A Long Way To Come
Laura Palmer: The Unconscious State of America (USA)
A few weeks ago, I was sitting next to my daughter talking with her when she dropped this question on me: “Mom, who are you really? I don’t really know anything about you. I know you are my mom, but who are you and where did you come from? What did you live through?”
I swallowed hard. I caught my breath. I know what she was getting at. She wanted to know what happened to me as a kid. She wanted to know what I endured on the streets. She wanted to know the list of violations, violence (sexual and physical) that I endured. She wanted to know what damaged me.
The question was hard because I have tried so hard to shelter her from these things, but it was even harder because I realized that in my attempts to keep her sheltered from my life experiences that she has only known a fragmented mom. Yes, this causes my heart to break.
It has become increasingly clear over the years that she inherited my trauma or is experiencing secondary trauma. This has been so difficult for me to accept and deal with. It seems self-centered if I say it hurts me. My daughter should be my number one concern. Maybe it’s time to step back, not consider the cause of her symptoms (me) but instead just try my damnedest to help her. I’m trying.
When she asked me that question, I answered ambiguously. I said, “Everything I lived through is nothing I would ever wish on you. Believe me, the things that happened to me are things that are nearly impossible to recover from. You do not want to choose those things if you have a choice.”
One of the symptoms of secondary trauma is for the child to duplicate his/her parent’s traumas. God fucking forbid for my baby.
Horrorific Acceptance
A few years ago, my daughter became obsessed with Twin Peaks. Just recently she watched Fire Walk With Me which has turned out to be one of her favorite movies of all time. When the movie was first released in 1992, I was absolutely obsessed with it. I watched it at least six times in the theater, and I listened to the soundtrack nightly. At the time, I had no idea what PTSD was, that I was suffering from it, or what the tell-tale signs of extreme trauma are. I re-watched the film last week, and I was stunned at how accurately David Lynch captured the traumatized female. He nailed it - everything from disassociation, to intentional self-obliteration, to hyper-sensitivity to sounds and anger, to distrust, to alienating those you care about so you don’t pollute them. The facial expressions, the inappropriate laughter, the reconstructing of reality, the self-imposed denial - it’s all there. No wonder I watched the film so many times. It was like looking into a mirror and validating how I feel.
But I had to ask myself why Laura Palmer’s character is appealing to so many young women and girls. Why does my daughter identify so powerfully with Laura Palmer? Certainly these young women have not all experienced Laura’s traumas or mine, yet so many identify with her. I was recently reading The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and part of it talks about the rape of the land in the Pacific Northwest, the clear cutting of forests, the decimation of the natural landscape for the profit of the white men. Maybe Laura Palmer is the land in general that has been pillaged and traumatized by the men who landed here, robbed it, enslaved and murdered the native peoples, and who have always kept women as second class citizens. Maybe Laura Palmer is the icon of trauma that every single woman wakes to the moment she is born.
Born into This
Questioning the appeal of Laura Palmer to all girls and women, I wonder if girls are inherently born into a state of trauma, especially in the Unconscious State of America where we like to believe we have come so far, but really the minute we are born we are torn in the battle between our reality as girls and women and the constructed reality that the dominate male power would like us to believe. And if we don't believe it, we're crazy, right? We as women and girls live in a constant state of violation and trauma even if we are not aware of it. Don't kid yourself otherwise.
I cannot tell you how many times (and this happens weekly at least) I am told I am crazy for speaking of violations or injustices of any type, especially those that have to do with me being female. It happens ALL THE TIME. Our culture perpetuates it. If we get real, we are crazy. If we speak of our trauma, we are victims. No matter what the case, that bad is always on the girl while the men mansplain it and belittle us. I am FURIOUS and I am SICK. Especially when I see what this Unconsciously State of America has done to the young girls who don’t understand why they feel so bad. Because we live in a country that treats women badly but pretends not to, that treats Mother Nature badly and therefore corrupts Mother Nurture. The trauma runs very deep.
Mother Smother
In other news, I also became obsessed with watching the TNT show Animal Kingdom which stars Ellen Barkin as a matriarch Smurf who raised her sons to help her run her crime ring. I could not stop watching this show. I realize that I was really hooked into Barkin’s character. By all accounts Smurf (a name which itself is belittling and not meant to take seriously) is a villain who will stop at nothing for her own gain and power, but when you look deeply into her, she is another traumatized female trying to get control.
Watch closely as Smurf disassociates while trying to maintain power, as she self-medicates with booze rather than confronting reality, as she hangs onto the rituals of raising her kids (baking them pie after “a job”) rather than letting them make it on their own. The show may be about a family crime ring, but at its core it’s about a mom who has no idea how to be a mom but is trying, a mom who has a dirty crime ridden past and present but is still trying to be a caregiver though she dirties everything she touches, and it is about the impossibility of matriarchy. In American culture, matriarchy only comes from a very broken place. A woman cannot be in control without being an abomination and being rididuled. This sounds bad, but this is also the message we are always delivered.
The Disassociation of Pie Making
So I have really been struggling with how to help my 18 year old, and where do I turn? Movies and TV? Why not? They represent our culture more than the shit that comes out of people’s mouths. Take a look real close and you can see what’s really going on. In this case: 1) Women are born into a state of trauma; 2) Any woman who tries to take control of her own life is a loser. And people wonder why girls feel so bad? I wonder why I feel so bad.
We have a long way to come baby.