Podcasts about afro dominican

The formerly undocumented Afro-Dominican poet, spoken word artist and cultural expression activist shares her decision to forgo law school in favor of a different form of advocacy, the importance of uplifting Black immigrant narratives, and the necessity of developing an identity independent of one's family.

Hear an Afro-Dominican perspective on Sicily, Vienna, Sri Lanka, India, Strasbourg, the Paris Olympics, Mexico & Vietnam.  _____________________________ Subscribe to The Maverick Show's Monday Minute Newsletter where I email you 3 short items of value to start each week that you can consume in 60 seconds (all personal recommendations like the latest travel gear I'm using, my favorite destinations, discounts for special events, etc.). Follow The Maverick Show on Instagram ____________________________________ Elsie Paulino joins Matt in person in New York City for this conversation over a bottle of French wine, and they start talking about the recent WITS Travel Creator Summit that they both attended in NYC.  Elsie then talks about her parents story immigrating to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic and her experience growing up in an immigrant home in the NYC-area.   She reflects on navigating the milieu of Blackness in the U.S. as an Afro-Latina and also the dynamics of anti-Blackness in the DR. Next, she explains how her interest in world travel developed and shares her journey studying abroad in Sicily in high school and Vienna in College. Elsie then shares travel stories from Sri Lanka, India, Vietnam, Strasbourg, and attending the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.  Finally, she talks about falling in love with Mexico and the life-changing experience of attending Dia de Los Muertos in Oaxaca.  FULL SHOW SHOWS INCLUDING DIRECT LINKS TO EVERTHING DISCUSSED ARE AVAILABLE HERE.  ____________________________________ See my Top 10 Apps For Digital Nomads See my Top 10 Books For Digital Nomads See my 7 Keys For Building A Remote Business (Even in a space that's not traditionally virtual) Watch my Video Training on Stylish Minimalist Packing so you can join #TeamCarryOn  See the Travel Gear I Use and Recommend See How I Produce The Maverick Show Podcast (The equipment, services & vendors I use) ____________________________________ ENJOYING THE SHOW? Please Leave a Rating and Review. It really helps the show and I read each one personally.  You Can Buy Me a Coffee. Espressos help me produce significantly better podcast episodes! :)

In the 1930s, infamous Dominican dictator Rafael Truillo ordered the burning of the country's palos drums, hoping to erase the powerful vestiges of African culture in the Dominican Republic. Luckily for us, the breakneck, trance-inducing sound of palos still reverberates at Afro-syncretic religious parties across the Caribbean nation almost a century later. In this episode, Afropop revisits the home of styles such as merengue and bachata, but this time we'll be looking towards the most deeply African side of Dominican music—little known outside of the island. Afro-Dominican music is a secret treasure, filled with virtuosic drumming styles, heart-stopping grooves, and mystic dance parties. We'll listen to traditional genres like palos, salve, and gaga, a uniquely Dominican take on rara music from neighboring Haiti. Throughout, we'll be looking at artists who have drawn on Afro-Dominican styles to make infectious pop music, from wizened veterans of the folklore movement such as Luis Dias, to a host of hip young bands who use Afro-inspired rock, reggae and hip-hop to redefine what it means to be Dominican. We'll also check out the Afro-Dominican scene in New York City—home to more than a half-million Dominicans—where we'll find a Dominican gaga group in Brooklyn that is mending cultural fences at a Haitian celebration. Produced by Marlon Bishop APWW #579

Alejandro Heredia's debut novel “Loca” has been praised as “quintessentially American”. It takes place in both the Dominican Republic and the Bronx, New York, where Alejandro was shaped into the person he is today.In this episode, Latino USA producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. speaks with the Afro-Dominican author about his —and his family's— migration journey to the United States, his queer awakening, and being a writer during this moment in history. They also reflect on family, grief, joy—and what it means to reclaim your story on your own terms.Want to support our independent journalism? Join Futuro+ for exclusive episodes, sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes chisme on Latino USA and all our podcasts.Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. Subscribe to our newsletter. 

In the 1880s, a small Afro-Dominican girl spent her days selling sweets on the streets of San Pedro de Macorís, a bustling port town in the Dominican Republic. Born out of wedlock and abandoned by her parents, her horizons seemed narrow — in this deeply stratified society, few people ever broke free from the life they were born into.But Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo had something that made people take notice. Two influential brothers, both poets and intellectuals, recognized a brilliant mind and a tenacious spirit. With the brothers' support, Evangelina went on to chart a path that was unheard of for any Dominican woman at that time: she became her country's first female doctor.In this five-part season, we will follow Evangelina as she studies medicine, first in her home country, then in Paris, where she learns new medical techniques in the emerging field of gynecology and encounters radical ideas about women's health: ideas that she hopes will transform her society back in the Dominican Republic. Little does she think her new approaches to women's health will eventually lead to her tragic downfall. Evangelina Rodríguez's contributions as a reformer and pioneer in public health were all but erased by the dictator whose regime hounds her to death. Here, we piece together her life and her legacy.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Why should our next generation of farmers – and just about everyone who eats – care about the Farm Bill? Celize Christy, an Organizer at HEAL Food Alliance explains the basic details on what's in the legislation, how it gets written, and how it impacts you. Then, Young Farmers' Policy Campaigns Co-Director Vanessa Garcia Polanco lays out the path forward in terms of the most important issues this time around. And we talk to farmers KD Randall and Matt Hollenbeck about what they need from their policymakers in D.C. Celize Christy, Organizer, HEAL Food AllianceAs an Organizer at HEAL Food Alliance, Celize facilitates connections among members, campaigns, and programs building collective power through HEAL's multi-sector, multi-racial coalition. Celize comes to HEAL's campaign and policy work by coordinating farmer-led education programming, advocating for BIPOC farmers in Iowa, and coalition building and organizing with sustainable agriculture organizations. At HEAL, Celize isn't just an organizer; she's a passionate agent of change, weaving connections and networks that celebrate the multifaceted voices of our food and farm systems. Read her full bio.Vanessa Garcí­a Polanco, Policy Campaigns Co-Director, National Young Farmers CoalitionVanessa García Polanco co-designs the strategy and implementation of Young Farmers' policy campaigns, ensuring we are pursuing and advocating for equity-driven, farmer-centric research, policy, and programmatic interventions. She serves as the organizational council member and co-chair of the Farming Opportunities & Fair Competition Committee of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. She has previously worked with Food Solutions New England, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems, University of Rhode Island Cooperative Extension, and the Executive Office of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She is an alumna of Michigan State University and the University of Rhode Island. She is a James Beard Foundation Scholar, AFHVS Innovation Leader, and an Emerging Leader in Food and Agriculture. As an Afro-Dominican immigrant, she brings her experiences and identities to her policy and advocacy activities.KD Randall, Farmer, Home Grown Farm + Young Farmers Land FellowKD is a returning generation farmer who developed a deep appreciation for the land and the ways that it constantly care for us. Inspired by the stories of their family, KD decided to pursue a career in agriculture, determined to contribute to the legacy and sustainability of southern rural agriculture. Recently, KD's work has focused on healing and fostering remembrance, reconnection, and growth in all of the places they call home, grounding in their southern rural agrarian roots. This passion has inspired them to create Home Grown Farms, a small rural farm that is still blooming into its first form. A component of KD's long-term vision is to explore ways to offer a diversity of wellness experiences through food, recreation, and spiritual services.Follow KD @farmerinthekells.Matt Hollenbeck, Hollenbeck's Cider Mill + Young Farmers Land FellowMatt Hollenbeck lives and farms in Virgil, NY, and is the 4th generation steward of Hollenbeck's Cider Mill. He has been a factory worker, cubicle jockey, geologist, outdoor adventure guide, worked on a small organic CSA farm, a butcher shop, and many other varied jobs before settling into continuing his family's 90+-year-old ag processing business. He's a first-generation orchardist with impostor syndrome, a staunch and vocal advocate for rural issues, smallholder agriculture, and appropriate technology. Matt is also a firm believer that family is the most important part of a family business. And a Luddite to boot! Check out HEAL Food Alliance's farm bill priorities here.Learn more about Hollenbeck's Cider Mill here.Follow KD Randle @farmerinthekellsLearn more about the USDA's EQIP program here, and the NRCS program here.The Farm Report is hosted by Leigh Ollman and Alita Kelly, produced by Leigh Ollman, Evan Flom and H Conley, and edited by Hannah Beal and H Conley. Audio engineering is by Armen Spendjian and H Conley. Music in the original episode is by Breakmaster Cylinder and JangwaLearn more about the National Young Farmers Coalition here and consider becoming a member. Click here to take action on the farm bill and other important policy issues. The Farm Report was originally air by HRN and is Powered by Simplecast.

Notes and Links to Alejandro Heredia's Work          Alejandro Heredia is a queer Afro-Dominican writer from The Bronx. His debut novel LOCA is out today (February 11) from Simon and Schuster. He has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA, the Dominican Studies Institute, Kenyon Review, and Trinity College. In 2019, he was selected by Myriam Gurba as the winner of the Gold Line Press Fiction Chapbook Contest. His chapbook of short stories, You're the Only Friend I Need (2021), explores themes of queer transnationalism, friendship, and (un)belonging in the African Diaspora. Heredia's work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Lambda Literary Review, The Offing, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College.    Heredia currently serves as Black Mountain Institute's Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Buy Loca   Alejandro Heredia's Website   Book Review for Loca   At about 2:40, Alejandro shares his feelings as the book's Pub Day approaches, as well as feedback that he hasn't gotten on the novel At about 4:40, Alejandro talks about his bilingualism, growing up in The Bronx and The Dominican Republic, and what led him towards writing  At about 7:10, Alejandro talks about how being bilingual helps him to become a better writer/thinker and how his Spanglish has developed  At about 9:25, Alejandro gives some background on a specific Dominican word At about 10:25, Alejandro responds to Pete's questions about what he was reading that served as foundational for him and he expands upon “writing across difference” At about 13:10, Alejandro cites contemporary fiction that inspires and challenges, including Gina Chung's work At about 14:10, Alejandro outlines ideas of how he sees the use of the word “queer” At about 16:00, Alejandro expands upon seeds and stimulating ideas for his book, especially wth regard to the “Author's Note” At about 19:10, Alejandro expands on his Author's Note reference to fiction's “capaciousness” and how fiction's constructs helped him write about loss and grief in Loca At about 21:10, Alejandro talks about the significance of his two epigraphs and ideas of “home” and friendship  At about 23:40, Pete and Alejandro talks about the book's exposition and an early inciting incident  At about 24:30, Pete asks Alejandro about main character Charo's domesticity and her visceral negative reaction At about 26:05, The two discuss ideas of community and Y2K and the importance of the “queer space” at The Shade Room in a Dominican and Puerto Rican community At about 28:20, Alejandro talks about intersectionality and his qualms about its usage in early reviews of the novel At about 30:55, Pete and Alejandro discuss Vance and Sal's first meeting and budding relationship and ideas of “identity politics and language” At about 32:25, The two discuss important familial and friend characters  At about 33:55, Yadiel is discussed as a proud queer character and Aljandrro expands upon a moment in which Sal and Yadiel  At about 36:15, Alejandro responds to Pete's questions about a “moment in time” and a “utpian moment,” and expands upon the good and bad of life “at the margins” At about 39:35, Alejandro replies to Pete's question about the ways in which he deals wth sexual abuse and its effects and the abuse as “foundational” and “inform[ing]” Sal's adolescence and beyond At about 42:45, Vance and his likability and Ren are described  At about 43:55, Anacaona and her history are discussed in connection to an important flashback in the book At about 46:00, Alejandro expands upon ideas of “erasing Blackness” that come as unintentional (?) effects of the portrayal of the Taino peoples  At about 49:15, Robert and his sympathetic nature and his usage of a homophobic slur are discussed, as Alejandro discusses the “reclaiming” of the word in the queer Dominican community At about 50:40, Don Julio, Sal's roommate, and his emblematic background are discussed, along with the benefits and drawbacks of “normalizing” a reclaimed word At about 53:00, Alejandro talks about being a “writer of images” after Pete compliments one of many resonant scenes At about 54:55, Pete and Alejandro tiptoe around any spoilers At about 55:50, Sal and Kiko and their minor triumphs and Sal's success as a teacher are discussed  At about 57:00, Pete wonders about Lena, an eccentric character in the book, and Alejandro talks about some ambiguities  At about 59:00, Robert and Charo's relationship and ideas of repression, personal choice, and guilt throughout the book are discussed  At about 1:03:25, Pete and Alejandro discuss generational differences in the ways in which Sal and Vance interact and see progressive movements  At about 1:07:40, Alejandro discusses social media contact info and points listeners towards his upcoming tour dates      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. This week, his conversation with previous guest Carvell Wallace will be up on the website. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran.    I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of Pete's, a DIY operation, and he'd love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.     The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 272 with Lamya H. Lamya is a queer Muslim writer and organizer living in New York City whose 2023 memoir HIJAB BUTCH BLUES won the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and a Stonewall Non-fiction Book Award, and was also a finalist for Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle Awards. Lamya's organizing work centers around creating spaces for LGBTQ+ Muslims, fighting Islamophobia, Palestine, and prison abolition.    The episode airs on February 18.

Notes and Links to Jason De León's Work   Jason De León is Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Loyd E. Cotsen Endowed Chair of Archaeology, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.    De León is Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) Inc. a 501(c)(3) research, arts, and education collective that seeks to raise awareness about migration issues globally.    He is the author of two award winning books: “The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail” (featuring photos by Michael Wells) and “Soldiers and Kings.” Soldiers and Kings won the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction. De León is 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellow.    In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Jason is an active musician who sang and played guitar with the Long Beach based hardcore-punk-reggae band Youth in Asia in the mid to late 1990's and the Americana band The Wilcox Hotel based out of State College, PA between 2005 and 2008. He currently plays bass in  The War Pigs and is involved in various musical projects including periodic reunions with The Wilcox Hotel.   Buy Jason's Books   Jason Website   Jason's National Book Award Receipt: Video   Book Review: Soldiers and Kings New York Times Review    Jason on CBS Sunday Morning: Video   At about 2:50, Jason helps Pete get over some Lakers/Kings traumas At about 6:15, Jason talks about the experience of winning the National Book Award At about 8:45, Jason shouts out indie bookstores like Literati, Village Well, Powell's as places to buy his book At about 10:05, Jason gives background on his early relationship with language and story, and how this reading was shaped by his childhood At about 11:10, Jason talks about ups and downs of reading and writing for joy, and how “story” has been an interest  At about 13:20, Jason talks about how multilingualism was part of his childhood and the ways in which speaking foreign languages  At about 14:50, Jason responds to Pete's question about writers who challenge and inspire him, including Ernest Gaines, Lus Alberto Urrea, Willie Vaultin, and Jesmyn Ward At about 17:00, Jason cites songwriters like John Prine, Jason Isbell, and Bruce Springsteen as inspirational At about 19:20, Jason gives background on the protocol and timing and embedding done in his research for Soldiers and Kings  At about 20:30, Pete is highly complimentary of Jason's balance of first person and third person and his skilled objectivity; Jason responds to Pete's questions about any “vertigo” that came with intense fieldwork and academia and family life  At about 24:15, Jason speaks to the significance of the book's epigraph from Jason Isbell At about 27:50, Jason discusses the difference between “smuggling” and “trafficking” and their implications in the book and beyond At about 29:15, Jason and Pete reflect on the titles for the people represented on the book, and Jason responds to Pete's question about how he wrote to avoid generalization   At about 32:30, Jason recounts a story from his first book that is emblematic of fully-drawn characters At about 34:30, Pete asks about ethical concerns in research for the book At about 36:05, Jason outlines how childhood experiences and exposure to violence may have helped him connect more with the main characters of the book At about 38:50, Jason reflects on how he proved himself trustworthy in his research and how and why the characters are “good judges of characters” At about 41:00, The two discuss Honduras and its importance in migration in the last decade or so, as well as how its emblematic of the global and natural forces  At about 45:45, the two reflect on youth and its importance in the book and how privilege, or lack thereof, connect to ideas of redemption and traumas At about 49:35, Pete cites a telling quote from Father Greg Boyle in reference to the high number of adverse experiences that so many migrants have had to carry; Jason discusses ideas of hope  At about 52:15, Pete highlights a resonant poem by Warsan Shire that leads Jason to talk about the “sharks” that put people on the migrant route At about 55:25, Jason responds to Pete's question about the infamous “La Bestia” At about 57:20, Jason explains the term “clavo” and its implications to “stateless” people    At about 58:55, Pete notes that the book deals so successfully with  At about 1:01:00, “The Future Belongs to Those Who Dream,” a chapter title, and its implications for optimism and hope is discussed  At about 1:04:55, Pete cites the book's wondrous last page, as well as the book's long future “shelf life”   You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. This week, his conversation with Episode 264 guest Maggie Sheffer is up on the website. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the classic Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.” I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 271 with Alejandro Heredia, a queer Afro-Dominican writer from The Bronx and winner of the Gold Line Press Fiction Chapbook Contest. His writing has been featured in Teen Vogue, Lambda Literary Review, and elsewhere; His resonant debut novel LOCA has its Pub Day on Feb 11, the day on which the episode airs.  

Dr. Mariel Buqué is an Afro-Dominican, Columbia University-trained Psychologist, intergenerational trauma expert, and the author of the book Break the Cycle: a book that focuses on healing wounds of intergenerational trauma. Her clinical framework is holistic and infuses ancient and indigenous healing practices into a modern, comprehensive therapeutic approach. She additionally provides healing workshops to Fortune 100 companies including Google, Twitter, Capital One, and Facebook and lectures within the psychology department of Columbia University. Dr. Buqué is widely sought out for her clinical expertise and trauma healing approach and has been featured on major media outlets including The Today Show, Good Morning America, and ABC News. She has been named as a School of Greatness's 100 Greatest People Doing Good in 2022.  Identifying Signs of Trauma What is Intergenerational Trauma How to Stop People Pleasing Fight, Flight, Fawn Trauma responses Cultural Psychology How to cope with High Functioning DepressionFollow Dr. Judith:Instagram: https://instagram.com/drjudithjoseph TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drjudithjoseph Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drjudithjoseph Website: https://www.drjudithjoseph.com/Follow Dr. Mariel Buquehttps://www.instagram.com/dr.marielbuque/https://www.drmarielbuque.com/https://www.drmarielbuque.com/breakthecycleSign up for my newsletter here: https://www.drjudithjoseph.com/newsletter-sign-upDisclaimer: You may want to consider your individual mental health needs with a licensed medical professional. This page is not medical advice.

