From the Editor

Uncle Daddy, Nazis, and Fascism in the US

Fascism has not suddenly burst onto the scene in the US with the election of a single president.

Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun at Peenemünde in 1941, and at NASA in 1970.

In the late 1970’s, my father co-owned a strip mine in northern Alabama. There was a labor dispute, I never knew the exact details, but the local KKK was supporting the union. The dispute wore on quite awhile until, as my father told it, a few clansmen took him into a shed on the property, held a gun to his head, and told him to get his yankee ass out of the state. Not long afterward, we moved back to Detroit.  Continue reading

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From the Editor

Between Two Worlds—The Emergence of Truth in Turbulent Times

The world was our solace. Now the world is reflecting the experiences of our childhood.

Tidal Reflection by Janet Thomas

A note regarding the following: I posted this on social media and it was one of the most challenging and frightening things I’ve done as a survivor. I wrote a book about my experiences (Day Breaks Over Dharamsala), but writing a book is done in safety and solitude. Posting on social media, however, is exposure up-for-grabs. It was excruciating. But these times are excruciating. They call out for our voices in all their vulnerable warrior complexity. “Coming out” to one another helps us all. “Coming out” to the world can now help the world.

Continue reading

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In the News

Karen Wetmore: Investigating CIA Experiments in Vermont

Karen Wetmore’s memoir, Surviving Evil: CIA Mind Control Experiments in Vermont, is a moving account of her childhood and confinement as a teenage psychiatric patient in Vermont hospitals. Like many survivors of extreme trauma, she still struggles to make sense of her experiences, but unlike most, she’s done years of investigative work, tracking down every available medical document related to her case. The records revealed she’d been treated by doctors listed as contractors of the CIA’s behavioral experimentation program MKUltra. After her book was published in 2014, she continued to ply the CIA with multiple FOIA requests. Their most recent non-response responses to her were telling enough, they claim the records she’d requested are still classified.

She says, “The Vermont press and the national press remain silent on the information I documented in my book, despite having been informed. A foreign journalist told me that he couldn’t understand why American journalists were not, as he put it, “All over this story.” Again I ask the question: What did CIA do in Vermont institutions that requires such measures to ensure secrecy fifty years later?  Beginning in September 2013, I decided to try to find out.

Read the rest of her important revelations on Fire Dog Lake, or order her book.

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Art

Polyvore

Examples of Polyvore sets by Gaylin Laughlin. Used with permission.

At first glance, Polyvore seems like an unlikely place to harbor a community of trauma survivors using art to heal. Continue reading

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Features

Qualities and Knowledge Useful for Survivors and Therapists Working with Dissociative Identity

Brian, a therapist who has worked with survivors of severe trauma for more than 30 years, lays out the finer points of what’s important for both therapists and survivors in navigating a path to healing. –Eds.

Personhood

Tolerance for Ambiguity

Integrating a trauma narrative, especially if it is the result of sophisticated mind control procedures, is a complex and lengthy process where subjective states (hypnosis, drugs) and manipulated states (electric shock, psychic-driving, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation) are mixed with objective states (veridical memory of ritual/sexual abuse or any other experiences meant to terrorize.) Continue reading

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Features

Disinformation and DID: the Politics of Memory

This article was originally published on DIDiva.com and other sites, but we thought it important enough to republish here in our first issue. -Eds.

This essay is not meant to be comprehensive. Instead it is the attempt to connect some dots that are rarely considered or discussed—hopefully providing a new way to view the politics of memory and of DID in particular. It is designed to generate discussion and suggest areas of further study. There is an old saying: “Don’t bite my finger—look where I am pointing.”
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Features

Who We Are: Janet Thomas

For this first issue, as a means to further introduce you to Borne, we thought to offer you selections of our own work. -Eds.

Janet Thomas is an author, editor, playwright, and teacher. Over the last few years, she’s traveled to India to teach the art of memoir writing. Below is an excerpt of her 2011 Nautilus Award winning book.


Day Breaks Over DharamsalaDay Breaks Over Dharamsala, A Memoir of Life Lost and Found

Chapter 10

For more than twenty years I have wrestled with, and been wrestled by, the truth. When I collapsed in the middle of my kitchen between Christmas and New Year’s, 1984, I had no idea that I was falling off the edge of my world. I had no idea that the inner framework of my life was imploding, and that the rest of my life would become a psychological reconstruction zone. The moment was visceral and paralyzing. I could no longer make my self up. But it would be years before I could even begin to describe what happened to me. And the way in to my truth was through lies. Continue reading

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Art

Who We Are: Lynn Schirmer

For this first issue, as a means to further introduce you to Borne, we thought to offer you selections of our own work. -Eds.

The works included here are typical, drawing is my primary medium, but I also paint and make sculpture. Continue reading

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