Hey readers, it’s Scarlette again — your neurodivergent Latina just trying to make sense of her world one post at a time. Today, I want to talk about my roots. My parents. The people who made me, for better or worse.
This entry is like peeling back layers of a story — messy, emotional, complicated. But I think it’s important. Understanding where I come from helps me understand who I am.
Let’s start with my dad. He’s from La Habana, Cuba. My grandparents didn’t stay together, and my dad ended up being raised mostly by his mom. His father didn’t think she was a good mother, but he still left anyway. And apparently, that whole side of the family didn’t care for my dad much either. His mother’s side saw him as a delinquent, and his dad was just a friend.
It didn’t help that my dad was rebellious. He dropped out of school in the sixth grade and spent a lot of time on the streets. He was beaten up by Cuban police often. When he was 16, he went to jail — not because he committed a crime, but because he refused to join the military, which was basically mandatory in Cuba at the time. He ended up spending about two to four years locked up. During that time, his mom and younger sister didn’t even visit him.
I can’t say I’m surprised that my dad grew up with issues — especially when it came to women. With the kind of family history he had, he never really learned how to love or respect women. His mom had a lot of different men in her life. My grandfather was more like a buddy to him than a parent. And from what I’ve heard, he beat the women he was with. It’s no wonder my dad repeated the cycle.
Now onto my mom — her story is heartbreaking too. She was born in Cuba but came to the U.S. when she was nine. She lost her mom when she was only four, so she was raised by my grandfather and one of her older sisters, Tia N until she was 10. Tia N already had a family of her own, so you can imagine the stress. My mom married when she was just 15 and got pregnant right away. She didn’t marry out of love — it was because she didn’t want anyone in her mother’s family to gossip about her for having sex. That tells you a lot about the pressures placed on her. She and my Tia I, her twin sister ended up getting an apartment and hustled hard to survive. My mom’s first job? Collecting vegetables. Can you imagine? Life hit her hard from every direction.
Her husband, L, turned out to be a nightmare. His parents mistreated my mom, and he cheated on her constantly. She was planning to leave him, to go live with her dad and restart her life. But right before she could, my grandfather had a heart attack and passed away on Mother’s Day. My mom became an orphan — again. L divorced my mom and took full custody of my brother.
When she was 18, she got with a man—let’s call him J—and they had my three older sisters, one after the other, all just a year apart. J was abusive. He used to beat her regularly, but one day, he knocked her unconscious so badly that she woke up with amnesia.
While she was still recovering, J kidnapped their daughters and took them to his parents’ home in Puerto Rico. His mother ended up putting the girls in a strict Catholic boarding school. When my mom went to Puerto Rico to find her daughters, J’s mother wouldn’t tell her where they were. And because my mom wasn’t a legal resident of PR, no one helped her. It was the 1980s, and she was a young, terrified woman trying to get her babies back—and getting shut down at every turn.
She didn’t find them again until almost ten years ago, thanks to social media. That’s how long she went without seeing or talking to her daughters. My brother and three sisters grew up thinking she abandoned them. They believed the lies they were told. That kind of loss does something to a person.
Because of that pain, my mom developed intense separation anxiety. When my sister and I were born—children from a different man, our dad—she became terrified that he would take us away, too. That fear never really went away. And sometimes, it showed up in how she treated us: overprotective, emotionally reactive, and scared to lose control.
Her trauma shaped a lot of my own.
She and my tia ended up getting an apartment and hustled hard to survive. My mom’s first job? Collecting vegetables. Can you imagine? Life hit her hard from every direction. She moved around a lot — lived in 19 different states. The last place she was before returning to Florida was California.
Whew. That was a lot to write. But this is real. This is the blood in my veins. These are the people whose stories shaped my existence. And while I might not agree with all the choices they made, I’m learning to see them as human — flawed, scarred, struggling. Just like me.
Until next time,
🖤 Scarlette
Scarlette Febles 
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