Autobiography: The Sweet and Harsh Struggle to Become

By Evânia Reichert

I was born in the far south of Brazil, in a colony of German immigrants, a decade after the end of the Second World War. They say I was born on the coldest dawn of the winter of 1955. It was a natural home birth. My mother, Lúcia, and my father, Arlindo, already had another child, my only brother, who was eight at the time. They lived in a simple wooden house whitewashed with lime, surrounded by many flowers my mother tended. At home we spoke only German, like all the other descendants of immigrants. I did too, until I was four.

Lúcia, my mother, had an artist’s soul. Everything she did was beautiful and creative: the flowers she planted, the sweets she cooked, the imaginative clothes she sewed, the embroidery, the knitting. She made lovely silk dresses for my dolls. Over time, she became a recognized seamstress of wedding dresses. And yet Lúcia never felt happy. Everything she did and lived through came with suffering, effort, complaints, and tears. Many days she flooded everything with her outbursts of anger.

I spent my childhood trying in vain to ease my mother’s suffering. At home I ran from one place to another to leave everything clean and pretty. I saved throughout the year so that every Christmas I could buy a new pot for the kitchen. I wrapped it in special paper, with Christmas baubles and red satin ribbons, like the ones that appeared in the magazines. But I never managed to see her happy, not even once. Lúcia, without a doubt, was a self-preservation Four. Today I understand she didn’t know how—couldn’t—show herself happy. It took me a long time to grasp that, no matter how much I did, I couldn’t change that in her. That it didn’t depend on what happened outside, nor on me, nor on anyone.

Arlindo, my father, was a calm man, incapable of saying no—passive, scattered, disconnected. He loved the sea, the good things in life, being with people, with family. I think my mother used him to justify her attachment to suffering, but he was also the one who eased her pain. When rage overtook her, he would follow behind like a firefighter, putting out the flames. I think he was a Social E9. In my childhood, my father was my place

of peace and joy. His calm allowed me to rest. I interpreted his passivity as a great virtue: pure goodness, I thought.

It took me a long time to discover that Arlindo’s omission and passivity were decisive in my developing, very early on, predominant traits of autonomy and independence, to the point that, while still a child, I became one of the pillars of the house. My asymmetric spine appeared at seven. Today I understand that the back pain was a sign: I was too small to carry so much weight. But at that time my parents couldn’t see it. It was exactly at that age that we lost everything, even the house we lived in. At that moment my mother fell into a deep depression. Because of it, I stopped talking about my pain.

They say that during my first years I was a very sweet, calm girl—unlike my brother, who drove my mother out of her mind every so often. At home there was a leather object, almost mythical: the white sandal, a symbol of maternal punishment. “Behave yourself, or the white sandal will come out,” my mother threatened. My father never shouted or hit us. But he also didn’t stop Mom from, in her fits of fury, leaving burning marks on us—especially on my brother, who got it the most. Perhaps that’s why, when I turned three, I began running away from home.

I have blurry memories of the urge to get out to the street. And of secretly taking my mother’s sewing scissors to cut the sisal rope that closed the gate. I don’t know if I actually did it. They only recount that I escaped many times. In the worst of those escapes, I wandered quite far from home and spent hours hiding inside a cardboard box at the post office headquarters. I have a vague memory of that box, the feeling of time passing, imagining my parents searching for me, and the fear of being left there alone.

Lúcia and Arlindo were self-employed workers, who had come from the countryside to the city in search of a better life. Both took care of the children, the house, and the family income. In my home, work wasn’t divided by gender as was common at the time. My father also cooked, washed the dishes, and did everything. My mother also worked outside to increase our income. My brother and I had to help at home. He always dodged the chores and, each time he did, he felt the sting of the white sandal. Sometimes I got hit too, without having done anything wrong. Unlike my brother, I made an effort, worked hard, and organized things. That’s how I earned respect, value, and power in the house.

My mother’s suffering and nervous state were central in my childhood story. Through her constant pain, Lúcia was the protagonist of our lives. I think now, as I write, that my father and I lived like helicopters circling around her. He is a firefighter; I, in prevention—doing everything possible to keep her from getting upset again. My brother, the most criticized and punished, wanted nothing to do with anything. For as long as I can remember, he was like a soaped fish: he slipped away from pain, from chores, from family. I think he was a self-preservation Seven.

I could never say I didn’t receive love or values from my mother and father. I think that’s the root of the contradiction that lives in me. My parents’ genuine love did not manage to protect me from them—betrayed by their own character traits, by the active unconsciousness of their personal histories. They both tried honestly, I know. But in the years when I was a child, they couldn’t. Because of the limitations that shaped their character, but also because of the sociopolitical and economic conditions that marked much of my childhood.

As I write, I realize I feel guilty for revealing this secret: that they couldn’t protect me due to their personal limitations—because of their character. And that it wasn’t only the postwar period, the dictatorship, or bankruptcy that made them unable to care for me. I acknowledge, with a barely denied shame, that I was a child who began protecting her parents from a very young age. And that I, as a child, should not have occupied that place. It’s still hard to say publicly that I was an unprotected child.

