#and applying to law school. it’s just cus i know i want to pursue higher education cus it’s always been a goal of mine but can i do it

[ace-no-isha]

anyways recently i’ve been really thinking about what it means to be alive and the terror of aging and growing up cus those are two separate things. growing up means taking on more responsibilities and cutting off alternate paths that your life could’ve taken. it means committing a third of your life to being a cog to capitalism till you die cus pension is not going to fund our generation cus the older generations failed us and are wasting it all and there will be none left for us when we are old. and then the growing old part. do you not feel horrified knowing one day your body is going to become less functional than it is now? joint issues run in my family. i’m going to be in even more constant pain than i am already if i get old and that’s the mildest of it. watching everyone you love die? externalizing the emptiness that consumes your very being and having nothing to fill it? being left behind. i cannot. i will not. it is just not happening.

and the ppl who say but what about the good!!!! it will never balance it out. two days a week where one is prepping for the next work day and maybe two weeks vacation is not enough to make little moments worth waiting for. i’ve already traveled. i’ve loved deeply. i’ve gotten tattooed and i speak six languages well. i’m not proud of who i am outside of these things but i’ve tried. i’ve failed a lot. i might only be 21 but even being 21 is a failure. me 10 months ago didn’t want this and it feels like they were more and more right the more time passes

going absolutely bananas can you tell? anyways gonna watch saiki k we’ll see if sober me flips out over this ciao

i got tipsy 🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭

[beautifulrzilience]

Law of Niatia

Good morning ya’ll! It’s a brand new day. It’s thunder storming out here in East Harlem so I am cuddled up here in my building’s lounge. I hope that life finds you well and that by this time, you have already had a good breakfast (it’s 11:26 am over here on my side of the hemisphere) and done some kind of meditation to get your morning off right. 

Niatia [Nuh-tea-uh]. It means gift from God, or according to rapper “Lil Mama” (ya’ll remember her right? My lip gloss is poppin?), “Purpose Goddess.” So you may be wondering, “What the hell is homegirl getting at?,” but I assure you that I am not [that] crazy and that I got something meaningful for ya’ll to think about today.  

So before I jump right into it, I gotta go back a little bit -back to my senior year of my undergraduate career in UC Santa Barbara (Go Gauchos!). Everything was going real well for me. I was graduating Cum Laude with honors distinction in the Sociology Department. I had already been accepted to my dream school, with a full ride at UC Berkeley for their PhD in Ethnic Studies. I was going to be published in the Ronald E. McNair Program’s book. Man! Academically I was thriving. However, within the span of 4 years of my undergraduate career, I had completely  neglected my body. I had gained significant weight for someone my height and size.  I had arrived to campus weighing 120 lbs, but by my senior year I was weighing 138 lbs! I was so focused on my academics, that I had completely neglected my physical health. My sister Miroslava (a.k.a Miros) and I would just go to fast food places and restaurants we loved and ordered whatever the hell we wanted. I mean we was graduating, so we were just living life: wild, happy, and carefree. 

When I moved to Berkeley, I decided that I was going to get my shit together. I decided to start working out, waist train, eat organic food, run at the Berkeley Marina, and have a strict eating regiment. I started seeing results quickly within the first month of my drastic life habit changes. One day, on Instagram, one of my best friends--Rony Argueta’s (shout out to him for following his dreams of playing soccer professionally) girlfriend, Daiana Diaz had posted a before and after picture of herself. And let me tell you. My jaw dropped. I don’t know what the hell she did, but she had transformed her whole body in less than a year. She looked like NOTHING I had remembered her looking like when we were at UCSB. If you don’t believe me, check it out: 

And what was her secret? Working out and eating right. She hella motivated me to keep going. I wanted to look like her, in terms of getting my body at its finest physique. Suddenly, I started seeing a shit load of my friends jumping on the getting fit train and I was loving it. It was motivating and inspiring to see my peers and my self being proactive about our health and our bodies.

Unfortunately, a year into my “Getting my body right” journey, my best friend and sister Miroslava Garcia had suddenly passed away due to stage 4 ovarian cancer. She was 23 years young. And just like that, my world turned upside down. I can’t explain to you what it’s like loosing your best friend--the person you lived with- grew up with in college- your ride or die- just be abruptly taken away from you with no real explanations. That I was depressed about her passing would be an understatement. I think for the first month, all I wanted to do was be curled up in the corner of my bed, in a little ball in my studio. My appetite had gone down. I didn’t want to see and/or talk to anybody. I felt so alone. I stopped working out. That year would only worsen. It would also be the year that I would be dismissed from my program. 

