Personal

Stories from my Lineage: Mama Lupita and Papa Santiago

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I never met Mama Lupita she was my great great grandmother and passed before I was born. I have heard many stories about her, she was the town “healer”. She cared for the sick and brought babies into the world. Made shampoos and medicines for people and she had a certain knowledge that helped the people in the crater mountain village they lived in.

Mama Lupita was set to get married. Due to the location where they lived, they needed to travel up the mountain to the city in order to officiate the marriage. She requested that her groom send horses for her and her bridal party. However when the day came the groom only sent one horse. Mama Lupita called off the wedding.

His cousin, Papa Santiago, saw this as his opportunity, asked for Mama Lupita’s hand in marriage and when the day came made sure to have the horses, they got married and had many children including my Grandma, Mami Mitty.

Papa Santiago died at age 49, due to complications after a surgery in the city. He was a good man, hard working, caring, loving. He died when my grandma was still a kid. She fondly remembers going with her sister to bring the food her mom would pack for him to the fields where the men were working. My grandma looking back thought about how he must have been tired and hungry but he would share his food with them whenever they were craving some. My grandma and her sister at the time blissfully unaware of his loving sacrifice.

When he passed, my grandma recalls her youngest brother, who was very fond of Papa Santiago, becoming deeply sad, until one day he too passed, they say he died of sadness. Occasionally my grandma’s older siblings would attempt to discipline her, she would grow frustrated and run towards the mountains, shouting for her dad to intercede. “Like a crazy child” she said, telling me this story one rainy day in Durango while we sat on a dusty couch in her old home looking through photos we had found in a box.

I was able to visit both Mama Lupita and Papa Santiago’s graves on my last visit to Durango, July/August of 2021.

Thinking about Spring

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I have a memory of being at my grandparents home in Guanajuato one summer and going to their garden with my older cousins to collect some vegetables and herbs for lunch. I remember there being a small stream running though it and the garden feeling so lush and cozy with smaller trees that created pockets of shaded areas for my then 4-year-old self. In my memory that garden has always stayed as a wondrous place that transported me to a new world. It was something I stored in the banks of my mind as inspiration for what I wanted to have and the world I wanted to live in.

Last year was my first time trying my hand at gardening. There were many things to consider for the front and backyard. How will we use it, where will Ozzie run around, will he destroy the grass, will the pea gravel be uncomfortable for him to walk on, what do we want the space to feel like. We mapped it out, Miguel built a deck and I planted seeds, starting some seedlings indoors in early spring and transplanting them to the beds after the frost. I got packets of basil, fennel, jasmine, zinnias and a midwest wild flower assortment.

We discovered a few things this past year about the space: The neighbor’s tree released lots of sap and leaves on the deck; Mosquitos liked hanging out in certain areas making it a pain to be outside without some sort of protection be it fire or a huge blanket; Ozzie did really well with the grass areas; I encountered some cute insects and butterflies and many curious robins; I planted too many wildflower seeds and they grew in a tangled fashion making it a sore sight in late summer; The zinnias provided an on-going source of flowers to cut and decorate the home with; and the basil was a graciously abundant herb that we shared and used until the frost ended its season in the fall.

This year, I’m being proactive about the garden, I’m checking out books from the library before the season starts and found a few YouTube channels to pull inspiration from. I’m growing lavender in pots from the seeds I harvested from gifted lavender sprigs and since lavender is a natural rat and mosquito deterrent I’m hoping that will solve some of our pest issues. I also want to clean up the beds from all the wildflower seedlings I crowded in there last year and shift my ambitions to focus on growing more greens and paying attention to color palette combinations.

I have reasonable hopes for this year’s yield and I’m hoping it will help set the tone for the following year. Elva from my ceramics class told me it’s taken her 20+ years to get her garden where it’s at. Sometimes it’s just trial and error, patience, experimentation, continued care and an effort to learn.

Video still from “Wendy’s personal video archives” August 8, 2023

Documentation and memories

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Exerpt from March 12, 2023

I’m a sentimental woman, catch me at the right time of the month and I might be shedding some waterworks over a trivial thought popping into my head. Today, memories. I watched “Terms of Endearment” for the first time last night and I cried. When asked if I liked the movie my answer was no, I did not like how it made me feel. I had a nice lazy Saturday, my first lazy Saturday of the year after a late Friday night out. I did not feel like thinking, much less crying. But there I was shedding tears for the kids, the mom, imaginary characters I had invested 2 hours of my life getting to know. 

