I was really inspired by religious history while completing my classical studies study-abroad course so I decided to include some photos from one of my favorite trips and share two of my favorite Bible quotes from scripture of course…(I have more but I’ll save that probably another time)

disclaimer: all photos are mine. please respect copyright and give photo credit <3

I’d love to do travel storytimes from some of the cities I’ve visited like Pompeii, Venice, Florence, Sorrento and even Rome. I’ll save that for a separate personal essay! Now, let’s begin with the “tour guide”!

“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well.” — Psalm 139:14, ESV

“Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” — Proverbs 31:25, ESV

gelato break!

moments at the uffizi museum.

night city walk in florence.

gelato break, again!

moments from the colosseum.

gelato appreciation break.

big back big back!!!

ooo, great. it’s like the bring it on cheerleading movies, but for men… except it’s deadly. 🙃

moments from the vatican.

I was in college when I first walked into a NSBE meeting. The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) is one of the largest student-run organizations in the country, and if you know, you know. If you do not, here is what it felt like from the inside: it was the first time I was in a room full of Black people who were also engineers, who were serious about it, who were competing for the same internships and full-time offers I was, and who were actively pulling each other toward opportunity. It’s not exactly a social club, although the social elements were real. It’s more of an infrastructure.

What NSBE does, at its core, is redistribute access. The world of engineering and tech runs on relationships. Who referred you, who vouches for you, who put your resume on top of the pile. For most Black students entering these fields, those relationships do not arrive by default. Your roommate’s dad is not a VP at a defense contractor. Your high school guidance counselor did not know anyone at Google. The pipeline that other people treat as natural is, for us, something that has to be constructed deliberately and maintained collectively.

NSBE constructs it. Deliberately and collectively.

I served as communications chair for my chapter. The role meant I was thinking about how the chapter showed up, how it spoke, how it told its own story. What I did not fully appreciate at the time was how much that work was also about building a network I would carry with me long after graduation.

A few years ago, a young woman reached out to me on LinkedIn. She was an electrical engineering student, preparing for an internship interview, and she wanted advice. I did not know her at all. We had never met before. But she found me, asked the question, and I gave her what I could. That is how it starts: someone extends a hand across a distance and trusts that it will be met.

What I could not have predicted was that she would become a close friend. Through college, through internships, through the accumulating texture of early career life, we stayed in touch. She was not an acquaintance who occasionally liked my posts. She became someone I actually talk to. My homegirl.

While I was building my communications role, she was doing something even heavier: she started her own NSBE chapter from scratch and became its president. And trust me, she did NOT do that for a resume line. She is someone who looked around, saw that the infrastructure did not exist in her space, and decided to build it. She did not wait for someone to hand her a table. She made one herself.

Earlier this year, she accepted a full-time offer. I posted about it because I could not help it.

Over 8,000 of you celebrated that moment for her.

Last week I attended the NSBE Annual Convention in Baltimore as a corporate partner. My employer came as a sustainability exhibit, and I was part of the team representing us on the floor. It was a strange and clarifying experience to stand on that side of the table. I have been a student in that convention hall, wide-eyed, rehearsing my elevator pitch, scanning name badges. This time, I was the name badge people were scanning.

And then my homegirl walked up to my booth and stopped by to say hello!

She is in product engineering. I am in automation engineering. Two Black women, two different engineering disciplines, standing in a convention hall in Baltimore that was built for exactly this kind of convergence. We met on LinkedIn when one of us needed something and the other one showed up. Years later, we are both here, both doing the work, both proof of what the network actually produces when it functions the way it is supposed to.

Tell me that is not Black nepotism working exactly as designed.

What I noticed, watching the students move through the conference floor, was how sophisticated the whole operation is. The thing about NSBE students who travel to NSBE nationals each year is that they don’t wait to be discovered. They are students who have studied the game, prepared for it, and showed up ready to play it on their own terms. They knew which ones had Black ERGs that were actually funded, which recruiters were worth talking to and which ones were collecting resumes for optics.

They were running the same calculus (no pun intended) that every professional runs, just with less margin for error.

Here is where I want to pause on the word nepotism, because it matters.

When we talk about nepotism in corporate America, we usually mean white nepotism. The kind where a legacy admission becomes a hedge fund associate because his father made a call. The kind where a mediocre candidate gets the offer because he golfs with the hiring manager. The kind that is so normalized it does not even have a proper name. It is just called “networking.” It is called “culture fit.” It is called “he came highly recommended.”

Black nepotism gets the actual word. And the word is supposed to feel like an accusation.

But what Black professionals have built through organizations like NSBE is something structurally different from the insider trading that non-POC professional networks run on. Non-POC nepotism hoards. It is designed to keep the circle small and the access scarce. Black professional infrastructure, at its best, scales. The student who gets the referral. The mentee becomes the mentor. The person who was pulled up turns around and pulls.

Sponsorship is different from mentorship, and this distinction matters more than people acknowledge. A mentor gives you advice. A sponsor puts their name on your name. A sponsor walks into a room and says, I know someone, and she is the one you want. NSBE produces sponsors. The whole architecture of it is designed to create people who will do that for each other across generations.

