I'm currently asking myself what does adversity mean. As I scroll through the results I've found that adversity usually requires resilience. I first heard the word in a class about personal development, they said resilience is the capacity one has to endure challenging situations yet keep going, some sort of toughness. Am I tough? That's what I've always been told, that i I look tough, intimidating. But am I? We're taught from the moment we're born that we are to love our parents unconditionally, that we are to respect them and cherish them and do everything just the way they say it. And that was the big issue, my biggest “adversity” was my mom. My mom never liked different, she believes women are meant to have families and raise children, she believes the world is as simple as working hard and getting what you want, she never accepts things that are more complex than what she already knows. I believe in art and passion while she believes in “real careers”. I saw the other kids and how their parents supported their dreams but I seemed to be on my own, and in a way I learned to deal with that. It’s not like I want to become an artist for shallow reasons. I wish to be a latina artist, which is hard enough being a woman, but I also want to change the dynamics in latino music, I want to empower women and minorities, I want to show them there is a space for them in pop culture, that they can be visible without stigma. It’s something I’m actually passionate about but she’s never been able to understand that. When I found out I have ADHD I was actually relieved, it made me understand so many things about myself. Telling her went something like: “Mom I have ADHD, that explains so many things, I just need accommodations in order to fully exploit my potential". But she refused to believe such a thing existed, she said I was probably just easily distracted and that I should work harder in order to achieve my goals, she told me that wasn’t true, that there was no way I had something like that. But there’s also my sexuality. If there’s something she couldn’t accept was being different in that way. She kept saying I was confused, I was making a mistake and that the life I was choosing was sinful. This was probably the biggest issue because it’s probably the biggest way in which I’m “different” from the daughter she wanted. It’s probably also the biggest reason she found to verbally abuse me and leave me on the streets more than once. Throughout all of these experiences it was never an option for me to stay quiet, I don't know why but I just couldn't do that. I stood up for myself and refused to live a life different than the one I wanted, and of course, it had consequences. I don’t know if it was the fact that I’m gay or all of these things together that lead her to cut all economic support in 2015, when I was 14. But she didn't cut communication, she kept the same hate speech going, how I had to work harder, how I was living in sin, how I needed to choose a real career. And of course I kept tolerating this, cutting her off meant accepting the concept of the ideal, loving mom wasn’t for me, that I was never going to get that, so I kept giving her chances she wasn’t even asking for until one day I made the choice to finally keep her out of my life. The constant abuse left me with a weak mental health and depression, and of course obvious economic issues. I guess a part of me is still afraid to be different, though I'm not willing to be anything other than that. While I wish I had a different experience, I'm also thankful, being my own mom the one that rejected me taught me that I not only have the capacity to stand up for myself but others too. Having been able to handle her, to overcome her abuse, means to me that I can overcome anything. So, am I tough? Or am I just bold enough to be something else? Something that wasn't built to make them happy but to make me happy. I don’t know really know, but I am certainly aiming for toughness.

The role of music in my life has been challenging since the beginning. Before I got into music I was only focused on sports, and this is sometimes a very distant field from the arts (Troy Bolton here). The first time I ever touched a guitar was after I watched it at Hannah Montana and realized I wanted to be her, but she was also my crush so maybe it was because of that. I lived on a small island by the Amazon River, so music schools were not very popular. But lucky me, my aunt found a teacher and we spent three times a week trying to make me play the guitar. And of course, I didn't have the chance to learn how to read music, that was too fancy for our town. Years passed by and one mother's day my school was organizing a dance performance and more "funny" stuff. Obviously, I wasn't going to participate because it was too much unnecessary work for me until this teacher came by and asked me if I could perform a song- yes, singing included- however, he didn't give me much choice since he was going to add it to our grades, and unfortunately, I needed those extra points. So this is where it goes weird. I told my mom I was going to sing for our mother's day presentation and she went nuts, but not in a good way. She claimed that she never heard me sing-me neither honestly- and that it was going to be a failure and the other moms were going to talk poorly of her. A role model. I wanted to shut her up so that night I just went out with it. And it turned out amazing. I realized I actually could sing. It isn't such a big deal now but for an eleven-year-old me, it was the best that could have happened. However, that came with a price. I knew what I wanted to do for life since that moment. When the time of choosing a career and a college arrived, the fear of pursuing my dreams increased substantially. My mother opposed for me to have a music career and education and refused to pay for college. And honestly, for almost a year I was thinking of just studying a "formal" major like law or business. I also thought of it as a much safer choice, not only because of my mother's financial support but because it is definitely more stable. However, as much as tried to get far away from music and art, I knew that if I didn't follow my heart, I was going to regret it. So I decided to leave home and my mom, to put myself together and to follow my dreams. Music plays a role of fear and doubt in my life, and I wished more people would follow what they really want. But music also played a role of love. It was there for me when my family got violent with me as a child; it was there when I was challenged to sing in front of moms the first time, and it is still here when I decided to be brave. Music and I have a long ride still, and we will get to our destiny with the best beats.

