Framing the Shadow

The Patchwork Chameleon Chronicles

by Ginger Freedom

available on AMAZON

 

REVIEW

By Tessa on June 5, 2014

Format: Kindle Edition

Ginger Freedom’s memoir is essential reading for all those who share an interest in the human mind. Freedom states that one of her motivations in writing the Patchwork Chameleon Chronicles is to provide hope through a narrative of recovery for others who likewise suffer from PTSD and experience Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but the scope of the narrative and poetry of the writing creates a work that transcends even this important agenda. As someone with very little knowledge of PTSD and DID Freedom’s memoir was a truly eye-opening read. Freedom’s memoir forced me to reconsider many of preconceived notions about mental health disorders, the ways we treat them and the destructive taboo that surrounds our discussion of them. I was left with a greater respect and understanding of the human mind and its capacity for creativity and survival. Moreover Freedom’s writing was compulsively readable. I downloaded the book late one evening and read it all in two great gulps. In many ways Anne’s story reads like mystery, in which the crime scene is the depth of the human mind and the stakes are truly life or death. I eagerly await part two!

 

CURRENT WRITING PROJECTS

Presently my system has multiple writing projects going on at the same time and we look forwards to sharing those here as they are self-published and sent out into the world.  Until then, here is a nice little bit of writing that came out just the other day!

 

 

 

I am suddenly a little old lady

 

My beauty has faded

 

Less of life is before me than behind me

 

I pause a bit to reflect and conclude

 

I have had a remarkable life

 

The family I was born into was a mixed adventure, but an adventure it was, and training ground for what was destined to become.

 

As a babe, young child, and youth - the fond memories foretold a bit of my destiny.

 

Images that pop – the fun of a large family, tussling with siblings, chasing older brothers, sharing rooms and a bunk with sisters.   The wonder of drinking rainwater from gutters, making mud pies out of orange juice, scouting for lady bugs in every green bushes.

 

The friends in the neighborhood at a time when neighbors were generally so very friendly and adventuring home to home, experiencing many toys, many different ways homes are organized always welcomed, always loved.

 

My father teaching me to ride a bicycle and letting go, falling, and getting up and trying again, which now that I look back, was a repeated theme. 

 

Try once, fall, fail, get hurt, don’t give up on the desire, try again, and eventually, success – whizzing round the streets on your bike, or with your dance company in future years to other lands, cities, countries even my inner adventurer wishing – even other planets.

 

Coming home from a school fair, the goldfish in a bag, hand in hand with the father you love dearly, having sagely learned how to compartmentalize experiences, stave things off, in order to be present and fully enjoy the moment.

 

Tears to my eyes at memory of my first performing event but I whizz back first to Kindergarten and the magic of FINGER PAINTING. Always drawn to scribbling, etch-a-sketching, drawing monsters (perhaps my inner own) with gaping fang tooth maws that matched tone for tone the brilliance of the Munster Family, our own Munster family, I modeled after my brothers endless obsessions.

 

Dressed in a cardboard teapot painted blue I sing and tip over my spout.

I smile in the moment and it is the memory of my smile at the joy of performing singing I am a little …

 

Winchells day old donuts my mother would have at, and I seem to remember them being either free or deeply discounted, difficult it was at times to feed a family of six on a engineer’s salary and as time whizzed by we all did our part to put food on the table.  Horrors of horrors which I sweetly set aside with no regrets.

 

Whoosh…forgiven but not forgotten… contained in another tome.

 

As adolescence found me mother nature became my kindest and closest companion when the family moved from the bowels of a southern Californian city losing its bucolic memory to layers and layers of concrete covering my companion’s beautiful face and hello wide open fields brimming with wonders to discover.

 

Riding graceful and elegant eucalyptus limbs with my two sisters we jounced up and down, bare feet dangling, hi ho Brandyberry (the name of my trusted steed), watch out Captain (the name of my sister’s rascally steed), horse crazy and tomboy nuts we all were.

 

One of my sisters won one year she did indeed.   She boycotted and went an entire year without wearing a dress to school.

 

Gasp.  To be in awe of your younger sister and finding yourself wearing her hand me ups because to spite being the eldest daughter, you are obviously the runt of the litter, but definitely not the most timid.

 

Joey Hayes, wherever he may be, can attest to that, and our tussle over the dodge ball and whose responsibility it was to return it.  I won that battle and many more before dedicating my life to being a peacemaker in an unconventional form.

 

The crisp magical moment in a grove of abandoned walnuts holding out a discarded paint tin top as a platter parading about.

 

A butterfly alights and we stare with our shared inner consciousness awareness the wonder that we can connect as one for a split fraction of a fleeting moment.

