After returning from a visit in Germany, the vivid images that once haunted me in Harburg/Schwaben began to fade. I felt as though I had left the sorrow where it belonged—at its source. The pain and mental anguish that had once consumed me began to loosen their grip. For the first time, I felt free. I had faced the past and believed I had won.

For a time, I walked taller—proud of myself for facing the darkest corners of my memory. I felt safer, more grounded, and began to express feelings I had long kept hidden. Confidence started to grow in the spaces where fear once lived.

But then, three weeks later, it came back.

One Sunday morning, I jolted awake from a nightmare so visceral that the emotions clung to me long after my eyes opened. It was more than a dream—it was a revelation.

In the dream, I was bound to a chair with duct tape, trapped in a room where water poured in from behind. I strained my neck, desperate to find an exit. There were no windows, no doors. Panic set in as the water climbed higher. I thrashed, ignoring the pain as the tape cut into my skin. When the water reached my knees, I managed to stand bend forward and began inching the chair toward the wall, slamming it against the plaster in a futile attempt to break free.

The water kept rising.

When the water reached my waist, a small basket floated toward me. I leaned in, trying to catch it with my chin as it drifted past. Then the current shifted, and I caught a clearer glimpse of what was inside: a baby. A baby girl. My stomach dropped – it was me.

I screamed at her, “What do you want from me?”

Faces of relatives appeared on the ceiling, their smirks twisted with indifference. One voice answered, “Just pick her up and take her home.”

I shook with fury and fear. “Why should I? She should never have been born. I don’t want her to live the life I’ve lived. Let her die.”

At those words, the dream shifted. The room darkened. The water began rushing in again, faster this time.

Another voice—gentler, glowing—appeared and asked softly, “Don’t you want to see who she might have become without the pain? Don’t you want to help her grow?”

“No,” I whispered. “She’s dirty. It was her fault. She’s weak. Just like my father said—stupid, worthless, unlovable. I don’t want her to live.”

The gentle voice vanished. I was left alone with the crying child. I tried to ignore her, willing her to disappear. But her cries pulled at me, until I looked again. Her small hands reached out.

At that moment the water stopped and the duct tape loosened. I reached into the basket to lift her out, and the water fell still. Her body was warm—alive. I was holding myself. A child who wanted nothing more than to be loved.

I woke up gasping, drenched in sweat. Standing now in the kitchen, shaking as I poured coffee, the dream still clung to me. My hands trembled, and tears streamed down my face.

The rejection I had shown the child—myself—terrified me.

I had hated myself for as long as I could remember. I saw myself through my father’s eyes: worthless, shameful, undeserving of love. At that moment, the duct tape gave way. I reached into the basket and lifted her out. The water hushed around us. Her body was warm—alive. I was holding myself: a child aching for nothing more than love.

I doubled over with the weight of grief. The dream lingered for days, echoing in every quiet moment. I knew I had to return to it. I had to understand.

That dream revealed something I had never fully understood: I had internalized the rejection I experienced in childhood. I absorbed my parents’ cruelty and mistook it for truth. Like any child, I depended on them—and accepted their views, their treatment, and their demands as normal.

I learned early to suppress my feelings, to deny my own needs. By twelve, my skin had broken out in psoriasis—a visible reflection of the chaos inside me. I had already labeled myself as unworthy. By fourteen, I had lost the will to live.

Deep down, a small voice tried to protest, but the damage was done—it had become an imprint. I couldn’t trust my own feelings anymore. I had learned not to.

Even worse, I found myself replicating the patterns I despised. How could I think and act like the very people who hurt me? Was I letting them win?

It became clear: the child inside me had been frozen in time, waiting—waiting to be seen, to be loved. Therapy alone wasn’t enough. The wound ran deeper—a fear rooted in the amygdala, the quiet force behind my repeated self-rejection.

Until I could accept the child I once was—the one who existed back when my grandmother was still alive—I knew I could never fully heal.

No one had ever taught me to love myself. No one gave me permission to cry, or arms to run into. I had sealed away my emotions, locking them behind trauma. My brain—had shut down my ability to process, to grow, to trust.

But today, I am free.

I have severed the emotional umbilical cord that tied me to a past full of shame, rejection, and darkness. I have become the adult I needed as a child. I can now meet life’s challenges from a place of strength.

It wasn’t easy. It took another journey back to Harburg to truly face the shadows.

Not everyone needs to return to their childhood home, but we must all return emotionally—because only by confronting the past can we free ourselves from it. If we don’t, the pain becomes our inheritance, passed on to our children in invisible ways.

Far too many adults carry these invisible scars for life, unconsciously repeating the patterns of their unhealed wounds—and passing them on to others.

This book is my journey—but I offer it with the hope that it helps others find their way out of the haunting shadows and into the light, where they can rediscover their true selves: compassionate, human, and deeply worthy of being.