Yaffa's Dominican mom wanted her to marry a White American. So when she fell in love with a Dominican man, she kept the relationship and wedding secret. And marriage and family therapist Claudia Parada speaks with Juleyka about how to confront our parents' bias while sparing our romantic partners the drama.
Yaffa S. Santos is the author of the novel A Touch of Moonlight. You can learn more about her work and writing here. Our expert this week is Marriage and Family Therapist, DEI trainer Claudia Parada. Learn more about her work here If you loved this episode, listen to Telling Them I'm Moving in With Boyfriend and Telling Mom She's Also Biased. tktk
Featured Expert:
Claudia Parada Claudia Parada is an associate marriage and family therapist, antiracism consultant and trainer, and holistic life coach, A San Francisco Bay Area native, Claudia completed my Bachelors at San Francisco State University Latinx Studies Program and a Master’s degree in Integral Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies training in humanistic approaches to therapy. She has a passion for working with people of color to re-member and reimagine the way they heal together in today’s world. Claudia uses ten years of holistic life coaching experience, six years of apprenticeship in Mesoamerican tradition, and four years of counseling training to support clients uncover their own inner wisdom around what health and healing mean for them.
We’d love to hear your stories of triumph and frustration so send us a detailed voice memo to virginia@lwcstudios.com. You might be on a future episode! Let’s connect on Twitter and Instagram at @TalkToMamiPapi and email us at hello@talktomamipapi.com. And follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody. Today, we welcome Yaffa to the show. Yaffa always knew that her Afro Dominican mom wanted her to marry a white American. So when Yaffa fell in love with the Dominican man during a trip to the DR and later decided to marry him, she knew her mom wasn't going to approve. Let's get into it.
Yaffa: My name is Yaffa Santos. I am an author. I'm also a mom. And I'm in training to become a family therapist. My new book is A Touch of Moonlight. And growing up I called my parents Mamí and Dad.
I was born and raised in New Jersey by a Dominican mother and American father. My dad is Jewish American and he's been racialized as white. I would say he identifies as white.
In the Dominican Republic. There's also a lot of internalized racism. Like my mom is an Afro Dominican woman, she's a Black woman and she does not identify as a Black woman. My mom came to this country in 1963, she was about 18 years old. She felt that she'd done a lot of hard work to become American. And, in her mind, that was unbecoming Dominican. If people would ask her, "Where are you from?" She'd be like, "Oh, I'm from everywhere. I have ancestors from this place, this place, this place." Her belief was that if she became more American, she'd be more successful.
She would say, "You have to be a professional, make your own money." But then she'd also say, "I want you to marry somebody who was like well off." And what I understood was that she wanted us to marry a white person.
I was on a school vacation, I was a senior in high school. I went to stay with my Abuela, my grandmother in the Dominican Republic, in the town that she lived.
One day I just went with my cousins to the park, and then he was there. We started talking, and we ended up going to the beach the next day and we had some time to hang out. And then, I went back the next summer, I did an internship in Dominican Republic, and then that's when we started dating.
Dominican men are known for being very [Spanish 00:02:26], very like, "I'm the man and I'm going to do it." So one of the things that stood out for me was that one time we went to the beach and we were going over this thing that had hot rocks. There was a bunch of men that were standing around and drinking and they were like, "Carry her! Carry her over the rocks." And he's like, "She got it. She can walk by herself." And actually, that made an impression on me because they're not like that usually.
So I came back from this trip and I told my mom that I had met somebody in Dominican Republic and she was like, "Absolutely no, no, no, no, no, no." She was like, "You don't like him. No, you just think that. You don't don't like him." So she's like, "You're gonna go to college and you're going to forget that you even met him." And I was like, "Okay."
We dated for almost a year, but then he's living in the Dominican Republic, I'm living in New York. He had to travel back and forth. It got pretty serious, I would say. At first, we said, "We want to get married in five years." I'm going to finish college, and then five years from now we'll get married. But then we said, "We already know we want to get married so what's the point?" When I first told her or mentioned the idea, she was like, "No, absolutely not. I didn't do all this so that you could go back and marry a Dominican." So we ended up getting married without telling her at all. We went to City Hall and got married.
