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Some of my favorite sites. Places and people that have had a profound impact on my life in some way. This is a collection my life’s searching to recover my sanity and happiness. Some of them have been my long companions since I started this path, others have come for a second and we departed on good terms while others have come and go. I am very grateful to have found each and every one of them since they have left a mark and they appear exactly when I needed them most. I would like to add, those are by no means the only people that have support me on my journey. Tho my acknowledge page is long overdue and it is coming … ...

The more I am hurting the more I hide. I have written a few different attempts for a new post without success. I have been “pretending” to be fine, not really to deceive who is around but because I couldn’t really be with my feelings. The truth is I have been very lost, my parents health is very frail and I am terrified of losing them. I do understand they have been in this world for 86 years and their time to go is near. I understand that but it doesn’t make it less terrifying. I am learning to accept where I am. Learning to stop trying to make myself feel better, learning to be with the pain and accepting it as a real part of myself, my feelings. It is what it is. I have moments, I am not terrified 24/7 it is more like moments that sneak in when I least expect. Like, I am at the office talking to somebody and all the sudden a wave of panic swirls up from the pit of my stomach to my head. Sometimes I can breath and stay with the breath, other times I have to move and I go hide somewhere hopefully with enough time to meditate a little; which in most cases helps, while other times I do not seem to connect with my space. While other times I just power through hoping that I would not do anything silly or that nobody would notice. I remind myself, I have something to hold on to. I know that everything is temporary and transient, everything will pass, sometimes that is enough to get me through the day. While other times it is not, and I feel like I am going to be swallowed by the grief. Even tho, I know it will not happen … I am still trying to get use to this feeling, trying to let it be next to me and not inside me, I am trying to make peace with the loss of who my parents were and stay with who they are now without panicking about the future. Sometimes, sometimes that works … Nothing is forever, not even this feeling …

I have ebbs and flows, sometimes I feel at the top of the mountain and sometimes I feel like a blob on the floor, I can not sink lower. Currently, I am in one of those flattened times. I feel like I’m getting all the emotions at once, I’m sad, and then I’m angry, frustrated, resentful. Why did it take a stroke to reconnect to my father? Why was it so difficult for us to talk? Which really it is not totally true, I used to talk to him a lot. He would spend hours telling me stories from when he was young, I would sit and listen and ask questions and at times I would get a bit frustrated because he talked about the same things over and over. But, I loved to hear his philosophies, he was unique and one of a kind. He had unique point of views and I wouldn’t agree with everything but I found him fascinating. A lot of the ways I view life, work, interactions, etc are very influenced by his teachings. I didn’t see it that way when he would talk to me. Now I understand that I was absorbing so much of his philosophy, which is brilliant in a lot of ways and very poor on some others … It was a privilege that I did not always appreciate. ...

Because of Dad The past few months have been one of the richest growth spurts of my life. Dad’s stroke allowed me to grow emotionally, spiritually, as an individual, and within my family. I have realized how much resentment I had been holding in my heart. How everything I felt had a tinge of what I wanted but it had a huge amount of what I didn’t want, it had a huge amount of my buried past, the past that I “forgot”, the one that I shunt. ...

I am in Veracruz with dad. He is progressing very well. There has been some complications, tho, I think today for the first time I feel like we are in the road of recovery and not just hoping to not get worse. This has been a huge lesson for me in many ways. I am learning to surrender and trust that everything is going to work out in whichever way it has to happen. For all this time all I wanted to do is remove dad’s suffering. I am learning to respect our paths, there are things he needs to learn, there are things I need to learn. I am searching for the best perspective in life instead of just being angry, resentful or sad. I can not “fix” dad, I am trying to just be and I am finding how difficult it can be. Sometimes 10 times a second I get to choose to let go, and do it all over again. I am learning that loving him does not mean fixing him or removing his suffering. Instead it means to be with him in spite of his suffering. To share his pain and love him anyway, to sit and read to him even if I am not sure if he can understand me or if he is listening to what I am saying. It means to respect my own suffering and not abandon him because I am in pain. ...

