Selectively Juggling

As the 8th child of ten children who was born into a world of family trauma and loss, I honestly feel that at age five I needed to feel emotionally safe, seen and valued. At age five my parents were still reeling from the drowning death of my brother, just two years prior. They were also still grieving the forced removal of one of my older sisters, who had caught the measles when she was 18 months old, and went from perfectly functioning to being in a coma for a year, fighting like a true warrior- however by age four was profoundly disabled due to the measles virus. This happened before my birth and a mere year before introduced measles vaccinations. She was forcibly placed in an institution for children with intellectual disabilities, just two weeks prior to my birth. So effectively I felt like I needed to be extra good, to be more than I was, simply to make up or amends for the deep loss, sadness and grief.

At age five I wanted to be both seen and invisible. I wanted to forge my own path to school, where I wasn’t just number 8 of 10, but rather a budding scientist and geologist. My reality is that I ended up studying Social Work at University.

At age five I was already beginning to be an outlier in my own family. I learned vicariously through observing others actions. I became hyper vigilant and flew under the radar, creating a world of imaginative play in order to escape some of the realities.