In this episode:
There’s a profound mix of beauty and pain in the narrative of my family, from my grandmother’s sacrifices of selling lottery tickets to avoid returning to an abuser’s home to the cultural tradition of silence that influenced my own journey in mental health. Honoring the choices of our women before me and discerning what to carry forward, this episode extends a heartfelt message of love and well-being to all who listen, and sets the stage for an insightful exploration of the book “It Didn’t Start With You,” for those eager to understand the profound impact of intergenerational trauma on our lives.
Resources:
Six-Week Writing to Heal Program – Starts June 3rd!
Book Study: It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn
Transcript:
00:02 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, it is Mother’s Day in the US, which means it is a hard day for a whole lot of people on this planet. And this episode is just me talking my randomness per usual. But I wanted to share a little bit of what I do know of my grandmother’s slash mother’s story, because what mother’s day is a really complicated holiday for me too. Um. So first I’ll give heads up in terms of listening to this episode, that there will be talk of intimate partner violence and there will be talk of pregnancy loss and, obviously, by nature of this show, addiction. But I did want to kind of give you that heads up on some of the topics that are going to come up with regard to today’s recording. But today I’m choosing to practice gratitude that is wrapped up in the belief and the reminder that multiple things can be true at one time. Right. And so in this recovery journey, I’ve learned that there can be a lot of beauty and I’ve learned that there can be a lot of pain, and I’ve learned that nothing is just good and nothing is just bad. Right, like, life is not that simple. Things are not black or white. So I really want to kind of focus on that energy today as I tell a little bit of the story of, again, what I know of my grandmother’s story, how it connects to my mother’s story and then my own, because again, there’s a lot that I’ve learned, there’s a lot that’s been passed down.
01:30
I have a book study coming up in June for the book. It Didn’t Start With you, right, and this is a testament to that. It didn’t start with you, it didn’t start with me. If you want to sign up for that book study, check it out on bottomlistsobercom. But again, here is just a little bit of my story, well, really my grandma’s story, just to give a sense of where all the years of me having my addiction be kept like a secret came from.
01:58
So my grandmother her name was Sofia, sofia Vargas, if you notice. Well, sofia Rojas Vargas. If you notice my sister’s namejas Vargas, if you notice, my sister’s name is also Sophia. So Sophia is a popular name in my family thanks to my grandmother, and my grandmother was actually born like way back 1902. And, to give you context, I’m 39 years old, so I’m talking about a grandmother that was born in 1902, but my grandmother had my mom late. My mom is one of, like her, last kids and then I’m my mom’s last kid and my mom, you know, she was 45 when I was born. So yeah, like there’s a huge age gap between, like I don’t even know how old my grandmother was when I was born. Just to give you context, or like if I were to have a child, you know my mom is already 85 years old. So we just have big age gaps in this family.
02:42
So, anyway, my grandmother was born in Nicaragua and the year was probably about 1916. But there was a Costa Rican man who went into Nicaragua and he basically charmed her, romanced her and pulled her away from the safety net of her family, right, so her family of origin was erased and taken out of the picture. At this point, when he brings her to the Costa Rican border, he lies to border officials there and says that this is his daughter and of course, again, we’re talking 1916. They’re not like scanning passports to check and verify papers, right, like they basically just have to take you for whatever you say. And it’s my understanding that my grandmother’s husband was also pretty wealthy. So you know, and of course, in the colorist world of my family’s nature, you know, my mom often tells a story about how he had blue eyes, like that was supposed to be, some like winning special feature, like he was an abusive asshole, but he had blue eyes. When I say two things can be true, that’s not the type of two things that can be true that I care to talk about, but just pointing that out. So he takes her, moves her into Costa Rica, marries her when she’s a teenager again about 14, 15, at most 16 years old and very quickly, from what I understand, the whole situation changes, right. So he may have been charming when he appeared in Nicaragua, but in Costa Rica that totally changed. And so he did become abusive, physically abusive and verbally abusive towards my grandmother, and she was so young and she didn’t have any way to reach out back to her family to get help. She was already married off. They were in different countries.
