I share her heartbreak. "Why Lord, Why?" was the heading of the email she sent.
This was my response:
This is the result of EXTREME NEGLECT AND ABUSE of this PARENT when she was
growing up. The years I worked at 26th and California, (Cook County Jail), I noticed that EVERY one of the juvenile offenders that would be up on felony charges were, THEMSELVES DCFS cases when they were growing up, being VICTIMS of extreme abuse and neglect often, from infancy. Their capacity to process emotions in a healthy way was killed long ago as they were forced to endure unspeakable horrors within their families and terror-filled neighborhoods, with NO protection.
growing up. The years I worked at 26th and California, (Cook County Jail), I noticed that EVERY one of the juvenile offenders that would be up on felony charges were, THEMSELVES DCFS cases when they were growing up, being VICTIMS of extreme abuse and neglect often, from infancy. Their capacity to process emotions in a healthy way was killed long ago as they were forced to endure unspeakable horrors within their families and terror-filled neighborhoods, with NO protection.
I'm reading this book called, "The Adolescent Self" by Dr. David B. Wexler to help me with my youth ministry and this child's condition is called, "Narcissistic Rage". It's explained, thusly:
"The narcissistically sensitive individual (child, adolescent, or adult) expects to be able to exercise full control over the environment. When the environment fails him, the blow to his fragile grandiosity is often overwhelming. The result of these intense feelings of betrayal is an urge to gain revenge and to somehow destroy the offending agent. Fragmentation (the internal experience marked by anxiety, tentativeness, or moodiness) is the result. The person in this state, experiences no capacity for productive self assertion (they can only react in a destructive way). The state is intolerable.
The origin of this form of narcissistic rage lies in the experience of traumatic helplessness as a child, when injuries were experienced and there were no avenues to adequately express the feelings nor idealized self-object figures (i.e. caring parents or caregivers to provide food, touch or warmth; grandparents who consistently remind them of their fundamental self worth; an authority figure to help foster identity development), who could serve containment functions. This sets the groundwork for hypersensitivity in later life, when small slights or perceived betrayals threaten to resurrect the same (childhood) experiences of both injury and helplessness."
So, THIS is the fragile psyche from which someone can shoot someone for stepping on their gymshoes... and yes... kill a baby for making them feel out of control and helpless... and then go shopping. ANYTHING to escape the panic and make themselves feel better.
The Black community has GOT TO STOP FROWNING ON PSYCHOTHERAPY!!!!
It's real. It HEALS. We need it!!!! The psychic traumas we have endured since we were crammed on those ships over 500 years ago, and those we endure everyday have KELOIDED OUR SOULS! They are scars on top of scars! This child is SICK and has been for a long, long, LONG time but it became normal in her world... OUR world... to just go on, limping along with the pain, fear, confusion, rage and emptiness.
There is no shame in getting help! THIS is the shame-- the generational tragedy of NOT getting help! There's so much help out there!.. MUCH OF IT'S FREE!
Sadly, I want to hug the mother, and cry for HER as well as that departed new life. Children in my OWN family have experienced and witnessed some things veterans of WAR have not had to be exposed to, and yet, I have wept countless tears as my pleas to their caregivers to get them some therapy were rebuffed. I even called DCFS on them to try to force it, to no avail.
In 12-step programs, they say the addict or alcoholic has to "hit bottom" before they are ready to finally get some help. Clearly, we, as a people, have not "hit bottom" yet.
How much lower do we have to go?
What do YOU think?
