Life Paths

Home Archive for 2015

-wild natural grass VS civlized plastic grass-

My baby girl´s story begins long before she was born, in the far past of my childhood, when I used to wonder about life and all… For I had always felt deeply connected with the Nature, I have been questioning a lot the way of life of the grown-ups and could not understand their rush and ignorant way of living. Myself, alternating and experimenting different approaches on life, I had though kept inside my heart the feeling that was something strange about the civilized societies and could not eliminate that instinctual believe whatsoever.

I did followed my heart as a youth and went on with love into a relationship with the father of my oldest son, despite the recommendations of all the grown-ups around that I should better go on with the path to success aiming for carrier and wealth fulfillment. Funny enough, I could never consider that type of realization as appropriate for my kind, so I quitted school without regrets and lived happily with my dear son and his father. Still, after a few years, I could not find satisfaction any longer in the standard routine of our home and dreamed on far, far away horizons waiting to be discovered…

In my life, all that I wished for have always become, so I wished to explore the big world out there. Than me and the father of my child split our paths and I went to Spain to my parents´place interested in checking out the modern life of the western society, that was promising to provide resources to finance my dreams…

I tried to continue the school and to have fun as my folks were giving their support in these matters, but very soon I discovered there was no joy for me to find in the trivial struggle of the common citizen. I started to become unhappy ... I often felt the impulse to just go away and loose myself in the night, walking towards unknown destinations, without desires nor plans, caring nothing but my body. I did not wished to wish for anything anymore, but to flow and let the life surprise me…I could see my journey as a vagabond, with no target, but not lost, living present in the present, searching nothing but the pure enjoyment of life. But my son could not be dragged in my own vision, so I thought about trying some sort of a middle way that would help me reconnect with myself and the free life spirit and he could grow happy and healthy, experimenting different alternative lifestyle so he could make his own choices and find his way.

I left that spring and, upon researching different places that were offering natural life possibilities, we discovered peace and harmony in the autumn in the valley of a free community in Andalucia. I lived with my son there the winter we stepped in 2012 in a small handmade house, with rich food garden and bee hives around.

It was then and there I met the father of my daughter. We felt deeply connected and resonated in a beautiful way, happy to discover we were sharing similar view on life and could find joy in the simple things… In spring, came my son´s father and invited him to spend some time together, so he left with him.

Me and my lover started a beautiful journey through Europe. We went on a visit to one of my dearest soul-sisters in the north of the continent and for a while we camped inside the anarchist state of Christiania, where we acquired a 3 wheel cargo bike we used as a vehicle part of the travel.

There, the baby came into my body. We arrived above the Arctic Circle after 6 weeks on the road. My lover lived for 3 years in a hand made house in the forest outside the city. It was April when we got there and some of the small houses needed to be repaired after not being inhabited during the last winter, so we had a lot of fun building mainly with natural materials and biking to town, bringing as many windows as we could fit in the box of the bike for there were thrown lots by the consumers of the nordic society.We made a garden in the forest village and we had couch-surfers visiting and being nice surprised by the possibility of living like that. Children from the nearby neighborhood were often visiting, envying our freedom and journalists promoted the idea that anyone was welcomed to join for it was always a house to host anyone and a warm fire and food to share, same as in the Rainbow inspired valley where me and him met.

-we do not cut the forest, we only used dead trees and sticks from the ground-

http://skogens.blogg.no/1417002869_mitt_paradis_gopia.html

Soon we discovered there was new life growing inside of me and because our whereabouts were way to famous and close to the town, we went on exploring the depth of the scandinavian forests and, arriving on the top of a hill, we both felt there was the perfect place to welcome our child into this world. We could see the ocean at the horizon and fresh water was flowing at the base of the hill, all surrounded by wilderness, a few kilometers from the closest neighborhood. We started to build a home there, my lover carried till up the hill an iron stove to burn wood and cook on, we used holly plastic on the roof and covered it with tree branches, the dome structure was made of wood, with two floors, a basement where we stored food we conserved during autumn and we isolated the walls with sticks, cardboard and several layers of cotton. We had really comfortable times there, though my lover spent a lot of time carrying and cutting wood and declared he had never saw himself so strong as than, I conserved fermented vegetables and dryed fruits on the oven and we peacefully lived there the autumn and the winter.

