"Scraps of my life" by VERANO VILLALBA SARA JUDITH

How it started...

sverano50 — 2025-05-26 00:45:13 UTC

I am the first daughter of my parents, my father a math teacher and my mother a very creative woman that when decided to get marriage with my father, she dedicated to stay at home taking care of me. My mother always told me that I was the most desired baby because two years went by when they organized and she couldn’t get pregnant so when I came into their lives it was a great happiness.

sverano50 — 2025-05-26 00:47:02 UTC

sverano50 — 2025-05-26 00:52:30 UTC

My name is Sara Judith Verano Villalba, my last name would be summer in English, but my story is a cycle of all seasons, constantly changing and renewing.I was born on July 3, 2004, so my zodiac sign is cancer, which is represented by a crab, I have the strength of a crab's shell and my intuitive nature helps me navigate the complex emotions of the early 21st century world I have grown up.I was born in this cold and grey city that is Bogota, but I grew up the first 3 years of my life in a town called Nemocon, the first streets that I saw those were quiet and near to the famous “mina de sal” a magic town that taught me to be loved for my family and the elderly since it was the largest population there. Every time I go out with my mother I was all the time saying hello to them and they became friends of my family, it was weird to see kids in that town.

My early years.

sverano50 — 2025-05-26 00:56:29 UTC

I spent the first 4 years of my life in a town called Nemocon, there I lived only with my father and my mother in the house that my father had built since he has always been a man who likes to live in spaces that he builds himself and my mother with all the love in the world has always supported him and helped him in these aspects, that town was completely magical for me and despite being so small I felt like the main character there.

sverano50 — 2025-05-26 01:01:38 UTC

I remember that my mother always liked to take me to the library despite my young age. We did most of the things together while my father worked. She always liked to teach me crafts, take me to dance classes and sing me children's songs in English. I felt very accompanied and happy. I remember that time with much joy and color.

Everything changed...

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 21:50:10 UTC

When I was 4 years old we had to move to Fusagasugá because my father had a job vacancy near that town. We started to live with my maternal grandparents, I didn’t understand anything but I was excited of that new life. Everything started to change, I enter to the school, it was a decision that my parents agreed with because I was constantly remembering that I wanted to know what it was to go to school. I didn’t remember well how it was my first day at school but I know that I wanted to cry but at the end I decided to show me strong in front of my mom, obviously she knew that I wanted to cry.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 21:52:43 UTC

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 21:58:47 UTC

Living with my grandparents was a nice experience, although sometimes I didn't really understand the dynamics of taking great care of them because of their age, I really enjoyed playing in their house and watching TV. My grandfather was a man who liked poetry and politics, he had many stories to tell and many poems to recite but I was too small to understand him, my grandmother was the most patient woman I have ever known and she always spoiled me, she made us cookies that she called "colaciones", which are a legacy from my mother's maternal family, she was a very brave and intelligent woman, she was always my other mother. Many of the values and attitudes I have today are thanks to my grandparents, for example my grandfather always showed me the importance of having character, of being sincere and humble, my grandmother taught me to be attentive to detail, to be kind and empathetic.

At that time I was thinking about having a sister, I was so obsessed that I always asked my parents when my sister was going to arrive because I wanted to meet her, at that time they had no plans for more children, but I was too young to understand it and I did not understand the dynamics of that, so I just prayed that at any moment they would give me a sister as a gift. When I was 6 years old my mother finally told me that she was expecting a baby and that that baby was going to be my brother, although we still did not know the gender of the baby, I was very excited because I was going to have a friend and someone to play and share with.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:12:31 UTC

When I was in school, I remember that in the first years of elementary school, despite some uncomfortable situations that happened, I felt happy. I did all of my elementary school in the same school. There, in grades zero to first, I had a teacher named Norma, who was very strict but at the same time very cordial with her students. At this time, I liked to come home and pretend that I was a teacher like her and I imitated her. In second grade, the teacher who taught me was called Adriana, from her I learned many things, such as how to be organized and to give my opinion more often. Finally, in third grade, the dynamics changed and the students had to change classrooms to see each subject with a different teacher. This time was very strange since I began to understand a little more how the world worked and all the dangers that lived in it.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:15:42 UTC

In third grade I met Professor Graciela, who was a teacher who changed my way of seeing life and gave me many tools to be who I am today. She taught me the importance of values such as respect and responsibility and developed many artistic skills in me such as dance and singing. She always accompanied me in all academic processes making me better every day. She was my teacher until fifth grade, at that time I was in first place most of the time and she always valued everyone's effort, without a doubt one of the best teachers I have ever met in life, an example to follow, she reaffirmed that idea I had of being a teacher.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:34:28 UTC

When I entered high school I was 10 years old and decided to change schools and with the support of my parents who have always been there for me, they got me a place in a normal school, perfect to continue and reinforce my idea of being a teacher. So I started sixth grade in that normal school that was in another town near where I lived, but things did not go as I thought, the focus of pedagogy began in ninth grade, the people at school excluded me and I felt very bad about my physique, also since the trip was so long from my house to school I started to get sick because every day I felt dizzy, so after 4 months of studying there I decided to change schools, my parents accepted because they saw me in very bad health, I was very thin and sad.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:37:38 UTC

