Embracing Self-Love and Authenticity: A Journey of Personal Growth and Rebellion

Embarking on a transformative journey often starts from within, and that's exactly where this new season, "I'm Growing," brings us. Weaving together personal stories with lessons from Raquel Reichard's "Self Care for Latinas: 100+ Ways to Prioritize and Rejuvenate," I delve into the profound realization that self-love is an act of rebellion, especially within a culture that often nudges us toward self-sacrifice. From recounting the awkwardness of my nerdy youth to celebrating my adult adoration for Hello Kitty, this season is a heartfelt exploration of authenticity and the courage it takes to be true to oneself.

As your host, I'm thrilled to share not only my own authentic journey but also the importance of genuine connection and self-respect. This episode isn't solely about my transformation from a self-doubting individual into a happily married person who's learned to cherish her quirks—it's also an open invitation for you to join the conversation. By sharing your own experiences, we can foster a community that values every step of our growth. To those who've ever felt the pressure to conform, this is a celebration of our true selves, an encouragement to live unapologetically, and a reminder that the treasures in life are those who love us for who we truly are.

Enter a world of fear, resilience, and generational trauma in "The Devil That Haunts Me". Follow Isabella and Julitza as they confront their demons in a tale of suspense, mystery, and the supernatural.

Explore the first seven chapters here

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the Habit Cup of Jihani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm Growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy. Hello everyone and welcome.

Speaker 1: 0:33

So I must warn you, today it is too cold for me to be in the garage, so I am inside and, as you may or may not know, I have fur babies that are very vocal, so you may hear either one of them, either the lady or Octavia. Octavia is a little kitten and La Lady is the massive German shepherd that has anxiety issues, so she cries quite a lot. So if you hear either one of those, don't worry, they're well taken care of, they just happen to be very spoiled. Anyways, welcome. Today is the last recording that I will do for the month of February, so I will start by saying that I set out to embark on the theme of self love, and I was prompted by buying and reading the book that is titled. Let Me Give you that it's Self Care for Latinas, and I believe it has the word 100 in it, but let me search it really quick. Oh, there it is Self care for Latinas 100 plus ways to prioritize and rejuvenate, by Raquel Rickard and I know I'm continuously saying that name wrong and I apologize for that. I first saw it in January, at the beginning of this 2024 year, and I immediately thought that I needed that book because, being born into and coming from and being raised in the Latinas, specifically Dominican culture, it is quite ingrained in us and inculcated in us, particularly the women folk, to put ourselves aside for the greater good of others, whether it be our parents, our grandparents, our kids, our spouses, our significant others, our families, our entire communities. And that has been the norm for as long as I can remember it that a woman sacrifices for others.

Speaker 1: 3:01

So self care and self love for me it really is just an act of rebellion, because I've been taught to do otherwise. So when I saw this book, I was like I need to get it, because this is something that I will need to be reminded of, I will need to continuously advocate for myself, read about it, so that way is at the forefront of my mind, and because of that, I was like, let's talk about it, right, because this show is all about learning and growing, because if you're not learning growing, you're just not growing, period. And I'm an advocate for growth and self development, hence why I have this podcast, all right. So because of that, I was like, let me make myself vulnerable and talk about this. It's hard and it's a continuous learning thing for me and I think it will be that way for the rest of my life, and that is to care for self and love for self.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Saying that today's episode in particular, I'll be talking about how I learned and I'm still learning how to overcome my fear of just being authentically me. I gotta take a pause there because I'm like how am I gonna present this? How am I gonna talk about this? So I am, and have always been as long as I can remember, just this hardcore nerd. I mean there's no other way. I can't sugarcoat that. I've always and I know like I think now being a nerd is in vogue. I guess now it's popular.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Growing up it was not so popular, right. It was quite frowned upon and really people will be very hateful towards anyone that enjoy books and enjoy the scholarly lifestyle as I do, yeah, so it was quite hard to be authentically me. So thank the God it's for every single geek that has come forth and have made it easier for all of us now, because it was quite hard out there for a geek, presenting myself and embracing myself flaws and all was not something that came easily. Easier thing for me to be was just being a person that looks different, like you have heard me say a million times and I'll continue to say, because it's not something that I hide from, I can't, I just can't right. I can't wear sunglasses every single time I'm outside right.

Speaker 1: 5:51

So everybody knows I have a lazy eye. I have extraocular muscles and not all of them are just as strong on my right eye. So it looks different because the eye is tilted towards the outer corner just because the extraocular muscles are not all strong there. So because it presents itself right, that way of being is just always in the forefront. People see that. That's like the first thing that people see when they meet me and it's funny to see reactions. Every single day of my life I see these reactions. It's very funny to me Now I've gotten so used to it. It's just, it is what it is right, it's not even my second skin. It's the skin that I live in, yeah, and I'm quite content with it and I've learned to love it for a long time.

