“CHINGONA” By Melanie Vigil-Gutierrez aka Chicana 702 with Chicano Poet Society
“Ok so you fell on your face!
You’re just going
to sit there and bleed?
Cry and analyze your steps
Is that really what you need?
Get up! Stop crying!
Dust yourself off
Speak no word about
How you fell!
Why you fell!
Just dust yourself off!
Don’t be mad there is no one to blame!
You may have tripped over your pride
Just watch your next steps
So you don’t ever repeat the same!
No one is going help you up
But that’s because God
believes you’re strong enough
to do it alone.
No need to call for help
You’re a Chicana Woman full grown!
It’s ok that you’re hurt
That only means you have a heart
But that’s a temporary pain
It only feels ripped apart
But if you stop crying and
take a deep breath
You will hear it’s still
beating strong and in rhythm
deep in your chest!
In fact you are ok
Ten more steps and that fall
will be far behind you
Focus on the future steps
because your daughter
is right beside you!
One day at a time
Right foot
Left foot
One in front of the other.
You are a Chingona
Because a Chingona was your mother!”
I came across this powerful poem, “Chingona”, by Melanie Vigil-Gutierrez with the Chicano Poet Society. It speaks to the heart of every Chicana/Latina I know. On its face, it solicits a sense of pride because it demonstrates our ability to overcome the toughest struggles, alone. I found myself reminiscing about the day-to-day grind of being a single mother, raising two boys, working a full-time job while also working towards my graduate degree, mostly alone.
Am I Chingona? You bet your ass I am. I know it, my family knows it, my friends know it. There are moments when I lose all sense of modesty and humility when I think about how hard I worked to do it all with very little help and still come through it with remarkable accomplishments. I frequently pat myself on the back because I know how Chingona I am. My hope is that every Chicana and Latina feel this same way every day.
BUT, we need to talk about why Chingonas are having to do so much, alone. We need to talk about why we’ve had to be so strong for so long. As resilient and fierce as we are, or appear to be, this just isn’t sustainable. We shouldn’t have to be so strong all the time. We shouldn’t have to endure so much, alone. Whether or not we have a significant other or a large extended family, many of us are doing too much without adequate support.
All too often, grinding it out every day with very little or no support manifests itself into emotional, physical and mental exhaustion. Overall compromised health often causes compromised parenting, where our kids become the unintended targets of our exhaustion and frustration, inadvertently causing them great harm. Hence, chancla culture. A culture in which, when George Lopez jokingly imitates his grandmother asking, “Why you crying?”, we instinctively know it means she’s hit or ridiculed him and he’s not allowed to continue to cry about it, while also minimizing his pain. Now as adults, we collectively laugh at the joke because many of us Chican@s/Latin@s have had those experiences and we superficially believe we’ve come through chancla culture unscathed.
In our culture, we have romanticized Chicana/Latina strength and grit. Our moms, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and every generation before, our women have struggled and toiled, endured and overcome. We have a myriad of family stories that speak to what our mothers have overcome, trying to make life better for our families. Here we are today, still overcoming. If this sounds redundant, it’s because the day-to-day grind is redundant, the struggle is redundant, and having to be strong is redundant.
I love this poem, “Chingona”. I relate to this poem. This poem tells it like it is for so many of us. But we must also examine if we are romanticizing the virtue of Chingonaness to the detriment of our health and sanity. Are we inadvertently telling young Chicanas/Latinas that they aren’t Chingona enough if they can’t manage their struggles alone, as so many of us have?
We must normalize asking for help. We must normalize equating Chingonaness with being specific about what we need from the people in our support circle, not shying away from speaking our truth about how hard it is to navigate daily life as working mothers.
If the strong Chingona in your circle hasn’t told you yet, out of fear, out of pride, out of shame, or any other personal reason, this Chingona will tell you…the strong Chingona in your life is tired. The strong Chingona in your life needs her family and friends to rally around her to support her. Not just with words of encouragement. Step up and step into her life. Remember the old adage “it takes a village to raise a child”? Well family and friends, be that village for your Chingona hermana and her kids. Don’t wait for her to be so exhausted and fed up that she finally calls you frustratingly asking you to step in to assist for the one day. She doesn’t only need a nice talk or gesture. Genuinely step up and step in. Bring some consistency with your presence.
Ask her what she really needs to feel some sense of relief from the stress and strain of her daily responsibilities. Sometimes that relief needs to come in the form of financial help. Pay a bill for her. Yes, you read that right. Seriously, pay a bill for her. The light bill, the gas bill, food, or maybe the kids need new shoes she’s trying so hard to save up for. Help her in the most practical way. Unless you’re a single mother, with no child support coming in, you have no idea how helpful and relieving it is to receive help with even one bill, a bill that she expected to pay all on her own, trying to guestimate when she might be able to pay it, while juggling all other bill due dates.
Ask yourself what you’d be giving up to provide that kind of occasional support. A couple of Starbuck’s coffees a week? A new PlayStation game? An evening out for dinner and a movie? A mani-pedi? The little sacrifice you make could mean a few days for her with less anxiety and more present and thoughtful parenting. It could mean the kids are in a far more comfortable and safe space with their mom, while their basic needs are being met.
It is easy to see that so many families struggle to make ends meet. Most people are working very hard to provide for their families. But unarguably, single mothers struggle more. Let there be no doubt about that. Chingonas rarely ask for help and when they finally do, the ask was long overdue. It took all her strength to put aside her pride just for the ask. So, until she feels fully secure being forthcoming about how she’s really doing, we should be doing the deliberate thoughtful work of asking her what she needs from us. Let her know it’s ok to be specific and then do what you can to help. Let the Chingonas in your life know that you do see them. Let’s stop pretending we don’t see that she’s struggling.