Many times, I have found myself regretting not documenting more. Back in what I estimate to be 2017, I had a good portion of photos from my 20s wiped out of my phone forever, sometime after high school I had a similar thing happen on my laptop after not backing up and as a 13 year old, I deleted a bunch of photos I didn’t like of myself from my family computer. As time passes it’s inevitable that many more memories and mementos will leave my life removing the little traces of their existence. This, I can’t help but feel a little sad about today.

I’ve been keeping a written journal and in my calendar, I’ve been writing in each day to help me record the days as they pass by, but I want pictures. At least right now, at this moment, what I crave is pictures, I’m attempting a physical photo album that lives outside of my phone. I don’t want to make it something I’m forcing myself to do every day, I’m bad at rituals, but hopefully writing this on here will keep me accountable or at least remind me to document more pictures of the small special moments of life.

coming soon <3

singing Baby one more time by Britney Spears at Alice’s Karaoke Lounge (January 21, 2024)

Dream Journal: A cat and a rabbit

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An Unsettling Dream

It was dream within a dream. I stepped our of their home, it was night time and I was looking for my shoes that I had left on their upstairs patio. In the shadows I saw a rabbit. In its panic the rabbit ran towards me and tucked itself at my feet in between my legs. I could tell it was scared, scared of people as rabbits are and I had spooked it with my presence. I wanted to calm it. I felt it’s body breathing in between my calves, it was rapid. I met it at its breath and tried to slow it down. The rabbit synced with my breathing and I felt it calming down. I heard a sound behind me, from a pile of things on my back left side, but I couldn’t see anything in the shadows. A cat jumped out and in its quickness sliced the rabbit’s neck killing it. The blood sprayed on my legs. The dead rabbit laid at my feet. I felt like I had betrayed the rabbit, given it a false sense of security before its death. I was angry with the cat, I scolded it, but the cat’s instinct was to kill, it had done nothing wrong. I felt guilt for not having done more to protect the rabbit, whose trust I had gained in its last moments of life. Then another animal ran to me, not a rabbit but something else that I couldn’t remember when telling my mom in my dream and I can’t remember now as I write this. But in the same manner it ran to my feet and in the same manner the cat came out and killed it. Two animals laid on the porch covered in blood. It felt like a waste. What was the purpose of their deaths?

Mexico City, September 2021

Gestures of Love

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A fond memory I carry with me is my mom carrying me in the shower. I remember it used to be a little treat when I would shower with her, she would pick me up, carry me to the water falling from the shower head and let the water hit my back. I remember it was so soothing to me, it felt loving and it made me happy.

When I was little I would occasionally wake up in an emotional cry during the night, the first time I recall it happening my mom was laying next to me, grabbed me in her arms and calmed me back to sleep, it was a gesture of love, and I remember feeling comforted and safe.

These are some of my early memories of love, treasures I collect in my mind and look back at fondly from time to time.

Promise to my mom

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I was talking to my mom on the phone while I was doing dishes. I like to multitask when I talk on the phone, a little habit I have. I don’t talk to my mom very regularly, we keep up from time to time, there goes months where we talk 5 times over the phone, there’s months where we don’t talk at all. No real reason other than we just talk when we find the time or when one of us picks up the phone and calls and the other answers.

My mom was telling me about a family she had assisted a few weeks back, the family gets together every remembrance day of their loved one and prays a novena, a 9-day prayer for their deceased.

I am no longer religious, but I am a partial contributor to my mom’s religious journey and her religion is very important to her. So as I stood there washing dishes and listening to her tell me about how much she cherished helping this family complete their novena, I made her a promise. That if she were to die before me I would do a novena for her on every anniversary for the rest of my life.

I may find myself regretting making this promise some day. She accepted my promise, joking that if I ever break it she will come and pull my feet in the middle of the night, and we never want to disturb those at rest. So here it is, my promise to my mom.

Ex-votos by Frida Kahlo in Frida Kahlo’s house, Blue House, in Mexico City

Lessons from my lineage:Healing the body from the poison of an overwhelming emotion

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Growing up, my mom stayed at home and raised me, she passed down many stories from her mom and grandma and so on. To this day I continue to learn new stories. This one, was one that I recently came to know and I will share, with hopes that if for whatever reason you find yourself or a loved one in a similar situation, you can use this little piece of knowledge. Healing the body from the poison that can come from a strong overwhelming emotion. 

