Dear friends, we have another little one who needs our prayers for his survival and growth. He is Vincent and his great grandma Katie is one of our survivor friends, please read from her blog and remember her and her great grandson in your thoughts and prayers.

Keepers and JM

Hi loved ones,

My precious tiny little angel great grandson is holding his own. Today he is off the respirator. He has a eye infection but is responding to antibiotics. He has started taking breast milk through a tube.(Kayla has planned to breast feed all along). She is pumping her breast daily for the milk. The baby will receive antibodies from Kayla’s milk which will benefit Vincent greatly. He has gained back the weight he had lost. Although he is in a incubator now to control his body heat, I feel in my heart we are all blessed by his well being. For one such tiny human to be born so small and to thrive is a miracle and blessing from God himself.

I have seen life as well as death for many years now as a nurse, but it never ceases to amaze me what technology is available today, from just 30 years ago in medicine. The hospital has some very experienced doctors and staff to take care of the best . I have faith the baby shall do well under their care.

Kayla and Andrew are doing well. Kayla is worried about her baby, but she knows he is in good hands. One day she plans going into the neonatal field too as a nurse. Kayla is in very much monster, big, bad, momma bear protective mold concerning the baby. If you even sneeze she goes ape.

They are staying at the Ronald McDonald house during the babies hospitalization, for the ride is a long one home and back. Andrew went back to work, but he is home right after. Both are going to be fine parents. I am so proud of them.

I get to hold the baby tomorrow. Kayla has got to hold him once, and it was just so precious. We have raised my granddaughter well.

Thank you all for your prayers and kindred words. I cannot express how much you all have touched all of the family. Kayla and Andrew are aware of you prayers. She has asked me to formally thank each and every one of you so in this post I am.

God Bless you all.

All my love,

Katie

The little  girl above by the name of Hannah is getting ready for open heart surgery to repair a hole in the upper chamber of her heart. Little Hannah is not even two years old yet and has a very big health problem. She is our friend Kat n all’s little niece and she is asking for prayers for her niece. Due to the location of the hole it cannot be done with a catheter and open surgery is required. She also has a breathing problem which means she has a tracheotomy tube in her now and needs oxygen when she sleeps.

Please include little Hannah and her family in your prayers for a successful surgery and recovery.

peace and blessings to all

Keepers

PLEASE NOTE; Items given away through KEEPERSKORNER are part of our ministry dedicated to improving the quality of life for those who live in multiplicity. Our available services are not open to the general public so we can make sure we have enough for our sister survivors. All requests are filled solely at the discretion of KEEPERSKORNER.

The above picture is of beautiful Grounding Stones that KEEPERSKORNER is now offering to our fellow multiples and sister survivors at no cost to you. One stone is the Shamrock Stone which is a real shamrock encased in plastic. This stone is accompanied with an Irish Blessing Card on the packaging. Another stone is the Wishing Star which is an angel encased in a plastic stone. And the last one is Worry Stone which encases an angel in an oval plastic stone. Each stone comes with its own little bit of information and suggestions on how to use that particular stone. The Original Worry Stone comes in it’s own little envelope. The Wishing Star comes in it’s own little sack along with the information booklet.

Keepers have used these stones as Grounding Stones for years now. Anywhere you look around KEEPERSKORNER you will find various stones lying around so that keepers can pick them up without difficulty. Whenever keepers go out, we carry one in our pocket to help us should we need grounding while shopping or lunching with a friend. Not only are these stones wonderful grounding tools but each one is beautiful in its own right.

Since these stones have cost a bit to acquire and since our supply is limited at present–we ask that you request only one stone at this point. We will be happy to ship one to the sister survivors who think these stones might be of help in staying grounded.

Please use our CONTACT US TAB to send in your request for the particular grounding stone you would like to have.

peace and blessings,

JM and keepers

Keepers come from a family with many professionals in it.  In fact, several of our relatives chose teaching as their career.  Our mother was a teacher as was one of our brothers and a female cousin of ours, also, became a teacher.  Only in hindsight do keepers realize that not one of these people chose their career out of a desire to educate the young.  In fact, just the opposite seems to have been the motive of each relative when choosing teaching as their career.