The resolve of strength and control formed in me as a preventive measure—to keep something even worse from reaching our family. That wasn’t in my childish ideals nor did it fit my little girl’s body. Faced with such a mission, I compressed in my chest the sadness, fear, shame, and anger. To this day, a part of me is extremely fragile and sensitive—someone who couldn’t be who she really was. Because she had to veer off the path of her essence, her original nature. She had to exchange her silk little dresses for sturdy, rough clothes capable of withstanding life’s avalanches.

I always used the argument of social reality to justify my childhood lack of protection. I have fought, forever, for social and political transformations—as if those and only those were truly to blame for what happens to families and to unprotected girls and boys in the world. I see that my tendency is to deny my parents’ negligence, reducing their responsibility in the fact that I became an adult while still a child. My anger easily projects onto the political and social system. It’s easy to point a finger at the world. I have solid arguments to blame the system, governments, and society for the cruelty toward the unprotected.

At the beginning of this text I said I was born ten years after the end of the Second World War, because that detail matters. Hitler’s nightmare caused deep social trauma among those of German descent in the region where I was born and raised. The physical bombs didn’t arrive there, but the psychological ones did. Even simple farmers, on the other side of the world, who didn’t even know what it meant to be Nazi or fascist, suffered the indirect consequences of the war. In southern Brazil, having a German accent or not knowing how to speak Portuguese became synonymous with Nazism and a motive for stigma and persecution.

In 1941 the use of the German language was banned in Brazil, which led to the closure of schools and cultural clubs of the German communities, where the vast majority of people

spoke only their native tongue. Our half-timbered houses, typical of German architecture, were quickly covered with cement to hide our origins. Fear, humiliation, and shame led people to withdraw into their small redoubts of safety. The feeling of injustice never repaired was covered by a thick layer of pride.

In the German-Brazilian culture where I was born and raised, the house walls were washed and repainted every year. And the gardens were always blooming and well tended. At least in that, there was no difference between poor and rich. However, racialized differences did exist—polarities marked by stigma. Popular sayings such as “a tidy house full of flowers is a German thing” and “a dirty, disorganized house without flowers is a Brazilian thing” were reinforced within families. At the other extreme, outside the colonies, separatism—accompanied by mockery and laughter—said: “Germans are brutes, they don’t know how to speak Portuguese, they’re all Nazis.” The polarity—the cultural stigma—remained in the postwar decades. And the German communities withdrew even more into their redoubts. When I started primary school, at six, I still spoke with a German accent. Other girls and boys did too, but some boys from the town center spoke Portuguese well. They laughed at us every time we said dera instead of terra (earth). When I moved to second grade, I met Vani. She had pretty hair and light eyes, but wore clothes that were much too loose, was a bit clumsy, and overweight. For that, she suffered bullying every day. The boys pushed her into the puddles in the schoolyard and erased our games drawn in the sand.

One day at recess, Vani and I were drawing shells in the dirt and the boys came again. They pulled down my friend’s skirt, leaving her in her underwear. Besides the laughter, they yelled: “Fat Vani, ugly Vani!” I don’t quite know how I managed what I did. But when one of them came back to push Vani, I ran toward him, shoved him away, and shouted, “Enough!” The boy fell to the ground, surprised by the strength of my push. I was surprised too. With my body trembling and eyes full of fury, I faced them while my little friend cried. For a while, they stopped humiliating Vani.

Added to the postwar separatist climate, in March of 1964 there was a military coup in Brazil that installed an especially severe dictatorship that lasted more than two decades. On the day of the coup I was eight. Shortly after, the economic crisis reached my family. My parents already had their own home—quite pretty—with a huge wasp nest. They said it brought good luck, that it protected against the evil eye. My mother decided to leave the nest there. But the nest didn’t protect us from anything. In that house we lived through a total collapse within a few years.

I think my father may have taken a step he wasn’t prepared for. He bought a house that was perhaps too expensive, built a shoe factory in the backyard. He became a small businessman. I never fully understood what led us to bankruptcy. Most likely Arlindo was

too generous or naive. Some stole from him, others deceived him. He went broke. He was burdened with debts, but he paid all the employees. We lost everything: the house, the factory, the car, the beds, the TV, the radio, the fridge. Back then it was like that: in bankruptcies, creditors could take absolutely everything.

I remember as if it were today, with total clarity, the strong men who came into our house. I was hiding in the bedroom, with the light off, peeking through a crack in the door. My mother cried standing in the living room while the men loaded the furniture onto the truck. My father tried to calm her, but he was as nervous as she was. They took everything, leaving only the mattresses, the stove, pots, plates and cutlery, plus a few cardboard boxes with our clothes. They left me my dolls too. I had them hidden in my wicker stroller, covered with a little blanket.

In my memory, that is the last scene I recall from that house. Many times I’ve tried to recover what happened after those men—who seemed like giants—left with their devastating truck. What did I see? What did I feel? Where did we sleep? Where did we eat? How did my mother and father feel? How much longer did we stay in that empty house? To this day I have never managed to recover those memories. It is a blank space in time. A void in memory.