Imani Celeste is a versatile Afro-Dominican artist whose approach is rooted in culture, storytelling, and community. At NYU Tisch, she received the inaugural HEAR US grant. Post-graduation, she directed, produced, acted, styled, and wrote "City of Dreamz," which showcased several esteemed and Academy Award Qualifying festivals. She has produced branded content for Essence magazine and a commercial for the New York Latino Film Festival. Her choreography and movement direction have been featured on MTV, Nowness, and Something Curated. In the city that breeds dreamz, Imani Celeste embodies her community and tells their stories in all of their unapologetic truth, drip and glory.

The mind and body are not separate entities, but rather a unified system that can be harnessed for healing and well-being, so today we focus on healing the body with our mind. Dr. Mariel Buqué, an Afro-Dominican psychologist and intergenerational trauma expert, offers profound insights into breaking the cycle of trauma through a holistic clinical approach that combines ancient healing practices with modern therapy. Dr. Ellen Langer, the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard University and known as the "mother of mindfulness," challenges conventional thinking about mind-body unity and shares her bold theory in her new book "The Mindful Body." Lastly, Dr. Joe Dispenza discusses the transformative power of thoughts and meditation in healing oneself, sharing inspiring stories of individuals who defied the odds and healed from severe illnesses. Together, these experts illuminate the path to healing and personal evolution through the power of the mind.In this episode you will learnHow to heal trauma without medication and recognize trauma within your body.Practical techniques to calm your nervous system and break the cycle of intergenerational trauma.The transformative effects of belief, gratitude, and personal evolution on healing.How our thoughts can influence our physical well-being and the concept of mind-body unity.The impact of unaddressed trauma on relationships and how to navigate healing when one partner is ready, but the other isn't.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1601For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you'll love:Dr. Mariel Buqué – https://link.chtbl.com/1555-podDr. Ellen Langer – https://link.chtbl.com/1578-podDr. Joe Dispenza – https://link.chtbl.com/1564-pod

Dr. Mariel Buqué is an Afro-Dominican, Columbia University-trained Psychologist, intergenerational trauma expert & the author of "Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma'', a book that focuses on healing wounds of intergenerational trauma.Her clinical framework is holistic & infuses ancient and indigenous healing practices into a modern, comprehensive therapeutic approach.She additionally provides healing workshops to Fortune 100 companies including Google, Twitter, Capital One & Facebook and lectures within the psychology department of Columbia University.Dr. Buqué is widely sought out for her clinical expertise and trauma healing approach and has been featured on major media outlets including The Today Show, Good Morning America & ABC News. She has been named as a School of Greatness's 100 Greatest People Doing Good in 2022.Her work can be found on drmarielbuque.com.I'm honored to have my first ever doctor featured on Watch Us Thrive! On this week's episode, I have an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Mariel Buqué, a psychologist with a passion for unraveling the complexities of trauma and intergenerational trauma healing.Dr. Buqué shares her own experiences growing up as an Afro-Latina, shedding light on the challenges of generational trauma. She takes us on a journey into the fascinating world of psychology and why cultural integration is key to her practice. Plus, she spills the tea on her unique 'Tea Time' sessions and the release of her book, 'Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma.'If you want practical tips and a candid discussion on breaking down barriers to therapy in communities of color, how to heal from generational trauma & much more, I promise this conversation is packed with insights you won't want to miss!Share this podcast & leave a rating + review on Apple. New episodes premiere every Tuesday.Follow me on Instagram, Threads, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter & YouTube!Get your free copy of The Thrive Guide here! Visit my website to stay up-to date.Sponsors:BetterHelp®— Get professional support when you need it. Receive 10% off your 1st month with my sponsored link!

