Platica Y Poetics S4E9- Xelena Gonzalez

A Conversation with Xelena González Creator of Lotería Remedios & Author

What began as a plática — the kind that feels less like an interview and more like a random conversation you didn't anticipate, unfolded into one of the most tender, genuine exchanges of this season. Sitting with Xelena González felt like sitting with easiness to wisdom. A grounded sensation. The kind that comes from a woman who has done inner work and is not afraid to pass on enlightenment through her ‘Remedios.’ We began at the core of her work — with the self. With remembering. Xelena's creative life has been shaped by a continuous returning, a reclamation of what the world has abandoned, awareness of natural word, and how listening to ancestral guides, is medicinal. Her artistic becoming, she shared, required to unlearn as much as it has required her to create — to strip away the goals, molds, the expectations, and find again what was whole before any of that arrived. As an artist, she’s tethered to herself not through perfection, but presence. Through small, sacred acts of returning. The theme of motherhood moved through our entire conversation like an undercurrent, not as a role, but our, fuerza, force. Xelena spoke about how becoming a mother transformed not just what she creates but why. She sees a deep correlation between mothering and storytelling, both acts of cariño. The stories she writes for children are not separate from the mother she is; they are of the same gesture, of care, and maternal instinct. And for those of us still becoming, or in need of guidance, turn inward, trust the season you are in, listen to the energy of the cosmos, pull a card or two from the Remedios deck and listen to its wisdom. Light a candle and open your corazón to the healing the universe offers through nature, ancestral wisdom, and presence.