Friday Field Trips

Nicaragua: a different kind of love

Welcome to Friday Field Trips, a second serving of words and water for paid subscribers to Wednesdays at the Well. I am so glad you’re here and am so grateful for your support.

Valentine’s Day like many “holidays” holds a lot of baggage for a lot of people. The day opens wounds and leaves little room for expansive understandings of love. Just look at the options in the greeting card aisle, or lack thereof. If you’re single or not in a relationship society deems valid, the day can be awkward and honestly, unnecessarily difficult.

Today, rather than share about an unrequited love or a love that broke my heart, I want to tell you about a place that led me to my own heart and handed me a love that transformed my life.

In 2008, I was living at a threshold, on the precipice of change, filled with intense anxiety and immense hope for the future. I was working on my undergraduate degree in Hispanic Studies. Absolutely loving my courses on the Spanish language, history, literature, and politics of Mexico, Central and South America.

When I learned that my faith community was planning a trip to Nicaragua to study social justice and to learn from the brave women leading the Casa Materna, an organization addressing the high maternal death rate in the country, I knew I wanted to go. And I did.