Duelo: ¿Qué hacer si el dolor toca tu puerta? | Marisela Odreman | TEDxSanta Rosa Women
Marisela Odreman shares her journey through the devastating loss of two children - her son Jorge Gabriel at age 3 and her daughter Valentina at age 29 - explaining how she transformed her grief from a prison of anger into a source of service and love through conscious decision-making.
Summary
Marisela Odreman presents a deeply personal account of losing two children and how she learned to navigate grief differently each time. She became a mother at 18 and lost her first son Jorge Gabriel when he was 3 years old after a brief illness. This initial loss consumed her with anger and guilt - she couldn't say goodbye properly, forgot about her surviving daughter temporarily, and developed serious heart problems from the emotional trauma. She describes putting on 'black glasses' and seeing life through darkness. Years later, after having two more children, her daughter Valentina - who had become her colleague as a teacher - died at age 29, also leaving behind a 10-year-old daughter. However, Odreman's response to this second loss was fundamentally different. Though the pain was equally intense, she was able to say goodbye, hug and kiss her daughter, and give her permission to leave. When well-meaning people told her to 'be strong,' she refused that narrative, instead choosing to put on 'glasses of love' rather than glasses of pain. She emphasizes that pain became part of her life but would never again be her prison. Odreman concludes by offering three key concepts for dealing with pain: decision (choosing whether to stay stuck or move forward), action (implementing what you decide to do), and resilience (which she argues is learned, not innate). She transformed her pain into a source of service and love for others.
Key Insights
- Odreman argues that resilience is not an innate trait but rather a learned capacity that can be developed after experiencing great adversity
- She contends that grief responses can be fundamentally different even for similar losses, as demonstrated by her contrasting reactions to losing two children
- The speaker claims that pain can be transformed from a prison that traps you into a source of service and love for the world through conscious decision-making
- Odreman asserts that society's expectation for grieving people to 'be strong' is misguided, and that people have the right to reject this narrative and choose their own response to loss
- She maintains that while pain becomes a permanent part of life after significant loss, individuals have the power to decide whether that pain will control them or be integrated into a meaningful existence
Topics
Transcript
Unexecuted Estoy bien. Solo duele cuando respiro. No recuerdo ni cuando ni donde leí esa frase por primera vez y fue exactamente lo que sentí cuando perdí a mi hijo mayor. I was a very young mother, I was only 18 years old. I fell in love with my baby. I looked at him, I smelled him, I hugged him. I learned a lot about the evolution of the baby, about early stimulation, and I put all of that into practice to see him evolve over time. At the age of two, when Jorge Gabriel was born, Adriana was born. What a joy, the couple. I felt happy. The motherhood marked my life. At the age of three, six months…
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