Love and the Infinite, My Memoirs

By Bill Dunn Jr.

In writing this book, the author’s goal is to help people that have endured their own sufferings of abuse at the hands of another and to help them unravel any damaging and lasting effects that these early traumas have had on their subsequent adult lives. Damaging effects from early childhood traumas are very complex. The author gives people practical and simple guidance toward healing with worldly strategies, as well as inspiration, insight, and creation of one’s spiritual reawakening. Love and the Infinite, My Memoirs by Bill Dunn Jr. invites readers to free one’s bonds and fears from the distant past abuse to a life of healing through the power of awareness and guided spiritual ideas and meditations to enlighten and awaken a new consciousness through a Higher Power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Aug 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504377553

Bill Dunn Jr.

A New England Scholar and career Environmentalist writes about his spiritual quest and awakening from early childhood abuse by parents who suffered from emotional and physical challenges. Through his quest for knowledge in the field of child abuse, his desire is to search for and identify real and effective worldly and spiritual remedies for healing for himself, and most importantly for others who have suffered from these calamities. He lives in New England with his wife.

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One way of perceiving Infinite Love is by visualizing the limitless Universe when you are outdoors on a clear night by taking a view upward into the vast Universe above your head—the stars, moon, planets, comets, nebulas and galaxies beyond—and imagine in your view another state of existence other than the physical state you’re viewing—an invisible (to the eye) spiritual constellation of stars, planets, and galaxies filled with the dimension of pure, Infinite, Unconditional Love, both surrounding and transcending an entire Infinite Universe with a creator of pure Infinite Love at the center of it all, but instead of this creator dwelling in an empty void of space, rather existing in a ‘home’ filled with a unparalleled and unending Infinite Love, acceptance, warmth, compassion, understanding, joy, euphoria, and goodness, with the complete and total absence of anything evil, the ‘devil’ (Satan), or hell.

Dedications

• to my two children whom I love dearly, but at times I did not treat well during their childhoods due to my distance and inattention;

• to my lifelong friend ‘Perry’ who back in 1963-4 got me enlivened to the subject of spirituality;

• to my current dear wife who suffered extremely under the yoke of an abusive mother; to all people, particularly children of the world who have suffered any kind of sustained abuse, may this work provide healing; and for all, may it lead to better, more realizable world peace;

• Besides my wife, for all others who have suffered brutality at the hands of their caretakers.

My dear wife once asked this: ‘How could we believe in an all-good/loving God when there are evils such as what I suffered under in childhood’. For all victims, there is healing, have faith and believe it!

Acknowledgements

I want to acknowledge the many authors and thinkers with their thoughts mentioned, quoted, or referenced in this work. In particular, I am particularly grateful to the following authors for their writings I have reviewed or quoted in my work: Dr. Bruce Perry, MD; Alice Miller, PhD; Uell Anderson; Neville Goddard; Ascended Master St. Germaine; Wayne Dyer, PhD; Florence Shinn: Anita Moorjani; Eben Alexander, MD; Bettie Eadie; DavidIJ, Theolyn Cortens. Their ideas are included as an excellent backdrop for the reader to understand: (1) the background of child abuse, its ravages through history, and its after- effects on child abuse victims in their adult life; (2) the background to positive thinking modes and themes the author feels are necessary to help past victims to successfully prepare to heal from abuse after-affects; (3) worldly as well as spiritual strategies that transform healing from past abuse into actuality. Within this work the thoughts of the above authors, as well as my own, form a mosaic of ideas and concepts, providing the tools necessary to help people to heal from past abuse. Besides this, it is hoped that the work will facilitate world-wide education to prevent these tragedies from occurring in the present and future to all infants and children.

Statement of Responsibility

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or mental problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help the individual in their quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event that the individual uses any of the information in this book for themselves, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for their actions.

Table of Contents

Going Forward, and Introduction

Part I -My Background and the Science Behind the Causes/Effects of Child-Abuse

Chapter 1 -The Beginnings and Story of My Life

Chapter 2 -What I Have Personally Learned About Child Abuse & Mistreatment

Chapter 3 -The Origin and Roots of Negativism, Threat, and Fear

Chapter 4 -Child Abuse, The Science Behind Its Effects on Adulthood, Bruce Perry, MD, PhD.

