January 14, 2025 • 24 mins
In this week's episode of Señora Sex Ed, Diosa and Mala sit down with poet and author, Elisabet Velasquez. Elisabet discusses writing her novel-in-verse, shares her experience as a teen mom, and how her mother discovered Elisabet was pregnant.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Senora or Senora Senora Senora, Senora, Senora, Hi Senora, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
To Senora sex Ed. Senora Sex Said is not your
Mommy sex Talk. This show is la platica like you've
never heard it before. With each episode, we're breaking the
stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in LATINX communities.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Latinas have been hyper sexualized in popular culture, but notoriously
denied sex education. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between
Latinas from gen X to Gen Z, covering everything from
puberty and body image to representation in film, television, and music.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Just a reminder that in this show, a Senora is
a woman with a lot of life experiences and stories
to share. Maybe she's in her thirties, Maybe she's in
her forties or fifties or older. Maybe she's trans, maybe
she sis.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
We are your hosts and producers, Viosa and Mala.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
You might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Lokatra Radio.
Since twenty sixteen, we've covered all kinds of topics, ranging
from politics to mental health, current events, and of course sex.
We still have so much to learn, though, and we
hope you listen to each episode with the Senoras and
Senoritas in Your Life, Chapter twenty two, How She Made It. Today,
(01:40):
we're joined by Elisabeth Bevelasquez. She's a forty one year
old writer from Bushwick, New York. Like many of our
previous guests, Elisabeth grew up with what she describes radio
silence around sex and sexuality.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Conversation is not the word that I would use, because
there was no talking at all about any of this.
It was sort of a radio silence around sex and sexuality.
I grew up Pentecostal, and I was really sheltered when
it came to anything that existed outside of my little
biblical bubble.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
I still actually.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Draw a lot of blanks around like pop culture, nineties music,
because we were so sheltered, right.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Elisabeth didn't start thinking about sex until she was in
the eighth grade. At this point, some of her peers
were talking about their own experiences or they had parents
who were a little more open. The sex said that
Elisabeth received was focused on sti education and abstinence. This
was very polarizing for a young girl.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Sex was either really a bad thing that you did,
and then religiously, if you know, if you have sex
outside of marriage. You're going to be punished, You're going
to go to hell, just this really scary, daunting thing.
And then as a young adult, you start to have
all of these feelings and you don't really know what
(03:04):
to do with them.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Elisa Peck became a mom at sixteen years old. At
the time, she was unaware of basic things like her
menstrual cycle and birth control.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I was a teen mom.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
I had my first child when I was sixteen, and
a lot of that I could attribute to a lot
of things, curiosity being one of them. But I had
a huge gap in like understanding sex education and even
and especially how my own body worked. I didn't have
(03:37):
enough information that allowed me to make informed decisions about
my body. I got pregnant and gave birth, Like I
wasn't aware of basic things like menstrual cycles, right and so,
or protection, birth control, none of that stuff. And I
was just really exploring and experimenting sort of just blindly.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
Really, and so.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
That was there was a huge lack of access and comprehension,
and it left me sort of.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Vulnerable to.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
A lot that I think could have maybe been avoided
or I could have made some more informed decisions had,
I had these disinformation in these conversations.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Oftentimes, young people learn about sex or give advice based
on what they've been told or what they believed to
be true. Elisabeth learned about sex from her peers, and
the advice she got wasn't entirely medically accurate.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
That's how I got pregnant, Okay, because girls were talking
about and young boys that we're talking about the pull
out method, right, and it's like, you know, if you
pull out, then there's no way you can you know,
or if you have sex for the first time, there's
no way that you're gonna get preed lo and behold.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
The first time I had sex, I got pregnant.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
And the other thing was because I didn't understand sexual health.
I didn't understand my menstrual cycle. I didn't understand my body.
