Ten years ago, I took a day off work to think about what I wanted to do next. Over breakfast and many cups of coffee, I wrote out some ideas and filled in a guided worksheet I found online. A huge part of me thought I wanted to go into photography professionally but when I finished several hours later, I realized I wanted to start a blog! I even came up with the name, Southern Señora, which has served me well all these years. And with that, sharing the Hispanic lifestyle in Birmingham, Alabama became my new mission. Southern Señora launched on September 15, 2014, the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month!
Almost immediately, I had so much to share and the photographs to go along with the stories. You see, I still wanted to include photography in whatever I decided to do. Sometimes I would just look at a photo and a story would tumble out and I couldn’t write fast enough. It was such an exhilarating feeling and even more so when I realized my stories were finding readers! I was covering Latino events in Alabama along with stories of Fiesta, a scholarship driven Hispanic festival that I helped co-found in 2003. I added some culture with Dia de los Muertos events and my collection of items I use for my altar each year. And of course, there were plenty of stories about my family, my dad’s Mexican Zuñiga side, to help me stay connected to my roots.
Over time, I wrote about my day-to-day life with my immediate family and shared stories of holidays and the lives of my husband Eddie, my children and my husband’s family from Alabama. With my mother being born in Alabama, I wanted to give the right mix of Mexican-American lifestyle to these tales. These stories had become more and more important for me to tell so that my children would have a record of them along with the photos taken. I loved that they would be able to share these stories with their children too. I don’t think people in general do a great job of family storytelling anymore so this was my way to preserve the family stories for my kids and grands. One of my favorite stories is telling the birth my first grandchild, Amelia, during the worldwide pandemic. I wanted Amelia to know what was happening in the world the day she was born and how different it was than a “usual” non-pandemic birth! It was a joyous event even though we had so many restrictions imposed and we were still learning how to cope with during those early months of covid. Historic, for sure!
My last blog post was two years ago in 2022. It was the fifth anniversary of my retirement from corporate life and Eddie and I were about to board a plane for France for our retirement trip. I had planned to write about that trip and many other things when we returned from this trip, but life was coming at me fast and furious. Every time I thought I had the time to do a little writing, that time seemed to get snatched away from me. Over the years, caring for my mother, a daughter getting married and four more grandchildren will do that to you. Sure, I probably could have carved out time to write but there were so many times when I just wanted to do nothing. Life was moving at such a rapid pace I wanted it to slow down a bit. I mean, I’m retired and my friends kept telling me I didn’t really know what that meant! But at the time it seemed more important to be as present as possible with everything going on in our lives.
During this time, I started focusing more on my Instagram posts and eventually getting into video and then reels. Writing for insta eventually became a substitute for blogging. Then, after returning from France and experiencing all that country had to offer – the food, wine, culture, history and people – I felt my writing had gotten better somehow! I thought I was imagining this until a friend who follows me on insta mentioned how much she was loving my posts since the trip. So maybe I wasn’t crazy after all!!! Traveling had enhanced my ability to tell a better story, plus I was able to tell more condensed stories with photos on my social media platforms.
Recently though I’ve had the urge to get back to blogging. I think what really convinced me was looking back through my blog archives and loving what I was reading. Plus, re-reading these posts began sparking more story ideas! There have also been so many wonderful things happening in the Latino community in recent years and subjects that have been resurfacing that I would like to explore and write about now. For instance, discussions about being Latino and speaking the Spanish language comes up a lot as it pertains to a person’s identity. I think this subject is getting even more attention with second and third generation Latinos now living in Alabama who don’t necessarily feel fluent in their parent’s native language. This subject became the topic of conversation just a few weeks ago with several Fiesta Scholars and it has hung with me since then.
Finally, I really want to write a book about Fiesta from its beginnings to where it is today. It’s been 22 years since Fiesta, with the help of the community, began telling the Latino story in Alabama. As a founder of this event, I can assure you we never had a conversation about how long we planned to have this event. We didn’t wonder about its lifespan. But did we think we’d be still doing this 22 years later? Honestly, I can say we didn’t. I have a trunk full of documents from the early days and emails of the conversations that took place to get Fiesta created. At the time, we were just happy to get the first event produced and have scholarship money to award to Latino students! The many blog posts about Fiesta that I’ve written can certainly serve as a way to help make this book happen. Is there a market for this type of book? I don’t really know, but I do feel as though it could serve as a wonderful history of a beloved event in Alabama, a history of how the Latino community has grown since the first Fiesta event, and that it is still going strong 22 years later. Fiesta still has a lot to offer our community and state!
So, on the 10th anniversary of Southern Señora, I want to thank my followers and anyone who has ever read one of my blog posts. Today I will raise a glass to toast you and to toast all the stories I’ve written and the stories I plan to tell in the future. I hope you will continue to follow me for what’s coming! I will also raise a glass to toast the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month 2022. After all, there’s a reason I launched Southern Señora on this date 10 years ago.
And as I restart my blog, I will close with the one word that ended my very first blog post…VAMONOS!
Southern Señora 