Brujas, Mothers, and the Complicated Women Who Raised Us

Raw, tender, and profoundly honest—this episode peels back the layers of maternal relationships that shape not just our lives, but the stories we tell. 

"I was raised by women who loved me and hurt me, and that's who I wrote." With these words, I invite you into the emotional core of "The Ordinary Bruja," revealing how Josefina and Mama Belén emerged from my own experiences with the complicated women who raised me. These characters aren't villains or saints, but something far more authentic—wounded healers carrying both damage and devotion.

Josefina's character holds the weight of maternal regret, including my most painful memory: being told by a professional to stop speaking Spanish to my young son. That moment of misguided protection still aches years later, even as I've learned the advice was wrong. Meanwhile, Mama Belén embodies those tough Caribbean matriarchs who rarely say "I love you" but demonstrate it through unwavering presence. These women taught strength and resilience but sometimes at the cost of emotional expression—patterns I unconsciously absorbed and had to consciously unlearn as a mother myself.

The transformative truth at the heart of this episode is that while ancestral trauma is real, so is ancestral healing. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is recognize the cycle and say "this ends with me." Whether you're navigating your own complicated maternal relationships or seeking to parent differently than you were parented, this conversation offers validation, reflection, and a path toward healing. Join me in exploring how protection can become projection, how love manifests in unexpected ways, and how our most painful experiences often become our most powerful stories.

Take a moment this week to write to one woman who shaped you—with love, anger, grief, or whatever truth lives in your heart. Healing starts with honesty, and motherhood's messy glory deserves nothing less.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Have a Cup of Joani
• 1:18 Josefina: Mother of Regrets
• 7:26 The Pain of Language Lost
• 9:47 Mama Belén: Tough Love Personified
• 14:31 Breaking Cycles of Ancestral Pain
• 18:08 This Week's Reflection Exercise

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, to tell you why. So pour your cafecito and let's begin.

Speaker 1: 0:37

I was raised by women who loved me and hurt me, and that's who I wrote. Hey, vasitos, welcome back to have a Cup of Joani. I am your host, joa, and you're listening to episode three in my series, the why Behind the Bruja. Today's episode is titled Brujas Mothers and the Complicated Women who Raised Us. And before we begin, take a breath with me, because this one yeah, this one is going to be tender. I was raised by women who loved me and hurt me, and that's who I wrote. Those words live in my chest Because when I sat down to write Josefina and Mama Belén también in the Ordinary Bruja, I wasn't just creating characters, and if you've heard me before, you know that I tap into experience, and that's why I'm saying like I wasn't just creating characters out of the blue. I was writing through memory, through legacy, through grief. You see these women in the novel, they're not villains. They are great characters, but they're not villains. But they're also not saints either. There is something murkier, more honest, more human. They are wounded healers. I think that's the best that I can say about that. They're complicated, contradictory, capable of both damage and devotion.

Speaker 1: 2:40

So let's talk about Josefina first. She is Marisol's mom. And Josefina, she is a woman riddled with what ifs. By the way, she's going to be the third and final book in the series, so you need to subscribe, okay, so that way you can stay tuned for that one. So that way you can stay tuned for that one. And the what ifs that she's riddled with and stuck with is like what if I had told my daughter the truth earlier? You know what if I would have pushed harder for her to know the truth, to learn what she needed to learn? What if I had passed down more of the cultural and spiritual knowledge, which is what she needed to learn right, so that way she can know where she stands, how she stands right and really the weight of the legacy that she embodies? The weight of the legacy that she embodies. What if she had trusted Marisolinov to see her for who she was becoming. You see what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 3:54

So Josefina is the kind of mother who carries her regret in silence and I know that all so well. Remember, I tap into experienced people so well. Remember, I tap into experience people and I know it all so well because I've lived it Till this day. I still carry the ache of not teaching my son Spanish. In this experience you're going to see that I gave that to Josefina in the book. So you're going to see a scene where you will see this. Just know that it came from me.

