Marisa

Marisa calls herself Chill, funny, confident, creative, ambitious. She is a single mother of two young boys in a large Northeastern city, the daughter of immigrant parents, with a Puerto Rican and Southern Italian family behind her. She works part-time in a hands-on trade because Distance learning has taken over our lives. She grew up with a mother who was very overbearing, over protective, strict, became a shy child with an anxiety disorder at a young age, and credits her work, which made her talk with strangers all day, with pulling her out of the shell I grew in as an adolescent.

Her cooking holds both sides of the family. Her father was the cook: a roast with Italian-seasoned potatoes and garlicky broccoli, sausage, peppers, and potatoes, salad dressing he made himself. Her mother always worked full time, and ordering delivery was her specialty. An aunt let her have fast-food kids’ meals, which came with a toy AND a crown. Now Marisa cooks rice and beans with sofrito, and pasta fagioli, by taste: I can just taste it and identify what's missing. Her stance on waste is moral: it's a disgrace that so much food regularly goes to waste while people still suffer from world hunger. Lunch is often my children's scraps/school lunch as to avoid food waste. Her five food words end with zero-waste.

Her defining moments come in two lists. Up: starting her career, five months of travel that made her feel more like a citizen of Earth, and becoming a mother. Down: postpartum depression, her father’s last months, and separating from her children’s father, the death of the family unit. She finds silver linings in the last two: being with her father to say goodbye, and leaving a toxic relationship. Motherhood is where she found her own phrase: I wanted to be the best version of myself for my child and gain a head start on defining and breaking generational curses. And later: I became unapologetically me.

Her relationship with medicine is guarded. Living with a health problem she chooses not to name, she met doctors who disregarded my symptoms, and concluded: Medical gaslighting is very much a real thing. She researches first. Doctors are a last resort.

She is direct about having little support. Her biggest weakness, she writes, is my lack of resources/support; asked where she might find more: I honestly wish I knew! Her answer to the 2 a.m. question is among the starkest in the diaries: I don't have that person. I've used crisis hotlines in the past. It is said without self-pity, and it should be read without pity. Stress takes her appetite.

The pandemic shows most clearly in one morning she described: it's 11am and I haven't had a sip of coffee, eaten breakfast, taken my supplements, or done anything for myself, because of the emails, assignments, meetings and photos of worksheets. Hochschild (1989) wrote of a second shift of housework after paid work; in 2020 Marisa describes a third shift, school, landing on the same person. Her Day 5 goal is modest, more water, and the focus on herself she wants is those small freedoms that get taken from you in motherhood. Her letter: remember to leave what's not serving you.