 

He/she is gone.

 

Her/his memory remains.

 

The joy of mud after the rain, when it used to seem to rain more, and bare feet in ecstasy wriggling and writhing and oozing and stomping loving sucking up the purest wonder up through the pores in the soles of my feet from mother nature’s sensuous and altogether delightful facial.

 

The spirit of the sixties was vibrant about me and rebel nature was cultivated and set firmly in stone.

 

When the builders and contractors came to our neck of Mother Nature’s hood we would not be deterred. Rascals that we were we would pull up the surveyors stakes one by one and when the building time came, I returned to the scene of our naughtiness to draw tiny drawings in the wet cement imagining them as tiny cave drawings sourced from my aching soul declaring, this is sacred ground, we must respect our mother as in earth, too many people coming too fast, we are losing our sense of self as we lose our open spaces.

 

I whizz back again to my grammar school playground and simultaneously jounce on the animated wild metal animals and fly the kite high in the sky with my brothers.  We possessed the sensibility and know how to be our own makers and our making of choice were kites fashioned from newspaper, string, glue, sticks, old sheets torn up for tails.

 

We let our hearts out high in the sky.

 

A safe way to escape.

 

And here it is that we connected with angels and all of our childhood woes and troubles were temporarily soothed and made better.

 

What wasn’t tended there could very well have been tended by the kiss of a boo boo and I do remember those as well as the generosity of parents when it came to the pets.

 

A cat who chose to follow me home, and the argument that ensued, nope, he followed me not you.  Guinea pigs, parakeets, chickens and ducks that ventured to the super market with, dogs, rabbits, sparrow hawks, red tailed hawks, a one eyed owl, and a raccoon that would only eat his eggs fried, and eventually.

 

A horse.

 

Before the horse came the discovery of my dearest adolescent to pre-teen friend, Lori Kennedy, who brazenly illustrated how to light her farts on fire and her sister introduced me to the wonders of the magic of Joan Baez.

 

Suddenly I am seconds away from a past encounter of playful listening to another being sharing the wonder of bits of her past, her story, and I embrace, and know, to be alive and human in the time/space continuum is a grand adventure.

 

Each and every person alive on this planet has something incredible to offer.

 

Suck it up, in and outward, I pause in this flow not knowing if I shall continue my own recollections that haven’t ventured passed pre-teen – the age I sat quietly all alone in the fields, surrounded by the comfort of the baccharis pilularis, weeping, I don’t want to grow up, not now, not ever, knowing and sensing that being an adult might require things of me that I wasn’t prepared to take on.

 

If I could just permanently pause, here and now, a child’s body, and pause I think I did.

 

It is indeed good to be alive.

 

Thank you life.

 

I am an old lady

My beauty has deepened

My heart has softened

The time I have left is less than what is behind me

 

What shall I make of it

Where shall I go

What shall I do

 

Nothing

 

I shall

 

Simply be

 

Present in this Moment

 

And be glad!

 

To be me

 

 

I am suddenly a little old lady

 

My beauty has faded

 

Less of life is before me than behind me

 

I pause a bit to reflect and conclude

 

I have had a remarkable life

 

The family I was born into was a mixed adventure, but an adventure it was, and training ground for what was destined to become.

 

As a babe, young child, and youth - the fond memories foretold a bit of my destiny.

 

Images that pop – the fun of a large family, tussling with siblings, chasing older brothers, sharing rooms and a bunk with sisters.   The wonder of drinking rainwater from gutters, making mud pies out of orange juice, scouting for lady bugs in every green bushes.

 

The friends in the neighborhood at a time when neighbors were generally so very friendly and adventuring home to home, experiencing many toys, many different ways homes are organized always welcomed, always loved.

 

My father teaching me to ride a bicycle and letting go, falling, and getting up and trying again, which now that I look back, was a repeated theme. 

 

Try once, fall, fail, get hurt, don’t give up on the desire, try again, and eventually, success – whizzing round the streets on your bike, or with your dance company in future years to other lands, cities, countries even my inner adventurer wishing – even other planets.

 

Coming home from a school fair, the goldfish in a bag, hand in hand with the father you love dearly, having sagely learned how to compartmentalize experiences, stave things off, in order to be present and fully enjoy the moment.

 

Tears to my eyes at memory of my first performing event but I whizz back first to Kindergarten and the magic of FINGER PAINTING. Always drawn to scribbling, etch-a-sketching, drawing monsters (perhaps my inner own) with gaping fang tooth maws that matched tone for tone the brilliance of the Munster Family, our own Munster family, I modeled after my brothers endless obsessions.

