The Post That Broke Me

A thoughtless comment about Dominican identity became the catalyst for an unexpected journey into memory, heritage, and the stories we choose to forget. What began as a simple observation about how Dominicans often embrace their Spanish roots while minimizing African and Taíno influences sparked a firestorm of criticism that changed everything about my writing and my understanding of cultural identity.

The backlash was intense—being called a traitor, uneducated, and a "pick me" for daring to suggest we might need to reclaim parts of our heritage. But one comment struck deeper than the rest: "Dominicans don't need to reclaim anything. We already know who we are." This assertion, contradicted by the same voices that elevate Spanish heritage while remaining silent about other influences, revealed a profound disconnection that I couldn't ignore. It forced me to ask: What happens when we forget who we are? What becomes of someone taught not to explore their lineage? And what occurs when that person begins to remember?

These questions transformed "The Ordinary Bruja" from a lighthearted comfort story into something more profound. Marisol's journey became a reflection of generational amnesia—the way communities cling to what's acceptable while abandoning what makes them whole. Hollowthorn Hill evolved from a simple setting to a place of ancestral memory, calling to Marisol even as she runs from it. Her magic stopped being merely aesthetic and became necessary, ancestral, and complicated. The story now explores returning to yourself even when everything around you says it's better to forget. Join me next week as we delve into the mothers—those complicated, often inadequate, always human women who shaped this story and our understanding of identity. Have you ever had to unlearn something about your own heritage? I'd love to hear your story as we remember together.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Have a Cup of Joannie
• 1:51 The Comment That Changed Everything
• 4:43 Confronting Internet Backlash
• 8:20 What Happens When We Forget
• 14:27 How The Story Transformed
• 17:32 Looking Forward: Bruja's Mothers

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome back to have a Cup of Johnny. This season isn't about hustling harder. It's about coming home to yourself, to your voice, to your breath, to the quiet truth that you're still here and you're not starting over. You're starting again. This is your space to reflect, reset and remember who we tell you. So pour your cafecito and let's begin.

Speaker 2: 0:37

It was supposed to be a lighthearted comment about Dominican identity and how it shows in our music, in our culture, in our food, right. But this one little comment just turned everything upside down. Hey y'all, welcome back to have a Cup with Joannie. I am your host, joa, and in this episode 2 of our series, the why Behind the Bruja, we're going to talk about some things. Last week I talked about how the ordinary bruja was born, this unexpected comfort story that started in Instagram stories, otherwise known as instant stories, during lockdown. It was light, sweet and magical, but then it wasn't. And today I'm talking about the post that broke me and how one internet comment I should say really many internet comments became a turning point for Marisol's story and mine.

Speaker 2: 1:51

So let's rewind to a random evening bedtime, phone in hand, mind scrolling when it shouldn't be, and I came across a post that was talking about Dominican identity and how Dominicans don't tend to claim our full heritage yet it's so prevalent in a lot of things that we have in the island, and I commented it was nothing wild. I was agreeing with the creator, naturally, julie, and it was nothing wild, just honest. It's something like. You know, I used to live in Europe and it was something about how Spaniards don't claim us the way that we, as Dominicans, seem to always claim them. Yet growing up in the island, no one really talked about Africa and the Taino culture and how we are interconnected to those two. Yet talks about Spain and things about Spain in our textbooks are very prevalent At least that was my experience growing up in the Dominican Republic. So that was it. That was the comment that I made, based off of, once again, my experience of being born and raised in the DR and also living in Europe for a little bit. That was it, but the responses that was it. But the responses. Jesus, I was basically called a vendepatria, a turncoat per se. I was told that I was twisting history, that I was ungrateful, that I was uneducated, that I was a pick me, that I was trying to be something that I'm not and, my favorite one Dominicans don't need to reclaim anything. We already know who we are.

Speaker 2: 3:54

That really threw me for a loop, people, because it's like, out of all the comments, out of all the comments, and I get the personal attacks, because usually when people hear something that is uncomfortable to them and they don't really have a good retort, they would go towards personal attack at home, and that's normal. I learned that in my rhetoric class, part of the MFA program, where you get to learn all the logical fallacies that exist and then you're made to read certain arguments and watch videos so you can see it in real life, at play, how they look and at home and in personal attacks are one of the most prevalent logical fallacies that are used to argue around the main idea of the argument or the argument itself in order for the other person who really doesn't have anything to go against that argument can save face or can seem as if they're doing something, but they're not. So it really doesn't rile me up per se, because I understand the reason behind it. Whoever is commenting because a lot of them were using kind of like these troll accounts really didn't have nothing to hold on other than their feelings were hurt, their ideas were being challenged by somebody else and they didn't like that. So, as opposed to just ignoring my comment or scrolling, they just went ahead and did personal attacks on me. So no big deal. But then I am very sensitive to lies and to people that don't want to see reality or that like to live a delusional lifestyle Right, and that always gets under my skin because I'm like, why, why would you do that to yourself? Like I get it that the truth is uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong. The truth is uncomfortable and I don't know.

