Hope Dealer with José Rico
"Hope Dealer" is story-telling that focus on building connections and fostering a sense of belonging within our communities. Through personal narratives, historical reflections, and calls to action, Rico and his guests offer listeners a profound understanding of the power of love, community, and spiritual practice in overcoming systemic oppression and cultural erasure. Each episode is a testament to the enduring love and resilience that drive communities to resist, persevere, and thrive despite the challenges they face. You can join this community at https://joserico.org/
Hope Dealer with José Rico
Decolonizing Healing and Connecting to Spirit
Discover the power of hope and resilience through the inspiring journey of Cheryl Aguilar, the founding director of Hope Center for Wellness in Washington DC. Cheryl, a passionate advocate for the Latino community, shares her personal story as an immigrant from Honduras and her transformative path to healing by embracing therapy despite societal stigma. Her story serves as a testament to the courage it takes to seek support and her unwavering dedication to decolonizing therapy and social work for the benefit of her community.
Join us as we explore Cheryl's journey that highlight the healing power of connection and cultural roots. We discuss her return to Honduras and her participation in the Latino Social Work Conference in Oaxaca, which reignited her connection to indigenous practices in social work. Cheryl opens up about her grief journey after losing her father to COVID-19, sharing how it deepened her understanding of identity and spirituality, ultimately leading to unexpected growth and healing.
Our conversation also sheds light on the resilience within immigrant communities and the importance of integrating cultural and spiritual practices into therapy. We touch upon the theory of self-psychology and the impact of societal dynamics on mental health, especially in the face of political and economic challenges. Cheryl's insights, combined with her commitment to fostering hope and unity among black and brown communities, offer a powerful reminder of the enduring strength found in shared struggles and the guiding light of hope.
F.L.Y. L.I.B.R.E. a guide for healing and liberation can be purchased here: amzn.to/4iCzAAM
Buenas familia, soy Jose, rico or Rico, if you know me from the hood. Thank you so much for your attention today. It means everything to me, and I want to welcome you to Hope Dealer, which is a podcast about our journey towards hope, resilience and joy through the stories that we carry about our return home, and my intention for our time together is to remind us that we carry powerful medicine within us that is our guide to our transformation. Thank you so much for joining me. I am so grateful to be able to introduce you to incredible people, incredible spirits that will share their journeys with us.
Speaker 1:Today was reminded of a beautiful sunrise, that this transformation and this journey is not something that we take on our own. It's something that we do in relationship with everything the elements, all living creatures and all people on this earth. And one of those people on this earth that I'm so excited to get to talk with us is Cheryl Aguilita. Cheryl is somebody who's going to blow your socks away. She is the founding director of Hope Center for Wellness out in Washington DC, and she is one of the leading advocates for the overall wellness of our Latino community, of our gente, through the decolonization of therapy and social work, so I'm very excited to have Cheryl speak with us. Cheryl, thank you so much for being with us. Cheryl, thank you so much for being with us. I want to welcome you to our podcast and would love for you to do an introduction, a brief introduction of yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thank you, jose. I'm delighted to be here. Muchas muchas gracias. And what an introduction. No pressure there, like no pressure there.
Speaker 2:I am really honored to be in this space and I cannot say no to anything that starts with hope. So, hope Dealer I love the name and we need more hope in this world. But what can I tell you about me? Soy inmigrante, soy Hondureña. I always kind of tell people I have the best of all worlds as an immigrant, as a Honduran. I grew up in New Jersey, I now live in Washington DC, and some of the things that make me most proud and fulfilled about what I do and who I am are my roles. Outside of what I do for work. I love what I do as a social worker, and that's one aspect of myself. But what I really love is being an aunt, una tia. I love, like my nephew, my nieces, being a daughter. I'm a wife, I'm a friend, I'm a listener, I am someone that people can count on, and those are my favorite things to be in this world. And then, when I'm not doing that, I'm doing my passion work, which is social work.
