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Thank you for taking the time to talk today. Let’s start with your journey from and to Puerto Rico; how old were you when you first moved from the Island to New Haven?
My mom wanted to try a different way of life and the possibility that she just wasn’t getting in Puerto Rico. She actually decided on the plane or right before the plane — someone told her, ‘don’t go to New York to raise kids, go to Connecticut.’
I was seven years old and my sisters were around 13, 14. We lived in East Rock, Cedar Hill, for only one year, because all the money that my mom got from the state was going to pay the rent and we didn’t have any money left over at all. She applied for housing, but there was a long waiting list. So we went back to Puerto Rico.
Then when I was 12 years old, she came into a little bit of money from a lawsuit, my sister was in a horrific accident. So she decided to try again. And this time, within months of being in New Haven, she got an apartment — number two in Kensington Square. Getting housing was the ticket for us to really have more stability than we’ve ever had in our life — because of all the challenges that a single mom has.
Were you in public schools? I wonder what that was like, going into and out of different school systems.
Yes, I was — and it was a lot of work. My perspective now on all of those things is really different now from when I was going through it. It was really difficult to change schools so many times — I went to so many different schools growing up. In Puerto Rico, my mom would think that any particular year was the year she was going go back to Connecticut and wouldn’t enroll me in school; then would decide that it wasn’t the year, so I would miss out on the seat I had at the school, and had to go to another school nearby. I had to make new friends every time.
When I got some stability going to a school, it was in Connecticut, at Roberto Clemente. It wasn’t my district school, but my district school didn’t have bilingual programs. Roberto Clemente did, so I got bused there.
Entering the building and attending that school was really a culture shock, because the school was so enclosed — sometimes I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I just did not understand. Why couldn’t we stay outside? Why wasn’t there a courtyard in the middle? Where are the windows that you actually open? That was just not my experience in Puerto Rico, the schools are indoor-outdoor. Even at that young age, I recognized the difference.
As far as the curriculum, the biggest difference for me was that I had been learning in Spanish, learning rules of writing in Spanish, all of that. And then coming to study where some of the instruction was in Spanish, but it wasn’t the Spanish I was being taught in Puerto Rico.
The one thing that was really impactful for me was that my teachers were all Latine. My Spanish teacher was Peruvian. My English, math and social studies teachers were all Puerto Rican.
As an adult, I learned that the school system in New Haven would come to Puerto Rico to recruit teachers. They would come here to San Juan, and recruit teachers, help them pass their practicums and all that stuff because they needed teachers. It really impacted me as a Puerto Rican, coming into that system with real representation; I never went to a school where I wasn’t represented — which was healthy for me.
I went to Wilbur Cross for the same reasons, I was an English learner. I couldn’t go to Hill House because there was no Spanish program. I think around sophomore year to junior year, I began to transition into all-English.
I lived in Connecticut for 34 years, until I moved back to Puerto Rico last year.
Were there other cultural differences that stood out for you along the way?
Aside from the school — the structure and the language, there was also a phenomenon for me that I can name for myself now as an adult, there was this really different culture of affluent white people. Now there’s more affluent Black people, but for me at the time it was primarily affluent white people.
When I was growing up, my communities were Black and Puerto Rican primarily, and there might have been like one or two white families. But primarily Black and Puerto Rican, and none of us were affluent — everyone did best that they could with what they had to survive.
We were all growing up in this urban culture but my neighborhood Dwight, in the late eighties through early 2000’s was so different from let’s say areas of Westville and East Rock where I experienced there was much more wealth.
We were so different from them — the way that we talked, the way that we related to each other, how we dressed, all of that was so different from this affluent white culture that also existed in New Haven. It was significantly different around language access, resources, clothing, and access to food. White affluence was so shocking to experience, the difference in culture within the culture. I couldn’t articulate it back then, but it was in my body and my experiences.
Thank you for sharing; I appreciate the two levels you’re describing — what you felt then, and how you’ve processed and understood it since then. I wonder how your path led you to the field of childcare?
I was a young teen parent, while I was in high school. First, my son stayed with my sister Johanna. Then he was part of the very first daycare that was created in Wilbur Cross to support student parents.
But before I talk about that, I just want to say — my sister has been an instrumental figure my entire life. Unfortunately for her during her development, my mom parentified her a lot. There were so many times she filled needs that my mom could not fulfill. Many times over, the needs were emotional.
