They came to me that day. I cut my thumb because I needed an onion. My blood dripping like a Tarantino wet dream. I wrapped my thumb in gauze to let the blood cease its fury. The altar that I built was for the ancestors who smoked rollies and drank Guinness. My dad was there with his Budweiser.

My grandmother, with her stern eyes, didn’t like the arrangement. But Cliotilde, you’re lucky you’re there, with the husband who left you for your sister.

The auntie who took the ring and the auntie who promised to care for me. They were all there.

I placed the gauze on the altar and pledged my alliance.

To the ones who roamed in Dublin. To the ones who made love in Mexico, the mishmash of ghosts and generational trauma, it ends and it starts here.

Blessed are the bleeding. Blessed are the indigenous. Blessed are the Iberian. Blessed are the Celtic. Your wounds, your songs, and your history are stronger than the intention.

Maybe the masculine and the feminine here are not the promised land. But we promise the struggle. We promise the fight. We promise our hearts with all our might. That is all we can do. And we will do it well. All of our enemies suffer the hell.

There I go. Trying to do a good thing, and it snaps away from its foundation. And that’s what happened to me today. After having a Jesus dream, where he was re-Crucified in the modern world, I woke up to Kronos wrapping his fingers around my neck.

It’s almost September. Almost another birthday. Virgo not rising. Virgo-grounded and confused. The kids screaming next door irritate me. Is it because my path is so far from theirs? Is it because I wish I could wake up and do it all over again? Wake up to appreciate the disapproval of my father and the dissatisfaction of my mother. We used to scream too.

I logged in to another day pretending I give a fuck about people logging into a website. I only care about the close circle I work with, fellow soldiers who are fighting their own battles. We get together a few times a week to give out about the pettiness of our masters. We should drink more and take up smoking.

Today, I sat alone in my chair, my arthritis trying to sneak into another finger. I wrote about the dreams and interpreted them. The beyond is telling me:

It’s not time, but be ready. Prepare yourself or you will drown. The Master of Time will encarcerate you with a caviate, create your own structure, but do it right.

Okay, I will do what the Universe tells me then. I will use the dreams as my guides. I am ready. I am awesome, and I can do this. But I had the audacity to read my email at that moment. I saw it. The one I had been waiting for.

A few months ago, I applied for a writer’s residency in Ireland. I submitted a bold piece. A story that I have to tell. I bled all over that page. ‘Well, I’m old now. Might as well burn it down.’ My dear sweet husband said it was brilliant. His love is honest and supportive.

I stared at the rejection and burst into tears. That thought crept in, ‘you’re not good enough…you’re a shit writer. This is why Kronos is going to devour you.’

And yes, I know there are choices. This is a test, right? I have to say smile and carry on. I have to think of all those writers who received hundreds of rejections before someone found them worthy. My ego is paper-thin.

Death

I received a package for my plants. I have a history of letting plants die. But the ones who dwell with me now have stood by me for a year. Bless them, they were flopping over, and I had to be plant mom and bought them this thing to support them. But as I was arranging one of the small ones, a branch snapped and fell. I could’t. It was too much now. I killed her baby branch.

I placed the dismembered limb on the altar, next to her mother and sisters, because life is shit and nature is the witness.

Is this a full circle?

By the water, she exhausted,

all the salt from her eyes.

The baubles house the imprints,

and spill into the river,

carry the messages,

to her terrestrial creatures.

The birds swoop down,

to drink the salty rain,

mujer que no llora,

distributes earthly pain.

And the other side of existence,

a form appears from the void.

He claims the ceramic bowl,

dips it in the water,

to take away historical accuracy,

a burden shared.

She is bleeding with her mind,

tired of her warden,

mujer que no llora,

from the situation she was born in.

And eons came, and aeons went,

to hear how a life was all but spent.

Bodies born and bodies died,

Observing Engels forget to lie.

Parcels spread all over the place,

all over the place, and beyond the place.

Chaos and order repeat and repent,

To the wizard and his witchy mistress,

la mujer que no llora,

is gifted with forgetfulness.

But that is the wicked way,

when memory goes,

she repeats her day.

