WRITING MY FIRST BOOK, CHANCLA

In 2020, I set the intention to write my first book. On August 18th of this year, it’s finally being published. The book is called “CHANCLA: Healing Our Families, Ourselves, and our Culture through Nonviolent Parenting”. It’s about the evolution of adult-child dynamics in Latine families. It offers my take on how to move through it with much gentleness and compassion for ourselves and those we come from, along with some supportive practices that are intended to be useful when implemented consistently.

I believe the only way that we will be able to create a gentle world is to treat our children and each other gently, and this book is my affirmative testimony to that. It’s a love letter to my family, to my Inner Niña, and to all Latine families.

For the last three years, especially, it has felt like every ounce of my energy has been poured into learning how to meet this challenge and birth this book. The week I asked my partner of 16 years for a divorce in October 2022, was also the week I vetted publishers who had planned to bid on my proposal. This auction led to my eventual book deal with a major publisher. Within a couple of months, I broke my wrist rollerskating (third time in my life, wtf), and it turned out to be a severe and frustrating recovery.

In the year that followed, I had _ abortions, went through a complete overhaul of the support persons in my business, somehow survived the worst betrayal trauma I’d ever experienced in my life, had to navigate two rocky and contemptuous co-parenting relationships (because I’m partnered with someone who is co-parenting), and experienced several significant deaths, including witnessing mass death and destruction in Gaza. All of this while caregiving and mothering 3 children who have been going through their own processes and transitions.

The last three years saw me navigating heavy weight as I wrote and tried to meet deadlines for four separate editors. The weight is why I started weight training again. I need to be able to physically lift so that it is easier to spiritually lift. That’s an essay for another time.

“THE GALLEYS ARE HERE!”

Fast forward to the beginning of this month, March. One early Friday afternoon, I open my front door and see a large box from New York. I know what it is, because I’ve been waiting for this box for 6 years. My kids are home, luckily, and I get to show them the box and ask them to open it with me. They’re excited. Mama’s been talking about this book, hyping it up, telling them their names are all up in there. This is their book, too.

I position my phone to record a video of the four of us opening the box. I want to remember this moment, especially since these books are not meant to be kept but will soon be shipped out to others. These books were going to be sent to my blurbers, to people important to me, whose opinions I care about, whose time I respect.

Without my prompting, writes a kind, supportive Facebook post sharing the photo I texted her with the box filled with the galley copies to her nearly 300K Facebook followers. People like , , and others share in my joy.

”The galleys are here! The galleys are here!” I text everyone that Friday. It is a time for celebration. I am in awe that this moment has come at last. It blows my mind. Still.

And, I have it planned. I would take some time to write heartfelt notes and letters to the 8 blurbers these copies were going to. I would ship them out as soon as I could make it to the post office the following week. Finally!

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ENTER THE WITCH CAT

About a year ago, I told the Universe that I wanted another cat. A black cat, a witch cat. I was averse to cats for so long. I had been deathly allergic for years, so they symbolized the demise of my immune system. And, someone once said that the Black ones were bad luck if they crossed you. (I think we can all agree, this superstition is racist.) But over the last decade, I’ve become comfortable knowing myself as magical and powerful, with “witchy” qualities, something other women in my lineage have shared. Our first cat, Pepper, needed a friend, and I needed a witch cat. “But, I want it to be low maintenance. Like mine, but not mine,” I specified to the Universe.

Soon after that, a Black cat began frequenting the outside of our house. Eventually, the 6 of us all bonded with him, and started letting him into the house. His name is Meow, Binx, CatMan, Kitty, or Teenjus, depending on who you ask. To me, he’s my witch cat, and he had been kind enough to do his business outside, not wanting to share Pepper’s litter box. This cat is easygoing. As I am writing, he is melted, legs sprawled, spilling over the cat tower like drippy ice cream on a cone. He is vocal and asserts his needs until they are met. He snuggles. He lies on the small of my back when he knows I need it. He teaches Pepper boundaries. He is gentle with the children. They have each claimed him as their own. But he’s no one’s cat, really. He just lets us think he is.

THE BASTET BLESSÈD PEEPEE BOOKS

The afternoon my books arrived, I moved the box down to the corner of our dining area. I left the box open. As I did that, I had no reason to believe this would be the final time I would see these books dry. A few days later, it was time to take the books to the post office. I went to the corner where they were, and immediately noticed a glistening substance over the ones on the surface. “Oh, fuck”.

It wasn’t just the ones on the surface; the pee had streamed down the sides of the stacks, and wet streaks made parts of the books’ fore-edges (the side pages) yellow. I walked to my rocking chair and sat down, breathing and feeling an inner upset that resembled something like a baby between embarrassment and disbelief. I searched for meaning. I texted my friends. I hesitated to tell my agent. I hesitated longer before telling my publisher. Most people saw the comedy in it right away, but it took me a while.

