“I wouldn’t change anything about my life”

like a juggler. This is how you could say that Inés Estévez walks through life. A happy life, but intense and busy, full of emotions and challenges. On the one hand, she makes her art: there she is an actress, singer and teacher at her acting school that operates at Saint Edwards School.

And, on the other, the personal: where in addition to her feminine universe, she is the mother of two girls with disabilities and everything that that entails.

Inés became an “expert” on the subject and uses the arrival of its public voice to fight for the rights of children, adolescents and adults with disabilities. He does it with love. Everything is linked to creativity and a vocation for service, two pillars in her life. “Diversifying was one of the things I celebrate the most because I give myself the pleasure of experiencing various creative expressions. And they don’t cost me because I embrace them with happiness. Still, sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed, with open fronts,” she confides.

And in this all-terrain mode that she recognizes, she goes deeper: “Diversification has to do with having faced more than one profession and also, because of the type of motherhood that I carry out. I don’t have a family environment to rely on, so I carry her a lot on my shoulders. On the other hand, it is not a neurotypical motherhood, it is neurodiverse. That has a double weight and a lot of mental load”. But Inés has everything very well organized so that things flow and can develop in all aspects.

Inés is having a great time at work. Last Thursday it premiered Miranda, from Friday to Monday, film that has her as the protagonist and that María Victoria Menis directed. She plays a literature teacher who experiences a kind of tsunami when she learns of the allegations of abuse suffered by her students, whom she supports.. For this reason, his life will change radically during that weekend.

In the film, Inés also sings songs that are a tribute to national rock and has a daughter with a disability: “It’s very crazy because María Victoria wrote the script without knowing that I also sing and that I have two girls with disabilities. It is very coincidental and striking,” shares Inés.

With years of career and several awards (ACE, for The coming flood; Silver Condor by Kill grandpa and Martín Fierro for Vulnerable, all for being best leading actress, among other awards), handles the adrenaline well before the debut.

“I get nervous when it comes to a play because it is live and direct and the result depends one hundred percent on you. With a movie, not really, because the work is already done. In the audiovisual field, one gets used to handing over what one does and putting it in the hands of the director and the editor,” she details.

The musical also has a premiere. On Saturday the 22nd he presents a new bossa, jazz & blues show, with his band at the Bebop Club, in Palermo. He will also do it on Saturday, July 20. And he also has two dates to sing with Chango Spasiuk. In addition, he will tour with the work Inside Forestin Rosario (today) and Córdoba (6/25) and Neuquén (6/29).

– The feeling is that you don’t stop, how many hours do you sleep?

– There is no day the same as the other. Depends. My sleep is quite interrupted, because I get up to give my youngest daughter an anticonvulsant. And if the oldest gets up to go to the bathroom, she comes looking for me. It’s like having two little girls. I usually wake up a couple of times a night. But when I can sleep, I sleep. And when I have to travel, I travel, as I will now for shows and theater. I am super organized so as not to give up anything. That is something that I proposed because if not, it would seem that my personal life is postponed. And the idea is not that. One will be a better professional, a better mother, a better friend, better everything, if he has a certain plenitude of personal order.

-What is your daily life like?

-Vida goes to a special school and Cielo, to an educational therapeutic center. It is non-formal education for children who cannot attend school. They work full time and also have their therapies. They are two happy girls. But I work to support two people – not just my daughters – to live in my house. Because if I have to go record or film, they are long days.. We need people to live together at home. And it is necessary to have two people because Cielo, the youngest, has cerebral palsy. She needs to be changed, fed. There you need two pairs of arms. One person can’t handle both. In other words, you can get by, but needs are necessarily neglected. Vida has a maturational delay, it is as if she were smaller than she is in certain aspects of her evolution. In what she has to do with psychopedagogy, she has a certain innocence, but she is a super confident and independent girl. People associate this type of disability with a lack of intelligence and nothing to do with it. They are two super intelligent girls, but hey, they have limitations.

-Your daughters must have taught you a lot of things, right?

