The Patterns We Inherited — What We Carry, What We Heal, and What We Keep
- Jasleni Brito
- Apr 6
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
It started with a conversation.
My friend Caroline and I were sitting together the way old friends do — comparing notes, finishing each other's sentences, laughing at things that probably shouldn't be funny but absolutely are when you've lived them.
Caroline is an artist, ceramicist, and writer. She's Colombian. I'm Dominican. And somewhere between swapping stories about our mothers, our cultures, and the very specific kind of love that comes wrapped in impossibly high expectations, we stumbled onto something bigger than either of us expected.
We are both liminal Latinas.
Neither fully from here — the United States, the country we live in and have built our lives inside of — nor fully from there. For me, there is the Dominican Republic. For Caroline, it's Colombia. We exist in the in-between, fluent in two worlds and sometimes fully belonging to neither.
And in that in-between space, we carry things.
The things we carry
We carry the work ethic of people who crossed oceans and built something from nothing. We carry the resourcefulness of women who fed entire families on what most people would consider not enough. We carry the resilience of cultures that have survived things that should have broken them — and didn't.
We also carry the wounds.
The expectations that were never quite achievable. The silence around pain that was supposed to make us stronger but sometimes just made us lonelier. The stories we inherited about who we are supposed to be, what we are supposed to want, how much space we are allowed to take up — and the quiet cost of living inside those stories for years without questioning them.
Caroline and I realized that so many of us — Latina, immigrant, first-generation, second-generation, any child who grew up inside a culture with strong expectations — share this particular inheritance. The beautiful and the brutal, woven together so tightly it can be hard to know where one ends and the other begins.
That conversation became a body of work.
Patterns of Generation
This May, Caroline and I are opening a joint exhibit called Patterns of Generation at Semilla Cafe + Studio. The opening reception is on Mother's Day — May 10th, 2026, from 1-5pm and it is free and open to everyone.
The timing is not accidental.
What better day to sit with the complexity of what our mothers gave us — the gifts and the wounds, the strength and the stories — than the day we set aside to honor them?
My paintings for this collection are different from anything I've made before. Literally and intentionally.
I am someone who tends toward control in my work. I plan meticulously. I place every color deliberately. I know exactly what a painting is going to look like before the brush ever touches the canvas.
For this series, I let all of that go.
Each painting begins with a canvas covered in loose, uneven brushstrokes — an imperfect foundation of color that would have made my old self deeply uncomfortable. Then I lay down a stenciled pattern, letting it bleed into the surface, uncontrolled and alive. And then — only then — I paint the portrait. Without a plan. Without knowing yet who she is going to be.
The pattern comes first. The person emerges from it.
Which is, if I'm being honest, exactly how it works in real life.
We are shaped by the patterns before we ever get a say in it. The beliefs, the behaviors, the stories — they're already woven into the background by the time we arrive. We grow up and we paint ourselves over them, around them, through them. Sometimes we don't even notice they're there.
This series is about noticing.
Caroline's ceramics carry the same conversation in a different form — literal patterns pressed into clay, beautiful and deliberate, asking the same questions mine do: what did we inherit? What do we keep? What do we finally set down?
The patterns that hinder and the patterns that heal
Here is the thing about inherited patterns — they are almost never entirely one thing.
The same culture that handed me impossible expectations also handed me an unshakeable belief that I could figure anything out. The same family dynamic that made me afraid to take up space also made me fiercely devoted to the people I love. The same stories that kept me small for years were also, in some way, trying to keep me safe.
The work is not to erase the patterns. It is to see them clearly enough to know which ones are still serving you — and which ones stopped serving you a long time ago but never got the memo.
This is what I think about when I paint. And it is, not coincidentally, exactly what I think about when I coach.
The women I work with are not broken. They are carrying patterns — some inherited, some self-created — that made sense once and no longer do. The moment they can see those patterns clearly, name them honestly, and make a conscious choice about what to do with them — that is the moment everything shifts.
What the cards have to say
If this is landing for you — if something in what you just read made you pause and think about the patterns you've been living inside — I want to offer you something.
The La Caribeña Oracle Deck was born from this exact conversation. It was created for women who want to listen inward, trust what they already know, and find the clarity that's been waiting underneath the noise.
An oracle reading with me is a one-on-one conversation where we use the cards as a mirror — reflecting patterns, themes, and possibilities that are already present in your life. People leave feeling clearer, calmer, and more grounded in what they actually want.
If you're ready to look at your patterns with fresh eyes — I'd love to sit with you.
And if you're not quite ready for that yet — start here. My free oracle quiz will deliver a personal message from your Higher Self in just a few minutes. It's the first step toward hearing what you already know.
Come see the work in person
If you're in Connecticut — or close enough to make the drive — I would love to see you at the opening.
Patterns of Generation
Semilla Cafe + Studio, Hartford, Connecticut
Opening reception: Mother's Day, Sunday May 10th, 1-5pm
Free and open to all
Come for the art. Stay for the conversation. Bring your mother if you dare. 😄
The work in this collection is available for purchase. If a piece speaks to you — before the show, at the opening, or after — you can explore the available paintings here:
What patterns did you inherit that you're still living inside? I'd love to know — leave a comment below or come find me on Instagram @jasleni.
— Jasleni ✨
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