Why We Don’t Have to Do It All — Not in Life, Not in Fiction

Being a Latina woman often feels like carrying the world’s weight on your shoulders.

From a young age, many of us are taught to juggle everything: be the caretaker, excel at work, preserve traditions, and maintain a spotless home. I’m literally writing this while taking a break from mopping the floor. That’s the rhythm we’re taught—clean, cook, work, smile. Repeat.

We are expected to be everything to everyone—the selfless mother, the devoted daughter, the hardworking professional, and the keeper of cultural values. But at what cost?

The Roots of the Expectation

The pressure to “do it all” isn’t just modern hustle culture—it’s deeply rooted in our cultural upbringing and generational patterns. In many Latine households, the idea of marianismo—the counterpart to machismo—reinforces that we should be self-sacrificing, nurturing, and morally unshakeable. And while these traits are often praised, they can quietly become cages.

Cultural sayings like “La mujer es el corazón del hogar” (The woman is the heart of the home) sound beautiful… until you realize how heavy it is to be the heart of something every single day. To never skip a beat. To feel like if you fall apart, so does everything else.

The Modern-Day Pressure Cooker

Today, we’re straddling two worlds. We chase careers, passions, education—and still feel expected to carry on all the domestic traditions without missing a step. That duality? It often leads to burnout, guilt, and an invisible scale we can never balance.

Social media intensifies it. One scroll and you see other women baking from scratch, launching businesses, looking flawless, raising kids, honoring culture—and doing it all in perfect lighting. The unspoken rule becomes: if you’re not doing it all—and perfectly—you’re not enough.

But here’s the thing: that’s a lie.

And it’s one I’ve not only had to unlearn for myself, but it’s also one I’ve written into my characters—because these expectations don’t just weigh on real people. They bleed into our inner lives, our self-worth, our sense of possibility. That’s why I gave this burden to Marisol Espinal in The Ordinary Bruja.

Marisol Espinal: A Reflection of Us

Marisol may live in a world touched by ancestral magic, but the pressure she carries is all too real. She’s the product of generations of silence, of cultural rules passed down without explanation. She’s expected to behave, to stay grounded, to not “make things up,” to hold the family’s reputation while trying to uncover its truth. She’s expected to be reliable and ordinary, even as the unexplainable calls to her.

And that’s the story for so many of us, right? Be dependable. Be useful. Be strong. But never too much. Never too loud, too angry, too curious, too bold. Never too yourself.

Marisol’s story reflects what happens when those expectations become internalized—when someone begins to wonder if the life they actually want is too far from the one they’re expected to live. She doesn’t rebel outwardly at first. She folds in on herself, quietly suffocated. And that, to me, is far more common and far more devastating than we like to admit.

Breaking the Pattern—In Fiction and in Life

So how do we break free?

Here’s what I’ve learned—and what I’ve written into both my life and my work:

Set Boundaries: Saying “no” is a powerful act of self-preservation. Not everything deserves your yes.

Redefine Success: Maybe success isn’t doing everything. Maybe it’s choosing what matters and doing that with your whole heart.

Ask for Help: You don’t need to be the only one scrubbing floors. You know who helped me clean my house today? My husband and our kids—because it’s our house. Shared space means shared responsibility.

Embrace Imperfection: The dishes can wait. You can’t. Your peace is more important than your productivity.

Celebrate Yourself: You’re here. You’re doing the work. That deserves to be seen and celebrated.

Moving Forward

The cultural expectations placed on Latine women are real—and they are heavy. But they don’t have to define us.

We’re allowed to change the narrative.
We’re allowed to drop what doesn’t serve us.
And we’re allowed to write ourselves into stories where the main character—like Marisol—gets to choose herself.

So whether you’re a real-life mujer balancing everything or a reader watching Marisol learn to stop holding it all in… I hope you find relief in the knowing:

You don’t have to do it all to be worthy.
You are enough—just as you are.

#breakingCycles #culturalExpectations #generationalPressure #identityInFiction #latineStorytelling #latineWomanhood #marisolEspinal #ownvoicesAuthor #TheOrdinaryBruja #writingComplexCharacters

Writing Flawed Mothers: Guilt, Grace, and the Space Between

There’s a particular ache that lives in the space between what a mother intends and what a child receives. That ache is what I try to capture when I write mothers—especially the complex ones, the ones who get it wrong before they get it right, or maybe never get it fully right at all.

Reading The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende changed something in me. Clara, with her quiet magic and spiritual detachment, and later Blanca and Alba—each woman layered in pain, power, protection, and silence. That novel didn’t offer easy maternal archetypes. It gave me mothers who hurt and healed, who sometimes protected their children by leaving them or letting them go.

https://haveacupofjohanny.com/the-devil-that-haunts-them-series/

It helped me realize that sometimes love and damage sit in the same room. That sometimes a mother keeps secrets because she thinks silence is safer. That sometimes her survival instincts look a lot like abandonment, and her fear of being seen too clearly makes her disappear before your eyes.

