My Daughter Doesn’t Look Like Me
By: Vanessa Palacios Sharma
Tags: Interracial Relationships, Babies, Motherhood

I grew up in a small border town called Calexico. My parents, both immigrants, came to the USA to seek better opportunities for their growing family. Growing up in a town like Calexico shielded me from a lot of terrible things: racism, classism, and overall the feeling of being an outsider. In Calexico, everyone looked like me for the most part, most people spoke in Spanish, and most people were Mexican American. I have to say, I had it easy for the most part, but I always felt out of place.

You see, whenever I would leave my border town bubble and go to other cities in the states, I never felt like I fit in. I looked different. My English had a funny accent. I couldn’t identify as American. Fourth of July? Oh, that’s just another free day from school. Memorial Day? Three day weekend. My parents didn’t celebrate these days and I also felt like they didn’t belong to me. They weren’t meant for me. The worst part was that I felt like this about Dia de los Muertos, Dia de la Independencia, etc. I was too Mexican to be American and too American to be Mexican. I never belonged to either place and this was my constant internal battle. I eventually came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to wave a white flag.

Fast forward to my early 20s. I met someone. We got married. We decided we were ready to have a baby. On the day my daughter was born, all I could think about was how I finally got to meet the human that I carried for so long. Most mothers will tell you that they had a certain vision of what their kid was going to look like when they came out into the world. I too had a vision of how she would look. That vision was completely different to what she actually looks like. My daughter looks 100% Indian. She is the replica of her father. His family was ecstatic about this. People told me things like “Oh it shows how much you love your husband. You created another one of him!”. I won’t lie and say I was not a tiny bit sad that my daughter didn’t resemble me. I was but that was a quick thought that meant nothing when I got to hold her close to me.

Months passed by and I was ready to take her out with me to run errands and go for afternoon walks. People would stare and sometimes they would even stop and say “She’s so adorable! She has beautiful eyes. I bet her parents hear that all the time” or “Cute! How old is she? Are you her nanny?” I was surprised by these comments and also enraged at first. How could someone assume that she wasn’t mine? Why do people at the park feel entitled to make their comments without fear of possibly being wrong?The truth is that all these comments started to get to me. I started to worry about my daughter and how she would be perceived in the world. Would she also feel like an outsider her whole life? Would she feel like she’s not American enough for Americans, like she’s not Mexican enough for Mexicans, and like she wasn’t Indian enough for Indians? Would she struggle with that internal battle of not being “enough” her whole life? Suddenly, after months of worrying about it and hearing more of those unwelcome comments, I let go. I can’t change how she looks, what people say, her race and her roots, but what I can change is how much value she puts into those things. I want to teach my daughter that it’s ok to be different and not fit into a box. I want to teach her that regardless of what people say, she is the only one who holds the power of defining who she is. I want her to make decisions for herself. I want her to be confident in her own skin. So much so that no one’s words can get to her and hurt her the way words have hurt me.

To all the mothers and fathers who have felt like I have before, rest assured that whatever anyone else says about you and your kids does not matter. Those kids will learn from you. Be strong. Be confident. Be bold. We cannot teach our kids to waste their lives trying to fit in. Dare them to be authentic and nonconforming to society’s stereotypes.