Can we talk?

Nine days ago I completed a collage depicting Josef Mengele. It took me several days to settle down from doing it. When it became known I was DID and had been in a government program to deliberately create dissociation, that is when I dove into research about common ties of military to CIA to cults (exploited children "business") and Operation Paperclip. I joined a support group to be able to talk about the bizarre memories only to find out many had already done the same research, although I always did my own as back up. First, the collage.


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Several survivors indicated they had memories of Mengele (a/k/a Dr. Green). We were all in our 40s and 50s then. I couldn't imagine that the U.S. would have allowed Mengele to touch "our country's" children for the purpose of abuse after the holocaust events became known. I was very naive about the country and our history. I had memories of Nazis but wasn't certain of names. Alters have shown me but there will never be proof. Suffice it to say I was in Germany and was around Nazis in several underground locations.

I invite you to do your own research but I'm not going to look up dates again. It's in a huge stash of paper from a decade ago. Secret Agenda is a good start that validates Mengele was a part of Paperclip. He was both in Germany (at least at designated times for programming during my time there) and in the U.S. at various times. Carol Rutz has done extensive research on Mengele's whereabouts disclosed in her book A Nation Betrayed. The possibility he had access to me at birth and before his published death in the 70s, is there. His pictures as an older man were known by my alters. I hadn't known the name though until several years into healing when his pictures from later decades became available on the internet.

My point is I couldn't allow myself to believe Mengele had been anywhere near me and he had not come up in my memories until a year or so into healing. It's also possible that they called each other by famous Nazi names with their M.O. of unbelievability. Numerous survivors recall a Dr. Green and Dr. White. I have few names that come up. My alters gave me images over and over again of people whose identity became known after I saw the real person on a documentary or in an article, along with appropriate holy sh*t triggered response.

With Mengele, I began to hear internal messages that I had been born virtually into his hands. In 1952, Operation Paperclip had begun and Aberdeen Proving Grounds was the primary first stopping point for Nazis being assigned throughout the U.S. at military bases, hospitals, and research facilities. That's where I was born. Videos of Mengele's history show he evaded capture after the war and escaped to another country. However, his vast research on twins made him an "asset" apparently. It's documented that he had worked with the U.S. and his entry and exit was facilitated by our government.

My earliest collages show a single combat boot. Images of Mengele after the war meant nothing to me. It was in the second video I acquired of Mengele that included his voice singing a bit of a song. As soon as I heard his voice, I freaked to the point of not being me. I was way in the background. I was also home alone. I ran into the bathroom screaming, locked the door, and curled up on the floor in a fetal position where I stayed for hours. The thought...the reality...of Mengele's hands having been on me was unbearable. I was raised Jewish. I was obsessed with holocaust history. I felt Mengele's level of evil through that knowledge. Flooding into my personal being was something I cannot truly put into words. Often, before my memories, I said I felt as if I were a reincarnated Anne Frank.

In processing the new collage, one of the answers I got was that I wasn't allowed to look at him. That reminded me of my client who always knew my shoes because she wasn't allowed to look at her abusers. With Mengele's reputation, I understand that was likely the case but I would have seen his boot. His voice, however, was blood curdling. Since that was the one sense "open" to me with him, I would have internalized that as trauma.

In saving items for collages, I never know what I'm going to use. The words "Omg, I'm a green crayon" I thought were fun or cute. But placed at the bottom of the Mengele collage caused another freakish reaction with his "code name" of Dr. Green. Was Mengele really an abuser or "just" another Paperclip Nazi? My personal validation is the voice. I simply did not believe it could be true. It's the last thing I would have wanted to be true about what I knew of the program(s) I was placed into at birth.

Let the truth be known

For the first few years of my recovery, I journaled my trauma as it oozed from my subconscious as well as my healing process. What surfaced was a world I never knew existed. I've spoken of healing through collages. I have several trunks full of collages and research and drawings and doodles and scribblings. I gave a short presentation at the 1998 SMART conference on "scrapbook therapy" and how it could benefit healing as well as internal communication. I gave a longer presentation at the 1999 SMART conference. It was also at that time I had completed my book Paperclip Dolls documenting my healing to that point. My pen name and survivor name was Annie McKenna.

