My Work

Our parents are the first people to give us anything. This is not meant as a heartfelt platitude. Just as we say life can be taken, it is also given. The giving of life is our first gift from another human. Our parents are the first to give us many things — gifts, warm memories, love. They’re also the first to give us pain. They give us our fears, harsh memories, our traumas. They give us the flawed personalities we spend a lifetime working to improve.

This is not unique to our generation, our parents, or our society. It’s the human experience to be shaped in some way by the people around us and our parents are the first people around. We like to think we’re the arbiters of our lives and the origins of our selves, but spending decades with the same person as we grow through different life stages can mold us more deeply than our conscious efforts later can. 

I’ve found it hard to hold within me these contradicting gifts. How do you reconcile joy and suffering given side by side? With self-reflection I’ve been able to uncover the patterns in my own behavior that add empty weight to my burdens. Living with these hidden patterns is like listening to a new record, unaware it has a few scratches, and thinking the song itself is flawed. It’s not always your life, but from what mind you experience that life, that makes it harder. 

Finding and mending the scratch conjures questions. When did it happen? How did it happen? Bear with my psychoanalysis, but a lot of those scratches happen early — it’s of course, much easier to scratch something that’s still soft and moldable than rigid and guarded.

I’ve had wonderful parents. And thanks to their dutiful and near perfect parenting, one of those scratches I carry is a deep and un-resolving need to repay my parents. But that’s the point here — you’ll always be scratched when you’re soft. Even the pan you pour a cake batter into, safe and appropriate of a vessel as it is, still molds the cake.

Some of us are not so lucky to have had parents wielding a mold that is just right for us. They leave us with more scratches than are defensible, some even intentional. These children grow to suffer the deepest; it’s much harder to accept suffering when it’s given from the same hand that gave you the gift of life. 

I thought about this experience and what parallels it might have. Humans are not the only species so deeply molded in youth. Puppies are only legally allowed to be sold after 6-8 weeks of age because this is when they’re weaned off their mother’s milk. The best breeders keep their puppies longer, around 12 weeks.

While a puppy can be weaned at 6 weeks, the learning it experiences with its siblings and mother has just begun. At 5 weeks and on, they learn when a bite is deserved and when it isn’t, when to heed a growl, how to have fun without hurting their playmates — lessons that will make them better adjusted to life in dog society. From 8-11 weeks a puppy experiences the Fear Impact period — anything that frightens them can become a phobia for life. Much to Freud’s credit, even a dog’s issues can stem from youth.

Yet, some of us may never notice a suffering we experience as stemming from childhood, and maybe it doesn’t. Others of us are familiar friends with our burdens and their origins. 

It’s natural to look at our difficulties and resent their creators, but they should always be framed within the full picture of who we are. You might have anxiety, but you also have a unique sense of humor through which you see the world. You might be depressed, but your compassion and care lighten the lives of those you know. Being hyper-focused on our flaws is water on a seed, they grow and grow, only to become more overwhelming. They become the only thing visible in the frame; it’s no surprise this creates feelings of pessimism, lethargy, and self-doubt. Without a balanced view of the fight, we see ourselves as surely defeated.

I struggled to accept my own gifts of suffering as still being part of myself, not a thorn that if only removed would let my truest self come forth. I felt conflicted; how can my parents who have selflessly gifted to me also have taken from me? Yet, my parents can ask this same question of their own parents and their parents can ask their parents too. It’s knowing I was not unique in this paradox that helped me make peace with the contradictions within. We all live and have lived; whole people, individuals, lives of both beauty and pain, but lives nonetheless.

Instead of trying to surgically remove the parts of ourselves that are discolored, only substituting incisions for bruises, we can take a step back from the mirror and appreciate the body as a whole, bruises and all. Appreciate the shades of purple and blue, consider how the body heals itself as blood collects under the wound. Appreciation for even the darkest of circumstances reframes the picture beyond just the pain.

