The first piece in this book called "Time Heals All Wounds" is a very sensitive and direct discussion of teenage suicide. SO many phrases resonated so deeply for me it has been very healing. I can only cope with a page or 2 at a time, but nevertheless, with all the terrible and lengthy silence around me when my siblings died, it is a great good that this has been published.
From a family, friends and carers perpsective there is insight. From a structural perspective of teachers in secondary and tertiary sectors there is discussion.
It is also great that it is published by a young fella I met when I was doin a writing seminar. His idea grew into something very tangible. People can change the world.
Hugs @Clawde
@Corny Thank you for your very thoughtful response.
The author Maria Tumarkin was unpacking the axiom, not pushing them at all, but looking at different angles. That is why I liked it. It was not prescriptive.
I looked at the first episode of Hemingway. Not sure if I will continue. I am more interested in the broader Paris scene and not at all interested in his macho side. I am wondering off hand if it is a response to his WWI experience. He is so celebrated as an author. Hearing you about the sadness of a woman indulging him. He seemed to set up a new wife neatly in time to move on.
Because of my life I ask long questions about the nature of love and what is good. Just my way. Its great to hear from you again. Been a while.
Hugs
Apple
Good to hear your love includes the strength of a lioness. Try NOT to get locked up! lol
I am concerned ongoing re fires and the climate generally. I watch consumption, reuse and reduce, and be careful about heating and cooling the person and the home and am a mild activist. We do not want another 2019/20 bushfire "season". Many of us are trying, yet the myths of growth and progress .... seem set to whirl on and on ...
I did not do literature at school, which may have been a good thing. I began later at uni. I bought a b ook to help me understand my father's New Guinea experience, otherwise I did not have much input re typical Aussie social cultural or war experien ces. So kind of making up for it after the fact.
There are some photos about Callan Park on the net. I have looked up places I was in as a child and also my family. Somehow B&W photos seem less scary than my imagination. Sort of contains it somewhat.
I was going to post this last night but was interrupted by my son. Lovely to "talk"
Apple
Gosh @Appleblossom you have had such a hard life. I can't recall what state you live in and if you experienced institutionalisation, but my family has. My great-aunt and great uncle died in some of Australia's last psychiatric institutions. My mother had what the called 'shock treatment' in one of those same hospitals. I was alive when my great aunt died, I was maybe about 7 years old. It's quite incredible how long she lasted, I think she was in her late 70s and may have even cracked her 80s.
I have always intended to go back through the family history but have been so consumed with coming to terms with my own traumas, and coping with the psychosis in my relatives in the present day (and my own) that I haven't got around to it. I am pretty sure that my Pop placed both of his sibs in there.....but I am not sure. I think his brother took his own life....but I haven't confirmed it.....I know that people are still placed in a ward, never to be released in NSW even though asylums are to be closed. And there is the adolescent wards close to Parramatta somewhere...its just so sad and it really humbles me on days when I am feeling sorry for myself and all that I have lost with my MI. There are people out there with it so much worse than me.
It always shocks me @Appleblossom how far behind Australia is in the climate change deabte/action.....I cringe as our representatives make us look like the ignorant, uneducated back-water of the world in this matter. Australia really is so far behind in lots of areas, 10,15,20 years behind. I think that Death Valley in California made some record this summer, I am pretty sure it was over 50 degrees. And I think it was during the bush fires that Penrith reached close to 50! From memory maybe it was 48 degrees! Horrific. And the State government is building the 2nd airport in western Sydney along with lots of other infrastructure and the climate scientists are predicting that in 30 years time those suburbs will be uninhabitable. That houses will have to be built underground to escape the heat. Our building and housing standards are so poor in Australia, no double glazing is required by the developers, inappropriate insulation given how hot it is......I've looked up the forecast and Sydney is due for a little rain but still high temperatures for winter!......We will have to move in with the wombats @Appleblossom . Burrow down to the cool - Corny
Gave me a lovely chuckle to think of burrowing down with wombats.
You are not the first to mention bunkers etc ....a lot of people are turning to that way of thinking. I love country but not up for bushfires ....Its a worry.
Yes my father died in an institution. My mother also had the shock treatment. While they were in hospital we were put in care. I was 6 with 3 younger sibs. All 3 passed too young .... 21, 33, 52. Later when I was 10, I visited my father in hospital in a Repat. I am aware of Parramatta girls homes and the equivalent down here. I am in Melb. Got tickets with an old gf who went to one when she was 14 and quite a drinker. Still they are quite different experiences, the real orphanages from the naughty girls homes.
I joined a group of people raised in care. They are good for getting research and details but I find they get me too upset by the agitating manner they keep past pain alive. I understand it is a tricky path to walk, and everyone has to do it at their own pace.
Hearing you about getting over one's own traumas. It has taken a while to reduce my stress and rumination and desire to research it all ... I am slowly coming to terms with it all in a less agitated manner.
The de-institutionalisation drive has good and bad about it. I see my brother as a martyr of it, just the state system doing its thing without treating individuals adequately. Too busy to worry about him, so the family gets to carry the load.
I am open minded about orientation. Grew up with many gays around of both male and female. Nice families or marriages were not very much in my social environment.
Apple
My goodness @Appleblossom you have had such an incredibly hard life. You are incredible just to survive and to be still standing. Just one of those life experiences would have completely destroyed another person. People would meet you or walk past you and think that you are so 'normal' , and have no idea what you have lived through. I hope that you have secure housing, a soft place to fall, and just a little corner of the world where you can be at some semblance of peace even if it is only momentary given your traumatic life. Maybe you have a furry friend to cuddle into too.
I think it is wise for you to titrate how much research you do, and going back into the past......you would most definitely have a stress disorder, and unfortunately how bodies reached that tipping point where we have to be very gentle because it takes so much to get our hyperarousal back down to our base line. Maybe you have met some people that have spoken to you in a historian/rsearcher detached kind of way and you have felt like saying, hang on this is my life! But I am the same @Appleblossom I need to know facts before I can process things and try to come to terms with it. I just need to know the whole truth even if it is horrific, I've always been like that. I said to Dr K when I simplify what happened to me and what put me into psychosis; it is truth. Finding out what really happened just spun my brain into overload. I am sure that coming to terms with your own truth has tipped your mental health at times......it takes so much stamina to live with MI and complex life-long trauma. I imagine globally there will be thousands of children left orphaned by Covid...it breaks my heart of little kids feeling scared, alone and unwanted.
I often think to myself imagine having a mental illness back in the day with no treatments available and institutionalisation......but the reality is that heaps of people have treatment resistant mental illness and medication compliance is a constant battle for people with no insight into their illness, which was both my parents when I think of it. But I do agree with you there are extreme cases that can't live in the community safely on their own and need a gated community.
Yes @Appleblossom I didn't ask to be gay I was born this way. It has nothing to do with my CSA, I have never felt that it did, women are my home. In an Irish Catholic it was no mean feat to standup for myself as the only gay in the family......
You guys have had a shocker in Melbourne with the lockdowns. I can't see Sydney coming out of at least some restrictions for a few more months.....we will remain the national hot-spot for a long time me thinks. One of my sibs became Mrs Fi Fi Pfizer II yesterday and the other sib will be Mrs Fi FI Pfizer III this afternoon so my anxiety and panic attacks are a little bit lessened, but I do worry about the kids, and the unknowns of this virus......poor buggers don't have great genes, but I will become their full-time carer until the day I die if they ever lost their health. Cheers to your health @Appleblossom stay warm and cosy in August, its the windy month. Corny