Nathalie Volk
“I could see his handprints for days”
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Nathalie Volk aka Miranda DiGrande publishes her biography with “In My Own Words: A Day Without Lies”. In it she also talks about her childhood and reports how she experienced violence from her own father.
Nathalie Volk describes mistreatment
Nathalie Volk, who is under the Stage name Miranda DiGrande published her book, grew up in Nienburg with her brother Christian, who was two years older than her, before her parents separated. The relationship with her father is still very complicated today. Volk talked about her childhood in her work: “Both my brother and I experienced violence in that house. Not just from my father, but I could see his handprints on my body for days. The outline of his fingers. I wasn’t safe in those rooms.”Conditions in which no child should grow up. She also describes the neighborhood as extremely dangerous and that she sometimes had to stay indoors because it was too dangerous outside. In her book, she describes her neighborhood as a “ghetto” and explains that she grew up alongside drug dealers and other criminal neighbors.
Nathalie Volk’s mother is also said to have not been spared from her husband’s violence and the author describes a situation in which she was torn awake at night. “This time there was no ringing, no shots, but a scream. A piercing, loud scream. My mother’s scream.” She rushed down the stairs to see what had happened. And according to her, she saw “blood on the marble floor.” She further explains:
I knew it had to be my mother’s blood. But my mother wasn’t there. It was quiet. Too quiet.
In the scenario described, she followed the trail of blood and found shards. “The glass pane of the living room door was shattered. I kept running barefoot and then I saw my mother, the blood running down her arm and she was trying to stop the bleeding with Zewa cloths. My father was standing next to her, completely silent. I later found out that they had argued because my father had been drinking again.”
Fear of the phenomenon of drinking and loss of control continues to shape people to this day. “Everything was ruined by my father or by alcohol, which is why I still don’t like it when someone is drunk,” sums up Nathalie Volk in her biography.
Source used: “In My Own Words: A Day Without Lies” by Miranda DiGrande