Truddi Chase

I first learned of Truddi Chase when I got my hands on my Mom's copy of The Oprah Winfrey Show DVD box set. She was profiled in a section of the set called Heart Prints. For Oprah, a Heart Print refers to those people and memories that leave the greatest lasting impressions. People that change who you are and your view of the world. There were several people and moments showcased in the set, certainly all touching and poignant, but none of them struck me in quite the same way that Truddi Chase did. I've only the memory of those few minutes on-screen... and yet I find myself thinking of her quite a lot. At least, I think of her more than I do any other person I've encountered in this way. Her story, what little I know of it, is one of the most compelling I've ever heard.

Truddi Chase is the author of When Rabbit Howls, which may be the first autobiographical account of Multiple Personality Disorder. The title of her book, and her explanation of it is one of the most haunting memories I have. I carry in my mind the sound of rabbits howling, what I imagine that is and what it really means. She explained that rabbits have no vocal chords and so don't have the ability to make sounds... except in moments of the most extreme, intense pain. That image has lingered in my head ever since. I've the image of their softness in my mind, their innocence and harmlessness. It's juxtaposed with the harsh reality of violence. There's the stark contrast of red, wet blood covering once white, dry fur. I see sharp, black, hard claws tearing away at soft, pink flesh. I wonder what it's like never making a sound, living a life of silence... and then, finally, singing a dark and deadly tune. I wonder how jolting and jarring it must be to hear your own death cry, inside your own head, your own body in a way you've never heard anything before because it's coming deep within.

Truddi's break was triggered by years of emotional, mental, sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her parents. The splitting of her mind hid the memories. They were hidden but not lost. Her other selves hold pieces of her trauma. She's been able to recover what she lost. She tells of the process of dredging up these memories in group therapy. She says it's there that you can hear the rabbit howl. She says, when recalling their memories, when they're living the memory, victims make the same sound... an unnatural, unsettling whining and howling. Thinking of it... imaging the sound makes me want to break. When I think of Truddi Chase I'm overcome with many thoughts and feelings. Mostly I want to hold her, and those like her. I want to protect them. They've been to places my mind can't follow. They've lived horrors I never will. At the root of it all, I just want it to stop... and then I think how the silence of rabbits must be like the silence of lambs. That silence is something we can all hope for.

I'm not a naive person. I understand this is the way it must be. It's a mixture of the ugly and the beautiful, it's just the way of the world. This place is a marriage of light and dark. I'm not saying that I don't want to live in it or that I can't live with the dark but it just seems to me that things are askew. There seems to be more pain than pleasure in the world, more sorrow than bliss. I just want balance. Any healthy marriage should be an equal partnership and it feels like we're being dominated. Not in a perfect world, just a balanced and healthy world, rabbits wouldn't howl. It doesn't need to be perfect, just balanced.

As unnatural as it all seems to me, I'm still hopeful. I'm inspired by the strength of Truddi Chase. I think the idea floats around that people with disorders are weak. Well if that happened to me, I wouldn't break. Or maybe people don't even have to go that far, Well that happens to other people all the time and they don't break. I'm amazed at the ignorance of people, their inability to recognize our wide and various differences... you'd think they would given how much they use them to separate and attack each other. No one's ever been through what Truddi Chase has been through. No one's even been through what I've been through, or what you've been through... by virtue of the fact that Truddi is Truddi, I'm me and you're you. We can't live the same moments. Everything can appear the same... but the Devil is in the details, as they say. It's all accented and colored in the most subtle ways. Everyone's living in a perfect storm that'll pass or erupt. It all manifests itself in different ways. No one has to be weak or strong... just different... different people in different circumstances.

Having said all that, it might go deeper... the source of the inspiration. It's more the strength of the mind, the heart, the soul, the spirit... whatever that thing is that carries on. It's a thing we all share. It just so happens that it was Truddi's story that made it shine for me. Because you see, Truddi's mind didn't break. She's said the same herself, though in a different context. I'm speaking more fundamentally. She's still intact. She never left... only ever changed. Maybe it's better to say that she adapted, however, unconsciously. There's a resiliency of the mind that's undeniable.

I never liked the word break in this context, when speaking of Multiple Personality Disorder, it just doesn't hit the right note for me. It's feels better to say shifted or rippled. I have in my mind the image of what it looks like. It's like a divine web or sheet of liquid. To say shifted and have it make sense, at least to me, means to visualize the mind as a stream of bright, white light. I see a thick, solid pillar of this light. Then there's the presence of the trauma. The rape and abuse take the form of a dark prism. The prism is blocking the light... and so, to shine through, the light shifts and separates into a dark and glorious rainbow. To say rippled, means to visualize the mind as an expansive arctic pool. The trauma is falling from the sky, a dark and terrible mass. It's clumped together, so not altogether solid. The pool, on its own... as it exists now would not be able to support the mass, it's too heavy. It would break the surface and infect the lower depths. The pool fluctuates between solid and liquid, at once water and ice. The first few forms of the trauma, small and light, fall... they break the surface and cause a great stir within the pool. Those few pieces create a great splash. Ripples then waves. Spires of water shoot into the air and in the moment of this excitement the whole pool freezes over. Now what once was a single thin sheet of water is now a great, ornate, frozen structure of walls and spires... just enough to bear the brunt and weight of the trauma.

The other image, the divine web, I hold in my mind as a notion of fractals. It might look like a large sheet of glass, broken and intact, but not quite. There's also the exponential nature to hold onto... this idea that it's always ready to grow and expand. All of it is tied to this idea of mutability, because that's the quality of the mind. That's what I'm reminded of whenever I think of Truddi Chase. There's nothing so great, so terrible... the mind always finds a way to protect us. Life finds a way. But it's different for all of us. Some people go catatonic. Sometimes the body gives up. Sometimes the shift is subtle and sometimes there's a Truddi Chase.


DS333, intact.