January 2, 2023 • 38 mins
Today my friend Lani lives very authentically, but she has struggled with perception and invisibility throughout her life. She unpacks the complexities of living a rough childhood that took her around the world and the nuances of her identity as a half-Korean, half-white woman who never looked like the rest of her family. She gets real about the power dynamics of past relationships and talks about how she hopes to maintain a full range of humanity and sexuality as a soon-to-be mom. From a disability that grounded her, to an OnlyFans page that empowers her, you’ll hear about all the things that have made her who she is in her strength, her power, and her joy.
“If I get rejected and I've showed up as my whole self, that's such a blessing. It's not about me not being good enough. It just means that they know something about themselves and see something in me that isn't a good fit. Awesome. Cool. How great.” –Lani
If you need to talk to someone about any instance of abuse there are National Hotlines you can call.
Creator & Host: Maria Fernanda Diez
Executive Producers: Gisselle Bances, Anna Stumpf, Nikki Ettore
Producer: Dylan Heuer
Associate Producer: Claudia Marticorena
Original Theme Music: Tony Bruno
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I hope I do cringe it some of the things
I say today because I hope that I keep growing
and changing. You know, this is who I am today,
with the information I have today, with the experiences I
have today. I love that quote that we just heard
from my friend Lonnie. She is so comfortable with changing,
and yet while she says that, she's also incredibly grounded
(00:22):
in herself in the present. I think that's one of
the most beautiful things about Lonnie is that she's constantly
allowing herself to grow. Lonnie and I met back in
about two thousand seventeen while I was performing a solo
piece and she was photographing the event. When you see Lonnie,
(00:45):
she's like one of the coolest people in the room
kind of thing. She is not that tall, but feels tall,
you know, like she's got that energy that's super tall,
super present. She's tattoos on her arms, on her legs,
she's got a couple of face tattoos. Even the moment
I got off stage, she came up to me and
(01:05):
introduced herself. I make friends very easily because I'm willing
to just say, hey, I like you, we should be friends.
And I have literally said that to adults. In the
last year, probably in the last month. You were one
of the first people who I met who was just
like super direct. Yeah, and I like to give that.
I love giving a compliment to somebody on the street.
There's so much joy in that, and it's free, and
(01:26):
we can just be loving and kind to people. I
was just like, WHOA, this person just lives very authentically,
or at least that's what I perceived even early on.
I think sometimes we think of confident people and loving
and outgoing people and we don't necessarily consider everything that's
(01:50):
led them to that place. And some of the most
brilliant lights have been through the darkest times. Something that
jumps out to me is Lonnie not only dealt with
a lot of outward forces of perception, but she was
also often unseen and had to make decisions for herself
in order to move forward in her own life. No
(02:11):
one was going to save her. You're going to hear
things from her youth, from her teenage years, and her
adulthood and all the things that have made her who
she is in her strength, her power, and her joy.
Just as a warning, we are going to talk about
abuse and sexual violence. Briefly in this episode, So please
take care of yourself the way you need to. Welcome
(02:34):
to When You're Invisible. My name is Maria Fernande. In
today's world, we love to tell stories about people who
have reached the top, like people who have achieved positions
of cloud wealth power. On this show, I won't be
doing that. When You're Invisible is my love letter to
the working class and others who are seemingly invisible in
(02:55):
our society. Helped to build a community here that will
inspire you to have generous conversations with others that are
different from you, conversations that might help you see life
in an entirely different way. What was young Lonnie like?
Where did she come from? This is like an incredible,
(03:18):
full human who has this pursuit of authenticity with kindness
and generosity that I'm like, what was the origin? My
grandparents on my mother's side are Southern Baptist Christian missionaries.
My mother she was in Korea from the time she
was four until she was fourteen with my grandparents. She
was the oldest of six. They adopted to have Korean boys.
(03:42):
Then they came back to the States and she went
back at twenty four and was there from thirty four.
She's white. The background is like Irish Scottish, but she
was raised with so much Korean culture, spoke Korean fluently.
She was a midwife and Korea. She worked with expats there,
She dated Korean men, and she got pregnant with me
at eight and had me at twenty nine, and she
(04:04):
knew the person that she was having me with was
not going to be a part of my life in
that way. They had dated whatever casually. I think I'm
like a diet for him. Fail I expeculate this is
what happened. No, I think she told me at some point.
I just don't remember for sure. I could be wrong,
but anyways, she didn't put him on the birth certificate.
She knew that it was not going to be something
(04:26):
that was okay in his world. It was a very
big deal that I wasn't going to be fully Korean
and that he had gotten a white woman pregnant. Basically,
and still to this day, there's only one person that
knows about me in his world, one person in forty
years wild that's it. Have you met his sister? Have
you met him? I have met him. He has children
(04:48):
that are probably late teens, early twenties. Now he got
married later, so you know, it was weird. I was like,
how am I supposed to grow up and look like anybody?
Because there's nobody that looks like Race played a huge
part in my life, Like, right off the back, had
I been Korean, it might have been very different, right.
It was a very big deal that I wasn't going
(05:08):
to be fully Korean and that he had gotten a
white woman pregnant basically, and so did you grow up
in Korea? So I lived there till I was about six.
Then we moved to d C. And we lived there
for a couple of years. My mom had a boyfriend there.
I traveled all over Asia as a kid. I had
an incredible childhood in the sense that I lived so
(05:28):
many places before I was even ten years old. I
got to see so many different cultures. I got to
see true poverty and be a part of life in
such a different way than we live it in America.
I got to see like a dentist on the side
of the street in Pakistan doing dental work and that
was just normal. And I was left alone a lot
(05:50):
to like play and imagine, and I wasn't heavily guarded.
I just did ship, and that's something I feel like
we miss out on as children here because of like
safety concerns and this and that. So I got to
live in Hawaii on a farm. I got to live
in Pakistan during the Gulf War. It was that like.
I was there with my grandparents. They were on a mission.
(06:13):
It was beautiful. I remember the way that the lightning
would hit the mountains and they would all light up.
I got to see really incredible things. I can't speak
for all people. I just know that I don't believe
in going to other countries and telling them that their
culture and their religion is wrong and that they're going
(06:34):
to go to hell, you know what I mean. It's
their job. That was their job, and they believed deeply
and passionately about it. Do I agree with how I
got there or why I was there, No, of course not.
Even as a small child, it was very confused by
all of it. I would get left with my grandparents
for three months at a time, which is unusual at
(06:57):
seven eight years old, and I think with all of
that ability to travel and see the world, I'm grateful
for in some ways, but it also left me with
the desire first stability, a home base. I have never
lived in a place for more than three years. To
this day, I've lived in New York for eleven years,
but I have never lived in one dwelling, one space
(07:17):
for more than three years. So having that experience as
a kid, whether it was changing schools constantly, having to
make new friends constantly, which all gave me personality traits
that I have today, I relate to that a lot
because I spent summers with my family in Mexico. My
parents would ship us partially because they are like, we
don't know about our visa situation, so if you ever
(07:38):
had to leave with us to go to Mexico, we
don't want you completely fish out of the water struggling.
So I spent time in Mexico, and then we moved
from Ithaca. And in Ithaca we had three different spaces,
so I was there until always seven. We moved around
three times and then always apartments, and then when we
(07:59):
moved to Minneso, it was another three homes. And then
I moved to New York, and then in New York,
I've had like how many places, which is an adult right?
