Our Mother Was A Catholic Nun

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Letter from Anne Albert, Doreen Frandi’s youngest sister, to Doreen’s daughter, Anne Frandi-Coory

Excerpt from:

‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?; A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations of Defeated Mothers

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Anne Albert, Doreen Frandi’s youngest sister

written c. 1996: To my niece, Anne Frandi-Coory

Doreen was such a beautiful child that on the ship which brought her, her brother and parents to New Zealand, a genuine childless couple offered her parents money to allow them to adopt her.  Doreen had a cloud of bright red curls that framed her pretty face.  How different Doreen’s life would have been had the adoption gone ahead.  Life within the Alfredo Frandi family was an uneasy one, so inclined was he to uncontrollable bouts of violent rage, during which he would throw furniture around the room and punch holes in doors.  Often it was his wife, Maria, a pale and nervous woman,  who felt the force of his fists.  Maria was in a perpetual state of acute anxiety and her concern about their lack of money exacerbated this state.  Alfredo was a labourer and work was hard to come by.  They had four children they could barely feed and clothe so any subsequent  pregnancies were aborted  with a knitting needle.  Unfortunately, as the oldest daughter, Doreen was needed to assist with the cleaning up after these procedures.  Maria had no conception of the trauma this was causing her daughter, and which was to haunt Doreen for the rest of her life.

When Doreen was sixteen years old, I was born, but I have never quite known why I was not aborted.  I can only suppose that my mother may have been experiencing symptoms of the menopause and may have been unaware of the pregnancy in  time.  So unexpected was my birth, that an apple crate was all that my parents had to lay me in.  Doreen was thrilled about the new baby and set about lining the crate with material and making it look pretty for me.  This was the beginning of Doreen’s devotion to me which was to last all her life.

Doreen was a very gentle girl and she was a help to her mother in caring for  the younger children, but she loathed house work of any kind.  She was adept at shopping for bargains and was a very good sewer.  Catholicism began to influence her life early on, as it brought her a peace and beauty so missing from her home environment.  Significantly, the nuns at the convent school she attended, recognized her potential for a vocation and one nun, Sister Anne, encouraged Doreen all she could to think about entering the convent.  As Doreen approached womanhood she exhibited no interest in boys or other worldly things, so firmly were her sights set of becoming a Catholic nun.  Alfredo was dead against his eldest daughter becoming a nun and turned the house upside down to show how much he detested the very idea.  This turmoil only made her more determined, and after a short time working in a department store and following her debut at the annual charity ball, for which she made her own stunning gown,  Doreen entered the convent.

Initially Doreen loved her life as a nun, but after almost a year of doing nothing but housework, she asked if she could train as a nurse.  Her wish was to care for severely handicapped children.  However, her request was greeted with profound disapproval because to actually ask to be able to do what one wanted, was against the very  strict rules of the convent  as well as a denial of the vow of absolute obedience.  Doreen was severely reprimanded and as a result sunk into a deep depression.  The nuns could not understand Doreen’s depression;  they believed that if you had a true vocation faith was enough to protect you from such things.  They then put pressure on Doreen constantly questioning her commitment to her vocation.  Doreen became hysterical which appalled the nuns, and they subsequently demanded that her mother remove her from the convent.  They could not know that bi polar disorder was manifesting itself in Doreen and would consequently ruin her life.

Doreen recovered very slowly from her first breakdown but she was devastated that her vocation was at an end and that she had broken her vow to God.  Doreen did  finally find acceptance and there followed a succession of jobs, which began a pattern set for the rest of her life;  employment interspersed with breakdowns.  In the 1940’s not much was known about bi polar disorder nor were there any satisfactory drugs available at the time.  Doreen was then subjected to countless ECT treatments without anaesthetic which really amounted to torture.  Around this time Doreen’s Aunt Italia, Alfredo’s only sister who was then 70 years of age, decided to take more of an interest in her niece. Italia  regaled Doreen with stories of the privileged   life the Frandi family lived in Italy before they arrived in New Zealand [Italia was born in Pisa, Italy in 1869]. Aristodemo, Italia’s father, had to flee Italy because he was a political agitator alongside Garibaldi, and Italia showed Doreen the fine silver and linen they had brought over with them.  Italia also dazzled Doreen with stories about the family riding in a grand carriage and people bowed with respect for them. Whenever  Doreen  was in the manic phase of her illness, she had illusions of grandeur, and would repeat all that her aunt had told her about their previous  life in Italy.  In these early stages of her illness, Doreen would spend money she did not have and would charge up accounts to her Aunt Italia and sometimes even stay in expensive hotels, all charged against her aunt’s name.  Following these episodes Doreen would then sink into the depths of depression. 

