Reborn without you

By Gabriela Traviesa Soria

After your departure there is only emptiness inside me, a pain form the soul that I don't know if one day I will stop feeling. How can I continue my life without you? “Reborn Without you” is more than a theory book about Thanatology, it is a book about self-help, full of shared knowledge, self-reflections and experiences. More than just the answer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Innovación Editorial Lagares de México, S.A. de C.V.
• Release date: May 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9786074106855

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Reborn without you

Copyright © 2020, Gabriela Traviesa Soria

D.R. © 2020 by Innovación Editorial Lagares de México, S.A. de C.V.

Gladiolas No. 225

Fracc. La Florida

Naucalpan, Estado de México

C.P. 53160

Teléfono: (55) 5240- 1295 al 98

email: [e-mail]

Twitter:@LagaresMexico

facebook: facebook.com/LagaresMexico

Front Cover Design

Diseño de Portada: Alejandra Anaya Frutos.

Editorial Supervision

Cuidado Editorial: Rosaura Rodríguez Aguilera.

ISBN Electrónic: 978-607-410-685-5

ISBN Printed: 978-607-410-679-4

First Published: may, 2021

Rather than fearing death, we should fear not living fully every day.

Gaby Traviesa

Acknowledgements

To you Mom, today September 3rd

I haven’t written to you in a while, but I remember you almost every day. I remember everything you taught me, all the love you gave me and all the values you instilled in me. Today, on the anniversary of your death, I thank you again for every rightful thing you did for me, and for making me who I am. Despite my faults and virtues, I am now a responsible adult, a mother who, like you, has tried to play the best of roles, transcending in LIFE. Without a doubt, like you did, I’ve made mistakes, but I also know that we learn as we go along. What is important is to learn the lesson.

Today, I apologize again for the things I kept to myself and for those I shouldn’t have, for judging some of your decisions. For not accepting you were depressed and for me being so demanding. For not being able to accept that you no longer wanted to live a low-quality life and for trying to save you as many times as necessary so I wouldn’t lose you. Maybe it was selfish, but we weren’t ready, or it was I who wasn’t ready to LET YOU GO.

You made me an empirical thanatologist and because of this I started to love helping others to go through the painfull path of illness, isolation, through all the remors and the guilt that comes with death. I have experienced the stages of grief, going through them helped me helping others in mourning to overcome them, reorganizing our emotions, feelings, thoughts, plans and in the process rebuild ourselves with new goals and projects. After the loss, after everything we have learned, after the legacy, the inheritance we will be REBORN once again.

For all this and much more:

I’M SORRY, THANK YOU, SO LONG AND FAREWELL.

… And further acknowledgments

I truly believe that there is so much to be thankful for every day, just being able to open our eyes and realizing we are alive. That every second of every minute of every hour is a new opportunity to carry out and complete projects. To reconsider and amend mistakes, to apologize and forgive and to say everything you have to say, especially the small but important things like Hi, goodbye and... THANK YOU!

I thank all those who believed in this small yet great LIFE project. My gratitude to all those who made possible the realization of this book, especially to Aida Cortizo for her support and guidance in this project, which perhaps took longer than I would have wanted, but which, ultimately, is another accomplishment in my life and one more check on my bucket list.

First of all, I thank God. Without a doubt, my greatest source of spirituality.

I thank my husband and my daughters for their love and support at all times.

And I thank my parents, for giving me the foundation to become the person I am. And, above all, to you dad, you were always my greatest admirer.... A PROMISE ACCOMPLISHED!

SO LONG!

Prologue

Love hurts when we lose someone. Due to love, their absence hurts. And it’s also because of love that they live in our memories. This way we can rebuild and move on. Just by thinking about them, we bring them back into our lives and they live on through us.

Thanatology is about the human side of medicine and in this book, Gaby shows us the human side of Thanatology. The experiences of a therapy, lessons learned, and reflections made by someone who is helping to heal others. She shows us that we are human, that the heart heals, that helping others... heals.

Reborn without you is more than a theory book of Thanatology, it is full of life experiences and feelings. It is more about how than of what. It shows us the paths along the way.

You, dear reader, will come to your own conclusions, your own reflections on life and death, on knowing how to ask for help and how to help others.

Throughout life there are many losses, but here we will know what is gained at the end: learning, strength, hope and love... a lot of love.

Writing to ponder, to heal, to share experiences and learnings is not an easy task. However, Gaby does it in a very simple way: from the heart, who always speaks in simple words and fluently.

Thank you, Gaby, for not only creating a self-help book, but for pointing out the importance of coping with grief and teaching me to remember without crying. You are the essential person, the accompanying angel who knows how to help us to overcome the difficult circumstances that at some point we all face as humans.

More than sadness for death and for the mourning experienced here, I think what this book left me with is a desire to live, realizing that I can choose and decide how to live and what experiences I want to take with me.

In this book, just as in life, Gaby’s experiences as a thanatologist and as a mourner are interwoven with the reflections, they left her, with her thoughts regarding death, but most of all, with thoughts and feelings about LIFE!

As a reader, at times I felt as if I was walking through a park, at others I felt my heart shrinking, and at others my own heart began to speak to me because I found my own reflections on each of the topics and cases presented here.

Therefore, enjoy these words that come from Gaby’s heart which will touch yours.

Valeria Lozano

Introduction

It’s so hard to talk about topics like Time, Love and Death!

Everyone has their own definition of these three concepts, as they are totally subjective ideas.

There are so many ways of loving and types of love, as well as different death figures. Time is so relative, that sometimes we think one day lasts longer than another; waiting for a journey, festival, concert or ceremony can feel like an eternity but for the one who is dying, time is short; it is never enough. For someone who is happy, death doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter.

Time is so relative, especially when it comes to love. One could say that love is eternal, and it can transcend time, or to others it could be ephemeral. I think we have to live life to the fullest, learning from either the bad or the difficult and appreciating health, home, family, friends, opportunities, and destiny, let’s call it: the MOMENT!

When we have to make a balance of our LIFE we can feel confident that we have indeed made the best version of our life and story. Sadly human beings have lost precisely their human part; they live inside this automaton being that pretends that everything is fine or makes others think that it is or only pretends to be okay in order to belong.

I feel, if before it was hard enough to grow up, now it’s even harder, more lonely, stressful and demanding. Technology is killing off what little humanity was left. I even thought about handwriting this book to make it more human, detaching myself from the keyboard, to really connect with what I was writing.

Just look around and see a world immersed in a cell phone, whether it’s texting, social networking or playing games to kill time or compete for mastering technological abilities. So why don’t we take a look around, try to meet the person next door, help an elder, or do something for others, without expecting anything in return, just for the pleasure of it? I invite you to try and give a gift of giving.

We are just so unaccustomed to being treated as human beings, of being heard, being helped, or just being kind, to be smiled at, or to be looked at in the eyes. Acts like these would be a gift that can be very rewarding if it is truly given from the heart.

Do we want to pass through life or have life pass us by?

Throughout my experiences as a thanatologist, I have thought a lot about what I still need to do in THIS LIFE. Without a doubt it was to write this book, to finish it, see it printed and, if I can make an impact in the life of one person, I would consider myself well served.

Clearly, there are many other things I would like to do and I hope I am given THE TIME.

But, as I said, time is relative. Death is a paradox since it is the only sure thing we have but it is also the most