And who has never had a bruise? We are fetishists for perfection; humans have always tried to hide their flaws like a herd animal hiding its wound, fearful to be attacked or exiled. Ancient instincts do not always serve us in modern society. Now we close ourselves off to the members of our packs that can heal us. We take insult at the idea we might have hurt another or might be ourselves hurt. Instead we conceal the wound, conceal what the animalistic brain deems a weakness and struggle on, festering and risking infection. 

Certainly, living in societies means we benefit in some ways from acting as a herd, but remember that the group will never prioritize the individual’s life. It would be a danger to the group’s survival as a whole. How much are we willing to bleed silently in service of the herd? Look at your bruises, don’t hide them. You only further convince yourself that perfection is the standard from which you’ve fallen and you are uniquely flawed. Every human body can sustain a bruise. Yours are not proof of an unusually weak one. Instead, let them serve as a reminder that your body is whole, living and though some parts are bruised, others are not.

Think of all the dogs you’ve met. The majority of them will also have been burdened with needless challenges that their more pedigreed neighbors were not. Yet, are these bad dogs? Is the dog that plays a little too rough, barks a little too loud, and irrationally fears innocuous situations unlovable? There would not be 90 million dogs living in homes cross this country alone if it did. Their families make exceptions for them where needed, a walk on a route that specifically avoids a menacingly colored car or extra comforting during a thunderstorm. They go on to live happy lives within a family that loves and protects them. How many of us have not joked about switching places with a pampered family pet? 

We are given so many things by other people that never take a material form. We live through infinite generations, each one shaping the next, both for better and worse. Ugly as they might be, you are still of your bruises and they are of you. Just as we are given to, we are taken from. Just as the sculpture requires the addition of clay, it also requires the subtraction. I’ve realized our parents don’t give and take, they give a single gift with two halves; you cannot be given joy without something with which to compare it. You cannot be whole without two halves.

A dog may never be able to overcome the challenges puppyhood burdened them with. It can take years of compassion, effort, training and retraining to give them the same thing other puppies had from the start. What happens in the formative years of life becomes so entrenched in the animal that it can become indistinguishable from their very personality. The puppy can remain fed, clean, and safe from harm during puppyhood, but it can also have been burdened with a severe phobia. The puppy is given a future of both joy and suffering simultaneously. As are we. 

Put your thoughts in the comments, on Twitter, Instagram, as you like.

I am an anti-social social media user. I eagerly share my thoughts while hiding away from the actual socialization. 

I dread Twitter mentions. I just go there to talk to myself, really. Therapy’s too expensive anyway. Short thoughts transcribed and collected are attractive — it’s like a journal, but one that claps for you afterwards. And while a positive exchange is like a pat on the back, the negative is more a push to the chest. Appreciated as the former is, the latter outweighs it.

The truth is I have little faith left in the possibility of quality interactions surrounding meaningful ideas, especially online. I resent social media for many things (maliciously addictive design, one), but I especially resent the thousand banal arguments I’ve been force-fed through the feed. I can’t think of another scenario where a human would be the audience of so much uninspired spite from strangers. Yet I remain, undying optimist (fool?) that I am.

I’ve seen so many of these arguments I feel like the Jane Goodall of social media. I’ve taken my observations and tried to analyze the data — what makes this strange species act so remarkably insufferable about their ideas? The point of study. Do the motivations behind why we argue degrade the argument? The hypothesis. 

Honesty is a concept that’s been present so long in human society we don’t consider it often and we rarely reconsider it. We usually approach it the way our societies always have, making tweaks for morphing cultures and shifting moral values. It’s worth much more consideration than we give it. It’s the most fundamental aspect of any worthwhile and healthy relationship, and what is a society but a giant collection of relationships?

When we think of honesty, we think about whether you are honest with me and I with you. It’s why public figures like Donald Trump are so darkly enthralling. Most of us wouldn’t think to lie to our families and partners, let alone entire countries, so when someone does, it’s jarring and we feel compelled to right their wrongs through our outrage. 

I believe in calling liars liars — we should hold each other to a high standard of honesty. But this honesty isn’t the kind we lack most in our relationships and it isn’t even the kind that’s all that important. The best time to stop dishonesty is before it leaves the origin.

