Sorry for this being so long, but two people’s past lives to put together takes up a lot of space apparently. So that is all I can recall at this time. I have no idea what to do with all this knowledge. It is comforting at some level to know that I am not the only one who has gone through past life memories and neither is my child, but could someone explain how people who lived seemingly opposing lives previously have been brought together like this?
So it seems my oldest son and I may have been on opposite sides during WWII. When I was a child I was obsessed with WWII. It started when I was almost 2 ½ according to my mother. I would wake up screaming “Run Run” and would give her a detailed description of my “nightmare” that included descriptions such as the guards with their guns in the guard tower, sneaking out of the barracks, and escaping by crawling under the barbed wire trying to run for the woods with someone else, a girl. She said she never got my age, but thought from the things I told her that I was maybe 12 or 13 and assumed I was a girl. She never discussed these dreams with me (and I don’t remember them) until a couple of weeks ago when I brought up the topic of reincarnation, which until this point was not something I would have ever discussed with anyone in my very Christian family who would NOT have accepted even the possibility. So I was surprised when my mother said “oh you that’s like you when you were a child” and then proceeded to tell me about the dreams. I asked her if those were the words I used and she said yes and told me how it made her think I was a concentration camp prisoner reincarnated, but she never wanted to think I didn’t make it to the woods or that I died and I never indicated if I died or not according to her; however, here are some odd facts about me in this lifetime.
I have always been interested in WWII, specifically in stories of survival, escape, or hiding and more specifically of the children. As a child I use to play a game I called “orphanage” (yet another word I had no way of knowing at that age, maybe 5 or so) where I would get with my friends and we would hide and run and hide and run trying to not be found by the bad guys. I use to pretend that my (very large) collection of stuffed animals were my adopted orphanage children and I would hide them around the house, always in two’s so they wouldn’t be alone, to keep them safe from any bad guys. I remember always wishing that I had brown eyes “like I use too” (I should say that in this life I am, as my mother always stated, the perfect picture of what the Nazi’s wanted, tall fair skin, blue eyes blonde hair and athletic) and preferring boy things and boy toys (I think my mom was wrong when she said she thought I was a girl, I don’t know that I agree) although this was always written off due to the fact that I have an older brother. I have always loved big band and swing and love the 30/40’s clothing, but more specifically the hats the boys wore and the cargo wool pants and cable knit sweaters of the era that the children were known to wear. Also as a child I was terrified of dogs. They were great and I wanted to be around them if I saw them, but as soon as they were physically able to be near me I would freeze and shake in fear and scream. I was also terrified of the woods to the point where if I had to be in the woods I would hyperventilate and freeze. I couldn’t (until recently) even walk in a park that had a lot of trees.
When I was almost 8 my mom bought the diary of Anne Frank in hopes it would help me, we read a little bit every night and every night after she left my room I would pray with tears streaming down my face and apologize repeating over and over “I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I should have tried harder”. I would cry myself to sleep for months after that. It was also around this time that my need to count and/or list off all my family and friends and their family whenever I was doing something. For example, if I was walking into school I would list off everyone I could as quickly as I could with the idea that I was making my list of people to save, once I reached the classroom or once someone talked to me I would stop and that would be all the people I could save (if I was counting it would be I could save whatever number I ended on). This continued until about 2 years ago. It was an overwhelming urge, although if interrupted it didn’t cause any alarm or disturbance. I would just start over again at the next opportunity.
