Just a few days ago, when I was returning from doing an errand, a woman stopped me on the streets, and despite her big mask I was able to identify her immediately.

She was someone I have known for a long time and an old friend of mine. Back in 1997, I began to study at the University of Camagüey, the Master’s Degree in Social Work, and my thesis to obtain said title was “The incidence of cultural work in the rehabilitation of psychiatric patients”; Therefore, taking advantage of the fact that my tutors were Ph.D. Olga García Yero and Ph.D. Luis Álvarez Álvarez, who worked at the Nicolás Guillén Research Center at that time, and they offered me that possibility; I joined a group of elderly women, psychiatric patients, specifically neurotic, who met there to put into practice my research.

The experience

What I learned in that period was incalculable, in every way, because in addition to the extensive bibliography that I reviewed, and from which I took the necessary knowledge, I was able to know the particularities of those people who were cared for by the Psychiatrist, Doctor Alfredo Muñoz Volivar, and the Psychologist, Yoicet Acevedo Estrada, in addition to Ms. Yarilda, who occasionally joined the latter.

During those systematic psychotherapy meetings that I attended I shared dissimilar stories, most of them hurtful, shocking, which caused pain and even sorrow. I sympathized to the point of achieving rapport and starting a friendship with some of these people, which I keep to this day.

That is why that day, when I met Raquel, I felt joy first; because I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She told me that she had not forgotten us, referring to the team that worked with them and of course, she included me because of the close relationship we had. She also told me about the usefulness of those meetings and like now when she was a little down, she was able to apply the techniques that they taught her and thus get back on her feet.

She also told me, that, in these times of pandemic, an encounter of this type, with someone who makes you remember how little or how much good you did for her, is always very gratifying. It is one more gift than life has offered me.

May this article serve to congratulate, again and again, those people who heal not only the tangible but also the spirit, and more so for these days of isolation in which we all live bearing a little higher dose of stress.

That is why I leave you here this beautiful phrase of someone who will continue to be our great Teacher: José Martí, and with whom I began my Master’s thesis work, I go to him every time I have an opportunity:

“You have to create a hospital for souls like the one we have for bodies. And may the disease be cured with the greatest tenderness …”

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García