Between eight and nine years old, I had already become my parents’ support. When economic ruin arrived, followed by my mother’s deep depression, I was the pillar for everyone. In the midst of so much chaos, I didn’t ask to be cared for—physically or emotionally. I managed to be a support thanks to a couple of neighbors who helped me with their loyal, generous friendship. I never forgot them. So much so that a page of my book about childhood is filled with gratitude for those friends of my childhood. To this day they inhabit a sacred place in my chest. And friendship became something essential in my life.

On the other hand, I believe my deepest wound around complicity is anchored in those first friendships, typical of second childhood, when we begin to choose who our best friends are. I still remember the sharp pain I felt in my chest when Beatriz, my little eight-year-old friend who lived across the street, began to ignore me even though nothing had happened between us. I went to look for her to play, to ease my sadness, the day after the strong men’s truck took everything we had. I considered her my best friend, but when I arrived, she ran off—she fled. The next day, she ran again. She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t speak to me, and hid when she saw me coming.

Unable to understand, I cried for days. I didn’t understand what had happened, or why Beatriz treated me that way. When I managed to react, I went to her house to speak with her. I remember the scene as if it were today, although sixty years have passed. Her mother opened the door and, sharply, told me Beatriz wasn’t there, without inviting me in as she

used to. She also told me that, after what had happened with my family, Beatriz would no longer play with me. The strongest part was seeing my little friend’s head peeking out from behind the sofa—and realizing she wasn’t angry or sad with her mother. On the contrary, she agreed.

Beatriz became a symbol of the wound that deeply marked my sense of complicity and friendship—key words when observing the tone of the social subtype of the Eight. When I think about this, I see that in me complicity is a theme full of contrasts, crossed by pains and loves. On one side, Beatriz’s betrayal and that of other disloyal people I met along the way. On the other hand, the support and genuine friendship of true friends, which have always been fundamental for me, up to this day.

Complicity is, in fact, an immense and sensitive theme within me. I am moved when it translates into solidarity. I am touched seeing it among people. When I feel that friendly connection from others toward me. I cry at any scene of solidarity on TV, and also when I see people risking themselves to rescue refugees at sea. I feel complicit with all the people with whom I develop close ties: my housekeeper, my friends, and my relatives.

On the other hand, I become very susceptible when complicity is trivialized. When I discover that someone I trust commits a small betrayal, an ethical lapse—when they lie or speak ill behind my back—I feel hurt. A part of my heart feels wounded. It is a childlike pain, deep and silent. What’s curious is that when this happens—others’ betrayals or lightness—it always takes me by surprise. Time and again I arrive at the same conclusion: that my trust is truly naive, similar to my father’s.

What I carry inside is contradictory. I am capable of facing great events. I have the strength and capacity to confront evil inflicted on others in the social sphere—even when it involves people I don’t even know. But I feel as helpless as a defenseless baby when facing the small betrayals (if such a thing exists) of people I once trusted. When that happens, I lose trust. And my affections and emotions freeze. I become cold; I feel nothing. No emotions, no desires, no anger, nothing. I feel very bad when emotions abandon me. That’s not me.

I cannot sleep if there are misunderstandings without resolution. That’s why I usually take the initiative to speak with people. If the issue is clarified, I forget it. I don’t hold grudges. Unless the person remains false, a liar—unworthy of my respect and trust. In those cases—fortunately few—I can no longer trust again. In my friendships I offer loyalty. I am a companion in celebration and in tragedy. And although I don’t say it openly, I expect total loyalty from my friends. In everything. I have a very low tolerance for lies and a keen nose for detecting manipulation.

The passion for complicity, so characteristic of the Social 8, is a kind of implicit blood pact, sealed in the intimacy of any close bond. In it there is an oath of mutual loyalty. It is a

never-officialized oath, a childish fantasy that idealizes loyalty as the measure of love. Complicity becomes a veiled pact between two supposed loyalties. The pact is a security strategy, a bond signed in silence, without words, sworn just with a look: we are together, always, until death.

Right now, as I write, I notice the dramatic tone of my words. There is the pain, but also the neurosis born in the basements of an unprotected girl, who turned loyalty into a life banner—but who, out of insecurity, went on to sign loyalty pacts, initiated in the clouds yet visible to anyone who wants to see them. When I analyze it, I understand that the virtue of loyalty doesn’t need pacts. That loyalty is a human quality, free and born of mutual trust between people. And that complicity is a kind of obligatory loyalty, a pledged, sworn one—born of distrust in search of mutual protection.

The breaking of a pact of complicity reaches me like the worst of affronts, accompanied by the sensation of a stab in the back. And it can happen easily, sometimes over details: if a friend reveals one of my secrets to others; if they play both sides, manipulating to their convenience; when I see that people I love are betrayed or used by someone in common; when agreements are lightly broken. In short, I have installed within me a fraud detector that activates quickly at the slightest whiff of betrayal or disloyalty.

I understand that my way of taking revenge in the face of a betrayal of complicity is to remove that person from the left side of my chest—forever. My watery heart hardens and turns to ice. I become cold and hard, like a stone. I don’t keep up appearances; I don’t even know how. I can’t hide my disappointment. Many times I have tried to understand and forgive. I keep trying. I even manage to understand what led the person to act that way: their limitations, the context, etc. If the person recognizes their ethical lapse, I can coexist with them socially. But I know my trust has been left like a cracked piece of porcelain. It never repairs completely.

