Kate sits down with her dear friend Marlene Dominguez, a first generation Dominican American, wife to Manny, mom of three curly-haired boys, and co-founder of Brave Church in Washington Heights, New York City – the neighborhood she grew up in, left for ten years to serve in Fort Worth, Texas, and was called back to plant a church in. Marlene’s story is layered, beautiful, raw, and full of the grace of a God who meets us exactly where we are.
This conversation covers identity, motherhood wounds, endometriosis, postpartum anxiety, counseling, natural births, curls, cafecito y pan, and what it really means to say “this is their childhood, but it is also my motherhood”.
About Marlene:
Marlene Dominguez is a first generation Dominican American raised in Washington Heights, New York City. She and her husband Emmanuel co-lead Brave Church, a church plant in their home neighborhood. She is a mom of three boys, a speaker, and the creator behind the Instagram community @curlswithapromise where she has spent over ten years pointing women back to their identity in Christ through the lens of beauty, faith, and culture.
In This Episode:
- Growing up in Washington Heights – Little Dominican Republic – and being called back to plant Brave Church
- Curls with a promise and the decade-long journey of embracing her natural hair and the identity story underneath it
- It is their childhood but it is also my motherhood, and why Marlene refuses to forget that
- No junior Holy Spirit, raising practical adults, not children whose entire world revolves around them
- Being diagnosed with endometriosis in her first month of marriage and what God spoke to her in that season
- Becoming a mom without a mom, the mother wound that motherhood brought to the surface
- Postpartum anxiety, EMDR therapy, and the therapist who told her what worked back then no longer serves her now
- The trust fund language she and Manny use in their marriage and why it changed everything
- Brave is not the absence of fear it is being a mom without a mom and doing it anyway
Connect With Marlene:
@curlswithapromise | Brave Church in Washington Heights
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