Speaker 2: 5:57

I really do believe that God has blessed me with a lazy eye, and I didn't believe that when I was growing up. When I was growing up, I thought I was cursed. But as I've gotten older and learned to love myself and accept myself unconditionally, I realized that this was more of a blessing, because every day I get to see my imperfection, from Paige New's, imperfection that I can never hide, that everyone sees. And yet I challenge myself every single day of my life to walk with my head held high, knowing that I'm still worthy of love and worthy of respect, and that has become such a blessing, was a blessing, is a blessing and will continue to be a blessing, because just that just being born that way has taught me so much. It was a reckoning of sorts, a sink or swim moment, and for me I decided to swim.

Speaker 2: 6:59

So, yeah, I don't get to lie to myself. I do not get to lie to myself. I get to look at the most prevalent quote, unquote worst imperfection you know, every single day in the mirror and I say I'm okay with that, I'm going to roll with that, this is me and I love it, I cherish it, I connect with it and I'm going to go on with my life. But not a lot of people have that right. I have that blessing of something that they have to come to terms with about themselves, that they can't wiggle themselves out. You see what I'm saying, so I can see how people can grow up and really make a whole life out of lying to themselves, starting with little things and then going on to bigger things, to the point where they're just comfortable in lies. Their lies make them comfortable has been kind of like woven into that side of the island, which is like we know who we are, we don't need to reclaim anything, but yet with the same mouth that says that, it's the same mouth right, that lifts up Spain and Spaniard identity, while it's the same mouth that stays close when it comes to anything else, which then tells me that their previous words are not in line with their actions, which pasitos, that is essentially a lie.

Speaker 2: 8:38

So, like I said, that one like gut punched me, gut punched me, you know. And there was another comment because I'm in the diaspora that my opinion doesn't count, and that one I shut down really quickly. I'm like you can't tell me. You know, like, come on now, not even my own father tells me what to say or what to do. You really think like an internet rando is going to do that? Absolutely not, absolutely not. So that was a quick get out of here, you know, kind of thing, but it was like comments like this that really were the breaking point for me. At the beginning, though, I was a little frozen because I didn't expect it. It was a thoughtless comment, y'all.

Speaker 2: 9:25

I did not expect this comment to take off like that, and it's still taking off. If you go on Instagram, it's still there. It has 2,249 likes and a plethora of comments underneath it. Oh, and here's the kicker. I'm not done. Hold on, here's the kicker. Some of them are like won't even let me tag them.

Speaker 2: 9:47

So this is this is the funniest thing, because I find that to be very coward-like. And maybe it's not their intent, maybe that's just how they have their profile set, you know, and they just they don't know, they forget, and then they go in and commenting. So it may not be that they're cowards, but the way that I see it, right, it's like a cowardly way because I'm trying to tag the person so we can continue on the conversation, but it's almost like they take a jab and then they run away. That's, that's the feeling that I get. I'm like are you even worth it? You know, are you even worth it? No, I did take a jab at a few and then screenshotted their comments, because if they're going to be making public comments, you know they should be okay with a public backlash. That's all I'm saying. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2: 10:36

So, nevertheless, once I digested all of this because, yes, I was like completely frozen in shock at the beginning, but then I was like F this, I'm not going to let no one punk me out in the internet. No Mi abuela. No crió una pendeja coño. And it made me ask the question, though that would change really the trajectory of the ordinary bruja. Remember what I told you on last episode, which I'm sorry, masitos I hit the publish button late. I thought I had hit it and I didn't hit it, and it wasn't until Friday, so it didn't come out on Wednesday as it should have had. That was completely my mistake. Please, if you haven't listened to the first one. Go listen to that one and then come back to this one, okay, but nevertheless, all these comments once I was able to digest it, it begged the question. I couldn't let go of this question.

