Satisfying My Soul

Most people in life want monetary or materialistic things, I, however, want to satisfy my mind, spirit, and heart. Of course, I want the typical American dream of a home, car, and wealth, but I also want to be happy in the ways I achieve those things. I want to help people who are struggling as I have experienced the struggle myself. When I die, I want to be remembered as a superwoman who has always ground for her loved ones and for people who I barely knew out of the goodness of my heart. I want to be remembered such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X. I want to be the black face of the disabled world. 

Black lives matter and a lot of people who are deaf have told me that they wish they had more people that looked like them. Whether it be an interpreter, a speech therapist, or an advocate for them to get equal rights in job opportunities. Knowing that I possess melanin, I want to utilize it to the fullest extent and I want people to feel comfortable with me. I have always been personable and I aim to get better at doing so with all types of people. Currently, I know more about the deaf and hard of hearing community more than other disabled communities, but I love to learn and I plan on fulfilling my heart by self-educating myself constantly throughout my life. I plan on being an entrepreneur in many ways and giving my children a head start in life by exposing them to the difficulties other people face on a day to day basis. I will teach them the importance of learning, loving, and giving and hope that they become successful young men who also continue that onto future generations to come.

I know that I don't have life figured out and that I may not even be certain that anything I say I want to do now will be what I want to do in the future, and that's okay. However, I am already proud of the steps I am making towards getting there. Throughout this first semester being back in college, I have been homeless, pregnant, battling whether or not I want a divorce, and receiving straight A's. I have also FINALLY, conquered homelessness as I have just received great news that I got accepted into a low-income apartment on the same street I lived on when my homelessness began! Wow, how life came around full circle. One day, I hope that I write a book and direct a movie on my life because it is certainly one I aim to share with others in order to inspire. Recently, I have already begun that process by partaking in an interview the homeless shelter initiated for their website and shared my story on my journey of life as a homeless mother. Eventually, that footage can be apart of the movie people watch to remember me by. I also hope to be so wealthy, that I can one day give out scholarships for other individuals with powerful stories for helping them end their homeless journies or helping them go through college. Everyone deserves a chance to thrive and I want to be that unselfish person to help them get there.

Grateful For School

I am a former student of a closed down college called Wheelock College. In 2015, I graduated from a high school called Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA), at the age of 19 years old with three scholarships, one of which was a $10,000 scholarship from Comcast.

Receiving a surprise $10,000 Scholarship from Latoya Edwards at the State House.

I got the scholarship for the countless hours of community service I did while also being homeless and getting great grades. Although I wasn't the Valedictorian, the graduation seemed to be mostly about me. The Comcast scholarship got used completely in less than two months just with room and board alone and I ended up dropping out without finishing a semester. A lot of people that surrounded me were upset at my decision for leaving college, but no one took the time to actually ask me why I left. The person who understood me the most ended up being the only person who stood by and applauded my decision and he is now my husband. Years later, the very reason why I left Wheelock College ended up being the reason the school got permanently shut down.

Formally named Marianna McNeil when I got the scholarship, this was the picture taken on the article written about me if one wants to learn more.

This year, the Wheelock College campus is now officially Boston University and the campus. Everything is the same except for the plaque being change to the correct school's name. When I attended Wheelock, there was a race war going on and for someone like me who stood for social justice and went on a Civil Rights Tour the summer before, I was not going to stay at a school that was so disorganized. The president of Wheelock College at the time was a black woman and she chose another black staff member to be the vice president. An anonymous professor became jealous and ran the new vice president's welcome letter through a plagiarizing system only the teachers have access to and sent it out to the press accusing her of plagiarizing a part of Harvard's welcome letter. It was assumed by the majority of the students that a white professor was accountable for this and students began chalking protests on the sidewalks of the campus. The lunchroom also became segregated by race as everyone had their own opinions on this issue. I became depressed by not only that, but I was also being bullied by my own dance teammates as I was apart of the dance team, and sexual rumors were also being spread about me. I became a pothead, smoking marijuana every day as a way to cope with all of this stress and I eventually dropped out for 3 years.

Fast forward to the present and I am now getting A's on all of my assignments at Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC), a college I wish I brought my scholarship to instead.

A photo of the college I now attend.

