Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jen Venegas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

You know when you just get one of those gut feelings or “hear” a very direct message? Well, a few months ago, I woke up in the middle of night and all I could think about was coming together with people interested in exploring decolonization practices within the spirituality community and industry. I knew I wanted these “meetings” to be free, consistently scheduled, and virtual to make them accessible to anyone that wanted to participate.

That one bolt of intuition inspired me to create monthly Community Talks. I planned one right away – from scheduling it, promoting it, working out the backend logistics, etc – and when the day came, no one showed up. I took a few days tending to my deflated excitement and then went into research mode. How could I make showing up easier? How could I make the talks more enticing? Essentially, what could I do differently and better?

Three months later, I have another Community Talk scheduled. I fined-tuned the topic, got super clear about community expectations around attending, worked out accessibility issues and hopefully any confusion that came up the last round, and I found that fire again.

These Community Talks are close to my heart as a radical leftist queer bruje. The focus is on building relationships and knowledge as we envision a better world.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always known two things: I was not meant for a “corporate life” and I have deep access to a gift I believe we all have access to. Despite knowing those things, I spent over half of my adult life on a path that brought me experience in professional editing, a degree in horticulture, a background in content creation, non-profit work, and practicing activism for over 15 years. All of that experience has given me some amazing tools and insights that I bring to Abeja Rise.

Currently, Abeja Rise offers sliding scale tarot and oracle card readings, free monthly virtual community events, and a biweekly discourse on ways to honor the self and the greater collective. Throughout my personal life and with Abeja Rise, I value intentional slowness and prioritized rest. You may not see me posting on social media multiple times a day, but what I do share with you and offer you is a deeper bid for connection and care.

I opened Abeja Rise because I wanted to be of service to my communities. I know, first-hand, that so many of us feel unstable with our spiritualities because of systemic issues like colonization and white supremacy that harms us ALL. As a mixed biracial person, I have an opportunity to be a bridge to connect us with our ancestral knowledge and our current life paths. I have seen, sometimes subtle, yet always expansive shifts in people’s lives after they work with me.

Growing up as a Roman Catholic in a Mexican American household. I was taught at a young age to bring a critical eye to everything and my relationship with Catholicism splintered in my teens. I became an atheist. Ten years ago, my best friend and mentor, Aria Serpa, taught me how to read tarot cards. That simple gift opened up a whole world for me. I found solace and rage as I explored the history of card readings and brujeria in Latin America and Mexico. That solace and rage ignited something profound inside of me.

I’ve found ways to bring that solace and sacred rage to others. A different world is possible. Abeja Rise was created to use my gifts and privilege in the greater liberation movement.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I have an intricate relationship with grief. My first experience with death was losing my grandmother when I was nine years old. She is one of the loves of my life and watching my mother’s heart collapse after her mom died was my first observance of grief. Over 30 years and 15 deaths later, grief and I KNOW each other.

Grief knows that I couldn’t cry for five days after my grandmother died but when I finally did, it felt like I would never stop. Grief knows that during my first severe depressive episode when I was twenty, I woke up one morning to find my cat on the front lawn, no longer alive. Grief knows that seeing Midnight like that knocked the wind out of me and I forgot how to breathe.

Grief knows that when my dad suddenly passed when I was 29, my emotional landscape shifted like tectonic plates, never to be the same again. Grief knows that I got stuck there, in the in-between with my compound grief, and my entire life slowed down to crawl.

Grief knows that last year, when I said goodbye to two of my pet soulmates, six weeks apart, my heart broke open. Grief knows the relief I felt but also the profound sadness.

Those last two losses changed something inside of me. Grief gave me a gift. Grief showed me that the otherside of grief is gratitude. As I practiced leaning into both Grief AND Gratitude, I felt an expression of my humanity and existence that I have never been able to access before. As I let go, so much more rushed in.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Through my experience with blogging, content creation, and marketing, I was taught a romanticized view of hustle-culture that often prioritized urgency and pathologizing in place of care-centered practices. Every influencer conference I attended, every blogging group or collective I participated in, every round-up of content creation tips or marketing books I read, the message I took away was to succeed, you had to develop what was an unrealistic (for me) grind.

And in some ways, trying to participate in the hustle culture did bring me success. But keeping that momentum alive was not sustainable for me, as a disabled person, but also just in general. When I hit burnout, I reevaluated my values around money and success. I learned to ask for help. I placed more value on rest AND productivity. I found a more stable balance that has me participating less in that fast-paced world and more on building connections and being of service.      

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.abejarise.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/abejarise
• Other: https://abejarise.substack.com/

Image Credits
Mayra Cortez, A xicana photographer, producer, pleasure activist http://instagram.com/mayra.films