Coming To The U.S. As A Teen (Episode 33)

🎧 What's it really like to start over in a new country as a teen? In this powerful episode, Andrea Rotondo takes us inside her journey of immigrating to the United States during her teenage years, sharing raw truths that will change how you see the immigrant experience.

Through intimate storytelling, Andrea reveals the reality behind the headlines - from navigating a new school system and learning English to building a life in an unfamiliar culture, all while being a regular teen trying to find her place in the world.

This eye-opening episode explores:

• The unexpected challenges of being a teenage immigrant
• How it feels to leave everything you know behind
• Balancing two cultures and finding your identity
• The real story of learning a new language as a teen
• Creative ways Andrea overcame daily obstacles
• Life lessons that transformed her perspective

Perfect for: Teens navigating cultural identity, anyone wanting to understand the immigrant experience, those feeling like outsiders, and anyone interested in building genuine cross-cultural connections.

Transcript

Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome, everyone. Today, we have with us Andrea Rotondo. She is from South Florida, and she was 16 when she came to The US.

She did become a US citizen at around 29 years old. And here, we're we're gonna talk today about what it's like coming to this country from another language and another culture. And we're gonna hear her story because everybody's story isn't the same. But, we're gonna hear her story. So how are you doing today, Andrea?

Hey, Fatima. Thank you so much for having me today. I am really excited to talk about this. Good. I so am I.

So am I. I've been waiting to have this conversation, actually. So why don't you start off by telling us how you came to The US, where you came from, what were the circumstances? Tell us. That is to me, it's a very interesting story.

I am originally from Ecuador, and all my family is from Ecuador. My grandparents are from Ecuador on both sides. We're just a very Ecuadorian family. And around when I was 16 years old, it felt kind of out of a sudden, which I know that for my parents, it was probably not. But for me, it felt like that out of nowhere.

My parents decided to move to South Florida where I currently live. Because my dad's business, things were changing. The economy in Ecuador was changing, and it just made sense for him to move basically over here. Not only it was financially better for the business, but, obviously, for us since that was our livelihood, that was everything that we used to pay the bills was coming from his business. So it just made sense for him to move here.

And, because traveling was such a big part of his life, ever since I could remember, my dad was always traveling. It just made sense for us to just move with him, together rather than just him moving here on his own. So I don't remember what the timeline was, but I just remember it was pretty fast. They told me that we were gonna move. I, told my friends, you know, as a 16 year old, you're feeling really attached to your friends other than anybody out over than anybody else.

So I was really heartbroken until my friends, moved here. I believe I got here, like, on a Wednesday. The following Monday, I was already in school, so it felt very fast. Was it overwhelming? It was very overwhelming.

I think my memory of that time just feels lonely because I didn't particularly felt motivated to make friends over here. I remember telling myself, I don't need any more friends because I already have my friends from Ecuador. Okay. And at that point, like, we were on Messenger. Like, so every day, I would just go on Messenger and talk to my friends.

I'm, like, just waiting to see whoever signed in to talk to them and see their pictures and whatnot. And it was like I was not ready to let go of of my life, quote, unquote, in Ecuador. I didn't wanna move on. I didn't want to see what was around me or even get immersed into the culture here or learn about other cultures. I was just very stuck on my life in Ecuador and not wanting to do anything with anything else or anybody else.

So that lasted probably the year and a half that I had left in high school here. I finished, in Ecuador, it would have been tenth grade. And because of the date of when I want to go to school over there and when school starts here, I jumped into the half of, eleventh grade when I moved here. So I finished eleventh grade, and then I did twelfth grade. And I probably had the same mentality for that period of time.

So how many friends did you make, while you're or did you just stay away from it? Here In high school specifically. Probably a handful. Like, I remember maybe, like, like, we were a tiny group of girl like, a small group of girls, and they were all from my ESOL class. But, honestly, it wasn't like I gave too much effort on my end.

So after we graduated, I didn't really stay in touch with anybody else from them. Okay. So you didn't make new friends. You you didn't want to because you were kinda just missing. You can correct me if I'm I mean, I did friends to the point, like, I was not hanging out alone, for example, walking around.

I was always with somebody. So there was always a group around me, but it was more of an internal thing rather than external. Like I said, so I wasn't walking alone. I had at least one person that I could talk to in every classroom and during lunch and all of that. But internal like, it was not like, okay.

