Birthplace,

 

As I write this, I'm waiting for my bowl of tea to cool. Once I have drunk that delicious, caffeine-free warm, licorice tea, I go to bed nice and early. I'm already quite tired, because it was a cold, dark day and I was still recovering from the sudden crying fit I had yesterday.

 

Although I don't use social media myself, Bonnie, my wife, has a tablet with Facebook, which she rarely or never looks at. Every now and then I follow the news of what is happening in our area and sometimes I also read about what is going on in Holland. Yesterday, I came across all kinds of information about my birthplace The Hague, where I grew up in the Vrede-rust district.

 

I suddenly couldn't stop looking at many cute and moving photos of families with children from the sixties and seventies, which people who had also lived there in the past had posted. People usually responded very pleasantly to each other's photos and memories and agreed how nice it was to have grown up there, although the neighborhood had deteriorated enormously.

 

My old neighborhood, also called Den Haag Zuid-West, was actually a very special neighborhood, which was literally built from the ground up shortly after the end of that horrible five-year Second World War. After the liberation from the Nazis, a hopeful time of reconstruction and solidarity began. Since there was a great housing shortage, they managed to meet the need for affordable, single-family rental homes in a short time.

 

Blocks of houses with balconies and fairly large windows, with porches, three or four levels high, alternated with galleries and low rows of houses, with their own small gardens. Everything was set up in such a way that everyone used the communal  backyards and there were many grassy areas with fragrant roses and flowering shrubs. Each neighborhood had its own name and shopping center, where many small entrepreneurs had their business. For example, we had a shoe shop, butcher's shop, grocer, drugstore, bakery, French fries and ice cream shop and flower shop within walking distance and, a little further, a bicycle shop, a toy shop and a hairdresser. This social housing offered plenty of space for numerous communal activities, churches, schools, boy scouts,  playgrounds and sports clubs. I now realize how pleasant and safe it was to grow up there.

 

I read they are doing everything to breathe new life into my old, impoverished neighborhood, but much has already been demolished and replaced with new homes. Apparently, where I used to live and play has become an attraction for the poorer, older and unemployed part of the population, with second and third generations, many who have come to the Netherlands from other countries. At that time there was still a homogeneous population, in which everyone worked and had a family and an average income. There were hardly any cars then and, in my family, we walked everywhere, rode our bikes or took the bus or tram, if necessary. There were still plenty of empty meadows and public gardens, where many children played every day. Yes, that's how I grew up. Suddenly, I was overcome by sadness and nostalgia, for what was actually a very happy childhood, which is now - I am sixty-five - very far behind me.

 

Since my Catholic parents had four, and later a fifth and a sixth, children, they qualified for a four-room ground level housing unit, where the string hung from the letterbox flap in the door and you could always easily enter as a child. When I looked at all those photos, I realized that we actually, broadly speaking, lived in exactly the same comfortable way as a lot of other people did at that time. I am so grateful for that. Despite painful memories, I was extremely lucky to have been able to spend my first years there.

 

My intense sadness was because of a belated Christmas card that I received from my dear old mother, which was written by my helpful sister. She said things weren't going well for her and Dad. She is blind and completely disabled due to osteoporosis, but fortunately she still listens to beautiful music. I know, from previous sporadic messages, that my parents, at least, happily live together in the same nursing home, but they are tired and sad in their final days.

 

I have had little or no contact with them for many years - and have never returned to the Netherlands since my emigration to the United States in 1999 - because I continued with my Embodied Language (EL) and because they or my other family members, apparently had no interest whatsoever. I wanted so badly to share my EL with them, but I couldn't. My two brothers and three sisters have failed me and every time I tried to interact with them again, I felt re-traumatized and judged about all the things, that had happened in the past, but were never really addressed - with EL – and I inadvertently ended up having Disembodied Language (DL) with them.

 

At a certain point, purely out

 of self-preservation, I decided

 to hold off and never be 

heard from again. I had 

never wanted it that way

 and, for a long time, I didn't

 even believe, I would be 

able to do it, but I felt 

compelled to do so. 

Rejecting my own family

 was and still is something

 I have never really been 

able to get over.

 

My great sadness also has to do with admitting to myself, that I have not managed to be on good terms with my family. I chose to have no contact rather than surrender to how they wanted me to be. I wanted and I still want, to continue my way and I don't feel any respect from them - because I always seemed to be the problem - for my way of life.

 

When I received that sad, sweet card from my mother, who says she thinks about me very often, I also felt something like a reproach: where are you, you abandoned us. I know, that I let them down and I cried too, to be able to forgive myself, because I just want what I want and that is absolutely okay.

 

In the past, when - before I, because of my complicated, on the one hand, happy, but on the other hand, painful family past - I fell into my old shame, resentment and sadness for the umpteenth time, it was always as if the whole world had collapsed before me and I had to start all over again, rebuilding myself. Fortunately, this time things are very different.

 

Although I definitely had a big emotional outburst, I didn't feel like everything had fallen apart again. On the contrary, I actually cried, because I knew very well what I did and why I did it – that we decided not to create a family and have children – and that I will continue with what I do, because I want to . It probably also has something to do with my own old age, that I finally could let go of the great sense of guilt, that I had failed, as the eldest son, as a brother, as an uncle, but also as a person, who actually always had wanted to talk to everyone about everything, but who knows and accepts that things will never be different, in his family.

 

Of course, I still had hoped for a long time, that something would happen, but I did myself a disservice by continuing to hope for this. It also took many years, before I could really believe, that I really had discovered my EL and that everyone – not only my family – continues to unconsciously suffer with DL. My motivation also comes from a sense of responsibility, that I, as the eldest son have   caused everyone so much trouble with my inappropriate and wayward behavior. I now finally forgive myself, that I am just who I am and that I am within my rights, to continue with my own way of life, even if they don't want that. I feel freed from a burden, that I apparently still carried with me.

 

In my hometown, there was a place, where I liked to go. There were quite a few low trees there, which I could easily climb and from which I could see all the houses. As a child, I had to come home to eat as soon as the streetlights came on. It was actually already time to go home, but I was sitting there, so comfortably, on that branch. Suddenly, I heard a blackbird singing and I started to cry, because it sounded so beautiful, and I seemed to experience eternity. I stretched out on that branch, and I lay there so still and it was like I was in a wonderful bed. It was a first realization of my Enlightenment, which I now call my Language Enlightenment (LE) and describe here, on this blog, with my BT.