There are 2 kinds of honesty — outward and inward. He who lacks the first always lacks the second. Inward honesty, honesty with the self, is the more elusive and unpopular form of honesty, yet a practiced sense of self-honesty can change your life. It cuts past all the bullshit excuses we give ourselves for why today just isn’t a good day for the gym because I didn’t sleep long enough and…; it transforms our relationships — instead of having a rough day and picking a fight with our partner only to call it an even worse day, self-honesty gives us the awareness to recognize from where our behavior stems.

Yet it’s so, so unpopular. We don’t concern ourselves with requiring this kind of honesty from others, instead we emphasize outward honesty — don’t you dare lie to me while I’m busy lying to myself about why I’m with someone who lies to me to begin with. But I completely understand inward honesty’s unpopularity. If choosing between catching you in a lie and catching myself in a lie, I would rather be right. 

We’re so fixated with catching and punishing other people in their lies we’ve neglected the second, vital half of what honesty is. Without self-honesty, everything we do stems from undefined motivations. If I can’t be honest with myself enough to see my dislike for another person might stem from my own insecurities, what chance do I have at a genuine interaction with them? Worse yet, I lose the chance to recognize and mitigate the damage my insecurity does to my relationships. I lose the chance to develop into a higher self. 

Here’s my own outward honesty; I don’t want to hear about how some public figure is lying again and how these people I don’t know are so wrong about a thing. If it’s a crime, let it be dealt with as such. If it’s a shitty person, deal with them, too, as such. I don’t need any more proof, I know everyone’s usually lying to someone else or themselves in at least some routine way. It’s not that I’m apathetic or cynical, I wouldn’t write this if I was. I believe it’s wasted effort that would be better spent catching that dishonesty before it leaves the source.

When people have reached the level of lying to others, the shame you heap on them will rarely change them; they’ve already lied to themselves about their justifications. The effort is better spent on the self. There’s little you can do to change a dish once cooked, but changing a recipe is an art in itself. 

I avoid debates now, the difference between 2 people seeking understanding and 2 people seeking to be right is the distaste left in the aftermath. Debates are debates in name alone when both sides are motivated by anything other than truth. Instead we dress up our egotistical motivations in ideology and fight to ensure they remain pristine, or in reality, unchanged.

Yet truth is never damaged by change, only the ego is. When we argue for ego, we lose the chance to find truth and instead force a perspective on the world around us. This rigidity in mind is exactly what’s missing and what creates the beauty in the way a child interacts with the world from deep curiosity or the one-ness and emotional peace with the world someone experiencing a loss of ego under psychedelics feels.

New environments are left behind by each route we take to a goal and that route differs with our reasons for the goal. If I want to lose weight for the sake of my health or to instead feel accepted by my society, the path I take to obtain the same goal can vary immensely, even dangerously. Lack of self-honesty can cause us pain. Without cultivating a sense of self-honesty, we repeat the same mistakes, needlessly prolonging our own suffering. 

But the damage is not just done to the self. Anyone that seeks to solve a problem must first understand its reality. The farther from reality we stand, the more our accuracy shrinks. Any critique or contradiction should be welcomed, examined, and considered as a chance to see more of reality. Or are we now so frail in mind as to fear being corrupted by even hearing the disagreeable?

Information is neither good nor bad, it’s the ego that tells us new information which might render us wrong is a danger. It’s that fear of being wrong that prevents us from seeing the world more truthfully throughout our lives. The concept of a cultivated child’s mind has been considered by those dedicated to life long learning. But the quality of the child’s mind that makes it such a freeing place from which to learn is self-honesty. The child has yet to fully form his ego and retains a fluidity of ideals that allows them to hold any idea and pose any question from a place of true curiosity.

I used to be a very argumentative person, always happy to teach someone how they were wrong. More self-honesty let me see how my arguments never had the goal of understanding, but instead of self-affirming. I wanted to be right more than I wanted to learn.

