Buen día mi gente, and welcome to La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas, the only Spanglish podcast for childfree Latinas. Latinas helping us liberate ourselves from the toxic cultural brainwashing we all grew up with so that we can design our best lives, instead. I'm your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato. I completely lost it over grilled cheese the other day. Yes, grilled cheese. Remember in the last episode when I said I was gonna do fewer but more impactful episodes? I had a plan. I came into February, I came into 2026, riding high. I had two TEDx stages that I was preparing for. I had the podcast ready to make a comeback. I had content, I had energy, I had a vision. After everything that 2025 threw at me, and I know it threw a lot at all of us, I finally felt like I was standing back up again. Like I could do something with all that anger, all that despair, that I could finally make things click back into place. 2026 was gonna be my year, and February was gonna be the turning point. I was ready. Then on Friday the 13th, my dad died. Everything I had built this month around was just gone. Those plans completely obliterated. And grief, as I've learned, doesn't care about your content calendar. It doesn't care that you had two TEDx pitches lined up. It doesn't care that you were finally, finally, finally ready to come back to work. And in the aftermath of all of that, both stages fell through. I was rejected by both, and I was left holding all of that, the loss, the disappointment, the rejection, and trying to figure out what any of this even means now. It was grief on multiple levels. So, yeah, about 10 days after his passing, I lost it, completely lost it, over the memory of his grilled cheese. It wasn't something big. It wasn't something profound. Just his grilled cheese sandwich. Because there was a moment where I realized suddenly I'm never ever going to have my dad's grilled cheese again. And that was it. That was the thing that broke me that day. Grief is complicated and it's also really weird like that. It's not always the big moments. Sometimes it's the smallest, most specific thing that takes you out completely. So yeah, February did not go as planned. Not even a little bit. I learned some stuff though. Some good, some bad. Like the bereavement leave that some companies offer. One of my brothers was entitled to three days. Three whole days. Can you imagine your dad dies on Friday and by Wednesday you have to be back in the office dealing with Brenda's bullshit? Oh my god, capitalism. My husband's office sent us flowers and that was nice. Friends I hadn't talked to in years reached out. But you know what's funny about condolences? Maybe it's just me, other people might feel differently. But I think that condolences suck. To me, every single one has felt like a stab in the heart, inside that Louis Fontanez-size hole, and it's just another reminder that he's not here anymore. I wish that instead of condolences, it was customary to send funny animal memes instead. Just funny stuff that reminds us that yes, someone may have passed and that's sad, but we are still alive and we still count. The day I became a certified mess over grilled cheese was actually going to be my first night out in public, so to speak. I had a Toastmasters meeting. And even though I was terrified to go, I really love our meetings. We have wine with our speeches, and it just felt like something I had to do. Because I still have to live my life, right? I still want to live my life. And Ryan asked me several times throughout the day as he saw me melting down over grilled cheese. And yeah, that's a pun for you."Babe, are you sure you wanna do this?" Because he knew and I knew that if anyone asked me how I was doing, even with kindness, even with the best of intentions, I was going to fall apart. But in this old age of mine, this big old age that I am now, I've learned to ask for help. So I had a brilliant idea. I emailed my Toastmasters group and basically just said, please don't ask me about my dad. I mentioned the grilled cheese meltdown. I even pointed out the pun and said that the kindest thing anyone could do for me was treat this like it was any other Tuesday night. And they all replied with, sure, no problem. And a really wonderful thing happened next. For two whole hours that night, I got to just exist. Not as the grieving daughter, not as a person everyone was worried about, but just Paulette in the room doing the thing with the wine and the speeches. And something else happened that I didn't expect. I was actually able to talk about my dad and him dying without breaking down. I think it's because I set myself up for success. Because I had asked for exactly what I needed. And interestingly, everyone who received that email said, thanks for letting us know. Huh. I think the simple truth is that people want to help. They genuinely do, but they need you to give them the roadmap. You need to give them a roadmap. Being vague while you're being vulnerable, like saying, "you know, I'm going through a lot right now." It doesn't give people anything to work with. And this thing, I'm now starting to call The Specific Ask, it does. I know why we don't do this, especially us childfree Latinas, women who grew up being told that we're asking for too much, that we're selfish, that we should figure it out on our own. If anybody else listening is also a first gen eldest daughter, we got that a lot, right? We have to make ourselves convenient and agreeable."Calladita te vez más bonita" and all that cultural crap. We've been trained to shrink our own needs down to nothing, and then we wonder why no one helps. And it just builds resentment. So here's what I want you to hear. Asking clearly isn't a burden. It is an act of self