When my grandma was pregnant with my youngest uncle she witnessed a scene that caused her to have a strong emotional response. She rushed to my great-grandmother’s place and my great-grandma fed her a spoonful of the burnt ashes from the stove, potentially saving my uncle from a miscarriage. As with any advice, take it with a grain of salt, my great-grandmother was the healer of the town, it was a middle of nowhere mountain town and going to the big town doctor was expensive and timely, she made remedies and brought babies into the world and had a certain knowledge that was helpful for the people there. 

My mom recently came across a finding that helped confirm the action my great-grandma took on that day. Similar to the burnt ashes, activated charcoal can be given to help victims of poison. There is a certain type of poison that can be absorbed through the body in moments of strong immediate emotion, people can internally poison themselves with anger, shock, a scare, intense grief, you get the idea. The effects of activated charcoal can be produced by burning any consumable dry grain on hand such as bread or a tortilla to a char black state (preferably with fire) and ingesting it. The though is that the poison produced is then absorbed by the burnt char and is able to be dispelled from the body rather than being absorbed.

So if you ever find yourself in such circumstances or with the ability to help such circumstances, you have this knowledge to carry with you, from my great-grandma to my grandma to my mom to me to you.

The current state of my grandma’s kitchen in her old home in Durango, Mexico

The night I unknowingly crossed paths with Miguel

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Memory from November 18, 2021

In our early stage of dating, Miguel had picked me up, we were passing by Arbella and I mentioned I had dj’d there before. That’s when he made a realization that he had seen me there. At first I didn’t believe him, I had only dj’d at Arbella once and I had only been there a hand full of times. But he kept insisting, describing the scenery he had seen me in, where I was, what I was doing and then I became curious. I asked him if he knew what day of the week he had been there and he couldn’t recall it. I had only ever gone to Arbella on Thursdays. I refused to give him any help so he could recall the date to it’s most authentic form, so he pulled out his phone. He had gone with his barber so he looked at their text messages, November 18, 2021, the day I went to Arbella for my friend Alyssa / Jillan’s Birthday. 

The day to me, unknowing to him, had more significance than just that. During this time in my life I had been finding myself grieving a certain situation. That day, I had spoken to my mom. We had a long conversation about life and love. My mom is a very religious woman now, very different from the woman who raised me in my early years, so at times I had found it difficult to have these conversations with her without her trying to convert me as an end goal. But this time I felt really heard by her, and the conversation resonated with me, it brought me peace. After hours on the phone I told her I needed to get ready, so she left me with this request, to go to St. Peter’s Catholic Church downtown and talk to God, I decided to give her that, so I promised her I would. I did have a period of my life when I was younger that I was religious, my religious era, around the age of 15-20 I recall having many moments where I would lay in bed before going to sleep, talking outloud to God about all sorts of things. So that night before going to Arbella I made the long detour walk to St. Peter’s Cathedral. But when I got there the doors were closed and locked, interesting sense of humor the universe has sometimes. So I silently sent my words before leaving. November 18, 2021. 

I’m glad I didn’t meet Miguel there, that night, it wouldn’t have been the right time. When I decided to start dating, my friend Karen pushed me to finally join a dating app, something I had been skeptical to do, and my friend Daniel told me to try Hinge, where I met Miguel. Thank you.

St. Peter’s Cathedral door November 18, 2021 at 7:26pm

The Pink Moon: Guidance from the Moon and the Ocean

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Yesterday was the pink moon. This year, I’ve been more intentional about tracking the moon stages. That is because last year, I noticed certain patterns I was having with the moon.

This year, around the time when my curiosity of the moon was starting, a mysterious stranger came into my life coincidentally at the exact moment when I needed it. Due to a series of events I had found myself with no phone or wallet, nothing but the little white jacket I was wearing in the cold, within seconds, I saw a car pull up to drop off some people, I went up to it and explained my situation to this stranger and he told me to get in. On the car ride, he told me his name was Shawn but he went by Casper because growing up his friends gave him the alias after the friendly ghost, since he was one of the few white kids. I don’t remember how we got into this conversation, but in the short ride he shared he had had a heart transplant after working construction in Colorado. He told me he had died while on the operation table and recalled being pulled into a tunnel. Later, by some form, he came across media where he recognized the tunnel he had been pulled into, it was a tunnel in Mexico and the name referenced the moon. He dropped me off safely and refused I get some cash to pay him, he was a kind man and I left him with these parting words: “follow the moon”. I’m not exactly sure what that meant but we all have our own patterns to find, so maybe he knew what it meant.

