Category: Written by Jessica

“You don’t sound like you’re from New York! Where’s your accent?”

Y’all, this question used to send me into an internal rage. In the past, I’d stuff those feelings in and would politely smile and chuckle, “Oh, I don’t know.”

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The other day, however, was not the day for a giggle. Someone asked me where I was born and raised, and I answered. Brooklyn. I lived in the same two-family home on Nichols Avenue from the day I was born until I was 27 and moved with my ex to Louisville.

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I got the same response, “You don’t sound like you’re from New York! Where’s your accent?”

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Instead of just quietly feeling uncomfortable and insecure, I simply said what was true for me.

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“I’m not Italian. I’m Latina.”

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The person responded, “Oh, right,” and then we went back to their day.

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Someone who studies language, accents, and dialects can give a much better response here, but here’s what I know: those New York accents that everyone obsesses about are real but not true for everyone. You’ve got to pay attention to WHO is speaking that way in media, and the stereotype is typicaly someone of Italian descent; it’s usually not folks who look like me. The friends I grew up with, people I went to school with, my sister, we don’t talk like that.

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So, why am I sharing this?

Because in general, it’s helpful to examine the stories we tell ourselves about someone based on the little information they choose to give us. We have a certain “mind map” of what people “should” be like, sound like, and act like based on whatever prior information we’ve got. The second someone doesn’t fit into what we think they “should” be like, rather than giving ourselves the space to accept new information, we try to make this person fit into what we know (usually limited information.)

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If someone tells you they are from somewhere, don’t question it.

If someone tells you how they identify, don’t question it.

If someone tells you they don’t drink, don’t question it.

If someone tells you something about themselves, let it be.

Allow yourself to be curious and learn something new about a fellow human.

Reflect – How can you practice genuine curiosity and respect for others’ experiences and identities, without imposing your own assumptions or expectations?

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Content warning for intimate partner violence.

Whether we celebrate it or not, Mother’s Day offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on what we’ve inherited from the women before us, what we choose to embrace, and what we decide no longer serves us. In this story, I share a bit about how and why silence was passed down through the women in my family and my decision to break from the cycle.

From Silence to Liberation

“Esta es mi hija,” this is my daughter, was one of the lies that Fernando Blanco, my grandmother, Sofía’s soon to be husband, told to border officials. He had taken her from her family in Nicaragua and brought her to Costa Rica to become his teen bride. 

It was 1916, and though much of the foreign world was consumed with conflicts and war, my then fourteen-year-old grandmother had more immediate concerns than what was happening across the ocean. As she crossed the border into Costa Rica, the false sense of safety promised by the charming Fernando vanished. She quickly found herself in a violently abusive relationship. 

My grandmother gave birth to three children in four years. Each pregnancy’s length of nine months, despite the nausea, the swollen feet, and the pain of childbirth, to my grandmother, were periods of peace. 

In those months, Fernando’s hand was on her only to caress her, to feel the kick of their child.

Abuela Sofía would recoil slightly each time he reached for her, fighting the urge to flee from her husband’s thick, calloused hand. She was weary of the affectionate gesture and dreaded childbirth as she knew shortly after a baby came, his touch would rapidly turn hostile and leave her bruised. 

Abuela Sofía couldn’t speak up because for her to speak up was to risk her safety and that of her children. She was in a foreign country at a time when women had no rights, and she had no access to resources. Recognizing that advocating for her and her children’s needs was not an option, my grandmother suffered in silence until she was finally fed up.

Late Friday nights were always the most difficult. After a long week of work, Fernando frequented the local taverna in search of camaraderie with the barrio’s other miserable husbands. Together they riotously laughed as they consumed guaro. Instead of liquid courage, he grew full of liquid cruelty. His hands developed an itch that could only be satisfied by beating whoever was up when he got home. 

The children knew to make themselves sparse on Friday nights by pretending to sleep. Their eyes were tightly shut, their little fingers gripping sheets up to their foreheads, praying that tonight was not their night. If it wasn’t their night, though, it was Mami’s. They winced and held in each gasp as they could hear the thuds from Fernando hitting my Abuela Sofía. 

