A Ferrari in Neutral

fast, furious, and frustratingly stuck.

i’m one of those people that likes to go fast.

i’m the first born, i’m a fire sign (aries sun), i’m latina…I like when my food comes out fast. I like when people respond to me right away. I like when the elevator doors open the second I press a button. I like when planes take off without delays, I like when my wifi connects instantly, and I like when I text “here” and my friends already outside. I love when traffic lights turn green as i’m approaching…i’ve always felt like a ferrari in human form. a red one obvi.

for the record I also love being slow - i’m a walking contradiction in almost every area of my life and I love that about myself. it’s like what the great walt whitman said “very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” but for the purpose of this piece - i’m a ferrari.

so when things are slow or delayed or just full on a non-stop, my wheels tend to spin a little. and smoke starts rising from the tires.

as soon as I had published chapter 6 of my first ever substack series A Complete Unknown: What Happened to Me In Hollywood and Why You Haven’t Seen Me, I was flattered that I got 1,000 subscribers in one week. immediately my thoughts went to: fuck, I gotta keep this going. but if you read that series, you know that internally i’m still very much struggling with the need to keep up on social or with anything that has to do with beating or cracking an algorithm for success. the thought of “growing an audience” makes me want to vom.

can we bring back “vom?” I feel like I haven’t heard that since a high schooler said it in a disney channel original movie or something…

I was struggling with the thought of needing to post a substack every week and doing something in spite of feeling inspired. thankfully my friend sadie reminded me that I don’t need to follow any “ rules” and can do whatever I want. so after that conversation, I decided I just cared about nurturing all 1,254 of you that are here. (thanks for being here ilusm) and that i’m not going to put pressure on myself to write unless I feel like I have something meaningful to contribute.

over the course of the last 2 weeks i’ve been fucking pissed. but I didn’t realize it. and it got me thinking about anger and if we ever really let ourselves full-throttle feel it?

it all started at my friend ayesha’s wellness event called coffee + a good vibe, she threw at the 1 hotel in west hollywood a couple weeks back. i’m really big on signs and synchronicities. I feel like the universe talks to us through people and 3 different people on 3 different occasions at this event told me about this incredible psychic that was there. by the time the third person mentioned him, I was like “ok godddd I hear you, i’ll go talk to the man.” when the event was over I saw him immediately dart for the door and I ran after him.

his name was dr.ondre (@ondrehealer on IG) and he is currently the Soho House West Hollywood Healer. I think he’s the main healer at a lot of soho houses around the world…and I know what you’re thinking…soho houses have healers? I thought the same.

anyway…as soon as I stopped him, I could tell he energetically knew what was going on with me internally. he started talking at me and saying things about the type of person I am that all happened to be true.

I told him how I feel stuck and clued him into a couple things going on in my world, and he left me with 5 words before he walked away:

you need to get mad.

ummmmm…ok?

I literally didn’t get it. mad at who? at what? I didn’t think about him or anger after I met him.

the next day I attended the premiere of Suits LA on behalf of the car company Genesis. I love the team over there and their cars. their cars make Tesla look like an Ikea toy. if you’re going electric, go Genesis. and no i’m not being paid to say this.

at the event I met some creators who had been chosen for some pretty sick partnerships with their company. I realized that all the creators that did so had such high-quality content - the kind it looks like you need a camera guy, audio and editor for and I just don’t have those resources right now. I began to internally feel kinda shitty about where I was at. how I wanted certain opportunities, but the means to get there just doesn’t feel completely in alignment for me right now. my wanting to be chosen wound from childhood began to surface.

the following day, I had a really early meeting with someone from McDonalds corporate. before I go into that though, some context:

what most people that follow me know about me is that I love McDonalds. there’s something so americana about McDonalds. the golden arches iconography is unmatched. I had my birthday at Mickey D’s when I was little. it was a huge part of my upbringing. my aunt worked there when she immigrated here from Dominican Republic and met her first husband there. McDonalds has always felt really familial to me. there’s literally no brand more nostalgic, and i’ve been a huge advocate for their McFlurry’s since I can remember. I truly feel that america’s greatest contributions to the world have been: water parks and the m+m and oreo McDonalds McFlurry. where else in the world can you get that creamy thick texture, unbeaten vanilla flavor, with candy swirled in, from the comfort of your car seat, for that price point? the OG McDonalds McFlurry spoon, is and always has been my greatest makeout partner. McDonalds follows me on instagram. i’ve made countless videos about McDonalds on social. and after a big award show red carpet, my driver always drove me to McDonalds for a large fry and a McFlurry to celebrate. it was my ritual.

