MARINA OPPENHEIMER BOOKS AND BLOG

  El otro día me cayó entre manos un dicho que no conocía y que me dejó asombrada. Decía así: “ Aquellos que siempre ayudan a los demás están haciendo por otros lo que quisieran que otros hagan por ellos.” . Soy generosa de nacimiento y ayudar a otros es para mí un reflejo casi biológico. Ayudar a otro cuando lo necesita es para mí como colocar la pieza correcta en un rompecabezas; de ninguna manera lo hago esperando que otro haga lo mismo conmigo. Reconozco que a veces exagero en ofrecer mi ayuda, hasta el punto en que la gente a veces se asombra de mi actitud. Como decía el Buda, incluso hacer el bien en demasía tiene consecuencias negativas. Hace unos años conocí a una pareja de jóvenes de mi país con quienes tenía la costumbre de encontrarme en la playa a charlar; aunque siendo ellos mucho más jóvenes, lo nuestro nunca fue una amistad verdadera. Al cabo de unos meses ellos decidieron partir hacia otro país a buscar mejor suerte profesional. El día de la partida ofrecí llevarlos...

In my building there is a man that I will call Paco whom, in the ten years I have lived there, I have never seen smile. Paco, is married, has a young son, a good job and good benefits. Yet, he does not know how to thank a gift, ask for forgiveness when he is wrong, often does not greet those who cross his path, and he treats others as if he hated them. If I were to write a report about what his past life was like, I would probably find losses, difficult moments, beings who did not love him, and several others who criticized him. But when I look back on my own life, I discover those same losses, those dark unending nights, and those adversarial faces. More than once, I wondered how my neighbor managed to get out of bed every morning with that dense sadness on his soul. Furthermore, how many more times did I compare his mornings to the way I open my eyes to the world every day. It was this comparison that helped me unveil Paco's s ecret once and for all. Paco is one of those beings w...

  Some time ago I met a woman on the beach whose husband had died a couple of months earlier. Since she was originally from the same country where I was born, it was not difficult for both of us to start an intimate conversation about our lives. Because she was still in the bereavement period for the loss of her husband, I let her talk about him and her marriage without interrupting. Besides, being a psychotherapist by profession, the lives of others are my main point of interest. It was then that she told me that she had had a wonderful marriage, and that when her husband came home from work, he always invited her to go out. If that did not happen, they spent several hours having a drink, talking and dining in the superb backyard of their home. In other words, life with this man had been splendid, and she now deeply longed for his presence. Since my psychotherapy orientation is systemic, after she stopped talking, I asked her if she had any children. It took her a while to tell me...

  There is no doubt that the lives of all of us are filled with hardships and losses; and yet, in order to continue living, we must accept and overcome the challenges that life sends our way. Like everyone else, I too lived moments of terrible suffering since my adolescence. At that time in my life I had fallen in love with a boy who, despite his young age, already showed a tendency towards psychopathic traits. Because my parents were emotionally distant, I became extremely dependent of this teenage romance; and when my boyfriend decided to leave me, the only option I contemplated was suicide. It was then that one night, when my parents had gone to the movies, I decided to swallow eighteen aspirins. Luckily, after swallowing the last one, I felt regret and asked my aunt to call my parents. As expected, their reaction was a cataclysm, but not being very sophisticated in psychological matters, they did not even think of making an appointment with a psychologist or a psychiatrist. As ...

Cuando un cumplea ñ os se repite su mensaje no siempre es el mismo; de joven me sabía a independencia, a caminos no andados, a omnipotencia.   Luego tuvo el aroma de jornada acabada, de deseo que el tiempo había marchitado, el perfume de momentos no vividos y de besos en el recuerdo perdidos.   Ma ñ ana de madrugada se repite ese día en que la fuerza del destino me trajo al mundo, pero esta vez su letanía ya la conozco, porque sabe a proyectos cumplidos, a tareas terminadas, a una mirada clara y, más que nada, a serenidad conseguida.  

 Thousands of times in my life, when faced with a difficult situation that suddenly resolves, I exclaimed: "I am really lucky!" However, over the years and with the number of times that extremely complex situations suddenly got resolved in my favor, the term "luck" became obsolete and incorrect; It was then that I decided to replace it with a more transcendent one. A few days ago I had to drive from Miami Beach to Coral Gables to go to the dentist. After almost an hour of driving in endless traffic, I finally arrived at the dental office. Later, when the treatment ended, I went to the parking lot to get my car and start my way back to the beach. It was when I turned onto Coral Way that my car stopped accelerating and started moving from front to back. I turned on the hazard lights and started looking for a space to stop; right away I saw on my right a gas station that, in addition to gasoline, also offered mechanical repairs. Wasting no time, I parked the car and ap...

  When I heard Denzel Washington, one of my favorite actors, talk about his mother in this way, I felt that he had explained in very simple words the complex nature of a mother/son relationship. The subject came up because the actor's mother had died recently at the age of 97. Then Colbert pulled out of the drawer a photo of Denzel with his wife on one side and his mother on the other side while at the 1990 Academy Awards. Not surprisingly, the picture of his mother brought tears to his eyes; the actor could not help but sob while he talked about her. I do not know if these beautiful words are the work of Denzel Washington or somebody else; what I know is that they perfectly describe what mothers feel for their adult sons. I do not mean to say that daughters are less important; what I mean is that, being a man, the son provides his mother with the male protection that all of us women long for. That is why when we go through divorce or widowhood, our sons become the refuge that no o...