This school has so many more opportunities and great professors that I connect with of all races at a much cheaper price. I even have the opportunity to take online courses, and with me being induced to have my second son in just 5 weeks, I will be able to take all of my courses online next semester. I wish I was educated more in high school about debt and what I would be getting myself into at a four-year institution, but I am grateful that I now have a smarter plan this time around. I will be attending BHCC for the next two years studying liberal arts and taking as many classes as possible, even though the summers with plans to maintain great grades so that I can transfer to Emmerson College to study communication disorders. With this plan, I will be saving a ton of money since my first two years will be done at community college prices! The staff at BHCC and Emmerson helped me develop this plan and told me which classes would be necessary for a smooth transfer and what grades I would need to get. Not only are the staff great at my college, but the bookstore also enables me to make sure I have my required textbooks on time every semester with my leftover financial aid. I am so grateful for BHCC, and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be able to be a homeless pupil yet again! 

The Future I Want, The Future with a Plot Twist, and the Dramatic Future

Story 1: My ideal future would be me working from home as a full-time YouTuber and blogger, getting paid to travel to make appearances for waves and collecting residual income. I also plan on working with toddlers doing early interventions at their homes twice a week helping them develop their speech one on one on the side with my master's degree. I'm done having kids am I am happy stopping after I have my second boy. I have my step-daughter and she fulfills plenty of what I need in a daughter so there's no need to try again for my own. I plan to have a decent size tiny home on wheels that I can take with me anywhere to travel to events around the US and I also plan to homeschool my children on that journey so that they can be well-rounded. My husband and I would still be married and our strong would be better than ever as he is YouTube famous with me as the famous wave couple and beat maker for Krump tracks (a style of dance songs meant for a dance called Krump.) My main home would be somewhere in Providence RI even though I'm from Boston to have a good enough distance from my family but close enough to still visit Boston. I would have a Honda Odyssey and my husband would deck it out and drop it low to the ground. He would also have multiple cars of his own. My husband and I would be making so much money that we could start savings accounts for each of our children and have residuals split between them going in constantly, however, our children would be disciplined and learn how to save their monies and spend wisely. Everyone would have great credit scores and my kids would be able to stay with me in my other regular and larger home in Rhode Island as long as they needed to feel stable. I would have paid off all of our debt and my husband would be free from child support.

Story 2: The story takes a turn and I end up getting pregnant again, this time with a baby girl that I name Nilanna Venus Silva. Nilanna is much younger than my other kids who are already teenagers themselves so I start to focus more on her and less on travel. I instead plan to keep my larger home in Rhode Island and start working strictly from home putting speech therapy on the back burner during my three-month maternity leave. I have a hard time leaving my first daughter when it's time to go back into work so I look for work at a daycare instead and become a teacher at whichever school Nilanna attends so that I could always be with her until she is around 4 years old. I then start to homeschool her as well along while my sons are in college and my step-daughter is living in my tiny house traveling or parked in my backyard. My husband is supporting us but is older and is having a hard time having the energy for a young baby all over again but he still manages to make me feel like a queen and helps out a lot to let me sleep. We are still making youtube videos and collecting residuals, so we are financially set and decided to retire our day jobs to focus on Nilanna and she too gets a bank account so we work harder on having more content on our youtube page so that our residuals are greater.

Story 3: With Trump being in office, he passes a law sending all black people to Africa using HR121. People forced to go and some people want to go because Black Panther was filmed there and a lot of people believe that Wakanda is real. Our family ends up getting shipped there and we all have to learn how to survive in a new habitat, get used to the extreme heat, and learn how to hunt. Every family becomes a slave to a Ghanian king and he forces us to pick cotton or our heads get cut off. No one ever assumed that black people would be slaves to Africans and America would be made white again instead of great again. My husband, my family, and I all stick together and find a way to escape and keep moving across Africa to a cave underground where no one finds us. The cave is located in a rain forest, so we try our best to collect rainwater when we feel it's safe to come out of the cave and when we feel the container we made out of mud that has hardened over time captures it. My family is forced to become vegetarians to survive because we eat the plants of the forest to survive. Sometimes we get lucky and my husband goes out to hunt when we hear creatures nearby, but for the most part, we have to live off of vegetation. My master's degree goes to waste and my husband and I have no technology or access to the internet to make money, so we live the rest of our lives hidden in the cave for survival.

