A Biography

By Lorena García

It took me a long time to recognize myself as a Sexual 3. Finally, after the entire SAT process, I could truly see myself and realize that my confusion had been an important part

of the journey. I understood that I could only look at myself with compassion when I was mature enough. Before this, I had rejected this trait and subtype. Falsehood was foreign to me. I didn’t perceive myself as false; instead, I often found myself being overly honest, unintentionally revealing intimate details and baring my soul. I eventually discovered that falsehood was precisely this—a lack of internal listening, prioritizing external expectations and what I believed others wanted from me. It was a kind of emotional prostitution, where I sold false emotions.

Claudio Naranjo saw this in me and often mentioned it. I imagine he patiently awaited my realization. This epiphany came during my first SAT as a collaborator, an SAT Education in Chile. Scenes from my entire life flooded my mind, much like what people describe in near-death experiences. My initial sentiment during this reflection was that I had been born with this ego fixation. I was unwanted from the very beginning. My mother attempted to abort me with an injection from a doctor friend, as abortion was impossible in Spain at the time. I feel as though I was born with a sense of guilt for simply existing.

According to my mother, I didn’t cry or complain as a child. She insists I was the sweetest girl in the world. That’s how I remember myself too—always striving to be well-behaved and avoid causing inconvenience, because I felt like a burden from birth and often believed I had no right to exist.

I was born in the 1960s, amid an environment of madness, drugs, and apparent freedom. My mother, an English Sexual E1, had moved to Spain and fallen in love with my father, an alcoholic Sexual E8 with numerous mistresses. At the time, she was his favorite. My father already had two daughters with another woman. Everyone in their circle worked in the film industry, and it was the hippie era (1966), a stark contrast to Franco’s conservative Spain, where societal norms were much stricter.

Their relationship was short-lived. Despite knowing it had no future, my mother didn’t want me to be an only child like she was. She became pregnant again, and my brother was born just a year after me. My father visited the hospital when my brother was born but then eloped with my mother’s best friend, disappearing from our lives for twelve years.

As my father didn’t marry my mother, during the Francoist era, the authorities refused to issue birth certificates for my brother and me. In Francoist Spain, if there was no church marriage, children were practically invisible. Despite not being Catholic, my mother had to baptize us to obtain our birth certificates. She also devised a clever trick to ensure we bore my father’s surnames—she gave them to her own mother instead. To this day, when I request my birth certificate, I must go to a special department where I’m treated as an outcast, a lingering reminder of my “illegitimate” status. (This status changed when my father officially acknowledged me at the age of twenty-four.)

Throughout my life, external forces influenced my sense of not having the right to exist. I often interpreted this as being “special” or different from others, possibly as a survival mechanism—a kind of arrogance shielding me from the associated pain. It felt as though I had internalized the belief from my parents that existing in the world required breaking the rules or being extraordinary.

This sense of unworthiness and the need to deceive in order to survive made me want to go unnoticed in life. I longed to blend in like a chameleon, fantasizing about invisibility as a way to avoid exposure. I feared that revealing myself would uncover a dark, forbidden side of me. In invisibility, I also found relief from maintaining the perfect image I thought others expected of me.

My father’s departure profoundly impacted me. He left with my mother’s best friend, an Australian who also worked in film and television. For the first twelve years of my life, he never called or wrote to us. Occasionally, my mother would pull out photo albums and tell us wonderful stories about him. I grew up believing that he left because I wasn’t worthy of having such a good father. My mother was open about his alcoholism, but I still fantasize about meeting him one day. Passing a homeless man on the street, I would imagine he might be my father, fantasizing that I could save him and win his love.

As an adult, I consistently sought out men I could “save,” and I was most attracted to those with a lustful or chaotic edge. My fantasy was always that they needed rescuing—until I realized that it was I who needed to save myself. It was frustrating when they didn’t want me to be their savior.

Men have always been central to my life. I invested immense energy in relationships, often feeling uncomfortable with the emptiness of being single. I believe my father’s absence contributed significantly to this.

When my father left, my mother had to work hard to support us, and we saw very little of her. Throughout our childhood, we had several caregivers. One of them, Paqui, was just sixteen years old when she came to live with us. She adored my brother and me, and I saw her as a maternal figure. Paqui represented joy in my childhood; her departure when I was six left a profound void.

I had to grow up very quickly. I developed a strategy to be noticed—seducing men and playing the role of the perfect daughter for my mother. I helped around the house, avoided disturbances or making noise, and intuitively read adults’ expectations.

As a child, I was remarkably adaptable to everything. I learned to easily disconnect from reality, controlling myself in order to survive my difficult environment, always fearing I might descend into madness. With my mother, I learned to please her so that she would

give me recognition. She always focused on my appearance, constantly criticizing my physical attributes. I started to care more about my clothes and looks to meet her standards, especially my hair, which she always picked on. It kept covering my face—another attempt to avoid attention due to shyness.

Regardless of my efforts, I never felt good about my physique, constantly fixating on what I lacked rather than appreciating what I had. At the same time, I had the confidence to seduce and fall in love with almost any man.

Throughout my childhood, my most recurring fantasy was to have a family. In private moments, I played out scenarios of having a husband and children who were always together and never separated. It was a secret I didn’t share with anyone, born from the deep need to have the family I never had. This unmet need followed me throughout my life. Over time, it became a dream, and now that I’ve realized it—though my family is far from perfect—I do experience happiness often.

From my childhood, I remember doing things alone or with my brother, whom I took care of because my mother spent most of her time working. She didn’t set limits for us, and that was something I envied about my friends—the structure and boundaries their parents imposed. I vividly recall moments when I would ask my mother to do something or go somewhere, secretly hoping she would say no. But she never did, and for some reason, that made me feel very lonely and abandoned. It felt like she said yes just to get it over with, as if she didn’t want to spend time with me. Having experienced this, I now understand how limits relate to love, and as a mother myself, I see how difficult it is to set them.

Another example of how neglected we were was when my brother nearly drowned in a pool. In our neighborhood community, there was a pool, and during nap time, only one woman was sleeping on a bench nearby. Neither my brother nor I knew how to swim—we were around five and six years old—yet we were left alone in the pool with no supervision. My brother fell in while playing, and I stood there, just watching him, frozen. I was looking at him but didn’t react. A neighbor on a balcony noticed and shouted to another neighbor, who rushed to save him. It was around the time Paqui had left, which is when I believe my depression began. I felt a lack of energy, an incapacity to react, and immense sadness.

Around that same time, when I was about six years old, I developed rheumatic fever. My knees started aching in the cold while I walked to school. Though the pain was mild, I recall exaggerating it because whenever I fell ill, my mother would care for me a lot. She got worried when I mentioned the pain, and I remember internally convincing myself that my knees hurt more and more, just so she would pay attention to me. It feels as if I provoked the illness out of a desperate need to be seen. After visiting the doctor and undergoing tests, I was diagnosed with a very serious disease that could affect my heart and even be fatal. The doctor instructed my mother that I had to stay in bed without moving, and I began

receiving very painful injections. This continued for four years until they operated on my tonsils, and the disease disappeared.

When I was nine years old, my mother started practicing transcendental meditation. She told my brother and me that it had changed her life, and she brought us to a large house for a session. There, we were dressed in white and surrounded by the smell of incense. Each of us had to offer a toy or object dear to us. I was led into a semi-dark room, and I remember feeling afraid. The instructor briefly explained how the meditation worked and provided me with a mantra, telling me it was mine alone to keep and never to reveal. I treated it like a secret. He left me in the room to practice alone with my eyes closed. I, being very obedient, didn’t open my eyes until he returned, even though I desperately wanted to leave that place. The wait felt eternal. I immersed myself in the experience, attuned to the sounds around me, yet unsure of what I was supposed to do.

I practiced this meditation at home frequently. At first, I felt obligated to do it, but I remember that it actually helped me. Over time, I even began to enjoy it. Eventually, I abandoned the routine, but the mantra has always stayed with me.

At the age of ten, I experienced a moment of awakening. My mother, who had previously been so inattentive, started treating me like a friend. One New Year’s Eve, she took my brother and me to a party where there were only adults drinking and doing drugs. I asked many questions about drugs, but everyone told me it wasn’t for kids. There was a man who was very drunk—and likely under the influence of something else—who gave me an endless lecture about why children shouldn’t ask such things. I vividly remember the surge of anger I felt toward him and my mother. The next day, I confronted her for explanations, and she admitted that what I had been smoking was marijuana. She told me not to tell anyone because it was illegal.

From that point on, I was allowed to join her and her partner Fausto in the living room when they were alone. I began smoking with them, and they seemed to enjoy my company. Later, I discovered they were also using other drugs, like LSD.

I always had friends quite a bit older than me. When I was ten years old, I had fourteen-year-old friends who were cutting classes at school and already going out with boys. I started imitating them to fit in and feel at their level. I started skipping classes too and going to big department stores to steal with two friends from school whom I corrupted (at least that’s what the school principal accused me of when she found out). We would take a bus to the center of Madrid (about half an hour from school), enter the store with a plastic bag each, and exit with it full of things. When I was ten years old, I started rebelling in response to the lack of limits and attention I received. I started doing poorly in school, which no longer interested me. I also started lying at home, until they found out about the truancy. That’s when my mother became more stern than ever, but it was too late for me.

For my mother, the most important thing and the source of her greatest suffering were her partners; at least, that’s my recollection. She always had partners whom she had to take care of and financially support; the one who was with us the most was Fran, a Cuban film director and another alcoholic, who spent the day in bed with a bottle of gin beside him. They fought a lot, and he would hit her. It was the norm in my house, and many days I would come home from school and find them in the middle of a fight, with Fran threatening to throw a chair at her head. I would walk in, see these kinds of scenes, and walk back out as if nothing happened. Again, I would disconnect.

Even as a very young child, I sensed men’s attraction toward me. My relationship with men was always strange; I barely knew them, yet I was very curious. What I knew was that they would be around at home for a while, and then they would leave. I remember the first time an exhibitionist showed me his penis. I was seven years old, in the garden at home, and he strolled up and down the street, exposing himself to me. I just stared, looking at him with wide eyes. Later in my childhood and as an adult, I came across many such scenes, like men hiding in their cars or in a park, watching me while they masturbated.

