Daniela Lázaro-Manalo reflects on the myth of moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui, how this myth relates to her own story and the invitation to divine love that she sees through it.
This blog is part of the ongoing Learn, Pray, Join: Undoing Patriarchy series.
Daniela Lázaro-Manalo is the racial equity education and advocacy coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee U.S., where she advances education and advocacy efforts on anti-racism and anti-colonialism. She holds a degree in communications and a master’s degree in Chicana/o studies. In both her professional and activist endeavors in the U.S. and abroad, Daniela is passionate about racial justice, equity, community mobilization, and the multiple, interdisciplinary understandings of identity formation in the U.S. As an educator, she grounds her work in Anabaptist theology, peacebuilding and restorative justice. She lives in Los Angeles, California, with her spouse and two sons. Daniela is a member of Mennonite Church USA’s Women in Leadership Steering Committee.
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When the moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui, armed her rebellion against her mother, her brother, Huitzilopochtli, embodying the patriarchal forces of war and domination, responded with brutal violence. He dismembered Coyolxauhqui’s body, scattering her parts across the night sky, enacting a dismantling that echoes through history in colonized bodies and fragmented identities. Her fragmented form was reassembled in the moon — forever visible, a reminder of both destruction and the possibility of remaking.
This ancient myth, reinterpreted through Gloria Anzaldúa’s Chicana feminist lens, speaks to our existence under patriarchal systems. As Anzaldúa highlights, Coyolxauhqui becomes a symbol of healing and resistance — her dismembered body representing how colonialism, patriarchy and borders fragment our identities. Our bodies, identities and sense of belonging splinter under the weight of expectations. Yet, like Coyolxauhqui, we find ways to restore ourselves, discovering divine love in the spaces between our broken pieces.
When I think of divine love I think of…
My early years, as an undocumented girl living in the U.S., and the fantasy world that my siblings and I created. This was a make-believe world, in which we reimagined our household items as the toys we couldn’t afford, created games to distract our baby sister while our parents worked long hours, and named ourselves kings and queens — choosing to grant ourselves citizenship first, when others refused.
Living undocumented in a system that demands proof of your value teaches you to view your body as a commodity. The patriarchy, intertwined with capitalism, tricks you into prizing only the parts of yourself that produce, that contribute, that make you “worthy” of belonging. The first pieces sacrificed are those that simply exist — that play, that rest, that breathe without purpose beyond being.
Yet even in this rupture, my siblings and I found divine love through imagination. We created wholeness in fantasy, when reality offered only brokenness. By crowning one another with belonging, when systems denied us recognition, we practiced resistance — finding ourselves, through play and connection, when the world sought to keep us divided.
When I think of divine love I think of …
The family we got to choose, like my “Uncle” Tito, who would pick me up after school in his beat-up van. He’d pull up and honk as loud as he could, and the only thing louder than the wonky horn was his laugh, because he knew it would embarrass me in front of my friends. He always had a way of making me feel okay about all the things that labeled me an outsider.
Coyolxauhqui’s story is not just about dismemberment but also about recovery. Similarly, our chosen community helps us gather our scattered pieces, holding space for parts deemed unworthy. Uncle Tito’s laughter created a sacred space of rest, where the exhaustion of navigating sexism and xenophobia could be set down. Laughter taught me lightness, a way to lean into difference.
When I think of divine love I think of …
Meeting my son for the first time. After 56 hours of intensive labor, and during a pandemic, nothing felt more uncertain. Those final hours broke me — the pain, fear, chaos. I met my baby at my most vulnerable … and the love I felt when I looked at him almost hurt, as it washed over me. It inundated every part of me, breaking down walls I had spent years building.
Through childbirth, I connected with Coyolxauhqui’s journey. The breaking open of the body, the shattering of self, followed by creation. Patriarchal systems have sought to control such transformations, rendering invisible the divine power in our vulnerable moments of becoming.
In this breaking, there is opportunity for transformation. Walls built by patriarchal conditioning can be washed away by love’s inundation. This isn’t gentle; it hurts as it heals. Divine love demands we confront our fragmentation before finding wholeness.
Rest as resistance, healing as reclaiming
As I reflect on these experiences, I am confronted with the circumstances that undergirded these moments of vulnerability — feeling disempowered, unsafe and unworthy. Vulnerability often comes from places of grit, gloom and tremendous discomfort.
In a patriarchal world that values productivity over presence, achievement over authenticity and violence over peace, rest becomes a radical act of resistance. Holding our fragments requires space and time — luxuries patriarchy withholds, especially from women, people of color and those whose bodies it exploits. The story of Coyolxauhqui teaches us that remaking is possible, but it requires acknowledgment of our wounds. We cannot heal what we do not allow ourselves to feel. Divine love creates the container in which we safely hold these pieces, allowing them to be reassembled not into what patriarchy demands but into what truly honors our wholeness.
An invitation to divine love
These experiences have become more than memories framed by difficulty. As I’ve searched for ways to understand divine love, I’ve learned to listen to what manifests through the everyday. The power to activate divine expressions of love is within you, now. Love happens in vulnerability.
Like Coyolxauhqui’s silver light, divine love illuminates ordinary moments as sacred sites of resistance. It is in these spaces — laughing at a creaky horn, holding a newborn after exhausting labor — that we find the power to undo patriarchy’s grip.
I invite you to tap into your own memories of expansive connection, to tap into the divine love that brings us together to listen, learn and transform in ways that reflect a vulnerability without bounds — extending into both the cosmos and the self.
In the story, the moon goddess was torn apart but made complete. Allow yourself the sacred gift of rest. Hold all your pieces tenderly, remembering that you are always whole, whether you are waxing or waning. Trust that divine love flows most freely through the cracks in our facades.
May we grow together in love, rest and the revolutionary act of remaking ourselves anew.
“Learn, Pray, Join: Undoing Patriarchy” draws attention to the ways in which the current systems in our world and churches create spaces that perpetuate patriarchal norms and do harm to those who fall outside of those norms. This initiative provides tools and resources to help MC USA church communities work toward a more equitable world, in which everyone is treated with the care and respect they deserve, regardless of gender.
You are invited to get involved with Learn, Pray, Join: Undoing Patriarchy.
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog belong to the author and are not intended to represent the views of the MC USA Executive Board or staff.