Bridging the Divide and Final Thoughts

A blurry family photo of Tita and her two kids.

One thing that I’ve realized is that my son is born of Mexican parents but he’s American and that’s not a bad thing. I suffered a lot of mental and physical abuse from my parents but I don’t harbor any ill thoughts towards them. I know that they tried to the best of their abilities. People think differently in Mexico. It’s inherent that you’re going to respect your parents and I do. You have to respect everyone. I’ve always maintained contact with my parents and with my friends back home, through everything. Sometimes they only call to ask for money but that’s why I came over here. Or at least it’s one of the reasons. I have to give back. Sometimes my husband gets upset because he knows what I went through but he understands that we have to give back. After all he has family in Mexico as well.

I can’t lie and say that it hasn’t crossed my mind not to help them out but nothing has changed. They’re still my parents and I was raised to respect that. There are times were we have to stop being held down by our past and cut the chains but I can’t do that to my parents and my country.

At the same time it’s important to understand that we have to get ahead in this country. We’ve fought day after day to achieve what we have in this country and even now we keep fighting. There’s something that Americans have already known. That is to send their kids to college, to encourage them to make something of themselves. I’d like to someday be a U.S. Citizen and make something of myself. We struggle and we fight for our children and no matter where we go there will be people who tell us that we’re struggling for nothing. That there’s no point. But we know, that it is worth it when we see our kids in school and making something of themselves.

My children motivate me, I don’t know anyone in the hispanic community that I look up to, we don’t have very many people to aspire to be. Our kids are going to be those people for the future generations. If we don’t strive to be successful there’s no point in having come to this country.