Speaker 1: 4:26

It's a little bit more fictionalized for the book, but the seed of it it came from my experience. You know, and I was thinking about this, not too that I do when things are heavy in my heart and I was telling myself in the car, as I was recording myself, I was like I have like very little regrets except for this one. I have this one regret and God knows that I try to teach my son Spanish. But I remember being in Fort Bragg, north Carolina, sitting in a counselor's office as a young, single mom I was 21. And having my son there playing in front of me. He doesn't know what's going on. You know the counselor is talking to me and she is telling me that he's behind on his vocabulary and I feel like crap, I feel like failure. You know, I'm looking at my son, I'm looking at this lady and the last thing that I want to do is hurt my son, hurt his chances to progress in life. And I felt like a complete failure when she told me that and she continued on with that session.

Speaker 1: 5:53

But the implication was clear. As she was talking to me, she was like because I didn't have a partner at home to reinforce one language, because she gave me the example of, like, well, dual parents. You know, one speaks one language and the other one speaks the other. You know'm a single mom and I don't have another partner there to speak the other language. Therefore, I need to stick to English. And I didn't know anything about anything Like I was so unprepared I I believed her. She's the one with the credentials, not me. You know I'm coming to see an expert, you know. So I know how to do right for my son. So I stopped.

Speaker 1: 6:51

And it still makes me want to cry whenever I think about that moment. It's just seared in my memory. And I stopped not because I didn't want to pass it down, not because I didn't want to pass the mother tongue. You know part of our culture. You know a way to communicate with the family. I stopped because I was scared I was making things worse for my son, that I was leaving him behind, and it wasn't until many years later that I found out that she was wrong. Now I know better and I wish I would have known then. So you see that regret right there, that inadequacy that sits heavy in a mother's chest and it sits so heavy for the rest of our lives. We carry that. I still carry this moment with me, you know, because that's the last thing that I want to do is hurt my kids, and you'll see that in my through. You see the things that I wish, we wish as mothers we would have done differently, the ways that we try to protect our kids by stripping away parts of ourselves so that way we can protect them, you see.

Speaker 1: 8:24

But when it comes to my character, josefina, her love for Marisol, like the love I have for my children, is fierce. You know I would do anything to protect them. It is not performative, but it is also not perfect, but you best believe it's unconditional and it's that love unsp child in one's womb, that lets a mother know what that child is capable of, you know. So I drew that into Josefina to give her that hope that, even though she may have come up short, like a lot of us mothers have, that she knew that Marisol would be able to break the cycle because she knew Marisol inside and out. Then there's Mama Belén. Then there's Mama Belen that I drew from all the mother figures and my grandmother from my dad's side, who are tough love personified. And you will see this in Caribbean women. I mean, how they show you love is through toughness. And that's Mama Belen. She's that older generation of Caribbean women, the kind that teaches more by showing than telling you.

Speaker 1: 10:17

I remember talking to somebody because I noticed, like when I came out of the house, how American kids they would often say I love you, I love you, I love you so much. And I remember looking and I was like why y'all say it so much? I was like, don't you tell that to your parents? And, mind you, it was my grandmother who raised me. So whenever somebody would mention parents, I would automatically go back to think about how my grandmother raised me. Right, and I'm thinking about my grandmother raising me.

Speaker 1: 10:53

This is my maternal grandmother, and she never said it. She never said it, but I knew. I knew that she loves me. I knew that she loved me, she. I knew that she loved me. God has her in her embrace. She is gone, but I knew for a fact, no doubt, that that woman loved me through and through because she showed me every day. But she never once said it and I never said it to her. And I think the only time that I did and that was after being in the United States for so long, and that was a week after I had my son was when she passed, and I will never forget that.

Speaker 1: 11:41

I always think like one angel had to come down and the other one had to leave, and that's how you keep things balanced. That's how I see that, and that was the one time that I told her I love her was on that phone call before she passed, but she never once said it. My paternal grandmother never once said it. What they did show me was that strength, that endurance, that magic in the ordinary, in everything that they do. It was like magical, mostly my paternal grandmother. She had an altar and everything. So y'all will see an altar right In the book and that's where I get a lot of that is from her, that woman. She practiced and whenever I would go to her house I would see some things and she would show us some things and, yeah, she was very spiritual.