Complicity is a central characteristic of the Social 8 subtype that has many facets. It also functions as a way of mobilizing groups around a goal, an ideal, or a belief—something like “together we can do anything!” or “for justice, we must fight!” Complicity unites, generates strength, mobilizes people toward projects and causes. When it serves noble ideals, it can move multitudes. But when it serves mafia interests—those who operate from crime—complicity becomes an instrument of control and domination over others. In mafias, the cost of betraying complicity is the elimination of the traitor through physical death. The pact is simple: absolute complicity or death.

For integrated Social 8s, the ethics of complicity and the commitment to trust are also part of their vital principles. The symbolic cost of betraying that trust is similar to that of the mafias. Faced with betrayal—with a trivial rupture of complicity—the traitor is eliminated emotionally from the Social 8’s heart, who says: that person has died for me. Whoever has

damaged the sacredness of complicity ceases to exist in their affections. The bond, once warm, breaks with coldness and contempt. Trust rarely manages to be restored.

I return to the memories of my personal movie. After having lost everything—and having also lost Beatriz’s friendship—my parents and I had to leave our white house, the one with the wasp nest. We moved our few belongings to a small untreated wooden house, marked by floodwaters, without paint or flowers, on the outskirts of a neighboring city—what my father was able to rent. One of the rooms became the workshop where my parents prepared leather pieces that would later be sewn and turned into shoes. That room shared a wooden wall with the outdoor bathroom, accessed through a roofed area. In that bathroom I made the most important decisions of my second childhood.

I remember, with the clarity of a cloudless sky, sitting on the bathroom floor with the door closed, crying in silence—as I did every time I couldn’t bear the sadness at home any longer. If I cried in front of my mother, she would get even worse. At that moment—after the bankruptcy—we had no money for anything. Many days there was only bread and bananas to eat. We had never lived through anything like that. My father went out to look for more work. My mother cried while tapping the little hammer on the marble slab used to glue the beveled edges of the leather before sewing them. At no time did Lúcia stop working. And so the weeks went by—perhaps months; I couldn’t say for sure.

My memory returns to the back bathroom. It’s an important scene. I understand it was decisive in the formation of my character. I was sitting on the floor again, crying, while my mother cried in the room next door to the rhythm of the little hammer on the marble. I remember the air was charged with an unbearable weight, and I felt a deep anguish. I wanted to disappear—to die. Hearing my mother’s crying, the tapping of the little hammer, and the muffled murmur of my own sobbing, I told myself I could no longer go on living like that. Everything was too dramatic, heavy, depressive, without a way out. I had to find a solution.

I remember that I got up from the floor, looked at myself in the mirror, wiped my tears, and made a decision: after school I would go to work—to do something that would bring money home. I remember vividly the feeling of encouragement and certainty that flooded me when I decided to start working. I was nine, but at that time child labor wasn’t a crime. And between working or staying sprawled on the bathroom floor, surely it was more promising to start working outside the home.

Across from our house there was a small real estate agency—Rangel Realty. From my bedroom window I could see men carrying wooden signs that read “For Sale” or “For Rent.” I did my hair, crossed the street, and asked to speak with the owner, who received me immediately. I told him I could make very nice “for sale” and “for rent” signs, and that I needed to work because my parents had no money. I recall that he was moved. I saw his

eyes fill with tears. I felt embarrassed, because I think he also saw mine, still red. He replied that they happened to need a new batch of signs for the agency.

My father bought some planks, cut the pieces to size, and I painted them white. Then, with metal stencils, I drew the red letters on the sale or rental signs. I also started to work two afternoons a week—on days without P.E.—with a neighbor, helping around the house and caring for a two-year-old girl. The days passed; at home everything began to improve; Mom and Dad got more work, and we even managed to plant some flowers in the garden. But our resources were still very limited. We counted the coins.

To get to school, I had to take a bus. On the days we had P.E. in the afternoon, that meant paying two round-trip fares. That was when Maria da Graça—a classmate—started inviting me to eat at her house. Over time, her parents began inviting me every day. It was a large family, with three daughters and the grandparents. “Where seven eat, eight can eat,” said Maria’s loving mother. And because I hurried to wash all the dishes and encouraged Maria, the youngest, to help dry them, her parents began giving us a few coins. It was the exact money for my bus.

Maria da Graça’s family never made me feel they were doing me a favor. Besides, from time to time they would show up with a pretty dress for me—for Easter, for Christmas, for my birthday—and sometimes with the excuse that “this dress will look so lovely on you we couldn’t resist.” Those people helped me enormously—not just with the meals and the bus fares, not even for the beautiful dresses. They helped me through the respect and dignity they offered, because they never made me feel indebted. I never forgot them. I feel for them a kind of eternal reverence—for their greatness, for their ethics.

Inspired by the ideals of my generation in the 60s and 70s, I entered adolescence in full rebellion. Nothing contained me—except myself. Since I had become my family’s support so young, I gradually stripped my parents of their authority over me. At sixteen I convinced my father to sign my emancipation papers, an official document. No one set limits for me; I set my own. Deep down, although I never spoke of it, I wanted to show my parents that I could do everything on my own without losing myself, maintaining my dignity—and theirs too.

