I am a queer migrant artist based in Brooklyn, New York. I came to the US in 2001 and was granted asylum in 2006. My ancestral roots are deeply planted in the blue Andes mountains of Nariño, Colombia. Since the age of seven, I have been in search of my roots, always asking family members, “Who do we come from?”

It has taken me years to begin undoing centuries of forgetting familial traditions and spiritual practice. 

I would describe my lineage as a borderland in itself: my Spanish and Indigenous ancestry that I have explored and integrated in order to reconcile my sense of dislocation and rupture. This borderland is also home to my queer migrant identity, which gives me a deep sense of belonging in the in-between—neither here nor there. This borderland also hosts the territory of intuition and the many rivers I have visited and where I most feel at home.

It has taken me some years to create a spiritual practice of my own. I started out very shy because I didn’t want to appropriate other people’s practices. I felt I needed permission to get closer to traditions that, though not taught to me by my parents or grandparents, feel true to me. Over my life, I have been reconnecting with traditions and spiritual practices we collectively forgot.

I am forever grateful to all the spiritual mentors, teachers, and healers who have blessed my journey and supported and guided my integration, helping me to remember what is part of my ancestral lineage. I thank my mentor Ayanna Maia for teaching to build an ancestor altar following my heart. I thank Mona Chopra for helping me heal my body and my spirit through acupuncture for almost ten years. I also thank my teachers Flor Alvarez Medrano and Carmen Alvarez from Guatemala and Pablo Tisoy and Muskuy Tisoy from Colombia. My heart has gained capacity to be in connection with life because of them. It is a wonderful gift and a responsibility I do not take lightly.