More Old LJ Notes: Mental Health After Toxic Childhoods

It is distressing to see how much of this remains true for me, twenty years after I wrote these comments back in Izmir. But I have learned a little bit, at least, from the experience.

“This coworker told me that mentally i am still back in the US trying to please my very toxic family. (No surprise there given that I am essentially an orphan, and have been since I was 15, but even before that, I was certainly already an emotional orphan...) Particularly emotional manipulation -the connection, the love and affection İ want so desperately will not from them no matter what i do. Even though we all try to be civil and friendly toward each other now we all know that the truth is that there is no acceptance and there is no trust or connection, despite the empassioned pleas of love -parents who do not protect are worthless, (yup, Dad...) and parents who manipulate are worse than worthless (mom ). Yes, İ need to let go of this anger, but am İ afraid that in letting go of the anger İ will simply make way for more need and weakness. My anger and my pride has kept me alive (only because I had no other more apropriate tools, nor the necessary support…), though it is no longer the appropriate tool to use (never was, but it was all I had at the time...). İt is so hard to let go of. Trust is the hardest thing to develop, for if İ cannot trust my own family, who can İ trust. But it ls clear that they cannot be trusted. So İ am truely on my own. I have always known this, but why do i continue to struggle with this? Why can one email or one phone call cause so much pain? (Because she knows what buttons to push since, as M. said, she installed them…) How do İ leave those things in the past and live for my own future, one in which İ am relaxed and happy and not afraid of what may come -loneliness, abandonment, homelessness, estrangement, lack of respect. İnteresting that İ so desperately want respect … Our values are not the same and neither are our goals -this situation sucks the life out while only the Aegean gives it back (but so much better than the cats who cross the Bosphorus mewing and scratching as they go). İ see people here with smiles and familes and wish for my own but it is not to be -right now.”

Well, I can see that I kept holding out hope for building a family for myself while not understanding that my unusally traumatic childhood (ritual abuse is pretty unsual even for the large country which is the United States, and people who have survived it have not generally been able to avoid hospitalization, which I have avoided once or twice only by the skin of my teeth) background makes it nearly impossible for the majority of people to understand, let alone identify with me, so that makes building a family very difficult. One reason that we need vastly improved access to mental health care in the United States. Also yet another reason that my great aunt Sr. Felix Manzilla became a nun, I suspect. And her trauma was not so very different, given, unfortunately, that at the time, many well educated Negro notables were being lynched, and those murders were always counted as suicides if possible, so of course she was told this, since the Order certainly could not have afforded to take on the consequences of recognizing the truth at the time.

May we become able to change our times, for the better so that we can Do Better for all of us in this world.

–Nia, fka Shira,

ShiraDest publications,

S. D. Antonia Jones, Mphil

Eradicate TB

My biological great grandmother died of Tuberculosis during the Great Depression, leaving my grandmother and her three siblings motherless, and apparently complete orphans, because they were divided up between the west coast, uncle Stanley and Aunt Senorah going out west to live somewhere near either Henderson, Nevada, or southern California, while my grandmother Laverne stayed in DC with my adoptive great grandmother, Grandma Marie, showin in the featured image, who had been good friends with my great grandmother, biological. TB is a killer based on poverty, and on lack of sufficient nutritious food, or so I have been led to believe, and I would not be surprised if this had been the case at the time. Things were difficult, apparently, for the family. They must have been if two of the kids were sent out west to live away from the family home location in DC. I don’t know why my family was broken up by TB, but I do know that we need to end poverty, which will go a long way, I think, also, toward ending TB. We can really do better.

Nia

(known to the family as Destinie Anto. Jones)

Knowledge (Especially Medical Research Knowledge) Needs to Be Free

NPR recently ( back in ’24 when this post was scheduled…) had an article telling us something important that we already knew, but needed the data to back it up because many of us keep being told that ‘it is all in your head’ and so we have to present objective evidence of just about every single cotton-picking thing that we say, because almost every word that we speak is either ignored or denied. So, thank you, NPR and researcher Jaime Grant for confirming that there is a very high level of trauma in the Lesbian community, which is to be expected in a society like ours, and that this research will be placed in the public domain for all to be able to access. The NPR article is here. Public domain knowledge, and Universal Health Care, is crucial for us all.

