She wrote her book, Self-Care for Latinas: 100+ Ways to Prioritize & Rejuvenate Your Mind, Body, & Spirit, deep in her own grief, a year after suddenly losing her best friend. Raquel shares what that experience taught her about self-care and community care, living with life-changing loss, and how she is building a career in media from her beloved Orlando, Florida.
Follow Raquel Reichard on Instagram @raquelreichard. Find her new book here. If you liked this episode, listen to How Robyn Moreno Gets Rooted and How Chef Grace Ramirez Found Her Place Outside of the Kitchen .
Alicia Menendez: I have followed Raquel Reichard's professional journey for years. She is always making space for us and for our voices. Currently, as the deputy director of Somos, Refinery29's channel buy-in for Latines. Previously as an editor at Latina magazine, Remezcla, Mic, and Mitu. Her new book, Self-Care for Latinas: 100-plus Ways to Prioritize and Rejuvenate Your Mind, Body, and Spirit, urges us to find ways to care for ourselves. It's a message that Raquel herself had to relearn in the wake of a devastating personal loss. Raquel and I talk about moving through grief, self-care that isn't one size fits all, and how her life changed when she finally accepted that her spirit was calling her home. Raquel, thank you so much for being here.
Raquel Reichard: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Menendez: Raquel, you call yourself a New York... Say it for me. I can't even do it.
Reichard: Nuyoflorican. Nuyoflorican.
Menendez: Do you see how my Jersey couldn't even get past it? How does that show up in your life?
Reichard: Oh, in every way. I was born in New York, but I left when I was really young to Puerto Rico, and then to Florida. But I grew up in Orlando identifying as Nuyorican because my parents were very Nuyorican. And then I moved to New York after high school, and I was like, "I'm quite Southern." Some folks were like, "You have a southern twang, where are you from?" And I started to realize, oh, actually I'm pretty Florida. And yeah, I think that shows up in so much of what I do. It shows up in my writing. And so much of the work that I do is really to uplift Puerto Ricans, especially in Orlando.
Menendez: You have been in the industry, in journalism, for the past decade, and one of the things I admire so much about you, Raquel, is that you have really carved out a lane for yourself where you are able to write about news, and culture, and everything from the perspective of our community. What has that required of you? And what is the closest you have come to walking away?
Reichard: I feel like it's required everything from me, honestly. This industry has been unkind to me, as it has been for so many of us. I have been laid off twice. My current employer just had massive layoffs. I wasn't laid off this time, but who's to say it won't be the next time? It is truly the community that keeps me going and that keeps me doing this work, the readers who show up and care about what I'm writing about and care about me also and my well-being. And that's reciprocated, right? I care very deeply about the folks who I write for, and to, and with. And so that's what has really kept me going. Because it's a rough time. It's a rough time in the industry. We're all going through it.
Menendez: You write in your book: “the weight of your weekly planner, untreated traumas, and self-hate is heavy, and it's crushing you.” Now, if I know you as well as I think I do by following your writing, then you are a person who is often reckoning with systems, and structures, and the ways in which we have to reckon with those inequities. Make the argument to me that even in the face of all that, self-care still matters.
Reichard: I mean, that's why self-care matters so much. We are constantly being beaten down by systems of oppression, by culture of Marianismo, by competing cultures in our families versus the culture that we go out to in the world, by personal experiences, and especially for Latinas who navigate so many different worlds, who might experience family separation, or mass incarceration, or just cat calls every single time we leave the house, or feeling like our bodies don't belong to us.
When this is your existence, our survival requires us to take care of ourselves. That's going to look different for all of us. We need to pour into ourselves, but we also need to pour into ourselves the way our mind, body, and spirit require it from us, and not just how we have been told how to self-care, right? The sort of commercialization of self-care as manis, and pedis, and faraway retreats that are inaccessible to so many people. They also might not be exactly what our mind, body, and spirit need from us.
Menendez: You organize these concepts of self-care into mental, physical, and spiritual self-care. So understanding that this is very much based on the needs of the individual, let's use you as our test case and walk through each of those individually. So when it comes to mental self-care, which practice have you found most beneficial?
Reichard: The one that is coming to mind right now is resisting perfectionism. I have always been an A-plus student. I think this also ties into Marianismo and this expectation and this role to please others. I've always wanted to be the sort of good girl, the good Latina, and that means being perfect and not doing things if I fear that I won't be perfect at it.
