To My Mom & Grandma

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Originally published in November 2018

The image I have in my head of her when she was young is her playing in the farm. Hiding in the corn field. Running away from her mother to avoid the punishment for the trouble she caused. I see her working alongside her mother and siblings, and I see her as she said goodbye to her father who died when she was little.

Most of these images might just be in my head, but I do know that it was in fact that reality, of living in a house with her mother and two sisters, that made her who she is. And it’s in understanding how she grew up that I can begin to comprehend how she is able to carry on in moments that I can’t even move.

And really, it comes down to her mother. In those moments helping her mom work to survive, she learned what strength really meant. She never saw her mom falter, seem defeated or seem weak. Her mom carried on, not just by dragging on through life. No. She walked firmly, she was strong and she moved forward. That’s where she, at a very young age, learned to be a strong woman. A strong person.

She would need this strength for the rest of her life, as life for her was never always easy.

She needed it when she was still young and she started working. When she was living in a small room with one bed with her two sisters, tending to a small coffee shop from early until late, learning to silence out the noise of hard circumstances and the noise of older men who would make unwanted comments.

She needed that strength when her husband moved to the US to work, and she stayed with her two young girls.

She needed that strength when she too moved to the US and faced jobs and people that humiliated her and treated her as if she was less than deserving. She needed that strength to work 3 or more jobs and to, somehow, never show her daughters defeat or weakness, but only possibility.

She needed that strength when many years later, she ended up moving back to Colombia leaving her life of more than 25 years behind. She needed that strength when she moved back “home” to a place that was not the same as when she left it. She needed that strength to practically begin life all over and to keep moving forward.

She kept her strength, the one she saw in her mother. And through all the ups and downs, she never once showed her own daughters weakness. Even when they didn’t have the strength to carry themselves, even when she might have felt like falling, she never did. And still today, she doesn’t.

That’s my mother. Not everybody sees her the way I do, but I know -even if no one else does – that her strength is so incredible that she’s the one that lifts us up. Neither my dad, my sister nor I could have gone through half of what we have gone through if not because she lifted us up. She, like her mother did, never shows weakness. Never shows defeat. All she shows is strength.

So to her, and my grandmother, I say thank you. Thank you for showing me strength, even if I myself don’t always have it. And thank you for carrying me with that strength, when I can’t carry myself.

I love you.