As an adult, it's insane and so like something to me,
I've always been like grateful for like the ability to
have seen some of the world in a different way,
But there's a feeling of being more of a nomad
(08:19):
than having roots. And I think there's also for us,
there was a lot of financial insecurity, and so even
though there was a lot of travel, some of it
was work for my mom, some of it was childcare
for my mom, And I think that anxiety that she
felt definitely came down to me too. And at some
point she built her business in Seattle and she's done
(08:40):
actually really well for herself now and it's amazing to see.
But yeah, I think that definitely affects that feeling of
like are we going to be okay versus just we
know we're okay. And I think that that has played
and does play into how we manage money and live
our lives as adults. Remember travel, laying as an adult
(09:01):
for the first time and only being able to like
afford ninety nine cent bread and tomatoes for nutrition, and
being in hostile and then realizing I'm like my parents
made it seem like we were super stable and like
we had spam sandwiches every single day of the road.
Trip and cereal. My grandmother was notorious for stealing like
bread and having a jar of nutella in her purse.
(09:23):
I remember one time I was thirteen, we were in
Amsterdam and we split one piece of pizza between the
three of us, and then my grandma had this packet,
like the sugar packet of like soup with hot water. Yeah.
Getting to talk to Lonnie about our economic situations felt
really good because there's some similarities between our upbringings that
(09:46):
I haven't really vocalized too many people before. Both of
us also relate on the facts that depending on where
we were, our race was perceived differently and our ethnicity
was perceived differently. Honestly, we wouldn't have thought about our
race the way we do had it not been for
other people putting their perceptions on us. So just thinking
(10:06):
about it too, I'm like, you grew up with like
your white side of the family, and then they were
from the South Mobile Alabama, So what is that like
being biracial with that? The race thing is weird because
it's both sides. Like I was rejected from my Korean
side and then I was fetishized and sexualized and abused
by my white side. For my Korean side. My grandfather
(10:29):
fetishized half Korean kids, so that was a thing. So
I do not speak to anybody on that side of
my family except for my mother. At this point in
my life. I want to take a moment to acknowledge
the fact that Lonnie does mention her abuse. We don't
get into it, and I think it's important sometimes to
give people the space not to dwell on it. We're
(10:51):
just going to allow it to breathe and just acknowledge
that it's part of the fabric of who she's become
as a person, and ultimately she's connecting it back to
how she perceived her identity around race. It's really interesting
because I don't feel my race here in New York
City super often, like I just exists amongst our people.
(11:16):
There's a lot of mixed people in different ways and
capacities here, But when I travel in the flyover States,
I do feel it more. But I felt it most
heavily as a child, and I didn't have the tools
or anybody working with me as to why I was
different and why I felt the way I felt and
why people were talking to me the way they were.
(11:37):
I also recognize, like the huge amount of privilege I
have in many intersections. Yes, I'm not a percent white,
and I definitely don't look white passing in any capacity,
but I'm also not black, and I'm also not dealing
with a lot of those stereotypes that are so insidious
in our culture. But as a kid, it was like,
(11:59):
we're did you get her? My mom would be like
where do you think? You know? But like, I look
nothing like my mom. I'm darker than my mom and
my dad, Like I just came out like a little
brown I don't know, well, yeah, so toasty side up.
And then you know, being in the South, like what
is she Mexican? You know, like people just wanting to
know what I was and you know why I was
(12:23):
with them, So you know, in that way, yes, I
was treated differently than my cousins. And eventually, you know,
that all came out at some point when I was
about fifteen, and that's why there's a huge divide in
our family and I don't speak to you know. And
then I was very confused and thought that I was
just going to grow out of my little brown body
(12:46):
and hair, and I would draw pictures. I really thought
that I was going to grow up and like I
was going to be like a blonde, green eyed teenager,
you know, because nobody really talked to me about it.
And then I ended up in public school, which was
so good for me, you know. I was able to
have a variation of people again. And we lived in
a predominantly Native American not predominantly Native American, but a
(13:08):
lot more Native and Indigenous people than in most parts
of the country right in Seattle, and so I would
school a lot of Native kids, and like I was
very Native passing, that was what people assumed when I
was younger, more so than Asian. And so then that
felt good to just have people that looked like me
around and my representation because again, remember it was early nineties,
(13:30):
late eighties, there was nothing on TV that looked like me.
There was nothing on a magazine that looked like me.
My like little cousin got like a Hawaiian barbie and
was like, oh my god, it looks like you. That
was my first moment of representation. Representation is super important,
it's necessary, and then there's the lifestyle of being constantly
(13:50):
like doing the work internally, but like even representations, when
you think about a child and how they mimic behavior
and then we as adults, like you were saying, with bias,
we place our bio or what we even think is possible.
You know when you look at like docmic Stuffin's the
Little Black Doctor. Yes, you know what I mean, and
like the difference and how many little girls decided they
(14:10):
might want to be doctors because of that TV show.
There's just crazy statistics to show that when we show
women and women of color or people of color in
roles that they don't usually see, then they start to
see themselves in those roles and start thinking I've got shows,
start thinking it's possible to do some of these things.
And I also just love the idea of just having
(14:31):
representation in fantasy worlds and also where we don't have
to talk about our struggles. We can just succeed or
we can live out these crazy lives. And getting to
talk to Lonnie about representation helped remind me of how
much we make those choices for ourselves and that we
(14:51):
can decipher what others are saying and be like, yeah,
that's what you think, but this is who I am.
And I'm really lucky to have met Lonnie I did.
It's incredible to be her friend, not only because we
get to explore ourselves in a safe space, but also
because she's constantly on a journey and going through a
lot and so open with where her life is today.
(15:12):
So we'll talk about how she is as an adult
in this present moment. After this break and we're back,
I'm pregnant. I'm like burping. I keep thinking I'm going
to cry. You are building and creating another human being,
(15:36):
and even if you weren't. As you all heard, Lonnie
is pregnant after a very difficult miscarriage last year. She's
having a baby boy, and with that comes a lot
of joy, but also some complicated emotions. I'm really in
tune with my body, you know. I've had a lot
of health stuff that I think makes me even more
like in body mind awareness. It took me a while
(15:59):
to get did about the pregnancy, which surprised me, especially
after having a miscarriage. I was like, Oh, why am
I not over the moon? You're really wanted to get
through this summer. We got married, this summer, his mom
passed this summer. It was just a lot, and I
was sick, like I wanted a little bit more time
with my partner before stepping into this next spot. You know,
(16:20):
but I also believe in the magic that is whatever
is happening is happening, and that's okay. But it's like
you're human being who had plans and ideas, and I
think that's something too, to like allow space for so much.
I do want to talk about your Only Fans and
all of that into for those who don't know. Only
(16:43):
Fans is this app that started off for artists to
post behind the scene footage for their followers and then
eventually became or always was, in tandem, an app for
sex workers to share their work and create a following
in subscription base. Lonnie's Only Fans is pretty spicy and
sixy you are mom, You are an incredible woman, and
(17:07):
like this is also a world that you wouldhabit and
that I think not a lot of people talk about
that intersection. Yeah, and it's so like weird because like
I like how to Creampie and got pregnant? Come on, right,
it's so weird, like we literally have sex to make
babies and then all of a sudden, you make a
baby and you're supposed to like not be sexualized, but
(17:30):
then you better keep having sex with your husband or else,
you know, like this weird fucking thing. Right. We started
the Only Fans last year and I stay a week
because he was definitely helping behind the scenes for me.
