I have been thinking a lot about my brother lately, and my head has been hurting continuously for months
now. I feel like I can't think straight. I begin by looking at family pictures that I had put together for a school assignment. (The assignment consisted of creating a reflective notebook, in which we had to break down
particular moments of interaction into transformative moments). My gaze freezes on a picture of my brother
and me. He must have been fourteen in that picture, which means that I would have been four years old. I
stay with the image. My brother had a genuine passion for learning. He was extremely bright at school and
avidly read tons of books on all kinds of subjects. He felt compelled to understand how everything worked.
When I was four, my brother taught me how to tell time. To this day, I vividly remember the feeling of his
arms around me (him sitting on the sofa and me standing in front of him), a toy clock between our four
hands. I internalized his patience and his softness. Without knowing it, my brother taught me in an embodied
way. No one had ever taken the time to teach me anything before.

My brother had many gifts, and I am enraged at how much was taken away from him. When my brother was
fifteen, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His spirit had closed down and no one was truly willing to help
him. Everyone seemed content to find a box, a name, for his "state". The psychiatrist who diagnosed him did
not take the time to look at our insane family life and at what my brother was battling; a dangerous alcoholic
father who attempted to kill him with a knife when he was three years old was just one of his many struggles.
Everyone seemed happy to facilitate a closing down, a spiritual death for my brother. It is difficult for a
fifteen-year-old boy to fight back when knowledgeable psychiatrists, as well as his mother and family, are
happy to take his spirit down and close it up. To hand him a box for him to hide in.

My mother felt compelled to kill her children's spirits. When I was twelve years old, I began to take dance
classes. Dancing instantly became my passion, the only thing I could hold on to to keep my sanity. When my
mother realized this, she told me one day: "I know that you are using prostitution to pay for your dance
classes." This false statement was completely shocking to me (the truth was that I was working at the
reception desk of the dance school in exchange for classes), but what came next was devastating: "You're
going completely crazy with these dance classes. You'll see, you'll end up just like your brother." I clearly
remember what happened to me after those words were spoken: both my spirit and sense of self ran away.
Left. Disappeared. Went into hiding. My spirit retreating from my body was a terrifying experience, which
left me with an intense sense of panic: Is it this easy to become like my brother? To lose myself? To
disappear from the world? My mother's strike was almost deadly, and I consider myself lucky that, unlike my
brother, I was able to return - and to continue dancing as well. My stubbornness served me greatly as a child.
It certainly was my health, and I am grateful for it.

That I witnessed my brother's journey without having been able to do anything to help him is unbearable to
me. I cannot reconcile the loss of his spirit, the half-gain of my own spirit and the haunting terror that what
happened to my brother could also happen to me. In his early twenties, my brother was put in a mental
institution for two years. I cannot contain my rage at this thought. My brother now lives in a home with other
mentally challenged men and women. There is no way back for him now.

In my family, the women were bullies and the men were victims. My mother was the patriarch. She lived by
the adage of "divide and conquer" to make sure that no one got along. For her, vulnerability and connection
were things to trample on, to kill. She was in awe of men who were professionals, and of women who were
artificially pretty. Otherwise, she showed disgust. My father never lived up to her standards. But looking at
the other side, my father beat my mother up when he drank too much. He also slept with knives under his
pillow at night. It took my mother years to admit to this. My family was nothing short of an internal war with
bombs, strategies, allies, enemies, hiding places and deadly strikes. This constant struggle, as well as the fact
that in my family there were two men, two women and me in the middle, made me feel like I had to choose a
side. I sided with the men. For one, they needed an ally (they seemed to be the ones who were being
victimized), and I also felt much more comfortable with them. As a kid, I loved to hang out with guys, to
fight with them, to play with small cars, with baseballs. I rejected girls very early on. This allegiance seems
strange to me, in that both my brother and my father had severe behavioural problems, but, somehow, I was
able to see their hearts, and this travelled a very long way within my body.

But I was a girl, like my mother, and not a boy... And I should be happy being a girl, because the men in my
family had very difficult lives. My father's story is also horribly painful. His father was a rough man, an
alcoholic who beat him up and took everything away from him. My father was a generous man who loved to
share his passions with others. The most vivid memories I have are of him performing magic tricks for me,
and singing opera wholeheartedly around the house. He was a very talented singer. When my father was a
young boy, he took it upon himself to gather his entire family every Sunday after mass to teach them about
opera. Sadly, my father ended up in a hospital, tied to a wheelchair, for the last 25 years of his life. He passed away on my birthday three years ago.

With a family like ours, where everyone was in constant danger, Children's Aid should have been at our
doorstep in no time. Someone should have gotten involved. The question that keeps resonating in my heart
is: Why didn't anyone care? Teachers, neighbours, aunts, uncles, friends, doctors, psychiatrists - no one came
forward. No one came to help. No one came to save us. No one came to save me. I only needed one person
who believed I was worth saving. Why didn't the psychiatrist who diagnosed my brother see what was going
on with all of us, with our family? I don't believe that people didn't notice, that it didn't show. People chose
not to look, not to intervene. It was like they were saying: "You all deserve to be treated badly, to be abused,
to be scared for your lives. You are not worth it". When I was ten years old, my best friend's mother told her
that she wasn't allowed to come to my house anymore. I wasn't stupid. I knew that she saw what was going
on. I remember feeling such shame.

Today, my struggle is to be out in the world with my heart intelligence, my true spirit and my passions intact.
To humbly continue what both my brother and father inadvertently taught me, but were never able to
accomplish themselves: owning their passions, savouring them, living them fully, and sharing them with
others. I miss my brother and father's spirits greatly, but I also feel their spirits powerfully alive in me. I
would like them both to know how much they succeeded in giving me, even within the isolation of our
family.

Because the Espritedu school is one of my passions, it was important for me (with gentle pushes from
Espritedu faculty members) to take this magnificent opportunity to write for Espritpublications. Given the
confusing relationship I experienced with my mother, being in a school with so many women has been
challenging for me. I am most grateful to all of my school colleagues for teaching me, class after class,
residency after residency, to separate the past from the present. To allow me to re-pattern my mistrust and let
female energy run through me again. To help me to reconcile the man and the woman within me, the bully
and the victim. I would like to send a heartfelt thank you to all of my colleagues for their love, support and
generosity, and for their gentle challenges. I love you!