Coping with Asperger's in SW Georgia

My twins were born 16 years ago, just before I turned 40. Both babies were premature, and of low birth weight (I could hold my 2 pound daughter in the palm of my hand.) They stayed in the hospital one week after birth to enable their lungs to develop a bit more, and then I took them home. Both qualified for WIC as I was the only parent working to support them. I divorced their father before they turned three due to his violent behavior which threatened both me and the twins.
Both children exhibited developmental delays very early on, especially my daughter, who easily qualified for SSI by the time she was four due to speech problems. However, my son, her twin, did not qualify although his behavior was far more uncontrollable. The SSI psychiatrist (the one who worked for Social Security) misdiagnosed him as having juvenile bi-polar disorder (an almost unheard-of diagnosis). I had to pay for his medicines out-of-pocket for several years, as SSI does not cover bi-polar disorder.
Frustrated, I finally, I took him to a juvenile psychiatric specialist in Thomasville who correctly identified my son’s disorder as Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning type of autism and she asked to see his twin. The minute my daughter walked into the office, the doctor said she exhibited even more symptoms of Asperger’s than my son did. Both children qualified for SSI after that.
Being qualified to receive SSI insurance and payments however, does not guarantee delivery of services to treat the disorder. Here in South Georgia, both twins were placed in special education courses, but because my son’s behavior was more violent and disruptive, he was placed in a separate classroom with behavior disordered children and was exposed to even more violent behaviors than even his disorder warranted. When he could no longer be contained in this classroom, he was moved to another school in the same area before being permanently moved to a school for behavior disordered children in a neighboring county. He was contained there for two and a half years and was supposed to be receiving home visits from “specialists” … we went through four such specialists who visited my son twice each in our home and never returned.
All the while that I was trying to get someone to educate my son- with poor to non-existent results – he was seeing a psychiatrist at the local government health clinic whose solution to my son’s behavior problems was to give him increasingly powerful anti-psychotic medications, some of which had fatal side effects if not monitored closely. When I realized, after about four years of these visits, (where I was not even allowed to ask the doctor questions, had even been told that he “did not have time to listen” to my concerns) I summarily removed my son from all medications as I feared they were doing more harm than good.
Over the last three years, since I removed my son from medications, he went through puberty and twice I involved local public safety to remove him from my home due to the nature of his threats … but I will never do so again as both times he was locked up in an institution in mid-Georgia where both times he was brutalized (beaten only, thank God) by more powerful and disturbed teenagers than himself. I have since kept my son home and he receives no schooling at all, but I cut a deal with the local Juvenile judge to home school my son and at least his is not in a public school system where he could hurt someone else.
I still have hopes that my son – who is now six feet two inches tall and weighs 250 pounds-, will outgrow some of his behaviors and indeed I can see where some progress has been made. But his whole world revolves around a 10 foot by 10 foot square bedroom where he has his computer, a TV and his video games. There is no contact with other children, he has no “off-line” friends and his education stopped more than a year ago when he flatly refused to do any of the assignments I gave him.
Still, I do not want m y son at the mercy of the “system” … I do not want his civil rights violated and I do not want him hurt. I feel I am doing my best to protect him from others and from himself, and I hope that one day I can find a place where he can go to day school, earn his GED and come home to me at night, perhaps learn to drive a car and get a little job to make some spending money.
My daughter is in high school now, but will never graduate as she cannot do math. I hope to get her into GED classes so she can get her driver’s license and perhaps get a job, as well. She has big dreams of moving out on her own and making enough money to travel but I will be glad if she can just get a local job and come home to me every day where I know she will be safe. She is far too trusting and I am afraid someone will hurt her or take advantage of her, although her social skills are a good bit better than her brother’s.
I know I will have to take care of my twins in some capacity for the rest of their lives, but sometimes it gets hard trying to be everything to them. I have had no help from the local school system for Dale, for sure, and there are no programs in this area of the state for children with autism. (The closest “school” is in Atlanta and yes, I could probably apply and let him go there, but he would be so far away I would not be able to see him or make sure he is OK.)
My next step will be to apply for help from the Vocational Rehab center in hopes that I can get some job training for the twins after they get GEDs, and maybe the center can help place them in jobs, as well. I only hope it will improve their quality of life and give them opportunities that the public education and health systems here never did.

