#79: Joy & Rebellion: A Childfree Latina’s Guide to 2025

[00:00] Buen dia, mi gente, and welcome to La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas, the only Spanglish podcast for childfree Latinas y Latines, helping us liberate ourselves from the toxic cultural brainwashing we all grew up with, so that we can design our best lives instead. Bye. I’m your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato.

[00:24] Happy New Year! Feliz Año Nuevo! How’s the first full week of 2025 been for you, hon? Did you know that you can actually text me and answer that question? For reals, there’s a link in the show notes to do just that. And I’d really love to hear from you. Just make sure I know it is you. Like, put your name in it.

[00:43] Anyway! I usually love this time of year. There’s something magical about a collective fresh start. I know a lot of people like to poo poo resolutions and all that, and I don’t disagree with it, because real change requires a mindset shift more than a to do list. You know, making resolutions and seeing them through?

[01:05] Most people fail at that, which is why the second Friday in January is called Quitter’s Day. Nice, right? I used to do the Word of the Year, and that’s what episode 53 is all about from last year. If I had to pick a word for 2025, with all the trepidation and the gnarly feelings and the fears I have about this coming year and the incoming administration, I’d still choose joy.

[01:32] When I look back at the many ups and downs of this last year from moving again and the expense of that and losing friends and still accomplishing several landmark milestones all on my own, I choose to focus on the joy. As humans, we’re biologically wired to focus on the negative, on the bad shit, and we have a lot of bad shit coming.

[01:55] We’ll get to that in a minute. So choosing to instead revel in joy and focus on the good shit, not the bad shit, that takes work. You can rewire your brain to do it more easily, even automatically, but that also is work. I’m doing a vision board workshop for the Latinas In Podcasting this weekend, and that’s not usually how I spend my new year, but it turns out it’s a pretty powerful tool.

[02:21] I’ve learned a lot about how repetition and intentionality are necessary for reaching your goals. This shouldn’t be a surprise since lifting weights works the exact same way. You have to repeatedly do the same thing, the same lift over and over and over, with increasingly more reps and or more weight, to improve.

[02:43] And when you finally do get to that next level, it’s an amazing feeling. Setting a new personal record, a PR, is a huge win. It is a moment of joy. That’s what I’m chasing this year. No, not chasing, let me rephrase that. I am welcoming joy. Notice how this shifts the intention? Instead of being something I have to capture, something I have to work for, it’s instead going to come to me.

[03:15] I just have to make the space for it. And I believe that, despite the wild shit going on around us. I actually did a whole series on how gym workouts carry over into real life from episodes 10 to 12. And spoiler alert! I’m planning to do a deep dive into that this year as we progress through 2025. So stay tuned.

[03:37] Back to the new year. A new year is a fresh start. Something we’re all doing collectively. We’re all experiencing a new year at the same time. And that’s what I’m usually so excited about. The blank slate. The possibilities. Anything can happen! Great things could be hovering over the horizon! But this year, this year feels different.

[04:04] For those of us in the US, we’ve already seen the storm clouds a-formin’. I’m gonna be very blunt, like you’d expect anything else. There are probably some bad things, truly scary shit, in store for us. Because they already showed us their playbook. We’re all well aware of Project 2025, yes? If you haven’t heard about Project 2025, please stop here and do yourself a Google.

[04:29] You can also listen to me talk about it on episodes 69, 74, and 76 for some background. Don’t worry, that list will be in the show notes. The bottom line is that there is little to no governmental resistance now to the draconian future the framers of P25 envisioned. And with Elon and Vivek running fast and loose with governmental oversight, who knows what fresh hell is waiting for us?

[04:54] What we do know is what They, the people in power, want. They want to go back to traditional values as defined by Them. That’s not a definition I subscribe to, and probably you don’t subscribe to either, because no. I don’t agree with stripping away the freedom we women and gays and theys have fought so damn hard for over the last century and then some.

