Tell me when I did nest in a belly and I was born: loneliness re-actualized these days.

"Cuéntame cuando sí nidé en una tripa y sí nací" fits the current situation of isolation.

Almost five months ago, it was published Tell me when I did nest in a tummy and yes I was bornan illustrated story that addresses, through metaphor and illustrations, the loneliness experienced when one has suffered abandonment at an early age, and which is published by Desclée De Brouwer.

Of those five months, three have been in this very special situation that we are all living, where in some way we have been dragged, just like the protagonist of the book, to disconnect and to glimpse the world. and to glimpse the world from the fishbowl of our homes.

This situation, contrary to our nature, just as contrary to the experience of not being gathered in the arms of the one who has carried us in her womb, has inevitably dragged us to loneliness and abandonment.

A story that explores the theme of isolation

Addressing loneliness is always difficultPerhaps because we begin as two undifferentiated individuals inside our mother's placenta and we develop looking at the face of the one who welcomes us in her lap. In that relational dance we discover ourselves and the world, in those eyes that return our gaze we learn to feel through skin-to-skin contact and the prosody of the times we are rocked.

And when that is missing something is lost, the opportunity to perceive, for that perception to be contacted and named and for that baby to discover its feeling, its existence. Without it, the emptiness of non-sensation seems to cover everything, the expression of the unknown body, lacking the touch of touch without contact that envelops the passing of the days.

As I reread the story and look at his illustrations I am taken back to our immediate present, where security has robbed us of the joy of touch, where we have lost the open smile that illuminates the eyes in the encounter and the voice and listening are distorted in the inexpressiveness of the mask.

We have been pushed by this unparalleled circumstance into our solitude, dragged into the intermittent or continuous sensation of abandonment.

Sadness, the Pain of uncertainty that does not know if it will be attended to and consoled, peeps out of our faces, even if it is hidden between decorated masks.

Just as the discovery of what was lost and the loving gaze that realizes what is missing help to heal the loss of connection, as the stories told by the children who shared their drawings in the book tell us, so too, paying attention, taking comfort, realizing how we have lost traits of our humanity in security helps us to take comfort.

This finding of comfort goes through the collectivediscovering ourselves as a group, as humanity, by attending to ourselves as one big family.

I leave you the video, a summary of this beautiful book that in its prosody sings of connection.

Author: Cristina Cortes, Psychologist, Director of Vitaliza Health Psychology Center.