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Tuesday's Trust
Oh, To Protect Our Child-Loss Heart!
With grief my companion,
I sometimes question,
Will its roots overtake me
On this Child-loss journey?
Or will those who say they love...
Squelch my heart with their toxic "love"?
We take some precautions
Though some may think we're haughty ~
(They can't know what we're living
For they think our grief trivial…)
Grief is quite enough you see,
We cannot endure toxicity…!
So...
We have a protective membrane
We keep around our heart
To hold in love, keep out disdain
To soothe our Child-Loss heart.
Our heart was thrown in deepest pain
When once our child did part
From which we crawl a bit each day
By grieving from the heart.
We have a protective membrane
We keep around our heart
To hold in love, keep out disdain
To soothe our Child-Loss heart.
Since our heart's in deepest pain,
We each must become detective,
A sleuth to spot fake love's disdain
To ensure grief's heart, protected.
We have a protective membrane
We keep around our heart
To hold in love, keep out disdain
To soothe our Child-Loss heart.
So whether you are friend or foe,
There is one thing you need to know:
We've become experts of the heart;
If your heart is mean, you must go ~
Beloved though you are, we must part!
We have a protective membrane
We keep around our heart
To hold in love, keep out disdain
To soothe our Child-Loss heart.
*****
Trauma survivors have every right to want, desire and expect to feel connection, caring and comfort….
~psychotherapist, and trauma specialist, Kathleen Young, Psy.D.
*****
…I'd only just begun to discover how important relationships are to the healing process…. (T)he nature of a (trauma victim's) relationships--both before and after trauma--seemed to play a critical role in shaping their response to it. If safe, familiar and capable (people) were available to (the trauma victims), they tended to recover more easily, often showing no enduring negative effects of the traumatic event. We knew that the "trauma-buffering" effect of relationships had to be mediated, somehow, by the brain.
In a social species like ours… all… essential functions are deeply dependent upon the brain's capacity to form and maintain relationships…. That's why, as children, we come to associate the presence of people we know with safety and comfort; in safe and familiar settings our heart rates and blood pressure are lower, our stress response systems are quiet.
But throughout history, while some humans have been our best friends and kept us safe, others have been our worst enemies. The major predators of human beings are other human beings. Our stress-response systems, therefore, are closely interconnected with the systems that read and respond to human social cues. As a result we are very sensitive to expressions, gestures and the moods of others. As we shall see, we interpret threat and learn to handle stress by watching how those around us (behave). We even have special cells in our brains that fire, not when we move or express emotions, but when we see others do so. Human social life is built on this ability to "reflect" each other and respond to those reflections, with both positive and negative results….
Recognizing the power of relationships and relational cues is essential….
We learned that some of the most therapeutic experiences do not take place in "therapy," but in naturally occurring healthy relationships. The (trauma victims) who did best… were not those who experienced the least stress or those who participated most enthusiastically in talking with us (therapists). They were the ones who were (in) the healthiest and most loving worlds…. (W)hat works best is anything that increases the quality and number of relationships in the (trauma victim's) life.
Relationships matter: the currency for systemic change was trust, and trust comes through forming healthy… relationships. People, not programs, change people. The cooperation, respect and collaboration… gave hope (to) make a difference….
~Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., the psychiatrist called in to head up a "rapid response" Trauma Assessment Team for the 21 children rescued from Waco by the FBI on February 28, 1993, as told in his book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog… What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing
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