2015 would be the year that really tested my will power, strength and tenacity to bounce back from the tragic things that had and would happen to me in the following two years.

 I immediately started reapplying to graduate school, I continued to build on my relationships with mentors and faculty who had showed me support, I was working 3 jobs, and auditing a full course load at Cal. In the process of reapplying to graduate school, I cannot tell you how many people: friend’s--professors--colleagues--acquaintances-- who would tell me to take time off...to apply to lesser known programs... and/or to apply to masters programs. When I think about it, I fucking laugh. Cus you would think that at least your friends would encourage you to pursue your passion(s) and to strive for the best opportunities out there--but it’s the very people who will be the first to instill fear of you pursuing the best in whatever it is you are searching for or are striving to be.

And so here is where what I am calling the “Law of Niatia” comes into play. Even though I am talking specifically about pursing a PhD through the perspective and positionality as a young Xicana, this can apply to anything and everything. See the thing is, when you have the belief that you are a gift from God--or whatever you call your higher power--then inevitably you will have a belief that you have a higher purpose in this life. And when you come to that realization than you have to make some really important decisions in your life. And I want to say is that the most important one is-cutting off all the negative people in your life. Yes, that may mean also taking a step back from people you call friends. 

When I was hustling to get back into school, again, I was neglecting my emotional, spiritual, and physical health and well being. I mean I honestly believe I was so consumed by the pressure and urgency to get back on track to get my PhD before I turned 30, I was so caught up surviving this hurdle of my life and career. Once I submitted my applications, I began to take seriously working on my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. 

I began and continue reading more self-help books. The new one I picked up, You are a badass: How to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life written by Jen Sincero has been giving me life. Shout out to @Daianadays for posting this on her snapchat and putting me on (you can get your own copy at Amazon for $9.80). 

In the first chapters of the book, Sincero talks about how important is to attract only positive energy, and surrounding yourself with people who motivate you. People who are pursuing their damn dreams. And I want to only be surrounded by that. I get high off of positive energy and inspiring people. It motivates me to hustle harder.

In this stage of my life, on my journey of embarking on a second attempt to obtain a PhD from another elite public university, I decided that if I really want to the mothafuckin best chingona in my field, that if I want to embody and live in my greatness, I gotta cut the people who make me feel some type of way. ANY body. Any person. Any individual. Any thing that makes me not feel my best, I am cutting them off. They have become distracting and unnecessary noise in my life. I can’t have that. I don’t want that. This time around I am doing things different. I am spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically grounding myself. 

And some of you may wonder, well how the hell did you start this conversation with working out, Daiana’s transformation, your transformation, and then start talking about cutting negative people off etc.? Well see when I think about Daiana’s transformation, I have this hunch that she may have had a lot of temptations, people who perhaps doubted her, and who knows what other external and internal factors that could have impeded her amazing transformation. So what did it take for her to get to where she’s at now? I think that she had to make decisions about food, people, and the attitude she had to psychologically also train herself in order to get her physical goals. Even though we were hundreds of miles apart, I felt (and continue to feel) how her attitude and mentality has also changed. She is fucking inspiring. She stands out. When I think of her I picture bright colors. She isn’t just an accountant at a top firm in Los Angeles, California, she has also began to brand herself as a fitness guru. I don’t doubt she is going to have her own business in this regard soon enough. I love seeing my Chicanas winning. I love seeing her win.  

So for those of my fellow People of Color who are thinking about a PhD, I hope this gives you a little something to think about, as far as what you need to do in your life, in order to successfully pursue your PhD. Surround yourself by people who are smarter than you, work harder than you, are more creative than you. Don’t compare yourself to them, but see what they do that makes them great, and apply their tools to yourself and see how it makes you better. We are trained to compete with one another in life and in academia, but imagine if we actually learned from each other. Don’t be afraid to cut the people who feed you insecurity, negativity, and/or self doubt. It’ll be the best decision you can make for yourself. 

Niatia’s (aka Lil Mama) interview with Ebro in the Morning was really inspiring. She talks about this idea of living life with purpose and believing you are a gift from God. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfzRXRKGpFQ&t=1540s