Search Results

< Back Ali's Story Ali speaks to Joan about her journey of being adopted. She talks about her mom and her sister and how they became a family. She speaks on how knowing a brief background of her biological family gives her some comfort. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 03:28 Yeah so I was adopted when I was 1 year old I think at the time my mom was living with my sister in Hong Kong and the adoption agency had sent her photos of a few children so she sorta got to see them and she could pick which one she wanted which sounds really weird but those are just the children who are available for adoption at the time and she ended up choosing me who knows why but here I am and when everything was final she actually flew down to Vietnam to bring me home everything was pretty much facilitated through the embassy so she had a lot of help in bring me home and it wasn’t too strenuous just for herself she was actually able to meet my birth parents which is something that a lot of people don’t can't really say that their biological parents and their adoptive parents met in person and yeah she met my mom and dad and she tells me that my birth parents couldn’t keep me anymore because they didn’t have the funds to feed me and my mom was crying and my dad was just kind of there but just knowing that is really special because a lot of kids once again they don’t have that they don’t have that memory so my mom said that I have multiple siblings so I guess I was just the one kid that wasn’t able to be fed at the time so it's interesting to know that I have like other siblings out there and my mom also has a photo of me and my biological mom of just her carrying me which is kind of crazy cause I don't know my sister is also adopted from Vietnam just from the south and she doesn’t have any recollection of like anything from her history I think these little details definitely changed the way i feel about adoption in comparison with other adoptees cause many adoptees get left behind you know left at a door step something like they they don't have any memories but there biological parents can say they know and my sister she's also adopted like I said and she was given up right after birth so she doesn't know anything about who her family is or how many siblings she had or anything like that and I think the fact that my family tried to take care of me for like a year was sort of reassuring that I was cared for its something that I am grateful for and other adoptees can't say that they have that same experience and they live their life not knowing what their birth parents truly thought of them which can very it can be stressful and impact their life so just knowing I was cared for was really important for me Previous Next

Elise's Story Elise Boehm talks to Edie Kirk about her decision to study abroad in Cuba and what it was like once she got there. She shares stories about where she went and what she did but also how the people there made her feel more confident speaking Spanish. Scroll to listen Elise's Story 00:00 / 03:24 My sophomore year at Umass Amherst I decided to go study abroad in Cuba and everything I would say went pretty well. You know one of the first things we did when everybody was there was we got to ride the ya know old-school classic Cuba cars. Which was I think one of the coolest things ya know we could have done. We took a ride around Havana just sightseeing ya know we got to take pictures with the car, in the car, outside of the car and it was a lot of fun. It was probably one of the best memories I have ya know when we were all like in the cars side by side, we were just like recording taking videos ya know I think the most important lesson that I learned is that even though I was scared of trying something new ya know I am glad that I did it and that I didn't let the fear of trying something new get in the way of me experiencing this great opportunity I think some of the best memories I have are when I push myself out of my comfort zone and just try something new ya know I am grateful that despite this being scary, being away in a completely different country and traveling alone I didn't let that fear get in my way I started to ya know feel more confident as time went on I mean I push myself to try some new things I was very grateful for that and I guess another thing that I was I guess happy with was that I got to get away from internet and what was happening back home because where we were at theres no internet so if we wanted to use the internet we would have to walk a few blocks to the nearest hotel and we would have to sit there and we would have to buy an internet card and put it in our phones and they we would have internet for how ever many minutes and so then thats how we communicate with the people back home and ya know go on social media and everything you would do on the internet and I think that ya know that being so far away and us not having like internet readily accessible was a great experience because its like we werent focused on like what was happening back home, what people were posting, what we were posting and so it was a way that we could fully embrace the experience and just be in the culture be in Cuba without adding these extra distractions ya know we really got to really experience it and i think that is one thing that I am proud of is that i dont think anyone on that trip really complained about the difficulties of getting internet because we were all having such a good time we were always busy or finding something to do whether it be going to classes, or going to the beach, going to the museum ya know we were constantly busy we had these field trips that we would go on so i think it was definitely a good experience overall