I knew I needed to be very careful in the world I was walking through—especially because I wasn’t accompanied by my parents or any relatives, as was usual then. I went alone, with friends, without anyone setting limits or controlling me. I didn’t get lost, I didn’t self-destruct, I didn’t fall into drugs—though many people of my generation did. But I lived sexuality, art, and freedom fully, despite the dictatorship. I spent my adolescence in ecological, cultural, educational struggles and for democracy in Latin America. Luckily, in those times AIDS didn’t exist, and our generational dream was natural living, free love, and peace.

My Brother

By the time I finished this autobiography, I realized I had written very little about my brother. I return here to include him. I think it’s because he spent a long time away. He had to stay on base—at nineteen he had already become a father, and the army pay was good. He became a sergeant and requested a transfer to another state. I recall now, as I write, the wound my mother carried toward him, because when we were ruined he never came to see us or help. He was a good person, but he thought more about himself, about his own things. I think he also felt abandoned, because he also abandoned us completely. He was stigmatized as the one who always made trouble, who got things wrong and didn’t take responsibility.

Despite having a steady salary from the army, my brother always lived with serious financial problems. He died young, shortly after retiring, run over by a truck. He was eight years older than me. I have no memories of playing with him. In fact, we never developed a fraternal intimacy—I don’t really know why—neither in childhood nor later.

I only remember that, in my adult years, he showed a certain admiration for me. I have the sense that his respect sprang from a silent guilt for having stayed on the sidelines and not being present during the hardest days after the bankruptcy. After all, he was the older brother. We never spoke about this. There was no time. He died too soon, just like our mother.

I feel now, as I write this exact line, that I have kept a great silence about the rupture of complicity with my brother. This is the first time I speak of it. My adult mind understands that he went far away to escape the constant criticism he received at home since childhood—that perhaps he didn’t have the emotional or financial resources to travel and do something for us. But my little girl’s heart never understood such indifference. He could have sent a postcard, I think. I sense there is a wound there as well—also denied and, until now, never revealed.

My Social-Subtype Mind

As a social subtype, the Eight’s “intellectual,” I like to read and write. It’s an intellectuality completely different from that of a mental enneatype—someone who seeks erudition for its own sake. For me, the search for knowledge aims to absorb as much as possible of this world, to have more resources. I read to know where I’m stepping, who I’m dealing with, and the best way to communicate what is urgent and important. In short, my intellect is at

the service of something—so that, through words, I can have better weapons and, consequently, more power in the battles I want to fight.

Except for poetry, music, and art—which nourish and move my soul—the knowledge I have always sought (and still seek) is specific, though varied and broad. I look for what I need for my struggles—what can be innovative and more effective in the battle of ideas, what will make a difference in the fights I take on to change things. I see I am not modest in my dreams, and I easily voice ambitious desires—nothing less than transforming the world. I have an unshakable faith in the power of desire, in the persistence of the search, and especially in our collective capacity to change paradigms. And, in that sense, writing has always been a doorway to bring my dreams into the realm of the possible.

Reading and writing for sheer intellectual delight is, for me, a luxury I don’t think I will ever have in this life. All my reading and writing—daily, intense, and pleasurable—are always in service of something. My intellectuality has a purpose and a clear direction. It is activist, utilitarian, strategic: to communicate with clarity, to sensitize and mobilize people, in the hope of awakening this world that sleeps, numb.

At best—especially when one works on oneself and transforms parts of one’s character—the Social 8’s intellectuality comes to serve the world. In its worst, neurotic version, it turns into cunning—a tool of domination, control, and power. It is important to underscore that this is a practical, concrete intellectuality, and it exists only as long as it fulfills a function. Without a social function, it simply loses libido—its vital drive—and motivation. It disappears; it ceases to exist.

Becoming a Journalist-Activist

At seventeen I was already a primary school teacher, studying and doing theater. That’s when I began writing about culture, education, and behavior for a local newspaper. I landed the job without seeking it—after speaking with the director to complain about the lack of coverage for the city’s cultural movement. He then invited me to do what I was demanding. Surprised by the offer, I accepted—and I made the most of it. Within a few months I created the Culture, Education, Childhood, and Ecology sections in that paper.

Some time later, I married the editor-in-chief of the media company. The newspaper was our greatest instrument of transformation. We were passionately committed to what we did. I demanded ample space for culture and ecology in every edition—and I fought for those stories to make the front page, right alongside soccer. I had good arguments. I succeeded. With so much daily space in the media, the cultural and ecological movement grew by leaps and bounds. Those were good times. In a few years I was well established

as a journalist-activist. I became a known editor of newspapers, magazines, and books. I liked the role because I could use journalism for my causes—in other words, to change things. Meanwhile I entered the fine arts program, then journalism. Earlier, at seventeen, I had started psychology—my first desire. But from the first classes they forbid any mention of the “damned” Wilhelm Reich. Since I was fifteen I had been carrying some of his books in my backpack. He and Walt Whitman were the masters of my generation. I protested and left that hypocritical faculty, born old. I returned decades later.