I gave my homegirl interview advice on LinkedIn before we had ever been in the same room. That was mentorship. What happened between then and this Baltimore trip was the check-ins, the shared experience of navigating these industries, the showing up at each other’s milestones and gradually venting to each other about the complexities of being a successful Black woman in STEM & arts (STEAM). In the midst of all this, mutual sponsorship emerged. We became invested in each other’s success in the way that people are when they understand that the infrastructure only works if everyone who benefits from it also maintains it.

Standing at that exhibit booth, I kept thinking about the version of me who walked those floors asking questions instead of answering them. What I thought I needed then was exactly what those students were here to find: someone who looked like me, who had gotten somewhere, who was willing to say the quiet part out loud. Here is what the process actually looks like. Here is who to talk to. Here is what I wish I had known.

But the truth is, Black nepotism starts within yourself. I was born and raised in the Southeast Bronx to first-generation Caribbean-American parents. And I will have to hold your hand when I say this but, Black nepotism is structurally a mindset, not a rite of passage.

That is what Black nepotism is. It is institutional knowledge passed through community and ABSORBED through active participation rather than through bloodline. It is access made less scarce on purpose. It is Lil’ Kim knowing who to put in her section and being unapologetic about the criteria.

The criteria, in this case, is survival and shared stakes. We are looking out for each other because the default architecture of these industries was built without us in mind. We are building the thing we were not given.

I love Black nepotism because I have benefited from it and because I now practice it. Because someone put my name in a room before I was in the room, and because I now understand that this is how it works, and that withholding that from the next person would be a kind of betrayal.

We met on LinkedIn. We ended up in Baltimore. We are both engineers.

Why game a system when you can build a parallel one, while slowly, insistently, making it matter?

That is my jump off.

And one more thing before I go.

This essay is simply a love letter to the Black professional infrastructure. Not a gate. I want to be clear about that, because someone might read this and ask: what about everyone else?

Here is my answer.

I have a close friend from college. She identifies as a white woman in computer science, currently finishing her degree, and she is one of the most genuinely curious and eager people I know. A while back, I connected her to a professor and director who runs a computational lab, the same lab I worked at during junior & senior year. I introduced her to my former boss & colleagues, talked her up, and made sure the right people knew her name. She is now doing research there in computer graphics and animation.

That is also nepotism. And I did it without hesitation.

The point was never exclusivity. The point is that sponsorship flows through genuine relationship. If you are a real friend, a real person, someone I actually know and believe in, I will put you on. Full stop. What NSBE gave me was a specific kind of community that I am fiercely protective of because it filled a gap that nothing else did. But the practice of pulling people up? That belongs to everyone willing to actually show up for each other.

If you are a woman in engineering who does not identify as Black, the Society of Women Engineers built something real for you too. I have attended their events and received hands-on, 1-1 mentorship from their industry professionals before and I have seen what that network taught me. And that is what I intend to keep doing.

There is a question I have been asked in professional interviews, the kind where someone across a table is trying to understand who you are by asking who came before you. It usually sounds something like: who are the Black women who inspire you? Who do you see yourself in?

And every time, I pause longer than I should.

Only because my answer is always honest. The honest answer is that I have spent most of my life in rooms where I could not point to anyone who looked like me and say: her. I am following her. The rooms I have chosen—engineering, technology, systems architecture—are not rooms that were built with me in mind. I am usually the only woman on my team. Often, the only woman of color. Sometimes both. And when someone asks me who inspires me, what they are really asking is: who showed you this was possible?

The answer is not someone I found in a boardroom. The answer is someone I found in a kitchen in the Bronx, and in stories about women in Honduras who came before her.

When I sat down with my mother in the Sonoran Desert and asked her about the women who came before us, she did not describe leaders in the way we have been taught to recognize leadership. She described presence. She described women who simply showed up, who baked cassava bread and distributed it through the community, who held the church together, who people came to when they did not know where else to go.

“People just knew where to go,” she said.

That sentence has been sitting with me ever since. Because that is what leadership actually looks like when it is not performing itself for an audience. It is not a title or a strategy deck or a seat at a table that was built by someone else. It is the quiet, total reliability of a woman who has decided that if something needs doing, she will do it and that everyone around her will feel the difference.

My great-grandmother ran the village that way. My grandmother ran the village that way. And somewhere between watching my mother navigate every room she has ever walked into, I absorbed it too. I absorbed it as a way of moving through the world, not a lecture or a lesson.

I work in tech. I am an automation engineer, which means I spend most of my days thinking about systems and infrastructures, how those systems break and hold, and how to make them run better than they did yesterday. I chose this field in part because I understood its social architecture: the quiet, the focus, the hours of deep work without having to perform extroversion. I have PTSD and social anxiety so a room full of code asks less of me socially than a room of people. I knew that going in, and I chose accordingly.

What I did not fully anticipate was what it would feel like to be the only woman engineer on my team. To join early morning work call meetings, hours behind in time zones from most of my colleagues, already done the mental math of what information I will need to collect myself because I cannot always trust the relay. To ask a question in a meeting and hear someone chuckle, not cruelly and maybe not even consciously, but fashionably as if the question revealed a gap I should have filled on my own.