You know, I'm in a new place. I'm gonna make friends. I'm wondering where they're from. It was just more like, okay. Like, you're talking to me, and I'm gonna talk to you, and we would hang out.

Sometimes we met after school, but it wasn't something that in my mind, I was like, okay. This is my new friend, and I will probably see you after we graduate. I wasn't that vested in the relationship. And it's kind of sad to say that now, and I wish that I would have made more effort into it because they were great people. They were amazing, they were amazing friends, but I I did not see it at that point.

I didn't see it that way at that point. Now you said, ESL classes, and, some listeners might not know what that is and this English is a second language. They keep changing the verbiage. If you go from from state to state, it's called all kinds of different names. I used to teach ESL myself, and that's what it was called when I did it.

But, so these are all if you're in an ESL class, it means you're in a community of students who are all from different countries, coming into Yes. Coming into, I just you and I know that, but I think the audience needs to understand that as well. When it came to when it came to outside of school, were you only at home? Did you try hanging out and doing other things, or you try to just stick to yourself? I was lucky in the sense that I moved here, and I lived with my sister who is much older than me.

She had kids of her own. So I moved to my sister's, home, and I was never alone, and there was never a lack of Okay. Duties, first of all, because of family. I was very lucky, like I said, to move with family in a very healthy and loving environment. And then when it comes to friends, I had one or two friends that I can remember that I would hang out.

Like, we would go to the movie theater. I've never really been into, like, going to parties or going drinking, and I've I've never been that type even now. So I never really did that kind of activities, but movie theater was probably one of the ones that it was a normal thing to do. How scary was it coming to a brand new culture that you just had only heard about? I think, at first, I don't think that it was scary in the sense of, like like, fear of where I am.

It was fear of feeling singled out. And just everywhere that I looked, there it was something there was always something new, something that I had never seen, something that I had never experienced. Coming from Ecuador, I I was very lucky of having the experience to go to a really good school. My friends were all the same since second grade. I even have friends that we have been together since or we were at that point together since we were in pre k.

Oh, wow. So coming from a place of I know everybody around me. I know their family. My teachers know me. We have the same teachers all the time.

I could walk into the principal's office. I mean, it it was a very it was a very homey place. Then suddenly, I'm in a classroom or in a school that was, like, 5,000 people or 3,000 people. I don't even remember, but it was just an insane amount of people compared to where I had come from. It felt unknown, and the unknown made me very uncomfortable.

It made me feel like like I was alone. It made me feel like I was lost. Like, I didn't know where to go. I just got a piece of paper telling me, okay. These are your classrooms, and these are the buildings that they're in or classrooms.

And I'm like, where? You know? Like, I don't know where this is. I don't know who to ask. It felt like there was no guidance.

It felt like like you should know this, but then you don't know it, and then you feel bad for asking. And then the whole mentality of, well, we're here to help you. We're here so that you can have a better future. We are here because this makes sense for our family. So you also don't wanna be ungrateful.

So in a way, that kinda makes you not even pay attention or speak or even consider your emotions because it might come off as ungrateful or complaining about you being here when you know that there's way other people are making big sacrifices for that. Like, my family, like, I think about it now, me as a family with little kids. Do I wanna have another person in my home? That's a lot of effort. You know?

So everybody around me was making a lot of sacrifices, and I didn't wanna be the one to just say, well, this sucks. Mhmm. So I didn't. Do you feel like people outside of your family and outside of the ESL classes treated you any different? I don't know that I knew that at that point.

I think that moving here, I was kind of just expecting, well, you know, you're a new person, but I was not aware of the perspective on immigrants at that point. I didn't know that people looked at you differently. I didn't know that people thought that you don't belong here, so you should leave. I didn't know that people looked at you as less than I didn't know any of that. I didn't know of the violence that takes place in high school or the extremes of bullying or gun violence.

I did not know any of that. So I think a lot of the things that happened, if they happened around me, I was oblivious to it. Like, it just happened, and I didn't see what it really was going on. But I think now that I am aware and I understand looking back, I do think that people looked at me differently, or maybe they made assumptions, because I was an immigrant, then it was a given that I didn't know English or that I didn't have any education or that my parents were poor or uneducated. So there's usually that concept of, like, first gen that the people my age now are the first people that go to school or, have a better salary.