The first man in my life was my father. He showed up when I was twelve years old, still drinking heavily, already an alcoholic. I was smoking joints openly at home by then. The same day I met my father, I also met my two sisters (daughters of the woman before my mother). Suddenly, I had a lot of siblings, a lot of competition for my father’s attention during his short visit. On that trip, Lisa, the Australian (the one he had been with all those years), called to inform him that she had become pregnant. The doctors had told her it would be impossible for her, yet just as my father made the trip to meet his children, she conceived.

I remember that meeting with my father and my sisters, I felt as if I didn’t belong, and was making great effort to fit in and to make up for the twelve lost years in a short time. I could see that my sisters were doing much better than me; they were also older.

My father stayed with us for a few days and then returned to Australia, promising to take my brother and me on vacation to Sydney after a few months. I didn’t quite understand why he was taking us and not my sisters. It seemed to me that my sisters were his favorites, and I felt like he hardly saw me.

We boarded a plane to Sydney, suddenly arriving in a wonderful country with breathtaking weather and nature. My brother Ed, the Aussie, was a few months old when we arrived, and I became his babysitter. There I met Lisa, my father’s wife and my mother’s friend. To me, she was the picture of the perfect mother. During the trip, my suitcase got lost, and Lisa

bought me a lot of clothes. I had never had so many beautiful clothes. She was very affectionate with us, and we lived in luxury, not having to worry about money, in a house in the middle of the tropics next to idyllic beaches. Suddenly, we had two dogs and another family, seemingly happy.

My father drank from the moment he woke up until he went to bed. He had his harem of women, some of whom were prostitutes, and he didn’t even try to hide it. Looking back, my stepmother Lisa must have been either blind or willfully ignorant, because I imagine she had been putting up with it for many years.

During my childhood, I could distinguish between those who acknowledged my presence and those who did not. Those who saw me treated me as the child I was; above all, I recall a sense of peace and affection when I remember that kind of treatment. Those who didn’t see me, for example my father, treated me as an adult because of their own confusion. My father doesn’t know how to relate to the female sex in any way other than sexually.

Whenever my father had children, he systematically separated from his wives. Despite being with Lisa for twelve years, the birth of Ed marked the beginning of their separation, which just happened to coincide with our visit. At one point, Lisa left for Melbourne, where her father lived. It was then that my father began to sexually abuse me in front of my brother. Initially, it was a shock to me, having never experienced any sexual contact. It left me paralyzed, and although I didn’t like it, it became the only way I could have a relationship with my father. I essentially became his girlfriend at the age of twelve. The abuse persisted the whole time I was there.

He managed to extend our stay in Australia (we were there for six months in total). I went everywhere with him, attending his parties, seeing him go to whores, and I started to feel very confused. I fell in love with him and began to experience jealousy. There were many days when I skipped school because he would take me to the movies or to his office to assist in scriptwriting or reading, expecting me to offer my opinions. He treated me like his girlfriend.

One night he was very drunk. Lisa had already left for Melbourne with Ed. We had been at a party with some of his friends, and we took a cab home, which was about forty-five minutes outside of town. On the way, he kept saying that when he arrived home, he was going to kill himself. When we got there, he wanted me to sleep with him all the time. I was angry and I guess scared, so I locked myself in Ed’s room and got into bed. My brother Andy was sleeping in another room with a friend. My dad kept telling me to come out, and that he was going to kill himself if I didn’t. I didn’t listen to him. I just wanted this nightmare to end. Suddenly, I heard a gunshot followed by silence. I got out of bed, and I remember

thinking that I wished he had succeeded in killing himself. I would feel a great relief. I made my way from my room to his. When I entered his room, I saw that he had fired into a wall. He looked at me, laughed, and said, “I missed.” I went in, took the shotgun from him, and left. I hid it under my brother’s bed, returned to my room, and locked the door. He knocked on my door all night, asking for the gun.

During all of this, I recall acting like an adult, with a lot of common sense and composure in the face of everything happening to me. Simultaneously, there was confusion and teenage-like emotions of infatuation and passion. While I craved my father’s touch and needed his affection, I didn’t want sexual contact and avoided it as much as possible. I never experienced a bond with my father as a father and daughter, and I never knew what it was like to feel a father’s love. The first and only time I experienced it was in a dream, where I hurt my hip and my father tenderly massaged me with concern, devoid of any sexual undertones. I sensed his love for me then. This dream was very important for me, allowing me to feel what it was like to receive loving contact from a father figure. It’s a dream I’ve had as an adult, already undergoing the SAT process. As a mother now, witnessing my daughter’s relationship with her own father and seeing her joy in being with both of her parents, I realize I never had that. We went back for Christmas to Madrid, when it was summer in Australia. Another thing my father did was teach me how to ride a 125cc motorbike. He really likes motorcycles and wanted me to learn. I remember we went riding one day, and I was very angry with him out of jealousy and confusion; he’d just told me he’d spent the night with a whore. I got on the bike, and accelerated the bike aggressively, resulting in a crash. A pedal got stuck near my Achilles tendon, which almost left me lame. With this injury and crutches, I arrived back in Madrid. I didn’t tell my mother about the motorcycle incident; instead I told her I had fallen into the pool. In Australia, I began to suffer from fainting spells. Suddenly, my blood pressure would drop, and I would collapse. I suppose it served as a defense mechanism against everything happening to me. They never took me to the doctor to see what was wrong. I also started to develop nearsightedness. I always gave myself the explanation that there were a lot of things I didn’t want to see. The return was terrifying. I didn’t want to be in Madrid, I wanted to go back to Australia all the time. I had fallen madly in love, and I couldn’t confide it in anyone. My depression continued to get worse. My mother learned about the motorcycle accident from a letter I sent to my father, and she forbade me to return until I came of age. She didn’t find out about the abuse, although my brother mentioned it to her one night in front of me. It sounded like a joke, and she didn’t pay it any mind. Upon returning to Spain, they enrolled me in a different school. I had always attended an English school, which is very different from a Spanish school. I had loved school in Australia because I was treated there as an individual, receiving the attention I had missed in Spain. I felt accountable for my learning, a mindset encouraged by the respectful support given to students facing difficulties. If you struggled with something, they wouldn’t criticize but instead expressed concern, as if sharing the burden with the

student. When I returned to Spain, and transitioned to a school that claimed to offer a bilingual education but leaned predominantly Spanish, all the joy for learning I gained in Australia evaporated, and I began to hate going to school. The only silver lining to this school was the friends I started to make. I had a teacher who would call me to the blackboard, and mock and humiliate me in front of the entire class because I struggled with division (in English education, you divide backwards). This teacher caused me a lot of distress, and I started to fail all my subjects. I only managed to pass with an “A” in one subject taught in English. Then they transferred me to an English school, but it was too late. I decided I didn’t want to attend school and I never went, not even when my mother made the effort to get out of bed and drive me. When she was gone, I would run away. I had several motivations for skipping classes, but the main one was boys and my friends, all older than me. Almost all of them went to high school, and when I ran away from my school, I would join them there. They had few classes, so I was always with them. I would drink liters of beer or muscatel in a park, play guitar, sing and smoke joints. I also started dating my first boyfriend, whom I stole from a close friend while she was away on vacation. On Sundays, he and other Falangists ran a stand where they sold fascist flags in various forms, like stickers or cloth. I didn’t hold strong political beliefs, but I decided to become a fascist too because I didn’t want to feel left out, and because it was fashionable among my friends at the time. I also think I did it to annoy my mother. Returning home, I would try to convince my family about the virtues of fascism, and my mother, of course, wanted to kill me. I was mainly targeting England for taking Gibraltar away from us. I wanted to hit her where it would hurt most. My mother started taking me to a psychologist, mainly because of my school problems, and I went for a while. I never revealed anything about my father, however. I never felt the confidence since the psychologist talked to my mother after almost every session. What I did achieve is having her persuade my mother to take me out of school. I wanted to study music, something I always aspired to, but my mother never bought me an instrument or encouraged it. My father’s family were pianists, and so was my father, among other things. According to my father, my great-great-grandfather was a pianist who lived and played in the court of King Alfonso XIII. My father has always claimed that we have royal blood because my grandfather was the son of the King. He says that my great-great-grandfather married a courtesan, and that the King had relations with his courtesans. It’s a tale to keep our sense of uniqueness and specialness. While in Australia, my father got me a guitar, and I began giving lessons. I had been giving them at school since I was ten, when, finally, I had received the guitar as a Christmas and birthday gift from the whole family. I stopped going to school at fourteen, and went instead to a music academy two hours away from home, recommended by a musician to my mother. My brother started playing around with my guitar, and I taught him everything I had learned. Being left-handed, he learned to play as a righty because they didn’t buy him one. He got attached to my guitar and never parted with it again. He is the one with the talent for music and now he’s a musician. When I was fifteen, I had my first serious boyfriend, whom I fell in

love with and lost my virginity to. I didn’t feel ready, but since I had older friends who had already made love, I didn’t want to be left out again. I suffered in this relationship for many years. He was in love with another woman, whom he met regularly. Love was already the central point in my life, and the pain was overwhelming. I wanted to die. I spent three days in my room, constantly crying. My mother helped me a lot, drawing from her own experiences. She’s always been there for me in my romantic dilemmas, and in those moments, I felt her presence as a mother more than ever before. This first love’s name was Carlos, and with him began my journey with hard drugs. Carlos had a sister my age, who became my close friend, and with whom I began to experiment more with drugs. Her name was Concha. I started taking LSD with her, and we smoked lots of joints. I was introduced to the street world. Concha and I experimented with nearly all drugs, except for heroin. Concha swore she wouldn’t do it because she knew the danger. The drugs provided a temporary escape from the pain caused by my relationship with Carlos, which never ended because I kept seeing him. Occasionally, we would get together for a night, but the next day he would disappear, leaving me feeling empty and sad. During this period with Concha, I also began my promiscuous phase, and every man I slept with I saw as a trophy. I started compiling lists of names, sleeping with a different one (or sometimes more) each night, and adding them to my list. It was a futile attempt to ease the pain and emptiness, which was only getting bigger. Each man made that feeling of emptiness grow. With Concha, I often ran away from home, leading my mother to call the police several times. She would file a complaint, and then not withdraw it. Later, as an adult, I even had the police drag me out of a hotel bed during a theater tour, because of an old complaint my mother never withdrew. I was still fifteen years old then. Concha was Galician, and we went to Galicia a few times with no money. We would sneak on the train, and in Galicia, we met with another brother of Concha’s, Manuel, a lawyer connected to the Galician mafia (he later ended up in jail). Suddenly, we lived a life of luxury. It was during this period that my involvement with cocaine began. I became Manuel’s girlfriend while Concha entered a relationship with a mafia boss.

