Safety Advice

“Move your stuff from the floor. If there’s an earthquake, you might step on them and fall."
When I was a little girl, my mom repeated this phrase at least two times a week at night. We live in Peru, a country of major seismic activity. In a year, we might experience more than 500 tremors.

I grew up used to earth's movements happening at any time. When they started in the middle of the night, my sisters and I would wake up to dad’s trembling voice saying: “Girls, go out!”. We would stand together in our living room with sleepy faces but racing heartbeats, waiting for the windows to stop shaking, and the ceiling lamps to slower their swinging. Funny thing is: while we grew older, my sisters and I kept repeating mom’s advice every time we were preparing for bedtime. We moved clothes, shoes, books, or anything that was blocking our way towards the door and said with Mami’s voice: “Move your stuff from the floor. If there’s an earthquake, you might step on them and fall.” When I was 17 years old, my family moved to another country, because of my dad's job, and I stayed here in Peru, at a student's residence to begin my Bachelor’s degree studies. Long story short, I was having a bad time at University. My grades were good, and I loved my career choice, but my social life was terrible: I had no Friends, I wasn’t seeing my high school friends, which was a bad choice I made for the silliest reasons (guess it was a growing-up lesson) and spent most of my free time by myself, crying or blaming my boyfriend for everything that was happening at the time. I've never felt so lonely or misunderstood. While everyone was enjoying the parties, new friends and the adventures of being almost an adult, I was having a pretty tough identity crisis. One night I was alone in my room, angry at myself, trying to handle the anxiety and sadness and went to bed. Sleeping was an efficient way to numb the pain. I began the same ritual of moving my stuff from the floor, repeating my mom’s warning in my head and, suddenly, I stopped. I took a notebook and a pen I had on my desk and wrote: “I should move everything that could be an obstacle in my way, in case there’s an emergency.” This was a revelation to me: The phrase I repeated every night was more than a safety advice. It was a life lesson. I realized I was on an emotional emergency and many things were blocking my way out of it, like pessimistic thoughts, sad memories, bad habits, complicated relationships, burdens, guilt, judgments, and bad decisions. When I was doing fine, those obstacles didn’t bother me too much, I'd usually dodge them, but when facing rough times, they'd made me stumble and became more dangerous than the actual emergency I was going through. I started a healing process that took many years. Every day I thought about my life and the obstacles I was leaving in the way that needed to be moved. It was a daily routine. I decided to handle one day at a time. I'd write the obstacles I identified during the day, and for the next week or month, I would work on them in a process that involved forgiveness, understanding, patience and incredible findings. A clearing-the- way-journey that helped me in so many ways. I keep repeating the phrase written in my notebook, the words that became a mantra to me and still help me through tough times today.