The silence settled in the house like a fog after each beating, and the kids slowly loosened their grips, exhaling a sigh of tragic gratitude. The pain was not theirs tonight, but they wondered about the state of their mother. My grandmother always followed the prior night’s beating with a

strained grin and shoulders held a little less high than the day before. 

It was the middle of the rainy season in August when my grandmother decided she was done with life as it was.That day, the showers played their melodies on the tin roofs of the barrio. Abuela Sofía walked along this muddy, shallow river, her children splashing ahead. She drew in a breath, closed her eyes, and considered her life and the life of her children, only to feel overwhelmed with sadness as her heart sank within her. 

Meanwhile, the giggles and sand splattering between the toes of her children reminded her of the girl she once was before years of abuse consumed her. Abuela Sofía knew she had to come to a decision. Her life could not continue like this. No, not just her life, but the life of her children could not continue as it had been. She resolved that if she were to be broken, it would be not by the drunken hand of her husband but by the path of a free woman.

She gathered her three older children with her newborn babe and faced Fernando before he left for the tavern the following Friday. Her shoulders were the farthest back they had ever been. She held her baby tight against her still-tender breasts, and with a deep breath, she looked into Fernando’s icy blue eyes and declared, “Vete a la taverna, pero no estaremos aquí cuando regreses.” Go to the tavern, but we will not be here when you return. 

Fernando listened as the wrinkles in his forehead dug deep into his skin from frowning.

“No vas a durar nada,” he replied, with a cold and calm tone. “You won’t last. As soon as you see your plates empty, their throats dry with thirst, you will return.”

“I’ll starve before I walk through this door again, Fernando,” Abuela retorted.

“Then get out. I cannot wait to see you turn into a common puta in the streets just so that you can keep my hands off of you. How many more men’s hands will you be subjected to once you leave? Did you think about that? This life with me is as good as it gets, Sofía. Remember it because you and your children will never have as good a life as this.”

Instead of responding, my grandmother grabbed her children and left. “Vamos, niños, we are safe now,” she affirmed as they began their walk away from Fernando. They had a life filled with financial challenges ahead, but to my grandmother, living in poverty and at peace was a life of wealth.

At that point, Abuela Sofía reverted to silencing her feelings. This was how she protected her children from fears and worries. Having become the sole provider, she vowed never to let anyone see her pain. The only time she spoke of Fernando was to caution her daughters against letting men hit them, reminding them that they are better off poor than with un hijueputa (a son of a bitch) who beats women. Aside from that, she quietly bore the emotional burden of years of being taken from her home, years of abuse and raising her children alone, amidst financial insecurity.

My mother, Amable, was born years after my grandmother left Fernando, in 1939, and migrated to the United States from Costa Rica in 1969 as a thirty-year-old single mother with four kids.

From my grandmother’s story, my mother learned to take no physical abuse from men, that it was better to struggle financially than to be beaten. However, another lesson passed on was that speaking up for herself could lead to grave consequences, and being an undocumented and unwelcome immigrant in a foreign country where she did not speak English, she avoided making many waves and expected me, her US-born youngest, to do the same.

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Most of my family who migrated to the United States from Costa Rica did the same. As they arrived,  they brought music, food, culture, and silence. 

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We did not discuss many things. Mental health and addiction were not topics not up for discussion. Sure, if someone drank too much, they were labeled a “borracho” (drunk) or a “vago” (lazy person), but that was where the conversation ended, at a label: no discussion, no digging, no examination, no reflection.

So when I found myself in the throes of addiction to alcohol, I continued the family tradition of silence. However, the quiet was stifling, and I was slowly losing my breath. I was suffocating. Silence may have worked as a tool for survival for my mother, grandmother, and the women before them, but it was killing me.

For years, I didn’t step outside myself to examine my situation and realize I was not in my mother’s or grandmother’s shoes.

I was born here in the United States. At the peak of my addiction, I was a teacher, the Kentucky State Teacher of the Year! I had a job with access to medical benefits that I could have used to help me treat my addiction to alcohol, but I let the old idea of the strong silent working woman keep me quiet. 