On the way back from a trip to Galicia, I met Sara, a student at a religious school. We became close friends, and the three of us were inseparable. My heroin era began with Sara. She became the girlfriend of a heroin addict named Curro, who ended up stealing everything from her family. Meanwhile, I had made friends with Alfonso, an orphan and also a heroin addict who practically lived on the streets. I became Alfonso’s girlfriend, and we both started fooling around with heroin. Concha distanced herself; she was very afraid of this drug. We started snorting, and the first few times I remember wanting to die. I kept vomiting and couldn’t move. After the first time, I said to myself, “never again,” but kept doing it because I didn’t want to feel excluded.

We did a lot of things under the influence of Curro and Alfonso. They must have been our age or slightly older. They started saying that injecting heroin would give a better

experience. The first time I tried it, I lost consciousness and accidentally broke a bar sink with my head. It took three hours for someone to notice the pool of blood around my head—I hadn’t even realized. Eventually, they took me to the hospital, where I received several stitches.

It was a time of living on the edge; the more dangerous the experience of dancing with death, the better. I didn’t want to be alive anymore, and with each hit of heroin, the wish to die intensified. I had been in a very bad state for many years, and now things were seemingly falling into place, especially concerning my father. I later learned that it’s a normal process for women who have been abused. Before the abuse, the wounds of being abandoned by him for twelve years had already left their mark. During that period, it felt as though I was taking on his responsibility and guilt, which were so overwhelming that I wanted to die because I couldn’t bear it. I felt immense shame. There was nothing tying me to life, no personal motivation or future prospects, nothing that truly mattered to me, so I didn’t care if I put it all on the line.

This marked the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Together with Curro and Alfonso, we started selling drugs on the street and stealing. We needed (at least) a daily fix. We injected ourselves with used syringes. There was a spot in a park fountain where junkies left them for others to use, and we used them until the needles deteriorated from use and became painful. Syringes cost money, and we didn’t have that luxury.

My mother was unaware of everything. One day, a friend of hers came into my room and saw a syringe on the floor. My mother found out that day and decided to take me out of the country. She called my father on the phone, who, perhaps feeling guilty, came to escort us to England. It was an unusual scenario for me, being with both parents and sensing my father’s concern. I would have liked to spend more time with them like this. I was taken to a village in southern England, where only one bus passed through each day. My role there was to work as an au pair, taking care of a six-month-old baby. I was sixteen years old and a junkie in deep depression. I brought opium with me to smoke and get through withdrawal. That’s when I found out that my father had quit drinking when I left at the age of twelve. I guess he realized what he had done to me, and the guilt led him to stay off the booze and drugs. He’s always blamed his condition for what he did, never fully owning up to it. I suppose guilt also made him travel to Spain to save me. He wanted to take me to Australia, but my mother objected.

They left me there alone, and I really wanted to die. I lived with the family on the floor above the pub they owned, and naturally, they were oblivious to my struggles. I kept crying in the silence of my room. I replaced heroin with alcohol. It’s miraculous how I got through cold turkey. I somehow could function, and despite the pain in my body and all the withdrawal symptoms, I managed to care for the baby. I also cleaned the house and did the

ironing. The family was very pleased with me, and I think the desire to look good put me in a very cooperative mindset. Perhaps feeling worse inside made me want to improve my self-image.

Although I resented my parents a lot for leaving me in that place when I was the one who needed to be taken care of, I later realized that taking on the responsibility of caring for a baby was probably what saved me. I was going through hell, from which I could momentarily escape. What astonishes me now is how effectively I concealed it—no one seemed to notice.

The village where I lived was called Fletching. There, I had several boyfriends who helped me hide what I was going through. They were all much older than me. The first one was twice my age (I was sixteen, and he was thirty-two), but that relationship didn’t last long. Finally, John came along. He was the one I think I fell in love with, and he was ten years my senior. I spent every weekend with him and befriended all his friends. They were all bikers with long hair and intimidating black leather outfits. They went everywhere in packs and sometimes got into fights, although they were generally peaceful. They were very foul-mouthed, constantly picking on each other, and, of course, me, as I was the only girl in the group. There was a pool table in the pub where I worked, and I became an expert at pool, winning competitions. It amused them to take me from pub to pub, watching as I triumphed over the tables.

After six months in Fletching, my contract with that family ended, and I returned to Spain. My friends were still on heroin. Even Concha was hooked; she didn’t inject but still smoked it. Sara was already prostituting herself. She had another Moroccan boyfriend, more of a delinquent, who was also her pimp. I found myself getting into that whole mess again, with Sara, her boyfriend Francisco, and his friend, whom I became romantically involved with. It was even worse than before. I didn’t resort to prostitution like Sara, but we were always together, and Francisco was capable of killing to get money. He robbed gas stations, older women on the street, and on one occasion, stabbed someone and returned covered in blood, unsure if he had killed or not. I got hooked on heroin again.

This episode lasted six months and ended in betrayal. An acquaintance of mine had come from Amsterdam with a surplus of heroin, and she had thirty grams left to sell, equivalent to 500,000 pesetas at the time, which was a lot of money. She wasn’t a junkie and wanted to sell it quickly. She told me about it, and I told my boyfriend. He suggested that he was going to rob a gas station with Francisco to get the money for the heroin. When they claimed to have the money, they called me to meet my friend. The plan was for me to receive the money, and I would make the exchange with her in the bathroom of a bar. When we arrived, Francisco seemed very nervous. He was carrying a newspaper with two large knives hidden in it. He explained that he was going to the bathroom with my friend because

I didn’t know what thirty grams looked like, but he did. Both went downstairs, and Francisco, wielding a knife, threatened my friend, and stole the heroin. He hurried back upstairs, saying, “Let’s go.” Sara, Francisco, and my boyfriend left the bar with him, and I could hardly react. They hopped into a cab in the blink of an eye. I was saying goodbye to my friend’s boyfriend, who had stayed at the bar with us. When I saw them leave like that, I realized what had happened. I rushed to the bathroom and found my friend in shock. She never forgave me, and our paths never crossed again either.

I also never saw Sara and my boyfriend again. I went home and opened up to my mother, admitting that I was addicted again, telling her everything that had happened. I pleaded with her to send me back to England. I was afraid of being in Madrid. It was like I suddenly became aware of the danger of the world I was caught up in.

Coming out of that stage of my life, I felt like I had a guardian angel looking out for me, who helped me stay alive. I had played with death too much. Three of the men I had slept with died of AIDS, including Concha’s brother Manuel. Concha is HIV-positive but manages it with medications that came later. I contracted hepatitis unknowingly (another resilient character trait). I found out the first time I was tested for AIDS, when the doctor said, “I have bad news to tell you,” almost giving me a heart attack. Only to inform me that I had cleared hepatitis B. I’ve always believed some doctors are sadists.

Reflecting on that time now, it feels like it wasn’t a part of my life. I was deeply ashamed of my family’s behavior. I took the blame to preserve the perfect image of my parents, and I couldn’t bear the shame, thinking I had caused the abuse and mistreatment. Trapped by it, I felt like nothing I owned had any value. I was too ashamed to express myself, even to speak, and I found solace only in drugs. The one that disconnected me the most from pain was heroin; with it, I felt nothing at all—the pain vanished, and so did the shame. It was like being dead while alive, which gave me a strange sense of pleasure.

I returned to England, this time living with newlywed friends. At this point, I still couldn’t name my depression or even recognize it. I remember this period as one of the saddest in my life. I lived in a village amidst the harsh English winter, where it gets dark by half-past three in the afternoon, in a house with no heating and only a trickle of hot water. Here I was, sixteen, almost seventeen, with no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I went back to my boyfriend, the Englishman, whom I only saw on weekends. These outings served as a refuge, offering a break from the harsh reality. Our weekends were spent hopping from pub to pub, drinking and watching talented musicians play live.

I began an apprenticeship in real estate. I liked the job. I learned to type and write descriptions for the houses we sold. I had a very upbeat boss who took me to play squash from time to time, trying to teach me with little success (I’ve always been quite clumsy at sports). He got me deeply involved in the real estate business and boosted my confidence

by actually listening to me and valuing my opinions. He was one of the few men I knew then who took a genuine interest in me and my growth, without wanting something in return. He was a bit like what I imagined a father should be.

After this job ended, I started another one in a construction company, managing the books and writing down numbers all day long. I had to get up every morning and leave the house, even in the freezing cold at night, without the chance to shower. Eventually, the company went bankrupt, and I was fired. I found myself unemployed and started messing around with drugs again.

I moved from where I was living to a friend’s house. She was married with a baby, but her husband was out all day. We were always partying at her place. I was getting tired of my weekend boyfriend.

During my time in England, I honestly just wanted to return to Australia, to my father. I was still a minor, and my mother had told me that I couldn’t go back until I came of age. I was in the process of obtaining the visa to return to Australia, which was taking time. At almost nineteen, I finally went back and achieved what I had set out to do and more—I became my father’s girlfriend. He lived in a mountain village, an hour and a half from Sydney, and practically took me hostage, turning into a possessive monster. When I arrived in Sydney, he had his harem, which he left when he started a relationship with me, under the condition that he could have me available sexually whenever he wanted, claiming me for himself twenty-four hours a day.

During this time, I did experience sexual and physical aggression. I had granted him permission, accepted the pact, and given him a free hand. He needed a lot of sexual activity, and I couldn’t take it anymore. It was a real hell for me.