And that's not really the case for me. My fam my mom was an attorney in Ecuador. My dad was a very successful business owner, but circumstances that probably there's more to the story than what I know up until now brought us here. There was definitely a sort of, like, disconnect. Like, I didn't really quite understand at that point why would people think of me and label me or make assumptions of something without not knowing.

And like I said, at that point, I didn't know that that was just the norm. Like, you just assume those things of an immigrant because and not saying that any of those circumstances make you a bad person or make you less than or that I am better than anybody else, but I I didn't know again at that point that being an immigrant equated to so many other circumstances. Now let's talk about the language. So in Ecuador, they speak Spanish. And, and here, the main, you know, language is English.

So you were thrown into not just a new culture, with people with different mentalities, but also a new language. Can you tell us a little bit about about that? Yes. So in Ecuador, I I knew English because in Ecuador, I started learning English as very small. Like, the first grade that you go to school, pre k, kindergarten, whatever it is.

In my school, they taught English, so I had, like, different subjects and classes and whatnot in English. And even in high school, I took, like, two or three years of French, so I had Spanish and learned French. So I knew the foundation, but it's very, very different when you have an American or English speaker teaching you English than when you have a very Ecuadorian person teaching you English. It just sounds so different. And it's so funny because, like, if I were to watch a video, recently a friend sent me a video from when we were, like, in, I don't know, fifth grade, and we were singing a a a, like, a Christmas carol for a Christmas event in English.

And I was like, what in the world were we singing? Like, it just sounds like a whole other language. It was hilarious. But that just made it so that my English was really, really good in a thick accent speaking, but I was really good in, at reading and writing. So when I moved here and they put me in the ASOL class, that was actually a super easy class for me.

Like, I knew I could write and I could read without a problem. Like, at my normal grade level, I could read and write everything. However, when I would go to, you know, the rest of the classes, it was very hard to understand because of my listening that needed to, like, fine tune for the American. So that made it a little bit more challenging, especially for, like, math, where I didn't I didn't learn math in English. I learned history and other things in English, but not math.

So that was probably the biggest challenge that I had in school. And then just the slang or, like, things that high schoolers would say. I was always lost Up until now, like, I don't know, like, the buzz terms and all I just don't pay attention to that. So in high school, I had to learn, like, a whole new vocabulary for slang. But when it came to, like, the daily life, I was definitely able to navigate things.

And if I had to read something, probably anybody that is an immigrant can identify with what I'm gonna say next. Like, you become the translator for your family. Up until now, my parents call me or send me screenshots or they were somewhere. I'm the one. Or at that point, we would go out to a restaurant.

I was the one to order for everybody. Like, you just become the default translator for the family. And that's quite common. So that that was quite common. Yeah.

Because I've seen it happens everywhere. I've seen it too. Like, for legal documents, for taxes, you're the one doing all of these really intricate and complicated things, and your parents just, hey. You know? You got this.

You can do this. And I'm like, I'm gonna do my best. Let's hope that I'm reading this right. But yeah. And and I I say it's common because I've seen it personally, myself.

Not because I'm, you know, not because I came from another country, but I have worked with people from other countries, refugees, a number of people from many different countries all over the world, throughout my life in different capacities. And that is something I've commonly seen, is they'll put the the the responsibility on the child usually who's being raised in America to translate everything, because they they don't get it. And I think people don't understand. And and I'm saying this as a former ESL teacher and I used to tutor and teach it. I think people don't understand, how difficult it can be.

The good thing is that you actually took English classes, so you could you got the reading and writing down. It's just like it's no different than those of us who take Spanish or French or German or whatever language we're taking in school. And some of us can read and write it well, but get speak it speak it a lick because you you you know, you have to use it to in any language. But I don't think people really get, how frequent that happens and how that can change the dynamics in situations and families. You know?

For sure. It it can be a big deal. It's like the younger generation is expected in a way unconsciously to carry the family forward, kind of like assuming that because you are here from a younger age, you kinda, like, automatically know all of these things and know what the IRS is expecting from you or your renter or your landlord or anything. It's like, well, you know, you should know. You're in school, and it's not the case.

You know, we we're came here as kids. We don't know anything about how the system works here. But at least we can read and write, so we can translate it. But I think that at least for that specific point, I would say, like, it's really important to still, whenever possible, talk to an attorney or an accountant to guide you with those types of, communications if you were to receive a a letter that that it looks like a legal kind of thing or an accountant if it's, something related to the IRS, you definitely don't want to just rely, on a teenager's or a kid's translation. I know that it sounds silly to say it out loud, but that that's a very like, it literally happens in probably ninety nine percent of the families.

