So lucky to have been given the opportunity to have a sit down with a REAL Chingona, Samara Mejia Hernandez. Chingona Ventures is a venture capitalist firm that invests in companies that may not look like your typical investment. This firm is helping change the way the we see VCs and what investing in founders looks like. Please take some time to listen to all of the gems Samara had to share and remember when all else fails just ask yourself, “What would a white, privileged man do?”
Category: friendship
Brown Girl Talks to MO
On my FINAL episode of young, Black entrepreneurs I finally get a chance to talk the founders of Master of Original! We talk about all things creative and how to take an idea and transform it into a brand. I truly can’t wait to see what’s next for Charles and Kenny, I know their unwavering positivity will only continue to bring the best things to them.
Brown Girl Talks to Saint Avenue
Part 3 of what is now a 4 Part Series on young, Black entrepreneurs. Walked away from this one feeling motivated and ready to manifest whatever is next. Thank you to LaStar for sharing his experiences and wisdom.
Brown Girl Talks to Mike Neal
This is Part 2 of a 3 Part series on young, Black entrepreneurs. On this episode, I have a chat with former Green Bay Packer, Michael Neal. Mike talks to us about his experience leading up to the NFL through his retirement from the Pack. Take a listen for an inside look of life in the league and beyond.
Brown Girl Talks to Black RN
On today’s timely episode, we talk to a Black RN. We talked back in March where he walks us through his new nursing assignment to an ICU Covid floor. I’m happy to report that since recording and posting this episode, him and his entire family remain Covid Free. Thanks to our special guest, for joining us and giving us a first-person account of what’s it’s like to be an essential, healthcare worker during a pandemic. Stay Safe and remember Masks Work!
The Real Truth About Loss
Let me preface this, I don’t know the WHOLE truth about loss. Frankly, I’m not even entirely sure what MY truth about loss is but I’ve been spending the last few weeks really trying to figure it out. On June 21st, 2019, I lost something that was so much a part of me that I’m pretty sure a part of me left with him and since then, time has flown by but seemingly stood still. I’ve drafted so many different explanations and justifications for what I was feeling and how I was coping so that my friends, my family and everyone else could understand me. But, despite all these drafts, I haven’t finished any of them. The thing is I haven’t been able to get to the ending. I haven’t been able to write the conclusion, to tie it up in a nice little bow, and although I’ve heard it doesn’t always have to end that way, I can’t figure out how to stop writing without it.
Let me start at the beginning and throw it back to about eleven years ago. I was a few weeks from 21, living on the 4th floor of a Chicago flat with three of my college girlfriends and I decided I was getting a dog. Our lease specifically said “no dogs,” but I got him anyway. See, from the moment I saw the goofy brindle puppy that wasn’t quick enough to keep up with his brothers and sisters, tripping over his own paws and wanted nothing to do with me, I was hooked. What can I say? Me gusta la mala vida. I knew the clumsy, not into people, would rather be alone, pup was made for me. And if there’s one thing I know the real truth about–it’s that he was in fact made for me, by science, evolution or whatever God you believe in, me and him were meant to find each other.
Through undergrad, law school, the bar and my first years of practice he remained my loyal constant. One house and 5 apartments later, he didn’t care if it was acres of grass to run freely or an apartment with no air conditioning, he was with me as long as I was with him.
He listened faithfully to my early 20’s drama and my late 20’s fears and constant second-guessing. He never walked away or chose someone else and always met me excitedly when I got home. I had no idea what I was doing and made most things up as we went, but he trusted I’d figure it out–and if he ever doubted me, he never let on.
I taught him to nap like your life depended on it, and he reminded me to get up, get some fresh air and have a meal and some water. He inherited my hate for the cold and the rain and refused to leave the house if there was even a threat of precipitation, I admired his commitment. He taught me patience and the importance of finding the ray of sun shining through the curtains even on the rainiest of days, and I tried to remember to embrace that point of view. I showed him the importance of a warm bath and a good towel dry, he made the shower his favorite spot when he needed some alone time. I moved, he came with. I was scared to jump, he reminded me I wasn’t alone. I was nervous about moving to a new neighborhood–5 different times–he never let me walk alone. I told him all of my secrets and he saw all of my mistakes and short-comings and chose me anyway. I wasn’t sure if my boyfriend would fit in with our life, he showed me you’re never too old to make a new friend. I was always afraid I’d end up alone, he stayed with me until he made sure I wasn’t. He got sick and we tried to get him better, really hard. He showed me he couldn’t do it and about 2 months ago, we all said goodbye.
. 
