“ I was born in the south of Spain in Sevilla, where the Flamenco comes from. It’s a very traditional place, I should be married with 22 kids but I’ve always been an adventurous person.
I left my house when I was 17 and I moved to Madrid. All my life I have been connected to art and the body so I did performance art and I was also doing competition fitness. I was dedicated to sport and fitness in Madrid. I moved back to Sevilla where I studied performance art and I did stage management for 12 years. At first I was working with private companies and then I worked for the Madrid Government where I worked in the big theatre. I was so lucky to see the best music and dance and theatre. I worked on an International world tour with a theatre production and after 18 months without even one day off I said, I need a break. I was stressed and I couldn’t speak English then so during that tour I needed a translator which was really frustrating.
In 2009 I decided to take 6 months off and come to Australia to study English. I wanted to be somewhere far from Spain with good weather. I travelled the East Coast and decided to stay in Byron, mainly because I was doing kite surfing at the time and the great vibes. With my visa I had to leave the country every 3 months so I went to Bali and back, then NZ and back.
As good tourists do in Byron I did my first jump in sky diving in Byron and I fell in love with it. I decided I wanted to jump by myself so I did the sky diving course and was going back to Spain to my job. At that time the economic crisis hit Spain. I was going to sell my place and come back to Australia to live but my apartment in Spain was worth 3 times less than it was before the crisis. I couldn’t go back to my job because the government had blocked all the businesses.
My sky diving licence was about to expire and I needed to do some jumps. Some of the crew from Byron were working in the drop zone in Berlin at the time so they said I could go there to do the jumps. You need a licence depending on what you want to do. You might want to jump alone or with more people, you may want to be a camera flyer or a tandem master, so each step is more training. I was in Berlin for 10 days doing jumps and I got on really well with the owner of the company and he offered me a job there for the following year.
I came back to Byron and continued my training so I could get my licence for packing parachutes, I was editing videos and I was training for camera person. The summer after I went back to Berlin. I did this for 2 or 3 years doing 6 months in Berlin and 6 months in Byron and life was good.
I needed to settle somewhere for a while so I decided to stay in Byron. I was working in the drop zone here for 7 years until I had the accident. They gave us the order to jump and it was really windy. My parachute was a small high performance chute so when I was doing the last turn for landing my parachute stalled and closed 10 metres above the ground. I broke my back. The T10 broke in my spine and the fall damaged the disc in the T6 and T7, rolled the disc in my C5, C6 and C7 in my neck and I had nerve damage in my right side.
In the beginning everyone was focussed on my back which took a really long time to recover with chronic pain. For 3 months I was in bed. I couldn’t get up and move around. I couldn’t stand up and I couldn’t sit for too long. I had a brace holding my spine. I couldn’t feel the left side of my body after the accident, I had white hands from no circulation. Finally a Doctor on the Gold Coast found the neck injury because they had only been focussing on my back.
The nerve in the right side started degenerating so 3 years later I had neck surgery. They had to open the neck and replace 2 discs. I didn’t say anything to my family. They knew I wasn’t jumping because I hurt my back but they didn’t know the seriousness of it. It was so hard to be here without the support of my family. I’m a super positive person but I went into massive depression. I went to the dark side of my brain which wasn’t working properly because of the trauma. I was married at that time. I married a year before the accident so I was in my husbands family home after hospital. The marriage broke down. My father died that year too so I flew to Spain in a bed. It cost a fortune but he died in my arms. The situation with my Dad was traumatic too because I was under medication for the trauma and shock so my feelings weren’t connecting and processing the grief and everything was so intense.
It took me a few years to recover mentally. After the surgery in my neck I could move my hands again. I still have 35% less power in my right arm.
I was in bed in the darkest space mentally, after having Psychology appointments and I felt she couldn’t understand me at all so that was so frustrating. I was living with a family of Musicians so I started singing lessons because I was given breathing exercises but I couldn’t follow those so the singing changed my whole life. In the darkest space when nothing felt positive there was light through music.
Nine months after my accident I had a friend who had to leave for Fiji so she asked me to come and stay in her house and she had 2 colours of paint, blue and white. That’s when I could sit so I found a rock and started painting dots for a mandala. That was the first thing I could focus on and do for a long time since the accident. This saved me, the music and the art and I think this is the reason I am still on this planet because it helped me emotionally and psychologically. I felt I was still here for a reason and that was to help people. If this accident didn’t happen I wouldn’t be where I am now. After the accident I did the Diploma in Music at SCU , I did the degree in Visual Arts also at SCU and I studied Mental Health at Tafe. I’m currently studying Auslan and specialising in trauma. I feel I can relate now better because of what I’ve been through.
I moved to Lismore when I was studying music. I was feeling distracted in Byron and wanted to really focus on my studies. I love Lismore and I love this community. When I first moved here I rented and then I bought my home in East Lismore in 2019.
The art I’m doing now is mostly about trauma. I have an exhibition currently at the Eltham Gallery which is reflecting on that a bit and also on how people see you from the outside without know what’s happening on the inside…… Oh you look so amazing! But they don’t know the pain inside. People say, Oh I haven’t seen you for a while but that’s because that week I had pain and I didn’t go anywhere. So the art reflects on that and also what is happening inside my body. A lot of the pieces in the exhibition reflect the outside and some the inside. A lot of artists who work with chronic pain have really dark art works so I tried to make my work more pleasant for the eyes.
I have a beautiful dog called Paco who I got as a 6 week pup from the Blue Mountains. He was officially the first Spanish Water dog born in Australia. He’s my best mate. He’s so handsome. (Paco will be appearing on Dogs of Lismore this week.)
I had a 3 year relationship with a guy who had 3 kids. I am still in contact with them. We were living in Ballina and I was moving to Lismore when we broke up. I was crying for hours and Paco was leaning his head on me for 3 or 4 hours and after a while he started barking angrily at my face like crazy. He pulled me out of my sadness. He was saying Snap out of it! Come on, get it together! and it worked.”
