The Odds Are Ever in Your Favor

Tina's life isn't a train wreck.  It's a ship wreck.  The Titanic being sunk by the Hindenburg on D-Day.  Only without the DiCaprio spreading his arms to the sky to that cloying Celine Dion power ballad part.

Tina had it rough from the start.  Her addicted parents fought violently, then divorced abruptly, ultimately leaving her prey to a pedophile neighbor who shacked up with her mom for drugs.  She went to foster care for a spell, then returned home in time for him to get out of prison and reoffend, rending her an indistinguishable pulp of truancy, alcohol abuse, noxious relationships, unplanned pregnancies and chronic physical pain.  Her children, at least one of them a product of acquaintance rape, have been taken away by the state for neglect and returned to her several times.  She loves them dearly but cannot get her head above water long enough to stop them from being taken away again.  And again.  She knows she's repeating her own mother's patterns like a script written generations before she was born, but she doesn't have the foggiest idea where to begin to piece together a more stable life.  She doesn't even know if she can keep the power company from shutting off the electricity tonight.

Tina isn't the next guest on The Jerry Springer Show.  She's a composite of dozens of mental health therapy clients I've participated in treating during my 15 years in the social services field.

Tina scored a whopping 9 on the ACE assessment, the highest score possible.  So did her currently and chronically incarcerated husband.  This is not a good thing, like getting a perfect 1600 on the SAT or a 9 in the Olympic ice skating trials.

It is, in fact, a very bad thing.  A high ACE scores portends an alarmingly poor physical and mental health prognosis.  Read: heart disease, cancer, obesity, addiction, stroke.  The saddest part of all is that the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) assessment is a measure of significant health risk factors associated with early childhood neglect, abuse and other adversity.  The unfair truth is, the more bad shit you went through as a kid, the worse your adult health.  So says the ACE study.

Except that there are always exceptions, perhaps more than are given fair credit.  Many of our world's leaders and role models might themselves have had high ACE scores had they been given that assessment by a family doctor, cleric or counselor.  The late Pulitzer-nominated poet Maya Angelou's beginnings were not completely unlike Tina's, only she wrote best-selling memoirs, won several Grammys and read her verse at a presidential inauguration.  That very president might have a high ACE score and yet, despite robustly-publicized personal issues, served as leader of the free world for two terms.

I, too, have a high ACE score.  But you probably wouldn't know it from looking at me or talking to me.  Or reading my medical records.  Or my resume.  I do not believe this is because I am particularly awesome or special.  (I am certainly neither poet nor president.)  I believe it is because of the unfreakinbelievable odds that were ever in my favor.  The countless synchronicities and kindnesses, forgivenesses and generosities that have embraced me at every turn.  In the shrink biz, we call these protective factors.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, which spearheaded the initial ACE study with Kaiser Permanente from 1995-1997, "protective factors are individual or environmental characteristics, conditions, or behaviors that reduce the effects of a stressful life."  The CDC website asserts that such mitigating variables "increase an individual’s ability to avoid risks or hazards, and promote social and emotional competence to thrive in all aspects of life, now and in the future."

So, what were these emotional talismans that staid my hand from the perilous choices that would have inevitably lead to a life of certain disaster?  Let me count the ways:

There was the loving extended family that stood in for my parents while they navigated a brutal divorce when I was a baby, making sure I was fed and burped, bathed and diapered, sung to and soothed.  There was the close-knit neighborhood where families knew each other and babysat each other's kids and planned block parties and carpooled to little league, the surrogate parents I turned to time and again for shelter and solace.  There was the fact that I was as gifted at academics as I was dismal at sports and thus developed an identity as a "smart girl" at a young age, which offered me a sense of purpose and hope.  There was my natural extraversion, which fit well into the tropical urban environment where I was raised and kept me laughing when depression threatened to Gorilla Glue me to the couch with seventeen blankets pulled over my head.  There was the honest mentor who begged me never to try hard drugs because "you'll love them so fucking much you'll never want to stop."  There was my ability as a promising young writer that led to a sustainable career.  There was the false HIV positive in college that scared me straight into healthier relationships with caring partners unafraid of commitment.

All of this didn't mean that I didn't have some serious hell to go through as I worked to address each of those risk factors outlined by the ACE assessment - risk factors that include parental separation or divorce, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, physical, emotional or sexual abuse, family member incarceration.  This is the sort of personal history that people like Tina and I are still unpacking.  After a dedicated period of time in ICU-style psychotherapy, things do settle down for many of us and we can begin rebuilding our lives.

In fact, my clinical recommendation is that people with substantial trauma or loss in their background don't wait until life returns to "normal" to actually get a life because healing is about a new normal.  (We actually don't want the old normal, or why bother to invest in getting help at all?)  Unless your emotional symptoms are so severe and disruptive that you truly can't function for a time, in which case you may require inpatient treatment, there is no reason not to keep plugging away at your degree or continue working at your job or take up a hobby or plan a nice trip somewhere special, even as you make a significant commitment of time, energy and resources at the beginning of your recovery process.  There is also no reason not to do something fun and creative every day, just to remind yourself that there is more to life than suffering.