A Passion for Waves

Currently, I am passionate about a hairstyle called waves. Waves come in many different patterns, there are 360 beehive,360 swirl, 540s, and 720s. I have the 360 beehive pattern of waves where there are no slants, my waves are just connected like ropes all throughout my short hair. Waves are achievable through the repetitive motion of brushing and combing your hair and making sure you sleep with a durag on at night so that they don't get messed up. If I could make a living with just brushing my hair I would, I am even considering taking it seriously and starting a youtube page where I show my progress in waves. 

Tying my passion for brushing my hair can actually be a career. I would love to have a stress free career of modeling waves, trying out new products to review, and even supporting black-owned businesses that make things for waves such as clothing, pomades, butter, and oils. Initially, I cut my hair short a lot and when I met my husband in 2015 he taught me the art of waving and showed me people who have become famous because of this hairstyle. Google Poppy Pharoah, 360 Jeezy, or even 360 Wavy Baby. 360 Wavy Baby is a famous 3-year-old waver! There are also many awards given out on wave pages on Facebook and Instagram that wavers can compete for. Waving or anything can be a career with the power of the internet.

As mentioned before, I would like to support black-owned businesses. Waves are achievable by people with a curly or wavy texture and usually, that means the black race can best achieve this hairstyle. To me, black people are any people who aren't white. I also want to inspire other females who struggle with societal norms and internalized racism. Girls do not need to have fair skin or long hair to be beautiful. My 10-year-old stepdaughter is a prime example, she struggles with wanting to be a white girl because she was conditioned to believe that being white and having a more manageable hair texture is more beautiful. I even felt ashamed to have Michael Jackson posters up because one day she said she wanted a different nose and lighter skin like he got to have. I had to cut my hair off and start waving to show her that not only white barbie dolls can be beautiful, she saw her dad's love for me and how we bonded through a common hairstyle and that motivated her to embrace her own waves that she has when her afro puff is pulled back. I want to make a difference with this hairstyle and I've already started to!

It's Time to be Grateful

Although I am probably facing more struggles than I ever have, I know that I am a strong individual and take a lot for granted. I conceived two boys and some people can't conceive at all and that's also something I take for granted a lot. Once when I was at my ex-boyfriend's house, his uncle and his new wife came by. At one point we were talking about the birth of my ex-boyfriend and his sister and the new wife just breaks down crying. Later that evening I was informed that she couldn't get pregnant. I too had that fear after the surgery I had when I was 14 so when I conceived and birthed my first son, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. Not only was I happy I could conceive but I was happy my son survived his birth since his brother prior to him did not make it due to umbilical cord strangulation. I've been complaining a lot because of my son's terrible twos and I'm just happy that I have that to complain about. I still wouldn't trade it for the world.

In addition to my sons, there are a lot of things in life for all of us to be grateful for. The fact that after three years I've successfully enrolled myself in college while being a mother of a soon to be two-year-old, pregnant, homeless, and going through a divorce. I continue to prove to myself through the specific experiences of homelessness and abandonment issues, I've always been determined enough to succeed educationally on and off for ten years. I'm grateful for the fact that I now have this blog and it is becoming a big part of my life. My goal is to take up blogging as a serious career which I have already been taken steps to do so. This blog has been a great venting platform and positive way to express me while dealing with my depression. I will continue to update this blog even after the course I created it for ends. I'm grateful for many things, the list goes on.

Some good things that I have started taking in are the act of meditation, the Baha'i faith, and "me time". While I haven't gotten to the "me time" part of that yet, I know how important it is to incorporate that soon. I will be a mom of two soon and it's going to get a whole lot harder to get some "me time". Meditation is also something I can absorb wisdom from and decompress a little. It can be hard to find time to meditate as a busy mom and student, but even five minutes a day has been helpful to me. Meditating slows my thoughts and regulates my mind. The Baha'i faith is something I am just discovering as a description of what my beliefs always were. Lately, I've been feeling forced to do things against my morals and the Baha'i faith is finally something that I feel I can claim to justify my morals to the government with the rules against vaccines. I am unable to enroll my son into daycare because I don't believe in immunizations and I finally found a belief that I can claim so that I don't have to vaccinate my kids and that is being Baha'i. If I incorporate more of these good things, I will be able to open my third eye to all that I take for granted and I will give thanks to the creator.