I actually had no idea that I was pregnant until.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I was four months.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
I was four months pregnant, and when you think about that,
that is four months of prenatal care that I was
missing because hey, I miss my period. I don't know
what that means, you know what? Sometimes I lead Sometimes
I don't who knows, Like I don't know what's going on,
and I can't talk about my menstrual cycle with my
mom because that feels weird and that feels inaccessible, and
(05:39):
you know.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
What do you really say? I don't even know how
to have the conversation.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Elisa Bit's mom found out she was pregnant before she did.
Here's how.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
My mom actually found out, which is just ironic, right,
because she was the one that was sort of watching
me and was like, you know, she was the one
that found out that I was pregnant because I went
into the bathroom one day and she walked in behind
me and I forgot to flush, and she tested the
urine with I swear to God, with the with the
(06:14):
pregnancy stick and came out and was yelling, you're pregnant.
I know it, And I'm like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You know, Elisabeth did notice changes to her body, and
when her friends noticed too, they chalked it up to
her becoming a woman.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I had been gaining weight, you know, my breasts were
getting bigger. But when I was taught having those conversations
with my friends, it was like.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Ooh, girl, are you getting boobies.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
It's like you're becoming a woman, Like this is you know,
your cleavage just popping like it was. There was no
sign to me that my gaining weight or my I
was exhausted. Like thinking back, you know, you're like, oh, okay,
once you start to learn like these are the signs,
these are the symptoms. You're tired, you're going to the
bathroom a lot. And these are things that my mom
(07:02):
noticed what had and so she knew right, but she
had never.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Taught me right.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
And again it was a punitive sort of experience.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Elisabeth has two children, her eldest Lisa and her youngest Adrian.
When she became a mother, she wondered how she do
things differently and how she'd teach her kids values without
forcing morality or religion on them.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
When I, you know, gave birth to my daughter, one
of the things that I thought about, and I think
a lot of parents think about, is how do I
do things differently? Like what does that look like? And
I knew that the conversations with my kids, I didn't
want them to be like moral like this moral or
like religious mind feel that we had to like oh
(07:48):
but God or you know, but you know, I wanted
to honor my values while still giving my kids the
tools that they needed to make good decisions. Right, So
our conversations and I think I did better at this
with my son, or I'm doing better at this with
(08:09):
my son because I was still very young and figuring
out a lot when I gave birth to my daughter.
And I give myself a lot of grace for that.
But you know, with Adrian, I feel like our conversation
started very young, where with Lisa, our conversation started sort
of when she was a teen.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Elisa Beet knows that sex, said, is more than the
intimacy and mechanics of sexual relations. It begins with basic
things like respect and consent.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
And I think that a lot of people think about
sex education as something that is, you know, maybe for
you know, older kids or and what I learned is that,
you know, sex education goes beyond sex right, like you
can have conversations. And I was having conversations with Adrian
not a very young, like young age, on very basic
(09:01):
and like foundational things like respect and consent and you know,
this is my boundary, and this is how you respect
other people's boundaries, and so like, these are conversations that
I think that we can have with our children. And
I started having those conversations with Adrian as young as five,
(09:23):
you know. And again that was because I learned them,
you know, and so and this is very cliche, but
it was, you know, I was really learning how to
break a cycle in the midst of parenting.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
We hope you're enjoying this conversation. Stay tuned, there's more
to come.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Thanks for sticking around. We are back.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Elisa Bit authored When We Make It, a novel in
verse based on her own lived experiences. When writing the
Mammy character, Elisabeth realized she needed to go deeper and
learn her own mother's backstory.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And so I'm writing the character of Mommy, and I
felt like I had a pretty good grasp on who
this woman would be because it was based on my
experiences with my mom. And I realized that I was
writing this woman as this cruel character that I had