What I notice most is the emotional intelligence gap. Engineers are trained to solve problems with precision. What they are less trained to do is communicate across differences, document their thinking, and make sure no one is falling behind. When someone does not understand something, the instinct in many of these rooms is to move on, rather than to circle back. When someone asks a question that seems basic, the instinct is sometimes to find it amusing.

My maternal ancestors would have recognized that gap immediately. You cannot run a village if you are leaving people behind. You cannot hold a community together if you are chuckling at the ones who need more time. Leadership is not about being the smartest in the room. It is about making sure that the room functions, that everyone is accounted for, that no one falls through, and that the work actually gets done.

I have started showing up to my work the way the women in my lineage showed up to theirs. I do not wait for someone to hand me a role. I do not wait to be the most senior person in the room before I take initiative. If something is not being communicated clearly, I document it. If someone is falling behind, I notice. If there is a gap in the system, I build something to fill it. I do not do this because I was asked to. I do it because I was raised by women who understood that the village does not run itself.

My mother put it plainly when I asked her about it: “We were not brought up to just be domestic. You are able to have a career, keep the household, and have a career as well. Everything is contributing.”

Immediately, I knew what she referred to was the full dimensions of a woman’s capacity, not work-life balance. She further emphasized that we were never meant to be reduced to one lane, one box, one corner of a room someone else designed. The women in my lineage moved across all of it. And I am doing the same.

I want to talk about something my mother said when she answered the question about what she wanted me to understand about being a woman and the thing she felt the world was not going to teach me.

We talked about multitasking and about the way women hold multiple threads simultaneously because we are naturally built for it, not because we have to. She described a woman making a meal while also handling a phone call, tracking three other things in the background, and how that capacity is not a burden but a superpower that other cultures have spent centuries trying to suppress precisely because they understand what it means.

“They know what she is capable of,” she said. “And they are afraid of that.”

I have seen that fear up close. It didn’t always present itself in dramatic ways, overt hostility, or explicit exclusion. Sometimes it looks like a man who is threatened not by what you are doing, but by the fact that you are doing it without needing him.

I previously dated someone once who made significantly more money than me. He told me so, frequently enough that I understood it was a point of pride. When I raised the idea (not a demand, but rather a simple hypothetical question) of whether he might cover something small for me, given the economic gap between us, he called it a gold-digging mentality. Our relationship ended when he responded by giving me the silent treatment for four months.

What I kept returning to, in those four months of silence, was not the argument itself. It was what the silence revealed. Here was a man who wanted partnership on his terms, who expected the emotional availability, warmth, and the presence of a woman in a relationship, but who resented any suggestion that partnership might also require him to show up materially when the scales were uneven. He wanted the village taken care of. He just did not want to contribute to the village.

My mother’s ancestors would not have recognized that arrangement. The men in my lineage, she told me, showed up. They did the hard labor. They came home to the women. They answered in response to the women. It was more of recognition rather than submission. And still is. They understood that the woman was running something essential, and they respected that enough to contribute to it.

What I have learned, from watching that model and then watching its absence, is what I will and will not accept in my own life. I will not perform wifedom as an audition. I will not shrink my capacity to make someone else comfortable with theirs. And I will not wait for a man, or anyone, to permit me to lead.

My mother got chills when I asked her what the women in our lineage would say about how I am showing up right now.

“They would say: look at how far she’s come. You have not as much yet, keep going. That’s just the start.”

I have been thinking about that since she said it. About what it means to be the first in a room, the only one who looks like you, the one who has to build the template because no one built it before you. It is a weight. I will not pretend it is not. But it is also, I am learning, an inheritance. The Garífuna women did not wait for someone to hand them authority. They ran the village because the village needed running, and they were the ones who knew how.

I am the only woman engineer on my team. I am navigating partnership on my own terms. I am writing essays that center women who look like me because I looked for that writing and could not find it. Every first is a form of leadership. Every space I take is a village I am choosing to run.

My grandmother would have understood that immediately. She would not have needed me to explain it. I’m sure she would have just nodded, handed me something warm, and kept moving. Maybe a baleada, or just a hug or something.

That is the template I was handed.

I am only now learning how to use it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman who leads. Rather than being a woman who performs leadership in the way that makes men comfortable, or being a woman who leads with the kind of leadership that comes with disclaimers, apologies, and a softer register, I imagine being a woman who leads with the kind of leadership that is so deeply embedded in her cellular memory that it stops requiring a name. The kind that just runs the village and doesn’t wait for anyone’s permission or recognition to do so.

I know what that looks like because I grew up inside of it.

I am Garífuna. Honduran-Jamaican American. I am Afro-Indigenous to the Americas. No, I’m not U.S. Native American, I’m not simply Latina nor am I simply Black. I am Amerindian to the Garinagu tribe descended from St. Vincent and Honduras. But rather a particular convergence of all those things at once. If you’ve read my earlier work on lineage and culture, you know some of this already. If you haven’t, I’d invite you to start there, because what I’m building toward now has roots that run deep.

