Hey, Girl
"This Is How We Do It" was our theme song.
Hello! It’s me. I haven’t posted in a minute, but I promise I’ve been busy figuring out where Substack fits into my memoir work. I’ve been strategizing. Plotting and planning.
And I’ve made a lot of progress. So much progress that I went and got a new laptop. Yes, in this economy. That’s how revved up I am.
Anyways.
I’ve also had a lightbulb moment about how I help myself feel most authentically me. What I mean is this: I need to feel like myself at work. Always.
To talk how I want to talk (i.e., like a human and not Corporate Barbie). To make silly comments, something I inherited from Mami, and have them land. To release the Spanish from my brain and let it play with the English. To hum whatever song is looping in my head without apologizing for it.
I want it to feel easy and breezy. I want camaraderie. I want to be reminded—and to remind others—that my Latin culture lives and breathes with me. And sometimes, it needs to be seen out loud.
Not all of this is possible in corporate America. Especially when you’re one of the very few Latinas in the office.
But I did have it once.
I can pinpoint the exact era: 2018 to 2024, when I worked closely with Alicia Romero at the Estée Lauder Companies. This period included two maternity leaves (hers) and a pandemic (the world’s), so we were mostly apart—me in New Jersey and she in Arizona. The distance didn’t matter, though. If we weren’t on the phone, we were Zooming, or texting. When we ran out of words, we let Jennifer Lopez GIFs do the talking.
There was a rhythm to it. Work, yes, but also everything around work. These were the cultural relevancy years, with a big-time emphasis on cultural. We were incredible together. Every day felt like the Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show: colorful, loud in the best way, full of stories that didn’t need to be justified or softened.
We created, almost out of thin air, an internal magazine called The Culture Report, designed to help the company understand culture and diverse consumers. A magazine inside a beauty company. It still feels slightly unreal to say that out loud.
She was the first boss I had who didn’t make me translate myself.
And in that space, I was understood—not just for what I could produce, but for how I moved through the world. That feeling is the one I’ve been trying to get back to ever since.
One of the ways I do that is small...but powerful. Let me walk you through it:
I leave my office desk, making sure I have everything I need to be away for ten minutes—or an hour.
I set up in our café area. I prefer the booth by the window, especially the one with the view of The Empire State Building.
I pop in my AirPods and play music that sounds like home. My ears need to be flooded with music that moves me. Spanish songs are my go-to. If it’s merengue, like a Johnny Ventura classic, the photo album in my head gets activated. There’s Mami blasting Johnny on Saturday mornings on Dyckman Street. Marc Anthony is on heavy rotation, and lately, a ton of Karol G.
Other times, my eyes want in on the action, too, so I tune to an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Those are dangerous, though. You need willpower of steel to not bop along to Carlos Vives. Instead, I take in the visual feast, focusing on his band’s maracas and accordion. It reminds me of when we hired a merengue típico band to play in our backyard for the twins’ college graduation party. All of us—plus a few of our white neighbors—dancing the afternoon away.
In the periphery, my ears pick up Dominican Spanish. It’s the kitchen matrons chatting amongst themselves as they tidy up the kitchen. Their cadence is as familiar as if I were sitting in my childhood kitchen.
It’s not a brainstorming session with Alicia anymore. But it’s the same work, really. And it’s where I feel most like me.
Girl. Blast that Carlos Vives next to me whenever you need a dance break. I may be needing it, too!