Motherhood and Family

I was almost twenty when my first son, Ismael, was born. A year and a half later Alencar arrived, and two years after that, Francisco. They shared with me the free, tribal, intense life I lived. Many dear friends, circles of music, poetry, and camping. With my sons I felt the greatest love one can feel, and I lived the most beautiful, fun years of my life. They were—and are—great companions on this journey, deep friends, good people. Together we understood that life is a time to be lived intensely—and that family love is our greatest treasure, sacred and irreplaceable.

Eros and the Fear of Surrender

Since adolescence, sexuality became a path of celebration for the many loves I was lucky to feel and live. At fourteen I found my first great love. I was dazzled to discover the intensity of sensations—transcendent—born of the meeting between love and sensual/sexual passion. I couldn’t understand why my friends were afraid of something so good. Without passion, one cannot live, I thought. Erotic love kept center stage throughout my life, closely followed by compassionate and idealistic love.

For me, Eros is an essential life drive—filling life with color, passion, and inspiration. In love, in work, in creation, in everything. The search for an inspired, passionate life was a beacon in my relationships. That’s why I could never stay in a relationship that only had a beautiful bond of compassionate, admiring love. In my personal nature, the energy of Eros is essential. Always. I can’t imagine living without it.

As I advanced in my personal growth and matured, an enormous fear revealed itself—the fear of surrendering deeply to love: fear of giving myself and being hurt; of loving and becoming dependent; of being controlled; of being subdued. Passion was always a familiar path—an affective-sexual equation without great risks. Seducing and living the intensity of passions was easy and fascinating. But when love insisted on moving forward—when it

began to cross passion’s border—I would go on alert. Whenever I sensed any emotional insecurity, fear of being betrayed, or even foresaw the slightest decrease in passionate intensity, I ended the relationship quickly.

My fear of surrendering to love caused great suffering for people who fell in love with me and truly loved me—beautiful people I hurt with this relational dynamic. My way of loving was overwhelming—intense in affection, complicity, and sexuality—but it could be cut off abruptly. Generally, shortly after ending a relationship, I was already involved with someone else. Once someone told me, “You end relationships at three in the afternoon!” In reality I had shown signs of insecurity earlier, but perhaps they weren’t evident. Ending things felt like a matter of survival. The fear of loss, fragility, and dependency kept me from giving myself completely.

Up to age thirty-five, most of my relationships were with people over whom I maintained a certain degree of control and power—generally through intense seduction and complicity. It was implicit that the other should surrender completely to our love, to the point of generating not the slightest insecurity about their total passion for me. If that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t move forward. When it did, the relationship advanced a bit, but soon my eroticism toward someone submissive or passive would vanish completely—and the relationship ended.

A Sabbatical from Passion—and a Turning Point

When I turned thirty-six, I felt I wanted to change that pattern. I decided to take a sabbatical year. I arrived at that decision out of sheer exhaustion from always seeking love down that same road. Passion alone was no longer enough. I wanted to leave that repetitive, painful cycle in my relationships. Since adolescence, I had never gone without being in a couple or an affective-sexual bond. I decided I needed to spend time with myself—endure being alone for a while—do something truly evolutionary in that sense. I also felt it would be good for my sons—who always formed beautiful bonds with my partners—to be able to deepen those relationships without them being interrupted. This retreat from passions wasn’t easy, but I felt it was necessary. To mature, it was essential to face—head on—my fear of surrender, my fear of love.

A little after that sabbatical, when autumn came and the trees began to lose their leaves, someone appeared in my life—invited by Nando, my dear friend and soul-brother. We lived together—my sons, Nando, and I—in a beautiful white house surrounded by flowers and nature. Nando was a musician and journalist. We spent our days there writing, singing, and caring for the children. When Nando’s guest arrived, I felt afraid of falling in love for the first time. I kept my distance—reluctant, a bit uncomfortable with a guest visiting in the very

week we were finishing a book. It did no good to slam on the brakes. It was love at first sight. I thought, “Ugh—my year of retreat didn’t work at all.” An alchemical Eros flooded my whole life, almost without giving me a chance to escape.

To the power of our sexuality and of life in nature were added our drives for knowledge, shared work, music, poetry, books, therapy, the body, and love of art. And, above all, the care and joyful life with our boys. I had three, he had one—all sons. There was much cultural and existential affinity. Yet, at the character level, we were opposite poles—and, at the same time, two people on alert not to be dominated by the other. He was a Social Five and I a Social Eight. Two seducers.

With the intimate challenge of ceasing to be a coward before love—of finally maturing and advancing in my personal process—I stayed with this person. Luckily, my partner was also willing to take on that challenge, and he stayed with me. We lived an intense, rich, inspiring life—constantly revisiting the more addicted personal traits that appeared in our relationship. We moved forward a lot, surfing the waves of daily life. As the years went on, we sailed ever more tranquil seas—though, from time to time, days with red flags would appear: strong winds, tense moments, demanding inner work.

Eros remains very alive between us, but there is also much compassionate and admiring love. Perhaps that’s why we’re still together—without promises, without idealizations—only with the life of the here and now. We still haven’t married. “Better not to make it official—what if it doesn’t work?” It’s almost funny, after three decades together. Our mutual commitment remains the same as on the first day: to live a good life of love, peace, creative work, living study, and self-knowledge. And—however incredible it seems—thirty-four years have passed.

