Breathe
By Mariana Conde
As a child I had my heroines. They kept changing; first my kindergarten teacher, whom I adored and was very close to in my early years. Then, of course, there was Barbie who could do it all: one day she was a veterinarian and the next a professional skier or equestrian rider. When I met Wonder Woman on TV I forgot about the others; I wanted to be like her, I wanted the belt to tie up bad guys, the bracelets that deflected bullets, the power to read the minds of people and animals. Nobody objected to Barbie that in this climate there are no female ice skating champions, nor did anyone dare to tell Wonder Woman that she kicked like a girl.
Today, I have another kind of heroines. They are women of flesh and blood who make their lives a heroic journey:
my mom, some friends... Yesenia Escudero.
If you don't know who she is, she has just received in Madrid, in the auditorium of the IESE business school, the award for Social Responsibility and Sustainability from the Fundación Corresponsales, for her Floridown venture. https://floridown.com/
Yesenia started more than ten years ago the Mosaico Down Foundation (https://mosaicodown.org/), which today has two campuses with more than 150 students with Down syndrome and other types of intellectual disabilities, ranging in age from one year to working life. It also has a gastronomy career (endorsed by the Mexican Institute of Gastronomy), a florist school (with a program from the Design 9 school) and is starting a bookbinding workshop (in collaboration with an art school) so that those who do not like cooking or flowers have something to choose from. Given the lack of job opportunities for her graduates, her peculiar logic and temerity led her to open two cafeterias, coffee modules in companies, the Catering with a Cause service (https://mosaicodown.org/pages/catering-con-causa ), as well as the virtual flower shop Floridown, to employ her graduates.
We got two jobs in the kitchen of a restaurant and the first day they showed up, the manager called me to ask who was going to take care of them. And I, how? They are adults, they have already graduated as chefs, they have been handling knives and coffee pots for years.
Yesenia is not the mother of someone with Down syndrome, does not have a person with a disability in her family, nor did she grow up near one, which she sees as a disadvantage. Her reasons for dedicating her life to these people come from elsewhere.
When she was seventeen years old, she got a disease, and in less than fifteen days she stopped moving her whole body, she ate through a feeding tube and lost 25 kilos. In seven months, I went from being a girl with dreams, partying, active, to a point where the doctors told my mother: there is nothing to do, take her home. They evicted me, you think? But my mom said, I'm not taking her home. I got my stubbornness from somewhere.
Not knowing where to put her, she ended up in rheumatology. There, a doctor intervened, did more tests and discovered that she had polymyositis, a rare disease similar to lupus that attacks a muscle group. Yesenia hit the jackpot, she had it all over her body.
Despite hearing that it was an incurable and degenerative disease, his reaction was different: " We finally knew what it was and I knew I was going to be cured. I focused everything on my rehabilitation therapies.
On her 18th birthday, her doctor announced that she was being discharged as a gift, with the warning that she would need to be on bed rest for a year. The virus was dormant due to the medication but could wake up at the slightest effort.
The list of don'ts was so long that I didn't even finish listening: you may not walk alone, you may not go to school, you may not have children.....
Depressed at home, her former high school classmates convinced her to go to a party. And I'm leaving in my wheelchair. At that party I learned a valuable lesson: people think that to help you need to give money, things. The greatest help is a word of encouragement, a vote of confidence.
That encouragement made her decide to disobey doctor's orders and she went back to finish high school. It was exhausting and required the help of many people, but she did it. If you want to, find a way; if you don't want to, look for excuses. You can have a weak body but if your spirit is strong, it is enough.
Every month in consultation, the doctor marveled at her progress, but it was not until a year later that she confessed to having gone against all his indications. He said to me, what saint did you pray to? None, but I didn't stay at home.
She studied Administration to earn money and help her parents with the debts left by her illness. She continued to be disobedient and worked in the competitive financial world; she got married, had her first daughter (this daring woman had two) and convinced that life had held her back for something, she began to volunteer wherever she went.
Soon after, she returned to school to fulfill her dream of becoming a history teacher. When she saw the many educational deficiencies in our country during her studies, she changed her mind. A colleague of hers worked in a center for children with Down syndrome and she said that many parents could not pay the fees. Where did these children go? To their homes.
I became interested and found out that these children could learn if given stimulation, support and an opportunity.
The rest is history. Yesenia not only walks, travels and enjoys her daughters, but -with efforts that border on the Herculean- has built one of the most successful educational and work centers for people with intellectual disabilities in the country, and now, an international example.
What she does not know, she learns; what is not there, she creates. Today, my stubborn heroine lives, and hundreds of people with disabilities live better lives because of her.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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