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Chiquis Rivera: When The Only One Left To Forgive Is Yourself

by Charles Karel Bouley Long

Beach Pride pleased tens of thousands of Latino and Latina fans when they announced Chiquis Rivera, the late Jenni Rivera’s daughter and eldest of the clan and former Long Beach resident, would be participating in the festivities. Her life of late reads like a camp novella. Her mother died in a tragic plane crash thinking that her daughter had an affair with her husband. Yes, clutch the pearls.

“No one can imagine, I certainly couldn’t know how that could totally and completely affect my life,” Chiquis started. “Here I was losing my mother in the middle of the worst part of our relationship, we had gone through so much already, and Im being seen as someone that hurt her, that betrayed her. People thought I shouldn’t even be grieving, it was so unreal,” she reflected. “I lost her before she died, I lost her when the lies about me and her husband came forward and she listened to them,” she went on. “ I had to face all of this in the public eye. When you accuse me of sleeping with my mom’s husband, it’s like saying I killed someone. So I had to write a book to set the record straight. I wanted to write about the mistakes both me and my mom made and how I’m working through it,” she added.

And so the book is out. Entitled Forgiveness, the book is an honest look at how a young woman in many ways dies with her mother and then has to reinvent, rebuild and move on all while grieving an unimaginable loss at the worst of times ever. More cathartic than literary, the book is Chiquis’ chance to speak to the public, but also to her mother in many ways. “I say many things in the book that I would want my mother to hear,” she told me. “The major message to her, the secret of the book…it’s my journey to forgiveness. It was very difficult to forgive my mom, life, destiny for what had happened. Once you forgive you grow wings and fly free. I was upset because I was left with this mess. I knew my mom. This was a hard lesson and we were going to be fine, but we were never given that chance and that was one of the hardest things of my life.” After the dust from the book settles (and it’s creating quite a stir already only one week in release,) Chiquis will release an album in June. She wants to continue in TV, touring, more books, in many ways take on the Rivera empire. But heavy is the head that wears the crown.

And as Chiquis learned about forgiveness in the book, she is also learning what her mother went through daily and empathy is creeping in more and more. “I’m getting a little taste of the things mom encountered with her life and career now and you have no idea,” she exclaimed. “I was so hard on my mom, so critical of her sometimes, and now I have so much more compassion for my mother. So many doors were closed in her face, and I’m experiencing the same things. Now that I’m experiencing it, I appreciate it so much more. I can’t believe she had to go through this, all on her own. Radio stations that don’t want to play your music for whatever reason… all the rumors and lies, and then family life. I understand her a lot more.” But understanding herself is what Forgiveness is all about; dealing with past and present. Her mother died with unfinished business – lots, in many areas.

In Forgiveness, Chiquis is seeing to it that in many areas she’s setting the record straight and putting and end to things past, to move on to things future.

To hear this or other interviews get the FREE Karel Cast App at www.karel.media/app; subscribe to the Podcast at www.spreaker.com/show/the-karel-cast; or visit the website at www.karel.media.

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