I hate to think now that I would so prize my ego and feed its love of being right over the chance of understanding, of learning. I don’t want my ego affirmed, I don’t really even want my ego at all, so there are many discussions I won’t have now. Most of them, actually, I won’t have, because most of them are an egotistical tug-of-war. Yet there are few things more uniquely human than exploring the world around you through honest discussion. Replacing one with the other is like replacing Phil Collins with Ray Wilson — offensive even in theory, disastrous in practice.

Surprisingly, I’m not some enlightened being recounting my wisdoms from on high. I struggle with not telling myself micro lies like “I deserve a second donut” and “I’ll do it tomorrow” daily. I admit my shame: I, too, have an ego, and it demands the ugliest things of me. I can’t tell you how to act from a place of inward honesty, but I can tell you it’s a good idea and how I try. 

Count the number of questions you ask every time you speak, then take that number and double it. Monitor arrogance. The moment you feel pride about the argument you’re making, stop and ask more questions. Ask questions to other people, even if you think they’re wrong, and ask questions to yourself, even if you think you’re right. For now I’ll retain my anti-social social media strategy: observe from a far and flee. Even Jane Goodall eventually left the jungle, too. 

You didn’t think I would praise the virtues of honest discourse and curiosity and then not ask for your thoughts, did you? Yell in the comments, on Twitter or even Instagram if that’s your thing.

I was so honored to have this piece as my first printed work in La Yerbera by La Liga. The printed version has now long been sold out, so I wanted to share this very special work here. I wrote this for my abuela, who is a force, a life, a personality to be reckoned with. I’m so lucky to come from a line of women who spit fire and kindness all the same. What a blessing of an existence. I hope you enjoy this ode to my roots.

Cerca de la Tierra (Close to the Earth)

Mi abuela se mudó a Miami desde Cuba, an incredible and immense story all in itself, but a common enough immigrant tale. More common still, she settled in the city of Hialeah, where she’s lived for over 15 years. That house she moved into was a barren lot whose gringuito owners lamented that nothing could be grown there. For them, the soil just wasn’t fertile. 

At the intersection of common life and quiet magic stands la casita del bosque. Today, that same piece of land is a tropical forest in miniature without having changed a thing about it but its caretaker. Every square foot is hidden under cool shade from the mango y aguacate trees towering above. Potted plants line the walkways, walkways that are delicately blanketed from the gentle snow of red Poinciana flowers in late May. 

“Corre corre que te vas a caer un mango encima!” takes the place of a greeting during summer months. As a 12 year old girl who caught lagartijas and parrots like a Latina Steve Irwin, my abuela’s house was a foreign country onto itself; a place that gifted me fond memories of being from the last generation before commercials needed to encourage kids to play outside. To this day, I know there are still parts of that semi-untouched forested land that I’ve yet to walk on. Land claimed by and for the matitas rooted there.

When I wasn’t being carefully watched so as to prevent death by falling fruit (an innate abuelita power is being able to foresee your death coming from even the most innocuous situations), I was sneaking into the vine covered, seemingly 1000 year old rusting shed with a heavy, creaking door that sheltered the altares and food offerings to los santos. When one prospers, so, too, do their gods. 

Upon fleeing Cuba, mi abuela was forced to bring nothing but herself and her children. However, she did manage to sneak out her santos también. Contrary to the stereotypes, not all Cubans are Santeros — and those that aren’t have a tendency to look down on those of us that are. Previously in meager surroundings, los santos have been eating good since they moved to Hialeah.

My abuela would have you believe they are the reason this piece of land where nothing would grow has become the mysterious viejita’s verdant, hidden house on the block. As all abuelitas do, I believe she’s giving away too much credit. 

Now as an adult, I share my home with 13 plants and counting. My table is never without freshly cut flowers to reflect every season. Just as she grew the fruit trees that stand almost protectively around her home, my abuela grew in me a love and fascination with nature. Like an estranged family member only to be visited on occasion, nature has never been something we lock outside. My abuela taught me to bring the Earth inside in more ways than one.

