Being Mestiza

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from readers about what I mean when I say I’m mestiza. That fact is always one of the first pieces of information in all my author bio and that’s intentional. Although the term has been around for a long time, I specifically use the definition from Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), which focuses on developing a new mestiza consciousness. For those that aren’t familiar with the term, mestiza or mestizaje means a person of mix-raced decent.

Being mestiza is different for everyone—everyone’s mix is a little different and, in many cases, few of us know everything about the mix that is our cultural background. This is because we are, in one way or another, products of colonization. And as a result of colonization, histories of the colonized sometimes get lost, erased, or suppressed. So it is important to remember that, like the wider Hispanic and Latinx communities, the mestizaje community is not a monolith. Our mixed heritage and our relationship to it are as complex and diverse as our backgrounds.

Identifying as mestiza then is a way of acknowledging the history of violence in our veins and undoing rigid cultural purity norms. We eschew conversations about who is the whitest or brownest. The purest Spanish or the most Indigenous. Celebrating our mixed-race heritage is one of the many ways we work to dismantle lateral oppression and white supremacy. It’s also a way of reclaiming the rich cultural practices that the colonizers tried to stamp out or villainize. Much of the legacy of witchcraft in New Mexico is one of the Spanish church villainizing—dare I say crucifying?—anything and anyone they didn’t understand or couldn’t control, which included many cultural practices outside the purview of the church.

I want to make it clear, before I go on, that I don’t speak for all mestizas as I write this. Again, each experience is unique, no mix is the same, just as our relationship to our mixed heritage is complex and individual. I’m likewise making some broad brushstrokes here, as this is a complex conversation that many communities have been having since colonization. So keep in mind that I’m only addressing some aspects of the very rich conversation as it relates to my personal experience, my writing, and my brujeria practice.

And I’m doing all this in the relatively small space of a blog when many have written books and dedicated entire careers to discussing this very topic. All by way of saying, what I’m writing here today is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to being mestiza. I’m also acknowledging here that explorations of my relationship to my cultural background will be ongoing and that, even as I write this, there will inevitably be things I won’t get right, nuances I gloss over, and complex conversations that aren’t fully unpacked. But to my mind, what is important is having the conversation. Articulating what this identity means to me right now, however incomplete. Part of pushing back against white supremacy is letting go of the need to be perfect, have all the answers, and produce a flawless text. My mestiza identity is about exploring my messy heritage and my messy relationship to it. Nothing is clean-cut about this history, so there will be no clean-cut conversations or answers.

New Mexican Mestizaje Consciousness

I often speak with my students about being mixed-race and how that is an integral part of my identity as a bruja. I identify specifically as mestiza, not Chicana, Spanish, Hispanic, or Latina. I never get offended when people do put me under those labels, as I know the conversation of being mestiza is pretty culturally specific, as is the difference between Spanish, Hispanic, and Latino labels and the history of colonization behind those terms.

In all honesty, all those terms are problematic and all those terms have different meanings depending on where you are in the world. For example, for native New Mexicans, Hispanic was the common term used when I was growing up. Nationally, we get lumped into the term Latinx since we are brown and Spanish speakers. Honestly? All those terms make me uncomfortable because I don't feel like they adequately express my mixed heritage. I likewise don’t judge those who wouldn’t know the nuances of those various terms because they are outside the cultural conversation. I mean, there are plenty of social and cultural conversations in which I’m an outsider, so I always appreciate it when someone kindly educates me when I get something wrong or if I’m simply unaware of it!

Embracing my mestiza roots, however, is a way for me to acknowledge that I am a product of histories of violence—and that I’m ready to move beyond them. New Mexico has a bloody history of Spanish conquistadors exploiting and violating Indigenous communities and, later, erasing them completely in an effort to sanitize and white-wash our history. Yet the legacy of the Spanish conquistadors is heavily romanticized while Native American cultures are silenced, appropriated, and exploited. What often gets left out in this highly sanitized version of our state history is that we have the blood of the colonizers and the colonized in our veins, the curanderas (folk healers and mystics), natural witches, and shamans—as well as the Catholic church. We are European. We are Ingenious. Some of us are also Latinx. Or a mix of other cultures. We all look different. We are always othered bodies because we cannot be easily categorized.

