I used to be the girl who took up space without asking permission. 

I was born in Laredo, Texas, right on the border, with pop star energy and a love for attention that couldn't be contained. I danced at family parties, performed for anyone who would watch, thrived in school, loved learning, loved being seen. I was vibrant, confident, and rooted in my own being.

And then I learned what it meant to move through a world that didn't want all of me.

Then we moved to Round Rock, Texas. White suburban America. Suddenly, I wasn't the star of the classroom anymore. I was "othered" for the first time. I got told I spoke "Mexican English." I learned to make myself smaller, quieter, more digestible.

We moved again. Fort Worth. A little easier. More diversity. I found my friends, found my footing. But I was so occupied with the social need to belong that I lost sight of the girl who used to lead confidently.

Then came San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The hardest years of my life. Depression. Binge eating disorder. I was the gringa who wasn't gringa enough, the brown girl who didn't speak perfect Spanish. Ni de aquí, ni de allá. I didn't know how to name what I was feeling, only that I didn't belong anywhere.

Eventually, I dropped out of high school, got my GED, enrolled at community college, and transferred to the University of Texas Austin to study Journalism. I poured myself into every leadership opportunity, every internship, every chance to prove I could thrive. I wanted an extraordinary life. I always have.

But I was operating from a wound I didn't yet understand.

By my early twenties, I was deep in the wellness world. Sauna. Cold plunge. Meditation. Breathwork. Yoga. I read all the books, listened to all the podcasts, followed all the protocols. I was chasing optimization, trying to fix myself into thriving.

But something was missing. I was numb. Disconnected. Burnt out from years of overworking, overachieving, trying to prove I belonged in rooms that weren't built for me.

In July 2024, after two years of running my own creative marketing business and feeling completely spent, I stumbled across somatic work. Sexual embodiment. Womb wisdom. Nervous system regulation. For the first time, I wasn't just learning protocols. I was coming home to my body.

I worked 1:1 with a somatic mentor for six months. I dove into PsychoNeuroEnergetics, menstrual cycle awareness, and feminine archetypes. I trained in embodiment, mythosomatic work, and eventually became a certified yoga teacher. I studied with elders and peers who taught me that the body holds the answers I'd been searching for in my mind.

And slowly, I remembered my own vibrancy and aliveness. The girl who used to take up space without asking permission began emerging again.

Looking back, I can see the thread clearly now. Even when I didn't have the language for it, I was always calling my community home.

At UT Austin, I minored in Women and Gender Studies with a focus on Chicana/Latino culture. It was a pivotal moment, understanding the depth of systemic oppression, the beauty of our resilience, the complexity of our identities.

During my internship at Bumble in 2019, I organized a Latina roundtable to create better bridges between business opportunities and the first-gen Latina community. Freshly graduated, I co-hosted Latinas Read, a book club for young Latina women hungry for representation. I launched a podcast called The Bold Ambition, interviewing women of color (mostly Latinas) about climbing the corporate ladder, imposter syndrome, and mentorship. We eventually rebranded to Las Hermanas and shifted our focus to wellness from a Latina lens because so many of these conversations were painfully white-centered.

I was already building containers. Already centering our voices. Already asking: where are we in this conversation?

This isn't new work for me. It's the work I've always been doing. And now, I'm bringing it into the body.

This work isn't just about feeling better. It's about unlearning what colonization, assimilation, and white supremacy culture taught me about my body, my worth, and my right to exist fully.

I'm actively decolonizing:

• Productivity as worth. The hustle, the overworking, the output-based identity I learned climbing the ladder in white corporate spaces.

• Assimilation. Code-switching to survive. Making myself smaller, quieter, more palatable. The "Mexican English" shame. Being too brown for white spaces, too gringa for Mexican spaces.

• Disconnection from the body. Treating my body like a machine that needs optimization instead of a sacred vessel. The numbing. The protocols without pleasure.

And I'm reclaiming:

• Pleasure as resistance. My vibrancy is my birthright.

• My voice. Speaking my truth without apologizing. Taking up space without shrinking. Leading from my cultural wisdom.