More Snippets of Truth

Here are a few more snippets of truth to nourish the burgeoning skeptic within me:

"It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it." - Edwin Way Teale (1889-1980), Circle Of The Seasons, 1953

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck." - Thomas Jefferson

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." - 1 Thessalonians 5:21

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man" - Bertrand Russell

"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." - T. H. Huxley

“Faith, as well-intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.” Thomas A. Edison

“Let us accept truth, even when it alters us and changes our views.” George Eliot

"While spiritual insight or faith is one valid measure in spiritual matters, true spiritual insight never directly contradicts valid intellectual insight or facts in the physical world. Faith may go beyond reason, but does not go against it. It never blatantly contradicts the facts which we perceive with our God-given common sense. Faith and fact point in a single direction. When they do not, something is seriously wrong…A willingness to accept facts as they exist, and to learn to use them to test the views one holds rather than falling back on subjective experience or rationalizations, is the first step towards discovering genuine truth." (Charles Larson, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus, pp. 177-178)

"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows." - Mark Twain

"I am surer that my rational nature is from God, than that any book is an expression of his will." - William Ellery Channing

"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." - Ludwig Borne

"There's a difference between faith in an area where the evidence is lacking, and denial in an area where the evidence is copious but against you." -Baura

Link to an article from The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry site, Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die.

The Reward of Patience

The reward of patience is patience. (St. Francis of Assissi)

The first time I read that, it didn't make sense to me, but after some thought, I realized that having patience can be a very great gift and goes a long way in preserving one's sanity and hope.

Benjamin Franklin once said that "he (or she) who can have patience can have what he (she) will." It is true that we do not always get what we want in life but if we can be patient and continue to hope, sometimes good things really do come to those who wait.

Remember the character Tom Hanks played in "Castaway." He nearly gave up, even tried to kill himself after being stranded all alone on a desert island, sole survivor of a plane crash in the Pacific. But when the branch on which he was going to hang himself fell into the ocean below after he tried to test a weight on it, he resigned himself to life and, lo and behold, one day the tide brought a piece of vinyl, part of the plane that crashed, which he used as a sail on his log raft to get him over the reef and out into the open ocean where he was eventually found by a passing freighter. Don't give up hope because you never know what the tide will bring in, or, in other words, one day the tide will turn in your favor, or your ship will come in, or, like the man on the island, even a piece of wreckage from your past may turn out to be the very thing that saves you.

Samuel Johnson once said, "That which is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity." Some things take a long time to develop or they may take a lot of self-preparation in order for us to be ready for the good things ahead ("I will study and prepare myself, and the opportunity will come" Abraham Lincoln, or "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going," said Beverly Sills.)

I realized I was making the same mistakes over and over again. The problem was not outside of me, but within me, so I decided to change the whole pattern of my existence. I still had my twins to raise and I had to work to take care of them and our house, but I also determined that I had to better myself. I attended college on grants and student loans, and finally got a decent, honorable job as a writer and then as a county employee. Best of all, I prepared myself for a special man by living a quiet and virtuous life alone with my children. I learned who I was and of what things I was capable, and I learned self-control and patience. I now have a good and kind man who loves me, who found me again after being apart from me for 37 years.

It is true good things come to those who wait, but also to those who are patient and pray for such blessings. Thank-you, God and Philip, for all the joy now in my life.

What Might Have Been

"I have spent my days, stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung." (Tagore)

My sister, Becky, also named Susan Rebecca Parsons Neff, is dying of cancer. That is not the saddest part. Becky lived life her way, and it is not my place to say she should have done it otherwise. She made her choices, and soon she will be gone. She has three beautiful and good children who have given her nine grandchildren who love her, and she is married to a devoted friend and caregiver, Charlie Neff.
I dedicate this page to her and post words from one of America's most beloved poets in memory of all of our lost dreams.

MAUD MULLER
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadows sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But, when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast--

A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.

He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

"Thanks!" said the Judge, "a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed."

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

And listened, while a pleasant surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away,

Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah, me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!

"He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.

"My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat.

"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.

"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door."

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still.

"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.

"And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.

"Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:

"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

"But low of cattle, and song of birds,
And health, and quiet, and loving words."

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go:

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
"Ah, that I were free again!

"Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.

But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,

And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been."

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!


Postscript: Becky has been gone for more than two years now. I miss her and will always remember the beautiful, vibrant and strong girl of our youth. We were only 11 months apart in age, I was the oldest, but we were as different as two sisters could be in many ways.
In spite of that, she was my good friend and we helped each other during different difficult times in our lives. I pray she is at peace now and forever, and that her beloved husband, Charlie, who died a year after she passed away, is with her, too. I love you, little sister.
"God be with you 'til we meet again."

