The One with Jesus

image of robot by the author

I am 32 years old. I stand in our art deco Berlin apartment in the kids’ room. My son, age 3.5, is sleeping. My daughter, age 2, is screaming. I get the baby carrier. I put my daughter in the carrier and on my front body. She is heavy. My groins hurt from carrying two babies inside and outside my belly for the last couple of years.  I start the soothing routine. I bend and straighten my knees. I turn to the left. I turn to the right. 

I am exhausted. I feel tired. It is not the tiredness of sleep deprivation. I feel the strenuous tiredness of constant achievement while being on this planet for the last thirty years. “Why am I so tired?”, I ask myself. I bend and straighten my knees. I remember a meditation technique from one of my meditation books, meditation for dummies.

The technique says, that if you have a question with no answer, stay with it, keep on asking, What is really going on? Again and again, until you will hear the right answers. My daughter is still crying. I turn to the left. I turn to the right. I bend and straighten my legs. Okay, let’s go: “Why am I always so tired?” I turn for a couple of tired dance moves to calm my daughter. My meditation question turns from “Why am I always so tired?” to “Why am I so lonely?” to “Why do I have to work so hard?” to “Why is everything so exhausting?” The screams of my daughter turn into quiet noises. The questions in my head get louder. My daughter falls asleep. I have a vision. I feel my twin brother.

Until this moment, I had three older sisters and no brother. But now, I see my twin brother. I am not scared. I still stand. I slightly turn from side to side to sooth my daughter and me. I have clear knowledge. I have a twin brother. He died in my mom’s womb. Suddenly, I know why I always felt so lonely. I remember hiding at big family parties, crying in my room. Suddenly, I know why I am so tired. My whole life I worked for two. I am an artist and a scientist. I am a yoga teacher and a super mom. I am the sporty one and the spiritual one. I put my daughter down on the kids’ bed. I am very careful to not to wake her nor her brother. I sneak out of the kids’ room and into my study. On my bookshelf is my mom’s 1979s expectant mother’s prenatal care record, when she was pregnant with me. She gave her records to me, when I was expecting. I thumb through the yellowish pages. There it is Abort, May 1979. I remember, my mom told me she had to go the hospital, when she was pregnant with me. She had a uterine abrasion. After that, she had to rest.

I see the whole scene in front of me. The male doctors in the 1970s. My mom, mother of three little girls, was pregnant again. There were no regular ultrasounds that would have shown her two kids. The doctors must have told my mom, that she is still pregnant and that all is well. And my mom was too busy to read her own records. I go back to the kids’ room. I lay down with my kids. I need to sleep.

Later, a while after my meditation and my vision of my twin brother, I speak to my mom. She tells me, that she always felt, that with this last pregnancy, she would have twins and a son. Everything falls into place for her, too.

For the next years, I feel guilty about killing my brother in the womb. At my parents’ house, I find an old box with letters from winter 1979. My parents’ friends sent condolence cards: “We feel sorry for you, again no son.” My whole life has been a disappointment for my parents.

In my mid-thirties, we live near Boston. I take the subway. All of the sudden my vision of my twin brother is back. That day, I see him as a fish. He swims. He tells me, that he is happy now. He chose that form of reincarnation. Now, my brother organizes democratic grass root community movements in the ocean. We part smiling. I am relieved. And still, I am sad that he is not living with me. But I begin to grieve. Sometimes I am mad at him. Sometimes I am glad for the short months we had together. Sometimes I realize, my parents would have ignored me completely anyways, with a brother on my side.
I need another five years for the next insight. I am 43 years old. I am on a walk with the dog. I think of my brother. I ask myself “Why did my brother die?” I remember my book meditation for dummies. I remember the question-meditation technique. I ask myself: “Why did he die and not me?” After a while, I have to stop walking. I feel a strong light flooding my entire body. I know: My brother is Jesus. He died for me. Now, it is on me to bring the light. And I spent the last 40 years, my whole life, feeling sorry for myself. With the light, I feel a strength I never felt before. “But how?” I ask. “How am I supposed to bring the light?” I do not get an answer. But I understand. My parents named me Dorothée. Greek for the Gift of God. Yet my whole life is not about my parents. I am here on this planet right now to bring the light of God. “But how?” I keep asking. I still wait for the answer.