I don’t know the truth about loss, but I know that losing him was the rock bottom of a place I haven’t seen in a while. I’m not sure what your truth about loss is, but I know mine makes everything a shade of grey, sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher and feels numb and outrageously heavy all at the same time. I know mine makes it hard for me to feel anything that doesn’t drag me down and I know that I’ve never gotten through mine without my buddy by my side.
I know that this time it feels heavier, darker and more hopeless than before. I know that it feels scary and unsteady and makes me question every thought and decision. I know that it feels terribly lonely when I open the door, walk to my bed or remember there’s no one at home waiting for a walk. I know that I work more, drag out my days and avoid being home alone as much as I can. I know I feel cheated and lonely that I can’t share my day with my friend. I know that no matter how many examples I write or stories I tell, that no one will ever understand the emptiness I feel. I don’t know about you, but the truth about my loss is that it’s still very much here.
I know he was more than a companion or a friend. I know he was more than a pet and I his owner. I know now that I don’t have to justify this undefinable connection to anyone. I know the truth about him was, that I’d do it all over again. I know that he was the only decision 21 year-old me made that 31 year-old me doesn’t regret.
I don’t know the truth about your loss, and I guess I don’t know the real truth about loss either. I know my truth. I know it’s heavy and dark and sometimes feels like quicksand if I let myself be still for too long. I know I’ll always expect to hear your paws when I open a door. I’ll expect to see you staring back at me from across the room. I’ll always expect to see you sitting patiently waiting for your food. I’ll always anticipate you jumping up between my legs to find the perfect spot like you were still 10 weeks old. I know I’ll miss the one that taught me to be selfless, the one who taught me what true, unconditional love was, the one that always found the ray of sunshine peaking through everyday.
As you can see, I have been getting to know the truth about my loss pretty well. I know it was hidden in 70 pounds of brindle fur, a line of chalk on the wet pavement that was his forehead to his nose, a hearty dash of patience for kids, a sprinkle of protectiveness, a healthy scoop of love of a warm shower and equal amounts addiction to the filet your dog dad would make for dinner. My loss manifested when the one who always followed me to bed, never walked too far ahead and never missed a Saturday Snooze suddenly up and left.
I’m not sure what the truth about loss is. I don’t know how long it lasts, if it gets better, easier, more forgettable, less painful, brighter, less numb, more open, lighter, less suffocating, more smiley, and less randomly cry-y. I know it’s made me question a million times over if I made the right decision at the right time. I know I’m not sure if you appreciated or hated the effort in the end and I can’t stop asking myself if you heard all of the things I was thanking you for in my head when I held you as you passed.
Truthfully, I only know things about MY loss. The truth is I’m not sure if I’ll ever find the place to put the perfectly tied bow to wrap up your story. But I think that’s fitting, because your life will live on in me because without you, I wouldn’t be 31 year-old me. As I told you for 11 years, “If there’s a life after this one, I promise I will find you there too,” because the truth about my loss is that my heart will always look for you and hanging on to that piece of hope is going to have to be the perfectly, tied bow.
I am the Sun
Every year I get the Birthday Blues. It never fails. I know some people get so hype and litty every year when their birthdays roll around, but me I get the birthday blues. It’s a combination of anxiety and nervousness of having everyone LOOKING at me and engaging with me that gives me a dread that I can only describe as such, the ol’ Birthday Blues.
Over the years I think I narrowed the reason why birthdays get me down: a new year for me always marks looking back on the year before and constantly comparing myself to, myself. What did I do? What did I accomplish? Am I where I wanted to be? Did I achieve the goals I set out for myself last year? Normally, the answer is no or not quite. And every year, like clock work, I have to re-set those goals, re-evaluate why I didn’t get to where I wanted to be and come face to face with some failures–eesh even writing that sentence gave me anxiety… Then, just like I always do, I set some new goals, re-set some old ones and try to remind myself I’m not a complete waste of space for having to re-set the old ones I didn’t accomplish. A constant comparison with myself and everyone else who has ever turned my age before me. So yeah, I guess it’s safe to say I get the Birthday Blues.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love birthdays, my best friends’, my family members’, my partner’s-I love to celebrate them. Even preparing for mine is fun it’s just THAT day, the day of reckoning or celebration (as some may call it), the day of the party, the actual day when all the attention is on me, is overwhelming. But, this year I didn’t quite get the same feelings of dread. Maybe because I was too busy doing 1 million other things, but I didn’t feel that same “oh god I have to sit down and look at all my failures again,” feeling and for once the only thing that gave me anxiety was that I was going to be 31 and how I hoped that no one would make the restaurant staff sing to me at dinner this week…
I realized that all these years I’ve been constantly competing with myself. Every year I set the bar higher, do more, do better, be more efficient, work, volunteer, write, research, find my passion, pay off my debts, let go of the weights in my past, love harder, be kinder but remain steadfast. It’s like me and my goals are flying around in space rotating around the perfect “BGT” trying to get sucked into her gravitational pull to find some kind of order… So, naturally every year, I let myself down when I don’t achieve all of these crazy benchmarks, and me and my crazy goals are spiraling out of control in space, but not this year.
