Introduction
The diversity of nature is unbelievable! It is such a wonder how life developed in so many different forms and ways. So many living organisms which all influence each other and keep the natural balance. Everything is connected in the big cycles of nature and humans are a part of this cycle.
Today unspoiled nature is very rare, especially in industrialized nations. The humanity strives to rule nature in order to feel more secure in our world. Many humans digressed from working with the cycles of nature, simply because they do not feel like being a part of nature.
It took me some time to understand the connections between all living organisms and to develop a dream of reconnecting with nature. My dream is not fully shaped yet and it will probably take my whole life, but it already started with my passion for animals when I was very young.
2.Family Background
Extended Family & Roots
My grandmother grew up at the end of World War II with no mother, six sisters and one brother. She has a deep connection to all her siblings. She was raised very religious and devout by her father. After some months of being widower he married another woman.
Later in life that lead to charity work of almost all siblings who wanted to help others. They are mainly feeling unprejudiced about all cultures and human beings. A lot of them are married internationally (USA, Denmark, Italy) and work to make the world a better place, e.g in a charity store or as a food saver cooking for the poor in Denmark.
To some extend they transferred that way of thinking to their children so that a lot of them work internationally helping others.
My mother was also affected by that way of thinking. For example she provided our living room and cellar to help organizing a campaign called “Christmas in a shoebox”, where people prepare a shoebox with school material, clothes and games for children in Africa. My mother did that every year for about four years and my sisters and I assisted her with curious effort.
Maybe she also took some of her motivation from her experience in Nepal, where my parents lived for half a year to build a hospital when I was at the age of one.
When I was ten years old, my parents decided to accommodate Bilalah, a five-year old girl from Afghanistan, who had a hole in her heart, to enable her to be operated in Germany. During that time we all gained deep insights in a completely different culture and lifestyle. Especially it was very challenging not to communicate through words, so we all had to become creative in other methods of communication. For the time Bilalah was with us, we adapted our daily life more to her culture (eating on the ground, Afghan food, making Afghan friends) and realized what it actually means to be in material poverty. She did not know anything in our house, including the toilet, kitchen tools and the television. But still I remember that time as very agile and exciting because we also learned a lot of things from her.
This experience of being together with an additional “younger sister”, who doesn't speak German and who grew up in a completely different culture, sensitized my feeling of the equality of all human beings and the Patrix thread of racism never appeared.
Born to the average middle class as a white female and the first girl out of three, I had no siblings as example and was always the first to try out age-based activities.
My mother works as a clinical study nurse in an applied research hospital and my father worked as a nurse too, but now he is in invalidity pension and works as an artist producing mosaic pictures. Both are very good-natured and especially with my dad I haven't had a single dispute in my life.
“Where there is a will, there is a way.”
My mother often quoted that sentence and encouraged me to simply follow my interests. She taught me that in life I should always try to do what makes me happy. My dad also often said: “If you are happy with what you are doing, than you are doing it right!”
Both never judged me nor gave me a direction to follow and I was almost always completely free in my decisions. That means as free as you can be without knowing about the Patrix and the patterns which go along with it.
So I mainly followed my personal interests (except school, where you actually are forced to do certain things) and was always very happy.
My first little sister, who is two and a half years younger than me, developed completely different than I did. She always had a more rebellious part and often looked for disputes and spreading bad mood. But on the other side she also could be very obliging, entertaining and if you really need her she will be present. Nevertheless I developed something like a “bad mood wall” over the years which makes me almost immune towards conflicts and bad mood and I learned to prefer high spirit discussions.
My second little sister was again a complete opposite of both of us with a more silent character and developed a lot of creative skills. She always went her own - sometimes very stolid – way, without taking care about advices of others.
Our different qualities of skills and character traits became visible in our school pathway. After observing the school system for some years I came to the conclusion that it is kind of weird (although we even went on a Montessori school). Because of my sisters silent character, she did not actively participate in school and the teachers ignored her. So she just refused to learn anything in big groups, but the teacher paid no attention to her. The teachers put her on a special school, where she finally learned to read.
My other sister was a bit too active in school and the doctor diagnosed ADS. So after primary school she went to junior high. As I did not have any problems with the requested behavior, I was sent to secondary school.
It showed me that our educational system is not based on the diversity of people. It is more focused on separating “intelligent” and “less intelligent” people and measured by some abstract qualities people should have without a focus on real human qualities.
My youngest sister developed the pattern to say: “I cannot do that, because others are more intelligent and I am stupid” and for me it is a big sign that our school system failed and instead the Patrix of internalized oppression dominates.
Family Dramas
At the age of fourteen my parents divorced, which was a huge cut in my life. I could not understand the necessity of it and was angry with my mother because she was the one who wanted to split up. But as time went on, we became accustomed to it and it was okay for all of us except my father. He was lost in daydreaming, doing nothing the whole time and mourning about the past.
Suddenly we got the message that my dad committed a suicide attempt by poisoning himself with strong medicine. To his and our luck a watchful housemate noticed the incident and called for help. Through this incident I recognized that bad things do not only happen in other families, but also in ours.
The second big drama in our family was my godmother, the youngest sister of my grandmother, being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2014. The diagnosis was surprisingly shocking because she always used to life very healthy and payed attention to a healthy diet and high quality products. But nevertheless we all believed in her recovery. But she died one year later and everybody was shocked. We always had a deep connection because she did not have children of her own and because of her tight bound to our family. Her death, which happened during my PDC in France, was the first I ever experienced in my life.
This experience gave me a completely new feeling of life, because I noticed that life plays his own game and no one is excluded. Over weeks I tried to accept her passing away and even if it seemed inconceivable my life on earth went on. My conclusion was not to think bad about death any more but rather as another step in our life.
The third aha experience in my life was a frontal car crash we had in Italy. I can remember every little scene very well. The most horrible seconds were just after the collision when the car was full of smoke and shouts from all of us were felt silent. I did not know if my sisters and my mother were alive. But when all of us gave a vital sign it was an overwhelming feeling of happiness to be alive. Nothing else mattered but our well-being and the appreciation of being alive was huge.
Before all these incidents, I kind of lived in a bubble which said: “Bad things never happen in my family. I am not concerned with “Contingency Patterns” of life.” These experiences showed me that a bubble protecting me and all the people I know, does not exist and we are all part of something whole coherent.