You said I couldn't, but I did, and here I am.

My two main people in my life are probably my mom and my sister, just because I've known them my entire life. I feel like people come and go in your life, but those two have been the most constant. They're the one's who know me the best as well. I'm pretty sure, if something were to happen, be it sad or happy, that they would be the first ones to be there.

I'm probably most proud of getting into college. As a kid, college wasn't something that a lot of the kids around me wanted to do. My family is not super rich or anything, and college was always something for people ‘up there’. But my mom went to college, she was the only one out of all her siblings. Then when my parents divorced, in my culture, when you get divorced, it's usually the girls who are less inclined to go into higher education. When they got divorced, people were like, "Oh, you don't have a dad, you weren't brought up with a guy in the house, so you probably won't get very far in life.” That was the whole implication of divorce. But my mom always said that me and my sister would go. We worked really hard to do well in school and to become able and successful.

I remember around senior year, everyone asks you those questions, like where you're going to go. A lot of my extended family was like "Are you sure that's what you want to do?" and they would make you feel bad about wanting to go. College is one of those things where you said I couldn't, but I did, and here I am. It's funny, because I used to work in Ballard, and I would drive by SPU every Sunday, for four years straight. I knew that it was a school, but I didn't ever stop. And then, I finally visited, and it just felt really good.

In my culture, there are gender positions, and it's not super hardcore anymore, but there are still many double standards that all the clans have. Like when you get married, as a woman, you go with your husband's family and do what his clan does. You usually don't spend time with your family as much. So, when you get divorced, you can go back to your family or stay with your husband's. There's this mindset that if you don't have a brother, an uncle, a grandpa, or husband to back you up, you won't get anywhere.

Growing up, whenever my sister and I would visit my dad's family, they would often look down on us because we weren't always with our dad, we were with my mom. Because we were raised with our mom, they thought we weren't raised as well. We weren't as well off, or didn't have as much privilege as other kids when they have both parents. When you get divorced in Hmong culture, it's very looked down upon. Things have changed, it's the twenty first century, but there are still those lasting stereotypes in the culture.