Twice born - Chapter 1

Meeting the Child

Go back…Just the light of consciousness heals. It is a healing force. Whatsoever you can make conscious will be healed, and then it will hurt no more.
A man who goes backwards releases the past. Then the past is no more functioning, then the past has no more grip on him and the past is finished. The past has no place in his being. And when the past has no place in your being you are available to the present, never before it.

(Osho, Yoga the Alpha and the Omega, Vol. IV)

We select our memories

How often during the day does it happen that we spontaneously go back in time? Maybe the times we actually register it are far fewer than the times we don't. To use Freud's metaphor, our whole mind is like an iceberg: what we normally consider our mind is just the visible tip of an iceberg: under the dark waters, a much bigger part, called the unconscious, contains all our memories, beliefs, attitudes, and values.

On a conscious level, we may find ourselves in a situation or certain surroundings in which we are reminded of something in our childhood that felt or looked similar. This can be a pleasant sensation, like a good memory, or an unpleasant one, of something we don't like to be reminded. On an unconscious level, there may be many more moments in the day than we know when we return in time. And in the night, it seems that so many of our dreams are related to childhood memories, or are filled with fragments of them.

According to the “time line” method of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), which describes extensively how we create our own maps of reality, and act, communicate, and think according to them, we are “in time” in the moments that we are regressed into the past. In our subjective world, we are once again “in” it, as opposed to moving “through” it with conscious detachment. To be able to watch the movement through our past, we need to take on a position that is outside of it. In our book we call this position “the observer,” or the “observer perspective.” As Robert B. Dilts points out:

Our perception of “time” influences the way we give meaning to an experience. Most of us have had experiences in which something seems so important at a particular moment; but when we consider it with respect to a larger time frame, wondered “why was I so caught up in that?”… Many mental and emotional symptoms are the result of a regression “in time,” to past experience without having the choice of assuming the more distant “through time” observer perspective. As a result, a person unconsciously reacts in the present as he or she has done at an earlier time in his or her life. As an example, an individual who has a seemingly irrational fear of public speaking in certain circumstances may find that there was a time when he or she was made fun of or humiliated as a child in front of a class or a group of people. Even as an adult, similar circumstances may trigger associations back to the childhood situation which the person feels emotionally but is not conscious of mentally.” (1)

We select our memories. According to Milton Erikson, we do this because some of them are just too painful to be retained in the conscious mind. In this sense, the unconscious mind functions as a “protection,” a way of making our emotional life more bearable.

We have learned to do this so early, that the mechanism of selecting has now gone on automatic. When certain memories come up, they are erased immediately from the surface of our awareness. But like weeds we want to eradicate, if we don't remove their roots, they tend to become more entrenched. Our painful, unwanted, disturbing memories, if denied their place in our waking world, grow even deeper underground. As Freud already observed in the early days of psychoanalysis, they might tend to claim our attention through unexplainable physical symptoms. Or, as NLP demonstrates, they tend to become the unconscious background of beliefs and values for our present actions and feelings. All this can create fear, giving rise to a feeling of losing control, of being unable to have a real choice about what we want to remember and what not.

In our selecting we often remember things of the past that have received a positive validation from people who had an important place and function in our lives. We wanted to be loved and recognized by them. Their memory of us, the way they prefer to remember us, still colors our own opinion of our past. “You were so sweet when you were small. So quiet, so pretty.” We feel seen and loved through these remarks, and are very quick in taking them as the truth of who we were.

For some of us, though, the validation we received of our past has more negative undertones: “You were too wild, too stubborn, too withdrawn.” Nevertheless, we felt recognized in the past by these definitions, accepting them as the truth that describes the child we once were. Negative attention is still attention, and as a child, it is more bearable than being ignored, or abandoned.

Healing lies in regaining all of your past

We all have a longing to regain our past. Without it we are uprooted. If our past remains in the dark, we cannot live fully. To disconnect from what shaped our early life, takes much effort and creates much isolation and loneliness. We want to regain our past, and yet at the same time we are afraid of this. What if the things that come up are too painful or confusing for us? We actually put these very things away a long time ago because we couldn't handle them at that time. However, if we only remember certain parts of our past, what is hidden then in the parts we don't remember? We don't always formulate this question for ourselves. We may just react so quickly to what comes up, that the question falls in between. Maybe we shrug our shoulders, and feel this as unavoidable--what has been has been. Maybe we turn on the TV, or read, or eat something, so the feelings which may be coming up are held in check or are kept at a distance.