Injustice Delenda Est

–Nia, fka Shira, of

ShiraDest publications

S. Dest. Antonia Jones, MPhil

Knife Fights that Almost Were, and The Real Question

I don’t know why, but I feel as if this story needs to be told, even though it may not be mine to tell. Nevertheless, it needs to be told. For the sake of those who are being worked over by a system bent on keeping them over a barrel, and for the sake of those morons in other countries who seem to see the USA as the land of promise and dreams. Here is a small bit of the reality of this place where those with no one to defend them end up being taught to go after each other, instead of turning their rightful rage on the actual perpetrators.

I was finally working in a place where I believed I might be able to do some actual good. Working for no salary, of course, as a volunteer, but still, maybe in a place where I could help make just a little bit of a difference for somebody who had even less than I did. Here in Albuquerque, that was easy to find. First Nations people, misplaced Native Americans trapped in this city with no resources, treated like vermin, along side destitute Americans, desperate immigrants, and bewildered refugees, all thrown together like so much trash. And one little center for Human Rights trying to help them, with no resources but donated pastries. The protein was kept by the bougies. So of course people were homeless, and of course they fought over the safest places to sleep, out on the streets. And so, of course, she carried a knife. A pretty big one, too. When she confided this to me, she knew I ought to have had her banned from the center, but she also knew that I would do no such thing. The same way she knew I would know how to braid her hair as I tried to get her to wait her turn in a very overly crowded and horrifically underfunded medicaid center. In vain. She stormed out after waiting less than an hour, unable to keep her 19 year old impulse to flee the stench of tiredness, despair, and anger wafting over from all of the other hopeless waiters in line. We’d managed to get a spot just a little bit isolated, two chairs in each row cleared almost as if by magic when they saw us stomp in together, a bundle of fury and myself trying to keep her in check long enough to get the help she was legally entitled to have. Also in vain. And the lone social worker clearly knew it, as I shot an apologetic glance at her, through a window backed by protective material separating her from all of us, the rif-raf waiting for her help. I chased my charge, whom I called my adoptive niece in order to remind her not to try flirting with me, out of the building, hoping that she would be able to keep her temper long enough to eat something at the center, and maybe try to go back to get that medicaid card. Agian, in vain. At the center, sitting in the volunteer office working on deep breathing, another hopeless person walked in, sat down at the small table directly across from her, and things went rapidly down-hill from there. Looks were fired off, resulting in hurt feelings, but with none of the words that might have explained and smoothed over the situation. Insults were traded, and then, of course, both of them were standing up, as one walked out of the office, and I began to hope that things would be ok. Yet again, in vain. My young ‘niece’ charged out into the hall after the person she felt had so gravely insulted her, with myself and the office manager, a paid employee, in hot pursuit, following the shouts emanating from both of them. I saw what I was afraid I might see, just as the two hopeless people turned to face each other again, this time with no table in between them, as one arm began to reach behind a back which I knew to have a large knife strapped to it, and I ran, conscious thought escaping me, to stop her from pulling out that knife and carving up the other person who had also lost hope in life, longer ago than she had. Unfortunately for me, both of them were bigger than I was. I moved into a lung, trapping her knife hand in mine while using the other arm to push her back, using every ounce of my strength and weight, holding her as I would have held a block in a breaking dam, praying that that dam would not break and gush forth the torrents of rage I was trying to hold back, sweeping us all away. I heard a voice behind me, and felt a back hit mine. I recognized the voice of my Volunteer manager, and felt her supporting me, solid, and far heavier than I was, helping me push our angry young woman back down the hall and toward the door. Finally, the door opened, and our young fury left, knife undrawn, and I was able to breath. I heard compliments on my ability to hold back someone larger than myself, but what I was wondering was why no one asked the real question, hanging heavy in the air. Why did that even have to have taken place, at all? Why were the resources unavailable to furnish the help that both of those poor miserable souls, so lacking in hope, needed? Why does our society not care enough to really solve the problems that are so clearly able to be solved, if we really wanted to solve them? Why does our system make it so damnably difficult to access housing and health care, when those two things almost single-handedly would solve the problems of so many people that are written off by the larger American society? Why do we not Do Better?

