Journal Potuguese Release - February 2024 - Flipbook - Page 86
85
the Maturity as a wife
Collaboration
Respect
and many other Strengths...
A multicolored and fragrant Garden
to restore energy and rejoice. Because the Gardener that lives in you knows
that
after the rain comes the rainbow
and after winter, spring always comes.
Second Story: Breaking the Shell of Fear
Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering /
There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in (Leonard Cohen) 8
I don't think Leonard Cohen ever met her, nor that she ever heard that song, but
the 35-year-old who walked into my office seemed to be a living example of these
words from the singer. From the age of 6, her father began a sequence of sexual
violence that lasted until she was 13, when she finally managed to leave home to
live with an aunt and never saw him again. During those seven years of daily
suffering, her strategy to get rid of those aggressions was to “get out of here”: she
used to call her friends to play, visit her aunts, or stop by her colleagues' houses
to study. Sometimes she tried to tell people close to her what she was going
through, but no one believed her. So, she decided to shut up. The bell remained
silent for nearly thirty years and her father became a ghost who haunted her from
time to time. Until, one day, her sister brought the news that her father was very
sick, almost dying, and needed the family's care. Despite being separated, her
mother agreed to bring him home and, after thirty years away, the girl found
herself facing a great dilemma: to take care of the father or not?
8
Cohen, L. (1992). Anthem. The Future Album. Columbia Records: 1992. Access:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg&ab_channel=LeonardCohenVEVO
Gardening Narratives and Writing Stories
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy February 2024 Release, www.journalnft.com, p. 7191.