Near & Dear

Joe Rodriguez: What does courage mean to you?

Kat Lazo: So right away I associate it with strength and then I realize (and this is where my unlearning still happens.) So I associate courage with strength and I associate strength with how much you can bear and tolerate. Looking back though, now I would associate courage with unconditional acts of love for myself and others.

JR: So if your life fell apart, having the courage to get back up is translated into unconditional love?

KL: I think when you go through anything horrible like a breakup, having the courage to believe in, fall in love and not allow that circumstance to affect you negatively, is rooted in love, which is courage.

JR: Do you think people are courageous enough?

KL: I don’t know if we are courageous enough. I think we could be more courageous than we are now.

JR: Do you ever see people in bad friendships, relationships, situations where they should get out and they don’t? What do you think holds them back?

KL: I think a lot of that is rooted in our love of stability. Right now in particular like a job: Some people stay in a job they hate for the stability and they might not have other means to make money. But there are also other people who stay in a job because they’re scared. They’re scared of failing in their dreams. There are also people who do that in relationships, they stay, but there’s always something that’s missing in the relationship. Getting out of that comfort zone is really hard for a lot of people.

JR: You’re brewing a drink called courage, what are the ingredients?

KL: One would be love. Whether that’s love for others or yourself, the act of love. Then I would say at least for me, being uninhibited. With certain acts of courage whether for you or someone else, you have to not think and act. If we say that an ingredient of courage is love, it’s not the brain, it’s your heart. So you have to turn off your brain. At least for myself, I’m a logical person and in this year, I’ve realized that I don’t always have to maneuver in that manner, that I can and should listen to my heart.

JR: Do you think your latinidad informs your courageousness?

KL: So the way that I had to find courage, which is how much can you tolerate, withstand, hold on your plate, is very much defined by my household and in particular, the women in my life. How much my grandmother tolerated of her husband, of people taking advantage of her, how much my mom can withstand, emotional turmoil, that is the measurement of what a great woman you are. You’re so courageous because you put up with him or this and you take care of your kids and are so tired. I have a tattoo on my arm that says Berraca and it’s something my grandmother always says. It has this layer of you have to put up with all this shit and push through the pain. But I’m undoing that, because I see its benefits, but not as a constant. So what I’ve realized is that definition of courage is a survival definition. And these women who have passed that down to me have had to survive and I don’t have to operate in a mode of survival for everything. If anything, there are certain events where I can relinquish that and use a different definition of what courage is because using the example that I’ve been brought up to believe like how much you can tolerate, using that for every scenario in my life is not beneficial and can be harmful.

JR: Is courage the absence of fear or the acknowledgment of it and going forward anyway?

KL: It’s acknowledging it and going forward anyway. To say that there isn’t any fear, who are you lying to? Everyone has fear. Even people who come off as confident have insecurities and fears. It’s like jumping off a cliff into water: You acknowledge the fear that it’s high, but you jump anyway.

JR: How do you learn how to trust yourself with your creative work?

KL: I used to not trust myself and would change everything in my work. Now I catch myself doubting myself and I remind myself the last time I trusted someone else’s creative vision and it went wrong. So it gets easier to hear the thought, decipher if it's valid or not, and then follow what you want. That came from exposure of working with mediocre white men. Because off of impostor syndrome which so many of us have, there have been so many times where you think they know more than you because they’re in the field, they went to film school, this and that and then when I start working with these people, I see their flaws or lack of knowledge or are figuring it out as they go along. But they have the privilege of people thinking they’re the expert or qualified and I see the illusion of, “Oh they know everything.” is gone. I take a moment to remind myself of what the landscape is with white men and their mediocrity and I think about the logistics, what’s factual, I’m here and I’ve done so much without the validation of a film school or this and that. I’ve done that on your own.

JR: What are some of your own personal strategies to help you tackle any fear you encounter?

