Amy Fabrikant gradually pieces together a hidden birth trauma through dreams, chance encounters, and a sudden recognition in a Paris church — a process that leads her to forgiveness, parenthood choices, and a new way of saying thank you to the child she once was.
A series of fragmented memories and symbolic encounters led Amy Fabrikant to recall that she died briefly at birth — feet-first, with her umbilical cord around her neck — a truth no one had explained to her.
The realization prompted practical, emotional shifts: she began forgiving her mother, affirmed her path as a parent to two transgender children, and reclaimed gratitude toward her own survival.
The wound is the place where the light enters you. — Rumi
A small, persistent bird keeps knocking at the window as Amy Fabrikant starts to speak. The detail feels minor until you learn how the bird echoes the story she's about to tell: a memory that took fifty years to assemble.
Fabrikant did not grow up knowing the full facts of her birth. Over decades the pieces arrived sporadically — a dream at a death retreat, the quiet weight of a labyrinth stone pressed into her palm, a grief-filled car ride with her daughters after her mother died. Each fragment nudged a larger picture into place: she had been born feet-first, blue, the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and had died briefly before being revived in the delivery room.
Those fragments were not a tidy narrative at first. They came as images, moods, and a persistent attraction to one particular religious figure. For years she had been inexplicably drawn to representations of a dark-skinned Virgin Mary. The attraction felt intimate and urgent, but lacked explanation — until a street in Paris provided one.
Tired and disoriented, Fabrikant ducked into what looked like an ordinary church. On the wall was the exact painting she had carried in her mind for years: the Dark-Skinned Virgin Mary. The recognition landed like a physical thing. The painting offered a new frame for the fragments: an image of being wrapped in something that was both fierce and tender.
From that repair came practical changes in how Fabrikant related to others and to herself. She began working through long-held resentments toward her mother, moving toward forgiveness. She also used the clarity to stand firmer as a parent to two transgender children, shaping a path for them in places where no path had existed.
Her work since has been of a subtle kind: small acts of inner tending, verbal acknowledgments to the younger self, and a steady reweaving of relationships. The healing was not an escape into mysticism. It was a slow, hard-won realignment between memory and meaning.
At the end of her telling, the bird by the window does not smash through the glass. It shows itself, then flies away. That final image captures the story's principle: some forms of love or rescue only need to be remembered to regain their force. For Fabrikant, remembering rewired how she saw her birth, her mother, and her role as a mother. It allowed her to say the simplest, most practical thing to the child she once was — thank you for being born.
The story is a case study in how memory, symbols, and chance encounters can converge to reshape a life. It shows how private reckonings can produce concrete shifts in family dynamics and self-regard without spectacle, and how a single recognition can alter the meaning of a lifetime of small signs.
The dream that ended, and the beginning I never expected Continue reading on Medium »
A recruitment call to a Texas insurance agent became something far more personal
Eight months after my memoir was published, I am still living in the strange quiet that follows. The book took more than a decade to write, and while I initially felt relief and a sense of completion, the post-publication period has brought its own grief and disorientation. I had thought the hardest part was behind […]
She was alone with four children under seven, mid-immigration, mid-flight, mid-panic -- the kind of exhaustion that sits in your chest like stone. When the cabin lights dimmed somewhere over the dark hours of a 24-hour journey, she finally dozed off. When she woke, she looked across the aisle to find a stranger quietly
When he woke, she asked about the cast and he said, “The moon fell on my foot.” “No fooling,” she said. He said he’d been reaching for the longest time. “One day I touched it. I held it in my hand. But then I dropped it.” “Silly grandpa,” she said. Bob Thurber is the author … Continue reading BOB THURBER: Babysitting G
Loading more related stories...
Open the app view to save this story, compare related coverage, and continue from the same source.