It's safe to say I really didn't know who I was at the time memories came up that included such government programs as Operation Paperclip (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4443934.stm) and MK-Ultra (http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~pellr/lansberry/mkultra.pdf). I found numerous survivors online with the same type of memories. I was deathly afraid of seeking a therapist who would be safe because of the content of my surfacing story. Becoming a psychotherapist didn't become a thought in my mind until 2000. I was able to enter a grad school counseling program in summer 2001. I made the transition from the world of what has been dubbed conspiracy theory to functionally healed survivor entering a new life chapter in a new career.

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In hindsight, I realize how focused I was on the unbelievability of my own memories and researching for hours a day only to find continued validation rather than information negating the memories that came from my murky dissociated past. Now that I'm beyond integration with much slowed new memory content and many resolved triggers, I realize now it doesn't matter what happened to me--only that I healed. But dealing with the memory content is, I believe, a stage of healing requiring focus to understand the breadth and intensity of the abuse.

I have been living in fear of having been Annie McKenna and now living my life as Grace the psychotherapist-blogger-writer-advocate. Last night I completed my application to the Obama Transition Project. I wanted to no longer have to hide that I was Annie McKenna. The new presidency is about openness. I shouldn't have had to feel shame about my history, but having had DID is still not completely accepted in my own profession, although it's the focus of treatment for my professional colleagues. Therapists who are also survivors mostly stay in the shadows so we can do the work we want to help others through that difficult healing journey.

For the first time ever, a professional organization of therapists who work with clients with DID, has opened discussion of the world of ritual and government abuse, both with the common denominator of organized pedophilia. For a therapist to speak of ritual abuse or government mind control has been taboo. Major strides have been made in the past few years. A presentation by professional colleagues was given to the United Nations to highlight the torturous methods used by groups of pedophiles to create dissociation. This is known to be a worldwide issue.

After 11 years of healing and living in both worlds, I still can't say what really happened to me other than a sh*tload of trauma. I know certain things were very real while other details are fuzzy. I was led to so much information about government abuse of its own citizens that I could not believe in anything political. I am aware of officials in my local government and/or agencies that have at least one person protecting the secrets of organized pedophilia. It is my hope that, under the new presidency, there might be a commission or task force to address these layers of government with the secrets as well as redirect the focus for survivors of abuse to safely report known "cult" activity and seek help. It would also require that health insurance companies be mandated to cover the more intense therapy needed for a survivor to heal from DID, and a new way for all of law enforcement and other helping agencies to view dissociation and work with victims of sophisticated abuse.

I want to be part of that change. The reason you don't see other therapists jumping on the bandwagon with this issue is that careers could be at stake. I'm in a place right now where my career is on hold and I can advocate from my home. I want it to be okay to be me to include my first few years of healing.

My book is no longer available although I'm going to try to make it available through Kindle. The SMART website still sells cassette tapes of each presentation from each SMART conference if anyone is interested. I don't benefit from sales. I've spoken in the Forbidden Topic blog about most techniques for which I gave presentations. What I have avoided in the blog are details about government and other key words that tend to cause the greater public to immediately dismiss the survivor. I am a survivor of that crap. I lived to heal. I lived to help others heal. And now I would like to be part of the change--to be proud of my country and my government once again.

Photo: My "nursery school" graduation photo. My mother has no recollection of my having been at nursery school, nor does my older sister. She was age 6 when I was 3. Look at the size of the diploma. Where are the other children? Why is "no one home" in my expression? Why is it a dirty area? Where was I when my mother thought I was in nursery school? If you look at the photo in enlarged detail, you can see the bruises under my lip and the blood on my lips. My mother always showed me that picture describing it as nursery school when she used to show it to me. Part of my manufactured childhood.