I started blogging because I wanted to share my experiences raising my son in Spanish. That desire has allowed me to have a voice online and has led to countless opportunities. I have become very active in social media, and thanks to that, I have met amazing people who have helped me in my journey as a blogger/writer.
When I created my Tumblr blog, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I certainly didn’t know where that would take me. I didn’t know much, but I quickly discovered great websites like Spanglishbaby. I also discovered a whole online community: parents raising bilingual kids, parents raising multicultural children and multilingual kids, Latina moms, working moms, funny moms, tired moms, moms who organize and advocate (Momsrising.org), parents who care about our food system, and like minded individuals who are interested in raising the Latino voice in social media (Latism).
I quickly learned that I loved writing and I wanted to share my writing with a larger audience. I started writing about other topics of interest to me, in addition to my son’s language learning.
One day, a few months after I started blogging, my husband asked me what I wanted to get out of blogging. I told him I wanted to write. I wanted people to read what I wrote, and I wanted to connect to people. By this point, I was already writing for Mamiverse, a great website for Latina moms. I told him that I wanted to write for NBC Latino. It was a website that really spoke to me; I enjoyed their content very much. I told him that was my dream, to write for NBC Latino. Today, less than a year later, thanks to amazing people I met along the way, that dream has come true.
If my dream became reality, it was thanks to amazing people who helped me along the way- every person that agreed to post my guest posts, my editor at Mamiverse, Lorraine Ladish, who gave me an opportunity and welcomed me to her team, and every blogger who has answered my questions and every friend who agreed to share their stories and opinions for my pieces.
Today, thanks to my blog, I am happy to have the opportunity to share many stories. I can share share my son’s language learning story as a contributor to Spanglishbaby, but also to share my love of my culture and identity as a Latina mom in the other outlets I write for.
My fervent desire to teach my son Spanish and to make sure he appreciates and values his roots and background as a multicultural and multilingual individual has sparked in me the writing bug—and made one of my dreams come true! That just goes to show that you never know what opportunities might come your way if you are passionate and believe in something. Also, it helps to not be afraid to ask questions and sell yourself! And have a positive attitude— my friend Eileen taught me that!
This post was written especially for the Multicultural Kids Blog Carnival, “Hidden Opportunities,” hosted this month by Stephen from Head of the Heard.