Chapter 5 -The Works and Contributions to The Subject of Child Abuse by Alice Miller, PhD., Psychologist

Chapter 6 -Epilogue to Chapters 1-5; My Impressions

PART II -The Science of Healing from the Aftereffects of Child- Abuse Carried into Adulthood

Chapter 7 -Introduction to Part II: Healing- The Thoughts on Healing Suggested by Bruce Perry, MD, and Alice Miller, PhD

Chapter 8 -My Memoirs, The Real Story From The Past: The Beginnings to Healing

Chapter 9 -The Real Beginning of my Spiritual Reawakening

Chapter 10 -The Background to ‘The Reaching Within’

Chapter 11 -Inspiration and Insight

Chapter 12 -The Spiritual Doors Open

Chapter 13 -Worldly And Spiritual Healing Strategies To Help Deal with Effects of Child Abuse

(A) An Inventory of Positive and Negative Memories and Behaviors Learned During Childhood

(B) Preface to Healing Strategies

(C) Worldly Related Strategies to Help Deal with the After- Effects of Child Abuse

(D) Preface to Spiritual Strategies

(E) Spiritually Related Strategies to Help Deal with the After- Effects of Child Abuse

(F) Summary of Worldly and Spiritual Strategies

Chapter 14 -Epilogue on the Strategies from the Author’s Perspective- The Ultimate Healing Strategy

Chapter 15 -Claiming and Building Faith in a Higher Power

(A) Discussion of the Phenomenon of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) as Proof of a Higher Power

Chapter 16 -Meditation

(A) A-priori Discussion to the Science of Meditation- Equality

(B) The Science of Meditation

Chapter 17 -The Actual Meditations

(A)   PART I- Getting Us in The Mood for Meditation

(B)   PART II- Meditations Dealing With Past Abuses Suffered

(C)   PART III- Meditations Dealing with Finding/Manifesting God and Love within this Life

(D)   PART IV- Meditations Dealing with the Power of Imagination to Change the Past

(E)   PART V- Meditations Dealing with the Power Within for Healing

(F)   PART VI- Meditations Dealing with Fear from Childhood Abuse and Traumas that Reappear in Adult Life

(G)   PART VII- Meditations for Finding Healing

Chapter 18 -Final Notes

Afterword 1 -Summary

Afterword 2 -Ultimate Healing Strategy: The Power of Inspiration from ‘The Falls’…

Footnotes

After-note # 1-: 1-16-2016-- Why We Are Here

After-note # 2-: 8-12-2016. Contrasting Aspects of Experiences Remembered from NDEs

After-note # 3-: 9-15-2016- Release of Inherited Primeval Influences from the Past

After-note # 4-: 3-25-17 Reprogramming the Imperfect Human Brain for a Child-Abuse Victim

After-note # 5-: 9-27-2018- Creating an Infinite, Healing Relationship through One’s Guardian Angel and Selected Archangels

After- note #6-: 7/20/2019- Forgiveness within the Earthly State is totally absent (unneeded) in the Infinite State

After-note # 7-:4/29/2020- I Go Within ‘Soul’ for Rendering Positive Healing of Body and Mind

Going Forward, and Introduction

Today, I’m spending a few quiet hours in a public library near the town where I live, collecting my thoughts to begin my life’s only book: I ask for inspiration from the Almighty, my only Source, to begin this quest and hopefully to eventually compete this work. To help people is my chief goal, rather than to gain accolades as an author or person or to make a lot of money from writing the book. My life and particularly my spiritual quest have indeed been lengthy, but I trust that together they have resulted in rich rewards. Those particular rewards have resulted in greater awareness of human resources available, along with our spiritual Source (God), which will hopefully offer some hope and relief for those in need from early- in- life sufferings with their follow up adult after- effects described in this work.

I reflect on the (human) birthing process, and evolution into this life from a Infinite, perfect spiritual existence into a physical bodily life consisting of the five senses, nine human emotions, and ego, with all of their manifestations resulting in both good and evil acts in this earthly life. We all supposedly came from a perfect, Infinite existence in which we were loved unconditionally, could do no wrong nor be punished mentally and physically, and then were suddenly thrust into this physical body and life where we were all challenged with all sorts of sensory and emotional ‘challenges’ and ‘traumas’, particularly early- on in our lives.

