Dear Sienna,

Most of my life I’ve never fit in, culturally or socially. I always felt like I was on the wrong side of the fence no matter where I was. Sometimes my hair was too dark; sometimes my skin was too light. Sometimes I asked for tortillas; sometimes I asked for kielbasa. As a child, being white and Mexican, neither side of my family really knew what to say or do with me at times. I wasn’t fully anything to them, I think. I realized this when I was only 5. When I lived in Los Angeles, I wasn’t brown enough for my Mexican family. I wasn’t Catholic, my mom was white, and I had a white name. Three strikes, and I was out.

When we moved to the Pittsburgh area to be near my mom’s family, I distinctly remember one incident that told me at a young age that both parts of me were meant to be silenced, and I needed to be whatever others needed me to be for their comfort. I was in Walmart shopping with a family member, and we were looking at clothes. I remember saying I needed chonies, which in hip Spanish terms at the time meant underwear. My relative looked at me and asked what those were. When I responded and handed over the package, I received a weird look back and a reply: “You mean underwear? What was that word you said? That’s not what we call those. If you want these, you need to learn their proper name.”

Elementary school wasn’t easy either. I was never a huge fan of mashed potatoes or pizza, but I loved tacos and chips and salsa. Why wasn’t that ever served for school lunch? In second grade, we celebrated heritage days and were each asked to bring in dishes that reflected our cultural background. There were a lot of Italian dishes, a few Greek dishes and one dish of salsa with a bag of tortilla chips. I am sure you can guess who brought those. (Side note: No one ate the chips or salsa but me.)

Fast forward to college. I went to a small private liberal arts school, which I loved. It was the the best four years of my life for many reasons. I was given the freedom to explore my identity and what it meant to be biracial. My mother always supported me, in whatever way I chose to identify myself, but there were some things she just couldn’t teach me on what it was like to be mixed. In college, I read, I listened and I interacted with others who were facing similar inner struggles as I was. I learned what it was like to appreciate not only my heritage and culture, but also that of others. This is where my love for diversity and inclusion work began. I had to step into a lot of uncomfortable spaces to grow, often being the “only one” in a lot of groups and classes. I never complained; I knew that the perspective I was receiving because I lived in this sense of duality was equipping me to see things from a multitude of levels that would challenge my own understandings.