For Which I Am Grateful

I have spent too much of my life not saying "thanks" when I should have, or complaining about things that don't matter. So before I die, or get too busy doing something else, I want to list a few of those things for which I am grateful.

I am grateful I was born in the United States of America, the freest nation on earth, on Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, although I have never been to the Grand Canyon (pictured here) yet. I am grateful that there is still a chance I may get to go there one day with my beloved Philip. (And for his love and presence in my life, I am so very thankful!)

I am grateful for the sacrifice of our nation 's armed forces and their diligence in preserving my freedom. I am grateful for the education I received in this country, for both my high school and college degrees, for my teachers and professors who labored to instill in me a diverse and extensive knowledge base, and for the opportunity to work for my living and to those who employed me and gave me a chance. I am grateful for my home, my family and my city and county officials and the many conveniences I enjoy living here.

I am grateful for my life, even for all of the things that went wrong, because I finally got rid of all the bad things that made me strong ('tho' some came near to killing me.) Even more, I am glad for all of the good things that are still a part of me ... including my four children and two grandchildren, my sisters and their families, my mom, my friends and all of those no longer with us, especially my grandma Susie Beck, and even for my dad, although he was not so kind to me for most of my life.

I am thankful for this earth and all that there is to look at, enjoy and cherish ... waterfalls and rainbows, spring showers and lilacs, starry skies and sunsets, among many other things. I am grateful for the oceans and mountains and the great forests and deserts. I am grateful for this body and its senses ... taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell, and for emotions and laughter, tears and song.

I am grateful for my job and the people I meet everyday, the smiling salesperson, the kind co-worker, the dedicated people who take time to make this world better for everyone. I am truly grateful for authors, actors and musicians, composers, photographers, painters and sculptors, poets and essayists and anyone else who takes time to express themselves in ways that enrich and ennoble the lives of others.

I am grateful for all of the modern technology that makes my life so much more pleasurable, including hot water, electricity, combustion engines and T.V., radio and the Internet. Especially I am grateful for medical advances that have saved so many lives (including my own) and for all of those who spend countless hours in laboratories, universities and elsewhere researching, testing and promulgating new theories and technologies.

I am grateful that God created mankind and this beautiful blue planet. I am grateful to be alive and still learning, still growing intellectually and spiritually ... and so of course I am deeply indebted to all the philosophers, prophets and great thinkers that have gone before, for sharing their wisdom with me and helping me understand what this life is supposed to mean.

Above all, I am grateful there is a God ... as Blaise Pascal once said, "Instead of complaining that God has hidden himself, you will give him thanks for revealing himself as much as he has, and you will thank him for not revealing himself to wise men full of pride and unworthy of knowing so holy a God." (Pensees 394)

Finally, a big thanks to all who have made my life more interesting and/or have taught me to be a better person, whether they meant to or not. Thank-you for listening/reading, too.

Where Is God?

I want to believe that somewhere out there, in that great dark space beyond our own atmosphere, that there is a God who cares, hears us, and answers prayers.

But where is He when you really need Him? Yes, yes, I have had good things happen to me, things that never should have happened but did, like my fiance finding me after all the years we had been apart. And of course I consider all four of my children as blessings, along with my grandchildren, too.

But how much of anything that has happened to me been of God, and how much of it just happened ... for no reason at all except as a matter of course in the flow of human events, a natural outflow of being human?

I am beginning to lose my faith, for real. I do not want to become the person I feel myself turning into lately, and it distresses me. I remember when I was eight years old, I lay in my bed, the top bunk, in a small bedroom with my other three siblings, praying for God to simply make my dad quit kicking and beating my mother. As I lay there trembling in fear and helpless fury, wanting to kill my father as I listened to my mother's moans of pain, I remember very distinctly telling this alleged God, that if He did not stop my father, I would never believe in Him again.

Guess what? The beating finally did stop that night, but the same scenario happened over and over again as I was growing up, different victims in the family maybe, but always the fear, the pain, the name calling and the shame. Everything was such a big secret, too, you know. We were not allowed to ever tell Grandma what dad did to mom, could never tell our teachers what was happening in our house, lest we be punished for being "traitorous bitches." We did not know peace and quiet or the joy of having loving parents. I guess mom tried to maintain a facade of "normalcy"but she never took us away from him, even though she had a decent, loving mother of her own to bring us to. I guess worse things could have happened, so maybe it is not that big of a deal.