Bahaullah Friends

I Need to Push Through

This week was one of the hardest weeks of my life. As a 6 month pregnant mom of a 23 month old son, I am not only dealing with homelessness, but I am also dealing with extreme anxiety and depression. I'm feeling like I have no options and it hurts to breathe. Midnight on Saturday, October the 13th, I was told by my mom that I could stay with her at her friend's house. I was already staying at another one of her friend Maria's house, but Maria has a cat and a dog, I am severely allergic and have been dealing with many nights of waking up not being able to breathe. I suffer from asthma, eczema, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), fibromyalgia, and post par-tum depression. Living at Maria's house on two matching love-seat couches pushed together in the living room with no privacy, wasn't good for me in any way, shape, or form.

Knowing that my health was suffering and my comfort was at risk, my mother told me to stay with her at another one of her friend's houses named Scott. I agreed and began to pack my things excited to live with my mother again and excited to live in a house where there are no pets. My little sister, Maritza, who now has her license, picked me up in her boyfriend's car and helped me moved my things to Scott's house. Afterwards, we hung out for a little while at her college, Curry College, with my son and ate ice cream as we waited for my mother to be ready for us to pick her up with the rest of her things. When my mother was ready, she called my sister but kept insisting that my sister drop me off at Scott's house before picking her up; we could hear it in her voice that she was slurring her speech. My sister and I didn't listen as the car wasn't hers and she was paying for gas.

When we arrived to my mother's location, we noticed the stench of alcohol falling off of her. Immediately, I became infuriated, my mom has relapsed after telling me she's been sober since December of 2017 in an attempt to get my youngest sister out of DCF's custody. When we arrived back at Scott's house, my mother and I started to put away our things and blow up the air mattress that we would be sleeping on together, my mom was making the bed and I was sitting near at the kitchen table sore for pulling a muscle in my back from all of the moving. As my mother made the bed I noticed that the bed sheet was on the wrong way so I told my mother and her response was " Why don't you shut the fuck up and make the bed yourself? If you don't like it then you and your son can leave." Wow, I am still shocked as I write this with tears overflowing my face. Infuriated I responded and said "I can't my back hurts to even bend, I threw it out earlier lifting the microwave by myself." Honestly I am so overwhelmed at this point that I don't even remember every word that we exchanged.

Finally, it reached the point where my mother crossed the line and yanked my son up by his arm almost dislocating his shoulder. I saw red because once you mess with my kids, I don't care who you are. Adrenaline kicked in and at this point I grab my son say to my mom " You better not ever touch my son like that again or you won't see him for 15 years just like you kept me from my dad for 15 years. He came out of my pussy not yours and I'll be damned if you think you can disrespect me just because you're my mom! THIS IS MY SON!" I don't know what she responded with but the arguing started to go back and forth and my son was already hysterical from the yelling and being yanked. Out of no where my mom shoves me with my son on my right hip and I shoved her back. 

From that point on, the shoving turned into her fighting me with my son still on my hip at 6 months pregnant. I was kicked, placed in a choke hold, and punched repeatedly in my left arm while trying my best to shield my crying son and my stomach. My son was also very sick and I refused to leave into the cold at midnight with no place to go and no money, I called the cops. Until the cops showed up the yelling continued and I was escorted out of the apartment with my son and my some of my things and placed safely in the back of the cop car. I called my husband and him and his father hopped right on the highway from Rhode Island to get me from the station. Vomiting from the severe anxiety and sore all over,I stayed over the weekend, yet I am still not welcomed there because of all of the back and forth I did with possibly divorcing my husband.


Now that I am in Boston, I went to police station today to get the police report and broke down crying as I explained to the officer what happened Saturday. The kind police officer gave me $25 so that I wouldn't be stranded and have a way to school and the crying persisted as I thanked her. I went to the Social Security Office afterwards to try to retrieve missing social security cards I needed in order to try to go to a shelter even though I was told by my previous case worker that I would no longer be eligible for any homeless shelter from 12 months because my husband didn't fill his one requirement of getting a job and supporting me. This placed me in a further depression, I called my husband because I realized I was missing my birth certificates and I need them to apply for any type of shelter and I was going to have to do it without him this time if I wanted a chance. My husband and I had another heated argument about me not being able to stay with him and again, I lost it.

