The History of Erika in 5000000000 words or less

Quote for the Day: Marianne Williamson from the 1992 book Return to Love: "We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone". Think about it. **This quote is frequently attributed incorrectly to Nelson Mandela's Inaugural Presidential Address. This corrected information was researched by a passing surfer John F. who kindly researched it. Thanks John. Erika circa 1994, cranberry bogs gate, Cape Cod, MA

Pre-Erika

In the long ago times when I was just an egg in my mom's womb, my dad decided to leave The Netherlands via a boat and jump ship in America. Where he would later be discovered as an illegal alien and drafted into WWII by the Army and spy against the Germans since he spoke fluent German, Dutch, and English. My mom 19 years his junior, went on to Brown University and got a job in Washington for the CIA translating documents from Red China. They met at a dinner party in 1963 and the rest is history, namely mine. My mom dated some very strange men before she met my dad including a man who always wore one black glove. Fortunately for me that relationship did not flower.

My Story--Childhood

I was born May 15, 1965 in Newton, MA and we lived on Commercial Wharf in the North End of Boston on the waterfront back when people who didn't make $500,000 a year could still afford to live there. My mom loved the North End. It is the old Italian neighborhood. My sister Heidi was born when I was 1 1/2. Mom said we were royalty in reduced circumstances. Since my dad worked at WHOI, we moved to Woods Hole on the Cape and then to Hatchville in Falmouth. Mom said the move was rather traumatic for me and I didn't speak for a week. When I was little I refused to speak or walk and my mom took me to the pediatrician. He pronounced me healthy and picked me up and tried to put my feet on the ground but I picked my feet up repeatedly. I just loved to crawl. So he said "Well, I guess she'll walk and talk when she wants to." Mom said she tried so hard to get me to say "mama" but my first words were "dada". I also refused to be toilet trained until one fateful day I did Number Two on the stairs and my mother yelled "ok that's it I give up on you!" and after that I used the toilet. At age 4 I remember wanting to go to school when I would look out the window and see the neighborhood kids get on the bus. We moved when I was 5 to Cataumet in Bourne by Amrita Island near the Animal Rescue League Summer Camp (again had waterfront back when people of small income could afford to live by the sea) and I started kindergarten in Bourne. I remember my father teaching me how to tie my shoes on the dock outside my house. I had a terrible life experience that haunted me well into my 20's at kindergarten I was happily painting and I had no concept that you can't dip the brush in different colors coz it will make brown and the teacher grabbed my hand and made me drop the brush on the floor and told me I would never paint again. Hey teachers, young kids are impressionable. Who knows I could've been a female Picasso. But traumatized I was til a kind friend gave me paints, brushes, canvas, left on a two week vacation and said she expected to see something there when she got back. I digress. Once when my father was clamming the marsh nearby I tried to go out to where he was, got stuck in the mud and fell flat on my face and could not get up and they had to rescue me or I would have suffocated. We moved the next year to the current home in N. Falmouth where I had first grade and on the first day of school my dad drove me and a deer jumped right in front of the car by the school. I never forgot that. My father was a writer and photographer. He used to take me to the print shop in Plymouth. He was not home much as he was always off on sailing trips all over the world with the renowned WHOI in Woods Hole, MA. But one day my life changed (affecting me well into adulthood). My father was leaving one Sunday morn for a sailboat race in Woods Hole and he said byebye to us I remember we were sitting on the floor watching cartoons and that afternoon my mom got a phone call. She rushed us to the hospital in a borrowed car and we waited for what seemed like forever. My mother came and got us 7 and 5 year old kids and my father was on a guerney. "kiss you father goodbye kids" she said. He was dead. He really loved to sail so I guess he went the way he would have wanted to go. He was buried at sea off the coast of Greenland. We have a whale tooth with the latitude and longitude of his final resting place on it. He loved whales and had many artifacts from whaling days (back when it was all legal). His death hurt my mother terribly. She struggled to raise two young children alone and with very little money. She used the life insurance money to buy the house we were renting. She worked full time as a secretary although she was very intelligent and could have had a real career. We always had the basics. I was trained since Grade 1 to go to college. So I was a shy kid with a great imagination. I always loved horses and mom let us take lessons. I really do take after my father...the love of travel, the writing/photography interest, europhile. I got to visit England, Bermuda, Denver, CO in my youth. I was picked on by bullies practically my entire school existence. The price we pay for living in a democracy. I guess. But I was a sensitive child and life was always very painful and upsetting. I mostly hated change of any kind. That was the worst. But change is inevitable in life. Much to my regret.