So the way my mom found out is that one of my husband's tía was calling him. She called my mom's house and she's asking, I'm looking for so and so's wife, and my mom's like, "He doesn't have a wife." And she's like, "Yes, he does." And my mom was like, "He does not have a wife." So she found out that we had gotten married about five months after we had actually gotten married.
At the time, our relationship was deteriorated. Communication had broken down. She just called me having not talked for months to say, "What's going on?" As she saw that our relationship was getting more serious, there became more and more tension. The hardest part about this whole situation with my mom was probably the fact that it didn't make any sense that she's Dominican and she's upset that I'm marrying a Dominican. But you know what? I know also why it is, again like I was saying about the machismo. She's thinking, "You're marrying a Dominican man, they're gonna be expecting you to be cooking three times a day, whatever their interests are, are gonna come before yours."
And I'm able to empathize with her on that level. Coming from the Dominican Republic in the '60s she fell into what, over here, was the feminist movement. And she identified with that a lot more than the way she was brought up, which is that you're gonna be subservient to your husband. My husband was not like that. We share the chores at home. We both clean, we both cook, we both work. So she's like, "Hmm." It helps her realize maybe it's not like what I was afraid of.
Eventually they got to the point where they were like, "Hey, let's go sit out and have a beer." It didn't happen right away though still, years into our marriage, she was still upset about it.
Lantigua: I was mentally clapping for Yaffa and giving her high fives the entire time.
As an Afro Dominicana those family dynamics around race and marriage are very familiar to me. So how should we as first gens and should we as first gens take on our family's bias when it comes to our love lives? What's our responsibility towards our parents and our partners? To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Claudia Parada:
My name is Claudia Parada, I'm an associate marriage and family therapist in California. I help first generation Latinx women find their [Spanish 00:06:15]. I'm also an energy worker and a DEI person that helps professional teams in their diversity work.
Lantigua: Wow. So you're just like doing God's work everywhere.
Parada: I'm trying out here.
Lantigua: All right. Same deceptively simple question I always ask, which is, what did you hear in Yaffa's story?
Parada: Ooh, okay. I was really taken aback by her courage to really stand behind her truth. She knew that she wanted to be with this man. Her mother was in disagreement with her choice. And she was just kind of like, "Oh, well," went ahead and just married him. I was like, "Go girl. You better do it." That takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage to do that.
Lantigua: Okay, but I have the push back a little bit because this was just not about the dude there is so much more than the dude in this instance.
Parada: Absolutely.
Lantigua: Can you unpack that for us a little bit and then tell us whether you see similar patterns in your work?
Parada: So internalized racism, so the way that it is that I have encountered that within myself, within my own family, and then within the collective Latinx community is that we really internalize this message of not being good enough, of really trying to separate ourselves as the good model minority as to why we're better than others. It's where colorism comes into place. It's where classism really takes a huge role.
Lantigua: So as a Dominican and as an Afro Latina, I was just nodding my head the entire time because the concept of [Spanish 00:07:55] to improve the race, which only ever means to make it whiter, really sends chills up my spine. And it was mortifying to me that Yaffa's dad is Jewish and presents as white and has been racialized, according to her, as white. And her mom was still giving her the message of, "No, you can't move backwards racially. You have to improve the [Spanish 00:08:28] by not marrying a Dominican.
Parada: So for me, what I think about when I hear [Spanish 00:08:34] is how deeply rooted this concept is in colonialism. And how indoctrinated that has been in us for generations. While there's a lot of pain there because of how violent that experience was for us collectively, there's also a lot of internalization that I think that we've done as Latinx people to really try to survive that.
And so, part of it is assimilation. As painful as it is to look at, the closer in proximity we are to whiteness the more stability, and safety and success that equates to. So while it's deeply painful and it needs to 1000% be unlearned, I heard that and I was like, "Yeah, that makes sense. I heard that a lot growing up. Look how beautiful this person's skin is, they are so white and they have light eyes and wow."