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The longer I carried this secret, the farther I distanced myself from help. I was rapidly drowning in my alcohol use, with eight trips to rehab and a diagnosis of alcoholic liver disease. The pressure to keep quiet kept me from healing until finally, in November 2020, I opened my mouth. I used my voice to speak up against the stigma of addiction and stopped comparing what I needed to do to live to those who came before me.

I tapped into the power that the silence had stifled and asked for help.

I had to release the norm of secrecy to save my own life, and now, I’ll make it my mission to always speak openly about overcoming addiction. This Mother’s Day, I thank my grandmother for doing what she needed to survive, and my mother too. As a first-generation American, I’m grateful that the silence ends with me.

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Podcast Listen to the Bottomless to Sober Podcast. Episodes 1-47 are live!

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Yesterday, I called my sister in tears after a doctor’s appointment because my doctor pointed out that my blood pressure was elevated, and the main reason she could recognize that it had spiked in the last few days was likely because of stress.
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“How is your mental health, Jessica?” asked my doctor. I blinked, and a tear rolled down my cheek, “I’ve been trying to manage and control a lot of things.” (aka, I have found myself fixated on trying to get pregnant since my pregnancy loss in January, and it hit me in that doctor’s office that this fixation is hurting me in more ways than one.)

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On the phone, my sister, the ever-wise gift of a human that she is, pointed out a simple observation: I’m very detail-oriented and driven. This serves me well at work as an educator and in running a small business. Still, my drive, organization, and attention to detail won’t guarantee specific outcomes in my personal life, including a pregnancy that goes to term.

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This reminder hit me hard, but I needed to hear it. My sister held space for me to weep on the phone; then, I called my partner to open up about the realization I had and how my fixation on looking at all the dates on the calendar, tracking my ovulation, and waiting anxiously to see if my cycle was coming or not was hurting me. We spent the evening decompressing, which involved watching something together and ordering takeout.

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If I had been drinking, there would have been no discussion of my mental health with my doctor, no phone call to my sister or to my partner to share how I’ve been struggling. There would have been no space for me to be heard. I would have faced these feelings alone, and because facing them alone would have been too much to bear, rather than letting them pass or moving into action to find a solution, I would have drank to escape them. I would not have felt it was okay to ask anyone for help, falsely believing the old story that the right thing was to keep it all in—the story that many women still think is true for them today.

I was looking through writing by Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a psychiatrist who works solely with women, for a reading on asking for help. I revisited this one substack that really jumped out at me. You can read the entire piece here, but I’ll pull out the section I want to discuss in this email.

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“You don’t have to wait until you’re in a crisis to get support

What if we reframed asking for support — whether it’s from a friend, a family member, or a mental health professional — as a skill we all need to build? What if receiving support is something that you can do even when you’re not ready to collapse?”
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What if we “reframed asking for support” as a skill?! Oof! Okay, Dr. Lakshmin, yessss! If I go back to belief systems handed down to me both in my childhood home and from society and my culture as a Latina woman, asking for help was never considered a skill. Needing support was considered a deficit.

I was raised to think that asking for help was a weakness, which affected my ability to seek help for my addiction to alcohol. I equated asking for help with weakness, and it fueled shame. So my first major act of resistance in my sobriety journey was deciding to recover out loud and openly admit that I had a problem with alcohol. Ever since, every time I hesitate to ask for help, be it for something significant or small, I push back against the hesitation and ask myself where it’s coming from.

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Usually, I can acknowledge that it’s typically thinking passed down to me that is no longer in alignment with me and move forward with my request for help anyway. I’m so glad I did that yesterday because instead of letting the circumstance spiral and worsen, I feel so much better today, and my blood pressure is reading normally as a result. 🙂
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Questions for Reflection: How does asking for help come up for you in your own journey? How do you overcome barriers you face in seeking support? How is asking for help a personal act of resistance for you? What strategies have you used to overcome the blocks to asking for support?

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Podcast Listen to the Bottomless to Sober Podcast. Episodes 1-43 are live!