Just before the controversial solstice of 2012, our baby girl came out to this world, right in the hands of her father. There was -15 degrees outside and aurora borealis was dancing in the sky, it was +30 degrees in our home and gentle candle light welcomed the little being into our life. It was a day long labor and we were prepared to contact a family that were good friends and were living in the closest neighborhood if anything would have not gone well with the birth. But all went good and she was born that night with only us to meet, instead of the standard procedures, strong artificial lights and abrupt cutting of the umbilical cord that I experienced giving birth to her brother in the hospital. We kept the placenta attached until it fall by itself 3 days later, we washed her with pure spring water we have heated on our very efficient wood-burner and we used only towels under her or cotton diapers that we washed and boiled daily.

We left the forest after she was about 1 month old and went to town to register her birth for after having debated it over and over again among each other and also with close friends, we got to the conclusion that having the document that would confirm her existence would make our lives easier to move around in this bureaucratic world. There is a human right that says nobody can be forced into joining a group or organization, so we thought that sovereignty would be respected, but than we´ve been told that the Child Protection Gestapo of the state where we were is demanding that any new-born to receive a personal number and they threaten to remove the child from his parents care if they do not follow the law. The famous Barnevarnet is responsible for very many ruined families, unhappy childhoods, they treat abusive the foreigners´ families, ignoring differences of culture, they also received lots of critics and fines for the past years from the UN Human Rights Committee and their actions have been mentioned in the media as ¨state sponsored kidnapping¨ … So we meet with 2 employers of this so called child protection( one of them did not speak english and still was sent to meet and talk with me, a foreigner, and understand my explanations….) and we debated a few aspects that seemed to be of their concern, like how do I keep the baby warm while in the city if I do not have a baby trolley - I was holding my baby girl close to my heart, in a wrap around my body, now became very popular and even recommended this practice, promoted by the psychologists and pediatricians supporting the so called Attached Parenting…

Or it was funny to hear they were asking us if she will go to school, while she was only a month old and none of us can see into the future… We are aware though that children must be educated into obedience before starting to attend the state education for if they cannot sit still while getting bored at some lesson,here, same as in U.S., there will be measures to be taken that include administration of ADHD drugs, in order to ¨fix¨ the child´s temper, make it easy for the ignorant teachers to pass on the unnecessary information that they themselves do not believe in, and make happy the pharmaceutical corporations...

But in our case, they had to admit our knowledge and quality standards were not below the health and care requirements and our interest in the proper development of our child was very high, our choices for her exclusive breastfeeding and natural fibers clothing, as well as the use of only organic food and products, also having raised another child that is all healthy and perfectly social and capable of any sort of action necessary for life in the society, so they did not go on with their inquiries.

So we went to the institution that takes care of turning humans into number series and asked them for the form to fill in necessary to register our daughter as a citizen of that state, but they denied to give us the paper, thinking that must be filled in by a medical official, so we went to the clinic with our baby, they also checked on her stated concluding she was perfect, they made an appointment for us with a doctor that was supposed to be the one to sign the register paper, 2 weeks later we met him and after his professional opinion concerning the baby was again of perfect development, he told us that he was not the one to be able to give us the paper, for it has been us all along that needed to fill in the form, as we suspected from the start, since it was only us witnessing her birth. So we finally got to fill in and send the document and waited for the resolution of the bureaucracy in our case.

Meanwhile, my son was in a very confusing situation, I could not travel to meet him since summer and I was expecting him while being pregnant to arrive by our side, but unfortunately, because certain members of his father´s family had constantly criticized my decision to split of his father and my way of life, he had to listen to this people´s hatred and ignorant remarks almost every day and… did not wanted to come where we were. His father did not did anything to stop the mean gossips that were poisoning my son´s heart and so the child disagreed to fly to the north and join us until he found out he has a sister. I skyped with him all along and one day I introduced to him his sister, of whom he did not knew while I was pregnant, so that explained him why I could not fly myself to him, to shut the mouths of the evil-speakers and take him from the unhappy vibes. Than he agreed to come and meet us, but not in the north, for he had been told I live as a savage in the jungle and the image he had in his mind was far from what was our reality, but difficult for him to understand, so he wanted to come to the community where we lived before, in the south of Spain, where he could recall happy memories and peaceful natural life that was not wild in the same time… So we had to travel south in order to meet him, his father was on his way to some other foreign lands for working contract, so we needed to rush into meeting my kid.

