Coming to Portland was a big dream for me. I came here for grad school because I wanted to learn about sustainability and create a lifestyle that was congruent to my values. In the process of being here, I have lived some of the most difficult life experiences and have learned to grow from them. I’ve become stronger, more resilient and vulnerable. While I was in grad school, I had a supportive network of people who welcomed me with open arms and were there for me. I quickly created a sense of community of like minded people and made my transition easier. I was experiencing a lot of grief when I first moved to Portland so being here provided me an opportunity to heal.
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A lot of people have a lot of negative things to say about Portland of how it is too white, and racist. I definitely relate to that experience. However it didn’t affect me as much when I first started living here, and I wasn’t too aware of it either. It was the first time I lived in a culture that was so different from my own so I expected things to be very different. However after graduation, I started working in the public school system and that is when I started to see things differently. While in the schools, I started to encounter those systems of oppression and see not only how they were impacting me, but also my students and the larger community I work for. Things changed politically very quickly and I started to feel like I constantly needed to prove myself in a system that wasn’t made for people like me. It shows up in little passive and not so passive ways that add up and make it hard to foster a sense of belonging. Yet I look back, I see what I have accomplished, I see how I have been able to create a life for myself and I know that the only way for me is to move forward. Being an immigrant has meant being torn between two places and finding ways to reconcile them. It has meant navigating uncertainty and joy and I can’t imagine my life being anything else than what it is today.