Speaker 1:Love that and I want to get to know you a little bit. Cheryl, you know, we met many years ago and as I've learned more about you, you know, one of the things that always sparks me when I get to know people is obviously we're going to talk about your path to where you are now, but I would love to know a little bit about how your journey started. You know, in the first episode I talked about how my healing journey started when I was young and realizing it when I came across the border into the US. We'd love to know. You know, now that you've had some time to reflect, now that you are more conscious about your healing journey, what can you share about? You know, a pivotal moment or something that now, when you think back, is what put you on this journey now. It could be in your childhood, it could be through your schooling. We'd love for you to tell us a little bit about a story, about how you believe your journey started to where you are now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, thank you for that question. You sound like my therapist.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we're talking therapy. But you know, it's so interesting. One thing loved the city, loved the friends I was making, but I was really depressed and I was really anxious and I didn't quite understand it because I was like, oh, I have the job of my life, like the job of my dreams, I'm in a great city, I'm doing great work, and yet I was sad, profoundly sad, and anxious. And I remember going to a therapist and I was really young, I didn't really know much about therapy, and on session one she gave me interpretations about my life and as a therapist, that's not what I do on the first day and I was like, no, no, that doesn't resonate, that's not true, that's not. You know, that's not what my life is about. But she was, she was there right now that I can kind of reflect on what her reflections were. That was my first connection with therapy and then my first exposure to how, as a community, we feel about mental health. Because I remember telling some of my friends, my Latino friends, that I was going to a therapist and the reaction was kind of like, well, you're so strong, but, um, you, you can do it, you're so capable. And I had to really fight those comments because not only were they stigmatizing, I was like, well, I'm still strong and I need support right now. You know, like it doesn't have to be one or the other, it can be both. But something that I came to understand in my healing journey is how some of the things that I have been through in life are the gifts that allowed me to be able to do what I work.
Speaker 2:So when I I would say that my journey towards healing began when my mother had to make a really hard choice to migrate to the United States, she migrated with my older siblings, two of my older sisters and my younger brothers, and I stayed in Honduras with my dad and as a child, as a teenager, I had a really rough time with that separation. A few years later, our mother courageously came and got us and we were able to move to the United States with her and my sisters, and I remember as a teenager, I was considered maybe rebellious in how I demonstrated how I was feeling. You know, I think teens and children, we don't necessarily have the vocabulary to share how we feel and we show it in terms of behaviors, and I think that experience wasn't really understood. I think I came to understand that experience and how I might have reacted later on in life as an adult, as a young adult, when I started my healing journey, just recognizing the choices that I would make in relationships or how sometimes we seek external things to fill ourselves up, and I didn't have understanding of those voices until I began my healing journey. But kind of fast forward to today and maybe like years ago, when I started my work in social work, I began to work with families, immigrant families like myself who had experience in reunification, and I began to work with the youth. So the youth I have a soft spot for children and youth and I began to hear my story through their stories and I was like, ah, this seems familiar. Ah, this seems familiar and I became really biased towards helping them out a lot more than maybe the parents, you know. I didn't realize then that my own experience was a bias that kind of impacted how I was doing my work. So it was like all about the youth and also like family therapy and helping parents and children come together in a healthy way, providing parents like psychoeducation about what the children were experiencing and so on. So that was my first exposure back to my own story, reflected by some of my clients, fast forward to 2020.
Speaker 2:Our practice, the Hope Center for Wellness. We began to work with families who were ripped apart by Trump's government and parents were detained, children were sent to shelters, separated for many months. Some parents were deported. I began to work with the families, specifically with the parents, and I began to tune into their experience as the parents' experience in a way that I don't think I had before.
Speaker 2:And in my work with parents, part of the work was to teach them about what the children were experiencing and in a support group that I had with parents, I realized that this information really wasn't working.
Speaker 2:Like you know, nothing I said made a difference in this group, in a support group I had, and that's when I began to understand that we cannot ask parents to help their kids if no one has seen their pain and supported them through their pain, able to reconnect or maybe see parental experience in a way I hadn't had access before.
Speaker 2:And I began to really understand, like my mother's choices and in a way that I might have not understood them before. And it's like as a society, we have so many expectations for parents and yet are we asking the right questions about what do you need? We cannot expect them to develop and raise well, good human beings if we're not giving them what they need to be able to do that. So I say, you know, before I used to say that I stumbled upon this work by mistake, you know, having been in public relations before and then I ended up in mental health, and then I see that it was like my own experiences that led me to this work and I am so grateful for, like, really hard things that I endure in life, because it's what has given me the opportunity to be able to do this work and understand it in a way that if I didn't have that experience I don't think I would.
Speaker 1:Wow, cheryl, there's a lot there and I got a couple of follow-ups, but the first one is I think you would agree with me that everybody in public relations needs to mental health work.
Speaker 1:That's the first part, yes, yes, the second part is so.