Cerca de la Tierra

Mi abuela se mudó de Cuba a Miami, un historia increíble y inmensa, pero un historia común también. Mas común todavía, ella se estableció en la ciudad de Hialeah, donde ella ha vivido por 15 años. La casa en donde ella se mudó estaba en el medio de un pedacito de tierra completamente basio, dueños gringuito lamentandan que nada podría crecer alli. Para ellos, la tierra simplemente fue estéril.

Donde el intersección de la vida común conoce al mágica callada se sientes la casita del bosque. Hoy esa misma pedazo de tierra es un bosque en miniatura sin cambiar ni una cosa pero su curador. Cada pulgada esta escondido debajo la sombra fresca de los arboles de mango y aguacate encumbrado. Matas en macetas alinean las pasarelas, pasarelas que están cubierto con nieve delicado de los Flamboyan flores rojos in las ultimas semanas de Mayo. El saludo “Hola princesa” se convierte a “Corre corre que un mago te vas a caer encima!” durante el verano.

Como un niña de 12 años que atrapo lagartijas y loros como un Steve Irwin Latina, la casa de mi abuela fue un país extrañero; un lugar que me regalo memorias lindas de ser de la última generación antes de comerciales que tenían que incentivar a los niños a jugar afuera. Hasta esta día, yo se que hay partes de esa casi-intacto tierra boscosa que yo no he puesto un pie sobre. Tierra reclamada por y para las matitas arraigadas alli.

Cuando no estaban velando me cuidadosamente para prevenir la muerte por la caída de fruta (un capacidad innate de las abuelas es preve tu muerte incluso de los situaciones más inocuos), me estaba metiendo en el cobertizo cubierto de oxida y escondido debajo viñas, apareciendo 1000 años. Detrás de su puerta pesado y crujiente estaban los altares lleno de comida y ofrendas a los santos. Cuando uno prospera, sus dioses también prosperan.

Al huir de Cuba, mi abuela fue forzada a traer solamente ella y sus hijas. Sin embargo, ella alcanzo a escabullir su santos también. Al contrario a los esterotipos, todos los Cubanos no son santeros — y los que no son tienen la tendencia de virar la nariz a los que son. Anteriormente en un escaso entorno, los santos ya están comiendo bien desde que se mudaron a Hialeah.

Mi abuela te haría creer que los santos son la razón que este pedacito de tierra donde nada podría crecer ya se ha transformado a la casita escondida detrás de el verdor, misterioso y abundante. Pero como las abuelitas hacen, yo creo que ella estas regalando demasiado crédito.

Ahora como una adulta, yo comparto mi casa con 13 matas y contando. Mi mesa jamas esta sin flores frescas para reflejar cada temporada. En la misma forma que ella cultivo los arboles de frutas que ahora se paran casi como protectores de su casa, mi abuela cultivo en mi una fascinación y amor de la naturaleza. La naturaleza nunca fue algo que dejamos afuera, como un miembro extraño de la familia que sólo visitamos ocasionalmente. Abuelita me enseño a traer la tierra adentro en más de una forma.

This was an important piece for me to write; I wanted to give my grandma something that could put the feelings of gratitude for our shared love of la naturaleza into words, and that’s what this is.

After it was published I brought by a copy of the magazine and we sat in her living room, surrounded by the tiny jungle she cultivated from barren sand in the middle of urban Hialeah. I read her this essay and, woman of few words as she is, all I needed to see was the pleased half-smile on her profile as she looked out the tall windows over her tiny jungle.

Salomé

*This essay get you thinking about your own abuela? You might enjoy my photos and essay from my trip to find family in Cuba. Interested in learning about one of the most significant threats to la naturaleza in Latin America today? Check out my essay on, Paying for our Own Destruction.

This essay originally published by La Liga is now home here at LunaGemme. Please share your thoughts and feelings with me in the comments or on social media.