What I decided within the day was that this must have been some sort of significant backwards blessing. Call it being delulu, call it Lucky Girl Syndrome, whatever. Other witchy women affirmed that this made sense. (We can only be friends if you, too, are delulu.) My cat, or as would say, “Not My Cat”, had sadly ended the possibility of these books being sent out. But I couldn’t help but feel like this was no mistake. For some reason, these books were going to be mine to keep.

We took the box outside and cleaned the books as much as we could. They remained stained and stinky. One of my best friends said, “I’ll take one of the peepee books!” I joked about auctioning the LIMITED EDITION peepee books to raise funds for an organization. told me to make some content about it (and this is that, sort of). lovingly invited me to write an essay about it (and this is that, definitely).

But— what evidence do I have that this was a blessing and not the affirmation of fears that my book STINKS LIKE CAT PEE IN EVERY WAY? :(

Bastet, the feline Egyptian goddess.

No, I don’t have Egyptian ties that I know of. But I did recently watch Prince of Egypt for the 28th time and a long documentary on Moses, so, you know. Egypt. If Bastet is unfamiliar to you:

“Bastet is probably the best-known feline goddess from Egypt. Initially depicted as a lioness, Bastet assumed the image of a cat or a feline-headed woman in the 2nd millennium BCE. Although she combined both nurturing and violent qualities, her shielding and motherly aspects were typically emphasized.

Countless representations of a seated cat, cat-headed goddess or cat with kittens include dedicatory inscriptions addressed to Bastet. By offering such inscribed images, donors expressed their wishes for health and children or, more generally, life and protection.” Source

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This is what we are going with. A protector. A hunter. A nurturer.

I totally still feel kind of peeved at my witch cat. And of course, now it is an inconvenience to have to get new galleys, and I’ve had to tell incredible, wonderful, important people that they wouldn’t get their galley copies as early as I had planned. But they are forgiving and seemingly amused by this.

And my witch cat, newly named Bastet, will be forgiven, too. Or, hopefully, credited with the glowing success of the book and added to the Acknowledgments in the 2nd edition. A yellow glowing success.

Some final words to BastetMeowBinxCatmanKitty:

I love you, witch cat. But don’t you EV-ER urinate on any of my books EVER again OR ELSE!!! (Or else probably nothing because I love you so much, my regal baby, my perfect witch cat.)

PS - My new galleys arrived today. They were immediately removed from the box and placed away from any peepee possibilities.

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This morning, ICE agents followed a daycare teacher into Rayito de Sol Early Learning Center at 7am and violently dragged her out in front of children and families. No warrant. Just this administration’s daily dose of terror and trauma being inflicted on children and on families. I’ve dedicated my life and career to preventing childhood trauma, and I need to tell you what incidents like this one do to our children.

First, some context: I am a child of immigrants. Immigrants raised me. The city of Santa Ana, full of immigrants, raised me. My entire body of work has been an attempt to abolish ALL root conditions of childhood trauma for kids, specifically those from Latine and immigrant families trying to survive and live with dignity.

I cannot and will not say that this focus is more worthy than other focuses, because I know that there are other groups of people who have experienced similar levels of collective and historical traumas, and those have been manifested in their own cultural ways. But I focus here because I have learned enough to see the context of my people, and the child of immigrants I was, with clarity.

Know, also, that I see my people as my responsibility. When I say “my people”, I mean those whose lineages are rooted deep in the history of this land, and those who, like my entire family, crossed colonial borders to live. Immigrants, beyond my parents, raised me. I am of immigrants. And because of that, I can now give testimony about what it means to be raised and shaped by a beautiful people who have been traumatized for centuries by the systems imposed upon, and sometimes internalized within us, and expressed through our relationships, including our parenting.

Additionally, I myself am a former early childhood educator who worked in classrooms full of predominantly Brown preschoolers, descendants of immigrants, for several years. I know the love, care, and dedication that teachers who work with young teachers exhibit. One of my co-teachers where I was a preschool teacher was undocumented. I always held that there was a possibility that one day the kids would come to school and not find Miss Luz in the pink room. I now train rooms full of early childhood educators, and their work remains profoundly important for the health and well-being of our entire society.

For over almost two decades, I’ve worked with communities of parents and families that have limited capacity to deal with anything beyond survival. I’ve seen firsthand how living in survival mode can harm parent-child relationships and compromise family well-being. But my message has always been: there IS hope, we ARE healing, we ARE evolving, and remaining steadfast and strong. Over and over I have affirmed to parents and families that what we need is within us, and that our needs deserve to be met. Our families deserve peace and ease.