Speaker 1:What resonated with me with what you just mentioned, is that both my parents came to Chicago from Mexico and left my brother and I in Mexico City, and so we were reunited with them after two or three years in Chicago, and that's how my brother and I crossed the border on our own through Tijuana in the trunk of a station wagon. And so that separation that you speak about, I know it very well and I think that's probably a reason why we see each other in the way we see each other right, because for me, what that has flourished, what the seed that was planted, was my ability to connect with people in a way that's unusual with other folks, right, and I think that's probably your gift also. But going back to the lessons that you learned, I would love to hear a little bit more about what's that you know. You mentioned earlier that you saw it from the perspective of the children the separation, and then, most recently, during the pandemic and that horrific immigration policy saw it from the perspective of the parents.
Speaker 2:What did that change of perspective teach you and how do you feel about that? New learning or healing? Am engaged in some research is that when we talk about immigration, we should also be talking about family separation. Part of the immigration experience is leaving people that we love behind physically and then reunited potentially with other people, and I think the story about separation is to be the front and center of our conversations what we hear from others society, politics, environment, and how it's really up to us to really undo some of the learning that no longer serves us, you know.
Speaker 2:I always say you know, as an adult, we have an opportunity to unlearn things that no longer work for us and relearn new things, and I think something I learned is that we may not listen enough to one another.
Speaker 2:When I was able to set aside my preconceived notions about the family separation experience and my own experience and really listen to the pain of the parents, I was able to see a story that I hadn't seen in a way that I understand it now, but I think that took first some healing to be able to figure out why do I feel this way and also to listen in a way that I hadn't. And I think as a society we sometimes as you see this in social media, you see this everywhere we're so pressed to have the right answer, we're so pressed to want to have solutions, we're so pressed to have our point across that we don't listen to one another in the way that we should. So I think that's what I hope for the world is that we can take the space and set aside what we're feeling to really try to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling as well.
Speaker 1:And why do you think this change occurred within you in the recent example with parents?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think both. I've been going to therapy for a very long time and I had to face some really important truth that I hadn't been able to uncover. To uncover, I think, when we talk about children and youth and then these children and youth become young adults and adults. Sometimes our pain, when it hasn't been witnessed or worked through, is the only thing that we can see. So it wasn't until I felt seen in my pain and was able to work through that I could see someone else's pain in a way that I could connect with. So I think we as a society can do that to one another. We can kind of mirror and tell people hey, like I'm sorry that you're going through that. That sounds really difficult, like some of our main needs as people are to be seen, heard and understood and we need to be able to figure out how to do that to one another.
Speaker 1:Wow, you're so right. I mean and I think that that is part of the reason why you know, why you mentioned that just the act of listening and being able to put, not be able to listen to people without putting our biases and our assumptions in the front or center of what they're telling us, that sounds relatively simple to do, but where it's so difficult, if we don't practice that, to be able to do that right, that's such a it's, it's, uh, it's a practice that takes intentionality, but also something that's, um, that you know, like you said, in in the world we live in right now, is so difficult to do.
Speaker 2:Right and something you said that really kind of resonates is how we, our world and our healing is connected to connections and relationships. I think my own healing I've been talking about my therapist a lot, but he's not the only source of support that I have. I think my friendships, my colleagues, my like trusted advisors, and my family and people that I can connect with and talk about my story, who can kind of hold it with care I think that has been an essential part of like my own healing and what I see healing in others as well, like my own healing and what I see healing in others as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and actually that's why, frankly, the reason I reached out to you, cheryl, I saw recently, in the last six months, your journey of returning home to Honduras and then participating in the Latino Social Work Conference in Oaxaca, and your sharing about your own personal transformation of going home and seeing more indigenous or culturally relevant or grounded practices within the social work field. You know, what you shared really just captivated me and wanted to really learn or hear from you what you've learned and what that means to you. So I would love to see if you could share a little bit about both of those things. I know they're very different experiences, but there is a through line there. I would love to hear you talk about those two trips and what those trips meant to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, thank you. I agree, they're like interconnected in a way that I didn't expect. You know I call my Oaxaca trip a life-changing trip, but I'll begin with my coming back to Honduras. You know, since I had been in the US, I have gone a few times to Honduras and it took me a very long time, even though I had the privilege to be able to travel back in a way that is easier than most people, or some people are not able to travel back. It took me a very long time to go back and I think most of it was out of fear. You know, you hear really negative stories about what's happening in Honduras the violence, the sociopolitical environment and so on and it took me a very long time to go back environment and so on, and it took me a very long time to go back.
