As of today, June 8, 2009, my mother’s writings will now appear on this site rather than on Stop the Storm. This blog is really a fitting home for her own writings that she always thought would end up being published.
As we read my mother’s writings we come to realize how complex both mental illness and early trauma is, and how hard it is to pinpoint exactly where things go so terribly wrong to cause so much suffering to children.
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Stop the Storm is a sister blog to this one, and is involved with finding ways to intercept and therefore to end, the repeating cycle of violence, abuse and trauma that is passed down through the generations most commonly in the form of attachment disorders — especially as the trauma is passed to infants and young children during the critical stages of their brain development. If an infant suffers from deprivation of any kind during these critical developmental window-of-opportunity years, the trauma will build itself not only into the infant’s brain, but also into their entire nervous and immune systems, as well.
The Workspace for Stop the Storm contains the culmination of literally thousands of hours of my own research of the research, work which I have put into distilling the most relevant portions of expert writing about secure attachment, insecure attachment, the development of an infant’s brain from birth until 2 years old — a time that the impact of maltreatment can drastically change the way the infant brain can grow and operate — and specific information about physical risk factors for anxiety and trauma related disorders.
TAKING CARE OF MOTHERS is the most effective way to stop the transmission of unresolved traumas and conflicts on down through the generations. Today’s world is very complicated for many of us, but if we are mothers, or are going to be mothers, it pays us to look closely at the mothering we received from our own mothers.
Think of it as a form of taking inventory of available (and unavailable) resources. Our species did not evolve with mothers being alienated or isolated from other mothers and other women who always were present to share the responsibility (and joy) of raising, particularly, infants and very young children.
No matter how advanced we have become in some societies, the needs of infants and very young children remain the same even though in many ways the needs (or certainly the hopes and desires) of many women have changed.
I believe that if we truly put the needs of mothers first, we are putting the needs of the tiny ones (and the bigger ones) first, also. This is NOT an either or choice. Rather, it is a BOTH/AND opportunity and challenge.
Motherhood has always been essentially about sharing. It begins (except in cases of adoption) with mothers sharing their bodies with their infants. The sharing that nature has designed for infants to do with their mothers and other adequate early caregivers cannot be neglected or the offspring will suffer from this deprivation in one fashion or another for the rest of their lives.
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My personal story is being written on the Stop the Storm website
http://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/
It is a story of horror and abuse as well as a story of celebration and victory. I invite you to visit those stories.
Nobody is a perfect parent. Nobody is a perfect mother. Perfection is not what we are going for. I believe that societies need to provide adequate care and protection of mothers so that mothers can provide the same for their offspring.
This makes it particularly crucial that we provide safety and security on all levels to our daughters who will grow up to be the mothers of the future. Yes, boys and men are important — but I am looking at a very specific priority here — the natural order of things ALWAYS had required that mothers be well taken care of so that the offspring of the species, ours included, have the best chance of surviving and reproducing and then caring adequately for their own young.
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This site is dedicated 100% to mothers.
TAKE CARE OF MOTHERS!
The well being of our species depends on it.
THANK YOU for visiting my blog and please feel free to comment.
Linda – alchemynow
TAKE CARE OF MOTHERS 
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