Your family is...loving? Your family is...hurtful? Your family is...all this and more? If you feel overwhelmed when you think about your family, this episode will help you understand your anxiety and give you evidence-based tools to repair it.  Dr. Mariel Buqué is a leading specialist in trauma psychology. She says our physical and mental health challenges can be rooted in family trauma passed down through the generations—not just culturally, but even biologically.  We're talking about her new book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma.   Transcript   MARIEL BUQUÉ: My family is loving and hurtful. My family is nurturing and invalidating. They have a mixture of characteristics—and I myself have also been a part of how this family has operated, perhaps in dysfunction, for a multitude of years. BLAIR HODGES: How do you feel about the family—or families—that you were raised in? Dr. Mariel Buqué says a lot of our current physical and mental health can be better understood based on how we answer this question. Dr. Buqué is a leading specialist in trauma psychology. She says a lot of families go through cycles of dysfunction, and these cycles are passed on, generation to generation—not just culturally, but even biologically. She says understanding our trauma can help explain why some of us are people pleasers. Or why some of us find ourselves in codependent relationships. Or why we avoid relationships. Why some of us avoid forging our own families, or why we forge unhealthy wounds. Dr. Buqué has been helping to develop cutting edge therapy techniques to address trauma to help heal minds, bodies, and hearts. Today we're talking about her new book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. As you listen to various episodes of Family Proclamations, I think chances are you're going to hear things that touch a raw nerve. I've definitely experienced that myself as a host. I hope this episode provides some ideas about how to address those feelings, and maybe become a cycle breaker yourself. There's no one right way to be a family, and every kind of family has something we can learn from. I'm Blair Hodges and this is Family Proclamations.   A KEEPER OF THINGS (1:52)   BLAIR HODGES: Mariel Buqué, it's great to have you on Family Proclamations. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. BLAIR HODGES: Yes! We're talking about the book Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. And this is one of the newest books that we're going to be covering, this one actually comes out in January of 2024. So first, I just want to say congratulations on the new book! MARIEL BUQUÉ: Thank you, I'm excited for it to be out in the world and for people to be getting their hands on it, and hopefully doing a lot of good healing from it. BLAIR HODGES: It must be an interesting time, because you've spent so much time with this book already. And now it's coming out. So by the time it gets in people's hands, you're sort of like, “okay, like, I've spent so much time with it,” how does it feel? MARIEL BUQUÉ: I keep telling people that it feels almost like that moment when a person who is about nine months pregnant is ready to just birth their child and meet them and have them out in the world. But also, because I just don't want to hold it anymore. I want everyone else to have it. BLAIR HODGES: I do too. Let's start by talking about how you personally used to be a keeper of things. And maybe you still are resisting this impulse. You describe hanging on to stuff even when you don't need it anymore, and that you even experience some guilt or fear when you think about throwing something away rather than finding some use for it. Talk about being a keeper. What are some of the strange things you've kept in the past where you've been like, “Ooh, should probably get rid of that, but I can't!” MARIEL BUQUÉ: Oh, my goodness, I haven't gotten this question. And it's such a good one, I appreciate it very much. So, you know, the actual through line especially in my maternal line, my grandmother, my mother, we've had this way of actually keeping things, first to preserve them for anybody else that might need them even if they're not functional items. And secondly, because of this terrible, terrible guilt of being wasteful. And it comes from there being a lot of scarcity in their lives, my life growing up, and feeling like if we don't keep every little thing no matter what it is that there's a likely chance that we might just be left with nothing. So it was just this irrational fear that was so profoundly ingrained in me. And you know, as far as keeping you know—there's so many things but one thing that I find to be particularly interesting that I've been able to keep and use to the last little bit for years and years and years is actually a white sage that I have. I've had it for about—I've been burning almost the same three bunches for like five years. BLAIR HODGES: Oh wow. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Which in part, I say it's a good thing because there's a lot around that plant that, you know, we're kind of over-utilizing it in on the planet. But I felt like that was like a such a curious thing that I continued to do, even though I'm still working on not being so much of a keeper, that I am so carefully preserving every last bit of everything. Even to this day, I have little things that I do still. BLAIR HODGES: You talk about how it comes from sort of a scarcity mindset; you mentioned poverty or need in your family's history and how that kind of gets passed down. That's why I wanted to start off with this personal example of yours, because your book talks about how some of the things we experienced in our lives are directly connected to what we've inherited. What came before us. Our ancestors, our direct relatives. I want to ask about—was it a mug that you broke? MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah. BLAIR HODGES: My heart went out to you, because I used to have this small little drinking glass that was my mother-in-law's, and I made fun of her for it. I said, “Who would ever need a glass of that size?” And she said, “It's perfect for juice at bedtime.” And she since passed away and I started using that glass and fell in love with it. And I would drink a little juice before bedtime. And one day I dropped it and broke it. And it was terrible. Because she's gone. And now my glass is gone. MARIEL BUQUÉ: I share the sentiment! Like, it still kind of makes me a little bit tender to even reflect on the fact that I broke that mug. Now, my grandmother, she lived in this—one might call it almost like a hut. It wasn't even a proper home. It had no indoor plumbing, you know, it was just this set of sticks really in the Dominican Republic. And for her to actually find a way to make this mug reach my home in the US was just like, I could tell the profound sense of love she had for me, that she did so much to try and provide me with a gift. And yeah, I felt an immense amount of guilt. I felt also like I could never see the cup again, like it just it was gone, right? And so there's this yearning for that part of my journey and my connection to her, to have been there. So actually, you know, I'm in the process right now of actually—I'm in a ceramics class, I'm actually going to create my own cup that in essence emulates the one that she gave me. BLAIR HODGES: I like that. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, it's a way that I can visibly still stay connected to that cup. But it did make me feel a deep sense of guilt. And guilt is that general kind of, let's say, more common emotion that we tend to experience in my family. We're very guilt driven. We're very guilt motivated. We're a guilt people. And we understand that about each other, too. So sometimes, you know, we utilize guilt almost to kind of get each other to do certain things. [laughs] Some subconscious, some not subconscious. But guilt has been so prominent, and it left me with this deep sense of guilt that was really hard to shake off for a number of years.   DEFINING INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA (7:22)   BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so we've talked about this physical object that you inherited, this beautiful mug that's now gone, and also a sort of temperament or an inclination toward guilt that you inherited. We're talking about inheritance here. Your book talks a lot about trauma as an inheritance—intergenerational trauma. Let's hear a definition of that. When you're talking about intergenerational trauma, what do you mean? MARIEL BUQUÉ: What I mean by it is, intergenerational trauma is the only type of trauma that is actually handed down our family line. It actually is at the intersection of our biology and our psychology. If we come from individuals who have actually endured adversity—chronic adversity, specifically—that has led to trauma symptoms, and that they didn't get a chance to actually resolve those symptoms and lived with the experience of trauma for a long-standing period of time, that it would have actually made its way into altering their genetic encoding, or their genetic markers or genetic expressions, as they call them in a scientific way. And that, upon conceiving us, both parents would have transferred over that genetic makeup that would have also included some emotional vulnerabilities or predispositions to stress and trauma. And then in comes everything else that life throws at us once we're born, which is our psychology. And if we're born into that family that perhaps is still under some sort of distress or trauma, and we're not feeling like our home environment, the initial home environment we grow into, is safe, or feels nourishing, or helps us to develop enough of an emotional foundation of connection and a sense of trust—which are basic elements of our foundational makeup—then we're gonna start developing symptoms of unrest. And then everything else happens in life. We can go into the school system and get bullied, we can get into a really bad relationship and all of a sudden, there's toxicity and cycles of abuse that are part of our journey. We can actually suffer from having a marginalized identity. And so all of these things play into our psychology. And when they're matched with an already vulnerable emotional state that is there since birth, and even before of birth, then we have the recipe for what we call intergenerational trauma. BLAIR HODGES: And it might sound unbelievable to some people, to think that something that could happen to an ancestor of mine, a stressor or some traumatic event, could literally be passed down. So later on, I want to unpack that biological inheritance and how that works, what the science says about it, so people can really wrap their heads around it. But before we do, let's talk about trauma in general. Your book introduces us to the fact that there are big “T” traumas, the big ones, and the little “t” traumas. Give us some examples of these and how they're different from each other. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yes. We bucket trauma into those two categories, big T, little T, capital T, lowercase t, there's different ways of referencing to it. But the big T traumas tend to be the kinds of traumas that actually threaten our sense of safety. They make it so we believe we may not survive the moment. Those kinds of traumas can be like theft at gunpoint, maybe getting into a car accident. It could also be the types of traumas that really hit hard and are very profound, like childhood abuse and neglect. Things like that tend to be like the bigger T traumas. Now, the small t traumas tend to be experiences that unnerve us and unravel us, but don't necessarily threaten our sense of safety. A traumatic experience that would be categorized under small t could be perhaps losing a job and then entering into financial difficulties. It's not that your life is being threatened or that there is a critical moment in your infancy where there's a profound disruption. But there is enough of a disruption in your life so as to say you're living under some element of trauma. Now, the thing about big T and small t trauma is that there are times when people suffer a big T trauma, and they experience enough nourishment, enough support and love in their lives—whether it's from a caregiver or other family members, community members, people that just hug you and care for you through those moments, and those symptoms can actually dissolve. And we can have somebody that has an accumulated, layered number of different small t traumas happening throughout their life that go on and addressed, and the layering of those can actually accumulate into really intense trauma symptoms. So on both ends, it's really about not just what happened, but also, how were you taken care of through it? And then also, were there other things that were also tossed into the trauma bucket that could have made life a little bit more difficult to bear.   YOUR ALLOSTATIC LOAD (12:23)   BLAIR HODGES: The big term you use for this is “allostatic load,” it's sort of like all the stuff that adds up over time. I've also heard of “weathering,” a weathering thing. And I've heard this in racial studies where they talked about all the microaggressions that people of color might experience just add up over time to increase the likelihood of heart disease or chronic stress. So what you're talking about are traumas that affect our emotional state, but they also affect our body. Talk about how trauma has not just psychological and behavioral consequences, but also some physical consequences in the way our bodies try to deal with stress. MARIEL BUQUÉ: The allostatic load that you reference is actually the wear and tear meter of the body. And you know, neurologically, where we are actually formatted as humans to go through stress and then resolve that stress and then come out of it. Our nervous system is actually structured to be able to go into a state of alert if it senses there's some elements of danger in our environment. And once the danger has passed, then our nervous system says, okay, we can rest, digest, and calm, and we feel at ease, we go into balance, we call it homeostasis. However, if we're not able to acquire that sense of balance on an ongoing basis—meaning that, for example, as you mentioned, individuals that experience racial discrimination on an ongoing basis, there is a little chance to actually recover from the last emotional injury or the last racial injury. And so then they go into yet another battle, and yet another situation, and yet another, and their nervous system—which is connected to all of their organ systems, which is connected to their brain, you know, it's all a part of one uniform system starts wearing down. And what happens is that the organs that are connected also start wearing down. One example that I think is fairly common to offer is that of gastrointestinal discomfort. So our nervous system has endings that land right at our gastro tract. And so whenever we're in a state of alert and we sense that there's danger, our nervous system is actually partially shutting down non-essential functions, which includes the function of actually digesting food. So our actual gastro tract is constricted, in part. And so when we think about, for example, individuals that complain of symptoms that mirror irritable bowel syndrome, and we start looking into their history, and we started looking into the things they battle on a day-to-day basis, there are some correlates. We start seeing the fact that these individuals are suffering stressors and traumas on an ongoing basis. And sometimes, when we start addressing the trauma factors themselves, the so-called IBS symptoms tend to dissolve. Which means that one, we're actually diagnosing physical conditions that are tied to stress, right, we're not actually addressing the stress, which is the root. And in addition to that, it's all one body. So it's interconnected. And that happens with many other things like a lot of cardiac issues have been mapped back to stress and trauma. A lot of autoimmune conditions have been connected to trauma in very specific ways. And even some cancers have had trauma elements, they're stress-derived as well. And so when the body is worn down, the body breaks down its own capacity to actually fight off any physical threat, meaning any cancers or any other conditions like viruses, or anything that may inhabit the body and then leave room for chronic illness to take root. BLAIR HODGES: During COVID, the irony there is, the stress could make someone more susceptible, and we have to consider the ways that the pandemic itself was a trauma that could make people more likely to have their immune systems compromised because of the stress that the pandemic itself caused. When I think about it in terms of family systems—you talk about family abuses that happen, it could be emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. And those can actually affect the physical health of the people that are encountering them, and not just in getting hit and being hurt from that. But as you said, in the way your digestion works, in your heart health, and your nervous system in general is really getting rocked. People that grew up in these unsteady or difficult home situations are going to pay the price throughout their life. It's not necessarily the case, right, that someone can just get out of that situation and then go on with their life as an adult. What you found in your practice is a lot of people who are carrying ghosts of their family life with them, they're still haunted by those ghosts MARIEL BUQUÉ: Very, very long into their adult lives. And it's something that tends to hurt at a very profound level, but tends to impact so many aspects of a person's life. People's relationships get impacted by their childhood experiences that are adverse. Their work gets impacted. Many times, we tend to see that people struggle with attentional difficulties that are really not a biological difficulty, like ADHD proper, but that the person is in essence, dissociating with higher frequency and as a result, not able to attend even to their job duties in the ways that they would have they not been in a state of trauma. The way that people parent is very much impacted by the trauma factors in their lives. It is even said that—although we cannot say that parents who are individuals that have suffered childhood abuse in the past are going to, in essence, abuse their children. But the studies do show that there is a higher risk of those very same parents perpetuating the very same traumas they suffered. So as far as data is concerned, we do have data to support that. We have to really make people conscious and aware of how their past is impacting their present person, so they don't replicate those trauma cycles forward.   BACK IN MY DAY (18:39)   BLAIR HODGES: Alright, I want to talk about traumas and triggers. You talk about how different things can trigger a trauma. So you might have an interaction with a boss at work that triggers something in how you're related to a parent or a caregiver or a teacher from your youth, that triggers things. And your book describes the resulting trauma responses. Things like having a short fuse when you're stressed out, behaving in self-destructive ways, maybe a propensity to become addicted to substances, being chronically pessimistic, being jumpy, self-blame, self-loathing, a lack of being able to generate emotional intimacy. These trauma responses are going to be familiar to a lot of listeners. And what I've heard, especially recently, is people complaining and saying, “Oh, all this talk about triggers and trauma is too much. People are just too fragile these days. We just need a tougher mindset. When I was growing up, we didn't have traumas and triggers, we didn't have to worry about it,” and so on and so forth. “You're all snowflakes,” whatever. And I'd just like to hear your response to that kind of criticism of, “Oh, even talking about this is just too weak, it shows fragility.” MARIEL BUQUÉ: [laughs] Well, I have a lot of things I'd like to say that can help us to really understand that perspective, believe it or not. Because the thing about people—I'm gonna place the people that are saying things like that in older generations, right? Maybe like, we'll say boomers, right? BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. [laughs] Glad you said it. I didn't have to. For all my Boomer listeners out there. It's all Mariel. Not me!  MARIEL BUQUÉ: [laughs] You know, just placing an example, for sure. But there is this idea that, well, you know, “I went through the same thing, I turned out just fine, you should be fine.” And we have to also reroute to what the science is telling us. Science is telling us that, with each generation, we have an accumulation of an emotional burden that deposits itself into our minds and into our bodies. And that when it goes on unresolved, it just passes on, but it gets compounded. So when we're talking about people in other generations—and let's even say down to Gen Z, and even the generation that's coming after them, because I think a lot of the sensitivity talk is mostly geared towards them, we have to think about the fact that we—even the millennials and Gen X that have been parenting these children—a lot of us have been suffering, and have had a lot of traumas that we haven't resolved because they stemmed back generations. And also because we just didn't know, a lot of us didn't know and still don't know, that these traumas exist within us. And as a result, the biggest risk with unresolved trauma is the risk of transmission. So when we're looking at these kids who are highly, highly anxious, some of them very, very depressed, they have their own global mental health crisis that's burgeoning at the youth level, and their suicide rates are ridiculously high, it's safe to say that the sensitivity they're experiencing isn't just coming from the fact that they all suffered a global pandemic. I mean, being a child in a pandemic, I can't imagine. But in addition to that, the fact that they actually have an accumulation of genetic material, of biological data that's in their own bodies that also produces that sensitivity. I like to take it there, because we can rationalize back and forth with different generations about different perspectives. But when we start looking at the truth of how our bodies hold trauma, I think that gives us all an opportunity to hold greater compassion for one another, for the ways in which we're holding emotional pain. BLAIR HODGES: This is the real value of your book, is that it's not focused on just the individual. I think a lot of pop therapy today can be really focused on the individual. Self-improvement, self-authenticity, finding your best self, being your best self. And it can even seem narcissistic at certain points, depending on the pop therapy that we're talking about. But your book shows us that dealing with trauma and striving for self-improvement don't have to happen alone. And in fact, it's better to not think of them in isolation, because trauma is interpersonal and intergenerational. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yes.   THE BIOLOGICAL TRANSMISSION OF TRAUMA (22:57)   BLAIR HODGES: So as you said, it can be transmitted both biologically and socially. Let's now get more specific about that biological transmission. This is the part that I just didn't have a lot of knowledge on. And to learn about the actual science behind how trauma can get passed on really opened my eyes. Give us a sense of how that works. MARIEL BUQUÉ: I'm gonna take us back, actually, to the moment in which our grandmothers were actually pregnant, and they were five months pregnant with a baby in their uterine wall that was a fetus that was developing. In that moment, as it were five months pregnant, the fetus, regardless of the sex, had actually developed precursor sex cells inside of the reproductive organs that would have eventually developed into being you. So at a specific moment in our lives at the very onset of our lives, when we developed into just one tiny, microscopic cell, we were living inside of our grandmother's womb, because we were three generations existing in one body—our grandmother, the fetus that was our parent, and then us inside of their reproductive organs. And when we start looking at when we actually developed—because we believe that we developed in our parent's womb, and we forget that there is a lot more biological data and even social data that we've been capturing from the environments around us well, before we were born, two generations prior, even, when our grandmothers were experiencing any kind of stressors, those stresses were actually filtering actual hormones like cortisol and other stress hormones into their bloodstream. And that was reaching the fetus inside of them, which was our parents, and eventually it would have landed onto us. And so everybody in that one body, that intergenerational body, was experiencing that stressor, whatever it was, they were experiencing it. So when we start thinking about biologically, what is happening, what is transmitted, how are these things interconnected, it starts making a lot of sense. And there's a lot more in the biology. I mean, I didn't get that technical in the book, because I thought it might overwhelm the reader. But there's also a lot of biological understanding from different points of expertise, different fields of study, that we understand that there's also some genetic material that's left behind in the grandmother when she gives birth. And then in the mother when she gives birth. So there's still genetic material that's tying each of these generations. So much is also implicated there in reference to what is happening intergenerationally, where there's this biological bond. Now fast forward, to now. Let's say you're already born. And now you have a parent who maybe their way of coping through stress is to yell at you. They yell all kinds of things, right, in order to just release that stress tension. What happens to that—let's say you're three years old—to that three-year-old little nervous system that has to digest this yelling big human. That little nervous system starts internalizing that the world is not safe, and it starts defaulting into a threat response, into an overactive nervous system response. Now, let's not forget, of course, that we're already talking about biological vulnerabilities and predispositions that are already manufactured inside of you. All they need is a trigger point, they need something to turn on that trauma response. And if you're living in a home where, we'll go back to abuse, perhaps you're being physically abused and psychologically abused, you're not feeling a sense of safety in the very place where safety is supposed to be formed and nourished. And so all of that is being factored into your nervous system as well. So when we're talking about the biological elements, we're talking about some of those epigenetic markers that we talked about at the beginning. We're talking about also the ways in which we exist in these three bodies in that genetic material, but also biological material is being transferred into these three bodies. And then beyond that, we're also talking about our nervous system and the ways in which it's being formed and structured around a sense of lack of safety. BLAIR HODGES: That's a helpful introduction. And as you said, you don't get too far into the weeds in the book, which I think is helpful. This is a book for a general audience. But you do let people know that there are research studies going on in cellular biology, psychiatry, psychology, neurology, neuropsychology, embryology, interpersonal neurobiology, psychoneuroimmunology—some of these I've never heard of before—developmental sciences, epigenetics. There are a whole bunch of different fields focusing in on this biological transmission. I think people probably picked up on the fact that it's not isolated—to talk about nature versus nurture is to perhaps introduce kind of a false dichotomy. Like genes exist, DNA exists, inheritance exists, but they're also triggered by social things. And so the nurture and the nature—it's really tough to separate those things. You also talk about how families develop their own intergenerational nervous system. When I thought about nervous systems, I just thought about my own nervous system, it's a part of my body. And you're talking about a nervous system that shared among people. And as soon as you described it, I could recognize this, this is where a family has to become so attuned to each other, for good or ill. So maybe you have a parent who's out of control, or really has anger management issues. The whole family has to have their nervous system attuned together to pick up on signals and to be prepared for things like that. Maybe spend a second talking about how that intergenerational nervous system gets built, and if you have an interesting example from a client or something like that, to give people a sense of what that looks like. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Absolutely. I think an example is a great place to land because that is a way that we can actually visualize something that can be so complex. For example, let's say that we have a child who is ten years old, they just got home from school, and their mother had a really, really hard day at work. So this child now asks where their food is, right, and maybe they use a certain tone and the mother just completely lashes out. Let's say that the mother's default nervous system response is to yell. She is constantly in fight mode. That's what we call it right? That's her default. And so she lashed out and displaced onto her child who was asking for food. What he did was actually run to his room crying, because his default nervous system response is to flee. Now, we have a grandfather who also lives in the home. And he comes out of his room, and he says, “Please stop yelling at this kid, please just stop. Is there anything that I can do, just stop!” That's a fawn response. It's a way in which a person would do anything to make the pain go away. And so right here, we have this contagion effect of everyone being in a state of distress because of what happened to one individual and the ways in which they responded and displaced. However, they are all having different kinds of ways of expressing that distress and that trauma response. They have different nervous system threat alarm states happening all at once, but they're feeding off of each other. And that's what I mean by the “intergenerational nervous system.” That being the psychological elements. The biological is a lot of what we've already covered. There are ways in which we're interconnected and biologically hardwired with the people that we come from. However, once we are in separate bodies, there's ways that we continue to feed off of each other's nervous system responses. And we create this contagion effect within our homes of emotions that continue to run rampant. And that tends to happen a lot with families that have emotions that have not been taken care of, or that have a lot of chaos within the family themselves.   THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA TREE (31:38)   BLAIR HODGES: That's Dr. Mariel Buqué. She's an Afro-Dominican psychologist who received her doctorate in counseling psychology from Columbia University, where she also trained as a fellow in holistic mental health. She's a world-renowned intergenerational trauma expert. We're talking about her new book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Mariel, as we've mentioned, and this can get pretty complicated, but you break it down simply with the idea of a tree. And this should be a pretty easy thing for people to latch on to, we already think of our family tree. But maybe break down, how you identify the pieces of the intergenerational trauma tree—the leaves, the branches, the trunk, the roots, and the soil. MARIEL BUQUÉ: You know, what I found within my work and a lot of the therapies I've been trained in is that we have these beautiful, beautiful tools that are really helpful, including trauma trees. But they weren't necessarily filling in the full picture of what I was seeing in the therapy room when it came to intergenerational trauma, which is why I decided to move forward with developing a new version of a tree, the intergenerational trauma tree, that actually had all of these different elements you just noted within them. And they're very specific for a reason, because they're part of what we then utilize in order to help the person create a trajectory of healing and then integrate that into their healing process. The leaves of the tree signify one family member, each leaf. And each of the leaves actually reflect not only what may have happened to that individual that could have been appraised as traumatic, but also any actual trauma symptoms, or trauma responses that burgeoned in that person as a result. And this also includes the possibility that some trauma symptoms may have been reflective of physical conditions or physical discomforts, like chronic migraines, for example. And so we start making sure that we map out every individual that a person desires to be a part of their story, or for whom we have some sort of a record of, you know, of their lived experience. And we start mapping out the leaves of the tree. And this also includes any of our descendants, whether they are our children, grandchildren, anybody who is related to us. And for some people, it is chosen family, and people who we've just had some level of proximity to them. And even some sort of connection or child rearing. The trunk of the tree signifies us. So it signifies the ways in which we've internalized the hurt. What has happened to us. Ways in which we have been unwell in our mind, meaning that perhaps our thoughts have been frozen in this idea that nobody can be trusted, right, and that's just the way our minds have been able to organize around trauma. And in our bodies—like perhaps we are that person that suffers that gastrointestinal discomfort that mirrors IBS. And in our spirit, and spirit usually is how connected we are to others, to ourselves, into the greater whole. And so if we suffer a series of bad relationships, or if we have a really tough relationship with ourselves, that's something to consider also, and something we have to bring into the trunk of the tree to hold an understanding around it. The interesting part about the trunk of the tree is that I also asked one question, which is, “How have any of the trauma responses reflected in this trauma tree impacted you?” So we can look at our parents and think, okay, well, you know, I had a parent that perhaps drank alcohol every night to numb their emotions, and that was their trauma response. And that impacted me and my sense of well-being, my self-esteem, right, and so we have to bring in that question to have an understanding. How is it that the people who were not able to break the cycle left room or opportunity for you to then experience trauma. The root system of the tree is one in which, for me I believe what needed to be reflected there were all of the internalized beliefs that we've held about ourselves, that stem from what happened to us, that stem from whoever didn't actually disrupt the cycle. A lot of people that suffer trauma say the words, “I am broken.” So I thought that that would be an important piece of what needed to be added to the system so people can really see it and visualize it and see the intergenerational trauma tree that's reflected in the book, and really understand, okay, you know what? That that's actually an internalized belief, it's not an actual truth. And so there are ways in which we start internalizing these ideas about ourselves in the world that then become almost kind of immobile, they become frozen in us. Beyond that, of course, is the soil system, which I think is always not attended to within any other trauma tree systems, but we have to think about the soil because it's such an integral part of the tree's growth process. And in the soil system, we have everything that feeds specific beliefs into our homes, into our families, into our communities. And that's anything that even stems from, like, the idea that you can pick yourself up by your own bootstraps, right? It's a systemic idea that also feeds itself into our homes. Or the idea that we don't air our dirty laundry, or we don't tell family secrets. And that can actually lead individuals who could use help inside of a family unit, lead them to experience shame, and not seek out help, and then just perpetuate harm onto the people around them, which is usually their family members. So the tree needed to be that comprehensive so that we can have a very global and well-rounded way of being able to look at what happened here through the generations. And then how can we take that information to then transition into how you can heal more profoundly, but in a more well-informed way.   YOUR SOIL SYSTEM (37:35)   BLAIR HODGES: For me, your intergenerational trauma tree system helps me kind of escape the temptation to blame and instead, to seek for more understanding. So for example, I might have a relationship with a parent and feel like, “Oh, this parent failed me in this or that way. And I can just put the blame on them, they let me down as a parent,” so I'm not attending to the soil. And I think, in this case, the soil a lot of times would be like cultural gender expectations for what a proper mother would be, or a proper father would be, and how those things hurt that parent, and how that soil affected that parent in the way they parented me. But it's harder, and I think less common, to zoom out like that and think about the cultural impacts that are happening, the soil that's feeding that person. I think it's a lot easier to just say, “That person hurt me. That's the cause,” and sort of hold on to the resentment there, the pain there, without attending to the bigger things. The other thing is, it's hard to imagine myself as really being able to affect the soil in any big way. So I feel like, for me maybe it's been easier to just blame individuals because I feel helpless when it comes to the context, when it comes to the soil, like I can't really do much about that. I'm interested in your thoughts about bringing attention to that soil just a little bit more, because I think this sets your approach apart from a lot of the therapeutic “pop-therapy” stuff I see like on TikTok or Instagram, it really doesn't often get into the soil, it's just more about like, “How to be your best self” or whatever. MARIEL BUQUÉ: You know, if we don't get into the soil, we are just existing in a world that is going to continue to perpetuate trauma and feed it into our homes. And so that's why I found it to be an essential part of what we needed to address. What we needed to address as individuals who have suffered these traumas, but also as a global community, right, because we can't just like place it all on the people who have suffered. But one thing I'd like to say about that, even before I get to the logistics about it, is that I have actually seen individuals who have been socialized for decades—one of those individuals actually is my father, who's 65, and who, a number of months ago had actually talked to me about the socialized gender norms that he was, in essence, taught to believe and taught to behave in reference to. And he almost felt like this “a-ha” moment just kind of came to him about the ways things could have been different, and how he can now enact a different set of behaviors as a result. And I even had a client, my oldest client was 84 years old. And I say these things, because I think that even when we are decades, and almost a lifetime, in these kinds of patterns that have been socialized and have been almost kind of invisiblized in our world, it is possible for us to actually still find a way to look at them. Or if someone else helps us look at them, because they have a different lens, and that we can still create even micro-changes around these things. So in terms of going out into the world and actually doing the work to try and eradicate the parts of the systems we are a part of that actually perpetuate trauma is an essential part of what we need to do. One example of this is when it comes to particularly childhood trauma, and the adverse childhood experiences that people tend to experience, we understand that we can put in place specific educational programs for parents, specific educational programming for children in their health classes, and in other places where children can access information, that can actually help them to understand not only how to cope differently, but also what actually constitutes as maybe even trauma if it's age appropriate. And I think these are places where—I know there are a number of different organizations that have a connection to the original “ACEs” study who are trying to do some of this work, and trying to educate the parent-child dyad, around how to have a connection that isn't rooted in trauma, but rooted in a healthier bond. And, you know, we have to do that work too in order to cut trauma at the root, right? We also have to offer the education, we also have to put in place policies, and bills, and institutional practices, and actually protect people from being further victimized, so that we don't have this more systemic victimization but that all we're doing is helping people solve the emotional hurt in their heart without solving the root cause, which is the institutional dimension of it. BLAIR HODGES: Right, it's sort of like your basement floods and you're putting fans down there to help all the water evaporate and clean it out, but then you're not addressing the fact that your foundation's cracked, and water is just going to come right back in. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yes.   ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES – 42:50   BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned the “ACEs” study. This is the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. And maybe we'll just spend another minute here on adverse childhood experiences and the idea of the inner child, that we all carry this inner child, we have an inner child, and you've developed a tool that people can assess what kinds of trauma they experienced as children, because sometimes we don't even remember the kind of things we experienced, but you want people to kind of tap into that. So we've talked about addressing the soil and being socially involved, and looking at that. Now we're looking at more like what we're doing personally and looking inward to ourselves. Adverse childhood experiences are something you recommend we assess and sort of try to think through what those adverse childhood experiences might have been for us. You've already mentioned one for my kids: COVID and the pandemic obviously was one of those. [And continues to be.] MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yes. Adverse childhood experiences are, in essence, what the words say. It's having experiences in our childhood that create enough of an adverse scenario or environment that it leaves us with emotional remnants that typically carry on into our adult lives. And the layer I wanted to add for the Intergenerational Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire that I added in the book are the layers of, not only what happened before us—because like I said before, we understand that there is a higher risk in families that have trauma for trauma to be passed on and to be perpetuated by parents and other people. But that we also needed to know the added element of what happened around you, like a pandemic, like perhaps a hurricane that devastated your community, right? Like all of these things that are very much a part of our lived experience, especially right now in history. Especially for the children right now. I believe it was the World Health Organization that did a questionnaire with some children, and I believe it was fairly open-ended, just to gauge what is making children feel so hopeless these days, because hopelessness is a large part of what leads a person to actually not want to be alive anymore. And we're seeing a lot of that in children these days. And so many of the children actually answered with the fact that they felt like, in essence, their world was imploding. Because we have so many climate crises happening on a day-to-day basis. And it feels like the world they're being raised into is a world that isn't even probably going to be here. That's a real reality for a lot of them that they're confronted with. And we're not really kind of gauging that as the adults in the room, right? We're not realizing like, they're in a world where they don't believe they may make it to 30 or 40 years old and be healthy in this earth, right? And so all of that is part of what we need to assess, to really get a good comprehensive analysis of what really is happening here that is producing adversity. So in comes this questionnaire that helps us answer some questions, but it is also a conversation starter. Because how would I know that, you know—of course, a pandemic, I think it is a little bit more of a given. But quite frankly, I wouldn't have thought about the environmental issues and that children would have already been capturing the fact that those environmental issues could blossom and lead to a destruction of earth and they wouldn't have a healthy planet to exist in. That's a real thing that perhaps some of us are have not been attuned to. So the questionnaire helps us answer a lot of questions. And it also helps us start conversations that need to be had.   PRACTICES FOR YOUR WINDOW OF STRESS TOLERANCE – 46:41   BLAIR HODGES: People can learn more about the questionnaire about adverse childhood experiences in the book, again, it's called Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. We're talking with Dr. Mariel Buqué. This book gives us a lot of information about how traumatic experiences affect us biologically, how our families and family life can impact us throughout our lives. But it doesn't just give us that knowledge. You also wanted to equip people with things they can actually do in their lives to help them heal. And you do have a proviso at the opening of the book that says there's really no replacement for contacting a professional if you can, because that's sometimes necessary when you're working through intergenerational trauma. This book can be helpful to do that, but you also say, “Hey, if things get heavy, reach out to somebody.” I really liked that. But the book has a ton of practical advice, exercises, ideas and things we can do to “broaden our window of stress tolerance.” That's a phrase that you use there. So maybe give us an example of a practice you've personally benefited from in learning to broaden that window of tolerance, being able to handle stress better, being able to heal from some of those past traumas. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, you know, a lot of the practices I include in my work in the book, and even in my personal life, have a layered element. And what I mean by that is I usually try to incorporate practices that really help the nervous system feel at ease and relaxed, but not just for the sake of feeling more relaxed in the moment. But for the sake of actually restructuring our neural networks, or forming new neural networks, that actually are formatting to a more relaxed body. So it's really essential for us to also think about what we do in response to trauma that can actually help us exist in a more resilient and resourced body moving forward. I usually go to a lot of practices that feel accessible enough to most individuals. I try and gauge people's ability statuses, and most of these tend to be practices most people can do. And these are, of course, deep breathing—I think it's been popularized enough, that we understand that taking breaths is helpful. But I like to pair deep breathing also with other exercises like progressive muscle relaxation, for example, which, for anyone that's not familiar, is a practice in which you tense specific muscle groups, usually with an inhale of a breath—which is how I organize it in my practice—and then you release the breath and release the muscle group. And then you move into the next muscle group. And you complete it usually wherever—typically like your toes, so you go from head to toe. The reason why this is a practice I have incorporated into my practice is because we have so much trauma that's stored as tension inside of the body. And on any given day, we're walking around actually with all of this tension pent up and not being released. And when I usually have conversations with folks about this, they start noticing their bodies. And they're like, “You know what? Actually, yeah!” And everyone's always like, “Oh, my goodness, I just noticed this pain that I didn't even realize was there, this tension in my neck, and there's a bit of a sharp pain there.” And well, that's curious, right, because that was there. But, you know, it took me to gain body awareness and body mindfulness in order to really understand I'm actually carrying some tension there. When we tense the muscles voluntarily, we actually almost kind of release that tension that's pent up there, and the muscles that have been constricted because of whatever threat we perceived, like, three hours ago, that can be released in relaxed. BLAIR HODGES: It could be like clenching your jaw, or just feeling that's where I'll usually feel it, like, are my teeth together? MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, making fists, you can make a balled-up fist, you can squeeze yourself, like you're hugging yourself really hard, right? BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I liked that one. I liked the song one too, where you find a quiet place that's comfortable for you and you can sing, and not just the sound, but literal vibrations of the singing can help your nervous system as well. It's a physiological response. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, there's actually, so we have this part of our nervous system that's called the ventral vagal nerve, which is the part of our nervous system that's most implicated in helping us to relax and release especially after being excited by a threat— BLAIR HODGES: And by the way, this is very evolutionary, like this is rooted back when we were running away from like some predators trying to get us or something, and our body—This helped us survive, and now it's helping us get super stressed. [laughs] MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, because it's overestimating threat. It's actually seeing threat everywhere, because threat is no longer like that big tiger that was chasing us; threat is now we turn on the computer, you know, we read that first email, and it has a certain tone, and that's a threat, right? So it's like [laughs] it's a very different life we're leading and as a result, threats are kind of all around us. And then we also have ways to really kind of over-appraise a perceived threat. BLAIR HODGES: Okay, sorry about that sidetrack. But it's just fascinating. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, no, it's super important. And it actually drives me right back to my point where the ventral vagal nerve is actually a nerve we can voluntarily stimulate in order to increase the relaxation response inside of our bodies. And one of the ways in which we can do that in a very effective way is actually by humming. And if we take whatever favorite song we have, and we instead of singing it, we actually hum it, we even increase even more of that relaxation response, because we're creating even more vibrations inside of our bodies, but more specifically, within our ventral vagal nerve, which needs that stimulation, that vibration, in order to get triggered and work in our favor. BLAIR HODGES: And you point out that some of these practices are ancient. Some of the things you're recommending are things that cultures and peoples have been doing for generations, we now have a scientific add-on, sort of understanding a little bit more, perhaps, of why biologically, these things are impacting us. But I also wanted to ask you about that relationship between ancient traditions, long-standing practices and science today. The reason I asked that is because I want to know how people can discern between quackery versus real practices, right? So, “Do your own research” is a phrase that came up around the pandemic, which really meant like, “Don't get vaccinated” or “Don't believe in science at all.” [laughs] So I want to know how you have approached being educated in a university setting, but also honoring and incorporating ancestral or ancient or indigenous and otherwise practices, and negotiating that difference between sort of science quote, unquote, “Western science,” and tradition, and kind of how you navigate that relationship in ways that won't make people say, “Well, I'm never getting vaccinated, because if I hum to myself, I will, you know, I'm gonna get healed” or whatever. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, there's always nuance in everything, right? I always like to add that. But the way that I see Western modern science is—in part, I see it as a science that is so widely believed, versus, let's say, ancient healing practices. We can even take yoga as an example, right? An ancient healing practice that we are now integrating into our day-to-day lives by the millions, and are realizing even in actual scientific studies that are focused on the brain, we're realizing that yoga is actually helping us to reorganize our brains and grow our brains in regions that are actually health-promoting, and grow memory centers, and do all these things, right? So in part I see the utility of Western science because people believe in it so much. So if we can utilize it to prove that the practices that have been here for thousands of years are actually effective, and we need to look in the brain, and we need to look at the body and the ways the body is organizing itself differently as a result of this practice, then let's utilize it. Let's let that help us buy into the idea of more holistic wellness, if that's what we need to do. So I see its utility. And then I also wish that we would be more willing to actually see how effective some of these practices can be without the use of medical science or scientific inquiry. Now, one thing I always like to go back to is—I'm sure that, especially I believe that whenever I do it, or I instruct people to do it, it feels like a little bit out there, until I can actually contextualize it, which is the practice of rocking. Like swaying side to side and rocking, which actually stimulates that ventral vagal nerve and helps us to feel relaxed. When I incorporate that or tell people to do that in reference to their mental health, they're like, “What are we doing here?” But when we go back to, you know, when we were a baby or a toddler, and people were rocking us to sleep, we were going to sleep. Why? Because our nervous system was actually feeling more calm, at ease, relaxed, and we were able to segue into such a vulnerable state like sleep. And that is the thing that I'm trying to bring us back to. I'm also trying to bring us back to the data that has been there since we were kids, that we actually had, but we lost it along the way, we forgot that we can actually rock ourselves and soothe ourselves. And we even see this in individuals that are on the Autism spectrum. So there are individuals who fall under the category of neurodivergence who actually utilize rocking, intuitively, to soothe themselves. And I think when we can see that people actually do this naturally, because they need that soothing element, or people do this instinctually, or intuitively, to soothe their children, we should be thinking about the fact that this actually has utility. And we should be thinking about truly incorporating it into our day to day lives. And rocking, if we're in our office chair. And we feel like that last meeting was stressful, why not take like two minutes to just kind of rock and sway and like, you know, you can pretend you're listening to some music if you don't want to look weird to your colleagues, but it's really going to help you, so why not do it? BLAIR HODGES: It just reminds me of so many things in your book, these ideas you offer. And I think my biggest obstacle to doing these types of things and incorporating them in my own life has just been impatience. I'm thinking about the end of the day when I'm trying to get my kids to bed and just like, “Go to sleep, why don't you go to sleep? I've read to you. I'm singing to you. I'm rubbing your back. I'm doing just about everything a parent could do. And I wish you were asleep and you're not. And now I'm getting frustrated. And you're asking about you want to write this letter to your friend at school the next day. And I just don't take that time to just stop and breathe. And yet, you also point out that when we're elevated, it can take five or more minutes to come back from that. And I had this false idea that, “Oh, I just need to take like three deep breaths, and I'm right back in it.” But I think what I've realized in reading this book, is that I was actually doing this really short-term coping that was actually just bottling up what I was coping with and pushing it down and keeping it there. Then it would just eventually build up and up and up. So I was really personally impacted when you're talking about the patience that's needed sometimes, like five minutes at least, to cycle through a stress response when I thought I could do it in a couple of breaths. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Most of us think that, because we've been socialized around deep breathing in that way. I mean, I'm really grateful that deep breaths are even entering the conversation in modern-day society— BLAIR HODGES: Sure, yeah.  MARIEL BUQUÉ: But we're not necessarily doing it to the extent that most of us need. And we have to also remember all of us suffered a pandemic, whether it impacted us greatly or not. We all suffered through a global crisis. So we all have some element of emotional remnants that we're still sorting through. And so when we're talking about all of that, and we're also talking about living in bodies that are decades long—sometimes generations of remnants that are still captured there, we can't say that taking three deep breaths is actually going to help us to release the stress. Like we, you know, [laughs] we have to do a little bit more work than that. But usually—especially with parents or people that are busy because their careers just tie them up, I usually get a little bit of resistance around the timing element, Like, who has five minutes? And I always like to reference the fact that, okay, you have one thousand four hundred and forty minutes in a day. If you take five of those minutes to actually regenerate your nervous system in the direction of health, and you do that for a period of a year, I think you're going to be in a slightly different situation emotionally than where you are now. Because what we know about body memory from even a neurological perspective, is that body memory takes an approximate three to four hundred repetitions of these nervous system regulatory practices to actually start defaulting to them. So we actually have so much power within us, within our inherent nature—in our breath, which is literally something that we all carry, that we can actually integrate into our day, and a year from now, bedtime might not feel as strenuous as it feels right now. [laughter]   FALSE FAMILY AND TRUE FAMILY – 1:00:46   BLAIR HODGES: That's right. All right. That's Dr. Mariel Buqué, and we're talking about the book Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. And speaking of intergenerational trauma, again, the book requires us to think a lot about our history. So for some folks, this book will require a lot of effort, especially if they have a lot of trauma and pain in their family history, because you're asking them to think about those family experiences. And in the process, you introduce this idea of the “false family” and the “true family” that we have in our minds. This was a lightbulb moment for me. The false family could be the story we tell ourselves about who our family is. The false family can also be future oriented—it could be a hope that there's some way to fix whatever's wrong with our family. And that we can return to some nostalgic paradise of a past that maybe never even really existed. And then we're stuck with family dysfunction that's not going to solve itself. And that's hard. And so a false family can be not only the story that's not true that we tell ourselves about our family, but it can also be future oriented as well. Talk about dealing with our ideas of our false family, and then what you talk about as our true family. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Our false family is those ideas we've held on to that truly don't hold any veracity for the most part, because they're ideas we've needed to hold on to in order to preserve our idea and our image of our own families. BLAIR HODGES: Like quick give us like just a couple examples of what that would be. A person might think what about their family? MARIEL BUQUÉ: A person might think that their family is loving, and still is not able to—let's say, like, an aunt can be loving, but does not have the capacity to hurt you. Actually, no. That very human aunt that you have has the capacity to injure you. They can say something about your body that could leave emotional marks, you know, for ages, right? Like, there's something that person can do, that actually puts them, almost kind of takes them off the pedestal, and makes it so that this person is now existing both as the aunt that is deeply loving to you, and the one that can be hurtful and damaging to your self-esteem. And so it's like, you know, stuff like that—when I say that, I think any of us, probably our minds go into a multitude of ways in which different family members can and have been hurtful. And it is because we all have families like this. Our true families— BLAIR HODGES: Because we're all human. MARIEL BUQUÉ: Yeah, we're all human. We're all flawed. We all err. We all say things that maybe come from a specific place, even if it's from a loving place, can be hurtful. We all cause emotional injury to others, because that's the human way. Now, when we're able to actually acknowledge that, what happens within us is that it actually creates a moment of grief that a lot of us are not prepared for. Because we've been denying that this family member or this family unit can actually have these deep hurtful characteristics within them. And as a result, it makes it so that we just delay the grief. But eventually we have to get to it. When we start realizing that the toxic relationships we've been getting into are mirroring the relationships we saw growing up, or that there are certain words we tend to say to our children—words that have been socialized and ingrained in our brain from how we were raised, but we never realized, “Oh my goodness, that's really hurtful and kind of cruel,” right? When all of these things start coming to the fore and we have these “a-ha” moments, we have to face the inevitable grief. And it's either we are in grief but we're denying and pushing it down, or we are open to the grief and are facing it head on and are saying, “You know what? My family is loving and hurtful. My family is nurturing and invalidating,” right? Like they have a mixture of characteristics. “And I myself, have been a person that has perpetuated things on both ends, and have also been a part of how this family has operated perhaps in dysfunction for a multitude of years.” So when we can actually step into an understanding of the true family we have in front of us, what I believe has been the biggest consequence of being able to enter that stage of grief and then just really feel the grief and come out on the other side, is that when we start having a lot of compassion for ourselves, for what we've had to go through, but also for the people that came before us, and the ways in which they've also been in their own suffering. It creates a lot of compassion. It doesn't happen for everyone. But it does create a lot of compassion for many people. BLAIR HODGES: And you talk about how the outcomes could be different. It might be something where you can reconcile with the relationship in an incredible story. It might be that someone's dead, they're gone, you can't reconcile with them presently. So you offer practices people can do—write letters to the to the deceased, or meditate on them, or whatever. Or it could be someone who's painful enough to where it wouldn't be safe to reconcile with the person. But you can still try to seek understanding and empathy toward that person, and try to heal in relation to them without having to necessarily come back together. So you're not prescribing the exact outcome in this book. It seemed to me that you were more interested

