Celia Ribeiro (CCgirl)

Born in Portugal in 1978, I immigrated here with my parents in 1985. As is the case with most immigrating families, we came here in search of a better quality of life. We faced more struggles than my parents anticipated but as a family we muddled through the tough times and treasured every second of the great times.

The first memory I have of my move to the USA is sitting in the backseat of the cab that we took to Lisbon Airport and looking at my, quickly fading, grandparents through the back window of the car. In hindsight, it was absolutely the saddest moment of my life. As I watched their faces get smaller and smaller it hit me, "I'm going to wake up without my grandma and my dog tomorrow". Instant tears came to my eyes and then they were gone from sight.

As sad as all that sounds, I believe that all of it made me a stronger person. I learned an entirely new language, new culture and that you MUST work hard to achieve your goals. It is because I worked so hard to learn how to read and write the English language that I developed a love of writing. As a child, I wrote journals documenting my new life and stories based on pure imagination. Although as an adult the type of writing I do in the business world consists mostly of proposals and performance review, I still love to do it.

I've never blogged before and to be honest I had no interest in it. Why the sudden interest? Well, I was recently the topic of a Sociololy paper. A good friend of mine was studying the impact of immigration on children who immigrate with their families from various parts of the world. Since than, I've been thinking about how great it would have been for my parents to have some of the resources we now have available to help them along their path of raising me in such unfamiliar territory. So, I decided that I would use my experiences to help other people get through some the hard times and at the same time persue my favorite hobby.