An emotional first-aid kit for December: between memories and empty spaces
4 min readTatiana Sedano
«Las vueltas de la vida» — the turns of life — is such a common phrase, one we say without thinking twice when we run into someone we had not seen for years, or when we finally use something we learnt as teenagers and had never needed, or when it is even plainer than that: when our lives change sharply and we have to turn everything around and draw on strengths we did not always know we had.
Countless seemingly chance events, dots joining up along a road that becomes hard, sometimes hostile, dramatic and even merciless — and yet somehow our instinct to survive, our tragic optimism, as Viktor Frankl calls it, makes us stand up, face the new scene before us and say yes to life in spite of everything.
My name is Tatiana Sedano. I love life, and I love helping others see their own strengths. I firmly believe that all of us can have a full, free and meaningful life, whatever our personal, financial or health circumstances may be.
My life turned for good when my husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness and our children were only four years old. In that moment my plan for life dissolved. All my dreams were cut short, and that pushed me to open a way through completely unknown ground: a family of three, a change of work, what people might say, and my own sense of meaning put to the test, among other things. So I also trained as an existential coach in logotherapy, and I have kept exploring my inner life ever since.
One of the thoughts I kept coming back to, I do not know whether to lift my spirits or so as not to feel the sheer loneliness of that time, was that surely some people needed more help than I did, or that there were people who had lived through extreme hardship for years, or who, without any tragedy at all, felt an emptiness inside they could not explain. I cannot say more clearly how this let me breathe again and recharge for the next day, which would surely be harder still.
As the months and the years went by, the challenges kept coming. But by recognising what was valuable in me, in my life, and perhaps in the new dreams that were quietly appearing in my mind, I was managing to begin again, laying one brick carefully upon another.
By then I had become far more sensitive to the changes in my life and in other people's lives, which let me see that we all have a story to tell, and that we need to be heard and to hear others, to feel with them, to help and to learn how to receive help.
I saw then that we need to hold each other's moment, to celebrate each other's wins, to share our doubts and our discoveries, and to love our own process and everyone else's. To understand that each of us is a world and a truth, and that from there, being connected, we can all grow stronger and keep each other company.That is where the idea came from of creating the programme Las vueltas de la vida with the single purpose of sharing the stories of people of every calling and quality whom life has confronted, questioned and tested in their own sense of meaning.
Stories with ups and downs, challenges, anecdotes, tears, laughter and countless feelings, but which, through resolve, perseverance and finding meaning at every step, are today stories worth knowing. And also stories of ventures, projects and initiatives created from the soul and from the heart, with the common good in mind.
Las Vueltas de la Vida is a space made to be a bridge between a story full of meaning and a heart that needs to hear it. It is a programme made to build a society that looks after its mental health and works for a better world for all of us who live in it.
