My name is Danielle or Daniela. I want to talk about my mom today. My mom is a great inspiration in my life. My mom is a very strong and smart person that is inspiring me to be better in my life and to take advantage of all the opportunities that I have.
The first reason that I admire her so much is because
“my family lived in El Salvador and survived the war in the 1980s.”
She tells me many stories of the violence she saw and about everyone who did not survive. That was how we came to the United States, right? No, I cannot—I cannot imagine being in that position at 15 or 16 years old. She tells me what she was going through and that is why I try everyday to make her happy, to accept her as she is.
All the women in my family, my aunt, my grandmother are my inspiration. They all suffered coming to the United States and they’ll never return. We can never return and so I still have not visited my country.
“Here in the United States I sometimes have difficulty speaking Spanish because I feel that I am losing my culture and my language. It is hard here living in United States being of Salvadoran descent and also American.”
But my mom is a very strong person and a great singer and all of her daughters are too. This is my family.
I am now studying in school. I am studying something good for my community and for this reason I love my mom. She is a very important person in my life and I appreciate everything because of her. I am twenty-two years old and I’ll be twenty-three in August.
Storyteller Daniela is majoring in anthropology at UC Merced. She created her story at MiHistoria’s Sharing Stories of the Latina Experience in March 2014.
