Ever since I could remember, I was taught that family is everything. They’re the people that inspire you, support you, and push your buttons, but most of all, they love you unconditionally. Every family is different, but the thing that stays constant is that there will always be that unconditional love, no matter how that looks – it’s inevitable. Once I started to grow up and was supposed to take on this role as someone that couldn’t handle spending the weekends with her family, I realized that time never came. The notion that we distance ourselves from family as we grow older isn’t apparent in my own life.
I’m grateful enough to have a supportive family that encourages me to go after my dreams. However, I always sense my dad doubting whether or not he did enough to give us the means to learn the unfair ways of the world. During our late-night deep conversations, he asks us what we think of our family and what we would do differently to raise our own kids someday. He doesn’t realize that the need to do better for the next generation is more than enough. His need to do better than his parents gave me a childhood that I wouldn’t give back for anything.
With this idea that family is everything, I grew to appreciate my label as a little sister. Experiencing everything before I did, my sister became a role model, like most older siblings. She created a clear path for me to fully thrive on my dreams, diminishing any fears of the unknown, seeing as her own steps had already conquered it. Seeing her live her life before me forced me to face reality a little earlier than I would have because I learned through her mistakes.
Learning from my dad and my sister is when I fully recognized our family’s backbone – my mom. The one who, in my opinion, sacrificed the most for us to be the family we are today. Thankfully, we had the means for my mom to stay at home and raise us to be the strong women we are today. But, as I grew older, I had a hard time battling this contradiction — my mom was telling us to go and find a job that will fulfill us, yet she never did. I now realize that it takes a strong woman to say that being a mother of two and a loving wife is the ultimate job, the one that fulfills her the most. She could do this without caring what judgment she might receive for taking on a domestic job, even if it might go against feminist views. To her, that’s what made her smile the biggest at the end of most nights, and that’s all anyone can wish for.
They all taught me so many different life lessons that I’ll take with me forever and one day pass on to my own kids. My dad always explained parenthood as a book— one in which you’re able to keep what your family taught you, but rewrite what you disliked. And all I can say is that when that book of parenthood gets passed down to me one day, I don’t see myself rewriting much.