But then there are situations which disrupt our delicate defense mechanisms. A friend, a lover, our husband or wife, our children, our boss, say something or do something, and before we know it, we react. And we react in ways that surprise us. “What was it exactly that made me so angry, or so sad? Was it maybe a word, or an expression, or was it the tone of voice that did it, or a certain way of looking, or touching?” Whatever it was, we suddenly fall and break through the safety net, crashing into something that we have been carefully avoiding for so long.

The way we are able to deal with it now may also be bound to the way we learned to deal with it in the past. The same collapse, the same fight, the same pulling back that we experienced as children suddenly takes over our adult consciousness.

Sometimes, what triggers these reactions is a critical life-changing event: a death, a disease, a divorce. For that moment, our sense of reality opens up into a gap, an abyss. The pain which is there might resonate into deeper layers of pain and abandonment. We might not be able to avoid the depth that we experience in those moments. In fact, it might just be that by allowing it to surface, the balm of healing we are longing for becomes available to us.

Healing lies in regaining all of your past. And not just the good parts. These are worthy and need to be cherished in all their sweetness and glory. But in the same way, the so-called bad parts need to be regained, and even more, those which have become hidden. Once they are integrated in our consciousness, we might actually discover that they constitute the very base of our strength and qualities today.

Discovering the loving adult inside

When we use the word “healing,” we want to add another dimension to the detached NLP perspective mentioned above. From the observer perspective, we are watching the two main parts in our work: the inner child and the inner adult.

In our way of integrating the past into our consciousness, we would like to include love and compassion for the inner child. This has to come from our inner adult. The child has a need to reveal its truth and to learn to disobey the old and poisonous parental beliefs and rules by which it has been brought up. But to be able to do this, the child needs to trust the strength and love that we have for it as an adult. It needs to trust that it really matters to us. Only then, will it be able to heal its wounds and free itself.

To be able to share with the child how much you care for it, you first need to connect with those resources from your adult experience that can help you to protect and nurture the “child-you.”

The following exercise will help you with this:

Remember a time as an adult that you feel comfortable recalling, when you felt caring and loving. Perhaps a time when you were caring for a friend, for a plant, or an animal.

Imagine that you can see this time, and the gentle expression of caring it brings, as a picture in front of your eyes at a distance of about three feet.

Allow your forehead to relax, and draw the energy of loving and caring into the place between your eyes. Experience it as an infinite source of loving energy flowing to this place, and from there, flooding through your whole body.

Allow this energy to flow from the adult-you toward the child-you. To reach all the places inside the child where it got wounded, to bring love and care there.

The same exercise, focused on strength or compassion, can help you to connect with those qualities in your adult life.

In this way, there is a growing connection between the loving adult and the child. The one who observes the past events of our childhood “through time,” will be able to observe both of these parts as they start to relate to each other.

In contrast to the psychoanalytical tradition, our “child” is not just the sum of long-gone memories we continue to identify with: it is a living reality that carries many gifts into our adult life. In this way, as the illusion of still being caught up in old pains dissolves, the “child” gains more substance and presence in a different, mysterious and new way.

Simultaneously, the adult we believe we are starts losing its rigid form. By assimilating the childlike energy inside, our adult form starts to expand and loosen up, transforming its fixed reactions into an alive and loving responsibility--the ability to respond to the moment as it comes.

Where this healing leads us, we cannot predict. It may bring us to a fuller, richer life; it may bring us to a deeper let-go, surrender. Nevertheless, however it manifests, healing is bound to happen as we gather the pieces, the fragments of our lives, into a whole. We find ourselves again at the center of a unified existence.

The observer can be practiced, the witness happens

To make the difference clear between the “observer perspective” that we refer to in this chapter, and the “witness,” our quality of witnessing that happens in meditation, we would like to add a part of a discourse given by Osho in which he answers a question on this subject:

The observer means the subjective, and the observed means the objective. The observer means that which is outside the observed, and the observer also means that which is inside.

