I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my innermost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was loosing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path had faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came--arising I know not from where--the current which I dare to call my life.

Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in Inward Stillness by George Maloney

I teach at a university--I have to be in the closet about Being Multiple. Yet I have a great impulse to share my journey with others--NO MORE SHAMEFUL SECRETS! This page is my chance to share my process and express my selves (who I usually call insiders). I think the colors and links that are possible on the web provide a way to do that in a way I simply couldn't match with paint and paper or with fabric.

This page started out primarily as self-expression, but as I have shared my experiences with other multiples, I have come to want to organize it more as a source of information for others, not just as an expression of myself.

This page, and its subpages, were written between January 1997 and early summer 1998. As time allows, I will update the information subpages, but I do not expect to make further changes in the pages that express my system (various personalities).

Information:

If you are reading this because you're wondering whether you are multiple, I have some thoughts on those issues at: self-diagnosis.

I have many more details on how I understood myself (as of the spring of 1997) as multiple at: Being Multiple. The focus is on less extreme forms of Dissociative Identity Disorder. I never had clothes in my closet that I didn't recognize and I didn't often loose time, but I did have voices inside who felt like "not me." For another system's reflections on less extreme forms of DID, see The Wonderful World of the MidContinuum!

I wrote a collection of reflections on my therapy process, which you can find at: My process. I also have reflections on the nature of multiplicity and on integration/fusion at The Whole and the Sum of the Parts. I also have a page about frogs which is about the process.

You will find resources and my reflections on religious issues (from a mainline Christian perspective) at my page about God.

I have a fairly lengthy list of books with my own reviews at: Books on DID. Also on the intellectual side, I have also written a response to a backlash article in the April 6, 1998 issue of The New Yorker magazine.

I wrote a lengthy description of my experiences with childbirth for someone who was doing research on how nurses can be more sensitive to abuse survivors. You may find this useful if you are pregnant or considering getting pregnant, but be warned that there are a lot of details about what can go wrong.

I have a lengthy page of links, particularly because I am impressed by the number of different sites providing discussion boards. We have created an amazing amount of community! At present, the other main online resources I frequent are Mosaic Minds and Fr. Mahoney's newsgroup (on Christian issues).

My System:

I started out writing in blue because blue was the host--the rational self who has made it possible for us to succeed in the world and made it very hard for anyone else to see our pain. I (blue) liked to have things organized, so I kept trying to make maps of the system inside. I started out with a series of cloth hearts, as I met insiders for the first time in the spring of 1996. I then made a page for each of the hearts in a photo album, with childhood photos that seemed to capture those parts. Later I made a quilt out of the hearts; if you are patient about letting it load you can see it here.

In August 1996, my system reorganized, and I began to get to know a layer of adult selves who wrote in different colors. In November, an insider named Linda who had helped in a crisis once spoke up and said that she had created the adult system at age 16 so that we could function in the world, and that the adults really didn't know anything about the childhood reality. Then slowly, I met teenagers and children, though some were never willing to identify themselves clearly. As a map I used a box--the kind of plastic box with little drawers that people use to hold nuts and bolts (it has five rows each with eight drawers). I have a description of that system at the box .

In late spring 1997, the insiders in that system began to work more as groups. The adults who had first started writing in colors (Black, Pink, Brown, Green, Orange, Red, Blue, and Purple) were the first to work together as a group and came to work most closely together. They began to refer to themselves as a group as "I" rather than "we". I saw this as collective, not full integration.

The Black group was the protectors and included: Angel, Linda, Shame, and Be Good. Map started out as a protector.

The Pink group was the hidden little ones: Baby Lion, Trouble, and sometimes Need, and Star. They have a page of their Favorite Things.

A new group began to emerge in mid-May 1997, first describing themselves as those who tell. At first, their most noticeable characteristic was that they loved coffee, which I have always disliked--I suddenly turned into a regular coffee drinker (though I have limited myself to decaf). They told about sexual abuse by my grandmother, in addition to the sexual abuse by her second husband that I have always remembered. I have written a page about female-female abuse.

By July 1997, they had solidified as a group of new alters identified with the abuse. The active members of this group were an adult who calls herself Hawk, a sixteen-year-old, a 12 or 13 year old named Sam, a 12-year-old named Sue, a ten-year-old, a seven-year-old, and a five year old.

I strongly suspect there were other little ones. They struggled with their shame about the abuse, but also with what they want to bring back to the system. Sam has brought us back to the reality of the world of magic where we were safe. Over the summer and fall, I struggled with more negative things that I needed to acknowledge instead of hiding: shame, and fear of rejection over-and-over again, and also the longing for death, as well as with a lot of new memories of sadistic abuse.

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