5th

I started to feel really bad this weekend and I thought I was going to have a bad episode, but I'm trying to stay optimistic. I need to remember to take things one step at a time and not compare myself to others. I started off the day by going to a temazcal about an hour away from the city. I was invited by Erandi, the daughter of the señora I live with. I really really needed that. It was an emotionally intense experience. I feel so grateful that I have the opportunity to be living in Mexico, regardless of what happens after.

I'm so grateful for all the lives I get to live here. I'm so glad I am able to dance folklórico every week. I'm back on antibiotics for the third time since I got sick, but my tía changed the antibiotics after my really bad fatigue less. I'm on them right now, but I feel ok. I'm still learning who I can really count on here in Mexico everyday. I am trying to be patient with my growth. I get to live so many lives here and I am so grateful.

"I feel that it is important to honor my healing and the people who were really there for me. To do that, I needed to honor myself. I needed to honor my body as an intelligent vessel that can guide me through this life. Though I already knew about eating well and getting exercise, the task was now to do these things consistently. I also need to love, pray, serve, and dance. The need to dance and rejoice no longer feels like a hedonistic indulgence but rather a spiritual necessity. My dad once told me that when you dance, you pray twice, or double (“cuando se reza bailando, se reza lo double”). Dancing is the most sincere prayer I have."

– 

Rosa María Hernández Juárez, “Healing Introspections: Reaching Inside and Reconstructing Myself,” Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women’s Lives