I grew up in a fundamentalist family which thought reincarnation did not fit into our religious ideas. In fact, the only thing that I knew about reincarnation, at age seven, was that people in India believed they could come back as a cow.

My father was in the military and when I was about seven, in the '50's, we lived in France. Our family went to Orleans, the town in which Joan of Arc grew up. We were not allowed to drive our car into the town, so we had to walk. My parents were not sure where to go as the signs were in French. I pointed down a street and said, "Joan of Arc lived down there." When I was asked how I knew, I had no answer. When we started in the direction I had pointed, we saw a sign we could make out telling us we were headed in the right direction.

As we walked up to the area for visitors, I told my mother I didn't want to go in. She said I had to stay with the family. I felt so compelled to go a different direction that, as the family went into the building with a group of people, I snuck down a side street. I knew exactly what it was going to look like and I knew there was a bridge over a creek around a corner, before I could see it. As I stood on the bridge, I was overwhelmed by sights and sounds and odors that I remembered from some where, but I didn't know where. I just knew I had lived there when Joan of Arc lived there. I knew I had played with her and we had loved to play in the water by the bridge. There are so many things that come into my mind even now as I think about it. I KNEW I had lived there even though I didn't know what reincarnation was.

My mother tells the story about how we were the only Americans living in the small town of Noveant. She said I played with the French girls and spoke French with them even though I had had little French in my classes at school. We moved from France to Germany. I again had experiences that aren't easy to explain. But I do know that I had been a German soldier and that I was killed by a hand grenade that exploded in my hand.

When we moved from France to Germany, I was put in the beginning German class, but after a week my parents were called for a conference. The teacher wanted to move me to the advanced class because I was learning German so fast. She asked them if I had ever been around people who spoke German before. After I left Germany I couldn't speak German any more. But I do understand German when I hear it spoken sometimes.

Again I knew this when I was a child. I never spoke to anyone about these experiences until I was an adult because they were against the religious ideas I grew up with. Now I am comfortable with them and find them empowering instead of "weird." I also have found that I can sometimes see other people's past lives.

Connie Foster
connie104@centurytel.net

Posted April 13, 2007