Yes, I agree ... many, many more people have had it worse than me and my siblings, like the Jews and others during the Holocaust of World War II. This, along with all of the other ethnic purges that have gone on since the beginning of civilization have to make us wonder ... where is God? How can a merciful and loving "creator" allow His creatures to suffer so much, incessantly tortured, humiliated, starved, diseased, beaten and killed? What kind of God is this? I begin to wonder at my sanity, it puzzles me so much.

Perhaps I should stop asking questions, stop asking "why?" Perhaps there really is no meaning to this life. It really is just as pointless and scary and crazy as I always believed it to be when I was younger. The false church my dad insisted we join so long ago, the Mormons, tried to convince me that we lived before this earth was created, and that we "chose" our earthly parents, chose when we would be born, and taught that we were as eternal as God, who they say was the literal father of our spirits as well as the creator of our mortal bodies. Well, guess what? I knew all along that this was false doctrine, as there was no way I would have EVER selected the two parents to whom I was born ... and I sure did not want to spend eternity as part of their "eternal family," another erroneous teaching of the Mormons (e.g., that all families will be "together forever" if they go to the temple and do the sealings etc. that allegedly bind whole family lines all the way back to Adam.)

Dad never kept the religion anyway; he made us join the church and was even baptized himself, but never participated in the religion beyond that point. He never quit smoking or drinking or running around on mom, either, so the whole thing was ridiculous. (Do as I say, not as I do edict.) Now that I have someone I can truly love and who loves me back, after all the years of no love, only hard times, I want more than ever to believe that there is a kind and loving God out there. But in my heart of hearts, I do not see how that is possible.

Is religion then only the opiate of the masses as early communists taught? Is belief in God even necessary to live a decent and moral life? I do not think so. I used to pray and ask God all of the time, when I was first baptized all those long years ago, if He would please let me talk to Him, or at least let me know if He heard me, let me know if he loved me. Guess what again? He never did. I was not asking for a sign; only for an answer, some little indication that I mattered to someone, somewhere.

Perhaps we only have each other. There is no God to save us and the way things are going, there is a very high probability that mankind will extinguish itself at some point in the not too distant future. I want to believe that we matter, that some great force out there beyond the sunset really cares about us, and will let us come home to Him one day. Life without hope is a terrible thing. Life without love makes it even harder. Aristotle said hope is a waking dream, but lately the dreams are too dark and crazy. I sometimes just want to go to sleep, curled up next to the man I love, and never leave our room, just stay where I feel safe and cared for and loved. But life pulls me onward, I have too much still to do, too many chores and earning a living, and no extra time to do the painting, reading and piano playing I enjoy so much.

I will continue to pray that there is a God and that He sent His only begotten Son to earth to die for our sins. I want to believe that the Lord loved us enough to die for us, and because I believe that, maybe one day all will be well.

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

On Being of Norwegian Heritage

My father was half Norwegian, his mother pure blooded, as both of her parents were from Norway and married in Minnesota after their immigration. They changed their names from Olson to Nokleby, for reasons I can only guess at, namely, that maybe there were so many Olsons already living in Minnesota that they took their Norwegian hometown name, I think, as a surname to help distinguish themselves from all the other Olsons.

Who knows? Incidentally, the picture I've posted on this page is of Norway, a beautiful, cold land of fjords, lakes and rocky shoreline which saw the rise and fall of the Viking culture more than a thousand years ago. I am proud of this heritage because my brief and not-too-in depth study of the Vikings reveals that they were more than savage invaders who repeatedly raped, pillaged and terrorized the shores of neighboring lands, especially Ireland, England and northern France (e.g., Normandy). The Vikings settled in many of the places they visited, including far off Russia (which they named), and they were expert merchants/tradesmen with a knack for languages. They co-existed with other cultures and brought prosperity and progress to many otherwise backward areas. And, yes, they did discover America before Columbus. They were fearless seafarers and savvy businessmen (why do you think they named a thermally heated island "Iceland" and a cold, desolate island "Greenland"? They named them thus in order to confuse or misdirect potential settlers in Europe and thereby keep them out of Iceland!)