And we did it because I thought I was pregnant
and I was like, let's make some money. I've been
toying around with the idea for a long time, so
we did and it was really fun, and then it
(17:52):
was hard when I had the miscarriage and like keeping
up with it, but I like dropped off when I
got pregnant. This time, it's a lot of work, right,
and I love making making content, but there's all the
other steps like editing and posting and you know, and
then I still have another job and other responsibilities. And
(18:13):
then if I'm not feeling sexy or sexual or whatever,
it gets harder emotionally to get into that headspace and
create that content and do that work. Wow, that isn't
really interesting to think about, yeah, because it's like it
is emotional labor in a big way that I don't
(18:33):
know that I realized before the sex work I had
done previous too Only Fans was I danced my way
through photo school, so I was a stripper. I just
like weird foot fetish porn before I was even eighteen.
Not so healthy situation. That was like literally like recording
stuff and putting on VHS tapes, building an HTML site
(18:55):
and the mailing people there VHS tapes like that just
dated me. I love how Lonnie talks about her sex
work and her sexuality and everything under the sun in
regards to that. Because I grew up Mexican Catholic, which
means it's super conservative, we may or may not talk
(19:15):
about sex. My sex talk was sex as fund but
only with the person you marry, and kind of implied
that the person I should marry should be a man,
and so like that was it. While that's changed, I
realized there was a lot of difficulties when it came
to learning how to love and respect your body and
(19:36):
its own pleasure, and it wasn't something that was ever
talked about, especially for women. Hearing Lonnie talk about how
she enjoys her work and the work she's done, and
the way she talks about all of this so matter
of factly is super free. I grew up very sheltered.
Oh yeah, I was on the run. What is that like?
I don't know anything other than that, right, so like
(19:58):
I was out of the house at fourteen and then
back for a minute, and then I left at fifteen
or sixteen with my thirty year old boss from Seattle
to Florida. My mom has like a going away party
for me, like by I was like, okay, looking back,
it's very bizarre. She's sorry. I mean, like she does
some work too, right, but yeah, And that was super
(20:20):
controlling and definitely abusive and definitely staged for a rape
to We were like living with his mom. We moved
his mom to Florida, and she was like, okay with
this teenage child that wasn't I wasn't allowed to drive
or have a job. We lived in this like cul
de sac in Florida, and I didn't leave that cul
de sac for like a year, So what made you leave?
(20:44):
He and I moved to South Beach and I could
get a better paying job than he could, as like
a cocktail server, and so I saved up. I knew
I wanted to leave. One night, he got drunk enough
that he like actually hit me, and he hadn't hit
me before. But I knew a cop and I was
able to call that cop and they put him in
(21:05):
holding for three days, which gave me time to move
out of the apartment, and I got my first apartment
in South Beach under someone else's I D and then
worked at Opium, like a big nightclub, as a bottle
service girl under somebody else's I D. Wow. I was
a mess. I ended up in rehab more than once.
It was rough, but I like, you know, my childhood
(21:27):
was rough, like it was beautiful in some ways, but
it was also like really dark. Even at a young age,
Lonnie was able to make really important decisions to move
her life forward and herself out of bad situations, and
I admire her for that, and so it makes sense
to me as an adult woman now, I was scratching
for anything to fill the void and make me feel whole.
(21:50):
I remember that first rehab journey at nineteen and the
counselor being like, if you don't fix your ship with men,
you're never gonna stay sober, and I was like, fuck you.
And it took a long time. I don't have a
part in the abuse, but I have a part in
figuring out how to heal the parts of me that
(22:13):
want and seek out the abuse, if that makes sense.
After that, I saw myself getting to another relationship that
wasn't necessarily abusive but was still controlling. You know. I
was like, wow, I'm lying constantly. Two people, please to
prevent discord, to keep the peace. I like, not just
(22:36):
two men to friendships in every part of my life.
And I was like, WHOA. Then, like I swung really
hard the other way, and we're talking about that brutal honesty,
Like I got kind of brutal. I was honest, but
without any kid gloves, without any like ability to see
what was appropriate. But in doing so, I started to
like really honor myself and see, like what the fund
(22:58):
do I want? What do I like? I started realizing, like,
if I get rejected right and I've showed up as
my whole self, that's such a blessing because it's not
about like me not being good enough for great or whatever.
It just means that they know something about themselves and
they see something in me that they know isn't a
good fit. Awesome, cool, how great? Oh? I sincerely very
(23:23):
much relate to what you're saying. I'm not for everybody,
but my whole life before that I needed men to
be like it makes not like vomit, but like she's
like girl from material. She's wife the material. I needed
to be seen as like the prize, the one that
you like, work hard to get and whatever, you know,
And you know, I shifted and contorted and twisted myself
(23:45):
in ways to make myself that and then was miserable
in that role. I was like, why am I doing everything? Ye?
Why am I doing everything? You are drowning me. But
I literally asked for that. I literally set it up, like,
look at me, I'm fucking superwoman. I'm gonna do everything
in my current relationship. I'm like, I'm doing shit, I'm tired,
(24:07):
I'm pregnant. What are you doing? And I know, like
you saying that you're still a generous person doesn't mean
you don't show up and do the work. Oh of course,
it's just you're like, I'm also acknowledging the realities of
my boundaries and my abilities, yeah, and my desires, Like
I feel like cooking tonight, I don't feel like cooking tonight.
I don't force myself out of some stereotype that I'm
(24:29):
supposed to, which I did for fucking years of my life.
I did things I didn't want to do, seemingly nice things,
loving things that I did not want to do. I
was resentful. I was angry. Yeah, you know, and I
I don't do that now. This morning, I was like,
if I finished loading the dishwasher, I'm going to be late.
I will come up. I said, Hey, can you finish
(24:51):
loading the dishwasher before you leave? Okay? Bye? I love you?
You know what I mean, Like I didn't take that
extra step. I completely connect with Lonnie on this point
because it's something I've had to learn and untangle, and
it's partially due to culture. Right for me, I feel
like the expectations and the layers placed on women, both
(25:13):
on my Mexican side and the American side I have
been so clear and we don't always think about the
walls we put up in order to be loved, but
that ultimately make us invisible. I'm thirty nine right now,
like this should hit me like last year. Not only
is Lonnie growing and discovering her boundaries in her personal life,
but she's also thinking about what her work life looks like.
(25:36):
She is also a photographer, and she's worked with Playboy,
She's worked at Fashion Week and various others. She built
an incredible career in her twenties and thirties and is
now reflecting on that. I love photography, don't get me wrong, right,
but I also had so much of my self identity
and ego came through my work. I had this hustle
(25:59):
in to work because it was what I wanted people
to see in me. And now I'm a good friend, right,
I'm a loving partner. I take an ability for myself.
What do I care about if you saw I did
this shoot for this brand like American culture, and like
(26:19):
the identifying with your career so huge, and then you
are also very talented at what you did or do that,
plus your work ethic got you to where you were.
But then it's yeah, there's a whole world outside of that.
Like my brother this weekend, I saw him and I
was like, very overwhelmed with all the work I was doing,
and he was like, I just want you to know
(26:41):
you can get off this train at any point in
time and you can get on a bike and ride
through a field and that will be just as valuable.
And I was like, this is so important and so beautiful.
