I've thought a bit about the last post...... and this info follows the question about what we choose.
I'll re post the book is The Transcendent Child by Lillian Rubin, the author of such best-selling books as Worlds of Pain, Intimate Strangers, and Juste Friends, is a sociaologist and spychotherapist who lives and practices in San Francisco. Sher is Senior Research Fellow at teh Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley.
Still on page 8, she writes:
"Sometimes it's the child who marginalizes himself by withdrawing in alienation. Then family members, feeling hurt, angry, and uncomprehending, respond in kind, helping to entrench the pattern of marginalization. SOmetimes it's family memhers who initiate the process by their collective inability to understand adn cope with teh child whio doesn't fit. Such a child often seems like an accusation to the others, an unfriendly and judgmental observer in their midst. Then the child reacts."
Next paragraph: same page:
"However it starts, it soon becomes a reciprocal system that circles around and feeds upon itself, leaving the child increasingly isolated. All too often children who find themselves in this situation spend theri lives knocking on a door that's closed to them. But those who transcend tgheir pasts soon become adept at finding and engaging alternative sources of support. Almost always a surrogate, a mentor, a model, a friend plays an important role in the life of the child- assuaging the loneliness, presenting the possibility of another life, of a different way of being"
OH OH.... this is such welcome information right now! I was asking questions, this information speaks to them.
Page 9
"In real life, the more the transcendent child feels detached from the center of family life, the more she becomes involved in some arena of living that's far removed from family pursuits. One child buries herself in books in a household where no one reads. 'I spent a lot of time taking the bus to the library', recalls Sara Mikoulis. 'That was my pattern; it still is. I find soemthing to throw myself into that keeps me engaged in something besides my own worries.'
OK..... ok.
I wish I'd made notes and highlighted. Sometimes I do make notes in books and go back with different colored highlighter pens, each time I re read it. I always get new information and compare how well I've internalized lessons I found important at the last reading.
This is like having a book club again... cept I'm the only one reading the book: /
The author goes on..... still page 9
"Although such activities usually isolate the children still further, the ability to escape into them also contributes to a heightened sense of efficacy and a more autonomous sense of self. Whatever the outcome of the choices they make, it's the sense of marginality in the family, the feeling that they don't fit, that lays the psychological groundwork enabling them to see and grasp alternatives."
OK.... makes sense.
Still page 9, she writes:
"Psychological explanations, however, are not enough to explain the capacity to reach for opportunities. True, some people don't see options even when they're available. But it's the one of the great failings of the psychological theory that it doesn't adequately take account of the impact of the larger social milieu- whether economic, cultural, or political- on human development."
Page 10
"Certainly, as Robert Louis Stevenson once said, life isn't just a matter of holding good cards but of playing the bad ones well. But it's equally certain that the psychological resources we bring to the table can't be disentangled from the larger social context within which the hand must be played out. A poor child has fewer options and greater obstacles to overcome than a middle-class one. In a society where race oten determines life chances, a child born into a n African American, Latino or Native American family has even more to surmount. The immigrant child who confronts an alien culture and a laungauge she can't speak has a more difficult time than an American born one. WOmen still are more handicapped than men in thier attempts to develop lives that include both love and work. "
"Just as the social context of life can impede development, it can also cacilitate it. Look, for example, at how feminism has made possible choices for women that were largely unavailable before, at how it has helped not just to change the rules and roles by which they live but the very identify they call their own. Or at the influence of the civil rights movement on both the identity of African Americans and the economy of that community."
Still page 10, she continues....
"It's true, as every therapist knows, that people who's lives are beset by pain and trauma oftent are so focused on themselves that they barely notice the world around them. Sara Mikoulis, for example, a black soman who suffered an exruciatingly brutal childhood, explains, 'I know it's hard to understand, but I never thought about myself or antging that ever happened to me as connected to my race. I was so abused by family, I thought it was my destiny. It was like everything fell into teh same pot, so if someone said or did something to me because of my race, I woudln't even have noticed. It just seemed natural that I'd be abused by them, too." Nevertheless, whether consciously understood or not, the shifts and changes in the social world form the background of our lives and times, often opening options that were unavailable to earlier generations, allowing us to see what had been invisible before."
On Page 11 now..... the book goes on about the ties of each transcendent child, poor or priviledged.
"They have, of course, also been molded by the past. But the form of the mold defies the expert predictions. The battered child is now a genlte and loving mother who sees it as her mission to spend part of her professional life working with abused children and thier parents. The child who was the family isolate, whose early years show little evidence of any particular talent for social relatedness, grows up to be what I call here adoptable.
By adoptable, I mean the ability to attract others who, at various times in life, become the mentors and surrogates who light the way and fill the gaps left by the past. It's a gift that's common among those who transcend their past- a gift that makes it easier to bear their travail, easier, too, to get up and move on each time they fall down.
Sometimes these are long-lasting relationships; often they are not. It makes no difference. Their importance lies in their meaning to the persons involved and in the fact that there is someone to hold out a hand in time of need, someone also who can help fill the empty spaces inside. "
I'll go on here though I was just trying to hit highlites. I see great importance in the author's thoughts here.
Page 12
"Just drawing such people in is not enough, however. As a therpist, I have seen many adults who might quality for adoptability but who are too fightened to risk a trusting engagement with another. For an adoption to work, therefore, a person needs to know how to accept and use what others offer, which means, among other things, being opent ot a relationshyip and willing to risk enough to give oneself over to it.
A sense of mission-commitment to something larger than self and personal interest-is prominent in most of the sotries that follow as well. At the most obvious level, such a mission provides purpose and meaning in people's lives. For the men and women whose stories I tell her, the mission is related also to teh grati8tude they feel for having escaped their childhood suffereings-gratitude that expresses itself in a sense of indebtedbess that impels them to try to pay back what they call thier "good fortune."
Ok.... OK..... this all makes sense.... I feel like I'm reading this for the first time but it resonates with me on the very deepest level of my gut, heart and head.
She goes on..... still page 12
"In adulthood, therefore, they're not content just to revel in lives that are so different from what they knew in childhood. Instread, they want to use the experiences of the past to change the present, not just for themselves but for others a well. In doing so, they not only give meaning to their suffereing but help to heal themselves."
Yes yes yes..... must get coffee.