seen my mom all these years, but she wasn't very
interesting because she didn't have a backstory. And as I
(10:30):
was writing this book, I said, I want people to
care about Mommy because I care about Mommy. But they're
not going to care about Mommy if they don't know
what happened to mommy. If they don't know and so
that really made me sort of go back to my
mom and begin to ask her questions and think about
(10:51):
what does it mean to.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Hold my mom accountable for the way that I grew
up and also have a.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Lot of empathy for her, Like those things can coexist
at the same time. And I don't think that I
really understood that until I was older.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Really is very recently, right.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
I started writing this book in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty,
and because at the end of the day, my mom
is human, and my mom is a woman, and my mom.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Had all of these like she was a girl once.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
To writing the mother character for her novel When We
Make It gave Elisabeth the space to look at her
mother differently.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
So when I started to remove her like this idea,
like this idealization of this woman who was supposed to
have the mother role and supposed to just be my
mom and supposed to be that, when I stopped looking
at her as as what everyone said I should look
at my mom as it opened up a whole other
(11:57):
way of me to empathized with who she is and
her life. I thought about who I was as a
young person, finding a safe space in this very volatile
environment in a book, and I knew that I wanted
to create that safe space in When We Make It.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
For Elisabeth, it was important for her to provide a
list of resources in the back of her book because
readers may be connecting with their own experiences for the
first time.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Whether we're talking about, you know, sexual assaul or we're
talking about harassment or any sort of unwanted sexual behavior.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
These are things that are real. These are things that.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Happen in our community, that happen amongst young people and
adults alike, and when it happens, it leaves us feeling
isolated and scared and confused.
Speaker 5 (12:54):
And if you're all.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Already in a place where you all don't have information
and knowledge, you're even more isolated. So I think that
it's really important, like the more that we talk about it,
that we have these conversations. So shout out to Segnora
sex because it the less people feel afraid.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
At Leastabeth's writing reflects her own personal, lived experiences. This
allows her to process her own sexual assault.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
I know that I was sexually assaulted as a young person,
and I held a lot of shame around that because
it was I grew up hearing that my body was
a temple, right, and also that you know, I had
to cover myself from head to toe because my body
(13:52):
would then tempt men.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
To you know, to sexual assault.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
So you automatically grew up thinking that you're responsible for
these terrible things that happened to you. So if they
happened to you, and in my case it did, I
was very ashamed. I didn't know where to go. I
didn't know who to talk to because I felt like,
inevitably it was going to be it's your fault. You know,
you showed an ankle, you showed your shoulder, you smiled
(14:18):
a little bit too much. You know, you shouldn't have
talked to that guy, right, So I know that I
wanted it was absolutely important for me to hold space
in my book for those experiences. And you know, these
conversations are hard to have, but when we have them,
(14:40):
we give ourselves the opportunity to hold ourselves accountable for
keeping each other safe and to protecting each other and
building healthier relationships and building more respectful relationships, and asking
questions about these things that happen in our communities that
we don't necessarily always have the.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Space to talk about.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
We hope you're enjoying this conversation. Stay tuned, there's more
to come.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Thanks for sticking around. We are back.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
And Lisa Pit's been reflecting on her upbringing and is
now able to look at her mother through a different lens.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I do have a lot of empathy for my mom
because survival has a lot to do with your capacity
to learn how to break cycles. And if you know
you're spending a lot of your time surviving, you want
to make sure that your kids are set up in
a way that is going to also help them survive.
(15:49):
And for my mom, it was like, if you're going
to be a teen mom, you're going to be just
like me. You know, you're going to suffer just like me.
