follow-up

follow-up
Sunday November 11, 2007

Dear Alice Miller,

I wrote to you a few weeks ago (‘Long Journey Indeed’) and I’d like to thank you for your prompt reply to it.
In your answer you stated: ‘you are on the path to [heal yourself] because you understand now how healing works’.
Shortly after that, there was a session with my therapist, in which I felt I was able to connect to my pain, to speak OUT OF that pain, instead of talking ABOUT it.
In the days that followed, something happened which seemed like a miracle to me: all tension in me ‘just’ flowed away, I felt completely at ease, at ease in myself and with myself. In a way it was like I saw things for the very first time, as if all the world was new, as if I were reborn.
These may seem pompous words but it really was like that. I felt such immense relief! This burden under which I have lived most of my life, was simply lifted, gone. For the first time in my life I felt love for myself.
I can see that the whole experience had absolutely nothing to do with conscious, rational thinking, volition, analysing etc. Something ‘down deep’ in me had let go, had released itself. I could feel it in my whole body, which un-cramped completely, I slept like a baby and woke up rested (contrary to my usual fatigue).
This lasted for a week and then it seemed to ebb away; the old mechanisms, thought-patterns and blockades took their old, familiar places. (I find this quite frustrating but I also realize all this won’t disappear overnight.)

To have experienced this, to know that this is possible, has given me a lot of trust.
Thank you very much, again, for your time and for all the work you do,

D. P.

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(A few days ago I awoke from a dream which I want to tell you, because of its beauty and clarity in message:

a little baby-boy is born; there is no mother, it is my child
I am so happy with it, carry him on my chest, safely hidden under my coat
I go outside and meet a good friend, I open my coat a little so she can see my child
she thinks he is so beautiful and so do I; she says: o, he looks so much like you!
after that I meet several other people, with whom I feel not that comfortable
when I get home I feel alarmed because my child has slipped down under my coat and is entangled in a lot of old rubbish
I free him, worried but lovingly and very carefully; I apologize to him
the child understands, it seems to understand everything, it is very wise
I am so good and careful and tender and loving towards him)

AM: Thank you so much for your wonderful dream and your letter. So I wasn’t far away from the truth and had the right intuition when I wrote you that you know how healing works. You will have times like you describe here, but also dark times when old memories will dare to come up, but you will no loger forget or abandon yourself. The dream shows it very clearly. Congratulations.