Recharging...
It's time to recharge ahead of a busy end of year.
LISTENING: to my cat's collar bell
FEELING: restful
SEEING: my beloved desk again
I'm back in New York after a special few days in El Salvador. Wow, I had no idea how badly I needed that. My babies (my nephew and niece) got to meet their grandpa, and I was surprised by how moving that was. My brother got to see our dad again after (too) many years of no contact. So did my sister.
As for me, I got to introduce my partner to my family. He and I have had a long, rough ride that has, at moments, left me uncertain, but seeing my family embrace him and remind me he's a good man ignited something in me I didn't realize I needed. More importantly, perhaps, I got to spend some time with my grandma from my mom's side and ask her about her upbringing.
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I want to learn more about my ancestry — about the women who came before me. If I ever write a book, I think it would have to be about them. I learned a few things: My grandma was largely abandoned by her mom and raised by her grandparents. My grandma was very poor when she was raising my mom and her closest sisters. Because of that poverty, my mom was malnourished and didn't learn to walk until she was 3. The land on which their house now stands was gifted by my grandma's uncle (my great-uncle?) after he saw how much she'd shuffle around with her girls. The land was worth nothing then — it rests on a floodplain and regularly gets poured on. After my mother and uncle helped my grandma build it up with the remittances they'd send home from the U.S., that same uncle demanded he be paid for what was initially a gift.
I can't imagine growing up this way. I grew up poor in the U.S., but the poverty I experienced is nothing like the extreme poverty of countries in Latin America. That inequality, indeed, is what triggered the Salvadoran Civil War in the '80s. People can only suffer for so long before they revolt. I consider that truth as climate calamity hits region after region with catastrophe after catastrophe.
We're living in the age of climate crisis, but I also believe this is the age of revolution.
Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, and the Global South is always front of mind for me.