And I think as women, as women color, as Americans,
as all of these added layers of trying to prove
yourself ends up feeding into some sort of external especially
(27:03):
capitalistic Western perception of valid having success young and having
a lot of commercial success. And I might still be
on that train had I not needed major surgery in
two thousand and sixteen. I have something super rare called
appropriate spinal my colonists super rare. It's in the like
movement disorder family, which is like Parkinson's is a movement disorder.
(27:26):
It's not degenerative, so it's not something that I have
to worry about getting worse and worse like Parkinson's or MS.
But it's not coming from the brain like epilepsy. So
I was undiagnosed for ten years and in and out
of hospitals trying to figure it out. I have a
lot more control over it now. I would say that
(27:47):
my body was so dangerous for me to live in.
It grounded me. I don't mean grounded in like this beautiful,
earthy way. I just mean like I was no longer
allowed to fly. Um, you know, it was like, sit
your ass down, you're not doing anything. Because it's a
chronic condition, she has to make sure she's doing little
things every day to manage it. So it includes eating well,
(28:10):
making sure that she's getting enough rest and things like
stretching every day and knowing how much weight to carry
on her when she's out and about. Because there was
such a break in my career, I would have had
to work really hard to get back to where I
was at after a few years of being home. There's
nothing wrong with it, and it's beautiful and I'm glad
I did it for all the years they did it.
(28:31):
I love a lot of the things they did. I
also see a lot of the things I did and
how stereotypical they are to like body stuff and all
of the things. Right, But I want to do something
that means something to me now as who I am today,
and this going back to the only fans thing, and
I'm trying to decide what I want to do about
(28:52):
that right now. I always thought that I would want
to make pregnancy porn, like I think pregnant women are
so hot. I do not feel how. I do not
feel sexy, I do not feel in my body. It
was something I feared about motherhood, was losing my sexual
identity and also all the repercussions with society about my
sexual identity as a mother. Yeah, like I'm curious as
(29:14):
to how do you reconcile that internally and then to
have something that's like such a public forum of it,
and then now how you're perceiving yourself and then wondering
how the world perceives you. There's stuff. It's terrifying. I
think what I want to do is, well, haven't announced
my pregnancy online. We want to find a fun way
to do it. But I really want to start making
(29:34):
content and start talking about this stuff, you know, and
that like vulnerability hangover is so real and so big.
I wanted to ask. We've talked about a little bit
of like the craziness of perception and then needing to
be seen. When do you feel most seen? Currently? Right now,
I think I feel most seen with my closest people.
My partner is very good at hearing me and seeing
(29:55):
me and not having to fix it or me and
just holding speed for I have a wild set of
emotions right now. I'm like everything is like Toddler big,
feeling like I feel very seen by our couple's therapists
and she'll point things out and that is really good
for me. My closest friendships, those are the places where
I feel perceived accurately, and I feel like that's really
(30:19):
lacking on my social media. I feel like there's very
little depth of who I actually am there, and I
want to be brave and show that more. Lonnie speaks
of this dissonance between social media and the self, and
it's also surprising because me, myself, I got caught up
in the I think this is, you know, a solid
(30:40):
presentation of a part of Lonnie, and she was like, no,
it's actually still a watered down version of even that
side of me. This is a good reminder of what
it means to look at someone's content and also what
it means to actually look at the person when I
post that miscarriage thing at the miscarriage video was my
(31:01):
partner's letter to the baby that we had lost. Because
I have mostly a male following, so a lot of
men reached out and shared their grief and their experience,
and you know, we don't really hold a lot of
space for men in those ways. I think something about
you is you're very accepting of all people. More. When
(31:23):
we come back from a break, welcome back to the show.
Lonnie is about to become a melf with a baby,
and she's excited and so confident and leads with so
(31:48):
much intentionality. It's been great to get to talk to
her about what the future looks like to her and
what it means to be a mother and what kind
of mother she wants to be with her full range
of humanity. How do you feel like as a woman
who has experienced abuse and not great situations with men,
(32:10):
how does that factor in when you raise him? I
think the biggest component to that is how me and
his dad interact. We have a very healthy relationship. I'm
very grateful I waited this long to have a baby. Yes,
I love him, Yes he's great because he's very cute.
But at the end of the day, even when things
are hard, we are not unkind or abusive, and so
(32:30):
I think that starts out with the way he sees
us interact, even if we choose not to stay together
in a romantic capacity. I really do believe that he
and I both have the capacity as people individually to
show up and be kind and loving and be each
other's friends. And I think it's impossible for me not
to want to talk about everything with him as it
(32:52):
becomes aga appropriate. And also big stuff is like starting
off with his own body autonomy, like he doesn't have
to kiss anybody, or hug anybody, or or be held
by anybody. Even as an infant. A baby can lean
towards you and tell you that they want to be
held or not held, and we don't respect that. And
we can also with me, Hey, this is my body.
(33:12):
I don't want to be touched right now. I love you.
We can kiss and cuddle and whatever in a little while.
Right now, Mommy doesn't want to be touched like stuff
like that just being the norm in our home. He's
going to have that out in the world where he
gets to use his voice and say no. And I
think little boys that also get body autonomy are less
(33:32):
likely to disrespect somebody else. I want to learn a
lot more and obviously move my content towards like sex
positive parenting and all of that stuff too, which I
think is like really important because I don't have some
body positive sex positive like it was just absent. Sex
is normal, and our kids should know about sex and
(33:54):
the fact that we have sex and why we have
sex for pleasure, for connection, for release, for like all
of these reasons for making more babies, for not making
more babies again, age appropriate information and normalization of these things.
Do you have any reservations of having your only fans
(34:16):
out there and having a kid. No, I don't know
that it will be like up and running when they're older.
I barely know if it's going to be up and
running like next month. Again, that comes to that place
of authenticity and honesty and just being like, yeah, it
was something fun that me and daddy did and it
(34:38):
was good for us, and we made money and we
enjoyed it, and that's it. You're gonna want to watch porn,
and you might want to make porn like cool good
a model release, like I really want to continue to
have my full range of sexuality as a grown up
person and be his mom and be able to hold
(34:58):
both beautifully because is I'm meant to. I was built
this way. I was literally built too have great sex
and orgasm and pleasure and then also derive similar pleasure.
That's also oxytocin, same hormones that we get when we
have an orgasm, or the same hormones we get when
we breastfeed. What do you feel like I would make
(35:21):
the world a better place. Authenticity just being able to
feel safe enough to show up as themselves, because that's
really what it's about it. Just stop fucking judging everybody.
So that's what I would wish on people. But that's
a big wish, right, is that they feel safe enough
to be themselves. And then when we are ourselves, we
(35:41):
give other people permission to be themselves too. We create
that safety by leading by example. When I'm a big
fan of leading by example. I think we all know
we're living in some really dire times and hearing her
talk about raising the next generation was inspiring. This whole
conversation honestly reminds me that there are incredible people out
(36:05):
there who are living with intentionality and a desire to
learn more and to grow and to connect. And to me,
that's what community and change is all about. And so
this conversation really made me feel in love with being
alive and being able to be in community and in
(36:29):
pursuit of community. That like, even though I might be
invisible at times, even though people might perceive me wrong,
there are people out there leading with generosity and we
can all be that way. Next up on, when you're invisible,
it's getting up close and personal with a new member
(36:49):
of my family. Jen is my sister in law, sister,
and we're very different, but we also do share some
really important things. She happens to be from a white
role working class background, and it was a really interesting
(37:10):
melding of the two families. This was a growing moment
for me in a different way of realizing what life
looks like in a part of the world that I
know very little about. Tune into the next episode to
learn more. Thank you so much for listening to one
(37:32):
Year Invisible and for joining me on this journey. Don't
forget to like, comment, and subscribe. You can find this
episode and future ones on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm your
host and creator Maria Fern, with executive producers Anna Stump,
(37:52):
Nikki Ittour and producer Dylan Hoyer, with associate producer Claudia
Martha Corena and post production producer Daisy James. Original theme
music by Tony Bruno. When You're Invisible is an I
Heart podcast Network production in partnership with Michael Toura Podcast Network.
