About the Author - Ancestral Threads, Weaving Our Way to Wellness
Rooted in ancestral memory, cultural identity, and emotional sovereignty through a migrant lens.
By Lorena Saavedra Smith
As I prepare to launch Awaken Your Roots during a delicate time for our communities—when immigrants are being viewed through polarized lenses—my path recently led me to a classroom full of Latina entrepreneurs. We were there to learn the art of public speaking, but what I witnessed was profound and healing: women whose extraordinary achievements were forged through adversity and transformation. Their stories lit the fire I needed to complete this piece.
When LATINA Style invited me to share my journey as an author, I was deeply honored. I began by writing about my book and the opportunities that led to its publication—including winning a literature and poetry contest. But something essential was missing. The piece didn’t feel aligned with my intention to let you, amiga reader, know that you were my inspiration.
That night in class, it clicked. Like many of my peers, I know what it means to feel invisible, dismissed, or out of place. When I arrived in the U.S. alone, with a suitcase full of dreams and the honest intention to work, study, and thrive—every day felt like a test of my intelligence and resilience. At first, it was exhilarating. But surviving in a society not built for our flourishing requires more than optimism—it demands transformation.
I often say that immigrants are not uprooted—we are replanted in a new environment. Like many Latinas, I worked tirelessly, often at the cost of my own well-being. And yes, I too fell into the trap of hiding my heritage to survive. For years, I denied the Peruvian, Andean, Latina parts of me that felt too vulnerable to show. I reached success, but at the cost of living an unfulfilled—not to mention unhealthy—life.
When modern mental health approaches failed to soothe the deeper ache, I turned inward—and then outward: to Nature. It was there I remembered that I come from a lineage of wise women and storytellers. My healing wasn’t through erasure, but remembrance. I began braiding my past, present, and future—like the women of the Andes braid their hair: a ritual that holds time and carries memory.
Awaken Your Roots is not just a book. It is a manta, a rebozo, a shawl that carries the most precious parts of ourselves. It is dedicated to the future matriarchs and to all of us who’ve had to code-switch our way through survival into flourishing.
We indeed belong to each other. And if you’re pushing through exhaustion or invisibility, please keep going. We need your brilliance in science, your compassion in medicine, your courage in leadership, and your presence in healing spaces. Future generations are looking up to you.
There’s a line I return to when I feel lost: “I may feel alone, but I am not. I come with a legion of women before and behind me.”
And just as I discovered in that class, healing is never just personal; it’s communal. It is ancestral. We, querida amiga, carry our abuelas’ wisdom, as well as their wounds and stories. And when we awake to this wisdom, we help heal not just ourselves, but generations to come.
Lorena Saavedra Smith is an eco-psychologist, storyteller, and pacha philosopher. Her debut book, Awaken Your Roots: Reclaim Your Ancestry and Sovereignty by Heeding the Jaguar's Call (Sounds True, 2025), is a poetic offering for healing, belonging, and emotional sovereignty across generations.