What I want to talk about here is the Garífuna women. The grandmothers. The great-grandmothers. Rather than campaigning for the position, or being handed them a title, the women who ran our villages ran them because the village needed running. They were the ones who understood that need in their bones. They fed people. They kept children safe. They held the community together during every kind of storm. Hurricane season, colonization, displacement, all of it. And then the men in our culture understood this. They didn’t resist it. They didn’t feel diminished by it. Because to suppress the matriarchal Black woman is to suppress yourself. You come from her. You eat what she prepared. You survive because she decided you would.

When the white men came for us, our women were the first to say no. Look it up if you want the receipts, but I’ll tell you this: the Garifuna were never enslaved on their own land without a fight, we fought. The women were part of that fighting as the foundation.

From the British to the Spanish colonizers, Amerindians reclaimed their own destiny and fate.

That’s the society I come from. A culture rooted in perseverance and determination.

My mother never once asked me to cook for a man. I want that sentence to sit for a second, because if you know what it’s like to grow up in certain households, especially certain Hispanic households, certain African households, certain Black American households; you know how loaded that sentence is. I heard the stories. Girls in the kitchen while their brothers played. Daughters learning to serve before they learned anything else. Women being prepared, from childhood, for the performance of domestic labor as form of love and obligation.

That was not my household.

My mother never told me to cook for boyfriends. She never asked me to serve my siblings or earn my place through domestic output. She asked me to clean, yes; mostly because I was a disorganized kid who needed some direction, not because I owed anyone my labor. When I was at my father’s house for summer breaks from school, I wasn’t in the kitchen. I was jumping on the trampoline, playing in the pool, playing dolls with my sisters. We were frolicking. We were allowed to just be girls.

I only understood later what a gift that was. What a radical, countercultural act that was. To raise a daughter as if she already belonged to herself.

My father was also a significant presence in my life, maybe not in the way that gets celebrated in typical narratives, but in the way that mattered for who I became. He wasn’t in my household. But he answered the phone. Every time. And we would talk for hours. I went to him for advice. Clean, direct, no-nonsense advice. I watched how he moved through the world, how he handled his business, how he showed up. I knew him. I knew his face and his voice and the way he straightened himself in the mirror before walking out the door. That counts. It counts differently than living together, but it counts.

What both of my parents gave me, in their own ways, was a belief that I did not need saving. I learned that I did not need saving from them, from any man, from anyone. I was engraved from an early age that the systems that make women feel unsafe were problems with the systems, not evidence that women need men to survive. That taking care of yourself, building something, and leading something was never beyond me. It was never even a question.

I want to say something about the Bible, and I want to say it with my whole chest.

Who ate the apple when they were solely instructed not to?

Adam.

God gave Adam dominion over the garden and one rule: don’t eat from that tree. And Adam ate from that tree. Eve was created to be a helper, a companion, a partner. And what did the man do with all of that support? He ate the apple anyways. And somehow, somehow, the entire patriarchal structure of organized religion has rested on pinning the downfall of humanity on the woman who was brought in to assist someone who had already made a mess.

I was raised in a Christian household. I’ve been baptized. I’ve studied the Torah alongside Jewish friends. I walked with Muslim friends in Jerusalem and even shared our first Shabbat dinner in Tel Aviv. I celebrated Ramadan and Eid with friends in the Middle East and in Morocco. I have read the Genesis account more times than I can count, specifically because my name demanded it of me and I’m telling you, with full sincerity and no bitterness: the original text doesn’t say what the patriarchy has spent centuries claiming it says. The Bible, read honestly, warrants the matriarch. It always has.

If we are going to reconstruct society from scratch, and some days it feels like we might have to, it should look like what the Garifuna already built. It should look like what my grandmother already knew.

I’m in a particular moment of transformation right now.

A becoming. I am stepping fully into myself in ways that feel enormous and quiet at the same time. I’m looking at new residential properties and thinking, for the first time, purely about what I want my home to feel like, what I want to build inside of it. Who I want to share it with.

I want to lead that household. I have no interest in managing it, or micromanaging it. I just want to lead it. I want to be the woman whose name is on the lease first, who sets the tone, who takes care of things because she genuinely wants to. I have no desire to lead because of the idea of owing it to anyone or performing for someone, but because that is how I want to love someone. That is how I understand love. I learned it from watching women who led not out of exhaustion or necessity, but out of an innate knowledge that they were the right ones for the job.

My grandmother knew this. Her grandmother knew it before her. And I am only now catching up to what they’ve always known about me.

This is part one.

I’m spending time this weekend with my mother in the desert. A wellness retreat, a birthday celebration, a women’s history day that is also just hers.

We have been talking a lot lately about the women who came before us. About the Garífuna mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers she watched growing up, and how they moved through the world. I asked her if I could interview her about what she observed. She said yes immediately, the way she always does when I ask her to help me understand where we come from.

Part two will carry her voice.

Until then, if you’re reading this and you were also raised by women who didn’t wait to be saved, who ran things quietly and completely, who never stopped being feminine while doing it: this essay is for you. You already know what a matriarchal society looks like. You grew up inside one.

