Dear Tee:

Only 2 hours ago, the capital of Ukraine was attacked by whom I believe, in the other thread, you referred to (rightfully so) as The Bully.. whom others try to appease. I read with great interest all that you wrote there, and I wholeheartedly agree.

I’ve followed the devastating Oct 7, 2023 massacre in Israel and the aftermath.

Within these global tragedies, injustices, severe wrongdoings.. Is there space for me, this one individual?

I suppose I am taking the space right here because you, Tee, you are here, and I trust you.

I want to process what I didn’t yet start to process, right here, with you.

Maybe I should offer a Trigger Warning

* Trigger Warning: the topic of suicide will be mentioned here, as well as other childhood trauma *

Whatever comes to mind (purpose: to heal, to transform, to transcend):

As early I can remember, my mother threatened to commit suicide. Actually, that’s my very first memory (at 5 or 6, don’t remember). Twenty years later, she threatened the same.. and throughout the in-between, and beyond, into my 30s.. until my sister told her (I was 30, maybe 40): “Then just do it!”

And.. magically, she never threatened it again.

For all of my childhood and after, day after day, I was afraid that she’d do what she said she would. I used to pray to the stars: “Please, please, please.. please, keep her alive.”

I stayed Home (in that prison cell) all of the years when other children played outside, socializing. I stayed home with her to keep an eye on her, to see that she doesn’t kill herself.

I absorbed everything she dished out at me.. received the severe shaming and guilt-tripping.. so to keep her alive.

This is the truth, neither minimized, nor exaggerated.

I lived under her suicide threat. Day after day after night, year after year.. almost a whole lifetime.

Funny, not.. not funny, she’s still alive at 85, so I hear.

The first memory I have is that of her threatening to kill herself and running to the street at night-time so to do the deed, so she said. My father was there, they divorced when I was 6, so I imagine it happened when I was 5-6, only that it might not have been just that one night, but a combination of nights. He repeatedly came home late and she accused him of being with other women. Screaming and yelling. Don’t remember him yelling, don’t remember.

She left into the dark, I must have cried really hard, really loud because to silence me he hit me with a belt. And my screaming halted.. that may have been when dissociation took hold. I sort of exited my body, or my mind, imagining I was in a movie, a bold actress, filmed into an exciting movie, and I left into the dark, looking for a dead body.. all the way to the street.

And I saw her then, a dream come true.. she was alive, I ran to her, RAN to her, Ima, Ima, Ima.. You are alive!

The response, her response: angry, accusatory: “why wouldn’t I be alive?”.

She didn’t hold me, she didn’t calm me.. She was Ice.

That was about the time the tics (Tourette) started, tics that follow me to this very day.

I’ve never processed this. Always felt dissociated from this, as if it didn’t really happened, as if I was exaggerating, making something out of nothing.

I don’t know where I am going with this. I think I want to integrate this experience, to reassociate it, so that I can transcend it.

It really happened, again and again and again, practically on an ongoing basis for 20 years, in-person.

Before the topic of self-worth, there was just this one thing: God please keep my mother alive! The dread. And then add the shame, the guilt. Not a good recipe for good mental health.

What if I let little girl Anita (inner child) talk about this.. will she sound different from what I shared right above.. What will she say?

Anita: talk to me little girl Anita.

Little girl Anita (LGA): (Nothing)

Anita (A): Remember, sweet little girl (here’s a hug, shhh.. it’s okay, little girl, you are safe now)

LGA: tears in her eyes.

Anita: Tell me, tell me.. please talk to me, you are safe.. and Tee is safe too, she is our friend!

LGA: Our friend? A: Our friend. LGA: She won’t hurt us?

A: No, she will not. She is for us, not against us. So, please talk to me, talk to Tee. Tell Tee how it was. LGA: Why?

A: So that we can help you! Tee is an Inner Child Champion, an Inner Child Warrior! Talk to her. Tell her about that night, or nights. It was dark, you heard her loud, what happened.. ?

LGA: I ran to her, I was going to save her!!! I was going to be a hero, a hero for my mother.. Her Hero!

A: Little girl Anita, a Hero..? LGA: Yes, a hero! A: You wanted to be her hero?

LGA: YES…!!! A: What would it’d be like, to be her hero?

LGA: She’d look up to me, her hero! A: She needed a hero?

LGA: Yes, she needed a big-time hero, someone special, someone unlike any other, someone great enough to save her!

A: a movie star, someone rich, someone more? LGA: Someone .. not me.

A: Tell me. LGA: She needed someone else, not me.

A: Who is “me”? LGA: someone who needed a mother, not a daughter.

A: You tried to mother her? LGA: She NEEDED a mother. A: What did LGA need?

LGA: I needed her alive, needed to keep her alive.

A: What did her suicide threats do to you? LGA: They kept me scared.

A: What did you need back then? LGA: A mother who didn’t want to die.

A: Did she want to die? (She’s still alive at 85) LGA: She lied to me?

A: She never killed herself, started the threats when she was 25, now 60 years later, she’s still alive.

LGA: She didn’t mean it? A: No.

LGA:.. ??? A: She bullied you, sweet little girl. LGA: Just like that?

A: Just like that, it was easy for her.

LGA: She lied. A: She lied.

LGA: So, hmm… just a lie. A: Just a lie.

LGA: So, I don’t have to be afraid anymore? A: She will not kill herself, she will die of natural causes.. no suicide.

LGA: Natural causes..? A: Natural causes, ageing.

LGA: I remember her young, 25! A: 60 years ago.

A: This has been quite a conversation! LGA: Will you hug me tonight, as we go to sleep?

A: Yes, I will hug you tonight, and every night. I love you. You are a good little girl. I am with you. You are not alone.

… Anita and Little girl Anita