Lo Siento 
Journals

My gold hoops sing louder than my voice when I’m told to be quiet. They clink in church, shimmer on the subway, and carry my mother’s legacy through every loop and shine. Dominican girls don’t do minimalism—we layer colors, fabrics, laughter, and history. Where others see chaos, we see home. I am my island’s treasure, loud and golden, taking up space because that’s what Dominican women were born to do.

Spanish lives in my hellos and goodbyes, in domino games with my tíos, in memories of piña coladas and mangú. I was the girl who stopped speaking Spanish at five, who traded merengue for iced coffee and skyscrapers, but still sneaks bachata into her cleaning playlists. Between two worlds, I write my rebellion in Spanglish. I am still Dominicana, even when I dream in English.

Women are forced to perform — in pain, in love, in how we exist. We are expected to cry beautifully, to suffer gracefully, to turn heartbreak into something marketable. Our pain becomes performance, our struggle becomes art, and our silence becomes survival. Society doesn’t value women until we’re gone, yet demands we endure everything with poise. “Pain as Performance” is a manifesto on how femininity is packaged, sold, and sanctified through suffering.