My Return from Silence
There was a time, not so long ago, when half of my world went dark. I remember that dead weight; it wasn't just that I couldn't move my left arm or leg, it was as if a wall of fog had risen right through the middle of my body.
I had always been an active woman - known in the neighborhood as the one who greets everyone, the one who organizes, the one who has an opinion on everything. I was the leading voice on the block, the one who welcomed all the grandkids and chatted with the whole world. Suddenly, I became a statue in my own bed.
I remember being conscious. That was the strangest part. I heard everything. I understood everything. I knew who was coming in and out of the room. But my body wouldn’t respond. It was like being trapped inside myself. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t bathe myself. I couldn’t eat on my own. My hands - my hands that had cooked, washed, and hugged so many times - refused to obey.
I won’t lie: there were moments when I felt something inside me was flickering out. It wasn’t just my body; it was the feeling of ceasing to be the person I had been my whole life.
When they spoke to me about trying something different, something I didn’t quite understand, something that looked like nothing I had ever known… I accepted. I don’t know if it was bravery or simply that I had nothing left to lose. Maybe it was the trust I had in the person who recommended it. Maybe it was that tiny inner spark that hadn’t given up yet.
Then, this young man arrived.
If I told you... I wanted to laugh so hard it almost shook my soul. This foreigner walked into my house, dressed in a suit as if he were headed to one of those fancy offices downtown. He brought nothing: no pills, no machines, not even a sprig of rosemary for a spiritual cleansing. Nothing. And his Spanish was so broken and odd that I thought to myself:
"Good Lord! My niece has gone crazy. What is this boy going to do for me? Even a shaman with drums would make more sense."
But he looked me in the eyes, and there was something in his silence that made me stay still. He already knew what it was like to be locked inside his own body; he had already walked through that tunnel.
The Awakening
We began the sessions. It didn’t feel like an exercise; it felt as if the air in my room was rearranging itself. The first time was there in my bed, without moving. But something shifted in my head. By the second session, they already had me in the living room.
And by the third... that’s when it happened, the thing I tell myself now and it feels like it happened to someone else. I remember feeling a tiny thread of strength, like a light turning on at the end of a long hallway.
I was able to stand up. Just like that, without anyone pulling me, without leaning on anyone. I walked straight. I felt my feet firm on the floor; they didn't catch, I didn't drag my slippers. I reached the center of the room, raised both my arms high, pointing toward the sky, and I felt a freedom I cannot explain to you. I sat back down all by myself, with a calmness I could hardly believe.
The New Doña
Five weeks later, I went out into the street. A neighbor stared at me as if he had seen a ghost. He approached me and asked, almost in a whisper:
“Say, Doña... what did that boy do to you? Was it voodoo or what?”
I just smiled at him. I wasn't going to explain sensory variables or environmental infrastructures. What for?
What I know is that the young man in the suit didn't "cure" me with magic. He simply calmed the noise around me so that my own body could remember how to function.
Today, I bathe myself, I go to the bathroom alone, I eat what I want, and I walk through my house as if nothing ever happened.
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I give myself a wink, because I know that the "Doña" who was slumped in a chair is gone for good. I am me again, but with a strength that comes from having stood in the silence and having learned to walk once more.