Our Experiences are Our Foundation

By Guest Blogger Alejandra Palos

A Sacred Journey

In the words of one of our Powerful Latinas audience, who has been through abusive relationships in her own life, her own struggles, and come out on the other side with words of wisdom to share:

Art has always been in my life; I was born and raised in San Francisco in the Mission district and have been inspired by witnessing my father pursue his artistic dreams in this country after emigrating from Mexico.

As the daughter of a well known artist, I have spent my life struggling to define my own identity and work. I was led back to art, after rejecting it as “my father’s” work.

I have been stone carving for 5 years, and it has been healing to claim my creativity and own my vision of change and empowerment. I am now continuing the passion without comparison. I am proud of this heritage, and I am emerging from my father’s shadow to follow my own artistic passions.

My work is an offering to my soul’s journey “one that fuses my art with a spiritual and healing perspective”. It is a creation on a worldwide scale that emphasizes love, enlightenment, and the healing touch of God. With great gratitude, my artistic offerings reveal painful lessons, blessings and a determination for a healthy future.

My own recent battle with thyroid cancer has given me the opportunity to use my voice through my work.  I have been given a second chance to live again, while   promoting spiritual growth and positive change.
Pieces of the journey:

“Dama” symbolizes my vision as an artist and the woman I am becoming, I am evolving.

“Volando”-celebrates the healing change, faith in my future and divine intuition.

“Siempre Frida”is homage to Frida Kahlo’s strength and resilience which has impacted me personally through my own struggle to overcome illness, emotional pain and suffering.

• “My Death is my re-Birth” is a self portrait symbolizing my death as the  “past person” who was a physically ill and spiritually yearning soul, and now re-born a new woman

Blessings on your own journey!

Alejandra Palos

Reflection, Repentance, Forgivenes: El día de San Juan Bautista

By Guest Blogger Sandra del Castillo

“Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”  And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Mark 1:2-4

In the early 90’s my children and I lived in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. One June 24th we were visiting a village around the Lake when we noticed youth throwing one another into the plaza fountain, amidst screams of delight and much laughter. They were also carrying buckets of water, which they splashed onto willing or unknowing passersby.

The children and I decided to watch from the shaded sidewalk. Doña Simona, an elderly indigenous woman explained to us that it was St. John the Baptist’s Day.

“Siempre le celebramos a San Juan con agua. Hay que bañarse en agua fresco or estar bañado!” she smiled. We always celebrate St. John with water. You either have to bathe in fresh water or get bathed!

Having lived in different regions of Mexico for over 14 years, I have found that no matter where you live, when el día de San Juan Bautista arrives, be prepared to bathe!

In case you’re not familiar with the biblical tale, John the Baptist was a harbinger of Christ. He wandered the desert in a fervor preaching repentance and forgiveness.

He lived off of honey, locusts, and carob and baptized in the river Jordan. Baptism promised forgiveness and the crowds flocked to the Baptist for their salvation.

As heralded, Jesus arrived one day to ask John to baptize him. John recognized him at once and replied that it was Jesus who should baptize him. When Jesus assured him that the baptism of Jesus by John was the way it must be, John agreed.

During the baptism, the heavens were said to open and a celestial light shone down. A white dove appeared above Jesus’ head and a heavenly voice was heard to say, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

The Baptist fell instantly to his knees for he knew the one he had been heralding had arrived at last. Isaiah’s prophesy had been fulfilled.

The story reflects, in part, the power of baptism, humility, and how important it is to do what you were called to do.

In the opening passage from Mark, former president Jimmy Carter notes that the key words are repentance, baptism, and forgiveness. Sounds like a good summer recipe to me!

A St. John the Baptist Day Recipe
Add one tablespoon of self-reflection, two for repentance.
Add one heaping serving of fresh water, and two more for celebration!

The ritual cleansing with water was a universal practice during the summer solstice, which falls this year on June 21st.  Reinvigorating and renewing, it continues to be a joyful way to welcome summer.