Speaker 1: 6:42

Yeah, like I've said before, I had to learn to love myself as a person that looks different, with a lazy eye that is very visible to everybody, and I learned to do that at a young age, just because survival right, if I wouldn't have had then, I just I wouldn't be here to talk to you today. Just because it's so hard being and looking different and being in a world where people feel that it's okay to dehumanize, to mistreat and to be violent upon people that look different. So I learned how to have a quick mouth with combat. I learned to be able to throw some hands too, you know, because of that, and I just became ferociously me, without filter, and just loving all of it because of that. But being a geek was different, right, because being a geek is not something that presents itself physically, it's something that you have internally.

Speaker 1: 7:52

So I remember being young and playing as if I didn't know certain things and then seeing the reaction I would say a positive reaction from others, particularly from the male species. They would smile. It was like this happiness that I will see in them when they found out that there was something that they knew that I didn't. And when you see that as a young girl trying to find their place right and I'm already struggling with acceptance just because physically I look different, right. So here I go. Right, little Jo, right, physically she's different, internally she's also different, but she's trying to hide that because it's already enough to be different physically.

Speaker 1: 8:43

So for the longest I did hid that I enjoyed books, that I enjoyed reading. But even that didn't last long, because when you're in school and you enjoy books and all of that, it usually translates to test scores, it usually translates to things that are very visible to everyone and eventually it's like the secret that comes out in front of everyone in the classroom and teachers I love teachers but they just can't hold water at all, like when they find out that somebody it's traditionally smart. You know they're good test takers and they have a good memory. They, you know they can memorize everything. Because I think that's all this is. It's not like I'm particularly more intelligent than the next person, it's just that I have an ability to memorize things and I love to read, and just because of that, then it's easier for me to take tests as opposed to other folks.

Speaker 1: 9:58

But I'm a big believer that we're all smart and we just digest information differently and therefore the intelligence and the smart that we have reflects differently. So that's why I say I was Lee, I'm still am traditionally a smart person and because of that then teachers were very loud about it to the point where they would say it in front of class and of course that that just like ruined it ruined my life. No, but I mean it just ruined any chances of me keeping that to myself. And I'm not even going to blame the teachers for it. Really, I mean I was coming out of school with like a stack of books and everything like that. So you know, because it just I would just get so happy whenever I had a chance to to get books and bring it home and read and all of that. And once my grandma like taught me to read fluently, then it was a wrap, folks, it was just completely just a wrap, like I was digesting everything as if it was going out of style. So then I couldn't hide that Right.

Speaker 1: 11:07

So now I have two things per se air quotes here going against me with the rest of the population. That is not exactly the same. So then you know, I become ostracized. And then I figure out that if I help other people, the other children in my classroom, right, with answers and with things like that, that they'll like me. So then I started doing that, I started helping classmates, but that was not the right thing to do, right, because I'm not supposed to give other people the answer to tests or do their homeworks for them. And then I know there was a point there while I was doing it, that I realized that these kids were not really my friends and my sister was very real with me. My sister is a year older than me and she was always ahead of me in school and she would have these very real conversations with me when we were young and being raised by our grandmother into Dominican Republic, and she explained that they only liked me because of what I was doing for them.

Speaker 1: 12:18

And that, ladies and gentlemen, that, like I'm telling you, my childhood made me grow up and learn these very adult things very early on. And I don't know whether to be thankful for it or just be like dang can't believe it, but I'll choose to be thankful right, and I learned that very early on that sometimes sometimes people like you for the things that you can do for them, not necessarily because they like you, because there's some commonality there between the two people. And I learned that then when I became friends with a lot of people just because of what I was doing for them. And of course, eventually I got tired because that's not sustainable. And I remember there's not a lot of things that I remember in my childhood.

Speaker 1: 13:12

I remember things that left an impression on me and I remember not doing it. I don't know what happened but, knowing me, I probably got fed up and then just blew up because my coping thing was to not say anything. Held on to it. Held on to it until I just blew up because I was so fed up with it and I'm pretty sure that's probably what happened here. And then I remember being lonely once again and just having a very few single digit friends, those friends that were with me, those friends that they didn't need me to do things for them for them to like me. So I just kept the same friends and I learned a valuable lesson that those that are with me from the beginning those are usually the writer die. Those are my true friends, that they were with me even when I couldn't do anything for them, even when I was having a hard time, and they still stuck through. So I also learned that lesson then. By being authentically me and by enforcing boundaries at such a young age, then I had an insight into how I will traverse through life later on as an adult. Mind you, this is just me now looking back at that. At that point I didn't have any of these epiphanies or wisdom. I was just really trying to make it through school and the social circles at school.