I realized when I was older that a she didn't
have the information, but her not talking to me was
her way of protecting me, or her thinking that she
was protecting me, and her way of you know, survival
(16:11):
or like trying to survive. And what really ended up
happening was that it was very punitive, you know, it
was it didn't look like what she thought, It didn't
yield the results.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
That she thought.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Because young people are curious, like they're going to get
the information from where they're going to get the information,
and oftentimes that information is going to be wrong if
it's not coming from the right sources.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Breaking generational curses and traumas are talked about in the
LATINX community, and for Elisabeth, breaking the cycle in her
family means being a safe space for her children.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I think it took me a while to understand that
I was in a safe space because that has a
lot to do with it as well. When you don't
feel safe enough to have conversations about your body about
you know what your friends are talking about, you are
(17:08):
less likely to be informed, right, And so I think
that breaking the cycle for me was also learning how
to create safe spaces in which.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
My children can talk to me.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
And again, it took me a while to understand that
I was safe because I created that safe space and
I am now the safe space. It's not necessarily like
an environmental thing, but I am had a very volatile
relationship with my mother. She has what I know now
(17:51):
as her own struggles, and it wasn't always something that
I understood. I looked at my mom growing up as
a very cruel woman who was at times abusive both
physically and verbally, and I didn't. I knew that she
had also been abused physically and verbally, because she would
(18:14):
mention that sort of in her moments of anger and rage,
and she would talk about, you know, what her parents
had subjected her to. I didn't really look at my
mom as someone who was kind or support. You know,
we have this like idea in the Latina community, you
(18:35):
know la madre juna, Right, you have one mom and
you have to respect her and you have to love her,
and she's there for you, and you know, and that
wasn't my experience.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Elisabeth was very critical of herself as a young girl
and young woman, partly because she was aware of what
was stacked up against her and was.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Very critical of who I was. And I was also
very aware of who other people wanted me to be.
And I never quite reconciliated that as a young person.
And then when I got pregnant, oh, forget about it,
because I had a thousand things against me.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I was growing up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which was already
the hood.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
People already looked at that neighborhood as you either die
in this neighborhood or you don't get out or people
from this neighborhood don't quote unquote make it right.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
And I was Puerto Rican.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
And there was a huge, huge discrimination against Puerto Ricans
in New York City. And then I was a team mom,
and after that I was a high school dropout. So
it was just, you know, strike after strike after strike,
and I felt or I was very much aware. I
(19:52):
didn't necessarily believe it all the way, because I wouldn't
be here if I did. But I was aware that
society looked at me as a failure. I knew because
I saw it in the media. I saw it in
the news. My friends kind of distances distanced themselves for me.
When they found that I was pregnant. The guidance counselor
was like, oh my god, I gotta write these in
(20:14):
the notes, like this is a you know, a girl
who's you know, I was transferred out of school to
go to a school specifically for pregnant girls.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
But now, if Elisabeth could talk to her younger self,
here's what she'd say.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Wow, you're a fucking badass, Like you don't even know it,
but you are a You're more than a survivor. You're intelligent,
you're in like your ingenuity is incredible, like they're so
because survival is an art form, and I want to
(20:51):
tell her that she's always been an artist. She's always
been an artist because I really wrote my way through
a lot of that. And I think when I say
writing saved my life.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
I literally mean that because.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I didn't have spaces to talk about what I was
going through. I often spoke to myself and I often
asked myself questions in my journal, and that really saved
my life because at least I was able to go
back to my entries and say, okay, well that changed,
(21:28):
right There was like a measuring this, well, you know,
I have a job interview next week, or I found
this GED program, and so I was able to sort
of like record hope in real time. And that's really
what I wanted to do with when we make It,
is provide a space where there was all of these
real things happening, and also there was hope and joy,
(21:51):
and young people get to sort of see how like
genius they are and how they are literally making it
every day by virtue of the fact that they wake
up and try.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
This conversation with Elisabeth has me thinking about sex education
and the access that young people have to all of
those different types of information and knowledge. And I really
do believe that young people have the right to access information, education,
and knowledge, especially about their own bodies. And I think
(22:31):
that it's really important that we preserve young people's right
to access information and not limit their access to resources
out of fear.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Next time on Senora sex Ed, we're joined by Gatta Chew.