–Nia, fka Shira, Shira D. Anto. Jones of ShiraDest publications…

Why Mental Health Care is So Hard to Get in the US, From A Different Point of View

Thanks to ProPublica for an outstanding article, reprinted by NPR, explaining something that I have been trying to tell folks back in the States for a very long time: it is really difficult to get proper and necessary non-acute emergency access to mental health care in the US.

Mental health professionals, it seems, are also often treated in similar ways to teachers, paid only for their hours actually in the room with the patient, or in the classroom teaching classes, but not paid for the even more important, as I was told at my last teaching position, work of doing the administrative paperwork required by to get paid:

“Insurers pay only for time in session, not the documenting of notes or chasing down of payments.

The reimbursement rates for mental health clinicians are also lower than what insurers pay medical providers for similar services. … Despite federal rules requiring equitable access to care, there are no requirements to even out provider reimbursements.”

This is an insane system, unless you actually want people committing suicide.

We can really Do Better. Please write to your lawmakers after you read the article for details…

Therapists Leaving Insurers

I am not sure whether or not I have this scheduled for (much) later, but this deserves mention :

“Therapists are leaving health insurance networks” in the USA: (thanks for this report from NPR…)

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/08/24/nx-s1-5028551/insurance-therapy-therapist-mental-health-coverage

Public Domain Medical Research: casca de bala … Conseguimos!

(summary: medical research should ALL be in the Public Domain…)

Muiti obrigada a NPR pelo articulo da teirca feira, 2024.09.06, y as duas mulheres, Neves and Ano Bom, trabalhando pelo bem dos tudos.

NPR article, Lady Doctor Finally Tells: Move -It’s All Connected

English

Esperanto

This is an issue that I have always had contention with, from the time that I tore my ACL in college and had continuing knee problems up until and through the time that I finally got rid of my car, forcing me to walk far more, and while carrying groceries, often up hills. I found that my knee problems actually resolved themselves as I became accustomed to walking about 5 miles per day, up rather steep hills, as others drove and went to the gym, while complaining of ineffective diet plans. Now, a doctor finally explains that I wasn’t crazy, after all. I no longer walk that much every day, but I still take the bus, walk about 1.5 to 2 kms per day, and still carry groceries and work items every day, keeping my arm muscles in shape with out the need to lift at a gym. She finds that: “…moving throughout the day in a low-grade way actually sends a stimulus to our cells to constantly dispose of glucose and use it throughout the day, which can have a profound impact on our metabolic health. So in a sense, our obsession with exercise while still being radically sedentary for most of the day, is not really working for us.” No kidding. So, it seems that fidgeting, pacing, and walking to the grocery store three or four times per week is actually more useful, as I have always felt, physically, than that advice from the traditional doctor to get those 30-50 minutes per day or week of brisk excercise. I feel it if I stay in and sit to write all day, rather than either standing up and pacing, or standing up to write (even when I have had to stack books on boxes to make that work, or use my drying rack as a very careful laptop stand), during the day. Now, I have further confirmation that my personal feedback is not wrong, not for my own body, and maybe not even for others. Thank you, Doctor. Salud Para Todos/Health For All (Thanks and credit for the Salud Para Todos/Health For All movement to Rigoberta Menchu Tum…) Shira