Today, Dr. Mariel Buqué, an Afro-Dominican psychologist and intergenerational trauma expert, takes us on a profound journey towards healing. Dr. Buqué's holistic clinical approach, which blends ancient healing practices with modern therapy, empowers listeners to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Through her book "Break the Cycle," she shares valuable insights, and in this episode, you will learn how to heal trauma without medication, recognize trauma within your body, and calm your nervous system with practical techniques. Dr. Buqué's wisdom also delves into the impact of unaddressed trauma on our relationships and how to navigate healing when one partner is ready, but the other isn't. You'll discover that every day presents an opportunity to break the cycle and choose a path of healing and growth!Buy her book Break The Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational TraumaIn this episode you will learnHow to heal trauma without medication and practical techniques for inner healing.How to recognize and scan trauma within your body.The importance of confronting trauma instead of numbing it.Ways to reflect on your approach to parenting and break intergenerational cycles.The profound impact of unaddressed trauma on relationships and strategies for healing together.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1555For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you'll love:Rob Dial – https://link.chtbl.com/1516-podDr Joe Dispenza – https://link.chtbl.com/1494-podInky Johnson – https://link.chtbl.com/1483-pod

Join adrienne as she dives deep with Suhaly Bautista-Carolina. They discuss rooted energy, looking back, bruja-ness, plant magic, the Tao Te Ching, the snake skin of the way, childhood memories as stepping stones to where we are, growing up between two city parks, Mamá Tingó, being another beginning, burrowing under ground and using your unique skills and finally, figuring it out before it's too late. Suhaly (she/they/we/us) is an Afro Dominican herbalist, artist, cultural worker, and community organizer whose work lives intentionally at the intersection of plant power and people power. Before joining the American LGBTQ+ Museum as Director of Public Programs and Partnerships in 2023, Bautista-Carolina served as Senior Managing Educator of Audience Development and Engagement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she led MetFest! and the Civic Practice Partnership Artist in Residence program. Bautista-Carolina is a 2021 Women in Power Fellow, an executive board member of ArtTable and Weeksville Heritage Center, and has worked in various capacities with organizations including the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), Brooklyn Museum, the Laundromat Project, and Creative Time. Through her practice, Moon Mother Apothecary, Bautista-Carolina centers care, collective wisdom, and ancestral legacy, while creating spaces of agency to facilitate healing. She is based in her native home of New York City, (Lenapehoking) where she lives with her wife and their baby girl, Luna.  --- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT OUR SHOW! - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/Endoftheworldshow --- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TRANSCRIPT⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Music by Tunde Olaniran, Mother Cyborg and The Bengsons --- HTS ESSENTIALS ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT Our Show on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/Endoftheworldshow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠PEEP us on IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/endoftheworldpc/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/how-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world/message

In this podcast I talk to author, intergenerational trauma expert, and psychologist Dr. Mariel Buqué about the impacts of intergenerational trauma, her amazing new book Break the Cycle, how to find healing and peace in every area of your life, and so much more! Dr. Mariel is an Afro-Dominican psychologist. She received her doctorate in counseling psychology from Columbia University, where she also trained as a fellow in holistic mental health. She is a world-renowned intergenerational trauma expert and the author of the book Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Her clinical framework is holistic and infuses ancient and indigenous healing practices into a modern, comprehensive therapeutic approach. She has utilized her training in holistic care to integrate holistic practices, like sound bath meditation and breathwork, into therapy, which has helped to deepen trauma healing for an entire generation of clients. Get her book here: https://www.drmarielbuque.com/breakthecycle

Welcome to a brand new episode of the ¿Quién Tú Eres? podcast, where we explore the conflict we often face between "professionalism" & being our authentic selves. This week's guest is Angel Rosario. Angel Rosario Jr. is a native New Yorker from Harlem/Washington Heights who explores his intersectional identities as a gay, Afro-Dominican, cis-gender doctor who is completing his training as a General Surgeon. Coming from a low-income background, Angel explores race, health, power, privilege, and the socioeconomic disparities that result through this lens, articulating them through his memoir writing and poetry, health disparities research, and mentorship. Also known as ‘el dotoi con los rolos', he further strives to challenge narratives of professionalism, notions of ‘success', and criticisms of healing by donning his hair with rolos, a symbol of his community and a homage to the Dominican, Puerto Rican, and non-Latina Black women who raised him. He believes that a diverse, unapologetically authentic, and culturally humble healthcare workforce, working alongside community members, is crucial to ending race-based medicine. He is a first-gen college graduate of the University at Buffalo, received his Master's in Public Health degree from Harvard University as a Zuckerman Fellow, and obtained his Medical Degree from the University of California San Francisco, where he focused on caring for Urban Underserved communities, receiving the 2020 Gold-Headed Cane award honoring the graduate student who exemplifies the qualities of a ‘true physician'. In this week's episode, Angel tells us his experience growing up in the Bronx being tested into a gifted private school in the Upper West Side, and navigating the medical industry as a queer black man. Angel is a kind and generous man whose work focuses on reducing racial bias in the medical industry. He hopes to dismantle systems of oppression in his field so that future patients can have a more compassionate medical experience.  Follow Angel on:  Instagram: @angelcurandero  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelrosariojrmd2be/  Follow Pabel on: Website: https://plurawl.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plurawl/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@plurawl  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pabelmartinez/  To book a speaking engagement email hola@plurawl.com Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of Bad Business Saso joins Beraq, Danny, and Producer Pete to talk about his upcoming project, his music, GTA 6, countries starting with the letter "N, O, P, Q, and R" and a whole bunch of other stuff Stream Saso: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7z3W8OunO3RH0quodR8Zsu Saso is an Afro-Dominican Latin Urban artist from both The Bronx, NY & Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His sounds range from many Latin fusion sounds surrounding the Caribbean as well as Hip-Hop/Rap. Saso has collaborated with dozens of venues, festivals, charity events with a strong and growing fanbase; taking the unique sounds that captured the core and essence of the African diaspora culture to spark a more inclusive and accepting cultural references that would touch people emotionally. Lay Bankz - "Ick (4 Minutes Of Fire Freestyle)" - https://open.spotify.com/album/2gchjSP5mauC4WTKDdMXYZ?si=leslqyPaTBOO8qmIbm6waw See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's episode, we are thrilled to have St. Clair Detrick-Jules, award-winning Afro-Caribbean filmmaker and photographer, back with us. Join us as we dive into her impactful book, "My Beautiful Black Hair 101 Natural Hair stories from the Sisterhood." St. Clair shares the inspiration behind her book, which emerged from her desire to uplift her sister Chloe, who faced bullying due to her Afro hair. However, as her project progressed, St. Clair recognized that the importance of representation and self-acceptance in natural hair extended far beyond her sister's experience. She passionately highlights the stories of Black and Afro-Dominican women who have overcome adversity, societal pressures, and discrimination, showcasing the beauty and strength of embracing their natural hair. We explore the significance of including diverse perspectives in this conversation. St. Clair emphasizes that the power of empathy and understanding lies in engaging with stories that might not directly affect us. Hair, she believes, is a universal theme that connects us all, transcending race, gender, and nationality. By encouraging dialogue and fostering a sense of self-love and confidence, we can create a more inclusive and accepting world for everyone. Welcome to Our Classroom!

