Grief and Surrender: Recordando a Rossy

She was the most generous person I've ever received anything from. The little she had she always shared, and when she had plenty she would easily give most of it to others.

This month I celebrate and mourn my most recent ancestor. Mi tía Rosa Maria de Guadalupe, Rosa Maria, Rossy, La Nena de Nenas, una bruja de las nuestras.

As I offered my first meditation to Huiztlampa (the South) on a windy day, she came to me and with her hands healed/held my head. The sky opened, the wind took a pause, and the sun embraced my skin.

"I fly and there is no difference between here and there" she whispered.

She was my first example of a woman who could be fulfilled without the companionship of a man. And it never escapes me that people (including her own relatives) ostracized her in most spaces because of this very fact. She paved her own path as a working woman from make-up artistry to photography to a career as a secretary in service of rich men, which unfortunately took more from her than it ever gave her. Without a paternal figure, she supported her family and beyond.

She taught me through her suffering that a job is not a life and that living to fit the expectations of others is a waste. She taught me through her joy that singing and dancing are medicine. In her later years she would say she had become "del pueblo y pal pueblo" (“from the people and for the people” - which contextually, means not trying to be part of or accepted by “the elite”) No longer following trends, nor adjusting to make oppressors comfortable, and no longer caring to be her loud authentic self. Whenever she saw my insecurities come afloat, she reminded me that no matter what others think or say, we deserve to walk with our heads high.

To me she was the embodiment of strength and generosity, with a side of fun and and at times a double side of drama. She was the most fun adult relative I was lucky to share time and space with as a child. She always talked to me like an equal, which during my childhood was a rarity. She also struggled in many ways, like we all do, with both inherited and lived trauma. All her arranques (tantrums) taught me a lot too. 

I will always be grateful for all the ways she helped me become myself by modeling behaviors I long to embody and also behaviors I hope never to repeat. Like myself, she was the ultima(last) in her matriarchal lineage; having no children of her own but always nurturing everyone's kids as if they were her own. If everyone in their life had someone like mi tia Rossy, who knows how to give unconditional love, our world would be very different.

Embracing grief and surrender as part of her latest teachings. I was lucky to have someone like her. I am lucky to have her, now a forever loving ancestor. I know she has found the peace she always deserved, and for those of us yet to transition, we are finding our peace in a world where she isn’t a dial away.