When I was pregnant, that was a huge thing for my family, obviously. My mom was devastated, and my sister took the burden. In my pregnancy and when I gave birth, my sister was there for me. I get emotional about it — she’s always been such a powerful force in my life.
In fact, I remember somebody telling me I should give up my son for adoption in the hospital. She was just so adamant — she was just like, no, no, that’s not gonna happen, this is our kid. So my sister watched my son his very first year because they didn’t have the day care yet.
And then I had a wonderful, wonderful teacher, Jean Davis, who was our health teacher. She was also instrumental in my life — a woman who took her time with me and listened to me. She actually mediated a conversation between my mom and I.
Miss Jean Davis helped me with Calvin to see him as the little human that he was, even though I really did not have the emotional maturity, the emotional capacity to be with my son and love him the way that he needed for his early brain to have a strong healthy start.
I lived in such constant toxic stress, and was a very young parent, not really understanding who I was becoming. My community was so violent, where I grew up. We were a marginalized community also suffering from oppression and poverty. There was so much trauma, constant fighting, people that got murdered. I should disclaim that I am not trying to pathologize the community and the people I grew up with, I am however speaking about my life experiences that I know some may not relate to or may find it difficult to hear.
This was during the late eighties and nineties in the neighborhood; in New Haven those were really, really tough years. You ever heard that nickname ‘gun-wavin’ New Haven, that New Yorkers called us? There was even a line in one of the Wu Tang songs that gave us a shout out, because there was so much that happened. Life was hard, and I was still deciding who I was in the midst of all of that chaos.
Fast forward, I graduated from high school and then my son also graduated from day care. Through Miss Davis being so intentional about Calvin having continuity of care and support, she made sure that I filed the appropriate paperwork and she ensured that he got a slot in the Zigler Head Start program.
Now that I think about it, I should also be proud of myself for following through with what I needed to enroll him. That was a big responsibility, moving through the bureaucracy of getting a child enrolled in school. That part, I definitely have to thank my mother for, she has always been one hyper-organized lady.
At the Zigler Center, my son’s teacher, Mrs. Gloria, who happened to also be Puerto Rican, insisted that I would come stay in the class. But for me, when my son went to school it was the time that I got for myself to run the streets — because I didn’t have a plan. I was 18 and I was really lost. I didn’t have a connection to my mother, it was a really difficult time. I used to hang out a lot.
Every time I missed Calvin’s bus and I dropped him off at the Head Start, Gloria asked if I wanted to stay and volunteer. One day I was down and out. I was just so depressed. Back then I didn’t have the language for depression. I recognized those pieces of myself now because I’ve done so much work to learn about trauma and mental health. That is another post altogether.
So one day I just decided to stay, stay in the classroom. And that one day turned into my career.
That one day, it turned into me going the next day, and showing initiative. I remember I got so many little awards and trophies for being a parent helper there. And then they offered me a part-time job as a parent aide. I remember being so proud of myself. It’s a bit of a painful memory, but I was so proud of myself and I went home and I was like, “I got a job!” The only thing my mother could meet me with was like, “what do you mean you got a job, who’s gonna take care of your son?” I was like, he’s gonna be with me, he’ll go to school and I’ll be working and then we’ll come home.
She just did not have the emotional capacity to meet me with joy. Today it makes me so sad for her because I understand the way that my mom was also a victim of the many oppressive systems starting from patriarchy in her early life with her brothers being able to go to school and her not being able to go… her sisters reached middle class because they got married and stayed married to their many times abusive husbands, and she decided that she was not going to do that. It was much, much harder in some ways than her sisters because she chose to divorce my dad who also had his own set of trauma, was an alcoholic and had other issues.
She had to endure so much. Today, as a woman who’s studied so much, and has learned so much about intergenerational trauma, I can better understand my mom. Like her, I couldn’t meet my son in emotionally healthy ways either. I also neglected him emotionally. And so I am very open about how he and I are all still repairing our relationship. We love each other very much and understand that we both had some attachment hardships at the beginning of his life and throughout and we both come to our relationship conscious and with intention. He and I are still growing.
So I meet my mom with grace and compassion now — it’s been a life journey to understand that.
That’s really how I entered early childhood. I worked part-time, and then I got an offer for a full-time job, and went into the public school systems and family resource centers. Connecticut has funding through the state to support families in different school districts; those family resource centers include early childhood, before and after school, and partnerships with families. I worked with families to support healthy attachments to their children.
I worked in New Haven, Bridgeport, New Britain and Hartford. My roles were always grant-based, so they would end or change. I gained a lot of experience working in different communities that are so similar to mine.
