Decolonized Motherhood

My existence is resistance 🤎✨

Pause the video to read along 🫶🏽

This was one of the questions I would get asked most often, “how do you do it all?”

I would sometimes answer “day by day”, but the people I could really open up with I would share with them “I don’t know any other way”. When I speak to other racialized first-born daughters from immigrants families we quickly come to the conclusion that our 30% is someone else’s 100%. Others who can’t identify the ways that we do and the way we perform in our everyday lives would never understand our natural-born hustle. It’s survival on another level and they just wouldn’t understand esa p**a vibra.

On another note…. What do you mean that becoming a mother means I have to leave who I am behind, my dreams, my aspirations, my goals and more before I was callled “mama”. I am leading by example so that my child know her wildest dreams can also come true, regardless of whether she chooses to become a mother or not. With read wife culture in full force currently, we also have to apply the same level of resistance to our role at wife/partner - no relationship or marriage is going to hold me back from achieving my dreams. In fact, make sure you get yourself a partner who will support them and be your biggest cheerleader, or else it just won’t work out, papo.

So yeah, my life is busy and I’m often hella tired. Even in these pockets of free time, I truly don’t know what to do with myself cause I’m still learning to simply rest. But all this is wrapped in my and my ancestors’ wildest dreams, I am la niña rebelde that’s dismantling barriers, I am the black sheep that they thought wouldn’t be able to do it; so yeah, I’m tired. But just watch… ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

A tiny change in your language can make a significant different in the resistance against US based imperialism. We have been so nurtured to think of America as the US, and this is a prime example of imperialism in action, that we don’t often think twice when speaking in this way. Calling the United States OF America simply “America” has been so normalized in everyday life and language that we don’t think about it twice, but if there is a time to start it is most definitely now.

Another point I want to make is that the map of America on the left is also a colonial version of the actual land proportions between North and South America. I encourage you to look up a realistic view and you will be amazed at how much bigger than southern hemisphere is than what is presented in these “modern” colonial maps.

Graphic Credit: .world.in.maps

I’m back! 💁🏽‍♀️✨

I spent a few weeks at home 🇵🇪 and it was everything I wanted it to be and more. Touching down in my home lands grounded me in ways my body, spirit and mind desperately needed, and cannot be achieved in Canada. I love Toronto, the city that adopted me 30 years ago, but nothing in this world feels like Lima.

I must admit though… Being in South America during the recent socio-political and downright colonial catastrophes that have happened around the world, and in particular throughout the Americas has been eye-opening, to say the least, and has amplified my perspective. I’ll definitely share more about what I’ve witnessed, reflected on, learned and more in the weeks to come, but for now I leave you with some of the views my eyes were lucky enough to see. ♥️☀️