04:23
And to kind of give you a sense of where the world was right, like if we’re talking about the years like 1916 to 1920-ish that time period, let’s remember that the world was in World War I let’s remember that in the United States women didn’t even have the right to vote. So what do you think a woman in Latin America was going to have the right to do, right? So just to give you some context there, at this time period again, women in the United States couldn’t even get a credit card without their husband until the 1970s. So to give you context in terms of where things were in Latin America also, costa Rica to this day is officially a Catholic nation, which means that there’s limited I mean there is access to birth control now. Back then there wasn’t. And also things like abortion not happening legally then, not happening legally now. So again, women’s rights basically don’t exist at this time.
05:16
So if you are being abused by your spouse, not much is happening for you in terms of protection and so, honestly, what is the easiest way to get through it? It’s to be quiet, right, cross your fingers and hope the period passes and that you survive, right? The only time that my grandmother got breaks from this abuse was when she was pregnant, and again she got pregnant quite a bit and pretty quickly. She was young. There was no access to birth control, so she had I want to say it was about four kids three kids in four years. She gave birth, three kids in four years, um, and so again, every time that she was pregnant she had the sense of safety of oh, he’s not hitting me right now, but even then it’s like you know, if he put his hand to caress her, you know there’s that immediate, like jarring reaction, because you are so used to being hit by someone that you know when you suddenly see that hand come out at you you’re going to flinch. And so that was her experience. Now, by the time she had her third child, which is my Tio Carlos, he was a baby, she, and she, for whatever reason, finally was growing sick of this. Right, like you, can only take so much after a while.
06:34
My grandfather would have a habit of going to the local taverna, which is a bar. Basically it would be a Friday night routine. Him all the other like husbands in the neighborhood would just go and get drunk and probably go home, and I don’t want to say that all of them would go home and beat their wives. But he did right. And so you know there was just this pattern of the kids would go to bed, hide hope it wasn’t them, because it was basically whoever was up and around when he got home. They were going to get it, and so typically it was her. The kids were already asleep and there’s just this one point that my mom says that my grandmother just got sick of it and over it, and she was just like I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do, like I might go and starve, I might have to be out on the streets, but anything is better than than this. Right, and again, she had a baby with her, an infant.
07:25
And so it was one Friday, right before he went to go to the bar, to the taverna, that my grandmother approached him, and this was the first time she ever spoke up for herself. And she was like you can go drink, but me and the kids we’re not going to be here when you get back. And so, from what I’ve gathered, his response was like really Like you think you’re going to leave me. You know, he wanted to point out that he had money. He wanted to point out that he had money. He wanted to point out that she had all these kids, right, what was she going to do? He basically said that she was going to have to go be a puta in the streets Puta means prostitute that she was going to have to go prostitute herself. And he was like you’re trying to avoid my hands, but imagine all the other men’s hands that are going to come across you now that you’re putting yourself in this vulnerable situation, and then he’s like you’re going to be back here before you know it, like you have no money, you have nothing. You know again, she’s a woman with little rights. So he was very confident that she was going to come back and she, just she left To fast forward a little bit. She never went back.
08:31
Yes, they absolutely lived with massive economic insecurity, and so from that time period again, my mom wasn’t born yet, my mom didn’t come till 1939. And basically what my grandmother did? She just started selling lottery tickets and so she would move from city to city, province to province with all her kids. As the kids got old enough, my mother’s big sister, marujenia, she became in charge of, just like taking care of them. So my grandmother would leave, leave all the kids with the biggest sister, and she would go work and then bring money back to wherever they were living. So again, they lived in all different parts of Costa Rica. My mom remembers there were times that there was just one bed for multiple kids and that was how they lived and they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. There was no such thing as government assistance. I mean, there still really isn’t any such thing as government assistance in Costa Rica. There’s nationalized healthcare but not like nationalized access to food. You know there’s not nationalized access to shelter if you are a woman or a survivor of intimate partner violence.