It does. There's so many guys out there that can help you guide guide you with that. It's a very, very common pack. Like, literally translations from, like, what does the TV control remote say or the computer to Yeah. Legal matters with immigration.

You know? So, it's a lot of pressure to put on a kid. It is. Because if they may mess up one little thing, it can really impact the whole family in very, very deep and long lasting ways. So I would say, and and it I'm not saying that from experience.

It did not happen to me, but I can definitely see how putting that experience that type of expectation can really harm somebody if it comes if it just so happens that something was translated wrong. Definitely. Understood correctly. This is kind of a sidebar to this this part of the conversation, but I feel the need to mention, not for you, but for the audience. I don't think people understand how the how hard it is to learn another language.

And English is actually one of the hardest language on the entire planet. It's up there with Russian and Mandarin. We're very, very difficult language to learn. So if you don't know it, it's already hard. But the older we get, the harder it is to learn a new language.

That's just a human thing. I don't care where you're from. And so I think one of the reasons why many of the adult immigrants will rely on their children or their nieces and nephews or whoever to that's being raised in America to translate is because it is an extreme challenge to become fluent in the new language when you are already over 40. You know, you've been speaking Farsi, Spanish, whatever the language is your entire life, and then, suddenly have to to learn this new language. And, you know, the the longer we're used to a pattern, this is just a human thing and not just with languages, but the longer we're used to a pattern, the harder it is to break it.

And so the harder the older we get because of that reason, it's hard to learn new languages. I have seen this being ESL instructor, and I I get why they do that. And I think it's a difficult spot to be in as a child, because you you they're your parents. You wanna help, and you really do. But it's a lot of pressure, and you don't really know how to say, look, you can learn this too.

You know? But, anyway, let's fast forward to when you became a citizen. Tell us, you came here at 16, but you didn't become a citizen till you're 29. Right. Yeah.

A lot happened in between. So I came here, again, we moved in with my sister for a while. Thanks to her, my parents', papers, they got their green card. Like, it was ridiculously fast. Like, probably within six months, they were they had everything.

And for some reason, my my paperwork, like, it just was delayed and delayed, and we were not getting anything. We were not getting anything. I was in high school. I finished high school. I don't know at what point and what year, but at some point, we weren't to my my dad, I remember, took me to this attorney, immigration attorney that he listen he likes to, like, listen to the radio and very typical dad that watches the news in the morning, afternoon, and night.

So he knew, like, oh, I know this attorney. She's on the news. We have to go to her office. So we went to her, and I remember I don't remember her face. I don't remember the space.

I just remember the words she said in Spanish. Which means, like, you can be deported at any point. And it just took us by surprise. Like, what? Like You did everything legally when you got here.

My paperwork. Like, we we got we got here legally. My parents have their paperwork. Like, everything is ready. They have their green card.

They're on their way to getting their citizenship. I have not broken the law. I'm doing everything right. Here are all my forms. We paid for everything what's going on.

So she explained, you know, a long process to basically just say, no. Like, you did things the wrong way. Again, whose mistake it was? I don't know. I'm not here to blame anybody.

But the point is without, like, unknowingly, honest to god, I was here undocumented. It immediately took me to feeling like, okay, now I have to hide. Now I have to become invisible. I cannot you know, obviously, I don't wanna break the law consciously, but unconsciously, you know, like, I don't wanna make a really loud sound. I don't want to be seen with the wrong people or be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

So I was very, very, very careful, to what in my mind my goal was to be invisible. Mhmm. So So, for example, one of the typical things that a teenager would do, at that point, I was, I don't know, 18, 19. I don't remember exactly. But, is learning to drive and getting your license.

I did not do any of those things because we were scared that for some reason, police officer would stop me while I was learning how to drive. In Ecuador, you don't get your license up until you're sick 18. No. So I didn't learn how to drive in Ecuador. So moving here, you know, that was just part of one of the things that I was gonna do.

