Jacinta Lomba is really that girl. That’s the first thing you need to know. A Cape Verdean baddie, she grew up in central Connecticut with her parents and two sisters. Although Connecticut is where her family home is, her heart belongs to many places. As a graduate of Brown University, she is no stranger to the Cape Verdean community in Providence, Rhode Island where she spent most of her weekends as a child and her college years. After college, she called Brazil home as she completed her Fulbright Fellowship.
Then, she jetted off to New York City to participate in medical research in the Bronx and now she’s a medical student in Washington, D.C. at Howard University. As a medical student, I know that the struggle is real on this journey and I knew I had to tap into Jacinta’s wisdom to learn all about what self-love and self-compassion looks like as a medical student. We talked about the importance of rest, getting dressed up and looking cute even when you are getting dragged, and why, of course, God is everywhere but He is especially in the vagus nerve.
Isabelle: Well, I know a lot about you but just so the people know tell me a little bit about yourself.
Jacinta: I’m twenty-seven years and I grew up in central Connecticut and when I was little the town was definitely more of a rural town. My parents are immigrants from Cape Verde which is a country off the coast of West Africa and they grew up there and came to United States in their teenage years. So, a big part of my childhood was a lot of connection to the way things are made. This is a product of being their daughter and the impoverished community that they grew up in – learning how to make your own clothes and grow your own food. So, now, we don’t have those same economic challenges but the value and the respect for how things are made is extremely present in my life and has always been present since my childhood.
I grew up sewing my own clothes. I started crocheting when I was in elementary school and I learned how to crochet from my mom because every Cape Verdean woman knows how to crochet (laughs). We grew up growing our own food in the yard and we have chickens and lots of pets. Cooking is also a huge part of my culture as well and there is this connection to the root and the origin of everything.
Also, I grew up with a lot of creative stimulation and there are a lot of artists on my mom’s side of my family and my mother studies art. My sister also studies art. My mom did photography and she is also an amazing seamstress. Like, a very talented and advanced seamstress! I used to do a lot of collage art. So, creativity was always there and it is a huge part of who I am and how I grew up. I used to write a lot of stories when I was a kid.
Isabelle: Aw, I love that!
Jacinta: Yeah! I was actually going through old stories and I was laughing at some of the stuff I wrote down. We also didn’t have cable in the house. My mom was very strict about limiting our time with the TV. But, I think that helped foster my creativity.
Isabelle: That reminds me of my mom. She used to take the Optimum cable card out of the cable box so we couldn’t watch TV during the school week. I was always like, “Damn! I can’t watch TV!”
Jacinta: Yeah! And I have two little sisters so we were just little rugrats running around. We were always making stuff and it was something I took for granted. It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized that not everyone grows up in a home with creative resources or was encouraged to be making art constantly. So, that is a little bit about my childhood.
Isabelle: Did you initially feel drawn to crocheting?
Jacinta: When I was growing up, my mom had so many little hobbies, including crocheting. There was always yarn and needles and one day I sat down and asked her to teach me how to crochet. As a child, my interests were more in scrapbooking and collage art. But, crochet was something that was always around. I always associated it with old people (laughs).
Crochet did not become an important part of my life until I moved to Brazil. I think I was pretty depressed and I didn’t know it and I was just trying to get through life. When I got to Brazil, I was living by myself. The Fulbright program is amazing but a big part of the experience is figuring out everything on your own. You could call them for emergencies but you had to navigate everything – roommate situations, visas, setting up your research project. I was so, so anxious! I knew that I needed some tool that could help me regulate and calm down.
I think I may have seen a crochet bikini and I felt drawn to it in that time. So, I set out to find a craft store and I got a few materials and it was the most surprisingly relaxing experience. I needed something that was monotonous, continuous motions that were slow and patient. The first thing that I crocheted was a little bikini. From that point on, I was just making everything and used YouTube to learn different stitches.
Isabelle: And they are cute as well! I did not know that you could crochet bikinis until I saw your work! Can you talk a little bit more about how crochet is a form of self-love to you? Speaking from my own experience, self-compassion is not one of those things that you get a gold star for in medical school.
