This is the first time I’m sharing my healing journey with you in such an open way. I feel it’s time for me to be fully present with you and share the parts of my life that have shaped who I am today. I hope this series allows you to get to know me more deeply and brings you a sense of connection to your own healing.

Thank you for being here, and I’m honored to walk this journey with you.

Trigger warning: This series will trigger you in one way or another, please read with care…and be gentle with yourself.

MY JOURNEY

My journey towards healing began around 2006. It was the year of many losses and changes in my life. As a teen transitioning into young adulthood, I experienced my first pregnancy and abortion while in an abusive relationship, I lost my maternal grandmother, and became estranged from external family; all during my senior year of high school and thereafter. I had accumulated so much grief in my body, but I didn’t figure that out until later. For the most part, I went on with normal life as if everything was fine, unaware that I was suppressing and avoiding all this grief.

After graduating high school, I decided to take a year off education to work because I was tired of school and I wanted to make money. Like so many first-gen Latines, I aspired to get out of the hood, buy a home, and live the “American Dream.”

My family and I were deep in the assimilation process by the time I was born in 1988 (assimilation: the process of adopting the beliefs and practices of a new culture (in this case the U.S.), such as when an immigrant to a new country becomes part of that culture. This is also known as social assimilation). My grandmother owned many properties in Los Angeles, and my parents and aunts and uncles owned homes as well. They had all converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Christianity and the only ties we had to Mexico were my grandmothers cooking, our love for family and mariachi. We no longer had family to visit in Mexico because mostly everyone came to the U.S. (except for one aunt, whom we rarely visited). The only ancestor I knew of at this point was Jesus Christ. I was extremely disconnected from my roots.

So here I was, eighteen, “American girl”, in search of her American Dream. A dream I would later find out was the driving force behind my avoidance, anxiety, and depression.

I started working at a Brokerage Firm as a receptionist, and over time, I moved up to personal assistant and accounts manager. I remember feeling proud that I was making around $30,000 a year. At that time, it felt like a lot of money to me, and I was really happy.

After a year passed from graduating, my dad confronted me and said, “Sonia, When are you going back to school?” My dad was my biggest supporter, always pushing me to do better for myself, and he was also the one person I didn’t want to disappoint. Growing up as one of five girls, we were all “daddy’s girls,” and I wanted to make him proud and be the perfect daughter. His confrontation gave me the push I needed to go back to school.

This desire to please him drove my perfectionism and high achievement for most of my life. The way I viewed my dad changed drastically as I got older and went deeper into my healing. As a result, our relationship changed, too. It changed in a way that helped me shed my perfectionism and see him as a human being with flaws like the rest of us, but I experienced a lot of grief during this shift because our relationship would never be the same. I’ll have to share more about this relationship at a later time because there is so much to unpack here. Just know, we are in a better place now.

Anyway, back to my original story. I decided to go to Pasadena Community College as a part-time student, which meant balancing my work schedule. Because of the stock market, I had to be at work early in the morning, and then I would be out by the afternoon. This allowed me to go to school in the evenings. I would go to work, then go straight to school, repeating that cycle for years.

In 2009, after leaving a five-year long abusive relationship, I became more adventurous and decided to sign up for my first psychology class. I was very intimidated by psychology because I thought it was going to be really hard and it was for really smart people. I didn’t think I was smart enough (abusive relationships take a toll on your self-esteem), but I signed up anyway because it fit my schedule and I had a good professor.

That first psychology course was a turning point in my life.

One of the first skills I learned was how to remember and interpret my dreams. The professor assigned us to journal daily, which included reflection questions and documenting our dreams as soon as we woke up. This practice was fascinating to me because I had always had vivid dreams. I was amazed at how I could remember them better just by writing them down. I could feel my self-esteem come back after every class. Building self-awareness in this way opens your eyes to your potential, and I saw I had a lot of potential.

It felt like a breakthrough.

I learned about lucid dreaming and the potential to control my dreams, which was mind-blowing.

Through this course, I began to understand the human mind and behavior. For the first time, I was building self-awareness. I realized why I felt and thought the way I did, connecting my experiences to broader human experiences. It opened my mind and changed how I viewed the world. Psychology turned out to be easy when I realized I could apply everything I was learning to my own life–it became fun and I fell in love with studying the mind (later in life, I learned I was actually studying the soul).

Before this class, my perspective was limited. Growing up, my life was centered around religion and family. Religion and family are great values to have, but when they’re the only values you have, your mind ceases to expand and personal growth is limited.

I grew up in a very sheltered environment, where my family were my only friends, and social connections outside were not encouraged; they were not discouraged either, but when you have a ton of cousins and sisters, friendships feel built-in. We went to church and spent time with family, but I wasn't taught to cultivate friendships. This upbringing made my bubble very small, and it made losing family very difficult. Fortunately, with psychology and my college experience, I learned that there was so much more to know and experience.

As a result of this psychology class and my sociology class, I began to question everything I had been taught at home. My bubble popped, and I was finally able to open my mind to new ideas and perspectives. I also started reflecting, for the first time, on all my losses, and gaining insight into my thoughts and feelings. It was the first time I acknowledged my grief and realized how much grief I was carrying. I became aware of the resentment I was holding towards my mom and her family.

When my grandmother became ill, my mom became her full-time caretaker and I felt like I lost my mom during that time. The absence of my mom created deep resentment, and I struggled with the fact that she wasn’t there for me during one of the most difficult times of my life. That loss was compounded by my own struggles with an abusive relationship I was in at the time, where I also faced the trauma of a pregnancy and abortion.

Finally, losing my maternal grandmother was the catalyst for me losing many people in my life—my cousins, who had once been my closest friends, turned on my family after my grandmother’s passing due to the inheritance of her properties. This betrayal added to my grief, and I found myself isolated in my pain. The grief from all of these events weighed heavily on me, but I had never truly processed it until I started writing for that first psychology class.