 

Dressed in a cardboard teapot painted blue I sing and tip over my spout.

I smile in the moment and it is the memory of my smile at the joy of performing singing I am a little …

 

Winchells day old donuts my mother would have at, and I seem to remember them being either free or deeply discounted, difficult it was at times to feed a family of six on a engineer’s salary and as time whizzed by we all did our part to put food on the table.  Horrors of horrors which I sweetly set aside with no regrets.

 

Whoosh…forgiven but not forgotten… contained in another tome.

 

As adolescence found me mother nature became my kindest and closest companion when the family moved from the bowels of a southern Californian city losing its bucolic memory to layers and layers of concrete covering my companion’s beautiful face and hello wide open fields brimming with wonders to discover.

 

Riding graceful and elegant eucalyptus limbs with my two sisters we jounced up and down, bare feet dangling, hi ho Brandyberry (the name of my trusted steed), watch out Captain (the name of my sister’s rascally steed), horse crazy and tomboy nuts we all were.

 

One of my sisters won one year she did indeed.   She boycotted and went an entire year without wearing a dress to school.

 

Gasp.  To be in awe of your younger sister and finding yourself wearing her hand me ups because to spite being the eldest daughter, you are obviously the runt of the litter, but definitely not the most timid.

 

Joey Hayes, wherever he may be, can attest to that, and our tussle over the dodge ball and whose responsibility it was to return it.  I won that battle and many more before dedicating my life to being a peacemaker in an unconventional form.

 

The crisp magical moment in a grove of abandoned walnuts holding out a discarded paint tin top as a platter parading about.

 

A butterfly alights and we stare with our shared inner consciousness awareness the wonder that we can connect as one for a split fraction of a fleeting moment.

 

He/she is gone.

 

Her/his memory remains.

 

The joy of mud after the rain, when it used to seem to rain more, and bare feet in ecstasy wriggling and writhing and oozing and stomping loving sucking up the purest wonder up through the pores in the soles of my feet from mother nature’s sensuous and altogether delightful facial.

 

The spirit of the sixties was vibrant about me and rebel nature was cultivated and set firmly in stone.

 

When the builders and contractors came to our neck of Mother Nature’s hood we would not be deterred. Rascals that we were we would pull up the surveyors stakes one by one and when the building time came, I returned to the scene of our naughtiness to draw tiny drawings in the wet cement imagining them as tiny cave drawings sourced from my aching soul declaring, this is sacred ground, we must respect our mother as in earth, too many people coming too fast, we are losing our sense of self as we lose our open spaces.

 

I whizz back again to my grammar school playground and simultaneously jounce on the animated wild metal animals and fly the kite high in the sky with my brothers.  We possessed the sensibility and know how to be our own makers and our making of choice were kites fashioned from newspaper, string, glue, sticks, old sheets torn up for tails.

 

We let our hearts out high in the sky.

 

A safe way to escape.

 

And here it is that we connected with angels and all of our childhood woes and troubles were temporarily soothed and made better.

 

What wasn’t tended there could very well have been tended by the kiss of a boo boo and I do remember those as well as the generosity of parents when it came to the pets.

 

A cat who chose to follow me home, and the argument that ensued, nope, he followed me not you.  Guinea pigs, parakeets, chickens and ducks that ventured to the super market with, dogs, rabbits, sparrow hawks, red tailed hawks, a one eyed owl, and a raccoon that would only eat his eggs fried, and eventually.

 

A horse.

 

Before the horse came the discovery of my dearest adolescent to pre-teen friend, Lori Kennedy, who brazenly illustrated how to light her farts on fire and her sister introduced me to the wonders of the magic of Joan Baez.

 

Suddenly I am seconds away from a past encounter of playful listening to another being sharing the wonder of bits of her past, her story, and I embrace, and know, to be alive and human in the time/space continuum is a grand adventure.

 

Each and every person alive on this planet has something incredible to offer.

 

Suck it up, in and outward, I pause in this flow not knowing if I shall continue my own recollections that haven’t ventured passed pre-teen – the age I sat quietly all alone in the fields, surrounded by the comfort of the baccharis pilularis, weeping, I don’t want to grow up, not now, not ever, knowing and sensing that being an adult might require things of me that I wasn’t prepared to take on.

 

If I could just permanently pause, here and now, a child’s body, and pause I think I did.

 

It is indeed good to be alive.

 

Thank you life.

 

I am an old lady

My beauty has deepened

My heart has softened

The time I have left is less than what is behind me

 

What shall I make of it

Where shall I go

What shall I do

 

Nothing

 

I shall

 

Simply be

 

Present in this Moment

 

And be glad!

 

To be me