[05:18] It’s a dangerous moment for us women and for all marginalized communities, especially those of us who aren’t lily white Christian men. And here is where I’m going to address the 39 percent of Latinas and the 54 percent of Latinos who voted for the Orange Payaso. They don’t think you’re white either, honey.

[05:39] So, you’re either a token who got spent, or you’re about to be in for a very rude awakening. A lot like those people the first time who didn’t think they’d be deported because they were quote unquote, a good one. No tienen vergüenza. But you’re gonna enter the find out period soon enough. You think you’re safe and your proximity to whiteness will save you?

[06:06] LOL. So what happens when all of that comes crashing down for you? Real talk, I don’t know how men are okay with this. Sure, you want to be in charge of something, but now you also have all the responsibility of taking care of everyone around you. That’s a lot to handle. Why would you want to take that burden on all by yourself?

[06:31] That by itself isn’t power. Most of the men I know enjoy having a partner, an equal with whom they share both the responsibilities and the privileges of a relationship with. Now, I know, all men aren’t mature and emotionally intelligent, but even so, why would you want to shoulder all the duties, the obligations, and the burdens by yourself?

[06:55] That’s dumb. And it doesn’t have to be like that. All you have to do is treat your partner like a person. It’s really simple. Anyway, for the rest of us, what is next? Well, that’s why you listen to this show, La Vida Más Chévere, right? Which is all about designing your best life. So how can we possibly design our best lives while also trying to survive this next year or the next four years?

[07:22] Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. What They, the people in power, want is for women to just shut the fuck up and get back in the kitchen or something. They want to strip us of our voices, of any iota of power we may have enjoyed up to this point. And let’s be honest, it’s been very, very limited, especially for those of us who are not white women.

[07:47] They want us just making babies and making sandwiches and not in any way complaining about any of that. Well, okay, if that’s what They want, if that’s what They’re gonna plan to do, I have a suggestion. The rest of us should take this as an opportunity to act as if we no longer have anything left to lose.

[08:09] Now, I don’t mean burning down your home and your safety with it, and I’m definitely not suggesting that we all go out and start popping CEOs, though Luigi Mangione is innocent until proven guilty. No, I am not advocating that we sacrifice ourselves and certainly not recklessly. We have to be strategic. What I am urging, as I always have, is for us to continue trying to dismantle the patriarchy and act as if we have nothing left to lose.

[08:43] They want to take it all from us. So, if They did, what would we be left with? What would we do? How would we act? How would we react? How would we organize? What would we do differently? This, this is the mind shift I want us to consider. The way we continue to design and live and thrive in our best lives is simply existing, resisting, and deciding that no matter what They, the people in power, want to enact, or do, that we will not be silenced. This show will continue as long as I can continue to put it out. Until it is illegal for me, as a woman, as a Latina, as a marginalized individual, to no longer be allowed to exercise her free speech. That’s my plan.

[09:34] What They fear the most is this very thing. Women organizing, resisting, and building a better future together irrespective of whatever power the patriarchy doles out to white Christian men. So that’s exactly what we should do. Your power, my power, it’s in our ability to reach others, whether that’s through a podcast like this or in a classroom if you’re a teacher, in a studio or a gallery if you’re an artist, or even having a conversation on the bus— or just on Threads.

[10:09] Whatever your platform is, now is the time to double down. Every interaction, no matter how small, creates a ripple of change. You know this. To be completely honest with you, there was a short time there where I was like, after the Latinas In Podcasting Virtual Summit in October, I took a long break. And for the last two months, I’ve been wondering, do I even want to keep a podcasting?

[10:37] Because quite frankly, I’d be okay walking away right now and focusing on other things like building the Latinas In Podcasting community and finding funding for that. That’s a full time job in and of itself. You listening right now could help that by becoming either a paid subscriber of this show or the Substack. There’s links for both of them in the show notes.

