Alice Miller, I will forever be thankful for your research
Thursday April 05, 2007
My Dear, Most Precious, Alice,
First of all, I want to thank you sooooo much for the books that you have written. Were you, yourself, the victim of this type of parenting?
This past January, when I think I came down with the flu, probably because I did not have a flu shot, but during that “down” time, I started reading a book you wrote, and that I had picked up at a local thrift store, which is where I do most of my personal shopping, even though most members of my family , just go out and buy the most expensive things at the most expensive stores .This book was “Prisoners of Childhood, The Drama of the Gifted Child.”
As I was reading your book, I identified ,with catches in my throat and extra heartbeats, that you were describing my actual life, as I was growing up I have since two days ago, found out that you ,have written many books about this subject, and I am going to” Amazon” to order as many of your books as I can. I think the subject you are studying is way more important than many other subjects that are being studied at the present time.
You can probably guess by this, that I was brought up in a sort of poverty situation, but I actually know that both my Mom and Dad had been raised by the parents you describe, who were themselves, brought up by their own parents, who were also going along with this idea of mistreating their children, in the name of “good child rearing” which you have mentioned.
I have earned a Masters Degree in Environmental Sciences, from the University of Michigan, and have worked in that field for 13 years, until I had two children, and decided to spend all of my time with helping my children grow up, and just being there for them in our home, whenever they needed me. I also became a Girl Scout leader, for five years of my daughter’s life, as she was growing up, and .I have now been a Pathfinder leader in Romania, for the past three years, and involved in our Pathfinder’s group weekly, here at College Church, in College Place, WA. .My life is now, basically spent in pursuing horticultural goals, relating to children as much as I can (I recently took my talking bird to a church preschool, where there were 100 children from 3 to 5 years old) helping people in any way that I can , and the studies of 9 various languages: Latin, German, Greek, Hebrew, Akkadian, Sumarian, Arabic, Romanian, and now Norwegian. and as each language has presented itself to me, each time the new language gets easier to learn. The present new language is Norwegian. I go every Monday night for two hours, to learn it. My daughter Lauren, married a Norwegian boy this past April
My question to you,is that I have so many instances of not being able to relate, especially to my husband, but I am getting better and better at being able to relate to anyone else than to him. I can relate to strangers very well What is in my heart of hearts, is that he might have been mistreated by his own parents, but has never admitted to it, and that is why I may have been attracted to him in the first place, is because he represented my parent’s total non- involvement into myself or to any of my siblings..
I will be coming over to Romania this summer, probably in July and August, to work with the orphanage over in Tisa Sylvestri, as I have been working with them the past three summers. If there is any way that I could possibly visit you on my way over to Romania,(or back from Romania) I would welcome that so very much. If there would be anyone in the world I would want to talk to, it would definitely be you . I would be first visiting London, where my daughter, and her Norwegian husband are both neuroscientists, and my daughter is doing research into Parkinson’s disease, but in her heart, she wants more than this:: she wants to be doing research on Huntington’s disease, because her husband’s father, and most of his brothers have this disease, and also her husband, has had gene testing, and it is almost certain that he will get this disease. His father was an Orthodontist, but had to withdraw from his business a number of years ago. My son in law has his PhD from Oxford in Neuroscience, and my daughter has her MS in Neuroscience from Univ iof Edinburgh , in Scotland. She is now starting her PhD in Neuroscience from Imperial College in London, where she is now doing research into Parkinson’s Disease, but she is saying that any progress they make there, will also be helping to make progress into Huntington’s Disease..
Much Love and Blessings, G. B.
AM: Thank you for your compliments but you are giving me so much credit before you have read the other books, written AFTER the Drama. You write that your daughter is doing research into Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Are the scientists interested only in the description of the symptoms and in their certitude about the genetic causes or do they also show some interest in the emotional factors? Can research into Parkinson’s disease be separated from the very obvious symptoms of fear that the bodies of these patients display?