By Dr. Laura Lee
June 2, 2026
For much of my life, I have wrestled with a simple question:
Where do I belong?
It is a question that has followed me through classrooms, airports, powerlifting meets, friendships, and countless conversations in two languages.
I wasn’t born into a bilingual family.
I am not Hispanic.
I did not grow up celebrating Latin American traditions around the dinner table or switching between languages at home.
I grew up in Southern Mississippi.
And for a long time, I felt like I didn’t quite fit there either.
The Shy Girl Nobody Would Have Predicted
If you had met me as a child, you probably would not have predicted the life I would eventually build.
I was painfully shy.
The kind of shy that made simple social interactions feel overwhelming.
The kind of shy that often preferred observing to participating.
The kind of shy that felt different but couldn’t always explain why.
Even now, as an adult, I sometimes recognize traces of that girl.
She still shows up occasionally in crowded rooms.
She still whispers questions about where she belongs.
Looking back, I think part of my fascination with language may have started there.
Language offered a way to connect.
A way to understand people.
A way to step outside myself and into someone else’s world.
I just didn’t know it yet.
A Language That Changed Everything
When I first started studying Spanish, I thought I was learning a subject.
Vocabulary.
Grammar.
Verb conjugations.
The mechanics of communication.
What I didn’t realize was that language is never just language.
Language is culture.
Language is history.
Language is family.
Language is humor.
Language is identity.
Most importantly, language is people.
At some point, Spanish stopped being a class and became part of my life.
Then it became part of who I was.
Years later, I would teach Spanish for more than two decades.
I would travel throughout Latin America.
I would work with immigrant families.
I would become an interpreter and translator.
I would eventually dedicate my career to helping English Learners find success in American schools.
But at the beginning, none of that was visible.
There was only curiosity.
And one open door.
The Summer That Opened My Eyes
I still remember studying abroad in Mexico during college.
For the first time, I wasn’t simply learning about another culture.
I was living inside one.
I attended classes.
I spoke Spanish every day.
I lived with a Mexican family.
I navigated daily life in a language that wasn’t my first.
Everything felt exciting.
Everything felt uncomfortable.
Everything felt alive.
For the first time, I began to understand that fluency wasn’t simply about speaking correctly.
It was about seeing differently.
The experience changed me.
And once you’ve seen the world through another lens, it is difficult to return to seeing it exactly as you did before.
The Students Who Taught Me
Years later, I found myself working with English Learners.
Children arriving at school carrying languages, traditions, and experiences that many of their classmates knew little about.
Some were excited.
Some were frightened.
Some barely spoke.
Some translated for their parents before they were old enough to fully understand the responsibilities they were carrying.
I often found myself thinking about how brave they were.
Every day they walked into classrooms where they were expected to learn academic content while simultaneously learning a new language.
I saw their struggles.
I saw their resilience.
And I saw their families.
Parents trying to navigate unfamiliar systems.
Parents who loved their children fiercely but sometimes felt intimidated by language barriers.
Parents who wanted the same thing every parent wants: opportunity.
Somewhere along the way, helping these families stopped being my job.
It became my purpose.
Buenos Aires and a Cup of Mate
In 2022, I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, as an international powerlifting referee.
At first glance, powerlifting and language education seem like completely unrelated worlds.
But both have given me something precious.
Connection.
Shortly after arriving in Argentina, I noticed people carrying small wooden cups everywhere.
On sidewalks.
In parks.
In cars.
At competition venues.
Eventually, someone handed me one.
Mate.
At first, I thought I was simply trying a drink.
What I didn’t understand was that I was being invited into a ritual.
A tradition.
A community.
As the cup passed from person to person, I watched conversations unfold.
Stories shared.
Friendships strengthened.
The drink itself mattered far less than the act of sharing it.
Years later, I still treasure the mate cup and bombilla my Argentine friends gave me before I returned home.
Not because of what they are.
But because of what they represent.
Belonging.
Friends Become Family
One of the greatest gifts Spanish has given me is not fluency.
It is friendship.
People often assume language learning is about communication.
But communication is only the beginning.
The real reward is relationship.
Over the years, friendships formed through language, travel, education, and powerlifting have become some of the most meaningful relationships in my life.
People who once felt like strangers now feel like family.
People separated by thousands of miles somehow feel closer than those living down the street.
Those friendships have reminded me that home is not always a place.
Sometimes it is people.
Living Between Worlds
There are moments when I feel out of place among monolingual Americans.
Not because I am better.
Not because they are wrong.
But because my experiences have changed how I see the world.
I understand perspectives that once felt foreign.
I notice cultural nuances that many people overlook.
I see connections where others see differences.
At the same time, I know I will never fully understand the experiences of someone who grew up bilingual, immigrated to another country, or navigated two cultures from birth.
That isn’t my story.
And I don’t pretend that it is.
So where does that leave me?
Somewhere in between.
Not fully on one side.
Not fully on the other.
Maybe the Bridge Is the Point
For years, I thought belonging meant choosing.
One culture or another.
One language or another.
One identity or another.
Now I wonder if I was asking the wrong question.
Maybe I was never meant to choose a side.
Maybe my purpose was always to stand in the middle.
Helping people cross.
Helping families communicate.
Helping students find confidence.
Helping cultures understand one another.
Helping friendships grow where none existed before.
Bridges are interesting structures.
They don’t belong entirely to either shore.
Sometimes that can feel lonely.
But bridges exist for a reason.
They connect people.
And perhaps that is enough.
Where I Belong
Today, if someone asks me who I am, I still don’t have a simple answer.
I am a teacher.
A traveler.
A mother.
A grandmother.
A powerlifter.
An educator.
A lifelong language learner.
A Southern woman from Mississippi.
A woman whose life was forever changed by a language that was not her own.
Most of all, I am someone who has discovered that connection is more powerful than division.
And if there is one thing I have learned from a lifetime spent between cultures, it is this:
We do not always belong because we are the same.
Sometimes we belong because we choose to build relationships across our differences.
Maybe I was never meant to belong entirely to one world.
Maybe I was meant to help connect them.
And after all these years, I think that’s exactly where I belong.
Corazón Sin Frontereas 
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