Alma Ibáñez's Blog
June 24, 2024
Grieving
An emotion. Sense of loss, loneliness, and pain.
I can feel my heart aching. Needing, longing for your presence.
But I cannot change what happened.
“So young”, people say.
“She was the sweetest person in the world”.
And although I know they are not wrong it just hurts. And I feel anger. Then I’m in pain. Then I acknowledge what has happened, and then I deny myself again.
It is just a dream. She is okay, she will be. She must be…
But no. God had other plans.
Grieving is not just a sense of loss. It is understanding that your heart is broken and may never heal but you have to continue living incomplete. Learn how to deal with it and keep going.
Forever wanting your presence, wishing to hear your laugh.
Forever incomplete.
Grief. It's such a small word for a big meaning.
I can feel my heart aching. Needing, longing for your presence.
But I cannot change what happened.
“So young”, people say.
“She was the sweetest person in the world”.
And although I know they are not wrong it just hurts. And I feel anger. Then I’m in pain. Then I acknowledge what has happened, and then I deny myself again.
It is just a dream. She is okay, she will be. She must be…
But no. God had other plans.
Grieving is not just a sense of loss. It is understanding that your heart is broken and may never heal but you have to continue living incomplete. Learn how to deal with it and keep going.
Forever wanting your presence, wishing to hear your laugh.
Forever incomplete.
Grief. It's such a small word for a big meaning.
November 29, 2023
To understand Rosario Castellanos
Rosario Castellanos was an amazing woman. She was a writer, poet, teacher, and human rights advocate for the ethnic people. She was born and raised in Chiapas, an estate from southern México, next to the border with Guatemala. In Chiapas, it is prevalent to this day that some wealthy families hire people from the Indian communities who hardly talk in Spanish.
Rosario was raised by a native woman who shared her customs, traditions, and legends from her culture. They didn’t like to wear shoes or underwear, so many racist phrases from nowadays have their origin in these customers, for example, “Indio pata rajada”, which means Indian cracked barefoot, meaning that they used to walk without shoes, sometimes harming their feet.
Then Rosario wrote a novel called Balún Canan and it is the perfect picture of the differences between native people and Mexican people after the Conquer of Spain.
With this resume of Rosario's life, saying that her poems translated into English have the same impact is to lie. Yes, we have almost the same meaning, and the same words, however, something is missing. The impact of every word beautifully written and thought cannot be translated. Somehow the main idea is captured, but the feeling, the words, and the urgency of those words are not. We can see it in her poem Birth, we can capture the sad moment of a man who could never say his own words until he died, but the translation doesn’t capture the urgency of the man to be hidden, and how after he dies everyone had a story to tell about him.
But overall, to understand Rosario Castellanos and love what she wrote, you need to know her. It's like having a personal chat. Then the translation won't matter, because you would understand her mood, her soul, and the meaning of everything through meaningful words.
Rosario was raised by a native woman who shared her customs, traditions, and legends from her culture. They didn’t like to wear shoes or underwear, so many racist phrases from nowadays have their origin in these customers, for example, “Indio pata rajada”, which means Indian cracked barefoot, meaning that they used to walk without shoes, sometimes harming their feet.
Then Rosario wrote a novel called Balún Canan and it is the perfect picture of the differences between native people and Mexican people after the Conquer of Spain.
With this resume of Rosario's life, saying that her poems translated into English have the same impact is to lie. Yes, we have almost the same meaning, and the same words, however, something is missing. The impact of every word beautifully written and thought cannot be translated. Somehow the main idea is captured, but the feeling, the words, and the urgency of those words are not. We can see it in her poem Birth, we can capture the sad moment of a man who could never say his own words until he died, but the translation doesn’t capture the urgency of the man to be hidden, and how after he dies everyone had a story to tell about him.
But overall, to understand Rosario Castellanos and love what she wrote, you need to know her. It's like having a personal chat. Then the translation won't matter, because you would understand her mood, her soul, and the meaning of everything through meaningful words.