Speaker 2: 11:31

What happens when we forget who we are? What happens, you know, what happens to a girl who's taught not to dig too deep into her lineage. What happens when magic is hidden, and not by accident but on purpose. And, most importantly, what happens when that girl starts to remember and I don't know. I think I was working on this story. I was working on this story already.

Speaker 2: 11:59

The Ordinary Bruja is one of those in-between stories, because I was already working on Under the Flamboyant Tree and then the Devil that Haunts Me. So I needed an in-between story while I'm in pause between edits. And the Ordinary Bruja was that. And I was like, yeah, let me just go ahead and do a rewrite. Enough time has passed. I have healed from the whole memory of quarantine and pandemic and everything that happened back then. You know, let me start taking another look at it. And during that same timeline, that same time frame that's when all of this was happening I made that comment. The comment section blew up and then I started to ask myself that question, which, because I was already working on the Ordinary Bruja.

Speaker 2: 12:45

Obviously it led to the hill in the story. If you read the one on Instagram, the instance story, you will see that it always had that hill. That hill was a metaphor for walking through your life, walking up and down your life and going through all those obstacles that one goes in order to find themselves. You see, so Hawthorne Hill was always there. It was always this metaphor, right, and it was like where the earth breathes, where ancestors whisper, where memory just waits and, like I've said before, it's always like being in motion for me. That, just, you know, percolates things out of me and I start remembering or thinking clearly and things of that nature whenever I'm in motion. And I wrote that hill as a kind of ancestral memory, one that's been calling out to Marisol even as she runs from it. But here's the twist Marisol thinks it's the danger. She thinks remembering it's the danger because that's what she's been told, because sometimes what we've inherited is not magic, but it's fear.

Speaker 2: 14:47

It wasn't going to stay soft, no longer. It was not going to be that comfort story that I wrote. That's when I knew it and that's when I knew it was going to be somewhere darker. To answer this question through Hollow, thorn Hill and Marisol became more than a girl in hiding In the instance story she was very much in hiding, she was very much allowing things to happen, but she became much more than that in this iteration of the story. She became a reflection of our community's generational amnesia. I will call it the way we cling to what's acceptable while abandoning that which makes us whole, which also incorporates the bits that we don't want to look at, the uncomfortable stuff, that we don't want to look at, our imperfections throughout history, that we don't want to look at, the way we internalize shame sometimes I think we call it pride, and the way we forget on purpose. Sometimes we call it progress.

Speaker 2: 15:43

And I couldn't write a light story after coming to that conclusion. I just I could not, because that comment section wasn't just internet noise, it was my childhood. When I look back at it, I was like this was my childhood, it know, omitting Africa, omitting Taino, barely in whispers, if that you know. It was school books that erased our entire lineage. It was the silence around what it means to be Dominican, mixed Taino, african, the spirituality that comes with it, you know, and yes, spani, but we still are worthy because we still have a choice.

Speaker 2: 16:53

So, yeah, the story changed and Marisol's magic. It stopped being aesthetic, really. It became ancestral, it became heavy, it became complicated, it became necessary. She started seeing shadows, she started remembering things that weren't hers but had everything to do with her. And that's what the Ordinary Bruja became A story about returning to yourself even when everything around you says it's better to forget.

Speaker 2: 17:36

I'll let you all sit with that one, because next week I'll talk about the mothers, and I just celebrated Mother's Day. I'll talk about the mothers and I just celebrated Mother's Day the complicated, often inadequate, always human women who shaped the ordinary Ruha. Writing them wasn't easy, and I'm going to have to share with you why I love to write mothers Because it forced me to look back at my own mother figures and the ways they failed me and the ways I'm learning to forgive them, but also the ways I failed my children as well, and the ways I am trying to forgive myself and ask them to forgive me. So episode three is going to be called Bruja's Mothers and the Complicated Women who Raised Us, and I already know it is going to be called Brujas Mothers and the Complicated Women who Raised Us and I already know it's going to be a heavy one.

Speaker 2: 18:29

Expect some tears, if not from you, at least from me. Until then, tell me, have you ever had to unlearn something you were taught about your identity? Dm me, email, tag me. I want to know your stories too, because we're remembering together now. All right, take care, vasitos, and I'll see you next Wednesday. Bye, bye.

Speaker 1: 18:56

If today's episode spoke to you, share with somebody who's finding their way back too, and if you haven't yet, visit haveacupofjoanniecom for more stories, blog posts and the good stuff started at all. Thank you for being here. Until next time, be soft, be bold and always have a cup of joannie.