love. Let me repeat that. Asking for help and being clear about what you need is not a burden. It is an act of self love. What it says is, "I know what I need and I trust you enough to tell you." And mi gente, I know that takes guts, but it works. It works! Let me give you another example of this very thing. Immediately in the aftermath, I knew I had to do something fast. Because you see, I do a lot of live in-person sessions for Latinas In Podcasting. In fact, we had just had one on the morning of Friday the 13th,'cause that was Galentine's Day. But I knew for anything upcoming, any of the live in-person sessions that we have all the time, I just, I could, I couldn't guarantee that I was going to be available. I couldn't guarantee that I would have the energy on that given day. I don't know how I'm going to wake up feeling day to day. So instead of just quietly letting things drop, or even worse, trying to power through that, that's not good for you by the way. I went to the community and said, can you cover these explicit things? I forced myself to write a blog post, that's probably the only pushing through I did. And I outlined everything I needed, what it would entail and what it would require of each volunteer. Really, it amounted to like two hours a day, a couple of times over the next few months. And my people genuinely surprised me and stepped up. Almost everything got covered immediately. Like there was no wait time. I was even able to hire a community member to edit that video that we made that Friday morning because there was no way in hell I was gonna be able to touch that. So people were very clear on what I was asking for. It wasn't just a vague,"can someone help me out?" It was, "this is what I need, this date, this time, two hours." And it worked. Let me be honest though, part of why it's easier for me to ask right now is because I genuinely don't feel like I have anything left to lose, and there is plenty to lose. Let me be clear about that. I'm just so deep at the bottom of the barrel of grief some days that I don't care what people think. And I think a lot of that has come with age and maturity too. But grief has a special way of burning off all that noise. The fear of being judged for having needs, it just kind of evaporates. And there's a really nice freedom in that. It's painful, but it's a clarifying kind of freedom. Some people might call it having zero fucks left. I mean, yeah, it's being honest about what it is I need and not caring if someone else judges me for it. They're basically two sides of the same coin. So that's what's going on here. So now this, this is the beginning of the new Paulette. The new Paulette that exists in the Dead Dad era. The part that complicates all this for me is that my TEDx talks were about the voice inside your head. And I had just finally, finally learned how to shut that voice down and that voice belonged to my father. So I have a lot of reconciling to do around that. Because grief is extraordinarily complicated. I probably don't have to tell you this. But it isn't weakness to experience the negative emotions that come with it. You aren't lesser than your peers for having emotions. No matter what capitalism or white supremacy culture or the podcast bros will have you believe. Mental grit and perseverance aren't forged by resisting or by bottling up or burying your emotions. They come from having a healthy outlet for them. Talk about eldest daughter syndrome. I actually had to have this talk with my mom. She, you may have heard last episode that they were separated, and yet she's taken on the burden of cleaning out their old house despite us telling her mom we're available. Like I've cleared my schedule for the foreseeable future. But she waited two whole weeks before saying, "okay, I'm too exhausted to do this." So I went and I spent some time with her, and we created a timeline of when all of this is going to get done, because there's a lot of furniture, there's, there's just a lot of stuff, right? All she had to do was ask, and all we had to do was be clear about what needed to get done. That's the power of the specific ask. You see, it works! But I don't want you to have to wait until a loved one dies to be clear about what you need. And to be clear about asking people to help you. So I'm gonna end this episode, this messy but honest, grief-soaked episode with this mission for you. What is your one specific ask? Just one. Think about the one thing you need right now that you haven't asked for. Just one thing. It doesn't have to be everything on your list. It could just be one thing. Maybe it's you need a night off from your spouse, so every Wednesday you're just going to go away from them. Or you want a couple of hours every weekend to just kind of have time to yourself. Those are kind of the same thing, but you know what I'm saying? Whatever it is. This one thing. Pick one thing and then ask yourself, who in your life could you actually delegate that to or ask help of? And if you feel like sharing what that is, text me from the link in the show notes. That'd be cool. Okay, mis amigues, that's it. If you do reach out, I'm asking you clearly. Please do not send condolences. Please send memes. Muchísimas gracias in advance. Don't forget to stay hydrated, and that's a burrito. Hey, mira. If this episode made you feel some kind of way, dígame! DM me on Instagram or send me a text. You can do that right from your phone. If you wanna be a guest on the show and put your story out there too, check out the guest form on my website at PauletteErato.com/guest. Yep. Just my name, PauletteErato.com/guest. Y no se te olvide que hay más perks when you join the newsletter. Todos estos links estan en los show notes. Muchísimas gracias for your support y hasta la próxima vez, cuídate bien.