Art As Spiritual Practice
Worshiping a woman came very naturally to us. After all, my family is a matriarcado—a matriarchy. My sister and I grew up in the Dominican Republic with our mother, Mami, a teacher who held multiple side jobs to make ends meet. She was smart, ambitious, and always with a plan: to do better, to make more money, to help other women. Perhaps she inherited this drive from my grandmother, Carmela, who worked as a seamstress and was known for feeding everyone in the neighborhood. I never met my grandmother—she died after giving birth to her ninth child, when my mother was only seven—but I knew her through Mami’s stories. My mother spoke of her kindness, her creativity, and her vibrant spirit. Making was her gift. I know she would have loved to see us creating too. I’m sure mi abuela was all the things I heard growing up, but I often wonder what made her sad, what worried her. As I understand it, she had nine children by the age of thirty-three; I can only imagine the toll th...
