Together We Rise!
By Corina Herrera-Loera
My journey has shaped me in so many ways while reminding me of what healing looks like in my communities. As a child, I remember translating for my mom and experiencing discrimination and bullying because my mom could not speak English. I also experienced many unpleasant things like domestic violence, gang violence, and the effects of substance abuse, along with unhealthy ways of coping with it all. At the age of 13, I lost one of my childhood friends to gang violence. Seeing his mother cry hysterically at his coffin propelled an urgency in me to do something about it. I remember telling myself I wanted to be a Probation Officer (PO) because I saw how some PO’s positively or negatively impacted my peer’s lives. I was told it would be too hard. After being the first in my family to go to college and earn a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, which also helped me understand why people around me did the things they did, I eventually earned my badge and became a PO.
