Witnessing someone getting shot at the age of thirteen changes you. It was a hot Saturday in a small grocery store owned by my family. I was helping my mom bag a customer’s produce. I grew up in Goiania, Brazil, running up and down the supermarket’s aisles, which explains my familiarity with each customer. The radio was playing a song by Sertanejo Universitário. Every customer seems to have known that song by heart. It was lunchtime, and the smell of my grandma’s food filled the air throughout our neighborhood. A lady came into the store and asked me to help her find a spaghetti sauce, and so I did. On my way back to the counter, I heard loud noises right outside of the store. For a split second, I believed they were fireworks, but when I looked to my left, I saw two men on a motorcycle. The passenger had a huge automatic gun. He had just shot an older man sitting on his porch. I felt a chill down my spine, and while the man was reloading his gun, I saw a little girl around six years old in front of the balcony waiting to be checked out by my mom. . My first thought was to bring her to the back of the store so she would not see what I just saw. Everything happened so fast, and on that day, my idea of a peaceful and kind world changed forever. I wish I could say that was the only traumatic experience I have been through, but those experiences made me who I am today. I was a child at the time, but my first reaction was to protect the younger girl. This is why I want to become a nurse. I want to help people in any way possible. I want to be someone who walks people through a traumatic situation and safely gives them back to their families. I could become a doctor, but the work of a nurse is deeper than that. Being a nurse is getting to know the passion and helping them through a difficult time. What makes me different is my background, my desire to learn, and fact that I do not have the means to make my dreams come true without help.

Witnessing someone getting shot at the age of thirteen changes you. It was a hot Saturday in a small grocery store owned by my family. I was helping my mom bag a customer’s produce. I grew up in Goiania, Brazil, running up and down the supermarket’s aisles, which explains my familiarity with each customer. The radio was playing a song by Sertanejo Universitário. Every customer seems to have known that song by heart. It was lunchtime, and the smell of my grandma’s food filled the air throughout our neighborhood. A lady came into the store and asked me to help her find a spaghetti sauce, and so I did. On my way back to the counter, I heard loud noises right outside of the store. For a split second, I believed they were fireworks, but when I looked to my left, I saw two men on a motorcycle. The passenger had a huge automatic gun. He had just shot an older man sitting on his porch. I felt a chill down my spine, and while the man was reloading his gun, I saw a little girl around six years old in front of the balcony waiting to be checked out by my mom. . My first thought was to bring her to the back of the store so she would not see what I just saw. Everything happened so fast, and on that day, my idea of a peaceful and kind world changed forever. I wish I could say that was the only traumatic experience I have been through, but those experiences made me who I am today. I was a child at the time, but my first reaction was to protect the younger girl. This is why I want to become a nurse. I want to help people in any way possible. I want to be someone who walks people through a traumatic situation and safely gives them back to their families. I could become a doctor, but the work of a nurse is deeper than that. Being a nurse is getting to know the passion and helping them through a difficult time. What makes me different is my background, my desire to learn, and fact that I do not have the means to make my dreams come true without help.

Excepting and embracing who I am was hard. Learning English was a priority because I was lonely I need some friends. I missed my family and friends that I left in Brazil, but I did not have anyone that understood what I was going through. A couple of months went by, and the problem became that I had a strong accent and was ashamed of it. Everything changed when I was in Spanish class, I wrote a poem about a painting called "After 502 Lucerne street" by Edward Rice. After I finished my poem, the teacher read it out loud because I had described the women in the painting as ‘taking sun,’ which made total sense in my mind. I asked why my poem was chosen, and the teacher said that I have a unique way of seeing and describing the world. At that moment, I realized that my background is not a weakness or something I should be ashamed of. Today, I am confident speaking what is on my mind with my noticeable accent as a reaffirmation of where I came from, who I am, and where I am heading. My goal is to become a polyglot trauma Nurse. The medical systems had many floods, and one of them is not prioritizing bilingual health care workers. Image how scary it is to get into a Trauma hospital because you got into an accident and not know what is happening around you. I want to make sure language is not a barrier in the Health Care system and that the passion and their family feel safe and understood. Many immigrants do not seek medical help for a couple of reasons: fear of getting deported, not having enough money, and not speaking English. Those issues are horrible, and as a Nurse, I can address one of them by speaking Portuguese, English, Spanish ( which I am fluent at) and learning more in College.

I can from a long line of strong women. On my dad's side, my grandma is a powerful black woman that spaced abuse relationship and raised her children by herself. My grandma is my mom's side is a native woman that ran away from her family when she was fourteen because her ad was abuse. She also raises her seven children on her own. My mom is kind and cheerful even when the people that she loved a lot passed away. They taught me that life is tough, but so are we. They overcame an incredible number of obstacles, which keeps me motivated to become someone that makes them proud. I want to because someone that helps powerful women overcome obstacles and achieve their full potential.