Therein lies our power. We are inherently transgressive because we don’t comfortably fit into the racial and ethnic stereotypes white patriarchy wants us to occupy. The evidence of this is something I always carry with me. I have a European last name. My skin is bronze but, in certain contexts, I can pass as white. So much of my existence inevitably challenges people’s preconceived notions of what it means to be a woman of color. I’m from a Spanish speak heritage but my speaking skills have deteriorated from adequate to mediocre. I would like to one day be fluent and try to practice more regularly. But my ability to speak the language (or not) does not make me more or less Latinx. I love Latin dance but I don’t practice the Catholic faith—something often heavily romanticized by people outside of our culture…but more on that in the next section. In each case, my very existence challenges traditional assumptions about what it means to be a woman of color and separates my relationship to my heritage from mainstream culture’s stereotypes about who I am.

I likewise honor my ancestral roots while also coming to terms with the fact that I can’t reach back for them. Some of us can reclaim other parts of our heritage, reclaim what’s been lost in a way that heals individuals and communities. For others, histories have been lost, so there is no way to fully recover what has been erased. Then there are those, like myself, who can’t look back. You’d be surprised by the ghosts and ancestral hauntings that get stirred up when you dig up family history. And, contrary to popular belief, not all ancestors are benevolent, a hard fact you have to learn when you’re a product of colonization. So I’ve closed the door to the past, though it sometimes calls to me. Instead, I’ve decided to look forward.

Mestizaje Bruja Activism

Here’s what I can reclaim: joy, pleasure, autonomy, and wholeness. That’s where bruja activism comes in.

For a start, bruja activism is about anti-racism. Claiming our mestiza roots pushes back against blood quantum, a colonial concept that pits Indigenous communities against one another in the battle for resources. Likewise, I acknowledge my ancestry and honor the histories I’ve learned, but I don’t pretend to know anything about rez life and don’t appropriate Indigenous experiences that aren’t mine. Again, there are a lot of different ways to explore and connect to our heritage.

We also resist the white-washing of our communities that celebrate only the European aspects of our heritage while ignoring or diminishing the value of the Latinx and Ingenious cultures that also make up who we are. But more importantly, it reminds us that, while we are all products of colonization in one way or another, we have the power to become more than those histories of violence and oppression. All of this is a rejection of white supremacy and the lateral oppression it feeds as communities of color try to regulate who is the most Latinx, the most Ingenious, the most Spanish, the most whatever, thus perpetuating systemic racism.

Instead, we take our power back. We reclaim what we can of our known Indigenous and Latinx traditions (so long as it doesn’t bring up old ghosts and traumas). We acknowledge that there are powerful magics in our bloodlines even if we can’t fully reclaim them or know their origin. It is enough to know they are there. We forge new paths. We push back against cultural norms of what mestizaje should look like. Again: we are not a monolith. Not easily categorized or labeled, and so, harder to control.

Mestizaje brujeria is also about rejecting traditional religion, at least for me. There’s no denying that the Catholic church historically suppressed women and other minorities—and continues to. From the Spanish witchhunts to the exploitation and violation of female bodies, the church is no friend of the mestiza. That history of religious trauma is something we still carry with us. I cannot romanticize Catholicism like so many outside our culture (and, yes, within it) can because I cannot separate its cultural and historical value from the traumas it has inflicted on women of color in particular. I’m also not here to police other mestizas’ relationship to the Catholic church. Again, our relationship to all aspects of our cultural roots is deeply personal and complex. What is medicine for some is poison to another. I only resist being told how I should feel about my own relationship to my heritage, especially by those who want to appropriate it or romanticize it without experiencing the burden of that history in their veins. That easily becomes another form of colonization, after all.