Speaker 2:I was able to go back um 10 years after having migrated I was a young adult uh to visit my father who had remained in Honduras and and I really appreciated that trip and as a kind of like the welcoming back, because after that I tried to go as much as I could couldn't always go as much as I wanted to, but it really helped me reconnect back to a piece of me that I felt was dormant. You know, as an immigrant, as a bi-cultural individual, I think something that happens is that we come and we want to be like others. You know, we don't want to be perceived as different than we may pass, and we adopt a new culture and sometimes we unconsciously repress our own culture. So I think going back to Honduras was kind of a reawakening, or the process of reawakening and reconnection with my own cultural, language, traditions and so on. And so I have been going back to Honduras in the last, you know, few decades and my father passed away in 2020 due to COVID, and that was really difficult and it was.
Speaker 2:I had been working with the migrant community for a very long time and helping clients who were unable to go and be with their loved ones during their passing, and I remember having that experience as well and think I couldn't go and be with my father when he passed away, and I remember every single client that I have been with or supported through their journey of grief and wondering did I do enough? Did I understand that enough? Because I now understood the pain of not being able to be with your loved ones when you want to and that you know grief, it was very difficult in the beginning and that you know grief it was very difficult in the beginning. It's you know. Grief is this like kind of roller coaster. If we have experienced it, you have some good days, some bad days.
Speaker 2:I feel like I had enough energy sometimes to like get up, be with my clients and go back to bed and I spent some time like that and then eventually I began to kind of hear my dad's dichos like in my head, like you got to keep going, you know this shall pass, and I began to kind of hear his voice in my head and I began to go on walks. I would go on very long walks. Then I began to experience being in spirit and community with that, like when I heard, when I saw the trees, when I felt the wind, and I just felt that connection in a way that I had never experienced being in nature and connecting me to like an ancestor or like a loved one who's passed. And that became part of how I dealt with grief and so my grief has also been, you know, I think, those of us who experienced grief in really deep ways. It also gives us a lot of gifts and I feel like I got to know my dad a lot more through my grief than sometimes when he was alive, but my grief also allowed me to be able to reconnect to culture. I was a lot more curious about his experience, wanting to learn what things that he had been through, and that's something that I encourage people to do while we have our loved ones alive to ask questions. We want to be able to pass information from generation to generation, and I became really curious about that experiences. And then the idea of like legacy came up in my mind how do we continue the work that our parents, our abuelas, abuelos, our ancestors, have began, and we are a product of all of their experiences and all of their work. So I think I began to think about how do we honor our loved ones with the work that they have done.
Speaker 2:And then I went to Oaxaca. So fast forward to earlier this year I had the opportunity to go to Oaxaca. I had a scholarship from the American Psychological Association to go, and it was a whole bunch of social workers wanting to really learn what traditional healing meant and how we incorporate it into our work. And I think what I learned there one of the many things that I learned is that we really thrive in connection, like I think the theme that you're bringing up is so true, like our healing and their studies. They kind of talk about that. We don't have to like bring the research up, but it's proven the more connections we have, the longer our lives could be and the more fulfilled our lives could be as well.
Speaker 2:And I was always very curious about, well, how. I would ask people, how do you deal with mental health? And they're like, well, what is that? You know, of course they know about mental health, but they don't experience it, they don't talk about it in the same way that we do here.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things I experienced about Oaxaca, it was like there was a festival every single day I was there. There was music, there was like a sense of like rejoicing and maybe party is not the right word but like celebrating, and there was that spirit of celebration that I felt like is part of the healing that most people experience. But also, you know, we connected with local curanderas and curanderos. We learned about integrating limpias into our work, into our work, and what I kind of felt, coming back to the US, is that we have our mental health story about Latinos in mental health is short-sighted.
Speaker 2:One of the narratives is that Latinos don't come to therapy enough because of the stigma, the negative stigma about therapy, which is true. That is part of the story that we need to recognize. We need to break the stigma. But another important part of the story is that they have different ways of healing. It's not just traditional therapy they may go to and it's not just the church, which has been part of the narrative. They may go to a local curandera. They may really connect with the neighbors and the community members within their communities, and those are other forms of healing that we need to honor. And as I think about this work, I think for me and other social workers and other therapists and other healers is that it's our responsibility to learn those other ways and if we're not competent in those other ways, it's our responsibility to connect people to those other ways.
