Memoirs of a Centaur: A woman's journey to freedom

By Mercedes Ciccociopo and Tamara Herraiz

Juana seemed to have it all. She had finally reached that important position she had been looking for in the company she was working with. And she also knew she could reach other professional goals and even fame. However, when she moved to a new city because of her job, she felt the need to "move" in more than one sense. She started traveling, getting away from it all… but, even though she had been dreaming about it during her whole life, it seemed that it was not enough nor were the relationships she would develop on the way. Her life was a constant emotional roller coaster, driven mainly by the influence of the exterior, of others, of the struggle between the "must be" and the "to be." And so, on her deep inner journey, she started realizing that what she actually needed was simply to live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muíños de vento
• Release date: Jan 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9789874826657

Book preview

Cubierta

Ciccociopo, Mercedes

Memoirs of a centaur: A woman's journey to freedom / Mercedes Ciccociopo. - 1a ed. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Muiños de Vento, 2023.

Digital book, EPUB

Translation: Laura Estefanía.

ISBN 978-987-48266-5-7

1. Memoria. 2. Novelas Biográficas. 3. Autoaprendizaje. I. Estefanía, Laura , trad. II. Título.

CDD A863

© 2022, Mercedes Ciccociopo

All rights reserved

Cover Design: Jimena Guida

Translation and Editing: Laura Estefanía

Published by Muiños de Vento Editorial

Soldado de la Independencia 864, Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina

@muinosdevento

[e-mail]

Digital edition in English by Muiños de Vento Editorial. Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 2022.

This eBook may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored or rented, transmitted or transformed, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, by photocopying, scanning or other methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Infringement is punishable by laws 11.723 and 25.446 of the Argentine Republic.

ISBN 978-987-48266-5-7

Epub production: Libresque

Mercedes Ciccociopo

Memoirs of a centaur

A woman's journey to freedom

Acknowledgements

To my mother and my father who, although it took me a long time to realize it, raised my brothers and me in freedom. To my nieces, who helped me discover what love is. To all the people who accompanied and accompany me during this journey that is life. Thank you for being my best mirrors.

PROLOGUE

And one day I decided to write, and one day I started writing. And that day is today, September 4th, 2016. It is Sunday, it is raining in Buenos Aires, and it is very cold, too cold for me, too cold for the horse that needs to feel the sun on her skin, scantily clad and free. And then I think about hibernating, and I google hibernation, and I find some definitions:

Hibernation is a long and deep dormant state, followed by very slow awakening. Metabolism is reduced in order to sustain breathing and not much more.

I need to sleep more in winter, I withdraw into myself, my movements are slow, it is hard for me to go out at night. I limit myself to do only the most essential tasks. I wake up, I go to work, I meet my friends and family, every now and then I go out and I sleep and rest a lot. I am afraid I might get used to this. I am scared of not living those moments with the intensity they deserve. Maybe it is the horse in my head that thinks that if she is not galloping, moving forward, then she is not living.

But on the other hand I think, yes, it is living: to sleep, to rest, to reflect, to look at oneself, it is also part of living. To me, it is to gather energy for what is to come. But, as I said before, all this is under review. I am under review.

I found something very interesting in the definition I quoted before:

Metabolism is reduced in order to sustain breathing and not much more.

I repeat it in my head. That is also living.

Hibernation is an ability of some animals that allows them to save their energy during winter. Not all animals use the same method to hibernate.

And not all people are the same. There are those who love winter. I consider winter as a necessary step to reach the summer. In another time in my life, I used to say that winter is a season that we have to get through. As if I didn’t like to live it and enjoy it. Now I think differently. I consider it necessary. I am using this season to connect with my own self. And also to rest. Because that connection takes a lot of energy.

In winter, days are shorter and nights longer. However, in the countries near the equator the situation is different. Instead of winter and summer, their seasons are marked by the average rainfall and other meteorological phenomena. In any case, there is always a season that invites us to go inside, and to rest.

Nature is perfect. The problem is that we have distanced ourselves from it. It is difficult for us to understand that the need to sleep, to rest and to stay at home that we feel in winter (or in the rainy seasons), is not other thing than to be connected with nature.

The horse also need to rest. In nature, horses are prey to predators and because of that they have a strong flight or fight instinct. Their first reaction to a threat is to get scared and run away, but they are also able to defend themselves when they cannot escape or when their young are threatened. They are usually curious animals, and when they get scared they try to find out what causes their fear and do not always flee when they discover that there is danger.