what most people don’t know is that it has been a life long dream of mine to partner with McDonalds on a campaign. and in january of 2024, the CMO of McDonalds and I had dinner for almost 3 hours. I pitched a show idea, content for their youtube page which I found to be more corporate than content focused, and a bunch of things that I was working on. what came out of that dinner was the fact that McDonalds sells happiness and this idea of tapping into different emotions. they loved Heart Broken Anonymous - a support group I founded for people experiencing heartbreak, grief, loneliness - and immediately the idea of a SAD MEAL that would consist of my favorite things: a m+m mcflurry and a large fry for people who are going through overwhelming distress came to mind. I met with someone else from corporate later that year and all I can share is that the timing wasn’t right. at least they knew who I was :).

I, in the year that I had last year (lol - read my previous substack series to get caught up) kind of put the dream of working with McDonalds to rest. until I heard from them again in the last couple of weeks and a meeting was setup for me to talk to the same person I spoke to last year, on the morning after the Suits LA red carpet.

I woke up that morning really hopeful. I was thinking to myself, timing is everything…this has been over a year in the works…you know when you’re just in that state where you’re just kinda hoping for a win? like if just one thing came through, you’d feel…I don’t know…fucking momentum…lol

the meeting turned out to be almost the same exact meeting I had last year. the timing isn’t right. when I closed the meeting tab, I started crying. this obviously doesn’t mean i’ll never work with them (I love them and who I met with and would still very much like it to happen one day), I think i’ve just been waiting for something to “click” and I really felt like maybe this time the timing was right. I felt let down and again just “not-chosen.”

meanwhile, my friend Christian and I - as you know if you’ve read my other substack - started a podcast called Scene Unseen. that too now, after 3 episodes is on PAUSE. lol. we didn’t anticipate how much the costs would be to make it happen and it’s currently not something either of us can take on right now. this of course is a bummer. I do feel strongly though we’ll be back when it makes sense.

but it was one thing in my life that felt like it was moving forward until it wasn’t.

I was really feeling like a ferrari in neutral.

then the Oscars happened. I attended an Oscars watch party Meta invited me to. it was full of creators, most of whom didn’t watch a lot of the ceremony, and I was just kind of taking it all in. (for the record I love the team at Meta and Threads), it’s moreso just the contrast of the environment I’m used to being in that felt weird. it was a really interesting parallel to having covered the Oscars for a couple years on live broadcast television sharing facts about the nominations and stories behind the films to then being in a room with a lot of people (not all) barely watching. I was kinda like how did I get here? what’s happening to hollywood? does anyone even care anymore? but I didn’t really give it much thought after that.

the week that followed someone posted this post on linked in about bringing back seasoned reporters to the red carpet, due to the lack of preparedness, connection, and depth there was this award season because most companies hired influencers over journalists to cover it on their behalf. it got a lot of engagement and someone tagged me in the post which is how I saw it, and overall it was just a reminder of the state of the industry. if you’ve been keeping up with my substack you know i’ve talked about this shift, so I wasn’t emotional over it, but I wanted to give you the context that this also went down over the last 2 weeks. it’s another “not-chosen” narrative that’s been present in my life even though this one is one that i’ve gotten over.

the biggest breakdown I had in the last couple weeks was with my doctor. since November, i’ve been on a massive protocol to cure my gut. I have IMO: methane overgrowth in my gut which causes bloating almost everyday. in the last 4 months, i’ve done gut-brain hypnotherapy everyday, I take 19 supplements a day, i’ve done 2 rounds of antibiotics, I walk everyday, I workout 6 days a week, I cook almost all my meals, i’ve been eating low-fodmap for monthssss, and I took a third or fourth? breath test (which requires fasting before) to find out that there is still methane overgrowth in my gut. I literally felt so defeated.

talk about feeling stuck as fuck. literally NOTHING in my life felt like it was moving forward. neutral fucking naz over here.