And so that has really stopped me from doing so much, honestly. It made it difficult for me to even write this book at first, because who am I to write this book? I had to work through that imposter syndrome, and I did that by leaning on friends, phoning friends for validation, which is something else I talk about in the book. And also resisting perfection, just writing, free writing, and letting it flow, and then taking it from there.
Menendez: How about when it comes to spiritual self-care?
Reichard: Spiritual self-care has been interesting for me. I grew up in a Pentecostal home and my relationship with spirituality looks very different now than it did when I was younger. I think when I was younger, I was taught that there was only one way to be spiritual and one way to experience spiritual wellness, and that is through Jesus Christ.
And in the book, there is a section on having a higher power, but I now believe that higher power can be anything. It can be a deity, or it can be your relationship with nature, or your love for a relative or a friend. It could be yourself. And so, while writing it, I was also recognizing the ways in which I have sort of grown, how much work I've done within myself to unlearn some of the more toxic messaging that I grew up with.
Menendez: The unlearning is a big part of the self-care. And then, when it comes to physical self-care, it took me a long time to realize that moving my body for 30 minutes every day was as much psychological for me as it was physical. And to see it as a form of self-care instead of self-punishment.
Reichard: Oh my goodness. There we go. That's a word. I think this section for me, it was the easiest for me to write, honestly. I think so much of my reporting has centered on body politics, and so I just had a lot to speak on. Also, my personal relationship with my body…I've lived with an eating disorder, I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I've also just done a lot of work with therapists and just a lot of somatic healing.
One of my favorite passages in that section is dancing to release trauma. And so, I love this one because my healing experience for years was really exclusively through talk therapy, which was extremely helpful, but it didn't really get into the somatic healing that I needed. And that started to come when I started to dance more intentionally, right? Dance with the intent of releasing that trauma, dance with the intent of creating joy for myself and by myself.
So somatic healing, it's treatment focusing on the body and how emotions appear within the body. And it's not exclusive to dancing, but that is just a fun, joyous form of movement. And I really, really wanted to bring joy to the self-care practices and culture. It's so much a part of our culture. Dancing alone in your bedroom to a good salsa from Frankie Ruiz, or going out to the nightclub with your homegirls and twerking to reggaeton, or taking a Latin dance class, whatever it looks like for you, just moving your body and finding joy in that intentional movement.
Menendez: Where were you in the process of bringing this book into the world when you lost your best friend, Raquel?
Reichard: Yeah. So I lost my best friend, Angelica Alvarez, on January 2nd, 2022. And this opportunity came February 2023. So I had gone an entire year, honestly on autopilot, just unwell. And when this opportunity came, it felt like it came from Angie. She was giving me something to sort of wake me up. And also really prioritized my self-care again, because through grief, I really just abandoned everything, right? Because I didn't have it in me.
And so, in writing this book, I think the biggest thing that it reminded me actually, is that self-care has to be flexible. I am not the same person today that I was five years ago. The self-care routine that got me through the day when Angie was alive wasn't helping me after she passed away. And being reminded of that and our need to find and develop new tools for the person that we are today, it feels so simple, but it was something that was absolutely necessary.
Menendez: If I followed the story of Angie correctly, I got the sense that you were very surprised by her loss, that you had the rug pulled from under you. And that is a very specific type of grief, when there has been no time for pre-grief, when you are actually just processing the grief in real time. And just to be clear, this is not just a friend. This is a best friend. This is someone who was like a sister. This is someone who was like a life partner, someone who you're going to grow old with.
And again, that's, I think, a loss that is just really hard to articulate because we don't make the same space for that in society that we make for a spouse passing or a family member passing. And yet, this is a person who occupied very much the space of both. And so I wonder, in the time that has passed, how you feel changed by the experience of not only the loss itself, but the grief that has followed and the process of trying to come back to yourself, understanding that you'll never go back to the Raquel you were with Angie, that that Raquel doesn't exist anymore, there's a new person that you're reaching toward.
Reichard: Yeah. There's a popular saying among Latinas that speaks to how we don't feel like we belong entirely to one culture or the other, right? This idea of being “ni de aquí, ni de allá.” And in many ways, this is how my grief feels right now. Unlike when grief first struck, I am actively trying to be more present. I'm no longer on autopilot. I'm moving my body again. I'm attempting to build community, find new passions. There's a part of me that is eagerly trying to live for her and also for myself.