Stuck in the world,

without a sky to look up to,

without the key to the firmament,

la mujer que no llora,

Es la guía buscando su puente.

My little sister sent me a video entitled ‘5 Hard Pills to Swallow as a Mexican-American’ that can be found on @msdd760 on TikTok. The truths are as follows:

1. If you rested, you were a huevona. Tired or not, no excuses.

2. Burnout wasn’t a red flag. It was a badge of honor.

3. Si sigues llorando, te voy a dar un a razon para que llores de verdad. Emotions = weakness.

4. You want money? Work harder. Break your back. That’s how you earn ‘deserving’.

5. Survival was more important than healing.

And it really got me thinking about the two little Mexicanas growing up in South Dallas in the 80s and 90s. We managed to escape the small town of DeSoto alive, but 20 years later, we’re still working on reaching our identities.

A hard knock life

I had this conversation with my sister, who is my bestest friend and confidant. We are also war buddies. Only the two of us understand the scars that we carry.

To give some background, my parents were from Jalisco, Mexico. Dad was from the Silent Generation, and a self-taught mechanical engineer and mathematician. He built machines for companies like Permag and Hitachi. That said, he grew up dirt poor in a small village outside Guadalajara. Although he came from a prominent Mexican family, my grandfather left them, and left them in ruin. At eight years old, Dad was the ‘man’ of the house. He didn’t go to school. He had to work to support his mother and two sisters. He also drove and smoked cigarettes.

Mom has a similar background. My grandmother died when Mom was three, and my grandfather was left to raise six children, the youngest a newborn baby. The poverty was real. They didn’t have shoes, and there was a story that the kids didn’t eat for three days. At 20, she married Dad, who was a few years divorced from his first wife and 30 years her senior. I think she did it to leave her situation. In the US, she became a citizen and a teacher.

This is not a unique story. I’d say most first-generation Americans can recite the stories of their parents sacrificing everything to make that fresh start. And even America isn’t a land that welcomes you with open arms. Dad had to fight in the Korean War to keep his citizenship. My mom had to attend school for seven years before she could take the exam to become a US citizen (yes, you had to take a rigorous exam back in the day).

This is the origin of trauma many of us first geners carry. Our parents imprinted this on us, with strict rules, hard work, and absolutely no emotional support. If we expressed any hint of emotion, we were weak, because they had it so hard. ‘What the hell are you crying about? You never had to go three days without food in your belly.’

Who do you think you are?

I know that other cultures have a shared experience. But for now, I’m talking about my personal experience as a Mexican-American, starting with that hypnated word. Mexican-American. For better or worse, our parents, especially Dad, instructed us to identify ourselves as ‘Americans’ sans the ‘Mexican’ part.

‘You were born here. This is your country,’ he would say. And he rarely spoke to us in Spanish.

Mom was a little more clingy to the Mexican half. We learned how to cook Mexican food, spoke Spanish at home, and would go on summer hols to Guadalajara or Mexico City.

But white gringos didn’t like for us to call ourselves American. And the Mexicans didn’t see us as Mexicans either. To them, we were the ‘yo sabo’ kids who spoke broken Spanish and had this false notion that we thought we were better than them. If our Spanish wasn’t perfect, instead of a gentle correction, we were the topic of a funny story they told all the relatives. I do not doubt that these stories will be passed down through generations.

There was that one time my tia served us fish for dinner. Freshly caught and delicious. But I asked if there were any ‘espinillas’ in the fish, instead of the correct word for fish bones, ‘espinas’. Espinillas means pimples. So 12-year-old me asked my tia if the fish had any pimples.

Two years later, there was the time my upper-class auntie took us to a fancy fondue restaurant in Mexico City. I ordered ass cheese, queso fundillo, instead of the correct term, queso fundido. I never saw that woman turn so scarlet. When I was told later, after the waiter politely walked away, probably to tell the chef what the gringa pendeja ordered, I burst into tears, which was the greater sin.

These memories don’t bother me anymore, but I do analyze the impact of not having a psychologically safe place in my immediate sphere. It was bad enough to be bullied by the outside world, but to be laughed at constantly by family is grating to the soul. And nobody cares. Just toughen up, buttercup, everybody gets bullied. It’s culturally accepted.

