Confession of a Butterfly — Finding her Wings. The True Story of Maïra (English)

Confession of a butterfly. How did I turn my scars into wings? My name is Maïra Oreis. For much of my life, I believed I was born to be abandoned. I was born in France in 1987, but my early years did not enjoy the love every child deserves. My mother was very young and faced issues of addiction and instability. As a baby, I suffered such severe neglect that one day, my heart stopped. The doctors brought me back to life, but surviving was only the beginning. After my parents' separation, my mother gradually disappeared from my daily life. For a time, my grandmother provided the tenderness I needed. At her home, there were warm meals, garden vegetables, and small surprises hidden under our plates. With her, I felt safe, but that safety did not last. I returned to live with my father and his new partner. Behind the walls of our house, I experienced fear, humiliation, alcohol, and unpredictable violence. I learned to enter rooms without making a sound. I tried not to attract attention. I began to behave as if I had to apologize for existing. My little sister and I took refuge in an imaginary kingdom made up of Disney stories, dolls, princesses, and happy endings. But even as a child, I could never imagine what came after the happy ending. I believed happiness was just a short break before the return of pain. At school, I was mocked and kept at a distance. When I tried to tell someone what was happening, my trust was betrayed. Instead of feeling protected, I felt punished for speaking out. So I fell silent. Two things began to keep me alive: writing and music. My father wrote poetry, and I discovered that words could hold emotions too painful to be expressed aloud. When I read one of my poems at school, the other children listened to me. Soon, some asked me to write down feelings they could not express themselves. For the first time, my sensitivity was not considered a weakness. It became a gift. Music offered me another world. When I discovered Britney Spears and her song "Baby One More Time," I felt a spark ignite within me. I waited for the song to play on the radio so I could tape it. I sang, I danced, I dreamed. Thanks to her, I began to understand that singing was my voice. I recorded the songs playing on the radio on cassette tapes, and I sang on my way home from school. Sometimes, I would deliberately slow my pace because I felt safer singing in the street than arriving home. The streets became my first stage. A teacher told me I had a beautiful voice. She could not know how much those words would mean to me. They gave birth to a small yet powerful idea: maybe my voice deserved to be heard. The wounds of childhood followed me into adulthood because I had grown up with a deep desire to be chosen. I sought love with an open, unprotected heart. Too often, I confused tension with affection, intensity with intimacy, and promises with security. I engaged in relationships, believing that love could save me. Instead, I repeatedly encountered emotional neglect, control, manipulation, infidelity, humiliation, and violence. I left, I returned, I forgave, I hoped. Each time someone promised to change, I wanted to believe it. In some way, a familiar pain seemed less frightening than solitude. Motherhood gave me another reason to carry on. My children became my roots and the deepest source of love in my life. But motherhood also brought fear, separation, and guilt. After seeking help following a severe assault, my children were taken away. I thought I was asking for their protection so they wouldn’t witness my trauma. Instead, I felt as if my vulnerability was being judged. Each visit, limited in time, ended with a new separation. Every time my children loosened their arms around me, I felt like I was leaving behind a piece of my soul. There were moments when I believed I would not survive. During a violent assault, a man I had loved threw me to the ground and tightened his hands around my throat. I thought I was going to die. My 5-year-