Walking amidst the crisp cold air, a tempo of a quarter of a mile stride met the winter warmth. It was the peak of winter, in the Southern hemisphere, far away from home — Miami.
The 1900’s street posts a la Mary Poppins flanked the French doors and architecture a la Evita Perón- the First Lady of Argentina 1946–52. Eva departed the world at 33, thirty-three. I am thirty-three.
A city within a city, a break of the daily entrepreneurial life was a pre-requisite and had now become the norm in the new life post trauma. There are now two lines, two lives defined- pre <<1992-2025>> and post trauma <<2026, and beyond>>
In the midst of the storm, of the blurred line between a life that once was, and a life yet to be born, was a reality of uncertain territory. I was born again, yet who was I without the trauma?
That is the norm for complex PTSD, where there is on-going trauma for an extended period of time. During these timelines of survival, always ready to fight, on-going alertness, and a nervous system on override, that is when the individual develops cognitively and their personality is forged by trauma. When the trauma is gone, when the body exhaled, I did not know who I was without the chaos.
A peaceful home arose: a financial and environmental stability. It was too quiet; the cat was snoring in safety, for her too, was a stray cat living in the streets of Key Biscayne once upon a time, in a land now deeply distant and foreign for us both.
I grieved the life once lived; I was terrified of what was to come. That is when the body said, <<Ok, bring out the reserves, bring all the exhaustion, bring out all the instability, bring it out…it is safe to let go>>
And so, in March of this year it all exploded. Walking amidst Palermo in the ending of the southern summer, I felt dizzy. I felt like I was going to faint. Shake it off. Maybe it is the new diet I am on for TEDx. Before long, I was bedridden and unable to walk. Crying of frustration on the edge of the world, so far away from all I knew.
Panic attacks came. Yet, the body sent the mind to live as if the trauma of over a decade ago was on-going in the present reality.
I felt the mind melting.
Once, I could not speak.
My limbs were numb.
The right side of my face became numb.
That is when I genuinely thought I was done.
I am having a stroke.
Sitting in the dark , under the chandelier in the living room, it was 1am, then 2am, then 3am. I was crying of desperation. If I lost my mind, or had a stroke or a heart attack, that was the end of the world.
That is when I realized:
I am terrified of losing control.
I am terrified of losing my mind, or
More specifically, the ability to be independent.
My mind saved me.
My intelligence and intellectuality allowed me to escape a toxic world that perpetually caused trauma. If my mind melted, if the stroke came, then it was game over. I would have to go back to where I sought so hard to escape from.
The mind went into the worst case scenario, which is a classic case of trauma. We tend to take a situation and look at the worst scenario possible in order to plan if what if it came true. Spoiler, it doesn’t.
So, I was physically immersed in 2026 Buenos Aires in a peaceful and loving home, while the mind was stuck in 2016 Miami.
Over a year ago, I started EMDR therapy for complex PTSD: precisely in March 2025.
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a trauma-focused treatment in which a person recalls distressing experiences while the brain is engaged in bilateral stimulation, such as guided eye movements or tapping.
The memories of my traumatic past were no longer just memories. They lived in my body as sensations, emotions, and reactions.
(Hello, The Body Keeps the Score.)
To survive, my mind had learned to keep certain emotions out of conscious awareness. All this time, those emotions were still connected and stored inside my body.
With EMDR, my therapist and I attempted to access, reprocess, and release what remained distressing.
But something went terribly wrong when we worked on the most traumatic episode of my life,
I once escaped getting gang …. And killed in Little Haiti, Miami by a group of men. The escape, the way time stood still, where every decision was a milisecond away from death. I climbed wired fences, I ran barefoot for what seemed miles on end. I hid inside a bamboo bush while ants crawled up my back. I could not move, while I heard them going around. It was at this moment we had to stop the processing of that event.
Now, we didn’t get to the part that I had to come up with ways to get arrested in order to get the attention of the cops. It was either, get arrested or die.
We did not get into the part where cops found me bleeding from head to toe. Crying inside a convenience store. I was taken to the hospital. My nerves and shock was so heavy I was deeply sedated. I woke up days later, in a hospital bed, alone.
In present day Buenos Aires, 10 years later, that episode was unleashed open. However, something happened during the processing of this trauma that my nervous system was not able to integrate: that memory and episode was brought to the present, as if the trauma was currently happening.
On the walk back home from that session, on October 2025, I felt like fainting. I had to call an Uber. And so, EMDR was paused until I could stabilize myself again. However, my therapist had her limits, and for many months, she could not stabilize me.
In May 2026, after months of my body collapsing on me, I went to the ER. Crying of frustration. It had been three consecutive days of wanting to faint, of tachycardia, of being too weak to walk. I was desperate and frustrated.
Did EMDR break me?
Did it cause permanent damage in my life?
What is worst, my therapist began to pull back and she slowly began disappearing.
After ten months in therapy, and over one year of our relationship, I felt as though she had reached her limit, and I could feel her fear not loud, but silent.
Upon coming back from the ER, I made the decision to stop therapy with her. It was a deterioration that left me wondering, is she the right therapist for me? And so, like a great mentor once told me, when things are not working, next.
So, I made the decision to rest. I made the decision to detour from excavating the past relentlessly.
Maybe recovery is about realizing we cannot do anything about the past, but we can build a life towards the unknown with the wisdom of what we now know. Talking and talking about the past is not going to progressively get us anywhere.
Understanding the why things happened, or why people are the way they are, is not going to change anything.
True change comes from the acceptance that the trauma and memories are, indeed, real. True transformation comes from the decision to move forward with patience, hope, and fearless determination.
I began taking vacations in cities within a city. First Puerto Madero, and now I am writing this blog post in the Paris of BsAs.
During these vacations, the processing began of allowing the body to unleash stored trauma. I laid in bed listening to my heart, body, and mind. Agony reigned and I cried in a fetal position. My heart was profoundly heavy and saying <<listen to me, hold me, don’t deny the existence of your emotions>>
And so, through listening, crying, and eventually breathing, I began going through the storm in order to come out into a new beginning.
Slowly, the body thanked me, the soul became more and more light, and the mind, well, it is still getting used to living in the present where the body exists.
A friend from Switzerland 🇨🇭 once told me, <<it seems as if your emotions are disconnected from your body>> and he was right.
I began doing yoga again, going to Pilates, saying farewell to coffee, and walking again.
Was I in panic at times being outside with people? Absolutely. Crowded places trigger my mind back to being in a life or death situation.
Babies crying triggers my mind back to when I was a child crying in pain.
People staring at me in public, most likely because of how I dress and look, makes me hypervigilant.
When I feel someone walking behind me, I step aside and allow them to pass me.
The world still feels like where I once came from, but not where I now exist.
Patience. Love. Acceptance. Slowly, the mind will catch up.
In the meantime, I keep raising my eyes to the angels in the clouds, in honor of the Lord. I was saved from above. It is inevitable to realize that I was saved by God.
