Julie
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.
What is your name?
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My name is Julianna Piñero. I go by Julie.
And where are you from?
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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?
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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 quote that deeply resonates with you and why?
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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.
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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.
“Commitment is just a promise to always be there amidst constant change.”