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During my crisis a couple of months back, M kept telling me that he was sure I was on the brink of a major breakthrough. Well, he was right! I have found my Self! What I mean is, I now understand how my inner system was created in the first place and that I have two original parts. One part, Mary, holds all the good, positive, loving stuff we got from our mother during our first 7 years of life. The other part, Ada, is the part who lived with abuse and split into many other parts to cope with it.

We’ve known Ada for many years, but only recently have we learned that she is the original ‘me’. Until recent weeks, she has been stuck at 13 years of age and much of this years crisis has been due to her struggle to come out, to be seen and heard. She has wanted it so badly, but due to fears and false beliefs, was unable to simply do it. So, she acted out, as one would expect any teenager to do … her behaviour screamed “help me”, but at the same time she pushed people away. Ada is now working with us in therapy and has grown beyond 13 years of age. She has accepted that she created many parts in order to cope with severe trauma and has no trouble accepting that the trauma happened to her (which I, the host, am still struggling with).

I have come to accept that I am a part of Ada and we are working together more often. Ada feels like she is in a time warp, having lost the last 23 years of life, so she is slowly working on accepting the life that I have created. Meanwhile, I am slowly accepting that I am not the whole person, or even the ‘major’ part. I know that our gradual acceptance of each other and our ability to work together more and more means that we are working on integrating. I am less afraid of that now than I was a few weeks ago. I know now that I’m not going to disappear.

It is amazing to watch Ada. In many respects she is like me, yet she is so much fuller than I am. I’ve been stressing for months over the question “Who am I?”, and now I can connect with Ada and know that I am Ada. And Ada is so much more than I realised a person could be. She knows who she is; she owns her life, whether it is pleasant or not; she connects with her history; she connects with her emotions; and she wants to make a life in the present and future. Ada is real in a way that I could never grasp, despite all the work I’ve done. And that’s okay, because I know I am part of her and one day I will be fully connected with her and become real too.

It is so strange to write about separate parts while at the same time knowing that we are One. I write about Ada and myself as separate entities, and at the same time, I know that I am Ada. There simply isn’t language for this. I hope that you will be able to understand. This is an amazing (even if scary and difficult) process to be going through. I hope that my words are adequate to share it.

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