My path is one of reclaiming curanderisma, natural spirituality, and natural sexuality freed from the chains of colonization, religion, and white patriarchy. The power of mestizaje is the power of shaping our own narrative. When we are so often confined to stories about the past, histories of trauma, and oppression, we forget that we are also stories of resilience, strength, and transformation. Abundance and hope. Love and healing. Through brujeria, I allow myself to explore my unfolding story outside of preconceived narratives rooted in historical oppression. I am allowed to know my body, myself, my soul beyond the mainstream (white) culture’s gaze. I am allowed to be whole, autonomous. And I am allowed to be the one who decides what that means and looks like for me.

I’m not entirely sure I’ve got it all figured out, either. In fact, I think it would be dangerous to assume so. But what I can say is that there is no separating my writer identity from being mestizaje, just as there is no separating my bruja identity from it. They are all one. Every word, story, insight that I commit to paper is all part of working through generational and ancestral trauma, conjuring a way of being beyond those legacies, and daring to see narratives of hope and healing in our futures. Having this conversation, working through the ambiguities and nuances, are all part of the magic. Putting these thoughts in writing on my blog…that’s part of the magic too.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

5 Things I Learned From My Year of Cultivating Sacred Simple Pleasures

Last year, I committed to a year of sacred simple pleasures. I cultivated joy. I indulged in the little things that delighted me. I embraced the sacredness of pleasure. Sounds fun, right? And it was…once I got past the hangups I unwittingly nourished over the years. You know the ones: I should be working. This is all just silly stuff. It’s a guilty pleasure. I don’t have time for this. Other people enjoy this so I should too. I couldn’t just enjoy something without these ugly thoughts cropping up. In short, as I started this journey into the sacredness of pleasure, I realized that I had a complicated relationship with pleasure.

I like to blame this on puritan culture and run-of-the-mill religion that makes us feel guilty for enjoying anything that feels good. I also had to come to terms with the fact that, as a successful woman of color, I often came up against feelings of guilt or impostor syndrome that told me I wasn’t allowed to enjoy myself. Sick, right? It’s the epitome of everyday gothic when your inner saboteur comes out because the idea of bliss is a scary thing to hold onto. You begin to hold yourself back before others can do it all in some vague attempt to keep yourself safe from whatever the world wants to throw at you, the transgressive bruja that is living proof that minorities can not just survive, but thrive. Honestly, I’m like a walking threat to puritan values and toxic patriarchy!

Once I cleared through all that muck, however, I was able to indulge in the sacredness of simple pleasures. I learned a lot about myself as I explored what was truly pleasurable to me and what wasn’t. It was like a year of relearning what it means to experience joy, from the small quiet joy of brewing a pot of tea, to the loud silly joy of playing hide and seek with my niece. I learned how to give myself permission to not work, to rest. I made room for things and experiences that had no value other than that they made me smile. And I learned that I had to completely upend the notion of pleasure before I could experience its sacredness. This revelation can be boiled down to five truths I learned from my year of cultivating sacred simple pleasures.

1. What I thought would be pleasurable often wasn’t. Okay, calling on the sympathy of all introverts here, I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first started the year, my idea of pleasures conjured up more extroverted activities. Going out with friends, dancing all night, filling up my weekends with out-there stuff. And while some of that was fun (I enjoy a night on the dance floor as much as the next woman), I found that much of it felt like I was performing.

   I could never quite recharge and found myself starting the work week with an empty battery and no energy to enjoy my cozy daily routines. I realized when I stepped back to look at things, that I was relying on what the extroverted world said I should be enjoying, versus what I was actually enjoying. Mainstream culture’s notion of pleasure is not my notion of pleasure….aside from the occasional turn about the dance floor.