Therapist after therapist has asked keepers how the abuse that occurred in our childhood home never came to the attention of the proper authorities.  You see, for the four older children in our family, the abuse was considered quite severe and, at times. blatantly obvious.  Still, it was like no adult ever even noticed.  Through our therapy, keepers have come to realize that our mother being a teacher was a huge part of “keeping the family secrets”.  Keepers mother always taught at whatever school keepers and our brother were attending at the time.  This made Mom an ever present force in the lives of her children.  In fact, people would often comment on how lucky keepers were to have Mom always right there with us. For one thing, our mother kept us out of the realm of public schools and educated us through Parochial Schools.  Having our teachers as her peers set up a situation where Mom was always believed much more than her children.  Unusual bruises or burns were discounted when Mom would explain them away as clumsiness.  Any time one of us tried to tell what was happening at home–our words made it through the school grapevine in only a few minutes and good old mom was right there to discredit what we were claiming was true. In fact, keepers were often faced with the HONOR THY MOTHER AND FATHER commandment when we tried to say something.  A few of the nuns who taught us also accused keepers of being the worst daughters in the world when one of said anything negative about our mother. And keepers missed a great deal of school in childhood because our main job was to tend to our dying Grandma.  Being a teacher at the school enabled Mom to have keepers out of school so much without anyone even questioning the whys and wherefore of our absences.  I don’t know if Mom ever harmed one of her students but I do know she knew about keepers being abused and never did anything to protect us or speak out on what was happening.  And I know that good old Mom literally sold keepers out to the highest bidder more than once which often makes me wonder how she was with her own students in her classroom.

Then, there was our brother who was a teacher in spite of having very serious medical issues that were a direct result of neglect in his childhood.  He, too, taught in Grade Schools.  There were always stories about him floating around that spoke of his tendency to be inappropriate with young girls.  But no one ever did anything about it.  Only after his death did his wife clean out of his office at the school where he taught.  A couple of his desk drawers were locked.  Upon prying those drawers open, it was revealed that each one was full of magazines containing child p*rn*graphy.  This brother was, also, very active as coach for children’s sports teams for many years.  Keepers have come to fully believe that the only reason our brother chose teaching as his profession was that it gave him great access to his victims since the magazines in his desk truly point to him being a ped*phile.

Then, there is our cousin who has taught in secondary schools her entire career.  The only schools where she has taught have been the most dangerous schools in the area.  She tells tales of students in her classroom with bullets in their headbands.  She tells stories of how her life has been threatened by this student or that one.  Only as she and keepers spent time together a few years ago did she begin to reveal the truth of her dealing with her students.  Young teenage girls would confide in her that the teenager was being abused within the home.  As a professional, our cousin was legally required to report such allegations to DCFS.  However, her advice to the teenage girl was always to not “rock the boat” by saying anything to anyone else.  In essence, our cousin ignored the allegations of sexual abuse that came her way as a teacher.  Keepers believe that this is all true just as she relayed it to us because this is the cousin who confided in keepers that some of our young cousins in today were still being abused by keeper’s abuser and then pleaded with keepers to remain silent on what we were told as our cousin was afraid the mother of these youngsters would be “upset” if keepers came forward with what we were being told.  I have no idea why this cousin became a teacher in the first place but it does not seem like her motive was educating or helping young people at all.

Keepers have raised three external children which means we have dealt with many teachers over the years.  And we, also, have friends who are teachers.  Keepers do know that most teachers are dedicating to educating our young and care very much about their students.  Our own external children have had teachers that keepers respected greatly.  And teachers who really went the distance in helping our children learn when they were having difficulty in a given subject.  We also know teachers who have had the courage to report abuse in the home of a child when it was revealed to him or her.  From what keepers have seen and experienced, these good teachers are the norm much more than the exception.

However, in our family of origin, being a teacher meant something very different.  Keepers take no pride at all in coming from a family of teachers because their intent seems much more sinister and deceptive than it ever should have been.  From keepers perspective, the teachers in our family of origin only served to take the abuse that occurred within our family and spread it throughout the schools and classrooms where our mother and our brother and our cousin were employed.

To the good teachers out there–Thank you so much for all you do to educated our youngsters and protect them from abusive homes.

peace and blessings,

keepers

Over the last ten or twelve days, keepers trying to blog has become a very difficult situation.  As we stated before, our new blog on KEEPERSKORNER has been taken down for now so we are using this (our present and future backup blog) for communicating with our blog friends.  However, another part of this situation is that keepers have lost our original blog on which we wrote for over a year.  Losing that blog is difficult for us because that was the main blog where keepers told a little of our story and put ourselves out there so that people could get to know the multiple behind our ministry at KEEPERSKORNER.  To us, that was important because who and what keepers are influences our choices in our ministry greatly.  But, as they say, everything happens for a reason and we know that must be true in this case as well as others.  So, keepers are thinking we need to begin telling our story one more time–only with greater distance and more experience under our belts–which may enable us to tell our story from a whole new perspective this time around.