Senora sex Said is a co production between Locator Productions
and Michael Tura Podcast Network.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
This show is executive produced by Mala Munos and Them.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Also executive produced by Jaselle.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Bances, produced by Stephanie Franco.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Creative direction by Mala Munios.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Story editing by Theosa m.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Music direction by Grissol Lomeli
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And music produced by Brian Gazzo,
Senora or Senora Senora Senora, Senora, Senora, Hi Senora, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
To Senora sex Ed. Senora Sex Said is not your
Mommy sex Talk. This show is la platica like you've
never heard it before. With each episode, we're breaking the
stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in LATINX communities.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Latinas have been hyper sexualized in popular culture, but notoriously
denied sex education. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between
Latinas from gen X to Gen Z, covering everything from
puberty and body image to representation in film, television, and music.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Just a reminder that in this show, a Senora is
a woman with a lot of life experiences and stories
to share. Maybe she's in her thirties, Maybe she's in
her forties or fifties or older. Maybe she's trans, maybe
she sis.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
We are your hosts and producers, Viosa and Mala.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
You might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Lokatra Radio.
Since twenty sixteen, we've covered all kinds of topics, ranging
from politics to mental health, current events, and of course sex.
We still have so much to learn, though, and we
hope you listen to each episode with the Senoras and
Senoritas in Your Life, Chapter twenty two, How She Made It. Today,
(01:40):
we're joined by Elisabeth Bevelasquez. She's a forty one year
old writer from Bushwick, New York. Like many of our
previous guests, Elisabeth grew up with what she describes radio
silence around sex and sexuality.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Conversation is not the word that I would use, because
there was no talking at all about any of this.
It was sort of a radio silence around sex and sexuality.
I grew up Pentecostal, and I was really sheltered when
it came to anything that existed outside of my little
biblical bubble.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
I still actually.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Draw a lot of blanks around like pop culture, nineties music,
because we were so sheltered, right.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Elisabeth didn't start thinking about sex until she was in
the eighth grade. At this point, some of her peers
were talking about their own experiences or they had parents
who were a little more open. The sex said that
Elisabeth received was focused on sti education and abstinence. This
was very polarizing for a young girl.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Sex was either really a bad thing that you did,
and then religiously, if you know, if you have sex
outside of marriage. You're going to be punished, You're going
to go to hell, just this really scary, daunting thing.
And then as a young adult, you start to have
all of these feelings and you don't really know what
(03:04):
to do with them.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Elisa Peck became a mom at sixteen years old. At
the time, she was unaware of basic things like her
menstrual cycle and birth control.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I was a teen mom.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
I had my first child when I was sixteen, and
a lot of that I could attribute to a lot
of things, curiosity being one of them. But I had
a huge gap in like understanding sex education and even
and especially how my own body worked. I didn't have
(03:37):
enough information that allowed me to make informed decisions about
my body. I got pregnant and gave birth, Like I
wasn't aware of basic things like menstrual cycles, right and so,
or protection, birth control, none of that stuff. And I
was just really exploring and experimenting sort of just blindly.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
Really, and so.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
That was there was a huge lack of access and comprehension,
and it left me sort of.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Vulnerable to.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
A lot that I think could have maybe been avoided
or I could have made some more informed decisions had,
I had these disinformation in these conversations.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Oftentimes, young people learn about sex or give advice based
on what they've been told or what they believed to
be true. Elisabeth learned about sex from her peers, and
the advice she got wasn't entirely medically accurate.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
That's how I got pregnant, Okay, because girls were talking
about and young boys that we're talking about the pull
out method, right, and it's like, you know, if you
pull out, then there's no way you can you know,
or if you have sex for the first time, there's
no way that you're gonna get preed lo and behold.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
The first time I had sex, I got pregnant.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
And the other thing was because I didn't understand sexual health.
I didn't understand my menstrual cycle. I didn't understand my body.