Finding My Type

When I discovered the Enneagram in 1991 with Alaor Passos in Brazil, it seemed obvious that I was a sexual Two: seduction, intensity, pride. As I deepened the work, I saw I was denser than a Two—that my seduction was different, not the kind that teases and retreats. I then considered being a sexual Six, and stayed there from 1993 to 1995, when I was with Claudio for ten days, living in the same house. That was when we organized SAT Cono Sur, bringing Claudio, Ramón, Ferrara, Juan Carlos, and Garriga together. We gathered people from southern Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. It was the autumn of 1996.

After a few days together—between travel, SAT, and rest—Claudio told me he had analyzed my autobiography with Ferrara and that he didn’t recognize me as a Two or a Six. That I didn’t have a Six’s rigidity nor a Two’s coquettish seduction. And that my life story

was that of an Eight—probably a social subtype. It was a blow. Images began flashing in my head, a retrospective at full speed. I entered a time tunnel and was taken by immense shame. It felt as if something twisted, coarse, and very ugly in me was being revealed. I felt like someone who runs others over with her intensity and quickness, who seeks to control the flow of things—of life—of everything and everyone around her.

Rereading my character under the Eight’s prism, I hit a dead end. I was shocked, silent. That way of being—which I understood as a virtue, something very positive in me (the very thing that had saved my family in childhood)—was actually the horror of horrors. I thought, “Now my partner won’t love me anymore; my friends will reject me.” I felt such great shame I don’t recall ever feeling anything like it—before or since. I spent weeks with a general malaise, lost and confused. I developed a torticollis that wouldn’t go away for anything. It was very hard to arrive at the Eight.

Before meeting Alaor Passos and Claudio Naranjo—already in 1991—I had felt a certain resonance with the Eight. I had read the enneatype descriptions in a mimeographed leaflet that came into my hands. On that occasion I felt immediate identification with the Eight’s lust: intensity, rebellious childhood, denunciation of hypocrisy, vigilante profile, and controlling dynamics. In that poorly printed leaflet, this was the first enneatype that moved me. However, that caricature of the Eight—as someone always very strong, insensitive, half macho, who feels no fear and much less guilt—didn’t fit me. I also had (and have) insecurities. And I feel a fierce guilt whenever injustices occur and I do nothing.

Inside, I am very sensitive. I have a soft heart—even if it often freezes in the face of disloyalty and injustice. None of those aspects of myself fit the caricature described in the leaflet. At the same time, it was the enneatype with which I felt the greatest similarity in terms of life story and childhood resolutions. Over the years—thanks to the evolution of the magnificent, experiential study of the enneatypes carried out in the SATs, through experiences with Claudio, and especially through understanding the subtypes and their important differences—the identification process advanced greatly and in depth.

Claudio, the SATs, and the Sacred

I was lucky to begin my search in the early 1990s, when SAT groups in Brazil didn’t exceed forty or fifty people. Claudio was our therapist. He was the one who cared for us—who took my hand and sat beside me when the crying welled up from deep within, undoing my defenses. From him I never received a single harsh confrontation. With Claudio I felt seen, understood, accepted. With him I could open my chest, trust again, be spontaneous—be myself. Claudio understood I had nothing devotional in me—but that my presence and my

commitment were real, solid, and sacred. I felt his love, his attention, his care. I received something very similar from Alaor and Suzy as well.

When I remember, especially, the first twenty or twenty-five years of the SAT school in Brazil, I get emotional. There was so much love, so much freedom, creativity, openness, and authenticity gathered there. Fertile, negentropic, auspicious times. The vast majority of us felt very good when we were together. There was space for everything and everyone—and that’s why those were such fruitful, welcoming years. I feel immense gratitude toward Alaor—and also toward Suzy—for having built that living, loving energy; for having brought Claudio to Brazil; for having been one of the largest SAT communities in history—a living school of human development.

Once I spoke to Claudio about my difficulty with devotion. I could never be a devotee, as I did recognize in fellow travelers. At first I thought it was either my pride or something of the ego that kept me from accessing devotion. I told him I took part in Buddhist rituals and many others, with deep respect for rites—but inside me it was as if I were watching a movie. A veil separated me from the emotion of the rite. And he replied kindly: “That doesn’t matter—devotion is only one of many ways to feel sacred.”

Then Claudio began telling me one of his many encounters with the sacred. Years earlier he had been invited to a meeting with a group of young revolutionaries in Paris. And, upon entering the room—full of people who wanted to change social reality—he felt he had entered a temple, such was the sacredness in the air, in the gaze of those young people. He told me, “The sacred is not only in temples.” He smiled and walked away slowly, as he always did.

Claudio’s Gaze and a Turning Point (1998)

By recognizing the sacred character of that meeting of young revolutionaries, Claudio also recognized me. With his capacity to see beyond forms and stereotypes—free of spiritual materialism—he melted the ice of my watery chest. He knew how to reach my heart from the inside, without confronting me, without triggering my defenses. He became my teacher when he touched, with tenderness and respect, the primacy of delicacy in me, veiled beneath seven thousand layers. From then on my life took another course. I could now be strong and sensitive, open and close my heart, love and be loved. This was decisive in my personal process. It happened in 1998, according to my diary, recorded in one of the many SAT notebooks.

