My favorite feature is her little pug nose, and yes, for a minute there I was worried from her ultrasounds that she would inherit her father´s nose, but in the end my nose won out :) I remember one of the many culture shocks I encountered upon arriving in Guate and attending a ritzy university was being asked on more than one occasion where I had gotten my nose job and who had done it. Despite knowing that this was probably intended as an ice-breaking-getting-to-know you question, I was still taken aback by it because, what the F was I supposed to answer? Especially when there was no preliminary "did you have a nose job?" question, just the automatic assumption. Every time my answer was honest, I had not had a nose job, but every time I could see the disbelief in their face as they were probably thinking "what a lie, it´s obviously a nose job and she doesn´t want to say who did it". The question was so nonchalant and so superficial that I found it to be quite irritating, but then so was my whole university experience... my own personal inverted version of How the Other Half Lives.
I was raised in Houston, went to public schools and was a latch key kid caring for my younger brother and sister while my parents worked several jobs between them to make ends meet. My father was the very embodiment of hard work and entrepreneurial spirit and by the time I was in high school he had started his own business. I admired and adopted his work ethic and was an overachiever who forwent a healthy social life in exchange for sleepless nights studying and working my butt off so I could get a scholarship. Life intervened and when it came time to claim the scholarships I was offered, I went to my parents to ask for my green card, as this was requested information on the forms. I remember the terrified and heartbroken look on my father´s face, and when he said there was something they had to tell me my stomach sank. I guess in the back of my mind I always knew we were not legal residents, but I had never asked and my parents had never discussed it. I was shocked and depressed and spent the night crying as though my life were over. I wasn´t going to be able to go to college, what was I going to do, why had I sacrificed so much? My depression was so evident, my father in a desperate attempt to come to my rescue (he was after all the most overprotective parent) offered to send me to Guate and help me continue my studies there, and I was in such a desperate state that I accepted.
Was it hard to move back to a country I didn´t know, to live with relatives I had not seen since the age of 5, to leave my entire life behind (friends, family, hopes and dreams)? Hell Yeah! Did I want to make such a life altering decision? No, but the way I saw it was God opening another door where he had knowingly just closed one. I have always been a spiritual person, but the moment I accepted that my life was not going to be how I had envisioned and that I would move to Guate and God would have my back was my first real leap of faith. That, in a nutshell, is how I ended up studying at a University where seeing armed body guards playing poker next to a parking lot full of new and expensive cars that belonged to kids who looked and dressed like fashion models right out of the runway who also casually asked who had done my nose job was normal. However, this is the same University that gave me a top level education, an amazing job, and where I learned what type of guy I didn´t want to marry, what type of woman I didn´t want to be and where I met my BFs, so thank you Universidad Francisco Marroquin. It was also in that U where my distorted perception of myself began to change because while there I discovered I was beautiful and that I could be attractive to the opposite sex.
It truly does all begin with loving yourself, every single bit of you from the inside out, and that is why I love the newest ad campaign for +Dove "Real Beauty Sketches". I identify with the campaign and I can now say that, back in Houston, I didn´t feel beautiful. This lack of love for myself meant I always felt out of place, and would fall for guys who didn´t know I existed which led to much heartache and further erosion of my self image. I was stuck in a vicious cycle and can recall one of my BFs in high school saying encouragingly, "don´t worry, someday you´ll find your Latin lover". I didn´t believe her because I truly wondered if I´d ever find someone I was attracted to that would be attracted to me. My description of myself back then would definitely have been very different than my present description of myself. I am very thankful that, not only do I now embrace everything about myself, from flaws to flourish, but I finally have my Latin lover and a beautiful baby girl who has my nose... so thank you Kate... you were right!
It truly does all begin with loving yourself, every single bit of you from the inside out, and that is why I love the newest ad campaign for +Dove "Real Beauty Sketches". I identify with the campaign and I can now say that, back in Houston, I didn´t feel beautiful. This lack of love for myself meant I always felt out of place, and would fall for guys who didn´t know I existed which led to much heartache and further erosion of my self image. I was stuck in a vicious cycle and can recall one of my BFs in high school saying encouragingly, "don´t worry, someday you´ll find your Latin lover". I didn´t believe her because I truly wondered if I´d ever find someone I was attracted to that would be attracted to me. My description of myself back then would definitely have been very different than my present description of myself. I am very thankful that, not only do I now embrace everything about myself, from flaws to flourish, but I finally have my Latin lover and a beautiful baby girl who has my nose... so thank you Kate... you were right!
My career, my husband, my personal growth, and my baby... all of these wonderful things happened because I decided to trust God and move to a country my 18 year old self had envisioned as a jungle where I would probably live in trees among monkeys in the middle of nowhere. Life Lesson: You may think you know what you WANT, but God always knows what you NEED. Like this poem I found online says, I believe that if you try to always look with faithful eyes you can find "beauty all around you", from the "things that happen" to you (even the things you think are bad) to the "prayers answered" (even the ones you don´t say aloud) "His beauty leaves you spellbound".
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