2. Quiet is delicious. So there I was a few months into the year, having to completely reframe my approach to pleasure. It wasn’t a loud, splashy thing. It wasn’t about being surrounded by people or chasing experiences. It was about listening to myself and my needs. And yeah, sometimes that meant being surrounded by people and chasing a new experience. But more often than not it was about giving myself permission to be quiet.

   In the quiet, I found that I was able to unplug from this fast-paced world and tune into myself. I experienced surprising revelations that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered if I’d continued on my path of loud, fast, busy. I reconnected with old parts of myself that I’d thought long gone. They’d only been in deep hibernation. My creativity and intuition blossomed under the soothing blam of quiet. I connected more deeply to life’s natural rhythms and, as a result, found greater peace in my daily goings-on.

3. Slowing down is an essential part of enjoying life. With quiet comes a slower pace. It takes time to settle in and indulge in something. Simple pleasures can’t be rushed. I’d begun to see that having a full to-do list or social calendar kept me from actually enjoying myself. It often left me disconnected from self and soul. In fact, I found that busy, busy is a great way to avoid yourself and the things you need to work through.

   I pretty quickly had to come to grips with the fact that, despite my best efforts, I can still be prone to overworking. But when I made a conscious effort to do less, I was rewarded with the time and space to clear out fo stagnant energy, outmoded ways of being, and the yuck I’d internalized from a world that isn’t comfortable with magical women of color. I replaced them with things that made me feel beautiful, stories that made me hopeful, and experiences that proved just how powerful pleasure can be.

4. Pleasure stirs up all sorts of unexpected emotions. Here’s the thing about enjoyment. When you create space for it in your life, you also make room for other emotions that bubble up as you begin to relax and open yourself to the softer, gentler things in life. Sadness, when you begin to realize that you’ve unconsciously denied yourself certain pleasures. Shock, when you realize how armored you’ve kept yourself—healthy boundaries are VERY important, but it’s equally important to remember to stay open to the good stuff. Guilt when you’re enjoying yourself a little too much…but there’s no such thing as too much, so then you feel anger at how you’ve let those pesky puritanical norms snake their way into your brain and make you doubt your own joy.

   See what I mean? I’ve got a complicated relationship to pleasure, or rather, the way society tries to manage and contain it and, sometimes, to crush it. This year taught me that I’ve had to consciously nourish and protect my sacred simple pleasures. The world is afraid of joy and, if I’m out of tune with myself, I can become afraid of it too. It’s the divine feminine incarnate and, like all powerful energies, can be at once healing, joyful, and terrifying.

5. Homey domestic comforts are the ultimate sacred simple pleasures. Seriously. Coming home to cat-cuddles. The smell of beeswax candles perfuming my home with their honeyed scent. The whistle of the tea kettle. These things bring me so much comfort and joy. I even found myself rediscovering old pleasures, like sewing and knitting, during this time. All of these homey tasks helped me to unplug from a long work-week, ground my energies, and fill my life with beauty.

   I began to more consciously craft the kind of life I wanted for myself. Full of luscious herbs in my garden and a pot full of stew in the kitchen. More books than I can ever read in my library and a bed piled high with knitted blankets large enough for two to cuddle under. I got rid of things that didn’t bring me joy in order to create space for my pleasure in my life and home. This simple domesticity brought me back to my core belief that true magic is in the everyday.

The thing about pleasure is that it’s pretty darn contagious. In fact, you could say that pleasure begets pleasure. It’s pretty wanton that way. If there’s one final takeaway I got from my year of cultivating sacred simple pleasures, it’s that the more you open yourself up to enjoying the little things in life, the more pleasure you start finding in the bigger things too. It is an act of everyday conjuring to invite this heady, hedonistic energy into all aspects of your life. My year of meditating on these simple pleasures might be over, but the cultivation of them is ongoing. After all, life is more delicious when you welcome in the divine feminine power of pleasure.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Inviting Synchronicity into Your Life

What is Synchronicity?

One of the central aspects of everyday magic is synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences, that pepper our lives and offer valuable insights, signs, and messages from the universe if we are willing to listen.  Some of my most powerful revelations have come out of seemingly innocuous moments that served to punctuate an important feeling, experience, or situation.  

