Author: Maria

The Death of My Mother

There is one truth universally accepted. A mother has the most profound effect of anyone on your life; be it positive or negative. So let me share with you just how true that fact is for me.

I had just turned 17 when my mother died. She was diagnosed and dead in less than six months from ovarian cancer. That’s why the fight against ovarian cancer is so dear to me and I’m hugely involved in prevention and early detection of this absolutely deadly silent killer.

There is no one is my life, besides maybe my father and we’ll get to him later, that I have learned more from. My mother, Reina Isabel, was as close to a saint as the world will ever get. Her compassion, her emotion, her selflessness, her devotion to God, her courage, her sense of humanity, her unbiased look at the world, her ability for forgiveness, her openness, and her capacity for love are all traits that reside in me that came from her. In the very short 17 years that I had her that’s the impression she undoubtedly left on me. But she was not infallible.
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The Importance of Organ Donation

UNOS 7-27-2015As many of you may know, I battle every single day with a genetic disease called Cystic Fibrosis (CF). I realize many of you may not know what that is or how it affects me and those around me.  I urge you to view a short video (~7 minutes) by a dear friend of mine, Ciara Hillyer, that has more hutzpah than I do and put together a very insightful and educational video and put it on YouTube. I promise it will help you understand more.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBAquFwYSus

The reason I ask for this is that we’re working towards educating everyone around us on the importance of registering as organ donors. More and more of us CF’ers are living longer and longer lives; this is a good thing but
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Q: How do you keep a good marriage?

Asked by: Lisa D. of Boca Raton, FL.

Q: How do you keep a good marriage?

A: One word… FORGIVENESS. But that can only come if you have another word… BOUNDARIES. And boundaries can only be set if you have another word… RESPECT. And respect can only be achieved if you have another word… COMMUNICATION. And communication only happens when you… LISTEN. And to really listen you have to have… TRUST. So there is your cocktail for marriage!

Most marriages fall apart when one of these key basic things is missing or communication breaks down.  You have to be HONEST too in your communication.  Can’t be hiding the fact you went on a shopping spree with your credit card and put $500 on it from your husband!  Can’t be hiding the fact that your buddy’s bachelor’s party is going to have strippers!

Dishonesty breaks everything down. The less details you tell each other, the easier it becomes to be dishonest and you loose the cornerstone of it all — trust. If you don’t trust someone, why would you listen to them? If you can’t listen to them, how are you going to communicate? If you can’t communicate, how can you respect them? And if you don’t respect them, how are you going to keep boundaries? If you don’t keep those boundaries, how are you going to expect to be forgiven?

So you see how it works? Work on improving the individual elements every single day.

~ Maria

August 1st, 2013

So I haven’t had a diary entry in a while. I need to unload some stuff. This entry is going to be about lawsuits… I’ve had many of them in my life. The biggest one was the 9-yr battle against my father’s former wife for the estate that my father left me. Three days after my father died, my step-monster had filed a contentment to my father’s will in regards to marital assets being improperly distributed by the will.  She was also pushing for a cremation, and I was appalled at the thought. My father had been baptized and raised as a Roman Catholic, not that she gave a fuck. I thought it would be honoring his roots — my grandmother especially — to have him interred with a full Catholic burial. 
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Q. With so much loss, how do you enjoy the gains?

Asked by: Teresa G. of Fort Myers, FL.

Q: With so much loss, how do you enjoy the gains?

A: I take simple pleasures in the time I spend with my husband and my new family — his mom, dad, sister, brother in law, nephew, and niece. Time with them is the only thing that I can fully enjoy right now. Its a gift I get every day and I am learning to accept it.

Accepting the gifts that come to you is the best thing you can do to balance your life out. Sometimes those gifts aren’t as “in your face” as others so its easy to miss them when we’re not looking. Look at your friends, your family, your colleagues, all of them can provide you with the gift of support in one way or another that you are not realizing.

~ Maria

My Sister’s Abandonment

It is with great sadness that I tackle this issue and I open it up with this caveat: these words are written from my memory and they are my point of view. I do not claim them to be neither true or false, they are my memories and memories can very often be skewed or fuzzy. But please respect that they are my memories none-the-less.

Abandonment is such a common theme in my life but its never been more unresolved for me than it is with my own sister; my full blooded sister that shares both my mother and my father.
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South Florida Living

When I was 6 years old, my family made the move from Venezuela to the United States of America; more specifically Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Fort Lauderdale was an amazing, vibrant place to live. With its golden sands and aqua-colored seas, it was the place to be and for my father it was the place for him to retire.

He had every intentions of running his business from a more separated manner and had friends that were willing to take that over and let him spend more time with us, his family. At first, that’s what happened. All of the sudden my father was around more and for my sister that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It was very different than what she had been used to and that alone caused even more of a problem between them. My father wanted my sister to be everything that he had intended my eldest brother would be — a younger version of him. Interested in business and finances and all that good stuff that my father was so proficient in. He was adamant about this.
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June 3rd, 2013

So this entry covers my feelings about my friends and how sometimes it takes a good friend or the example of a friend to wake you up to what you are missing.

Friendships are just another type of relationship, so when you look back at your relationships count how many of them were bad and find the common denominator. You may, in exploring this, find that you are in fact that common denominator. What is it about you that makes all your relationships fail?

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The Restless Night

Be still your heart in the restless night,

as the fire in your soul seeps through the light,

a new day escapes the howl of the wind,

that rages quietly in the corners of your mind,

would you dare to believe,

in my arms you will find reprieve,

the blue in your eyes shall shine bright again,

the screams of your pain will not be in vain,
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© 2024 Maria Espino