The ideas and creativity I desire to offer others reflect on the effect of traumas suffered by many early- on in their lives, and these aim to suggest strategies that will help people that have endured these sufferings to unravel any damaging and lasting effects that these early traumas have had on their subsequent adult lives. Damaging effects from early childhood traumas are very complex. I would like to offer some concrete science behind the background of child abuse, as well as realistic and simple to understand healing solutions to any of these damaging effects. There are solutions, other authors have suggested them, and I am writing this work to offer what I feel are helpful suggestions from their standpoints as well as those of my own to give people practical and simple guidance toward healing.

The suffering wrought on so many children in the world at the hands of parents and caretakers renders unconscionable and dramatic effects that are often life- long. The tragedy of these effects is that with most people’s lives there is often no exit from the damaging, negative effects throughout their adulthood resulting from these early sufferings. This work will offer strong hope that healing solutions do exist, along with exits from current damages in peoples’ lives from early-on in life mistreatments.

From the indicative words of Jesus: ‘Suffer little children to come unto me, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’¹⁷⁹.

PART I

My Background and the

Science Behind the Causes/

Effects of Child-Abuse

Chapter 1

The Beginnings and Story of My Life

I suppose that my beginning was not much different than any other. Trauma covers all births to some extent, but my birth and probably pre- birth came at a price, as my mother did not enjoy (unlike many other women with their pregnancies) her pregnancy with me because she suffered a lot both mentally and physically during that nine month time-period. I have heard that a vast majority of women suffer some discomfort, but otherwise, this time proves to be one of the more enjoyable and rewarding experiences of their lives. For my mother though, this clearly was not the case. Pediatricians and other medical experts indicate that a carrying mother, always in a constant crisis mode such as my mother was, creates trauma for her fetus with possible lasting deleterious effects to the infant after birth. I was born with stooped shoulders which I have had all my life, and wonder whether the traumas suffered by my mother during her pregnancy with me might have had something to do with this, creating a life- long lasting physical defect. I wonder if lifetime angst and impatience for me also connects with the same fetal stress. I remember throughout my childhood of intense criticism by both parents about my poor posture: I felt an intense negativism then from this criticism, and now I’m all the more convinced that this constant criticism was all the more unjustified and unfair.

Since my mother’s suffering had dramatic effects on my life from the outset, I have pondered a lot over the years as to what prompted her suffering: was it her small anatomy (body frame), poor health, or otherwise. Since my parents and relatives (mostly born in 1900-1920 era) were very secretive particularly on relationships between the parents, I had few clues until very recently. To make a long story short, my awareness over the years has revealed that my father (a very well groomed and dressed man) was very likely a philanderer with females outside of the marriage with my mother. My father, a career airline pilot, was extremely attractive to stewardesses who attended his flights. He had a relationship with one, which might have resulted in a child (a half- brother or half- sister to me), but I presently have no clue as to the reality of this, and if so, the present whereabouts of this person.

From past informational inferences along with more recent awareness, I can only speculate that since divorce back in those times was not in vogue and very rare, that my mother simply (or not so simply) internalized these realities, and the result was that her pregnancy with me as well as with my sister who followed nine years later were wrought with mental and physical suffering due to physical symptoms of the pregnancy itself on her, perhaps coupled with the marital indiscretions by my father.

I was raised in a seemingly normal Catholic middle class home and family in Massachusetts, near urban Boston. My father worked as an airline pilot (a captain) for a commercial airline. I never lacked for material wants or necessities. But, I was emotionally starved and deprived: clearly something was wrong. I remember that my parents often argued and fought, with my father at times using a metal pancake turner to ‘spank’ or ‘paddle’ my mother. For me, there was an almost constant atmosphere of fear and punishment. My parents were pretty fearful folks themselves, and as it turned out had been brought up in the same fearful, punishing environment. Because of their fear, strict discipline was the order of the day, with spankings and thrashings carried out by my father under ‘orders’ from mother.

