Whales - can they hear us cry? Comforting moments along the way to recovering from repressed memories, amnesia and post traumatic stress

I was seven when I went through several severe traumas within a period of a few months. I was too afraid to tell anyone and I had nowhere safe to go. I had no support at all from anyone. Today, although I don’t remember everything I am satisfied with the memories recovered the past 36 years and I have acquired little known information about the process of amnesia, repressed memories and post traumatic stress.

How I survived should be of interest to all professionals working or doing research on repressed memories and post traumatic stress today.

I survived for many reasons and one is to educate about these very complicated functions of the brain. This site has important information about amnesia, repressed memories and post traumatic stress. I might be a little disorganized in my writing here, but, one day every lay person will be able to understand what happens to the brain after severe trauma. And here I am speaking of a child brain - because once the brain matured to adulthood, it will acts differently to severe trauma.

A natural tool, and sometime the only tool available to severely traumatized children is a form of meditation.

Severely traumatized children use a form of meditation to repress traumatic memories.

Can Whales Hear Us Cry?

Music has always been very important to me. Music is soothing and comforting. As a young child I remember a song I particularly liked. It was about Jonas and the whale. I remember sitting in a big adult rocking chair and singing the song over and over: "Jonas dans la baleine disait, je voudrais m'en aller, bo-boum bo-boum."

Even after going to bed at night I sang the song in my head. I loved the whale so much as I pictured her swimming freely in the ocean. It was soothing and made me forget about the fear and kept me from crying. I loved the whale so much that I began to swim with her, holding onto her fins.

As Jonas wished to go away - I wished it, too, and I actually went away and fell asleep holding onto the whale, letting her guide me in the soothing warm water. For these moments, I learned to forget about being scared. I forgot about the outside noises. I forgot about tomorrows. It was just me and the whale floating in warm water and it was peaceful.

At age seven, I learned a form of meditation that helped me to survive and forget. I created a solid wall that separated me from harmful memories. I was fourty years old when the wall began to crumble.

In my family environment and at the boarding school, it was made easier for me to forget because no one spoke of the “episodes” and I could not speak to anyone about it either.

Time after time during my life there were reminders of the traumas.

Reminders are what trigger post traumatic stress - where something disrupt your controlled routine and bring the traumas too close the surface. I learned to handle these reminders and I became very skillful at it. Distancing myself and away from the site of the traumas became an unconscious goal. I was successful doing this as well. As time and years went by, after many successfully well-handled reminders, I found myself at 40, across another ocean and nowhere to run anymore. I could no longer handle the reminders and I was forced to face my past.

I fought the best I could, but, I was lost, confused and very tired. I had no clue of what was going on with me.

To understand this you need to realize that these decisions to run away from the past were not conscious decisions. It was as if I was guided, directed to move away. It is as if you went to sleep in your own bed one night and woke up a few days later in another country. Another life. Except for me, the awakening was years later. And remember, the traumas I went through were extremely frightening, nearly fatal and they were deeply buried.

As much time I spent running away from the past, I spent as many years retracing and putting the pieces back together.

Ignorance and skepticism on the subject of repressed memories, amnesia and post traumatic stress have severely hurt my recovery.

Can Whales Hear Us Cry?

What brought the memory back about my childhood song of Jonas and the whale was the appearance of a whale in the San Francisco Bay in the fall of 1985. They called him Humphrey. He was front page national news for several days.

I was at a very low point of my life around the time Humphrey visited the bay area. It was the time I remembered the most painful childhood memory. (I had been buried and left for dead in the basement of our home)

I had difficulty coping with this memory and I took a break from my employment.

I was hospitalized for three days and I remember the first evening just before going to sleep in the Marin County hospital bed. I remember laying there all drugged up. It was then that I remembered the song of Jonas and my friend the whale. And it was then that I encountered the child I left behind and it was then that I cried for her for the very first time.

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