I am white passing. I do not look like my mother or my sister. And when I visit my stepdad’s white family, no one says, “You look just like your great grandma when she was a little girl!” But I love my loud, Mexican family, with all their chaos, delicious food, and overflowing love. I also love my goofy, reserved, board-game playing white family, no matter how much they talk about the weather. This dichotomy within myself plays out at school too, where I don’t feel comfortable claiming brownness despite my shared experiences with other Hispanics in America, but I feel isolated and unseen in privileged/white spaces. All this has forced me to reflect on what being Latina and serving my community as a therapist means to me. I believe serving the Latinx community should encompass open conversation, humility, and the awareness that we are all in different positions but deserve to be heard, seen, and ultimately treated with respect no matter our background. I feel fortunate that my personal experience makes me uniquely fit to serve and connect with diverse populations, especially those that are mixed-race and struggle with identity. I am committed to diversity and inclusion, because I know exactly what it means to not feel safe in our academic and professional spaces. And, I am committed to equity, because I was raised by people who didn’t necessarily begin life with the best footing, but I believe all people deserve access to the same resources, funding, opportunities, and education as everyone else. I can’t pinpoint the exact time and place I decided to become a therapist. I have always held a fascination with feelings, emotions, relationship dynamics, and how our experiences as children shapes everything about how we function as adults. However, in typical first-generation immigrant fashion, I had always been taught that I needed to do something more….well, flashy? I needed a job that my mom could tell her siblings about (hence, engineer or lawyer). Would helping people through their darkest moments, being there as they confront their innermost selves do justice to my ancestors that worked so hard for me to be here? I guess one of the natural effects of getting older is to realize that maybe, just maybe, you’ve been asking the wrong questions. Slowly, the layers of intergenerational guilt have begun to be shed, the crushing need to impress or prove myself peeled back to show a woman who just wants to know, "How are you really feeling?" - This Fall, I will begin my first year of graduate school at Metropolitan State University. In two years, I will have a Masters in Social Work and will be on my way to licensure to become a certified clinical social worker and therapist. I will be going to school full time while completing a 15-20 hours/week of unpaid internship. And even though I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, I think mi abuelitos will be smiling down on me.

I can’t pinpoint the exact time and place I decided to become a therapist. It seems I always knew, on some level, for when I finally made the step from quietly entertaining the idea, turning it over in my mind like a suspect puzzle piece with a speck of purple in one corner, to deciding and committing fully to it, it felt as natural and right as if I had placed the puzzle piece perfectly on the first try; the joints connecting and the colors aligning with satisfying ease. I had always been the de facto sounding board to the often toxic emotional qualms of my own parents (before and after the divorce), learning early the careful art of communicating one’s feelings without triggering the defensive anger that often accompanies immature adults in relationships. I walked the tightrope between all my siblings' big feelings (I am the middle child), assuaging my mom’s controlling ways and needling out my step-dad’s unintentional aloofness. Throughout college, I listened with rapturous curiosity to Esther Perrell’s Ted Talks, my ears singing at her mix of wisdom, research, and love on the topic of relationships. I read John Gottman’s research, amazed at his ability to predict divorce with 90% accuracy after spending just 10 minutes observing a couple. This fascination with feelings, emotions, relationship dynamics, and how our experiences as children shapes everything about how we function as adults, didn’t immediately lead me to the idea of therapy as a career choice because I had always been taught that I needed to do something more….well, flashy? I needed a job that my mom could tell her siblings about (like an engineer or lawyer). I wasn’t sure that helping people through their dark moments, being there as they confront their innermost selves, holding space as they learn to find love and joy again would be…enough? During my time as the Executive Assistant at the non-profit, Educating Children of Color, Inc., I have seen directly how family dynamics and the judicial system impact vulnerable populations. During my time there, I have witnessed the profound effects of intergenerational trauma, emotional abuse, and violence on youth of poverty and youth of color in my community; impacting not only learning and emotional regulation but also social skills and physical health. This has fueled my curiosity about the psychology of family dynamics and my desire to develop strategies to disrupt harmful patterns and the barriers that perpetuate these cycles of disadvantage. Inherently, a significant portion of my clientele will identify as women, and women in particular face intersecting forms of discrimination. Misogyny shapes relationship dynamics in profound ways, often manifesting as power imbalances, limited communication, and unacknowledged trauma; which is compounded by the effects of racism and classism for those in marginalized communities. Moreover, the interplay of these dynamics creates barriers to accessing essential resources. Other challenges for women in relationships include gender-based violence, unequal emotional labor, wage gaps, and societal expectations; all of which often burden women disproportionately. Although misogyny, alongside systemic racism and economic inequities, creates unique stressors for women in relationships, I do not believe that the solution to these problems requires embodying an “anti-man” posture. I don’t think relationships (or life for that matter) should be seen as a zero-sum game, where the empowerment of one party requires the subversion of another. As a therapist, I will center women’s experiences by creating a space that empowers and validates them. I will do this by actively challenging harmful gender norms, promoting equitable dynamics, and addressing how societal oppression impacts relationships.