I was shuttled between schools: back and forth between public schools, military schools, and various catholic schools. During the fourth grade I was sent away to a boarding Catholic military school run by the Sacred Heart Brothers, where corporal punishment was the ‘regular order of the day’. I once asked my folks why they sent me there, and they simply answered that I had stepped out of line by breaking two small empty clay flower pots that belonged to the neighbors next door. For years during my youth, summers were spent in various boarding camps and military schools, for what reasons I never really knew, except that ‘it was good for me’, or ‘I was fat, lazy, and slovenly’, or ‘because I was a bad boy’. I hated all these experiences, and never understood the basis for my parents sending me to these places other than being given their several proclamations mentioned above. The ‘strictness of structure’ declaration was regularly preached by my folks, which became the order of each day. My father constantly threatened me with sending me to ‘bad boy school’. Yet I was in no way ever in trouble with any of the school or law authorities during any period during my childhood. In addition, my parents often went away for several days and left me with many different babysitters over the years; one of which sexually assaulted me on at least several occasions. When I told my folks about this, they practically disowned me, as they clearly did not believe me. Two words summarize well the collective feelings from all of my childhood: total humiliation.

Now, after all these years my awareness clearly tells me that the reason for all of what has been described above was primarily due to their relationship problems. My mother once told me when I was about 10 years old that she really did not love or respect my father anymore. She did not give any reasons. At the time, I was totally left in the dark. In my family, as well as with many families during the 1940s-1950s time period, relationship problems were often discretely hidden away from the children. Now I realize that my father was unfaithful in the marriage, and this caused intense angst for my mother, and was the probable underlying cause for much of her emotionally abusive behaviors towards me during childhood.

In 1961 when I was 16 years old, the family moved to Miami, Florida supposedly ‘to get a new start’ in life. My father’s airline base of work was transferred there. My parents finally made a good decision on my situation and schooling: I was to attend a Catholic day school for two years in the Miami area, operated by the Marist Brothers, from which I graduated in 1963. In short, this was the best experience as far as schooling, in fact the best overall experience during all of my childhood.

I attended a State University in Florida for the next six years, where I completed the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. For the next 45+ years subsequent to that, I pursued an essentially environmental related professional career, which included: 10 years of college and community college teaching, 2 years of social rehabilitation work, and 36 years as an environmental scientist- planner for a state environmental agency. I have been married twice, and have two grown children from the first marriage, each of whom developed successful work careers and family-related lifetime partners.

Yes, I have been a parent too, and will briefly and very honestly describe that experience here. After undergraduate school, I got married to my first wife, and subsequently had 2 children, a girl and a boy. Both of my children are well grown now: my daughter in her early forties, and my son in his mid- thirties, both being college educated and beyond, with each having embarked on successful work careers. I have been divorced from the first wife for 27 years now, and remarried to my second wife for 25 years. I can honestly say that despite my somewhat tattered upbringing with many of its negative effects carrying over into my adult life, both my children have been highly supportive of me and in frequent touch with me over the years, for which I am constantly amazed and thankful. But, how do I currently grade myself overall as a past parent, particularly in light of all my recently developed awareness about child abuse/mistreatment? Satisfactory or passing at best, but I could have performed far better had I known then when I was actively participating in raising them what I know now about abuse, and how it carries down the generational lines from one set of children to the next. The frequent emotional abuse and poor treatment I received from my own parents dramatically affected my first marital relationship, as well as how I treated my own children. The after-effects from abuse during my upbringing were the prime reason in causing the failure of my first marriage, but I never realized that then. But now, I know this and readily admit to this.

Perpetuation of physical violence was very fortunately not what I most often carried from my own upbringing into my first marriage and children: rather the effects from my childhood onto my first family were a clear and distinct desire for detachment on my part (or passive- aggressive behavior as the first wife often coined it) from being emotionally involved with my first wife and children at that time. I would sometimes get involved, and at other times draw away into a corner out of sight from the rest of the family with its normal daily affairs. At times, I just wanted to be alone to myself, not bothered with the daily business of dealing with everyday issues such as discipline of the children or taking care of the family. This behavior alone constituted a form of abuse toward my wife and children. Also, I would also occasionally engage in anger outbursts, resentment, impatience, and voiced-out emotional abuse, particularly toward my first wife. My children were clear witnesses of this nonchalant or poor behavior on my part. Clearly at that time I did not realize why I felt and reacted in these ways. Discipline and dealing with my children was simply ‘not my cup of tea’. I was afraid of taking the lead on this, and my first wife often had to pick up that slack and step in to provide these measures when they were necessary. I was totally confused as a husband, at the same time as a parent, and had no clue at that time as to why. Numerous counselors and therapy sessions during that time-period didn’t provide much help for me either.

