On Episode 8: Water, Memory and Midlife as Rebirth
After eight episodes of some of the most extraordinary Latinas in this country naming themselves out loud, both of us were still processing. So we called Rocio Navarro, a water healer, writer, and one of the women who has been holding Ana through the last three years of her life, to help us hold all of it.
Water healing, in case it’s new to you, is the somatic practice Rocío guides in warm water, where your body is literally held and supported until it can soften and release what words cannot reach. Her work sits where ancestral wisdom and the body meet.
This is what we call La Terapia, the final episode of every season, where we sit with someone who can help us metabolize everything the season surfaced. And Rocío handed us the language for what this season has been.
In this episode, she teaches through the chrysalis. That stage inside the cocoon where the caterpillar’s tissues dissolve into pure liquid before anything resembling a butterfly takes shape. From the outside, it looks like nothing is happening. Silence. Stillness. Like something is lost.
"The transformation inside the chrysalis is not a gradual reshaping. It is closer to a complete demolition and rebuild. Silence, stillness. Like it's lost. But the stillness is still at work, and it is the work."
If something in your life has been pulling you under and you cannot yet see what's on the other side, sit with that for a second.
What Rocío is naming, and what every guest this season has named a su manera, is that the collapse is not the outcome. It is the middle of a messy process most of us were never taught to recognize, let alone stay in. Rocío reminds us that the imaginal cells, the ones holding the shape of who you are becoming, are protected through the whole dissolution. Nothing about this stage is erasing you. It is revealing what was already there.
That is what midlife is asking of you. To trust that the stillness that feels uncomfortable and like nothing is happening is doing the deepest work of your life.
Rocío also talks about something we suspect will land hard for a lot of you, because it did for us. The descent is not optional. She calls it tocar fondo, an archetypal journey that shows up in every indigenous tradition around the world, the place we all have to go to figure out what is ours and what was handed to us by generations before.
“We don’t grow from the weakness of our system. We grow from the resilience or the strength of the system.”
So much of the healing conversation right now is about focusing on what was broken, and Rocío is not dismissing that work. She is adding to it. The resilience your grandmother built, the way your mother figured out how to keep going, the parts of your lineage that carried love forward even when everything else was scarce, those are the imaginal cells you are working with. Your blueprint was never only trauma. It was also wisdom. Your work now is remembering which is which.
We asked Rocío how midlife has shown up for her, and she said sovereignty. When we asked her what she had stopped apologizing for, she answered in one unapologetic word.
Rest.
Season 1 has been a rite of passage for us, and you are the reason it landed the way it did. Gracias por estar aquí. Gracias por escuchar y compartir.
Con cariño,
Ana + Cristy
FAVORITE MOMENTS:
00:00 - 01:56 Ana & Cristy open the season finale
01:56 - 05:12 Why close with “La Terapia”?
05:12 - 06:49 Meet Rocío: healer, writer, activist
06:49 - 11:34 The burnout that changed everything
12:31 - 15:07 Why water healing?
17:04 - 20:32 Total demolition and rebuild
20:32 - 22:32 Midlife as rebirth
22:32 - 27:40 “Tocar fondo”
29:33 - 33:06 Processing the season’s wisdom together
33:06 - 36:03 The pain of falling apart and the courage it takes
36:03 - 42:09 The feminine rising
42:09 - 47:14 How to heal without self-punishment
47:14 - 50:01 Midlife is not a crisis. It’s a reckoning
50:10 - 51:18 “Entre Sabias”: rapid fire questions
51:18 - 53:05 Support Rocío
Follow Rocío Navarro on Instagram and subscribe to her Substack publication Waters We Come From
Explore her offerings at rocionavarro.org
Our podcast is bilingual, so episodes will be in English, Spanish, or Spanglish depending on our guests. You’ll find them labeled in our feed, or you can use YouTube’s dubbing feature to listen your way.
A few recommendations (no pressure!):
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Follow us on Instagram: @her.wisdomera | @anaflores_me | @mcristymmarrero
Watch us on YouTube: @herwisdomera
Gracias por escucharnos.
Ana + Cristy
Episode Credits
Her Wisdom Era is hosted by Ana Flores and Cristy Marrero
Our producer and editorial coach is Laura Ubaté. La gran Lau.
Theme music and sound engineering by Stephen Hermann for Explosion Robinson AKA El Santo.
Social media by Team Belu, the best.
Branding by la diosa Leticia Vidaurri.
Our Executive Producers are Ana Flores and Cristy Marrero.
