Jumping into Love of Life

By Maria Antonieta Osornio Ramirez

After suffering a sky diving accident Maria Antonieta Osornio Ramirez (Tony) becomes paraplegic. In this autobiography, she depicts her soulful concerns and walks hand in hand with the reader through her dark world, with the intense suffering that burdens her and plunges her into the deepest desolation. Her pain can only absorb light, strength and color insofar as she finds an inner answer. A call to all humanity, Jumping into Love of Life makes the most perturbing revelations.
María Antonieta Osornio Ramírez jumps from death to life through a deluge of love, in a process that fills her with light. With the same fearlessness of her youth, when she would jump out into the void in a parachute, seeking total contact, the sublime intensity of the unreachable, contact with her most exciting and powerful emotions, she jumps today into life, in search of those experiences had only by those who, like herself, dare to give all of themselves.
Reading Tony is like reading in our own book of frustrations; it is every person ́s search for self, that deep wish we all have to jump into life, achieve and find out we can and that what we really are is the greatest of all secrets and revelations, because “we are simply love.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: DEMAC A.C.
• Release date: Jun 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311308931

Maria Antonieta Osornio Ramirez

Maria Antonieta Osornio Ramirez was born on July 10 1954 in San Juan del Rio, Queretaro, Mexico. In San Juan she studied for secretary. She then got married and became a military sky diver obtaining a sub-leutenant degree. Since 1992 she studied an intensive Human Development course with Dr. Marcela Musi. She is currently member of Eric Fromm's Humanistic School. Along with Martha Diaz de Babb she founded the Humanist Foundation for Handicap People (1997) and Cautive Attention (Telemarketing to help handicapped). She has one son, one daughter and three grandchildren.

Book preview

JUMPING INTO LOVE OF LIVE

Maria Antonieta Osornio Ramirez

Mexico 2010

Jumping into Love of Life

María Antonieta Osornio Ramírez

English edition by

Lisa J. Heller

Translation by

Martha and Laura Creel Galindo

Author’s photograph © Contempo

ISBN: 9781311308931

© Copyright, first edition, Mexico, 2010, by

María Antonieta Osornio Ramírez

Tel. [phone]

[e-mail]

E-book made by www.3Skreen.com for DEMAC through Smashwords.

Full or partial reproduction of this work, by any means –including electronic– without prior written permission of the copyright bearers is strictly forbidden.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Awakening

2 Wings of Freedom

3 Shadows of Death

4 The Fall

5 A Heart in Agony

6 Innocent Souls

7 Miraculous Angels

8 Flying without Wings

Introduction

My life might seem exceptional, but it is not. Hundreds, thousands of stories at least as dramatic as mine exist throughout the world, where, confined to a room, hidden within four walls, left on a bed, sofa or sometimes even the floor, disabled people abound. The only difference is that they remain anonymous, while my story has come to light. It is a testimony of what the life of any one of the other hundreds or thousands is like.

Sixteen years ago, my life took an inevitable turn when my accident occurred. Had someone told me then everything that I would experience, I would have stated categorically that I couldn’t withstand it. Had I been told then that in that new form of life I would encounter deep new meaning, nothing would have sounded more artificial.

When I entered the Autobiographies of Mexican Women competition, organized by Documentación y Estudios de Mujeres, A.C. [Documentation and Studies about Women Association], my first goal was to win the prize for the financial assistance it would provide. But the prize I won surpassed my expectations: my life and my struggle started to be publicized in many different places, stirring interest in truly understanding how it was possible to be so severely disabled yet happy. Without expecting it, my testimony started to become a vehicle of inspiration. Many people, especially the disabled, sought me out and requested interviews. They wanted me to help them achieve something that to them seemed impossible: to recover their faith and find their way back into society as capable and productive individuals. Ultimately, this was what my story was about.

With the support of my two teachers, Marcela Musi and Martha Babb, I started meeting and talking to colleagues. I felt unable to help, since I didn’t have professional training at the time: I was simply an individual who had fought ardently for her life and had been given the grace of receiving support and being led by great hearted beings. However, my teachers told me that while I didn’t have professional training, I had the most important element: experience. This was true as a first step, but, aided by my teachers, my personal process led me to train as a psychotherapist.

Never having planned it, the force of a purpose that surpassed my limited strength began embracing me. One morning, as I sat in my wheelchair, enjoying my garden and the warmth of the sun, I looked at my wheelchair and suddenly realized that I had never looked at it before, plainly acknowledging and accepting that this was my reality. With absolute clarity, certainty and

strength, the conviction emerged from my heart that I should devote myself

to the service of others who, like me, had lost a major part of their capacity to

physically move but whose souls still beat vehemently.

Frequently, the limited information available about disabled people prevents us from understanding and being aware of what it means to have to live with no legs, with no arms, without movement. Many people fail to realize that the disabled are human beings marginalized by society and often, tragically, by their own families. People tend to be unaware that disability plunges its victims into deep depression and loss of self-esteem, which is extremely difficult to overcome and leads us to believe we are in the way. Many times we are stuck for years inside a room, because there is, literally, no one who can lift us, and when there is someone who can, the shame of looking ugly, deformed, different, keeps us in hiding. It is difficult for society to understand us. Most average people don’t realize that we have special needs, and when they do, they feel uncomfortable having to move aside to let the wheelchair pass, for example, or having to help the disabled somehow. The disabled constantly need to politely and pleasantly ask for help, because we are seldom self-sufficient. In short, the life of disabled people involves dealing with a hostile environment caused by our situation and the world around us.

Just as a drop of water becomes a stream, within only a few months of my autobiography’s publication, a good part of my day was taken up on the phone, talking to individuals like myself and discovering, together, the possibility of changing their lives. Others came personally to my home, and I met with them as well.

It gradually became clear that something more structured than simply phone