Shortly before the end of the war Doreen joined the Air Force.  It was while she was in  the Force that Doreen met the father of her first child, Kevin. Phillip Coory  neglected  to mention that he was already married with a young  son, Vas, until Doreen informed him  that she was pregnant.  Phillip Coory  believed at the time that that was the end of the matter and he had rid himself of her, but then his brother Joseph came on the scene.  Joseph was a kind and simple man, who did his best to make Doreen happy.  Sadly, his family conspired  against Doreen from the outset; perhaps they did not approve of her good looks or the way the marriage came about.  The marriage ended in disaster;  Joseph was not her intellectual equal and her illness would have been extremely difficult to live with. About three years after their marriage Anne was born and eighteen months later, came Anthony.  Following a severe bout of  bi polar disorder, the children were taken from her and placed in an Orphanage for the Poor in South Dunedin.

The permanent loss of  her children caused Doreen great anguish from which she never really recovered.  In later years she had contact with her daughter Anne, but Doreen was never able to accept that the child did not blame her mother for her abandonment.  Years later, her youngest son, Anthony moved to Wellington to live, but that feeling of guilt never left her and obviously prevented her from having an emotional relationship with her son, although he did make a futile attempt at it.  Doreen and Kevin lived a life of great hardship and near poverty, with Doreen frequently suffering nervous breakdowns, which culminated in her being  admitted to Porirua Psychiatric Hospital.  Kevin had to learn to deal with his mother’s extreme mood swings from a very early age which made his young life intolerable at times.  I have no idea how she coped during those years but I am sure that sometimes  she must have prayed for death, yet through it all her faith in God  never wavered and carried her through until the day she died.

At the peak of her loneliness, Doreen met a man, Edward Stringer, and spent a night with him.  Of course, given her luck, or lack thereof, it ended in pregnancy.  During the weeks after the birth of her daughter, Florence, and suffering from depression, Doreen signed adoption papers for her daughter.  Sometime later, Edward and Doreen met up again, and with the sole intention of getting her daughter back, she married Edward.  Heartbreakingly for Doreen, it was much too late; the adoption was quite legal and binding. Once again life had defeated Doreen and during a severe bout of mania, Edward left, unable to cope with his new wife’s disorder.  From this, there followed a period of dreariness, when Doreen and Kevin lived in a state house at 56 Hewer Crescent Naenae, Lower Hutt in Wellington, and she obtained a reasonably stable job in a factory close by.  At least the disorder left Doreen in peace for an extended period, in which Doreen developed a love of cats, and she had up to six at one time or another.

Kevin started up a very successful restaurant, Bacchus, in Courtney Place in Wellington.  Doreen was employed by Kevin in the kitchen of the restaurant, and she appeared to enjoy her time there.  Sadly her mother died on 10 March 1980, which caused Doreen to have another nervous breakdown.  Following her recovery, Doreen retired from work and moved into a council flat in Daniell Street, Newtown in Wellington.  During this time, she appeared to me to be doing no more than going through the motions of living.  My heart ached to see her like that, with no apparent interest in anything.  Kevin’s bankruptcy and his consequent  permanent move to Sydney, took the utmost toll on her spiritual well being.  Doreen then lapsed into a serious bout of her  disorder, suffering yet another complete nervous breakdown, and she was admitted once again to Porirua Hospital for a considerable time.