Sasha's Story Sasha talks about her relationship with her Aunt and how she inspired her to be strong, powerful, and resilient and to appreciate the values that they share. Scroll to listen Sasha's Story 00:00 / 01:36 The person I wanted to talk about was my aunt so my aunt is my mom's older sister of 9 years and shes probably the most inspirations person I have ever met in my entire life so she was a chef who lived in Manhatten New York and she was in such a male dominated career and a lot of the other family members that I have are men who are also chefs so she at thanksgiving she was always fighting people on who the best pie was and who made the best pie and who got to make the turkey cause she was just so confident and she she was never arrogant but she knew what she was good at and she knew that she could do better than most of my uncles and she did the reason that my aunt stuck out to me so much is because I think we are so similar and definitely growing up she was someone that I went to a lot for just challenges that I had in my life i think that we both grew up with a learning disability so to be able to talk to her about kind of the struggles and embarassments that I had in at that point it was 10 years in school but all that time and she was able to kind of give me confidence and i mean looking at her now she was so successful and I I was like I can do that then honestly being at UMass now like I think about her a lot when things are really hard and when i see myself I fortunately see a lot of her strong amazing qualities reflecting back so my aunt unfortunately passed in november of 2017 and I think that talking about her is something that I need to do more so this has been really helpful on all of our walks but because i think about her a lot but i think talking about it is a lot more helpful so i like what i see in myself when it reflect my aunt and i am glad that i had the opportunity to talk about her

Jake's Story Jake reflects on two similar scenarios he has encountered with bees and how that has made him realize the power of one’s own mindset when it comes to handling situations differently. He talks about how he keeps a positive mindset which has translated into looking at things in a more gratifying way and spreading positivity in other aspects of his life. Jake's Story 00:00 / 04:45 I guess my story starts when I was going into High School, the summer going into High School, basically both these instances are times that I got stung by the entire nest of wasps. So the first incident was with my friends. Then we did sort of a hide and seek tag game. I decided it would be good to hide in the woods next to his house instead of like in the yard you know extra secretive. I go like slightly off the path because obviously if I'm on the path I can be seen and then as I'm waiting I feel sort of like things in my legs and I have no idea what it is so I'm like oh oh and then I start running away and it's actually horrible cuz as I'm running like that's like the worst thing you can do obviously. So it gets more traumatic so I'm running down the street and the type, I’ve never been stung by a wasp nest, and basically the pain waves are like sort of comes in like waves and I realize after it's on purpose cuz I was obviously stuck multiple times but the waves make it feel like you're being stung like a million times. So I'm running down the street and then I'm like no it's stuck in my shirt so I take off my shirt. Like I said, eventually now I'm completely panicked. I sit down like my friend's mom is out and she's also panicked. I’m exhausted. According to the fire department, I passed out for five seconds or whatever, so overall horrible and I didn't think it would happen again. Then in my summer camp job, it was all outdoors because of Covid so they weren't inside and I had to walk the kids to basically the other side of the school where there is a bathroom Just as I am walking completely innocently I see one little like wasp thing near like a hole and the kids are all lined up behind me and I walk just completely on the sidewalk, not on the grass, and they all attack me. So here I was and not a single one attacked the kids, just me. They're like in shock but it was a completely different situation and I feel like basically the essence of the story is that like the power of your mind and like sort of your mindset. So in that case, I was literally just standing there and I just took it and I was like oh my like I was just completely calm and it was crazy that happened twice in the reactions were so different and it wasn't it wasn't because you know I know I was stung by bees before so I learned from it. It was more just that you know here I was a camp counselor so I was like oh I have to act calm you know so like if a bee stings you you’re not going to panic. If ten sting you you’re going to try and not panic either and that reaction really stayed with me. I was all red and they and I then I continued walking them to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom. I took them to the bathroom. You know I was fine. Completely different reaction and just reflecting on that was