Babygirl Guerrero by Katerina Guerrero

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Babygirl Guerrero by Katerina Guerrero

See, I come from days and nights at the restaurant, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. I watched my parents work hard, early morning prep for my father, early wake-ups for my mom, the teacher. I’d go to school with my mom and then run through the park after class to meet my dad at the business. Those are the days I miss. That was my normal. 

As I got older, I started asking more questions about who I really was. I grew up in an immigrant community of mostly Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, but I was Mexican American. So who was I? 

I’d visit my family in Mexico every year. I’d buy my rebozos like my mom told me, remembering how my tía taught me to wrap it around myself. I learned embroidery so I could one day hold tortillas in the cloth I made myself, just like my abuelita. But even with all that, sometimes I still feel stuck. 

My parents called me Babygirl Guerrero. 

But knowing where I come from doesn’t always mean I know where I’m going. I’m learning that identity isn’t a single moment of clarity. It is a lifelong stitching together of memory, tradition, and self-invention. Some days I feel like I’m made of all the pieces I inherited, and other days I feel like I have to reinvent everything from scratch. 

I am the daughter of a teacher and a chef. I am the girl who knew the rhythm of a restaurant before I knew multiplication. I grew up watching my parents cut limes, stack plates, count change, and still somehow smile like they weren’t carrying the weight of an entire dream. I didn’t realize until later how much of my childhood was shaped by figuring things out, not just for the business but for our place in this country. 

When I was younger, I didn’t notice that we were different. I didn’t know that being Mexican American meant sometimes being invisible, sometimes being exoticized, and sometimes being questioned, even by other Latinos. I didn’t understand why my Spanish felt too American in Mexico. I didn’t have the language yet to explain why every time we crossed the border, I felt both home and not home. 

I’ve spent years trying to earn my own belonging. Learning the things my mother’s hands just knew, how to wrap a rebozo tight enough that it feels like armor, how to embroider slowly enough that each stitch becomes a prayer. Holding tortillas in a cloth I made, the same way my abuelita did, trying to feel that same sense of rootedness she carried so easily. But there are days when even tradition feels like something I’m still trying to deserve. 

I was the last grandchild, the surprise baby, the only girl, the one everyone expected softness from but also strength. I was told I was the peacemaker, the one who brings us all together. And sometimes I wonder if that role made me more interpreter than participant, the bridge, the in-between, the one who understands everyone but feels fully understood by no one. 

Still, I carry my family with me in the way I work, in the way I love, in the way I take care of others, even when I forget to take care of myself. I carry the weight and the warmth of being babygirl Guerrero, the one who came last but was expected to hold everything together someday. I carry the restaurant lights, turning on before sunrise. I carry the pride of being from people who built everything from nothing, even if they never called it resilience. To them, it was just life. 

Maybe the feeling of being stuck isn’t failure. Maybe it’s the space before transformation, the place where roots and wings fight for room. Maybe the version of myself that doesn’t have all the answers yet is still worthy, still whole, still in motion. 

Because I’m learning that identity isn’t something you arrive at. It’s something you grow into. It’s the restaurant and the rebozo. The English essays and the Spanish lullabies. The embroidered tortilla cloth and the diploma. The girl who knows how to serve a table and the woman who knows how to serve herself. 

Maybe this is what inheritance really is, not a perfect story but a history that asks you to keep writing. A culture that isn’t frozen in the past but alive in the way I laugh, speak, cook, love, and question everything. A reminder that I don’t have to choose between who I was raised to be and who I am becoming. 

I am not finished. But I am rooted. And that is enough.