It was 1999, I was a sophomore in high school when I found out I was pregnant! How could this have happened to me, I thought to myself. My first thought was how am I going to tell my dad, my mom?! I knew my dad would be sad, disappointed, ashamed that his only daughter was going to be a teen mom and that my life is over before it began.. What now, what happens now? Lets see, I can either tell my mom and dad the truth or I can pretend like this never happened. Abortion?! Adoption?, neither of these options sounded like a good idea, I didn't want to live with regret, always wondering and thinking about my child that I didn't even give a fighting chance to, or a child that I gave up on. At 2 months pregnant I knew this child was going to be special. I couldn't go through with aborting my child, nor could I go through with the thought of someone else having my child. It was then I decided to keep my baby, after-all everything happens for a reason, right? So as every young girl begins, I had dreams of becoming someone.
I decided I didn't want to listen to the others and give my baby girl away to strangers, it was then I decided to prove everyone wrong and prove that I could be a great mother without giving up my dreams. I really wanted to be an example and a good role model to my daughter and other younger girls who too could be going through the same thing. I knew that it was going to be hard and that I was going to face difficult times in the future but I also knew I was the only one who could change my future and my child's destiny was in my hands. I had to grow up fast and boy did I. There was no time for after school activities, hanging out with friends, it was a difficult time but somehow I managed. If it wasn't hard enough being a teen mom, being a single parent was also hard.
According to "The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy" about half (51%) of teen moms graduate high school. Other data has found that less than two percent attain a college degree before the age of 30. I didn't want to become another statistic being a teen mom was more than enough and already being placed in that bracket and  being of Latino decent made it even worse. After high school I went on to college studied Journalism at California State University of Long Beach. There were many times where I felt like giving up and dropping out, but that would have been the easy way out. I wanted to make my daughter proud and I knew that finishing school would give my daughter hope. Hope to someday also go to college and make something of her life. It was up to me to be that role model someone she could look up to. So I did what I had to do, I finished and graduated with a degree in Journalism, with dreams of someday becoming a reporter or writer or whatever was in my destiny.