Translator: Tania Lines Reviewer: Michael Nystrom
Has anyone here
ever had to leave a party just when it was getting good?
Just when you’d been bold enough to dance with
or talk to that person that had captivated you.
Then you’re told:
“It’s time to leave”.
When I was three years old, I stayed in my mum’s car
whilst she quickly dropped something off.
I was playing around, and I released the handbrake.
The car shot down a ravine with me inside.
It rolled so many times that it was left practically destroyed.
Luckily, during one of its rollovers, I was thrown out of the window
and landed as if nothing had happened.
From that day on, the words “you were reborn”
have remained ingrained in every cell in my body.
“You were reborn”.
How many events occur in our life
that lead to rebirth?
We’ve just gone through a relentless crisis.
All of us have been badly shaken by it.
When I was a child, I dreamt of three things in life:
marrying the love of my life,
having children
and working as a news presenter for a major TV station.
I thought that when these life events happened to me,
I would be happy.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Each one of those events brought me happiness.
However, my beliefs that I would be fulfilled
when they happened, were shattered.
Let’s start with marriage.
I’m not one of the fortunate who can say: “And they lived happily ever after”.
It’s very painful being with someone you’re not happy with.
And it’s very painful being with someone who isn’t happy by your side.
And it’s also very painful pretending to be the perfect couple.
And as a mother,
contemplating divorce is terrifying because you ask yourself:
How am I going to bring up my kids?
Will they be happy one day?
Will they heal from this pain?
But the most painful moment for me was when my daughter,
when she was just three years old, asked me:
“Mummy,
why are you and daddy not living in love?”
I was torn in two.
I didn’t have the heart to say to my kids:
“It’s okay to stay in a loveless marriage.
It’s okay to be unfaithful to yourself
and to betray yourself to impress others.
Keeping up appearances and living up to expectations”.
I had to teach my kids to live,
to trust,
to dare.
I built my marriage
on a pipe dream for so many years,
until that dream suddenly shattered.
It left me
fragile, exposed and vulnerable
and unsure of who I was and in which direction I wanted to go.
Is there anything harder or more painful than that?
Yes.
And that’s not having the chance to look inwards
and see who we really are.
It was because of the heartbreak that I experienced
and the need to keep going for my kids,
that I asked myself not what kind of life I wanted
but what I wanted to become,
so that I could be present and enjoy life.
To still my mind, observe it and tend to it
and to see that beneath all that pain,
there was love -
a love that picks you up, makes you strong and carries you forward.
Life is like a palette of many colours,
some are neutral, dark or very dark,
others are bright and luminous, lifting our spirits.
But we have to learn to appreciate them step by step, and be daring.
To close our eyes and savour the moments of happiness
that fade away.
Speaking of motherhood,
my kids came with a clear message:
children do not come into this world to fill the void in their parents’ lives,
and neither are they a personal statement.
They come into our lives to show us pure love.
Imagine my little one, Luciana, at just three years old, asking me:
“Why are you and daddy not living in love?”
But this is all part of life:
an accident,
a failed marriage,
an innocent young girl asking if you’re happy in your life.
Just a year after my divorce,
I got that longed-for opportunity to work for a major TV station.
Let me tell you about it.
Imagine, it was like getting a wink from the Universe
telling me that when you say yes to life, life says yes back,
and that after a storm, the sun comes out.
But would this radiant sun stay forever?
I can tell you that initially,
it was a real upheaval because:
firstly, we lived in a different town, far from my whole family.
We didn’t know anyone at all.
And I’m going to tell you something because Erica told us it wasn’t obvious.
I’ll tell you something a very wise teacher told us:
“Only tend to the obvious”.
What was the obvious for me in that moment?
That after a divorce, I had to keep going for my kids.
So I packed my bags and my kids’ bags.
I can tell you that my heaviest baggage was, without a doubt,
the mass of doubts and questions
about whether I was doing the right thing for my kids.
I’ll never know.
But what I’m sure of is that I didn’t know any other way to do it.
And a little voice was telling me: “Do it, experience it!
And if you don’t like it, come back, end of story”.
I did that job for two years.
Was it what I hoped?
Much more than that.
It gave me the chance to get a little stronger,
to get to know myself a bit more,
to value myself -
fundamental values when it came to raising my kids.
Maybe you’re asking yourselves, where does thanatology come in?
You can’t study death without having experienced life.
In my profession,
I’ve come across two types of patients.
Those that upon suffering loss experience profound pain
which tears them apart.
And those that upon suffering loss experience profound pain
which tears them apart,
as well as endless regret about everything they didn’t do.
Life tosses us around, carries us away, robs us.
Pain...
is the price we pay for having loved.
And I want to ask you:
If you knew there was a price to pay at some point,
would you still say yes?
Would you have that child?
“Live with death as your advisor”, that’s what one of my teachers said.
What if you decided to walk a different path,
wear different clothes,
meet different people,
travel to different places?
What would happen if you discovered
that who you think you are right now
is just a tiny step towards your greatness?
A year ago,
a patient came to my practice,
a beautiful woman who lost her daughter when she was 24 years old,
her only child.
On top of that, she had raised her on her own.
She came to me crushed.
During our work together, we realised she had given her all.
They had lived with abandon:
they had travelled,
they had said yes to life.
They didn’t hold anything back.
And where is she today?
Still travelling around the world with her daughter ingrained in her heart.
That’s what life is about.
Keeping our loved ones ingrained in our heart,
so that when we can no longer see them,
we can still feel them in every fibre of our being.
Thank you.
(Applause)