I have no doubt whatsoever, that it was not only Doreen’s manic depressive illness that had such a destructive effect on her life.  I sincerely believe that she carried guilt feelings from her experiences as a young girl,  witnessing  her mother’s self inflicted abortions, made worse by Doreen’s Catholic beliefs.       I realized this to be true, with great clarity, when I visited her at the hospital during her final stay there in 1995. She led me out into the hospital gardens, and pointed to a bed of purple pansies in bloom.  “There you see” she told me with infinite sadness, “there are all the little babies”.

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Doreen at her debut-she made her own dress

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DOREEN’S CHILDREN…

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Kevin

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Anne and Anthony

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Vincent (adopted out)

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Florence (adopted out)

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For more about this story see posts:

 Why I’m an Atheist;  My Brother’s Story 

&  Italian Family Trees & Photos

Where Are The Mothers’ Names?

Renoir: 'On The Terrace' 1879. In Memory of Missing Mothers

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One of the saddest things for me that has come out of research for my book  Whatever Happened To Ishtar?  is the fact that some historical birth and marriage certificates only record the names of fathers and paternal grandparents.  It was indicative of an era when only males were considered important in the scheme of life.  Although I have built up an extensive family tree of both my Lebanese and Italian ancestors, there are many gaps where a mother’s name should be. And each gap represents not just a missing name but links to whole lineages.  As  examples: when, after many years of searching,  I located an ancient document of my maternal great grandmother’s birth,  her mother’s name was omitted;  a marriage certificate where both the mother of the bridegroom and of the bride were omitted.  In some other cases I was able to find the information in a baptism confirmation certificate or in immigration archives, but my family trees have several names missing.  My hope is that descendants of those families I have written about, will  read my book and help fill in some of the missing gaps for our descendents.

Importance of Genes

Familial Bonds. From Cultural Anthropology by Roger M. Keesing.

What  Adoption Dismisses: Biological Connections

Being related to someone, having that biological connection to a mother who has given birth to you, is what is called the primary bond.  This event of creation  is our connection to the human race through thousands of years of evolution.  It is the  innate and emotional blood-bond and instinctive mother-child relationship. The biological/genetic connection to a family, to a mother and a father,  is highly important in any society.   The basis of any successful society is the family unit; it is on this basic foundation that a society establishes itself, and has done so since human society began.    Sometimes we just need to get back to the basics!   Perhaps Western society just got too complicated.

See post Adoption & Separation &  The Wound That Never Heals

Letter To Elizabeth

Motherhood - The Ideal. Massimo Stanzione, Naples 1640s

Hello Elizabeth,

I do empathise with you although I wasn’t adopted myself, but two of my half siblings were. I wrote about them in my book ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?’. See more on my blog about the negatives of mother/child separation, adoption under category Adoption & Separation. I was abandoned by my mother and placed in an orphanage, but I at least knew who my biological parents were. In all the years I have met and spoken with adoptees, I only ever met one man who did not wish to trace his biological parents. What came of my talking to adoptees was that it didn’t matter how good or bad their parents were; what mattered to them was knowing who and what their bio parents were, and why they were given up for adoption. It seems to me that adoption itself isn’t always bad, it is how it is carried out.

In the past, women like my mother, were forced by Catholic nuns to give up their new born babies, and most of these mothers never recovered from their loss. See Philomena’s and Sheldon Lea’s stories on my blog. The nuns never allowed these mothers to contact their lost children; refused to pass on information about the adoptions or the mothers’ names. The suffering in these cases, for mothers, and children,  was  life-destroying.

I understand what you are saying when you talk about your dad’s spirit being with you. The father you didn’t get to meet. I feel the same about my mother. The emotional pain she transmitted to me, persisted until I finished writing the book and she finally was at peace. Take care. Anne.

Visit Adoption Critic for ‘Dear Incubator‘ letter and comments…….

Dr James Latham Peters – Druggie, Misogynist, Child Pornographer, Anti-Abortionist

More good Christian male anti-abortionists outside clinics intimidating women

Here we go again!  It seems as though things haven’t changed much for women wanting to control their own fertility.