I didn't. I didn't even dare to try and learn because, again, of fear of getting, quote, unquote, caught. Even though, technically, the police officers are not the ones that are going to deport you, but, you know, there's there's always the fear. I remember at that point, there were different, at that I remember the word was redadas, like, police officers were, like, just randomly stop cars to, like, see DIY DUI things. And I was always like, oh my god.

Like, I don't wanna be in a car with somebody that for some reason is gonna end up having you know, getting a ticket or whatever. So I was very mindful of who I was gonna get in the car because, again, I didn't have a car. I couldn't drive. I had to get rides to go literally everywhere. So that just really held me back.

One of the the things that I think was hardest for me to let go because of that was going to school. While I was in high school, I applied for different scholarships, and I received different scholarships because of my grades. However, because I was undocumented, I was considered out of state. I had to pay an out of state fee for either Oh, really? College like, state universities or the community college, it was an out of state fee, and I couldn't, receive any of the funding that I had gained.

So I had to pay out of pocket. And I have always been very, like, academic oriented, and that was very hard for me to let go of that, to go to a what I knew at that point was a good university. So I went to the community college, and I had to pay. I remember at that point, I was, like, maybe 18, so that was probably, like, in 02/2008. I had to pay a thousand dollars for each class that I was taking.

So I was saving my like, I was working and saving my money so that I could pay, one class and take one class per semester. Fast forward, I don't know what years. I don't remember timelines anymore. I just remember, like, like, moments and milestones in my mind. And, basically, the way that I got my papers was not even for the original process that we took.

Like, when I first moved here, it was because my husband was a citizen. So we got married, and we started a whole new process, with, you know, the the government immigration. I don't even know how much money that cost it. I don't remember. We had an attorney this time making sure that I was doing everything completely to the t.

We had our interview and all of that, and I got my papers. I wanna say it was five years later. I don't remember any more timelines, but maybe three years afterwards. I don't know. But I finally got, I did my citizenship.

I remember we were in California at that point. My daughter was with us already. It was what felt so long. And, ironically, after probably a year after I had gotten my citizenship, we finally got a letter from that original, form, I think it's called the I one thirty, saying like, hey. Now you can submit the next batch of paperwork to the migration.

How many years later? I think. Years later. Fifteen? Yeah.

Yeah. That's kinda crazy. An insane amount of years later. I was like, you guys still have me in your list? Like, wow.

I I think I would have rather know, like, was just lost, but it was just crazy that we have a system that works like that. That's what I think. That years later, they could be so clueless. Yeah. I don't really right.

Right. Like, I'm already a citizen, and you still have me. I don't know how that works, and I never I didn't say it. You know, I didn't contact them further, you know, like, about that case. But I know that a lot has changed and that the laws around immigration change all the time.

They do. I remember at that point, it was like, well, things are delayed. Or sometimes it was like, oh, now they're, like, push like, they're getting through the cases faster. And then again, oh, it's delayed again. I don't know if it was because I was very young or because I was fearful or because I chose unconsciously to not care.

But I did the things that I needed to do, and after that, I didn't look into it. I I was very anxious, and I was very fearful, but I was not look like, watching the news, asking my attorney, following up. I was not I was not doing Did any of this a lot of pictures that I did not know. Say it again. There was a lot of moving parts that I couldn't really pay attention to.

Did any of this play a part in you getting married? Were you already gonna do it anyway? My I was gonna do it anyways. Yeah. I I interestingly, though, I did have somebody that it was this person that we knew she was a a professional service provider.

And I remember her telling me, hey, you can get married with my son if you want to, you know, for papers. And that was probably the first time that I heard that that's A thing? A common practice. Oh. Yeah.

Okay. And I was like, I don't even know your son. What do you want me to get married? Like, are you looking to, you know, like, you want grandbabies? Like, why are you saying that?

And then I realized what it meant. Again, there are so many things that happen here, especially as an immigrant of, like, common practices that you really don't know that they are a thing until either you become one, you're here, or somebody tells you from, like, you know, a podcast like this one. But so many so that happened, and I was like, no. Thanks. Then, somebody else told me, like, well, you can just pretend that somebody's, after you in your country.

And Asylum. It's so easy to, like, write, to, like, put something on the newspaper over there that you're you were assaulted or something like that, and then you bring that as proof. And then that way you can seek for asylum. And I was like, I'm not going to do that. Like, I know that every case is different.

And and for some people, that would probably make sense. I definitely don't condone or say, hey. Go do legal activities Right. To get your papers. But I think that in my case, I feel very lucky that I did not have to do that.