This June I encourage you to honor San Juan Bautista with this ancient ritual. To repentance, baptism, and forgiveness, I have added the necessary ingredient, reflection. As el día de San Juan Bautista approaches, there is plenty to repent and ask forgiveness for.

As we move into the summer, let us take the time to reflect, and consider the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico. Though we may not be residents of the gulf coast region who have been suffering the effects of this fatal disaster since April 20th, what happens there affects us all. There is much to pray for.

A powerful tool, prayer has been scientifically proven to be particularly effective when shared in community.

As the oil continues to gush out of control and the “experts” prove unable to cap it, let us be steadfast in our prayer and intent.

Let us pray that the right people find their way to the depths of our ocean floor and stop the mythological beast that has been set loose. Let us pray for the families whose livelihoods and environment are being destroyed as a result, and for the wildlife; that they begin to move and migrate away from their poisoned habitats. Let us pray not just today, but every day until the disaster is contained.

After your prayers and meditation, immerse yourself in a fresh body of water. Regardless the form it takes, whether a clean river, a pool, your shower or a water balloon fight, allow the water of forgiveness to wash over you.

Feel it cleansing and healing your wounds and those you may have caused others. Imagine courageous heroes healing the bleeding puncture wound at our oceans depths with caring and expertise.

I close this prayer to San Juan by paraphrasing two powerful women, first the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, “Envision not a better world, but “a good one.” and Russian Jewish feminist icon Emma Goldman when she said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”Amen and happy summer!

CONNECTING OUR PAST AND FUTURE: HOW WRITERS KEEP EXPERIENCES ALIVE

By Guest Blogger Thelma T. Reyna, Ph.D.

For better or worse, our experiences created us, inside and out, and continue to influence who we are. For writers, personal experiences oftentimes end up on the pages of our books, poems, stories, screenplays, and essays.

Even when our creations are “fictionalized,” the heart of our tales springs from our childhoods, our marriages and friendships, people we know at work, and from our everyday surroundings. It has been a long-accepted maxim that writers usually write what they know best, and what we know best is oftentimes what we have experienced directly.

Can life events be relived for decades and centuries into the future? In essence, can time stand still? By interjecting their writings with personal experiences, authors do indeed capture these events in time, to be relived by generations of readers, thus weaving past and future with the power of the written word.

An Element of Autobiography Prevails

In addition to memoirs, fictional writings are replete with an element of autobiography.

Consider the case of current Latina bestselling author, Caridad Piñeiro, acclaimed writer of 24 romance books. Her huge success with her new “paranormal romance” SIN series can be traced to her deep love of science and extensive training in it.

In her newest book, Sins of the Flesh, the novel’s hero, Caterina Shaw, is afflicted with a strange medical condition that causes her skin to blend into the background, like a chameleon’s. Suffering from a terminal illness, Caterina was used, without her consent, as a guinea pig in a demented doctor’s laboratory. In creating this riveting tale of medical experimentation (and romance!), Caridad used her direct experiences with science and laboratories to craft the plot of this book.

Caridad recently communicated to me: “I was a science geek, earning a B.S. degree magna cum laude from Villanova University….My love of science led to this new series. There have been hints of it in other books, but this time it was more overt.”

She adds: “I think that every experience in life adds something to what we do. In this case, it helped create a new concept for [my] novels.”

Such is the transferable, ubiquitous power of personal experience!

Another Latina Author’s Experiences

Sandra Cisneros, one of our premier contemporary authors, states on her website that she writes “…what happened to me that I can’t forget, but also what happened to others I love, or what strangers have told me happened to them….”  She includes vicarious experience as inspiration for her fiction.

Ultimately, she takes all experience and “cuts and pastes it together to make a story….” Her last novel, Caramelo, is, according to Booklist, “a sweeping, fictionalized history” of the author’s Mexican-American clan. Indeed, Sandra’s research into her roots entailed trips to Mexico for approximately a decade.