He forced me to quit smoking and drinking, and I found myself in another prison. I molded myself into what he wanted me to be, and although I was suffering, I put up with it again because I felt loved. I know that my father has loved me and loves me in his own way, but he misunderstands what love should look like due to his own past. He has a history of incest in his family and witnessed it at home when he was little, from his aunts and his parents. My grandparents spent his entire childhood fighting—my grandfather was a communist, and my grandmother was a fascist who called the civil guard and put her husband in jail. While they were still together, my grandfather didn’t sleep with his wife but with his own mother. All of this has helped me understand my father’s behavior, but not forgive him.

Occasionally, I managed to escape and visit my brother and stepmother in Sydney. Gradually, I started spending more time with them, and my stepmother offered me a job in her television production company. While I handled secretarial tasks, I also met with the

writing team. It was a subject that fascinated me, despite my quiet demeanor. I learned a lot about developing TV series, and it provided a respite from the ordeal with my father. We saw each other less frequently, but he still tormented me whenever we did.

By this point, I had lost sight of who I was or what I wanted in life. My father decided that I should follow in his footsteps as a screenwriter and film director. He heard about a drama school relatively close to where he lived, which offered courses in acting, screenwriting, and directing. He insisted that I enroll. It was a university, and I hadn’t completed my studies, but I had the advantage of being Spanish. So, when I went to register for the entrance exams, I told them a lie pushed by my father: that the papers proving I had finished high school had burned in a house fire, and it was impossible for me to retrieve them from such a distance. Surprisingly, they accepted this story.

The entrance exams were very difficult. I had to perform both a classical and a contemporary theater monologue, as well as sing a song. I had no prior exposure to theater and suddenly found myself reading Shakespeare and learning a monologue. In the town where my father lived, there was a seasoned actor well-versed in Shakespeare. My father, treating my audition as a personal challenge, enlisted his help with my monologue. With all the awkwardness I felt, this became another nightmare for me. Despite the initial embarrassment, I worked so hard on the monologues that I eventually built the confidence and strength to give it my best shot. I had acted before, at the age of fourteen, in a movie my mother had produced.

On the day of the audition, I found out there were around four hundred of us, and they would select about sixteen. The audition took place in a massive room, with a panel of teachers behind a long table, taking notes. I performed my monologues and followed up with a flamenco rumba on the guitar. I think they liked it because of the exoticism, and I was admitted. This was when I was able to get away from my father for real. That’s why I believe theater saved my life. I started meeting people my own age and started smoking tobacco again. My father couldn’t stand this and kicked me out of the house. He told me he never wanted to see me again because I had taken up smoking.

I moved in with a schoolmate, and renting an apartment felt wonderful. I was still suffering a lot because of my father, as he was sending me letters saying that he wished he’d never met me. I confided in this friend about my father, and finally sharing my story was liberating. What I didn’t anticipate was the reaction of the people I told. They were horrified, and I almost ended up consoling them, assuring them it wasn’t a big deal and that I was fine. I felt completely detached from my past experiences, as if they weren’t a part of me. What truly caused me suffering was the separation from my father and the fact that he didn’t want to see me; I couldn’t comprehend it.

When I look back on it, I realize how depressed I was and recognize the lack of self-esteem I struggled with. In college, I was very embarrassed about showcasing my talents, facing exams almost daily in front of a panel of judges—in acting, voice, singing… anything that exposed me. I believe my shame from the experiences with my father created a contradiction: I needed to hide, and at the same time, express myself through characters, which provided a sense of liberation. Overcome by fear, I would drink cognac before each exam or performance to relax.

I have both good and bad memories of this university. On the positive side, it enriched me culturally, which I had never experienced because I had left school so early. I learned to read theater, acted extensively in front of audiences, even directed a classic ("Antigone"), and played live music. It also taught me teamwork, introducing me to valuable and creative people, some of whom I still keep in touch with.

The best thing was the opportunity to learn about the Aborigines and their culture. There was a subject called Theater Studies, and the teachers who taught it decided to do a cultural exchange with Aborigines. They reached out to a Western teacher who lived in a village with the Pitjantjatjara tribe. Six of their elders visited Sydney. The elders are highly respected and esteemed because they are the wisest of the tribe, a sharp contrast to the West, where they are often considered a nuisance. It was the first time these elders had left the desert to venture into a coastal city. They lodged in a house provided by the teachers, and unaccustomed to indoor living, chose to sleep in the garden. They even moved the furniture outside to sit on the floor inside.

I got very close to them, as if I sensed that I was going to learn things no one else could teach me, and I made the most of every second spent in their company. Every evening, we performed inma, an Aboriginal sacred dance where they sing with their bodies painted, half-naked. Depending on the body paintings, women and children, only men, or only women can participate. It’s a sacred rite to perpetuate life on Earth, attract food, and celebrate health. I felt privileged to be part of this.

Upon their return to the desert, they had to select six students to spend time with them. They chose me and five of my best friends from college. Along with two professors, we traveled to Alice Springs by plane and then by 4WD to Mimili, their home. Recognizing the devastating impact of Western Australians taking away many of their sacred lands like Ayers Rock or Uluru, they had implemented a new law prohibiting white man access without permission from the Aborigines. In Mimili, we were the only white people, together with this teacher who lived there and in whose house we stayed.

It was one of the best experiences of my life, and my first spiritual encounter, which at twenty years old, I couldn’t quite name or fully comprehend in all its glory. I felt a connection with those people that transcended words, originating from a place I can’t

describe. They were very generous with us in imparting knowledge about their culture, and I learned to appreciate nature and the land, which was like their home. There were codes to enter certain areas, requiring us to wait until invited. Each rock held symbolic meaning, and they graciously guided us to their most sacred places. Daily sessions of inma became a shared practice, and in return, we performed theater in front of an earnest and eager audience.

The Aborigines have a strong need to preserve one of the world’s most primitive cultures, a culture that Western society is slowly destroying. During the ten days I spent with them, I witnessed this destruction firsthand, and I connected with a very ancient pain whose origin still eludes me. The youth had stopped following the elders and embracing their cultural heritage. Caught between two opposing worlds, they felt like they didn’t belong anywhere. Their desire to die was evident, and tragically, many of them were slowly dying. They spent their days inhaling gasoline fumes, numbing themselves until the inevitable happened.

In their culture, there is no concept of forbidding children; instead, they accompany them through their mistakes, offering no judgment, simply being there for them. This was their approach to the children and young people who were succumbing to their pain, witnessing their race’s self-destruction. For the elders, it was meaningful that we, despite being young Westerners, were so interested in their culture. It gave them hope. In the final days of our visit, the young ones set aside their gas cans and joined us during inma time, dancing and singing alongside us and their teachers. It was a deeply touching experience. Though things reverted to their usual state after we left, we felt we had given them something significant.

I felt guilty and ashamed to belong to the West. I also felt a deep connection with those children and their desire to die. Their pure, lost gazes resonated with me in a way I had never experienced before, touching my heart. I still remember Bradley, whom I regarded as a little brother, who died shortly after we left. I returned to Mimili a year later with three friends, immersing myself in their culture for twenty-one days. I ate worms and kangaroos until I suffered diarrhea and vomited for four days straight. It seems that culture shock often manifests in this way.

Upon my return to college, I excelled in writing essays and theoretical papers, but failed in everything that required presentation, like acting. Eventually, they expelled me, telling me it wasn’t the right place for me. In retrospect, I realize that I was never a conventional actress, quite the opposite. In a conservatory, especially an English-speaking one, there seemed to be no room for someone like me, especially at a time when I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to pursue acting because it made me suffer too much. Oddly enough, being kicked out served as a catalyst, solidifying my decision to continue and pursue acting.

I was on vacation in Spain when I received the news of my expulsion. Before leaving, I had partially separated from my then-boyfriend, with whom I was living. I had become pregnant

and made the decision to have an abortion without consulting him, something he couldn’t accept. This led to our separation. By that time, I had begun to grow closer to my father again. He had a new girlfriend, who was younger than me and had previously been my brother Andrés’ girlfriend. Later, they would have another son together, my little brother Manolo.

My father’s girlfriend was deeply involved in rebirthing therapy and convinced him to enter therapy in an attempt to fix our relationship. He agreed and called me so we could do it together. At that point, I had already awakened my desire for deeper introspection during my experience with the Aborigines and through acting, so I agreed. I also hoped for a different relationship with my father. I was still with my boyfriend James and looked forward to them getting to know each other.

During my first session with the therapist, she told me that she would prefer to work separately with my father and me. I was honestly relieved by this. Her style involved minimal conversation before or after the sessions. The first session was very revealing for me, as the breathing exercise brought back many images and moments from my childhood, a time when I had no control over what was happening to me. I felt very supported by the therapist, but afterward, there wasn’t much space for further discussion, and I would have liked that. She then invited me to a group session, which I attended but didn’t engage with. I held back, feeling scared because there were people with much more experience and maturity than I had. I was the youngest in every way. I just wanted the session to end so I could leave.

I don’t recall if I had the abortion before or after these sessions. But at some point, I went to see the therapist again, and she explained more about the rebirthing technique. She told me that everything is recorded in our unconscious from the moment of conception and that we begin to feel from that very moment. This connected me to the pain of having had the abortion. A flood of guilt hit me, and I cried for all the times I hadn’t cried before. Until then, I had assumed the abortion caused me no trauma or pain, and that I only felt relief. This woman helped me reconnect with my true emotions. The first time I made contact with myself was with the Aborigines; the second time was with her.

It’s curious that I initially went to therapy to work on my relationship with my father, yet we never discussed it, even though many of the images from that first session involved him. I had been waiting for the therapist to bring it up, but she never did. I don’t know if she was waiting for me to do it. I still felt a lot of shame and, I suppose, fear. Internally, I had somewhat forgiven him. Later, when I started Gestalt therapy, I realized that I hadn’t forgiven him at all but had instead swallowed his guilt, convinced that I had provoked everything that had happened.

Emotional disconnection helped me survive my childhood and adolescence. When I began to reconnect with my emotions, I knew I was on the right path, but it was very scary. The fear was that I might open a void of pain in me that could never be closed again and that the suffering would never stop. I had learned to survive without feeling. Yet, confronting that pain made me feel alive, and I knew it had to be good for me.

Being an actress connected me to life. Inhabiting the worlds and lives of other characters ignited my passion because it reconnected me with my own life and aspects of myself that had been dormant. The contact with the audience frightened me so much that it made me feel alive too.