The body that keepers occupy is now 58 years old.  We were born into a family where both parents were serious alcoholics.  We had one older brother and three younger siblings.  On our mother’s side–our family of origin was chock full of perpetrators who placed no value at all on little children.  We are also mothers of one son and two daughters–all of whom have been estranged from us for several years now.  And keepers are Grandmothers to several little children.  Truth be told, keepers wanted very much to be part of those little ones lives but that was not meant to be for us.  We have seen our grandbabies only a couple of times since they were born over the last five years.

We have several people in our system that we consider artists.  Beth is our eleven year old alter who works with markers and colored pencils.  Ellen Keeper is one of our adult alters who paints in watercolors.  And Maggie is another adult alter who works with pastels and does only portraits.  Sarah Christine is our 18 year old alter who does calligraphy.  Yashi is our Asian alter who works on rice paper and does Chinese Calligrapy along with some Sumi Art (Her work has yet to be made public).  And Polly is our 14 year old alter who writes poetry.  Much of keepers work is displayed on our website KEEPERSKORNER and is offered free to our sister multiples who find meaning in any given piece.  Keepers have done gallery showings but did not enjoy the experience very much and found it difficult to accept money for our artwork so we have not done this type of displaying our work since beginning our ministry here at KK.  And keepers have done a great deal of pro bono work for the St. Louis Artist’s Guild (where we have been a member in good standing for years now) and for local churches and for events like CHILD ABUSE AWARENESS WEEK.  Keepers have enjoyed doing pro bono work over the years but have begun to limit it in our lives as our focus with our art has shifted over the last eighteen months.

Several therapists have told keepers that we are a textbook case of MPD (we still it MPD instead of DID because that was the name when we were first diagnosed.)  We have lived a life filled with body memories and very low self esteem and minimal functioning or cooperation within our system.  At one point, keepers carried five separate pairs of glasses with us wherever we went.  Each pair was a different prescription customized for a specific alter.  Fortunately, a few years ago, keepers found an eye doctor who put all five prescriptions into one pair of glasses.  The company that made the glasses tell us our pair is the most complicated they have ever constructed.  Keepers have also had serious physical problems over the years.  We have weighed up to 406 pounds (due to a medication where we gained 14 pound a week for over a year).  And we have weighed as little as 100 pounds.  Needless to say, our closet contains a multitude of sizes for various weight periods.  We have alters who can communicate in different languages.  We have an alter who is deaf and mute who communicates with sign language.  Who have an alter who spent her early years as a dancer.

Keepers therapeutic life began in the early 1970’s when we saw a psychiatrist for a while.  Our JM was in the military and keepers were having a very difficult time with that kind of life.  Our psychiatrist was very compassionate and obtained a Humanitarian Discharge for our JM so he could be with keepers on a more regular basis.  After that, our next therapeutic experience began in the early 1980’s with a woman who readily admitted that she could not make sense out of keepers and withdrew as our therapist.  Then, we saw a second therapist for five years.  She was the one who diagnosed our MPD.  However, she was not a woman who could work adequately with something as complicated as multiplicity.  Then, we moved on to the man we call our former therapist–who was our T of record for 17 long years.

Keepers former therapist was of the belief that there was nothing to our system except repressed memories and abreactions.  In the 17 years we worked with him, we never once had a conversation where abreactive work was not the focal point.  He spent all of our time in session or on the phone digging at repressed memories.  Unfortunately, keepers had no way to know any better so we thought his treatment was appropriate and went along with it.  But keepers were continually faced with the fact that we were not getting any better (in fact we only seemed to get worse).  We had no ability to stabilize and no ability to get beyond our past solely because our therapist was constantly keeping everything unearthed.  Only now do keepers know that our continual decline was due to the therapist doing very bad therapy with us.

Keepers have lived a mostly reclusive life for years now.  Largely, this is because we never had anyone to teach us how to function in the world.  Our former therapist spent many years separating keepers from each other and discouraging communication between us which made us very unstable even within our home.  I am very sad to say that the many years of incompetent therapy were the very years when our children were growing up and so influenced by what was happening to their mother.  In the life of a child, 17 years takes up most of one’s youth.  Unfortunately, keepers children got the worst of keepers during those years of their lives.

Physically, keepers have always had such bad posture that breathing was almost impossible.  Our system had begun “panic breathing” (breathing using the shoulder muscles instead of the diaphragm).  We had severe spinal problems that had left us unable to move easily.  Our spine had been operated on at the cervical level which did little good.  Due to childhood abuse, keepers had much of our large intestines removed in our early twenties.  We have also been through doctors believing this body had cancer of the cervix which entailed many biopsies which showed–eventually–that cancer was not  our problem.  Then, in 2001 keepers went through a major breast cancer scare which entailed ultrasound and biopsies and a multitude of other tests.  Even today, keepers have a mass in our right breast that must be watched and attended to regularly.  Unfortunately, keepers have lost faith in the medical profession and do not follow our required mammogram schedule as we should.