Anyway, Great-grandma Lottie (her real name was Charlotte) Nokleby married her second cousin, Ole Nokleby (nee Olson), an older man who moved her to Calgary, Alberta, Canada shortly after they were wed and began homesteading there. She bore five live children (as opposed to the more than three or four stillborn she lost) for him- three girls and two sons- and I have heard stories of Grandma Lottie having to get up from her childbirth bed to go put out a raging fire in their corn field. She was tough as nails and finally divorced her first husband and married four more times. The last fellow she married, a man named Peterson , had some money and owned a rendering factory in Mt. Vernon, in Washington state (by the way, my dad's birthplace). Lottie learned to fly airplanes and owned and raced thoroughbreds after the age of 50. I vaguely remember that she was short, only about five feet tall, and broad, and she had a distinctive Norwegian accent and cooked "pretty cribs" (boiled, ground-potato balls stuffed with a piece of salt pork or herring) and potato pancakes and other Norwegian delicacies. She never let me play with her extensive collection of horse statues when we visited her in Sedro Wooley, Wash., which were beautiful. I never felt like a beloved granddaughter as she never hugged or spoke to me (our branch of Norwegians held the belief that children should be seen, not heard, EVER!) and when she died, she left all of her estate to her youngest daughter, Pearl, ignoring all of her other children, including my grandmother, Gladys.

Well, the point of all of this diatribe is to discuss what I think are the pros and cons of being of Norwegian descent. I inherited the native intelligence and natural curiosity of the race, and a bit of wanderlust flows in my veins, as well, since I love to travel and see (discover) new places. I also inherited the Norwegian musical ability. Grandma Lottie played a mean accordion and her husband played the fiddle. My dad played guitar which I took up at age 12 and later I largely taught myself to play the piano (or play "at" it, as best as I can) and I have been a pretty good vocalist for most of my life. I inherited the coloration of the race, being olive-skinned, light-green-eyed and auburn hair (unlike my three siblings who were all fair-haired and blue-eyed, in the truest Nordic tradition). I also inherited a natural athletic ability but not as much as my sisters, and the long bones and facial features, high cheek bones and full lips, of the Nordic people.

But there is a dark side ... the bad part of being Norwegian is the temperament and stubbornness that besets so many of them. A harder working group of people than my Nordic family branch you will never meet, but God help you if you catch them after a few drinks and tick them off. The violence, both physical and verbal, was horrifying, and drinking exacerbated the situation, acted like fuel to a roaring fire. When angry, and especially when I used to drink a bit, I, too, seemed to lose my mind temporarily, would actually black out as I struck out at people and things with a force and blood lust that is terrifying when I look back at it after calming down, or after all the years that I have behaved myself. Then deep remorse would set in, and I would do all I could to make up for the storm of emotion and screaming, throwing things, hitting myself and, if mad enough, striking another individual. These rages were not uncommon and many a sheet rock wall has been caved in or pieces of glassware thrown and broken over the years.

After the violence of my childhood, the rages my father made us endure, seeing my mother and siblings and myself beaten into the ground nearly every time he drank, (I took my first beating at age four for running away from my father: my last one at age 18, when dad tried to kill me by strangulation, punching me in the stomach, ripping out my hair, and putting me through a sheet rock wall) you would think I had enough of violence to last forever. But his continuous beatings and rants and destructive behavior imprinted themselves on all four of his children, and we self-destructed, each in our separate ways. I will not speak of my siblings, as those are their stories to tell (or not), but I married four times, each one progressively worse, more violent and more heart-rending than the last.
It was only after years of psychotherapy and repeated suicide attempts (and a couple of "lock-down" sessions in Baton Rouge psychiatric wards) that I was able to regroup, stop the drinking and the ensuing rages, and try to build some self-esteem.
For the bottom line was that after being raised by one rage-filled parent who tore us down emotionally, mentally and physically - (and another who was a victim herself and so let it all happen, did not save us from him), - neither I nor my siblings had any sense of self worth. Our individual liberties or rights as individuals had long been stripped away, and I, at least, did not believe I had any worth at all; I felt that I was nothing and meant nothing to anyone, and so I deserved to be punished ... I became a victim and, as a result, nearly died at the hands of a husband.

After years of abuse, I finally came to the conclusion, (especially after my father died this year of a disease -Type 2 diabetes- that he stubbornly insisted for years that he did NOT have), that I was of some worth. My four children love me and I finally met a man who loves me for myself, in spite of all my failings. I have my college education, a good livelihood and a pleasant, modest home. I have so much to be grateful for and I am again proud of my Nordic heritage, that which gave me the courage to change my circumstances and dare to be more than I ever thought I could be.
Enough said about that, then. I am not mad at anyone anymore and life's too short as it is ... and these are the "good old days" now that I am living "la bon vie" with my beloved Philip and twins.