School has almost started, and in Head Start land, the beginning of school means many in-service trainings for staff. I presented about Conscious Discipline, which is a social-emotional curriculum that focuses on the connection between brain state and behavior.
When I train, I always try to tell stories and give personal examples to illustrate points. I sort of stumped myself as I tried to give examples of survival state- fight, flight, or freeze. The flight part was a piece of cake; I simply shared how I chucked my cellphone at Angie's head and took off running barefoot down the highway when that horrible woman from the driver's insurance company told me over the phone that I needed to accept that Cory's death was no accident.
But fight? I'm no fighter. Freeze? When have I ever done that? I am a well-accomplished flee-er.
So I thought about these other brain stem behaviors for a couple days, and realized I actually have done them, I just didn't realize it.
Let's start with fight. I remember being in the car with my sister and mom a couple days after the accident, my hardcover journal (i.e. funeral planner) in my lap, trying to tune out their voices that pursued every detail of the plan to plant my daughter in the ground. Everyone was upset. Things were beyond tense. At one point, an argument ensued between my mom and sister, and in response to the raised voices and hammering home of the fact that Cory was indeed laying on a slab somewhere, lifeless, I simply picked up that heavy hardcover book and began to beat myself in the face and head with it. Fight.
The possible fight reaction is the reason I won't drive by the driver's house, just to see what it looks like...to see if the exterior of her house gives away any sense of personal responsibility, guilt, or poor mental health. Is her life falling apart the way mine is? Do her surroundings give away her inability to organize or care for herself? Is she suffering? Is she?!
No, I won't even drive by because I would surely be tempted to stop and knock, and if she were right in front of my face- the woman who side-swiped my girl, caving in her head and breaking her little body: neck, arm, hips, I don't think my hands would be able to stop themselves. My pre-frontal lobe would be on vacation, and I'd have a nice long time in prison later to wish I'd never sought her out. I don't want- as a Hispanic friend of mine who speaks English as her second language says- to ever "regret myself" that way.
So then- freeze? When have I ever frozen? This one was a toughie. All I could remember doing in brain stem situations like being choked up against a wall or chased through the house at knife point was running.
Finally, days later, in the shower, it hit me.
At the road side, the bystanders held me back and I didn't fight them. I have hated myself for this for three years. Night and day. Obsessively. HOW could I not go to my baby? Touch her? Feel the warmth beginning to flee from her body? Provide her the thin or even imaginary comfort of my hand on her face, her precious, precious face?
Let me tell you how. My brain wouldn't give the order to my feet. I was frozen to the spot. I never had the chance to think how I would feel about it later on; it just was.
I'm not a bad person. I'm not a bad mother. How about that? I was just in the lowest part of my brain, surviving the scariest thing that has ever happened to me- and that wasn't the possibility I would be hurt or killed, it was that my child might be.
Isn't it funny how long it takes until some things click? No one can tell them to you; you have to come to them on your own, in your own time. So now, in my "reason and logic" pre-frontal part of my brain, I forgive myself for freezing beside the road, for not fighting tooth and nail to get to her side. I forgive myself for that part.
Baby steps.
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