My Strong Families Story

By Lovely-Joanne A. Diala

After looking through videos of stories ACRJ collected for the Strong Families Story Collection, I began to ask myself: “What makes my family strong?” The answer is pretty simple, my mom. Mama is the core of my family; she is the glue that keeps us intact. My mom is the person who motivates me and my sisters to be the best we can be, our success is just a thank you to all the hard work she has done for us.

It has been 17 long years since we emigrated from the Philippines to the United States. We moved to join my dad and to start a better life for our family. Mama was the first and only one in her family to immigrate to the U.S. Barely knowing the language, the culture, or anyone, she persevered through all these challenges to make sure my sisters and I were taken care of. In addition, having a physical but not so present father-figure, Mama ultimately played the role of both mother and father. Through her example, my sisters and I learned to be independent and to find our own strength and power within to motivate ourselves to constantly aim for our goals and our highest potential.

For as long as we could remember, Mama has always been one to sacrifice for our family. She prioritizes everything in her life around me and my sisters: from constantly dismissing management opportunities at work in order to give time for our academic needs, to not going back home to the Philippines to bid her mother a final good bye because she knew there would be no one here to take care of us while she was gone. The sacrifice Mama has made is beyond anything my sisters and I could ever repay her for. But it’s not like she asked us to. All she ever says is that she wants us to have a better life for ourselves, for our own future.

Everything we do is dedicated to our mom. She is our rock, she is why our family is strong.