
“Darling, don’t you know no matter how much money you have, you won’t be able to fix problems from the past?” I spoke to her.
She cried miserably as if she didn’t know this harsh truth. In fact, she didn’t. She was too young and blindly believed that if only she could make enough money, her parents would stay together. She imagined a different childhood, filled with laughter and joy. So, she decided she was going to fix it.
That girl was me, now fully grown into a woman. I have been working hard, unaware of the motivation rooted deep inside me. If it weren’t for the jet lag from a long trip between Europe and Bali under the influence of the strawberry full moon in June, I might have continued living with that belief. The full moon’s energy stirred something deep within me.
Lying in bed at night, extremely exhausted but unable to sleep, my mind wandered to my family’s problems. I thought to myself, if I had money, maybe I could have fixed it. This was not the first time I had this thought. Usually, I concluded that I had to work harder. But this time was different.
I felt her — a little girl inside of me — desperately in tears.
“Do you really believe it will bring Mom and Dad back together?” I whispered to my younger self, surprised.
Tears streamed down her face, and she screamed back at me in silent question. “Isn’t it true?”
“No, darling, it doesn’t work that way.” I was struck by how innocent she was.
She cried through me for the rest of the night, realizing that nothing could ever bring her parents back together. Every scar would remain. I embraced both of us through the night.
By sunrise, as the pain eased, a new blank space of possibility arrived. If money couldn’t fix the past, what could it be for? What could I make it mean?
Through my tears, I smiled, and in my pain, I laughed. I held myself tight, cuddling my inner child, and whispered:
“Let’s do this together for a new reason, for you and for us. We have nothing to fix anymore.”
My name is Lalita Janette, author of the non-fiction novels “Good Girls Cry, Bad Girls Moan” and “Lalita, Come Back to Me.”