like sort of the importance of your mind and like how your body reacts cuz it really does have a connection I feel like. One of my favorite character traits of me is my positive attitude on things. One of the ways I sort of like I think naturally I am positive but one of the ways I got to be so positive was I started doing gratitude journaling. Before bed I would just close my eyes and instead of thinking about random things during the day I would just think about things I was positive about and then I would just fall asleep and that would be the ending of my day. It was actually super cool cuz like first of all you don't realize how many good things happen every day but then also I started being like during my day I was looking for things that I could write or tell myself at the end to like add to my list. And then eventually after a while after a few weeks of doing that then just subconsciously I was like absorbing positive things and it was like it was super cool and I actually started texting sometimes I text my friends instead of doing it before bed I'll just text my friends randomly like things I’m grateful for like that day and then a lot of times they text back things they're grateful for so I hope that sort of spreads the positive mindset stuff or whatever. The bee situation, looking back I think it encapsulated how Previous Next

< Back Bert's Story Bert speaks about her life journey and how not everything went as she planned. She talks about her adventures with her husband and kids and how she found her way to her career as a Speech Language Pathologist and how that career changed her view on life. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 03:33 It seems to me that lots of people have kind of a plan in their life of what they would like to do, and they set about doing it. I never had such a plan. I was kind of a vague wanderer among libraries and was really interested in English literature and English history and studied for a bit in England for a little while and I didn’t have a glamour of what I wanted to do with my life. It seemed like it would be good to be useful, but I didn’t have much other plan than that. I got married shortly after college and we had a child and then because I had been an only child pretty much in my life, I thought we don’t want this child to be all alone we should have another one pretty soon. And it turned out that that one turned out to be twins. And suddenly wooo, I had three babies, they were less than two years of age, and I was supposed to figure out what to do with them and I had to stop wandering around wondering what book I was gonna read next. So, it was a pretty hectic and transformative time for me. I had to think of myself as a very different person, responsible for these three little babies and then three wild little boys and I started to sort of become somewhat more assertive I think. I had never been before. After being at home for quite some time with them I thought I really gotta get out of here a little bit and I saw a notice that Children’s Hospital School for Kids with Hearing Loss was looking for some volunteers and I thought well I could probably do that. And I arranged for a baysitter and went down and helped out mainly in an art class with kids with severe hearing losses and they were very interesting. But the director of the program kept saying you gotta go to graduate school. And so after a year of so of prompting I did start a graduate program in speech language at Catholic University. A friend from graduate school who was a little bit ahead of me called and said Bert I’m working at this great school you’ve gotta come and work here with me. It’s a school for preschool children, very young children, with a variety of pretty serious physical and neurological problems and they need another therapist. Okay, here I am. It turned out to be wonderful. The schools had a wonderful transdisciplinary approach so that instead of passing kids around from therapist to therapist or teacher to teacher or whatever, we were in teams. The parents, teachers, physical therapists, the occupational therapist, speech language therapist, we were in a team and we all had to understand what everybody else’s goals were for this child so that anytime you interacted with them whether you were changing a diaper or you were helping somebody have lunch, or you were playing together all of those goals had to be integrated. It was an incredible learning experience and it taught me way more than any course ever could ever have taught me. I never imagined so many interesting, challenging situations just kept unfolding one after another and with the enormous good fortune of always having very good people to work with, not a lot of money but a lot of really good, strong coworkers. I feel very fortunate in my unplanned, kind of wandering way. Previous Next