Speaker 1:Wow, again, there's so much there. First, my deepest condolences for your father, and not knowing how it is to grieve your father during a period where you cannot be there with him must have been terrible, and I'm sorry that you had to experience that. My father just passed away two months ago and I was fortunate to be the home care provider for him and grieve with him and set up the ceremony for his transition for five months, and so I was able to experience what I wish you would have been able to experience in a way that allows. I love what you said about you know that the grieving that you were able to allow to grieve with your father after he transitioned through the relationships in nature and others. So I'm glad that you were able to experience that, and I couldn't agree with you more about how we are able to connect our grief to legacy. Wow, what an incredible way to position grieving in our community and within our families, and you know I myself just did a curandero class at the University of Mexico with the hierbas and how that is such a powerful way for us to use the energy of you know again, of the medicines that are around us to help us and to be able to go through the grieving process and helping our family members to go through that grieving process. So a wonderful, incredible insight. Incredible insight.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering, you know, as you were talking about the different practices that you learned in Oaxaca, and you know I love your reaction to their reaction of what is mental health right? Because it's. You know, I started reading this book, a Blackfoot family therapist that uses the Blackfoot Indians cosmology of self-actualization and community actualization and her position is there's no such thing as self-actualization. People self-actualize in community. Obviously we express it in our individual identity, but self-actualization happens in community. Could go a little bit deeper, like you know, after going to Oaxaca and understanding more of the more comprehensive outlook of mental wellness and community wellness, how has that impacted the way you're approaching your work back in DC?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. That's a great question and my deepest condolences to you as well with your death passing. Yeah, you know, I always I really appreciated this trip for many reasons and I think, coming back to how I have experienced my work, then, when I was in Oaxaca, I learned about healer Maria Sabina, who used to use a very recognized figure in Oaxaca and actually in the world. I did not know about her until then. She's someone who used mushrooms as part of like sacred healing ceremonies and I had the opportunity to spend time with her nephew, her grandson, one of her grandchildren, and I think that, that, coming back to legacy building, I was really in awe of what he's doing in his community to carry out his, her legacy. He's doing in his community to carry out his, her legacy and, um, and coming back, I think how that has changed my work is that I am really more curious now to understand what the communities I work with, what they understand, what they, how they have experienced mental health and how it's talked about in their communities. A lot more curious to understand how they have survived up until now. I think one thing that I always say is that people have survived the world in the way they can before they come to my office like, and I need to be curious about how they did that because we're going to tap into their strength. But I think now I have a lot more curiosity about that how is it that you deal with this really rough moment in life within your community? And I'm a lot more curious to understand how I can support that and bring that into our space. So, for instance, when a client talks about spirituality, we may bring that in as part of their treatment goals or as part of the interventions that we use. You know, if prayer is something important for that client, how do we build it into something they do? So I think the way that I have applied it and continue to apply it is one what I do in sessions and how I ask questions.
Speaker 2:I'm a lot more curious about reframing mental health. I am learning listening about how we reframe mental health for our clients and what healing means to them. And healing may not mean like coming to therapy for a very long time. It may be like I want to talk to someone, and right now I'm talking to you, but then I want to be able to talk to my hermana or my hermana or my tia, the same way that I'm talking to you with courage, you know. So being able to understand what can we do in this space that is translatable outside of this space in a way that honors your values and your culture. You know, something that kind of came up for me and I don't know if I'm going somewhere else, but I'm inspired by what you said.
Speaker 2:There's the theory that I recently learned school self-psychology, that when I learned about that theory it really felt like home. It talks about that, for our well-being and for us to form a cohesive sense of self, or like strong self-esteem, we are dependent upon our environment, and initially our environment. It's our caregivers, our parents, and then that extends outward to our teachers community, the government and everyone around us. And then in this theory, the theory looks at three major needs that we have a human being, we all have a need of twinship having other people that we can relate to, that are like us, that think like us, that we can find sameness with. So when it talks about the, when I think about the Latino community and the immigrant community, that's such an important element of when we are somewhere else to find other people that sound like us, that look like us, that we can relate to.
Speaker 2:Another psychological need with the need to be met within. This theory is mirroring. We all have the need to have people affirm who we are, our strengths, our qualities, our goodness, and then we all have the need to have strong idealizing figures or people within our lives that we admire, whose strength and calmness and sense of self we can internalize. And this begins at home sometimes and then it extends outwards, and that's something that I feel like we can all strive towards providing. We can all strive towards providing individually, as families, as communities, as government, as environment, as communities as government as environment. I don't want to get too political, but one of the things that we saw when families were separated by the Trump administration is that they did not have an idealizing figure, a government that they felt was protecting them. So in this instance, the government unconsciously symbolized an idealized figure that totally failed these families, who were separated really abruptly.
Speaker 1:Wow, so yes, I do want to go there. That's actually my next question, cheryl. So you've been. We've been syncing up pretty pretty well. Just want to share the name of the book and the author that I just started reading. It's called Transformation Beyond Greed Native Self-Actualization and it's written by Dr Sidney writes this she introduced this indigenous self-assessment tool that basically gives a different in your field. I forgot what they're called, but they're like different spheres of how indigenous or colonized you are in seven different domains. Right, and she does that because, through her practice, she wants to know where you are in these domains to be able to customize a therapy session for you.