When I left that school I felt very calm, I looked better and I took a break for 3 weeks while I recovered. I did not want to go back to the same school where I had studied primary school, but this time I was no longer studying in the morning but in the afternoon so there were no more places in the morning. Starting there was very hard, I was not used to the schedule and much less to the people, but as time went by everything got better, I had good friends and I had a great time. For the following year I was 11 years old and I was entering seventh grade, there I returned to the morning session and by chance I was with the same group that I had done in primary school, I made friends with new people but at that time I was accepting the physical changes due to pre-adolescence so I did not feel satisfied with anything.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:40:18 UTC

In the following years of high school I felt very excluded at first and it wasn't until ninth grade that I was able to make friends again with whom I felt comfortable, by then I was already 14 years old. That year was very chaotic because I was going through a skin condition called vitiligo and it was a painful process that impacted my self-esteem, so I hardly left the house, I avoided being in places where there were many people and I spent my time making remedies and investing my time in my physical care to feel better.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:53:00 UTC

In tenth grade, when I was 15, I already felt much better, the vitiligo condition had passed and my self-esteem was improving. That year I met the man who would become my first boyfriend and in this relationship my academic level and self-esteem deteriorated. It was a fairly toxic relationship that lasted a year. With the passage of time, I found people who supported me to get out of there, and although the mourning cost me two years of my life, it is an experience that I remember with courage and that forged my character and my self-esteem. It was more difficult to face the grief due to the pandemic, since in the year 2020 when the pandemic began I was entering eleventh grade, the last grade of my high school and I could not enjoy it as I wanted or deserved, in addition to being locked up all the time made me feel lonely and aimless, in these years 2020 and 2021 that were the years of my grief, I made many mistakes, I had quite ugly and traumatic experiences that made me reach the limit, but as everything has its end I was able to get out of there, and learn to put myself first, my well-being before anything else. When I entered the university virtually, it was when I was going through this very difficult and painful moment for me, since everything had accumulated: getting used to virtuality, living with my parents, the death of my grandmother, alcohol dependence and low self-esteem. But it was at the end of this year that with the help of friends, my family and my effort I was able to move forward and begin to heal.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:54:30 UTC

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sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:56:58 UTC

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 22:57:20 UTC

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sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:00:01 UTC

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sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:02:07 UTC

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:12:06 UTC

When I was 6 years old and my brother was still a baby, my parents told us the news that my mother was pregnant again. At first I thought it was a joke, but as time went by I realized it wasn't. On my 7th birthday I went to meet my sister in Bogota. I remember that when I saw her I said that she was very ugly, because I wasn't happy that I was going to have a sister after waiting so long. The relationship was difficult at first because I was accepting all the changes that had happened and I felt that the attention they gave me no longer existed. However, as I grew up I shared more with my two brothers and I liked her a lot. My sister and I fought a lot since we were little, but today she is one of the people I trust the most with my things, the one I have the most fun with, and she is a mirror for me. I often see myself reflected in her and it is amazing to know that there is someone in the world who can be so similar to me despite the differences.

My friends.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:37:22 UTC

My first friend was Tatiana and she makes me laugh a lot, I always have love people like that. Then in first grade there were people who bothered me so much that I didn't want to go back to school, but my mother always advised that I had to defend myself in the most respectful way and not pay attention to people who were like that. When I was a child I avoid the conflict, when something bad happened to me it made me blush and, I wanted to cry, I preferred not to say anything.But the same story happened a lot of times at school, in life. I had to learn to say what I thought, what I felt and it was very hard at the beginning, It is a process that I continue learning and improving over time. As I grew up it got worse, when I entered third and fourth grade I always had the first places academically, I met a girl named Danna at first we had a certain rivalry because we both fought for first place on the report card and when there was a dance or singing event we always wanted to participate, this generated a competition between us. One day she got sick and missed a lot of time at school, her mother decided to talk to my mom so that I would lend her the notebooks and get ahead of the most seen subjects, from that day things changed we started to talk more and in fact we both had many things in common, so we became friends, the best friends.This generated a lot of envy in the classroom, they bullied us and in a certain way they only wanted to talk to us about homework, we never let them treat us badly, together we were a team in everything, if someone said something bad to Danna, I defended her and vice versa here I began to improve in a certain way my communication skills for conflict.Danna was a person who taught me valuable lessons in life, both academic and personal, she reinforced my love for studying, she instilled in me the love for the grandparents we had and made me laugh a lot, she taught me how important it was to have a friend day after day, but not everything is rosy. One day her grandfather, who was a very special being to me, passed away and she had to return to Bogota, so when I entered fifth grade I no longer had my best friend, obviously we grew apart at that time I did not have internet or a cell phone to communicate with her, it was very hard, I arrived every afternoon crying, no one wanted to be my friend at school and since we were the same group the envy continued, I was afraid to spend recess alone or exchange words with someone because I felt that they were going to make me feel bad for who I was and because I no longer had my friend to defend us. My mother noticed the situation and immediately began to advise me and the teacher I had at that time, Graciela Marquez, one of the best teachers I have ever had in my life, helped me get ahead, at the end of the school year I already had some friends but nothing was real, nothing was like before. So when I entered high school I decided to change to a normal school since I already had the idea of being a teacher, but the environment was worse and I had to go back to where I studied again, there I started the afternoon shift, made new friends and learned to be more sociable, I was with people who reinforced that characteristic. I met people who at the time were very valuable to me, Alejandro who was a friend who already distinguished me but we met again that same year, he taught me the importance of humility and of being a person who can adapt to any environment, because life is about that, adapting to changes and to the diverse spaces and people that there are in those spaces. Keidy was a person who helped me when I needed it most and gave me unconditional support, teaching me to understand people in a unique way, Junior was a friend who changed me completely, he showed me other ways of seeing the world and his tastes greatly influenced my tastes, in addition to that when I had my first love breakup he understood me and reminded me in a certain way of my value as a woman and a person, none of them were completely perfect but today I remember them in the best way. I met each of them in a larger group of friends that we had, which split up due to misunderstandings with the partner I had at the time and because it split into a group in my favor and the other in his favor. In 2020 I met Brandon, who is a person that helped me in my personal development in an impressive way, at first it was a friendship in which I found a refuge, we both continue the friendship until today and I consider him as a brother, he is a person who has never judged me and has helped me in the most complex moments of my life.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:41:35 UTC

