INTRO

• How do Queens...?
• How do I move through my day, how do I live in a state of flow?
• How do Queens stay healthy? 
• • Eat and live and plan my days around my hormonal cycle
  • Live according to Infradrian Rhythm (longer than 24 hour Circadian rhythm; 28 days)
  • Every week we need diff foods, diff types of sex, diff types of working out
  • Eat whole foods, a variety of them
  • What you can't get from a whole food diet, get from high quality supplements
  • Essential Oils (Young Living- organic, therapeutic grade, highest quality, pure essential oils)
  • Alissa Vitti- Woman Code; In the Flow
• How do queens live vibrantly?
• • Partly by staying healthy
  • Stay connected to your flow
  • You will not be the same person this week that you were last week
  • Let yourself shine by flowing and being present in each moment, even through the pain
• How do queens engage their power
• • You need to KNOW you have power
  • You are a superhero! And you have superpowers at your disposal
  • You have to KNOW it before you can ENGAGE it
  • Engage it: tell yourself you're powerful in the mirror, write it down, dance, be a bad bitch, put on something that makes you feel sexy, call someone who makes you laugh, make someone else laugh!
  • By embracing your power, you're growing and embracing your queendom
• It is not a fairytale or fantasy that you get to have a shining, powerful, rock star version of your life, whatever that means to you.
• You create your world, even when you don't feel any control over it. 
• • You get to choose your response, and that response is the next piece in creating your world
  • It is a dance between what is out of your control and what you can control
• Take time every day and feel how best to express your soul's cry
• • Maybe it's breathing, yoga, dancing---GET INTO YOUR BODY
  • Really intentional work doesn't have to last a long time. You can do really powerful work with your body in a few minutes.
  • Engage with other Queens who can lift you up
  • Write down or speak out loud who you are and how you want to feel that day
  • We ultimately do what we want. So if you focus on how you want to feel, you will inevitably do the things that make you feel that way.
  • Who are you? Get clear on that. Because in the moments when you need to engage your power, it's going to come from knowing deeply, who you are. It's an unshakeable confidence that who you are, is Divine.

 

Interview- Melissa Alvarado Sierra

• I got to know Melissa's work when I read "Why I Abandoned the American Dream and Followed My Puerto Rican Dream Instead"
• The physical movement coincides with the emotional movement.
• Witnessing a suicide in San Francisco clarified what she wanted, to write and go back to PR
• The Coquí, if you take it outside the island, it often dies
• Everybody has a different journey
• I marry my feminist self with my Puerto-Rican self 
• • Rosario Ferré is an inspiration
• Women in PR is a reflection of the island of PR
• • Machismo is a big issue
  • My power comes from fighting against patriarchal society I was raised in,  as well as the colony of Puerto Rico. PR women are colonized and brutalized too. 
  • The fight for women's rights goes along with the fight for freedom of our island.
  • Have to negotiate being a powerful, independent woman, with the fact that our identity is tied to a legacy of patriarchy
  • Underground way of using power as a woman by flirting and using your body. How do I take those things that are inherently part of me, that have been used to keep me under control, for my own power?
  • When i first got my period I was told I couldn't go out and play with the boys anymore
  • • I screamed in protest on the page
• When I write about people, I remind them that every experience has different lenses, and understanding that helps to avoid minimizing others experience or voice.
• I fought to be a writer, so I'm happy. All the dark sides, all the struggles, I'm ok with it. 
• It took years. I started at 25, which is late. 
• • While modeling, I did a writing internship on the side, without telling anyone.
  • Slowly started writing and getting things published, and eventually gave up modeling to write full-time.
  • Being far away from home gave me a freedom to work on my dreams secretly, and nurture it, and then tell people when there was something to show
• How do you nourish yourself?
• • Because I move around a lot, I try to keep something stable with me
  • • I always have my books with me
    • I try to read every day
    • I try to write every day, even if it's something silly, like describing a palm tree. It's a muscle that needs to be moved every day. And it's also my therapy
    • I talk to myself, freely
    • I fight for my own little 9 year old self, as my own protector
  • As I age, I stand up for myself more
  • • I spend my energy on me first,then others
    • Not selfish, it's self-care
  • Think about being pregnant with your inner child, about mothering your inner child
  • Liberating ourselves will liberate our children, especially our daughters
• What was it like coming back to PR fully empowered, living the dreams and life you created for yourself?
• • Once it's out there and tangible, people accept it, but when you're working on it, people don't understand the process.
• I decided my life was precious, and I wasn't going to waste it doing something I wasn't excited about.
• It's important to see ourselves represented in art, it's how we know we matter and we have a voice
• What seeds do you want to plant with our audience to "Grow the Queendom?"
• • Nurture your passion. Your voice is valuable and we need to hear it.

 

Q&A

• Why are the groin and stomach the places that usually retain the most lymphatic fluid?
• • The groin and stomach have the most lymph nodes, because we excrete the most from these areas (pee, poop, women bleed)
  • • When lymphatic fluid builds up, we feel puffy and inflamed
    • Since the most amount of lymphatic fluid passes through these lymph nodes, when they are clogged by toxins, these areas of the body become the most lymphatically inflamed. 
• Send in your questions: [email protected]; IG and FB- @queendom.come.podcast
• Online video coaching with me through BEAM+Flow "Embodied Flow Sessions" (bodywork, feelings, hormone balancing, creative coaching)- [email protected] IG and FB: @beam.and.flow or @chloecofresi
• During Coronavirus, all embodied flow sessions are pay what you can. If you're an essential worker, they're free!

 

MOMENT OF FLOW

"BOOM" by Chloé Cofresí

Boom!

It's 4 am

the power goes out

I'm on the roof

The entire building is shaking, and I look out

There are people flooding the street in cars

Running, shouting, laughing

Laughter, thats the craszy thing

The world is ending and we're laughing 

Because why not?

Because. Why? Not?

And as the world shakes, and Yemaya comes up form the ocean

I'm left wondering 

Is this it? 

And all I can think is 

"Protect me, protect my family, protect this house, protect my island. 

Protect me, protect my family, protect this house, protect my island."

And thankfully, we're protected

But my brothers and sisters in the south, they're not

And their entire life is gone

In a second

And I'm here

I made it

We're ok

It doesn't feel right

Something's off

So I text back to the "mainland"

Who's up?

Who's awake

It's 4 am

And I get a smile on my face

Because of someone

Someone who cares

For me, for my family, for this house, for this island

"Protect me, protect my family, protect this house, protect my island." 

And we're here

So the next day we gather in cars, and we get supplies

And we drive down

To the damage.

There is no power

There are lines filling up gas stations

We don't know how long it's gonna take

Pero somo Boricuas, pa'que tu lo sepas!

We're Puerto-Rican, just so you fucking know it!

And we come together

And it doesn't matter if Washington or our Governor hear us

We hear each other

And we're together

And when the earth shakes

We stand up 

We say

We're here, and you can shake all you want

But we're here

And we're together

And we're not going anyWHERE

Somos Boricuas pa'que tu lo sepas!