Another thing that happened up until about 2 years ago was that I could read and understand German fluently; however, I have never in my life taken German, been to Germany, or had exposure to German in any form outside of the random foreign film which I never needed the subtitles for. In college I took French and was oddly able to read and understand the language fluently and was able to always respond appropriately but never in French always in English or Spanish (I had taken 7 years of Spanish through high school and college). I always assumed this was because of the similarity between Spanish and French, but in actuality I don’t think they are that closely related. The first time this happened I was in Spanish class in high school and my Spanish teacher was extremely excited about the new German class she was taking (we only had Spanish and Latin as options for foreign languages at my high school). She wrote a sentence on the board and before she could translate it for us, I translated it out loud without even thinking. The teacher was shocked and said I was right, but I got in trouble for speaking without raising my hand so my spontaneous translations of her excited German sentences she would always write on the board despite being in Spanish class, stopped. With French I remember being in class the first day and the teacher coming in and speaking French to everyone. Some people understood since they took it in high school some looked stunned, no one spoke but I answered him and so “no I haven’t taken French before, but I’m still excited about it.” He had said “if you have taken French before, you are probably excited to be here, if not maybe you are not so excited”. He laughed and said “well then you wouldn’t have understood me now would you”. He seemed to be annoyed with me from that point forward as I would always answer questions correctly but in English or Spanish and fortunately for me he also taught Spanish and Italian so he knew I was correct in my answers.
I have always had a soft spot for children, and am actually a professional counselor for children. The overwhelming need to be prepared for an emergency is unrealistic in the sense that I have never, in this life, lived through an event that would thus put me in the mindset to ensure I had things for myself and my family if we had no access to anything. Emergency plans of where to meet up and who is in charge of who and what are also something I am and have always been very concerned with. I have always liked and felt comfortable hiding or being in small places, but only if I choose to go there (whenever my older brother would lock me in the closet or put blankets over me I would have a full on panic attack to the point of trying to scream but nothing coming out cause I couldn’t breathe and was totally frozen in fear and panic) and be there and as a child my mom was constantly having to figure out where I was hiding as I would do this almost daily and would stay there for hours as I always took things with me to ensure I wouldn’t have to leave my spot. I have always had a strong desire to visit Germany and any holocaust or WWII related memorial or historic place, yet at every given opportunity I do not take it. I even lived in London (which I knew like the back of my hand despite never being their prior to this visit) and did not go with my sociology class to the War tombs which is all about WWII and Churchill. I said I didn’t feel well and instead stayed at my dorm at the boarding school and found old school newspapers from WWII era and read what they had to say about the war at the time.
So it seems my oldest son and I may have been on opposite sides during WWII. When I was a child I was obsessed with WWII. It started when I was almost 2 ½ according to my mother. I would wake up screaming “Run Run” and would give her a detailed description of my “nightmare” that included descriptions such as the guards with their guns in the guard tower, sneaking out of the barracks, and escaping by crawling under the barbed wire trying to run for the woods with someone else, a girl. She said she never got my age, but thought from the things I told her that I was maybe 12 or 13 and assumed I was a girl. She never discussed these dreams with me (and I don’t remember them) until a couple of weeks ago when I brought up the topic of reincarnation, which until this point was not something I would have ever discussed with anyone in my very Christian family who would NOT have accepted even the possibility. So I was surprised when my mother said “oh you that’s like you when you were a child” and then proceeded to tell me about the dreams. I asked her if those were the words I used and she said yes and told me how it made her think I was a concentration camp prisoner reincarnated, but she never wanted to think I didn’t make it to the woods or that I died and I never indicated if I died or not according to her; however, here are some odd facts about me in this lifetime.
I have always been interested in WWII, specifically in stories of survival, escape, or hiding and more specifically of the children. As a child I use to play a game I called “orphanage” (yet another word I had no way of knowing at that age, maybe 5 or so) where I would get with my friends and we would hide and run and hide and run trying to not be found by the bad guys. I use to pretend that my (very large) collection of stuffed animals were my adopted orphanage children and I would hide them around the house, always in two’s so they wouldn’t be alone, to keep them safe from any bad guys. I remember always wishing that I had brown eyes “like I use too” (I should say that in this life I am, as my mother always stated, the perfect picture of what the Nazi’s wanted, tall fair skin, blue eyes blonde hair and athletic) and preferring boy things and boy toys (I think my mom was wrong when she said she thought I was a girl, I don’t know that I agree) although this was always written off due to the fact that I have an older brother. I have always loved big band and swing and love the 30/40’s clothing, but more specifically the hats the boys wore and the cargo wool pants and cable knit sweaters of the era that the children were known to wear. Also as a child I was terrified of dogs. They were great and I wanted to be around them if I saw them, but as soon as they were physically able to be near me I would freeze and shake in fear and scream. I was also terrified of the woods to the point where if I had to be in the woods I would hyperventilate and freeze. I couldn’t (until recently) even walk in a park that had a lot of trees.
