I had a lot of emotional support from my family throughout my childhood, especially from my mother. My mother always encouraged me to describe how I feel and take me to places to distress myself.I am a kind mellow person but at the same time I can express how I feel in a professional way because my family made sure I understood the value of resilience.

When I was a child my parents lived in a beautiful house in the evergreen area.They were considered middle class. When I was eight years old, my parents divorced and had to live in separate places and both my parents struggled a lot more. One of the things my parents agreed on is to make sure my brother and I went to college.We both graduated from college however we both are living with my mother to this day. The economy is different now than it was back then. Right now my husband and I are saving for a mobile home and our goal is to move by next year.

I went to a daycare when I was two years old  but didn’t learn how to talk until I was five years old. My older brother did all the talking for me when I was younger. When I started kindergarten, I started going to speech therapy and after that I began to talk a lot more to the other children in the classroom. I remember making a lot more friends ever since I started talking.

Values and beliefs

My core values are honesty, loyalty, and reliability and my grandmother helped me understand the importance of these core values by telling me that one day in life some people will appreciate these values in you and these values will go a long way .My core belief is “ what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and to never give up. I remember struggling a lot in school and crying when I got home, then my mother showed me this song called never give up by Yolanda Adams. That song means a lot to me because it mentions if your passion is there then you are in the right place.

Culture means a lot to me because you want to keep traditions alive otherwise you can lose a little part of where you come from. For the longest time I thought I was only mexican american. I went to the mexican super markets and people automatically talked to me in spanish when I didn’t understand them they gave me the look of shame. I remember someone saying”Why don’t you speak spanish you wannabe gringa” ? That really hurt me to the core.Then one day I wondered if I was more than that . Later I ordered from ancestry and found out my background( will post it on padlet) and the results surprised me. 

Education is very important to my family as said earlier my parents made sure we went to college  so on a scale of 1-10 I would say an 8. The reason for that is because no one in my family went to college besides my brother and I.My brother majored in Psychology and I majored in child development. I remember my family being very supportive with my major. 

Personal or familial change

We all go through hardships in life and I would like to share a couple of mine. When I was 10, my fifth grade teacher wanted to hold me back . My mother fought for me not to be held back . One day my teacher said “ Let's face it your daughter is not smart and she is not going to be smart”. That comment made my mom and I furious. One of the things about me is that I like to prove people wrong when they upset me. I studied hard and ended up getting good grades after.

Another hard thing I went through is a job loss that I had. I remember sitting in the office waiting and thinking they are just probably telling me what will happen in the new school year. Then that's when they told me “working with children is not for you and don’t fit in here”. After they said “It's like putting a square block in a circle” That did a major scar on my heart. Surprisingly I overcame that and started working at kidango and later on kidango/educare and I felt like I belong here . Like my mother said if there passion is there then you are in the right place.