Maslow’s Hierarchy, Child Abuse, and Thriving in a Pandemic

Maslow’s Hierarchy was magical for me to encounter as child neglect and abuse survivor. I suddenly had a way to understand the rest of the world. It was like discovering Cliffs Notes for a foreign language I was trying to learn as fast as humanly possible because no one else spoke my language.

This is why I’m so excited to learn that Child Abuse Pediatricians are a legitimate subspecialty now. They are the ASL translators for all neglected, abused, and traumatized children whose mere existence makes the world feel horrified and uncomfortable.

In addition to performing the CONSTANT threat/risk analysis calculations I’ve had to do to survive or navigate that Physiological Needs (Red Zone) every day since childhood, I’ve ALSO been expected to maintain some base level of cultural and emotional competency in those other 4 levels (yay for “fake it till you make it”). More often than not I’ve had to do it simply to reduce the burden/inconvenience on others when I bump into them while navigating life in their world.

Reducing my size and inconvenience in areas of friendship, family, intimacy, esteem, and self-actualization is a System Maintenance and Risk Reduction measure. It means I always have the resources and energy to run the calculations to keep the food, shelter, sleep, and personal security applications running as they have never been able to just run automatically in the background. I’ve rarely had the time OR energy in more than 4 decades to do MORE than daydream about what having those other things in my daily life would be like.

It’s not a complaint, request for pity, or judgment on those who have led very different lives than mine—It’s simply a framework that helps me understand the areas in my life where I still have knowledge gaps, or where I still have work to do. My youngest son starting his second semester of sophomore year has hit me harder than when my oldest hit this same seemingly weird and random milestone. The gap between where I was at that point, where my oldest was, and where my youngest (10 years younger than his big brother) is now in the January of his sophomore year is breathtakingly different.

I was living in an apartment with a pedophile in his late 30s who has “rescued” me from the child abuse and neglect that I had experienced at home. The windows were nailed shut, most of the clothes I had originally were thrown out and everything I wore was hand-selected by him, I had no access to the apartment keys, or the car my grandfather had given me to learn to drive in. This was the early 90s before cell phones and before pagers. My abuser took the phone cable with him whenever he left the apartment where he had switched the knob to lock me in instead of locking intruders out.

When we were in public he had a “friend” who he had escorted me to and from the bathroom to ensure I didn’t look at or speak to anyone. It was a surreal year in my life. It’s crazy that it's taken until today to realize that the Nine Inch Nails show WAS my first concert. Whenever people talk about first concerts it’s like my brain’s footage only goes back as far as the handful of shows I saw when I was pregnant and I can’t ever remember which of those shows was my first one. My brain tells me it HAS to be one of those shows instead.

When he was arrested for not paying child support in December of my Junior year after he’d taken me to Cincinnati to visit his grandmother for Christmas of ‘94 (she supported him financially) I suddenly found myself with MAGIC in the palm of my hands. For the first time in over a year, I held the keys to my car AND to the apartment. I called a friend I hadn’t seen in years who helped me gather my stuff from the apartment and I showed up at my grandparent’s door where they welcomed me with open arms.

Two weeks later I discovered I was pregnant.

I knew NOTHING about abortions having come from an Evangelical Catholic family, adoption wasn’t an option either because I’d grown up having been neglected and then abandoned by one parent only to be severely neglected and abused by the second one and then failed repeatedly by Child Protective Services.

The moment I held my son in the fall of that year I promised to protect him and never make him wonder what was so horrible and unlovable about him that even his own parents would physically neglect and abuse him. It has been the biggest promise I have ever made in my life and- honestly, looking back I don’t know how the fuck I had the audacity to think I could actually pull it off. At that point, I was still “in the red” with a partial HS education, a GED, and unlimited will to prove to my world that I was going to defy all odds and expectations.

The more I think about it—the more I realize why the Second Level and work IS my “happy place”. It really has been a luxury for me to consistently meet my own safety needs and those of my kids. I have people I enjoy working with each day, I get to solve complex problems with no clear/straightforward solutions (which I’m good at because I’ve ALWAYS been good at those!), and they've given me more opportunities in the past 5 years to touch (IRL!!) & flirt with things in the orange, yellow, green & blue areas! It’s also why I am as obsessed as I am with My House. It is the physical trophy of leveling up to the Second Level.

I love it because it is the Safe Floor I have built for my kids’ lives AND it is my memorial to the joy my kids have been able to experience in life because of how hard I have worked physically and emotionally. It is the epitome of security and a foundation from where everything else they need can be built if it is to be achieved.

So when Covid started and all of the self-actualized people with healthy relationships and connections and hobbies and job security fell through my roof in a panic during Covid I didn’t freak out. I’m still not freaking out because for me that roof hasn’t always been there.

When those people started feeling the burn of CONSTANT analysis paralysis and risk assessment and posted “This Is Fine” on their Twitter TLs I felt strangely seen for the first time in my life.

Like the world around me has been forced to live in my head for a while. Two years is LONG. And it IS hard and it SUCKS and I don’t blame anyone for being shitty or resentful that so many good things in their lives were pulled out from beneath them.

I want more than anything for the people I love to resume normal lives.

I’d like for people going through this to never take for granted the foundation beneath them.

I’d like for us to develop better ways to reach back and lift up people whose lives have maybe always been uncomfortable to acknowledge.