Cellular memory

I stood next to a large machine. It looked like a rocket. A nerve-racking noise came from it, every other minute. I desperately tried to be present. I kept saying: ‘I am with you. I am with you. I am here.’ I hoped she felt, heard, or knew, because I felt disconnected, from myself and everything else. I hovered above my head.

At the rocket’s end two tiny little feet peeped out. They belonged to my daughter. She lied there motionless, in a kind of straitjacket. Two foam rubber pieces were supposed to protect her little ears. Big plates rattled inside, when they slid over each other, time and again: heavy, hard, and unpleasant. What did that fragile baby body go through?

We had not been prepared. The specialist said: ‘She’ll fall asleep. She won’t notice a thing.’

But when the attendants tied her down with Velcro on a frame, pumped up the cushion inside to prevent her from moving, she panicked, cried out in distress.

Things went quickly then. We had hardly time to consider options. She was anaesthetized, then again put into the MRI-scanner: my little girl, only ten weeks old. Already I felt like a failure, and now, over a year later, the memory of those two bare feet still hurts.

Many people would say she is too young to remember, and no, on a cognitive level she won’t recall a thing. Traumas are forgotten, and people live on. But the believe that little children always bounce back has made us blind or insensitive to what may be going on inside. Our bodies, cells, and energy fields can carry these kinds of experiences (let alone those vulnerable baby bodies).

Please, be aware of that, and give them all the love and space they need to heal.