I grew up in a German middle class family in an area that’s called Martinez, San Isidro, Buenos Aires. Those who are from Buenos Aires know exactly what that means, but for those who are not from Buenos Aires here is a summary.

San Isidro, located in the northern part of Buenos Aires, is known for being an area of ​​rich people, with European-English, German and French surnames, and for being very right-wing. This is not unusual, as right-wing politics upholds the system that privileges the rich and promotes their social and economical status.Of course, this is a very big generalization, but to summarize something that’s very complicated, let's just say that’s how it is.I then grew up surrounded by right-wing people. And to make matters a little more extreme, I grew up in the Menem era. For those who don't know what this means, here comes an explanation:  Argentina had a president from 1989 to 1999 who not only privatized the entire country, but also pardoned many of the people who had been convicted by the previous government. People who were members of the former military dictatorship, commanders convicted in the Junta Trial from 1985.

Menem was the president of oblivion, and the society I grew up in was very keen to forget, thanks to an economy that somehow made a dollar worth as much as an Argentine peso, which of course was completely absurd and later led to an economic collapse for the entire country.The little that was said at family gatherings about the disappeared always landed in the conclusion that "They must have done something. If you weren't involved in it, they didn’t come after you".The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo were greatly feared. They were seen as vengeful goblins who only wanted more blood to flow, and Hebe de Bonafini was highlighted as the representative of the entire organization. She was one of the founders of the Grandmother of Plaza de Mayo and it was said that in her activism she advocated for armed confrontation with the government. This howeverWhich did not give a true picture of the important work that the organization did.There was no understanding, no compassion, no empathy for those searching for their missing children. They were portrayed as mad women looking for their terrorist sons and daughters who had been imprisoned as a solution to the disaster they had caused. The missing grandchildren were never even mentioned. Again, the argument that "they must have done something" was what justified everything.  According to the message I got at home, one should not have anything to do with the Grandmothers. They just wanted to fight and they were never looking for justice. They just wanted blood and revenge and the best thing to do was to keep your head down and pass unnoticed. Maybe that's why, when I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me that "if they ask you at school which of your parents you look most like, say you look like your mother who is Argentinian". The thing was that my mother was the daughter of Austrians and, in turn, resembled one of the Von Trapp children from the movie "The Sound of Music". So, she did not look Argentinian at all.So I grew up like those privileged middle-class girls from the northern part of Buenos Aires and didn't really care about any of this.It was something that was far away from my reality. I remember my friend from school, who was also adopted, used to read books about the dictatorship, and even identify strongly with it. Without saying it, but probably thinking that she was one of the missing children. The whole thing was very boring to me, and deep down I felt she wanted to be special, and that's why she wanted to think that she was one of those girls. Because as I said before, in the society I grew up in, there was an underlying message that these babies were special, not like the rest who were just children of the poor. It seemed ridiculous to me to talk about something we knew nothing about, and as it was said around me, it is better to look ahead.And that was my attitude, until the day when everything changed and I understood that the only thing left was to go to Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.It wasn't easy-who would I meet at the there? Were they the vengeful goblins that everyone around me was talking about or were they heroines who like Don Quixote fought the windmills of a society that ridiculed them and wanted to forget them? As I already told you, Argentina is a country with so many gray areas that it is almost impossible to trust anyone. It is hard to go against a system that forces people to think only of their own survival. When the reality of a country is so dysfunctional, it forces its inhabitants to be in a constant state of vigilance and fear. Of course, within that system there are people who are trying to change the state of reality that surrounds them, and here and now I want to send my warmest greetings and say that I see you and salute you. The admiration I have for you is endless.

So, why I decided to go to the grandmothers has not only to do with the rape I survived on August 7, 2001, but also with the Swedish man I met on the adventure tourism trip I took to Mendoza with my cousin.I'm going to rewind here a bit, see if you guys can follow me in this story.

August 7, 2001 was a sunny winter day in Buenos Aires. It was a beautiful dry day, which I could feel in my hair because it wasn't the typical disaster that Buenos Aires humidity does to my curls. As I mentioned earlier, I was on my way from my yoga instructor class. As I passed a house and was distracted by how beautifully the sun reflected on the red petals of the flowers in the garden, a young man approached me from behind. He threatened me that I had to do as he said or he would kill me. At first he wanted to rob me, but I had no money on me. Then he forced me to go with him. We walked and walked, I was so scared I didn't try to run away or scream. Eventually he found a secluded spot and I knew what was going to happen.The rape was quick, and like many survivors, I negotiated for him not to hit me, well aware of the frequency of femicide in Argentina. Nothing brings us closer to life than the presence of death. In that moment of total clarity, the two thoughts that would follow me throughout my life arose, the first of which I have already talked about: “Is this all? All my life I've been trying to do everything everyone wants me to do and now I'm going to die?" And the other, which unconsciously had something to do with the suspicions of being the daughter of the disappeared: "If I die now, they'll never know what happened, they'll never find me."

But I survived and a couple of months later my psychologist told me that nature heals and that it was a very good idea to go on a trip to Mendoza with my cousin Lily.

As life can be, fate struck again and I met a Swedish man at the hostel where we were staying. He seemed like a creature from another planet. Tall, with a cascade of long, straight, copper-colored hair.Like most Swedes, at least in words, very aware of human rights and the injustices of society. When I told him about my adoption, he told me: “Of course you have to search. We all have a right to our identity." I believed him. It was the first time I heard those words: "Identity is a right." I had never considered that concept before. My origins had always been a mist of speculation about where my genes came from.Speculations that assured me it was better not to know anything, that indicated that I should be happy with just being adopted by a family. That’s what I had gotten from life, and it was all there was to have. If there was something that I had permission to feel, something that I was reminded of from time to time, it was gratitude. There was always someone who said: "Look how lucky you were, who knows where you would be now if your mom and dad hadn't picked you up".The right to my biological identity had been revoked from the start and I had to settle for that and be happy. But my soul, which had just survived an episode where a person took the liberty of taking away my right to my physical integrity, reducing me to nothing, listened to the Swedish man's words, which he said with such wisdom and certainty, and reminded me, that this life is mine to live, that it can end at any moment, so it's time to live it.That clarity, that strength made me go against my whole family, the beliefs I grew up with and make the decision to approach the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Life derailed me completely from the path I had been on, and now that I had completely lost my way, why not face my deepest fears and emerge from the anonymity of my adoption and risk being seen?After all, victory always belongs to the brave.