I am very sorry and express this now, or as Alice Miller suggests in her works on how to best deal with past abuse and its effects on others, is for the former abuse victim (namely me) to partake in the process of ‘mourning’ or ‘grieving’ over what caused these past behaviors on my part from my childhood with the resultant negative carryover effects on my own family and children, and recognize that all of these things cannot be fixed because they were in the past.¹ However, now I can see clearly why I behaved like that, or as Wayne Dyer (whom I very highly respect) titles his latest Book, I Can See Clearly Now, the words of his book title happen to exactly describe my own current insight and understanding into my own past abusive behaviors towards wife and children during the first marriage.

Although there may have been other individuals associated with the care of my children who endured mistreatment at the hands of their caretakers in childhood that might have spilled over during their adult lives to affect my children, clearly it is my own past with the abuse I suffered and how it affected my own behavior toward them that concerns me the most at this stage. At least now, I know and can honestly say why my own behavior was like it was towards them.

In looking back over my past life, up to the time that my second wife contracted a serious illness eleven years ago, I had absolutely no conceptualization or realization that my own upbringing had consisted of anything related to substantial abuse or mistreatment: yes, occasional spankings or thrashings by Dad, and other what I thought were ‘small’ punishments, but nothing that I considered excessive. It was my wife’s illness, and realizing that it had probably been brought on by her own severely abusive childhood experiences that got me to thinking and realizing that I too had suffered my own set of negative childhood experiences. During my adult life I would frequently have temper tantrums, and this dramatically affected the family involved in my first marriage. At that time, I never inquired into the possible reasons for these outbursts, but now I realize that the seat of these emotions came from the pain of repressed feelings as the result of physical and emotional abuse I encountered during my own upbringing. It was not until the juncture of my second wife’s bi-polar illness eleven years ago that there developed in my mind a clear connection that her illness and childhood upbringing with abuse related to the realization and fact that I too had been abused in my own childhood, and that this abuse had directly related to why I manifested certain negative adult behaviors towards others, particularly toward my first marital family.

My present impressions about child abuse began from a startling awareness developed eleven years ago when my second wife was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward due to a bi-polar (manic- depressive) disorder. I slowly began to realize from my college courses and readings in child psychology as well as other lifetime experiences that ‘early-on’ life experiences with my wife’s immediate caretakers or parents had a lot to do with bringing on the bi-polar condition that emerged at that juncture of her life. Her mother had repeatedly abused her with severe whippings and abandonment in the early years, and these traumas had lasting effects on my wife’s mind and body psyche well into her adult years, right up to the moment she was diagnosed with depression and bi-polar. Repeated traumatic experiences suffered by the child particularly in the very early-in-life years have definite negative and lasting effects on the developing child’s brain, which have lasting consequences and effects well beyond childhood into adulthood.

My impressions and power of imagination pressed on: in review of my own history, as well as viewing the history of many others, including acquaintances, colleagues, and neighbors that I have encountered throughout my lifetime, that the many strange and/or destructive behaviors I have observed people doing probably tie-in with and relate to carryovers from ‘early-on’ childhood experiences encountered by these individuals at the hands of their parents/caretakers. Many of the early-on experiences that these people encountered seem to be clearly in the ‘abusive’ category, which haunts these individuals during and throughout their adult lives, causing negative and sometimes violent or addictive behaviors by these individuals to be projected towards others or on themselves. I have witnessed many persons’ negative actions and behaviors, and wondered, but only have become clearly cognizant as to the ‘whys’ of these behaviors in recent years. It also appears that many of these same individuals who had been affected by early-on abuse were (and still are) totally unaware of the fact that these ‘early on’ abusive experiences in their childhoods would ultimately have negative consequences in their behaviors towards others much later-on in their adult lives, i.e., they had no awareness of the fact that the former abuse they encountered in childhood would be so innocently ‘transferred’ by them onto others years later.