The moon like the ocean have been guiding presence in my life. So today I will recount a memory I recalled a few weeks ago, and that marks the 2nd anniversary of this recent pink moon. I haven’t talked much about this here and I won’t do it now, but in brief, I was in a very long relationship in my life that I had started at the young age of 17. I learned many beautiful things in this relationship, and I am grateful for those experiences but it took a lot of time for me to choose to walk away from this.

I thank the ocean and the moon for guiding me, the first time that I swam in the ocean, April 18, 2021, I remember sitting on the beach with ocean water dripping out of my nose and this clarity about this situation, a certain acceptance I had never fully experienced before. I was still in a relationship at this point but I had come to terms with it internally. The first time I ever tracked feeling that level of acceptance. When I returned from my trip I could see things falling into the same patterns but my perspective had changed, it was the full moon, the night of the Super pink moon, April 26, 2021, after going to see the moon over Lake Michigan when I finally ended things. It was the guidance I needed.

Guidance from the moon and the ocean, thank you pink moon. <3

The Pink Moon on April 5, 2023 over lake Michigan at 9:10pm

Screaming in the Car

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Okay, to preface, for a very long time I’ve had this desire to go somewhere secluded and scream at the top of my lungs until all the air is out. I think I just imagined it to be a nice little euphoric release of some sort. I’ve never done it, the alternative seemed to be to scream in the privacy of my home but I’ve lived in multi-unit buildings all my life and never quite felt comfortable for fear of alarming someone. So this little desire stayed just that for a very long time until a few months ago when this idea popped into my head and I said fuck it and just screamed to the top of my lungs while driving on the highway in the privacy of my car. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before, I’ve used my car countless times to cry in but never thought of screaming in it. It felt really good. I won’t lie, part of me was a little hesitant, and still am sometimes to do so. The other day I did it and the car in front of me’s brake lights came on so it made me a little paranoid that I had been heard, but that was quickly calmed when I realized the reason for the sudden stop had been due to an exit closure and not my horrific scream. I still hope to some day live out my little desire to the fullest but until then I’m going to continue to do this and if you ever feel like screaming in your car, I highly recommend, feels really good, my lungs feel cleared, my head sometimes a little dizzy but we’re good and I get a little jolt of energy so 10/10 recommend. 

Monyeka's new photo studio

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KAREN/ MONYEKA GOT A PHOTO STUDIO IN CHICAGO!!!!!

This shoot was fun, because we just had fun with it, it was Karen’s first shoot in her new space and I’m so honored that she asked to shoot me. I now have photos to feel hot when I’m 100-something looking back on my youth.

Book with her here, have her shoot your project and if you get lucky she may end up inviting you to her favorite spot in Chicago, that I now dub “Karen’s spot” and I think of her every time I pass by it. <3

Thank you for having me to be your first shoot in the space. This year will be amazing for you!!!

Follow her on insta, she may be doing a giveaway very soon. 🧚‍♀️

Insta: @monyeka_
Website: www.monyeka.com
Email: monyekaphoto@gmail.com



Wendy's Annual Friends & Family Calendar

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This year’s Friends and Family Calendars are out!

Each calendar is 1/1 edition, with a personalized note. 30 Calendars, hand sewn and bound by yours truly. My little labor of love. Thank you so much to all of you for being amazing people and for your kindness. I hope you enjoy it and that it brings a little joy into your space.

If there are empty days, write something good that happened to you that day, a dream, something to remember. At the end of the year, you can keep the calendar as a small memento of 2023.

Hoping to produce a larger batch for next year’s annual calendar. Love and appreciate you all.Besos <3

Red room window performances on Michigan Avenue’s Mag Mile

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In my free time I like to indulge the assortment of ideas that pop into my head.

I have a studio unit in a very visible-high traffic street in downtown Chicago and this window is visible from the street. A bed is pressed up against the window and I don’t have blinds so I’m sure many strangers have seen many snippets of my life through this glass.

The idea was inspired by my time in Amsterdam, to dance for the people walking on Mag Mile through the comfort of my window. It came to me at a time when many things had shut down and one of the ways to connect was through means of windows. I documented this little session of me dancing to the song “Europa” by Santana and I had a few onlookers who waved at me. It was a fun production.