Her experience working with children, her challenges facing her own mental health problems, and her passion for literature led Alejandra Vega Rivera to decide to write a series of short stories about anorexia, autism, and the disorder negativist-defiant with tantrums and anxiety.
The first story he has launched and is for sale is Un Abrazo de Agujeta, whose The English version is Shoelace Hug, which deals with the subject of anorexia.
“My goal is to contribute a grain of sand so that when children read it, through fiction, they can identify with certain behaviors and be empathetic and understanding”, says Alejandra in an interview with Real America News.
But she also wants minors not to feel ashamed for suffering from any condition.
Communicator, cultural promoter and writer emigrated from her native Mexico to Los Angeles in 2014, where she worked c with children in the workshop Leer es Crecer, founded and taught by her at the facilities of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Los Angeles.
“I really liked working with children”, he says. But at the same time, she says that the stress caused by doing her master’s degree in literature caused her panic attacks and anxiety.
“That master’s degree was death. It was very heavy. I got sick. I had to go to therapy and get medical treatment.”
The idea of writing children’s books came to him during the pandemic.
“Writing is my passion. That was combined with the idea of making children’s books on mental health issues to break stigmas and choose a different life; and I wanted to do something especially after my own experience with mental health problems”.
A Abrazo de Agujeta is a story about eating disorders. “I think that all women know at least one person who has struggled with a problem of this type.”
Alejandra says that she had the support of the UNAM therapist, Alma Orozco, who helped her guided on mental health issues and the most appropriate language to use in her books.
“She recommended that I speak directly to children with the words that are”.
The character in Abrazo de Agujeta is Rebeca, a very perfectionist ice skater who is about to turn 13 years old.
She has it all, except that she develops a problematic relationship with her body that prevents her from fully enjoying life. She loves her electric pink shoelaces, but she has an out-of-control conflict with food.
And the plot arises from the fact that Alejandra considers that women in today’s society are very demanding with ourselves, and that can lead us to suffer from mental health problems as happens to Rebeca, the character of Abrazo de Agujeta with which she identifies herself.
“It is focused on girls between 8 and 13 years old because in Teenagers are given more of this type of cases, especially on social networks. And it is that we live in an environment in which if you are overweight, everyone points it out to you; and when you lose weight, you receive compliments that feed your ego”.
That is why, she comments, that girls want to lose more and more weight, and some even die.
Alejandra says that with Abrazo de Agujeta and the rest of the stories that she plans to go on the market during the course of this year and the next, she wants to contribute to the prevention of problems of mental health.
“This book aims to open the conversation in families and in society about the importance of becoming aware ; and it is also an invitation to empathize with ourselves and with those around us”.
Abrazo de Agujeta you can buy it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble in its Spanish or English version.