In my early twenties I lost my first pregnancy. I was a young bride, and trying to become this thing that was scripted onto my body without my consent: a mom.
With that in mind, after my first miscarriage, I lost it. People began to tell me the most inappropriate things that they thought would be comforting but essentially were more damaging for my own young formation and understanding of myself, and my limited understanding of God. People told me things like:
El cielo cogió un nuevo ángel
Dios tiene un propósito, que no entendemos nosotrxs, pero un día entenderemos
Dios sabe porque te quito a tu bebé.
Somehow underlying these statements is a weird understanding where God sees all and controls us like puppets and we are pawns for some purpose that we are not privy to and people may or may not end up as collateral damage.
When I Found Out I Thought God Was White, And A Man, I Lost Interest. ~ Alice Walker
THAT was what I and those around me seemed to understand about God, I had no interest in that dude. Because as a budding feminist, I suddenly found myself really irritated that this male powerful being had taken from me something that I was told was my sole purpose in life: motherhood.
I was also royally upset that this dude was basically telling me that he meant to hurt me, and that I would eventually understand. Of course, this man thought he knew better about what was best for my body, than myself AND he also wanted me to manage my reaction to this thing through understanding him. This dude was just like all the other dudes in my life and I wanted nothing of him.
So here I was grieving, and finding myself in theologically violent reflections about God in relationship to my female body, and I was done.
Prisca
A few years later, once I recovered from this heartbreaking situation, I found Sandra Cisneros, who referred to Guad (Guadalupe) as a sex goddess. Cisneros, talks about pre-Colombian Guad found in Tonantzin and a slew of other goddesses that love, make mistakes, cry, and have sex. Guad does not supremely reign over me and take things from me; rather she is standing next to me through my heartbreaks and miscarriages.
She carries me, and she does not tell me to reign in my reactions. Guad does not have a purpose for my sadness, there are no lessons to be learned in my tragedies, instead Guad cries with me, wails alongside me. Guad rejoices in my victories, and she dances with me through the struggles of being brown and woman.
I am in my early thirties, now, I have lost my first great love, earned a graduate degree, began Latina Rebels, and try every day to help people articulate our joined struggles through my stories. I am an adult, trying to become a better version of myself all while making my mami proud. Theologically I have more of a foundation than I ever had, through a decolonial lens that reclaims these heavily churched and oppressive figures that have only ever been violent to females, LGBTQIA folks, and people in the global south who have violently been turned into “civilized” people through religion.
I am now very aware of my fertility issues, but I am now acutely aware that there is more purpose for me in this world outside of motherhood. But I had to trade in God, for Guad, to fully come into myself.
Sometimes you go through things and realize that God is not enough, and that is okay. I hope you all find your Guad, wherever she may be.
Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez
A writer, author and activist feminist. Founder, Latina Rebels