Speaking from Experience…

Many of my own stories are also triggered by personal experience, though I usually expand a small event into a full one with characters, settings, and events that I did not in fact experience.

One of the stories in my new book, for example, describes a woman on a neighborhood walk who finds a small, lovely jewelry box by a trash bin and takes it home. The first two pages of this story, “Little Box,” are an exact description of my discovery of such a box in Chicago. However, everything that happens from that page forward is total fiction. (The little box, by the way, sits on my bookshelf now as I write this blog.)

Conversely, another of my stories, “White Van,” describes my own neighborhood in Pasadena and closely depicts a neighbor I had long ago. Though the narrator of the story is fictionalized, the situation in the story is almost all based on reality.

My story “Juana Macho” was inspired by someone I knew in my native Texas. “Fooled” was inspired by my own mother’s critical illness and the measures my family members took to protect her from tragic news. “Marry Me” was triggered by the fact that one of my younger brothers was the object of affection of an elderly woman who proposed to him!

Of course, although fiction writers may use their experiences as a springboard to their tales, imagination takes over and renders an actuality into a new creation.

The Bond Between Life and Literature

Perhaps this pervasive tapping of experience by authors—whether just as inspiration for a plot or character, or for an entire story or poem, or any amalgamation in between—is a testament to the closeness of literature and life.

We’ve heard it said that good literature mirrors life. Literature captures the nuances of experience and reflects these back to us to enlighten us about people, about love and struggle, about all the vicissitudes that life presents us.

As Fred White, in his book The Daily Writer (2008), states: “Our imagination allows us to extrapolate from stories we’ve read…and our own familiarity….”

Writers past and present extract the heart of the matter from an experience that moved them somehow, then offer that experience to their readers in a new, gussied-up form, with embellishments that give the original experience a uniqueness birthed by the author.

The Stories in All of Us

Ultimately, we all have stories inside us that are worthy of a book, a chapter in a book, or a poem and more. Unavoidably, we often reflect on experiences we’ve had, dissecting them alone or with others to find meaning in them and in life in general. This dissecting, this analysis is similar to what authors do, as they take snippets of experiences and, as Cisneros says, weave them together to make a story.

Luckily for broader society, the weaving that writers do enriches all of us and helps enlighten our journeys in this world.

[For any of the books listed in this post click on the links to be taken to amazon for purchase or reviews.]

What are *Y*O*U*R* Questions about All Experiences Bring You Something?

I look forward to speaking with many of you on Monday!  I have had some interesting questions submitted for our discussion, and wanted to encourage you to think about what your questions are about what your own experiences are “supposed” to, or actually do, bring you.

Some of you shared your own struggles with me, and I have to say that many of you have overcome much more than I have!

For those for whom it’s useful, I’ll be talking a little bit about my own experiences as a teenage single mother on welfare, in an abusive relationship, and what came out of those experiences for me personally.  There’s more to the story, so you’ll want to be there to get the details.  :-)  I am open to answering specific questions people may have about my experiences, and I’ve never done that in an open forum before, so take advantage of the opportunity.

I will also invite you to share, if you’d like to, some of your experiences and what you’ve taken out of them.  Note:  These do NOT have to be sad, unpleasant, or difficult experiences.  They can also be positive ones!

Some women have given me permission to share some of their stories, and we’ll do that, as well.  We will also be answering some questions that people have posed together, in the group.

Among questions women have submitted are the following:  What good can come out of truly awful circumstances (such as harm to children)?  How do we share the life lessons we’ve learned (often out of difficult situations) with others who have not had the same experiences (such as our own children)?

What do we get out of the negative ways in which Latinas are sometimes treated in both society and within our culture and our families?  How do we work to change these cultural beliefs and behaviors that harm Latinas?

How do we turn our own experiences into strengths and get the most out of them?  How does one stay inspired?

One woman spoke of turning 40, and how she wants to discuss being at the time in her life that used to be called “midlife” (as in, “midlife crisis”) and is now called “the age of miracles.”

