Motherhood Part 2

 As  I was recovering from major surgery in January, I received the most fantastic news ever, not once, but twice was I told that I would become an aunt! Both my sister-in-law and friend gave me that happy news that they were pregnant. I cannot begin to express the excitement I feel towards this new title I am earning! I have sheer joy and cannot wait to hold my niece and nephew (of course not at the same time). I am going to enjoy every second of being an aunt because I know I am going to rock it!
After I digested the fact that I would become an aunt to two babies this year, I asked myself, if becoming an aunt would or could replace my yearning for motherhood. I have yet to find the answer, and I do not know if I ever will.

In Motherhood Part 1, I shared an experience I had in a previous relationship where the possibility of becoming a mother was very likely. How different would my life be right now if that pregnancy test would have been positive?  Would I still be in the same relationship? Would I have been promoted to supervisor of Gateway Services? Most importantly, would I have had four surgeries in seven months?   I really do not want to consider having an alternative life to the one I am currently living. I still believe that it was a real blessing that it was only a scare because I was not prepared for motherhood at that time and honestly, I am not ready now either.

I do not know how different things would have been, so all I can imagine is living this same life, having had the same experiences but only with a toddler. If that were the case, then, I would be a single mother with an incredible support system because I would not have been able to go through surgery alone while raising a child. But all this is just hypothetical of course.
Motherhood is in my future, but for now, I am going to enjoy aunthood to the fullest!!

" Do you even belong?"

I was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, a city on the northern coast of the country; the same city that Shakira and Sofia Vergara call home. My family and I immigrated to this county when I was six years old, I became a citizen at the age of sixteen; but to some, that does not matter because to them I will always be an immigrant and they will always question my legal status. 

Imagine being a kid and having a classmate say to you, " How did you get here? did you swim over?"  Or, how about being told to go back where you came from because you do not belong, this had happened to me and not just once or as a kid. As an adult, it has happened.

I am one of the blessed immigrants in this country that has had it "easy" because my parents were able to do things "right."  I have never lived with the fear of being deported for not having a piece of paper that gives me the false protection of being here. I never had to question myself after graduating high school about life, because I knew I could go to college if I wanted to. However, I knew many classmates in high school that lived with that fear. I had a handful of friends that questioned themselves because they did not know what they would do after graduating. 

Being an immigrant in this country is not easy, it will never be easy. But currently, it is not just not easy but also dangerous. I turn on the news, and all I hear is the continuous hate speech and not only towards immigrants but all minority groups. It has to stop. No one person is better than the next. No human has more rights than another.