KL: Taking a beat, but also my girlfriends. Group chats are essential. There are so many moments that my girlfriend will reach out to the group chat and say, “Hey, I want to apply for this job, but I don’t think I’m qualified.” And we say, “Girl! What the fuck! Apply!” I know recently I had a moment where someone forwarded me a job opportunity to work on a series and you needed a director and producer title for film. And I only have an associate producer credit for one doc, everything else was digital. I don’t think I should apply. And my friends told me, “Don’t eliminate yourself before they eliminate you. Think of all the mediocre men who are going to submit their stuff half ass who don’t have the qualification. What do you have to lose submitting your stuff?”

JR: Fill in the blank: Courage is ________

KL: Love

JR: How do you recognize your own courage?

KL: I would say the first step would be to do some deep self reflection. So realizing what it is that you fear and why you fear it. I don’t think you can be courageous without knowing what it is that is or might be holding you back. Once you self reflect, I think you either have to jump off the cliff yourself and become uninhibited or have a collective group of people who know you the best who are going to push you off the cliff. Sometimes we can’t, sometimes we have so much baggage and trauma that we’re gonna hold ourselves back. So sometimes you do need the help of others to push you off there. From there, just keep swimming and moving on to the next thing.

JR: What does courage feel like?

KL: Liberating. Because if I’m describing courage as acting from my heart and letting go of my brain, logic, and reasoning, then it feels liberating to now tap into this new facet of who I am.

Joe Rodriguez: How would you define love?

Johnny Sibillly: I would say love is a practice of giving of one's self and receiving of another.  It’s a practice of taking care of yourself and taking care of other people.

JR: You’re in a relationship right now, how did you guys meet? How does he make you feel?

JS: We met at a brunch with mutual friends and then we lived on opposite sides of the country and kept in touch from the day after onward and we started flying back and forth to meet each other. So we did long distance for a month until we met again. He makes me feel invincible, he makes me feel as if I am worthy of love and as if my love is worthy of having with other people. He makes me feel like everything that ever happened to me was for a reason. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, you watch movies and think, “That doesn’t exist! Love hurts and it’s hard!” And I’ve never felt that with him, it’s always been kind, gentle, communicative and you want it to exist but you don’t think it actually exists until it comes into your life and he definitely changed me forever.

JR: Do you ever have this fear of “When is the other shoe going to drop?”

JS: Yes, when we first started dating, that’s all I thought about because everything was great and people lead us to believe, and we’re conditioned to think that when people are kind to you, there’s an ulterior motive or when people are good to you there’s gotta be a reason or there’s something wrong with the situation because we’re so used to accepting love that people have given to us. So if guys were really shitty to me in the past, I was just waiting for when is he gonna be shitty, when am I going to find out? I had to stop thinking about that because it got in the way of just enjoying my relationship. Because I’m not saying there will never be issues or we won’t have problems, but I think about that Maya Angelou quote, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” A lot of times we use this when people aren’t good for us but I think we should think of that when people are good to us. If someone continues to show their kindness you have no choice but to believe them because that’s what they’re giving you.

JR: You guys are in a long-distance relationship. Is it hard? 

JS: I spoke to a friend who was in a long-distance relationship for a while and he would tell me that “If you think about it like it’s hard, it’s going to be hard. Before the internet existed, there would be people’s husbands who would go off to war and we’re so used to instant gratification in this world, that we forget that our soulmate might be out there but they might not be within 5 miles driving distance. 

So I was single for a long time in New York and I thought to myself, “Oh I’m just gonna look for something closer.” Even though the six years I was in New York, I didn’t find it within the confines of my city. So if this person loves me, so what if they live a couple thousand miles away? They fill that expectation that you have for a partner. So yeah, there are times where I wish he was here so we could cuddle or we could go on a date but we make it work. Sometimes we’ll go on dates, and we’ll go watch a movie basically at the same time to go watch the same movie by ourselves.

JR: For people who don’t believe in long distance, what would you say?