09:37
And so my grandmother, from my grandmother, my mom, did learn to not take physical abuse from men, and so my mom very proudly talks about how she would never let as my mom would say, she’ll never let any son of a bitch hit her. So my mom definitely learned that. But the other thing that she learned from my grandma again was this we just stay quiet and keep moving forward. We stay quiet and we move forward. We stay quiet and we work hard. We hustle hard, but we stay quiet. Right, it had to have been incredibly difficult for my grandmother to have kids and more kids, like as she’s sick, maybe had a romance right and then got pregnant and she had to have the kid Right. There’s probably a lot of mental anguish there with the food insecurity and the insecurity of not having a steady home or place to live, but we don’t know that. That’s never been documented, that’s never been verbally said. I’m just making these assumptions because I’m like shit. If I had multiple kids and I didn’t have a place to live, I would be freaking out personally, right.
10:52
And so what I do know, from lack of it being stated, is that my grandmother didn’t talk about anything emotional. She didn’t have anybody to confide in in terms of, you know, her worries and her stress, and so my mom absolutely carried that with her, especially when she came to the United States. I absolutely carried that with her, especially when she came to the United States. By the time my mom came to the United States, typically in these stores called botanicas, which is eventually the type of store that my parents established. So in this botanica, right again, my mom was just by herself in this country. She was staying with her older sister, not the one that took care of them, but a different older sister. Again, there was a lot of them, sister, not the one that took care of them, but a different older sister. Again, there was a lot of them. And, um, you know, no matter what, my mom never talked about anything, right. And so I remember, as time passed and I was eventually born, the only time that I ever heard my mother cry was when my grandmother died, and that was when I was about five years old, so before that, after that, I really never saw my mother crying. She never, ever talked about emotions.
12:21
Now again, putting it in context, this makes sense If you are an immigrant in a country that typically does not like immigrants, right, if you are not here legally, you don’t necessarily need to be talking about your struggles and then trying to seek help. Because where was she going to seek the help from? Right, like, let’s be honest, there really was nowhere for my mother to go in terms of, like letting out her pain. Right when my mother and my father were together in the younger parts of their relationship, there were definitely things that my father did that were not far from angelic behavior. And though my father never laid his hands on my mom, right, like, he definitely had his little good times quote unquote and would sometimes leave on a Friday and not come back till Sunday. Did my mother ever speak up or complain about that to him? No, she didn’t, because she knew that to cause an uproar with my dad would have left her with no place to go Right, and by that time she had already had my sister. So I say this to recognize that the silence that my grandmother had the silence that my mother had. They had functions at that time. Right, staying quiet guaranteed them a place to live. Staying quiet guaranteed my mother access to the United States. Right, staying quiet for my grandmother probably reduced the amount of beatings that she got from her ex-husband. Right, and in my mom’s case, again, staying quiet just gave her shelter, food and a partner at a time when she needed that kind of support.
14:00
So by the time I’m born in the mid 1980s here I am right, at that point my dad had settled down because he was already an older man. I mean, my mom was 45 when I was born, so my dad was 57. So I mean, at that age, you know, he’s slowing down, so he’s not really going out and partying. Being Mr Good time, being Mr Flirt, being Mr Womanizer, like those days are done for him. But right, we still didn’t talk about feelings.
14:27
And so for me, I very vividly remember my memories, like if I were to cry as a child you know in Spanish being told you know, stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about. Right, and I’m sure many of you listening to this can probably resonate with this, regardless of what your family’s culture is. But that whole stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about that very quickly told me to try to stuff my feelings in, yeah, or you know, for me, right, food was my first source of comfort when, say, my mother wasn’t the most nurturing person, right, and so I learned, well, if I couldn’t talk about things, I could eat, right, and so those were some of the things that started happening with me. I remember vividly as a teen. And here’s the thing teens’ dopamine levels are like very low. So I understand this now.
