Fragmentation

Demons clouded my soul but always, angels lift my heart.

This essay tells the first part of Anna Rosa’s story, the world she is born into and must navigate while facing incompatible scenarios. Strong currents threaten to pull her into the abyss, the underworld where demons reign. Powerful life force lifts her to see the possibilities and beauty of human connectedness. Intercultural Communication became Anna Rosa’s lifelong dream. It springs from being rooted in other worlds, the invisible realm, and from the guidance of wise and kind guardian spirits.

Anna Rosa was born in an airplane and has been on the move ever since. Her mother Ziska insisted that she saw the pyramids while gasping for air during labor pains. Anna Rosa’s father Anton swears they were crossing over the Pantheon in Athens. And the pilot noted ‘baby girl delivered safely upon landing at Aman airport, Jordan.’
And what do you say, Anna-Rosa? “I was born between worlds; and feel most at home in the zone of friction, the liminal space. – between the establishment and the revolution”. She continues, “It is my calling to be a cycle breaker of transgenerational hate and bitterness within and between us”.

For Anna Rosa, it has been a long and laborious process through the minefields of cultural, moral, and relational politics of fragmentation.
She was born during a time of great turmoil in Germany a year after the end of genocide and invasive Nazi warfare with the resulting retaliatory Second World War.
People were on the move, profoundly disoriented from the consequences of their deeds. Millions were searching for a new beginning, dreaming of idyllic family life, and belonging again as proper, correct humans.

Why didn’t we remember what that was like and today show empathy and solidarity as we witness the unspeakable, catastrophic extermination of Palestinians?
Back then, a blanket of silence and denial was drawn over the national German psyche. Consciousness about murderous history and complicity were split off and sent undercover. – underground.

The deliberate, culturally engineered post-Nazi ‘recovery’ collectively focused on economic success – the fabled German Economic Miracle – see what we built, made, achieved, and own –proof that we are worthy.
For many, this was a moral bypass, not facing, owning, and mourning the consequences of cruel, dehumanizing choices made before. It was denial at all costs. The consequences for many were deep fragmentation of identity: the good outer performer – and the exiled and suppressed inner, emotional, moral, and spiritual self.
And as smoothly, society grounded again in an authoritative, cultural mindset of Christian values and white dominance entitlement.
This fragmentation is so deeply ingrained that today’s most brutal and cruel genocidal erasure of Palestinian life and belonging is relegated so easily and effortlessly into the parched moral underground.
Anna Rosa’s recurring dream of being born in an airplane reflects the ambitions of her parents for their newborn, tabula rasa, immaculate so to speak. New-born Germans were both, the hope for redemption and the inheritors of unaddressed guilt, shame, and anger – the trans-generational trauma baggage.

Ziska encouraged her daughter to move into the world. She gave Anna Rosa recently published biographies of pioneer men and women. These newfound heroes were active in other parts of the world, fearlessly engaged as social activists against racism and bigotry. It doesn’t have to be this way was Ziska’s message. It can be different. A marching order of sorts for Anna Rosa perhaps in some way to fulfill her mother’s own, interrupted fantasies.
That is as far as mother and daughter could work through personal and collective guilt and shame together, albeit indirectly. The family’s inner demons kept roaring and clawing their way to dominance. Alcoholism, bitterness, depression, and violence prevailed, leaving behind two bewildered children, Anna Rosa and her brother.

Instead of a carefree, untarnished new life, way too soon for Anna Rosa, much-needed relationships were disintegrating, already broken. A dying mother, in such pain and desperation, drowning in the waves of violence, venom, and spiritual vandalism thrust at her by a hateful, psychotic, alcoholic husband.
School, village, community, and church were oppressively normative, punitive, and righteous, which frightened her but also triggered strong rebellion.

Anna Rosa’s family was ‘othered’ and ostracized because of ‘their wrong’ religion and incompatible social standing, vis a vis the rural village’s rigid cultural norm. Those were based on patriarchal, homophobic mono-religious structures.
All these people who cast such an oppressive net of conformity had just a few years before enthusiastically supported mass human rights violations and genocide. Anna Rosa faced that history and felt deafening shame and guilt, but also anger, and deep sadness about all those attempts to rob her of imagined creative possibilities for connecting across cultures.
She fought the ‘system’ to hold on to idealism, the vision of life’s possibilities. She held on to the passionate desire to pursue and live in diversity-affirming, generous, open-minded relationships with people who were different for any reason. She promised herself to transcend norms and stereotypes, forge creative alliances, and be courageously and happily different.
Anna Rosa was on the move, feeling at home in the transitory space the ‘neutral terrain’ between the borders cultures, the mystical space of transition. She felt comfortable here and met spirited seekers who like her had a dream, a vision of vibrant, colorfully diverse communities collaborating.