But what hurts me now is seeing the trauma continue and escalate at the scale we are seeing it—daily. We are witnessing so much theft before our eyes. So much is being taken, namely the right of children to be prevented from this kind of trauma. What is being stolen is the continuity, predictability, stability of being together and at ease with your parent, or with your child, since they’re also abducting children in ways all too familiar to our bloodlines.

Being a child who witnesses your daycare teacher abducted is traumatic. Being a teenager who films your mother thrown to the ground outside your vehicle is traumatic. Watching your father handcuffed while masked men push you and your mother into courtroom walls is traumatic. Not knowing where your caregiver has been taken after they’ve been abducted from the factory where they work is traumatic. And trauma takes a LONG time to heal from.

Healing must occur in reparative, restorative conditions, and those conditions are not widely present in this country currently. And, historically traumatized families are being impacted by other conditions of hardship at local levels too: low wages, food insecurity, rising housing costs, and more. These are all ON TOP OF the warranted fears the parents, children, and families in our communities are facing with these lurking gestapo headhunter thugs invading our cities.

At least 8% of all U.S. children live with at least one undocumented family member. This means at least 8% of all U.S. kids are at risk of experiencing the trauma of family separation right now. Too many are living under this constant threat. When a child witnesses their parent or a caregiver violently taken, their entire sense of safety in the world can completely shatter. The belief that their adults can protect them, that home is safe, that they’ll be okay—it can all vanish instantly.

Children witnessing these events can carry hypervigilance in their bodies long-term. Every knock on the door, every person in uniform, can feel like a possible threat in their bodies. These kids’ nervous systems will remain activated, scanning for the next separation, the next potential threat to their safety. This is what developmental trauma looks like. This is what ongoing cultural trauma looks like. This is historical trauma and the seeding of epigenetic effects taking place in real time.

For our Latine children and youth already navigating the stress of living in mixed-status families, this compounds the layers of intergenerational trauma many in our families already hold. The inheritance becomes their parents’ fear, their families’ stories of violence and displacement, and now they must reckon with their own direct experiences of state violence. I can’t tell you how much I don’t want this to be true, and how much I wish this was not as grave and alarming as the reality of it is.

These children are learning, some for the first time, that there are entire institutions, governments, systems that see our families as disposable, that see the adults they love as less human. They are learning that their parents’ labor is welcome and wanted, but their parents’ humanity is not. They are learning that Brown bodies can be violated with impunity. This is the lesson kids are being taught today, and anytime this happens. It completely shapes how they see themselves and their worth.

And here’s what really breaks me: we DO KNOW how to prevent this trauma. We HAVE known. We KNOW children need safe, stable, predictable relationships with their caregivers. We KNOW family separation causes lifelong harm. This suffering is not inevitable—it is CHOSEN and EXPLICIT. In fact, it is policy. It is violence. It is child abuse.

The children and the grown-ups in Rayito de Sol this morning will remember this for the rest of their lives. The Maestra who was taken will carry this, and she will carry the knowing that one of the worst days of her life, if not the worst, was witnessed across the country. The families watching and bearing witness, including yours and mine, will carry this too.

We must never ignore that responsibility, even if you are not Latine yourself nor relate to these fears and traumas being inflicted. If that is you, you have EXTRA responsibility to use your privilege to intervene. The kids being traumatized need ALL of us to show up, speak up, and disrupt this violence and prevent the traumas however we can. Our kids cannot wait for people to become “comfortable” enough to act to prevent this from happening. Our kids deserve to live free from fear and trauma NOW.

On October 5th, 2023, two days before her 59th birthday, I visited my Tia Adriana for what would be the last time. She let me use oil on her legs and feet, which I had offered because I wanted her to feel loved and nurtured. We joked and laughed; she tried to turn on some of her sweet energy for me, mi Mami, Papi, and my son, Emilio. She was weak and moved slow, but smiled, happy to see us. She told me to “Be Good”, and I felt that she was serious. I told her I would see her for her birthday in two days, and we woud eat chicken fetuccini alfredo from Olive Garden.

On October 6th, less than 24 hours later, she was gone.

On October 7th, it was her 59th birthday.

On October 7th, Palestinian occupation resistance fighters took Israeli hostages, and the world cracked wider open, like an iceberg splitting and crashing down into the Arctic Sea, revealing millennia-old microbes, a danger to humanity. Every day since, too many in Gaza have been slaughtered. Every day for two years, it is there for me to witness. And I do witness.

It has always struck me how these events, the death of my aunt and the catalyzing events of October 7th, occurred consecutively. It is my individual grief entwined with collective grief, and it is my individual rage at the injustice in my family, in my bloodline, that is embedded within the rage I feel towards the greater injustices that threaten our collective survival.

