy in my class. His mom and his family were on welfare, and it was clear he was outgrowing his clothes. I suspected that the mom, who was busy working hard in her college classes, could not afford to get him the clothes that he needed. I asked her if it would be OK if I bought him some clothes for Christmas. She said that would be wonderful.

So in the next week, I had our school secretary get his sizes. Using the then Sears catalog's size chart, I ascertained that he was between a boys size 9 and ten. I then went to every thrift store in Burien and bought him some very nice jeans and shirts. I laundered them and asked a friend who was an extremely talented seamstress to hem the pants.

A couple days before Christmas break, I gave him the clothes to see if they fit properly. I sent him into the staff bathroom in the office to try them on. He came out and paraded proudly to show the clothes off to the office staff. He had such a beaming smile on his face! Later that day, he came up to me in class and said, "Mr. Lewis, I don't have anything to give YOU for Christmas."

I replied, "Just that you are happy with the clothes is enough Christmas present for me," and I gave him a hug.

The next day, I walked into my classroom before school, and there was a very love worn teddy bear on my desk.

There was a piece of notebook paper with it, saying, "To Mr. Lewis."

Well, I melted into a pool of tears.

Christmas 2014

I am heading into the holiday season, and I am discovering more about how I feel about it, about which my sentiments are mixed. I am starting to sort out my feelings. I am listening to Mannheim Steamroller Christmas cds. Many times I surprisingly finding myself in tears while listening.

I'm discovering how deep a longing I have surrounding Christmas. In my history is a mixed bag of memories of abuse I underwent, along with some joys interspersed. Perhaps I have an ideal idea of Christmas that has seldom been fulfilled.

There have been Christmases where I have been solitary, and the peace was lovely. Now I am married, and I have many interactions with my in-laws and with Jon's friends. There is a spirit of joy and contentment when in those situations. Lately I seldom have contact with my family of origin (FOO). The fear of further abuse prevents me from being close to them. I have concluded that in my FOO, all parties at some time participated in my abuse. My father clearly delineated himself as the higher power in our FOO, and to get along with him, my sibs and mom all jumped onto the abuse bandwagon at various times in the past. I am finding that I can look at my FOO rationally, and without the anger and rage that I previously underwent. I was thinking about my dad's FOO, and I have come to the conclusion that their dynamic was willing to sacrifice one or more of the kids for the "well-being" of the others.

My dad was the scapegoat in his FOO, receiving an abuse similar to mine. I also considered Aunt Helen, who was retarded, and I inquired if she was afflicted with Down's syndrome, as Uncle Frank was. I found out that she was not Down's. She was a victim of shaken baby syndrome. In short she was another victim of their sacrificing. I do not understand why a FOO would engage in this practice, but the evidence is clear that they did. But I am meditating my way into serenity concerning my past.

The past is what it is, and it is immutable. Therefore it is one of those things that I cannot change, and am learning to accept it at face value. I am also learning to tacet myself grace and forgiveness for my formerly continuing in despair for many decades. My fear was what I thought protected me through the difficulty, and now I realize that I am able to be free from the rancor and despair, and that fear is no longer needed in my life to protect myself.

Heaven or Hell on Earth

I am getting so bad at keeping up with posting. It's been a long time since December 2012, when I last posted. I have come to an understanding about my painful past. I have relived many of the most painful incidents from my past. I am guessing that I have carried out the hypervigilance for the sake of protecting me from the painful incidents from recurring. It's like PTSD. I have taken inventory about the consequences of consigning myself to mentally staying in the painful past. It constitutes a distortion of my model of my world, in that I had been expecting the painful incidents to interject into my present and future. I have been impoverishing my perception of the present by expecting more ill deeds, as in my past. By remaining mentally in the painful past, I am preventing myself from being happy in the present. I am in a contented relationship with my husband, Jon.

My life, as a retired teacher, is going well, and though I am not wealthy by any means, my needs are, for the most part, taken care of. I am getting better about calming my hypervigilance and being in touch with my happy present. I am coming to understand that the true meaning of heaven or hell is that one either chooses to live presently in joy, or in pain. I am beginning to choose joy.

Catching Up

OMG, It's been such a long, long time since I posted. Since I am pretty sure that hardly anyone ever reads this, so then I guess that I can just ramble.

I have been attending 12 step meetings for my codependence. I am working on my fourth step, which is to list a moral inventory. Step 4, Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. I.e., what I have done that dysfunctional. This has been a tortuous and torturous process. It seems that it has taken forever. I have documented all that I have done dysfunctionally and much of the abuse that has been done to me. The latter is important, as it indicates my dysfunctional responses to the abuse done to me. I am not sure as to when I will be "done" with step 4, however. I see that I have lived most of my life in despair, and I am learning that by meditation and centering my mind, I can begin to reprogram myself out of this despair.

It is refreshing. Jon and I have been together almost two years now, and we have decided to become married in August. After some difficult trials together that we have faced successfully, I am confident that making this step is the right one. I am doing my utmost not to become a bridezilla though. Fortunately from my 12 step meeting, I have some wonderful friends who are very supportive in planning all of this.

Assimilation & Accommodation

I am a dyed in the wool Piagetian constructivist. For those of you who do not possess a background in cognitive developmental psychology, I am saying that a human learns by building structure for knowledge, and then putting individual pieces of learning into that structure. Piaget, a ground-breaking cognitive developmental psychologist, defined building the structure as accommodation. Learning that puts pieces of knowledge into the structure is assimilation.

From my professional experience, I have discovered that learning by accommodation is far more powerful learning than assimilation. Accommodation is life changing, and therefore life expanding. Assimilation is more like adding bits and pieces of knowledge and therefore like adding trivia. Accommodation also requires readjusting everything you know to learn something new.

In the past I have discovered that there are those who fear learning by accommodation. I suspect that since accommodation makes the learner change who s/he is, that it induces fear of change into them.

So those who are fear-ridden are reluctant to change, and resist learning that shifts her/his paradigm.

I believe that I had been one who feared changing his paradigm. Thus I was stuck in an uncomfortable place, and desiring a change, but not necessarily willing to actually change.

More details later.