I was born in Austria on the lucky side of the world,
the privileged one, the one humans decided to fence off as well as possible from the unlucky one, with borders and limits drawn on land and life.

I was a little girl, three years old, with blond, curly hair. When my mother Ricky sold me to my stepfather Helmut, who raped this little girl with her blond, curly hair, I did not die. I cried for a very long time.

My grandmother raised me, and many years later, I connected with my mother as if nothing had ever happened, no words, no guilty looks, nothing.

Not long ago, while working in Belgrade, I received a call from my son. She was in the hospital in critical condition.

I rushed with the car to Austria and went directly to the hospital. I stood next to her bed for a while, silent. Nothing had faded away, not any image, sound, or clear memory you could grab, just everything, unblurred, unfaded, as unblurred a three-year-old girl can get it.

I was standing there, so silent, moveless, relieved that I made it in time, frozen, knowing that even though it felt like an end, it would never be one. Time did not pass.

When I saw her blinking with her eyes shut, a tiny moment of awakeness, I told her,

it’s ok, mama, I forgive you. You don’t know right and wrong. She said I’m sorry, in tiny, almost unnoticeable words, like a soft brise of air when the air stands still. She died two days later.

Change can happen in a second or a hundred years, and it does bit by bit. Yes, I am afraid sometimes, but I’m not scared, and no fear can change my path because every morning, no matter what was before, I am flooded by the morning sun and my decision to do another tiny bit to change the world.