Wherever you are, whatever your own experiences, and whichever issues are of interest to you, I’d invite you to sign up now for the call – and invite your friends and family to sign up, too!  I look forward to speaking with you, learning from you, and sharing with each other.

As Latinas, we have so much to offer each other.  Let’s gather together to make the most of our community and our time.

When:  Monday, June 21

Time:  5 p.m. PDT, 8 p.m. EDT

Click here to  sign up now.

And of course, if you’re not available at that time, sign up anyway, and we’ll send you the recording!

5 Lessons from Positive Experiences

When we talk about all experiences bringing you something, one might think that we’re only referring to negative experiences, but let’s think about what we get from the positive…!

All positive experiences bring us 5 key things, in *addition* to what each of them may individually bring to you.  For example, all positive 
experiences bring you something that is unique to that moment.  
Holding your baby for the first time, graduating from an educational institution, or even just a day at the beach — each of these things are positive and bring a unique flavor to our lives.  So that unique experience — that moment — is special in and of itself.

However, positive experiences in general also give us so much more.  
Let’s reflect.

1.  Gratitude

How often do you take a moment to simply *be* in the moment and have gratitude for a unique, wonderful, beautiful experience?  Whether it be a wonderful meal, which reminds you that you can smell and taste, and that you have enough food to eat, or reading a good book, which reminds you that you can read and think and imagine and have the access to books.  Every moment that is good reminds us of the bigger picture of our lives, and can be a reason to be grateful for all we have.

2.  Appreciation

In addition to the moment itself, and giving a sense of gratitude for everything in your life, we can also appreciate the specific people, things or places that came together to create that moment for us.  For example, perhaps your lover cooked that amazing meal for you, and you can offer appreciation to him or her for that sweet gesture.  Or perhaps the music playing that moves you was written by a talented group of artists.  Likewise, you can feel appreciation not only for your ability to experience what they have to offer, but also for the particular humans on the planet that brought that experience to you!

3.  A Sense of Possibility

When we are up, and have a positive experience, we know that more are 
possible.  By having a good time, we know that it can happen again.  
When we are in a good space, we have optimism that things can be good, we dream bigger and have hope.  This ability to experience one good thing keeps us holding on for more of the same.  And as we learn what pleases us, we can create more of that in our lives.  As you find out you love jazz, or Indian food, or hiking, or volunteering, you are able to think to yourself, “Wow!  How much else is out there that can bring me joy?”

4.  Perspective

Often when we’re in a good space, it allows us to see how much better off we truly are than many others in the world.  If you are able to read, have access to a computer, and live where there is running water, we’re doing so much better than millions of people in the world.  Sometimes we lose that perspective.  However, when we’re happy, we can remind ourselves of the blessings we have and this is more than just gratitude or appreciation.  Rather, we can see things with a broader, bigger and fuller perspective.

5.  A Wonderful Memory — Positive Experiences Create More Joy!

Pure bliss, joy, and peace.  When you have a positive experience, you carry that moment with you and you can call it up and relive it at ANY time you want to.  Since we all have a memory bank full of all sorts of memories, why not call on the good ones to bring us back more fully and more often to that place of happiness and contentment?  It’s those small moments of excitement, pleasure, interest, and so on that create the fabric of our lives.

So as you move through your life and have wonderful moments of being YOU, make sure you keep the lessons from those happy, shining moments, as well as the lessons from the darker ones.  ALL experiences bring you something…

More Thoughts on All Experiences Bring You Something

From Contributing Blogger Carmen Mojica

“To thine own self be true.” – Shakespeare

As I reflect on the last two years of my life, a lot of emotions come with it. there is a certain level of sadness for the relationships that have fallen apart. There is frustration over the amount of times I’ve had to pack all my belongings and leave due to being unable to stay where I am.

There is anger towards people who can’t understand or respect what I’m about. Yet, past all of those emotions is a satisfaction that cannot be taken from me – the satisfaction of knowing that I have learned how to be true to myself.