Lantigua: Y pelo bueno,
Parada: Exactly.
Lantigua: So I've often asked experts like yourself this question in different formats, which is, what do first gens Yaffa in terms of their responsibility, in terms of their duty to elevate their own families? Many people, they feel torn because they feel like I've got to be the person who educates, who breaks the cycles, who sheds light on the biases that are actually limiting us in so many ways. How do your clients, how do the people that you work with go through these things?
Parada: I find this to be a really complex question. Of course, you want to think, "Yeah, stand up and say what your truth is and be the one who educates." And then, we also have to think about positions of privilege and the different intersections of identity. Not everybody can stand up to their parents and say, "I disagree with you," because maybe they're queer, or maybe they're gonna lose their housing, or we don't really know everybody's situation. Also, I would never in and of myself say to an Afro Latinx person, you need to be the one taking on this emotional labor because they've already taken on so much emotional labor.
I think the answer to that question is really, it depends on what's your baseline, how regulated can you be in this conversation? Can we stay curious without creating a humongous rupture within your family? Are you okay with the consequences that are gonna happen if you have this conversation with your parents? And there are skills that we have to build around that.
Lantigua: I want you to take us down that path. Talk to us about the skills.
Parada: One, how are you examining your own self and how you're coming into the conversation? So the way that we're going to be stepping into a conversation, hopefully, is with a regulated nervous system, an understanding of how and when we get triggered, how to cope with those triggers, and then stay curious about, "Hey mom and dad, you're saying something that's pretty problematic. I don't agree with that. Let's have a conversation about it."
There's also co-regulation. So really inviting and educating yourself and whoever's in the conversation with you around how we can stay in contact with each other. The first step in this is having the awareness of yourself. When you're starting to feel activated so your thoughts, your physical sensations and your emotions that it is that you're aware of. So when you begin to feel escalated, or you begin to recognize those in your partner, whoever's in your conversation, then really saying, "You know what? Can we take one moment to pause here? I'm feeling like I'm getting activated, or I'm feeling like I'm getting really excited." And really kind of owning that you need to take that pause.
There is those mirror neurons and how nervous systems can really come together. If I'm calm, then you can be calm or vice versa, so that's part of it. I can pivot and say, "Can we take a moment to laugh, or make a joke, or have a tea, or go for a walk?" And that helps them also come to calm down with you.
Lantigua: And if they don't?
Parada: Yeah, I think from there, if they don't, I would probably disengage at that point at the conversation. Because when somebody is in such an activated state, we all know that we're no longer listening at that point. We're not listening. So then I would at that point say like, "Okay, so I think I need to take a break. Maybe we can revisit this at another time."
And if it feels like something that is possible saying, "Look, Mom and Dad, I really love you and this is something that I want to share with you, but right now it's not seeming like a really good time so we're going to try maybe another time later." And if that doesn't feel like natural language, then I think what I like to do with my clients is talk about, well, what does feel natural for you? What is your language? Cause that's maybe the way that I would talk and my parents have gotten used to that by now.
I also really want to hold our older generations and folks who are holding older paradigms, they can also change too if we work it with them. And I've seen my partner do this with his mom 'cause she lives with us and he's like, "Mom, Mom, I'm trying to talk to you. I'm trying to tell you this. I'm not accusing you of anything. I just want to have a conversation with you, is that okay?" So it's actually been quite a few times of trying that where she actually has come around sometimes.
Lantigua: Yeah so I'm actually glad you brought up two really key things here. One is that this is not one and done. There are ingrained patterns of behavior that if we want to see change, it has to be repeated. And you have to make many attempts.
But the other part of this that I want to spend a few minutes on is the partner, right? Because we are our partner's ambassador to our family. And so, we have a duty of care when it comes to not just ensuring their wellbeing and their safety within our families, but also sometimes literally to shield them from the BS. How do we handle our duty of care with our partner? How much do we share? How much do we get them involved? Do we bring them into the actual conversation? Where do you suggest people draw boundaries when it comes to this?
