Invisible Self (eBook)

Broken Childhood, Primal Healing

Michelle Taja Miller (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-9902596-1-4 (ISBN)

'The Invisible Self' is an autobiographical account of Michelle's formative years as a young child growing up in foster homes in post-war France and her return home to a new life and father figure at six years old. She prevailed against all odds, with the aid of a few people who loved her and forays into primal therapy in 1970s California. Despite debilitating handicaps, she slowly claws her way back into an existence where hope is rekindled. Descriptions of her therapy sessions color the narrative and provide glimpses of the healing process at work. Michelle's harrowing, euphoric story will be a source of hope for those whose lives may have traversed traumatic periods and events but whose paths forward may still be shrouded in darkness.

Michelle's experience extends beyond her own healing. She earned a master's degree in Applied Breathing Sciences. As a Certified Behavioral Breathing Analyst, she bridges the gap between anxiety and breath, teaching sufferers to let go and allow life-giving air to flow unimpeded. She has trained and worked as a primal therapist at Art Janov's Primal Training Center in Venice, California. As a Primal Coach, she delves into the depth of the human experience, guiding her clients through the emotional challenges they face in their lives.

Our journeys to adulthood are punctuated with unexpected events, often fraught with emotional or physical danger. Too many of us grow up with our nightmares, demons, and skeletons in the closet; and children are still the largest oppressed minority. "e;The Invisible Self"e; is a story of survival that is so intense, reaching adulthood was an achievement in itself. Michelle's life story is captivating, engaging, and inspirational. In today's world of cynicism and widespread apathy, this is a chance to root for the underdog and champion the downtrodden. Her birth account is astonishing in its impact and detail, venturing into the science of how birth can be the blueprint for a lifetime. In a result-driven world thirsting for instant gratification, this book allows readers to hit the pause button, take a step back, and accompany Michelle through her journey as an adult forced to revisit the nightmares from her childhood. Watch as she slowly puts together the pieces of the puzzle, retrieves the missing memories, and slowly exorcises the demons of the past. "e;The Invisible Self"e; is interspersed with later-in-life therapy sessions, revealing cathartic moments and life-changing insights. Along the way, Michelle chronicles the early days of primal therapy with its challenges and pitfalls and offers some heartfelt conclusions as to what went wrong and how to avoid the mistakes and faux pas of the past. In 1970, Arthur Janov envisioned his therapy as a game changer, but the personal unresolved pain of those in charge undermined results and left more than a few souls lost in no man's land. Notwithstanding, Michelle believes that primal therapy could still be a tool for a saner and more balanced world. She could well be at the helm of primal therapy 2.0. Beautifully conceived and written, "e;The Invisible Self"e; is at once emotional and heartfelt, compassionate, intuitive, and thought-provoking.

CHAPTER I

The Family Heirloom

MY GRANDMOTHER, Sarina Nahmias was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in the early 1900s. Her father, Joseph Nahmias, was a wealthy and respected businessman in their community of Sephardic Jews. He cared about his family, but he was not the kind of man to demonstrate affection. As her mother died soon after she was born, Sarina grew up motherless … and isolated. She had a brother, already a young adult, and a sister in her teens.

Sarina received a first-class education, and by the time she was 18, she was fluent in French in addition to the languages spoken at home: Greek and Ladino, the old Spanish that Sephardic Jews have spoken ever since the Spanish Inquisition sent them fleeing all over Europe. Her education was comprehensive; she learned how to run a household, and how to become an accomplished, well-mannered young woman so that when the time came, she would be considered a suitable wife for a future husband. But Sarina could not wait to run away from the suffocating traditions of her father’s home.

In the early part of the twentieth century in Greece, the father chose a husband for his daughters. Marriage was an economic and social arrangement between families. Once married, the woman would take care of the household and give her husband children, preferably boys. Sarina was not a woman who could live such a passionless and dependent life. She was restless, with a fervent longing for adventure. She rejected traditions; she wanted to make her own choices. She cared as little about money as she cared about conventions, so marrying for economic security had no appeal for her.

Sarina married her first husband, Ernest Cohen, for love in defiance of traditions. She bore his child – my mother, Reine – but it was not long before she realized she had rushed into marriage with the wrong man. She was furious to discover that her husband expected her to rein in her rebellious spirit, settle down and become a traditional wife. They fought a lot, two strong personalities up against each other, neither one backing down.

The day came when Sarina had had enough. She took Reine and ran away to a place she had always dreamed of, Paris. She was attracted to this modern, bustling city famous for its artists and revolutionary thinkers. She was driven by a fierce desire to build a life for herself and become an independent woman. Guided by the idealism of youth, she overlooked the practical. She had no income, no job, no contacts in France, and a four-year-old daughter to look after.

In the end, it was her father who came to her rescue. Once he understood that his daughter was beyond his sphere of influence and that she would never return to Greece, he traveled to France to help her get settled. He bought her a small store and the apartment above it. Sarina divorced Ernest and began a new chapter of her life.

Upon her arrival in France, she felt handicapped by the presence of a child she was not equipped to care for. Reine was a burden, an encumbrance, a piece of luggage that had to be stowed away. With no family to help her, my grandmother decided to leave her daughter in the hands of strangers in a foster home until she settled into her new life.