Often times, taking a stand for the things you believe in can be hard and even a bit scary. You have to deal with a lot of adversity from friends and family, and even have to experience the loss of some of them.

I have always been a willful individual. It is hard for me to ignore my gut and ignore who I am, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. I remember in college when I first began my spiritual practice. I was free for the first time in my life to explore other religions outside of Catholicism.

I was raised strictly Catholic for as long as I can remember. My whole family adheres to the religion. Me, on the other hand, have always been interested in other faiths from a young age.

Having the freedom finally to express it without the fear of being reprimanded was essential to my growth. Through studying other paths of worship, I learned a lot about consciousness, being present and evolving as a woman.

Part of the reason I have been able to get past the self-hatred I battled with in my life, as well as the severe depression that enveloped my life in high school, was because of my yoga practice and studies of other scriptures. I was happy with my growth upon graduating, yet I had the feeling that it would not go over well at home.

I remember on the eve of my graduation, I looked my mom in the eyes and told her that I didn’t want to have issues because of how different I was. At the time, I was referring to changes in my life such as being more like a “hippie”, which meant being very laidback about how I dressed and reacted to life in general.

Within the first few weeks of being back home after college, that became an instant problem. My mother wanted me to be more dainty and ladylike, and my only response came in the form of complete indifference to subscribing to materialism.

Just 3 months in, my mother stumbled upon my books on witchcraft and had a fit. The whole thing was more dramatic than it had to be but my mother, being a devout Catholic, was absolutely scandalized. She made it clear that she was vehemently against my interest in spirituality outside of hers, and told me she accepted me as her daughter but not what I believed in. In tears, I packed all my things and left.

I spent a year traveling from place to place, upset and angry that religion had driven a wedge between her and I. But there was just no way to compromise. I could not lie to myself and give up my books so she could be happy.

Because of it, life has been awfully interesting. Leaving forced me to grow up in many ways. But it has been hard. Not having a stable home while pursing my dreams of being an established author and artist has been a challenge but despite all the odds, I was able to complete my literary work and expand my worldview.

Towards the end of last year, I had to make a tough decision to move back home. The time away from my mother helped our relationship a lot, and I thought going home again would be less dramatic than last time.

For the first 3 months everything was alright. My mom still did not like my “hippie” ways but did not nitpick at them as much as she did the first time around.

But my spirituality was still not okay. I had to put all my books on spirituality in my friend’s house. I had to practice outside of the house, as she made it clear that it was not allowed in her house. I obliged as best as I could to her rules, even though I felt incredibly stifled and restrained. I assuaged her demands on my spirit just to have peace in the house. I had no intentions of staying there to live but knew the arrangement was temporary.

It broke my heart when she flipped out one day and told me I was worshipping the devil. Again, she said she could not accept the fact that I was of a different creed than her. And again, I packed all my things and left.

The whole situation is upsetting. I have often found myself asking if I could have done something different or anything in that vein. All I wanted was for my mom to be okay with who I am. Yet, as painful as this experience has been, it was not pointless for me to go through this.

I have realized that I am who I am, regardless of who likes it. And I cannot be someone else just to make someone happy. With all the obstacles and situations that I have experienced because of my identity, I am happy to be following my own path.

To learn more about Carmen, see her full bio page here.

Are You Graduating?

This month, we are surrounded by many people “graduating” from one level to the next.  Last month my son graduated from college, and this month, many are graduating from high school (including some friend’s children).  [Ok, ok, I'm getting old -- I know!]

But in reality, we are always “graduating” from one level to the next.  Although we often think of graduation as the conferral of a degree or diploma, to “graduate” really means “To advance to a new level of skill, achievement, or activity.”

What have you grown out of that you leave (or need to leave!) behind?

Sometimes we “graduate” out of friendships, marriages, jobs, relationships, houses and levels of income.  At each step, we launch ourselves into something new.  Sometimes we are prepared for the new level, and sometimes we don’t even know we’re graduating, and keep on doing things the same way we did before.

