2025/Isabella-34020

I am a Hispanic woman raised by an immigrant mother who I watched throughout my childhood be the stereotype the young girls in our community dread. Financially trapped, unequipped, and lacking the freedom to live independently. When I was a young girl my mother told me “don’t let yourself depend on a man for his money”. I was, to put it nicely, quite an arrogant child and I sort of frowned at this statement as if it was common sense. As a child, it brought me a great amount of emotional distress to hear my parents scream at each other and I don’t know whether or not I was selfish or hyper aware of my emotional needs, when I told my mom not to get a divorce at the age of 7. Now that I’m older I don’t regret the way my life has played out and I wouldn’t change it however this set a very broken example of love and relationships for me to look up to. I’ve realized I have no healthy relationship to look up to but that my parents had successfully planted a drive in me to achieve more, and it’s this sacrifice of relationships for the success of their child that embodies hispanic upbringing. For my career will have been built off the lives of the latinos struggling before me. My education was funded by my father’s 20 years in the military after he couldn’t afford to finish college without enlisting. I now carry the torch.