Paying for Our Own Destruction

                               A Guarani woman (Photo courtesy of Sarah Shenker/Survival)

Disclaimer: If you feel that for some reason your situation does not allow you to change any aspect of your diet, even if that is simply a vegan Monday, then use this essay for its educational value to help those who can change their diets and store this knowledge for the day you might be in a situation where you too can change your diet. This statement is not meant to erase the existence of poor vegans, those vegans living in food deserts and all the others who despite a popular narrative to the contrary, still eat with ethics in mind.

Veganism calls to mind white people with dreadlocks who spend their trust fund at Whole Foods and thousands on a trip to India to discover the virtues of poverty. These people do exist, but just as white women are unfairly often the face of feminism, just as white men have become synonymous with rock music, we know that a lack of representation does not mean a lack of contribution.

 The idea that something is not “for” your race or ethnicity is a tool of limitation. One that, once broken down, allows for the creation of a beautiful and unique interpretation of something that previously was lacking, something that was smaller before you took a piece of it, molded it and added your own vision.

Reasons such as environmental destruction, health, and animal welfare are relevant to and can be sympathized with by all identities. To say otherwise is to grossly underestimate a human’s capacity for care. There exists an extensive list of the ways in which animal agriculture exploits not only animals but humans as well, however, I will focus on only one of these ills now: the violation of indigenous rights.

To fill the demand for meat, Latin America is being forced to exploit its own resources once again. While the destruction of one of Latin America’s most precious resources is tragic in and of itself in addition to the loss of animal habitat that leads to extinct species as well as the loss of an important environmental balancing mechanism that mitigates climate change, there is yet another loss in this situation, that of human life.

 

            Vegan Cuban-inspired sweet potato and platanos maduros bowl

Screaming into the void of consumer demand, many distinct indigenous groups have already organized and continue to speak out against the destruction of their homes for pastureland. Consumer demand has placed the value of meat and milk before that of indigenous peoples lives. Both the Yukpa in Venezuela and the Guarani in Brazil have detailed the violence they’ve experienced at the hands of cattle ranchers, who have gone so far as to murder indigenous people on contested land. Murders that go largely uninvestigated and unpunished. Damiana, the wife of the Chief of a tribe of the Guarani people, lost her husband as well as her three sons all to what has been dismissed as “roadside collisions” with the same cattle ranchers encroaching on their ancestral lands.

Activists have called for companies like Starbucks and universities like Harvard to divest, that is, to end their monetary relationship with harmful practices. We cannot hold these businesses to a higher ethical standard than we hold ourselves as individuals in everyday life. For the same reasons we sought divestment from these companies, we must divest our own money from companies and practices that are not in line with our own beliefs.

The act of protest has the power to influence, but only in so much as it controls the flow of money. A protest is effective only when it presents a possible loss of income; this is the point at which negotiation begins. In a capitalist society, money often weighs more than words and acts faster than law. Why then, would we ignore our most constant and accessible form of protest? The mundane act of grocery shopping is the single most politically powerful tool available to the working class, as with every purchase, support is either extended or rescinded. We already utilize this power in responding to new flavors, distasteful advertising, and bigoted CEOs; now is a more crucial time than ever to divest our support for products that are born out of exploitation and cruelty.

As activists and ethically minded people, we cannot ignore our role as consumers whose purchasing choices have consequences. Animal agriculture is a decrepit means of feeding ourselves, propped up by all the ancient methods of unconscious consumerism and violence that we have no choice but to move away from or face the consequences of a world prioritizing cheap perks built on a chain of absolute cruelty. We need to do better; if that means just one meat-free day a week, then repurpose the old business adage and remember, every dollar counts.

Eating vegetarian in staying with family in Cuba

Do you have any tips for cutting down on our consumption of animal products? What do you think is the best way to fight against the usurping of indigenous lands from afar? If you’re in a rough position of your own and unable to make any ethically minded changes, help share this article with others who can!

Salomé

*If you like my work centered around Latin America, you’ll enjoy my photos and essay from my trip to find family in Cuba.*

Sources & Further Reading

• Venezuelan Indigenous Arrive in Caracas to Demand Land Rights

• Brazil's Indigenous Tribes Are Being Hunted by Murderous Cattle Ranchers