JS: I would say communication in any relationship is important, but communication in long-distance is especially important. I think anyone entering a long term relationship takes planning because he works a full-time job, and luckily I’m an actor so I can make my schedule a little more, but there has to be scheduling. In the beginning, take it easy. Because all your friends will be like. “Who’s moving where?” Slow down, just see where it goes, and as you get deeper, then you can have those conversations because nobody wants to be in a long-distance relationship. Just like you have a career and personal goals, the same goals need to be in place when you’re in a relationship.

JR: How has love changed you? How has your love and current relationship changed you as a person?

JS: I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. So meeting William opened up my world up to the possibilities that other dreams of mine can become realities as well. That being in love with someone, I can understand the world of wanting to take care of people a little more. The loyalty of being willing to fight for someone that you love. I thought I was in love before but when you’re in love, I feel like I’m just a much more sober person if that makes sense. I feel like I'm able to be more present with my friends and with myself and I think when you’re a loving person, a person who seeks and wants love, that can take up a lot of your time because you’re focused on it. But when you have it, it kind of frees you up to do these other things. 

There are people who don’t want to find love and are busy in their own worlds and that’s awesome. I really do believe love comes to you when you are ready for it because, and I hate saying this because I feel like everyone says it but nobody means this, but I was in a place in my life where I wasn’t for the first time, looking for love and I think him being across the country made it easier for me to say “Well that’s probably not gonna happen.” It took out the physical aspect that we couldn’t feel or touch each other. So we had to communicate and get to know each other, some people don’t do that. I know I’ve been in relationships where I rush to the bedroom and you really don’t know this person so the spark is really gone and it’s changed me for the better. He is so different than me, I‘m a very passionate person and I can get angry quickly. He centers and calms me down. He’s a great partner.

JR: Do you think people are generous enough with their love?

JS: Yes, I do believe people are generous with their love but then they’re taught not to be because they’re either hurt or taken advantage of. I think everyone is born with a giving spirit, but I think the world as we go along strips us of that. I think Marianne Williamson talks about returning to love because love is always there, but people shut themselves out because of bad relationships, parents, or just everyday situations closes us off to love so until we can bring that back, we can’t get back to being generous with it if it’s closed off.

JR: Should people protect their heart from getting hurt?

JS: The fear of getting hurt is sometimes bigger than the pain itself because it’s as if you’re protecting yourself. It’s like wearing armor or a bulletproof vest to sleep. You can be in no harm whatsoever but you're scared you’re gonna get shot every night. The fear of that breaks you down more than the pain does, so when you are heartbroken, you beat yourself up because you say, “This is what I get for being vulnerable and finally letting my guard down!” Or you could take it from the mindset of “I did the best I could do, I gave it my all, and I’m gonna learn from this.” 

Every relationship we have is a learning experience. I’ve been with exes and I thought, “What a waste of time that was.” But it wasn’t because I learned something about myself. Every person you come into contact with, every relationship you have whether it be a friendship or love interest, you learn something about yourself. So if we take the good aspects of what came from these relationships, even if it’s learning that people can be assholes, I think learning that is important and that’s an easier said than done kind of thing. When you’re hurt by one person, you shouldn’t bring it into your next relationship and that’s something Will and I discussed when we got in a relationship because I was saying something that was triggering for me because of something else and he said, “I appreciate your experience, but that's not me and I’m not him.” So we have to start all over with some sort of boundaries.

JR: Do you believe love is truly unconditional?

JS: That has to come from within. Can you know all the worst parts of yourself and still say, “I am beautiful, I am worthy.” Before you even think about anyone else accepting who you are, you have to think: Am I able to accept the best and worst parts of myself unconditionally? I think when we first start dating someone we put our best foot forward, we hide our crazy. Or we can just be ourselves and you work through it. I remember Will and I got into an argument and my first thought was, “Well this is the beginning of the end. Because once we start fighting, that’s it.” He sat me down on the bed and told me “I just want to let you know, we might have disagreements, but you’re the one I want to have disagreements with, not anybody else.” So I do believe that that in itself is unconditional love. I’m telling you no matter what we’re fighting about, we’re gonna work on this together. 

