The Sabbatical: Coming Back to Myself

By Gabriela Quintanilla, North Star Fund Hudson Valley Program Director

I recently returned to work after a three-month sabbatical. You might see the word “sabbatical” and think that I’m a professor. Sabbaticals are most commonplace in academia. But I am not an academic. I work in philanthropy as the Hudson Valley Program Director at North Star Fund.

North Star Fund is a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing. We work with communities of color building power in New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Every five years, our organization offers staff a three-month sabbatical. It’s an internal practice that reflects the vision and values we hold in the world.

In taking my sabbatical, I wondered what it would be like for me, as a previously undocumented person from a working class, single-parent household now working in philanthropy?

Becoming An Organizer

There are times when I struggle to remember my childhood. I liked beating boys at marbles and singing Selena songs with the paletero. At 13, I walked from El Salvador to the United States with my two younger sisters, aged four and seven. We arrived in 2006 without knowing any English, to reunite with our mother, after two years of not being with her.

Acclimation to life in the US revolved around school and church. I grew up in a conservative, religious environment. My first introduction to organizing and community change was through a Youth Arts Group that met every Friday. It was the highlight of my week because it was the only place where I felt I could be myself.

Before I received my US residency I was undocumented for eight years. During those eight years, my biggest dream was to go to college and become a “professional.”

In 2008, I became part of the DREAMers movement, a youth-led civil rights campaign for undocumented young people. Our movement advocated for pathways to citizenship, access to financial aid and equal rights for undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. Through my participation in these efforts I started to organize protests and share my story.

Despite my undocumented status, I was able to go to college at SUNY Stonybrook, majoring in Sociology and Political Science. During my senior year I decided I wanted to do more to help rural, undocumented high school students in the Hudson Valley. I founded Adelante Student Voices (Adelante) to inform undocumented students of their rights, including access to higher education, and dedicated myself to building the organization for several years. Despite not having much by way of resources, I wanted undocumented and immigrant youth in the region to feel safe, seen and held.

This year is Adelante’s 10-year anniversary, and I could not be more proud of the work that it continues to do.

After getting Adelante off the ground, I spent four years working at Rural & Migrant Ministry, the same organization that ran the Youth Arts group I was a member of when I was younger, as the Coordinator for Western New York, organizing with farmworker women and youth to advance policy change, including throughout the pandemic.

Now as the North Star Fund Hudson Valley Program Director, I am often the voice in the room for grantees because of my background in grassroots organizing. I am the bridge between communities and organizers and those with the wealth and power to support them. I feel a tremendous privilege and honor holding this role and immense responsibility.

When the Body Speaks

So what is a sabbatical like for a 33-year-old who has had little time for rest or reflection? And what would be the best use of this time?

I knew that I did not want to be in the US for my sabbatical and since leaving El Salvador as an adolescent, I had not spent extended periods of time in Central or South America. I wondered what it would feel like to travel as an American citizen—and to be away for three months. To be surrounded by other Spanish speaking cultures. This was going to be the study abroad experience I had never been able to have.

I set out south without a plan. I started and ended my trip in Mexico and traveled to Costa Rica, Colombia and El Salvador in between.

For the first month I did not know what to do with myself. It was challenging to be away from home and out of my daily routines. It felt like I didn’t fit anywhere. I was in some of the most vibrant places in the world and yet I couldn’t detach from the realities around me and back in the US.

In the first month I experienced the following:

A 6.5 magnitude earthquake in Ciudad de Mexico. Everyone had to evacuate their buildings and one person died. I had flashbacks to an earthquake in 2001 when I still lived in El Salvador.

The following day I woke up to the news of President Maduro being captured by the US government.

While in Costa Rica, the country elected Laura Fernandez as president, a rightwing politician promising major change. Soon after, Jose Antonio Kast became the president of Chile. He has pledged to militarize the country and fight “illegal” immigration at all costs.

This same “fight” was escalating in the US as I watched anxiously from afar. Immigration arrests, deportations and the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

I felt panic, so much panic, thinking about all the immigrants in the US and especially those without legal status. Thinking of the risks my loved ones were facing scared and overwhelmed me, and my body broke down.

Despite the beautiful days in the Costa Rican mountains, my entire right side ached, and I couldn’t walk. I went to a local clinic for an ultrasound and they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me.