Keepers also spent a great many years as addicts.  We were addicted to prescription drugs like muscle relaxers and pain killers and anti depressants and sleeping pills.  We also had an alter who drank heavily while taking these medications.  Once, keepers were unconscious for four days.  Once we wound up in the hospital.  Still, somehow, our addictions went on without change for a very long time.  Since keepers remember our mother giving us shots of bourbon to make us sleep when this body was only three, we have come to understand that addictions were not only inherited but learned behaviors within our family of origin.

Keepers mother passed away in 2002.  Within hours of our receiving the call that she was gone from this earth, keepers began to change and to heal.  We stopped using medications of any kind and we ended our life of one alcoholic binge after another.  The morning after the news came, we went to a hairstylist who took us from grey to blond and found a style that suited almost all keepers (except maybe our boy alters).  We began following our life long dream to do a charitable organization that would improve the quality of life for multiples everywhere which is now known as our ministry here at KEEPERSKORNER.  Keepers found the strength to report our former therapist (and see our case through).  We also reported the uncle who had harmed us so badly because keepers were given information that not only he but his adult son were still molesting children in this family.  And keepers had to report one of our own external children for behaviors that were harmful to our grandchildren.  That child has accused us of being mean and vengeful for standing up for our grandchildren but it was the only way keepers could protect our grandbabies since this adult child of ours ignored our several requests that we dealt with the issues of his behaviors in keepers therapy sessions.  Keepers are glad that we found the strength to do our reporting because our former therapist was convicted and our uncle was removed from the home in a way where he will never harm a child again and our own child got help for his problem which tells us we did the right thing in spite of the fact that the cost to keepers has been tremendous.

One of the most painful things that ever happened to keepers occurred a little more than three years ago.  We had reunited with our family of origin (after many years of not having them in our lives) because our youngest daughter was getting married and wanted her aunt and uncles at her wedding.  When we got back in touch with our siblings, we also reestablished contact with a female cousin of ours.  J (this cousin) and keepers began spending a good deal of time together.  One Sunday afternoon, J confided in keepers that her father (our uncle) had confessed to her on his deathbed (some 9 years before) that everything keepers remembered about our childhood was true and that he knew of our abuse even when keepers were very little.  The fact that J took nine long years to give us this information destroyed our relationship with her.  The fact that J was a teacher made this situation even worse because it meant she would not report abuse that came to her attention in her career.  This happened to be the same Sunday that J confided in keepers that our uncle and his son were still abusing children within the family.  J wanted keepers to remain quiet because the mother of the children being abused might be upset when the truth came out since our uncle was her husband.  Keepers could not remain quiet about all of this and went to DCFS immediately which ended all relationships within our family of origin.  It also left keepers with unending pain over the realization of the kind of people keepers come from.

In today, keepers are healthy and happy on a physical level and an emotional level and a spiritual level.  We let go of our Catholic upbringing and found our own faith in God without the structure of organized religion even though we associate a lot with ministries based on God’s love.  We have breathed normally for years now.  Keepers will always remember the moment when our breathing switched from panic mode to breathing from the diaphragm because it was so shocking to us.  Our body now stands straight and is supple in spite of our being so long in the tooth.  We live here at KEEPERSKORNER–peacefully and quietly (for the most part)–going out a couple of times per week to lunch with a friend or be out and about with our JM.  Keepers do not drive because our dissociative tendencies do not mix well with our being behind the wheel.

Keepers look back and feel how the pain of being different and feeling so alone almost destroyed any chance we had on this earth.  Even in today, our aloneness can consume us when our JM is working many hours at his day job.  But, something about us is very different because we took our dream of helping other multiples have a better life than keepers had and turned that vision into our ministry at KEEPERSKORNER which is what our lives are all about in today.

peace and blessings,

keepers

our host was doing their scheduled maintenance and they realized one of their hard drives was failing. They took our blog off line to prevent anymore data from being lost or corrupted. they are trying to recover the data and it s/b back up by Feb 28. Many thanks to Elvina for her help regarding the blog and helping us understand things more.

peace and blessings

keepers

Keepers are back to blogging at this blog where we will stay from now on.  We are in the process of moving the rest of the pages from our website to this blog as I type.  Once we are finished, KEEPERSKORNER (the website) will be deleted permanently and our ministry at KK will function totally from this blog.  Thank you for your patience and understanding.

peace and blessings,

keepers