I hope I do cringe it some of the things
I say today because I hope that I keep growing
and changing. You know, this is who I am today,
with the information I have today, with the experiences I
have today. I love that quote that we just heard
from my friend Lonnie. She is so comfortable with changing,
and yet while she says that, she's also incredibly grounded
(00:22):
in herself in the present. I think that's one of
the most beautiful things about Lonnie is that she's constantly
allowing herself to grow. Lonnie and I met back in
about two thousand seventeen while I was performing a solo
piece and she was photographing the event. When you see Lonnie,
(00:45):
she's like one of the coolest people in the room
kind of thing. She is not that tall, but feels tall,
you know, like she's got that energy that's super tall,
super present. She's tattoos on her arms, on her legs,
she's got a couple of face tattoos. Even the moment
I got off stage, she came up to me and
(01:05):
introduced herself. I make friends very easily because I'm willing
to just say, hey, I like you, we should be friends.
And I have literally said that to adults. In the
last year, probably in the last month. You were one
of the first people who I met who was just
like super direct. Yeah, and I like to give that.
I love giving a compliment to somebody on the street.
There's so much joy in that, and it's free, and
(01:26):
we can just be loving and kind to people. I
was just like, WHOA, this person just lives very authentically,
or at least that's what I perceived even early on.
I think sometimes we think of confident people and loving
and outgoing people and we don't necessarily consider everything that's
(01:50):
led them to that place. And some of the most
brilliant lights have been through the darkest times. Something that
jumps out to me is Lonnie not only dealt with
a lot of outward forces of perception, but she was
also often unseen and had to make decisions for herself
in order to move forward in her own life. No
(02:11):
one was going to save her. You're going to hear
things from her youth, from her teenage years, and her
adulthood and all the things that have made her who
she is in her strength, her power, and her joy.
Just as a warning, we are going to talk about
abuse and sexual violence. Briefly in this episode, So please
take care of yourself the way you need to. Welcome
(02:34):
to When You're Invisible. My name is Maria Fernande. In
today's world, we love to tell stories about people who
have reached the top, like people who have achieved positions
of cloud wealth power. On this show, I won't be
doing that. When You're Invisible is my love letter to
the working class and others who are seemingly invisible in
(02:55):
our society. Helped to build a community here that will
inspire you to have generous conversations with others that are
different from you, conversations that might help you see life
in an entirely different way. What was young Lonnie like?
Where did she come from? This is like an incredible,
(03:18):
full human who has this pursuit of authenticity with kindness
and generosity that I'm like, what was the origin? My
grandparents on my mother's side are Southern Baptist Christian missionaries.
My mother she was in Korea from the time she
was four until she was fourteen with my grandparents. She
was the oldest of six. They adopted to have Korean boys.
(03:42):
Then they came back to the States and she went
back at twenty four and was there from thirty four.
She's white. The background is like Irish Scottish, but she
was raised with so much Korean culture, spoke Korean fluently.
She was a midwife and Korea. She worked with expats there,
She dated Korean men, and she got pregnant with me
at eight and had me at twenty nine, and she
(04:04):
knew the person that she was having me with was
not going to be a part of my life in
that way. They had dated whatever casually. I think I'm
like a diet for him. Fail I expeculate this is
what happened. No, I think she told me at some point.
I just don't remember for sure. I could be wrong,
but anyways, she didn't put him on the birth certificate.
She knew that it was not going to be something
(04:26):
that was okay in his world. It was a very
big deal that I wasn't going to be fully Korean
and that he had gotten a white woman pregnant. Basically,
and still to this day, there's only one person that
knows about me in his world, one person in forty
years wild that's it. Have you met his sister? Have
you met him? I have met him. He has children
(04:48):
that are probably late teens, early twenties. Now he got
married later, so you know, it was weird. I was like,
how am I supposed to grow up and look like anybody?
Because there's nobody that looks like Race played a huge
part in my life, Like, right off the back, had
I been Korean, it might have been very different, right.
It was a very big deal that I wasn't going
(05:08):
to be fully Korean and that he had gotten a
white woman pregnant basically, and so did you grow up
in Korea? So I lived there till I was about six.
Then we moved to d C. And we lived there
for a couple of years. My mom had a boyfriend there.
I traveled all over Asia as a kid. I had
an incredible childhood in the sense that I lived so
(05:28):
many places before I was even ten years old. I
got to see so many different cultures. I got to
see true poverty and be a part of life in
such a different way than we live it in America.
I got to see like a dentist on the side
of the street in Pakistan doing dental work and that
was just normal. And I was left alone a lot
(05:50):
to like play and imagine, and I wasn't heavily guarded.
I just did ship, and that's something I feel like
we miss out on as children here because of like
safety concerns and this and that. So I got to
live in Hawaii on a farm. I got to live
in Pakistan during the Gulf War. It was that like.
I was there with my grandparents. They were on a mission.
(06:13):
It was beautiful. I remember the way that the lightning
would hit the mountains and they would all light up.
I got to see really incredible things. I can't speak
for all people. I just know that I don't believe
in going to other countries and telling them that their
culture and their religion is wrong and that they're going
(06:34):
to go to hell, you know what I mean. It's
their job. That was their job, and they believed deeply
and passionately about it. Do I agree with how I
got there or why I was there, No, of course not.
Even as a small child, it was very confused by
all of it. I would get left with my grandparents
for three months at a time, which is unusual at
(06:57):
seven eight years old, and I think with all of
that ability to travel and see the world, I'm grateful
for in some ways, but it also left me with
the desire first stability, a home base. I have never
lived in a place for more than three years. To
this day, I've lived in New York for eleven years,
but I have never lived in one dwelling, one space
(07:17):
for more than three years. So having that experience as
a kid, whether it was changing schools constantly, having to
make new friends constantly, which all gave me personality traits
that I have today, I relate to that a lot
because I spent summers with my family in Mexico. My
parents would ship us partially because they are like, we
don't know about our visa situation, so if you ever
(07:38):
had to leave with us to go to Mexico, we
don't want you completely fish out of the water struggling.
So I spent time in Mexico, and then we moved
from Ithaca. And in Ithaca we had three different spaces,
so I was there until always seven. We moved around
three times and then always apartments, and then when we
(07:59):
moved to Minneso, it was another three homes. And then
I moved to New York, and then in New York,
I've had like how many places, which is an adult right?
As an adult, it's insane and so like something to me,
I've always been like grateful for like the ability to
have seen some of the world in a different way,
But there's a feeling of being more of a nomad
(08:19):
than having roots. And I think there's also for us,
there was a lot of financial insecurity, and so even
though there was a lot of travel, some of it
was work for my mom, some of it was childcare
for my mom, And I think that anxiety that she
felt definitely came down to me too. And at some
point she built her business in Seattle and she's done
(08:40):
actually really well for herself now and it's amazing to see.
