I don't remember any details of a past life, but I do remember being in another realm and deciding to come back here. I saw the opportunity to be born as the person I am now, and I wanted to be born because I felt sorry for someone here, probably my mother. I remember thinking that I could help her and that I was strong enough to survive another life here.

I wasn't forced to come back. I could have stayed where I was as long as I wanted to. The being I was talking to wanted me to wait and come back here at a later time. Other beings said that I might not survive, that I might not be able to return to that other realm after being born here. They told me that I might be destroyed or get lost. I told him that I knew I hadn't done well the last time I was on earth but that I was stronger and had learnt much in the time since then. It had been a long time since my last life and I was sure I could handle a new one. Despite their misgivings, I was allowed to come back.

I remember telling my cousin about all this when I was three, but my mother thought I was telling stories. I never mentioned it to her again. I was brought up to be an atheist and I still am an atheist because there was no sense of a god in my memory of that other realm. Although there was an authority structure, we were all the same types of beings. I was brought up to think philosophically but not spiritually. And yet this memory, which does not fit into anything I was ever taught, has always been with me.

There are a few things about this other realm that I remember strongly. There was no colour. It wasn't white or black; colour just wasn't a factor. Also, I was female and these other people were male. It seems strange to me that in that place there were distinctions between male and female entities. We didn't have bodies. I can't make sense of that even now.

I remember referring to the fact that I had lived as a human before, but I do not remember any of my past lives. Except that once as a young child I remember seeing a bird and thinking, "I liked being a bird." I felt nostalgia.

I remember being born. I was six weeks early. I remember thinking, in English, in a jolt of panic, "It's happening, something's gone wrong, I made a mistake." I remembered the warning I had been given not to come back, and I was afraid that I had overestimated my ability to survive here. I was determined not to fail so soon, and I pushed myself to get out. I think that, without that memory to spur me on and the feeling that I had something to prove, I would have died during birth.

I have other memories from when I was a young baby - of being so small that all I could do was cry for my mother to come and change me or be with me. I remember thinking, "Where's that lady? I want that lady to come. I like her." I have memories of playing with my activity centre, of stretching, crawling and posing for photos as a baby, of people talking to me in baby-talk, of my first birthday party which was held when I was only ten months old, of my mother choosing baby-food (I really wanted the red jar but she almost bought the dark one), of toddling around when I was only just able to walk, and of my parents arguing when they were going through their divorce when I was two years old. No one else I know has memories from that far back in their lives. I can only explain it to myself by thinking that I was an old soul in a young body.

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