Speaker 2:I love that. I'm definitely going to read that up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And what it made me think those three elements that you mentioned. I would love to go a little bit deeper into them, because you know you are in DC and for me, I would be remiss by not asking you this question from a psychological, therapeutic lens. You know, right, we're we're still recovering from a poly crisis of the pandemic, the economy, the, you know, the realization that we're in an oligarchy, not a democracy, like all of these things, the separations, the. You know the, the threats of, you know, project 2025 and, specifically, the specter, possibility of mass deportations.
Speaker 1:In DC, who have spoken to a lot of these families and you can't get away from this environment, if you wanted to, specifically because you're in the middle of downtown, right, how do you understand this moment, again, from your perspective? And I want to ask you how do you understand this moment? And then the second is like, what do you think we are called to do to get out of this moment? And I know those are two really big questions, but I would love to just get your insights on. You know, what is it that you think this moment is about and what is it that we are called to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Wow, Wow. It's like the million dollar question right there. You know it's interesting. Someone recently asked me a similar question. Actually, one of my clients really wanted to know my thoughts about how I feel about this time. Yeah, and I feel like this moment is about multiple things that we need to hold.
Speaker 2:I think this moment for many and I would say the majority of us, is about fear, pain, but there's also this is also a moment of opportunity and hope, and I think we can acknowledge that it is terrifying to think what our world, what our country and our world will look like with an elected official. That is not for us. We can acknowledge that it's fearful, that it's anxiety provoking. We can acknowledge that there's pain in how we have seen racism rise from the shadows. I mean, it's been there, but now it's palpable. Like now there's no filter from anyone in sharing how they feel about people of color, about our communities. Like pain in acknowledging that the world that or the country we might have felt we lived in, has these other aspects of itself. You know that we might have, I might have thought that we're not as prevalent anymore, but now it's evident that it is as prevalent as always been, but it's been hiding and now it's been emboldened to show up in ways where feelings are not acknowledged.
Speaker 2:I also think that there's opportunity and hope, and I'm a hopeful optimistic. I could be a realist, but I think there's always hope in which we had many others before us who have paved the way for social justice, who have paved the way for healing, who have paved the way for action, and what we have seen time after time is that when communities band together, we not only heal together but we can overcome together. So for me, that's the hope just to see the momentum, the new momentum, rise with, you know, with Kamala Harris, with candidate Kamala Harris. We're seeing that momentum happen. We're seeing people come together and I think that's my hope that we realize that this moment is about coming together, continuing our hope, instilling hope in others and moving each other towards action, in whichever way that looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, and you know, one of the things what sparked this question in me is your response about you know what you hope to do is inspire people to talk with others about what they're feeling and what they want to do, with courage, with my role, right, and I think the way I see this moment is everything that you said and this is an opportunity or this. The calling right now, I believe, particularly in our community, is to speak with courage. And you know, call out the fear and the demagogy. I'll say that word. You know, call out the fear, call out the divisiveness.
Speaker 1:Calling out and back to your point is to be able to articulate a future and a multicultural nation and society where we all fit in and where our community and others will never be again used as a scapegoat for issues that are actually not caused by us, but we have been harmed by the issues of the inequality in our country. You know you have the right wing trying to say that immigrants are the cause of that inequality and we know that we are the ones that are harmed the most because of that inequality. So, given what you believe, you know what you just said is, in terms of what we are called to do. What do you think your role is in helping people coming together and being able to follow the footsteps and continue the legacy of those civil rights leaders that have preceded us, those civil rights leaders that have preceded us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, and I agree. I really appreciate hearing your perspective about the Kersh, because I think it's absolutely. This is a time to be courageous in whatever it is that we, in every aspect of our life, but when it comes to politics as well, and when it comes to owning our truth and be able to defend our truth of who we are, you know, being courageous to show up as authentic as we are, because that's the beauty of our community, like who we are, the diversity within and what makes us us. My role wow, that's. Thank you for that, you know.
Speaker 2:My role is, I think, to continue to create and provide a safe space for people to connect to their strength and their courage so they can go on and do out in the world what they set out to do, but also to create spaces that are collective spaces and we're doing that in different forms collective spaces so we can know that we're not alone.