I actually had no idea that I was pregnant until.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I was four months.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
I was four months pregnant, and when you think about that,
that is four months of prenatal care that I was
missing because hey, I miss my period. I don't know
what that means, you know what? Sometimes I lead Sometimes
I don't who knows, Like I don't know what's going on,
and I can't talk about my menstrual cycle with my
mom because that feels weird and that feels inaccessible, and
(05:39):
you know.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
What do you really say? I don't even know how
to have the conversation.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Elisa Bit's mom found out she was pregnant before she did.
Here's how.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
My mom actually found out, which is just ironic, right,
because she was the one that was sort of watching
me and was like, you know, she was the one
that found out that I was pregnant because I went
into the bathroom one day and she walked in behind
me and I forgot to flush, and she tested the
urine with I swear to God, with the with the
(06:14):
pregnancy stick and came out and was yelling, you're pregnant.
I know it, And I'm like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You know, Elisabeth did notice changes to her body, and
when her friends noticed too, they chalked it up to
her becoming a woman.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I had been gaining weight, you know, my breasts were
getting bigger. But when I was taught having those conversations
with my friends, it was like.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Ooh, girl, are you getting boobies.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
It's like you're becoming a woman, Like this is you know,
your cleavage just popping like it was. There was no
sign to me that my gaining weight or my I
was exhausted. Like thinking back, you know, you're like, oh, okay,
once you start to learn like these are the signs,
these are the symptoms. You're tired, you're going to the
bathroom a lot. And these are things that my mom
(07:02):
noticed what had and so she knew right, but she
had never.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Taught me right.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
And again it was a punitive sort of experience.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Elisabeth has two children, her eldest Lisa and her youngest Adrian.
When she became a mother, she wondered how she do
things differently and how she'd teach her kids values without
forcing morality or religion on them.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
When I, you know, gave birth to my daughter, one
of the things that I thought about, and I think
a lot of parents think about, is how do I
do things differently? Like what does that look like? And
I knew that the conversations with my kids, I didn't
want them to be like moral like this moral or
like religious mind feel that we had to like oh
(07:48):
but God or you know, but you know, I wanted
to honor my values while still giving my kids the
tools that they needed to make good decisions. Right, So
our conversations and I think I did better at this
with my son, or I'm doing better at this with
(08:09):
my son because I was still very young and figuring
out a lot when I gave birth to my daughter.
And I give myself a lot of grace for that.
But you know, with Adrian, I feel like our conversation
started very young, where with Lisa, our conversation started sort
of when she was a teen.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Elisa Beet knows that sex, said, is more than the
intimacy and mechanics of sexual relations. It begins with basic
things like respect and consent.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
And I think that a lot of people think about
sex education as something that is, you know, maybe for
you know, older kids or and what I learned is that,
you know, sex education goes beyond sex right, like you
can have conversations. And I was having conversations with Adrian
not a very young, like young age, on very basic
(09:01):
and like foundational things like respect and consent and you know,
this is my boundary, and this is how you respect
other people's boundaries, and so like, these are conversations that
I think that we can have with our children. And
I started having those conversations with Adrian as young as five,
(09:23):
you know. And again that was because I learned them,
you know, and so and this is very cliche, but
it was, you know, I was really learning how to
break a cycle in the midst of parenting.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
We hope you're enjoying this conversation. Stay tuned, there's more
to come.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Thanks for sticking around. We are back.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Elisa Bit authored When We Make It, a novel in
verse based on her own lived experiences. When writing the
Mammy character, Elisabeth realized she needed to go deeper and
learn her own mother's backstory.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And so I'm writing the character of Mommy, and I
felt like I had a pretty good grasp on who
this woman would be because it was based on my
experiences with my mom. And I realized that I was
writing this woman as this cruel character that I had