Parada: Ooh, I think that's a really good question. Your partner is not responsible, for me at least the way that I hold it is, they're not responsible for taking on your family's BS, or conforming to your family's BS. So you as the partner that is in this family dynamic that is problematic need to figure out what is my system of support where I can really work through this without displacing it onto my partnership? Because it's really not fair and really it's not their emotional labor to carry. They can support you in some ways, but it would be really to tell my partner, "Hey, my mom actually doesn't like you because you don't come from money." Or, "My mom doesn't like you because you're Afro Latinx, or you're X, Y, and Z." It could be a million different things. And that would be really, I think for me, a terrible thing for the partner to hold and know. We don't have to protect mom and dad, but we also don't have to completely displace that labor onto them either. That's not fair.
Lantigua: Okay, but you need emotional support as you're going through this.
Parada: So you're gonna need to identify somebody in your support system, whether it's a friend, or community member, a mentor, a healer, where they're gonna be able to have that kind of critical eye of systems and have an understanding of how they can support somebody through a process that is challenging. So whether it's in your church, or in your spiritual practice, or with your friends, I encourage you to write it out because when you have it in front of you, you can kind of pick from your menu. Like today, I'm going to call Jessica and she's going to have 30 minutes for me to talk about how shitty it is with my mom.
Also, have a therapist or coach. I completely encourage this too. Obviously, I drank the Kool-Aid. I think therapists really help for this to be able to help you process, and not only verbally, but physically. When you're holding emotions in your body, they can help you physically process those emotions.
Maybe a therapist is not everybody's thing, but I have girlfriends who see a psychic, or a curandera, or whatever it is. And then, make yourself a list of how it is that you support yourself. So is it a walk, is it a meditation, is it a bubble bath, is it...? And then those other things on the list. Is it ice cream? Is it going for french fries? What is it that is actually going to help support you through a difficult time so you're not displacing that onto your partner? So, really making those lists and having them readily available to you so you could physically touch it and see it is helpful.
Lantigua: All right final question, which is kind of open ended, but did I forget to ask you about something?
Parada: Ooh, I want to echo and emphasize the thing that it is that you said, which is it's not a one and done. A lot of times people when they come to work with me, they get really like, "Ah, but I did the thing already. And then I have to do it again? I did my boundary. I have to keep holding it?" And even in DEI work, when you're talking about anti-racism, like, "Oh, we have to keep exploring this," and I'm like, "Yeah." It is a constant and lifetime's work of engagement. So once we start to think about it as the long game, then it really takes off the pressure of having it be more outcomes based. Really giving yourself that grace and our families and friends that grace too, they need it as well.
Lantigua: Thank you, Claudia. You're a gem. Thank you for being here.
Parada: Aww, thank you for having me here.
Lantigua: All right. Here's what we learned from Claudia. Calm down, together. When you feel triggered during a difficult conversation, invite your loved one to take a break with you. This helps everyone calm down while staying connected, and committed to moving the conversation forward.
Create two support lists. One is of people in your network you can turn to when you need to vent, or process a challenging situation. The other one is a list of activities you can do by yourself to support yourself. Pick and choose as needed.
And remember, own it. If it's your family's bias and their difficult dynamics creating the drama, do the emotional labor yourself and leave your partner out of it as much as possible.
Monica Lopez: Thank you for listening and sharing us. How to talk to Mami and Papi About Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Carl Kevin Robinson Jr mixed this episode. Juleyka Lantigua is our creator and host. I'm senior editor Monica Lopez. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi.
Bye everybody. Same place next week.
Monica Lopez:
Thank you for listening and sharing us. How to Talk to Mami & Papi About Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is our show's producer. Carl Kekin Robinson Jr mixed this episode. Juleyka Lantigua is the creator and host. I'm senior editor Monica Lopez. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi. Bye everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “She Married a Man Against Mamí's Wishes”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything,
LWC Studios., October 31, 2022. TalkToMamiPapi.com.