As the full moon rose upon the horizon,
And intense emotions swelled with the tides,
A broader landscape opened up,
Illuminating a new path for me.
I can now observe in the sea of my ancestors,
How they have carried me,
How they have kept me afloat,
How they have drowned me,
How they have shaped me.
And now in the mirror of my self-reflection,
I can clearly see.
Giving the name of a dead person to a newborn is basically expressing the desire to see that person live again. This name-giving takes on different meanings depending on the time, the culture and the tradition we live in. In most cases, it represents a wished and embodied return. In Greece, the land of my blood ancestors, it is a tradition to give the name of the grand-parents without thinking so much more about it. In Yoruba tradition, they say that a new born is often the return of an ancestor. In most cases, a healthy distinction between the newborn and the dead person is established. Boundaries are clean, grieving has happened, the name is well received. Integrated. But when you give to your baby the name of a dead person, whose death has remained a secret, the death has been traumatic, the grief has been unprocessed, then the name can then take the form of a veil or a mask under which the newborn can absolutely disappear. I believe that this is what happened to me. My entire life, I felt that there were hungry and untethered forces howling around me. Some weird energies. I often suspected the presence of the other inside of me, but I did not really know what to do with that. I did not believe in ghosts back then as I do now.
As a child, I thought I was silent when in reality I was silenced.
As a child, I thought I was shy when in reality I was terrorised.
As a child, I thought I was overweight when in reality I was two inside of me.
A porous border between normality and pathology.
It's not dead skin that I leave behind. These are invisible particles that won't bother you at all at first. It will leave you indifferent. And then little by little, I will settle in your chest, in your nest, in your heart, and from being invisible, I will become suffocating.
It was not until just before my 40th birthday that, while working on my family tree, I saw a pattern emerging clearly. I uncovered unknown and hidden stories that one by one were exploding to my face like small, burning, acidic bubbles. Secrets protecting traumatic memories, secrets protecting woeful ignorance and injustice, secrets protecting intolerable losses, and incest. Incest everywhere. Painful patterns frozen in time. Painful patterns trapped in the unconscious field of the family. Painful patterns that needed to repeat themselves again and again in order to find a way to heal.
Migration. Colonisation. Domination. Disconnection. We know where it leads.
Maman, you say you did not know that Tata Irene lost a baby before I was born! All these years, it was hard to believe you. Quite a weird thing to just be a coincidence, don’t you think? Anyhow, after all this time, after too many unanswerable questions, I believe you now. You said many times that you did not know, that I need, I have to believe you. There is no other way… I believe you all the more now that I see, through your sincerity and your ignorance, a real sign of a powerful and intrusive force of the loss of a child.
In 2018, something weird happened. Looking back, I think this was probably the first visible crack around my name. I was participating in a Transgenerational retreat in the South of France. We would start every morning by sitting in a circle, sharing each, a few words. One after the other, we would talk about dreams, feelings and emotions that emerged during the night, the day, the work. We did not have a real talking stick to pass around, but our teacher was using another powerful tool: she asked us to simply announce our name prior to talking. Though we knew each other, day after day, this practice, she said, helps realign the energy and acts as “fine-tuning” on the words of the next person talking. Odd as it sounds, it obliged us to pause. If anyone ever forgot to say their name, the teacher would immediately stop their flow by a firm and loud reminder : “Your name!”.
After conveniently forgetting myself the first two days, I realised how complicated it was for me to pronounce my own name. Patricia. Patricia. I mumbled, I hesitated. It felt fake. It felt alien. So, on the 3rd day, when it was my turn to share, without even thinking - it was not premeditated, Cleopatre1 burst out of my mouth. Wow! It just popped out like that. Everyone in the circle was taken by surprise. They all looked at each other, then at me; as I continued sharing, quite normally, they understood that this was no joke. And so, we moved on, the teacher did not intervene, and there I was, speaking under my ancestors´ protection and name. For the rest of the days of the retreat, I presented myself as Cleopatre. It felt right. I was proud. So much more appropriate and so much more comfortable.
Listen to me Papa! I was not born to replace anyone. I didn´t come here for your mother´s approval at the dinner table, or a soothing and sweet reminder for your sister´s loss. No. I was born for blood and feathers and herbs and the sea, I was born from the roots and from the skies. I was born from rain and chants, and even if my kingdom is a real mess, I like it here. So listen to me papa! Wake up from your deep sleep and enter back into the world. I have news from you! My name is Sage.
Patricia, Caroline, Jeanne are the names I was given at birth. Patricia, Claudine, Marianne are the names of the dead baby of my aunt Irene, the sister of my father. Although, all these years, my attention was set on just the first of the three names, I never realised that there was more to look into; they say that the devil is in the details! One day, quite recently, I pronounced out loud all 3 names of mine and of hers; I realised that Caroline and Claudine sounded so similar, and so Marianne and Jeanne ! My goodness! What have they done? Unwillingly, my parents had become the perfect (empty) vessel for the strong incantation of a ghost; the perfect echo chamber for an insisting visitation.
Call me crazy. Call it a malediction. Call it vampiric energy. Call it whatever. At the end of the day, a young restless soul has being pushing hard to live, through the years, through the bodies. She found a way. Through my body.
The denial of one generation nourished the delirium of the following.
Come rain or come shine, I would wear my name and it would wear me. Like a stone in my stomach. Like a heavy backpack full of her past and yours, her stories and yours, her stuff and yours, her dreams and yours, her expectations and yours. They were not mine. And you know what? I give them back to you and to her. The name, the child, the stone…
Ancestral reconnection is not about becoming a trauma sponge for the un-metabolised pain. I didn´t realise that this is what was happening with me. In my defence, I have to say that such a condition is pretty natural. The “sponge” thing is actually the default mode we are all living all our life. Facing the stories, facing the mess, is very complicated. It is hard work but it is absolutely crucial. Shaking and wringing the troubles out of our body and out of our personal space is the only way to give ourselves what we really need. It is also a good way to give our ancestors, the healing they may still need to be in their fullness.
We are living here and now, and we are also a part of a vast tapestry that has been woven for tens of millions of years and will continue on after us. I love the image of the tapestry. I love imagining a woman sitting on the earth, weaving our lives on her loom. There is a pattern. It existed before you. And when you come, you are like a new thread that is woven in. Through your life, through the way that you are, through your achievements, through your healing. You continue the pattern but you can also change it.
I have decided to change it. Radically. But with tenderness. Radical tenderness on a golden thread. I like that. A golden thread that will shift something in the whole. Just a little. It will weave something humble. And even if I know that in thousands of years from now, no one will remember me or my life or my story, I will still be there.
With a golden thread and radical tenderness.
Patricia is the story of pain. Sage is the story of radical tenderness.
Cleopatra is the name of my paternal Grand-Mother.
Gave me goosebumps! Listening to Philipp Glass piano study n°5 while I read it...(ever so slightly evolving patterns) Beautiful story