-I think we were learning together. It gives me the feeling that we accompany each other and we see aspects of life together, the three of us.. You become an expert on the subject, like all mothers and fathers, but above all, mothers or relatives of people with disabilities. You will get a doctorate.

– Tell me about the adoption.

-We had signed up for older kids, but they showed up, who were one and two years old. We signed up for two with treatable or reversible diseases. And there are many possibilities. You do the paperwork, the meetings, if you want a baby or two or three or four. Then there is a question: “Healthy?” And then I thought: “If you have a biological child, you don’t know if he or she will be healthy, so what right do you have to choose that your adopted child is not healthy?”. And well, these two girls appeared: they both had a condition. They asked us if we agreed and I didn’t hesitate. Both had a developmental delay, but the extent was not well known, it could be better or it could be worse. As they grew up, she became more defined.

-Have you ever wanted to be a biological mother?

-I never wanted to be a mother. I wasn’t interested as a personal achievement. Nor did I have that need for it to go through biology and my body. And I make a distinction between wanting to be parents and wanting children. A child is not “had”, it does not belong to us. There is some selfishness in that concept. On the other hand, exercising motherhood or fatherhood is nothing other than accompanying another being in its evolution. I could have had biological children, but faced with certain circumstances I had no doubt that adoption was the most logical and necessary path. There are too many children without parents.

–Let’s talk about work. Why did you agree to film Miranda, from Friday to Monday?

–There aren’t many leading ladies over 40, unless the film is written by a woman. So I loved the opportunity. After more than 40, in general, you play the wife of, or another relative in the story. It is a product of the famous patriarchy. And while the protagonist goes out to resolve the issues, the woman stays at home waiting for the phone to ring. So he was very pleased. Beyond the fact that we made it at a complex time, coming out of the pandemic, with masks, in November 2021. And it is premiering now at a also complex time in the country. Everything is difficult. We are all very involved. There are many social guarantees that are being violated: education, art, culture, disability. It is a complex moment. But hey, I loved making the movie.

-You just said how age and work influence some, do you want to be aware of these issues, do you take care of yourself?

-I should take better care of myself. I do orthomolecular medicine and have vitamin supplementation. It’s a matter of staying healthy, because if not, how do I sustain all this? In fact, I tend to grab those respiratory things that are going around. It is a fragility that I have. As a child I had repeated tonsils and had surgery on my tonsils and adenoids. That removes defenses. Returning to the question, I should do physical activity and I don’t. I take care of my food and in my house we eat in a very healthy and organized way. Obviously I give myself my tastes. Or I have a good wine, a good beer in the summer, a glass of whiskey. For me, the poison is dairy and flour.

-And what other pampering do you give yourself?

-I don’t give a lot either! My work continues to be an escape from the weight of reality. Beyond that it is a responsibility and a commitment. Acting, singing and teaching are activities that I enjoy while doing them. They are a good anchor. I also take my trips. Going to a nearby sea with friends already changes me a lot. I really like going on adventures alone. I am very adventurous. I have gone to spend my birthday alone in the mountains of Córdoba or in Brazil. It nourishes me to be with myself a little.

-Yes, it’s rest too. All my work and all my daily tasks are linked to interacting with other people. Being a little alone is a recharge of the battery. Read, listen to music or make whatever plan I want.

-TI have in mind creating a home thinking about my daughters for when I am not there. A home regulated by the same parents. And not only for my daughters, but for all adults with disabilities who lose their family. Because if not, they end up in a psychiatric hospital or a nursing home. It is very serious. So what we need is someone to donate a piece of land to us. I live in Escobar, so a property that is not too far away. It is about creating an educational therapeutic center or day center, with a home. So that the people or kids who start going there take ownership of the place like someone who goes to school and little by little they can stay until one day they can live there. It is a goal that I have and I am not going to leave this life without achieving it. And I also want to write another book, make another album and write a play.

-You came when Dolores was 18 to try your luck in Buenos Aires, would you change anything about your life?

-Not me I am satisfied with the person I am. It seems to me that one is the result of one’s choices, successes and mistakes. Obviously, one would like some circumstances to have been kinder. But I wouldn’t change anything about my life.