I told my friend Christian Gonzalez with whom I had the scene unseen podcast with about my results, and he said to me “i’ve been telling you for years you have an angry woman inside of you” and he believed that was the root cause of my bloating. stuck energy. for context, christian is an expert in helping people emotionally release trapped energy in the body.

I kinda shrugged it off, even though I know emotions get stored in the body, and that anger typically turns into cancer. look it up.

the next day I sent out invites for my upcoming birthday party. I wasn’t going to celebrate myself this year and then decided to put something really cool, and curated and smaller together that I felt like I could pull off. I love throwing parties and experiences and I feel like America has forgotten how to party. anyway, I could only pull it off if I invited a certain amount of people because of the venue space capacity and the deal that I made with them. this meant some friends wouldn’t be invited or could bring plus ones.

I ended up getting in an argument with a friend over the no plus one thing, and they had called me right after living through everything you just read. I had had it! I could feel my engine revving. instead of hanging up and telling them i’d call them later, like I normally would, I felt the not-chosen wound come up, the anger go from my stomach to my throat and realized I was going to explode. I ended up letting it come to the surface and expressed my anger. i’ve never really done that with a friend before. I’ve only done that with my parents. and then I realized holy shit, how have I never expressed anger? even in a healthy way in front of + behind closed doors? I can’t say my expression this time was the healthiest, but it felt correct to express it in my body.

is this what the psychic meant? is this why I’m always so bloated?

my friend and I love each other btw and of course eventually came to a resolution. I will share more insights I got from this interaction in a substack this thursday, because it was a pretty profound breakthrough that led to a breakthrough with my health actually. a reminder everything’s always connected.

after I let myself be angry on the call, I gave myself permission to be irritated at life for a full 3 days. I was furious and frustrated that my new podcast was on pause because i’m not in a better place, that I don’t have a social media manager and team, that McDonalds felt like a dream I had to energetically let go of again, that the red carpet has became a laughing stock, that my friend wasn’t coming to my party, and that my gut health hadn’t improved after all that work I put in. I decided to let myself freely express and act annoyed everywhere I went. I would drive annoyed, I’d slam my drawers after grabbing socks out of it, I sang and screamed the song cabaret by liza minelli. I slammed my trash in the dumpster. I expressed anger. it was so new and so profound. why didn’t I ever let myself do this before?

I thought about how even in the pixar films inside out 1 + 2, anger just didn’t get enough screen time as he should have.

I realized I was too scared to ever be full-on angry. I was kinda like half angry my whole life. whenever I got irritated, i’d kinda express but then kind of repressed it. I’ve always felt like if women get angry they’re instantly seen as being a bitch, rather than a complex human with emotions.

and I decided to share this story because so many of us feel this way, men too. we all so rarely let anger have screen time. I wrote this post to encourage you to feel it. don’t unhealthily project it onto other people, learn how to self regulate, but don’t ignore or push anger down, or half-ass it like I did. scream in a pillow, sing a song at the top of your lungs, stomp your feet, do kundalini, play a screaming meditation on the Open app, ring your towels in the bathroom, go boxing. buy some eggs and egg your ex’s house! just kidding, don’t do that. eggs are so scarce.

I felt a lot lighter after those 3 days and I recently had dinner with some friends and asked them how they released anger. we laughed so much at our stories, it felt like I was in an anger support club. why don’t we ever talk about this? it’s so human.

I feel like I let myself put my foot on the gas. and rewrote the narrative that being angry means you’re a bad person. feeling anger doesn’t last forever. and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re a victim to anything that triggered it. it just means you’re pissed. and that anger gives you data that’s really important to have. the lightness + insights you gain on the other side of releasing anger is euphoric.

this whole time,

I couldn’t help but wonder…was my anger the engine I’d been too afraid to start?

stay tuned for my next substack post this thursday on the breakthrough I had with my friend that led to the huge - aha moment with my health.

thanks for reading! let me know a time when you expressed anger and you were happy you did:

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