Week 3 (Rodriguez, Sasha)

 

As a Chicana who grew up in Southern California the Virgin of Guadalupe was a very familiar image. My relationship with her is different in that even though my family is Catholic and my grandparents had very strong connections to religion I did not grow up with the same attachment. My parents gave us the choice and allowed us to find our own way toward religion if we picked it. Though just because I was not religious growing up she was still vibrant in my life. The Virgin of Guadalupe was my culture in she was the idea of the perfect woman. That's what I was told. She represents purity, feminity, and being a mother. Those were all values that I should have to be a woman and that was the representation I had to look up to for she was everywhere. From necklaces to images in the home to murals around the streets. She is an image you know to respect and to be in awe of and she is someone my grandparents love very much. So much that my grandfather wanted the place he was buried to have a view of the Virgin of Guadalupe so that he felt like she was looking over him and us when we came to visit him. So to say that even though I am not religious she is present in my life and I admire her. 

     It wasn't until I saw the image of Our Lady that I truly felt connected to her. In traditional images, she is what perfection should be and what I should be which always made me feel a lot of pressure. Pressure to fit this mold or I am not good enough or really deserving of my culture because when I saw the Virgin I did not see myself. Our Lady and other interpretations did make me feel like I saw myself and that the Virgin is not one person but she is more than that. I can be bold, I can be brash, I can be me and not have this idea of if I am not pure and motherly then that makes me less in the world. I didn't know I needed to see the different interpretations of the Virgin but now she makes me feel proud. Proud to be Mexican, to be a woman, to just be me. That is a bit of my experience with the Virgin of Guadalupe.