Once that front-loaded initial investment in treatment starts to pay dividends, we might find ourselves more able to relax and trust that our lives are no longer in constant drama as we successfully self-regulate, change old negative patterns and make better choices.  And we might find that we are beginning to recover toward, and not merely from, something.  We often find ourselves more portable and socially flexible, better able to enjoy diverse experiences, places and people.  We may discover long-hidden talents and emerging interests that do more for us than just relieve our pain.  They delight us. They might even define us, perhaps more than our suffering ever did.

And then there are those times, which happen to everybody, when life rocks our world and the old feelings, perceptions and beliefs may come home to roost.  Those are the times to slow down and break life down into bite-sized pieces. They are the times to batten down the hatches and get extra high quality rest, hydration, nutrition and movement.  To reach out and strengthen our reliance on a healthy support system.  To stay in our pajamas longer and treat ourselves to massages more often and go back to therapy.  Twelve-steppers call this "getting back to basics," an approach that can be extremely effective during periods of vulnerability or reactivation.

We needn't be surprised if some of our symptoms reemerge during those periods.  As with any former injury, old aches and pains can rear their heads amid a susceptible context, the way a previously broken ankle may act up during a rainstorm.  This does not at all mean that the hard work we have done to resolve our losses has been for naught.  We and our treatment have not failed.  What we may need is a tune up, a temporary return to the therapies and other resources that helped us in the past.  How temporary is a case-by-case determination, but there is no shame in taking all the time you need to feel resilient again and no gold medal if you get there more quickly than anyone else.  This is about quality, not quantity - most importantly the quality of your life, internally and externally.

Sometimes this may be a more grueling process than others.  Sometimes what worked to ameliorate our symptoms in the past doesn't quite do the trick this time.  And sometimes there is just no way out but through, and there is just no amount of positive thinking or plan of action or spiritual practice that can exempt us from simply experiencing whatever it is we need to experience. That is no reason to give up and accept a life sentence of emotional reactivity and dysregulation.  When it comes to your recovery, don't take no for an answer.  As they say, don't give up five minutes before the miracle.

And whatever you do, don't go it alone because trauma loves to divide and conquer.  To know we are deeply loved, that we have a place in this world no matter what is happening, this makes all the difference.  My myriad protective factors have proven this to me time and again.  And, perhaps without your knowing it, so have yours.

My mother once told me that, when her family moved back to the U.S. from Hispaniola, where she grew up until age 14, she sometimes could not relate to cultural references her high school friends would make because she did not grow up with the same songs, games, books, commercials, etc. As she jokingly put it, "How can anyone be from Haiti and be normal?"

I sometimes make reference to this when a client asks me whether they will ever "get over" a significant trauma. I tell them it's kind of like growing up in a foreign country - you may sometimes not relate to certain things the way many of those without that experience do. It will always inform your perceptions, emotions and decisions in some way, even after it stops ruling your life. You may still speak with a slight accent on certain words. You can no more erase it than you could erase growing up in, say, the Caribbean.

And that's not a bad thing, as long as you can use your experience as fodder for creating something beautiful in the world.  We aren't meant to go back to the way we think we would've been had that "horrible thing" never happened. We are meant to move forward with all the wisdom we have gathered from it.

The Sultan's Harem

Topkapi Palace in Istanbul is a stunning example of Ottoman power and opulence.  The sprawling campus overlooking the strategic Bosphorus is connected by colonnaded courtyard gardens, its hundreds of rooms intricately adorned with Anatolian mosaics, carved lattice, embossed inscriptions, marble baths and gold-leaf murals. But none of those treasures left as lasting an impression on me during my visit there as did the stories of the harem.

An estimated four hundred of the sultan's private apartments were reserved for his Imperial Harem, which was comprised of his wives, concubines, consorts, female family members and their attendant eunuchs.  The word harem can be translated as "sacred" or "private," so in fact, this secluded area of the palace was where the royal family and its trusted servants resided.

Contrary to predominant Western fantasies - ranging from reckless orgies with pliant damsels in infinite configurations of servility, to a kindly sisterhood of constant solace and compassion amid a helpless, hopeless plight - the harem was a strictly organized hierarchy based upon the order and status of each of its members.  As SUNY Binghamton researcher Phillip Emeritz put it in his paper Feminine Power in the Ottoman Harem, "The harem was not an orgiastic prison, but rather a private site of female political enterprise."

And apparently, the politics inside the cloister were no less treacherous than those on Capitol Hill, with the sultan's mother in the role of co-regent to the sovereign himself.  The queen mother, often the slave concubine of a previous sultan who bore her monarch his successor, wielded absolute power in the harem, determining the future of the dynasty and therefore the Ottoman Empire itself.  One famous young concubine, Turhan, served the court's queen mother, Kosem.  But when Kosem challenged Turhan's son's ascension to the throne, Turhan arranged for her competitor's murder in a violent coup that dramatically altered the trajectory of the entire realm.