I do remember vaguely, and I say vaguely because I really don't remember details. It's probably my own mind, like, shielding me from memories. But I remember vaguely at some point, I was considering going to Canada and moving there permanently. I don't remember again details of why and how or what, but I remember I had a couple of friends that that moved from here to Canada. So I was like, maybe that's gonna be the way because, you know, you grow older, you're not in high school anymore.

You don't have the free lunch or reduced lunch. You don't have program. Now you're an adult. Now you have to figure out what you're gonna do next. You're gonna be a professional.

Where are you gonna work? You're gonna buy a home. You're gonna buy a car. Like, all of these big adult questions that continue to pile up as you grow that I was looking for solutions. Like, I just knew that I could not stay undocumented forever.

And, thankfully, it just so happened. I think I don't think it's coincidence. The person that I was gonna marry was a citizen already. Mhmm. So it was like, oh, this is great.

Yeah. Let's do it. Well, I think that's, I think that's interesting. It's something that when you told when we had the conversation before this recording, you know, something that you you told me that really stuck out to me because it's it's just the fact that you thought you did you you you and your parents both thought you did everything right. You you got your papers.

You you came here legally. You thought everything was fine only to find out you fell through some sort of loophole. You know, there was some kind of whatever that something wasn't filed properly and all the, you know, piles and piles and, you know, millions of miles deep of paperwork that we like to do in this country, for every little thing, you know, somewhere you miss something. And, and then that puts you in a situation where now you're it it's altering the way you live your life because now you feel like you have to hide. So now you're not living up to your full potential.

You're not going after things the way you really want to. You're going to college in a way that you feel is gonna best shield you instead of the way that it's gonna best suit you. And, you know, and and so I think these are things that people take for granted and don't think about when it comes to what you have to go through to be in this country. We're only talking about your story today. I know people's stories who were far worse, but I just think that sometimes we need to not be so black and white in how we think about situations when it comes to a lot of things, but especially immigration, because I I know too much to know to to believe that black and white thinking is is effective or efficient or right.

You know what I mean? And and just looking at your situation, that's something that really stood out to me is just the fact that you thought you did everything right. And lo and behold, now you find yourself hiding. You know? And I'm glad that you were able to become a citizen, you know, and the marriage was legit.

I already knew the marriage was was legit, but I needed you to say that for the audience because I know how people think. You know, take what you said and run with it. Like, She just married somebody, so she can become but it it, you know, it it, you know, it and that I needed you to say that that wasn't the case. But I'm glad that you were able to be in this country. So or become a citizen rather.

And, tell us for people that are coming into this country now and they're coming in from, let's say, Ecuador, because you can't speak to other countries because you're not from there. So let's say Ecuador. They're coming here from Ecuador and, you know, they're they they're coming here legally or they're just or or even if they're not coming here legally, they're still coming here and dealing with a new culture, and a new language, in a new setting. What would you say to to them? I think that I think there's something important to point out and is that we all have different starting points, not necessarily making you better or worse than anybody else.

It's just understanding where you are before coming and just being mindful of that and maybe taking some time to, like, do, like, a mental assessment where I am, who I am, and maybe periodically remember that because I've seen time and time again that moving here and in a way starting from scratch, which is the most typical situation for everybody, you're starting from scratch, it kinda you have, like, a mourning period. Like, you're grieving who you were before. That's right. Mhmm. And it doesn't you're not consciously thinking of that.

You don't consciously know it at that, like, that perspective over through that perspective. You just feel like like you're not you, but you are you, but but you're not. So it's this constant confusion of, I don't know who I am anymore. What should I do? And you look back and you like, even until now, whenever I think of Ecuador, I have not been back since I moved here.

The memories of places that I have of people that I met or that I knew over there are how I left them. Right. Like, they don't evolve in my mind how they evolve in real life. And your memory of yourself stays, you know, the same because you're not growing in that place. You're growing here.

So it's very, very hard to let go of that. And I don't think necessarily you have to let go, but just understanding that you are evolving, that you are adjusting to a new place. And it's okay to feel the way that how heavy that is to feel down, to feel sad, to feel heartbroken, to feel kind of like, again, that grieving process, how you're letting go of some, a loved one. It's kind of similar to that. I think that when you see it through that perspective, it kinda helps you understand your feelings a little more, and it could also potentially help you see the the the light at the end of the tunnel.

