The story
Qué será, será — the lilting refrain Doris Day sang, a song my mother and I used to sing together when I was nine, in a playful, carefree way. The uncertainty made me smile. The future is not ours to see? To me, it felt like a bag full of promises and possibilities. Then, one day, I woke up to sorrow.
I climbed lazily out of bed. Through the windows, a gray day loomed — a promise of rain. As I peeked through the door, I saw my dad, still wearing the suit and overcoat from the day before, pacing in circles in the hallway just outside my bedroom. When he saw me, he said:
“Your mom is in the room. She’s very sad — go give her a hug.”
Mourning
My dad didn’t need to explain why. For the last few days, my parents had been staying at the clinic to keep Grandma Mercedes company while she recovered from surgery. I was nine. I understood: my grandmother had just passed away.
“Put on your slippers first,” my dad told me. “Don’t go walking around the house barefoot, or you’ll catch a cold.”
He kept pacing. My dad never let his sadness show. Men neither cry nor shed tears — so the unspoken rule went. They must not let anyone caress their faces, must never use profanity in front of ladies. But they do get angry. I’d seen it. Especially if you don’t do as you’re told.
I put on my blue slippers. My cozy pink flannel pajamas offered little comfort against the cold, but I knew not to complain. I walked slowly, held back by a sudden apprehension — my heart pounding, my throat aching, just like when I had tonsillitis.
A gray morning
A few beams of sunlight filtered through the blinds in the master bedroom, yet they failed to pierce the gloom that filled the space. It was as though dark clouds had somehow drifted in through the windows.
My mom sat slumped in her armchair near the window, looking utterly bereft. Beneath her camel-colored coat, she was still wearing the red dress from the day before — which, in the dim light, looked to me like a large bloodstain. She was covering her eyes with one hand and sighing. I stood beside her, unsure if she sensed my presence. Gently, I settled into her lap and rested my head against her chest. Tears trickled down my face, but no words came. I prayed to my guardian angel — “… ever this day, be at my side, to light and guard…” the guardian angel who never forsakes me — asking him to lift her sorrow.
I thought about how my grandparents’ big house would feel the following day — Sunday — without MamáMercedes. The idea of her absence frightened me.
Numbers
Grandma was sixty-five years old. Spent twenty-seven days in the hospital. Had eight siblings, ten children, and twenty-two grandchildren. On Sundays, thirty-three of us gathered for lunch at her house on Transversal 45.
Numbers distracted me from feelings too large to hold.
Who will now take Mamá Mercedes’s seat beside Papá Lucio? Who will wander through the house overseeing the sancocho, scolding us for climbing to the attic, making sure we children didn’t ruin her roses?
And on Mondays, who will sit in her rocking chair, surrounded by the aunts as they sew and chat about housekeepers and husbands?
Grandma died at the end of August. Mom started to dress in black from head to toe, steeping the end of my childhood in solitude. When she wasn’t slumped in her armchair, she wandered through the house wrapped in her long blue robe, curlers in her hair, no makeup. It was a time of deep silence, of absence, of stillness.
The Reflection
Inviting the outside in
It took a few years before I heard my mom laughing again while playing cards with new friends. She was back — but I was no longer the little girl who would sit in her lap.
It was only much later, when I learned to practice self-compassion, that I unlocked what had stayed long trapped in me, holding me back from fully experiencing who I was. I had already graduated as a medical doctor, turned into an art psychotherapist, but I still carried the nine-year-old writer-to-be within me. For decades I would not dare to let her out. Nowadays, I write in two languages, have published articles, essays, and books, and the words continue to flow.
Unlocking the unprocessed feelings we carry within — looking at them honestly, without flinching — is what frees us. This is the core of HeartMinded Parenting.
Preventing blocked care
Most of us tend to parent the way we were raised, unconsciously reproducing patterns we never stopped to question: fear-based responses, not talking about deep feelings, using punishment as a first resort, withdrawing warmth when a child disappoints us. We don’t do this because we don’t love our children. Most of the time we are striving to give them what we ourselves didn’t have. But often we must delve into the past and make a conscious effort to free ourselves of deep-rooted patterns that block care.
Transforming those patterns goes beyond teaching or learning new techniques. It means looking honestly at the beliefs absorbed in childhood — about discipline, emotions, mistakes, or about how and when to ask for help. Those beliefs are embedded in us and shape what we do before we even realize what we are doing.
HeartMinded Parenting can guide both counselors and parents through exactly that process: letting assumptions surface so that instead of automatic responses, we become curious before we jump to judgment. We can then gradually replace unconscious, fear-driven patterns with mindful, compassionate ones. Without experiencing that shift in ourselves, it would be difficult to guide others through transformation and healing. Reflective practice is not an add-on — it is the foundation of growth.
The outcome is not simply better parenting strategies. It is a deeper, conscious, shift: from fear to connection, from trying to control behavior to reading the language of behavior, from reopening old wounds to choosing to heal them — for our own sake, and for the generations that follow