A Mother Like No Other

No individual in my life has shown me the meaning of success more than my mom has. She has taught me not only how to be successful, but how to develop my own idea of what it even means to be successful. She raised my younger brother and I with (probably too much) liberty, did the impossible to provide us with the opportunity of growing up in the United States, has remained our ROCK through thick and thin, and perhaps most importantly – has not ceased in her endeavors of bettering herself.

Vampires, Witches, and Fairies

We were allowed to believe whatever we wanted, growing up. We experienced celebrations for both Christmas and Hannukah, and never once did it occur to me that those holidays required following a certain belief system. When I accidentally read a book that revealed the secret of Santa Claus at five years old, my parents felt bad that I had to “upkeep” the secret for my brother – so they convinced me that dad was a vampire.

My dad was older than most dads, he had unreasonably large and sharp canines, and his past was so adventurous it came off as mysterious from the perspective of a child. One Halloween, he dressed up as a vampire, made a joke that this was his true self, and the belief stuck. To reiterate it, my mom made a beet soup a handful of times during full moons. I remember other kids getting excited around Christmas and I, a very considerate friend, didn’t crush their belief but rather shared with them my own – “Forget Santa Claus, you guys, my dad is a VAMPIRE!”

Lawrence, my younger brother, fully believed in the Greek Gods until he was twelve. We would ask mom what she believed in and she’d say, “Yo no creo en las brujas, pero que las hay, las hay.” We didn’t speak Spanish. She’d say that fairies lived in the flowers of our grandparents’ garden and when we waited for our Hogwarts letters, she didn’t deter our hopes.

All of this open-mindedness to otherworldly ideas was foundational for our unlimited capacity for dreaming, yearning, and creating.

Mom loves being a witch 🙂

The Land of Opportunity – moving to the United States

Our family was not without hardship in our experience of moving to the United States. As a kid, I thought we’d given up the greatest luxuries of my grandparents’ home and our house on a tropical island in exchange for what seemed like a crappy apartment near the Brassfield Theater here in Greensboro (the apartment was, by no means, crappy). However, I’d grown up being given the “metropole” narrative about America, and so I trusted that whatever it is my mom was trying to do here, it would all work out.

Until I didn’t trust her at all. As I grew older and we experienced more domestic complications like divorce, robbery, lower income housing, employment challenges – mundane things to the average person, of course – I resented my mom for bringing us here. After a childhood of promise, it all seemed like my mother’s betrayal. I thought, wasn’t the United States supposed to bring us opportunity? How is it that the friends I have around me seem so much better off?

I realize now how much of a privilege it is to even be surrounded by the privileges of others. This she tried to teach me – gratitude, humility, and even simple acceptance of one’s circumstances. And I fought it all the way through. As a teen, I retaliated. I drank and smoked and stole the car. I hated family. I was a victim, I was sure of it. I did everything I possibly could to make my mom see just how “awful” she was to me.

It took dropping out of college and her cutting me off financially – classic, right? – for me to figure it out. I came home after six months of working full-time, trying to pay my $1000 monthly expenses (which now seems like a DREAM), crying and begging her forgiveness. And forgive me she did. Forgive me, she has, for every piece of hell I threw against my mother. For every resentment and fight and meaningless anger I projected unto her, she has forgiven me. To quote Mumford & Sons – “Well you forgave, and I won’t forget.”

The United States is no Eden, as it seemed to my kid-self, but the lives my mom and brother and I are able to live and lead here are indeed more full of uniqueness and agency than would have been feasible for us in Brazil. Both my parents worked to get us here, but it was my mom who struggled the most – as an immigrant, as the primary custody parent, as someone still marked by an accent and cultural differences. But she fought tooth and nail to succeed in her goal: to give her children a better chance.

My Mom TODAY – October 16th, 2024

It was her birthday last Monday! Happy Birthday, mamãe! This year we celebrated something truly special – she sat on the BAR. That’s right! My mom, who was told her Brazilian clothes were unacceptable here in the Bible belt, whose peers laughed at her misuse of words and misplacement of grammatical order, who endeavored simply to fit in for fear of being taken advantage of, who once felt like she had failed when she didn’t continue a career in the furniture business that had brought us here in the first place – MY MOM SAT ON THE BAR THIS YEAR!

But that’s not the only thing! Here’s a list of so many successes that I am so proud to say about my mom over the past dozen years (in no particular order)…

• Maintained and advanced her position in her place of work over the course of a decade
• Put two (very untraditional!!) kids through college
• Bought a house
• Got married
• Actively supports her elderly parents back in Brazil
• Studied for the bar over the course of three years
• Started working out and getting stronger
• Minimized her coffee intake – the hardest thing ever!! Lol
• Improved her diet + nutrition
• Been active in book club, pilates, yoga, and swimming activities
• Developed some truly meaningful friendships with likeminded women

And most importantly of all, has simultaneously kept a positive attitude while being true to herself (and to me) about her fears and insecurities. She has accepted me for who I am – and all of my bad decisions! She accepts what she cannot change and changes what she cannot accept. She has open arms for so many in need, and knows how to draw boundaries. She is patient with people who likely don’t deserve it. My mom has grown to exemplify everything she has always preached to my brother and I, and I couldn’t be prouder to be her daughter.

I could go on and on. There are so many things my mom has done in the past that I’ve taken for granted, and so many more things she continues to do that I now know to appreciate, all of which have felt like the “magical spells” she allowed us to believe in but really have taken a lot of GRIT and GUILE to accomplish.

It has never been about how to make money, how to have luxuries, how to be popular or how to take power. It has always been about how to develop a life that brings me a sense of fulfillment within myself, whilst being stable and secure enough to not burden one another. It has always been about how to be authentically myself, and how being my authentic self contributes to the development of a wholesome and healthy community. Yes, many things have taught me all of this, but you have always been the ladybug on my shoulder, whispering words of advice that I needed but perhaps did not want to hear. Thank you for teaching me about success, mom.