‘Valentino’
During my life, I’ve struggled a lot with my mental health.
Always moving, from California to Minnesota to Nevada, added more layers to that struggle. And I know I’m not the only one. A lot of Latino teenagers go through the same thing. But we’re not taught how to deal with it. We’re just told to be strong. To suck it up. That mindset gets passed down from generation to generation, and it ends up setting an unrealistic standard for kids like us who are already carrying so much.
Every time we moved states, I had to make new friends, get used to new environments, and adjust all over again. One of the biggest reasons we moved around so much was to find better-paying jobs. In California, rent is super high, especially because of gentrification, and even if you’re working multiple jobs, it’s still hard for working-class Latinos to survive. In Nevada, yeah, things were cheaper, but the jobs didn’t pay enough to support my family.
I grew up in small apartments with ten people crammed together. Living with my cousins, my mom was barely able to make ends meet, it was stressful for all of us. When you add on the socio-economic conditions we face, plus the discrimination we experience just for being Latino, it becomes an even bigger challenge, especially compared to white families who don’t have those same systemic barriers.
According to the U.S. Census, between 2019 and 2020, the poverty rate for non-Hispanic whites was 8.2%, while for Hispanics, it was 17.0%. That says a lot. That number shows up in our lives every day, in our housing, our schools, our jobs.
Another thing we don’t talk about enough is generational trauma. It’s something so many Latinos carry without realizing it. The LA Times talks about “first-generation trauma”, basically the emotional struggles that kids of immigrants go through. It’s real. Trying to make your parents’ sacrifice “worth it” puts so much pressure, stress, and anxiety on us.
When you grow up in this kind of environment, it changes how you see the world. I learned how to keep myself distracted just to cope. I knew I couldn’t have or do the same things other kids my age were doing, but I made it work. Playing outside with other kids going through similar situations made me feel less alone.
There’s also this inherited silence in Latino culture. We don’t always talk about what’s happened to us, or what’s still happening. Things like discrimination, immigration struggles, or even just how hard life has been. That silence is passed down. A lot of it comes from fear, fear of being too vulnerable, fear of deportation, fear of judgment. Parents try to protect us by not talking about the bad stuff, by focusing only on what’s “better” now.
But that silence doesn’t help us process or understand where we come from. It just leaves us carrying things we don’t have words for. And when you never talk about something, it doesn’t go away, it just grows inside you.
Most of our stress comes from external factors. Instead of dealing with it, many of us try to ignore it or act like it’s not that deep. But it is, and it affects our mental health more than we want to admit.
It’s so important that we stop internalizing the idea that expressing emotion is weak or that our culture is broken because we’re struggling. We’re not. Latinos are resilient as hell. But part of that resilience needs to include healing. And healing starts with being open, discussing what we’ve lived through and how it’s affected us.
Being honest about how you feel isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s how you start to undo generational trauma. It’s how you begin to accept the things you can’t change, and work toward changing the things you can.
