Journaling for Transformative Learning
Journalilng for Transformative Learning
As an educator and a healer, I’ve learned that journaling can be an instrument to dig into your soul, understand your past experiences, address the hurt you might have experienced and health your wounds. Living an “examined life” as Socrates recommended, can help you break old patterns of thought, and open your potential for compassion.
TRANSFORMATION THROUGH COMPASSION
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Qué Será, Será?
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
How could we best support children?
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Anger: Our deadliest sin
When Anger Turns Fatal: Our Collective Responsibility
You may remember this case. In 2007, the world was shaken by devastating news: Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old South Korean E
nglish major, killed 32 people and then took his own life at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. It remains the deadliest shooting rampage by a single gunman in modern U.S. history.
As that tragedy reminded us, unchecked anger has the power to destroy families and drive human beings to commit unthinkable acts.
In the aftermath of killings like this one, enormous WHYs hammer our minds. Cho killed his fellow students without a word of warning. With chilling composure, he left campus after the first two killings, mailed his videos to a news network, and returned to continue the massacre. Do we really need to ask why?
What is our responsibility?
It is tempting to excuse ourselves from any share of responsibility by saying that Cho was mentally ill, that his classmates tormented him — perhaps without fully understanding the impact of their cruelty — or that the roots of his suffering lay in exposure to toxic chemicals from his family’s dry cleaning business. His sister said publicly that his family had never been able to envision that he was capable of so much violence.
But why not?
How is it possible that not one person perceived the magnitude of the rage Cho had been carrying — rage that ultimately exploded into a fatal episode? Perhaps we have learned to treat anger as an inevitable feature of human nature, an emotion that does not need to be understood or transformed. Many even justify it, offering us the image of a wrathful God or of a loving Jesus who was still capable of enough fury to drive merchants from the Temple.
And yet we know better. From this painful lesson, and from the many mass killings that have followed, we might learn that our society would be far better served if people came to understand God and Jesus — or whatever name we give to the sacred — as synonyms for joy, love, and compassion.
Why was Cho so alone that no one helped him work through his anger, calm his fears, or find his way out of his hatred? After the killings, it is impossible to say this was “none of our business.” We are not the same people we were before mass violence occurs. It is, inescapably, our business.
Compassion for the victims. But also for the perpetrator?
Beyond the profound compassion I feel for the families and friends of those lost in mass killings, I also carry, at the level of my soul, a deep compassion for people like Cho — those who appear to have lived tortured lives from which they found no exit. And I commit to advocating not only for a zero-tolerance-to-violence society, but for a zero-tolerance-to-indifference world.
A few weeks after events like these, the tragedy may fade from our daily conversations, but it is never truly forgotten. We may choose to forgive the perpetrators and question whether the tragedy could have been prevented. But nothing healing comes from hatred, and nothing changes from pointing fingers.
Our shared responsibility
If, from a spiritual standpoint, we are all one, what does that mean for us as a society? “We fell down with everyone in that classroom,” one blogger wrote in the days after Virginia Tech. Let the investigations about delayed warnings and institutional failures run their course. What matters equally is what we decide to do with the grief and discomfort these events awaken in us.
I comfort myself on such dark days with this: when violence strikes our hearts with terrible force, it can — extraordinarily enough — also crack them open. It can lead us to cherish life more fully, to reflect on how we might contribute to building a more compassionate society, and to ask how we can cultivate and teach the socioemotional skills that develop empathy — at home, in schools, and in our communities.
Let us take a moment each day to express our love to those mourning after these tragedies — including the families of the perpetrators. And then let us take another moment to reflect on our common responsibility. A world where we truly support one another is not a dream beyond reach. It is the world we choose to build, one relationship at a time.
Reseñas Hombres con Rabo de Paja
Novela: Hombres con Rabo de Paja por Silvia Casabianca (Editorial Icono, 2024)
Descripción: Hombres con Rabo de Paja de Silvia Casabianca Zuleta transcurre a orillas de un puerto ficticio sobre el río Magdalena en un período crucial de la violencia en Colombia. La historia sigue a Jerónimo, obsesionado con desenmascarar a quienes arruinaron a su padre Farías Bermúdez, un comerciante arrastrado por la corrupción política. Su búsqueda de verdad se convierte en una lucha contra su propio deterioro mental, entretejida con la búsqueda de identidad de un adolescente y un secreto de mujeres que solo se revela al final.