< Back Pat's Story Pat speaks about her journey in Little Falls, Minnesota. Here, she went on a profound healing journey and learned the power of forgiveness. While in Little Falls she met a special friend who showed her what she had been longing for. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:43 So this was a bit of my experience at Little Falls. Every day in the time I was there, there was profound healing experiences, there was all kinds of exercises some would say exercisims ya know where I went back and new relations to my parents wrote letters to them from me and to them umm and I felt like okay Ive done this already ya know I have gone through all the hell of my childhood. Was this really worth the airfare? Um well as it turns out it really was okay so after I wrote letters about my rage and hurt I wrote letters from them to me explaining why they were such a mess and why they were such awful parents and that was a killer I could begin to really understand how miserable their lives were the empathetic ya know writing these letters was very powerful at the end of it we had a big ceremony to burn all of the letters letting them go, watching the ashes rise float away which was providing us with a bit of healing and a chance of freedom I hope. So after breakfast, we got our coats on and we were asked to line up outside no explanation of why the sisters who lived there the residents came out and walked our line, handing each of us two red carnations cynicism was creeping into my mind our assignment this was so weird was to walk in a line all 30 of us in silence to a cemetery that was on the property and once we got to the gate of the cemetery we were to disperse and find graves that might have been those of our parents whether they were actually alive or dead we would lay down our carnations and say a final goodbye okay for some reason this struck me absolutely ridiculous, ludicrous and as I watched the 29 other walk into this vast catholic cemetery to find their parents quote on quote parents graves I refused to participate I was rebeling enough already Ill show they I just stand here after some time I have no idea how long I got bored standing there along and decided to walk in and wonder amid the graves I hadnt walked 100 feet when I looked down and what I saw in this catholic cemetery in this monastery were 2 grave stones side by side with Jewish stars this was too weird to be a coidindence so I stopped I knelt down for a closer look and something broke in me something big it was like flood gates opened as I started to do as I was told and say goodbye and complete my assignment I started to sob I mean serious unstoppable sobs like years and years of sobs and as the tears fell on my carnations I felt such deep sadness for them, my parents, for me for lost opprotunites for all those years I felt reallt sad my mother had died young at 60 well before I had developed any understanding of her pain and the lonliness that caused her bahvior and Id never be able to tell her I understood and was sorry for my contributions to that I never had a chance to tell her I really loved her I have no idea how long I stood there sobbing years and years when suddenly I felt this very gentle arm around my shoulder a gentle touch which brought me back and i looked up to see that tiny frail indian women in her street clothes who looked to me for support earlier that week holding me with a betivic smile on her face she gently helped me up and held me for a few moments she said shed been worried when she didnt see me back at the house and became worried for me And as she held me and she stroked my hair im crying just thinking about it and told me that she loved me and in that moment I experienced unconditional love for the first time and I understood that above all else thats what id been weeping for. Previous Next

Diane's Story Diane talks about how her goals and ambitions are constantly changing throughout our lives. Diane and Victoria discuss how they have changed throughout lives, and what has remained constant. The common thread for both women is their strong mothers. Diane's Story 00:00 / 06:01 There were eight of us in the household and I was child number seven out of eight. So I would describe myself as kind of the weirdo, you know my older sisters were very responsible and my younger sister was the beautiful baby right so, I was sort of the I mean not in I don't think this in a bad way, I just think that it was just sort of like I had the opportunity to sort of I didn't have a lot of responsibility and I didn't have to be the baby which also is a sort of responsibility. So yeah I got I got to be a little loose as a child, and I was you know, I colored a lot and collected leaves and things like that. When I was young, I wanted to be with lots of people all the time and I wanted to make food and have fun. I didn't know how to turn that into a money-making career, I just wanted to be with people very social as a little person but, that changed a little bit when I became a teenager. I became far less interested in being social in being with my family even. I withdrew a little bit. I sort of indulged in the quirkiness a little bit more and then then maybe was healthy for me my family was still there even though I kind of took a wander but, I it was at that point I did start thinking about careers and things like that and like could I be a social worker or could I be someone who listened? Because I am a bit of a talker, still. I am chatty, let’s just face it. I’m a Chatty Cathy but I wanted to learn how to be a listener and maybe take some of that into work that was helpful work to individual you know. I was never really very interested in making money I think I wanted to make a difference. You know the other thing that we spoke about once was that tape measure principle of like if you pull out each inch and you know at 10 everything that you've done by 10 inches and then 20 inches, what have you done and I'm like okay here I am at 60 inches, so far from you know that 6 year old self