That’s the thing because we’re so scared of things ending or being heartbroken, we kind of self-sabotage. It’s that “We accept the love we think we deserve.” If I look in the mirror every day and wish I were ten pounds lighter, if I tell that to myself every day, your brain is going to interpret that as normal and it’s not normal. Love is a practice because some days you’re not going to be good at it. And I tell WIll this, “I choose to love you.” You don’t just fall in love with something. Love is not some mythical, magical thing that just happens to you. We choose to call our friends, and we choose to love and that’s why people don’t want to take responsibility for mistakes they make or hurt they cause people because they’re like, “That’s how I am and this is how it is.” No, you choose to do all those things and love is one of those choices. 

JR: Are you in a place in your life where you can confidently say that you love yourself?

JS: Yes, and today I really do. There are some days where I’m not my best friend, but that's also from years of making that a normalized behavior. People joke and make fun of self-help and therapy but if you’re honest with yourself and are able to have that inner dialogue, that’s super important. I remember an acting coach gave me an assignment to sit in a bathtub with water with no phone, no music for 30 minutes and if you were able to be with yourself for that long without going crazy, then that’s one step closer to self-love and being able to be with yourself, because a lot of times we can’t be alone. We can’t sit with our thoughts cause it drives us crazy. 

I think self-love is an intense practice and that goes before any relationship because you can substitute self-love with someone else and that’s why a lot of relationships don’t thrive because you’re dependent on someone else to fill your cup when you can do it yourself.

JR: How do we prevent that dependency?

JS: When I was single, I would do things to better my relationship with myself. So having a conversation in my head about what my goals were, what I wanted to achieve. Self-love is not just saying, “I’m special, I’m pretty.” It’s treating yourself if you did well on an interview. Self-love is the practice of being able to be alone. I think another reason people are upset when they lose love is that they feel like it was a replacement for something they were missing. So I’d say single people or people fresh out of a relationship: Invest in yourself, set goals for yourself. Even in a relationship, you should still set your own personal goals. There was a point where I missed Will so much and said, “Maybe I’ll give up acting and just move in with you.” He said, “Absolutely not. You stick to your goals, you stay in that city and make it happen.” He could’ve been a partner that said, “Yeah, move up here!” But he thought further into the future. When you’re a whole person and have your shit going on, it’s a lot harder to fall into the dependency.

JR: Does one type of love ever take priority over another?

JS: I think self-love takes priority because like if RuPaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love anyone else?” You need to put on your oxygen mask before you put on someone else’s. If you love yourself, that will emanate towards every relationship that you have.

JR:  Which city are you more in love with?

JS: New York

JR: Describe what romantic love feels like in 3-5 words

JS: Comfortable and natural.

JR: What does self-love feel like in 3-5 words?

JS: Empowering and undefinable.

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As far as where love fits in my life, there’s room for it absolutely. But it is simultaneously terrifying. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been in love but to know that it wasn’t right at one point. But the feeling doesn’t and never really goes away. For the past couple of years, I’ve been investing most of my life on myself in all facets. Whether that’s working on my emotional and mental health, upping my meditation, and getting to a point in my life where I not only like myself but can appreciate and in some aspects, love who I am, despite my circumstances and despite the people that are and aren’t around me.

I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I’ve become so much more self-reliant and sufficient that to give of myself to someone and vice versa fills me with worry. Because if we are just giving and taking from each other, how do we know how big or small of pieces that we’re giving and receiving? Then somehow your lines are blurred and suddenly things don’t feel like they belong to you sometimes like they're now part of this duo that’s been formed, but that’s the goal, right? That’s what everyone wants to have - a shared life with somebody, shared experiences, shared things and shared activities. I think back at my interview with Fran about trying to train ourselves to not live co-dependently but interdependently and drawing those lines in clear bold that your identity is to not be comprised of just a relationship and that the other person in your life is simply adding to the beauty that is your life. The special someone is an added bonus who might give what you lack and maybe enriches your life that much more!