If you were raised by women who led without a title, please tell me about her.

I walked alone through the streets of San Juan this past summer and felt something I don’t typically feel while traveling in foreign places: safety. Not the kind of safety that comes from locking your door or staying in well-lit areas. The kind that lives in your body when you’re surrounded by people who look like you. When you don’t have to calculate your presence in a space. When you can just… exist.

I didn’t know how much armor I’d been wearing until I saw Bad Bunny’s reaction to winning his first ever Grammy award. The first Latin artist to win Album of the Year, for a fully-Spanish album.

That solo trip to Puerto Rico changed something in me. It gave me language for a feeling I’d carried my whole life but couldn’t quite name. And now, during Black History Month, as Bad Bunny prepares to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show after winning multiple Grammys, after ICE raids have terrorized immigrant communities across the country, I finally understand what that feeling was.

It was belonging. And I’m done questioning whether I have the right to claim it in the United States.

The borders drawn on maps don’t define belonging. America (the Americas, plural) is a hemisphere of interconnected histories.

I Am Black Because I Am Latina

I have grappled with this since I was a young girl but now as a woman with a developed frontal lobe, I am clear about one thing in particular: I am Black because I am Latina. Because I am Caribbean. Not in spite of it. Not as a separate category. Because of it.

My Blackness flows directly from my Garífuna heritage, from my Honduran mother, from my Jamaican father, from the African roots that run through the entire Americas like an underground river.

I am 50 shades of American.

The Garífuna people carry a specific kind of resistance in our DNA. We’re descended from enslaved Africans who survived a shipwreck, who mixed with Indigenous Caribs, who refused colonization, who created our own language and culture and community. When British colonial powers tried to eliminate us from St. Vincent, we scattered across Central America (Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua) and we survived. We preserved our culture. We preserved our language. We preserved ourselves.

That’s what I carry. That’s what my mother gave me.

My father gave me a Blackness filtered though Jamaica, through another island story of survival and creation and resistance. My Jamaican side is another thread in the vast tapestry of the African diaspora. That deserves a separate honorable mention.

Because I perceive life as a woman, I feel most connected to being a Honduran woman on behalf of my mother. But I am all of it. Garífuna, Honduran, Jamaican, Black, Latina, Caribbean, American. These aren’t contradictions to reconcile. This is just who I am.

These Worlds Are Colliding

There’s something surreal about watching Bad Bunny dominate the Grammys and prepare for the Super Bowl during the same era that ICE is conducting violent raids, separating families, abducting civilians, terrorizing communities. During Black History Month. During a moment when right-wing-rhetoric is trying to define who belongs in America and who doesn’t.

Black America has endured this kind of oppression for hundreds of years on American soil. The surveillance, the violence, the question of belonging despite being foundational to this country’s existence. And now immigrant communities are facing a similar terror. The raids, the fear, the constant need to prove citizenship, to justify existence.

These worlds are colliding right in front of me. And I’m standing at the intersection.

I’m a U.S. born citizen. My parents are U.S. born citizens. I shouldn’t have to defend my belonging, but somehow the question still hangs in the air. Not for me specifically. I couldn’t be deported to another country anyways but even if I could, it would be to Honduras or Jamaica. Still America, technically. Still the Americas.

That’s the thing people don’t understand: America isn’t just the United States. It’s a hemisphere. It’s North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean. It’s all connected. It’s connected by history, colonization, African diaspora, indigenous roots. It’s connected by it all.

And as a Honduran-Jamaican Garífuna-American, I’ve always known what many people grapple with everyday: Blackness in the diaspora is vast and complex.

Bad Bunny is Our Resistance

When I saw Bad Bunny perform in San Juan, it was a 4-hour concert packed with Afro-Latin culture. Bomba. Plena. The African roots of reggaeton running through every beat. The pride of being Puerto Rican, of being Caribbean. The refusal to translate yourself for anyone’s comfort.

And now he’s bringing that to the Super Bowl.

Over 100 million people will watch. Many of them have been fed anti-Latino, anti-immigrant propaganda. Many of them don’t understand that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Many of them don’t see the Blackness in Latino culture. Many of them think “American” means one very specific thing.

On top of that, Bad Bunny is going to perform entirely in Spanish. He’s going to center Puerto Rican and Afro-Caribbean culture unapologetically. He’s not going to code switch. He’s not going to dilute it. He’s not going to perform his setlist in English to make anyone comfortable.

He’s going to do this during a moment when immigrant families are being terrorized in their own neighborhoods. When the message from those in power is “you don’t belong here.”

His response? We’ve always been here. We’re not going anywhere. And the whole world is watching.

That’s resistance. That’s leaving a mark on the Super Bowl legacy. On American history. That’s leaving proof of existence. The revolution is now being televised and I’m relieved.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be American, to carry all these identities at once and still be told, implicitly or explicitly, that I need to choose one. That I need to simplify myself for other people’s understanding.

