Quisqeuya la Bella Podría Ser Traumática

(The Beautiful Quisqeuya Could Be Traumatic)

I'm going to la República Dominicana in a month and I have no idea how to feel about it. I am feeling both strong emotions of excitement and resentment. I do not know what to feel about going to a the motherland that I've never had the opportunity to explore what it means to call it the motherland. I anticipate that I will discover a part of myself and inch closer to understanding who I am. Since learning Spanish in 2016, I have been searching for answers to who I am as a Dominican and Puerto Rican living in the diaspora. Learning their respective histories, slang, and culture has been fundamental processes for the uncovering of my identity. Yet going to D.R. is a dramatic leap in a journey that has until now been a Sunday stroll.

My mom and I will be undertaking this journey together, as we are both seeing our fathers; myself having only met my father once and my mom never having met hers. In the context of the Indigenous Feminist Planning Praxis course that I am taking, I am concerned for how my sense of futurity will shift as a result of this experience. Will the legacies of my father and my grandfather carry onward within me as I teach my own children life lessons? Will I begin walking in the footsteps of my paternal ancestors to reproduce their knowledge and visions after learning to value their life stories? Not having a father figure for your entire life and forcing myself to confront the consequences of that reality can potentially have dramatic effects internally and to my worldview that I am not sure I am prepared for. But what makes it real is writing about it. Emotional literacy research notes that putting traumatic events on paper makes tangible the emotions you are experiencing and allows you to move forward from that trauma. I look forward to processing all of this information and growing stronger from it, even though there is the possibility of the experience turning out for the worst.

My mentor Dr. López and I on 1 of the 3 Dominican Independence Days