See :  More Women Infected With Hep C   Some men would like to have complete control over women’s fertility – like Dr James Latham Peters who, it is alleged, has deliberately infected over 58 women (and counting) with the same strain of Hepatitis C virus as he has.  It can only be spread blood to blood. This man has been allowed to administer anaesthetic to women having abortion procedures  at several clinics in Melbourne.  Dr Peters has already been struck off the medical register in the past  for drug addiction and prescription forgery.  And, can you believe it, for possessing child pornography.  I would have thought that the authority in question would have banned him from medical practice for life.  What were these clinics thinking in hiring him in the first place?  Why is it that  women,  at such a vulnerable time, should be put literally, in the hands of such a despicable human being.  Now, the lives of all these  infected women will be changed forever.  Their future health is uncertain.  He is worse than back-street abortionists – at least they knew what they were.

Dr James Latham Peters

It is obvious that Dr Peters has a hate attitude toward women seeking abortions and one can guess that he supports the pro-life lobby. Pro-Life is an oxymoron when used in the  context of anti-abortion.  So-called Pro-Lifers kill doctors and workers at abortion clinics and look what Dr Peters has been up to; there is no doubt some of these women will die because of his actions.  I would bet that he will be found to be  another  devout misogynist and  Christian.   One is also suspicious about  why this evil man,  who uses children for his own gratification, would want more children to be brought into this world?

I cannot for the life of me understand why men take to the streets to abuse women intending to have abortions.  What do they know of the experience of pregnancy and of childbirth?  Most of us  know that if men had to give birth, the human race would die out.  These deluded men stand outside abortion clinics for hours insulting and intimidating women.   Haven’t they got churches to go to?  It reminds me of the man who approached a young mother in a café  feeding her baby with a bottle.  He shouted at her, “why aren’t you breastfeeding that baby?” and stormed out.  The young lady burst into tears.  I know, once being  a young mother myself, how difficult it can be to breastfeed.  How could a man understand this?  That particular mother could have been on medication, or have infected nipples.  There are many other complications when breastfeeding just as there are surrounding abortions.

Anti-abortion protesters – haven’t these men got churches to go to?

The serial anti-abortion protester shown above says that women and girls who have been raped, or who are the victims of incest should be forced to give birth and that “they can adopt it out”.   This man should read some of the literature on the failures and trauma of adoption

See my posts:

Adoption: The Damage Done

Catholic Orphanages & Adoption

Separation:  The Open Wound

Do these men have any idea what it would be  like for a woman or girl to carry a foetus  inside her for a full nine months after being raped by either a stranger or their own father.  I write about girls being impregnated by their fathers and a Catholic Priest in my book  ‘Whatever Happened to Ishtar?’ and the consequences for generations to come.

Who knows how many women Dr Peters has infected and it must be hell for possibly more than 2000 women treated by Dr Peters, who will have to be tested for hepatitis C.

UPDATE 9/11/2012

Emotional victims wept in the Supreme Court as James Latham Peters, 63, responded with the word “guilty” to each of the 55 charges of negligently causing serious injury as they were read aloud.

Latest Update:’

Dr James Latham Peters was sentenced on 7 March 2013 to 14 years in prison with parole after 10 years.

Separation: The Open Wound That Never Heals

Separation at Birth; The Primal Wound. Photo: afcoory

Separation of mother and infant is cruel.  There is no other word for it.  It matters not whether the separation is brought about by adoption, maternal abandonment, or death or illness of the mother,  the trauma is the same (see post August 13). The following articles explain it well.

“It can no longer be assumed that one can replace the biological mother with another “primary caregiver” without the child’s being both aware of the substitution and traumatized by it. The mother/infant bond takes many forms and the communication between them is unconscious, instinctual, and intuitive.”

Nancy Newton Verrier, Ph.D., “The Primal Wound”

What Is The Primal Wound?

Understanding The Trauma of Infant-Maternal Separation

by Marcy Axness

Throughout the generations of routine obstetrical, hospital, and adoption practice in this country, the assumption has always been, “Why would the separation from its mother affect a newborn baby?” But with the advent in the last twenty years of pre- and perinatal research, we now have astounding findings about what a fetus experiences in the womb, what a strong connection it has with the mother long before birth, and how intelligent, aware and remembering a newborn is.