But I am Black. I am Latina. I am Honduran. I am Jamaican. I am Caribbean. I am a woman. I am a U.S. citizen. I am a Central American. I am a Latin American. I am American in every sense of the word.

It’s like 50 shades of American. This is what America looks like for me. This is what America has always looked like. Complex, layered, intersectional. The erasure of that complexity is perpetually violent. The insistence on singular definitions is the oppression.

Whoever the land belongs to is a nonissue to me. I belong to this land. Point blank period. My ancestors’ blood is in this soil through and through — from the United States to Honduras to Jamaica to the entire Caribbean. The borders are just colonial constructs. Especially when my belonging predates them.

Celebrating Black Womanhood

This Black History Month, I’m not just celebrating Blackness. I’m celebrating being a Black woman specifically. Because my experience of Blackness is filtered through womanhood, there are specific joys, vulnerabilities, and even specific forms of resilience that I cultivate as I navigate the world as a Black woman.

In San Juan, I felt safe because I saw Black women like me everywhere. Women who didn’t have to explain themselves. Women who existed in the fullness of their identity without apology. Women who were just… living. Bilingual women. Bilingual Black women. Bilingual Black Latina women… just living!

That’s what I want. Not just during a vacation. Not just in certain spaces. Always. Across all U.S. land.

Despite the peculiar nature and timing of these events — the ICE violence, the political rhetoric, the Super Bowl, the Grammys, Black History Month all colliding at once — I stand strong. As a Black woman. As a Honduran woman. As a Jamaican woman. As an Afro-Latina. As an American in every sense of that word.

What Sunday Means

When Bad Bunny takes that stage on Sunday, I’ll be watching as someone who saw him perform in San Juan. As someone who felt what it’s like to exhale in a place where you belong. As someone who carries Garífuna resistance and Jamaican strength and Honduran pride and Black womanhood all at once.

I’ll be watching as someone who knows what he’s really doing up there. And trust me, he know what he’s doing. Literally and figuratively.

It’s not just a halftime show. It’s a declaration. It’s a reminder that we’ve always been here, that our culture is American culture, that our Blackness is Caribbean and Latin and undeniable. It’s a reminder that we don’t need permission to take up space.

And I’ll be celebrating myself. I’ll be celebrating all of me, every shade of American I contain knowing damn well that I belong to this land.

Here’s a “poem” I wrote back in December about my personal experience living in America during these times. I hope you enjoy :)

My president hates me.

No, let me say it correctly: Mi presidente me odia.

Both are true. Both languages. Porque maybe tomorrow he’ll ban one and I need to practice living without the other. I need to know which words I’ll be allowed to keep.

I’m scared to go outside anymore. Porque when I leave my apartment, I don’t know if I’ll come back. Not because of crime. Not because of an accident.

Because of unmarked vans. Because of men in masks who won’t show badges. Because of ICE agents who roam mi ciudad like they’re hunting.

And I wonder: ¿Quién cuidaría a mi perrito?

They can’t deport me to another country. That wouldn’t make any sense. I was born in New York City. Mi madre, born in New York City. Mi padre, born in New York City. My grandparents arrived to this country in the ‘60s and ‘80s, legally, with all the papers, did everything right, everything correct, everything properly.

But it doesn’t matter to them, does it?

Would they still take me to an undisclosed location? A detention center with no name? A place donde nadie me encontraría?

Who would contact my employer? Who would notice? Who would notify my loved ones?

Would he? Would my president file a missing persons report for someone like me? Would he even see me as a person worth finding?

Yo nací aquí.

I was born here.

Does it matter? It should matter. It doesn’t matter.

The color of my skin matters more than the U.S. state on my birth certificate. Where my family comes from matters more than donde yo nací.

White imperialism dressed up as policy. Xenophobia dressed up as safety. Hatred dressed up as patriotism.

And the world is watching. The world sees America, los Estados Unidos, and sees exactly what we’ve become. The most xenophobic place. Not just racist. Inherently, violently, systematically xenophobic.

For what?

Para qué?

So they can feel superior? So they can pretend this land was always theirs? So they can erase the fact that we built this country too, that our hands harvested, that our backs carried, that our families belong?

So I write in Spanglish now.

Not because it’s cute. Not because I was a no sabo kid.

Because it’s mío. Because it’s mine.

Because they want to take it and I’m holding on with both hands, con mi dos manos, with whatever dignity I have left. This is my lineage. Esta es mi cultura. These are the words mi abuela spoke, the words that raised me, the words that make me whole.

And if he tries to ban Spanish—when he tries—at least I’ll have written it down. At least there will be proof that we existed in full. En dos idiomas. In both languages. Complete.

No amount of good citizenship will ever be enough for him.

I volunteer. I pay my taxes. I vote. I could smile at every neighbor, salute every flag, pledge allegiance until my voice gives out.

Y nunca sería suficiente.

It would never be enough.

Because he doesn’t see a citizen when he looks at me. He sees something to remove. Something that doesn’t belong. Something other.

¿Por qué?

That’s all I’d ever want to ask him. Why?

But I know I’d never get a real answer. Just condescension. Just arrogance. Just that look that says, who are you again? The one that says I’m not worth remembering. Not worth the respect. Not worth the dignity. Not worth the humanity.