The night of my Tia’s birthday, one of her relatives brought up that Hamas had attacked a music festival. I had heard of things like this happening before, but at the time, I hadn’t known how large-scale it turned out to be. I responded something like, “Well, when you’re living in an open-air prison and been under occupation as long as Palestinians have, you’re going to have people resist”. I don’t think he knew where to go from there, or whether we got interrupted, but the conversation stopped.

I took a week to grieve my aunt before posting anything about Palestine online. I knew it would be a shitstorm. But I was angry knowing that what was next was the attempted extermination of Palestinians by Israel. It always went that way. And I knew that this would be much worse due to the scale, according to the media, of the impact this attack had had just based on the quantity of deaths (one thousand two hundred). I found myself fighting people online, naming the white supremacy, naming their complicity in what was quickly, but not quickly enough, understood as a genocide.

I thought about how I wasn’t being allowed to grieve my Tia as slow as I may have liked, because I had a platform and I felt a duty to use it to call attention to what was happening. I made videos, I wrote slides and mini-dissertations on the interconnectedness of Latine and Palestinian struggle. I funneled my sadness and madness into digestible content.

And, I also thought about how tens of thousands of Palestinians were being buried in rubble, and their relatives were being displaced unable to find their dead, give them proper burials, have sacred ritual. I thought about how, in comparison to the people of Gaza, I did get to grieve my Tia. I wasn’t displaced, and we had our standard, somber mourning rituals, with some joy among us sprinkled in between. Who was I to deserve a gentle grief?

I thought about how my grief and theirs were the same hard pit, simultaneously boiling over ugly when least expected. But I wasn’t in fear of more death for those around me. I did have daily fear for Palestinians, though, and I still do. From the beginning, I have seen so much death from my screen, as many of us have, and it has continued to make me dread my screen and not want to open my feed. But I do.. because we have to, lest we abdicate our responsibility to our fellow human.

A new understanding of the interlocking grief and rage, both individual and collective, has evolved within me, containing the individual, interpersonal, cultural, and global intersections. Grief and rage are in a constant state of movement inside me, and I sometimes wonder whether I can handle the layers, whether I can swim in these raging rapids without the floaties that guarded my childhood optimism, of which my Tia was one.

I know and care “too much” of what has happened in Palestinian history, given my study of it in college, and I can’t let it go (nor do I want to). And, I know too much about what led, at least partially, to my Tia’s early death in the way of her own grief, of the short sticks she experienced in her life. I want to describe the tracing I’ve done. Out of respect for my family, I can’t quite yet. But I will say that many of us come from families that have been dealt short sticks, and illness and early loss of life has happened because of the trauma of it all. We’ve dealt with more grief and pain and suffering than we may ever be able to recover from, and that’s why Gaza and too many places in the Global South feel so painful— because it implies a continuous long-term grief in countless families. And that grief is not always moved through with grace, because how could it when you can’t heal from one blow before another one comes? Is it even possible?

Maybe in a few centuries, but not anytime soon. This is not me being cynical. This is me looking around at my world and noticing the destruction and calamity that exist both outside and within our families. I am not diminishing the beauty and celebration of the creation and the life being generated amidst the crumbling. I am not ungrateful for the unity, precious solidarity, and joy when they are present. Those are things I do acknowledge and am grateful for.

When we stood looking up at my Tia’s resting place in a cemetery wall today, I told my Tio: “How lucky we are that she was lent to us for as long as she was”. And yet I am still pissed that she is not here anymore. Just as I am still pissed that genocide continues. I am pissed, and I am grateful for Palestine, for its steadfast people, and for our shared commitment towards its liberation and the liberation of all oppressed peoples.

So I carry both: the grief for my Tia Adr and the grief for Gaza. I don’t carry them as separate weights but as one agonizing, but necessary load. I carry the rage too. I refuse to let it burn out. I choose, instead, to transform it into a stubborn refusal to look away, to go numb to it, to accept that any of this is inevitable or normal or the way it’s “meant to be”. It’s not. And on every October 7th from that day on, I have chosen to remember my Tia’s smile, her directive to “Be Good,” and the Olive Garden pasta we never got to share.

And I will also remember that this is the day the world chose to pay attention to Palestine’s suffering, even as it has raged for decades before and continued relentlessly after. My Tia taught me, without ever saying it directly, that love means showing up even when it hurts, even when you’re weak and moving slow.

So I show up for her memory by refusing to be complicit in forgetting—forgetting her, forgetting Palestine, forgetting any of our people who deserved so much more than the short sticks they were handed.

To me, this is what it means to “Be Good”: to hold the grief and the rage together, to let them fuel the struggle for a reality where less and less families have to bury our relatives and loved ones too soon, where liberation isn’t just an illusory fabrication only existing in our dreams, but a daily reality rooted in love that we build momen-to-moment with our hands, the same hands that soothe the pain and soreness of our human condition with warm oils and our warm love.

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