When I was almost 8 my mom bought the diary of Anne Frank in hopes it would help me, we read a little bit every night and every night after she left my room I would pray with tears streaming down my face and apologize repeating over and over “I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I should have tried harder”. I would cry myself to sleep for months after that. It was also around this time that my need to count and/or list off all my family and friends and their family whenever I was doing something. For example, if I was walking into school I would list off everyone I could as quickly as I could with the idea that I was making my list of people to save, once I reached the classroom or once someone talked to me I would stop and that would be all the people I could save (if I was counting it would be I could save whatever number I ended on). This continued until about 2 years ago. It was an overwhelming urge, although if interrupted it didn’t cause any alarm or disturbance. I would just start over again at the next opportunity.
Another thing that happened up until about 2 years ago was that I could read and understand German fluently; however, I have never in my life taken German, been to Germany, or had exposure to German in any form outside of the random foreign film which I never needed the subtitles for. In college I took French and was oddly able to read and understand the language fluently and was able to always respond appropriately but never in French always in English or Spanish (I had taken 7 years of Spanish through high school and college). I always assumed this was because of the similarity between Spanish and French, but in actuality I don’t think they are that closely related. The first time this happened I was in Spanish class in high school and my Spanish teacher was extremely excited about the new German class she was taking (we only had Spanish and Latin as options for foreign languages at my high school). She wrote a sentence on the board and before she could translate it for us, I translated it out loud without even thinking. The teacher was shocked and said I was right, but I got in trouble for speaking without raising my hand so my spontaneous translations of her excited German sentences she would always write on the board despite being in Spanish class, stopped. With French I remember being in class the first day and the teacher coming in and speaking French to everyone. Some people understood since they took it in high school some looked stunned, no one spoke but I answered him and so “no I haven’t taken French before, but I’m still excited about it.” He had said “if you have taken French before, you are probably excited to be here, if not maybe you are not so excited”. He laughed and said “well then you wouldn’t have understood me now would you”. He seemed to be annoyed with me from that point forward as I would always answer questions correctly but in English or Spanish and fortunately for me he also taught Spanish and Italian so he knew I was correct in my answers.
I have always had a soft spot for children, and am actually a professional counselor for children. The overwhelming need to be prepared for an emergency is unrealistic in the sense that I have never, in this life, lived through an event that would thus put me in the mindset to ensure I had things for myself and my family if we had no access to anything. Emergency plans of where to meet up and who is in charge of who and what are also something I am and have always been very concerned with. I have always liked and felt comfortable hiding or being in small places, but only if I choose to go there (whenever my older brother would lock me in the closet or put blankets over me I would have a full on panic attack to the point of trying to scream but nothing coming out cause I couldn’t breathe and was totally frozen in fear and panic) and be there and as a child my mom was constantly having to figure out where I was hiding as I would do this almost daily and would stay there for hours as I always took things with me to ensure I wouldn’t have to leave my spot. I have always had a strong desire to visit Germany and any holocaust or WWII related memorial or historic place, yet at every given opportunity I do not take it. I even lived in London (which I knew like the back of my hand despite never being their prior to this visit) and did not go with my sociology class to the War tombs which is all about WWII and Churchill. I said I didn’t feel well and instead stayed at my dorm at the boarding school and found old school newspapers from WWII era and read what they had to say about the war at the time.