Flores 1

Flores, Kenia

English 101

Professor Batty

10 May 2017

An Inspiring Story about a Woman with a Huge Heart

Still Water Saints is a novel about a woman who becomes a healer and owns a Botanica

and helps others with personal problems. Some may ask which character inspires hope or

showed more compassion than other characters in? Many readers will probably answer this

question differently and choose different characters from the book as all characters face different

personal issues and struggles. I picked Perla Portillo because she inspires others and many

people, such as her clients, look up to her for help. Perla also faced many personal issues such as

not being happy just staying at home all the time and being a housewife because she wanted to

discover herself. In addition, Perla and her husband werent able to have children and later on

Perlas husband passed away and Perla became a widow. It wasnt easy for Perla to deal with

loneliness and become a widow until she discovered a man called Dario, whos a healer and told

her she has the gift to help others. Perla overcomes her loneness makes her saintlike because is

what lead her to learn and discover how to heal and helps others.

Perla lives in a town called Agua Mansa with her husband Guillermo and they only have

each other with no family because Guillermo was sterile and unable to have babies. Perla always

had hope and expectations to be able to have babies one day but Guillermo had no hope and give

up on having a family. Perlas struggle and a reason why she feels alone and would always

daydream about herself having children one day. Until one day Perla met Dario the healer and

Perla walked into his Botanica, a shop that carries traditional religious or spiritual remedies
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which helps people with their personal problems and crisis. Dario was able to try and help

Perlas struggle to have children with his remedies. As soon as she went back home to Guillermo,

as she explained they had another chance to have kids but Guillermo had no hope and didn't

believe in healers helping Perla and Guillermo in having kids. The text states, We don't need to

try anything. Why do we need children? I've gotten used to it just being with us. We don't need

any of that we got the two of us (Espinoza 78). This quote shows that Guillermo has accepted

the idea he cant have children and will no longer try to do the effort and has accepted whats his

reality. As Perla begs Guillermo to try one more time and explains how she still has expectations

and how lonely she is. I want it. I have nothing. I feel like I'm suffocating here. All day I'm

alone (Espinoza 78). This quote shows Perla is suffering from loneliness and doesnt want to

give up on goal and still has hope to achieve her dream on having a family with Guillermo.

Reading and learning about Perla shows that she's a woman who's depressed about being

alone and wants to discover herself and wants to know how to cope with her loneliness as she's

tired of being just a housewife. She visits Dario and he realize and he can see that Perla had the

gift to help and heal people just like himself. Perla starts crying and starts explaining to Dario, I

want family. Not power. (Espinoza 79). For Perla it's hard to accept that she wasn't meant to be

for her to have children and it was time to accept it coming from Dario telling her the truth but

she had the ability to heal and help others. Until Perla takes time to herself and accept the fact

she won't be able to have a family and decided to work for Dario as it helped her cope with her

depression and loneliness as Dario explained and trained everything she needed to know to

become just a like Dario and help Perla to discover herself. This experience about working for

Dario and for his shop helped her cope with her personal life.
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Perla working for Dario and inside the Botanica helped her a lot emotionally and helped

her distract herself from her problems she's going through and interacting with her clients helped

her to have someone to talk to. As her clients loved Perla and her service, her clients continued to

come and visit back to the shop for their needs. Perla started to have connections with others and

developed friendships with the next door small markets owner name Alfonso and with one of

her clients Teresa. Perla saw Teresa as her daughter because of the they both had bond was and

help each other and listen to each other. Perla loved how she had so many people to talk to now

that she worked at the Botanica but everyone around her was temporary. Such as Alfonso had to

leave because he has no business, Dario had to move away and have Perla be in charge of the

Botanica and Teresa worked at a clinic and kept her busy. For Perla to see her friends leave from

her, makes Perla feel alone again and have no one to talk to but Perla working and help other

clients kept her busy and going with the shops business.

At the age of 72, Perla owns the shop, feels lonely, and depressed as she watches her

friends leave and becomes widow after Guillermo gets sick and passes away. Her house becomes

really lonely and she gets scared to be alone at first soon after Guillermo passed away. This part

of Perlas life was very difficult for her to go through and it's not a great experience to go

through. After not having a family and have Guillermo pass away was very difficult for Perla to

go through as she spends a lot of her time alone at the shop and at her house. Good thing Perla

had the shop and clients to cope with her personal life and people such as Teresa helped her by

being there for Perla as a good friend as Perla saw her as a daughter.

In real world context learning about the psychological study and affects about women

becoming widow how much it affects their mental health and can become an illness and how this

relates to Perlas story. Study explains it can take up to three years after becoming a widow it is
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hard to improve a woman's mental health. Becoming a widow can destroy a woman's mental

health and it can be a critical condition. This cause can cause a high chance of constantly getting

anxiety and depression. Women have twice the chance to become a widow than men. This study

helps me explains and understand about Perlas situation.

Reading articles about real life context about becoming widow is really hard to cope

with. According to the article Months After Marriage Military Wife Becomes an Unmarried

Widow it is difficult being a widows. The article discusses how a woman married to a man in

the military isn't easy to get use to and get worried about any moment she can lose her husband

in the middle of war in the military. A story about Arits Henderson as she explains about it's not

easy to be a military wife and how she becomes a widow after her husband Miles passed away

after a helicopter crash in Iraq. Arits doesn't have family or children and it this was such a harsh

experience for Arits to go through. This story relates to Perla's story because both stories explains

how widowhood and loneliness effects women. This story relates to Perla's story how Arits

doesn't have any children either and losing their husbands was everything they had.

Another article I read about a married a couple serving the community as the couple

worked for Dallas Police Department. Katrina and Lorne Ahren were working together one day

as the whole police department was in a middle of a dangerous scene. In the scene five police

officers were shot and one of them was Lorne and wasn't able to survive from the injury. It was

an unexpected experience for Katrina to lose her husband, her partner in her job, and become

widow. Although she is proud to say her husband was a true warrior and was very dedicated to

his job. This story relates to Perlas story because it talks about widowhood and serving the

community. Perla serves the community with people coming to her shop to help them with their
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personal problems and this article about the married couples serves the community as they

protect the community as Dallas police officers.

Perla is a wonderful woman with a huge heart that likes to help others and people love

her services for the Botanica. Perla is saintlike as people look up to her for their personal

struggles and issues. Many readers would believe someone like Dario for example would be

more saint like because he's the one that teaches Perla to become a healer just like him but I

believe that Perla helped improve the Botanica and brought more clients than Dario. Perla served

the community as much as possible like Teresa with her studies in school, Rodrigo giving him

shelter and attention, Lluvia with giving her a chance to draw a mural because it's something

Lluvia loves to do, Rosa with her weight and insecurities and many others. This is why I believe

Perla is saintlike than other characters in the book and inspires others to have hope.
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Works Cited

Henderson, Artis. Months After Marriage Military Wife Becomes An Unmarried Widow.
NPR. 12 January. 2014.
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/12/261410855/months-after-marriage-a-military-wife-
becomes-an-unremarried-widow

Wilcox, Sara. First year widowhood most harmful to mental health according to the sample of
70,000 middle act woman. APA. 14 September. 2003.
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2003/09/widowhood.aspx

Fawzy, Farida. Dallas Officers Wife: He was a true warrior in every sense of the world.
CNN. 12 July. 2016.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/12/us/dallas-officer-lorne-ahrens-wife/