Jorge Ramos: Our Walter Cronkite

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Photo from the New Yorker

Our first Hispanic Heritage Month feature is Jorge Ramos. He is journalism ROYALTY. The Mexican journalist became famous and interviewed some of the world’s top leaders while on Univision’s evening news (which I grew up watching). He continues to be a part of important conversations with important people.

He has also been named one of Time Magazine’s ‘Most Influential People.’ Jorge Ramos has become a passionate advocate and voice for the immigrant and Hispanic community in the U.S. He has legend status in my book. He has lost his neutrality over the years, which has been slightly disappointing from a journalism angle, but he always uses his voice to talk about the things that really matter— which I admire.

He is someone who I looked up to very much in my childhood and was an inspiration while I studied journalism.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2020

By: Gabriela Yareliz

It feels like autumn. It’s like 2020 said it was ready and someone flipped the switch. The temperatures have dropped to crisp cool lows. If only someone could flip a switch and make the neighbor above me shut up. It’s like he thinks he is competing in American Idol every minute of the day. I can’t imagine sharing a wall with the little singer.

With autumn’s delicious temperatures come some holidays, and for 2020, mask acne and the elections. 2020 has been a beast of a year. It has flipped over our kayak several times. We have found ourselves underwater, gasping for air and trying to reposition ourselves upright. The rapids of 2020 have been real.

I recently heard that Bad Bunny will be doing a live concert with the NYC Latin music station Uforia. Now, say what you want to say about the Bunny— what caught my attention was that the station announced him as the biggest star in the world, right now. And to be honest, I think they are right. It never ceases to amaze me how we Latinos excel in music. It’s Hispanic Heritage Month, and I typically include a little series of Hispanic people I celebrate. I am going to be featuring some of my people over the next few days.

One thing I value about my culture that I need to adopt more solidly is the joy in the resilience we have. The world can be falling apart and there is no AC or power, but people will turn up the music and dance.

No matter how hard we cry or how dramatic life gets (and boy does it get dramatic), we love with an inextinguishable hope that burns through us, leaving sparks in our veins.

So, if there is anything we should take from this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month, other than the achievements and great contributions of amazing Hispanic people— it’s joy in resilience. Hispanic people— we work hard, we don’t stop, we serve with our hearts, and we believe in one life. We are only going to live this once, so don’t be afraid, and turn up the volume and dance.

I truly believe that it’s not so much music that has been one of our greatest contributions to the world— but collectively, through music, we have given the world joy. And that should be celebrated and recognized. Joy is a true gift that you can carry anywhere and no one (or nothing) can take it away.

Yesterday, I was dancing and having a Carrie Bradshaw moment in my apartment, with wild abandon. I leave you with some of my favorites. TURN. IT. UP.

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month. Choose joy.

Rituals

I am up at 4:34 am, as we wait for the downpours Hurricane Laura is supposed to bring to NYC. There is an occasional drip-drip outside, but nothing else.

I have been thinking a lot about rituals, lately. Sometimes, rituals get a bad rap. They are considered to just be routine or things on a list we need to tick off.

This week, I had my dreaded endometriosis specialist appointment. (I love my doctor, but these appointments still make me so nervous). It has been three years since my body was out of sorts, hormonally imbalanced, and I was feeling not-so-great (understatement of the year— I was feeling the way 2020 is going— let that paint a picture).

I decided to treat my body holistically, with lifestyle change and supplements. When I first started, I was a bit lost. I was barely someone who took a vitamin on a regular basis. I am plant-based (have been since I was 13, but figured this is important to note, as I often get questions), I switched to a lot of clean products (skincare, beauty, self-care), and I started supplementing regularly with Welleco and NAC (two NACs a day has kept the endo away, for me).

And while I won’t sit here and pretend to be an MD (because I am not— but someone should give me an honorary endocrinology degree), I will say that this discipline and prayer has helped me have the endo in remission for years, now. By God’s grace, everything is as it should be, and I am feeling so much better.

As the seasons are to be transitioning soon, I have also been cleaning my house. I do these seasonal purges at home. I didn’t do one between spring and summer because I think I was so disoriented with the whole Corona lockdown, but I have been doing it now, and it has been refreshing. As I mentioned before, I think I skipped out on it last season because I was disoriented, and yet ironically, skipping this ritual made me feel even more disoriented.

Another ritual I have picked up on is that of skincare. This is something I would want to pass on to my child, along with how to be hormonally balanced. I didn’t grow up with a skincare routine, despite all the Seventeen magazines and Teen Peoples I read. I was clueless and just bopping through life. I wore sunscreen only on beach days, basically. I have come to learn that it’s important to have those pockets of time for a good face mask and regular lymphatic drainage.

Lastly, my mind went to the Sabbath. I am a Sabbath observer. Friday has always been a cleaning and preparation day. I remember, as a kid, the house smelling like cleaning product (the smell of Lysol or Pine Sol bring me true joy— not even kidding). My mom would put on music, and we would clean. I am grateful she always presented cleaning as something fun. To this day, it’s therapeutic for me. As I got older, I was oftentimes the first one at the house on a Friday afternoon, and the cleaning would begin. I was always proud of the days when I had the house mostly sparkly clean and a ravioli dinner ready for the family when they arrived.

