Welcome. My name is Sofía. I'm a 40-year-old stay-at-home mom to two beautiful kids: an eight-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl. We moved to Texas from Mexico almost four years ago. We packed our things, our dreams, our hopes and our fears, and we came here with our hearts in our hands. Since then, we've been working to settle down, connect, and feel like we belong.
The thing is, in Mexico I used to work, and I loved it. Not only the pay (which was obviously nice), but even more, everything that came with it:
- feeling fulfilled by the fruit of my labor
- being part of a community
- seeing the difference my work made
- moving forward with clear deadlines and a real sense of progress
When we came, I didn't have a work permit, and I had a child whose world had been turned upside down. He went from speaking Spanish and learning German to starting at a school that was 100% in English. So life led me to become a stay-at-home mom.
Since then (and probably before, but less) I feel like I have been living in my head and… oh boy! It can get loud and messy in there.
~ how and why riding writing righting came to be ~
A couple of weeks ago, I had a beautiful dream. I mean, it must have been beautiful, because I woke up feeling a clarity and peace I hadn't felt in decades… However, I only remembered these words: writing and riding.
And I felt a big pull to start writing. You see, my emotions fluctuate just like the ocean: when a wave comes, it's usually more than one, and they are BIG. Sometimes it feels like a tempest. After all these years living in my mind, I lost my compass. There's no shore in sight, my boat (body) is broken, the storms are getting stronger, and it's been harder to stay afloat.
What I mean by all this is that I struggle with depression (oh! it's hard to write this down and let the world see my wounds), and my self-worth is in the negatives.
For the last couple of years, I felt a pull to get closer to God, to strengthen my faith. But I didn't know where to start. My husband wouldn't join me, and I felt awkward just thinking about attending a mass or a service.
I tried to visualize myself, and I felt completely out of place — weird, and wanting to cry.
With the support, friendship, and guidance of Lisa, I recently came to Jesus. For the first time, I started reading the Bible, and I found a word that was new to me — "righteousness" — and it felt like what I needed to close the circle:
I've been living for so long in my mind, away from my support system — you know, the people who love me, encourage me, help me grow, and see the good in me. I had little to no participation in what felt like meaningful projects outside raising my kids. I mean, I'm very involved in volunteering as much as I can with my kids' activities, but I still feel a void. Through all this time, I didn't notice how my inner dialogue had changed — how it became detrimental, negative, ultimately toxic.
So this is what got me here.
I want to be clear about one thing: I love my kids, and being their mom is one of my greatest privileges. Motherhood is a challenge, for sure, and quite a huge one, but it's also my main reason to want to better myself. I've come to understand that their wellbeing is tied to mine; I can't pour from an empty cup. And when my daughter was born, it dawned on me that I can't just tell my children how to see and value themselves — I HAVE TO SHOW THEM, by example. (It's true for my son too. But I know some of these hardships fall heavier on girls.)
Today I'm aiming to ride my waves — the emotional ones, the doubting ones, and also the amazing waves of ideas — by writing. Putting the storm into words makes it tangible: it moves what's trapped in my head onto the page, where I can finally see it in full — not in fleeting pieces, like thoughts that fly by — make sense of it, and act on it instead of just drowning inside my mind. And while I do, I'll be looking to right my self-perception and my inner dialogue.
Just like God wants us to stand on truth, I need to really see myself, accept me, and love me with my lights and darks. ALL OF ME.
A friend of mine, Kacie, said a phrase that resonated with me:
Jesus loves you exactly where you are, but too much to let you stay there.
There's something else I want to be honest about: I'm writing this in English, and English isn't my first language. That's on purpose. This is my home now, and writing in it — stumbling through it — is part of how I'm learning to belong here. It isn't easy, and I'll get things wrong. But showing up imperfectly, in a language that's still becoming mine, feels like exactly the kind of wave worth riding.
And I won't pretend this is easy. Opening myself up like this — letting you see my wounds — makes me uncomfortable and honestly scared. But I'm choosing to do it anyway, in the hope that if any of this resonates with you, you'll know you're not alone.
So this is me starting to move (hopefully forward), one wave at a time, one word at a time, making one wrong into right at a time. I'd love to share this journey with you.
May you too ride, write, and right.