Salud Mental
- Tricia Zee
- May 20, 2023
- 5 min read
When Hey Mija, launched back in 2020 it was with the intention to help Latinas feel seen and represented, fall a little (or a lot) more in love with themselves, and empower them while chasing their dreams.
Along the way, I've connected the best way I've known how, by sharing my perspective and experiences through my shop and social platforms. Being a Latina-American has always been at the root of my message and connection, but what I hadn't realized was that while I have used the Spanish language to find common ground for those of us who feel thrown somewhere on the cultural spectrum, what you saw more of was the actual journey itself. Realistically, it doesn't matter that you speak or don't speak Spanish, the story behind the message on each product piece is where we've connected most. You've followed me on my growth, and have first-handily seen it hasn't always been linear. There are months where I'm feeling completely badass and others where I'm working through all of my traumas and feels. As we all do.
So many of the messages I've shared with you through the collection have come from a state of where I am, or I feel we all have collectively been, emotionally. In my life, at my age, socially, and culturally, while I keep transitioning through all of it, it shows up in what I share. So, it's hard to ignore the presence of mental health and the very prominent role it plays in the mission that Hey Mija, set out to do.
Now let's be clear, I am by no means an expert in the mental health field, but I am however an expert at being curious about wanting to understand myself and others more. That curiosity is what brought me to open up a conversation with a lifelong friend and damn near brother Cesar Sanchez. We grew up as door-to-door neighbors with Latino parents who had decided to make America their newfound home. We were blissfully unaware at the time of how taxing that would be on them, on their future, and inevitably on us as their first-generation Latin-American children who would grow up navigating two different worlds.
In just a few short years ahead we would both suddenly lose our fathers. One of us to incarceration, and the other to a sweeping illness. Just like that, we now belonged to a single-female household. Women who fumbled with English as a second language and had left most of what they knew miles away on another mainland. In many ways, we
weren't much different from many kids in our neighborhood, which according to the 1990 US Census, were part of an average of 28% of single female households, with 43% of the Bronx population identifying as Hispanic. On paper, we weren't alone but in our very young and impressionable minds, we felt as if it was only happening to us. With good reason. Not only were we mourning the absence of our fathers, but we were also involuntarily harboring shame for the circumstances our families were left in. If you're from a Latino household, you know whatever happens or is said behind your four walls, stays there. Speaking about your family's business is not only frowned upon, it's also reprimanded. So, as you can imagine, it was just better to say nothing at all about the matter, even if it was about your feelings. And so there we were, young kids who were quietly hurting, growing up in a fast-paced city, having to assimilate into American culture to belong.
When the conversation between Cesar and I took the mental health route it was because he was wearing a t-shirt that simply said Salud Mental (which means Mental Health in Spanish) across the chest. He told me he was inspired to get it made after going to therapy. It was such a simple yet powerful statement, one that clearly had been done with that intent in mind.

As he opened up about his mental health journey he touched upon so many of the stressors we had as kids. Especially the fact that he felt there was never space for him to feel his feelings, particularly as a young boy. Mental health has had a negative stigma throughout generations, but what happens when we're not self-aware enough of our mental health altogether? He mentioned that wearing the shirt not only sparked conversations but also prompted many Latino men to ask what the phrase even meant. As inconceivable as that sounded at the moment, it slowly began to make sense. Not only for Latinos but for the BIPOC community. We're taught to be resilient and lean heavily on our faith. Hard times just make you tougher. Vulnerability just makes you weaker. And being vulnerable is not an option when you're in survival. This rings all the more true for males. So, we end up disconnecting from ourselves and our feelings to serve our families and society. Where does all that bottled trauma go you might ask? As the researcher and author Brené Brown so eloquently puts it,
" The body keeps score, and it always wins,".
As our discussion continued I realized Cesar and I knew what this quote meant all too well. We knew what it felt like to suppress our hurt (consciously or unconsciously) and put on a good poker face, only to have it manifest in our bodies later. We both had struggled with panic attacks in the past.
For reference, a panic attack feels like a sudden surge in your body of intense anxiety. Your heart begins to race, you hyperventilate, your extremities begin to go numb, and if you can't come down from this spiral of fear in time you can begin to tunnel vision and potentially pass out.
In both of our cases, we hadn't connected the dots leading up to them. This unforeseen imminent danger our body was reacting to was a build-up of layers of emotions and anxiety. Not only at the current time in our lives, but we would later find out it was trailing from years before. What we both learned through therapy is that the kids we were, never fully go away. That the parts of us that felt alone, scared, misunderstood, and so many other feelings we have as children, come with us into adulthood. Most of us can't even identify them because our triggers continue to shapeshift throughout our lives. But at the core those unresolved emotions that you thought you could just get over keep showing up in different ways. At work, in relationships, in your parenting, as fatigue, anxiety, and even illness. We shouldn't have to wait until we've lost all control for motivation to self-reflect.
Cesar contacted me sometime after our conversation with an idea to collaborate on a collection in hopes to inspire other talks like ours. Considering we're still in Mental Health Awareness Month it seemed like the perfect time to launch something like this. We know the positive effects therapy can have on our personal lives, but even more important the effects that having social awareness about this issue can have on generations to come. We hope to encourage you to self-reflect and find that wearing the words Salud Mental will embolden your journey, and help reframe the idea for so many others that see it.