The inside and the outside can't be separated; they are together, they can only be together. When this togetherness, or rather oneness, is experienced, the witness arises. You cannot practice the witness. If you practice the witness you will be practicing only the observer, and the observer is not the witness.

Then what has to be done? Melting has to be done, merging has to be done. Seeing a rose flower, forget completely that there is an object seen and a subject as a seer. Let the beauty of the moment, the benediction of the moment, overwhelm you both, so the rose and you are no more separate, but you become one rhythm, one song, one ecstasy.

Loving, experiencing music, looking at the sunset, let it happen again and again. The more it happens the better, because it's not an art but a knack. You have to get the knack of it; once you have got it, you can trigger it anywhere, any moment.

When the witness arises, there is nobody who is witnessing, and there is nothing to be witnessed. It is a pure mirror, mirroring nothing. Even to say it is a mirror is not right; it will be better to say it is a mirroring. It is more a dynamic process of melting and merging; it's not a static phenomenon, it is a flow. The rose reaching you, you reaching into the rose: it is a sharing of being.

Forget that idea that the witness is the observer; it is not. The observer can be practiced, the witness happens. (2)

The observer perspective gives you the right distance to notice the dynamic between the adult and child parts, and allows you to enter a place of non-involvement. The witnessing quality that grows out of this even lets go of this “outsider” place, moving beyond all separations into a truly existential merging. So, in its own time, this process leads us from feeling split, to observing duality inside, and finally, to experiencing unity inside and around.

Be open for the mystery

As we go through the journey that begins in this chapter, we take you by the hand and walk the way back in time with you.

We want to respect that your experience in the past created the reasons for you not to remember, or not to remember exactly. Yet, we also want to acknowledge that part in you that does have the longing and the urge to go back there and reconnect.

Deva S., a woman whom we will follow through eight sessions of the Childhood Deconditioning process, was insecure about starting her first session. She told us that she had had enough of looking into herself. And yet, she knew that something had not been cleared out about her past. In the session, she realized that only recently had she been able to imagine taking the little girl, the child she once was, into her arms, and to have loving feelings toward her. When our journey was completed, she was surprised how quickly the time had passed in the session, and how many memories had come to her.

Among other sources, our journey has been greatly inspired by the work of John Bradshaw, who imparted the technique of the adult journeying back to rescue and heal the child within:

At first, it may seem preposterous that a little child can continue to live in an adult body. But this is exactly what I am suggesting. I believe that this neglected, wounded inner child of the past is the major source of human misery. Until we reclaim and champion that child, he will continue to act out and contaminate our adult lives. (3)

Unlike Bradshaw, who moves from infancy to school age, we move further and further back in time, peeling layer after layer of conditioned behaviors, toward the original nature that contains all our potential.

In the regression that we offer in the “recipe” of this chapter, we create an invitation for you as an adult to meet your younger self. The child you meet can be between the ages of four and ten. We do it in such a way that you are not only remembering and observing. In some parts of this work, you enter into your adult part, and in others you enter back into the skin of the child and relive what was there at that time. This means that, as you become that child, you feel yourself in the body of that child, you see through its eyes, you hear the sounds of your past through its ears, you smell and touch again what was there. You open up all your senses to this experience.

In some moments you are totally there again, in other moments not. Accept it as it comes.

It is worthwhile though to notice what fully keeps your attention, and what makes you want to disconnect. It might indicate in which moments and situations in your childhood you learned to close off. Often, in these moments the only way you could handle them as a child was through spacing out, or through retreating into your dream world. This might be repeating itself in your adult life. Those are the points where ordinarily you lose attention, become disinterested, or turn around and leave. But because we are there with you, you may want to stay a bit longer and take a step further into it.

There may be a lot of surprises; there are things long forgotten and things that you never observed with such clarity. The journey back may also feel familiar, the feeling of having started it a thousand times before. It can almost be shocking to realize what details of your past you have registered inside--to discover that even in very difficult or traumatic situations a part of us, or a part beyond us, has remained watchful.

Some of you might notice, though, that even if you have detailed memories of the events of your past, and everything is sharply etched on the slate of your mind, you have no feelings associated with them. For instance, if your parents' aggression turned toward you as a child, or they expressed the threat of leaving or of going mad, then the feelings that came up in response to this, such as anger or fear, were too great for you to handle. You learned to repress or deny them. As an adult, you can remember each detail of what happened in those moments, yet you cannot connect with those initial feelings anymore.