seen my mom all these years, but she wasn't very
interesting because she didn't have a backstory. And as I
(10:30):
was writing this book, I said, I want people to
care about Mommy because I care about Mommy. But they're
not going to care about Mommy if they don't know
what happened to mommy. If they don't know and so
that really made me sort of go back to my
mom and begin to ask her questions and think about
(10:51):
what does it mean to.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Hold my mom accountable for the way that I grew
up and also have a.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Lot of empathy for her, Like those things can coexist
at the same time. And I don't think that I
really understood that until I was older.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Really is very recently, right.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
I started writing this book in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty,
and because at the end of the day, my mom
is human, and my mom is a woman, and my mom.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Had all of these like she was a girl once.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
To writing the mother character for her novel When We
Make It gave Elisabeth the space to look at her
mother differently.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
So when I started to remove her like this idea,
like this idealization of this woman who was supposed to
have the mother role and supposed to just be my
mom and supposed to be that, when I stopped looking
at her as as what everyone said I should look
at my mom as it opened up a whole other
(11:57):
way of me to empathized with who she is and
her life. I thought about who I was as a
young person, finding a safe space in this very volatile
environment in a book, and I knew that I wanted
to create that safe space in When We Make It.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
For Elisabeth, it was important for her to provide a
list of resources in the back of her book because
readers may be connecting with their own experiences for the
first time.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Whether we're talking about, you know, sexual assaul or we're
talking about harassment or any sort of unwanted sexual behavior.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
These are things that are real. These are things that.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Happen in our community, that happen amongst young people and
adults alike, and when it happens, it leaves us feeling
isolated and scared and confused.
Speaker 5 (12:54):
And if you're all.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Already in a place where you all don't have information
and knowledge, you're even more isolated. So I think that
it's really important, like the more that we talk about it,
that we have these conversations. So shout out to Segnora
sex because it the less people feel afraid.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
At Leastabeth's writing reflects her own personal, lived experiences. This
allows her to process her own sexual assault.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
I know that I was sexually assaulted as a young person,
and I held a lot of shame around that because
it was I grew up hearing that my body was
a temple, right, and also that you know, I had
to cover myself from head to toe because my body
(13:52):
would then tempt men.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
To you know, to sexual assault.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
So you automatically grew up thinking that you're responsible for
these terrible things that happened to you. So if they
happened to you, and in my case it did, I
was very ashamed. I didn't know where to go. I
didn't know who to talk to because I felt like,
inevitably it was going to be it's your fault. You know,
you showed an ankle, you showed your shoulder, you smiled
(14:18):
a little bit too much. You know, you shouldn't have
talked to that guy, right, So I know that I
wanted it was absolutely important for me to hold space
in my book for those experiences. And you know, these
conversations are hard to have, but when we have them,
(14:40):
we give ourselves the opportunity to hold ourselves accountable for
keeping each other safe and to protecting each other and
building healthier relationships and building more respectful relationships, and asking
questions about these things that happen in our communities that
we don't necessarily always have the.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Space to talk about.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
We hope you're enjoying this conversation. Stay tuned, there's more
to come.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Thanks for sticking around. We are back.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
And Lisa Pit's been reflecting on her upbringing and is
now able to look at her mother through a different lens.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I do have a lot of empathy for my mom
because survival has a lot to do with your capacity
to learn how to break cycles. And if you know
you're spending a lot of your time surviving, you want
to make sure that your kids are set up in
a way that is going to also help them survive.
(15:49):
And for my mom, it was like, if you're going
to be a teen mom, you're going to be just
like me. You know, you're going to suffer just like me.