We waited for the papers for my daughter to be ready, but it seemed to take much more than we expected, so we decided to go anyway and have them delivered to where we will arrive after.

-The Holly Spring- one of the water sources of the community-good, tasty, healthy-

And when we were already happy living all together back in Andalucia, an e-mail from the state register office came demanding us to provide genetic probes in order to be tested for the authenticity of our mother-daughter relation. We were so far away and tried to explain the circumstances, plus we could not understand why was that required since we had struggled to have the birth certificate done since the baby was about one month old and there is a term of 4 weeks to do the registration. It was not our fault for the officials took longer time to provide the right form and to deal with the case. Even so, even we brought on various other types of evidence, like the umbilical cord, witnesses and photos from before, during and after birth, they only wanted the DNA test. The institution they wanted us to deliver our probes to was founded and financed by the Rokefeller Foundation (Folkehelseinstituttet), reason for which we denied to deliver the samples of our daughter´s DNA to them, asking if there is possible to do the test through another institution. A lawyer working for a famous lawyer firm, contacted us suddenly and offered his help with our case, he was also a volunteer for the Save the Children organization and claimed he will contact the authorities that demand for the test and help us receive the approval to do the test through another private clinic. And he asked us to sign a paper where we give him the right to represent our daughter´s cause and our case in official circumstances. We did as he said and than waited for his resolution, but the contact with him started to fade away, he was not responding our e-mails and he was never having obtained any answer from the state officials.

So it passed manny months and we moved to living in Portugal:

Starting to get paranoid about the whole story, we decided to travel north and meet the lawyer who was no longer answering our e-mails, even when we asked him of his opinion about us coming back to the state where our baby was born and if there should be any concerns for our family integrity and our daughters security from the child protection, still he was giving no sign.

When we first came back to the nordic country we left more than a year before, we went to find the lawyer, after he answered one time the phone and hearing who was calling, he claimed it was bad connection and hang up, he did not picked up our calls anymore.

So we searched for him at the company where he was employed, but we had no answer at the inter-phone, nor when calling directly at the door and waiting in front of the camera to be welcomed inside, nobody answered us. Interesting symbols decorating the building brought even more suspicions to us…

We went than at the Save the Children organization to ask for the lawyer and there he was, kind of shocked of our presence there, mumbling some explanations about how he never got any answer from the state about our demand to do the DNA testing with another institution, and when we demanded he cancels the document that was making him our daughter´s legal representative, waiting for quarter of hour there, he came with the answer that he does not have it with him, that it might be home… We had to insist there is something to be done and we came up with the idea that we could obtain from him a new document where he declares the other one is no longer valid and he ceases to be dealing with the case. We also informed him that we ourselves contacted the state registering office and they immediately agreed with our proposal to not use the foundation that was initially recommended to us for the DNA test, which seemed to surprise him somehow.

We followed the steps they communicated to us and went to a clinic, where a doctor took the probes from me and my daughter and sent them to the DNA researching institution that we got in contact, we had to pay quite a big amount of money for it, but the results confirming our genetic relation came very fast so we sent them further to the state registering office, only to be answered that the doctor was not an official representative to take the probes and that we need to redo the whole process. We decided to travel to the far north and go to the office from the city where we first went to register our new born. We asked the employer that first denied to give us the right form to fill in and triggered the whole delay and complications, to make a phone call and get the direct approval to be the one taking the probes from me and my daughter as an official representative. Than it was all right. We payed again for this other test and sent it and had it approved. In 2014.

My long story had all these adventures for the fault of a system that claims to function for everybody, but if one is not inside the assumed standards of common lifestyle, it might get more complicated. Many told me it would have not been so difficult if I would have just given birth in the hospital, like that is something I must do, not my free choice… I had also encountered complications in my life for not having a credit card or a bank account. I have never had one and I would hope to never have to have one, though the society I live in right now seems to be unable to work for the ones that do not contribute to the banking system, cash almost disappears and so does other freedoms. The taxes we pay we cannot choose what will those money be used for so when I am buying or owning anything I am NOT free to NOT finance the wars killing innocent people from other countries and cultures. The children themselves are not free to choose if they even want to belong to a certain state and to obey the rules and laws they could not understand. If someone did not even read the rules of the game they are forced into playing, how can they take responsibility for their actions?