If you report something like this to us after the regression, we ask you to breathe in and to connect with your body. We then focus on where and how you were affected in your body by those events of the past, and what it is you are holding in those places. Often, by locating the place in the body (for example, belly, chest, or shoulders) and by experiencing the physical sensations in this place (for example, contraction or disconnection) it becomes more clear what feelings you learned to hold back in you childhood.

Others of you might notice that when memories come up from the past, you easily get overwhelmed. Instead of staying with the real feelings that are there, for example, sadness or anger, you react to them and try to control them. This can result in an inner panic or fear. Or, when we lead you back in time, and you feel we have expectations about what you should do or not do, show or not show, then out of insecurity, you might produce feelings: you emote when you actually need to go inside and feel yourself.

Often this comes from an internalized message from one of your parents. Their demand on you in your childhood to control yourself or to act according to their expectations entered your private world. In your adult life, it functions as an inner controlling or criticizing voice.

After the regression, if you report that you have noticed this, we support you in recognizing the internalized voice of your parents, to disidentify from it, and to step into your adult position again, this time remaining alert and present, paying attention to the real feelings of the child-you.

Or, for some of you, it will be initially difficult to connect with the real feelings of the child because everything felt normal and uneventful in your childhood.

Cristina F. came from a middle-class family. No major trauma, separation, or violence had happened in her childhood. She in fact had the tendency to blame herself for her anxiety .

As we moved back in time, she met for the first time as an adult, her younger self. To her surprise, she saw an expression of mistrust in the eyes of her little girl. When she tried to connect with her, she felt that the little girl was not as willing to open up as Cristina had remembered her. We encouraged Cristina to ask the child some questions, but there was no real answer coming. Only when Cristina started admitting to her helplessness and insecurity about what to do, did the child open up. Cristina became aware that this was exactly what had been missing in the little girl's relationship with her parents. They had never shown her any of their doubt or vulnerability. In this way, they had taught her to keep a constant check on her own feelings. The little girl now experienced for the first time an adult being openly insecure. Cristina's obsessive fear of making mistakes was exposed, and a healing process began.

So, it is good to have a guide on your journey. A guide who has also gone down the path of his or her childhood, and has come back. A guide who is willing to share this journey with you, to lead you step by step backward, until you reach your own destination.

Be open for the mystery. We contain more than we often know. Yes, you are an adult now, and you move through life in an adult body. But, inside you, the child is still very alive.

Let yourself be led back in time. Reexperience the surroundings in which you grew up. And meet the people of your past again: your friends, teachers, parents, family. And meet yourself again. You can still reach the child you once were, back through time and space. Become that child again. Look at the world surrounding you, the world of your own childhood. And enter into that world as the adult-you.

It is a journey in which the adult meets the child in you. But it is also a journey in which the child meets the adult-you. From both sides there will be true observations and deep feelings coming up.

This meeting between both parts of you is the most important, regardless of whether its outcome is “positive” or “negative.” It is the beginning of the work as we present it to you. Once this meeting has happened, the journey to regain your individuality has begun.

To meet inside, to look into each other's eyes, to listen to each other's messages, to feel the loss and longing on both sides, to reach out in your own unique way creates the right base from where to begin the journey of Childhood Deconditioning.

Kabir says (4):

Friend, wake up! Why do you go on sleeping?
The night is over--do you want to lose
the day the same way?

The Evocation
My personal experience in meeting my inner child
Svarup

As I relax into myself, I visualize a winding path that leads me back in time. I know that at the end of it there is the little girl me, Manú. She is waiting for me. As I leave the present behind me, I feel the excitement of coming closer to the little girl.

I move back through my thirties, my twenties, my adolescence. And keep walking further back.

