Would you drop everything to write a book? With the help of your children it is easier...
Sofía is a 12-year-old girl who is about to go on an excursion with her school but, that same day, a storm takes place that prevents her and her companions from going on an adventure. To her disappointment, her mother explains that life is based on two types of future: the planned future (the excursion) and the emerging future (the rain). Our existence is a mixture of both and there will always be storms that can change your destiny.
At some point, the first book and Rosa's life get confused. It is the story that she tells her daughter, but also to herself.
Rosa Domingo is a 44-year-old psychologist and writer living in the Catalan city of Malgrat de Mar who She decided to leave her job as a civil servant to get fully involved in writing books on psychology in the midst of a pandemic. But what she never expected was that her two children, Sofía (12 years old) and Jan (7 years old), would be accomplices in this new stage. Especially when living together 24/7 during confinement became a rediscovery for many families. and the need to value “what is essential”, a motivation for thousands of people.
The writer Rosa Domingo has written books based on her conversations with her children.
WE DON'T REGRET WHAT WE DO, BUT WHAT WE DON'T DO
1. I wish I had the courage to do what you really wanted to do and not what the others expected him to do.
two. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
3.I wish I had the courage to express what she really felt.
4. I would have liked to have contact with my friends.
5. I would have liked to be happier.
These five phrases were the most listened to by Australian nurse Bronnie Ware during her stay in a hospice unit. Years later, Ware would compile these testimonies in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, a work that she would come to at the hands of Rosa Domingo, the protagonist of our story. The revelations of those people at the beginning of the tunnel, they also aroused something in her.
Two of the titles of self-knowledge and personal growth of Rosa Domingo.
“I studied Organizational Psychology, but I always liked the visual theme focused on psychology”, says Rosa Domingo to Traveler.es. "Over time, I ended up working in a Human Resources department, but I found gaps to continue training."
Rosa deepened her studies in Clinical Psychology and in 2013, parallel to her main activity, she founded the psychology journal Insight. Nevertheless, the pandemic hastened a decision that perhaps Rosa had already made a long time ago without daring to take the step. Locked up at home, she asked for a leave of absence that she always delayed due to uncertainty, convinced that she could contribute more as a writer than as a civil servant.
Illustration of one of Rosa Domingo's books.
“There are different stages and we cling to one in particular because for us it represents a comfort zone, although something inside you tells you that your life is not full. Of course, you feel afraid and it is not easy, but it has a reward”, continues Rosa, for whom the pandemic has meant an opportunity not only to launch into her dreams, but to do it in the company of her two children: “The pandemic has been an awakening and a reconnection with the family.”
WHAT DO THE MONSTERS THINK?
Jan, 7 years old, likes to draw aliens and dinosaurs. She until one day she came to her mother with a drawing of a monster that was her first sign of inspiration. Rosa found it interesting to continue exploring the relationship between her child psychology books and her little girl's drawings: "I began to explain her situations and ask her what monster she would draw in each of them," Rosa says. “This is how the book Secret Dictionary of Monsters was born, which deals with negative emotions of children such as guilt, aggressiveness, jealousy, hatred and anger, among others.”
Author Rosa Domingo threw herself into writing during the pandemic.
At the same time Sofía, Rosa's 12-year-old daughter, became the inspiration for Who am I?, a book that explores different dialogues between a girl named Sofía and her mother in order to dissect fundamental concepts in the psychology focused on young people and adults as the essence of being, vocation, beliefs or dreams: "I was the psychologist and my daughter came to ask me questions," says Rosa. "From then on, it happened. the answers that make up the content of the book, with situations such as the aforementioned excursion of Sofia weighed down by the storm”.
Two books written in the company of her children have been two of the many published by Rosa during the pandemic: Dream diary, a notebook designed to write down our dreams on a daily basis and delve into them; Nervi the bear, a story with relaxation techniques for children; o Kōan: Mandalas to edit, a notebook that reveals a kōan, a type of enigma used by Zen masters to assess the progress of their students, through drawings of mandalas. Several of her books have been translated into Catalan, English and even German.
Rosa assures that although one of her titles still depends on publication by a publisher, she she feels very comfortable publishing on Amazon KDP, the giant Jeff Bezos' self-publishing platform that has helped so many writers to spread her work autonomously: “My books are having very good acceptance and Who am I? has a great diffusion, especially among associations of children with high capacities”.
The progress is coming, and although the evolution is recent and slow, Rosa knows that the time is coming to live 100% of what she writes, although she always needs to have a plan: “Currently I'm pulling savings and, luckily, my husband works. I follow the philosophy of the Maslow Pyramid: we must first meet our physiological needs like eating and breathing, but we must also have a safe environment to be able to reach the expected self-realization”, says Rosa: "We don't know when the storms will arrive, but we can be prepared for when they come."