Clearing the Garbage

Nothing lasting is built in haste. Emotions don’t shift overnight, and neither do deeply ingrained habits. But I had to begin somewhere if I was going to unload the burdens I’d carried since childhood.

At the age of 70, I returned to the place where it all began. After 28 years in the USA, I was determined—and believed—I could finally face the past with ease.

Parents are meant to prepare a child for life. Mine did the opposite—they handed me a weight far too heavy for a child to carry. That burden followed me into adulthood, shaping how I saw myself, how I related to others, and how I lived. Even when I wanted to change—to think, feel, and act differently—the long shadow of their influence pulled me back.

Then one day, standing in front of an overflowing garbage can, I saw it: I had become someone who cared more about external appearances than internal well-being. My thoughts were toxic, my emotions heavy. I was repeating the very patterns I had tried so hard to escape.

I looked around and realized I was surrounded by people who believed the world couldn’t function without them—arrogant, self-important, emotionally disconnected. In that moment, it became clear: I needed to empty the garbage inside me. To cleanse myself of what had been forcefully deposited there. But first, I had to confront it—look it in the face, analyze it, and return it, symbolically, to those who had left it with me. Only then could I begin to fill myself with something better—something nourishing.

The abuse I suffered in childhood wasn’t just emotional—it was psychological, spiritual, and physical. Not knowing anything else, I internalized it. My father, a typical Nazi and a textbook psychopath, constantly told me I was worthless, stupid, and undeserving of even the food I ate. My mother, a narcissist, gave birth to six children, four of whom survived—only to become her personal workers, her emotional slaves.

As I began writing about my past, those haunting shadows came rushing back. But with every painful memory I put to paper, it felt as if I was taking out the trash—layer by layer. Each scene I wrote switched on a small light. The pain didn’t vanish all at once, but it loosened its grip. The more I wrote, the more I understood how much power those unspoken memories held over me. When I had written everything I could never bring myself to say aloud, I felt something shift. I felt lighter. The fear lessened. Slowly, I began to feel empty—but in a new, healing way.

That emptiness was space. Space to be filled with something real.

In its place, I discovered a different version of myself—a gentle, kind woman, capable of love. Tentatively, still afraid of rejection, I began to speak my truth. I no longer had to mold myself to please others. My voice grew stronger. I know now in part what self-respect means.

After six years of deep self-reflection—what I’ve come to call my own form of self-therapy—I made a pivotal decision: it was time to return to the source. Back to my hometown of Harburg, Germany—the place where so many of my most painful memories were born.

At 75 years old, after 28 years of finally speaking freely without insult or belittlement, I stepped once more onto German soil. And when I arrived in Harburg, I found it unchanged in the most unsettling ways.

Talking to the people there felt like breathing in the same poisoned air I had known as a child. I was shocked to realize that even two generations later, the same darkness had not just persisted—it had multiplied. The arrogance, the entitlement, the addiction-fueled dysfunction—it was everywhere, in the grocery stores, the guesthouses, in the way people interacted. The old wounds were still bleeding—only now, they had been inherited by others.

Once again, I had to face what I had long tried to avoid.

Not because I believed I could change it—not alone. But because I still hold hope. Hope that others will recognize the sickness in this way of living, and choose humanity instead.

I don’t claim anything. Nothing was ever freely given to me—except the first seven years of love from my maternal grandmother. She was the one saving grace of my early life. Without her, I truly believe I might have become a psychopath myself. Her kindness was the seed of my survival.

Yes, I follow the law. But I will never stay silent in the face of lies, manipulation, and the abuse of power. I will speak against dictators, narcissists, and those who harm children and gentle souls.

Because even though healing was slow and change once felt impossible, now, in the later years of my life, I will rewrite my book—and include the scientific, psychological, and even genetic consequences that child abuse can have on a life. I must begin to speak the truth—and for the sake of my own dignity, that someone must be me.