Reseñas
Clara Vargas: Un viaje al mundo interno del protagonista
Jerónimo pasa de soñar con ser fotógrafo de paisajes en la ciénaga de su pueblo a presenciar cómo el mundo que conocía se desdibujaba y, aunque no se rompió del todo, quedó desalineado para siempre. Hombres con rabo de paja nos lleva hacia un viaje al mundo interno del protagonista, mediante escenas que señalan la violencia cotidiana y la corrupción en diferentes esferas de la vida de un pequeño pueblo que, a pesar de ser ficticio, puede representar cualquier pueblo colombiano.
Con una prosa introspectiva y sensorial, la violencia no se explica, sino que se filtra en la conciencia del narrador a través de confesiones en el diario de Jerónimo, como la siguiente, en la que el río no es solo un escenario, sino un agente de descomposición moral.
Pensé en mi muerte cuando el otro día en “La Exitosa” sentado de cara al río, vi bajar cadáveres que flotaban en las aguas. Mi mundo torció un poco su eje. “¿De dónde salen?” le pregunté a Pascual María. “Se rumorea que son víctimas de la violencia en los campos, en los pueblos”, me dijo. Hubiera preferido no verlos: el agua infla los cuerpos y el sol, las aves, los manatíes y los peces van blanqueando y despedazando los cuerpos flotantes, hasta que el río los descarga en algún playón de las orillas donde el sol y los goleros terminan de borrar la humanidad del difunto.
Un libro interesante que no solo plasma muy bien el contexto histórico, sino que nos introduce en la mente del protagonista, que se deteriora en soledad, al mismo tiempo que se refleja el desgaste del orden familiar y social, tal como el río borra la humanidad del difunto.
Aura Cenzato: La trayectoria de Farías Bermúdez en Hombres con Rabo de Paja
El corazón de la novela de Silvia Casabianca queda enmarcado en las décadas de 1940 y 1950, incluyendo las elecciones de 1946, cuando el liberalismo sale del poder y se recrudece la violencia bipartidista. El tema álgido es el nombramiento del nuevo alcalde de Aguadal (pueblo ficticio), que viene del gobernador conservador y no por voto popular.
Este, sin embargo, no se opone a un alcalde liberal, en aras del gobierno de unidad nacional que se proclamaba en esos días.
Farías Bermúdez, hijo de un campesino desplazado tras la derrota del general Rafael Uribe Uribe en 1900, crece marcado por el anhelo paterno de romper el ciclo de pobreza. Entregado a su tía Horacia—viuda acaudalada de Aguadal—, sobrevive a una relación contradictoria hecha de altivez, despotismo y encariñamiento. Armado con la máxima paterna—”En la vida, todo depende de la habilidad que desarrolles y de las oportunidades que aproveches”—, se vuelve taimado y astuto, inmune a recriminaciones. Tras estudiar en Barranquilla y participar en la rebelión del recién formado sindicato petrolero en Barrancabermeja (1926), retorna a Aguadal para convertirse en próspero comerciante, dueño de la miscelánea “La Exitosa”.
De parte de la autora no hay indulgencia con nadie, ni siquiera con el lector: Farías es contradictorio, déspota con su mujer e hijas, ofensivo con su hijo Jerónimo, quien arde en un deseo compulsivo de leer, en lugar de ser comerciante. Jerónimo es un personaje al que se quisiera abrazar, rescatar, salvar, pero se precipita hacia un destino trágico.
Es un libro escrito desde la provincia, un microcosmo ejemplar donde se tejen relaciones buenas y malas que permiten extrapolarlas a paradigmas universales. A pesar de su formación bogotana, es sorprendente el conocimiento que Casabianca tiene de la provincia, su inmersión en esa peculiar cultura de pueblo, llena de la complicidad que han perdido las grandes urbes—tanto en lo malo, como la politiquería, como en lo bueno: la solidaridad frente a tragedias.
Todos los personajes se mueven dentro de un contexto minucioso, muy colombiano, lleno de detalles que le dan vida y credibilidad a la narración, casi como si presenciáramos una obra teatral brotando desde las entrañas del mismo pueblo.
Ángel Galeano H.: una propuesta psicológica interesante y actual.