[11:00] And we need that funding because we need these voices amplified and protected. So I will continue to do that too. And if you’re going to be in Chicago for PME in April, let’s chat. But I also recognize that those of you who tune into this show, who are listening to me right now, you deserve this, you need this.

[11:20] You may not think so. You may be like, Paulette, I’m just here for the entertainment. Haha! Alright, that’s cool too. Thank you for your downloads. But I know that at least one or two of you listen because you want hope. Because you want to hear that things aren’t going to be as terrible as we’re all kind of catastrophizing in our own heads that they might be.

[11:38] And look, I’m not going to tell you that it might not be bad. It might be. I told you it was going to be blunt. It might get really ugly out there. Already the leopards are eating their own faces. It’s not going to be great for anybody. But then I might also suggest you go to Costco and fill up on popcorn for the rest of this term, because, I don’t know, we might actually be entertained by this bizarro circus.

[12:03] It’s a possibility. But remember, despite all of this, we still have freedom of speech. We still have freedom of expression. They cannot take that away from us. Not without a lot of other crap happening before we get to that point. Like literally burning the Constitution to ashes. If that happens, we’ll have to regroup.

[12:26] Maybe Nic Cage will come and steal it before that happens. I don’t know. In the meantime, I want to challenge you to use your voice. The speaker, Vinh Giang, calls it an instrument, and I love that. So your instrument, whether that’s a literal one, like a drum set, or a figurative one, like your voice. I want you to find your instrument, use your instrument, and act as if you have nothing left to lose.

[12:55] If you haven’t found your instrument yet, start looking now. Start today. Write it, sing it, speak it, dance it, let it out. This is what is meant by standing in your power. Then, and if you’ve already found your voice slash instrument, you’re here, use it louder. They want us to disappear from the public discourse.

[13:17] They want us to stop being inconvenient to them. They want us to shut up. So the antidote to that is very simple. Not only do we not shut up, we play our instruments louder. You know how when an award nominee is on stage, like at the Oscars, when their acceptance speech starts to take a little too long and the orchestra starts playing louder and louder to drown them out?

[13:45] We are the orchestra! That’s how I’ll be operating. And that is going to be the theme of La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas this year. In the next episode, I’m doing a deeper dive into the mindset shift and how you can do it too. So once again, stay tuned. Till then, as we gear up for the inauguration, I have some resources you can check out in the show notes.

[14:10] One is Women Take the Day, which is an initiative to again become an orchestra and drown out the circus by uplifting and focusing on the voices and actions of women that day. Don’t forget that the inauguration falls on January 20th, which is also MLK Day. It’s ironic, isn’t it? And not in the Alanis Morissette kind of way.

[14:31] I mean, irony that we will be celebrating this civil rights figure at the same time and on the same day as we can watch the collapse of our democracy. We can laugh at the absurdity. We can also cry. Definitely have a cry. Crying is a release and we all deserve one. Tears, like rain, help wash things away.

[14:55] They allow us to let go of pain and fear and burdens we’ve been carrying for far too long. And what if, in spite of all the crap that may go down this year, we washed away some of this pain and reconnected with our joy? What if 2025 was the year of joy? Remember, we have nothing left to lose, so we may as well enjoy what we have while we’re here.

[15:28] Mija, that’s how we strive. When we have nothing left to lose, then we have everything left to gain. So we’ll take up space. We’ll revel in joy and our little rebellious orchestra will get loud. You with me? Good. Now stay hydrated. And that’s a burrito.[15:52] Hey, mira, if this episode made you feel some kind of way, dígame. DM me on Instagram. Or send me a text. You can do that right from your phone. If you want to be a guest on the show and put your story out there too, check out the guest form on my website at pauletterato. com slash guest. Yep, just my name, pauletterato. com slash guest. Y no se te olvide que hay más perks when you join the newsletter. Todos estos links están en los show notes. Muchísimas gracias for your support y hasta la próxima vez, cuídate bien.