Manú's home

I keep walking back: a silent road on the outskirts of Padova. On each side of it, there are neat one-family working class houses, built with the sweat of honest work. Each house has a tiny garden with dahlias, azaleas, daisies of all colors, vegetable patches with lush zucchini and their meaty yellow flowers. I hear the rumbling of an occasional Vespa, the shouts of children playing in a nearby scrawny field. The whizzing of bicycles rushing past. The sound of a radio from an open window: ”Volare....” It is a modest, decent and tidy neighborhood. It is populated by farmers turned into factory workers, shopkeepers. They are all proud of their plastic flowers on the dinner table, their oversized dolls fitted in large, lacy satin dresses in pink and light blue, towering languidly over their beds, their pictures of Christ with torn chest and bleeding heart, inspiring piety and guilt. There is a stuffy, rancid smell of airlessness in those houses, where everything has its own place forever.

I turn around the corner. I enter a smaller street, newer. The asphalt still smooth and dark. Occasionally, a Fiat ventures this far out of the center of town. On each side of the street, there is a crop of newer buildings, two, three stories high, clean, light-colored little boxes, all with the same balconies, the same railings, with a few geraniums struggling to break their inflexible geometry. There is fruit shop at the corner: a magical world filled with smells, colors. Inside the shop, the radio blaring at full volume: a speaker is commenting on the Tour de France. I remember the taste of a dried carob in my mouth, that can keep you busy chewing for hours. Next to the fruit shop, there is the grocery. I can feel again the lusciousness of melted imitation chocolate on an oily paper, waiting to be spread onto a crusty piece of white bread.

I keep moving on. I reach one of those light-gray apartment blocks. It is slightly weather-beaten from the winter smog and rain, and outshadowed by other buildings mushrooming around it. The first childhood home I can remember. The home of four-year-old Manú, one year before the birth of her sister.

I stop in front of the main entrance door, a low-cost modern affair (maybe glass and iron, maybe wood). I recall the disappointment that Manú experienced when she had to leave the cozy, ordinary, smelly world behind, and the relief of reentering the protected, enclosed domain of her family's apartment. There she could fly with her fantasy to the end of the earth. I go up the stairs, past the first floor. I can hear the loudly-dressed, ageless Mrs. Pellegrini playing with her newly acquired mini-jukebox. I pass the door of the Malatesta children, with whom Manú played funeral in an old trunk smelling of mothballs. I reach the door of Manú's home.

I open the door slowly. I smell freshly washed laundry, new cleaning products for scrubbing everything, air, spotlessness. It is the memento of colonial super-hygiene, the memory of much wider marble halls in a faraway country. I enter the kitchen: there is a table, a cream painted pantry, a few battered pots and pans shining with pride and obsessiveness. I see the neatly stacked grocery store wrapping paper, the folded plastic bags. I move through the tiny corridor and pass by the dark room which is hardly ever entered. It has a green and black Arab blanket on the guest bed. This room is occupied once a year by relatives who bring halvah and stuffed dates from Tunis or Paris as a present.

I enter the living room. I see the proud, half-size library, the shrine of the family. It contains art books, detective novels, science fiction, and books by American writers. The little clay head made by mother smiles cheekily from the round wooden table. It stands there like a promise of creativity never fulfilled. On the low four-legged table there are stacks of crossword puzzles. In the window corner, the armchairs give a feeling of noble stability. All of it in such a tiny room. This room probably never dreamed of such splendor.

I move to the dining room, which is rarely used for this purpose. Towering in its central place, is the magic box: the television set, a wooden space-time machine. For Manú, this is a window into the real world, somewhere else, always somewhere else.

I move to the bedroom. I can see the large double bed with wooden carvings at the head, and clean sheets. The room emanates a feeling of twilight. On the right side, I see Manú's bed, a box enclosed in eternal shade, the shelter of night and sickness.

Over the whole apartment hovers an atmosphere of waiting, waiting for better times, waiting for the wounds to heal, waiting till waiting is forgotten.

Mother is in the kitchen. Sometimes she sings her Edith Piaf songs, sometimes she stamps on the floor with disowned frustration. She is focused on channeling her energy onto the meal. Her food is always slightly overcooked. There are no big wafts of aroma from this mediocre packaged food. She is well organized. She is a bit overweight from the amount of white bread and café au lait she secretly, even to herself, gulps to chase her sadness away. She is a sculptor trying to be a cook, a political agitator trying to rearrange pots.

