Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Yessica Villatoro. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi YESSICA, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
For many years my sole purpose and meaning to my life rooted in having a corporate job, working very had, climbing the ladder and earning good money. All of that changed when I went through a life changing experience involving my womenhood and owning a vulva when I was 30. That experience rocked my world, made me question if I was just ticking of boxes and going with the flow of things. I knew things were wrong but I never stopped to think about how can I fix or change something for the newcomers. This experience made me challenge myself and challenged everything that I thought I was doing right. I was living plan A-Z based on expectations that the world had imposed in me, ticking boxes was my purpose until I lived in pain through the experience of being a women and reflecting of all the years of my life I had endured pain and had just moved on with my life. When I get asked what was the catalyst to start my journey with Jess Period, I have to respond that it was many points in my life where I lived abuse but I didnt know it was abuse, it was many lived experiences of the women in my family as well that I got to experience. When is hardship enough to wake up and say enough is enough?
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
As a Mexican brown girl I was taught to only use pads, tampons were never an option for me because my culture thought tampons was a way of me losing my virginity and also my mom never used them either because she never got a proper period talk and therefore I never did. Growing up my home was filled with women, my mom, my sisters, my aunts and my cousins. I don’t have to ask them to know that they also never got a period talk.
Presently I make reusable menstrual pads as a healthier option for those of us who never got the option to use any other menstrual products. I make them not only to give an option, but also to rebel to the world that I am taking back ownership of my body and that I can make better choices for me and my health for something so personal and private.
My pads are not only a product, but they also have a message. I focus to raise awareness of periods and how many of us specially brown latine girls need to have the period talk in order to be succesful in other aspects of our life. When I think about this profoundly, having menstruators be empowered about their periods is really the vessel to get to have a better chance of living and having a better life. Having autonomy of ones body and really knowing what is happening to our body is a huge form of empowerment that I hope to give to any new and old menstruator.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
A personal area of knowledge that I have specifically towards my advocacy and that has helped my journey is related to having lived two different perspectives of how to navigate life and periods. When I was younger I did not have the means to do much and therefor suffered from period poverty but now I do live a comfortable life that allows me to advocate for menstrual health for new menstruators.
One skill that is important to have is discipline. Its hard to get up and do something that is hard everyday, that is why discipline is the way to get to the desired point. A goal with no discipline will always stay a goal because will and passion lack at times but that is why discipline exists to keep you going.
Lastly I believe its important to give yourself grace and recognize even the smallest of improvements, when we focus so much on the end goal, we live miserable during the course of working towards the goal. Enjoying the small milestones is a good practice to keep motivated and also to enjoy the journey.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
There are two books that have made an impact in me, one of them is Reyna Grande’s memoir The Distance Between us. In her book, Reyna talks about her childhood and teenage years living in Mexico , living in poverty and having parents that migrated to the US. When I picked up Reyna’s memoir from the Riverside Library, I did not think the book was going to bring me to tears and made me feel as if she had somehow written some of my story too. There is one thing to write a book that is a memoir and a very different one to write a memoir of an immigrant. I did not know stories like these could be written, I did not know stories like these mattered, I did not know my story was of value too.
The second book that has been important to me is Prisca Dorca Mojica For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts. This book validated sentiments and opinions I had in me but was shy to make public or even felt guilty of like loving my home country Mexico and loving the US the place I live in but also having a resentful sentiment of the impact the US has had in my country.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jessperiod.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessperiod_
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/465386242802501
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Jess Period
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