When the pandemic hit I felt very alone so I decided to adopt a cat. She was my company in many moments when I didn't feel well and it was a wonderful experience to have been able to raise her from baby with my family. At first my dad didn't allow us to have cats, so I adopted her secretly and once at home there was no way my dad would leave her on the street. We all learned to love her. She passed away last year, but I always remember with nostalgia and love all the joy she gave us.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:54:19 UTC

My family has influenced many of my decisions throughout my life, as they are very important people to me and they have instilled in me values and ideologies that I still carry with me despite the distance. Likewise, my family members have helped guide me on the best path and this is something I am always grateful for. Currently I have a boyfriend and over time I have learned that I also consider him a member of my family. He is a person in whom I can trust all my feelings and thoughts and he is always there to understand me. In addition, he has made me mature emotionally and is the person with whom I feel most comfortable

My life as a sister.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:57:45 UTC

Suddenly the day came when my parents gave me the news that I would have a brother, that day I did not like it, I felt frustrated and upset because I did not want a male brother, I had always asked them for a girl, so I asked them why they could not simply bring a girl and that's it, a twin of mine. My parents obviously noticed my discontent and well I did not understand at all that that was simply not possible anymore, so my mother took on the task of making me accept my brother from the womb, she gave me gifts, letters and told me that they were from my brother, that he loved me very much and already wanted to see me so over time I created a bond of affection with my future brother without even knowing him and each day that passed my excitement to see him grew.

Finally the day of my brother's birth arrived, but I couldn't see him that same day because he was in Bogota with my mother in labor and I was in Fusagasuga with my grandparents. I met him a few days later, but those days that at that time felt like months to me were horrible, because I missed my mother a lot and I cried every day that I got to school and didn't want to go in, so several teachers, one of them who was my aunt, had to comfort me so that I could go into school and feel better. Those days my father took me and we could hardly share because he had to leave very quickly for work. As it began to be noticed that every day I arrived at school my reaction was worse and I had little desire to be there without my mother, my father decided to hire a babysitter, her name is Angela and for me she was a refuge, she took care of me, she helped me with my homework and above all she taught me many good things and she was always there for me emotionally.

sverano50 — 2025-05-27 23:58:40 UTC

Some time after I never knew exactly how much it was, I was able to meet my brother, he was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen and I felt very impressed and happy that he was there with us, since then he is the best of brothers and I have learned so many things from him that it surprises me, he is a very intelligent, loving and kind child, since he was little he has always shown me his most sincere affection and although there have been times when we did not understand each other completely he is always a company for me, being the older sister was never easy, since when I was 6 years old and my brother was a baby I was always asked that I had to be an example for him, that I should take care of him and not feel jealous if they gave him more attention since he was very little and did not understand, at first that made me angry because if I did something wrong I was always the one affected but not him because he was so little, however as I grew up I understood it.

As a teacher:

sverano50 — 2025-05-28 00:18:10 UTC

I have noticed the importance of teaching, because we have the power to inspire and empower students to reach their full potential. I have been working s a techer since this year and I have learned to develope patience, empathy, and the ability to understand and adapt to diverse learning styles. I want to continue improving my teaching for being a good guide and person with my future students.

Since I started working as an English teacher for children, I have reconnected with my inner child and have been able to experience new emotions, such as admiration and pride in seeing my students progress with my support. I have also gone back to doing crafts, something that I love and am passionate about, since I like teaching my students by connecting their motor skills and art, which they love and me too.

These art and craft skills are thanks to my mother who taught me since I was little the importance of creativity and being resourceful when we can't have all the materials, because at the end of the day the important thing is to let our imagination flies.

sverano50 — 2025-05-28 00:20:07 UTC