HEIDI
Raised In An Ashram
Part 1.
Emotional Rating:1/10.
Easy read.
1 death.
A story of a life forged in chaos & love in the 1980’s.
Growing up in a cult/experiment/movement.
Raised In An Ashram
Part 1.
I grew up in wild hippie-communes and ashrams all over the world. From the wild, buzzing, hot-sticky jewel of my heart that is India...to running around Ibiza as a child in the1980's...going on adventures with other kids, whose parents were off finding themselves.
Growing up, I was mainly, holding on for dear life on the back of mopeds, often driven by 12 year olds.
My life was full of colourful adventure. I am one-part daughter of an olive oil producer from Crete, the other my mama’s side, the descendant of large and strong women from a quaint teeny-tiny village, in southern Germany (where time, may have stood still!)
There, I'd fetch milk in large cans and rode on dogs, swam in lakes and in rivers that wound themselves around our farm house. Where I lived with my nan Irml, whom I loved very much providing warmth, a slow pace of life and a well needed routine.
Here me in my traditional ‘Dirndl’ dress that I wore when I was still sweet and innocent, living in the south of Germany…one side to me for sure.
…And here the other side of my character :)
Why my upbringing was a little unusual was that my mother had joined a cult when I was only one year old. This was not even the weird bit!
She spent all her life looking for something. She was now looking for ‘herself’ in Oregon, the U.S.of A and I was simply not allowed to go with her.
My grandparents (who were very traditional) insisted that I was not to be surrounded by (wonderful) freaks and beautiful intellectuals, who wore little clothes (that was the sticking point I think). Also, the hippies would make-out with each other a lot…also not cool with the my Nan.
I ended up living with my grandparents, for what seemed like years, as my mother went wild in the desert. We’ll come to how ‘wild’ another time.
my time was evenly spent on two halves of the farm which was separated by a slow river and a wooden bridge. One side of my family was very down to earth. This was the side my grandmother lived on. The farm house was always tidy and always had food on the go. If it wasn’t being cooked, then it was being caught, butchered, smoked, pickled, kneaded, taken from the ground, the river the forest.
My grandmother made the house a home and she was a lovely and kind lady.
She liked to wear kaftans and was very creative. As she had so many children she didn’t really get the chance to see where her art could have taken her.
She was an orphan. Her mother died at birth. And then there was a weird circumstance and folk wondered as to what happened to her dad when she was 11 years old. There were rumours about the untimely death of my grandmother’s father. He ‘slid’ of a famously tall mountain despite being a professional climber, and just after a dispute with the local nazi party.
So grandmother ended up being a helping hand on my grandads family farm.
My grandad was the sort of ‘long lost’ son of the family.
Like so many other homes the boys went off to war and left big holes in hearts and empty beds. Women were in charge.
Grandad was raised to be a good German boy. He went to German mountain youth club where the nazis would already get their little evil ethos programmed into him. Alongside many fun activities and purposeful sense of community he’d feel looked after and sheltered. He’d play amongst other mountain dwelling countryside boys in adorable suede leather shorts and were allowed to be free in nature. All he ever wanted to be was a farmer. He also loved horses
He’d already had been bright and had been holed up in a Siberian prisoner of war ‘work camp’ for 9 years. This was run by russians who’d captured invading Nazis in Poland.
Germany was being rebuilt and women who had been manless and running businesses were now to create families and homes.
So, expectations of wivelyness had to be met. My grandmother was a however a master seamstress, an extraordinary cook, gardener and painter. She loved all things travel. She’d collect ‘national geographic’ magazines and had dreams. She really liked listening to my mothers tales. I think she’d be happy knowing that I became an avid traveller & artist myself.
We’d cook, bake and do crafting together. She’d make me the most beautiful dresses and I loved her very much.
She was like a mother to me. She lit up when I walked in the room. She was that type of person. Despite her heavy burdens she never laid them on me.
Warm sunny days were spent in our garden, which grew heavy with berries. Within a hop and one skip we’d fish to catch our lunch. Our neighbours would bring salads and cold drinks and we’d eat together. Then the kids would jump in the river.
For christmas our big family would bake enough to feed the whole village. Braiding pleated buns, the finest kipferl, which dissolve in your mouth (I will add this to the blog another day. These must to be shared.)
