Borderline - My Romanian Baby - is a poem that describes what it is like to be the parent of a sufferer of the mental health condition, Borderline Personality Disorder.
BPD aka Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder often receives a bad press.…
Borderline - My Romanian Baby - is a poem that describes what it is like to be the parent of a sufferer of the mental health condition, Borderline Personality Disorder.
BPD aka Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder often receives a bad press. Sufferers are at times described by health professionals as highly manipulative and challenging, especially around relationships.
The condition is often hereditary but can be caused by childhood traumas such as sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect. Sufferers may regularly self-harm and have difficulty with thought patterns – using splitting (black and white thinking). American psychologist, Marsha Lineham said people with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90 percent of their body, lacking emotional skin they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.
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The Romanian autocratic ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu, ruled for 25 years. He decreed each woman had to have a minimum of 5 children. Contraception and abortion was forbidden. Mothers left their babies at the orphanage door being too poor to feed them.
In December 1989 Ceausescu was overthrown and killed in a bloody revolution. Foreign journalists discovered thousands of abandoned children living neglected lives in desolate institutions.
One of them became my Romanian baby. The experience of her early years has never gone away.
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Written and performed by Hilary Walker.
Supporting Actor - Anya Marr https://purpleport.com/portfolio/anyamarr
Produced & Directed by Mark Mace Smith at Thud Dub Studios, Manchester, England.
(c) 2017
