A Movement for Women Who Continue to Endure

As far back as my memories go, the woman I knew as Mother had been shaped in such a way that her thinking and memories were skewed toward distrust and imputing wrong motives. That’s just how it was. My own life path was steered by those tendencies. But there are consistencies to the telling and retelling — enough that I can knit together moments of significance in her life. Some parts are missing. Other parts are too horrific to believe. I have her contemporaneous writings — her poetry, her short stories, her own memoir written by her own hand, some published, but many not — are my sources for the retelling now.

The account of Alice Lorraine Hill's survival and perseverance into old age is a story of the human spirit's ability to adapt and maladapt in ways that should never, ever be demanded of a girl. Join me as we retrace the journey of her life, and I will share the traumas that I know about. Her story deserves to be told. If any part of Alice’s story touches your own, then I ask you to help make sure the cycle of tragedy ends.

This telling will take time. We will start and the beginning of Alice’s life.

To be continued.

The high cost of survival was paid by Alice’s body, her health, and her state of mind. Those consequences did not stop with her; they affected her children as well. The trauma carved its way into Alice’s spirit and left an indelible mark on her physiology and psyche, and it was multigenerational. Awareness of adverse childhood experiences has peaked and waned. If human behavior is not part of your vocation, the concept of “global neglect” is not going to be part of your everyday lexicon. The fact that it happens at all shames any society that calls itself advanced. We will explore that more as we go.