When I started writing Under the Flamboyant Tree, Bianca emerged from that space. She isn’t an evil mother. She’s a woman who chose self-preservation over staying. She’s sharp, emotionally inconsistent, sometimes loving, sometimes absent. Writing her was hard. It meant I had to look at the wounds that shaped her and resist the urge to fix her.

https://haveacupofjohanny.com/the-ordinary-bruja/

Josefina in The Ordinary Bruja is different. Her silences are protective. Her distance is survival. She carries guilt and love in equal measure, but her choices—and omissions—still leave a mark on Marisol. She’s a mother who did her best while being chased by her worst fears. And her daughter is left to untangle what that love really meant.

But I couldn’t have written them—not truthfully—until I turned inward.

Starting therapy taught me to step outside of my past and stop clinging to every hurt like a proof of injustice. It helped me learn to say, this happened, and then ask, what did it teach me?

That shift broke something open in me. I stopped reliving my story as a victim and started observing it as a student. I looked at the mothers in my life—and then at myself.

I saw the ways I’ve failed. The moments I snapped when I should’ve softened. The walls I built to protect myself that also blocked my kids (both my biological child and my stepkids) from seeing my love clearly. And it made me weep—not just for the times I got it wrong, but for the incredible chance I have every day to do better.

So now, when I write mothers, I let them be messy. I let them love in broken ways. I let them reflect the reality that healing is nonlinear. That protection can look like control. That silence can scream with meaning. And most importantly, that redemption—when it comes—is a choice, not a guarantee.

Writing flawed mothers helped me become a better one.

And maybe, just maybe, reading them can help someone else see that love and imperfection have always coexisted. That being loved badly doesn’t mean you weren’t loved. And that the healing starts the moment you look at the wound without flinching.

If this reflection resonated with you, share it with someone who’s still untangling their own mother story. Leave a comment and tell me: What book helped you see motherhood—or yourself—differently? Let’s talk about the hard, honest, beautiful middle.

#biancaCharacter #characterDevelopment #generationalHealing #josefinaEspinal #latineStorytelling #motherhoodInFiction #TheOrdinaryBruja #therapyAndWriting #UnderTheFlamboyantTree #writingFlawedMothers

The Ordinary Bruja Has Her Own Home Now — and So Do I

Yesterday, something big happened: I finally created a landing page for The Ordinary Bruja on my website.

https://haveacupofjohanny.com/the-ordinary-bruja

I know, I know. To some, it might seem like a small tech thing. But for me, it was a huge emotional milestone. It took me two days, by the way, to deal with my theme, templates, and understanding how to create and attach one to a page. For some, this may be easy—but for me, it was not. And I thought it fitting that I would struggle, because Marisol in The Ordinary Bruja does as well. She wrestles with the unseen parts of herself, trying to carve space in a world that keeps trying to define her. My tech frustrations mirrored her emotional ones. We were both, in our own ways, learning to take up space.

Now this story—my story—has its own digital casita. A space carved out just for it. And in a way, it feels like I claimed space, too.

Creating this page wasn’t just about layout or links. It was a moment of saying: This book matters. It deserves more than a placeholder or a passing mention. It deserves a spotlight, a welcome mat, a front door. And now it has one.

Why This Page Means So Much

The Ordinary Bruja has lived in my bones for a long time. Through character sketches, chaotic drafts, midnight edits, and early morning writing sessions with cafecito in hand. Through every moment I doubted myself. Through every time I wondered if there was space in the world for stories like this—stories rooted in brujería, Christianity, identity, belonging, and the quiet rebellion of reclaiming your truth.

Now it’s not just a manuscript sitting in a folder. It’s not just an idea I carry in my head. It’s real and shareable. And it has a home.

What You’ll Find on the Page

If you visit the page, you’ll find:

• A haunting quote that captures the book’s soul
• A teaser about Marisol’s journey and what’s at stake
• A request link for ARC readers who want early access
• A peek at the cover and the mood that inspired it
• More details being added soon as we get closer to release!

This is more than a book. It’s a story about spiritual duality, cultural inheritance, and reclaiming the magic we were told to forget. I’m so proud to finally give it the home it deserves.

Want to help? Check out the page, request an ARC, and share it with someone who needs a reminder that they are powerful, seen, and never alone.

🖤 Here’s the link: https://haveacupofjohanny.com/the-ordinary-bruja

Let’s build this story’s village, one reader at a time.

#arcSignUp #authorWebsiteUpdate #bookLandingPage #brujeríaInFiction #identityAndSpirituality #latineStorytelling #magicalRealismNovel #newAdultFantasy #ownvoicesAuthor #TheOrdinaryBruja