When I wrote an article I used the word "blame" when talking about how my Mother helped form a part of my nature that I don't like... some readers took exception to the word and in many ways I agree, but I've been thinking about it and it's the best word I can come up with, because it's true. There are things I "blame" my Mother for just as there are thing I "thank" her for... you really can't have one without the other. She taught me to be quite articulate by allowing me to always have my say, so long as I said it politely I could speak my mind... but I couldn't wash the dishes or clean the floors as it would never be to her standards of perfection.

My stepfather on the other hand would tell me "speak your mind" but I soon learned that when doing so what I said had to be to his liking or I would end up sore and sorry. Yet this same man gave me confidence in my ability to use tools, to cut, measure, and build... to mow the grass and make a garden bed [well away from my Mother's perfect garden beds] and have confidence in myself in a lot of ways. So a part of me is quite articulate, but that part is normally reserved for the written word... part of me is confident in my own abilities yet in some other ways I never feel as though what I do is good enough. When a part inside tells you that what you do is never going to be good enough, you tend to give up... I'm working on helping that part of me, or at least I'm trying.

I don't believe my Mother meant to do my psyche any harm and I do not use the word "blame" maliciously toward her, yet I do use the word "thank" with gratitude and love. My Mother's blows were not intentional, but unintentional blows can cause as much or maybe even more harm than fists. When I was 10 I bought a paint by numbers kit of a blue-jay and carefully painted within the lines to give it to my Mother for her birthday, I'll never forget how my stomach felt when she unwrapped it and told me that there was no shading in the picture and how it looked "flat"... she was an artist, so is her sister and I felt that I could never be as good as they were, so I had made my first public attempt a "safe" project. I had done many drawings before that but had never shown my Mother as I knew they were not up to her standard, but looking at my rough sketches many years later I was surprised at how good they were for a 10 year old. I never painted or drew again unless it was for a school project, but my heart was never again in it.

I can't sing either... I can in the car with the radio playing when there are no witnesses, I even recorded myself singing recently so I could hear my own voice, it's not that bad actually, but I still can't sing with all my heart when someone can hear me. If you are really good at something at get nothing but compliments on it, but somehow loose the magic it is worse than if you never had it. All my early childhood I heard how well I could sing, what a wonderful voice I had for someone so young etc, I was from a musical family so it was logical that I would follow one of my parents footsteps. Dad was an extraordinary pianist and my Mother would often sing on the radio and in musicals, I had two left hands so the piano wasn't for me, but I had a voice and I knew how to use it... until I had my tonsils and adenoids removed along with them went my voice. Or so my Mother told me many times, often speaking in sorrowful tones about the death of my voice. I don't know whether it was just a post operative thing that may have fixed itself given a little time, because from then on I never sang again.

I know that I must have unintentionally harmed my children, I know I was too strict a Mother with my oldest children, but I hope I had enough good points in my raising of them that they feel they have more "thanks" for me than "blame". It is not until we raise children of our own do we really know the full potential for harm and good entrusted to us at the moment of their birth, for whatever we do with a child from then through the formative years and even into adolescents impacts both emotionally on the psyche and physically on the brain.

I've been reading some very interesting yet bothering things... my new/old bible a book I read 22 years ago, a book that made me know I wasn't mad to want to carry my babies around and during the times when they were not in my arms run to them when they started crying. For almost 8 years of Mothering I had been made to feel "abnormal" and that I was spoiling my babies by giving them too much attention, but this book was what I needed to put my mind at rest. Thanks to a good friend I have yet to meet I am now in possession of that book again and am getting different things from it now, remembering more of the rest of the story, not just that pertaining to the care of infants. "The Continuum Concept" by Jean Liedloff... which according to a quote on the cover by John Holt "if the world could be saved by a book, this just might be the book."

Anyway a part of the book which covers nature vs. nurture tells how a human infant raised by wolves will forever be a wolf. When these children are "rescued" they can never learn to fit into human society. How different we are to animals with less complex brains, they never seem to have any problem figuring out what they really are. I think of our pet goose "Gos" the first thing she saw when she hatched became her Mother, so for several weeks she was very strongly bonded to Rhianon, and even now at 2 1/2 years of age she sometimes seeks human company and wants to be picked up. She is however a goose, and she knows it, she spends her days with her own species, more surprisingly to her own type [White Chinese] within her species.

Valentine our heifer calf was taken from her mother at 4 days old, and brought here 4 days later, she lived in our garage for over two months, my girls were her Mothers and as they give her milk, food and affection, but when at almost three months of age she met her half sister Autumn she went looking for an udder to feed from. So it seems that even though humans raised her she knows that she a calf. The same is true of goats; Rhianon bottle reared our buck Muddi and all the new baby goats over the last three years prove that he most definitely knows he is a goat.

It seems that when we raise a newly hatched gosling, or bottle rear a calf or goat we become a goose, cow or goat... the non-human infant we are rearing don't become human. It does not seem to be in their power to become anything apart from what nature had designed them to be.

The brain of the human infant is very plastic and takes longer to develop fully, so it molds well to fit it's environment. This is a great survival/learning tool however our plastic brains are also very easily damaged, and not just the neural pathways as once thought. New research has pinpointed areas of the brain that are smaller in people who suffered from abuse as children... and that is the scary part. For who amongst us has not thought or maybe said, "they should get over it" about someone who can't get beyond feeling the pain of the small child crying from the depths of their soul. Expecting someone with a physical difference within their brain to just get over it is akin to telling an amputee to use their missing limb, it just can't be done...

For an abuse survivor it is in some ways empowering to know your pain is justified and not feel ashamed anymore of that part of who you are. When you stop trying to fight a part of yourself and instead learn to live with and accept it you can finally find peace. The small hurting child within will always be there and can bubble to the surface without warning and bring a flood of childlike tears and emotions over the silliest of things. The child within can be impetuous, bad tempered, poor at communicating and sometimes very very sad... but also she brings with her compassion and caring for those smaller and weaker beings.

It is so very important for humanity for the abuse cycle to be broken, taking small children from their abusive Mothers may not be the answer, a Motherless child will always feel a deep loss and void. I believe that mentoring programs could be the answer. They would need to be 24 hour a day hotlines where some non-judgmental, non-authoritative person can be at their side to help fight the impulse to "do unto others as was done unto them" emerges in a parent with little or no emotional support.

Institutions can be the most harmful situations... I speak from the experience of living in a children's home for a while in the early 60s. I know these places have come a long way since then, but an institution is still an institution and as well as the potential for abuse there is also a small death of who we are when for months or years on end we are without love.

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