*Brower Park, Crown Heights, BK - 10/23/25*
***Author’s note:*** *Julie I met on June 5th, 2023 at Daughter, a coffee shop in Crown Heights. She said “hi” and I responded “good morning.” She was wearing a red Chicago Bulls sweatshirt.*

What is your name?

00;00;49;09

My name is Julianna Piñero. I go by Julie.

And where are you from?

00;00;58;25

I grew up and was born in Silver Spring, Maryland. My family moved there a year before I was born from Puerto Rico. And I've lived in New York for 12 years.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

00;01;50;11

Don’t focus so much on what you don’t have, what isn’t happening, or what you’re scared of. Because when you dream bigger and you act with more love and curiosity, and you focus on that, those things will be bigger in your life.

“Is there a memory from your childhood — when you close your eyes and you’re like, ‘Whoa, that was a really special moment’?”

00;02;58;29

I can't remember how old I was, but it was Thanksgiving. We had we had very little extended family near us growing up. So my extended family was in town from Puerto Rico and California, and I and maybe my older brother had taken it upon ourselves to make Thanksgiving turkey cut out of our hands. We turned them into turkeys, and we made them on construction paper.

I remember the feel of the construction paper as I'm setting down every single nametag in front of that person's, placemat on the dining room table. And I remember we never used the dining room table because we never had enough people around the table to justify using, what, maybe an eight person table. So it always sat empty.

00;03;53;14

But this day, with all the family in town, we set all the little placemats, the all the little nametags out, and I remember the feel of the construction paper as we did that.

What does family mean to you?

00;05;07;03

As a kid, whenever family came into town, it was a reminder of this place that I come from that I had never lived in, which is Puerto Rico. It was always a big gaggle of people speaking Spanish, which was a language that was my first language. But then I lost it. It was, you know, culture and customs and even just this energy that I always just wanted to absorb more of.

00;05;39;10

There was always this thing in me that wanted to feel closer to my Puerto Rican identity. And as someone who never lived there when family came into town, I just felt like I could be a sponge. And I remember, I think it's always going to be this thing I want more of and always going to be this thing that I'm grieving, that I haven't had enough of and haven't explored enough of.

00;06;08;29

I remember when my grandfather, Poppy, was on his deathbed, and we all had a couple of minutes alone with him in the hospital room, and the first thing I said was, I'm so sorry I didn't speak more Spanish with you. And all of a sudden I'm speaking the most perfect Spanish I've ever heard myself speak. But I just, you know, when extended family was in town, it was this connection to this place that I couldn't see.

It was this connection to this part of me that. It's 100% a part of me.

Is there a quote that deeply resonates with you and why?

00;07;38;17

I think the quote, “everything happens for a reason.” Not really because I fully believe it, but because it's something that my mom always used to say to me as a kid. And when I was a kid, I fully leaned into believing it because she was the source of trust in everything that was right, and everything that was comforting, and everything that felt good.

So, even though as an adult, I can see the nuances in the phrase and sometimes struggle to trust it. It always holds this, you know, place with me and my mom. As a kid, I would always turn to her with my anxieties, with the things I was scared about and the things I was stressing about. And she would always tell me, “everything happens for a reason,” and it would always make me feel better.

What's something that you do? And time stand still.

00;09;06;02

There's two things. Can I say them both? Because I think about them similarly: dancing salsa and playing guitar. And it's because what I'm doing both—it's like the only time that I'm not actively thinking about what to do next, what is the next step. I can just lose myself in the moment, and in that moment, that present moment is what creates the next moment.

I don't have to do anything else to get to the next moment. I just have to be here with it.

00;13;45;29

I don't know how to describe it other than visually. So imagine, like, a really thick paintbrush getting dipped into paint and then swirled across a page. And all of a sudden, I'm dropped into that brushstroke, and I'm just surfing the wave of it.

I'm just being carried by the contours of a brushstroke. And there's no resisting, and there's no planning, and there's no turning back, and there's no pushing forward.

00:15:02:20 – 00:17:15:01

Presence is being slow — listening, breathing together. But it’s also acceptance. One of the greatest gifts I can give someone I love is accepting them in that moment. When I think about love, one of the phrases that comes to mind is: I promise to never know you. I promise to always see you.

How do you navigate regret?

00:19:28:08

I don’t engage too much with regret. I feel it, but then I hate how it keeps me stuck. So if I can fix it, I do. And if I can’t, I let it go.

00:20:16:25

When I regret something, I look at the beauty that came from the decision I made. There’s always something beautiful that’s here, and something beautiful to look forward to.

What are some ways that you tap into either your intuition or your childlike curiosity?

00;21;57;03

I love interviewing people and meeting new people at coffee shops and there's so much magic to the spontaneous conversation with somebody on a park bench next to you. I engage in so much curiosity and play in that, and just hearing somebody's story and burrowing into the tiny corners of their perspective and trying to learn more.

This element of loss or, feeling not as abundant at times - how do you navigate that?

00;25;02;25

I try to just let myself feel and I'm trying to do that more of just removing myself from any sort of expectation. Because sometimes I can monologue to myself and it's like, almost like a conversation that I'm having with someone else where I'm explaining how I feel and making it palatable and justifying it.

Sometimes I just need to lie in bed and feel my feelings and cry and let it all be here. When I do that, it’s like I’m making friends with the worst feeling ever. It’s not clawing at me anymore — it’s just here. And it will pass, because I’m allowing it to be here. And it's not clawing at me anymore. It's just here and it will pass. But it will only pass because I'm allowing it to be here.

Julie

Craig