Ĉi tio estas afero pri kiu mi ĉiam disputis, de la tempo kiam mi ŝiris mian ACL en la universitato kaj havis daŭrajn genuajn problemojn ĝis kaj tra la tempo, kiam mi finfine forigis mian aŭton, devigante min piediri multe pli, kaj portante manĝaĵojn, ofte supren laŭ montetoj. Mi trovis, ke miaj genuaj problemoj efektive solvis sin, kiam mi kutimis marŝi ĉirkaŭ 5 mejlojn tage, supren laŭ krutaj montetoj, dum aliaj veturis kaj iris al la gimnazio, dum mi plendis pri neefikaj dietaj planoj. Nun, kuracisto finfine klarigas, ke mi ja ne estis freneza. Ŝi trovas tion: “… moviĝi dum la tuta tago en malaltgrada maniero efektive sendas stimulon al niaj ĉeloj por senĉese forigi glukozon kaj uzi ĝin dum la tuta tago, kio povas havi profundan efikon al nia metabola sano. Do iusence, nia obsedo kun ekzerco dum daŭre estante radikale sidema dum la plej granda parto de la tago, ne vere funkcias por ni.” Do, ŝajnas, ke ŝanceliĝi, paŝadi kaj iri al la nutraĵvendejo tri aŭ kvar fojojn semajne estas efektive pli utila, kiel mi ĉiam sentis, fizike, ol tiu konsilo de la tradicia kuracisto akiri tiujn 30-50 minutojn ĉiutage. aŭ semajno da vigla ekzercado. Mi sentas tion, se mi restos kaj sidas por skribi la tutan tagon, prefere ol aŭ stari kaj paŝadi, aŭ ekstari por skribi (eĉ kiam mi devis stakigi librojn sur skatoloj por ke tio funkciu, aŭ uzi mian sekigon kiel tre zorgema tekkomputilo), dumtage. Nun, mi havas plian konfirmon, ke mia persona sugesto ne estas malĝusta, ne por mia propra korpo, kaj eble eĉ ne por aliaj. Dankon, doktoro. Salud Por Ĉiuj/Sano Por Ĉiuj (Dankon kaj meriton por la movado Salud Para Todos/Sano Por Ĉiuj al Rigoberta Menchu ​​Tum…) Ŝira (ps: one sentence added after translating -can you find it?)

This article by NPR cites Dr. Casey Means. Project Do Better offers an editable plan for communities to help us all Do Better on community and public health, as part of Phase I of this Abolition Movement related umbrella project.

Book Review: Smith’s Washington At Home, and Adulting Education

Today, adulting education, part of Project Do Better, comes as a short post on financial self-defense in DC history, which is one of the pre-requisite bits of knowledge to be proven before one can show that one is a true Serving Adult, in the proposed Service Adulthood Challenge. This part of the three parts of self-defense (physical, financial and emotional self-defense), involves knowing your rights and responsibilities in your state or region, as well as in your nation of residence (and origin, if that nation, as often happens, has a claim on you, still). It also involves understanding our shared histories. This book, happily, has a good bit of DC history, even Black history, and a bit of Jewish DC as well.

—

Before I delve into DC history, please remember to “Adult” for yourself, and find out what your legal financial rights are, for instance regarding statutes of limitations on debt, which is is your responsibility to know and defend…

     Here is why I am using an old photo taken of me with a fellow anti-war peaceful protester at the weekly silent Stop The War vigil    in Bath, England, back in 2007 (yes, the same year that I stood in that gap to stop a beating…):  it reminds me of where I personally have been, just as the research I did on DC history reminded me where my family and those around them, from DC and the MD, VA, but mostly DC area, since well before the Civil War, in varying states of free-ness, but all either MU (mulatto) or Black, and thus subject to the Black Codes in whichever of the three states they live in or passed through.  So they really had to be Adults, and know the laws of every area they were in or from.  Part of that “adulting,” as some people like to call it these days, included protecting themselves and their family members whenever possible by owning property  (Note: updated in 2023…).  So, here is the review.

     I found my old notes, from 2010, in my research notebook, and realized that I had never written them up after creating the tours for SHIRtour, my DC community cooperation walking tour company.  What strikes me most immediately about these notes is page 200, where Smith notes that the 1874 DC disenfranchisement “was definitely influenced by ” the fact that more than a quarter of the District’s population was Black, suggesting further reading in Brown, 1978, The Negro In Washington.  In my review of the Guide to Black Washington/ (reviewed back on Feb3rd…), we saw mention of John F. Cook, Sr., and Smith mentions him here, also, as setting up the 15th St. Presb. Church, the first Colored Preb. church (in DC, I presume).  The famous paper of the DC Negro Press, The Washington Bee, is mentioned alongside The People’s  Advocate, and on to Black Broadway on U St, NW, from the 1920s -1950s, and the Howard Theater in DC, which opened at the same time as many other places, in 1910, but Ben’s Chili Bowl doesn’t open until 1958!  🙂  (made famous by President Obama, but we local native Washingtonians all have parents who’ve eaten there for their entire lives…)      And most astoundingly of all, that we were never taught in school, was the fact that on 23 July, 1919, at 7th & U, NW, over two thousand armed Black residents defended their neighborhood White attacks, provoked by the mainstream (white) press!   Who knew about this, and why did we never learn about it?