Off of that, I do believe love is real. I believe in the many forms love takes on. From familial love, platonic, romantic, and self-love. In my life, I’ve found it more important to be in love with yourself in the least narcissistic way. I still find myself every morning and evening when I have to face myself in the mirror and remind myself of all my good qualities, that I’m deserving and worthy, and that I do have flaws and all those are FINE. Because they’re all mine and nobody else’s. I think that’s most empowering of all when developing a love for yourself. Owning everything that you are and aren’t, all your good and bad.  

While being single, Valentine's Day has always meant something different every year. Whether I was happy for other people but sad for myself, happy that love exists, or just found a direct disdain for the holiday. This year, I’m recognizing the moments to revel that a thing like love exists. This intangible thing that lends itself to affection and adoration for another person or even yourself. To be single, for me, it’s revelling in my singledom, my independence, and appreciating myself, where I’ve been and who I am.

For me at the moment, what love means to me is this adoration, attention, and affection that you give and receive. Love is that thing that weaves in and out of our lives and allows us the opportunity to change ourselves, open our eyes. Because to give yourself to someone else, whether that be a parent, a sibling, a friend, a lover, and yourself to give a piece of your heart and say, “I love you, I value you, I will be here whenever and for whatever.” That’s powerful. And I’m going to go out and celebrate the beauty of that. The beauty that the idea of that exists and this beautiful thing that so many songs, movies, literature is predicated upon. I’ll walk to work and try to bask in the sunlight and take in as many deep breaths of gratitude that I exist, that I am who I am, that I am complete on my own, that love exists, and that love is all around. I’m not sure if that sounds naive or cheesy but being cheesy is just being vulnerable which is cool too. I hope you have a happy Valentines Day and tell people who you care about that you appreciate them while not forgetting to bask in yourself because you’re worth it.

Love, Joe

Joe Rodriguez: What does love mean to you?

Fran Tirado: You know what’s so funny? So I’m seeing this guy right now who asked me recently or said something about love specifically and I said, “Oh I’ve never been in love.” And he said, “Why would you say that that doesn't make any sense.” He said love is a spectrum. I think love is this amorphous blob of things that can hold a lot or not very much at all. HIstorically love has much cultural weight to it that it doesn’t need to have because of the ways we think about marriage, monogamy, the one, the end all be all. I think it’s such a limited way of thinking about how we find ultimate affection for people because if you’re just holding out for just one person, I think it’s limiting yourself to so much. What if you have 10 ones out there? What if there are so many people you could have an intense bond with but you’re cutting yourself off from it?

JR: When I’ve previously spoken with you, you weren’t really much into the idea of romantic love and called it lust or passion. Why would you substitute lust and passion for love?

FT: I think lust, passion, and sex have much harder lines to them. It’s so much easier to hold on to a concept like lust or sex. Love is so untenable to me or difficult to grasp that sex and lust feel like the low hanging fruit. To me, sex is just easier. I think that I am very privy to having partners that I like to call a “situationship.” Someone you’re in a relationship with but you don’t want the weight of a relationship with. An insignificant other is a term I like to use. Not that the person themselves are insignificant, just that I don’t need to be beholden to them and vice versa.

JR: Do you think people in relationships think they owe something to the other person?

FT: Oh, yeah always. I also think that we are cultured to be very co-dependent in our relationships when we really should be interdependent. We should be thinking about our partners with autonomy. I always think of myself as my own one and I think you have to be good with yourself before you can be good with anyone else. I think that’s very much so true even when that comes to love and relationships and that’s why I love that Eartha Kitt quote, “It's all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self-love deficit.” If everyone had that attitude towards love I think it would create more interdependent and more stable relationships.

JR: Do you think the power of self-love is more important?

FT: Everyone is different, but personally, I would say yes. I would say self-love is a priority and should take precedence over romantic love. But not everyone functions the same way. Some people need people in order to figure themselves out and that’s okay. Some people think they need people to figure out themselves and they actually don’t. They should figure themselves out first and I think a lot of people fall into that camp.