I have also developed awareness from experience that many professionals and writers in the growth psychology and counseling fields steer pretty much clear of discussing the raw facts about child abuse. From the literally dozens of these authors’ works that I have read in the past decade, although they may make mention of ‘early childhood traumatic experiences’ as having possible effects on the child, very little is discussed on how these traumas relate to possible ‘carryover’ consequences of abuse towards others during their adult lives, nor the causes for the abuse, nor the responsibility placed on the perpetrators that caused the abuse. It is like the perpetrators (or parents) are left off the hook for any responsibility, with quite a few therapists, authors, as well as members of the general public suggesting that the victims of the abuse, i.e., the children themselves, are actually to be fully blamed for having caused the abuse and not the perpetrators (parents). I feel that clear foundation of the fact for the blame must be established and placed on the perpetrator (the parents or caretakers) before any healing and/or forgiveness can occur for the victim. Any blame on the victim (the former child) just will not make the grade!

Cover-up of child abuse, with blame for it projected on the child instead of the parent, has been a world-wide phenomenon involving all cultures and classes of people. Is it the Fourth (4th) Commandment, ‘honor thy father and thy mother’, that insulates parents or caretakers from identification as abusers? Or is it the authority of the Church? Or is it the stigma in most all world cultures that the parents/caretakers and whatever they do to children (i.e., power of authority) is ‘protected turf’, that parents can do pretty much what they want with their children until the cruelty gets noticed by the public, or it comes under the scrutiny of the law? Or is it the simple fact of raw biology, that we are constituted as a biological fusion from a set of parents, one male and one female, (or have legal guardians as caretakers), with this forming a bond based upon biology or legality that cannot be broken despite whatever mitigating circumstances related to abuse that might be perpetrated by the stronger (parent/guardian) on the weaker (child)? Or is it the basic fear of people in general throughout the world that the family atomic unit, i.e., a mother, father, and children, is the most basic and fundamental unit of society in the world, that raising the specter of child abuse to the extent that it does occur might threaten the credibility of the family unit, which might pose a serious threat to the principal social fabric of human civilization? Or is it Alice Miller’s contention that it is far too painful for victims and perpetrators to face the facts and emotions of the past abuse? note 63

What is the reason for suppressing revelation of the devastation rendered by child abuse? For the past 10 years this author has pondered on this and has really drawn no firm conclusions. Along with Alice Miller’s idea that it is far too painful for victims and perpetrators to face the facts and emotions of the past abuse, my own recent feeling and thinking leans more decidedly toward biological fusion or connection of parents and children as the prime explanation for perpetrating the wide-scale cover-up of this horrific worldwide problem. That is: because we are a biological product of these two people, we are cemented to them devotionally, despite their cruel treatment. Biological attachment may actually play in with and intensify the aspect of the power of parental authority over their children. But the fact of the matter remains: that in all of human history, countless numbers (billions, in reality) of people have suffered under the yoke of mistreatments of all sorts at an early age, and these have had lasting and devastating effects on the mentalities and subsequent actions of these individuals on billions of other people during their adult lives. I am convinced that a very high proportion of violent crimes and deeds, mass killings, perverse sexual acts, mental illnesses, and even physical illnesses stem from after-effects of people having endured traumatic childhood experiences of all sorts from caretaker abuses, and that most of these individuals carrying out these acts or that have these illnesses have little to no awareness of the possible connection of their bad, perverse acts, or sicknesses to the abusive treatment they suffered, particularly during their early childhood.

This book seeks first to define and examine these relationships more clearly, principally through: (1) the author’s own perceptions about child abuse related to his own childhood history; (2) relating ideas on the science of child abuse from two world renowned authors on this topic. But more importantly, the latter part of this work seeks to offer a collage of ideas, strategies, and meditations that directly relate to healing solutions for any adult who identifies with an awareness of the connectedness of negative and traumatic early childhood life experiences they endured with their current adult behaviors, attitudes, and actions.

Chapter 2

What I Have Personally Learned

About Child Abuse & Mistreatment

I reflect back nearly 30 years ago when I regularly attended an adult education growth workshop group in my local parish church. This workshop was conducted by a Marist Priest, Fr. John Bettridge, from Australia, who had been trained as a psychologist- counselor. If I can summarize what he said and often repeated: ‘when we all were very young, we were vulnerable because we were so small compared to those big, big people (i.e., parents or caretakers) who towered over us: we were vulnerable to their every whim, be it kind or unkind, and when we grew up and became adults we carried those memories with us, good or bad, and continued unconsciously to act out on others particularly the bad stuff because of suppressed feelings from those early- on experiences’. ² He went on to say that the bad stuff very often has carry-over effects on how/what we teach our children (the next generation), and this goes forward to their children (the next successive generation), etc. But, Fr. John also stressed a methodology to ‘open the door’ to rectifying these learned and embedded behaviors: that once we become aware of the former abuse/mistreatment on us with its negative after-effects carrying into adulthood, then we can adjust, (or ‘redirect’ our efforts as Fr. John would say), by changing our present attitudes and behaviors through awareness of how we feel and what we do toward others, and move onward in our lives with a changed, more positive, and loving ‘modus operandi’.

