Happy life and new year @marivic10, I thank God, my own life, the one I defend and value, the life we each have (my husband and I). I am grateful for what feeds our soul Love, because we have been building it for years and neither of us wants to leave it, this adult coexistence, with meaning.
On Christmas day 2023, just after having my first coffee and opening our gifts with my husband, I sat down to read one of the books I received as a gift from him, thank you for this wonderful gift. I started reading it and I couldn't let go until I finished it, that afternoon, with a tight heart, I cried in silence, my husband hugged me very tightly because I relived part of my life story, when I was a few years ago with the cancer process and the grief it means in my life.
I read without stopping that "What I managed to tell you" which is actually what Mariela good friend, the author of it, managed to tell us all before she died recently in Madrid on December 12, 2023. I was touched by her frankness. Painful truths that we can also learn from.
It is Mariela's art of turning pain into books, of becoming a mother in "a year for a lifetime", and in this book I felt invited to live, to take the pain and transform it again and again into love, ... How much love of life one must have to be on the verge of death and vibrate that way!
While I was reading the book, I felt myself conversing with her. Even though at some moments while reading I felt her heartbreaking pain, and that she had suffered so much, the only thing that makes me happy is that she was able to courageously and proudly assume her vulnerability and that despite so much pain she has enjoyed life.
Her book is a real jewel and somehow represent that bibliography to which you always come back as a woman because they are very valuable recommendations for those of us who have been through this disease, and somehow we can help other people to go through it.
But this book is something else. It is the hurried prose of those who know that the clock is against them. That awareness of death, so human and so fierce, came to Mariela unintentionally, and once she had accepted it, she transformed it into a book, into smiles and into encounters. In general, it is an enjoyable as well as profound reading.
This book is autobiographical and contains hard personal experiences and at the same time without drama. I would tell you as I tell my clients when they come with many topics for me to advise them on their business, and they come out gushing: "Start wherever you want, and then we'll spin and weave," making our way.
This awareness of death is indispensable to live fully from a certain moment in life, because it is precisely in our vulnerability that profound wisdom is treasured that becomes an invaluable inheritance.
It's such a difficult duel.
I knew her, she was a colleague I met at a congress. And yet, one is left a little helpless and a little lonely when an author like her, who you have enjoyed and accompanied you in life, dies. As a human talent professional, I am left with the feeling that we did not fire her at the height of the teachings she leaves us. I stay with her, and at the same time I can't say goodbye to her because we were close... Migration and its things...
Far from the attitude of "extending" life, like one who lengthens breaths, Mariela with her book invites us to live life, to see it from the front, to get into the ins and outs of what we have not told anyone or WE have told ourselves to embrace ourselves with deep love for who we are and have been.
It's a beautiful, rushed, deeply honest book. Reading it in such a transparent way, is an invitation to be ourselves, for me, it was like an invitation to see that finiteness inevitably leads us to drop layers and heavy layers (masks) that take away valuable time to be with those we care about, in what matters to us and where we are loved. It's a beautiful book.
"What can we do with the time?, how do we stretch it? Because now it's true that time is pressing! So let's take advantage of it!"
I thank you for adorning life with anecdotes from here and there, the journey of what your life was Mariela, my dear friend, and also my infinite gratitude for the legacy you leave us. Thank you for making your pains before the imminent death, books that accompany me ... Thank you, friend, that your soul is free wherever you are.
In summary, Marivic the result of 2023, is as I start this new year, with my best dress, one made to measure of hope, illusions, and above all the commitment to continue working on gratitude to be able to feel the joy of living, of breathing, of continuing to gain years, enjoying and growing every day.
Janitze.
Separator made with Canva by @janitzearratia
Any images in this post are taken with my iPhone 12, the Infinix pro-note 30 or with the camera eighties Rolleiflex 2.8 f, and edited with Canva
Translation with |DeepL
