from silence to ceremony: here is my boricua rebirth 🇵🇷🪶🪔

i’m afro-taína. but for most of my life, i didn’t feel like i was allowed to say that with any real confidence.

i didn’t grow up speaking spanish. i didn’t grow up learning the history of Borikén. i didn’t know the stories of our resistance, our medicine, our songs. i didn’t grow up with abuela’s herbal wisdom or the rhythms of bomba and plena pulsing through my body. and because of that, i felt like i had no right to claim my own lineage.

it’s strange, isn’t it? to carry an entire culture in your blood and still feel like an outsider to it. to feel like a visitor in your own ancestry.

all i had was the food. lechón asado, pollo guisado, empanadillas. that was the one place i felt puerto rican without needing to explain myself. but even that felt surface-level when the rest of me was starving for deeper connection.

i remember being a teenager and avoiding the label altogether. i didn’t call myself latina. i didn’t feel “latina enough.” not fluent, not raised in it, not close to the island. i thought: maybe this just isn’t mine to claim.

but the truth is: what wasn’t mine was the shame i inherited around claiming it.

it wasn’t my fault that colonization, assimilation, and generational silence severed the cord.

it wasn’t my fault that i didn’t grow up hearing Taíno words or learning how our people understood the stars.

it wasn’t my fault that the language was lost.

but it is my responsibility to find my way back.

and now, i am.

i’m learning the Taíno names for the land, the sky, the sea.

i’m learning about Atabey—the divine mother spirit—and how she lived in all things: rivers, wombs, earth.

i’m learning that the healing practices i’m drawn to today—plant medicine, prayer, womb wisdom, energy work—were always part of our people’s way of life.

i’m remembering that the blood in my veins is not just mixed—it’s sacred.

puerto rican culture isn’t just spanish and african—it’s also deeply indigenous. and all of these things combined make us who we are. our Taíno roots are still alive in the words we speak, the food we eat, the way we survive. and though they tried to erase that history, it lives in our DNA. it lives in our dreams. it lives in the ache we feel when we sense something is missing.

that ache is the call to remember.

and i’m answering it.

not perfectly, not fluently, but faithfully.

i’m reclaiming the parts of me i was taught to feel ashamed of.

i’m studying brujería, not as a trend, but as a return.

i’m asking my wise and well ancestors to guide me—even the ones whose names i never knew.

i’m lighting candles. setting altars. listening to the drumbeat in my belly.

because i’m not just doing this for me.

i’m doing it for my daughter.

so that she grows up with the pride i had to earn.

so that she knows her bloodline is beautiful.

so that she feels her ancestors’ hands on her shoulders and doesn’t question if they’re really there.

so that she never has to wonder if she’s “enough” to belong.

she is enough. because i’m choosing to belong—to all of myself.

this healing didn’t start with me.

but it’s becoming more visible through me.

and it will continue with her.

i want her to speak her truth in two tongues.

i want her to know Atabey’s name and feel her in the waves.

i want her to eat with reverence. to pray with fire.

to walk with the knowing that her roots run deep, wide, and wild.

so no, i didn’t grow up fully immersed in puerto rican or Taíno culture.

but i’m building a life where both are honored at the altar.

and i’m doing it with devotion.

for me.

for her.

for every ancestor who wasn’t allowed to.

🌺

if you’re also walking this path of remembering, i see you. you don’t need to have grown up with all the traditions to be valid in your identity. sometimes, the most powerful reclamation comes from the ones who were once disconnected—and found their way back anyway.

we are the seeds.

we are the medicine.

we are the prayers our ancestors whispered into the earth, blooming now.

con sangre y fuerza,

Yaríelis