When I saw you in Pondicherry, at the age of 40, before you passed away, you recognized the 8-year-old girl you had taken to your centre before being adopted in Belgium in 1976. My return to you was the logical step after a long inner journey in search of my origins. It wasn't easy for me to make this trip back. But once the decision was made, our reunion ushered in a thousand discoveries in my native country, and at the same time it helped me to see, in a different light, the rich, deeply touching, and sometimes difficult years that I had experienced as a child, and then as a young adult in the West. You will read, in these letters I send you, about my painful arrival in Belgium, and the abused childhood from which I am now cured, but also the often extraordinary encounters and events that have made me who I am today'.