The field of study I’m pursuing is acting. Choosing it has been by far the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I believe that there is something to explore in every field, that we can only become a more complete version of ourselves by diving into different aspects. Choosing just one thing was quite difficult, I knew I was looking for something challenging but something that could help me reach out to every part of my own self. I believe art is the one thing that checks all the boxes. There’s the usual conception that art reflects what we feel, and I agree with that, but I also think there’s so much more to it. Not only does art reflect the artist’s feelings, but it can also help the audience discover themselves, it can help them grow and self-analyze. It can change how we conceive the world by being a space where all types of people collide, somewhere we are all accepted for who we are, and, in that way, we get a chance to push said acceptance into society. Art is a two-way street, it can be an outlet for political thought, for social change, for emotions, and more, it is both something we reflect ourselves in and something that reflects back to us. Art, particularly acting, makes me feel insecure in a way that betrays who I think I am. That’s mainly why it is so essential to me. Art has also impacted me as I grew up in an environment where I couldn’t express any feelings or emotions otherwise they said I wouldn’t be in “control” of myself. This means that now I have a hard time identifying and expressing my feelings, but acting helps me explore these feelings and emotions that are sometimes so rare to me, it gives me a chance to grow and develop an aspect of life I wasn’t allowed to explore, so it’s also about self-growth for me. The emotional part of my life was left aside, so it’s challenging to comprehend how others express emotions, how people feel and cope with struggles, especially since I was taught to deal with everything in silence. In spite of that, I love a challenge. I grew up incredibly frustrated due to my family’s situation, I had no emotional and financial support, I was mistreated, and it all contributed to a growing feeling of being powerless. I have no tragic story, but I can tell my own experience of feeling powerless and frustrated. Powerless as a child who didn’t have the physical strength to fight her abusive parents and had to suffocate any sort of expression of emotion. I have found this to be the reason I am constantly driven towards big challenges, I learned to get some sort of emotional fulfillment through achieving things, through conquering challenges, it is an essential part of who I am and why acting is my biggest challenge.

There’s a growing sense of individualism that drives us to do things we’re not necessarily proud of. It’s something we don’t think about often because we see every selfish action as one, we fail to understand that every single time we’re being selfish we’re feeding the idea that individualism is the best way to get to a good place, that if we all follow this idea we can all find happiness. But at times like this, we find that to be the wrong approach. In my country, the pandemic made some of us realize how harmful it can be to think that individualism is the path to a greater good. People had to die, suffer and beg for help for us to understand we need to think about something other than ourselves. But I refuse to believe that’s the only way to understand, I believe involvement in our communities can help us see the way other realities surround us, it can help us pop that bubble we like to live in to make us more humane and empathetic. I could assure that involvement in our communities would reduce discrimination of all types as we could relate to people that are different yet share a space and values with us; it could also increase solidarity, making people more prone to helping those in need and organizing to achieve a greater goal. We would be able to identify the underlying issues that we face as a society and thus create a much more holistic strategy for a better life quality, an intersectional one, that understands the core issues and the nuanced consequences for each group. I came to these conclusions during my Gap Year after high school. I got an internship at UNICEF Latin America. Among my few volunteering experiences, this has been the most challenging. My main job was known as "Facer"; it consisted of walking down the streets of Lima and approaching people to sign a new partner. We walked the same hours that these children had to walk to school to raise awareness about the other faces of childhood in Latin American countries; mainly, in Peru. Training and trips around the country were needed to witness the harshness of the situation. Children were sold because of their ethnicity and virginity, they lived in insalubrious environments and did not have access to education. Children in mountainous areas with climates below zero walked miles in unsuitable footwear to reach their schools or had to cross lakes inside big buckets to reach centers in a deplorable state. The books and supplies that the government provided were in Spanish, so they were forced to detach themselves from their native language without qualified teachers to translate. I felt helpless, but that gave me the impulse to work twice as hard. That is how I spent six hours a day being politely and not so politely rejected. There were weeks when I didn't make a single affiliation, but giving up wasn't on my plans. I realized that real effort could lead us to places we never imagined. That month, I ended up being the best Facer in Peru, and I got to travel to Argentina for a UNICEF leaders seminar. Although Peru is one with the fewest contributors, I started to walk the streets again, and from every 30 people, at least five ended up being UNICEF partners. The numbers and the average time of partnership increased. Later on, a child from an Amazon community wrote a letter to tell me that his stomach stopped hurting because he finally had clean water. While I wished I could change things on a grander scale, his letter made it all worth it. I understood that if every single person got into some sort of community work we would all have a broader compassionate understanding of life outside of our world. I’ve always had many different interests, while I explored all of them in the search of the “one” thing I was meant to do for the rest of my life, I discovered I was looking for something that wasn’t real. For some of us there just isn’t a “thing”, and that’s alright. We are people and people are complex beings, no person could be described with just one word. If we’re so complex then we shouldn’t go looking for just one thing, aiming towards an oversimplification of our existence. I found that I am allowed to want more than one thing for myself and everyone surrounding me. I chose an artistic path because I believe I can achieve this complex goal through the arts. I plan to get a very complete education, not only focused on my art and performance but also on social topics, learning about history, social justice, and diverse cultures. Arts are an outlet for us to communicate, we communicate through the stories we tell, through the visual composition, the colors, music, and so many other elements. I believe that by having a more complete approach, meaning taking into consideration the history behind each group, the needs every person may have, the behavioral patterns we perpetuate, and the current situation of inequalities we’re living in, we would have much more valuable art pieces and a much more rich artistic expression. What I want for my art is for it to help create awareness, to encourage people to explore themselves, and begin to grow in values that are aimed towards a community’s goal. I want to portray a nuanced society, people with diverse backgrounds and real struggles so that we can all start empathizing with each other. I certainly believe that an inclusive and diverse portrayal in the media and arts can get us closer to an inclusive and egalitarian society, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.