See this year, I realized I’m the Sun. Me, this BGT is the Sun, and I’m not waiting to join anyone’s imaginary gravitational pull, because it turns out, I am the pull. This year I am praising myself for every single accomplishment and failure and I’m equally proud of them all. I am happy to be in love with someone who only expects love in return. I am lucky to have dog that’s 11 but is confused for 5. I am privileged to have a family that loves and supports me despite my flaws. This year, I am walking into 31 leaving behind a past that I thought would have it’s grasp on me forever. I feel lighter than any goal weight I’ve ever set for myself. I found my voice and wasn’t embarrassed to share it with anyone and everyone who was willing (or not) to listen or read it. I am working everyday to find my passion and enjoying some laughs along the way. I am using new found time at home to write and research more and I’ve never felt more invigorated to work towards change of all kinds. Every day, I’m trying really, really hard to be kinder while maintaining my passion and steadfastness and hey I have a little less debt than last year too… I guess that’s what happens when you turn 31 and realize you are the Sun. 🙂
Immigrants as…Humans?
I sit in court a lot, most mornings that’s where you’ll find me, sitting in a courtroom. While I wait, I online shop, check the news, Facebook stalk people who were mean to me growing up–realize they were actually all terrible even at 8 years old because as adults they all voted for trump. It’s all a distraction. It distracts me from focusing on the fact I have to get up there and be better. Just in general I have to be better. Better prepared than the other attorney, know more facts than the other attorney, write down the new deadlines faster than the other attorney, etc. Why? Because sometimes judges think I’m an interpreter and ask me to interpret for pro se parties in a courtroom full of my colleagues. I do it willingly, every time The people I interpret for remind me of my parents, my aunts, uncles, and my friends’ parents. The ones that know more English than they think but get really nervous when they’re put on the spot. The ones who want to make sure they don’t miss one word in a legal proceeding because it could mean the difference between OK and oh fuck. They trust me, I’m brown like them, my Mexican accent is comforting and they see their kids in me, they see what the kid of an immigrant can be.
My parents are immigrants, they came here undocumented and remained so for a really long time. So long so, that I remember going to their citizenship ceremony and reciting the pledge of allegiance with a picture of Bill Clinton hanging on the wall. I had to miss school that day and I went back thinking I too had become an American Citizen at that ceremony. I proceeded to tell all my 2nd grade classmates how cool it was. Some of them started to call me an illegal alien. At parent-teacher conferences my teachers asked my mom if she was lying about my social security number when she enrolled me. My mom had to explain to them that I was a citizen, but the ceremony was so important to them that they brought us with to witness it–also they couldn’t be sure they would be home before we got home from school. As an adult I know now that schools are not allowed to ask a child’s immigration status. My parents, although now documented, are still immigrants. But they’re parents and they’re people and they’re human.
They aren’t doctors or biochemical engineers who are working on the most forefront research on the cure for pediatric cancer, they’re just humans. They’re two people who have run a small business for over 30 years. But they still deserve to be treated as humans. We all do. Not every immigrant, documented or undocumented, is going to be a doctor or a the next Harriet Tubman but they still deserve human rights. My parents are luckier than most, they get to point to my brother and me, and our accomplishments to bolster the undocumented immigrant narrative, like, “look at what we can contribute to society if you let us in!” But they shouldn’t have to, sometimes just existing in this country as an immigrant is hard enough.
A lot of people think that immigrants come to this country to take advantage of what the US has to offer. To that I say, “TRUE TRUE.” BUT there are two things you’re missing: 1. people wouldn’t leave their countries if the US didn’t go in and colonize the fuck out of places, 2. these people leave EVERYTHING behind, EVERYTHING. My parents told me, like most other undocumented immigrants I know, that when they came here they left with the clothes on their back….THAT’S IT. The clothes on their backs. They left family, homes, jobs, security, etc., because there was more opportunity here. Or at least the prospect for more opportunities. Whatever it was, the idea that they could improve themselves was worth leaving behind their entire lives. Not because they wanted to but because they HAD to. I don’t think I have to go into the extensive history of the United States and its colonization of Mexico–Hi Texas!–or the entire maquiladora systems they set up in countries all around the world but long story short, the opportunities aren’t there. And NO it’s not all the US’s fault, these countries’ governments have played a role, but when your fighting for survival, everyone is fighting for survival and there wouldn’t be a fight for survival if there wasn’t a trigger, *cough cough* US colonization.
