I read the article and paused when I came upon the quote you chose. I thought, "The child I was is not so different from the person I am. In fact, I am that child, even the prelinguistic one. I am also the adult and all the points in between."

Each realization of earlier-me was built on and developed so that now-me cannot be 100% sure when an idea originated. I see in earlier-me's thoughts, the seeds of all the major ideas and philosphies of now-me.

I feel this strongly. I look at pictures of earlier-me and recognize the pictures and feel the feelings of earlier-me. I still hold within me the traumas of earlier-me. I am mostly over most of them, but the earlier-me that is still part of me is still working on those traumas, large and small. The traumas hold some small place in our cells. The joys do too. The joys keep the traumas at bay, give strength, hold one together.

And if our bodies are dissimilar, our points of view are even more so. Mine would be as inaccessible to her … as hers is now to me. Her thought processes, prelinguistic, would largely elude me.

I don't think so. I understand her and feel her feelings.

I am 7 wanting a cuddle from my mother. She says she's busy.

I am 10 and my father discovers my stash of comic books and rips them all up.

I am 12 and sitting on the floor of the middle school hall crying that I was not chosen to be a library helper. The injustice of it!!

I am adult and crouched underneath a desk in a college where I worked, in despair that a love-target refuses an embrace.

All of those losses seem very real to now-me.

But maybe I'm a mostly integrated self -- at least for now.