The first day I began working with Noa, I felt a strong presence of her mother with us. It was overwhelming. As I inquired about her family in Israel, she told me that her father and brother live in Tel Aviv. She explained that her mother died in 2004.
During our first appointment, I shopped, cooked, tidied the apartment and helped with the care of her then two-month-old baby. We chatted lightly, just getting to know each other a bit. While “holding space” for Noa, she had the safety to “be” with her emotions. She now internally had permission to be with her feelings, look at them as closely as she felt comfortable doing. What occurred was magical.
As our time together on this day came to a close, it was as though a light went on inside of Noa. She suddenly told me her very intimate feelings of feeling frightened and angry when alone with her infant daughter. Somehow during the short time we spent together, she identified that when she was alone with her baby, painful memories and feelings of caring for dying mother arose. She then relayed feelings of anger for her husband and did not know why. In the next breath, Noa told me that being left alone as a young person with the responsibility of caring for her dying mother was overwhelming and traumatizing. Noa identified that she was transferring the latent anger she had from her father for leaving her with this great responsibility, to her husband.
The pace of discovery I witnessed on this day was breathtaking. It moved me to my core. Noa’s bravery to look closely at what she was feeling, as painful as it was, within the safe container which I provided, was a testimony to my theory of “Mother Diamonds” and how incredibly important my work is.
When a woman births, the creation of a Diamond begins. Just as carbon under extreme pressure creates a diamond, the circumstances of living far from her family, birthing her first child in Berlin, being brutally confronted with the memories of the death of her mother created the perfect conditions within Noa for a seismic shift. She is the original Mother Diamond.