But yeah, I think that definitely affects that feeling of
like are we going to be okay versus just we
know we're okay. And I think that that has played
and does play into how we manage money and live
our lives as adults. Remember travel, laying as an adult
(09:01):
for the first time and only being able to like
afford ninety nine cent bread and tomatoes for nutrition, and
being in hostile and then realizing I'm like my parents
made it seem like we were super stable and like
we had spam sandwiches every single day of the road.
Trip and cereal. My grandmother was notorious for stealing like
bread and having a jar of nutella in her purse.
(09:23):
I remember one time I was thirteen, we were in
Amsterdam and we split one piece of pizza between the
three of us, and then my grandma had this packet,
like the sugar packet of like soup with hot water. Yeah.
Getting to talk to Lonnie about our economic situations felt
really good because there's some similarities between our upbringings that
(09:46):
I haven't really vocalized too many people before. Both of
us also relate on the facts that depending on where
we were, our race was perceived differently and our ethnicity
was perceived differently. Honestly, we wouldn't have thought about our
race the way we do had it not been for
other people putting their perceptions on us. So just thinking
(10:06):
about it too, I'm like, you grew up with like
your white side of the family, and then they were
from the South Mobile Alabama, So what is that like
being biracial with that? The race thing is weird because
it's both sides. Like I was rejected from my Korean
side and then I was fetishized and sexualized and abused
by my white side. For my Korean side. My grandfather
(10:29):
fetishized half Korean kids, so that was a thing. So
I do not speak to anybody on that side of
my family except for my mother. At this point in
my life. I want to take a moment to acknowledge
the fact that Lonnie does mention her abuse. We don't
get into it, and I think it's important sometimes to
give people the space not to dwell on it. We're
(10:51):
just going to allow it to breathe and just acknowledge
that it's part of the fabric of who she's become
as a person, and ultimately she's connecting it back to
how she perceived her identity around race. It's really interesting
because I don't feel my race here in New York
City super often, like I just exists amongst our people.
(11:16):
There's a lot of mixed people in different ways and
capacities here, But when I travel in the flyover States,
I do feel it more. But I felt it most
heavily as a child, and I didn't have the tools
or anybody working with me as to why I was
different and why I felt the way I felt and
why people were talking to me the way they were.
(11:37):
I also recognize, like the huge amount of privilege I
have in many intersections. Yes, I'm not a percent white,
and I definitely don't look white passing in any capacity,
but I'm also not black, and I'm also not dealing
with a lot of those stereotypes that are so insidious
in our culture. But as a kid, it was like,
(11:59):
we're did you get her? My mom would be like
where do you think? You know? But like, I look
nothing like my mom. I'm darker than my mom and
my dad, Like I just came out like a little
brown I don't know, well, yeah, so toasty side up.
And then you know, being in the South, like what
is she Mexican? You know, like people just wanting to
know what I was and you know why I was
(12:23):
with them, So you know, in that way, yes, I
was treated differently than my cousins. And eventually, you know,
that all came out at some point when I was
about fifteen, and that's why there's a huge divide in
our family and I don't speak to you know. And
then I was very confused and thought that I was
just going to grow out of my little brown body
(12:46):
and hair, and I would draw pictures. I really thought
that I was going to grow up and like I
was going to be like a blonde, green eyed teenager,
you know, because nobody really talked to me about it.
And then I ended up in public school, which was
so good for me, you know. I was able to
have a variation of people again. And we lived in
a predominantly Native American not predominantly Native American, but a
(13:08):
lot more Native and Indigenous people than in most parts
of the country right in Seattle, and so I would
school a lot of Native kids, and like I was
very Native passing, that was what people assumed when I
was younger, more so than Asian. And so then that
felt good to just have people that looked like me
around and my representation because again, remember it was early nineties,
(13:30):
late eighties, there was nothing on TV that looked like me.
There was nothing on a magazine that looked like me.
My like little cousin got like a Hawaiian barbie and
was like, oh my god, it looks like you. That
was my first moment of representation. Representation is super important,
it's necessary, and then there's the lifestyle of being constantly
(13:50):
like doing the work internally, but like even representations, when
you think about a child and how they mimic behavior
and then we as adults, like you were saying, with bias,
we place our bio or what we even think is possible.
You know when you look at like docmic Stuffin's the
Little Black Doctor. Yes, you know what I mean, and
like the difference and how many little girls decided they
(14:10):
might want to be doctors because of that TV show.
There's just crazy statistics to show that when we show
women and women of color or people of color in
roles that they don't usually see, then they start to
see themselves in those roles and start thinking I've got shows,
start thinking it's possible to do some of these things.
And I also just love the idea of just having
(14:31):
representation in fantasy worlds and also where we don't have
to talk about our struggles. We can just succeed or
we can live out these crazy lives. And getting to
talk to Lonnie about representation helped remind me of how
much we make those choices for ourselves and that we
(14:51):
can decipher what others are saying and be like, yeah,
that's what you think, but this is who I am.
And I'm really lucky to have met Lonnie I did.
It's incredible to be her friend, not only because we
get to explore ourselves in a safe space, but also
because she's constantly on a journey and going through a
lot and so open with where her life is today.
(15:12):
So we'll talk about how she is as an adult
in this present moment. After this break and we're back,
I'm pregnant. I'm like burping. I keep thinking I'm going
to cry. You are building and creating another human being,
(15:36):
and even if you weren't. As you all heard, Lonnie
is pregnant after a very difficult miscarriage last year. She's
having a baby boy, and with that comes a lot
of joy, but also some complicated emotions. I'm really in
tune with my body, you know. I've had a lot
of health stuff that I think makes me even more
like in body mind awareness. It took me a while
(15:59):
to get did about the pregnancy, which surprised me, especially
after having a miscarriage. I was like, Oh, why am
I not over the moon? You're really wanted to get
through this summer. We got married, this summer, his mom
passed this summer. It was just a lot, and I
was sick, like I wanted a little bit more time
with my partner before stepping into this next spot. You know,
(16:20):
but I also believe in the magic that is whatever
is happening is happening, and that's okay. But it's like
you're human being who had plans and ideas, and I
think that's something too, to like allow space for so much.
I do want to talk about your Only Fans and
all of that into for those who don't know. Only
(16:43):
Fans is this app that started off for artists to
post behind the scene footage for their followers and then
eventually became or always was, in tandem, an app for
sex workers to share their work and create a following
in subscription base. Lonnie's Only Fans is pretty spicy and
sixy you are mom, You are an incredible woman, and
(17:07):
like this is also a world that you wouldhabit and
that I think not a lot of people talk about
that intersection. Yeah, and it's so like weird because like
I like how to Creampie and got pregnant? Come on, right,
it's so weird, like we literally have sex to make
babies and then all of a sudden, you make a
baby and you're supposed to like not be sexualized, but
(17:30):
then you better keep having sex with your husband or else,
you know, like this weird fucking thing. Right. We started
the Only Fans last year and I stay a week
because he was definitely helping behind the scenes for me.
And we did it because I thought I was pregnant
and I was like, let's make some money. I've been
toying around with the idea for a long time, so
we did and it was really fun, and then it
(17:52):
was hard when I had the miscarriage and like keeping
up with it, but I like dropped off when I
got pregnant. This time, it's a lot of work, right,
and I love making making content, but there's all the
other steps like editing and posting and you know, and
then I still have another job and other responsibilities. And
(18:13):
then if I'm not feeling sexy or sexual or whatever,
it gets harder emotionally to get into that headspace and
create that content and do that work. Wow, that isn't
really interesting to think about, yeah, because it's like it
is emotional labor in a big way that I don't
(18:33):
know that I realized before the sex work I had
done previous too Only Fans was I danced my way
through photo school, so I was a stripper. I just
like weird foot fetish porn before I was even eighteen.