This is when Anna Rosa’ began to split off too. Love, safety, and belonging during the early years had vanished; family and community relations were broken. As a teenager, she had fought to save her mother from dying, rescued and protected her brother, tried to fix what didn’t work, and fended off her father’s aggression and violence, coming close to attacking him one day as he threatened to kill Ziska.
As a way of coping, as many children do in traumatic situations, splitting off the inner and outer persona denotes survival. Externally focused on self-worth creation, Anna Rosa thrust herself into achieving and performing in the socio-economic sphere of life. She was bright, ambitious, and extraverted and wanted to work in intercultural communication globally. Anna Rosa’s amazing ventures will be revealed in the next essay.

Her inner persona, the emotional being remained imprisoned, and fiercely controlled. A wounded heart, longing for love and home. Showing vulnerability and sharing her pain, shame, and yearning were marks of weakness, too dangerous to reveal.
Throughout her life, those critical, fear-mongering demons often stirred emotional dissonances, as judgments pointing out faults and shortcomings.
Other times, neediness emerged for being rescued from herself by a strong, morally upright fully dedicated, accomplished other. ‘Was I looking for heroes from Ziska’s books.? Were those my idols’? Anna Rosa contemplated ‘did I try to fulfill Ziska’s dreams’?

In later years, Anna Rosa reflected on her relationships. Was it deceitful, that two aspects of my being, not integrated at those times, showed up at a lover’s doorstep? A dazzling outer appearance, sophisticated and worldly. Along as well emerged the inner persona, a self-absorbed, needy child who had difficulty accepting others for who they were. This one created illusions and expectations of what she demanded partners to be.

In her maturing years Anna Rosa embarked on a Vision Quest journey, seeking integration and inner peace. She felt drawn to the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa, wild and ruggedly beautiful rock formations that conjure the mystery of ancient spirits they hold.
Anna Rosa fasted and lived in solitude. At night, she slept on a thin foam mat under the majestic star-studded sky. Early mornings she assembled a makeshift tent for shade during hot summer days.
One day, seemingly out of nowhere she felt an overwhelmingly powerful energy surrounding her, forcing her to her knees. It appeared as a majestic, unspeakably kind, forceful, and wise vibration.
A powerful message was conveyed: “Not that way, my way – what you see is who you are – be that. – love, wisdom and unending mercy”. Anna Rosa was profoundly moved. She recalled Jalaludin Rumi’s poetry, called, ‘Whispers from the Beloved”. Was this the vision she had asked for?
“Break that transgenerational cycle of bitterness, hate, self-pity, and shame of many who went before you. Embrace this as your purpose for healing yourself and as service to others”.
And so began Anna Rosas’s emotional and spiritual transformation, a journey of facing truth – painful, shameful, and hopeful truth.

Anna Rosa accepted that the deepest pain early on was the moral injury –“I am just like ‘them” she whispered. I too got caught in the racist illusionary system of superiority, projecting blame and all I did not like about myself onto others, outcasting people.

From the teaching by her newfound family here in South Africa and many friends, Anna Rosa experienced that willingness and open-mindedness lead to amazing discoveries of what our shared humanness can mean. She remembered beautiful, intimate times singing with Ziska, graceful moments of love shared despite misery. Today she can see her father as a sensitive young man, bolting from an abusive home into the false promise of grandiosity and heroism.

And now again, here, witnessing the magnitude of inner beauty and dignity shown by people who had survived massive assaults and exclusion during Apartheid – ‘By the Grace of and with unwavering faith in God’.
In the words of Archbishop Desmon Tutu, “We seek to live our purpose by building inner capacity in the face of adversity and seek to achieve a state of felicity instead of resentment and bitterness”.

Anna Rosa felt called to initiate and lead reparative dialog, which has taken place now for many years. More in the essay ‘What South Africa can teach us’.

During emotionally and spiritually healing meetings, Anna Rosa openly speaks about her process of healing history in herself. ‘My split-off personas, all those externalized coping and life management patterns and sabotaging aspects are accepted companions today; alignment of all parts of me, trusting divine purpose for being so, and opening to loving kindness for self and others.
She continues ‘showing vulnerability aligned with integrity opens a door to the heart for the other to enter – a safe and loving space. – May we be warm and welcoming to Palestinian women and children’.

We are in the midst of a seismic shift in the world order. Values propagated by the so-called Global North, as standards for respectful human relations, equality, and equity are questioned as the result of soul-destroying silence about the cruel destruction of Palestine. The definition of democracy appears hollow and inconsistent today; seen by the Global South as engineered by and for the protection of White West societies. Israel’s genocide with impunity for all to see seems to expedite this exposure of double standards.

The suffering of Palestinians is our burden and obligation to offer healing. My essays are intended as an invitation to engage in healing dialog, facing our history together and initiating restorative collaborative action.

And then one day we can invite young Israelis who were so caught in hate and destruction, becoming so sadly dehumanized. We Germans share that journey.

THE END