When I returned to Madrid, I began my search, which I didn’t realize was my calling until much later. At that time, there weren’t many drama schools in Madrid. My mother, a talent agent for actors, always leaned toward performances that were more connected to truth and less to artifice. In Spain, overacting—intense, tense performances—was still highly valued, in my opinion.

My mother always had a knack for this kind of thing and was searching for a school that would teach her clients to be authentic and personal. She comes from a family of actors; both her parents were actors, and she was on the path to becoming one too. Her first job as a child was in the theaters where her parents performed, calling the dressing rooms to inform the actors about the time remaining before going on stage and ensuring they complied. When she finished school, she managed to pass the entrance exams for one of the best drama schools in England. However, her father told her that if she wasn’t willing to sacrifice everything to be an actress, like scrubbing stages for several years, she shouldn’t even try. This discouraged her, and she gave up on that school. I believe she would have made a fine actress.

My mother supported my decision to pursue acting, insisting that I should study. She sent her actors to learn from Cristina Rota, and I joined them. At that time, Cristina was the only one who conducted classes in the living room of her house. I spent four years at her school, where I learned a lot, and, most importantly, I began to enjoy myself. I no longer felt scrutinized every time I performed, which allowed more room for mistakes and exploration. Cristina was very generous and dedicated a lot of time to me. Both in class and when I had a job or an exam, she would give me private coaching sessions without charging me. She was the one by my side during the transition from her living room to a venue where we began performing for the public. After completing my studies with her, I directed a short play, and that’s where I met Marcos, a musician who was also studying at the school because of his interest in acting. He composed the music for the play I directed, and we started a courtship that lasted four years.

Cristina Rota extended an offer for me to stay at her school, but I declined. Despite learning a lot from her, I still felt lost and believed that to grow further and learn more about acting, I needed to leave for some time. I wasn’t completely sure if I wanted to be an actress, although her school was the closest I had come to that realization. I’ll always owe her a lot because it was there that I ultimately decided I wanted to pursue acting, thanks to the taste, enjoyment, and confidence she instilled in me. It was the first time I felt capable of taking on this path.

My search continued, and my mother suggested I try a school in Los Angeles. I didn’t like the city at all; it felt enormous, and the people seemed very fake (this was the thing that threw me off the most. I wonder if it was because I hated seeing my reflection in them). I only saw hypocritical smiles, and I felt very lonely. During that trip, I also visited New York, a city beating with life in every way. I loved it, especially listening to live jazz in tiny bars, always with impressive musicians. Once again, I put myself in danger by going with unknown men, buying drugs on 42nd Street, venturing into unsafe neighborhoods… Yet, once again, nothing untoward happened to me, and I remained oblivious to the gravity of the situation until I told my friends about it, and they pointed out the risks I had taken. I was utterly disconnected from fear.

Now I’m the opposite; I’m afraid of everything. I don’t have as much faith as I used to that there’s some invisible force protecting me. I’d like to reclaim this sense of security, even a little bit, so I can relax. Now that I’ve shifted to this other extreme, I fear that if I’m not the one controlling every moment of my life, something terrible will happen. It’s exhausting. I think it has to do with aging and being more experienced in life. Now stability matters a lot to me, unlike before, which was evident in my heroin days. I also think my second subtype might be self-preservation, so the need for security is more pronounced in me at this point in life.

Another important reason for not moving to the United States was that I had fallen madly in love with Marcos. Having just separated from my previous boyfriend, Jose, with whom I had been living for two years, I found myself without a place to stay. Since my first boyfriend, Carlos, had left me, I developed a pattern of being the first to leave in subsequent relationships. I suppose it was a way to avoid facing the pain of abandonment. When I left, I also left many of my belongings due to guilt and, once again, to preserve my image. Unable to cope with the emptiness and grief of separation, I always found the next partner right away—sometimes the very next day or even before officially breaking up.

At the beginning of my relationship with Marcos, I couldn’t find a place for myself. I lived at my mother’s house and also ended up partially living with him at his, which was always a mess and had no natural light. We called it the “hole.” It was quite depressing. During this

period, I was very insecure and wore heavy makeup. I couldn’t step out onto the street without it. I felt far from perfect.

We moved into my childhood home, which my mother rented for very little money because it was pretty old. Although it had served as my mother’s office for a while, she needed a larger space. I took Marcos out of the “hole” to live in that posh neighborhood, in a beautiful apartment with a garden and a swimming pool. I had this fantasy that I was rescuing him from misery, although he wasn’t really miserable. I think Marcos is an E8 like my father. I’ve always been attracted to E8s. He was the bassist in a trendy band at the time.

I was still looking for an acting school. Two of my actor friends from Cristina Rota’s school had just returned from Buenos Aires and told me about a school there run by Carlos Gandolfo and a teacher they had met, Juan Carlos Corazza. Since my mother was also eager to bring someone from abroad for her actors, I told her about Juan Carlos and suggested inviting him to give a seminar and get acquainted. My mother contacted him on the phone, asked for his resume, and proposed that he come to Madrid to give a seminar that summer.

I was in charge of organizing the event with my mother, and I also took part as an actress. I immediately connected with him and felt like I had finally found my teacher. This meeting was as significant for me artistically as it was personally. Everything I had learned at school in Australia was totally at odds with this approach to acting, which involved research, embracing the unknown, and learning how to learn. Instead of putting on armor, it was about baring the soul, and for this, knowing oneself at a deep level was crucial.

I remember the first exercise I did alone in front of all the attendees, where Juan Carlos asked me what I felt and what I needed. No one had ever asked me this before, and I started to cry, continuing throughout the entire seminar. It was as if I was exposing all my fragility, which had always been concealed by my cold exterior and restraint. At that very moment, I began walking down a path that would change my life.

Through Juan Carlos, I learned about Gestalt and met my teacher, Claudio Naranjo. Juan Carlos incorporated much of what he learned from Gestalt and Claudio into his classes. Around that time, I also became friends with someone practicing Gestalt therapy, and I began individual therapy with a Gestalt therapist she recommended. I started therapy partly because it was a trendy thing to do in my circle and partly because it seemed appropriate given my experiences, but I didn’t feel a genuine need for it. After a while, the therapist terminated our sessions and advised me to return when I truly felt the need for it. It was a bold move that turned out to be a great favor, because it pushed me to connect with my true needs.

With therapy, I began to see that things weren’t right in my relationship with Marcos. I had entered a process of personal growth, and he wanted nothing to do with it. I felt lonely and

dead in the relationship. I thought we were the perfect couple when, in truth, we loved each other a lot, but it wasn’t the right time to be together.

Before we broke up, I went to Australia with the intention of renewing my permanent residency, but I arrived late and lost it. Initially planning to stay for only two weeks, I ended up staying for two months. I went to Bali, invited by my stepmother Lisa, along with her and my brother Ed. Upon returning, I couldn’t change my ticket to Madrid and went back to Australia, where Lisa got me a job in a television series. In Australia, I was well-received because I was considered exotic, and after filming three episodes, they offered me a permanent position. I declined because it would mean leaving my entire life in Spain again. I also had a meeting with my father, and although he wanted more, it scared me, and therapy had connected me with anger. I didn’t tell him this, again driven by the desire to protect him.

While in Australia, I had a lover, which gave me the strength to end things with Marcos when I returned. My friend Ana, the one who introduced me to Gestalt, was also planning to separate from her husband. I broke up first, and then she followed. Ana helped me a lot. She moved in with me, and I decided not to rush into a new relationship but to take my time. Initially, it felt a bit like a chore. I had lovers but didn’t marry any of them. Ana practiced meditation, and I took up the habit again, which offered much-needed solace. I spent two years without a partner, meditating, doing therapy, and taking theater classes. Encouraged by Ana, I participated in my first group dance therapy with Graciela Figueroa. This workshop impacted me profoundly because it was a new experience, and I felt very awkward in my body.

Ana also convinced me to try the Fischer-Hoffman process, which I did with Paco Peñarrubia’s team. It was another impactful experience, and Enrique de Diego, part of the team, provided great support. In one exercise, he asked me to read a letter to my father aloud for the group. It marked the first time I publicly accused my father, and I’ll always be grateful to Enrique for that.

I’ve always felt the need to have a man by my side. Whenever I tried being single, I felt a deep emptiness and a lack of self-confidence. Now, I understood that looking for a man to fill that void would never make me happy. I wanted to start feeling good about myself—complete and self-assured.

It was my second year studying under Juan Carlos, and two schoolmates and I decided to stage a play. I secured the minimum funding, and two other classmates ended up directing. We found a theater for the performance and even managed to do a small tour. On our premiere night, we caught the attention of a theater director, and I was offered my first tour across Spain.

At the end of this tour, Juan Carlos proposed that I start teaching at the school together with Catalina Lladó. He was directing a play and needed substitutes for his classes. We began teaching together and formed our first group. While I enjoyed teaching, I also realized that it could potentially keep me away from acting. I decided to stay connected with the school by attending some workshops without the commitment of leading one.

I was at a crossroads, torn between fully immersing myself in the Studio’s work or stepping away entirely. I enjoyed my time there, and Juan Carlos had this idea of putting together a team where we not only taught but also performed in theater. These people felt like family to me, and my closest friends were working there. Considering all these factors, I decided to stay. Plus, it offered a steady income, which gave me a sense of security. I spent fourteen years working for Juan Carlos, and in the later years, I began to desire to be a mother, channeling all my energy into it. Although staying there felt like having a father and siblings, I realized that to keep growing, I needed to leave home. I am very grateful to Juan Carlos for everything he taught me about education, acting, and art.

Being fully engaged in teaching at the Studio distanced me from my acting, something I had neglected for too long. Consuelo, a fellow Studio member, and I decided to stage a play where I would act, and she would direct. We chose Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which turned out to be challenging in every way. I began realizing that I was developing a different vision of my profession. I needed to liberate myself and explore my own approach to being an actress. I wanted to break free from that neurotic need to be perfect, yet everything I enjoyed and experimented with in rehearsals disappeared in front of the audience. My vanity took over, making me feel trapped by the image I projected.

