When I was little, my dad would often look up to the sky and yell, as if he was admonishing the Divine: “We are not all born at the same age!”. Intrigued by the meaning of those words, years later, I sought their origin, hoping to better understand my father’s argument.
Tudor Popescu wrote the theater play that borne the same name in 1980. Coincidentally (or through synchronicity), the scenario would be played in theaters across the country, but also later, in my life. The main character, Ștefan, faces a series of unexpected events and, in the middle of a spiritual awakening, he wonders “Have I lived well up until now?” Just like Ștefan, I often asked myself the same question, but the answer finally found me three years ago, after my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
The left-handed righteous child. August 2022. We recognize the first symptoms of my dad’s illness. We haven’t yet found the right treatment, and in his meltdowns, he would call me a hundred times per day. Both my mom and I were still in shock, and every so often, we would call each other just to cry. I was so desperate; I would have done anything. That’s how I ended up at my first family constellation.
We had just finished the opening meditation and we were about to play somebody else’s constellation. And in the very first minutes, I had an extra sensorial experience: within my left leg, right in the area of the shin bone, I began to feel some tingling and micro-vibrations. They intensified. I tried to ignore them, but it was nothing similar to what I had experienced before, and that thought terrified me. I jumped off my chair as if burned and exclaimed, “What the fuuuuck?!”
“What happened to your leg?” asked the facilitator calmly. I was astonished by the questions of how I could have forgotten that moment from my life and why was I recalling it only now, here, and especially like this: “I had it broken when I was little.” “Don’t worry, it’s healing.”
Twenty-five years earlier, I was playing with the only two children from the block, both boys, Costică and Aurică. The game was a classic: we had to climb one of the three plum trees in the block’s yard and jump from one branch to the other. Long story short, I was the monkey who didn’t grab the branch and fell on my leg. Dad appears out of nowhere. He tells me in a commanding tone to put my foot on the ground. “Step on it!” I cannot do it, it hurts a lot. He picks me up and rushes up the stairs. He tells me I have no athletic inclination. That I fell like a complete fool. Yes, that’s right, fell, not feel. Falling like a complete fool. Inside the house, I hear Mom saying: “Did you see what happened to her? She broke her leg.” Dad reassures her by saying that it’s probably just a sprain. That it will pass by tomorrow. To put something cold on it, and it should be fine. Then I hear her, choked with tears, saying: “You swore on the child, and look what happened!”
Convinced it was just a minor sprain, I spent an entire night in agonizing pain. I felt like I had a fever, and my mind obsessively replaying my mother’s burning words: “You swore on the child, and look what happened!” A pain greater than that one given by the fracture was that I understood exactly what she meant. I understood the meaning of her words, but I did not understand the meaning of things. Why me?
For several weeks, the heated arguments between my parents, which were generally centered around the lack of money, were now about another woman. I remember how Dad reassured Mom that it wasn’t true. “I swear it’s not true, I swear on my legs!” echoed the words of my soccer-playing father. Mom wouldn’t be convinced, and at that moment, the ominous oath appeared, reaffirming the Universe’s manifestation power: “I swear it’s not true, I swear on the child!” I cried bitterly, not knowing which pain was greater: the body’s or the one of the soul’s? The pain of a broken leg or the heartbreak of the left-handed righteous child?
The next day, I am reminded what a burden I was. And how I didn’t even know how to fall. It wasn’t the first time I received the nickname “Trouble!” from my dad. By that age, I had been conditioned to believe that my birth had stood in the way of his fulfillment, in the way of him achieving higher goals, all because he had to raise me without any help. He calls a friend who takes us to the “Grigore Alexandrescu” hospital. To his surprise, it’s a double fracture. The bullying continues in the emergency room. Every time someone shows up, I’m labeled a “goose”, a “stretcher case” and how I didn’t take any of his sports genes. Message received: he’s ashamed of me, I don’t meet his expectations, I disappointed my father.
