A defining moment in my life was the first time I traveled to my mother’s home country, the Dominican Republic. I went on my own to work with a girl’s organization – the Mariposa Foundation. During my time there, it felt like I was unearthing an unknown part of myself. I had to face the uncomfortable truth that my otherness in the State ALSO existed in the Dominican Republic to some I was the same as a gringa there. The identity politics of that and not being fluent in Spanish was hard to come to terms with, but there was also the beauty of visiting a students humble abode and her mother feeding me the same soup my mother always made me when I was sick growing up in my vastly different American Suburban upbringing. On that trip I also was able to visit places in the country my mother had only dreamed of as a child. That trip was a bridge between cultures for me and my mother’s past and my present.