Only towards the end did I truly start acknowledging myself as an actress, because I began allowing myself to be surprised and possessed by something beyond my control—one of the reasons I love my job. Acting has been liberating for my ego. It’s funny, and it may seem contradictory, but standing in front of an audience, embodying a character with a world distinct from mine, has freed me from my vanity. I’ve felt like breaking free from my cage. Acting compels me to step out of my comfort zone and trust in a higher force.

The time came when I needed to leave the Studio to continue growing. It was very difficult for me because it had been my family for many years. Juan Carlos was both a father and an artistic mentor to me. This paternal dynamic, in a sense, became a trap. By placing myself in the role of a daughter, I became accommodating, blind to certain things, and not entirely honest. My teacher will always remain my teacher.

I met the man who is now my husband, M., ten years ago. It almost coincided with the death of Carlos, my first boyfriend, in a motorcycle accident before I turned forty. With M., it has been an ongoing journey. Before him, I was with Jose, another musician and another E8, and that’s when I stopped getting involved with such men. Jose appeared after my first SAT

Program course, during which I went a bit crazy (or perhaps my craziness became more evident). I attended this SAT with my boyfriend at the time.

And that’s when I met Claudio Naranjo. The day before going, something miraculous happened, which I’ve always associated with the magic of the SAT program: my father, who hadn’t spoken to me for years, called me, crying, and asking for forgiveness. It was the first time I heard him cry, and it left me in shock. He was about to move in with a girlfriend, and I had previously told her about the abuse I endured from him. She, having experienced abuse from her own father, decided to leave him. He was devastated, and I, in a moment of automatic desire to appease him, said that yes, I forgave him. However, it was another instance of false forgiveness.

I arrived at the SAT identifying as Conservation E2, but Claudio always told me that he thought of me as a Sexual 3. It was hard for me to accept this because of my history—always in search of intensity and drawn to danger. Additionally, given my past with men, it was difficult for me to see myself as what I perceived as a Sexual 3—women who were good girls, always composed, controlled, rigid, and sometimes labeled as sexually frigid. They had all been exemplary students. I felt like the opposite of all that, yet the underlying pattern was the same. I realized this five years later.

During that SAT, I was trying to play a role that didn’t correspond with who I really was. Firstly, I was uncertain about my own character traits, and then, during the parental work, I struggled with the concept of forgiveness toward my parents. When I returned to Madrid, I wrote a letter to my father, informing him that I had done some work and forgiven him. He wrote me back, again blaming his circumstances—alcohol and drugs—for what he had done to me. It was as if that request for forgiveness I had received from him before I left for SAT evaporated, and witnessing his lack of accountability made me very angry. It was then that I realized I hadn’t truly forgiven him.

When I came back from SAT, my boyfriend and I broke up due to my own infidelity, which he eventually found out about. I felt terrible about it. I went to my mother’s house and let him stay in what used to be our home until he had sorted things out. I suddenly felt very guilty for all the harm I had caused him, something I hadn’t thought about while living out the affair.

I met up with my lover one last time, and that’s when I realized our supposed connection had all been my illusion. I slowly distanced myself, unintentionally causing him a lot of harm. Later, I learned how much he suffered due to our separation.

Still grappling with the sadness from the breakup with my boyfriend, I decided to go away for a weekend with my friend Ana, who lived with her husband and their baby in a town outside Madrid. Her husband asked if I could give a ride to a musician friend of his, Jose,

who turned out to be my next partner. This relationship became a nightmare. I got swept up in its intensity, and before I even knew who I had gotten involved with, we had already rented an apartment and moved in together.

I went through hell, and instead of leaving, the abuse just got me more and more hooked. I think I needed a relationship like that before I could heal from all the toxic ones in my life. I had suicidal thoughts, cried non-stop, but couldn’t find the strength to leave. Jose is incredibly talented as a musician, sensitive, and cultured. I was attracted to this side of him, as if I had met a genius who gave my life meaning. He himself thinks he’s a genius and is angry with the world for not recognizing him, which reminds me a lot of my father.

Jose made me feel so small and diminished my self-esteem to the point where I thought I was nothing without him. I was afraid I wouldn’t survive without his support. This relationship cost me my friendship with Ana, who one day told me that Jose didn’t respect me and was telling people intimate details about me. She tried to make me see how destructive it was, but I couldn’t. We didn’t speak for seven years after that.

I felt incomplete without a man, and I preferred being with someone like that rather than being alone. I needed a man by my side as much as I needed air to breathe. It took me two years to participate in the SAT again. During SAT II, I was more honest and shared the hell I was going through. Neither my closest friends, with whom I worked every day, nor anyone else had heard anything. There were many days when I went to work without sleep, having cried all night, and concealed it so well that apparently no one noticed.

A year later, Jose told me he was leaving, unable to handle the damage we were causing each other. Even though he made the decision, I was the one who left home. I wanted to die, and the next day, I took a plane to visit my mother in Los Angeles, where my stepmother Lisa was also working at the time. My mother took great care of me, treating me to massages, spa days, and shopping excursions, which helped me momentarily forget everything. After this, I’d call my friends and share my tragic story. This is my most frivolous side; one of the places that allows me to disconnect from everything is the shopping center. As I look at clothes and spend money, my mood changes, and the hell I was going through disappears, even if only for a moment.

During that trip, I finally had a conversation with Lisa, my stepmother, about what had happened with my father. My older sister (my father’s daughter from his first marriage) had told the whole story to our family. I had confided in her, and I guess feeling the weight of being the older sister, she spilled the beans. Lisa had lived with us during the early stages of the abuse and said she hadn’t known a thing. She apologized for not noticing and not doing anything to stop it. I listened, but I always felt uncomfortable talking about it with my family. I think Lisa didn’t see a lot of things because she didn’t want to see them.

My sister also had a sexual relationship with my father later on, at a time when they were operating on his son, who recently died at twenty-one due to numerous surgeries for a brain tumor. She was twenty-six at the time, and I believe she was really desperate, needing a father figure. Our confusion from having an absent father and a distorted understanding of love likely contributed to this. She says he took advantage of her situation and raped her.

The breakup with Jose helped me mend my relationship with my mother. For the first time since leaving home at fifteen, I went to live with her for a while, and I finally allowed myself to be her daughter, not the mother. She, in turn, became more of a mother to me than ever. She took care of me, gave me advice, cooked dinner every night, and listened to me. And surprisingly, I let her.

The problem for daughters who’ve taken on maternal roles for their mothers lies within us, as we sometimes don’t let them be mothers. I realize I had put myself above my mother, recognizing my arrogance—a very egotistical aspect that didn’t allow me to learn how to take care of myself because I didn’t know what it was like to have a mother.

I had left home at a young age and always looked after myself, either by working hard or relying on a boyfriend for support, but I never asked my mother for anything. I did ask her for money once when I needed it for therapy, as the therapist suggested. I got into a huge fight with my mother and didn’t speak to her for a while. This presented an opportunity for her to care for me too. I felt incredibly guilty asking her for money and allowing her to take care of me, like I was playing a role that wasn’t mine. It felt as if something inside me had been torn apart.

I’ve often focused more on the sadness or pain in my life, seeing myself as a victim of the circumstances and the people around me. As I write this biography, I’m recognizing the harm I caused, especially to the men in my life. Seeing myself as a victim is also vain because by paying attention only to the damage others did to me and not acknowledging my own role in all of this, I maintain an intact image of myself.

Another thing is that I’ve always claimed to be faithful, in contrast to others of my subtype. However, looking back, I realize I very rarely was. As long as my relationships were going well, sure. But when I no longer felt fulfilled, I sought outside what I was missing inside. This pattern was connected to my commitment to my father. On one hand, I wasn’t fully committed to a man, and on the other, I pursued secret affairs. I was also unfaithful to Jose towards the end of our relationship. I think I did it out of revenge.

I was thirty-three when I separated from Jose, and I was terrified I would never find another man and wouldn’t be able to start a family—realize my dream. I still carried the sense of not being fulfilled without a man, and I think I stayed with Jose for so long out of fear of being

left with that emptiness. I even wanted to get pregnant with him, even when we were apart.

At this point in my life, I met Bert Hellinger and learned about his Family Constellations method in Seville. I went to work on the issue of attracting men who weren’t good for me and the belief that I could never have a healthy relationship or start a family. Hellinger did a simple constellation with me. He asked me to pick representatives for my mother and father. I was supposed to "play" myself. Then he instructed me to position them.

The way I arranged them, he quickly identified the theme of incest. He explained that women who place themselves in the position I did often do so with the desire to reunite their parents, assuming the mother’s role. He rearranged the positions, removed me from where I had placed myself, and had me tell my mother something like, “This is your business, not mine, and I hand it over to you.” It was liberating, and I felt it was a crucial part of my journey, lifting a huge weight internally. The following year, I met the man who is now my husband, someone very different from the men I had typically sought. He treats me very well.

That year, I took the SAT III, and Claudio Naranjo invited me to collaborate with him to create a theater production for the SATs. I was surprised because I hadn’t done anything to make this happen—at least not consciously. I’ve always felt unconditional love from Claudio; he loves me simply for who I am, with no ulterior motives. Despite feeling awkward and clumsy around him, he has always valued me, which has caught me off guard time and again.

The invitation came one evening when we were having dinner together. I opened up to him about something that had been bothering me: I couldn’t forgive my father, no matter how hard I tried, and I didn’t know how to move forward. Claudio told me that I didn’t have to forgive him, and that perspective has been one of the most valuable gifts he’s ever given me. I felt an immense relief, as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I’ve always been grateful to him for that.

After being with M. for a year and living together, he eventually told me that he wanted to end things between us, feeling that he wasn’t in love. This turned out to be one of the most important lessons of my life. It coincided with the wedding of two of my friends, who invited me to join them on their honeymoon as they noticed my distress. It was August, and I wanted to die. I couldn’t stop crying, reliving all the feelings of abandonment from my past through this separation. I didn’t eat, smoked non-stop, and relied on pills to sleep. My friends did everything they could to help me, offering wise advice and listening to me, but nothing seemed to relieve the pain. It was two weeks of torture, but in the end, I returned to Madrid stronger than ever, able to face everything. Internally, I had let go of M., and this was the ultimate lesson.

Driven by my fear of abandonment, I had ended up suffocating him (of course, he had his share of commitments as well). When I stopped doing that, he began to get closer again. When I came back, he told me that he wanted me to give him another chance. I set a few conditions, including couples therapy. He agreed, and our first step was a session with Suzy Stroke, which proved to be immensely helpful.

