What Was Your Mother Thinking…The Cause and Effect of Human Behavior and Remarkable Observations of the Physics of Energy and Nature
By A. Christina Liczbinski
2009 (Paperback) Authentic Creations Books
What legacy do you bear because of what your birth mother experienced while she was pregnant with you? Christina Liczbinski’s book What Was Your Mother Thinking explores that question, and reaches into other areas of energy – PTSD, animals, music, among others.
While the celebrity make-up and hairstylist dutifully quotes research, her personal career was most interesting to me. Her parents’ lives were nearly identical to my mother’s parents’ lives. Highly-talented musicians, they all lived through WWII, and were madly in love with their spouses. Christina continued in the entertainment field, which was familiar to her through her DNA and her upbringing. My grandfather played a Stradivarius for royalty around the world as a teenager and young man. He and I both ended up in radio. It didn’t occur to me until a few years ago that my grandfather played on the air live on CBS, or the Columbia Broadcasting System, and years later, I found myself working live on the air on a CBS station. Violin was his instrument. Voice was mine.
I believe the first three and a half years of living in that love-filled apartment on the Upper West Side, gave me enough resiliency to survive the PTSD that would follow. Just last week, I had to explain to my son that I couldn’t not jump out of my seat when he quietly came up behind me. As Christina would explain – the violent energy I experienced as I was growing up, is still in my cells. The energy resulting from PTSD – post-traumatic-stress-disorder – remains in the body, until processed and released.
My mother ran a nursery school for many years when I was a teenager, and I remember her telling me about one little boy who insisted on dressing up as a girl. Christina interviewed more than one-thousand cross-dressers. For most, their mothers had wanted daughters, not sons. The little boys began dressing as girls, to try to please their moms. Even unstated, the message came across. This is one of the most interesting chapters.
Christina borrows heavily from Dr Masaru Emoto, whose gorgeous photos of ice crystals – their forms in response to music, or love, or stress – open each chapter.
She speaks of the music heard by the pregnant woman – the babies seem to recognize it. My first son took 42-hours to be born, so I had a lot of time to listen to music. I had chosen the rolling piano chords of a street musician, whose music I loved, it relaxed and rocked me. When that son was about three, and his baby brother was one, I had them strapped in car seats, and we were driving. To calm them, I dug through my drawer of tapes, and pulled out that one. It had been years since I’d played the tape. We drove in broad daylight, but as we rolled along, my toddler started saying, “Dark, dark out, momma.”
I tested him, saying, “No honey, the sun is out.”
He insisted, “Momma, dark, dark. Music. Dark out.” I can’t explain his comments any other way than to say that he remembered the music from being in utero.
Christina also addresses the beautiful attuning of animals. As I read her book, noticing her anecdotes and research, my own stories popped to mind.
This happened a few months after I’d divorced. I had free airfare, so I flew to Puerto Vallarta by myself. As soon as I heard about snorkling with the sea lions, I decided I had to do it. A group of close to forty stood in line, with water up to our chests – or, in my case, neck – and listened to the instructions. I was fourth in line. We were told that a sea lion would pop out of his cage and come kiss each of us – beginning with the first person. The cage opened, and without thinking, I opened my heart. The sea lion swam swiftly toward our line. But instead of kissing person number one, he made a beeline to me, and kissed me first.
Amazing, the impact of energy.
