Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez is a hater, but reading her latest book, you wouldn’t know it. 

In Tías and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us, Mojica Rodríguez refuses to shame the women in her life for being who they are, even if they live drastically different realities. 

Instead, she tenderly examines the factors that molded them—both within society and their familial structures. And, perhaps like a more knowledgeable cousin, provides guidance on how they—and by extension, anyone who can see themselves in the 20 archetypes she sets forth—can push for more. Just as importantly, she challenges all of us to do better, to hold each other with compassion so we don’t clip each others’ wings, freeing us to become the most whole versions of ourselves.  

While Mojica Rodríguez is gentle throughout her second book, avoiding passing judgment on every woman who inspired this text, it doesn’t always come easily to her. 

“I grew up within a really judgmental context,” she tells Intervenxions. “And I know what that did to me as a little girl and as an adult. My intrusive thoughts [are] in my mom’s voice. Like, ‘You’re not good enough.’ ‘Why do you think you could do that?’ ‘You’re talking too much.’ And I think it’s just trauma. For me to hold her with compassion, for me to hold me with compassion, it’s just been therapy and healing. The more you do that, the more you start seeing other people and how it affects all of us and how it’s generational. It’s just been my own journey of figuring out who hurt us because that’s fundamentally what’s wrong here.”

Read more at Intervenxions.