Father is in the living room, listening to a cheery Benny Goodman on the phonograph, so far away from his reality. The lights are dim, and he is slouching in the armchair, defeated by yet another day of trivia, compromise, humiliation. His forehead is thumping, his eyes are squinting like two bitter fissures behind thick glasses.

The dream of revolution that brought them here nine years ago from Tunisia is gone. Italy belongs to America, and Stalin has been exposed. They are now bewildered and lost in this small northern Italian town.

Meeting Manú: That hope, so many times felt, so many times betrayed

Where is Manú? Where is her place in the house? I look for her in the kitchen, in the corner where her small table and chair are set. It is the place where she draws for endless hours, plays office like daddy, asks mommy a million questions while she cooks. Manú is there, sitting at her place, intent, drawing glamorous figures of music-hall dancers, ostrich feathers, net stockings, diamonds and sequins. She draws on the back of the grocery paper with a pen from daddy's office. She is wearing a gray pleated skirt, the latest in synthetics, a dark blue pullover, a white-collared shirt, tattered and torn at the hidden elbows. Her chubby hands are full of ink spots. Her hair, cut short against her will, is untidy. She is fully absorbed, as if the drawing has the magic power to carry her out of the kitchen, out of the suburbs, straight into the spotlights, dreams and sparkles.

Manú through the eyes of Svarup

Suddenly, she senses something unusual, a different movement in the kitchen, an interruption of the routine of pot banging and the distant jazzy flute. She looks up and sees me, the adult woman.

Her response reflects an initial fear of the unexpected, a flutter of anxiety. Then she smiles. Her eyes close almost shut as her cheeks lift up, and the rosy determined mouth opens up into a gracious disarming smile. I sense that she hasn't yet realized who I am. She just smiles because she knows that it works. Adults get touched and are impressed by her good manners.

I scan her eyes and expression for a deeper response. Does she like me? Is she open to meeting me? What is that charcoal sparkle that glimmers through the slits of her eyes? I can see that she is attracted by my long hair, flowing dress, and shiny earrings. She is always trying to convince her mother to wear some makeup, to be a bit more sexy, although she wouldn't really know about this last word. And yet, I also read in her some mistrust, some anxiety about the disruption of her routine. All of it, is covered by her smile, a device for keeping distance, biding time, figuring out. I get slightly irritated by her ways, I don't know how to approach this little, polite, arrogant girl, how to penetrate her heart. I feel manipulated, I would like to shake her out of her pleasing attitude. I feel insecure.

She feels my insecurity and draws closer. She shows me her drawings, her eyes opening wider. I sense her uncertainty, her need for my approval and praise. This is the main form of love she knows.

Svarup through the eyes of Manú

It's time for the magic: I allow my consciousness to float out of my adult body, up and up, and to descend into the body of Manú. I experience my surroundings through her senses, and look through her eyes.

I can feel the sourness at the pit of my stomach: like a belt around my upper belly. My mind is free, spacious, able to roam into the furthest realms. My voice is modulated. It is a bit nasal, but free to sing and speak. The lower part of my body is dark. There, I experience an unfulfilled desire to run, jump, cuddle, get dirty. I look at my scratched knees, bruises and cuts on my chubby legs. I am awkward and over careful when I move in the very limited space of the house. My heart is a fluttery, trembling, forbidden area. It breaks open at night, into sweaty nightmares and fear of evil presences lurking in the dark, of monsters under the bed. All this is banned again each morning by the reasonable daylight.

My world, my safe world, is in a cup of steaming barley coffee with dry crackers, in the heroic adventures of a boy and a dog on the prairies of the TV set, in the lulling, reassuring voice of my father, and the neat, clean certainty of my mother.

I feel a bit imprisoned in this little body: I want to grow up fast, be respected and admired. I feel humiliated and cheated when my parents treat me like a silly child. I want to be finished with mistakes that make people laugh and say I'm cute. I will show them!

I look at this adult woman standing there in front of me; she has something very familiar to me. She has long dark hair, is tall and stately. She looks powerful. I am not sure what to expect from her. She is not treating me like a lovely little doll, and yet she does not want me to behave like a little wise adult. I am at a loss.

She tells me, in a low, calm voice, that she has been searching, moving from place to place, living in many different ways. She admits that she forgot me, and then dreamed about me, and finally decided to find me again. It sounds like magic: I like it, and I experience feeling soothed in my belly. I can feel that she is telling me the truth, plain and simple. I am a bit afraid, and I need to be careful. So many times I hoped for this to happen, and then felt betrayed.

