About Lesley E. Guerrero
StellaLaGuerrera (she/her/ella) also known as Lesley Guerrero is a first generation Chapi-Mex (Chapina y Mexicana). She leads with her heart and is passionate about being a resource for her community to live fruitful lives. An advocate for mental health and holistic wellbeing, Lesley is continuously seeking ways to connect with others and provide support through her many roles. Lesley is dedicated to creating accessible wellness experiences and expanding community education for Latine and BIPOC communities. Lesley is a Holistic Wellness practitioner that leads workshops, classes and individual supportive sessions for communities in English and Spanish. The mission of advocacy for Holistic Wellness for Latine and BIPOC communities is carried out through her non-profit organization Viviendo Una Vida Bonita.
Can you share how your Guatemalan and Mexican heritage has shaped your understanding of healing and wellness?
Healing and wellness was not always spoken about in my household at a young age. A lot of healing and wellness conversations began as an adult child with my family. After having worked as an educator in the schools and having taught students who were also newly immigrated to the country, I began to see how affected my students were from being separated from their families, losing their cultural customs and finding how to navigate our Western Education System.
These new understandings provided me the words to begin to explore these concepts with my parents. Healing and wellness conversations drew from the stories of my family and their upbringing. I learned about the activities my dad enjoyed in Guatemala as a child, where exercise played a major role in his life. I learned about my mother’s experience in Mexico and how difficult it was for her to grow up as a teen without her mother’s presence. Having Guatemalan and Mexican heritage allowed for me to internalize the challenges our Western world brings to immigrants and more so how this affects families for generations.
What role has community played in your own healing journey, and how does it differ from the more individualistic approaches often seen in Western mental health conversations?
Community and family has been the center of all of my healing journey. Until I began to trust and rely on my community and understand my family, I could not fully heal. Being first generation and being the first in my family to break generational cycles, I struggled alone in the beginning. I thought I needed to follow the Western individualistic approach and I tried by going to therapy. I soon realized that I wanted to be better to be able to hold my family and community tighter, not simply push away. Healing for me was learning to understand my roots and the challenges of my community, by finding ways to manage my own experience to continue uplifting them as well.
Were there any cultural beliefs or stigmas around mental health that you had to unlearn in order to prioritize your well-being?
In my family there was an incredible stigma on being vulnerable and talking about difficult emotions. After many years, I realized some folks with a similar cultural background could also resonate with this but not all, so I will only speak on my family’s beliefs. My mother and father learned quickly that emotions created barriers to survival and they themselves had not had the best guidance.
Of course, when I came into their lives as a loving, emotional baby girl they needed to figure out a distinct approach from the way they raised my older brothers. My parents were cautious with me but not sensitive to the way I viewed the world. This created an internalized deep sense of doubt within myself and I frequently felt like a burden. These internalized beliefs I needed to unlearn, to be able to feel worthy of the love and support I needed to heal. With time, journaling and loving mentors, healing this wound was attainable.
What are some traditional or ancestral healing practices from your cultures that have helped you reconnect with yourself and your community?
A practice that I have leaned on all my life has been music and dance. The vibrations, and history of the culturally rich music I grew up on lives in my body. So much so that the mere memory of dancing a cumbia with my father and mother on a Saturday night in our living room brings tears to my eyes. The somatic practice of connecting the rhythms of music with movement always brings me back to myself. This practice also gave me a strong, loving community within social dancing and even the opportunity to perform with a latin dance team. Integrating dance with other healing practices, I have learned a lot about how my ancestors utilized music and dance as a ritual and community celebration. I bring music, singing and dance to my community as a way of sharing my joy and the love it has brought to me since I was a child.
How can we honor and integrate cultural healing practices while also making space for personal emotional exploration?
Cultural healing practices have become extremely colonized and repackaged in a way that has made our community feel estranged from their roots. I think the way cultural healing practices are presented in the west, creates a divide with a very individualistic perspective of personal gain and for practitioners the need to take a course for every practice. I don't believe partaking in cultural healing practices is separate from personal emotional exploration.
When understanding our roots, the need for community and being receptive to leaning on community we are able to connect deeply with ourselves. Sharing a smile with the person next to you in Yoga class, helping the person next to you stand up after a sound bath, sharing a few moments after a dance class are simple ways we can achieve this. We can integrate our personal emotional devotion to ourselves, by being immersed in community whenever we participate in any healing practice.
There is so much to learn from this, and a great resource to understand this deeply healing practice is through an excerpt from Luis Valdez's "Pensamiento Serpentino" A Mayan Inspired Poem:
In Lak'ech-
Tú eres mi otro yo. / You are my other me. Si te hago daño a ti, / If I do harm to you,
Me hago daño a mi mismo. / I do harm to myself.
Si te amo y respeto, / If I love and respect you,
Me amo y respeto yo. / I love and respect myself.
What message would you share with someone in our community who feels disconnected from their roots but wants to explore healing in a way that honors their cultural background?
I think we don't understand how much of our “disconnect” is not entirely our fault in the beginning of our journeys. Many families who are immigrants and or refugees have complex experiences when choosing to leave their homes and to no surprise this translates to their children and family dynamics. Of course you're not feeling connected to your family, when we have been separated or simply the way of the world that has created this system that makes it so we are disconnected. I would tell the reader (you), to give yourself grace, mucho cariño and courage.
In my journey, I learned a lot of the damage colonization has done to my family and regardless of the negative messages from some family members, I needed to have the courage to know I still wanted to connect with my roots and heritage. It was difficult not having a blueprint but very rarely do we ever. I would urge you to be critical of the narratives, curious about the way you are practicing and simply CONNECT.
Connect for the sake of community and honoring your innate longing for connecting with your culture. As I've mentioned before, the community aspect came before the healing for me and I truly believe this is the way I honor my cultural lineage.