Editor, Autor, Facilitador de talleres literarios.
“La historia se impone y la construcción de los personajes armoniza con sus naturalezas, en una propuesta psicológica interesante y actual. Démosle la bienvenida a esta pluma que irrumpe en la narrativa colombiana, refresca la atmósfera y nos alienta a quienes vivimos pendientes de nuevas voces creativas en medio de tanta banalidad e insipidez“.
Reseña completa en su website
Lina María Pérez G. Autora, catedrática: Las mujeres de Aguadal, donde transcurre la novela
“Sebastiana, Festiva, Joaquina, Horacia, Eleonora, Lucinda y Felipa son algunas de las mujres sin rabo de paja que acompañan la historia de Aguadal, desde comienzos del siglo XX hasta la época de la violencia. Mujeres que saben mirar con desdén y callar con rabia las convenciones de una época en la cual el destino femenino es una camisa de fuerza.
“Aguadal es un pueblo hirviente a orillas del Magdalena donde mandan los hombres, ordenan el mundo y hacen prevalecer sus vanidades, aspiraciones y autoridades. Farías, dedicado al comercio, es un principal del pueblo que, de carambola, se ve nombrado alcalde y resulta víctima de manipulaciones de los amigos con intereses políticos al margen de la ética. Su esposa Sebastiana, madre de varios hijos, es el pilar que sostiene las derrotas y entusiasmos generados por las decisiones de Farías. Es una mujer de su casa, con la desesperanza en su cara, en su piel, y en las frustraciones de un matrimonio fallido.
“Es una novela narrada en tercera persona con una narrativa convencional, que hace contraste con la voz del diario íntimo de Jerónimo. Hijo de Farías y Sebastiana, él se propone observar y registrar el mundo decadente en el que vive. Cuando su padre es condenado por malos manejos en la alcaldía, la familia cae en desgracia emigrando a Cartagena. El hijo rebelde permanece en Aguadal en un mundo enmarañado en el que solo tienen sentido las ficciones literarias, y su obsesión por vengar al padre. La tarea de descubrir a los conspiradores lo va llevando a perder la cabeza, a arrinconarlo poseído por un demonio.
“Personajes, situaciones, ritmo descriptivo, argumento coherente con una atmósfera opresiva y una certera dosis de suspenso son los elementos que componen la intriga de la novela. Pero también hay una mirada sobre la escritura como protagonista y motor de la historia. Y creo que es ahí donde está el valor literario de la novela. El acto de escribir, encarnado en la obsesión de Jerónimo, constituye la potente conciencia narrativa en contraste con el discurso descriptivo del narrador en tercera persona. Es la conciencia registrada en cuadernos, que uno tras otro van formando el mosaico de memorias y azares. La escritura de Jerónimo va evolucionando de la mera exposición de situaciones y episodios, hasta la descarnada confesión de su complejidad interior: “Escribo para no olvidar, para contrariar el caos… yo quisiera arrancarme el corazón del pecho, quedarme sin entrañas.” Jerónimo es el único hombre que no tiene rabo de paja. Se juega su testimonio en la búsqueda de un lenguaje potente que conduce al lector no a perder la cabeza, pero sí a descubrir el secreto que cierra la historia”.
Comentario de Elizabeth Beaufort (Lili): Lenguaje propio de la buena literatura
La novela de Silvia Casabianca Zuleta está excelentemente escrita con el detalle suficiente y el lenguaje propio de la buena literatura. Se ubica en un pueblo X del Sur de Bolívar, pero la historia es bastante universal, podría darse en cualquier ciudad latinoamericana y también describe una problemática muy actual. Me llamó más la atención la segunda parte de la novela. En la primera, se plantea el problema, la corrupción y las intrigas de los mandamás del pueblo, pero en la segunda parte, Jerónimo, el personaje principal e hijo de alcalde que termina en la cárcel -algo previsible-, opera como la conciencia social y política de unos hechos. Con sus pesquisas e indagaciones incansables, al tiempo que se deteriora su salud y se corroe la sociedad en que vive, evoluciona el contexto y lo profundiza para entender un poco más el ambiente social y político de este pueblo. Me gustó que hubiera introducido hechos históricos colombianos como el Bogotazo y el robo de las elecciones en 1970. El final tiene su misterio, un recurso literario interesante.