“Many doctors and psychologists now understand that bonding doesn’t begin at birth, but is a continuum of physiological, psychological, and spiritual events which begin in utero and continue throughout the postnatal bonding period. When this natural evolution is interrupted by a postnatal separation from the biological mother, the resultant experience of abandonment and loss is indelibly imprinted upon the unconscious minds of these children, causing that which I call the primal wound’.” So writes Nancy Verrier in her book, The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child (1993).

Rather than deeply question whether the experience of adoption is traumatic, we as a society tend to believe that enough love and care can make everything right. But psychologists from Freud on down have taught us that the first stage of psychological growth includes the development of trust, as a foundation for secure relationships with others.  [My Emphasis] Babies who are separated from the only connection they’ve ever known–their matrix–have had their nascent sense of trust deeply violated.  (See   ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?’for more about the emotional scars caused by infant abandonment).

And so all that love and care we give to the adoptee often has a hard time “getting in”. [But if no love is given, then the trauma is much more acute] as Verrier says of her own relationship to her adopted daughter, “I discovered that it was easier for us to give her love than it was for her to accept it.” On very deep levels, adoptees often feel it too dangerous to love and be loved, authentically and deeply; they can’t trust that they won’t be hurt or abandoned again.

Children often split themselves off from the injured parts of their psyches, and develop functional, acceptable, “false selves”. This concept of the false self is often the explanation behind what seems like “wonderful adjustment” on the part of an adoptee (or any traumatized child) who has responded to the deep fear of further abandonment or trauma by becoming compliant and adaptive to the needs and expectations of the parents or caregivers. However, their grief and anger is simply buried, even out of their own consciousness, where it can remain throughout the years, curdling their emotional lives.

See  Michael’s Sister Sent back

ADOPTION: The Damage Done

Kayapo mother and child in the Brazilian rain forest. Photo: 'MILLENNIUM' David Maybury-Lewis

I have interviewed and spoken with many adults who were adopted out as babies, during the process of writing  my book ‘Whatever Happened to Ishtar?’,  and only one man told me that he was not interested in tracing his birth mother or his biological roots.  I believe that most babies removed from their  mothers soon  after birth, suffer psychologically in some way and this in turn affects their personality.  How could it not?  We are after all, animals, with a sense of smell like any other, and mother and child have a special smell each recognises.   Our mothers carry us around in their wombs for nine months and the newborn knows its mother’s heart beat intimately.  We can learn many lessons about mother/child primordial bonds from animals in the wild, especially elephants.
Most Children’s  dis-connection with their biological families is a tragedy and sets them up for lifelong feelings of not quite  ‘fitting in’ anywhere.  Their self-identity is compromised. If an adopted child is lucky enough  to have an adoptive mother who is genuinely caring and who is supported by  a strong adoptive father and extended family, then the outcome can be reasonably good. But most of these children still need to know who their biological parents are and to know their genetic background.  Often, these adults I spoke with, told me that they became  more contented with their lives, and more fulfilled,  once they had discovered their roots and met members of their biological families, even if the relationships were not carried on for various reasons.  Just meeting with family members and learning about their heritage, was enough for some adoptees.  Others of course developed close relationships.  Unfortunately, far too many adoptions turned out to be nothing less than unmitigated disasters for both mothers and children.
The majority of mothers who adopted their babies out  in the past, carried feelings of guilt and loss for the rest of their lives.  Many descended into depression or severe mental illness.  Losing a child through adoption (and it is a loss) has a far more damaging effect on the mother than does abortion.  Mothers may think they have dealt with their loss, but often it is just buried deep within their sub conscious.  In the past, the general consensus was that if the baby was removed from their birth  mother soon after birth, neither would suffer any lasting psychological damage.  The child would grow up completely inculcated into the ways and traits of its adopted family, and that genetics didn’t come into it; nurturing was everything.  This has proved to be so utterly wrong.
I worked as a case worker for the Department of Social Welfare in New Zealand for a time.  And it was gratifying to see that children living apart from their parents and extended families in foster homes, were encouraged to keep family photograph albums along with scrap books of their biological family members’ lives.  Even allowing for the fact that in most cases the children were abused by those same families.  The children were proud of their families and loved showing case workers albums and scrapbooks, as though to reinforce their own identity.