How Reclaiming My Latin American Culture Helped Me Heal
I am a proud Latina. I love tostones, rice, beans, pernil, mangu, pollo guisado, and all the other cultural foods I grew up eating. Being Latina is such an important part of who I am now, yet for most of my upbringing I don’t think I ever said or felt this way, especially when I was in the throes of my eating disorder.
When I was a kid, my mom’s mom, who was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, lived with my mom and I for about half of each year. Once fall arrived and the New Jersey weather started cooling off, she’d travel back to her home country to avoid the winter weather of the Northeast. She never learned English and was an amazing cook – traits that indirectly helped me connect to my Dominican heritage through both language and food. These cultural foods were also a staple part of family gatherings on my dad’s side of the family, the Puerto Rican side.
Looking back, I can see how, outside of my home, I suppressed my Latin American culture to “fit in” for a lot of my childhood.
Most of my friends at school or my soccer teammates were white. I remember wishing my hair was straight instead of thick and curly. I remember wishing I could have thinner thighs. I remember being embarrassed to say I loved beans. I spoke Spanish at my mom’s house when my grandma was with us, but I was embarrassed for people outside of my home to know that. This cultural shame was the main reason why I didn’t become fully fluent in Spanish as a child.
When I found myself in the throes of an eating disorder during college, the suppression of my cultural identity came to a climax. My eating disorder brain was upholding white supremacy [see this article, trigger warning: photos including comparing thinner bodies and larger bodies, pinching body fat, etc.] by demanding I look more like my white peers and demeaning my cultural foods.
Unlike many other BIPOC struggling with an eating disorder, I was able to access treatment promptly, and the treatment did help me immensely. I successfully processed a lot of the underlying issues that led to my eating disorder, and within a year or two of leaving treatment, I got to a place of true recovery, physically and mentally. But a lot of the exploration of my cultural and racial identity happened on my own after I left treatment.
Exploring my cultural identity
Like many other BIPOC who do get help for their eating disorder, I didn’t get to explore how my ethnic or cultural identity factored into my eating disorder during treatment. It’s no secret that the eating disorder treatment space lacks diversity amongst both providers and patients. I was given meals that didn’t include my cultural foods, even though several had become fear foods. Meanwhile, I was in school studying nutrition – a field that largely upholds Eurocentric foods while dedicating relatively small efforts towards building “cultural competency.” This assimilation came at a detriment to my overall well-being.
I was denying central parts of myself to fit in with the norm. I’m not alone in this. While assimilation brings a sense of safety, it also impacts our sense of self. Being authentic is important to me and it was an important part of my recovery.
Connecting the dots
As I moved through recovery, reconnecting to my culture became key to my healing. I decided to move to the Dominican Republic after graduation to do volunteer work and connect with my grandparents’ home country. Rather than rigid eating disorder-driven exercise, I embraced Zumba and salsa dancing. This not only helped me express myself and find truly joyful movement, but the music and dancing also helped me feel the blood of my ancestors coarse through my veins. I let go of tracking numbers and embraced movement that helped me connect with myself through my culture.
My drive towards connecting with my culture also motivated me to reintroduce foods I had been restricting. I wanted to be able to fully embrace Dominican culture when I moved there, so I began eating meat again and let the love of my culture override the eating disorder thoughts. Getting to connect with the community there and say yes to the food they offered me allowed me to fully immerse myself. I was able to be more present in the moment rather than caught up in the eating disorder’s harsh rules or judgments.
It helped that I didn’t feel the same sense of otherness that I often feel in the U.S. For example, the billboards featured people that look like me, and everywhere I went, I looked like those around me. My body no longer felt ostracised, but rather, it felt like my body belonged.
I truly believe that my time in the Dominican Republic helped me heal. My grandmother passed away the year after I left treatment, when I wasn’t yet in a fully recovered place, but moving to the Dominican Republic the year after her death gave me a chance to connect with her in a new way. That connection helped propel me towards real healing.
Final Thoughts
Those of us from immigrant families or with marginalized identities often try to conform to the societal norm in order to achieve safety, but as a result, we deny central parts of who we are. For me, reconnecting to my Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage helped me rediscover my true self during my eating disorder recovery. I am confident others could be empowered through this cultural pride, too.