Justice for the Left Foot. I am livid with ANGER, an anger that still burns 27 years later. An anger that is triggered every time I meet another wronged left-handed child. Many times, I would appear out nowhere in difficult or unfair situations waving my justice-league cape: “Alina to the rescue!” All I wanted was to save my inner child, the one I projected onto any victim of injustice. Only no one was shouting “Help!” And the rescuer was robbing the victim of their own power. That rage marked the end of my childhood.
Until that moment, I had been a spiritual child who believed in God with all her heart. A God I had learned about from a (stranger) religion teacher, not from my parents. Until that moment, I idolized my father. His word were my inner law. He carried me everywhere in his bicycle basket. He was the one who always bought me sweets. He was the one that made me love poetry and symbolism. He would sing to me (albeit rarely) Ducu Bertzi’s song “M-am îndrăgostit numai de ea” (“I Fell in Love Only With Her”). He was my soul parent. But that moment of divine justice felt like a profound betrayal. Because it was little Alina that paid the price for my mother to find out the truth about her own betrayal.
Betrayal, betrayal, triple betrayal! First, I was betrayed by my earthly father, who had lied and cheated and whose role should have been to protect me, not to hurl empty vows that put me in danger. Then, I was betrayed by God the Father, who sacrificed me—the innocent one—to humble my dad. And implicitly, on an unconscious level, I felt betrayed by all the masculine side that existed between those two poles [my father, God the Father).
Who was I ever going to trust again?
The Healing of the Lame. The on-duty doctor appears. A handsome man who saw beyond the modestly dressed child accompanied by an adult who, at 9 o’clock in the morning, reeked of a sweetish smell of alcohol.
He tries to make me smile. I have to wear that cast for a month, and he chooses to rebuild my spirit already broken by my father’s words. He was the thread of string that wove and supported my entire trust in men. A symbol of healthy masculinity.
My first family constellation session came as a confirmation of something I had always known: there is another world beyond what we see, and it’s here. I looked around me and knew I would never be the same again. From that moment on, my inner search intensified: I felt a pressure related to time, an internal pressure to read, to learn, and to experience more.
This was followed by a marathon of seeking: traditional therapy, art therapy, somatic therapy (including TRE), Wim Hof exercises, yoga, daily meditations, etc.
I enrolled in an integrative psychotherapy training, I went to see Dispenza in Barcelona, and last year I took a sabbatical. My quest brought me into the world of astrology and, just like that, I transformed into a time traveler.
My shin bone fracture was written in my natal chart. It was written in the stars: a cardinal grand cross, whose meaning I would only understand later in life, in the last constellation session I attended.
Equally fruitful was a psychosomatic session I attended a few months ago, in which, through a Brownian movement—taking turns walking on tiptoes, on heels, limping on the right foot, limping on the left foot, walking normally, mimicking a dwarf or a giant—we were asked to connect with our bodies. Simultaneously, we had to notice what person instinctively came to mind, what moment we associated with that type of walking, and of course, the emotion behind that memory.
I discovered that my father (my right foot) and my husband (my left foot) were the people who had given me the most important resources, and that in the event of losing either of them, it would be incredibly difficult for me to deal with the pain.
What an irony! My father (the right foot) was the one responsible for the fracture of my left foot (and, implicitly, for my lack of trust in the masculine)! And although I initially refused to consider what would happen if I lost both my father and my husband, I remembered the healing of the lame man from Capernaum. A paralyzed man is brought by his friends to Jesus to be healed. Because of the huge crowd surrounding the house, the four friends break through the roof and lower the lame man down, bed and all. Seeing their faith, Jesus heals him, telling the lame man to get up, take his bed, and go home. That’s when I knew: Where my feet can no longer carry me, I trust that the feet and faith of others will. Life will carry me. And vice versa.
I wonder—whose left or right foot am I, in turn? No, we are not all born at the same age.
We are born for one another.