I Don’t Believe in Borders
People call me a gringa like it is something I need to apologize for. Like the country I was born in is a character flaw. Like the accident of geography makes me responsible for every policy, every stereotype, every version of America that someone saw on television.
I don’t believe in borders. Not the ones on maps and not the ones people carry in their minds. Borders are tools of control. They decide who belongs and who does not. Who moves freely and who gets stopped. I am not interested in performing the version of myself that makes borders comfortable.
You were born where you were born. So was I. That is the beginning of the story. Not the whole thing.
The Land Remembers
Land holds what happened on it. The red dirt of Oklahoma. The cerrado. The caatinga. The Atlantic forest that used to reach all the way to the water. They remember who was buried in them. They remember who was taken.
When I walk the streets of Pelourinho, I am not a tourist. I am someone whose people passed through here, on the same ships, to different shores. The diaspora is not a metaphor. It is a map. And Bahia is on that map.
Knowing where your roots go does not mean you are trapped by them. It means you have something to stand on. Read the full ancestral inheritance.
Where the Hostility Actually Comes From
When someone meets me with hostility because I am American, I do not take it personally. I understand what is underneath it. Centuries of a specific story — that the West is rich and the rest of the world is poor. That richness is deserved and poverty is a character flaw.
That story was written by colonialism. Not by me. Not by you. But we are both living inside it. The hostility is borrowed. It belongs to a system that taught both of us that proximity to wealth was a measure of worth. That is a lie. A very old one. And it is still doing damage.
Kind. Fair. Not a Doormat.
There are people who will test what you are made of. Not always with bad intentions. Sometimes because they learned that kindness is a resource. That the person who gives without conditions is the safest person to take from.
I am kind. I am fair. But I am not a doormat.
The years you gave, the sacrifices nobody acknowledged, the times you showed up without being asked — none of that obligates you to keep giving to someone who never once asked what it cost you.
Freedom Begins Before You Can See It
You cannot free your body from something your mind still believes you deserve. I have watched people choose the familiar cage over the open door. The open door required them to believe they were worth what was on the other side.
Freedom is not a place you arrive at. It is a decision you make. Usually more than once. Usually when it is uncomfortable.
On Giving Until Empty
There is a kind of generosity that is actually self-abandonment. It looks like giving. It feels like virtue. But it comes from a place that believes if you stop giving, people will stop valuing you.
You do not owe anyone a version of yourself that runs on empty. Generational conditioning will tell you that sacrifice is love. Sometimes it is. And sometimes sacrifice is just a habit that was never examined.
The Closing Thought
On March 9th I woke up with all of this inside me. It came out in a rush — the reciprocity thread, the frustration and the clarity arriving at the same time.
I do not know what you will do with this. That is not my job. My job is to say what is true for me, clearly, without apologizing for the fact that I see it.
Some of you will understand immediately. Some will feel resistant and read it anyway. And some will say: your mind isn’t free enough to understand. That is okay too. Those are the ones I am most patient with. Because I have been there.
Want the numbers behind the assumptions? Read part 2: The Salary Looks Big. The Bills Are Bigger.
Learn more about Sisi in Brasil: I Am.