I started hysterically crying and the guard told me to take the phone call outside since it was becoming too heated. I hung up and said "I hung up anyways." Still angry and hurt, my number was called and the woman at the counter tried to calm me down and reassure me that everything was going to be okay. I felt hopeless but her words helped because I'm on the verge of being suicidal but I can't take my life because I have my kids. I am now at my college writing this blog and cramming in last minute assignments before my 2:30 English class, because despite all of this, I will STILL rise to the top.

Alcohol Savior

Throughout most of my teenage years, I suffered from verbal, physical, and mental abuse as well as homelessness. Currently I am homeless again and I have more positive hope than ever before that I'm going to swim to the top of this deep blue sea whilst surrounded by great white sharks. My mother is a recovering, severe, alcoholic. She's been drinking since her adolescent years and it's almost as if alcoholism was passed along as a family tradition. Knowing that fact, I know that I too could easily become the version of my mother that I hated.

Initially, my mother's downfall started with the breakup of her 16 year relationship with my ex step father. Though they never married, I only knew him as "daddy" and until this day I call him daddy. We were living in Fall River, MA. My mom, daddy, and two younger sisters Maritza and Mayra-liz. Mayra-liz was one years old at time, Maritza was twelve years old, and I was 14. I remember seeing the last day daddy let my mom abuse him as he walked out of the bathroom with his hat slapped over his eyes after a stretch of loud physical commotion. Afterwards he left, to Georgia. He left his family behind and I became my mother's new punching bag. That is when we moved in with my mother's mom. Abuelita or Wella for short. Shortly afterwards, Wella died and my mom faced homelessness for the first time with her daughters. My mom didn't handle any of these traumatic back to back events well at all and became a severe alcoholic who is now recovering because of my youngest sister being taken away by DCF. She has since been sober for a year and has been my boulder through my current struggles and tribulations. 

Life has literally come full circle. It is thanks to my mother's mistakes that I can healthily choose how not to follow in her same footsteps even when given the same circumstances. Currently I am going through divorce and as mentioned before I am also homeless again. I, like my mom was, am a homeless mother going through a difficult breakup. I could easily give into an addiction like alcoholism, but instead I am using it as a motivation. That is why I've enrolled myself back into college. I'd rather setup a better future for my sons then to sit around and feel sorry for myself. Although I do have days where I want to end my life and days where I doubt myself; but I look at my kids and I see that I would be a bigger failure if I took any sort of step back.

 My mother may not have always been there for me then, but she is there for me now; more than anyone in my life ever has been. She's been my support financially and emotionally even though she too has a lot on her plate with trying to get custody of my sister back and sleeping in a room she pays rent for. However, somehow, she makes a way even when me or my ex husband can't afford diapers she will find a way to get me some. When I'm crying late at night she picks up the phone and keeps me grounded, and she plans for ways on making the future better, and we together, learned how to speak positive things into existence. There is power in words. Part of that power has allowed me to be where I am today even though it is certainly not my final destination.

Womb Chronicles

From not knowing if I could have children to now having conceived two. I have gained a lot of insight from my own womb. Ages 13 to almost 23 showed me my strength in three different instances; through surgery, the pregnancy/birth of my first son, to my current experiences with my second pregnancy. All of which tied back to how I've gained strength and insight from my womb. Though many have endured the pain of childbirth and life's curveballs, my experiences were still very unique considering that my life was at stake. 

On May 23rd, 2010, my mom's 30th birthday, I almost died. At 14 years old I was diagnosed with a rare condition called hematocolpos. Hematocolpos caused me to not have a menstrual cycle due to the walls of my vagina being too thick. Without my knowledge, I was having my period for a whole year but the blood couldn't exit my womb. I ended up having to go through emergency surgery to create an escape for the excessive amount of blood. Now having experienced childbirth, the pain I endured that day was worst and showed me that childbirth is just a mental game of chess.

Traumatized by the surgery I had at 14, I was

convinced that I may not be able to have children. I was blessed after four months of trying to conceive. My pregnancy was semi-difficult due to severe morning sickness. The birth of my eldest son Vernile the third was a "piece of cake." My husband kept me calm as we sung along to John Legend's all of me in the middle of contractions and pushing. In 2 minutes and three pushes, my son was born on November 30th, 2016 at 4:20AM. Nothing could compare to the pain I felt that night on my mother's birthday, or so I thought.