The formerly undocumented Afro-Dominican poet, spoken word artist and cultural expression activist shares her decision to forgo law school in favor of a different form of advocacy, the importance of uplifting Black immigrant narratives, and the necessity of developing an identity independent of one's family.LTL is coming to a city near you! Subscribe to our email list and let us know where we should record next.

The musical genres most people associate with the Dominican Republic are merengue and bachata. Yet, there's another set of rhythms that are essential to the spirit of the country, and that's Afro-Dominican roots music. That's where the band Yasser Tejeda & Palotré come in. They blend some of the country's black roots rhythms like palo, salve and sarandunga, with jazz and rock to bring a new spin to local sounds—and to reimagine what it means to be Dominican. In this segment of "How I Made It," the band's frontman Yasser Tejeda walks us through the inspiration behind their latest album "Kijombo," and the making of the single "Amor Arrayano," which is all about love across the Dominican-Haitian border. This episode originally aired in 2020.

Damon gets to talk to JBlak about his adventures in music, Afro-Dominican rhythms and music, the history, sneakers and more. There are other segments like: gig alerts, educational spotlight, iconic recording, music news and others. 

James Bond Was Based on An Afro Dominican But Racism Kept That A Dirty Little Secret

Yael R Rosenstock Gonzalez (she/her) is a sex educator, sex coach, researcher, author, speaker, curriculum developer, and workshop facilitator. As a queer, polyamorous, white-presenting Nuyorican Jew, Yael has always been interested in understanding the multi-level experiences of individuals. This led her to found Kaleidoscope Vibrations, LLC, a company dedicated to supporting and creating spaces for individuals to explore and find community in their identities. Through her company, she facilitates workshops, develops curriculum, offers Identity Exploration Coaching, and publishes narratives often left out of mainstream publishing.This episode we explore:Honoring boundaries in community spaces and navigating POC spaces as a white presenting personFinding belonging and claiming identity as a multi-ethnic personDiversity in the Jewish diaspora Promoting inclusive representations of human experience in publishing Episode ResourcesDecolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self-Image, and Achieve Body LiberationBali Retreat March 19-25 2023https://kvibrations.com/https://www.sexpositiveyou.com/https://www.instagram.com/yaelthesexgeek/https://www.tiktok.com/@yaelthesexgeekHello and welcome to another episode of Body Liberation for All. I'm your host, Dalia Kinsey, holistic registered dietitian, and the author of Decolonizing Wellness.My work is centered on amplifying the health and happiness of LGBTQI+ and BIPOC people. And that is also what we do here at Body Liberation for All. I wanna remind you, I am hosting the Decolonizing Wellness Eco-Luxury QTBIPOC retreat in Bali in March. So if you are a person who loves the plan way in advance, like I do. This is when you want to book. This is a great time to give yourself plenty of room to break the trip into payments and to get all of your ducks in a row. If you aren't going to be able to join us, but you know someone who this retreat could be life changing for, please make sure you share it. Substack makes sharing so easy on their platform. So if you visit daliakinsey.substack.com to listen to this episode you'll see it's just a click of a button. Today's guest, the Yael Rosenstock has so much knowledge in different areas that we cover a lot of territory in this conversation. There was still so much more that we could have dug into that hopefully at a later date we'll get to revisit. Today we explore a little bit of the lived experience of being a white presenting person who lives shoulder to shoulder with POC within the family, but out in the world is not having the same experience as the family members that have a darker complexion. Since we already know race is not actually real from a scientific perspective, it's totally a social construct, your skin color itself will to a large extent determine how much lived experience you have as a person of color or as a white person, regardless of what the socialization inside of your house is like because so much of the POC experience, if you're living in a colonized country, if you're living in a country that has its roots in white supremacy, so much of the experience is informed by the anti-Blackness or the anti-POCness that you're going to encounter out in the world.That does not in any way invalidate the cultural uniqueness of people who are in these very blended families and happen to have pale skin or white skin. So it's interesting to me to hear directly from somebody having this experience. It's an interesting concept to look at on an individual level. What does the fact that race is fictional and totally social have? How does that all play out - when you know you are culturally different from the white folks who do not have POC blood relatives that they live with and are close with but at the same time you know that you're not experiencing the same level of marginalization. What is that like? I rarely bother to claim my Latinx heritage. Because the anti-blackness that I have encountered in a lot of Spanish-speaking circles here in the US is so intense it doesn't make any logical sense for me to keep trying to be somewhere that I don't feel welcome.Some of these themes that Yael shares, the feeling of not enoughness when you are more than one thing or when you've only been presented with a narrow definition of what it means to hold a particular identity, is so relatable. I know not just to us, it's so relatable to so many people, because the ways that we define certain identities are so narrow it naturally leaves out a large number of people. The work that Yael is doing to promote the authentic representation of a wide variety of human experience at her publishing company feels like such a natural extension of this lived experience that she has of knowing how difficult it can be to really claim and embody our identities when we haven't seen anything similar reflected back to us. I love this. Entire conversation. I know you will too. Let's jump right into it. Body Liberation for All ThemeYeah. They might try to put you in a box, tell them that you don't accept when the world is tripping out tell them that you love yourself. Hey, Hey, smile on them live your life just like you like it is.It's your party negativity is not invited. For my queer folks, for my trans, people of color, let your voice be heard. Look in the mirror and say that it's time to put me first. You born to win. Head up high with confidence.  This show is for everyone. So, I thank you for tuning in. Let's go.Dalia: I definitely wanted to cover the concept of white passing fragility. But then I want to definitely talk about your other projects and just what you're doing with intersectionality.Yael: Okay. I do want to warn that there's a very good chance that that will not. Some people will really like that idea of the white passing fragility, but others won't because right. The author of that book has become super famous and super rich off of a book around racism as a white woman. And just giving you a fair warning that this may or may not be taken so well.Dalia: And then that's so interesting too, because it seems like people should be compensated for good work or things that they do with good intentions.Dalia: But so often people who are in social justice are on the struggle bus financially, but, and that almost seems to be the expectation. Like you have to be a martyr to break down systems of oppression. But then I also am conflicted because it seems like all the time, white people continue to profit off of pain from people of color and especially Black people in this country. Even when you look at who makes money off of depictions of just Black suffering in general, whether it's another movie about slavery, even if it's a "fun" spin on it, like the Django or something, which I refuse to watch, I just don't understand how we're not seeing how problematic that is, but at least hers originally started out with intentions that seemed more educational.Dalia: Like I think it's a little more sketch to create a film or a piece of entertainment that centered on Black pain. And then all the money goes to somebody who's not Black. I mean, not at all, but the majority, most of it, right. It seems less sketchy, but it is sketchy nonetheless.Dalia: And I've been having a lot of feelings around these white savior complexes that are popping out these days. And people not understanding that, hey, maybe people want to be the hero of their own damn story and guess what, maybe they are ready are.Yael: But you're in the wayDalia: I know. Right? Or like you just exhausting people showing up to the March and explaining to everybody how, you know, you're being white the right way. I don't know if you've seen that play out in real life where people try constantly schooling other white people on how to be more. Down, I guess is the expression, but it doesn't really translate, but it's so rare that people confront people like that because their competition or the people that you have to compare them to you sometimes are so problematic that by comparison, they seem amazing.Yael: Yeah, I like this better.Dalia: So it's like, should I even say anything?Dalia: So I don't know.Yael: Considering that most of my spaces are POC and or Latin. I don't have that many white saviors.Dalia: Smart. Okay. Is that by design or is that coincidental?Yael: Well, I think at first it's coincidental, right? Just like growing up in a mixed neighborhood with a mixed family.Yael: It just is what happened. I was in a school with folks of different groups. And so that just continued. And then when I did reach middle school and there were white people who were just white, not Latin, like, I mean, there were a couple in elementary, but not many. And. I just felt really uncomfortable in the space.Yael: And that was like my assigned group. Cause I wasn't dark enough to be in the Latin group, I think. And also like the Latin group was like ghetto fab. Like I also wore my hair back slicked back. I also had the lip liner, and I had the big hoop earrings as well,Dalia: But like it wasn't enough.Yael: It was a, it was a browner Latin group. And so I felt like I shouldn't be part of it. Like I was friends with them, but I shouldn't be part of it because I didn't look the same. And so I just like ended up, even though I was friends with all the other groups, I ended up in the white girl group and I was just like, this is uncomfortable. Like, I don't agree with the things they say.Yael: I like rebelled a bit and basically got kicked out. And so I think after that, I was just like, I'm going to try and choose. So I don't think I've ever been like, I'm unwilling to be friends with white people because that doesn't seem nice either. But the same reason that folks have affinity groups, right?Yael: The same reason we hang out with queer people as queer people, the same reason you hang out with Latin people if you're Latin or Black and Black is because you don't want to have to explain certain things. And I'm tired. And so I don't go into all white spaces cause I get nervous about why are they all white?Yael: Like what's the intention behind this group. Is there an ulterior motive and I, yeah, I just like, I don't want to have to explain things that I end up becoming that white person, the white savior being like, that's not how. I joined a book club once. And they were talking about how, like, it didn't make sense that this person was referencing their dreams.Yael: Like it's not like a real thing. And I was like, this person is Mexican. And I don't know that much about Mexicans, but in like Caribbean culture dreams can be really important.Dalia: Oh wait. They were saying like a literal dream, not goals that they were struggling with finding meaning in their dream and they thought that was weird?Yael: Yeah. He was writing a memoir and he was referencing how he thought his dream was related to the, like what was happening in his life and that he had seen a Wolf or something. Right. He has indigenous culture roots, right as a Mexican-American. But they were just like, no, that's like, he's just making that up from the memoir.Dalia: But no, because that's extremely common.Yael: Yeah. Like they couldn't fathom it.Dalia: That is fascinating. So this is so interesting, can you share your marginalized identities? Because I think the experience of being white presenting is interesting in that you may be exposed to things that I might never hear, because I didn't even know that, I didn't even notice that white people weren't doing that all the time too.Dalia: Because at work at the moment I'm working in a majority Black office. And people are constantly talking about, you know, oh, I saw this, I wonder if it's a sign and we all have different religious backgrounds too. Somebody even started wearing a hair net because they're afraid somebody might get some of their hair that was shedding and put roots on them. None of us thought that was weird. We were all like, oh, if you feel it's necessary, you do that. You make sure you're not,Yael: You save yourself. It may or may not be real. It may or may not be. I'm always like, I rather be careful then sorry.Dalia: Exactly. Absolutely. Nobody said anything when I came into the room to sage it because I thought that we had some bad mojo in there.Dalia: People said, make sure you get my desk.. Someone came in with holy water. Like we had a very problematic coworker , and we were like, get all the stuff we're clapping in the corners.Yael: I was friends with one of the custodians where I used to work and she's an older woman. She was like the age of maybe like between mother and grandmother.Yael: And she brought me a bracelet because she was. You're very joyful and you're pretty. And I just think that someone's going to send you a curse. made me a bracelet to protect me from maldiciones. She just didn't want me to get hurt.Dalia: And you immediately put it on. You're like, okay, thanks.Yael: I mean, first off, like I appreciate that you're caring about me and no, I don't think it's weird.Yael: I've worn, evil eyes before, you know, like, to me, I think that the bigger thing for us is like whether or not we participate or whether or not we're like, yes, this is real when I talk about ghost stories, I share all the ghost stories. I know. Was I there? No. Was it real? I don't know. Cause I wasn't there, but it could be .Dalia: It's so dismissive to be like, oh, that's so dumb. What? Who says that -only people who are very sheltered and are under the impression that their way is the only way.Yael: This was a group about social justice. The people are lovely and the ones who hosted, I actually adore. They are fantastic.Yael: And they weren't the ones who were having this question, but I remember one person in particular, she was just totally dismissive. And I was just like, I don't understand. And I didn't show up for a couple of years, but then I came back and I was like, okay, my role is going to be giving the perspective of not these people in the case that this comes up again, because they keep reading books by people of color. And like, I don't have the same perspective. Like I said, I'm not Mexican. I don't know what they do. But I have a feeling that this is like something that's shared, like it's a native American thing.Yael: It's a Latin thing. It's a Black thing. Like I just feel, you know, Asian cultures, everyone, actually.Dalia: I know this is whats so bizarre.Yael: There are definitely white people who also have that as a practice and Jews, a lot of us who do pass it are white or pass as white, like that's also part of our culture.Dalia: And that's another thing. So this is one of my big questions. So, you identify as Latin X?Yael: Yes, I'm LatinaDalia: You're Latina and you're Jewish. And so does that mean your mother is your Jewish parent.Yael: That is actually, so...Dalia: does that matter or is that like out of date or…Yael: No, that is an excellent question. My parents tried to enroll me in what's called Yeshiva because they didn't like the local public school.Yael: And so they wanted to put me in a Jewish school and I got rejected because my mother is Catholic and my father is Jewish. And as you like are insinuating, like the religion follows the mother. Now that school accepts muts like me of my form. They no longer discriminate against us, but because my parents couldn't put me in the Jewish school.Yael: I went to an Episcopalian school.Dalia: Oh, wow, you were all over the place.Yael: Yeah. So I got a good Christian education .Dalia: Oh, and how did your dad manage,, was he a little heartbroken? Like, Ooh, not what I had in mind.Yael: Well, it was a small school. There wasn't a religion class, but like every morning we started with prayers and every Wednesday we had mass and I just, I didn't know they wanted me to be Jewish. I thought they were saying, here are our religions. You go to Sunday Jewish school. You go to day school with Christians. Figure out your path. And so I very confidently figured out my path. I was like, I am Jewish. And like, I am now very knowledgeable about Christian stuff. But actually they did want me to be Jewish and they had warned the school that that was what they wanted.Dalia: I was under the impression, and this may not be accurate. Is that like a modern Jewish person may be a little more secular and maybe they know some of the traditions and then maybe they go to synagogue for special events or, but still feel that strong cultural identity.Dalia: And then don't really feel, I feel like they should be dropped into that white American bucket with everybody else because they're separate as an ethnic group. Whereas other white ethnic groups (in America) gave up their separateness for the most part.Yael: Interesting. So I haven't done much study into the question, but I have a friend who sent me, who sends me lots of articles, Catherine.Yael: And she sent me an article about whether or not Jews are white and my coworker, Asia Gray, who does our anti-racism curriculum and what have you. One of the books was, how antisemitism was the original racism. And so that's part of the way that she talks about oppression and like structural oppressions and what have you.Yael: And she starts that story there and it's like Jews became white if you are white, but there are Black Jews. There are like plenty of Middle Eastern Jews that have more color there are Russian Jews, the Sephardic Jews, the Mizrahi in general. So there are plenty of Jews of color and then they're like me Ashkenazi, which are of German roots, right. German and certain parts of Russia, roots and Poland and all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah. Yes, it is a different, I agree. It's different ethnic group. Like you can trace us back when I did that blood test, I literally come out 49% Ashkenazi. I'm from Germany, even though I can, I can trace my roots on a family tree that's physical to the 15 hundreds. It says I'm Ashkenazi. Wasn't mentioned Germany because the Jewish blood is what it picks up. And so, yes, I agree. Like there's like this ethnic thing there and that's why you can be a secular person of a religion.Yael: I mean, there are plenty of secular Christians, right. That celebrate Christmas and what have you. But there's like this certain level of like the foods that you eat and the mannerisms that you have and like certain cultural values. I don't identify it as a secular Jew I identify as reform, which is like a less observant Jew.Dalia: Now, how did you feel your queer identity meshes with Judaism? It's rumored to be an easier mesh. Is that true? Are Christians just being jealous?Yael: I think it is an easier, easier. I mean, I know plenty of Christians that are queer, but my synagogue, I don't remember how old I was, but she bat mitzvah'd me so young enough for that had a lesbian rabbai.Yael: And she got married at our synagogue and we were just a regular reform synagogue. Right. We weren't like, ah, where the most social justice progressive synogauge, we were just a reform synagogue. And we did lose some of the older parishioners and I imagine some other age ones, when she joined as the rabbi, but for the most part, everyone was like, love who you love.Yael: Right? Like that's not an issue. And she was a woman rabbi and my next rabbi was also a woman, right? So like that's super common. It's even starting very slowly in the Orthodox community, which is one of the more observant sects of Judaism to have women rabbis. And so overall I think that shift is, is more common in our space .Dalia: The idea of there being Jewish people of color is interesting to me, because it seems like in the states, people are under the impression that that's not a thing. Can you tell us about the work that you're doing for representation, and as far as intersectionality goes as a very fair skin person of color.Yael: Sure so I think the most thing that the thing that directly relates is that I'm part of the diverse bodies project. The idea is a nude photo interview series, intended to increase representation of who gets seen and photograph naked and how you want to be represented.Yael: So it's not that you had to do a sexy shot or you had to do a serious shot that people get to bring their personalities in through the photographs and show who they are. And that was really important to us and something that we did because it's been taken us forever. But the mini books that we've already released is the Jews flying the rainbow flag mini books.Yael: And so it's got five different Jews and we had plenty of Jews participate but featured five different Jews ranging from like early twenties to, I think, sixties and out of the five of them. Two of them are Black. One of the Black Jews is also Latin, so she's Afro Dominican. And the point of that was to be like folks exist, you know, and it's so common for you to be like, this is what a Jew looks like when.Yael: Yeah, sure a lot of us do look like me. There are Black Jews. There are Latin Jews, there are Asian Jews, there are all the types. And so that was really important to us that we highlight that these are two queer Black Jewish women and they get as much space in this little book as anyone else.Yael: I will say part of my work and that's what we got into the white white passing fragility talk is that I don't identify as a person of color. And who knows, maybe I'll change that at some point. I choose not to identify that way. Cause it feels appropriative. And to be like, just because I have another language or just because my family may have a bunch of people of color and it doesn't mean that I'm existing as a person of color.Yael: And so when I walked through the street, people see me as white and that's just true. But I do enter, and I was asked this question recently, so why do I enter people of color spaces? And it's cause I'm, I'm feel safer there. I feel more connected there. I don't feel blegh there. And so if people are willing to have me, which they generally are, most people of color spaces are open to white presenting Latin folk. Then I just asked permission and I join.Dalia: That's interesting and I knew that, and I forgot that when I said that, because I know I'm very used to- anybody who says they're a person of color. I was just like, okay, like, it's the response? Because especially, you know, Black American, no, actually.Dalia: Latin people even more than Black Americans come in all kinds of shades and colors, and you can't look at somebody and have any clue what even their parents look like. And that a lot of times really informs their experience as far as how they were treated growing up, because it is funny to me how depending on who you're sitting beside, people may perceive your color differently, which just goes to show how arbitrary our understanding of race is..Dalia: Like number one, we know it's not a real biological thing, but like you said, it's the experience that creates the cultural differences. It's the lived experience that matters. So if, when you are out in the world, people treat you as though you are white well then you are having the white experience.Dalia: And that is really the key difference. But I have biracial friends who, if they were with their brown parent, they get treated differently and are even perceived differently versus with the other parent, which I just think is fascinating.Yael: Well, my parents are both white. My dad is white Ashkenazi and my mother is a white presenting Latina.Yael: My uncle, my abuela they would have been identified as POC, but not my mother. And so when I'm with my mother, it was the same thing. People don't realize she speaks Spanish. She's been spoken about by people who were like checking her out.Dalia: Well, it's just interesting to me. And I don't know if this happens everywhere or if it's some of our American brainwashing, but like all the time people act as though Spanish is. Secret language. And I'm like, what is wrong with you? It is so, so common. And the people who speak it look so many different ways and you don't have to only speak English, your heart language, or your first language.Dalia: Like, that's another thing I'm like, you do realize that maybe she can speak Spanish as a second language or not all latin people look the same. I really don't understand the disconnect with that because I've been spoken about in Spanish to my frigging face so many times, and I do speak Spanish. And usually, I mean, unless they're saying something really rude, usually people are trying to guess whether or not the person I'm with is my husband or my what's the male form of mistress.Dalia: I bet there isn't one, right? Oh,Yael: LoverDalia: Yeah, it just goes to show like, if there isn't a word that connotes, not a legitimate partner, because you're not married to them that's some more sexist shenanigans, but yeah, it's just interesting to me that people make that assumption so often. So what has your experience been like trying to stay connected to your Latin roots when so often people are very narrow about what they consider to be Latin?Yael: So it's funny because all of our countries have folks, all the Latin countries have folks that look like me. And like most of the countries have folks that look like you, right? It's not, we're not anomalies in these spaces.Yael: And so I actually, I was convinced I needed to prove myself. Like my mother, I felt counted as real Latina because she was raised in Puerto Rico. Her first language is Spanish. Like that seems to me like check that counts. But me I'm half Ashkenazi. I look, the way that I do my Spanish for awhile was pretty crappy.Yael: And so I, I felt the need to prove myself. All my friends were Latina and I was like, I must be more Latina. I must speak this fluently. And I must eat the food. And I am an incredible salsa dancer at this point. So, but that was all me. Right. And perhaps white people and perhaps Black people who weren't Latin.Yael: Right. And that, if I said I was. The response was always like, oh really? Unless I turned around and then they're like, I see it in your butt now I know that you're Latin because of your butt, like, literally the number of times people have been like, I believe you because of your shape. Otherwise I wouldn't have counted you.Yael: Whereas on the flip side with Latin folks, there's really not much surprise. They don't assume I'm Latina. But if I start speaking Spanish or they see me dancing or whatever, like they ask me, where are you from? They don't ask me, are you at the end of the ask me? Oh, okay. Yeah. Right. Assume that I am. And they're right, because for them, it's not so surprising to see someone who looks like me, but I think, and it's when you think of immigration, you're going to assume that more white Latins are going to migrate because of mean.Yael: Whereas you have browner and Blacker people migrating because of need. And so if you're hanging out with folks from your same social class, which will end up being also your same racial categorization, because those are very linked to whether or not we all want to admit it in the Americas as well.Yael: And all the Americas. So like, I think that that's part of it, right? You're used to hanging out with other brown people. And so even though your country has plenty people who look like me, you never associated with associated with them. Either. They were from a different region or they were from a different social class.Yael: And so they went to different schools and they had different access. And so I think that's more it, but like Latin people never not include me.Dalia: Oh, that's interesting. So it was really more just internal.Yael: Yeah. I was like in TV, none of the Latinas looked like me. All of my friends were darker than me.Yael: And so I was like, I need to be darker. And my abuela ? When I went to go visit her, she was like, no sunscreen. We need to get you more dark.Dalia: That is so interesting to me because that I've seen more often the opposite experience. So first I think when I turn on Univision, everybody's white and the housekeeper looks like she has some indigenous ancestry.Dalia: She doesn't get to say anything, except like, let me get that for you.Yael: They're white almost. They're like what I call exotic white. Like they have, what's considered what I consider the stereotypical, Latin of means look, which is like, they have very heavily European race roots, but they were at some point mixed with other races.Yael: And so they have like olive tone skin, dark hair, like certain whatever. And I don't have. It's like, I'm actually just white passing.Dalia: Yeah. Oh yeah. That makes sense. That distinction. Yeah. I can see that for sure. Like a Sophia Vergara type of, yeah.Dalia: But at the same time I'm sure when she is home, she would be called white, but it's just, when you weave and you come here, then you you've turned into some exotic white.Yael: Yes. And that like that to me is like an interesting thing too. Like if in your own country you are white and then you come here and you're like, I'm a person of color.Yael: What changed? And it's true. Our racial dynamics are very different in each country, but it's interesting to me that, like, I mean, you don't necessarily, people don't identify necessarily as white or Black or what have you. That's not part of, most of the country's ways of self. They just don't do that. And then some countries that like became illegal like you don't put that stuff on the birth certificates, like you just don't name race. But in my head, I'm like you can recognize hopefully that people look different in your country and that you're having different experiences based on that. So when you come to this country, why do you claim this identity?Yael: Or if your family came to this country, why do you claim this identity when you were still white passing?Dalia: Well, yeah, that is really interesting. And what is funny to me, especially for Dominicans, just because I hear this from them more than anybody else, that your race, it feels like it did change during the flight because your treatment was completely different.Dalia: And maybe back home, you were part of the dominant group culturally and power structure wise. And this is the first time people are treating you as though you're an other. And so maybe your identity will shift them because race really is a social construct. So you can make a flight and your race changes.Yael: Yes, totally agree. But also those are Afro Dominican, right? Then being put into a category that is on the lower end of, or possibly the lowest end of our racial categories in the U S. And so they're going from being the norm to going to being the most marginalized population in the country. Whereas if you are a light skinned or white passing Latina you were going from being the highest, probably social class in your country to be not too far down. You might feel like you're all of a sudden, like super oppressed, because you're not used to any form of oppressio nDalia: that see, that really says a lot. And it is the author, speaking of white passing fragility, the writer of white fragility says, you know, like 97% feels like a horrible loss or injustice when you're used to a hundred percent.Yael: Oh, wow. Nice quote.Dalia: And I say that, and I'm like, she probably said some other numbers, but don't look it up. Trust me. I love the idea of that perspective of asking for permission to go into these other spaces because you feel comfortable, but then also not internalizing the rejection. If somebody says, I really, I don't think it's a fit.Dalia: How did you get to that point? And how do you suggest other people who are white presenting, but feel more comfortable in browner spaces? How should they reconcile that?Yael: So I think there's like tying back with like that white savior thing that like, I need to be here.Yael: Don't get me wrong, communities are important. And again, like a lot of my community is POC and that is important to me. And also I recognize that not every space is for me. If you were going to have a men's group, I don't belong in it. When I was helping facilitate a peer sex education group, I was like, we need a leader for the abstinence and virginity group, because I am neither abstinent nor identify as a virgin, but I am a super sexual human being.Yael: And so I don't belong in this space. It does not make the space safe. This is a group led by and for folks with a certain experience. And so when you recognize that that's the point, right? Like women's groups, you don't want men. And normally we don't question that we're not like, oh, how exclusionary what's exclusionary is if you don't allow all women.Yael: All women belong in women's groups, whether they're CIS or trans. But you don't allow men because it's a woman's space. And the point is to create a space that feels safe for that population. So they can be heard, feel seen and not have to explain things that they would have to explain to someone who doesn't understand.Yael: And so to me, that is what often POC spaces are. And there's so much I can understand because I'm surrounded by POC and because my family has POC and there's so much I can't understand because I will never live it.Yael: And so if the space would be safer without my presence, then why would I want to put myself in a spot that will cause others harm when then the intension is for them to have a good space.Yael: Not every space is like that, right? Like if you go to school, if you go somewhere most spaces, unless you're like at historically Black university, right? Like you're going to be surrounded by white folks and like, no, one's questioning that. And so why shouldn't you get to be surrounded by the people you want to be surrounded with for this time period that is yours. It's your time, it's your space. And so I think for me, it's just like thinking about what is your intentions about entering it? Are you trying to contribute in a way that is helpful and wholesome and caring and supportive. Great. Is it wanted? Yes. Enter. Is it not. Go somewhere else. You can still hang out with those same people just not in that particular space that was designated at this time for this purpose.Dalia: And when you say it that way, not at this time and not this space, because I feel like a lot of people who seek out those spaces, that isn't how most of their day is, you know, it's just a little refuge and it certainly isn't that they don't want to have a fully integrated intersectional life.Dalia: Like you said, it's a break from having to explain certain things. And what's interesting is when sometimes you try and make things more and more broad. There's just more potential for issues because I have seen more on reality TV than in real life. Yes. White presenting, Latin people using certain racial slurs saying it's okay for them because they're down or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, but you're not of the group that gets to use that word and they just kept on defending it. I'm just like, okay, we're just, you're canceled. We're moving on. So there are, there can be issues where people who you would expect to not be problematic come in and are.Dalia: And so maybe some people have been burned. A few times, and now they're just, they're exhausted and they don't want to put the energy into fielding out who is safe and who is not safe.Yael: And there's nothing wrong with that. Like it's not necessarily personal, it could be personal if you're one of those people, but even the question, right?Yael: Like I wanted to advertise a job position and so I seek to advertise them first in places of color and queer spaces. And so I contacted several different groups. Oh. And then, sorry, I remember there was a posting for a DEI position at a Jewish organization. And so I started to contact the admin of different POC, Jewish groups, like a Black Jewish group, or what have you.Yael: And I said, listen, I filled out their form to enter, but I was like, I don't actually want to enter. I'm wondering if you can share this link. So folks can see the job. I am a white presenting, a Latino Jew. I ended up getting messaged even by the Black group. And they're like, oh, you can join. I was like, Black is not part of my identity.Yael: Like we, because of the Caribbean, we have those roots as well. But like I don't claim that.Dalia: It's funny. I do feel like Black people in my experience. That's why I was so I've been surprised when people have told me, they were bullied. Black kids in school who are other POC is it's always surprising to me because the town that I was raised in and the part of the south that I'm from, people still were in that space of, if you we're different enough to maybe not be able to get into a whites only area, or if the clain would have targeted you too, cause clan is not down. They're very antisemitic, they're anti everything. But then you were welcome. Like if you wanted to sit at that table, you were always welcome. Just anybody who is being othered the policy was come on in. If you have nowhere else to go, we'll take you.Yael: That's lovely. I definitely know that that's not always true. And again, it's okay. I mean, the bullying is not okay. Deciding who's in your space is, but yeah, exactly. So like I was welcomed and obviously everyone's Jewish because it's a Jewish group.Yael: And so it's, it was specifically a space built for Jews, Black Jews and some Jews of color to have a reprieve from the white Jews. White Jews often mean, well, right? Like we fill up social justice spaces, like hardcores. I've spoken to people about this, that like insofar as percentage of folks who are involved in social justice by group, I imagine that our group is one of the most heavily social justice oriented.Yael: Cause we're so small and people are like you're everywhere, but it doesn't mean that we're doing it well or that we're doing it right. And so it can be exhausting to have white Jews around because we are those white saviory types.Yael: And yeah. So I was, I was surprised and I was like, well, okay. Like I will post it myself then afterwards. And she had, she had posted already and she had written my name and giving me credit. And like I said, this person wanted to let us all know about this job.Dalia: That's very cool. It's nice to find community, but it's also very nice to know that when you're trying to create a safe space around certain parts of our identity, that there are people who understand and support, because I'm sure it's hard for some people to hold that space.Dalia: And to not feel guilty about saying no sometimes. So it's nice to know that even if not everybody understands, some people totally understand and they're not gonna lose any sleep over it. They're just going to move on to the next Facebook group and they'll be fine. And maybe you'll run into each other in another space.Dalia: That's centered around an identity that you have in common.Yael: Yeah. Exactly. And so I think that's just like, it's kinda like building resilience and you might actually be in another POC group together, but not necessarily that one.Yael: And make everybody safe because I would hate to go into a space where I was told, Hey, women are welcome. Like this happens a lot. Well, not now that everybody's at home groups are really growing and there's like a group for everything. But previously it just felt like, like in the nineties, everything that was gay or LGBTQ was CIS male dominated.Dalia: Tell us about your company and what made you want to form a publishing company and what your vision is for that company?Yael: Sure. So my company's name is Kaleidoscope Vibrations, LLC . And for anyone who's an owner, kaleidoscope is it's like this toy that had all these like gems on the bottom and you'd move your hands in opposite directions around this tuby thing. And you'd look inside and it would be create new, pretty color combinations.Yael: And so the idea is that every vibration or event in your life creates a new beautiful you, and that our identities are always forming and they're always developing. And the reason I created this company was because I was this like Jew that wasn't Jewish enough. I was this Latina that I didn't think that I looked enough or counted enough.Yael: I was queer, but not queer enough. You know, like there are all these ways and this, I, I didn't feel like I should count. And that's, that's different, right? Like that's different than choosing whether or not you belong in a space as to whether or not you feel like you matter enough to be in a space or if you, you belong.Yael: And so I created this company to help people find confidence in their identities and find their communities. So maybe. You don't belong to blank community, but you do belong to another one and then you can find the people that you need so you have a supportive, loving environment that understands you.Yael: And so I do workshops, I do identity coaching, curriculum development like inclusivity in the workspace across different identities and what have you. But we also have a publishing sect, and that's the purpose is to uplift different narratives that aren't necessarily heard. And so the first book was mine, which is An Intro Guide to a Sex Positive You.Yael: Sex is not necessarily something you think of and you're like, oh, this is not inclusive, but it really is. And so my book, I know I had someone read it, who was like, I've been looking for a book that validated my experiences as a queer person while reading it that wasn't heteronormative, right. That wasn't geared towards straight people.Yael: And it's not that my book has hetero exclusive. You can be whatever matched you with. I just don't assume what you're going to match. And so I don't add genders into my conversations in the book and that like that in and of itself, apparently at the time was somewhat revolutionary for some folks. And the next book was Luna, Luna Si, Luna.Yael: Yes. Maybe it's that Luna? Yes. Luna Si. And it is a book about two little sisters who are Latino it's in English and in Spanish. And the younger sister has autism. And she is 40% verbal. And so we often see representations of savants, right? So, and they tend to be white males. And so you have these kids who have really incredible abilities to count numbers or to memorize things, or what have you.Yael: And they often do have very good verbal capacities. They have awkward social cues because they have trouble reading it, but that's like the extent to how they represent autism. Whereas in this case, like you see how she, how she is able to communicate the form that her language takes. And you do learn about like the kinds of things that she can do.Yael: You learn about stems. So like ticks that people do to keep themselves calm and well. And that was the intention, right? link that autism comes in all colors, all ethnicities, that there are varying levels of how much people can communicate and what, you know, how much need or help they might require.Yael: And yeah, and it just, that's, it it's a story about sisters and how they love each other and how they communicate and also one of them has autism. And so that intention of bringing those to the surface and yeah, we're working on a bunch of other different possibilities as well. Another one's about anxiety.Yael: So another bilingual book, but a little girl's anxiety and what that's looked like for her.Dalia: That's really helpful. I think that more and more children are experiencing anxiety earlier. So that's definitely needed. And it is interesting how ableism racism, xenophobia, how it all plays together and how you really don't see representation of people living with a diagnosis that aren't white it's. I mean, it's almost always going to be white to the extent that when you meet someone with something as common as down syndrome, who's Asian, you're like, wow. Like, oh, I didn't know. Obviously we can all get whatever we can be born, any kind of way, human diversity, it's just what we choose to feature. That makes it seem like we aren't as diverse as we are.Yael: But then it's also the like racism that exists within the publishing space. And so even when you do have some books that are more representative in that, like the pictures have kids of all different colors, it doesn't necessarily that the author is a person of color.Yael: And so with my company, you have to have either the identities that you are discussing or someone in your like close family, someone in your close life, and you have lived this with them, right. That you are experiencing this with them. So like the author of the book autism, t he person with autism, didn't write this.Yael: She doesn't write. But her sister wrote it. And so she has lived with her sister, her, the younger one's entire life, the one who has autism so entire life. And so that was like the perspective that we were able to take. And so it's very important to me that the people who are writing the stories also have lived experience.Yael: And it's not just about like, oh yeah, we need to mix A and B and with number 3 so that we can count in this diversity world where like, you're supposed to do this. Now it's about like, this is my story, and I want you to hear it.Dalia: And the way that people tell their own story is so different from how it's told by an observer.Dalia: And people can feel that difference. Sometimes it's so subtle, but you definitely, some things just they're very difficult to fake and so right now, a lot of companies. In all sectors, not just publishing people are faking the funk right now, and it's not pretty. So it falls flat. It's all kind of, oh, this just came to me.Dalia: Did you see that woman who has been saying that? She's...Yael: who said that she was Black from the Bronx in the Bronx and is a white Jew from Kansas.Dalia: Yes, she got the hoop earrings, she got the tan and she was like, I'm ready to rock. I do not understand how this has happened more than once in such a widely publicized way in my lifetime.Yael: So I actually, let's, let's break that down a bit. So first off, she's a, she is a white Jew, right? My friend is also a white Jew. Neither of them actually presents white. Like, if you look at them, that's not the identity you're going to give them because they were darker skin tones. Right. And so it's also interesting how whiteness works that like, because they are Jewish, they are given.Yael: Right. It just, that is also so interesting. But I remember someone commented, like how did no one realize like Afro Latinas don't come that light? And I was like, hold up a second way lighter than that woman. Right. There are people who identify as Black. That is their identity. Who are way lighter than this faker.Yael: And so my thing was, you should not fake who you are, but the fact that people believed her makes total sense to me.Dalia: But it seemed like to me, what was the most damning is how. Some of her clothing choices and accessory choices, maybe they speak to her, they were so sterotypical. It just seemed a little performative.Yael: She faked three different identities.Dalia: Oh, I didn't see that part.Yael: Afro Latina was her latest identity. The one before that was Black American, the one before that was north African. Okay. She moved across the globe.Yael: No one tracked this?! Like at one point she was north African and now she's Black and now she's Afro Latina from the Bronx specifically.Dalia: That's interesting too, that extra, that, that was so important for her to feature that what trips me out about it. And I think what really troubles a lot of people about it is to know that.Dalia: Race is not real to the extent that whatever you say could literally change your experience. You just have to keep saying it and buy some hoops and you can be another person. Like, it just, she went overboard with the, just so stereotypical, but you're right. It easily could have been true going off of skin color alone.Dalia: And some people do still dress that way, even though it's not the nineties anymore.Yael: But I love my hoops in the nineties.Dalia: I did too, you know, but they're like more modern with the embellishment. It has that like handcrafted feel. I don't know what happened with the hoops. It went out for me with letting my eyebrows finally try and grow back in, but I did use to be so, so into that. But at one point I also had a Jheri curl.Dalia: So I really shouldn't talk about anybody else's since its style, I've made many mistakes over the years. I really appreciate you sharing your perspective and coming on. Where can people find you? Sure.Yael: So my main thing is that I'm @yaelthesexgeek I'm a sexologist, sex coach, a sex educator.Yael: @yaelthesexgeek on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. My website is sexpositiveyou.com, so pretty easy. And then my company is kvibrations.com. And so you can find most of my things through there.Dalia: Awesome. You are doing so many different things. We didn't even touch on the sex positivity, maybe that's for another day.Dalia: Are you thinking of revisiting that book now that you know, we're kind of all in a different place as a country and as queer people? Or are there things you'd like to add? Are you going to revise that addition or write something new?Yael: Yeah. So the book is only two years old, but things change and shift so much, right? Like now there is so much more language outside of queer spaces around pronouns, but I think even in 2018, like the idea of talking about pronouns outside of queer spaces was still foreign for most, so. Yes, there are definitely, I've looked back and I'm like, oh, overall, I'm like, this is a good book.Yael: Just so you know, like people love my book and I go back, I'm like, oh, this was, this was better than you thought it was. Yes, there are, of course things I want to change, but I I'm looking into doing a teen workbook version of it. Because I wrote it for my 14 year old self, but I don't think parents of 14 year olds would be thrilled to have their kids read this book..Yael: And I think it's more of like a 16 and up kind of book. And I want to be able to reach people when they're younger because sexual trauma and boundary making and self pleasure and all of that is important before you are 18 or 16. And I also started, but I'm not going to have time right now, the nerds guide.Yael: So this is the intro guide and the nerds guide goes into the socio historical and psychological backgrounds. And so when you talk about things, Gender. I want to be able to talk about that are six sexes and genders are present in the Talmud in ancient Jewish text, rich and written 1500 years ago. I want to talk about the hijra in India, and that they have like that as a third gender that's established that how different native American communities have two spirit or don't have two spirit identities.Yael: And like, what does that mean and how do they conceptualize it? And just like, recognizing that there's so much more beyond what we talk about.Dalia: Yeah, that sounds really fascinating.Yael: Yeah. But that's going to take awhile. It's going to take research and I'm doing a PhD right now.Dalia: The list just keeps going.Yael: And that's on the back burner, that's like maybe if someone gives me a book deal, I'll work on that.Dalia: I love it. Oh, excellent. Thank you so much for coming on.Yael: Thank you for having me.Yael: I always, I really enjoy talking with you and Dalia.Dalia: Same here. Same here. You'll have to come back when you finish your nerd book or I'm sure, actually you're doing many things. I'm sure it'll be before then. Sounds good. Get full access to Body Liberation for All at daliakinsey.substack.com/subscribe

