How my mother raised me to become a strong woman today is simple: I watched her. I watched what pushes her to stand for a continuous eight-hour shift at her job as a cashier for seven days of the week for low minimum wage and why she never left her job and looked for a better one.
As I grew, I finally understood. What fuels her the most is determination, family, security, and hope.
My mother is willing to sacrifice a great portion of her health and instead be exhausted and a job which she doesn’t want to do and doesn’t effectively use her skills as a worker. She never wants my family to say no to something because we “don’t have enough.”
Image source: Pexels
At one point my family was forced to separate and live in different parts of the world: my brother and I in the Philippines, my dad in Alaska, and her left all alone in California for years. She didn’t know when she’d see her family together again, and yet she still worked and worked until we had enough to bring all back together at home.
Not once in my entire life did I hear her speak so negatively about the separation but rather about the people who caused it.
Instead, she uses the hardships she has faced and continues to face today as tools to teach her children the things she learned. These are things that I still carry with me today. I always think about the future and never the hardships of the present.