Growing Up Latchkey
A Healing Journey from PTSD to Spiritual Awakening
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Introduction This is not the story I necessarily wanted to tell nor is it the story I had obsessed over of all my life, THE story that would birth my Magnum Opus-- my “great work”, my own unique contribution to the world of sufferers desperately seeking answers, offering psychological wisdom and healing. Those intentions alone drove and steered my entire life-- to bring ease to the suffering and heal the broken-hearted—why? Like so many in the world, it would be because of my great suffering all my life and utter broken heart and ultimately my shattered soul which stemmed from profound childhood neglect and abuse in the midst of middle class America in the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s, where I was placed by Lutheran Social Services with two adoptive parents who took an oath to “serve and protect” the public as representatives of law enforcement. The universe had other plans for me. It is amazing to me how seemingly overnight your whole life can be uprooted and altered forever by one event. A life event of such magnitude that it jolts you into finally releasing your own ego that had grown into untenable hubris. An event so traumatic it would trump all other traumas in my life that I had become accustomed to that would render me utterly paralyzed in mind/body/spirit. But this event, this seeming curse, was really the most miraculous blessing I could have ever imagined in my life and it began to set in motion universal synchronicities that I had never experienced before in my life that would first drive me deep into my own hell but would eventually lead me toward a spiritual transformation of a power and magnitude so great that I had never experienced in all my years in organized religion (or even as my short stint as an ordained minister)! Real power. No more spiritual parlor tricks thinly disguised as patriarchal ego for the control of people’s minds, lives and finances. Real soul liberating healing power! The power of LOVE. The only power that can awaken us to realize that all we had previously understood before as reality, all we had been told by our parents, teachers, higher education, governments, and organized world religions were all and entirely merely an illusion! A believed figment of our collective agreed upon shared 3D reality. Ever since a child I have been a strong intuitive. I had to be. Those of us surviving childhood neglect and abuse, out of pure survival, had to focus all our energies on reading every emotional environment we entered for threat assessment. We become very adept at this—but the protections we built become our very prison we need to be free of. At the beginning of my transformation and spiritual awakening a year ago I intuitively felt that on this next leg of my life’s journey all my years of education, training, and degrees in the study of the behavior of groups of people (sociology), the study of the behavior of individual people (psychology) and the study of world religions and all my life experiences on this 3D plane of existence would not serve me at all for this next phase. I had an inner knowing that to guide me in this new previously unchartered territory of my psyche that I willing chose to do, would be the most terrifying journey I have ever encountered but each painful step would bring me ever closer to seeing the invisible prison I had built and my spiritual eyes slowly came into focus where I could see the chains that had kept my heart bound for so many years. Even after being “born again” thirty years prior. This final blow to my heart center mid- life (the event) forced me to finally stop running and playing hide and seek with life—it would disable me so thoroughly that it effectively landed me in bed for four months were I had NO choice but face my blocks and my childhood demons once and for all. This leg of my life journey would also bring up the deepest, blackest terrors hidden in my heart (what was left of it) from my past abuses and child neglect. These dark unhealed energies would come screaming to the forefront of my psyche during therapy sessions and would be transmitting intense, frightening and overwhelming images and information jolting my central nervous system with past somatic abuse information to my brain via my body—unconscious information that I finally allowed to come forth after all these years, that came directly from the source, what I term the trauma bio-code that was still running in my central & peripheral nervous systems throughout my entire body for years. Like a hidden trauma response program just waiting to be activated—PTSD. Unconscious information that had previously tried to communicate to me through my body for decades unsuccessfully had finally burst through the powerful veil of illusion we all have built and I was left emotionally and physically shattered but would change my entire life forevermore. And I am eternally grateful.
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About the Book
Thousands of children grew up with little or no parental guidance, and as a result, many of them are battling psychological and emotional problems as adults. These latchkey children are mostly unaware of how their upbringing has affected their present, but in Growing Up Latchkey, the author explores how she and others were affected by growing up largely unsupervised. Darla K. Johnson, PhD, draws on her background as a psychotherapist, psychologist, and spiritual counselor to explore the dynamics of latchkey families that had to contend with energy crises, the Cold War, recessions, and long hours at work. In these families, many children spent their entire K–12 experience getting themselves ready for school, arriving home to no parent greeting them, and in the author’s case—having no one to protect them from an abusive sibling. Johnson eventually developed post-traumatic stress disorder, but she overcame her symptoms to live a fulfilling and happy life. Join the author on a deep personal journey that holds lessons for educators, employers, therapists, and parents on helping people recover from and avoid fear and torment from childhood traumas.
About the Author
Darla K. Johnson, Ph.D., is a health/medical psychologist, psychotherapist, adjunct professor of behavioral neuroscience, and spiritual counselor who has a passion for educating parents, teachers, and the medical community on the vital importance of placing children’s psychological and emotional health and well-being on par with their physical care. Her individual clients have included executives, engineers, physicians, ministers, teachers, therapists and political figures. She has worked with more than twenty thousand individuals and families over a twenty-five-year career.