Echo of Her Dreams

FROM AN EARLY AGE, as the daughter of immigrants, you see resilience reveal itself in small, unnoticed moments. It comes as translating for your mother, sitting in waiting rooms with your imagination and alertness side by side, and watching your parents try to assimilate in completely different ways. I learned that resilience wasn’t loud; it was quiet, dignified, and often unseen. Masked by smiles and optimism, the struggle wasn’t always talked about, but it was felt. Its origins were rooted in a life that began before mine.

My mother is a woman with her own story, her own dreams. She carries old wounds with a soft smile, like secrets she long ago learned to keep quiet. She was once a model in Mexico—radiant, confident, friendly to all. The kind of beauty and self-assurance that unsettles certain people, the ones who didn’t want her to chase those dreams. As a girl, she was deeply bonded to her sisters. The kind of bond only girls growing up together truly understand. When she came to this country, she hoped to chase something greater. Like so many immigrants, she believed in possibility.

Growing up with my mom and two older sisters, I developed a sense of belonging early on. Empathy moved between us like a language of its own. We knew, without being told, that sisterhood came first. My sisters listened when I cried, laughed at my jokes, and teased me in ways that felt like love. We fought, of course, but nothing ever broke the bond. It was a soul-binding blessing. Sister soulmates, we’d say. Feeling deeply was a revolutionary act, and it was something passed down to us. Yet even in the warmth of our sisterhood, shadows were inevitable.

My mother never got to pursue her dreams. She says she wouldn’t change a thing. She laughs easily, finds joy in small moments, gets along with the world. And maybe she truly is at peace. But I still feel the shadow of what could have been, and sometimes, that sorrow is mine to carry, even if it’s no longer hers. My mother gave up her dreams for the sake of a family; the rhythm of her own ambition surrendered to the constant needs of others. She hoped love would be enough, but the man she trusted with her future did not protect it. Still, she says, she had us, and everything that led to us was worth it. She says she wouldn’t change a thing. Maybe that’s true. But I’ve always felt the ghost of the life she never got to live quietly echoing inside me.

And here I am, still in many ways that little girl. A daughter, a sister, shaped by all the things she said and all the things she didn’t. I see my mom in me: her softness, her strength, the quiet way she carried pain. Even when she never spoke of it or pretended it didn’t exist, I felt it. I’ve carried her sorrow like my own, tucked it into places I didn’t have words for. And some nights, when everything is still, I ache. Not for a different life—but for the one she never got to live. And I wonder: if I could give her dreams back, would it be enough to keep mine from fading, too?