The Teenage Years


I developed an overwhelming and insatiable obsession with the J Geils Band in 1980 when the Love Stinks album came out. I had terrible acne and had a best friend named Jill. We were very close and competitive. She and I became complete devotees of the band after we saw them on Saturday Night live and then live at the Cape Cod Colisseum. What an amazing live show. I was hooked. She and I created band characters and made up stories of what they would say and be like. We did not want to meet the band, we wanted to "be" the band. I don't think anyone who is not prone to obsessions could grasp what that really meant. I graduated from Falmouth High School (was on the Honor Society, American Field Service, reporter for the class paper, college prep courses). At 17, I really came into my own. Did not care what anyone thought of me. Was wild and crazy and managed to make a Yearbook superlative "Most Individualistic". I rode horses since age 10, worked as a stable slave, had no luck with boys whatsoever. The only ones I met wanted sex and nothing else. I was very much into music. Having discovered it about 1977 the height of the disco craze. But I am an adolescent of the punk early 80's New Wave scene. I remember when MTV first came out! I never had any inclination to try drugs or alcohol or smoke. Just never did. Now that's considered trendy but back then I was an iconoclast. A holdout. I got a lot of public comment about my newspaper articles. I took 4 years of Latin. I remember crying my eyes out senior year when my English Teacher asked me to think for myself. "I don't know how to do that!" I cried. I did not get along with my sister at all. I had a paper route, watched a lot of TV and listened to a lot of loud music on the stereo.

The college years


I went to BU in Boston to be near my boys (The J. Geils Band) and I almost had a breakdown when I was at school at a huge dorm and really having trouble adjusting to change when I heard on the radio the band broke up. I freaked. My really unsympathetic floormates told me to shutup and get a life. As a result of my infatuation I did end up meeting Seth, the keyboardist, and had quite a few interesting social encounters with him. I eventually met the band (except Peter Wolf, probably a good thing) but was very disappointed by my fantasy of them vs. reality. I did well in school graduating cum laude in 4 1/2 years with two undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Journalism. I was on the BU equestrian team and wrote for the school paper. I spent my last semester in London Great Britain on an internship. But all I had ever known was school my whole life. The real world beckoned so of course I chose to ignore it for a good 8 years or so.

Post School Malaise years-- Age 21-25


So I lived with some wonderful friends for a few years but that did not get me on a career track. Because I never worked I lived in semi-poverty. I spent a year looking at the wall of my room. (Depression that was never diagnosed, or maybe I was just lazy or really bored). I went to Europe for 6 months just before the fall of Communism in 1988-89 and lived on less than $20 a day. It was wonderful. I love Europe. My fave countries are Ireland and Portugal. I love Prague and Rome. Actually at the time I thought Rome was too dangerous so I went thru Yugoslavia (just before war broke out) to Greece. yea, where angels fear to tread (this is a pretty constant them in my life)...I began to study spirituality and discovered Native American religion. I went to medicine wheel gatherings and sweat lodges and made shields and on vision quests trying to find my true calling. I was still seeking.

The adult years -- Age 25-33


With luck I found a job up the street at a little shop. It was a place to be safe learn about spirituality. I became a practitioner of Wicca and paganism. But I became bored and I decided to move on and seek my fame and fortune and hit the road cross country odyssey in 1995. Very scary because I was afraid people would be out to hurt me at every turn. What I found was a delightful country of vision, beauty, love and the only two people to threaten my safety were both men and I knew them. Statistics don't lie. I took my dog and went to LA and up to Oregon, worked in LA at The Prudential but my heart hurt so I drove home in a little old white car. Returning homeI discovered Reiki and have since become a Reiki master and teacher of the Usui and Karuna types. It has changed my life and I wholly recommend it. Now I am into the teachings of Lazaris and the Enneagram (sacred geometry). I began a real full time benefits job in 1995. It has not been easy. I suffered alot and it made me stronger. I started to fight for what I believe in. I made a commitment to get out of debt and completed a two month odyssey to Australia and New Zealand. I love to travel and recently went cross country driving from LA to Boston.
New Erika Hahn Photo Gallery at angelfire.