For contrast, I was fortunate enough to have another branch of the family who lived on the other side of the little wooden bridge.
Those lot ate their bread with a knife and fork!
I loved spending my time playing hide and seek with my cousins in their walled garden, which was huge and groomed. The floors were polished and the house always smelled of beeswax. The tables were draped in stitched linens and the women wore pearls and red lipstick. This was the posh side of my family…the judges and so forth. Classical music would echo through the wooden house. The clocks alone would fetch a fortune at Sotheby’s. We’d have coffee and cake together every sunday…My (poor worn out by me) relatives were also very kind and we had lots of parties where we’d dress up for birthdays.
Once we dressed up as chickens and read poems to my aunty Ruth. She’d spent a good 20 years of her absolute prime relieving chickens’ bodies’ of their little heads. She owned a chicken farm and decided she’d never marry so being a boss and taking lovers was more her vibe!
My dear great aunt, Ruth was my grandads sister. She might have been a bit crazy. But surviving a second world war would do that to you. She was tiny and very tough.
My favourite thing she’d do with me, was take me in her little yellow ‘Beetle’ and we’d go to the lakes and swim in the rain. She had a german shepherd dog too called Yette and she’d always make the car smell…but those are the kind of memories that made being a kid very special for me. We’d sleep in the bed that was my great great grandparents and she always had a heated blanket in the winter. Strangely though she used to pop a bit of olbas oil in our night time tea…I don’t think she knew that it wasn’t meant to be ingested.
I thought she was cool. She was resilient and hard as nails but she was always there for me. A survivor who stayed kind. Which is a great human feat. In my opinion that is the hardest thing to do? Despite adversity, suffering, pain to stay open, generous and to believe in people’s ability to do good.
As you know….and as it happens, life always moves like a river and changes.
One day after having pined for my mother and wanting nothing more than to be with her again, all of a sudden she was just there. Right in front of me. She’d returned from America.
One might judge her. Why on earth would she leave her child behind? How selfish could she be? But things are not always as they seem.
Best way i can describe her is that she was from another place…I sometimes believed that she was barely from this earth. Forged from something other.
At the little bavarian community hall where I stood small and dressed in my shiny mermaid leotard my heart was in my throat. There SHE was. My mama who was very tanned and pretty. Her hair was blonder and very long. She gave me a huge cuddle and sat with me in the back of our families brown Mercedes Benz car.
She was holding me and told me that my grandmother, Irml, with the warm round face and the long black hair who played endless games of lego with me and who was my ‘home’ had died. I was absolutely beside myself. I don’t think I ever fully recovered. I never had the chance to say goodbye to her. Feel her warm hands on my face. Mama said ‘Irml had left her body and gone to the ‘other place’… which seemed to have became a frequent destination of those I loved in my future life.
My sweet, wild and untethered mother took me from the biscuity-bosoms of my grandmothers house and drove to a big city on the other side of Germany, where we inhabited a commune in Berlin.
It had white-Italian carpets, which I remember staging one of my dramatic deaths on.
As I was a clever child and obviously unclear on death. Surely, I had ‘things’ to work through. I’d decided to cover myself in ketchup and thus delicately displayed myself across the pristine corridor with the most splendid and largest kitchen knife I could muster. Cleopatra had nothing on me! I was a heroin. My mother LOVED THAT* (not) so much. I guess better the carpets than years of therapy?
*Also, not the german naked-inhabitants of our boutique commune.
My mothers sister Fritzi lived in Berlin too so that was nice.
It was a bit much for a child who is still so close to the ground. There were many things that I was not to touch. Heroin was a big problem in 1980’s Germany. Aids was on the rise. Berlin was not Bavaria. And my mother had burned through a string of men. All whom had promised her love.
As my mother had Albert Einstein’s IQ (yes it’s true) and because she recognised a restless soul, she decided I was ready to once again up and leave, taking me on more adventures…and we packed the little belongings we had (mainly a huge, massive bag full of cash) and off we went to India.
Me in an Ashram in India, 1986, being given the name Shikha…(meaning flames of love).
I remember this so well. Everyone is laughing because I kept on looking at the wise man’s hands instead of his lovely face.