Okay, and as a Gen X, I get it. I am at the age now where I think, ‘kids today are too soft,’ and then go into a rant about how we used to drink water from the garden hose.

Some parents who were products of bullying went the other way, hard. They gave out participation trophies like lollipops at the dentist, and it seems like everyone under 30 is allergic to something. Helicopter parents didn’t want their kids to feel any discomfort, when that is the key ingredient to growth, to maturity.

A broken generation

“The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble…. They can never be solved, but only outgrown - Carl Jung

Therein lies the solution to the Mexican-American problem. Make peace with the past, be grateful for it, and then move on. Because in Jungian psychology, the gold is in the darkness, the shadow, the struggle. Once you get that gold, which is the knowledge of it, put it in your pocket and continue your journey.

I had what is known in the West as a ‘midlife crisis’. I did buy the fancy sports car, but that didn’t help me. I sold it and walked out the door in madness. Maybe running away wasn’t the sound adult thing to do. It was the result of keeping everything inside me to the point where my past blew up, and I didn’t have the tools to be an adult.

You see, before this, my dad passed away, and that was the event that started me on the journey to the new me. It was like his death released me from my reality and threw me to find a new one.

Ten years, and I have been through divorce, homelessness, but also therapy, a new partner in my life, and the opportunity to find out who I am and what this life is all about. I’m not saying that my life is easy; the more I learn the secrets of the universe, the more isolated I feel from this matrix. I have to deal with that.

The one gift that keeps me going is that I am starting to think of my past as an ally in what I am to become. I’m not by any means excusing the behavior of my family, or calling myself some kind of guru shaman. I am not even sure if I am ready to forgive the people who hurt me the most. But the more I know myself and appreciate the person I have become and the gifts that I have been given (including my daughter and my husband), the more I see what a treasure it was to have these difficulties in life. It allowed me to have resilience. It allowed me to be brave in my decisions. It allowed me to be a loving parent, a giving spouse, and a good friend. I see the reel of my past as a reminder to do better and not to be so hard on myself.

I know it’s easier said than done. It’s actually not easier said than done. It took me 40 years to say these words.

How do us Amex bridge the Mexican soul with the American vivacity? By recognizing that we have outgrown the old ways of thinking about ourselves. By stepping into the power with the knowledge that we come from a vibrant tribe and have the opportunities that our ancestors didn’t have. We are the best of both worlds. Ironically, I see that now living on the other side of the pond. I’ve reconnected with my roots studying the Celts, the Nordic tribes, for example. I see the similarities in the way they communicate with the unseen, how they treat the natural world, and that the material world is not where it’s at.

Wherever you go, bring with you the best of you. Pass on the healed spirit, not to lecture or judge, but to be the omnipotent wind. That caress the faces of the seekers, the wind that carries them to greet that other world, to communicate with their ancestors. It is with the ancestors that we receive the instructions to heal ourselves. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. Each individual has their blueprint. It’s not my job or yours to preach to them, but to earnestly hold their hand to find the map so they can begin his or her own journey.

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If you’re new to my world, let me tell you the situation. I am a lucid dreamer and an astral traveler. I had no idea what this was until a few years ago when I did Aya for the first time. That’s a story for another post. Anyway, I went down all the rabbit holes, got a divorce, moved to Ireland, and then the pandemic happened. All the dreams I’ve had since I was about four, well, the ones I could remember, started to make sense.

I found Carl Jung, Uncle Carl, and he’s guiding me now, giving me the keys to untangling my dreams and the symbols I stumble upon in waking life. You know what is strange? If I tell people in the matrix (I used to call them ‘normies’ but it seems rude now, they’re not there yet), they look at me like I need to be in an institution. It’s not like I am a sage or a shaman. None of that. Not even close. But it hurts now, not to be ‘normal’. The more ridiculous the world gets, the more it feels inauthentic. Like a made for TV drama with shit writers.

Lately, I have been having dreams that tug at me more than usual. Weird dreams aren’t unusual for me. About a week ago, I did my weekly ceremony, to give thanks to my protectors and honor their blessings, stuff like that, and then I pulled out three cards.