Speaker 2:I think, you know, when it comes to twinship, when it comes to mirroring, now more than ever we need those spaces where we can affirm with one another like we got this, you know, like we got this as a community, and create those spaces when we find connections in times where we feel isolated and where we may feel like there's no more hope. I think there's healing in community and collectiveness, but it doesn't stop there. I think, for me, we have to get people to vote. We have to you vote, getting out the vote becoming naturalized when we're able to pushing and advocating for the rights for all immigrants and the rights of all marginalized communities. And I think that as providers, but also as community members, we need to really be thinking about voting right now for those, for all of us in our community, to get active in some way or another in our political process.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I'm a firm believer that healing, part of the healing process, is action. Right, it's not just, you know, talking about it and having conversations. There has to be some action for the healing. So I agree with you there. And also, you know, I love the way that you know you see your role as providing spaces for connection and for mirroring. I think we should make some shirts like that show that this is part of the necessary work in our community. I don't know if it's shirts or if it's a deck of cards or something.
Speaker 1:Something yes, right, that's the work.
Speaker 1:Right, that is the work for us and as somebody I mean as somebody that shares your practice of creating spaces and being a circle keeper myself to be able to make that happen.
Speaker 1:You know, I also know how fulfilling, but also how energy, how much energy that takes for us to be able to hold space and be able to. You know, because when you hold space for people and you create this container, you're constantly creating a kind of a force field where people feel safe within your force field and you are entrusted by people to come into this space where they will be protected, where they're not going to be judged, where you are able to be courageous and honest with the mirroring. And that takes energy, that takes practice, that takes work on your part. So the next couple of questions I want to ask you is how do you practice? I mean this way of sustaining yourself. You know, I love the fact that you have the center of hope and wellness. How do you feed that hope? What are the practices that help you maintain that positive energy and allows you to create those spaces with people you work with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing is I surround myself with amazing individuals like you, you know, that fill my spirit. That's definitely on the top of my list. You know, I am really grateful for having a spiritual practice. I think, first and foremost, I'm able to do this work through my belief that there's a higher being, in my case God, that helps me fulfill his vision for my work. So I'm not necessarily working based on what I want to do in the world, but more like I feel like I'm guided by what he calls me to do. That's a very sacred connection for me in how I wake up in the morning. And, well, the first thing I do is like every breath. I just, I'm just so grateful to like be able to like feel my breath every morning Like I'm alive. What a gift, what a gift that is, you know, um. So I begin my morning kind of like my healing routine or kind of my staying essential routine, um, but like taking a few deep breaths in the morning when I wake up, just really feeling my body like in my bed, really kind of feeling myself like with a body scan.
Speaker 2:I, you know there's times where I'm not always good at that. I have to always come back to like my practices, because we're not always perfect at the things that we asked other people to do. You know, I'm the first one where like, oh, I'm telling clients to do this, I'm not doing it, I have to hold myself accountable. But but lately I created this practice where you, oh, I'm telling clients to do this, I'm not doing it, I have to hold myself accountable. But lately I created this practice where, you know, I get up in the morning and do my breathing, I may read a Bible verse, and then I've been very deliberate about not starting work without creating a space for me, because I'm outpouring so much and I'm like I cannot outpour if I'm not filled from within.
Speaker 2:So I created this practice that the first thing I do every morning is just go on a walk, and there's connection in that because I get to share this space with one of my sisters and my mom. We all walk together from different places by phone and we're like chismeando and talking and like walking and sharing, you know. So it's a very special space. You know, outside of that, um, you know, I have my own healing space in in my therapy. I, I, I think that's a very special place. This is the first time that I ever have therapy in Spanish. Um so it's, it's been like a transformative experience. You too, I'm like to say like you know, I don't want to be like too, too.
Speaker 1:Too grosera.
Speaker 2:Too grosera aquí, but like to say, like one of our big emotions, in Spanish, it feels really good. You know it feels really good. You know it feels really good. So you know, that's a protective space that I don't miss, like, that's just like my accountability space, because if I want to do this work, I also have to maintain some sort of like well, maintain my mental health very intact. And then I well, I love to. I well, I love to rest. I love to rest, like I have learned to listen to my body for when it needs rest.
Speaker 2:Um, I think I was sharing with you the story when we talked that I, um had called my bank and they had asked me what my favorite hobby was, because that was a security question and I was like god, what did I tell them? And I couldn't remember exactly what I had told them and I was like sleeping. And they're like yes, that's the answer because I love to nap. I love I think that's something I adopted from, like Honduras. You know we used to have a nap culture. It's less like that now. But well, my body's tired, like I take a break. You know, that's just as simple as like that, you know, and then I do a lot of things when I'm not working to kind of feel my spirits and my mind and my heart.
