La Trenza del Barrio

I'm not sure when it happened. I think it was a progression of the happenings of life throughout the years. This was my biggest lesson of learning how to not take anything for granted. My high tolerance for pain, and it's pretty high, came from when I lost my ability to walk. Yeah. I did. I lost my ability to walk. Degenerative disc disease. Whatever that is.  ¡ Pinche espina!  ...I say that with love. Nine years ago, I had back surgery. Has something ever been taken away from you that you so desperately wanted to have back? I had to relearn how to do it all over again. My goal was to dance again. I love to dance. And I did! You know, I used to be a runner, too. I ran all the time; I loved it. I miss it. Fast forward to 2017 when I became too big of a burden.  That is when the tables turned. He cut off the service to my phone on the day of my spinal injection. I don't blame him though. The timing was not great for me. I mean, who does that? But the faster

When I tell people that I grew up at the dump, people look at me in shock and bewilderment. It's true though. At the end of our driveway was the entrance to the National Serve-All landfill. My sister and I used to pick off and eat wild berries from the trees that were the natural fence which separated our drive from the landfill's man-made entryway to the dumping area where the trucks would gather to take their collections of trash each week. Needless to say, I came from humble beginnings. Can you believe I honestly thought that everyone ate tortillas  and menudo  until I learned that not everyone did? My parents used to be Mexican-American migrant workers who sought the American dream just like anyone else longing to have a chance at fulfilling dreams that didn't even seem possible. So much so, that it was up to me to decide that I would learn how to speak, read, and write Spanish and learn about traditions that I did not grow up with. Through my parents' own l

“Fuck you.”  These two words were the deal breaker for me. You can’t take it back after you say it either. And if someone is unwilling to communicate at a later time, you reach an impasse. An understanding cannot be made no matter how much you want to try to make it work. This is a main reason I didn’t go back. I grew up seeing the destruction of what my parents did to each other and I knew that I did not want that for my marriage. It had nothing to do with me. The cycle of abuse that he endured surely taught him that it was acceptable to talk to a person he “loved” in that manner. It becomes an addiction or many addictions in his case, in various forms to treat people like that, too. Whatever healing does not take place, you carry it with you and at any point in time, it can become unleashed. So let me ask you, are you going to hold it against someone for that? Why? It is only when a person is ready to do the work on themselves that a person can begin to heal the layers.

You know, sometimes I think my hair has a life and mind of its own. It decides what it wants to look like each day. It disregards the way I want it to look. It challenges the way I style it. It just does what it wants to do. It always has the last say in everything I do to it.  ¡ Cabrona! When I was a little girl, my mother would braid my hair all the time. She was always so creative with my long beautiful locks. She would create regular braids, pigtail braids, french braids, braids with fluorescent shoelaces in them, with beautiful ribbons, and pretty bows. And then I remember those painful plastic ball hair ties, where if you tied it too tight, the ball would snap on your hand if you didn't fasten it fast enough and it would hurt so bad. Good times, good times. BUT! I was so cute and stylish as a kid.  As I look back, I think about all of the ways my hair has been such a huge influence in my life. My hair has some pretty deep secrets. It's been almost every