Speaker 1: 17:03

But there are some times when I'm a teenage when I try to be somebody else and I blame that to the hormones and trying to figure out who I am and all of that and I think every teenager goes through that where they embody different personas until they're comfortable in the persona that they embody, which is probably who they were to begin with. I dressed differently, I did makeup differently, tried the whole sunglass thing, you know, and just like I am, I eventually just got sick of it because it's like it just felt so tiring. I'm the kind of person that if it takes too much energy then I'm probably not gonna do it, and the things that take too much energy out of me are usually things that I have to pretend to be, if that makes sense, or when I have to put on a mask because I'm pretending to be something or someone, then it takes a lot of energy out of me, and then I end up not doing that for too long, and that's what occurred through my teenage years, when I really did embody these personas. I will not hold on to it for too long, because they were just not me, so I ended up shedding them and becoming something else, who I ended up figuring out later on that that was the true Joani, the real person behind it all, but I tried again to pretend I was dumb. That backfired, though, because I ended up doing really bad in one of my classes when I could have just aced it all because of that peer pressure man. Peer pressure as a teenager sucks. That thing sucks hardcore.

Speaker 1: 18:56

And, like I said, I tried the different outfits and all of that and tried dating and all of that, but at that time I still didn't love myself, so none of that stuck. It was almost as if not loving myself, I was so rejectful of anyone that would come close to me. It's like the weirdest thing to explain. Even when I felt like physically attracted to somebody or wanting to be with somebody, it was always like this barrier there that I couldn't break through because I didn't love and appreciate self. And it's kind of hard, I would say, to love someone or to attach yourself to somebody when you are not being your authentic self. It's really hard to do and I think that's what was happening there. And I remember ghosting and dodging certain people just because I will come to the realization that I didn't really like them, but I just didn't have the heart to make them feel bad and then to say it to their face. So I wasn't that confident then, but I knew that that was not the right person, that was not the right thing to be doing at the time. So I would just kind of like get out of there quietly and then just let it run its course. And I did that quite a few times when I was a teenager and yeah, and that's an adult too. Y'all need to hear those episodes. I don't do that anymore. I'm happily married and stable, but yeah, and I think it all stems from not embracing who I was and being my authentic self.

Speaker 1: 20:47

Now fast forward and I'm an adult and nothing really the core of me has not changed. I'm still a geek. I'm still a nerd. I still love to read and write, love to digest information and learn new things every day. I'm still the same person with the lazy eye that looks awkward and it's socially awkward mostly because of that.

Speaker 1: 21:16

And there's an anecdote that I remember that I already had my kid and I love Hello Kitty stuff. I love it. I was a hardcore pink enthusiast. Now I'm more into the darker colors. I still like the vibrant pinks and the vibrant yellows, but now as I'm getting older, I don't know what it is. It's like the more neutral or dark colors are really kind of like drawing me in, but back then it was like hardcore pink Hello Kitty.

Speaker 1: 21:48

I remember I used to have a Hello Kitty phone and I was in my 30s and I remember putting water in my Hello Kitty bottle and looking at it and I was thinking out loud and I'm not realizing that my son was there and I was like, oh, I should just use the plain gray one that I have, because then people at work are gonna make fun of me because I have Hello Kitty, and I'm like 30 years old, you know, and I didn't realize that I was saying this out loud in the kitchen, and I remember my son. Then, all of a sudden, I feel like my son right next to me and he's looking up to me and he was like mommy, you tell me not to care about what people think of me, but to care more about how I think of me and how I feel about myself. And when he said that, this little wise, little short thing next to me, I remember looking at him and being like God, I created a monster, that no, I didn't say that. I looked down and I was like you know what? You're right, you're right. Why should I care? You know they don't pay my bills. You know they don't live with me. You know why should I care?

Speaker 1: 23:21

And then I remember John, that then he just smiled and he kind of, like you know, shook his head, like yeah, I taught mommy something today, and he surely did. He taught me something that day. He reminded me that I need to be my authentic self and I need to respect myself and love myself. So other people will do the same and if they don't, to keep moving on. So I will leave you all with that. I thank you for listening to my ramblings today. If you don't take anything out of this conversation, take this that those who love the real you, those are the ones that you need to keep around. If you have to be somebody else for others to love you, they don't really love you. All right, I will see you next Wednesday or whenever it is that you choose to listen to this podcast. I'll leave that up to you.

Speaker 1: 24:29

I am still thinking about the theme of for March, so come back and find out what that theme will be and if you have any suggestions. I am literally this old crone that have, kind of like, accumulated a lot of anecdotes from which to pick. So if you have a theme that you want me to poke at or talk about, let me know. Email me at joa at haveacupofjoanicom. That is, joa at haveacupofjoanicom, and I will talk to you soon. Bye, oh, we could. We can fly. Thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment, do a rating, if you can, on the podcast, share with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time. Bye.