Two Stories

She was always so cheerful when she'd come to clean the house. It didn't matter how tired she was or how many things she had to do,but she'd always sit my brother and myself down and make us a sandwich. M___ was always so humorous and caring. When we were bored, she would tell as a funny story to engage us. When we were sad, she would do far more than necessary to scare away the melancholy.

And she was brave. When she went back to Mexico with her children to take care of her family there, she left without legal hope of return. She did her duty there as a daughter. Realizing that her kids' lives were in America however, she sent them back; she couldn't live without her children though,and her feet voiced her love. She trekked over mountains and deserts for four days to get to the border. After being rebuffed, she attemped it three more times before finally making it.

I know where she got her strength. In her own words, it was "faith and family".

J___ would help out around houses in her area. She was an ardent supporter of her local mosque and worked extremely hard to give her daughter a better life than the one she had fled in a disintegrating Yugoslavia in the 90s

It's a surprise that she even made it. After her husband was targetted and killed as a Bosnian Muslim, she survived brutal conditions, hiding for days from troops intent on genocide. She was even taken prisoner once and abused, but she managed to escape and eventually came to the U.S.

In America, she worked very hard to support her small family. The psychological blow of her traumatic past was still very powerful. Slowly but surely however, as she began to meet with people and participate in the local religious community, the potency of her pain ebbed away.

As a child, I had never known about her roots; she was so full of life, that I had never expected that such a tragedy could have ever struck her. Knowing now what she had to go through, I can only admire her resilience even more.