Dad is recovering in the hospital, 2 weeks ago he had a brain hemorrhage in the left side of his brain. A brain hemorrhage the size of a lime. His state is delicate, tho, seems like the most dangerous time is over. He lost the speech and most of the movility on his right side. There is a long recovery ahead of us. This post is not really about him, it is about me and the very clear message I received last week when I saw my father fighting for his life, when I said goodbye twice to the man that gave me life, when for the first time in my adult life I was hysterical and I had no idea what to do, when I signed twice to be responsible for his life since we were doing things against the “advisable doctor” at that moment. I finally understood what things are important for me in this life. it was very clear that my love for dad is unconditional, that I do not care if we do not see eye to eye or if our beliefs are so different we could be from different planets. I understood that to be myself and keep my beliefs I do not need his approval and I do not need for him to think the same way I do. I understood I get to be myself and he gets to be himself, we can hold hands and see opposite worlds, I understood that if I stopped trying to convince him how right I am, therefore how wrong he is …. we can love, respect and accept each other. Now, I do not know if I will be able to fully be with him again. I am very grateful to Federica for pushing me to “make peace with him” at least I know we were both trying to heal our relationship and I will forever be grateful to her about it. Thank you Momentum for being in Seattle, I love you! ...

About 8 months ago my father had a stroke, which change our lives forever. I stopped using my blog for all that time, I was too emotionally involved with his recovery, I was too fragile, too raw to make sense of anything. During those months I wrote some pages, I wrote to keep myself halfway sane, I wrote to pour my soul and maybe find solace, I wrote because I didn’t know what else to do with myself, with my time, with my thoughts. ...

I have been so absent from my blog and I think from my life to. It is not easy to make the path back … So many things have happened and at the same time it seems like nothing has changed. Almost one year, almost one year since I last wrote anything, one year since I last I wrote a word in this blog. Did you ever have that feeling that your entire life is changed but from a naked eye, nothing, really, truly nothing changed? I feel that way right now. I still work in the same place, I still drive the same car, I still have the same name … and at the same time. I feel like somebody else is here, typing this words. I think in so many ways I dress, act, talk like somebody else. I must be somebody different than who I was a year a go. There are so many things, so many stories … I will tell you all those, ok, maybe not all. Just some, just enough. I am open, and at the same time, this makes no sense. But I promise I will do my best to explain how even tho, I am the same person. That person is now gone, different forever changed …

Being Mexican for me is a verb not a noun. It is to be loud and to laugh scandalously, to be colorful and to follow your traditions. I mean there are lots of traditions in Mexico, not all of them I follow, not all of them are part of my personal or familiar traditions but I respect them! It is to have skulls on your table at the beginning of November and to have posadas with pinatas on December. It is enjoy chiles, mole and guacamole. To eat carne asada from time to time and to kiss our savior good night. It is to wish to see my beautiful Puebla for the ofrendas and to think of my beautiful Popocatepetl when I see a magnificent volcano. It is to think of the sleeping Iztaccíhuatl and the warrior legend. It is not forgetting where I come from or how to speak Spanish. It is not forgetting who I am …

I am so lucky to have amazing support, people who showed me things on a different light. I changed from beat up mode to healing mode. In beat up mode the cycles of self-harm persist over and over. In healing mode we still feel the grief, the dark, deep rooted pain, tho if we allow ourselves to share that raw pain. Accepting love and support from the people around us, it creates a huge wave that crashes in and ultimately, resides. I didn’t think I was strong enough to feel the incredible pain caused by my brother’s departure, I really thought I would die if I let it all come to the surface. I was immersed in so much guilt and shame, there was no room for healing. Allowing the space with the people I love to not only share but explorer and shift from guilt to love and connection. Seeing myself through the eyes of others created the space for healing. I know I can’t have my brother back, but I can recover myself and my family. I have worked on forgiveness for 21 years, every time there is something different in the layer that I uncover. I do not know if I have learned everything I need to know from this crazy experience but I know I am making progress! As one of my precious friends reminded me, I get to experience forgiveness and a release from the guilt. I can’t live in the space of “what if I had…”, that conversation doesn’t move us forward. There is a lot of love and connection that is possible with myself, my family and everybody I come in contact with, coming from love and connection instead of guilt and inadequacy. I am processing. I am sad, but without the feeling it will never end. I see the progress now, I am good …. <3