Revisiting My Adolescence and Autonomy

Throughout my self-knowledge journey—before and especially after meeting Claudio—I came to understand many things about my childhood, my relationships with my parents, and the formation of my character traits. I realized how harsh I had been with my parents in not revealing what was in my heart. Very early I stripped them of the authority to guide me through late childhood and adolescence. I did what I wanted and believed was right, without asking for help, guidance, or even permission. Excessive childhood autonomy—disproportionate to my age—fed my teenage rebellion. It was also my revenge for childhood abandonment: if no one cared for my little girl’s heart, don’t come now trying to take care of me.

At fifteen I brought my boyfriends to sleep with me in my room—unusual back then. I didn’t lie to my parents or hide what I did, even if it was hard for everyone. Thanks to the young people of my generation, the value placed on virginity was declining, but it remained the only badge of honor for teenage girls. I can only imagine how hard it was for Lúcia and Arlindo to enter their teenage daughter’s room and see the birth-control pill case hanging from the mirror. I don’t think it was easy for them to deal with my rebellious independence while continuing to trust me.

When I matured, I saw how well Lúcia and Arlindo behaved with me during my adolescence. They endured my rebellion without castrating my power or my freedom. Even my mother withstood not being able to make pretty dresses for her daughter. I walked the streets inspired by the hippies: barefoot, with a few meters of fabric tied around my body—without a single seam. My parents were people raised in the countryside, with little formal schooling, yet each carried a moving wisdom about life, each in their own way.

With time, as a fruit of personal work, I managed to reveal my heart to my parents. We became close, intimate, at peace. It was important for me to understand that my mother never intended to hurt me—and that she lacked the personal resources to heal her own wounds, let alone the ones she caused in me. I also understood that my father’s passivity wasn’t as positive as I had interpreted in childhood. His omission and disconnection were, in fact, what most disturbed my mother. And it was precisely that omission that pushed me to occupy an adult place that wasn’t mine, while still so small.

Seeing My Parents With New Eyes

I was able to review each one’s roles and recognize my mother’s love and generosity, long before her death at fifty-nine. Deep down—despite her emotional instability—she was a strong woman who made immense efforts to care for us, the home, and the family. She was

loving and very important when my children were born. She made soft, beautiful baby clothes and taught me to embroider, with silk thread, my little ones’ pillowcases. She also helped me care for them whenever I needed, with a newborn calm—utterly new and generous. On my children’s birthdays, she was the one who made the most beautiful cakes.

Lúcia “suffered from varicose veins and nerves,” as people used to say. She also spent years with painful pelvic fistulas that came and went. Eventually she was diagnosed with early cervical cancer. But, according to the doctors, she wouldn’t die of that—as long as she had surgery. She wouldn’t even need chemotherapy. Even so, a few weeks after the operation she died beside me—victim of a generalized infection caused by hospital negligence. Lúcia did not deserve such suffering in her final days.

I was also able to recognize that my father was, indeed, a person of immense goodness—and that he genuinely wanted us to have a good life. He loved celebrating special days. He had the virtue of simplicity, with an almost childlike joy. Arlindo was an unforgettable grandfather to my children: friendly, sweet, cheerful. Thanks to him—and to the freedom he always gave me—I escaped becoming a repressed, curtailed, unhappy teenager. Today I understand his disconnection as a regressive infant defense—of the uterine stage or the first months of life—and that he had neither the tools nor the awareness to perceive that trait. He never had that chance.

At the end of my mother’s life, during those interminable weeks of suffering, my father became totally absent again—head in the clouds. I was the one, again, who took on the task of caring for her—and also of burying her. Even so, he helped a lot: he played with and tenderly cared for my children while I spent days and nights in the ICU waiting room. This time, neither my mother nor I were upset by his omission. We already knew that, when the pain was unbearable, disconnection and absence were his defense. We felt that he was present—in his own way, as he could be. My father lived many more years, remarried, and was happy. He died at seventy-six, a natural death.

I recognize that Lúcia and Arlindo were great people: good, ethical, and dignified—and very loving, in their way. They were deeply wounded in their childhoods and, despite everything, they never lost their dignity. I was lucky to grow up in a home with little false morality and little repression. When my adolescent freedom, short skirts, and sensuality were discussed, my father always said to my mother: “Ah, let her live her life.”

Because of my ego’s coping style and everything that happened in our lives—but also because I always received love from my parents, especially in early childhood—I believe I developed greater resilience than my mother and father. I still don’t know whether that was good or not in my life. It was what it was, I know. But I feel it could have been different if my country’s social and political context had been more just, and if I hadn’t lived my childhood and adolescence under a military dictatorship.

Context: History Written on Our Bodies

Brazilian political history—as well as Nazi persecution in the postwar period—carried great weight in our lives. It caused traumas, crises, and obstacles my family faced and, consequently, the challenges I had to overcome in childhood and adolescence. Lives in continuous struggle: for survival, for justice, for dignity, for peace. Within that context, along my arrow of time, a Social 8 was formed—with its light and shadow. In its own way—anchored in its life story—marked by the culture and the social-political context in which it was born and raised. Perhaps a little far from the initial caricature—and closer to what is real.