Friday is still a general cleaning day. Yesterday, I cleaned my floors and took the trash down. I took inventory of some things that I needed to order like bedsheets (literally haven’t bought a pair in the past 3 years, and the fitted sheets are no longer errr fitted).

There are many things about Sabbath that have stayed the same, like preparing before sundown and church. I will say there are things I miss that revolve around family and are harder to do because I live alone.

I miss praying together. I miss doing Bible study with others on Friday night. I miss service projects or going to the hospital to sing and accompany people. I miss the special gathering time to close the Sabbath, where we would sing and pray together. And while rituals may be just rituals, they can also be special markers that encourage us to really connect to something.

When I supplement and move, I connect to myself. When I clean, I am typically praying for others and listening to a good podcast, I connect with God as I am preparing for a time of rest. And then Sabbath, it’s a time to connect to God but also to community and family.

Someday, when I have my own family, I will be able to celebrate Sabbath in a different way than the quiet way in which I do now. While rituals may be a burdensome routine to others, rituals are markers of care and dedication. They are pockets of discipline that can make a life better.

I share this only to say that rituals are a big part of my life. I often think about them and about how I can keep optimizing. Rituals have impacted my health in a positive way and they have a way of making me feel nostalgic. They help bring me into rest.

Rituals— they connect a life; they can mark a life; and they can save a life.

(The rain is falling, and I am gonna see if I can slip back to sleep).

The Strength for Some Madness

By: Gabriela Yareliz

My boyfriend is very gifted and artistic— it really shines when it comes to food. He makes things that are so delicious but also knows how to present them on a plate. He can make sparkling water next-level, you know what I mean?

He found this show on Netflix called Chef’s Table and encouraged me to watch it. It’s a fascinating show that closely examines people’s greatness. These globally recognized chefs, their colleagues and families are interviewed. You learn about their professional trajectory but also their personal lives. The obstacles overcome, the muses, the voids left behind. I haven’t watched too much of it, but from what I have seen, I can say that it’s impressive.

One of the things that has struck me the most is how the best chefs are often people who depart from a set path, and they do their own thing. This sounds small— but when you look at the years of struggle, years of empty dining halls, and scathing reviews— it’s everything but easy. I loved the Massimo Bottura story.

What a beautiful lesson, to pursue a destiny or vision of something and keep at it, regardless of the criticisms and obstacles around you. One could say some of these chefs border on madness, but there is an incredible strength behind the “madness” to keep pushing, to keep dreaming and to keep enduring, regardless of the voices around you.

For some of these chefs, they had bad review after bad review, and then finally, out of nowhere, out of the fog, comes a person who sees them as they truly are, in all of their artistry and brilliance. It reminds me how in life, we can get so trapped listening to all the wrong voices, even though they may be voices of authority and influence.

In life, we are each born with a purpose. And some of us are born with a true sense of destiny. Bob Dylan describes this as, “Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about will come true.”

The one voice we should be tuned into is God’s voice. He has a purpose and a plan. He guides us, and sometimes, even when we take the path we are so sure He has guided us to, the circumstances and voices look bleak. It’s confusing. We are confronted with empty dining halls and bad reviews. But ultimately, we must keep on. We must continue to follow the only voice that matters, and we must somehow gather and find the strength to be mad enough to continue.

There’s strength in this madness to be set-apart, unique and persevering. There’s strength in the madness to be different. This is a madness worth the struggle.

A Lesson on Father’s Day

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Father’s Day and Mother’s Day are often avoided by people who have experienced childhood trauma. Some people have experienced pain caused by one or both parents, so they distance themselves from the holiday and deeper yet, from the person it celebrates.

Father’s Day isn’t a holiday I like to embrace. Sometimes, it feels like these holidays remind you of everything you could of had but didn’t. That’s hard.

Not to delve in too deep, but I have had a roller coaster ride of a relationship with my father. At times, it felt like the relationship was so strained it was nonexistent. There were many many years where my father chose not to be a part of my life. And this was painful. I experienced that feeling of rejection, a lot.

What I think is important to carry with us is that every difficult thing we face in life presents us with an opportunity. Will we internalize the trauma and let it drag us to the bottom of the ocean or will we use it to solidify the foundation of our worth and the direction in which we are choosing to go. These are the questions posed.

Relational trauma can leave us with a distorted picture of ourselves. What broken relationships do is they act as a shattered mirror. We look at ourselves in this crazy and broken mirror and can be alarmed and disoriented with what we see.

My relationship with my father has taught me many things, over time. It made me really aware of the love I wanted in my life; the type of man I wanted in my life. I also made the decision to throw away the shattered mirror that was left for me. And this has been a process. I decided to replace that broken mirror with a good mirror. A mirror where I see myself clearly and see myself as the worthy child of God that I am.