So now I stay home most days. I stay in with my puppy surrounded by my neighbors of whose faces I know and hope to see again tomorrow.

But the fear lives in my body now. El miedo vive en mi cuerpo.

Even as a U.S. citizen on mainland soil, I fear siren alarms. I fear unexpected door knocks. I fear a rise of unmarked cars on the streets.

And my president?

He sleeps fine.

He doesn’t think about me at all.

Pero yo sigo aquí.

But I’m still here.

Writing in both languages. Existing in full. Refusing to disappear.

Even when he wishes I would.

Especialmente when he wishes I would.

It was a random night at an In-N-Out drive-thru when one of my close friends looked at me mid-ramble and said, “So… you’re a sapiosexual.”

I blinked, wishing I already had fries in hand, but we were still waiting at the window.

A what?

The conversation hadn’t started with labels, it started with a rant about my take on modern dating. So, he asked me about my type. He asked me about the kind of man I would marry, the standards I hold, and whether I’d ever compromise.

He teased me about kids, about how he wanted to be “an uncle” one day, while I reminded him that I can’t force a marriage proposal from any man, and I’d rather wait than settle.

I was confident in saying that I’d stick to my standards, even if that meant being thirty with no kids.

I had been going on and on about how I’m not just attracted to physical features or a good smile, but to the way someone thinks and feels. I had launched into this little TED Talk about how both intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence matter to me and how I become enamored by someone’s curiosity just as much as their empathy.

Then that’s when he gave me the word.

Sapiosexual.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that moment stuck. Because as much as we toss around labels these days, this one unlocked something for me.

So, what does it even mean?

At its simplest, sapiosexuality is attraction to intelligence. But for me, it’s never just about “book smarts” or flexing an IQ score. It’s about how someone’s mind works. The curiosity in their questions. The depth of their conversations. The way they connect dots no one else does.

And honestly? It’s just as much about emotional intelligence. How someone listens. How they self-regulate when things get hard. How they make space for other people’s feelings. How they show grace and presence in the middle of chaos.

It’s the combination of a sharp mind and an empathetic heart. That’s what makes me weak.

What makes it important

Physical attraction can be instant, shallow, and fleeting.

Looks fade, trends shift, and surface-level chemistry fizzles. But someone who can stimulate my mind? Someone who can match my wit, challenge me with new perspectives, and also make me feel safe emotionally? Now, that’s how you pull me.

That’s what I call cha-rizz-ma.

I’ve realized intelligence isn’t just what you know, it’s how you process the world.

Do you approach life with curiosity? Do you treat people with dignity? Do you know yourself well enough to be honest, even when it’s messy? That’s what makes me lean into you.

Sapiosexuality in friendships

It’s not just about who I date. It applies to my friendships too.

I can’t stand ignorance. I can’t stand cruelty dressed up as humor. I can’t stand shallow people who not only lack depth, but know it, and still refuse to grow. That energy feels heavy, and it drains me.

Over the last five years of studying social-emotional learning, I’ve realized this isn’t just a personal preference; it’s a pattern.

I gravitate toward people who are self-aware, curious, and emotionally mature, and I distance myself from those who aren’t. Because when it comes down to it, IQ and EQ aren’t separate to me, they’re intertwined.

Someone might be brilliant on paper, but if they’re emotionally lazy, or if they can’t regulate themselves or empathize with others, it leaves me cold.

And I’ve felt that in my own circles. I’ve had friendships where people couldn’t show up, couldn’t respond, couldn’t care in even the smallest ways. Not because they were too busy, but because they simply didn’t know how, or didn’t want to. That lack of emotional depth always hurts more than silence.

On the other hand, when I connect with people who think deeply, who laugh and reflect and ask real questions, I feel seen. I feel safe. I feel inspired. It’s why I talk so much about wanting community instead of an audience. I don’t want people who watch me from the sidelines, silently lurking, never engaging. I want people who actually grow with me, who can hold a meaningful conversation, who care enough to meet me in that space of curiosity and compassion.

That’s where my sapiosexuality expands beyond romance: it’s a worldview.

It’s the standard I hold for anyone who wants to be close to me. Whether you’re a friend, a partner, or even just someone who crosses my path… I need you to bring more than a pretty face, a bag, or a funny joke. I need you to bring your mind, your heart, and your willingness to grow.

Intelligence > Superficiality

I can think of conversations where I wasn’t attracted to someone… until they opened their mouth. They said something thoughtful, asked a question no one else would, or showed emotional depth that caught me off guard. And just like that, my whole perspective shifted.

On the flip side, I’ve dated people who checked the “on paper” boxes: good job, good looks, good car, good resume. Some even owned property and had high-earning salaries. But when the conversation stayed shallow, or when they dismissed my feelings with a joke, the attraction dissolved instantly.

For me, chemistry can’t survive without respect and intelligence.

Intellect meets empathy

Here’s the thing: intellectual intelligence alone doesn’t cut it. You can be brilliant in theory and still lack the self-awareness to carry a healthy relationship. And emotional intelligence without intellectual curiosity can feel stagnant too.