Deserted, Reine had no one to tell how much she missed her father and her home and everyone she’d known back home. She missed hearing the language of her childhood. In the foster home, she was ridiculed for her inability to speak French, for her flamboyant red hair, her freckles. Disoriented and scared, she started wetting her bed, which infuriated the foster mother. Once, as a punishment, Reine was made to walk around the courtyard with the wet sheet on her head in front of a crowd of kids. She told me that story many, many times as she was going from one emotional breakdown to another, one hospital to another, one suicide attempt to another.

While still in Greece, Sarina met Moïse Ventura, who had fallen madly in love with her, so much so that he followed her all the way to Paris, leaving behind parents, siblings, friends, and his professional life. He was a Greek journalist who wrote fiery articles denouncing the repressive Greek regime. Expressing his views had landed him in jail on more than one occasion.

Reine spent a year in foster care before Sarina brought her back to live with her and Moïse, now called Maurice. His old name was dangerously Jewish in the burgeoning antisemitism of prewar Paris. Maurice loved Reine with all his heart, but he was a dreamer who idealized life and was blind to his wife’s flaws. Before long, Sarina was holding the reins. Four years after Reine returned home, her brother Claude was born. Maurice became even more passive and let his wife order him around as if he was a child, which left his children at the mercy of their volatile mother.

In May 1940, after Hitler invaded the north of France, the south was still an unoccupied “Free Zone.” At that time, people believed that only men were at risk of being arrested and deported by the Nazis. So, in late 1941, Sarina persuaded her husband to leave Paris and wait out those dangerous times with friends in the Free Zone while she stayed in Paris with five-year-old Claude and fourteen-year-old Reine.

I grew up on tales of those terrible years. My mother and grandmother were haunted by the brutal memories of the occupation. They now lived in the 11th arrondissement, while their store was in the 12th. To go from the apartment to the store, they had to cross the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine that divided the two districts. On a cold winter day, Reine was on her way to the store to help her mother as she usually did. Holding her little brother’s hand, she stopped on the curb on the 11th district side to wait for cars to go by so they could safely cross over to the 12th district side. Suddenly, she saw a large group of men come running from every direction. Nazis and pro-Nazi French men surrounded the 12th district and proceeded to arrest every Jew on the street, - men, women, and children - loading them like cattle onto army trucks. Reine could not stop staring at the avenue, terrified by the screams, the tears, the confusion. Had she crossed just seconds earlier, she and her little brother would have been picked up too, never to be heard from again.

A short year after Maurice had taken refuge in the south, the Free Zone was also invaded. The Nazi government imposed mandatory ID badges for Jews: The Star of David, with the word “Juif”, (French for “Jewish”), written on it. This was one of the tactics used to isolate Jews from the rest of the population, enabling them to identify, deport, and ultimately exterminate the Jews of Europe.

When the entire country fell under German occupation, Sarina decided that the best thing for her family was to be together. She prepared to leave Paris and rejoin her husband in the south, but as so many were fleeing the city, she only managed to get two tickets. She left with Claude and entrusted friends with her daughter’s safe voyage.

My mother never forgot being left behind in the care of “friends” who were strangers to her. She told me that story time and time again, pain written all over her face, tears running down her cheeks. To Reine, this was the ultimate betrayal by her mother and the undeniable proof that Sarina had chosen her son over her. Reine was expendable. My mother never recovered from it, and although she joined her family soon after, her relationship with Sarina was now beyond repair. I could hear the mix of rage and despair in her trembling voice as she spoke. That unexpressed rage turned into hatred, and so my unforgivable grandmother remained unforgiven.

Once the war ended, there was relief, but there was also a void. For years they had lived one day at a time, never knowing what the next day would bring or if they would survive at all. Now that she was free, now that she did have a future, 18-year-old Reine felt adrift, not sure what to aspire to nor what to dream about. She began to attend classes at a Jewish club where young adults would get together. They formed a theater troupe, played music, picnicked in the gardens, and held parties.

During this time, Reine had turned into a beautiful woman. Her friends from the old days said she looked like Rita Hayworth and that the boys were all in love with her. Among her admirers were two people who were to play important roles in my life: my father, and my stepfather.

MY FATHER

My father, Louis Miller, was born in Warsaw, Poland. When he was a boy, his family moved to Belgium, where he grew up. He had an older brother and a younger sister. During the Nazi occupation of Belgium, the entire family survived by hiding in the maid’s quarters on the top floor of an apartment building in Brussels, spending years carefully remaining unseen and unheard. After the war, his family moved to Paris.

My father was a talented painter, musician, and an artisan who made leather goods. My mother admired his music and fell in love with him; they married and moved into the apartment just next door to Sarina’s. He set up his leather workshop in one of the rooms of the small apartment.

My grandmother was dead set against this marriage right from the start. Ironically, the woman who had once spit in the face of convention and married for love thought little of her new son-in-law because he did not a have steady job with a guaranteed income. She doubted that he could be a good provider for his family. But I always suspected there was more to my grandmother’s dislike of her son-inlaw. Maybe she was not entirely...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	30.7.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
ISBN-13	979-8-9902596-1-4 / 9798990259614

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