Hey, soy La Coziest Latina y soy originalmente de Chile, although I came here to the United States when I was little. Lo que me paso es que the pandemic made me a stay at home mama (SAHM).
You see, we were living in the hustle and bustle of downtown San Francisco, and having an awesome time – working hard (I had my own business where I helped technology startups with growth), working out, and playing hard with nuestros amigos maravillosos (en serio: it was Napa one weekend, Carmel or Tahoe the next, and nothing but spectacular cuisine and fun and games in between).
When we got pregnant we thought things would be the same but different in a totally wonderful new way. But then 2020 happened, and the pandemic hit SF. The week after we came home with esta nueva guaguita, when things got real, and we realized how hard it was going to be for first time parents to a teeny baby in a tiny two bedroom apartment with no yard (a shared rooftop patio), during all of the lockdowns. En serio, you couldn’t go three feet without walking into someone else. I also had to stop working because we didn’t want to get a nanny or send her to day care, and decided I would take care of the baby full time during all of the chaos.
So we packed our bags and headed east – to a tiny, beautiful town in suburbs of the Bay Area, where we found ourselves in almost 2 acres, surrounded by land and pine trees and redwoods, and a family of deer, and bobcats, and pajaros – tantos pajaros!
This opened us up to a world I never thought I would become part of: a world where you bake bread and knead dough to bake your own empanadas; create your own Christmas wreaths with the branches from your very own pines; where you eat the fruit that you pick from the garden and you make jams and syrups and spreads from the stuff you pick from bushes just three feet from your driveway; where you plant your own peppers and tomatoes for fajita night, and herbs for el tesito de la tarde.
And something happened that was wonderful. The more I made things like my own coffee mask, or gluten free bread, or olive oil candles, or the more I made our bedroom cozy with candles and fresh new bedding, the better I felt during those dark fall and winter days of 2020, when sometimes everything felt terrible in the outside world. It just felt really good. After birth, I was left with a lot of body pain, and I wasn’t able to do much about it. It was the best place for postpartum healing and trying to go back to normal.
I don’t remember what I was reading or watching, but I bumped into a concept that in Danish culture is called hygge; the critical importance of making the home cozy. The word means a feeling of comfort and wellness through little things like un cafesito, a blanket, some super comfy PJs, a book, taking care of your garden. This has everything to do with self-care, or autocuidado, and doing things that protect your own well-being and happiness. I had bumped into this concept that had a name in the other side of the world but not here, but that fit so perfectly into this new era of self-care: protecting yourself and your family, and creating a feeling of goodness for your family during the difficult months of isolation.
This was basically called el invierno by our ancestors, wasn’t it? Our ancestors also had their version of this. We have our own hygge. It’s cooking recetas de las abuelas – making delicious sopa o a big pot of fideos para los 10 primos que lleragon a la casa; singing and playing guitarras together. Playing games like chess o cartas. Going to the playa for the weekend. Putting on some crema en la cara.
This is a blog about just that; my own journey into autocuidado, and the search for our own Latinx version of hygge. I don’t want to call it Latin hygge because we have our own self-care and cozy routines that have been passed down from generation to generation, to get through long winters. We just have to dig deep and define it, name it, and re-imagine it for modern times. It’s something like acurrucada.
So, welcome, muchas gracias por leer, and I hope you are as excited as I am about going through this journey of #latinacoziness together. Get cozy.