Through the experience of working with families and learning about brain development, attachment and social determinants and getting the opportunity to be a mom for the second time around? That is really when my parenting started to shift, when I first-hand began to learn the actual needs of children and having an opportunity to practice with my second son being a different mom.
With all of that I had to move through the grief and guilt of learning that I had given my first son early experiences that were really different from what I learned and it was so painful.
When one of those grant roles came to a close, I called my colleagues at All Our Kin, which is where I work now. It was just the right moment because they were expanding. That’s how I got to work more closely and dedicatedly with family childcare, which for me is also connected to my personal story and the invaluable role of a woman supporting other women.
Do you want to say more about that theme of supporting women?
I’ve come from such a strong line of women who endured and who overcame. Having sons, it’s something that I often reflect on — how has it felt for them to be sons of the women that we are? What is that, and how does that shape their view of the women they look to partner with? Because my sons identify as heterosexual men. Those dynamics are so intricate, so nuanced — it really takes a slowing down to think about that.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way that I’ve experienced being Latina, a Latina in the workforce. Although growing up I had the chance to have teachers that represented me, the people who guided me into my career, who ended up being long time mentors and much more, a lot of them were white women. They helped to shape who I became as a professional. The spaces of leadership in the field were much more inhabited by white women than they were by women who look like me — and sometimes still are.
Growing into the professional I was becoming in my early years I had maybe five mentors who were women of color versus over ten mentors that have been white women. I’m always thankful for all the women in my life and how they shape me. Beyond cultural binaries.
And I would be dishonest with myself if I didn’t also speak up about how invisible-ized Latinas have been in the workforce. In any workforce, but particularly for me in the education and in the childcare workforce. We are primarily the ones doing the work directly with children and parents, while the women in leadership are primarily white women.
I’m coming close to three decades in the workforce, in the public sector in childcare and education. And I continue to see it. Leadership is white, maybe you find some middle management of women of color and the ones doing work on the ground are all women of color.
At this place where I find myself in my life right now, in my development as a human, I would be dishonest in not voicing that and what that means for me.
What led you to move back to Puerto Rico last year, after 34 years in Connecticut?
Unfortunately, my mom and her heart condition. It runs in her family; her mom died from it, and two of her sisters. My sister moved back to the island about 15 years ago; the cold was too much for her. Then my brother left, then my mother.
I was away at a conference, and I called my mom as I did routinely. She was without her breath. She was having a normal conversation with me, but she sounded like she just ran a marathon. I asked her what was going on, you sound like you’re really agitated?
I was super-concerned, because she had already had heart valve surgery when she was with me in New Haven. She didn’t want to take the medication and the doctor bluntly was like, ‘you could choose not to take them and you’ll die.’ And that’s when she got into a regimen of medication.
She hated medicine. Primarily because she comes from a line of very spiritual people who cured everything with home remedies. In fact, when her mom was diagnosed with the same condition, heart failure, her mom decided that she wouldn’t take any meds. She died at 62.
The second instance when she was really sick for not taking her pills I called my sister and asked her to go visit. Turns out she had to get hospitalized for a week. Fast forward a few months later one of her sisters died from the same condition.
I’m fortunate enough to work at an organization that really values family, so I flew in to support my sister and mom. I was in meetings, doing everything I could do right from the hospital. My mom gets released, she moves in with my sister, and I start traveling more often to relieve my sister. Now I’m spending six weeks in Puerto Rico.
I go back and forth between my family, and on one of my travels back, I told my partner that I really want to move to Puerto Rico, I want to support my mom in her later years. She’s done a lot for us and there’s no way that I can be so far from her when she transitions. He, as he has always done, prioritizes my needs and fully supports the move and decides that he wants to move with me. So I make it a priority to work out the plan that will get me home.
A position for our technical assistance team doing national work becomes open, I apply and I’m awarded the position. That gives me the freedom to move forward with the plan and still have my rice and beans and be able to feed my family.
It took me two years to fully transition, and that’s how I ended up here last year.
Once in Puerto Rico I began to make contacts with the early childhood community and in one of the conversations this amazing woman I met with from the University of Puerto Rico said to me, “you came here through your mom but really it was your home calling you back because there is work you have to do here.”
I look forward to hearing about it. Thank you for taking the time.
Connect with Marina on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Instagram
Email Marina directly: virgenmarinarodriguez@gmail.com
Interview with The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com