“I left Germany when I was 19 to travel the world. I never really had a plan but I’m 28 now and I’m still traveling. The best part about my life is that I do exactly what I feel like when I feel like it. Every now and then I return back home to Germany and it’s nice because I get to be a visitor in my country of birth. However I don’t plan to settle down any time soon. Settling down would be hard for me because I’m so used to living in the moment. While back home everything is planned out. If I want to have a talk and a coffee with a friend it is normal to plan these things one week in advance and that’s the thing, maybe in one week I might not be in the mood for coffee and a conversation.”

2//2 “When I found out my daughter had been raped by him something inside of me snapped. I went up to him and I asked: ’‘Did you rape my daughter?” He answered: “Yes, I did.” It is hard to describe how I felt but everything around me became blurry. I lived in a rust. I could no longer feel anything and the only thing I could think of was: “He is going to die.” With the help of a friend, I drugged and I killed him.
When you kill in the name of your country it is justified. When you kill out of revenge you go to prison. I never tried to get away with what I did. I didn’t want to get away with what I did. On the contrary, I waited three weeks for my arrest. I knew what I had done was wrong and that I would get arrested for it. I have been punished for what I have done. I was sentenced to prison for 12 years. I hurt myself, I hurt my daughters and I killed a man. What I did, I regret but at the time I was so desperate and I felt no other option. When I got out of prison I started to write down my story as a way of coping with everything I had been through. At some point I would only write at night so no one would see me cry. In my life I experienced physical pain but that is nothing compared the mental pain I have experienced. There is no doctor, no medication or other remedy that can take that pain out of your soul. Still I refuse to see myself as a victim and I take full responsibility for what I did. I’m a grandmother now and I take good care of my grandchildren. I found a wonderful husband and somehow I made it through these 52 years of my life. I became an artist and I wrote a book, I paint and I write poetry. My artist name is LaReina which means the Queen in Spanish. It is a name the South American women in prison gave me. They gave me that name because they saw me as a strong mother, a Matriarch, a Queen who survived in a kingdom of misery. Every since I came out of prison I have been carrying that name with pride.“

½ “I was only seven when my mother offered me out to elderly men as a prostitute. My entire childhood my mother earned money off me. she abused me both mentally and physically. She was an alcoholic and all the money I would make she would spend on alcohol. When I got my period I became no longer interesting for pedophiles and she made me work other jobs. Whenever I refer to her, I rather not call her my mother but just the one who brought me into this world. At the age of sixteen I met a man and we got into a serious relationship. In a way he was my ticket out. Two years later I got pregnant and we had a baby girl. After a few years I found out that he would sexually abuse our daughter. It broke my heart. we divorced and he got arrested. After that I tried to make life better but my childhood trauma kept following me around. I got into a spiral of abusive relationships and drug abuse, I also had my second daughter. I never trusted anyone until I met an old family friend. He seemed to be very understanding of my situation and for the first time I felt that I could be vulnerable in front of another human being. He gained my trust and I was able to share the horrible things I went through as a child. I was happy I had found someone I could talk to but then one day my daughter came up to me and told me that she had been raped by this man.”

“If I’ll tell you all the things I love about her I’m going to cry.”
“And if she is going to cry, I’m going to cry.”

“I was a dancer on Michael Jackson’s Thriller tour in 1984. While we were on tour, my father who lived in England got a heart attack. I remember sitting in my dressing room crying when Michael came up to me. He asked me what happened and when I told him about my dad he immediately arranged a flight home for me so I could go see my dad.”