The cards were: Ace of Pentacles, 10 of Cups and the Justice card.

My skin was electric looking at these cards. I didn’t really have a particular question. I just told them I was overwhelmed with the world, worried about the future of mankind, scared for my family and that is what they presented me. I love these cards. They evoke something inside of me that I can’t even write here, because I don’t know. I realize that sometimes I’m not supposed to put these things into words; I just have to absorb the symbols, let the archetypes guide me. I didn’t know what to think after pulling these cards. I left them on my altar and went to bed.

The Lions

That night I had ‘The Three Lions Dream’. To summarize, I was in a Victorian-style house, with a layer of dust on everything, but lovely and grand. I could tell that it was once an impressive home. And now it seemed abandoned. There was a man, a thin, white man with stunning blonde hair, a hat that looked straight out of a fairy tale, and a smug look. I didn’t like him much. I named him the Charismatic Man.

In the parlor were three lions: a mama, daddy, and baby lion. They were all pacing, like they were hungry or wanted out of their cage. The male lion had some kind of solar energy. Separating us from the lions was a thin curtain hung as a parlor door. The air would rustle the curtains, and I peeked in to see them. I was terrified, of course, who wouldn’t be at the possibility of getting mauled by lions?

I told Charismatic Man, ‘You have to get these lions out of here, they’re dangerous and they’re going to kill us!’ I was frantic. But funny, Charismatic Man seemed bored at the suggestion. He said not to worry. He wasn’t getting rid of the lions. This made me panic even more because I was thinking of my daughter. If she arrived at the house, she could be killed by them. I was also confused as to why the man didn’t care.

I opened the door, and the lions ran out. Charismatic Man ran after them, upset. He wanted to bring them back. I ran after him because I still wanted to convince him to expel the lions. But now they were loose in the town.

The town was like a small Italian village. I found Charismatic Man in a cafe, surrounded by women. They were charmed by him, hanging on to his stories and offering him exotic cakes and spicy tea.

“Don’t believe what this man says! Lions are roaming around, and he wants to keep them!”

But the women dismissed me. They were too enchanted by him. I walked back out, anxious to find the lions. I went back to the house and stood in the enterance hallway. The lions then ran back in, back towards the parlor. The baby lion stopped in front of me and let me pet it. He put his paw on me, and I felt his sharp little nails scratch me. But he wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was playful. He walked back into the parlor following his parents.

I peeked in, still afraid, and caught the eyes of the male lion. He looked deep inside me. I felt that pure raw power, that energy that knocked me back. He snarled, but I knew then he wasn’t going to hurt me. I woke up, trying to untangle it all.

A loose interpretation

A few days later, I went back to the altar to look at the cards and to try to connect them back to the dream. I felt like the Ace of Pentacles was presenting me with a new journey. Something is unfolding for me, and I have a responsibility to do what I am meant to do in this world. I have to stay grounded in the journey, at least in the beginning.

One of my favourite cards is the 10 of Cups. Again, there are no words to describe how it makes me feel. It’s a positive card, something to try to get to. It also reminds me of family, of unity. Maybe this is also protection from my ancestors. My aunt, my dad’s sister, told me once when I was a lost teenager, ‘no matter where I am, I will always protect you,’ and she probably is protecting me.

The Justice card also gives me hope when it comes to this shit world. No one can deny that evil is loose right now. It just is. We’re all being tested. And I just had a thought, in the way I was taught to read the tarot, the Justice and the Strength cards are switched, because you must be balanced and proceed with the journey in a just manner, with a clear and balanced mind. The Strength card has a lion that is being tamed by the maiden. Will Justice tame the solar energy in our world? That raw male energy. There is a clear imbalance, not enough real feminine energy right now. Gaia has a boot on her neck.

That leads me to a follow-up dream I had a few nights ago. I will write about this one too. But it was an apocalyptic dream, in a post-war world, full of chaos. Yesterday, I did a 6-card reading for the dream interpretation. I chose the 10 of Cups again. And I also got the 2 of Cups, which has the head of a lion! The lions seem to be a guide, a reminder of strength and solidarity. Perhaps?

I’d love to know what my fellow tarot card readers and/or Jungian dream interpreters think about this.