who was collecting leaves, and how much more time do I have? Do I have another 10 years or 20 years and do the years make a difference? And I decided after our last conversation that I want my legacy to be that I went sort of day by day. I want it to be that I just took each day and I tried, I didn't try to be happy I don't I don't necessarily want to try for that I want that to be the end result of what I do, so I I think, like you, I'm I probably smile too much I might be insanely happy most of the time but, I think that you know I think for me it's really turning into the small differences. The kindnesses and the little bits that add up to what I hope will be you know a legacy of well she didn't she wasn't terrible you know I mean I think that would be enough for me and that’s all right. It is okay and I learned that from you and and our conversations because I see it in you as well. So often you said to me, it is one thing everyday. It is at least one thing everyday and I thought wow this is this is actually harder Victoria but it's much more fulfilling and I think it makes a greater impact then holding back or not doing because there's lots of opportunities for it and I appreciate that insight into your vision of the world cuz I'm trying to put it into my vision of the world. So I guess that would be my legacy. So I know one thread that we shared was was our mom's. I don't know if that's one that you were thinking of at this moment. It was with great joy that I was able to tell my mother that I was participating in this project and she was interested to know about it. Then she died at 99 years old and after a very good and rich and wonderful life and it really meant a lot to me to be able to share that with you. I'm getting a little choked up now but it was sort of like she was really she was always curious she always wanted to know what was around the corner or why did you do that or what are you eating today or any of those things. It was really a lot and I think that it was a big part of my healing process was talking with you and you were very patient and listening to every single story but it was a big thing for me to be able to also maybe think and talking with you and some of the questions and the places we went it was like okay so maybe a part of my legacy is continue Dorising and to share with other people like you. What Doris was, what she did and how like she was kind, you know like your mom and we shared that. That’s part of the good thing, we can talk about anything, you and I. it's not necessarily a passing of a torch okay but it was a little bit of you gave me the like “you can do this Diane you can take this on” and I really appreciated that cuz I think I was feeling sort of bereft and alone and I wasn't and you showed me that. We Dorised together though. We turned her into a verb and we did it and I hope someday to get to tell your mom what you've been in my life. Previous Next

Rick's Story Rick talks about his parents and how they were his lighthouses growing up. Specifically, he focuses on how a moment with his father in the hospital has guided his view on the meaning of life. Rick's Story 00:00 / 03:15 I have always felt that my parents were kind of my lighthouses. You know they kind of guided me along the way and I think that my father was more protective of the rocks, but my mom was the lighthouse that steered me to shore when maybe I hit the rocks. They were pretty incredible people, I mean and it is sort of, of course like any family we had our own disfunctions. My father raised birds and when I say we had birds, he had maybe 40 parakeets in a cage on wheels in the garage that he would wheel out. We had ring-necked doves and white doves in the basement in a huge coop. And then he actually built a huge coop outside for the cocktails. So we grew up with lots of birds and he was a very gentle man, he was a man of birds and flowers. My mother was very, my mother was always making something for somebody, okay. She was always crocheting or knitting. And if she loved a soap opera star who had a baby she would send them things that she made. And she was always feeding people. And if she didn’t have food to give someone if she came, she would give you canned food. “You sure you have enough to eat honey?” you know. We took in a lot of people who had no place to go during Christmas and so there were always people who would come for the holidays. They kind of took people under their wing. I think one of the most significant things that happened for me was when my father had kidney disease and when he, it was discovered he only had kidney. Um and he eventually had to go for dialysis but he had that type of poisoning that happens and we were all gathered in the hospital room and I thought that that was going to be the time that he was going to be leaving us. My father has blue eyes, but his eyes changed color. They just sort of. I don’t even know how to describe it, they became translucent and we all noticed that. But he was looking behind us, and I just knew that his brother was in the room, his mother was in the room. You know, his relatives were in the room and that they were there to get him. And to take him. And I really didn’t expect that he would live that night, but he did. And so in the following morning when we went to visit him, and we of course were thrilled that he was still there you know, he said, “I really thought I was going to leave last night and I never thought I would have the opportunity to say I love you again.” And I thought, oh my god, that’s it. That’s the only reason why we are here, that he gave me my mantra. He gave me my purpose. He gave me this incredible insight that the only reason that we are here is for the opportunity to love and say those words. And we forget that as we squabble, as you know, as we go through everything we go through. You know but, that to me became the beacon of his lighthouse. Previous Next

