The Other

1

Turn Off Survival Mode

Growing up, I knew that I had the chance to do something my immigrant parents never did: build a career that meant something more than living paycheck to paycheck. Discipline, scrappiness, and going a mile a minute were not only traits that helped push me through the current of chaos and instability—they also felt like they were part of who I needed to be to stay focused on the goals I was hungrily pursuing. My ambition meant never taking my foot off the gas pedal. It felt counterintuitive to slow down, as if doing so would mean I was lazy, careless, or maybe even reckless. I was in the land of opportunity, and I wasn’t going to do anything to derail what was possible ahead.

If hustle culture were its own city, I’d be the mayor. But, as you’ll read, I eventually hit a plateau in my career. Years of valuing productivity as a way to prove myself led me to equate my value with how I showed up for others. But at a certain point, staying in that gofer mode was getting in the way of my professional progress. In order to climb up the ladder, I needed to do more. Yet when it came time to express my ideas and advocate for them, I found myself holding back.

When you come from a place where you learn to survive by living through the expectations of others, it affects your ability to excel and find ease in being yourself. Instead of focusing on self-development and seeking new and better opportunities, you get stuck on “getting it right.” As if there’s a gatekeeper between you and your success whom you’ve got to keep happy.

Many women of color and children of immigrants may understand when I say that I grew up in survival mode. It meant my family was constantly running from one thing to the next, doing our best to get through the next twenty-four hours, the next week. We couldn’t plan too far ahead because we hardly knew how to make it to the upcoming month as we tried to survive financially, manage our never-ending housing insecurity, and deal with the chaos of being uprooted.

I’d like to tell you my parents did well for themselves with this chance at the American Dream. That their hard work, endless jobs, and long hours gave us a comfortable living in our new life in Lima, Ohio. But the truth is that we struggled and would continue to struggle for a long time. I watched as my parents opened unsuccessful restaurant after unsuccessful restaurant, right around the time our small community was hit hard by the 2008 recession. Lima is a town of less than 40,000 people in northwest Ohio, about two hours away from any major city. Like any other industrial town dominated by steel, manufacturing, and the local oil refinery, it has borne the brunt of economic booms and busts. The many empty warehouses serve as evidence of the factories that have come and gone.

Shortly after we moved to Ohio from Chile, my father, who worked as a line operator at the health technology company Siemens and was eagerly making plans to obtain certifications to help him land a promotion, was laid off unexpectedly as the plant announced its closing. Our family scrambled for a plan B.

The tricky thing about being new immigrants to a small city with no networks or professional contacts was that each time my parents were laid off or one of their entrepreneurship aspirations failed, they had to start over from scratch. They worked hard for what they earned, and their priority was always putting their kids’ education first at all costs, but honestly, they were never good at managing their money properly. As a result, bills accumulated and savings remained low, which would affect my siblings and me down the road. Tension and screaming matches brought about by stress from all sides were the toxic status quo in our home, triggered by the volleyball games I had to miss because we didn’t have gas money, not being able to do homework because the internet bill didn’t get paid, and so on. I’ve never quite forgiven myself for all the outbursts and pressure that I placed on my already-overworked mother, who day after day placed her own physical health at risk working jobs that called for physical labor because they were the only jobs she could find. My reactions stemmed from the pressure I was putting on myself to belong and to excel. It was a factor I couldn’t control, but it also had a major role in shaping my extra-meticulous, judicious, organized, responsible, and very much type A personality.

Admittedly, my relationship with my family is complicated. I would gamble and say you would agree that no family is perfect. But above all, my parents gave us something great: a chance to be in a country where we could make our own decisions, choose our own destinies, and seek out our own dreams.

Their emphasis on our education meant that by the time I hit high school, they managed to send me to a private Catholic school that we could barely afford. My mother would have recurring conversations with a school financial administrator, who warned her that if we didn’t make our payments, I would be pulled out of class. This went on for four long years, during which I dealt with the stress of not knowing if I’d still be in the same school the next day, while my mom had to deal with the humiliation of the financial administrator chastising her.