How did I know to trust my instincts that a relationship was well and truly over? I was thinking about the whole situation and, when I turned on my car, the radio blasted, “the thrill is gone…” Boy was it, and to ignore that would only cause more heartache.

And what gave me the courage to turn my blog posts into the manuscript that would become my award-winning Everyday Enchantments? A random folded paper tucked into an old book I’d decided to reread.  On that piece of paper was a series of scribbles from my teenage self thinking about the day when I would be An Adult and a Published Author.  I started working on my new manuscript that afternoon.  

Without those insights—those little nudges from life telling me I’m on the right track or ready to move on—I wouldn’t have been brave enough to listen to my inner wisdom.  You would be surprise what the universe is willing to reveal if you simply ask it and stay open to the answers it might give. 

3 Ways to Invite Synchronicity into Your Life

1. Get loose. Real talk: we live in a world that values concrete, rational things—all good and well in their right place—but synchronicity is a different kind of literacy all together.   It’s about opening yourself to the possibility of a new way of being.  Often times, our innate instincts and unfiltered feelings get buried under the pressure to conform to social norms.  Instead of allowing ourselves to introvert when we need to introvert, for example, we push past our needs and do more, get louder, and move faster despite our soul’s longing for quiet. Loosening up allows us to let go of rigid expectations or assumptions about how things should be so we can be open to the magic around us.

2. Get playful.  When was the last time you stayed up past your bedtime reading?  Or ditched the to-do list in favor of a schedule-free Saturday?  Or danced in your pjs to your favorite song?  If its been awhile, now is the time to welcome that playful energy into your life.  Be like the otter, an animal that devotes as much time to play as it does to work.  Why?  I’ll let you in on a little secret: Synchronicity is pretty darn playful.  It’s a lot like Coyote, that perennial trickster, sneaking up on you when you least expect it, catching you off guard, forcing you to rethink your world view.  The best way to be open to these insights is to let go of hard and fast rules and just…get playful.
   

3. Get curious.  Synchronicity is all about opening yourself up to the world and remembering that child-like curiosity with new places and things that delight the senses.  This kind of energy loves questions, exploration, expansion.  Often our sense of wonder gets lost as we succumb to the demands of day-in, day-out. Take a moment—pause, breathe deeply, and think about what it used to feel like when the changing seasons created a sense of unblemished excitement for something now or they way a sunset was like an open invitation to marvel at the beauty of life or how a winding dirt road was the promise of an adventure. Then turn that innate curiosity on your inner landscape—forget to push and prod and contain difficult feelings or old selves and simply marvel at the fact that you contain multitudes, like so many tiny cosmic seeds waiting to be explored. Synchronicity is found in these silent, joyful explorations.

How to Listen to the Messages

Sometimes we throw out questions to the universe and get an answer maybe that instant, maybe a week or month from now. More often than not, however, the answers come when we’ve forgotten to fixate on whatever it is we want answers to.  Sometimes we even get nudges and insights to things we didn’t know we even had questions about. 

Synchronicity is like that—trickster that it is—deciding what questions you get answers to and which ones you just have to struggle with on your own.  Or if it sees you forgetting to enjoy the wonder around you, well, like Coyote, it won’t hesitate to shake up your order a bit.  However synchronicity comes into your life, it is a reminder to tune into the magic of your every day.  Often the wisdom it imparts is immediately and intuitively understood, so don’t worry it like you would a loose thread on your jacket.  Just feel what it is asking you to feel.  The answers will come.

Be warned though: The more you invite synchronicity into your life, the more it will manifest unbidden, as if it only ever need your time an attention to reveal itself to you wholeheartedly and without restraint. And with more meaningful, soul-illuminating coincidences, comes more magic. Enjoy.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter for regular doses of enchantment.  Want even more inspiration?  Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.  Here’s to a magical life!