I personally think, for me, the real magic happens in the balance of IQ and EQ.

I want a person who can debate with me about tech or philosophy and also hold me through a hard day. Someone who is as invested in their growth as they are in mine.

The challenges in modern dating

Being sapiosexual in modern dating can feel… tricky. Dating apps reward swipes, quick glances, and surface-level picks. You have to dig through a lot of noise before you find someone who wants to talk about something real.

And sometimes people mistake sapiosexuality for elitism, like it’s about who’s the smartest in the room. That’s not it. Not at all. It’s not about GPA, IQ, or accolades. It’s about connection. The way someone’s mind and heart expand your own.

Turns out, he was right

When my friend first threw that word at me, I laughed. It sounded like another trendy term that the social media collective dug up. But the more I sat with it, the more it fit.

Knowing I’m a sapiosexual reframed how I look at attraction. It made stop second-guessing why surface-level attention never felt satisfying, and why deep conversations with the right person could keep me up all night. It gave me language for why emotional safety is non-negotiable for me, and why chemistry without intellect never lasts.

So yeah, maybe I am a sapiosexual.

That night in the drive-thru gave me a new lens for love and attraction. And honestly, I’m grateful for it. Because being a sapiosexual isn’t just about dating. It’s about honoring the fact that I fall in love with the way people think, the way they feel and the way they process the world.

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This essay has been published on Priestess Magazine, a platform for women’s liberation writing rooted in style, power, and social justice.

Study abroad in Spain was supposed to be one of the best chapters of my life. It was supposed to be filled with immersion in culture, late-night conversations in plazas, and new friendships that could last a lifetime. Instead, it gave me a case study in something I’ve now come to understand far too well: how jealousy can elevate into violence, harassment, and digital stalking.

At first, it was petty. Arguments over laundry, side comments that carried more venom than humor. But it escalated quickly… to physical assault, to harassment, to the point where my family back home was stalked online. Months later, after reporting her to both the study abroad program and our home university, I still find traces of her. Not just on Instagram, but on LinkedIn.

When jealousy logs into LinkedIn

This is where the dynamic changes. On Instagram, imitation can masquerade as “inspiration”. She rebuilt her branding to look eerily like mine, as though personal branding was something she discovered only after seeing me live it. But on LinkedIn, the platform exposes you. There are no anonymous scrolls. When my profile lights up with a notification at 2 am, I know exactly who’s watching. LinkedIn was built for transparency, networking, a digital handshake… not for lurking in the shadows.

But look, this piece isn’t just about a jealous flatmate from study abroad. It’s about what it means to succeed as a Black woman.

Our presence in STEM, in graduate school, in spaces not designed for us, already comes with scrutiny. We fight stereotypes, systemic bias, and the constant burden of proving we belong. And then, layered on top, there goes women who aren’t Black who attempt to dim our light: girls like her who joke about race, threatens us with “Black jokes,” and boasts about how her Caucasian mother would casually throw around the n-word with their family. Their jealousy turns into surveillance, their insecurity into sabotage.

Her hatred turned into physically shoving me when I told her to stop throwing my wet clothes out of the dryer. Her fragility turned into ugly-crying while whining “Why are you being mean to me?!” immediately after I yelled at her.

I grew up in the Bronx. I know what it means to defend myself, verbally or physically. But I also know that fighting back would risk everything I’ve worked for: my career, my credibility, my graduate education. So I called the Student Coordinator for backup. She chose violence. I chose boundaries. That doesn’t mean I’m weak. It means I’m protecting my future.

Obsessive surveillance on Black women

When you’re a black woman, you’re never really lonely. Because there will always be a white person in your business.

What I’ve realized is that jealousy doesn’t disappear; it festers into obsession.

Her jealousy festered into stalking my father’s public Instagram profile and watching my family spend Father’s Day weekend at Universal Studios in Orlando. I was and still am being watched like a circus act, not because I’m failing, but because I’m thriving. And the irony? That jealousy is fueled by inspiration… inspiration she will never admit.

Digital technology makes the lurking visible. Fake Instagram accounts with “NEW” stamped across them. 0 followers, 0 followings, no profile picture and yet I’m supposed to believe the account that’s been watching my story for days is a person acting out of good faith. LinkedIn views at midnight will leave a digital footprint.

Social media platforms reveal who is watching, who is copying, and who cannot look away. Technology doesn’t just connect us; it documents us. Every click, every fake account, every midnight LinkedIn view leaves a trail. I’ve kept receipts, and I’ve kept quiet longer than I should have. But silence has a cost: it gives stalkers room to believe their behavior goes unnoticed.

So to the one who lurks, who copies, who stalks… people can literally see you.

This is the reality of thriving as a Black woman in STEM: There will always be someone watching, hoping you stumble, keeping tabs on your success because it unsettles them.

Success means being seen, being envied, and yes, sometimes being stalked. But it never means silence.

And for my stalker,

If you think you can dim my light, here’s the truth: I will always be thriving. And if I live rent free in your head, here’s some decor for the space.

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