But my pull toward her is strong. I give in to it, I feel transported, the hunger for touch, for melting, erupts. I touch her hand. It is warm, rougher than my mother's hand, and steady.

There is a silence, a new, relaxing feeling of silence. I put my curly head against her belly: a belly which grumbles, is alive with scars and feelings. She smells fine, of wind, faraway places, tobacco and food, life juices and balm. Can I really relax? My breathing is a bit fast; I'm overwhelmed. She holds me, silently. I feel my belly, my legs, a sense of deep rest, no effort to protect, prove, pretend. It must be just like this how angels, the glittery angels, the white clad angels of my secret fantasies, feel: light, good, and blessed. I cry and sigh softly. Waves of shame fall on me and are washed away. I am showing myself as I really feel: small, a bit lost. I need so much to be touched. And she touches me in a simple way that feels like the earth. And I long to be able to cry, cry and be weak, like a baby, like a pussycat, like a child, a girl-child.

Coming back into my adult body

I allow my consciousness to rise again and float upward, out of Manú's body, back into my adult body. I hold that small girl. She is nestled in my arms. Her body is alive with soft waves of sobs, which slowly melt with her breathing. They are like the gentle sound of a very sweet song. I feel the timelessness, the quiet of simply being, while I hold her. My heart is filling up with her innocence.

She looks at me. Her eyes are like stars, dark stars with big question marks: “Is it really possible? Is it really true?” Her questions start erupting, tumbling, one after the other. She wants to know all about the places I've been, the stories about what happened to me, the people I met. It's scary for me to realize how open this child is, how easy it would be to answer her questions with my fantasies, to weave around her a world full of golden lies and promises for the future that would keep her away from feeling the present. She is willing to believe anything I say to her. Her curiosity is boundless. Also, she has learned very early to please adults with her questions. She knows that this makes them feel powerful, knowledgeable, and wise. I have to be careful.

But I can feel how important talking has become in her restricted suburban home of noble immigrants. “Would you like me to show you these places? Would you like to travel with me? Would you like to see them for yourself?” I sense her indecision: she is drawn to adventure, she craves for wider spaces, different horizons and an atmosphere which suits her dark blood better.

Yet, I know that she dreads losing the comfort of her mother's neatly tucked sheets, of her father's fairy tales. Her trust in life, broken so very early and replaced by the security of rituals strictly regulated according to the clock, will take time to grow and mend. And it's fine for me too. I am not yet accustomed to carrying this girl around with me all the time. Very few of my friends know her. For the rest of the time in my adult life, I have tucked her neatly in bed hoping for her to sleep, just like her mother used to do. It will take time for me to get used to her, to let her be there and show her insecurity and her needs in front of others. I will have to learn to let her voice what she really sees and feels. This will challenge my fixed ideas and habitual behaviors.

And yet, we both won't forget the moment of silence and peace in which our bellies met, and the angels sang. We can no longer turn away from each other. We look at each other; on some deep level, it's understood. She lets go of my hand and returns to her drawing. She glows with the afterwarmth of our meeting.

I quietly leave the kitchen and go through the dark hallway. Just then, her father shuffles toward the kitchen, whistling his tune of hope for a better tomorrow. I open the door and slowly shut it behind me, passing through the wafts of boiled cabbage and tomato sauce coming from the neighboring apartments. I walk down to the road. The evening fog is just descending. It spreads melancholy and dreariness around the brightly lit windows and the lampposts' yellow halos.

I walk down the path that leads me forward in time. I pass by the first school, and notice how its prefabricated building stands on the side of a new road edging an abandoned field. I move further, through all the schools of my childhood, one after the other. I reach the place of my adolescence, hearing the echoes of my favorite music of that time, the Stones and the Beatles, rebellion and romance. I walk further, into my adulthood, through the pains and discoveries of initiation into life. I reach this moment, here, now. I feel the gratefulness for this life, so rich and vast. In my heart, I feel Manú's heart beating. I feel my body stretching out. I treasure the very alive presence of a curly, chubby, dark, starry-eyed little girl inside me.