Currently, I am pregnant again. With more mental stress than ever before, this pregnancy has been a lot more difficult already. Today I am exactly 23 weeks pregnant and the aches, pains, and morning sickness are 100% worse than my first pregnancy. If I am going through so much now I can only imagine what childbirth this time around would be like. I am currently planning on taking all online classes next semester to be able to prepare for my second son.

Although I have experienced childbirth before, I can say I was lucky enough to have been induced and given the option to have an epidural. I know, again, that these physical pains are still mostly mentally dominated and that I will be strong enough to have a second easy going labor. However, my husband and I can only prepare for so much; the baby can come at any moment, I just hope he comes out in the hospital. All in all, I have learned that I possess impeccable strength, anything is possible.

   

Project HIP-HOP Helped Mold Me

 A moment in my life when I discovered a power or experienced my power at "work" was when I was a part of a non-profit organization called Project HIP-HOP (PHH). As mentioned in my previous post, the HIP-HOP in PHH stands for Highways Into the Past, History Organizing, and Power. PHH was a social activist group that performed creative flash mobs to the public. The flash mobs each displayed a different "ism"; such as racism, sexism, classism, etc. Instead of protesting with signs and marching down roadways, we put all of our protests in our flash mob pieces through the arts of song, dance, and theatre. I was dance captain of this group and the main character in most of the pieces. Although I was a great dance captain, I fell in love with theatre and the spiritual connection I have with theatre especially when it has a heavily important message behind it.  

 
 I was riding on this high of my powers of creativity in dance and theatre, as well as the spiritual journey I had within myself with the help of my mentors. Wyatt Jackson (the dance director), Ferai D. Williams (the theatre director), and Mariama White-Hammond (the executive director). During my 2 years there at Project HIP-HOP. I was one of two people to able to get the opportunity to go on the annual Civil Rights Movement tour twice. My 1st year on the tour I visited and exchanged performances with inmates sentenced to prison due to a Jim Crow law "violation". At one point my group and I were at a black history museum in Mississippi when the museum suddenly received bomb threats from the Ku Klux Klan a.k.a "the KKK". Lastly, and as mentioned in my previous post, I lost my grandmother, whom I called Nana, on the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington; right before my group and I was supposed to perform our civil rights flash mob piece for former President Barack Obama. 

At this point, I started to feel hopeless and became infuriated with tears, anger, and astonishment due to
the emotional chain of events. A year prior to my Nana's death, my grandmother on my mom's side, my Abuelita, passed away and Nana's mother, "Nana- Great", also passed away a week after. As if that wasn't enough my cousin also got shot on my Abuelita's front steps in the same week my Nana-Great passed away. In the case of both Nana and Abuelita, I lived with each of them at the time of their passings and as a result became homeless twice because of my name not being on any of their leases. I was later diagnosed by my high school therapist with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I was beginning to feel hopeless at this point. I was just receiving blow after blow and funeral after funeral. I felt like we had more family reunions because of the many funerals my families had to attend. In the same. I felt as if I was losing my power and everything I've ever worked for would come to a tragic end away from my family at the young age of 16 years old.

To strengthen my powers and replenish myself, I pushed myself to learn the skills that my Nana tried to acquire, but never got the chance to, such as, American Sign Language (ASL) and knitting. I also continued to practice dance and theatre. Although I suffered a great deal due to mental illness, and still am. I look at the knowledge I instilled in my soon to be 2- year old son teaching him beginner signs to quickly advance his speech capabilities and to be able to communicate his needs and wants to me before he could even speak. It is because of my sons that I am going back to college. I want to lead and live by example and show them the importance of the cliche saying " you can be anything you want to be if you put your mind to it." I want my sons to see their mom conquer and grind her way to a master degree in Speech Pathology/ Communication Disorders with a minor in Hearing and Deafness. I want to let them see their mom be what she wants to be when she grows up. That would be the greatest power of all, the power of inspired determination.

Nana, You've Influenced Me Greatly

To my beautiful Nana,

I am writing to thank you for your existence on this planet whilst it lasted. You have made an impeccable impact on my life. Even though you no longer have breathe in your body, you continually influence me when I think back on the lessons you instilled in me. I hear your voice as my conscience and I strive to be more like you every day. When we meet again on the other side, I want to be there with you knowing I made you proud of the woman, mother, and wife that you've raised me to be. 

