Embracing Courageous Conversations during Hispanic Heritage Month.

By: Miriam Solen

As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, we see this as a time to celebrate the multitude of cultures that make up the Hispanic and Latinx community. At Thumbtack we also feel a duty to approach this year’s heritage month with more of a somber tune given the disproportionate impact of the global coronavirus pandemic on the Latinx community.

This year’s theme for Hispanic Heritage Month is “Esperanza: A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage and Hope.” As the lead for ¡VAMOS!, Thumbtack’s employee resource group (ERG) for our Hispanic and Latinx employees, I wanted to keep a balance of education and celebration in the back of my mind when planning out programming for the month. Courageous Conversations, our monthly series in which we pair an outside speaker with internal employees for a candid company discussion on difficult topics, was one of the ideal ways we decided to address this priority. Past conversations have included a discussion of the life-affirming implications of non-binary gender pronouns, the particular history of Asian-American racism, and a discussion about the current state of race, parenting, and law enforcement in America.

This month, we invited Criss A. Cuervo, founder of mindfulness-based company Alma Y Espiritu and author of PERTENÆCER, a self-paced mindfulness and meditation book specifically for Latinx immigrants to the United States. We discussed how COVID-19 has impacted the Hispanic and Latinx community — and how the global pandemic has not only affected global communities’ mental health, but also highlighted the barriers and stigmas that exist within the Hispanic/Latinx community to seek support for mental health issues.

Criss immigrated to the United States from Venezuela when she was 15 years old. Like many other immigrants, she faced many obstacles that helped inform her current work and practice: discrimination, isolation, language barriers, and the culture clash between her birth country and her new home. As a fellow first-generation immigrant from Venezuela, I’ve recognized that these external challenges have not only created “extra-cultural stress” but also created internalized hesitation to seek help.

“The mainstream has benefitted everyone in terms of mindfulness,” Criss shared with our employees, when talking about how the past years’ events have highlighted the need for better self-care. “My role is to make sure that minority communities benefit from mindfulness-based approaches and solutions.”

Criss and I talked about the resources we can seek and steps we can take in order to support the Hispanic and Latinx communities from within or as allies. Some key takeaways from our discussion on how to support Hispanic and Latinx communities include:

• Mentoring new immigrants and inviting them to partake in your own traditions.
• Sharing books and resources about the benefits of mental health.
• Model seeking support.
• As allies, educating ourselves and understanding the difficulties that can arise when navigating new systems and cultures.

“The biggest step we could do is educate ourselves,” said Criss. “It takes a lot of courage to take these first steps to overcome these stigmas around mental health that have been internalized within our communities.”