My mother here in the turquoise leopard print trousers.
And here another one in India
Pune 86’
The ‘Kids House’ …our own little place to go wild…whilst our parents meditated. I am the kid with the pink headband and the all over facial beard ;) I still know most of these kids! All of them are amazing humans.
Living in India was amazing and scary. You can read more about some of my adventures in part 2!
After India my mother and I skipped, schlepped and hopped all over the globe and then, when I needed to get an education and living in India again didn’t seem like a good idea, I eventually ended up in England, Devon. In an awesome hippie school! When I say something is awesome I really mean it!
This place was one of a kind! Crazy-fun-scary-Wild-sometimes lonely- always adventurous, certainly an experimental hippy situation!
Here our school photo, 1987’. England
The day I arrived I was picked up from a quaint little train station in Devon by a a dude in a van. The drive was lined with old trees, sheep in the fields and a empty bath in the courtyard with some kids skating it and listening to really loud music. It was all looking all very 80’s.
The guy in the right hand bottom corner, Anu, taught me how to take photos. We’d listen to David Bowie and I’d help him process photos in the dark room. He was a true inspiration and probably one of the reasons I became a photographer and my beautiful aunty Christa ( another one of my mamas sisters), who took me to fancy art shows in metropolitan places. ‘she’d say If the kid isn’t going to shower then at least she’ll know who Bill Viola is!’
I loved this place so much. It was a mixture of crazy, idyllic and in the middle of nowhere…surrounded by hills and lush nature…and some poor local villagers who wanted to know why a 7 year old, tiny girl speaks like Eddie Murphy with a German accent (yep, my education consisted of watching American videos with cool guys kicking butt).
Although, just small children, we didn’t really have any rules as such, so basically we just learnt how to live with each other. I think I knew how to cook a 5 course meal by the time I was 7 years old. I could also spit very far and I had a sharp tongue that would get me into trouble. I was probably just acting out because I was feral and probably a bit lonely at times. Also, looking back now, I think I was very tired because I didn’t have a bedtime.
We’d have food fights with jelly, have long meetings in the morning, singing ‘yellow submarine’, meditated, painted, watched 80’s films in a huge snuggle pit of 150 kids.
I slept, ate and played with lots of children in a big house in the lush English countryside…running wild & feeling free and in no hurry to be anything but a kid. This was probably why I didn’t learn to read until I was 12 years old. I always preferred building dens, getting hench (to beat up boys) and to be completely honest, I basically thought I was a ninja! Eventually the school grew and so did I and when I was a teenager life again had it’s way of making change happen.
Although I loved this free & chaotic place, I don’t think I could put my son in a boarding school abroad...ok a better word for it would be a kids commune.
These days, what I love doing the absolute most, is hanging out with small humans in nature. Creating images that are natural, fun and full of love and feeling gratitude for the freedoms I have been afforded by those who came before me. Especially my grandmother and my mother, who are both together in the place where the light is bright.
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Authors note to the reader:
This story took place in a time when the world seemed wide open.
Before women would travel by themselves. My mother was an intellectual, a staunch feminist. Activist and had read all books under the sun. She had already joined many movements in the 1970’s and was looking for something else beyond the grasp of intellect.
Writing this, I believe she would have thought she was ‘right on’, sticking it to the ‘man’.
I guess, she kind of did. I’d often witnessed her mute authoritarians or bureaucrats who’d dare to limit our freedom. There was always bribery if that didn’t work. In those days she would not have known about ‘white’ feminism, her movement of hippies, inadvertently being colonisers or culturally appropriating practices like yoga and other forms of therapies. Some of her adventures would not have ‘given back’ to the communities who’d invited her with open arms. For this I am sorry! I know she would be too. I will make repairs when I can, for myself and also for those who came before me.
Stories have many sides and most of my life was directly impacted by fascism in 1930’s.
personally, I believe my mama just wanted to get away from the trauma that was passed down just after WW2. She wanted to be free. Because of this, there were times where I would be raised by others. All of my little hippy friends had parents who’d often be swept away in ‘bliss’ and in deep devotion to our guru. As small child I had to look out for my brothers and sisters. They became my family, not by blood but by bond.
