Growing up, I spoke both Spanish and English, but since my mom's family does not speak English, I spoke mostly Spanish before I went to school. I spent very early elementary in Miami public schools and the rest of my schooling in rural central Pennsylvania public schools.

My family lives in Colombia and the US and I have some family from El Salvador as well, so my Spanish was never really consistent in my opinion. When I moved to rural PA, I only spoke Spanish at home and at church (lol) until I stopped going. My Spanish fell off when I stopped speaking it in social settings and only spoke it to talk to my family, especially since I would speak Spanish in a casual and non-formal context. Speaking mostly English as a teenager in rural PA definitely influenced how I speak both English and Spanish, as well as my relationship with both languages.

I definitely still consider myself bilingual and don't subscribe to any idea that language needs to be "perfect" (typically upheld to a colonial standard, especially when it comes to spanish and english). I will never forget or stop communicating in spanish even if my education/schooling is in english because I both literally need it to communicate with my family and it is important to my cultural identity.

My dad learned French and Spanish before dropping out of school and moving to Miami for work, where he met my mom. My dad definitely has an American accent when he speaks Spanish, but he has spoken it for ~30 years and he is fluent. He speaks to me in both Spanish and English, but mostly English since it's his first language and his side of the family only speaks English.

I lived with dad's mom (pictured) for 8 years; she only speaks english so I spoke only english to her and at school while speaking spanish to my mom's family. This has definitely impacted my relationship with language, as she would get frustrated when I was speaking spanish and she couldn't understand me, so I internalized a lot of shame as a child around language.

Language is not neutral, so I know my english accent is typical of someone from Pennsylvania and my friends from high school since I lived the majority of my life in south central Pennsylvania. I definitely speak more like my dad than my mom, but growing up in multiple places makes it difficult to piece together how the way I speak came to be. It does make me mourn for how my relationship to language could be different today and I think spending so long in a rural area and english-only schools damaged my relationship to language.