I realized when I was older that a she didn't
have the information, but her not talking to me was
her way of protecting me, or her thinking that she
was protecting me, and her way of you know, survival
(16:11):
or like trying to survive. And what really ended up
happening was that it was very punitive, you know, it
was it didn't look like what she thought, It didn't
yield the results.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
That she thought.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Because young people are curious, like they're going to get
the information from where they're going to get the information,
and oftentimes that information is going to be wrong if
it's not coming from the right sources.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Breaking generational curses and traumas are talked about in the
LATINX community, and for Elisabeth, breaking the cycle in her
family means being a safe space for her children.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I think it took me a while to understand that
I was in a safe space because that has a
lot to do with it as well. When you don't
feel safe enough to have conversations about your body about
you know what your friends are talking about, you are
(17:08):
less likely to be informed, right, And so I think
that breaking the cycle for me was also learning how
to create safe spaces in which.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
My children can talk to me.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
And again, it took me a while to understand that
I was safe because I created that safe space and
I am now the safe space. It's not necessarily like
an environmental thing, but I am had a very volatile
relationship with my mother. She has what I know now
(17:51):
as her own struggles, and it wasn't always something that
I understood. I looked at my mom growing up as
a very cruel woman who was at times abusive both
physically and verbally, and I didn't. I knew that she
had also been abused physically and verbally, because she would
(18:14):
mention that sort of in her moments of anger and rage,
and she would talk about, you know, what her parents
had subjected her to. I didn't really look at my
mom as someone who was kind or support. You know,
we have this like idea in the Latina community, you
(18:35):
know la madre juna, Right, you have one mom and
you have to respect her and you have to love her,
and she's there for you, and you know, and that
wasn't my experience.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Elisabeth was very critical of herself as a young girl
and young woman, partly because she was aware of what
was stacked up against her and was.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Very critical of who I was. And I was also
very aware of who other people wanted me to be.
And I never quite reconciliated that as a young person.
And then when I got pregnant, oh, forget about it,
because I had a thousand things against me.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I was growing up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which was already
the hood.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
People already looked at that neighborhood as you either die
in this neighborhood or you don't get out or people
from this neighborhood don't quote unquote make it right.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
And I was Puerto Rican.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
And there was a huge, huge discrimination against Puerto Ricans
in New York City. And then I was a team mom,
and after that I was a high school dropout. So
it was just, you know, strike after strike after strike,
and I felt or I was very much aware. I
(19:52):
didn't necessarily believe it all the way, because I wouldn't
be here if I did. But I was aware that
society looked at me as a failure. I knew because
I saw it in the media. I saw it in
the news. My friends kind of distances distanced themselves for me.
When they found that I was pregnant. The guidance counselor
was like, oh my god, I gotta write these in
(20:14):
the notes, like this is a you know, a girl
who's you know, I was transferred out of school to
go to a school specifically for pregnant girls.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
But now, if Elisabeth could talk to her younger self,
here's what she'd say.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Wow, you're a fucking badass, Like you don't even know it,
but you are a You're more than a survivor. You're intelligent,
you're in like your ingenuity is incredible, like they're so
because survival is an art form, and I want to
(20:51):
tell her that she's always been an artist. She's always
been an artist because I really wrote my way through
a lot of that. And I think when I say
writing saved my life.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
I literally mean that because.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I didn't have spaces to talk about what I was
going through. I often spoke to myself and I often
asked myself questions in my journal, and that really saved
my life because at least I was able to go
back to my entries and say, okay, well that changed,
(21:28):
right There was like a measuring this, well, you know,
I have a job interview next week, or I found
this GED program, and so I was able to sort
of like record hope in real time. And that's really
what I wanted to do with when we make It,
is provide a space where there was all of these
real things happening, and also there was hope and joy,
(21:51):
and young people get to sort of see how like
genius they are and how they are literally making it
every day by virtue of the fact that they wake
up and try.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
This conversation with Elisabeth has me thinking about sex education
and the access that young people have to all of
those different types of information and knowledge. And I really
do believe that young people have the right to access information, education,
and knowledge, especially about their own bodies. And I think
(22:31):
that it's really important that we preserve young people's right
to access information and not limit their access to resources
out of fear.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Next time on Senora sex Ed, we're joined by Gatta Chew.
Senora sex Said is a co production between Locator Productions
and Michael Tura Podcast Network.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
This show is executive produced by Mala Munos and Them.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Also executive produced by Jaselle.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Bances, produced by Stephanie Franco.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Creative direction by Mala Munios.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Story editing by Theosa m.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Music direction by Grissol Lomeli
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And music produced by Brian Gazzo,
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