My personal project started in 2011, when my parents gave me my first cactus at the age of 14. It was a Parodia Magnifica. To this day, he’s still alive, he’s exactly 11 years old. This cactus marked a change in my life. A change that would come to light a few years later. Many of you who are reading this may think that there is no such thing, that it’s just a plant, but if one thing is clear to me and I can say for sure that it defines me, it’s the simple fact that a cactus represents me. This statement has been clear to me relatively recently, when I read a sentence explaining the meaning of cacti. It says: “According to FENG SHUI, this is a plant considered guardian and helps people find their inner strength in the middle of loneliness. They are cleaners of the environment and the water they retain symbolizing our emotions and feelings. Their spines may seem harmless to us, but they are an integral part of their defense system and symbolize protection against dangerous and unwanted visits”. So, reading this definition, I immediately understood that cacti were my world and that I had to do my best to learn more about them, to know their scientific names and as much as possible to get even more familiar with cacti as with plants in general.
After spending a few years working in other sectors, such as hotels and factories, I decided that I could not go on like this and, at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic began, I found a training cycle that fits perfectly with my profile. A medium degree of gardening and organic farming. At the time I knew I was here, that I had found the door to my own happiness. At 2019 I was embarking on this path with a collection of almost 200 cacti. Two years later, in 2021, more precisely in December, the course ended, both theory and practice. Now, I could start work on what I wanted, and what I’d always liked, but as always happen, things don’t go out as you want them to. I didn’t find any gardening jobs, not counting the jobs I could do on my own and I had to go back to the factories. I took this change as a disappointment, a defeat to the future that I had to
touch. While they say one door closes and another opens, that is exactly what happened. I had heard about subsidized courses that gave you a certificate of whatever you were studying, and I thought it might be a good choice as well. So, I got down to work and found one to work as a forester. Suddenly, I saw it as an opportunity to continue my training in this area, and I saw a door open in front of me. I had found my place again. I had found the escape route from the factories, I had found the future that I had been waiting for so much. Now, in March 2022, a year of theory, practice and forestry work awaits me. And of course, continue with the collection, which I already have over 500 copies.
Since I started the course until now, especially at the beginning, I found that there were a lot of people, both men and women, who said to me, but you use chainsaws and cut trees? I was surprised because I am a woman, they might think I was not able to do this job, which is unfortunately considered a job for “men”. Once again, it was my turn to make my way between criticism and bad words from some people (happily not all, some others have told me that I was admired for choosing this job). I had to defend my decision and even stand up on a war footing saying that times were changing and that women had the same right to take a machine, drive a tractor or be the gang leader of a group of men. What I know for certain is that the forest runs through my blood, as both my father and grandfather are forest men and they also did this job that I am passionate about today.