M. and I got engaged, and I relaxed, no longer smothering him. I’ve always wanted to be a mother, and we began trying for a baby when I turned thirty-eight. Initially hesitant, M. gradually warmed up to the idea. I always assumed that once I made the decision, I’d immediately get pregnant, but that didn’t happen. It turned into an obsession. I read everything available on the subject, tried various methods to track ovulation, and our sex life began to suffer due to my controlling ways.

I practically became an expert on pregnancy. I knew I needed to chill out, as everyone kept telling me, but I couldn’t. I found it increasingly difficult to relax, and I enjoyed sex less and less. Gynecologists recommended in vitro fertilization. I wanted to adopt, and M. knew this, but he wasn’t yet ready, so we decided to go ahead with IVF. After two attempts, we gave up. It was an incredibly tough time for me. I took each failure terribly, feeling a lot of pain and anger. My womanhood seemed to be at stake. I don’t know where this idea came from, but I didn’t feel complete as a woman if I couldn’t get pregnant. I was also under the influence of all the hormones they gave me, which made me highly sensitive and caused changes in my body.

Before making the second attempt, M. was already more open to adoption. We agreed that if this attempt also failed, we would adopt. My friends Ginetta and Grazia suggested I stop IVF and talked to me about adopting from Ethiopia. I was very encouraged by this, and I asked Ginetta to be the godmother if we chose Ethiopia. Now, she’s our daughter’s godmother.

We began the adoption paperwork. I told M. about Ethiopia, but he wanted to look into the possibility of adopting from Nepal. He had filmed a documentary there and seen an orphanage, and he wanted our child to come from there. I, on the other hand, wanted a newborn baby if possible, for the selfish reason that I adore babies and thought it would be easier in every way. I doubted I’d be able to adopt a child who already had a lot of baggage due to the suffering that comes with such circumstances. They had recently opened an adoption program in Ethiopia, with an easy, speedy process and the chance to adopt very young infants. So, we decided to go for it.

One of the requirements for the adoption was to get married. While I had always dreamed of a wedding, M. thought it was silly; we had a mortgage together, so for him, that already meant we were married. We had a lovely ceremony with a few friends, celebrating at my mother’s house. Taking this step felt important for both of us, and I saw it as a fundamental

part of my personal growth. It was also incredibly exciting. Both of us opened our hearts more, but I especially noticed this in M.

A year and a half went by, and just before I left for an SAT in Mexico, we received a call informing us that they had pre-assigned us a three-month-old girl. Her name was Kalkidan. We received pictures, and I took one with me to Mexico. On my first day there, I had some free time, so I went shopping for clothes for her, something I was eagerly anticipating.

When I returned to Madrid, they provided me with a scheduled travel date to bring her home, depending on the outcome of legal proceedings. However, a document got lost the first time, and they postponed it. They gave me another date for my trip. On the morning my mother and I were set to leave, I received an early morning call notifying me that the baby girl had died. It appeared to be a sudden death. They found her in her crib in the morning, but she died between bottle feedings. Her biological mother had died in childbirth. Life’s mysteries—just as I was about to travel to get her, she died. Thank God I didn’t have her with me yet. I was in deep anguish, but I can only imagine how much worse it could have been. M. had to deal with this news while on the road. Pain has always brought us closer, so even though we were in despair, we had each other.

I spoke several times with the director of the adoption agency. I felt tremendous support from her. She asked if we wanted to proceed, as there might be another baby soon. Two days after Kalkidan (whom we were going to call Lucía) died, another baby appeared in Hossana, and two weeks later, we were summoned to the agency, where they asked us if we were ready. I immediately said yes, but M. had some doubts. He didn’t want to rush into something new so soon after our loss. The child was two weeks old at that time. Her name was Abenezer. She was born in the field and was found by a farmer because she was crying. She was wrapped in a jacket with the umbilical cord still attached. The farmer brought her to the police, and when someone finds an abandoned baby, they have to name it. This farmer named her Abenezer, which means "helped by God." And thanks to the grace of God, she survived.

The court date was set for August 2, and we planned to travel on the 4th. M. was able to come, though he had to leave early. My mother also came to stay with me, helping me with the paperwork after M. returned, bringing all her enthusiasm. My brother Andy had his son on July 29, so my mother became a grandmother twice in one week.

The trial on August 2 couldn’t take place due to a power outage in Addis Ababa. It got postponed to the 5th, but we chose to proceed with our travel plans anyway. There’s always the risk that the trial may not go well, though it’s less common for abandoned children. Alternatively, something could be missing, leading to a delay until September. Abi was one and a half months old when we met her. Following the trial day, the court was to

be closed until mid-September. I had decided that if she couldn’t come home, I would stay there with her for as long as necessary.

We met her on August 4, and for me, it was love at first sight. I never left her side again. That night, I bathed her and put her to bed in the foster home with Hanna, one of her caregivers. The next day, the trial was to be held, and if it was favorable, we could take her to the hotel with us. Luckily, it was, and we cried and jumped for joy when we received the news.

A year ago, we went on a trip to Australia with the whole family: my mother, my daughter, my husband, and me. My mother wanted to show us the house she had built in the tropics about three years ago. She said she had it built with the hope that we would visit every year. I always told her I wouldn’t be going; it’s too far, and said she should build one on the Spanish coast. Despite that, she built a huge house in Australia, and I think it’s mainly for herself. I also can’t help but think it’s not a coincidence she chose the country where my father lives, but well, those are just intrusive thoughts…

Lisa, my stepmother, had been battling cancer for four years and had been diagnosed with metastasis (it had already spread to her bones). I wanted to visit her to say goodbye, but the mistake was doing it with my mother. She paid for the entire trip, which was very generous of her, and I felt obligated to take her with me. We spent a week with Lisa and then traveled north to my mother’s house. That trip was a bit of a nightmare for me. My father lived near my stepmother, and I had decided to see him too.

I hadn’t seen him for seventeen years and started contacting him by email about a year ago, when I finally felt that I could. I felt more at peace with him. I arranged to see him during that week, and my mother mentioned that she also hadn’t seen him for a long time. Her therapist had suggested it would be good for her to see how she felt because she believed she didn’t feel anything. She wanted to take advantage of my meeting with him to see him too.

This began before we left for the trip, and I started telling her no, insisting that she should arrange her own meeting with him. I set a clear boundary, but she didn’t want to listen. When we got there, she was still trying to take advantage of my meeting with my father. It led to a heated argument, with both of us crying. I had to stand firm for her not to come with me. It made me recall what Hellinger said: my mother was, once again, using me as a middleman to get closer to my father. Unconsciously, she made me her pawn. I brought this up during our argument, mentioning what I had told her about my work with Hellinger years before, but she didn’t remember. The resolution was that I could go with my husband and daughter to meet my father without her. Even so, during the last meeting I had with my father that week, my mother still managed to join in at the end because that’s how she had apparently arranged it with him. I left immediately to give them privacy.

My father was very nervous and arrived late; I had already thought he wouldn’t show up and blamed my mother because I had called him to let him know she also wanted to see him and would be at the meeting with me. He didn’t know she wouldn’t be there. He eventually arrived, and we spent the day together with my brother Ed and his wife, and my husband and daughter. We talked a lot about the lost years. He is in his eighties, living in the middle of nowhere, where he paints a lot and makes a living from it. With the money he makes from painting, he’s shooting a movie he produced, and he was very excited about this. He’s in excellent health, he does a lot of sports and takes care of himself. He’d always had a girlfriend or several, but this time he talked about one. I felt calm and strangely detached during this encounter. I’ve always felt awkward around my father, and had a need to get close to him as soon as possible to bridge the gap of lost years, but this time I didn’t feel this need at all.

I decided to go back to spend some time alone with Lisa after our trip to the north, to my mother’s house. M. had to return to Spain. I was aware that this would be the last time I’d see her. I went with my daughter, and it was very depressing, but Lisa always maintained her sense of humor, avoiding sinking into the gloom, pretending that nothing was amiss, that she wasn’t going to die. She told me a lot about her past and her childhood, revealing things she had never discussed with me before. I spent some time with my brother Ed as well. I had a feeling Lisa might not live much longer, given what she disclosed about her diagnosis and treatment, but my brother and mother insisted she would live for years. I did a little “big sistering” for my brother, preparing him for what might come.

Lisa’s always had difficulty letting herself be taken care of; she could be a Sexual 3 like me. Throughout her life, she took care of everyone. She passed away nine months later at home, surrounded by her son, her sister, and a friend. Her death was apparently calm and pain-free. They set up a hospital bed at her home to make her more comfortable, provided her with morphine (kept in the fridge for when she needed it), and the doctor also went to see her every day.

During that time with Lisa, we also talked about my father. She hadn’t spoken to him in years, angry since she had learned what he had done to me. One day before she passed away, he visited her, and they managed to reconcile, which was a relief for everyone, especially my brother. In the days leading up to her death, she arranged her funeral, or as she preferred to call it, the celebration of her life: she made lists of people she wanted to invite, made a recording of her voice, searched for a venue... She was very busy planning her party. Her sister would often say to me in English, “She’s putting on a show.” And that’s what she did till the end, putting on an outward display that had nothing to do with the harsh reality of her illness.

I had a second meeting with my father, this time alone with him and my daughter. Although my youngest brother, Manu, who is now twenty-two, and Ed were supposed to be around, Manu wasn’t present, and Ed was working. I felt nervous, not keen on the idea of being alone with my father. Lisa had gone into town (she lived in the suburbs) and had made it clear that she didn’t want him in her house. She had taken one of his paintings years ago as collateral for money he owed her, and she was afraid he would try to retrieve it. When my father arrived, my daughter was asleep, so I suggested having coffee outside in the garden. He went into the house to use the bathroom, and I started to feel uneasy.

We drank the coffee, and when Abi woke up, my father asked if I wanted to talk about our past together. He told me that he had always believed I had forgiven him, and it was a surprise when I said no years ago. I simply replied that I didn’t feel the need to discuss it at all, and he didn’t bring up anything else. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with my daughter around. My focus was on self-protection. I thought if we went into this, he would likely become defensive as usual, blaming everything on his situation and not taking any responsibility himself, while holding me accountable.