But at the same time, there's this other part of me that remains deceased, and I think it always will. This is the part of me that shared life with Ang, the part of me that planned a future with her. So for me, I think long-term grief feels more like being a resident of two lands, of two nations. In the land of the living, you learn how to survive and you do, and you return to life, and to hope, and to love. And in the land of the dead, you acknowledge that the life you're living without your best friend still isn't the life you want. You recognize that the hole is unfillable. Yeah, that's how it's feeling right now. I am just sort of “ni de aquí, ni de allá.”
Menendez: I'm so moved because I am familiar with both concepts, both as it relates to Latinidad and as it relates to a person who has experienced life-changing loss, but I have never drawn a line between them, and I just think that is absolutely so beautiful Raquel. So thank you for that. And I wonder if you have had an experience or experienced the tension of trying to care for yourself while also caring for others.
Reichard: Definitely. I mean, I deeply believe that by caring for ourselves, it allows us to sustainably care for others, both physically and emotionally pouring into folks, but also being an example of what self-care looks like, and that example giving permission to others to do the same. But this is reciprocal. It has to be. And so when my grief started, I really needed my community to pour into me in a way that honestly made me a little uncomfortable, but it was necessary. Because I literally was incapable of doing basic things like cooking, brushing my hair, getting out of bed.
But at the same time, I was doing community care in another way. I was showing up for Ang, her family, her sister, her parents, her daughter. After someone dies, a lot of things need to get done. Just so many different things that one does not think about that should not be top of mind for anyone who's grieving. I think that's sort of the community care that I was able to do. But selfishly, I think it fed into me as well. Being able to continue to show up for my best friend when she wasn't here physically gave me a sense of meaning and purpose, and it's just what we did. We always showed up for each other. So it was just sort of maintaining that relationship after death.
Menendez: Raquel, you have such a strong sense of community and a strong sense of place. I remember when you made the decision to move back to Orlando. I think anytime someone in our professional universe makes the decision to leave New York or DC, it's like, "Okay, is this going to work out?" Because there is invariably a cost-benefit of analysis of wanting a career in media and moving away from the places where media is generally seated. How did you make that choice to move back to Orlando?
Reichard: I was terrified. So I think my spirit had been calling me to move back to Orlando for a really long time. I just wasn't in a really good place mentally, emotionally. I just left a job. I was in the middle of a breakup from a nearly ten-year relationship. But the only reason why I was holding onto New York was because I had worked so hard for my career, and I thought moving back home to Orlando meant that I was going to throw it away.
And honestly, it was conversations with Angie, who was kind of going through the same thing in her own life. She was in Staten Island, she was in the middle of a breakup, she didn't love her job at the time, and we just made the decision to move back to Orlando together. And I don't want to say that it's been easy, but it also hasn't been as challenging as I thought it would be. I had already built a name for myself in Latina media, and I was able to obtain full-time work. I've had three full-time jobs at major Latina news outlets since living in Orlando.
Menendez: I have to also imagine though, Raquel, that it required a certain coming to terms with it is more important to me to be in the right place than doing the right thing if I am forced to choose.
Reichard: Absolutely. I needed to be around my core community. I needed to be with my family. I needed to hear my niece’s laugh. I needed to be able to watch my nephew get dirty playing sports. Those things were the sort of healing that I required. And also I wanted to be back in the South. I think there's something really, really special about the Puerto Rican community in Orlando.
And I remember living in New York and feeling a bit jealous of other Latinos that I had met there, jealous in the sense that they had spaces to gain a political education or build this cultural identity in a way that I didn't in Orlando. And so I also felt this sort of urgency to return home and create those spaces that I had always craved and that I saw was possible in bigger cities like New York, and Chicago, and Philly, and do that for my folks here.
Menendez: Raquel, I really needed this conversation today, so thank you so much for taking the time to have it.
Reichard: Thank you so much. This was great.
Menendez: Thanks for listening. Latina to Latina is executive produced and owned by Juleyka Lantigua and me, Alicia Menendez. Virginia Lora is our producer. Kojin Tashiro is our lead producer. Tren Lightburn mixed this episode. We love hearing from you, email us at hola@latinatolatina.com. Slide into our DMs on Instagram or on Threads and TikTok @latinatolatina. Check out our merchandise at latinatolatina.com/shop. And remember to subscribe or follow us on RadioPublic, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Goodpods, wherever you're listening right now. Every time you share this podcast, every time you leave a review, you help us to grow as a community.
CITATION:
Menendez, Alicia, host. “Raquel Reichard Wants You to Know that Self-Care Isn’t One Size Fits All” Latina to Latina, LWC Studios, April 15, 2024. LatinaToLatina.com.