Jacinta: Medical school gave me the opportunity to figure that out for myself. Until medical school, I don’t think I was giving myself that much self-love. I was constantly pushing myself and holding myself to extremely high standards. My self-worth relied on getting accepted to medical school, passing exams, and doing really well. You know what I mean? Medical school was the first significant time where things really were not going well! It is actually really hard to pass! So, my self-worth was in the trash. The first time I failed a course at Howard I was devastated and I felt like a waste of a person and my self-worth was in hell. I remember the weekend I found out about that test I was super down and I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to do anything. The person I was dating at the time told me, “No, now is the time that you need to celebrate yourself!”
When you are doing well, it is easy to go out and have a good time. But, when you put a lot of effort into something and it flops, that’s the moment where self-care becomes it’s most powerful. So, we went out and it felt really weird at first because I thought I didn’t deserve joy or happiness. But, after that moment, I realized that this is how I cultivate a self-worth that is grounded and constant no matter what way my life is going. In the moments of failure, it’s important to love yourself and do something that makes you happy. That’s how you teach your body and your nervous system that you are worthy of love and respect no matter what.
So, now, there have been so many times where I have failed. I have failed STEP 1 two times now and that was really hard. But, I still went out after both of those failures and I counted my blessings.
I am grateful that my senses are in tact. I am grateful that my family is healthy. I am grateful that my body is working and that I am not in pain. I am grateful for my friends and there are million things to celebrate in life! When we put so much value on outcomes and productivity as a determinant of our self-worth, we are cheating ourselves and trying to achieve these arbitrary standards that…
Isabelle: Don’t make a lot of sense and are impossible to reach! Medical school is such an inhumane experience. You have no power over your own schedule and there is so much emphasis on achieving. It’s super important to not to tie your self-worth to it because medical school training is already in hell. Why would you want to send your self-worth to hell with it? (laughs)
Jacinta: Exactly! That’s how you build resilience – that’s how you get up and believe in yourself and believe that you are still worthy of effort, of moving forward, even in the face of so many failures. If I subscribed myself to the same way of thinking before medical school now, I would not have made it through my first year.
Isabelle: Okay, so now that you are in a better space, what emotions do you feel when you are in a space of self-love?
Jacinta: That’s a great question! My wellness journey is entering a new place where a lot of it now is focused on vagal tone and the parasympathetic nervous system. I remember when I learned about the vagus nerve I remember thinking, “This nerve is amazing!” I actually have connected the vagus nerve to my spirituality. When we talk about God being inside of us, I am in a state of self-love and compassion when my body is a parasympathetic state. That’s a big concept but day to day what that looks like is slowing down and not putting pressure on myself to get things done.
There is an ebb and flow that I respect now. When I do that, I feel that sense of calm. I pay very close attention to where I am carrying tension. I do a lot of stretching and rituals in the evening – I will light candles, yoga, meditation, prayer, crochet. There are lot of daily practices and habits that help with that parasympathetic state where I know my vagus nerve is working. That’s what is all about! Also, that is when everyone is their most creative.
Medical school is a constant state of sympathetic activation. Tense! Trying to get through as many things as you can! It’s extremely toxic. But, what’s crazy is that I can get more done if I am in the mindset of rest. If I need to take a little bit more time than everyone else, I am okay with that.
To me, the success is in getting your mind right. They say that play is opposite of survival mode – our problems require that calm activation. The average medical student is just not well. It explains the high rate of burnout and it explains why doctors have some of the highest rates of suicide compared to other professions. The anxiety disorders and the narcissism disorders!
Isabelle: *shakes head* Mm, the narcissism!
Jacinta: Right! These maladaptations to trauma have consequences and the system as well doesn’t create or make much space for rest. This is part of why we have the problems we have in medicine and I am just not going to be a part of it. Sorry!
If you want to check out Jacinta’s work, you can admire her talent on her Instagram page, @mood.crochet!
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