Hey all!

We had the pleasure of speaking with Loida Vasquez, who is Native to Los Angeles, California. In the 90’s, she was an internal investigator for large corporations before returning back to school and obtaining a B.S. in Sustainable Agriculture at Maharishi University of Management. Loida is currently working as a consultant and teacher to heal the world's soils and return life to it so that the food we grow on it is healthy and nutritious. She’s passionate about justice, clean food, and nature.

Through our conversation with Loida, we uncovered her story as a lesbian and Latina woman growing up in Los Angeles as she learned to come to terms with all of these identities. Loida reflected on something we believe we have all felt at some point—just how utterly exhausting it can be to constantly pretend to be someone you’re not. Loida reflected, “It takes too much energy, too much effort, to try to impress people. One of the things that I learned when I was 15 is that it just feels so much better to be liked for who you are.”

And we completely agree! But this ideal of complete self-acceptance can still be so much easier said than done. Loida, however, reframed it for us in a way that highlights why it really doesn’t make much sense to put so much pressure on pleasing everyone we meet, and we can’t believe that we have never thought about it in this way! Dydine said, “We don't like everybody, so why would we want to be liked by everybody?”

Think about it—really, go back and read that question Loida poses again! The very qualities that make you likeable to one person are in fact surely likely to make you unlikeable to another.

Honesty can be helpful or hurtful;

Joking around can be inappropriate or needed;

Confidence can be arrogant or attractive.

If we are so caught up in pleasing everyone, we are bound to lose the qualities that make us who we are.

But what if what makes us who we are is not rewarded in society? Loida encountered this too, particularly as a woman in business. She reflected, “I'm a minority three times [as a Latina, a lesbian, and a woman], but I think the biggest challenge that I encountered in the business world was because I was a woman...”

Unfortunately, the wage differentials Loida speaks of are by no means resolved and men still hold the pen while writing the paycheck: Today, median earnings of women are 79 percent of what men are paid, and there are actually fewer large companies run by women than by men named John!!

We so much enjoyed our conversation with Loida and we encourage you to listen to the full podcast here in order to unpack more of Loida’s story and hear her advice firsthand on how women must continue to fight for our value (!!).

Written by: Isabella Harnick