< Back Betsy's Story Betsy talks with Brenda about a spontaneous trip that changed her life. She talks about her wonderful experiences and a noteworthy figure that she meets on this trip. Returning from her trip, she decides to pull inspiration from her time away when opening a small store in Northampton. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:58 ​ Previous Next

Janet's Story Janet gives voice to her late older brother Jay and recalls the significant impact he has had on her early life and professional career despite struggling in his adolescence and growing up in a time where it was unlawful to be self assured about your homosexuality. This is a story about love and loss but touching upon hope in freedom of self expression in culture today. Janet's Story 00:00 / 03:57 I was born in 1943. Yes, I'm going to be 80 years old. A middle child and a working class post World War II family near Flushing, New York. My older brother named after my Father William Henry Ruloff Nelson Jr was a quiet, deeply sensitive and highly intelligent boy. During those years the 1940s and the 1950s baseball. Mom's at home waiting to put supper on the table for their working husbands was part of the American dream and I lived in a little area in Queens where people's families were very very much devoted to fulfilling that post World War II American Dream. My Brother Jay as we called him did not fit in. He wrote poetry, read deeply and spent a great deal of time alone. Even as a very girl I knew Jay, four years older was different. As he and I grew to adolescence he began to be teased by the other boys on the Block. As we played baseball, Jay kind of withdrew into his room quietly. In his early teens I knew there was trouble my parents talking behind closed doors. Those were years when words like homosexuality were never spoken out loud it was illegal and immoral. With all that he was struggling with as an adolescent, Jay had time and made time but to always be my big brother. In a family overwhelmed by illness, financial issues, and emotional stress, he introduced me to poetry and to literature. As he grew, his friendships of bright enthusiastic gay boys I became a focus of their energy. Surrounded by them I went to my first opera. When my brother moved out when I was 16, his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan became my second home arrested from my own. His life was not easy despite his high intelligence and a full scholarship to Princeton University, he dropped out of college unable to reconcile the emotional stress that marked those years. My course was different. At each juncture of my growing professional life, it was my brother who championed my success and kept me motivated when I questioned my own abilities. My doctoral dissertation was dedicated to him. In 1982, Jay showed the early signs of AIDS. The years ahead were marked with anxiety and fear. We talked honestly and after 4 years we knew he was dying. I saw him 36 hours before he died at the age of 46. I read a favorite poem of his, Edna St. Vincent Millay at my younger son's wedding. A piece of it is “love in the open hand, no thing but that; ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt.” Like my brother it's a poem about the freedom and the trappings of love. My son's daughter's middle name is Jay, named after him. Over these past decades, I've watched with amazement and joy at the changes in our culture. I often find myself smiling as I think about how Jay’s life would have been had he had such freedom and affirmation. Previous Next

Francesca's Story Follow Francesca as she shares her spiritual journey as a follower of Saint Francis of Assisi, inspiring her devotion to uplifting others around her while spreading love. Francesca's Story 00:00 / 03:47 Julia: “What person or entity in your life has been the most influential for you?” Francesca: “For me, I grew up in a difficult family, but a friend invited me to go to church with her and they taught us how to become followers of Saint Francis of Assisi, and he became the most important and most influential person to me. It was fortunate that I had that happen to me, just by chance it seemed like.” Julia: “Do you want to talk a little bit more about the process of finding him as that influential person or kind of what he meant to you?” Francesca: “Well I had already had my first communion. I had gone through all the training and the catechism and everything, but none of it meant anything in my heart. And after my first communion I was attending a church that was a national monument, that was gorgeous. You walk in and there’s paintings all over the ceiling, and everybody went because it was such a beautiful church and everybody went to show off their clothes. And I didn’t know what I was doing there, you know? And then my girlfriend said, you know, come to my church you’re gonna like my church, it’s fun, we have the beat music, guitars and everything. So I decided start going over to her church. And when I went, at first I said why are there no paintings, there was nothing, you know, there was nothing. And they said ‘It’s a Franciscan church and Saint Francis wanted the churches to be simple.’ And then they said ‘You can come on Friday afternoon, we teach all about Saint Francis.’ So I went on Friday afternoon, and they would teach us all about Saint Francis, and then they would teach us about the problems we were facing today - how would he tackle that? And we would have to go home and do homework and bring it back the next Friday. And then after we worked all together as a group, after we worked, then we would have time in the courtyard and it was a beautiful, beautiful courtyard. And we would have time to play. And they were teaching me, then I understood finally. So Saint Francis became my ladder to God, because before I hadn’t gotten any of it, you know? It was all up here, but it wasn’t in my heart. I couldn’t find a consistent church near me, so I go to a Congregational church. It's important to me to be able to serve and to be able to belong. So I started going, and I started serving, and it's important to me, and it's also important that Saint Francis always had to uplift the least of the least, you know, always make sure that you can help them. Like if they’re homeless, whatever. Help them. Help them. Help them, you know? Don’t leave people stranded behind, you know? So that was really important to him, and it was important that we stop reading the Bible, stop reading all the books, and do it. Get out there and do it. So that was really big for him. So I try to be as active as I can. Whether its part of my church or not, I try to. If I see someone who is homeless, I stop and talk about whatever they want to talk about. Saint Francis became really meaningful to me, he made sense to me, for love to exist. For love to be the most important part of living your life." Previous Next

< Back Brenda's Story Brenda talks about her experience being a daughter to Brazilian immigrants and first generation college student. Brenda describes the transformation in her perspective from once desperately wanting to fit in to typical American standards, to now embracing her Brazilian roots and culture. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:01 Both of my parents emigrated from this state in Brazil called Minas Gerais. My Mom came from the capital which is Belo Horizonte and my Dad is from this small, more rustic rural town called Governador Valadares. I didn’t think too much about it in my early, early ages but as I started getting into like third grade, fourth grade, with people, you know, dressing up for St. Patrick's day. And just being like, there is no Brazilian recognition, like really, there would be hispanic heritage month that we kind of talked about and black history month but Brazil is really weird because we are a little bit of everything. Usually, you know, when I am in the sun, I get like very, very tan. And my hair, especially when I was younger, was very long and big and curly and I had bushy eyebrows and I hated that. I really hated that. My best friend growing up was blonde with straight hair and blue eyes. And I would pray to God, like literally this third grader, I would cry to my Mom, and be like why don’t I have blonde hair and blue eyes, why don’t I look the way I want to look and fit this mold that I so desperately wanted to fit in. So at the time, I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to identify myself with something but that's what the issue was is that I often felt like these kind of headline identities, none of them really fit for me. But a lot of that in hindsight came from me trying to push down a lot of these aspects of myself that I feel like made me inauthentic. And it didn’t really, I guess come full circle until I got to UMass, and that's when my bubble really burst. And so my whole floor was filled with hispanic people, black people, caribbean, a very diverse mix of college kids. And when their families would come they would bring their traditional little Brazilian pastries and stuff, like pao de queijo, which is like cheese bread. And I remember this so well that one of the guys Mom came and brought it around for like to everyone on the floor, and that is such a Brazilian thing to do, like if you bring one thing you’re bringing it for everyone, I don’t know, and it just felt like, it was weird, it felt like a piece of home that I got to have at this really scary huge place. And I don't know, I feel like UMass being so big gave me the space to stop the comparison. That was when I was like, oh my god, I can stop being a poser kind of, and try to just relax a little bit, wear my hair natural. I also feel like going through different experiences and really realizing how much my parents sacrificed for me and care about me and show me so much unconditional love that not everyone in college gets to experience made me really appreciate them on a level that I never had. They really raised me with so much warmth, that it is crazy that I ever wanted them to stop being like that and be more American because it was the most nurturing environment. And now it's like, I’m like Mom please cook and yeah, just embracing that aspect also just like, now it’s time to kind of embrace differences. So yeah, I guess just like not thinking so hard about who I am and just being who I am, is what I am doing right now. Previous Next