Category: Storytelling
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365 Days and no regrets later
A year ago I left behind everything I worked so hard to build. A 6-figure salary. A loving community. A stellar professional reputation. The apartment I’d made a home. The independence. The ‘Rich Tia’ status. That one might hurt the most. Not because of the money. Because the money opened opportunities to share some of…
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Why I’ve been MIA…
First Gen Latina Sabbatical Travels #4.5 This blog/substack started as a space to develop my writing voice and dabble in topics that matter to me personally without waiting for approval. Or being afraid to make mistakes. I want it to stay that way. But I haven’t posted the final installment of my First Gen Latina…
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Mexico City, mi amor
The first time I visited la Ciudad de México, I was nervous. It was July 2017 and all the news reports and state department advisories stressed extreme caution when traveling to México – of course I worried. It’s a poorly kept secret that drug cartels run big chunks of the country and political corruption has…
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Peru: The spiritual journey and gastronomic experience
Lima, Cusco, Mexico City, and Oaxaca, in that order. I wish I could tell you I made these travel decisions practically. That I followed a set of rules and did some kind of process of elimination to land on the right thing. But the truth is I didn’t. I made every decision based on instinct…
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Setting the stage for an Intentional Sabbatical
A Sabbatical is something you do with intention. After making the decision to take time off from work, there were a lot of choices I needed to make about what that would look like, but before I could structure it logistically, I had to get clear on a few things. First, why was this the right…
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That One Time a First Gen Latina Took a Sabbatical
In 2025, I went on Sabbatical. This isn’t a traditional “Sabbatical”. I don’t have a job to go back to and my employer is not funding any portion of this because… I’m not going back to work for them. In many white-collar professions, particularly academic ones, there are provisions built into your contract that permit…
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The Power of the Specific Story: Benito’s Super Bowl Moment
As soon as Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio walked onto the field last night with the name Ocasio splattered across the back of his jersey, I knew this was going to be deep and demanded my full focus. Ocasio is a choice. In most Latino traditions, the second last name refers to the maternal parent and…
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Cerando Circulo
Wow. I’ve been here before. Literally. Last week I tried to create a new blog website only to find that I already had one. With an existing blog post. To say I was shocked feels like an understatement. How did I forget I had already been down this road? To top it all off, the…
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