But immigrants come here and for the most part they just try to exist. They work, they pay taxes, they are friends, neighbors, property owners, fathers, mothers, children AND SOMETIMES they produce children or they themselves are impeccably, outstandingly smart and accomplished and are about to change the world. But mostly, they just try to exist, like you and me. And I think it’s time to stop seeing immigrants as worthy because they are doctors or engineers or overly accomplished in any other area. Immigrants are worthy just because they exist here. Period.
I don’t know one person who has or had the courage to get up and leave their entire life behind to take a chance in a country that has a force whose sole purpose is to remove them from it. I lied. I do know people like that, they’re all immigrants, they all came here undocumented and they’re all here EXISTING. And they are just as worthy of a reason to reform this broken system as Malala, Justino Mora of Undocumedia , and every immigrant engineer and doctor whose story I see on my Facebook feed.
So I’m done. I’m done with having to push the stories of the top 1% of undocumented immigrants to convince people that fixing this system is necessary. From now on, I’m pushing the majority. The men and women, or however they identify, that are working in the back of the restaurant, cleaning our homes, fixing our shit, working tirelessly to put their kids through school all while not having seen their parents since they left their home countries. Those are the stories I’m pushing, because that is worthy that is necessary.
I never asked my parents what their dreams were when they were kids but they always told me the only thing they ever wanted was for me to have more than them, to have it easier than them. I’ll always remember my dad telling me, when he grew up all he wanted was a house with walls and a real floor. His favorite thing about our house is our hardwood floors, he always told me he dreamed to have the house he lives in now, to him that is a mansion compared to where he came from. He just hoped that he was able to put me in a position where one day I could have better, that I could have more. And every immigrant parent I’ve ever met, from doctors to service workers, their goals are the same: to give their children more opportunity than they had. And that, that makes them worthy.
So the next time you’re thinking about whether the Democrats should let the government shut down because the Republicans refuse to pass a clean DREAM Act or reform this broken immigration system, think of these immigrants. They have the same goals as you. The have the same aspirations for the future as you. They are just as worthy, as you.
Brown Girl Talks Meets Bourbon N Browntown
I spend a lot of time on social media sometimes silently but mostly vocally judging people’s opinions on certain human rights topics. Sometimes though, my social media stalking leads me to discovering new forms of resistance that are happening right in front of me. This time in particular, my gym life stalking lead me to Caullen Hudson’s Instagram and podcast Bourbon N Browntown that he hosts with his roommate and friend, David Moran.
I causally and creepily slid into Caullen’s DM’s and shot my shot and asked him and David to come have a Brown Girl talk. Luckily for me, they didn’t think I was a major creep and said yes! Below is what transpired after 5 people of different shades of Brown and religious affiliations chatted over a bottle of tequila and homemade guacamole.
Obviously David and Caullen are doing great things and I am so grateful to have been able to pick their brains a little. Check out SoapBox PO here! You can also catch their podcast on iTunes or their website!
Tweet Caullen here! Caullen’s Instagram!
In a Sea of Attorneys I Present to you: Sharon Fairley
As you may have heard by now, Lisa Madigan, current Illinois Attorney General, will NOT be running for her fifth term. What does this mean? Well to a lot of people it means a lot of different things but to me, it means that there’s going to be seat open come November 2018 that MUST be filed with a competent, educated and experienced attorney….AND if that person just so happens to be a strong, independent woman of color?! Well that’s just icing on the cake.
I ran into Sharon (we’re cool like that now) at the American Constitutional Society panel on Race and Bigotry I was on about a month ago. She introduced herself to me and showed genuine interest in why I was there–as a blogger not an attorney. She asked me for a card (which I didn’t have because I am NOBODY) and said she was interested in doing something together. My BGBF, who was there with me standing in for my mom, and I just laughed because we seriously thought she was just campaigning. How sweet but ya right. Low and behold I sent her an email a few days later–shot my shot if you will–and she responded! She had her campaign manager, David, set up a meeting and on a late Wednesday night after being at events all day she came to MY house. We sat down and had a chat and this podcast (click play down there!) is what transpired.
There’s not much more to add to what Sharon shared with me that night. She’s smart, hard-working and tenacious it’s how she’s been since she started her education and has taken that into her professional life as well. As of December 5th, 2017, she’s OFFICIALLY ON THE BALLOT as a Democratic nominee for Illinois Attorney General. Not to mention she is the most educated and experienced candidate in the running, period…AND the fact that she’s a strong, independent, mother and woman of color…well that’s just icing on the cake.
Check Sharon out on Twitter FairleyforAG or on her site at Sharon Fairley
Brown Girl Talks 