Here I am. I am searching for the cause of my fears, I try to confront them and not to run away anymore so that I can run free, not so much as a horse, but as a centaur.

Here I am then, in the struggle between the basic instincts and the civilized behavior of mankind.

The word civilized makes me crack a smile. For what is civilized? The answer will depend on whom we ask. According to one interpretation, centaurs are wild beings, without laws or hospitality, slaves to animal passions.

Many legends about them maintain that they are very fickle creatures, that they usually look at the sky to determine their destinies.

How many times did I look at the sky praying for something that I didn’t even know what it was. After all, I was asking the sky to decide for me. Until Saturn came to pay a visit. He calmed down the centaur. Saturn shook me and said: Take responsibility. No one is going to decide for you. You have to take your own decisions. So as to know what to decide, the first step is to look into yourself, to get to know yourself deeply, to align your thoughts with your actions. To empower yourself.

I hated Saturn, I hated it with all my heart. I blamed him for my sorrows, my loneliness, my emotional imbalances. At times I feel I didn’t take advantage of it as I should have. We usually think any point in the past was better. We regret about those things we didn’t do. For that reason we usually feel longing.

Here I am then, writing these Memories of a Centaur, combining the autobiographical and the fictional: coming to terms with the shades of gray and the dichotomies of life. With no other purpose than to live and tell.

THE MOVE

Juana was at her new house, thinking. She was feeling stuck. She couldn’t figure out what was it that she wanted. She was entangled in her own thoughts and couldn’t find a way out. She told herself that she should let herself go with flow, let herself go. Not think too much. Was it the ravaging birds of the centaur that were chasing her? The recurring headaches made her think that all was a product of her imagination that never stopped. She couldn’t find her place. She read and thought. But there was no clarity in her thoughts.

It was the first time that Juana had left the city where she was born (Buenos Aires) to settle in another city that, although in the same country, remained different, even the way people talked. It was Córdoba, or the Republic of Cordoba, as its settlers would prefer to call it. To leave her place of origin, at least for a while, was something she had always dreamed of; actually she would have preferred to settle in another country, but being things as they were, she felt the change as something positive. This move to another city had been due to her job.

Since the day of her move, Juana hadn’t had enough time to reflect. She didn’t have it, or she didn’t give it to herself, probably a combination of both. It is not easy to give ourselves time for inner connection, it means a great effort to reach the depth of feelings and emotions. There are so many distractions, especially in these days in which we live connected to everything and everyone, except ourselves.

Juana could not withdraw herself from those plans, from her ambitions, from devoting her whole time to think in what to do next, what she was going to do for a living, where she was going to live next, who she was going to be with, whether she was going to stay single, whether she wanted to have children or not. So many thoughts were diverting her away from her feelings. They were also telling her that she was not capable of feeling. And that is what she believed. But something kept growing inside of her. It was the need to confront her fears in order to move forward. Each day she was more and more convinced that her greatest fear was to connect with her emotions.

While talking with a guy she was getting to know at work, he told her that he used to be very scared of heights, that he had suffered from fear of flying. So he had decided to become a pilot. That story resonated in Juana’s ears. She even went so far as to tell him that his were manageable fears, because they were related to practical things. If hers were related to height, or elevators, or water, they would have been much simpler to deal with, to go through and overcome. Because her fears were different, deeper. Nothing from the outside scared her; it was what was going inside of herself that she was afraid of. A therapist had made her realize that.

Passing through. That is what life seems to be about. Passing through barriers. She remembered the movie (and the book) that inspired her the most during her adulthood, Eat, pray, love. She had watched it many years ago, at another time in her life. Nevertheless, that movie kept showing her that she had some pending issues, that she still needed to forgive herself in many ways. That is the reason why it touched her to the point of tears every single time she watched it. She had some emotional trauma. And she had been thinking for a while that her worst fear was dealing with her emotions. Her fears came from inside her.

How to get over it then? Some fear like I’m afraid of flying is so much simpler. It is easier to overcome: I jump onto an airplane, I push myself to do it, I do it, I go through the experience, I overcome it. That’s it.

But what did fear of emotions mean? Or fear of connecting with her emotions? What emotions? For an analytical and practical person like her, all this was so subjective, that she couldn’t put a name to it, label it, she couldn’t put it in words: emotions, what was an emotion? What did emotional immaturity mean? If she didn’t even know the meaning, how could she confront it, go through it and overcome it then?