15:15
But you know, teenagers, teenagers, boredom is like a death sentence to a teenager, and I mean, I know this from being a teacher, but there’s like actual science behind this. Like dopamine levels are lower in teenagers. So when they are bored, it’s like incredibly painful for them, like it’s just like hell on earth. And so think about it, like when you first get sober, if you experienced anhedonia, I feel like that’s probably what it’s like to be a teenager who is bored, and that would happen to me. And when I got bored like that, I would actually start crying.
15:46
And you know my parents would be like what the hell are you crying about? And they couldn’t connect my sadness or my feelings. They couldn’t make sense of them, not connect to them. But they couldn’t make sense of it because for them I mean, my father was a Cuban refugee and my mother, again, like she was a kid, going from home to home, city to city, sharing a bed with multiple siblings, right, and to them they’re like, what the hell are you sad about? Like you have a stable house, you have your own bedroom, you have food, you have clothes, you don’t lack for anything. Why are you crying? Right, Like that was basically what my parents were like. Their minds were boggled with. Like why the hell are you crying?
16:25
And so, again, I was taught to just keep the feelings to myself, like all right, well, if I’m crying, if I’m letting this stuff out and my parents say this to me, then maybe I need to just be quiet. But here’s the thing when I started to drink and the drinking became problematic, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t think that I did, because I believed that I was just supposed to keep everything quiet into myself. And here’s the thing I needed to differentiate my situation from the situation that my mother was in to the situation that my grandmother was in, because I was born here in the US. I’m an American citizen. By the time my drinking had become a problem, I was also a teacher with benefits, so I easily could have gone to the doctor. I easily could have gone to a therapist. There are lots of resources at my disposal that I just simply didn’t feel safe going to because of the fact that I thought I had to keep things quiet. Right Again, alcohol abuse and drug abuse in my family is nothing new.
17:29
There’s lots of family members that I have seen with issues with alcohol or drug use, but nobody talks about it Not in depth. At most they’re just called un borracho. They’re depth. At most they’re just called, you know, they’re called drunk or they’re called lazy bagel and that’s that. But there’s no conversation about, yeah, like what, what could have caused this? How, how could we get this person help? There’s just the labeling of the person and the accepting that they are how they are and there’s like no hope for them, right? So again, I didn’t want to talk and then be labeled in that manner, right?
17:59
But the game changer for me was when I finally realized that the silence was deadly, when I realized that the silence was suffocating me and that I needed to speak, that I needed to open my mouth in order to save my life, because recovering from addiction you don’t do it alone. It’s very hard to recover by yourself. Right and again, if I looked at my life in context for me to speak, no one was going to physically come and hurt me for openly stating that I was struggling with an addiction to alcohol. But I I didn’t understand that, I just knew that I had to be quiet. So once I finally started opening my mouth, right when I finally quit drinking, that made a huge difference, because then I became willing to do whatever I needed to do in order to get sober. If I was willing to say I am struggling with this to a doctor, then I can get access to medical treatment right. If I was willing to say I am struggling with this to a doctor, then I can get access to medical treatment right. If I am willing to say to other human beings this is my struggle, then I have the opportunity to connect with other human beings and get that emotional support and not feel alone and not feel isolated and break down the shame that comes with years of addiction. Break down the shame that comes with years of addiction.
19:21
But I had to be willing to break the cycles that I was in from my family. I had to be able to look at this trait that I had inherited right, this silence that I had inherited, and be like does this still serve me or is this something that I can let go of? Silence absolutely served my grandmother. It absolutely served my mother. It protected them, it kept them alive, but it wasn’t doing the same thing for me, and once I recognized that, that gave me the opportunity to stop and make a change.
19:50
So, with that, on this Mother’s Day, I am incredibly grateful for everything my grandmother did to survive, for everything that my mother did to protect herself, and I’m also grateful that I am finding what I need to do to survive and that I am finding what I need to do to protect myself, and it doesn’t look the same as what they did. And future generations, hopefully, they will recognize that to always look at what you got from the people before you and practice the freedom of choice. Does this serve me or can I let this go? And if you can let it go, let it go. So, with that, thank you all for listening, wishing you a blessed day, sending you all the love in the world. Thanks so much.
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