Like, I'm not alone. Even though you feel like you're extremely, utterly alone, maybe you can give yourself a little bit of hope that, oh, okay. Like, this is how it feels. Like, the process or the way that I'm feeling is common for people going through my experience. I think that that give brings a little bit of hope.

So I would say that, like, it's totally normal. And I think that's the reality, and I think that that's one of the hardest things to let go or or or in the life as an immigrant to let go of who you were before. Mhmm. If especially if you're coming as a teenager, probably, you're gonna know, like, the circle of friends that your parents have are gonna be people that are in a similar journey as them. Right.

Whether it's people from the same country or somehow there's gonna be a commonality there, you're going to hear, oh, you know, in my country, I was a doctor. In my country, I was a dentist. In my country, I was an attorney. In my country, I was this and this and this and this and that. And what they're doing here is starting from scratch.

Yeah. Yeah. Starting like, it literally it makes me wanna cry. Yeah. It's it's so hard for them to let go of who they were.

And I don't wanna say that it was for nothing, but understanding where they are and even for them too. I know that it sounds kind of, pointless, but I think seeking help if possible. I know therapy is really not a thing in our country. Right. Mental health is really not a thing in our countries.

Mhmm. But especially for the younger generation, if you're listening to this, be the one to break that cycle. Yes. Be the one to break the cycle of of keeping mental health secret or keeping mental health as a taboo that it is and speak up and either you'll be the one to seek help. There are more and more therapists that are even specializing in immigration that can help you, because it's not easy.

It's not easy to to to stop being who you are just because of a new location. It's really not it it's really hard, and it can really take a toll on you. But I will also what's to that, I would say be encouraged that there is a lot at the end of the tunnel, that there are thousands and millions of people that have done this before you, that there are people that have opened the way and made a way so that even if it's a tiny little bit, it can become a little bit easier for you. There are more resources with social media the way that it is. There's easily available information for you.

You don't have to stay in the same broken place forever. You don't have to stay in the same starting point as your parents or as the previous generation that came before you, or you, if you are the first one coming here, you can make you can take the same steps, but probably at a faster rate if you take time to learn and to educate. Because the problem or I hear often is like, oh, the system, the system, the system. I don't think that we are gonna change the system, but I think that we can learn it, and we can learn how to navigate it and take advantage of the opportunities and take advantage of the things that we can so that we don't stay in the same place where we are, but we can keep moving forward. And I'm gonna tell you openly and honestly, I think that I am still catching up, especially when it comes to learning the financial system.

I'm still catching up. My parents came here when they were in their fifties Oh, wow. Wow. They're they're not gonna go much further, you know, when it comes to four zero one k's and all of these, like, really technical things, but I can do that for myself. And I'm still learning, and I'm still and I'm making moves.

And I have two choices, either learn and make moves so that I can move a little bit forward and move a little bit forward so I'm not so far behind, or I can choose to say, well, I don't know this and my parents didn't do it. So now I'm in the same place as they are. I don't want that. I don't want it for myself, and I don't want it for my kids. Mhmm.

So there is hope, definitely. There's there's there's there's a lot of hope and, but it also starts it starts with you. And with that, I have nothing else to say because you ended that so beautifully. Andrea, thank you so, so, so much for coming on and, and telling us your story and sharing that with us. I'm really grateful that you did, and I hope that I know that there are some listening who heard what you said and related to some of it.

And hopefully, we change the minds of some of those people around them so we can think with a little more compassion and understanding than sometimes we do as Americans. Once again, thank you very, very much for for coming on. Thank you, Fatima, for having me and for the tears, the unexpected tears that that I had. Thank you for the time. And now for a mind shifting moment.

Today, we heard Andrea's story. Her story is uniquely her story. It's her experience. However, there are parts of her story that are quite common. I think it's very important that we take the time to listen and try to understand other people's experiences.

Can I tell you something? It actually will make you a better balanced person if you listen to people who are not just like you. And the next time you look at someone who is from a foreign country, a different country, and they have an accent, regardless of how they got here and regardless of how long they've been here. The next time you hear someone with an accent, I want you to think a little differently. Instead of wishing they had a better American accent or any similar thinking, I want you to think, what could I learn from them?

Thank you for listening to Mindshift Power Podcast. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter. If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.