Stories of Our Journeys

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Continuing part two of two conversations with Maureen Seiger and her daughter, Michaelina Argy, Maureen shares more of the story of her journey with the deep pain of guilt around her daughter’s thalidomide birth defects and deformities, her husband kidnapping her children, surviving the mental breakdown and hospital to eventually reconnect with her three children years later. Mikey Argy shares her experience sitting in Parliament to hear the announcement and apology from the British Government recognizing thalidomide survivors, finally getting the recognition she and others deserved.

After the children were taken away to England, I fell in a heap. I crawled to the psychiatrist I was seeing at the time and said, “What am I going to do? My life has ended.

“He looked at me and said, “Is it really? You look very much alive to me.”

I demanded an explanation, and he said, “Well, you’ve got two choices. You can go or you can stay.”I went absolutely mad. “What sort of an answer is that?”

He said “Do you want me to tell you want to do? I can’t. I can only tell you what will happen.”If you go to England, exactly the same thing that has been happening to you in Australia will happen to you in England. The only thing that will be different is that the country will have changed. You will continue doing what you are doing now. If you don’t go, there is a chance, however slim, that you will come out of this.

“The choice is up to you . You can go or you can stay. You can continue, or you can change.

“I was very grateful to that man. Not at the time but now. I chose up. I chose the chance.” Maureen Seiger

She talks about the abandonment by her husband, every sound in the night waking her up, thinking it was one of the children. It continued for more than six years as she subconsciously listened to sounds of potential danger in the house. “If I heard a child in the crowd screaming ‘mummy,’ I’d turn around and look.

“Eventually, she turned her life around and found the strength to go forward. She became an executive secretary, traveling around the world. She eventually married world renown classical pianist, accompanist, and master teacher, Joseph Seiger. Maureen lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Everybody, at some time in their life, has to make a decision. They don’t know it at the time, but it is a life-shattering decision because there is always two ways you can go. You can go forward or you can go backward and there is no other way. There is nothing in between.

As is the goal of Stories of Our Journeys, we join with Maureen and Argy to celebrate their story and hope it helps others facing similar challenges and knowing that you will survive and find greater strength along the journey.

For more information on Thalidomide and the efforts of Mikey Argy and The Thalidomide Trust, see “Michaelina Argy and Maureen Seiger, Thalidomide Survivors” on Stories of Our Journeys.

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