There’s a book on a kindergarten shelf right now called Tia is My Mami. It’s about a seven-year-old girl whose mother is gone, and whose aunt has become her mother.
It took twenty years to write.
In Episode 50 of The Padernacht Podcast: Brick by Brick, Steven Padernacht sits down with Jessica Galeas — a Bronx-raised early childhood and special education teacher, wife, mother of three boys, and debut author — to talk about the story she was afraid to tell for most of her life, and what happened when she finally told it.
The Teacher
Jessica has been in the classroom for more than fifteen years, teaching kindergarten through second grade in New York City public schools, working with typically developing students, English language learners, and kids with special needs all in the same room.
What she describes as the biggest part of her job isn’t academic. It’s social emotional learning — SEL — the skills kids need to cope, collaborate, manage emotions, and develop empathy. Skills that don’t come from a textbook but from the culture a teacher builds every morning.
“School is the second home for them,” she said. “We’re with them for eight hours a day. You’re like their second mom.”
After COVID, she saw SEL surge into the forefront of every curriculum. Kids who had spent months in isolation came back needing to learn — or relearn — how to be in a room with other people. “Sometimes it’s not always taught at home,” Jessica said. “So we teach it through read-alouds, group work, working through scenarios. How do you feel? How do you think that person feels?”
The book kids gravitate toward most in her classroom? Jabari Jumps — about a little boy terrified to jump off a diving board. “After we read it, the kids are literally clapping and cheering when he does it. And I have to tell you that makes me so happy. Because it’s that empathy — you can imagine how he feels. And then I tell them: that could be you, too.”
The Book
Tia is My Mami started as a graduate school project more than twenty years ago. Jessica’s professor read it and told her she should do something with it. She tucked it away and carried it with her for two decades.
The story is 95% her own. Down to the two dogs — Casey and Venus, the names she used in the book. Down to the Bronx backdrop. Down to the moment that sits in the middle of the story like a stone.
Jessica’s mother became too ill to care for her when she was around three or four years old. Her Tia — her aunt — stepped in and raised her as her own. Her Abuela took early retirement to be there after school. And her mother eventually passed away.
“She did it effortlessly,” Jessica said of her Tia. “Had no kids of her own yet. I was her first niece. She took over that role like literally as if I were her own. I call her ma. She is my ma.”
“I am who I am because of her. Had she not taken me under her care, who knows what could have happened.”
Part of the urgency that finally pushed Jessica to publish was watching her Tia get older. She gave her a preview copy over Thanksgiving, in a private moment. “She just looked at it and she was bawling. And she said to me, ‘Because of you, I also am who I am. And you taught me so much.'”
Why It Took Twenty Years
Jessica didn’t talk about her family story growing up. Not because it was forbidden, but because she was afraid. Afraid of how it would be received. Afraid it wasn’t perfect. Afraid of being in the world with that kind of vulnerability.
“Get that confidence up, girl,” she said, speaking directly to her younger self. “I was in my own head, overthinking everything. Just go. Just let go. Just do it.”
Becoming a teacher helped. Becoming a mother helped more. Watching kids in her classroom who looked like her, who came from families like hers, who had no book on the shelf that reflected their reality — that became the push.
“I don’t see this,” she said. “Non-traditional families, kids raised by grandmothers and theas and uncles and aunts — there’s not that much out there with regard to this topic.”
What the Book Is About
The story follows a little girl — no name in the book, though Jessica would name her Jesse — who grows up in the Bronx with her mother, then with her Tia after her mother grows too ill to care for her. They go on walks with two playful pups. They share chocolate bar treats. They keep her mother’s memory close through stories.
And then her mother passes away.
“While the topic can be heavy, by the end of the story, I hope that there’s some hope there and some love,” Jessica said. “The message is that family is family, family is love — no matter what that looks like.”
Steven read the book before the episode. “I flipped the page and it was just — whoa. It hit me. And there’s a part of you in that story that’s now being spread across the entire world. And I think it’s beautiful.”
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The Response
Tia is My Mami has been out for a few months. Strangers have walked up to Jessica and said, “That’s my story.” Teachers have read it to their classes and reported back. One child told the class: “I’m so sad for her that she doesn’t have her mom — because I have my mom.”
“That’s really what I want from it,” Jessica said. “That someone can see themselves in it. Or someone can see someone they know in it and share that story with them.”
Triple Hearts Books — her imprint — is named after her three boys: Mason, Cruz, and Jagger. It represents family, love, and connection. More books are coming, she said, with the same theme: non-traditional families, kids who don’t see themselves in the literature, the message that you can come through it okay.
Find Tia is My Mami on Amazon. Find Jessica on Instagram at @tripleheartsbooks
Steven Padernacht is a third-generation Bronx realtor with nearly 20 years of experience serving buyers, sellers, investors, and landlords across the Bronx, Riverdale, Westchester, and greater NYC.