Afro-Dominican filmmaker Loira Limbal's documentary Through the Night is an intimate look at one home-based 24-hour day-care center in New Rochelle, the couple who runs the center and the mothers and children who need it.  The film, which was co-produced and presented by the PBS program POV, examines the impossible situations workers who are single parents--primarily women and most particularly women of color-- can find themselves in a 24 hour-a -day economy. Limbal asks: “What happens when they don't have family to pick up the slack?” And Through the Night goes a long way in answering that question.  In this 2020 podcast, we talk about the social and political conditions that lead to the need for 24 hour-day-care, the personal cost of our modern economy for working mothers and for the caretakers of their children. But we also talk about the film's appreciation of the ways communities of color can answer these needs creatively and lovingly even as the film decries a system that demands this adjustment to survive. Limbal also talks about the making of the film, the women she met during filming and her responsibilities to them, the overlap and differences between journalism and art,  her determination to make Through the Night while raising two children and working full-time job, and bringing out a film during the pandemic.  We'd love to know your thoughts--email us at artworkspod@arts.gov.

Afro-Dominican filmmaker Loira Limbal's documentary Through the Night is an intimate look at one home-based 24-hour day-care center in New Rochelle, the couple who runs the center and the mothers and children who need it.  The film, which was co-produced and presented by the PBS program POV, examines the impossible situations workers who are single parents--primarily women and most particularly women of color-- can find themselves in a 24 hour-a -day economy. Limbal asks: “What happens when they don't have family to pick up the slack?” And Through the Night goes a long way in answering that question.  In this 2020 podcast, we talk about the social and political conditions that lead to the need for 24 hour-day-care, the personal cost of our modern economy for working mothers and for the caretakers of their children. But we also talk about the film's appreciation of the ways communities of color can answer these needs creatively and lovingly even as the film decries a system that demands this adjustment to survive. Limbal also talks about the making of the film, the women she met during filming and her responsibilities to them, the overlap and differences between journalism and art,  her determination to make Through the Night while raising two children and working full-time job, and bringing out a film during the pandemic.  We'd love to know your thoughts--email us at artworkspod@arts.gov.

Osaliki Sepúlveda is on a mission to tell stories that instill and uplifts Latino pride. In 2018, he founded the Collectives for Arts Music & Dance, a non-profit cultural organization that provides authentic artistic performances and cultural programs that celebrates the humanity of Afro-Dominican and Latino traditions in the United States. Also, he serves as artistic director for Dominican Folkloric Squad, a performing arts ensemble that produces folkloric presentations for the stage and community spaces across New York City. Learn more at www.c4amd.org

Brendan Fitzgerald chats with UFC veteran and featherweight contender Alex Caceres.Caceres is a recognizable character to fight fans with his free-flowing style and of course the trademark hairstyle.He has been on a long journey in the UFC and is still going strong as he is about to turn 34 years old.Full episodes of Fitz Nation are now exclusively on UFC Fight PassShow Notes0:00 - Intro1:30 - Veganism (Influenced by documentary forks over knives, wearing a Vegan strong shirt)4:30 - Life Update5:00 - Pinched his sciatic nerve5:15 - Rolling a blunt6:00 - What was Alex's earlier life like?7:10 - Father was a drug dealer7:40 - Molested when he was a child 8:30 - Body dysmorphia 10:10 - Run in with police officers12:00 - Afro-Cuban and Afro-Dominican, Completely Latino12:20 - What Formed Alex15:00 - Alex's belief in the Martial Arts lifestyle 16:15 - Anything is an art 17:04 - The Non-Physical World 18:00 - The Flaws of the Education System 20:25 - Doesn't Have Expectations of Himself22:22 - What It Means To Live With Expectations24:00 - When Did Alex Think MMA Was A Career 26:04 - How MMA Was The Perfect Path27:46 - Alex Smiling during the Fights30:00 - Alex's TUF Experience31:20 - Biggest Lessons He's Learned in MMA33:45 - Alex's Is Afraid to Shine Bright 35:30 - Alex Doesn't Watch Tape37:00 - The Magic Of Not Giving a Fuck38:55 - Managing the Small Things39:30 - Alex's UFC Career 41:50 - What Alex Wants To Achieve

We chat with Yasser Tejeda,  an award-winning Dominican composer, guitarist, vocalist, and producer.  We talk about Dominican roots music and how music can connect us to our Afro Dominican heritage.  Yasser Tejeda is an award-winning Dominican composer, guitarist, vocalist, and producer. According to Billboard, Yasser is giving traditional folkloric music a new spin with jazz, rock, and Caribbean rhythms in "a frenzied celebration of the ancestral union" while Juan Luis Guerra, the most influential Dominican artist in the world, praised his mission calling it the "marvelous example of what's happening with Dominican music. When it comes to his music, the main focus has been to uplift and promote his Afro Dominican roots. Guest IG: https://www.instagram.com/yassertejeda/ Website: https://www.yassertejeda.net/Check out one of his songs: https://open.spotify.com/album/7KfHrbLLADgDs2lLAC4sbjBecome a Patreon Supporter Here!  www.patreon.com/rocioandmercedesWe'd love to hear from you! email us at rocioandmercedes@gmail.comFollow Rocio and Mercedes on IG: Rocio and MercedesPlease rate, subscribe, and review the show!It really makes a difference!This episode was produced by: Quinton Cameron, Mercedes Ilarraza, and Rocio MendezSupport the show

One of my favorite parts of hosting the Jasmine Star Show is that I get to speak to some of the most inspiring, brilliant entrepreneurs in all different industries all over the world.Today, you're about to hear from one of those entrepreneurs: CEO of Bomba Curls, Lulu Cordero, who recently became the first EVER female owned Afro-Dominican hair care brand to be sold at Target!In this conversation, Lulu tells her story of overcoming hardships to start the brand of her dreams, using your hater's doubts to fuel your business, and how Lulu is paving the way for other minority business owners to chase their dreams.Y'all, this woman is a powerhouse and I can't wait for you to hear all about her… so without further ado, click play now!If you enjoyed this episode of the Jasmine Star Show, please leave a review on iTunes! We DO read them, and they DO help us create more content you love, so head to iTunes and leave a review with your thoughts today. 

Dr. Lemny Perez was born in Harlem New York to Afro-Dominican parents. She stands out as a Clinical Psychologist, writer and NFT abstract artist. She is a curator on the http://NFT.Tips SearchLight team and an NFT Artist Trainer on the Dream Conduit. Her NFTs have been featured in Forbes magazine. Dr. Lemny lives in California.

The musical genres most people associate with the Dominican Republic are merengue and bachata. Yet, there's another set of rhythms that are essential to the spirit of the country, and that's Afro-Dominican roots music. That's where the band Yasser Tejeda & Palotré come in. They blend some of the country's black roots rhythms like palo, salve and sarandunga, with jazz and rock to bring a new spin to local sounds—and to reimagine what it means to be Dominican. In this segment of "How I Made It," the band's frontman Yasser Tejeda walks us through the inspiration behind their latest album "Kijombo," and the making of the single "Amor Arrayano," which is all about love across the Dominican-Haitian border. This podcast episode originally aired on February 25, 2020

El Negrito del Batey (The Black Man from the Batey) composed by Hector J. Díaz and Medardo Guzmán, in the voice of Alberto Beltrán with La Sonora Matancera, is a signature merengue song that many people in Latin America easily recognize. The song presents us with an intoxicating combination of rhythm and lyrics, which appear to walk right into the trap of stereotyping black people only to later throw the stereotype out of the window. It is hence perfect for our Were You Listening series for its subtle and not so subtle message. Were we listening?This episode accompanies the Yo Soy Merengue episode of the second season of our podcast. In this episode we hear from two Afro-Dominican guests: music and dance educator, composer, arranger, producer, and co-founder of Areíto Arts, Edwin Ferreras,  and University of Northern Colorado Professor, music producer, recording and mixing engineer, arranger, composer, and bandleader Socrates Garcia. And we also hear from host Andrés Hincapié's mom Margarita Noreña!For more info and resources check our website  here and our YouTube channel here.Contact us at: themixedtapepodcast@gmail.comIf you like the music we use check our playlists here.Host/Director of Series: Andrés Hincapié, PhDProducer: Melissa Villodas, PhD CandidateGraphic Content Creator: Susan Mykalcio

Calling all book nerds! Are you looking for a place where your book-loving heart can flourish? Join us at jenhatmakerbookclub.com, and become one of our sisters in nerdiness. For August 2021, Jen and the club read Elizabeth Acevedo's Clap When You Land. Elizabeth Acevedo is an internationally known New York Times bestselling author. Her writing is inspired by her Afro-Dominican roots, along with her upbringing in New York City as the daughter of Dominican immigrants. She is formally trained in performing arts, but later received her MFA in creative writing. And here's the thing, she writes novels in prose. Her book Clap When You Land shows readers that relationships are anything but easy. Familial relationships, relationships to the landscape, the relationship you have with yourself. This book dives deep into what it means to know and be known, and how our circumstances directly impact that. Jen and Elizabeth chat about what it's like to write a book in prose, how young people teach adults, and why it's so important to develop strong connections with the women in your life.  * * *   Thank you to our sponsors!   Jen Hatmaker Book Club | Join us at jenhatmakerbookclub.com and become one of our sisters in nerdiness.    ABLE | Get 20% off sitewide with 20JEN at livefashionable.com.    

In this episode of Dialogues in Afrolatinidad, Dr. Michele Reid-Vazquez chats with Dr. Zuly Inirio, an Afro-Dominican soprano and doctor of musical arts. Dr. Inirio details her upbringing and how she got her start in music. She highlights her Afro-Latinx Song & Opera project, which aims to spotlight and increase representation of Afro-Latinx artists in classical music. This episode also features a performance by Dr. Inirio.

Rachel Vanderpool Rosario is a registered dietitian nutritionist with an integrative approach. She holds licenses in MA and MD and has a virtual practice called Insight Nutrition & Wellness Counseling. Rachel offers nutritional therapy and counseling for gastrointestinal disorders, autoimmune hypothyroid, depression/anxiety, and general wellness. Rachel identifies as Afro-Dominican and is passionate about maintaining traditional foodways as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.In this episode, Rachel joins me to talk about the hidden racism that no one talks about.  Before talking to Rachel I was not aware of how the food industry perpetuating social injustice on the most vulnerable communities.  I also wasn't aware that many members of the African American & Hispanic communities are forced to live in food deserts and are at risk for more health issues, including mental health.  Rachel also talks about the importance of valuing our ancestral foods and learning more about the benefits of basic food staples related to our specific cultures.  To learn more about Rachel, please visit https://www.transforminganxiety.com/27Follow Dr. Sekandari on:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_nafisa_sekandariFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/dr.sekandariJoin private FB Group Transforming Anxiety: https://www.facebook.com/groups/transforminganxietyWatch Video Recording on YoutubeTo learn more about Dr. Sekandari's Transforming  Anxiety Course, a self paced, online course that helps you manage and control your anxiety from the comfort and privacy of your own home, visit https://www.transforminganxiety.com/course

New movie “In the Heights” was initially considered an important step for more Latino representation in movies, but a controversy has risen regarding colorism and the film's cast. The movie takes place in a New York neighborhood, Washington Heights, which is predominantly Afro-Dominican. But, as our guests explain today, the cast does not include dark-skinned Latinos. Yvette Modestin is a writer, poet and activist who focuses on shedding light on the Afro-descendant experience in Latin America, as well as the Founding Director of Encuentro Diaspora Afro; Anne Hernandez is a social worker and activist board member of Encuentro Diaspora Afro. Their expertise allows for a nuanced discussion on colorism, anti-blackness, and representation in the arts. Executive Producer: Adell Coleman Producer: Brittany Temple Distributor: DCP Entertainment For additional content: makeitplain.com

Caribe Soy (I'm Caribbean) by Ramón Torres is a great fit to accompany our Señora Bachata Mix(ed)tape Podcast episode because, among the many bachata songs expressing some version of national pride, Caribe Soy is one of the only ones that uses the formula of national or regional pride while also explicitly recognizing the African roots of the region and the inequalities across racial lines. In spite of the fact that Ramón Torres was not able to acquire many years of education given his poor upbringing, he is one of the few bachateros who go beyond lyrics of love and heartbreak introducing in his lyrics reflections addressing social issues. Caribe Soy is a prime example of this approach because it does not blindly buy into the miscegenation myth. Instead, the song recognizes the hardship of the African and native peoples, breaking the romanticized notion of an ideal, somehow superior mix.Were we listening?In this episode we hear from host Andrés Hincapié and from two Afro-Dominican guests: dancer and instructor Noeli Nathalie Rubio Reynoso and Spanish interpreter and local bachatero Antonio “Chaggy” Feliz Gómez.For more info and resources check our website  here and our YouTube channel here.If you like the music we use check our playlists here.Host/Director of Series: Andrés Hincapié, PhDProducer: Melissa Villodas, PhD CandidateGraphic Content Creator: Susan Mykalcio

Doctoras Miguelina Rodríguez and Griselda Rodríguez-Solomon are changing the way women connect to their divine feminine and their personal power in a patriarchal culture. Known as the Brujas of Brooklyn, these Afro-Dominican twins are challenging all the societal norms and expectations placed on women and creating space for others to do the same. In this conversation, we talk about our religious upbringings and finding identity in the word 'bruja' and how we all should connect with our womb and our menstrual cycles to experience transformation. Follow our guest: @brujasofbrooklyn Follow the pod: @waitholduppod | @heyjessmolina | @yarel_ramos www.waitholduppodcast.com

You are now listening to Ritmos Negros! Aren’t you tired of the snow?? Well...ME TOO! (For those who live in cold climates) Let’s go to the Dominican Republic!! In this 1st episode of the 2nd Season, we dive deep into the Dominican Republic's complex history, the Haitian-Dominican tensions, and how these stories relate to Bachata music & dance. We’ll answer questions like “How does Africa connect to Bachata?” and “How did the transformation of Bachata to a global style impact Dominican identity?” No guests this time. It’s just you and I! Bachata Music Links & Sources - Black in Latin America by Henry Louis Gates Jr.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1jinULlubo Derecho, Majao, & Mambo Rhythms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1nZLlyzRdc Por Esa Mujer by Franklin Medina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vc3agcfW7A Amorcito Enfermito: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRamQIGEm48 Florecita Blanca by Anthony Santos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5RVoxGYxBk Propuesa Indecente Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFs3PIZb3js

In this very personal episode of Break The Cycle, I discuss my very unconventional and complex education journey as a first-generation student. As an Afro-Dominican immigrant, I explain how education has become both a symbol of privilege & oppression to me. I will get brutally honest about my education journey and the impact it had on my mental health. Tune in as I share the personal experiences, insights, and lessons I encountered, and explain how it all inspired me to start a new initiative called: El Cibao Drive.