Nana, even though you are both of my younger sister's biological grandmother, you have taken me in as your own. Right before you passed away I lived with you and it was just you and I. You sheltered me from my mother when she was a sick and abusive alcoholic and you taught me how to be a responsible and conservative young woman. Our plans were for you to adopt me right before school started and right after I finished my Civil Rights Tour. At that time, I was the dance captain of a non-profit organization called Project HIP-HOP, where HIP-HOP stood for Highways Into the Past, History Organizing, and Power. In that group, we used creative pedagogy to push forth our social injustice messages. Project HIP-HOP mainly focused on using dance and theater in flash mobs to protest to the general public getting people to focus and pay attention to the racism that still exists today. On this particular day, it was the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington. My group and I were to perform for former President Barack Obama. At that time, I received a phone call from your son, my stepdad, saying that you've passed away. In hysteria, I said "FUCK OBAMA, MY NANA IS DEAD!!!" as I hysterically cried in the grass at the White House while it rained. Loosing you was not only the greatest grief I've ever felt, but it coupled with me becoming homeless since you were no longer alive to shelter me.

Since then, I've only become even more motivated and determined. I've learned to knit to cope with the loss of your death, received a $10,000 scholarship to college from Comcast because of the countless hours of community service work I put in at Project HIP-HOP, as well as the great grades I got all in high school all while being homeless. I am now majoring in Speech Pathology/ Communication Disorders with a minor in Hearing and Deafness because of how influential you are to me. You were me, my sister, and most of my cousins' preschool teacher at the Dorchester Salvation Army. I strive to impact people and students the way you have and I want to give my future students a better foundation to life in general. Also,I still have your sign language books from church when you were trying to be apart of the sign language ministry. Even though you never got to finish learning, I continued what you have started and I am now fluent in American Sign Language (ASL. One day, because of you, I will become a pediatric speech therapist where I will strengthen the speech of young tots as I have already done with my first born son.

Get to Know Smii13y (Smiley)

Hello readers, and welcome to my blog. Here is where you will learn about me as an individual while also witnessing me getting to know my inner self better. I'll start off by introducing myself, my name is Marianna Silva and I was originally born in Boston Massachusetts as Marianna McNeil. My Puerto Rican mother, the youngest of 21 children, and my mixed-race father, the eldest of 4 came together and birthed me, their firstborn, on December 13th, 1995 at approximately 3:06 AM. I was birthed in Chinatown at a hospital formally known as New England Medical Center, now renamed Tufts University. Since then, I've gone to college for two months, dropped out, gotten married to my current husband, and birthed a child of my own on November 30th, 2016. Three years later and I am now enrolled back in college and am expecting my second child on January 27th, 2019. 

As mentioned before, I am a former college dropout and there are multiple reasons behind that fact, but the main reason is that I have many interests and hobbies; I usually refer to myself as "the Jack of all trades, but the master of none". My favorite fun fact about myself, however, is that I am intermediate in American Sign Language (ASL), and I plan on using my knowledge of ASL in future classrooms after receiving my Early Childhood Education certificate, I even taught my almost 2-year-old son basic signs to help him communicate with me before he even starting speaking. Additionally, I LOVE participating in rap karaoke or any karaoke for that matter, but I know I am a horrible singer so I stick with rap since I enjoy it and think I am great at it. Since I have so many hobbies, I'll throw in one last hobby and that is that I love to knit and first learned how to knit when I was 16 years old as a way to cope with the sudden loss of my Nana and homelessness. I became so good at knitting that I was even allowed to teach a Friday enrichment at my high school. Students were allowed to take my class to fill their class requirements on having to take at least one enrichment course.  

Most of my friends would describe me as nerdy, smart, and weird because I would dress differently from most, I had different views than most, and I could not stand failure. My stepfather, who raised me,  would even describe me as determined while others see stubbornness; because ever since I was a baby I would have to be told countless times to stop doing something, and I would never stop doing it ha-ha. Same goes for people calling me weird or smart, I was determined to get scholarships and great grades so I honed in on my goals and achieved them. Others couldn't relate at the time because most people that age was more focused on having sex, smoking weed, and hanging out with friends. I had a boyfriend during those few years and still was more focused on school than I was being non-productive. Although I feel as if I lost sight of that determination due to the chain of events that happened after dropping out of college, I know that I still never have. My long-term goal of graduating college has now become a short-term goal and is closer to grasp than ever before! The school year 2018-2019 is all mine, and to the graduating class of 2019 here I come!