I cried for days. I knew I needed to cry out my frustration and fear and worry. I focused on breathing exercises. I reminded myself that I deserved this time away, to be present in my surroundings. To be in awe of the toucans, capuchin monkeys and to slow down like the forest sloths. (I am obsessed with sloths.)

The pain began to disappear. The physical pain was a product of the stress and helplessness I felt watching my people being criminalized for their immigration status.

It became clear to me how our bodies speak to us if we have the space to tune in and listen. That all the emotional and mental pain we experience is captured by our bodies.

It took my body to stop working for me to pay attention to my pain differently and I was able to do that because I was not working full-time.

Returning to El Salvador

After being a tourist in these other places, I wondered what it would be like to be a tourist in El Salvador. It would be my first visit back that didn’t revolve around family. What would it be like to engage with my home country on my own terms? What would I discover?

I spent time with local groups doing direct service and mutual aid in rural areas. These are places that have been forgotten by the government and have very little infrastructure. The communities have formed committees to supply the services that the government has failed to provide. People pay a monthly membership fee of one dollar and the fees are used to organize trash collection, or replace street lighting, or arrange transportation for children to get to school.

This country, my country, is a facade. The news reports that there is no crime here. That the country has been “cleaned up.” That there are no longer gangs in the street extorting and killing people. The reality is that El Salvador has replaced thousands of criminals with one: Bukele.

Bukele is a charismatic dictator. He uses the long suffering our people have faced to position himself as the savior of the nation. He uses faith and religion as the basis for his power.

I spoke to an ice cream vendor in El Tunco, a touristy beach town. He pointed out the facade, the make up that hides the poverty and lack of infrastructure. He was hesitant to say more and told me so. He said, “you never know who is listening.” This nervousness characterized my conversations with many Salvadorans who wanted to tell me their stories. Their eyes reflected fear. They kept things short and vague. To criticize the government is to risk being arrested without due process or legal representation.

Authorities are arresting people in an anti-gang crackdown that is rife with abuse. They have detained thousands of innocent civilians and minors. Tattoos or where you live are used as evidence of involvement in criminal gangs. I have family members that have been wrongfully detained in the mass sweeps. I understand why there is so much fear.

My heart was dismayed by this sad and complex reality. At the same time, I felt inspired by the people in the communities I stayed in. How they continue to support and care for each other despite so much corruption and restriction.

Salvi-gringa

Being in El Salvador helped me once and for all understand why my mother has sacrificed so much to give us a better life and I felt immense gratitude.

I started my trip feeling like I didn’t fit anywhere. In El Salvador, I came to a new understanding…I am a Salvi-gringa.

Gringa is what the Salvis called me. They would ask me where I was from and were always surprised when I responded, “I am from here.” Even after I explained that I was born in El Salvador, they still labeled me as “gringa”.

What’s true is that I no longer know what the day-to-day experience of a Salvadoran woman is. Yet I hold on to what remains of my cultural values, the memories of my country, my language, my food, my colors.

And it’s also true that I had intense cravings for peanut butter during my travels. (It doesn’t get much more gringa than that!)

So much of what I believe has been shaped by New York. The exposure to liberal views and to all different types of people.

I am devastated by what is happening in El Salvador. Just as much as I am devastated by what is happening here in the US. I do not feel like I belong here, but I do not fully feel like I belong in El Salvador either.

I am a proud Salvadoran gringa. Proud of where I come from and of everything that has contributed to the person I am today. I am both and that is my superpower.

I feel honored to have had the privilege of not working for three months to look myself in the eye, see my reflection and take stock of all the lives I have lived up to this point. Immigrant. Student. Organizer. A bridge between worlds.

My sabbatical meant I got to hear my inner voice. I had more time for contemplation. I have been back for three months now. And just because the sabbatical ended doesn’t mean spending time with myself has to end. I have taken long bike rides and walks with my dog. I am carving out time for yoga and pottery. These are the moments that I can tap back into myself.

As philanthropy makes the slow and uneven shift to hiring more staff from impacted communities, its practices need to adapt. It has a responsibility to provide extended rest periods to its staff and make the same possible for grantees.

We are people doing work that requires emotional labor. The parallels to our lived experiences means the work carries a different weight. We are people holding it down for our grantees and holding it down at home while crises mount. We are people that need time to rest and to celebrate how far we have come.