     More notes about Mt. Pleasant as an early integration neighborhood, cooperation instead of White Flight in Adams Morgan, and Moses Liverpool, George Bell, & Nicholas Franklin opening a school, and Pres. George Washington’s letters to the Touro Synagogue, in Newport, RI as precedent for shuls in DC, cooperation in the Deanwood neighborhood, and Shepherd Park against Block Busters (& Boss Shepherd pbbl turning in his grave!!)…

–

2011-08-08 16:52:00
gender-diffs among Black landowners in Wash. County, 1855… Curious…
I do not have time now, but I am dying to look into why (on p. 127 of Washington at home: An illustrated history of neighborhoods in the nation’s capital; second edition, 2010, JHU Press, Kathryn Schneider Smith, ed.)

4 of the 5 black landowners in what is now roughly the Brightwood neighborhood (via the 1855 Washington County assessment listing 31 landowners along the 7th St. Turnpike, opened in 1822, from Rock Creek Church Rd to the District Line

(presumably meaning to what was then Boundary Street, now FL ave., marking the border of the Federal City, aka City of Washington)  Line, were women.

No time to delve, must check this wonderful book out again in a few weeks!

–

So, it turns out that many of the former slaves who owned property were light-skinned women, manumitted by their owners, as has happened in at least two cases in my family.  This may or many not partially explain the lack of Black male property owners in DC at the time vis-a-vis Black Women owners.  More research is needed, but it holds with commentary down the family line about women being differently positioned in the DC black community.  As for the Jewish community in DC,   Washington Hebrew Congregation starts without a building, much of the community living along on 7th Street, NW, which was also known as Market str if I recall correctly, as it leads down to the Wharf, back in 1852.  The YMHA, on 11th and Penn. was also an important center of the community.  Several families came down from Baltimore around and especially after the Civil War.  For more details on the synagogues, see pages 62, 91, & 94.

    More on my continuing striving with family history and financial self-defense next week, friends:

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Share  two different resources on your ideas of financial self-defense.

2.) Share your thoughts on how you found and like each of the resources you found.

 

ShiraDest

based on a post  originally drafted in September of  12020 HE

Parashat VaYishlach 5783, Women’s Mental Health, and Generational Trauma

This parashah looks at how dysfunctional family systems might even heal, given the right circumstances.  It also looks at the pain caused when women are treated as mere property to be possessed by one group, and property to be recaptured and avenged, by another group. This portion again, as last week points up the need for long term carefully trained specialists in all types of trauma, but most especially childhood trauma, and full access to that mental health care for everyone.

Last year, we looked at VaYishlach, and Favorites among children causing problems over and over again, …

while

the previous year, 5781, we looked at what happened to poor Dinah, in this, the 8th Torah portion:

Etz Chaim

Empathy cries out to be heard in this parashah, the 8th in the Torah.   What do you think, Thoughtful Readers?

While there are many ways to help increasing empathy,  Language Learning as a Fourth Tool for Empathy Building is both fascinating and practical.

Empathy building is a crucial task, particularly in our contentious society today.  The task is tiring, and cannot be done all at once, but with careful planning, education, and greater cooperation between the generations, it can be done.

Let’s Do Better.

–

Last week was  Parashat Vayetzei 5783, With Mental Health Care For Childhood Traumas?…

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Click on the ShiraDest website and blog menu above this post in the browser version of  WordPress, as the Reader does not show it, for more materials to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing.

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about Project Do Better.

ShiraDest publications

Shira Destinie  Anto. Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.