Speaker 1: 12:43

But sometimes through that showing of strength and endurance and this stoicism, sometimes it leaves out the grace right Like that. Grace for those emotions, the grace for tears, the grace for softness doesn't always come easy for these tough, older generation Caribbean women. Right, and growing up, I remember feeling like there were things I had to be and do because I would look up to them, these tough Caribbean women, and I was like I must do that because that's what my grandmothers are doing, you know, and that's what I saw. And they never told me this is what you will do or this is the way for you. I just saw them doing it and I automatically assumed that that was my role as well. But you see, those actions carried weight as well, because I internalized that as gospel, as that is the way for me. I must follow in their footsteps.

Speaker 1: 14:00

So when I became a mother, I started doing the same thing with my son. I was trying to mold them into a mini me. And it was very forceful at first. And I remember crying. I remember him crying because I was trying to control everything around him, how he acted, what he did, what he said, how he dressed, so I could save him, because I wanted him to be a certain thing, a certain person, so that way I can protect them from the world. Until one day I asked myself I was like wait a minute, why am I doing this? Why do I want him to be a mini-me? You know, why am I treating my son like a second chance at my own childhood? Son like a second chance at my own childhood?

Speaker 1: 14:53

And let me tell you something unlearning that was hard, because I look up to my grandmother To this day. That woman, she is the epitome of what a matriarch is. Both of them, my paternal and my maternal grandmother, my God, tough, resilient, like, gave no shit, but care for others. You know, walk the walk, barely talk. But their actions said it all you know.

Speaker 1: 15:27

So it was hard to unlearn that, but I had to accept that there were some things that they did that were not the best, but they didn't know any better, you see, because that's what happens sometimes, sometimes, we just pass down scars as parents, as mothers, as fathers, down scars as parents, as mothers, as fathers, right, as caretakers. We, just when we don't know any better, that's what we do. We pass down scars to those who are raising those children that are born in our womb or those children that become our children. You see, so I had to realize that, so that way I can unlearn that. And I had to do that because my son is not me and I can't parent out of fear, because sometimes protection becomes projection and that's how cycles repeat, right.

Speaker 1: 16:29

And so, you see, talking about Josefina, mama Belén, my own experience hold on to until today and for the rest of my life, and they just seep into my writing. And that's why I write these mothers, these brujas, these survivors, because there is no manual for motherhood. Yes, there are books I read what to Expect when You're Expecting, and other books, right, but it's still no way to really decipher how to go about this role. Each situation is different, each child is different and as children, right, as we're being raised by these matriarchs, we end up absorbing their wounds until someone somewhere down that line says this ends with me, and that's what the ordinary bruja is showing that ancestral trauma is real, but so is ancestral healing, that sometimes the bravest thing a woman can do is to choose differently.

Speaker 1: 18:08

So, vacitos, this is what I want you to do this week. If you're ready, I want you to write a letter or, like me, record a voice note, record a journal note to one woman who shaped you. Maybe it's your mom, your grandmother, a tia marina, a stepmom, someone who left their mark on you. It doesn't have to be love-filled, it's okay. It can be angry, it can be grieving, it can be a mix of things, but get it out of your body, because healing starts with the truth. When you say that truth out loud and the truth is that motherhood is messy, legacy, it's complicated and that's totally okay. Thank you so much for sticking with me in this very heavy episode Next week.

Speaker 1: 19:08

I'm diving into the heart of the story itself Marisol, the reluctant bruja who doesn't want to be seen, who hides her softness behind sarcasm and fear, who doesn't believe she's enough but carries the power anyway. That episode is going to be titled Marisol is Me Hesitant. Episode is going to be titled Marisol is Me Hesitant, haunted and Holding On. And if you've ever second-guessed your own word. If you ever try to shrink or thought of yourself not too much or too much for people you won't want to miss this one. Until then, keep writing your truth and give yourself the grace your mothers didn't always know how to offer. All right, vasitos. See you next week. Bye. 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 books that started it all. Thank you for being here. Until next time, be soft, be bold and always have a cup of joannie.