PHOTOS OF ERIKA 1990, 1995, 1996

The wonder of video here. Thanks to Tim Jackson of Duct Tape Productions. This is a video image from my brand spanking new Canon ES6000 Hi-8 video palmcorder. Ain't technology amazing? I recorded this and plugged RCA cables into his PowerMac and using software captured this image, played with it a little on PhotoShop (a very expensive program) and saved the image as a gif file, used FTP to upload it to my site, used HTML to put it on my Homepage. WoW. I am really thinking about buying a scanner and digital camera. The possibilities are endless as long as my bank account reads a plus balance! Web page design is fun. ME AT THE X-FILES CONVENTION IN WEYMOUTH, MAY 3, 1998 JUST AFTER I MET NICK LEA, ACTOR WHO PLAYS THE EVIL FBI AGENT KRYCEK. I SPENT OVER $30 AND STOOD IN LINE FOR 2.5 HOURS FOR THE AUTOGRAPH SESSION, THEN I WENT HOME AND WATCHED THE XFILES FOR AN HOUR ON TV. Then I watched the XFiles Movie in Boston in July 1998 and went home and watched the Xfiles on TV on Fox. I am probably going to see the movie again. Love that black oil stuff. ME, A FAN, NO, NOT REALLY.

Pics of Me...Out travelling the world. This is The Colosseum in Rome, Italy December 1996.
Meeting my Star Trek idols on a cruise to the Caribbean in 1990.
Astride my beastie Clover Valley, Summer 1995.
Vital Statistics
Eyes: Turquoise Green Height: 5'10" Weight: How Rude! IQ: MYOB Politics: left of center Education: 16.5 yrs Status: single/ no kids Religion: Wicca
Travel Destinations
Europe: Great Britain France Germany Denmark Norway Sweden Finland Netherlands Italy Switzerland Spain Portugal Ireland Luxembourg Austria Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia Greece Belgium Hungary and Iceland Caribbean: Bermuda, Bahamas USA: MA VT NH CT NY ME NJ MD DC DE FL SC NC TN CO UT AZ AR TX CA OR ID WY NM OK PA RI KS MO IN OH Canada: Toronto Middle East: Israel and Egypt Pacific: Australia (NSW, QLD, NT, WA, VIC), New Zealand (N/S Islands)

Erika Stats: (here I plan to use tables...one thing at a time, ok? geez) Eyes: Turquoise Green; Height: 5'10"; Weight: on a good day 150 lbs; Education: 16.5 years; Politics: left of center; Humor: Slapstick/absurd; Health: excellent; Status: single, no kids; Standards: High; Religion: tends toward wicca/Native American but baptized Episcopalian. I guess I swing both ways with deities (uh, was that sacriligious?).
LIKES
Likes: Chocolate (the good stuff from Europe, natch), irreverency, X-Files, Angel on WB, Star Trek, The Practice, travelling, natural fibers, straight talk, Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, progressive rock, TV Production, environmentalism, animal rights, the unusual, XENA Warrior Princess, Reiki, bicycling, horseback riding, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia icecream, web page design, computers, Dylan McDermott, Seth Justman, native american ideology, honesty, dreams, Monty Python, Absolutely Fabulous, Red Dwarf, Mel Gibson, Star Wars trilogy, sci-fi, all creatures great and small, writing, Michael T. Weiss.
DISLIKES
Dislikes: Egotistical/male chauvinist men, liars, people who go out of their way to hurt other people for no good reason, road rage, power tripping, meat, boredom, suffering, intolerance, ignorance, bullshit, my job, family dysfunctions, alcoholism, tyranny, patriarchal consciousness, developers who rob the land for their own greed, and anything, in short, that makes my life more difficult (tho I concede it does promote personal growth).

Two things I will never do: get a tattoo or get any part of my body pierced.
COMMENTARY
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This page last updated September 23, 2001