Sonya is autistic, cannot talk, can only make monotonous movements, does not react in any way when communicating with her, is completely detached and non-contact.
The doctors diagnosed her with profound mental retardation. It was like that until seven-year-old Sonya had a pen and her mother touched Sonya’s hand at that moment. And Sonya started to write.
Yes, it turned out that Sonya could read and write, she had absolute literacy, a photographic memory, and an unfathomable knowledge of our world.
Some doctors couldn’t believe it for a long time. It’s hard to see in a child who can only make inarticulate sounds, screams for hours, and can’t even bring a spoon to her mouth on her own anything intelligent.
At the literary circle it was required to give aphorisms-definitions of various concepts. For example, there was such a task: to give aphorisms-definitions, what is science? And what is the soul? Sonya answered (wrote):
«Science is a system of knowledge based on doubt.»
Does a ten-year-old girl, unable to speak, give this answer? She also wrote about the soul:
«The soul is such an empty place in a person that a person can fill with God or Satan.» Who among the adults is capable of giving such an answer?
After reading what Sonya writes in her childish handwriting, you will realize that we hardly know anything at all about the mind.
Sonya has written many things: poems, fairy tales, diaries, aphorisms. You can think and ponder over every line there.
Here is Sonia’s entry after the session at the dolphinarium:
«Today I swam with Waha without daddy. Waha calmed me down and told me that I was like a dolphin girl, and I had a tail and fins and was in harmony with the water. That was the image. And also about the free flow of will, that you don’t have to strain it, but just let it go in the right direction. And the direction — well, listen to the Creator, there is always a feeling of harmony. This is no longer thought-images, I realized that somehow, while I was swimming. Waha took fish from me three times. I have a lot to think about, and first of all, about the free flow of will. Dolphins are so harmonious because their will is always directed toward the Creator.»
Sonya has had a very clear worldview since childhood. When she was eight years old, she wrote:
«Why do people live? God, when He sends everyone into this world, says, ‘Work and glorify Me through your works. I think so, for me these are poems. It’s impossible for me not to write them, otherwise I would die of pain, bursting with the pressure of the words in my head.»
Sonya’s mother tells: «My daughter’s baptism is Sophia. She is a religious person, although she rarely goes to church services — it’s very hard for her to tolerate large crowds of people. Only in the summer, at a camp for families with «special» children, can Sonya freely go to church — everyone there is friendly. And at home in our small town her peers can point and laugh at Sonya and adults can shake their heads with pity… In one of the churches where Sofia was at the time, the priest during a sermon on the sin of judging a neighbor, pointed at my daughter and said «Here you think she can only moo and behave strangely? But you don’t know, what if there is great wealth hidden under that shell?»
She cannot talk, so the only way to communicate with her is in writing. Sonya reads, instantly «photographing» the text, composes poetry. She has her own system of ideas about the structure of the subtle world and original terminology. She has innate literacy. When people ask her, «How do you know that?» — she replies: «I’ve always known it.»
A unique child.
