The French Connection: 2013

Dear Family,

It has been a long while since I have connected or written to you. My absence was not from lack of care or love--it came about living with traumas unbeknownto me that were and are controlling my emotional reactions that often spiral my ability to act or think logically to overcome feelings of being overwhelmed, feelings of guilt, and feelings of despair. Until recently, by God's divine intervention, I came upon a book that revealed to me the "why'". I now know what I have to do to overcome the traumas of childhood that has permeated my cells keeping me in a quagmire of anxiety, disassociation, despair, guilt and suicidal thoughts. I am writing this for me and you!

The Beginning 1947 - 1950 I want to start from the beginning, my earliest memories of trauma and sadness. My earliest recollection of fear surely happened in-utero from all the stress my mother experienced from my alcoholic and unfaithful father, Jim Barlow. My mother shared stories of my father's alcoholic binges disappearing for days along with his philandering ways sleeping with other women. Besides all this, living with her parents, and having a new baby that she wanted to raise with the theory (1947) that picking up a crying infant only "spoils them". She told me how her mother and her would argue about me; my grandmother wanted to pick me up and soothe my cries while my mother wanted me to cry it out and not spoil me. Being an infant at the time, I can only guess that it was a stressful time for my mom. My mother also told me that she became pregnant again and aborted her pregnancy after spending days looking for my father with the help of my grandfather. My father disappeared for a few weeks and when he returned he was physically abusive to my mother. Apparently, my grandfather put my father in place, firmly and quickly. Mom did not mention how far along she was in her pregnancy, it had to be extremely traumatic to come to that decision. My grandparents did not want her to stay with my father. Somehow he convinced her that life would be better in the states, and he would sail back to the states, find a home and they would be a "happy" family. He had a way of manipulating my mom with his lies as she would find out; life was worse for us in the states but she was too proud to let her family know the truth, she hid it from them, and stopped writing.

When she left Marseille she met another french woman, Fay, who had also married an American, a sailor. Fay was from Paris and they became friends. They sailed to the US together. When we arrived in New York, my father was no where to be found. I don't know how my mother survived until they located my father, I do know she had to put my in an orphanage temporarily because she had no food or money. I don't know how long I was there, it was a few weeks perhaps. I do not know how my mother did it--she had remarkable strength and determination. I will write more later. Patsy