Godmother: An Unexpected Journey, Perfect Timing, and Small Miracles

Description

Odile Atthalin was a young woman from a prominent, bourgeois family in Paris when she decided to leave home in search of meaning. All she knew was that she wanted to go East; but once she had separated from France and committed to creating a new life for herself, opportunities fell into place. After years of travels around the world, including a life-changing four years in an Indian ashram, Atthalin settled in Berkeley, CA, where she found all she needed: her first real home; a godson with special needs to nurture, to whom she became a devoted godmother; and a subculture of seekers, writers, guides, healers, artists, and spiritual creatives-a diverse tribe in which she could fit and finally felt she belonged.

Odile Atthalin was born in Paris, France in 1936 to a patriarchal bourgeois family, the eldest of six children. After surviving the German Nazi Occupation in Normandy and the loss of a baby sibling, she witnessed D-Day and the liberation of her village by the American tanks. She majored in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and studied American Literature at Barnard College on a Fulbright Scholarship. Back in France she completed an M.A in Clinical Psychology. In 1969, she left for India, and kept traveling until 1983. Since 1988, she has maintained a private practice in Berkeley. In 1996, as a Senior Rosen Method Teacher, she founded the Rosen Method Open Center, a school to train Rosen Method Bodywork and Movement practitioners and teachers in the US and in Europe. In 1987, she became a godmother to a baby boy with special needs and became very involved in raising him. Atthalin loves reading and writing, in French and English. She finds great joy in meditation, yoga, Qi Gong, singing, hiking, dancing, and leading a weekly Movement class done to all kinds of good music.

"In this memoir we are drawn into the experience of a lonely child whose heart is opened by the birth of her brother, and then, suddenly, slammed shut. Decades later, after a transformative spiritual journey around the world, she is given the opportunity, in the most unexpected way, to reopen her heart and develop a mature love through the nurturing of another small child with special needs, staying focused on offering herself in selfless devotion to his well-being. I was fascinated by the ways they bring out the best in each other as he grows into manhood." -Carolyn Allen Zeiger, PhD, author of Doing it All Isn't Everything