In this episode, I speak with counseling psychologist and educator, Dr. Mariel Buquè.Dr. Mariel Buquè is an Afro-Dominican counseling psychologist and educator. She provides clinical care and teaches courses at Columbia University and Columbia University Medical Center in the areas of culturally-responsive delivery of mental health care and the decolonization of eurocentric therapeutic practices. Her clinical work focuses on healing the wounds of intergenerational trauma for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.Dr. Buquè focuses on delivering racial healing therapeutic practices and workshops and conducting mental health and anti-racism workshops across the United States in the areas of structural racism, cultural competency, implicit bias, and microaggressions, as she believes in the liberation of our minds and of oppressive systems as necessary qualities of our overall wellness.

We chat all things Spirituality with Sili Recio. She shares her journey of becoming a Priestess. She answers questions on connecting to our loved ones that have passed, setting up an altar, and the beauty of death. We talk about her amazing children's book: "If Dominican were a Color" and her journey to writing It. Sili has been calling herself a writer since she won a trophy in a poetry contest in the sixth grade. She is an Afro-Dominican storyteller, disruptor, and Mami. Sili earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Rollins College. She entered the world of social media via her blog in 2010, and has never looked back. Sili lives in Florida with her daughter, the Frog Princess, and tries not to pass on her love of café con leche to her child. She is failing. You can visit her at SiliRecio.com.IG: silirecioTwitter: silirecio

Episode is sponsored by Afro Dominican. Check them out at @iamafrodominican and fb Afro Dominican. Short podcast, land update and complications. Still on track for goals and future retreats. To invest in the property reach out to me. Yoga teacher training and what I expect to get moving on into the future. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/motavate/support

We are welcoming Sili Recio to the podcast this week. Sili Recio has been calling herself a writer since she won a trophy in a poetry contest in the sixth grade. She is an Afro-Dominican storyteller, disruptor, and Mami. Sili earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Rollins College. She entered the world of social media via her blog in 2010, and has never looked back. Sili lives in Florida with her daughter, the Frog Princess, and tries not to pass on her love of café con leche to her child. She is failing. You can visit her at SiliRecio.com.Sili's Social Media Channelshttp://facebook.com/SiliReciohttp://Instagram.com/SiliReciohttp://Twitter.com/SiliReciohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/silimrecio/ http://SiliRecio.com Here's where you can find Pamela and/or The Well Done Life Podcast:Please reach out and share your feedback on this week's episode or topics that you would like covered :-)Twitter: https://twitter.com/iampamelaldavisInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamelaldavis/Email: thewelldonelife@gmail.com

Rocio and Mercedes chat with Angela Abreu, the founder, and Executive Director for Dominican Writers. This is an organization solely dedicated to highlighting content that not only promotes the works of Dominican Writers but also provides them with the tools and resources necessary for their development. In this episode, we discuss Angela’s journey toward creating the platform, touch on the importance of telling our stories, and her journey identifying as an Afro-Dominican.More Info:IG: @angysgotitIG: @dominicanwritersEmail: info@dominicanwriters.comThis episode was produced by: Quinton Cameron, Mercedes Ilarraza, and Rocio MendezEdited by: Quinton CameronLogo by: Dylan Rogers

Rocio and Mercedes: Amplifying the AFRO in Afro - Dominican! Here is our trailer for our first season!

In this episode, Ayumi talks to magical cosplayer Fadhili about the Italian magical girl series, W.I.T.C.H. and her experiences watching it in French Canada. Find her on Twitter and Instagram. What Ayu is watching/reading: Seinen magical girls Mama wa Shôgakkô yonensei (1992) News: Transcripts and a Tumblr incoming! (Thank you to Mercedez) The podcast will hopefully come to YouTube and maybe Amazon Podcasts soon as well. The Owl House - Amity is confirmed lesbian and season 1 is coming to Disney+ soon. Twitch stream confirms Luz Noceda is Afro-Dominican specifically. Other Notes: Fadhili's Sailor Muezi cosplay Black Panther x Sailor Moon cosplay group Music featured: Eyecatch from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch French Opening of W.I.T.C.H. US English Opening of W.I.T.C.H. Original podcast music by Hazel, @TwinkleParks Feel free to leave a message on Anchor about your favorite magical girl series and it might just appear on a later episode. Find the podcast online on Twitter or Instagram @magicalgirlayu or on Anchor at sparkleside, and don't forget to comment online with the hashtag #SparklesideChats! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sparkleside/message

Hazel Reeves is a brilliantly talented sculptress who tells stories in bronze. In recent years she has secured several prestigious commissions among them the Sir Nigel Gresley sculpture in Kings Cross, London commemorating the engineer and innovator of steam trains, and the Cracker Packer statue dedicated to the women who have worked in the Carrs biscuit factory, now McVitie's in Carlisle, for over a hundred years. I've been keen to talk to Hazel ever since I was involved in doing some preventive conservation work on her incredible sculpture of Emmeline Pankhurst, Our Emmeline, in the centre of Manchester. Today we discuss her creative journey and why she loves telling stories in bronze. Join us for this lively chat and to look at examples of Hazel's work and read the transcription of the interview, go to www.sculpturevulture.co.uk/hazelreeves/ Sample of Interview (Transcription) Lucy: Today, I thought I'd kick off our chat by asking when she first felt drawn to creating sculpture? Hazel: Well, I think you have to go back to when I was younger and I was desperate to go to art school and my parents said, ‘No!' And so, I sort of forgot about that artistic career for many years. Then I was in the Dominican Republic working with the UN on women's rights and I suddenly got back in touch with all the things I was passionate about: music, drumming, dancing, arts. When I came home, it just came to me that I was going to be a portrait sculptor, which was quite bizarre because I'd never actually done any sculpting nor any portraits, but it's the only time in my life I've actually suddenly realized I had a calling. Lucy: Did your parents have nothing to do with the arts? Was it very alien to them? Is that why they discouraged it or was it that it wasn't a proper job? Hazel: Oh, all of the above. According to my mum, art is a luxury and you only did arts if you couldn't do anything else. My eldest sister was already at art school and I think they were also worried about having two penniless artists in the family. So it was like, "No, you're more academic. You could go off and go to college." And so it was many years later that actually I rediscovered that this is what I should always have been doing. This is my journey and I wouldn't be the sculptor I am now if I hadn't been on that journey. Lucy: So it definitely was something that came to...you'd had to sort of squash it down for quite a long time. I wonder what it was about the Dominican Republic that brought it all to the forefront of your mind. Is it the environment there? Is it a creative place? Hazel: It's a very creative place. I really got into the Afro-Dominican folkloric scene there. That's very much about their music and the dance but it was also a very vibrant place, a very creative place, a very musical place. Also, you're completely out of your normal environment. Making that transition from the UK to that sort of country, where there is deep poverty in some places, but also working with the UN was a tremendous experience. It was particularly the nightlife and the nights out dancing that just really sort of shook my whole system up. It was like, ah, yeah, I'm actually not somebody to be sitting at a desk. Get your free novel from https://sculpturevulture.co.uk/a-rarer-gift-than-gold/ where sculpture is always at the heart of the story.

In this week's episode, we interview two Afro-Dominican chefs whose mission is to help make including vegan options into your diet easier, fun, and affordable all with a Latino twist. Through their business, Coco Verde Vegan, they make every meal count while not straying too far away from the flavors and roots they grew up with. Rate, Review, and Share Like this show? Please leave a rating and review on iTunes. Share this episode with your fellow gardeners and foodies! Resources for the Episode Coco Verde Vegan Website Coco Verde Vegan Instagram Coco Verde Vegan Twitter Coco Verde Vegan LinkedIn --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/afrobeets/message

Afro-Dominican portrait, dance and fine art photographer, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, reflects on his career as a dancer and its impact on his photography.

Blackness within the Dominican Republic: In our special "Dominican Independence Day" episode, Nicole Pozo and I explore what it means to be an Afro-Dominican. We explore our experiences with blackness in DR and within our families. Nicole, a recent Dominican immigrant, also speaks about her journey of discovering & embracing her blackness and how migrating here contributed to it. In this episode, we celebrate our Dominican identity while simultaneously acknowledging how our country can improve & reach it's highest potential.

The musical genres most people associate with the Dominican Republic are merengue and bachata. Yet, there's another set of rhythms that are essential to the spirit of the country, and that's Afro-Dominican roots music. That's where the band Yasser Tejeda & Palotré come in. They blend some of the country's black roots rhythms like palo, salve and sarandunga, with jazz and rock to bring a new spin to local sounds—and to reimagine what it means to be Dominican. In this segment of "How I Made It," the band's frontman Yasser Tejeda walks us through the inspiration behind their latest album "Kijombo," and the making of the single "Amor Arrayano," which is all about love across the Dominican-Haitian border.

In honor of Black History Month, this episode explores the Afro-Latinidad identity and the concept of blackness in Latin America. Tune in I speak about my journey towards embracing my blackness as an Afro-Dominican, global black solidarity, and ​the different racial narratives that exist outside of the US.

Renowned Colombian writer, Juan Gabriel Vasquez & his urban portrait of Bogota. Afro Dominican twins, Brujas of Brooklyn & their healing practices. John Jay College Immigrant Student Success Center on dreamers and undocumented students & the 2020 Census

Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer Yasser Tejada & the group Palotré combine African-rooted Dominican traditional folk styles and fuse them with r&b, church gospel, funk, jazz, and rock into a celebration of Afro-Dominican culture. They play this roots and funk fusion from their brand-new record, Kijombo, in-studio.  Watch the session here: 

We couldn’t think of a better person to kick off our first season of interviews than South Florida based Afro-Dominican freelance writer and poet Topacio Marrero.   Marrero, whose writing has been featured in places like Blavity, HuffPost, and Ain't I Latina, brings the gift of mindfulness, conscious, and authentic transformation into the lives of those who attend her workshops and/or speaking engagements.  Born and raised in Washington Heights, her writing focuses on her journey both as a parent and an Afro-Latina, exploring not only culture and identity, but also how communities can recognize and achieve their full potential.     We sat down to talk with Topacio ahead of the mid-October publication of her first book of poetry to about her childhood, Domincana-Haitian relations, and the challenges of raising a bilingual, tricultural daughter in a place like Miami. We also asked her to pay it forward and suggest someone who might not be well known, but who she thought listeners should check out.  It’s a conversation rich with insights and thoughts to continue to explore as our first season rolls on. 

Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos Garcia is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.”… Continue reading → The post Roberto Carlos Garcia – Black Maybe, Afro-Dominican Roots and Casta | Q – Haiti, the Dominican Republic and and musings on travel appeared first on Bootleg Like Jazz.

Jasminne Mendez is an Afro-Latina poet, educator and award winning author. She received her B.A. in English Literature and her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Houston. Mendez has had poetry and essays published by or forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Acentos Review, Crab Creek Review, Texas Review, La Galeria, Label Me Latino/a, Gulf Coast, Bird’s Thumb, The Rumpus and others. Her first multi-genre memoir Island of Dreams (Floricanto Press, 2013) was awarded Best Young Adult Latino Focused Book by the International Latino Book Awards in 2015. Her poetry and essays have been named finalists and honorable mention for several awards including the Rose Metal Press Chapbook prize and the Barry Lopez Creative Non-Fiction prize. Recently she won the Cogswell College Magazine Poetry Prize judged by Major Jackson. She is the co-founder of Tintero Projects: A Reading & Writing Workshop Series, an organization that seeks to build and promote emerging and established Latinx writers in Houston. She is a 2017 Canto Mundo Fellow and an MFA candidate in the creative writing program at the Rainier Writer's Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. … Continue reading → The post Jasminne Mendez – dicusses her new book, “Night Blooming Jasmin(n)e”, Afro-Dominican roots and Journey with Scleroderma and Lupus appeared first on Bootleg Like Jazz.

Born and raised in New York City to Afro-Dominican parents, Suhaly Bautista-Carolina has designed a career centered on harnessing the collective power of communities through the arts. Over the past 10 years, she has served as a social justice educator, youth advocate, and community organizer both in the U.S. and throughout Latin America. Suhaly has worked in various capacities with organizations such as the Brooklyn Museum, Creative Time, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), ArtBuilt, and the Laundromat Project. In 2015, Suhaly was a panelist at ArtPrize7's "Reflecting the Times: Arts & Activism" alongside Dread Scott and Arts.Black. She is also a 2016 alumna of CCCADI’s Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship and a graduate of Columbia University's Summer Teachers and Scholars Institute, "The Many Worlds of Black New York." As a curator, Suhaly has worked to design exhibitions and arts programming on behalf of organizations including Art Connects, ArtSpace, and Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership’s “Black Artstory Month.” Her photographic documents and writings have been published in La Galeria Magazine, Remezcla, United Nations’ International Museum of Women and Caribbean Vistas Journal. She has enjoyed solo exhibitions at New York University (8th Floor Gallery) and La Casa Azul Bookstore and has been featured in Bustle, The Girl Mob, and mitú. Suhaly is a Weeksville Heritage Center Ambassador and serves on the Advisory Boards to Black Girl Project and More Art. She earned her Bachelor’s (B.A.) and Masters in Public Administration (MPA) degrees from NYU, where she was named one of “NYU’s 15 Most Influential Students.” Suhaly lives in Brooklyn with her wife and their daughter, Luna.

In a special series for Crooked Conversations, contributors Julissa Arce and Grace Parra explore and celebrate the Latinx experience in the United States in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. In the first of four conversations, the hosts discuss the history of Latinos in the US and talk to Columbia University professor Ed Morales about the words that Latin-Americans use to define themselves. Then they are joined by spoken word artist Danyeli Rodriguez Del Orbe who shares her experience growing up Afro-Dominican in New York.

In the 1930s, infamous Dominican dictator Rafael Truillo ordered the burning of the country’s palos drums, hoping to erase the powerful vestiges of African culture in the Dominican Republic. Luckily for us, the breakneck, trance-inducing sound of palos still reverberates at Afro-syncretic religious parties across the Caribbean nation almost a century later. This week, Afropop revisits the home of styles such as merengue and bachata, but this time we’ll be looking towards the most deeply African side of Dominican music—little known outside of the island. Afro-Dominican music is a secret treasure, filled with virtuosic drumming styles, heart-stopping grooves, and mystic dance parties. We’ll listen to traditional genres like palos, salve, and gaga, a uniquely Dominican take on rara music from neighboring Haiti. Throughout, we’ll be looking at artists who have drawn on Afro-Dominican styles to make infectious pop music, from wizened veterans of the folklore movement such as Luis Dias, to a host of hip young bands who use Afro-inspired rock, reggae and hip-hop to redefine what it means to be Dominican. We’ll also check out the Afro-Dominican scene in New York City—home to more than a half-million Dominicans—where we’ll find a Dominican gaga group in Brooklyn that is mending cultural fences at a weekly Haitian celebration. Produced by Marlon Bishop. Follow Afropop Worldwide on Facebook at www.facebook.com/afropop, on Instagram @afropopworldwide and on Twitter @afropopww. Subscribe to the Afropop Worldwide newsletter at www.afropop.org/newsletter/ [APWW #579] Distributed 8/10/2017

Welcome back to Therapy Chat! In this first episode of 2024 I'm so happy to bring you this interview recorded this past Fall, with Dr. Mariel Buqué, author of the new book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. We discussed intergenerational patterns of trauma, legacy burdens that were carried by our ancestors and are held in our bodies, showing up as patterns of tension, pain and illness. Tune in to our conversation and learn how you can break the cycles of those who came before you and make things better for the generations that follow you through time.Dr. Mariel Buqué is an Afro-Dominican psychologist. She received her doctorate in counseling psychology from Columbia University, where she also trained as a fellow in holistic mental health. She is a world-renowned intergenerational trauma expert and the author of the book Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Her clinical framework is holistic and infuses ancient and indigenous healing practices into a modern, comprehensive therapeutic approach.Follow Dr. Buqué on social media @dr.marielbuqueVisit Dr. Mariel Buqué's website: https://www.drmarielbuque.com/Find Dr. Buqué's book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma on AmazonJoin my e-mail list to learn what's coming up in 2024 with Therapy Chat and Trauma Therapist Network and get my free PDF 5 Common Mistakes People Make When Searching For A Trauma Therapist here!We are accepting new clients in my therapy practice (for those located in Maryland). Learn more via our website: https://bahealing.com Find a trauma therapist near you via https://traumatherapistnetwork.com ! We believe that trauma is real, healing is possible and help is available at Trauma Therapist Network. Check out these great learning opportunities through our friends at the Academy of Therapy Wisdom:Working With Complex Trauma: Innovative Approaches for Restoring Mind-Body Integration with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and Linda Thai, LMSW. The Neurobiology of Feeling Safe - Working With Boundaries Inside and Out with Jules Taylor Shore, LPC, LMFT, SEPNeurobiology with Heart - Partnering With Your Client's Brain to Make Sessions Easier and Deeper - with Jules Taylor Shore, LPC, LMFT, SEP  Living With the Legacy Of Loss - A Somatic Approach for Working With Grief with Dr. Janina Fisher Thank you to TherapyNotes for sponsoring this week's episode! TherapyNotes makes billing, scheduling,notetaking, and telehealth incredibly easy. And now, for all you prescribers out there, TherapyNotes is proudly introducing E-prescribe! Try it today with no strings attached, and see why everyone is switching toTherapyNotes, now featuring E-prescribe! Use promo code “chat” at www.therapynotes.com to receive 2 FREE months of TherapyNotes!!Find my most frequently recommended resources for learning about trauma here – includes recommended books and trainings.Love Therapy Chat? Leave a rating and review, and subscribe where you listen to your podcasts! Thank you!Podcast produced by Pete Bailey – https://petebailey.net/audioAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy