The life and writing of Augusten Burroughs part two and some late morning reflections

I have been interested to explore the life of writer Augusten Burroughs over the past few days and to find he had both a brother and mother who have written books about their past and family.. There was a lot of criticism of his mother’s autobiography on Goodreads since she has claimed that in that book that both sons lied. There are even those who had doubted the accuracy of Augusten’s trauma memories..

I listened to half of a talk he gave at a public library yesterday discussing his novel based on his relationship with his father A Wolf at the Table. It is a little sad that wolves get a bad wrap after all his father killed the son’s guinea pig, and seemed to have a very narrow emotional range as do most alcoholics.. I am writing a bit blind here as I have not read that book and I have only seen the movie made of his novel Running With Scissors which covered his life from the age of 12 when he was sent to live with his mother’s psychiatrist and was raped. What comes across in the talk especially as he talks about how sensitive he is sensation wise to clothes tags in his shirts and t-shirts and how those sensations relate back to childhood also makes very interesting listening. So many things can make us flashback after a childhood of such neglect and trauma.

From the side of the mother, she obviously had to deny her own pain on some level to be able to side against the inner child of Augusten in terms of both giving him no help when he went to her about the sexual abuse and later denying it and I can understand how many condemn her on the Goodreads site. And yet I also do not know enough about her own childhood to comment much, but to see that Augusten was left in such a vulnerable position (after the mother’s breakdown his father effectively discarded him and wanted nothing much to do with his son) does resonate. In time he has had to deal with his past in the best way he can and manages to do that with his writings.

I did have to stop listening to the talk though when he started going on about the condition of his father’s teeth, saying as an academic he ‘should’ have known or been told to practice better dental hygiene.. One of the trademarks of alcoholics and children of alcoholics is a failure to take care of themselves, its just another in a long line of symptoms of emotional neglect that then passes onto the way the body is treated.

Obviously as a child Augusten was super observant.. In the talk he says he has vivid memories of being very small in his highchair and looking at the world around him through the little hole in a Saltine cracker. I think many of us coming out of trauma became observers, since we had no one looking out for us, we had to become hypervigilant to survive. This does not mean that we are always able to develop deep empathy for what our parents suffered and I guess if we have been so hurt its only natural our hurt would make us angry and want to turn away from then.. This is natural for our first priority needs to be reclamation of the true self and our trauma map, so many of us defer that in an effort to be there for parents or siblings who could not be there for us and as we start to heal its only natural we also want to help our family. Our most basic instinct, after all is to bond and connect and we only sacrifice that after extreme trauma.. We do have to deal with our inner lives, the sad thing though is often our parents did not have that luxury, they were just flat out surviving..

These days gratitude is growing within my heart for all I did survive and all of my family as well. It was a lovely case of happenstance yesterday after our leafy walk to the village milk bar at Manuka to run into and old friend from school who told me that her Nana lived in a house very close to the one my Nana used to live in. We discussed where our parents were born and since she knows all about the history of our family around Mum’s clothing boutiques at the Lawns there we were also discussing that. Sadly her Mum died a year ago and I went to the funeral but it only seems like months ago.

I am grateful I am alive today and can smile after I cry. I did weep a lot this morning cuddling Jasper just thinking of the amazing gifts he brings into my life.. Thursday to Friday was tough.. I got really angry with someone who misjudged me and I had to fight my corner. And I found I was helped in that after re-reading that book by abuse therapist Patricia Evan on how others make us up ‘backwards’ or try to define us . It really is so spot and interesting.. She speaks of how so many people live caught up in spells that others cast on them. This may come from a parent or sibling or teacher (or even peers) who showed contempt for certain parts of us while defining us in all kinds of damaging ways or ways that were not accurate.. That said we may have friends who see past the minimizing definitions we live inside and long for us to embrace the truth and beauty of what we have buried.

And the truth is until we can know and love and accept WHO WE REALLY KNOW AND FEEL OURSELVES TO BE we really are always going to remain vulnerable to the definitions of others according to their value systems, not ours.. The work of a life for many of us living with what therapist Elaine Aron calls an undervalued self may lie in learning all about what the truth of our real essence is and learning to protect, nurture and sustain that like a precious seed of a unique flower that requires all of our best inner sustenance to grow and blossom.