As a child and as a teenager, I hated fights. I felt very uncomfortable witnessing people yelling, cursing, and using violence against each other. When I was taking college entrance exams, I was inclined to study Psychology, but Law spoke louder, I enjoyed dealing with families and their complex issues, using the law as a structural basis for the path to follow. However, I became exhausted of seeing people destroying each other, neglecting to consider how their actions impacted the family system, especially the mental health of their children.
A case, in which I was the woman’s lawyer, was the last straw, for me to rethink my career. In 2001, I decided to follow, in parallel with my law practice, the path of peacemaking and social inclusion, through Mediation. I was introduced to Mediation within a therapeutic context, as a path to be explored, since, in my therapist’s view, it aligned with my life story. This path has brought me and continues to bring me self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-care and self-compassion! I realize that, every day, this internal work is a source of resources and repertoires that foster the possibility of improving my intra and interpersonal conversations, of observing people’s facts, feelings, interests and needs, of understanding and respecting their requests, as well as the different ways they think, feel and act. In other words, I continue to be an “eternal learner” in the acceptance and personal enrichment of the different, the surprising. With the Master’s in Mediation and Negotiation, and many other related courses, focused on families, business families, companies and schools, many horizons have been explored, and the world has opened up to me. As a determined walker, I followed this path, always with new and exciting scenarios!
As time went by, I discovered, because of Mediation, that I no longer had a vocation to be a litigating lawyer. The knowledge of Collaborative Practices in Law, a specific methodology designed to ensure that all family members’ needs and interests are addressed without resorting to the judiciary, arrived in Brazil. Soon after, I received training in Collaborative Practices in Law, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, carried out by the American creators of this way of working. What a wonderful experience!!! What a humanized world we could live in if people could resolve their issues through collaborative dialogues!!!!
My puzzle was not yet complete. To add more value to my work, both as a lawyer and as a mediator, I felt the need to undergo training in Couples and Family Therapy. I thought that, once I completed this training, I would see the full picture. How wrong I was! I understood the importance of studying human development, making connections with neuroscience, attachment theory, trauma, and childhood-adolescent sexual and emotional education—knowledge that formed the foundation for me to remove the veil from my eyes!

My puzzle will never be complete as long as I live, but I will continue to walk this path, determined to create a much better world to inhabit, where our needs and those of others are considered, and where love pulses in relationships.