Out of the Darkness Came Light

I was born in Northwest Indiana, about twenty miles outside of Chicago. The day I was born, my great-aunt took my father to a bookie to try to win money to pay for the hospital bill. My mother named me after her college roommate, who ended up as an alcoholic on Skid Row in Chicago. One might say that was an omen. In hypnotherapy sixty-one years later, I was asked when was the safest time I could ever remember. I described what I saw while being hypnotized. The place I was in was cottony and fluffy. I didn’t feel alive, and I didn’t feel dead. I was at total peace and felt like I was floating. Then my therapist asked when was the next time I felt the safest in my life. I described it as a very dark place. I felt comfortable and warm. I could see light far in the distance. As far as I can figure, I was describing the time before being conceived and then the time of being in my mother’s womb. I almost hit the floor when I realized what I had described! From the day I was born, I was not safe. My father came out of World War II an alcoholic. He also was a narcissist and so much more, as I would find out in my life. He met my mother shortly after the war. They were married six months later. My father worked 30 hours a week, went to college and graduated, and built a house within a five-year time period. I was born 8 months after they married, followed by two sisters and a brother being born within those same five years. A younger sister was born four years after that.