If my daughter hadn’t been there, I would have gone in for the kill. I knew it was a matter of either getting into a fight or skimming the surface as if nothing was wrong, and I wasn’t willing to do the latter. The way he posed the question made me realize that I had to confront him to make him see something, a different perspective, because he did it in an accusatory tone, as if he was an angel and I was a witch for harboring resentment towards him for so many years; that’s at least how I felt about it.

We spent the day together, had lunch with my brothers and sisters, and then spent the afternoon alone again. I felt strange, realizing that I’ve never really had a father-daughter relationship with him, and that there’s virtually no bond between us. I was cold with him; however, he was more affectionate, as if wanting to make amends for the past in his own way. I just wanted for it to be over and done with; I didn’t feel comfortable.

The court date was set for August 2, and we planned to travel on the 4th. M. was able to come, though he had to leave early. My mother also came to stay with me, helping me with the paperwork after M. returned, bringing all her enthusiasm. My brother Andy had his son on July 29, so my mother became a grandmother twice in one week.

The trial on August 2 couldn’t take place due to a power outage in Addis Ababa. It got postponed to the 5th, but we chose to proceed with our travel plans anyway. There’s always the risk that the trial may not go well, though it’s less common for abandoned children. Alternatively, something could be missing, leading to a delay until September. Abi was one and a half months old when we met her. Following the trial day, the court was to be closed until mid-September. I had decided that if she couldn’t come home, I would stay there with her for as long as necessary.

We met her on August 4, and for me, it was love at first sight. I never left her side again. That night, I bathed her and put her to bed in the foster home with Hanna, one of her caregivers. The next day, the trial was to be held, and if it was favorable, we could take her to the hotel with us. Luckily, it was, and we cried and jumped for joy when we received the news.

A year ago, we went on a trip to Australia with the whole family: my mother, my daughter, my husband, and me. My mother wanted to show us the house she had built in the tropics about three years ago. She said she had it built with the hope that we would visit every year. I always told her I wouldn’t be going; it’s too far, and said she should build one on the Spanish coast. Despite that, she built a huge house in Australia, and I think it’s mainly for herself. I also can’t help but think it’s not a coincidence she chose the country where my father lives, but well, those are just intrusive thoughts…

Lisa, my stepmother, had been battling cancer for four years and had been diagnosed with metastasis (it had already spread to her bones). I wanted to visit her to say goodbye, but the mistake was doing it with my mother. She paid for the entire trip, which was very generous of her, and I felt obligated to take her with me. We spent a week with Lisa and then traveled north to my mother’s house. That trip was a bit of a nightmare for me. My father lived near my stepmother, and I had decided to see him too.

I hadn’t seen him for seventeen years and started contacting him by email about a year ago, when I finally felt that I could. I felt more at peace with him. I arranged to see him during that week, and my mother mentioned that she also hadn’t seen him for a long time. Her therapist had suggested it would be good for her to see how she felt because she believed she didn’t feel anything. She wanted to take advantage of my meeting with him to see him too.

This began before we left for the trip, and I started telling her no, insisting that she should arrange her own meeting with him. I set a clear boundary, but she didn’t want to listen. When we got there, she was still trying to take advantage of my meeting with my father. It led to a heated argument, with both of us crying. I had to stand firm for her not to come with me. It made me recall what Hellinger said: my mother was, once again, using me as a middleman to get closer to my father. Unconsciously, she made me her pawn. I brought this up during our argument, mentioning what I had told her about my work with Hellinger years before, but she didn’t remember. The resolution was that I could go with my husband and daughter to meet my father without her. Even so, during the last meeting I had with my father that week, my mother still managed to join in at the end because that’s how she had apparently arranged it with him. I left immediately to give them privacy.

My father was very nervous and arrived late; I had already thought he wouldn’t show up and blamed my mother because I had called him to let him know she also wanted to see

him and would be at the meeting with me. He didn’t know she wouldn’t be there. He eventually arrived, and we spent the day together with my brother Ed and his wife, and my husband and daughter. We talked a lot about the lost years. He is in his eighties, living in the middle of nowhere, where he paints a lot and makes a living from it. With the money he makes from painting, he’s shooting a movie he produced, and he was very excited about this. He’s in excellent health, he does a lot of sports and takes care of himself. He’d always had a girlfriend or several, but this time he talked about one. I felt calm and strangely detached during this encounter. I’ve always felt awkward around my father, and had a need to get close to him as soon as possible to bridge the gap of lost years, but this time I didn’t feel this need at all.

I decided to go back to spend some time alone with Lisa after our trip to the north, to my mother’s house. M. had to return to Spain. I was aware that this would be the last time I’d see her. I went with my daughter, and it was very depressing, but Lisa always maintained her sense of humor, avoiding sinking into the gloom, pretending that nothing was amiss, that she wasn’t going to die. She told me a lot about her past and her childhood, revealing things she had never discussed with me before. I spent some time with my brother Ed as well. I had a feeling Lisa might not live much longer, given what she disclosed about her diagnosis and treatment, but my brother and mother insisted she would live for years. I did a little “big sistering” for my brother, preparing him for what might come.

Lisa’s always had difficulty letting herself be taken care of; she could be a Sexual 3 like me. Throughout her life, she took care of everyone. She passed away nine months later at home, surrounded by her son, her sister, and a friend. Her death was apparently calm and pain-free. They set up a hospital bed at her home to make her more comfortable, provided her with morphine (kept in the fridge for when she needed it), and the doctor also went to see her every day.

During that time with Lisa, we also talked about my father. She hadn’t spoken to him in years, angry since she had learned what he had done to me. One day before she passed away, he visited her, and they managed to reconcile, which was a relief for everyone, especially my brother. In the days leading up to her death, she arranged her funeral, or as she preferred to call it, the celebration of her life: she made lists of people she wanted to invite, made a recording of her voice, searched for a venue... She was very busy planning her party. Her sister would often say to me in English, “She’s putting on a show.” And that’s what she did till the end, putting on an outward display that had nothing to do with the harsh reality of her illness.

I had a second meeting with my father, this time alone with him and my daughter. Although my youngest brother, Manu, who is now twenty-two, and Ed were supposed to be around, Manu wasn’t present, and Ed was working. I felt nervous, not keen on the idea of being

alone with my father. Lisa had gone into town (she lived in the suburbs) and had made it clear that she didn’t want him in her house. She had taken one of his paintings years ago as collateral for money he owed her, and she was afraid he would try to retrieve it. When my father arrived, my daughter was asleep, so I suggested having coffee outside in the garden. He went into the house to use the bathroom, and I started to feel uneasy.

We drank the coffee, and when Abi woke up, my father asked if I wanted to talk about our past together. He told me that he had always believed I had forgiven him, and it was a surprise when I said no years ago. I simply replied that I didn’t feel the need to discuss it at all, and he didn’t bring up anything else. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with my daughter around. My focus was on self-protection. I thought if we went into this, he would likely become defensive as usual, blaming everything on his situation and not taking any responsibility himself, while holding me accountable.

If my daughter hadn’t been there, I would have gone in for the kill. I knew it was a matter of either getting into a fight or skimming the surface as if nothing was wrong, and I wasn’t willing to do the latter. The way he posed the question made me realize that I had to confront him to make him see something, a different perspective, because he did it in an accusatory tone, as if he was an angel and I was a witch for harboring resentment towards him for so many years; that’s at least how I felt about it.

We spent the day together, had lunch with my brothers and sisters, and then spent the afternoon alone again. I felt strange, realizing that I’ve never really had a father-daughter relationship with him, and that there’s virtually no bond between us. I was cold with him; however, he was more affectionate, as if wanting to make amends for the past in his own way. I just wanted for it to be over and done with; I didn’t feel comfortable.

My daughter comes from a country where women face significant mistreatment. Almost all the girls are raped at a very young age, becoming pregnant and keeping it a secret to avoid being disowned by their families. They give birth alone, often in remote rural areas, and abandon their newborns. Some of these children die, while others, like my daughter, manage to survive because someone finds them and hands them over to the police. They eventually find homes in orphanages or foster care.

Since becoming a mother, I’ve begun to appreciate my own mother and all mothers in the world even more. I love my mother deeply and recognize all she has done for us. She has had a tough life, and her story, when compared to mine, seems terrifying. I’ve found it in me to forgive her, and we now have a good relationship.

I began writing this autobiography two years ago, and upon reviewing it now, there are many things I would change. But, this is what I presented to Claudio. Reading it again, with the wisdom of hindsight and introspection, I recognize that my writing style also carries

traces of my ego. I see the desire to preserve my positive self-image and portray myself as a very good person, but I confess, I’m not that saintly. There are also other things I would include, and one, in particular, comes to mind that I’ll add now.

I thought I had written about my great-grandmother, but reviewing it now, I see I haven’t. About a year and a half ago, an antique dealer tracked down my mother online and reached out to her. He had come across an album belonging to an actor who had worked in my great-grandmother’s theater company. The actor created the album before going off to war. The antique dealer, very kindly, mailed us the album, and that’s how we discovered that my great-grandmother had been an actress, a theater director, and an acting teacher.

The album was full of photos, hand programs, and newspaper clippings with reviews of her plays. My grandmother was featured in the programs and reviews because she worked with her mother as an actress when she was very young. Strangely, she never shared much about her mother, probably because they didn’t have the best relationship.

Discovering this has empowered me to pursue my own path in theater. Around the same time the album surfaced, I stumbled upon a theater space, and now I’m doing what my great-grandmother did many years ago – a revelation I hadn’t even considered until recently. There must be something grander at play here, some higher force bigger than all of us. It brings me relief to think about it. Since I started writing this autobiography, my professional life has seen rapid growth. Suddenly, the social subtype, which I used to relate to the least, has become much more present in my life.

This autobiography reflects my own version of my life. Other people, like my mother, probably have a different perspective on my childhood. She didn’t see me as unhappy, but that’s how I truly felt. This leaves me with questions: What is reality, and when did I learn to construct falsehoods? Internally, I’ve mostly experienced sadness in my life, yet out of deceit, I’ve presented the opposite. So, the interpretations vary. All the events are factual, and it makes sense to me that I’ve developed this character.