JR: What is your favorite form of self-love?

FT: Sometimes I’ll go to whole foods and I’ll spend like, $45 on constructing a really nice cheese board and eat it myself while I watch a movie while and have a glass of wine.

JR: Loving yourself is the end goal, but you don’t go from 0-100 just like that. So how do you learn to even begin to like yourself?

FT: I’m hesitant to answer because it’s been such a long journey. I have not liked myself for a very long time, and that is because as queer people, we are taught to hate ourselves over and over again. So in a lot of ways, my own practice and act in radical self-love is simply a practice in undoing years and years of hatred towards myself. I feel like sometimes that self-love is making up for that lost time. It’s a daily practice in very small mental tricks where you’re constantly telling yourself that you’re not scum.

If you commit (and its easier said than done and won’t happen immediately,) but once you are able to commit to and play the mental game of telling yourself every single day or hour of your waking life that you are worth whatever it is you’re pursuing, that you’re worth whatever job you’re up for, you’re worth whatever partner you’re going for, you’re worth whatever clothes you want to wear. The mental practice of telling yourself, “Yes you can totally do that.” Sometimes you just need to own it and fully gaslight yourself and say, “I’m absolutely worth whatever it is I’m pursuing.” And the practice of doing that over and over again will hopefully help you like yourself and in turn, love yourself.

JR: Where are you investing your love right now?

FT: I think for the last few years, it’s definitely been me. In the most recent year though, I’ve really tried to focus a lot of my love on my friends. I think my friend, Alok V Menon has a lot of amazing thoughts of what it means to love friends as fiercely and intimately as much as a romantic partner. We have celebrations for marriages but we don’t have celebratory unions or ceremonies to advocate for people who might've been there for longer.

JR: Describe what self-love feels like in 3-5 words?

FT: An insistent and unending practice.

2/11 - Fran Tirado Feature

2/18 - Johnny Sibilly Interview

2/13 - ‘All Around” - A new poem

2/21 - Audio Journal: A new audio series

What I have scheduled will be uploaded on that date and I’ll have possible impromptu new content coming around should inspiration strike / if I can make time. I’m happy to accept submissions if you’d like to write or show me what love looks like to you in a photo!

Near & Dear is a new page to explore the values that we hold close to our hearts and how those affect us. It’s still in early stages, but I hope to continue what I’ve been doing for about 3 years, interviewing folks about their experiences and figuring out the how and why to who they are. Because who you are today doesn’t just happen just cause. You are you because of the people, experiences, heartaches, and triumphs that you and I go through every day.

Often and now again, I have a creative itch I end up scratching myself and have felt compelled to create opportunities for myself when one wasn’t handed or accessible to me. I’ve always wanted to work in media, specifically in journalism and storytelling in various mediums, but here I am! The editor, writer, producer, researcher, and host.

I created Near & Dear as a way to talk about universal themes that apply to all of us and how it’s affected our lives.

Growing up, I would feel the need to all of a sudden talk about ~deep topics like love, life, sadness, etc. and people would get turned off that I would openly want to talk about something that’s so vulnerable so casually.

But I feel like, in these trying times of America, I think it’s more important than ever to talk about the values and feelings, experiences, and people that help shape who we ultimately are as people. The why of it all has always intrigued me and now I’ve decided to bring that mentality and my love for interviews and storytelling in a format that’s all my own, which I’m excited and slightly scared about because to trust yourself and an idea head-on is the worst, but doing the thing itself takes away the fear of it.

So here we are at the debut of Near & Dear Magazine. Where every month will have a corresponding theme that connects to a value I think we all share. You will see possible fun posts written by myself, and of course, interviews of people that I may know or may get to know, and maybe you’ll have the privilege like myself, to discover a side fo them that you might not have seen before. I’m always open to submissions if you want to share a story of your own. 

Again, a genuine thank you if you stopped by, a greater thank you if you made it to the end of this note, and endless thank yous and gratitude if you end up coming back.