Governador Valadares is a Brazilian municipality in the countryside of Minas Gerais. That’s where I was born. My parents named me Barba-
ra. I have a brother, Lucas, who is three years younger than me. When I turned 5, my family moved to a small town called Jose Raydan, another
town in Minas Gerais, Brazil. A very small town with a total of 5 thousand
inhabitants, we moved because the whole family, including my mother,
lived there. When we got there we started living in a bar, and I think that's
strange. At first I liked it a lot because I was close to all my cousins and we
could play at any time. We could play in the streets without worrying. There
were lots of animals where we lived, and we could even ride horses. Those
were the fun days growing up. I loved that city, I felt like I was the happiest
child in the world. A while later things started to change. I suffered a lot of
bullying at school because I was a “FAT” child but that was just the tip of the
iceberg. A while later my parents started to fight a lot.

My parents separated, and my father decided that he would go abroad. First, he thought about going to Australia, but his friends convinced him
to come to the United States, so he left on his journey. When he arrived
here in the States always sent me photos. He told me that it was something extraordinary, several races and cultures together, he had never seen any-
thing like it... And in the blink of an eye, 2 years had already passed, the longest 2 years of my life, I had never felt so empty, everything in me was
a mess. On 05/03/2021, the day that my life changed completely, literally
everything became chaos, a secret that I spent these 2 years hiding came to
light... My mother discovered that I was being sexually and psychologically
abused by my uncle .. Everything became chaotic, my family literally turned
against me, saying that I was lying, that he probably didn't mean to, that my
clothes provoked him, I was only 13/14 years old. I was being attacked a lot,
the words of those closest around me were hurting me. It was then that my
father decided to bring me to live with him. My uncle was convicted of the
things he did and sent to prison. We have no contact with him, we no longer
see him either.

So my mother and my brother set out on this journey. On 03/26/2021, I ar-
rived in this country. My god how incredible I thought this was, I was in an-
other country getting to know new cultures and new races and languages. I thought this was great. I saw people being themselves, without worrying
about what others would say. I've never seen anything like it, all together
without worrying about social class, or what race you are. Here I managed
to overcome some obstacles in my life, I managed to achieve things that I know would be very difficult in my country. I didn't understand when ev-
eryone said that there was a country of opportunities, but now I can under-
stand.

© Barbara. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.