I continued to attend his weekly workshops for several years, and actually participated in a specially arranged tour he arranged for our group to visit his homeland in Australia for three weeks. Along with my prior college psychology coursework, I credit him really for my beginning awareness of the possible negative consequences of child abuse early- on in one’s life, with its carry-over effects into adulthood.

While this work focuses on the possible negative effects of parents/caretakers on children, at the outset I have to discuss and give positive credit for all the good intent and good things done for children by their caretakers. Note the part of Fr. John’s statement above, ‘we were vulnerable to their (parents) every whim, be it kind or unkind’. We want to have parent to child relationships that are kind, and that give the child a positive basis in its conditioning and growth development. These good things provide positive nurturing signals to the child, rendering a healthy outlook on the child’s relationship with itself, which includes love of self as well as with relationships that it has with others as it matures in the outside world. For the most part, most parents and caretakers set out with that lofty goal clearly in mind. But for a variety of possible reasons that is not what often ‘pans out’. Or, what seems to pan out and have the most notoriety is the negative stuff: things that the TV, radio, the internet, the law authorities, the courts, and the news media in general emphasize and broadcast. The general public seems to clamor in favor of this negative, divisive, high profile and pitched drama sort of stuff. The good stuff related to child behavior or accomplishments seems little emphasized, or it seems to ‘get washed asunder’. I will touch on the whole concept of ‘negativity’ in the next chapter.

As stated in my testimony in the last chapter, I had both good and bad stuff embedded within my own childhood upbringing. So did everyone else who has ever lived and gone through childhood: for some, more good than bad, for most probably fairly equally, and for a lot of unfortunate others, more bad then good. Good influences/effects of caretakers on children produce a positive climate and game plan for the future of that child, but bad influences not only cause all sorts of problems for the child during childhood, but also these usually transfer to continued problems throughout adulthood. Repeated physical and/or emotional violence and abuse renders harm not only for the child during childhood, but also seems to easily transfer into negative behavior by that same individual towards themselves and others during adulthood. Repeated early- on in life mistreatment and violence seem to ‘hardwire’ these behaviors within the human brain into a pattern of unconscious repetition when that same person becomes an adult, with the same negative and aggressive patterns easily transferred to that same person’s children or others who come along during that person’s adulthood. We will cover this aspect more, with additional scientific aspects in Chapters 4 and 5.

It is interesting to note that the human has a particularly long ‘gestation period’, that is, a long period of time under the care, or ‘under one roof’ of parents or caretakers. In the primitive state, this time was perhaps 10-15 years; in the more advanced modern state, this has been extended to perhaps 20 or more years. This would typically be at least 25% of an average lifetime, which is more than any other species in the animal world that I am aware of. This is also a relatively long time to be under the umbrella and burdens of abusive or mistreatment behavior for any child.

Why the ‘hard wiring’ in the brain from the effects of childhood? It should be pointed out that both positive and negative effects of caretakers on the child can be ‘hard wired’ into that person’s developing brain and dramatically affect their later-on adult life and behavior. Experts in child psychology tell us that the effect of parents/caretakers on a growing child are critical, particularly in the early infant to 3 year old stage due to crucial growth and development that occurs early-on in the very complex nerve centers of various parts of the human brain. As the young infant grows into a child, parental/caretaker influences can continue to have lasting effects. Evolution, biology, and survival of the species have inculcated into the infant human brain the capacity to ‘imprint’ particularly repeated experiences as learned and remembered, for supposedly assisting it to survive once it grows into the adult phase. This biological- evolutionary process developed over past eons was primarily to facilitate development of positive behaviors related to assisting the growing infant to successfully survive once it was no longer with its parent/caretaker. It was not designed to inculcate the effects of negative social behaviors from early- on abuse. Unfortunately, evolutionary processes