Centering Love
Publishing this on the most special day for my daughter and me is a celebration of our journey… Centering love is a part of a healing journey where I seek forgiveness and joy.
My spirit has called on me to re-calibrate my life to center self-love. This is a glimpse into my journey.
I’ll never be able to fully live life without considering others (thankfully) but considering myself first and honestly must be my priority. Life has boldly reminded me that it's no one’s responsibility but mine to ensure that I stand and act in my own truth. My foundation is rooted in critical race theory, intersectionality, and equity to celebrate, honor, and provide space for diverse experiences, nuanced thinking, and creative processes within social transformation.
As a queer, multicultural/racial Latina, who is deeply committed to learning through the transformative power of fire and celebrations, my goal is to be grounded in self-love and benefit the collective.
My journey as an adult began before 18 in teenage shelters and the streets. So rarely spoken of but the cooperation and navigation of street life is a form of love mixed with pain and survival. To want to survive we must love. The exploiters providing so long as they benefit, the exploited hopeful, the ones who fit neither weaving between worlds so that we can survive the margins and live another day.
Exiting that world to a home where there was little judgment on the past but plenty of old-school guidance that will cuss you out in a heartbeat if you dare to disrespect yourself or others. A place that was full of strangers would save my life and become a place that held me until I could breathe on my own.
My traditional adulthood started on someone else’s couch and shortly after in the arms of a stranger who had weed, a warm home, and resources. After a summer of being taken care of, I would find myself in my house-slippers locked out of the house. A fit of drug-induced jealousy would be the deciding factor of whether I would be housed or not.
It’s the day I left and returned to a house where trauma and triggers lived in the walls.
A new beginning was the moment I verified I was pregnant. Sitting on the steps of the clinic across the street from Inglewood HS, my alma mater, smoking a last cigarette waiting with a friend to find out what I already knew. I was pregnant. The moment I heard the words my soul shifted. It uncovered an unconditional and previously unfelt love before my daughter was even born. She took up space, a beautiful space, from the start – 10lbs, 5 oz, a huge smile, big eyes. I would privately call her my Buddha baby because of her round cheeks that matched her round body and multiple chins and chunky legs. She was heavy in my arms and filled my heart. To this day I know I get on her nerves as a mom who lived too many lives does but there is no doubt of the love between us.
Attending school, working, and creating a home filled our life but then I hit a wall of unresolved emotions. This led to an inner retreat that placed a blanket of sadness in our once vibrant home.
The desire to be the best mom I could propelled me into therapy to unpack, rebuild, and heal. Today we navigate as adults and being a grandma (Lita) of two. My path of continuous learning and growing.
In my twenties, I took a journey to Cuba where I felt warmly at home. I felt the beauty and love of the island in my soul. After two weeks, I was speaking Spanish freely – it was natural, a rebirth of a different time. As a little girl, I had a caretaker who only spoke Spanish and I took Spanish classes in school but I’ve only been comfortable speaking English. At 48, I took a Spanish Sin Pena class. I’m also co-learning with my grandson, which is an incredible gift.
Having Cuban, German-Jewish, Dutch ancestors define my heritage and my skin-tone presents me as light-skinned, mixed-race Latina and for some a look of white. But my life is more nuanced with a childhood living within predominantly Black communities and being deeply rooted in the pride of my Cuban and east coast ancestry along with the history of people unknown to me. Coming to understand the advantages I experience and emotion of my struggles to be grounded and accept how I am perceived and who I am is a path on my journey of self-love.
This also includes living in my truth as a queer womyn. A longer journey than it would be in a different time. It took people close to me observing and asking questions. I didn’t live my truth until my mid-thirties. Opening up to love without having to qualify myself was freeing and awkward. I was so used to the hetero-normative dance. Moving to a queer-friendly city, joining a womyn’s circle, and exploring who I actually felt drawn towards, as opposed to responding to someone else’s attraction to me, were transformational acts of self-love.
Another important part of identity and particularly important to my career path has been the connection of the political, daily experience, and the overall implications for humanity. Being raised immersed within a poor working-class perspective of political and economic structures that center humans over profit meant I experienced movement building as a way of life and not just a theoretical concept from books.
That did not come without complications of gender dynamics and neglect for my safety as a child. Even in that pain, the foundation of right and wrong through the lens of intersectionality of race, class, gender, and equity has given me the advantage of seeing the connections and interdependence of our communities, families, government, systems, education (mis-education), economic structures vs. political structures, etc.
These nuances in my identity and core understanding of the world have carried throughout my life. And now serves as a foundation for my consultant journey. The birth of being a consultant came from the loving support of community, successes, frustration, and my overall experiences as a non-profit leader.
I am unambiguously critical of racist capitalism and how it is used to exploit and destroy lives while ravaging resources in our communities and throughout the world. The connection to survival based on whether one has a job is a terrible consequence of U.S. culture. I have also been exposed to wealthy people who started their lives in poverty and built their wealth supporting the success of others.
The layered frames of finances have provided me a strong foundation for running a nonprofit that was in its infancy and cash-strapped to others that had multi-million dollar budgets in a way that honors people’s need for living wages, time away from work, and space for creativity. While also building in reserves and paying off long-term debt and serving our community. It has shaped my value of work ethic founded on integrity and the passion to change systems and lives.
The formation of my consulting business came from the acknowledgment that nonprofits are charged with being strategic and charismatic movement leaders while simultaneously being experts in fundraising, people and project management, relationship building, systems change, and so much more. Finance is crucial for successful operations but often one of the more perplexing and speculative parts of the job.
Successes and comfort with budgets and equity-based organization structures, from the perspective of a bookkeeper, program staff/manager, board member, and executive director, provide me with a unique opportunity to make budgeting processes and creating organization frameworks more accessible to more people.
