“Mami yo quiero que seas alguien en la vida y no dependas de nadie”. The phrase my Mexican mother always tells me, “Quiero que vayas a colegio y saques una carrera”. I thought it was a phrase every Mexican mother would say to their children, to give them a spark of hope of motivation. My mom was the one who would always take me to school, even though she would work every single day and make sure me and my sister would have everything to be successful and get through my education. Although there were moments in the beginning when I didn't know any English and neither did she as our native tongue was Spanish, she would make sure that I would learn English, by putting effort into practicing English words with me even though she didn’t know what they meant. I’m in high school now, and everything is much harder now. My years in high school were the hardest period of my life. Transitioning from a low-income school to a well affluent school was a big change for me. Taking the hardest classes was the only way I could solve and get accepted into my dream school and a way to pay back my mom’s love and gratitude. I struggled with maintaining my grades in these advanced classes and my mental health was deteriorating. As I kept comparing myself to my old self coming from always a straight-A student and graduated valedictorian to an average student. A student who always had to commute 1 hour and a half to get to school, plus maintained extracurriculars. I would always get home late, giving me insufficient time to complete homework, and most days, most of the time I had to work on it till past midnight. One night I had to complete a 1200 essay in a book we read in class, practice for a biology final, a math essay describing the relationship between math and knowledge, and commence with a personal project I had to work on independently in, it was too much for me, too tired, and too drained. Out of all the stress and anxiety it had caused me to break out into tears and made me think about the future. It was around 1 in the morning, and I thought no one would hear me breaking down until my mom came into my room, with a frightened face as if she thought she saw a ghost, she looked at me and hugged me, for what felt like an eternity. She told me to keep going, that at the end of the day, all the hard work will pay off, and that she will be there for me through the hardest barriers I will face to get to my dreams, “Mami, tu puedes, yo se que puedes, tu echale ganas, pa que tu seas feliz y prósperas en la vida”. And that made me reflect on the person who has always been there for me, and the person who has been motivating me through my life to get to my aspirations in life, my mother, my spark.