“Your daughter will grow up to be no one in life with this sort of example,” she said, referring to the “irresponsibility” of my family’s late payments. But my mother ignored her harsh remarks and remained steadfast, pleading for an extra day, promising the next payment would come ASAP. And it would—very slowly, while my mom endured the reprimands of this stranger who said things like, “Your daughter should be out working for her education.” The financial administrator probably thought she was teaching us an important lesson, but if she could’ve spent one day in my mother’s shoes, she would have understood how out of touch her assumptions and unsolicited advice were.

“I wish I would have done a better job defending myself,” says my mother now when we recall those meetings. But as a newcomer with only broken English to get by, she didn’t yet have the confidence to stand her ground. Speaking to other first-generation immigrants, I know this is a feeling that arises all too often. Her focus was on keeping me in school, even if it meant swallowing her pride and dealing with the anxiety of it all. And it worked. That high school provided access to opportunities like AP classes and plenty of extracurriculars to choose from, and I threw myself headfirst into every single one within my reach. This meant that I signed up for musicals even if I only got background roles, and despite being incredibly unathletic, I enrolled in sports throughout the school year.

The feeling of always needing to do more and do it faster to compensate for our situation stuck with me, as did the constant angst that at any given moment, we could lose everything—because many times we nearly did. I normalized the scramble. The anxiety. The constant surge of adrenaline. And then my toxic addiction to it: If there was no angst, then I unconsciously felt I might be doing something wrong, because most of my family’s wins happened when we were teetering on the brink of falling apart. Because nothing in life was certain and there was always so much at stake in even the smallest of opportunities.

Like the time I felt my life had been struck by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake that threatened to demolish my one shot at developing my professional life and education.

It was a hot late afternoon in mid-July, the summer after my freshman year of college, and, as on any other weekday, I was out on delivery runs for my Mary Kay beauty and skin-care consulting business. With my windows rolled down, I breathed in the scent of Lima’s freshly mowed suburban lawns while doing a quick mental check of the best route to drop off bags of products and reach my consultation with my new client Renee on time. That’s when the phone rang, snapping me out of the map I had laid out in my mind. It was one of my repeat customers, Angela.

Against my better judgment, I flipped open my Razr cell phone and brought it to my ear. (This was pre-headphone days, and if I’d put Angela on speaker, the noise streaming through my open window would’ve drowned out my voice.) With one hand on the wheel and the other holding my cell, I almost missed my turn as I struggled to pay attention to the voice on the other end.

“I can’t for the life of me find the color from last time,” Angela said, “and I wondered if you knew… Hold on, I think I—”

Bam! I jolted in my seat, my body secured in place by my seat belt, my heart jumping into my throat, as my car came to a crashing stop. Blood rushed to my face. I frantically glanced around to get my bearings. When my eyes met the windshield, I realized there was an old, run-down beige minivan parked in front of me that I had just fender-bended. How. Did. This. Happen?!

“Found it! Apple Berry!” said Angela in her cheerful voice, defibrillating me back to reality. “That was the lipstick shade!”

“O-o-okay,” I managed to whisper back, trying to conceal my heavy, panicked breaths. “I… I have to go now. I’ll… I’ll be delivering it shortly,” I promised. Desperate to hide the fact that I had just hit a parked car, I added, my voice wobbly, “Thank you again for the order!”

Light-headed, I ended the call, my cell phone sliding out of my hand and onto my lap. The deep pit in my stomach felt like it was sucking the blood supply from every inch of my body. A stream of nightmare scenarios flashed across my mind: Jail. Never going back to school. Separated from my family. Detention center. Deported. I squeezed the steering wheel until my knuckles turned bright white.

It was the end of a series of eternally long workdays, and I had been pushing through a wiped-out feeling that was quietly taking hold of my body and mind. I shouldn’t have been driving that day. I didn’t know it then, but I was swimming in my own survival mode, yet I couldn’t and wouldn’t stop until I reached my goals. I was slated to return to Ohio’s Miami University for my sophomore year in just a few weeks, and everything was riding on how much money I could milk out of these last few weeks of working my numerous side gigs, including my work at Mary Kay. Since I was unable to apply for government scholarships or loans due to my undocumented status, and my family didn’t have the means to pay for my college education, I had to find creative ways to afford each semester’s dues. Aside from a small private scholarship that I received and some college credits that would transfer over from my AP classes, I knew there was really only one possible way to get to the finish line: pay it all in cash.