Not so healthy situation. That was like literally like recording
stuff and putting on VHS tapes, building an HTML site
(18:55):
and the mailing people there VHS tapes like that just
dated me. I love how Lonnie talks about her sex
work and her sexuality and everything under the sun in
regards to that. Because I grew up Mexican Catholic, which
means it's super conservative, we may or may not talk
(19:15):
about sex. My sex talk was sex as fund but
only with the person you marry, and kind of implied
that the person I should marry should be a man,
and so like that was it. While that's changed, I
realized there was a lot of difficulties when it came
to learning how to love and respect your body and
(19:36):
its own pleasure, and it wasn't something that was ever
talked about, especially for women. Hearing Lonnie talk about how
she enjoys her work and the work she's done, and
the way she talks about all of this so matter
of factly is super free. I grew up very sheltered.
Oh yeah, I was on the run. What is that like?
I don't know anything other than that, right, so like
(19:58):
I was out of the house at fourteen and then
back for a minute, and then I left at fifteen
or sixteen with my thirty year old boss from Seattle
to Florida. My mom has like a going away party
for me, like by I was like, okay, looking back,
it's very bizarre. She's sorry. I mean, like she does
some work too, right, but yeah, And that was super
(20:20):
controlling and definitely abusive and definitely staged for a rape
to We were like living with his mom. We moved
his mom to Florida, and she was like, okay with
this teenage child that wasn't I wasn't allowed to drive
or have a job. We lived in this like cul
de sac in Florida, and I didn't leave that cul
de sac for like a year, So what made you leave?
(20:44):
He and I moved to South Beach and I could
get a better paying job than he could, as like
a cocktail server, and so I saved up. I knew
I wanted to leave. One night, he got drunk enough
that he like actually hit me, and he hadn't hit
me before. But I knew a cop and I was
able to call that cop and they put him in
(21:05):
holding for three days, which gave me time to move
out of the apartment, and I got my first apartment
in South Beach under someone else's I D and then
worked at Opium, like a big nightclub, as a bottle
service girl under somebody else's I D. Wow. I was
a mess. I ended up in rehab more than once.
It was rough, but I like, you know, my childhood
(21:27):
was rough, like it was beautiful in some ways, but
it was also like really dark. Even at a young age,
Lonnie was able to make really important decisions to move
her life forward and herself out of bad situations, and
I admire her for that, and so it makes sense
to me as an adult woman now, I was scratching
for anything to fill the void and make me feel whole.
(21:50):
I remember that first rehab journey at nineteen and the
counselor being like, if you don't fix your ship with men,
you're never gonna stay sober, and I was like, fuck you.
And it took a long time. I don't have a
part in the abuse, but I have a part in
figuring out how to heal the parts of me that
(22:13):
want and seek out the abuse, if that makes sense.
After that, I saw myself getting to another relationship that
wasn't necessarily abusive but was still controlling. You know. I
was like, wow, I'm lying constantly. Two people, please to
prevent discord, to keep the peace. I like, not just
(22:36):
two men to friendships in every part of my life.
And I was like, WHOA. Then, like I swung really
hard the other way, and we're talking about that brutal honesty,
Like I got kind of brutal. I was honest, but
without any kid gloves, without any like ability to see
what was appropriate. But in doing so, I started to
like really honor myself and see, like what the fund
(22:58):
do I want? What do I like? I started realizing, like,
if I get rejected right and I've showed up as
my whole self, that's such a blessing because it's not
about like me not being good enough for great or whatever.
It just means that they know something about themselves and
they see something in me that they know isn't a
good fit. Awesome, cool, how great? Oh? I sincerely very
(23:23):
much relate to what you're saying. I'm not for everybody,
but my whole life before that I needed men to
be like it makes not like vomit, but like she's
like girl from material. She's wife the material. I needed
to be seen as like the prize, the one that
you like, work hard to get and whatever, you know,
And you know, I shifted and contorted and twisted myself
(23:45):
in ways to make myself that and then was miserable
in that role. I was like, why am I doing everything? Ye?
Why am I doing everything? You are drowning me. But
I literally asked for that. I literally set it up, like,
look at me, I'm fucking superwoman. I'm gonna do everything
in my current relationship. I'm like, I'm doing shit, I'm tired,
(24:07):
I'm pregnant. What are you doing? And I know, like
you saying that you're still a generous person doesn't mean
you don't show up and do the work. Oh of course,
it's just you're like, I'm also acknowledging the realities of
my boundaries and my abilities, yeah, and my desires, Like
I feel like cooking tonight, I don't feel like cooking tonight.
I don't force myself out of some stereotype that I'm
(24:29):
supposed to, which I did for fucking years of my life.
I did things I didn't want to do, seemingly nice things,
loving things that I did not want to do. I
was resentful. I was angry. Yeah, you know, and I
I don't do that now. This morning, I was like,
if I finished loading the dishwasher, I'm going to be late.
I will come up. I said, Hey, can you finish
(24:51):
loading the dishwasher before you leave? Okay? Bye? I love you?
You know what I mean, Like I didn't take that
extra step. I completely connect with Lonnie on this point
because it's something I've had to learn and untangle, and
it's partially due to culture. Right for me, I feel
like the expectations and the layers placed on women, both
(25:13):
on my Mexican side and the American side I have
been so clear and we don't always think about the
walls we put up in order to be loved, but
that ultimately make us invisible. I'm thirty nine right now,
like this should hit me like last year. Not only
is Lonnie growing and discovering her boundaries in her personal life,
but she's also thinking about what her work life looks like.
(25:36):
She is also a photographer, and she's worked with Playboy,
She's worked at Fashion Week and various others. She built
an incredible career in her twenties and thirties and is
now reflecting on that. I love photography, don't get me wrong, right,
but I also had so much of my self identity
and ego came through my work. I had this hustle
(25:59):
in to work because it was what I wanted people
to see in me. And now I'm a good friend, right,
I'm a loving partner. I take an ability for myself.
What do I care about if you saw I did
this shoot for this brand like American culture, and like
(26:19):
the identifying with your career so huge, and then you
are also very talented at what you did or do that,
plus your work ethic got you to where you were.
But then it's yeah, there's a whole world outside of that.
Like my brother this weekend, I saw him and I
was like, very overwhelmed with all the work I was doing,
and he was like, I just want you to know
(26:41):
you can get off this train at any point in
time and you can get on a bike and ride
through a field and that will be just as valuable.
And I was like, this is so important and so beautiful.
And I think as women, as women color, as Americans,
as all of these added layers of trying to prove
yourself ends up feeding into some sort of external especially
(27:03):
capitalistic Western perception of valid having success young and having
a lot of commercial success. And I might still be
on that train had I not needed major surgery in
two thousand and sixteen. I have something super rare called
appropriate spinal my colonists super rare. It's in the like
movement disorder family, which is like Parkinson's is a movement disorder.
(27:26):
It's not degenerative, so it's not something that I have
to worry about getting worse and worse like Parkinson's or MS.
But it's not coming from the brain like epilepsy. So
I was undiagnosed for ten years and in and out
of hospitals trying to figure it out. I have a
lot more control over it now. I would say that
(27:47):
my body was so dangerous for me to live in.