Turhan's story backhanded me as my three-month pilgrimage around the Mediterranean's sacred sites in 2007 came to a close.  On an informal sabbatical from a rigorous course of study in feminine spirituality, the genderless reality of the human condition hit me like a cup of ice cold holy water.  Here I was, within blocks of the Hagia Sophia, the original Byzantine basilica dedicated to Holy Wisdom, said to be feminine.  Just weeks before, I had stood on the stone labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral outside Paris, tears flowing at the haunting resonance of a boys' choir practicing as I prayed facing a statue of the Virgin Mary, embodiment of the Divine Feminine.  And I felt duped.

Duped because I realized that much of my emotionalism had been merely an adolescent religious fervor, one that idealized reality rather than surrendered to it.  I wanted so badly to believe that there was a way of organizing society based on so-called feminine values of total equality, respect and integrity.  I needed to mythologize a human history that may have been, had men not raped and pillaged, conquered and enslaved.  I insisted on believing that our biological drives do not determine our behavior, that competition for resources and status was pure construct.  And I ate that DaVinci Code shit up like a starving child, desperately wishing for safety and order in a chaotic world.

While there may indeed be both feminine and masculine principles in the universe, this in no way automatically endows human beings in a female body some sort of higher spiritual awareness or power, any more than it does those with a penis.  The exclusively female capability for live birth makes us conduits, not creators, of life.  It is just too easy and too tempting to want to take our turn at the throne of sexism as a sort of historical payback.  To spiritualize this is no different than the various groups of men in history who justified their own dominance as a divine right legitimized by the sacred texts they themselves authored.  While spiritual superiority may seem like an obvious oxymoron, the concept is in fact not evident to some, including those feminists who believe that matriarchy is a blissful paradise of nurturing cooperation.  Because, you know, women never get pissed off or fiendishly controlling or want their kids to beat your kids' asses in soccer or SAT scores or anything.

Today, I am no more impressed by unintelligent feminism than I am by idiotic patriarchy. Women who believe the world would be utopia if we were solely in charge may prefer bedchamber back-stabbing and poisoned wine to outright combat, but I do not prefer either. Just because we have estrogen and mammary ducts does not render us exempt from unchecked egoism and the primal drive to rule over.  Mature, thoughtful equality is what interests me now.  Without that, the oppressed becomes the perpetrator for awhile, and then it just flips right back again, over and over.  It is only a matter of time before those who identify as victims become bullies when the power falls into their hands.

I bore witness to this during several instances of advocacy training during my early days in the social services field.  While I am forever grateful for the vital social importance and personal growth value of privilege and oppression work, I in no way want to live in that paradigm in the long term.  I have met advocates who insist that they cannot possibly be racist because they are part of an oppressed minority.  I have trained with professionals who vehemently believe that there is no way that people of relative privilege have legitimate suffering.  I have even been mentored by highly educated and accomplished leaders who suppress voices that challenge the victimhood identity.

A few years ago, I met a former idol of mine whose work has been a game-changer in empowering females around the world.  Like me, she had worked with women in domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers and prisons.  She saw first-hand the devastation of early trauma on these ladies' adult lives and the heartbreaking consequences of catch-22 choices.  Yet, when I asked her at a book signing whether she believed that women could be abusers without being coerced or forced to do so by men, her answer was flat-out denial.  It was as if she regarded the female gender incapable of generating unprovoked violence, as though two X chromosomes made perpetration or even the thought of it impossible.  Would she tell those abused by women that their experience of violation is biologically impossible?  Or is she reluctant to concede to the complexity of the issue for fear it will weaken the punch of her girl power message?

Dualistic thinking like that serves only to buttress the shame and isolation of those who have been harmed by females.  People victimized by women are already walking uphill both ways to even begin to conceptualize their plight.  They are already fighting against societal taboos and collective denial.  They don't need a bunch of self-proclaimed progressives telling them to turn a blind eye, lest they throw a wrench into an already-polarized political agenda.

It is crucial we women own the ways that we can be perpetrators, too. Any feminism which does not give serious consideration to how we as women also bully, dominate, abuse and oppress is to me only part of the story.  I have witnessed insecure women relentlessly erode the confidence of a strong woman and then gloat like a hyena over a fresh kill as she disintegrated into a pathetic puddle on the floor.  The only male who has ever been crueler and more oppressive toward me than several women I have known was a diagnosed sociopath.  And even he apologized.

So, please, ladies, let's cut the shit and do the rest of the work at hand.  Yes, we need to continue signing petitions and voting and demanding equal pay for equal work. Yes, we need to protect our bodies and reproductive rights, which are increasingly at stake every day.

And yes, we need to take ownership of that absolute tyrant that is inside every one of us, male and female alike, and befriend and integrate it as a very real part of us - and not the sole domain of The Man.