It’s 2 am my senior year of high school. I was pulling my second all-nighter that semester. This time, the culprit was an 8-page Environmental Science paper. My only company; stress, anxiety, shame, and debilitating sleep-deprivation. No matter how many times I asked myself how I got there, it would be many more years before I understood fully. And it would be many more years before I got the answer to an almost constant question in my life: “What is wrong with my brain?” It wasn’t until college, during a phone conversation with my sister, that I began to learn about the often overlooked symptoms of inattentive ADHD. Procrastination, high motivation threshold, yes, but also, symptoms I didn’t recognize. I began to learn it’s not normal to fall asleep driving, to feel overwhelmed with simple, but boring tasks, or to obsess about a new hobby or skill for 3 days, only to completely abandon it on the 4th. I didn’t immediately seek a diagnosis. I was hesitant of the label and I wasn’t quite ready for the identity shift. I had always been the 'smart one' in school—quick to grasp concepts, praised for insightful essays. But behind the scenes, I lived in a constant state of panic, pushing assignments to the last minute and collapsing under pressure. I struggled to reconcile how my peers and teachers perceived me and how I was really feeling. Although ADHD seemed to bridge this gap, I felt myself resisting a diagnosis; partly because I had been affected by misinformation about the condition—like that those that had it were often academically or cognitively “behind” their peers. Since my diagnosis, I now see how ADHD affects every aspect of my life; the ways I’ve been compensating my whole life with hyper-organization, planners, notebooks, highlights, sticky notes, to-do lists, and calendars. I literally forget that I’ve put on a pot of water, or started laundry, or need to meet with someone later that day. I regularly have to remind myself to eat, simply because it slips my mind. These struggles, which for so much of my life I had internalized as personal failings, no longer had the power to be such acute sources of shame in my life. Paradoxically, the diagnosis gave me power by reminding me that: hey, maybe it’s not all my fault. Being neurodivergent is central to my mission as a social worker and future therapist. Although I am so much more than my ADHD, being Latina, first-generation, and a survivor of abuse, I also think my unique brain chemistry allows me to serve an even broader population. Moreover, I feel that my perspective gives me “insider knowledge” on how to advocate for inclusive therapy practices or trauma-informed care. My own experiences navigating the emotional weight of executive dysfunction, sensory overload, and the pressure to "perform normally" have fostered an attunement to the invisible battle people face. As a therapist, I want to listen without judgment, understanding how neurodivergence can shape every interaction, and validating the experiences of clients who have spent their lives feeling out of place. My ADHD doesn't hinder my path toward social work—it clarifies it. It reminds me daily that healing is not one-size-fits-all, and that effective therapy must be inclusive of minds that think, feel, and process differently. I used to think something was wrong with me. Now I know: my brain isn’t broken—it’s brilliant in a different way. And as a therapist, I hope to help others see the same in themselves.