I inherited so many expectations of who I was supposed to be. I stopped performing them.

I'm a first-generation Latina. An eldest daughter. A daughter of immigrants. A DACA recipient — a dreamer. For a long time I collected those labels like responsibilities, and if you look closely, they all have the same thing in common: somewhere along the way I was handed a very detailed picture of who I needed to be, and almost none of it was mine.

I was the strong one. The translator. The second mother. The one who made it look manageable. I learned early that my worth lived in how much I could carry for other people, and that asking for anything was a kind of betrayal.

Despite the intergenerational trauma, the conditioning, and the systems built to keep me small — I am choosing something different.

So I went inward. I started connecting with my ancestors, honoring their resilience, honoring my roots. I wanted to really understand who I am, what was handed to me, and where the line is between what I inherited and what I actually believe. That's the work. Questioning everything. Unlearning. Learning. Growing. Expanding into my higher self.

What being the first actually feels like

I am the first mujer in my family to have her own career. Her own money. Her own relationship with herself — with awareness, with compassion, with power. That is a privilege my mother wanted for me before I could name it, and I'm trying to take full advantage of it.

I have wings and I can fly. I have freedom. I can decide my own destiny. And being the first also means being the one who does the difficult, painful, transformative work first — for everyone who comes after me. I am the first. I am not the last.

Spirit is not separate from the healing

I am deeply spiritual. I connect to the Divine Feminine, to the divine mother, to the quiet intelligence that has kept the women in my family alive through things I will never fully know. Ritual, prayer, candles, intuition — that's not decoration in my work, it's part of the medicine.

I want to travel and see the world. I want to be free. And I want to show other women how to do it too — because this is how I'm choosing to change the world: by changing me. My story is the example, not the pedestal.