It grounded me. I don't mean grounded in like this beautiful,
earthy way. I just mean like I was no longer
allowed to fly. Um, you know, it was like, sit
your ass down, you're not doing anything. Because it's a
chronic condition, she has to make sure she's doing little
things every day to manage it. So it includes eating well,
(28:10):
making sure that she's getting enough rest and things like
stretching every day and knowing how much weight to carry
on her when she's out and about. Because there was
such a break in my career, I would have had
to work really hard to get back to where I
was at after a few years of being home. There's
nothing wrong with it, and it's beautiful and I'm glad
I did it for all the years they did it.
(28:31):
I love a lot of the things they did. I
also see a lot of the things I did and
how stereotypical they are to like body stuff and all
of the things. Right, But I want to do something
that means something to me now as who I am today,
and this going back to the only fans thing, and
I'm trying to decide what I want to do about
(28:52):
that right now. I always thought that I would want
to make pregnancy porn, like I think pregnant women are
so hot. I do not feel how. I do not
feel sexy, I do not feel in my body. It
was something I feared about motherhood, was losing my sexual
identity and also all the repercussions with society about my
sexual identity as a mother. Yeah, like I'm curious as
(29:14):
to how do you reconcile that internally and then to
have something that's like such a public forum of it,
and then now how you're perceiving yourself and then wondering
how the world perceives you. There's stuff. It's terrifying. I
think what I want to do is, well, haven't announced
my pregnancy online. We want to find a fun way
to do it. But I really want to start making
(29:34):
content and start talking about this stuff, you know, and
that like vulnerability hangover is so real and so big.
I wanted to ask. We've talked about a little bit
of like the craziness of perception and then needing to
be seen. When do you feel most seen? Currently? Right now,
I think I feel most seen with my closest people.
My partner is very good at hearing me and seeing
(29:55):
me and not having to fix it or me and
just holding speed for I have a wild set of
emotions right now. I'm like everything is like Toddler big,
feeling like I feel very seen by our couple's therapists
and she'll point things out and that is really good
for me. My closest friendships, those are the places where
I feel perceived accurately, and I feel like that's really
(30:19):
lacking on my social media. I feel like there's very
little depth of who I actually am there, and I
want to be brave and show that more. Lonnie speaks
of this dissonance between social media and the self, and
it's also surprising because me, myself, I got caught up
in the I think this is, you know, a solid
(30:40):
presentation of a part of Lonnie, and she was like, no,
it's actually still a watered down version of even that
side of me. This is a good reminder of what
it means to look at someone's content and also what
it means to actually look at the person when I
post that miscarriage thing at the miscarriage video was my
(31:01):
partner's letter to the baby that we had lost. Because
I have mostly a male following, so a lot of
men reached out and shared their grief and their experience,
and you know, we don't really hold a lot of
space for men in those ways. I think something about
you is you're very accepting of all people. More. When
(31:23):
we come back from a break, welcome back to the show.
Lonnie is about to become a melf with a baby,
and she's excited and so confident and leads with so
(31:48):
much intentionality. It's been great to get to talk to
her about what the future looks like to her and
what it means to be a mother and what kind
of mother she wants to be with her full range
of humanity. How do you feel like as a woman
who has experienced abuse and not great situations with men,
(32:10):
how does that factor in when you raise him? I
think the biggest component to that is how me and
his dad interact. We have a very healthy relationship. I'm
very grateful I waited this long to have a baby. Yes,
I love him, Yes he's great because he's very cute.
But at the end of the day, even when things
are hard, we are not unkind or abusive, and so
(32:30):
I think that starts out with the way he sees
us interact, even if we choose not to stay together
in a romantic capacity. I really do believe that he
and I both have the capacity as people individually to
show up and be kind and loving and be each
other's friends. And I think it's impossible for me not
to want to talk about everything with him as it
(32:52):
becomes aga appropriate. And also big stuff is like starting
off with his own body autonomy, like he doesn't have
to kiss anybody, or hug anybody, or or be held
by anybody. Even as an infant. A baby can lean
towards you and tell you that they want to be
held or not held, and we don't respect that. And
we can also with me, Hey, this is my body.
(33:12):
I don't want to be touched right now. I love you.
We can kiss and cuddle and whatever in a little while.
Right now, Mommy doesn't want to be touched like stuff
like that just being the norm in our home. He's
going to have that out in the world where he
gets to use his voice and say no. And I
think little boys that also get body autonomy are less
(33:32):
likely to disrespect somebody else. I want to learn a
lot more and obviously move my content towards like sex
positive parenting and all of that stuff too, which I
think is like really important because I don't have some
body positive sex positive like it was just absent. Sex
is normal, and our kids should know about sex and
(33:54):
the fact that we have sex and why we have
sex for pleasure, for connection, for release, for like all
of these reasons for making more babies, for not making
more babies again, age appropriate information and normalization of these things.
Do you have any reservations of having your only fans
(34:16):
out there and having a kid. No, I don't know
that it will be like up and running when they're older.
I barely know if it's going to be up and
running like next month. Again, that comes to that place
of authenticity and honesty and just being like, yeah, it
was something fun that me and daddy did and it
(34:38):
was good for us, and we made money and we
enjoyed it, and that's it. You're gonna want to watch porn,
and you might want to make porn like cool good
a model release, like I really want to continue to
have my full range of sexuality as a grown up
person and be his mom and be able to hold
(34:58):
both beautifully because is I'm meant to. I was built
this way. I was literally built too have great sex
and orgasm and pleasure and then also derive similar pleasure.
That's also oxytocin, same hormones that we get when we
have an orgasm, or the same hormones we get when
we breastfeed. What do you feel like I would make
(35:21):
the world a better place. Authenticity just being able to
feel safe enough to show up as themselves, because that's
really what it's about it. Just stop fucking judging everybody.
So that's what I would wish on people. But that's
a big wish, right, is that they feel safe enough
to be themselves. And then when we are ourselves, we
(35:41):
give other people permission to be themselves too. We create
that safety by leading by example. When I'm a big
fan of leading by example. I think we all know
we're living in some really dire times and hearing her
talk about raising the next generation was inspiring. This whole
conversation honestly reminds me that there are incredible people out
(36:05):
there who are living with intentionality and a desire to
learn more and to grow and to connect. And to me,
that's what community and change is all about. And so
this conversation really made me feel in love with being
alive and being able to be in community and in
(36:29):
pursuit of community. That like, even though I might be
invisible at times, even though people might perceive me wrong,
there are people out there leading with generosity and we
can all be that way. Next up on, when you're invisible,
it's getting up close and personal with a new member
(36:49):
of my family. Jen is my sister in law, sister,
and we're very different, but we also do share some
really important things. She happens to be from a white
role working class background, and it was a really interesting
(37:10):
melding of the two families. This was a growing moment
for me in a different way of realizing what life
looks like in a part of the world that I
know very little about. Tune into the next episode to
learn more. Thank you so much for listening to one
(37:32):
Year Invisible and for joining me on this journey. Don't
forget to like, comment, and subscribe. You can find this
episode and future ones on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm your
host and creator Maria Fern, with executive producers Anna Stump,
(37:52):
Nikki Ittour and producer Dylan Hoyer, with associate producer Claudia
Martha Corena and post production producer Daisy James. Original theme
music by Tony Bruno. When You're Invisible is an I
Heart podcast Network production in partnership with Michael Toura Podcast Network.
Host
Maria Fernanda Diez
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