Jobs like restaurant work, babysitting, and Mary Kay consulting, which others may have seen as minor side jobs, took on new meaning and became serious opportunities for me. I was first introduced to Mary Kay by a friend who mentioned a lady at the mall complimenting her skin and offering a “free makeover.” What started as a fun opportunity to get one-on-one makeup advice turned into a life-changing opportunity: a vital piece of the financial puzzle that would help me get through college. The piling on of all those side gigs had already gotten me through my first year. Now my future was riding on doing everything in my power to save as much as I could that summer and get another round of semesters under my belt.

While some of my friends were unwinding from their school year poolside, my mornings began at the back of a Mexican restaurant, cutting limes and setting up for our nine a.m. opening. At around one p.m., I’d have an hour-long lunch break and then clock into the second shift. Depending on the day, I’d rotate between being a busser, a waitress, or a hostess. Luckily, I had the chance to train in all three roles, which made finding an available shift easier at any given day. After leaving the restaurant around five, I’d run home, trying my best to quickly scrub off the smell of fajitas before transitioning into a Mary Kay beauty consultant extraordinaire.

My late afternoons were spent offering makeup and skincare “parties” to strangers in hopes that I would at the very least make one sale. I found myself constantly looking for ways to up my game so customers would take me seriously. I’d offer a bonus follow-up service delivering the purchased products straight to the client’s door. Repeat customers like Angela, who bought Apple Berry lipsticks and eye makeup remover every five months, were my priority. I could count on their fifty-dollar purchases (before tax), twenty-five of which was my take-home commission. Add up all the Angelas and their referrals, and my delivery service was worth it. Which is why I tried to squeeze it all in, to keep going and stay afloat. Every little bit I could do added up.

I was constantly racing against the clock and doing way too much at once in an attempt to manage the swirl of uncertainty ahead. I was exhausted and mentally overloaded, my mind on autopilot, always trying to think two or three steps ahead of everything. It’s how I had conditioned myself to survive in my environment, a lesson I had incorporated into my life ever since my parents decided to leave Chile for good and follow the American Dream. A lesson that would appear over and over again throughout my life and career.

Only, on this particular day, my nonstop hustle had finally caught up with me. Maybe it was the fact that I was driving without a license or answering a client’s call while driving, or the fact that I was semi-speeding in order to make the list of deliveries before dark. (I hated driving at night for fear of being pulled over and caught without documentation.) For a split second, I had lost control, and now the consequences could be devastating. My education was at stake. How could I have made such a rookie yet colossal mistake? Why did I miscalculate the sharpness of that left turn? All I had to do was drive down that street and park in front of the porch where I was due to leave the next Mary Kay delivery. Out of all possible scenarios, I couldn’t believe hitting a parked minivan would be my undoing. A fender bender at that.

I walked over to the front of my car that day—well, really, the car I had borrowed from my parents—and immediately noticed a deep dent in its front bumper. My heart sank. I knew what I had to do, but what if this person called the cops? What if they found out I was undocumented? What if they took me away and I never got to see my family again? Paralyzed by an avalanche of fear, my only thought was: I need my mom. When I reached our house, I waited outside until she came home. The minute my mom stepped out of her car, I burst out with the story, struggling to find the words to explain what happened. She walked over to me, digesting my agitated state and the possible consequences of this turn of events, but instead of chastising me, her voice softened. “Una cosa a la vez,” she said. One thing at a time.

In a normal situation, I would have exchanged insurance information with the car’s owner and we would’ve gone our separate ways. Instead, I offered to pay her cash to avoid getting the police or any third parties involved. Normal also would have meant having a driver’s license at age twenty. Normal would have been simply enjoying my first summer break from college. Normal would have been not having three or four jobs to save up enough cash for school because I didn’t have access to any form of financial aid. We were far past normal in many ways.

There were no safety nets.