While she was thinking about all this, putting her analytical and practical mind to work, she turned on the WIFI on her laptop and just googled emotions.

Emotions are psychophysiological reactions that we all experience: joy, sadness, fear, anger. They are known by all of us, but not because of that they care of complexity. Even if all of us had felt anxiety or nervousness, non all of us are conscious that a wrong management of these emotions may carry a blockage or even sickness.

That was closer to her understanding. Emotions are psychophysiological reactions that represent modes of adaptation to certain stimuli by the individual when perceiving an important object, person, place, event or memory.

She was not at all convinced by the definition. She kept googling.

Maybe what she lacked was the connection with her emotions. Juana was very used to ignore them. To act like nothing had happened and move forward. She felt that that was the only way she could progress in life. Because that was what had helped her get where she was, so far, and she did it by taking steps forward.

The thing is that it was exactly that what had also driven her away from her feelings, not taking enough care of herself, investing so much energy in other people, in the outside, and not in the inside.

It was time to make a change. It was time to carry out the move. It was time to give herself the time she needed. It was time to connect with her emotions. For that, she was going to ask for help.

So she began with guilt. What did she feel guilty for? She was trapped between the TO BE and the MUST BE. But her mistake was feeling that this was happening to her for the first time ever. The fact was that that trap came from long ago. She had been raised, and had spent the most of her life, living in the MUST BE. And she had made it so deep, so hers, that she had forgotten TO BE. So from that moment on, everything had been the MUST, everything had been thinking, and almost no feeling at all. Even her teenage sexuality was experienced by her on the must and the thinking. When her hormones began to kick in, when her sexuality bloomed, she just repressed it. She experienced it in absolute loneliness, and with a huge amount of guilt. As she grew up, she released some of that energy, but always with guilt.

Where were her emotions then? One Sunday night, while sitting on the couch of her new home in Cordoba and watching the movie Valentine’s Day, emboldened by the wine she was drinking, she reflected about this and tried to connect with her teenage emotions.

Excitement and guilt were linked together. The feeling of guilt was not left. That feeling of doing something wrong, even if her mind told her she was not, was still there.

And was that what she was doing now again? But her body was asking for something different. And now, at her 38 years, she was much more aware of it. Much more conscious about what her body needed. It was real that sometime she needed to have sex. Had that turned her into a less valuable woman? Maybe not. The question was at what cost she did it. Who she did it with. And to accept that she had desire, lending herself to it and let it go, without judging herself, without limiting herself, without feeling guilty or punishing herself after it. To accept that this was also part of her inner search.

When that year of 2017 began, Juana asked for one thing: TO FLOW. But by mid-year she felt she needed something more: CONNECTION with her emotions and feelings.

Juana dreamed of that. She dreamed of feeling so much peace in her heart, of being so conscious about her emotions and feelings, that everything she could see ahead was light. She felt her heart beating fast every time she connected with that. That was the path. She glowed.

She didn’t want anything to distract her from that state of spirit. How to make it last? She felt that way many times when she danced, traveled, and she felt it when she wrote. She let herself go and at times she forgot about her mind and whatever was in her heart flowed out.

Her body was light, her headaches stopped, her skin had a tingling sensation, as if her soul was coming out of her body and at the same time surrounded her completely. If someone had been able to see her that moment, she felt as she was a white light body, very intense in the centre and fading from her skin outwards, melting into the rest of the landscape. On the couch in her new home, in this new place that was not absolutely hers yet but which, besides that, every time she returned to, she felt it like home, a feeling of belonging. A place where she could just BE and reflect. Her refuge.

The search had just begun.

THE UNCERTAINTY

A little over a year had gone by since Juana moved out. Since her change of house, of city, a physical movement that represented much more than that, somehow she felt that it was a new path. Or the door to a new path.

She was searching for her place in the world. And her whole life she had been looking outside. But one day she was visited by Saturn, and Saturn stayed during three years, talking to her, proving her, taking her to places she didn’t want to be taken. This, to a centaur, who could handle it all, who was always stepping forward.

Liz Greene explains In her book Uranus in the Natal Chart that Saturn has a way to make us become aware of what we are through the discovery of what we are not, and then, maybe we discover that we’re not so emotionally independent as we thought we were.

The centaur became suddenly confused, looking