Speaker 2:You know I love watching comedy, like anything that has to do with like making me laugh. You know I have to be in a certain mood to watch certain type of TV. So, like sometimes my husband is like, do you want to watch this movie? And I'm like, does it have violence, Does it have this, does it have that? And I'm like, no, not today.
Speaker 2:Today is not the day I love to read. I love to read, I can, but I do have a bad habit of buying the next book before finishing the last. So I have a lot of books that I have to, that I started reading and I still have to finish. I love to read and, yeah, those are kind of like my grounding spaces and even though it's been a little harder now that I am pursuing a PhD, I do try to create some time for my relationships, you know, for my friendships, for my one on ones, for my time with my family. It may not be as much time as I used to have with them before, but I try to make it quality. So when I'm, even if I'm with someone for like an hour, like I try to be fully present in that moment, you know. So that's a little bit about how I fill my cup.
Speaker 1:Those are wonderful practices and rituals and connections, a very comprehensive way of looking at the work that you do. Conversation today about that. You're a very hopeful person, that you find hope in this moment. I know you're also working on your PhD and you're starting to plant this moment with the hope that it will blossom two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now that you know you kind of see as your freedom dream of sorts that you know is connected to what you were talking about your legacy.
Speaker 2:Hmm, you know, you kind of like brought a little bit of a tear to my eye. That is connected to what you were talking about, your legacy. You kind of like brought a little bit of a tear to my eye because this feels really big but also really important. So I'm working to be really courageous, to lean in into that dream and kind of quiet down fear of the overwhelm. So part of my dream is to someday go back to Honduras and be able to create healing opportunities or services or anything that community may need in that area of entrepreneurship being able to help people women specifically, with entrepreneurship skills, helping youth with education, well-being, and so a long-term dream of mine is to be able to go back to the community that kind of raised me up until I was 14 or 13 and be able to give back.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm a product of the love of my parents. I'm a product of people who invested in us through their dreams, through their sacrifices, through their choices, and I'm a product of, like, the community that saw me kind of grow up and going back. And, as I've been talking to people about their migration journeys, no one should have to leave their home because they don't have access to resources or they don't have what they need within their own homes. That choice should be made if they want to, and I want to be able to provide the things that people need if they want to remain in their homelands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that is a big dream, you know. I think that is also a very realistic dream and you know, I've seen and experienced in just the last less than a year several people that I know and I connected that have done something very similar to that dream and are starting to do that. So I know it's a very possible dream. I also know that you know somebody like yourself that has been able to transform in many different ways is probably the best person to catalyze this transformation for other people and return home. I pray that the conversations with your father also help in achieving this dream and that the community that loves you so much is also called upon to contribute to this dream with you, shira. Time to contribute to this dream with you, shira. I want to thank you so much for spending time and just want to leave it up to you to close this out, if there's anything that you want people to know about the Hope Wellness Center, about your work, about anything that you feel called at this moment to share with our listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thank you for this. Like I don't want to go. Can we continue? Bring me back. This has been a great conversation and I think this is what happened. This is what happens and what we can repeat and emulate in a safe space. We have really good conversations about what matters to one another, and I appreciated you for kind of setting the stage for me to be able to feel comfortable. I think I shared some things that I haven't really shared in other spaces. I really have appreciated what you have done in this space.
Speaker 2:I grew up hearing la esperanza is the last thing that we lose, that we should lose, and I think that's so true.
Speaker 2:But I think that what that reminds me of is like the sayings that our parents, our grandparents, our great-grand grandparents, our aunts, our uncles, like all the wisdom from within our families, all the wisdom that is already within us, all the strength that is already within us, and I think, as we close, I would love to invite people to come back to themselves, to come back to their families, come back to where their wisdom starts and lifting that up, because we have that already.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes I think society calls us to find wellness in like products or things or this or that, but there's a lot that is within us. So we need to be curious as reporters, as investigators, about where does our strength come from and how do we lift it up and share it with others. So let's continue to have hope and instill hope in one another. One of my favorite quotes is hope is having oh God, I don't want to butcher it, but hope is having light despite the darkness. It's by Dema Tutu and I'm totally misstating it. It's on my website, but it's something that really grounds me. We should never lose hope.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. We are not going to lose hope because we're dealing hope here. So thank you so much, and I will definitely ask you to return Everyone. This is Cheryl. I think you'll have to check her out, and thank you for being on. Hope Diva.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Your history books got it all wrong. So I come to you with a song. In 1810, con el gran grito de pasión Se levantaron con razón Black and brown fighting together,