I had managed to stash away a couple thousand dollars under my mattress that summer, and although it was nothing close to the full tuition for the year, those savings, coupled with the private scholarship and my plans to continue working cash-paying jobs, were enough to get me back on campus in the next few weeks and figure it out along the way. But that night, with my mom alongside me, I went back to the owner of the car and handed over my wad of hard-earned savings, suddenly feeling my future disappear before my eyes.

What now… what now… what now?

After I handed over the cash to the owner and left to go home, numbness washed over my body as my mom turned into the Ray’s Supermarket parking lot in silence. My little sister had been sitting in the back seat all along, quietly witnessing my unraveling.

I glanced over at my mother. No matter the struggle or impossible situation ahead, my mom was always the one who forcefully told us that “todo tiene arreglo.” Everything can be fixed. And I’d revisit that advice for years into my career. She always made us feel like we were on our way to something better. She was never without a can-do attitude, and always had a deluge of opinions and advice. But this time she had no words left to offer, underscoring the gravity of the situation.

Sitting in the passenger’s seat, I watched her downcast demeanor, fighting painful knots in my stomach and tears that felt like they were drowning my every breath. After what felt like an eternity, she turned to me, full of empathy and sadness.

“It’s not fair to you. You worked so hard.” Her voice was barely audible through what sounded like a lump forming in her throat. “It’s not fair to you,” she kept repeating as tears streamed down her face.

Before that, I had seen my mom cry only once, when I was seven years old. I was upstairs in my room flipping through books when I heard her devastated shrieks. She had just received a phone call announcing that her dad, Tata, my grandpa, had passed away suddenly. It took thirteen years and a miscalculated left turn to bring her guard down in front of me enough to openly share her tears again. In the parking lot, we wept together, quietly holding each other, trying to make sense of the moment. This time there was no “We’ll take it step by step” or “We’ll figure out a way around this.” We had played all our cards.

I was exhausted. Defeated.

That night I paced back and forth in my room, then flung myself to the ground, my hands pounding against the floor. I screamed my anger and devastation into my pillow and then out loud, without caring who could hear. It was a cry for help, one I knew would be in vain. Reaching out to the rosary on my bedframe, I held it tight and curled myself into a ball, pleading for answers to get me out of this mess, until eventually my tears gave way to sleep.

After months of ramping up my work hours, working seven days a week, often fifteen-hour days, I managed to get back to school.

As you’ll learn, I eventually started my own path in a new city, became financially independent, and gained access to work successes seemingly beyond my means. Survival mode took on a new form in my life. This survival mode followed me into the workplace as I did everything I could to stay afloat, clinging to every opportunity to break out of the box society had created for me as an undocumented Latina.

Survival mode marred my self-awareness. When you’re constantly trying to subsist, there is no room to question the why behind your actions and progress. Survival mode wasn’t just about my money or my goals; it was omnipresent in other ways in my life. Surviving in white American culture meant carrying the weight of inadequacy in every interaction I had and constantly feeling like I had to prove myself at every turn, whether the moment called for it or not. With every achievement, from getting my first job to starting at MSNBC and onward, I held on to the sense of having to prove that I belonged there. I learned to survive by hiding part of my identity, the fact that I was undocumented, the shame it made me feel. I swept it under the rug, pretended it wasn’t there, and kept forging ahead to succeed for myself and my family. It’s what I needed to do to create some sort of psychological safety for myself and keep going. But all that did was confirm to myself that I was an “other,” without making space for anything but repressing my own guilt and self-judgment over it.

But as time went by and my career and work experience evolved, I realized that having a seat at the table and using it meant the level of my productivity wasn’t enough, a counterintuitive notion to what I learned growing up. The quality of my work value, one that called for me to express more confidence and gravitas, was what I needed to tap into and show more of. Could it be that the very thing that defined my immigrant ethos was starting to work against me as I grew in my career? The immigrant and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) story—working hard, being humble, and navigating our careers with empathy—is one of the greatest generational gifts we have received, but as we move up in our careers, this narrative’s effects on our work lives can be more complicated than they initially seem. I realized that I needed to reevaluate how I was showing up at work and figure out what I ultimately needed to do to achieve not just success but also happiness, peace of mind, ease, and assertiveness at work. To climb further up the ladder, break glass ceilings, and move into our greatest power, we have to start from within.