I heard Sophia Roe speak on fatherhood, feminism and hate. She spoke about how many broken relationships, especially father relationships, turn women into insensitive women who hurt men around them and see people as dispensable because that was how they were treated— furthering a cycle of trauma, harm, insecurity and instability. Sometimes, this looks like a woman who bounces from relationship to relationship, and other times, it looks like a woman who isolates herself behind her walls. These attitudes are often passed onto children (and the cycle goes on). I found this to be really profound, especially when she said that when women behave in these ways— when they leverage power, emotionally hurt others and withhold vulnerability— they are just like the fathers who hurt them and who they claim to hate so much.

For those of you who don’t know, Sophia comes from a turbulent childhood. I admire her a lot because she is a whole person who has chosen to love people and love the world around her despite everything she had to navigate. She spoke about her own relationship (or lack thereof) with her father, and said, “It’s very important for me to have the power of knowing I forgive him because now I know I am ready for love.”

On this Father’s Day, and every day, I want to choose to rest in forgiveness because then it means I am ready for love. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you forget what you have lived through or what was done to you. Nope. There is no forgetting. We have lived this life and cried those tears of blood.

There is power in not forgetting, though. Not forgetting means we remember what not to do. Remembering our pain can transform us and make us intentional in how we lead with love.

Remembering the things that have hurt me remind me of the type of person I want to be; the love I want to pour out and leave with others.

My relationship with my father taught me the love I am worthy of. I have forgiven him, and I keep the memories and hurts as a map to where I want to go. I made the choice to throw out the mirror he left me with, and with my own mirror I can see clearly. I see myself. I see strength. I see love.

An Uncomfortable Topic

By: Gabriela Yareliz

A scene keeps playing over and over again, in my head. Summer of 2009, I visited France and did a stage with the French government. We were living in a small French mariner village. I gathered with young people from around the world (whom I love— friends for life), and what we had in common was our passion for the French language. Because we came from around the world, we had nights where we would present on our country and what it was like there.

I wasn’t the only one from the U.S. Joining me, were two young adults from Boston. I remember that when it was our turn to present, and it was my turn to speak, things got weird.

You see, the group didn’t really see me like they saw the Boston friends, who were also representing the U.S. They were white; I was not. People associated me with Puerto Rico, more than anything. I was fine with that, but that was interesting.

When my friends presented a glorious view of the U.S., I realized that my experience in the U.S., while something I am deeply grateful for, did not match theirs. When it was my turn to speak, I spoke about the Hispanic experience in the U.S. I spoke about racism, immigration and certain dynamics that we could improve in my country, because part of our conversation was about the future.

You could have heard a pin drop. People looked a bit bewildered, to be honest. I was talking about something that didn’t match an international perception of the U.S. at the time. This was a summer where all over France, beach towels with Obama’s face were ubiquitous.

Some people had this look on their face, you know, how people look at you when they think you are irrationally bitter about something. But I wasn’t. I just wanted to be honest and share my experience. I wanted to add depth to their understanding of my great nation.

My mind goes back to that presentation a lot, these days. Sometimes, I wonder if now, in this different world that we live in where everything is videotaped and disseminated— I wonder if they watch the news and remember what I said.

Time has given me a very public and strange vindication that I didn’t want. I wonder if they see the state of our country and think, “So this is what she was talking about.”

Where will we go from here, America? I still think of all our future could be if we did the hard internal work. Racism is a manifestation of the deeper evils we allow to take root in our hearts. Where will we go from here?

Class of 2009

By: Gabriela Yareliz

As the graduates of 2020 celebrate, I was reminded of high school.

We should never stop celebrating how far we have come and never stop dreaming of where we want to go.

Our unofficial 2009 graduation song is here. May we always live our life— stop chasing the paper and nevermind the haters.

Stillness and Light

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I just saw a little video on Mimi Ikonn’s Instagram stories of how she was walking in London and a hail/rain storm came out of nowhere. She and a friend took shelter under the ledge of a building. They were laughing and confused, getting soaked.

It reminded me of that summer night in France where we got caught in a strange July hail storm. The sky was red and orange, and we were close to the Sacré Coeur cathedral. A group of us, clumped together, confused, laughing, and soaked at what looked like a bus stop.

There is something magical about embracing the unexpected storms. You take cover, you look up in bewilderment, and you laugh with the person taking cover next to you.

You wait it out. When the hail stops, there is stillness and light.

Ravi Zacharias

By: Gabriela Yareliz

This week, we mourned a fierce man of faith, and a personal hero of mine, Ravi Zacharias.

He is someone I have quoted extensively and studied with extensively. A man who was determined to reveal faith to the rational mind. A man determined to make us all seekers of truth, in a world slipping into contradicting philosophies.

His passing filled me and many in the world with great sadness. Hard to put that into words. But I wanted to leave you with something he posted, just before he died. What a life well-lived. A life not focused on anything the world offers, but a life focused on the love of God for humanity, and sharing that.

The question he loved to address, was ‘Why Jesus?’ So, I leave you with his response.

Thank you, Ravi. You put everything on the line in the pursuit of truth, and may you be richly rewarded by spending eternity in the presence of the God you shared so beautifully. I will be eternally grateful.