I know at times in my past, I “graduated” beyond a certain level, but was holding on so hard to the old ways, that I forgot I needed to learn new methods to be able to keep up with where I was now.

Graduating to new levels can be difficult.  However, the *process* is part of the growth cycle.

When a caterpillar goes into a chrysalis, it seems as if they are doing “nothing” — they are simply inactive.  But how far from the truth!  In reality, this stage of quiet is allowing the growth and complete transformation into something new!

However, if you’ve ever watched a new butterfly emerge out of the chrysalis, it has to fight hard to do so.  It cannot emerge without a lot of struggle.

In spite of the difficulty, this step in the process is a necessity.  For those butterflies that have had the chrysalis cut off from them (seemingly making the process “easier”), they were weaker, their wings aren’t ready, and they die.

What a metaphor for life.  Although cliche, it is so true.  This month, as we reflect on our theme of All Experiences Bring You Something, think about where you are in your life.  In what areas are you ready to “graduate” to the next level?  Where have you graduated to already, and are you embracing those new skills, or holding on to your old methods?

I know that I am also continuing to “graduate” from one level to the next — continually learning, growing and changing.  At it’s not always easy!  I am chagrined, at times, to see where I have refused to change and grow, and have to remind myself to let go of old habits, patterns and ways that no longer serve me…

For those of you who would like to have a conversation about how “All Experiences Bring You Something”, I will be hosting an open Q&A call June 21st on this theme, including answering questions about my own history!  Click here to sign up now for this call, and you will be sent the call in details.  And if you miss the call, don’t worry, we will send you the recording.

And if you missed the first blog post of this month’s theme, click here to read it now!

Theme of the Month: All Experiences Bring You Something

As we go through our lives, we experiences our ups and downs, things that are both bitter and sweet, and things that bring both pain and pleasure.  But no matter what, who we are is created by our RESPONSE to these experiences – they all bring us something…

I am sure that, if you’re like me, you’ve had some experiences that have left you breathless…for both good and bad reasons.  All experiences are a foundation upon which we build our understanding.

Our experiences allow us to know what love is (not just what we read or hear about love).  Our experiences allow us to taste chocolate, walk in the rain, dance to music, and cry with a good friend.

While we have a variety of ways in which we ingest these experiences, we all know that you cannot adequately describe the color blue, what it feels like to dive into a pool on a hot summer’s day, or what it means to be Latina.

These experiences have to be LIVED, to be experienced, and those experiences bring us something.  What those experiences do for us, however, is completely up to us.

Have you had your heart broken?  Eaten a rotten piece of fruit?  Or been betrayed by a friend?

Have you even been laughed at?  Made fun of?  Or failed at something you really, really wanted?

Could you adequately describe those things?

When we pick ourselves up from difficult times, we get to *choose* what those experiences will mean for our world view.  Will we choose to fundamentally view the world as good, or bad?  Will we decide to try again…or simply give up?

Likewise, have you ever eaten a warm cookie, fresh out of the oven?  Hugged a wriggling, squirming puppy that is desperately trying to lick your face?  Woken up on a cold morning snuggled under a warm comforter?

Do you take those experiences for granted, as something that is your due, and “owed” to you?  Or do you choose to accept them with gratitude, and appreciation, and with the joy of knowing that you CAN have those experiences?

This month, we will reflect on what our experiences have brought, how we interpret what’s happened in our lives, and how we’ve chosen to craft what those experiences mean, and how we will move forward…

June 2010 Recommendations

A former Simon & Schuster editor, Marcela Landres is the author of the e-book How Editors Think and specializes in helping Latinos get published.

Check out her webpage at: www.marcelalandres.com.

	The Heavens Weep for Us: and Other Stories by Thelma Reyna (Outskirts Press) Delicately written stories of characters whose losses bring opportunities.
	Born in the Cavity of Sunsets by Michael Luis Medrano (Bilingual Press) Resilient poetry wrenched from funerals, rehab, and taco trucks.