Circling Frozen Time In Time!
Part 1

By Martha Russell, Ph.D.,

CEO of Changing Lenses, Inc.

Raising Horizons for the Suffering

How does one begin a nonprofit purposed to help the suffering of humanity when one's own family is suffering? Consequently, I acknowledge and address my own trauma and that of my family as I press forward to emerge as one of the most effective trauma reducing advocates for trauma victims due to racism and other cisms of America. So let Our Circle be formed.

This morning I made the decision end a vicious cycle of being a codependent to my youngest son's emergence into the state of FROZEN TIME. What is FROZEN TIME? When months pass by and one has made little to no progress in their life, I view this as one evolving into a state of Frozen Time. Now when years pass one by and one cannot show any visible progress or goal attainment in his or her life, then this person is succinctly lost in the frost of FROZEN TIME.  FROZEN TIME is often associated with some form of unhealthy addiction, which places a person on an unending treadmill of walking through life daily making no progress outside of feeding the addiction. Many of us have been there and some are unknowingly even with habitual treadmills on social media or in  "churchianity"; however the most dreadful FROZEN TIME treadmills are related to alcohol and drug addiction because these often lead to prison or death. 

Is it possible that parents can be the cause or the promoter of adult children being caught up in Frozen Time? The answer is yes. Yet, that “yes” has a caveat of spiritual wisdom to it which asserts the cliche “You reap what you sow”. When parents sow seeds of fortitude, harmony and prudence, they generally reap children who display attributes of fortitude, harmony and prudence, for the most part. When parents sow seeds of sluggishness, strife, and squandering, they tend to raise children whose lives are plagued with challenges related to sluggishness, strife and squandering. This is not just the science of agriculture where apple seeds produce apples but it also supports the family dynamics proverb that Children Learn What They Live. In the case of my children, their lives experienced wholesome and dysfunctional family ethics. As parents, our squandering may have overwhelmed our attributes of fortitude and our relentless strife may have overwhelmed our sincere love and compassion that we had for all four of our children. Regardless, each child individually gleaned what life skill set, emotional intellect and resilient rising above it all schematics,  at differing levels as each one navigated through life's ups and downs from Thouron to Rabbit Run (street names of our first and last home as a family).

Today's message focuses on creating a circle around our youngest son, CC, whose major struggle in life was that he was born as our youngest daughter. We discovered his true gender identity only two years ago when he returned home from the overwhelming pressures that college life - overshadowed by gender confusion, experiencing lost, battling depression and addiction to pot - brought to him. When CC arrived at home, he desperately sought help and shared his turmoil with a need to be whom he was born to be, a male person. He also asked for help for his pot addiction which appeared to be his only scaffold to assist him with his transitioning from female to male; however, it is now his detriment to his transition and to achieving all of his life goals. As a typical controlling mother I immediately pressed into my favorite  “I can make it happen” role but I did not succeed. I immerse myself in the study of transgender just as I did ten years prior with the study of homosexuality. I contacted so many places to address the pot smoking issue, only to discovered that he could not get the help he needed for pot because it is not deemed an addictive drug by mainstream medical and therefore, our insurance would not cover in-house treatment. I now realize it was my linear vision that Rehab = overcoming addiction that caused this failure in helping him with his pot addiction. I failed to look at the obvious in that our extended family had a number of family members over the years who did go to residential drug rehabilitation who did not succeed. My two brothers both died in their addictions and my beloved nephew at age 26 also died in his. All three been to drug rehabilitation centers. Notwithstanding, there were others such as my own husband who did succeed. Although they may have relapsed after Rehab, they were able to gain control over what could have caused their lives to be left in FROZEN TIME.

CC's life appears to be rapidly evolving into FROZEN TIME and I believe my husband and I are actually increasing its refrigeration process. CC seems to be on a very dull treadmill of sleeping, smoking, eating, strolling through our premises a few times a day and sleeping again. He has stopped doing all of the important steps achieving goals in his life.  He failed to sign up for his EMT test after spending 10 months completing the coursework.  He simply stopped doing the necessary tasks required to have his name changed and his gender officially changed on his driver's license. When questioned on these things, he constantly points the finger away from self to blame something or someone  for each item he fails to accomplish. Just yesterday, he blamed me because he was unable to enroll in school due to his failure to raise $250.00 needed for his transcript to be obtained. His view was that I did not want him to go because I did not want him to attend school in Ohio in January and therefore, he could not get the financial support from family members.  This is the kind of logic pot addiction offers. He completely ignored the fact that there were so many missed opportunities for him to have raised the funds but he opted not to labor when was called.  What is even more frustrating to me is that he never attempted to obtain the transcripts until the day before the class was to begin. I sincerely believe he thought I was going to make magic happen for him and because I made no attempt to do the magic, I was at fault for him not getting enrolled. Perhaps, he is correct. I finally have to accept the fact that this child has never taken the responsibility for his own failures. He has conveniently blamed me for his numerous disappointments in life and I accepted them. Yes, I made many mistakes beginning with not having a clue to his gender identity, even though he provided so many clues as young as three years old. He even had to deal with being placed in an ALL GIRLS classroom from second grade to seventh grade at the school where I was founder and administrator.  Furthermore, in my zealot mother role to help him navigate a life as a teenager who had no friends, I continually guided him into school and out of school activities where he may can connect socially. I spent tons of dollars on activities such as horseback riding and ice hockey and ice skating lessons and none of which he completed. I allowed him to quite when things got to challenging or uncomfortable for him. My greatest mistake was to force him out of school because I believed homeschooling would shield him from his inability to socialize with his peers. That failed miserably but was fortunately short lived. He returned to school and became part of the school band. That was his best connection to a social life in high school. So I accept my part of the foundational problems but I cannot continue to build on these problems. 

Now that CC is 21 years old, we as parents and he as our son must begin to move to an adult relationship where we support and respect one another. Restoratively speaking, CC also needs a platform to share the harms we as parents brought to his life and how I and my husband can repair the harms we committed. Yet, CC also has to be willing to acknowledge and repair the harms he has committed to his own life and harms he has committed as a member of our household. Restorative Justice is justice that heals but it can only succeed when all parties involved can face their own demons and offer a commitment to acknowledge the wrongs, repair the harms and celebrate every victory on the way.  How will Restorative Practices look for us?  We will reflect more on how we got to where we are today and address this question in Part 2.

Thank you for taking time to visit with us as our endeavor shall be to continue:

Raising Horizons for the Suffering through Restorative Approaches!