I’m an immigrant. Every thread of my identity is wrapped around that core.

I became a citizen of the United States in 1973 and have lived in this country for most of the past sixty years. I’ve immersed myself in the life of my community and my adopted country, but even now, I continue to see myself in that way: as an immigrant, a person whose roots are somewhere else, not here.

Like most of the other immigrants I know, I’ve wrestled--and I still wrestle--with the question of identity: of “Who am I?” It’s a question most people ask themselves at some point in their life journey. But for immigrants, the stakes are higher because our roots are elsewhere.

There’s a saying in Spanish: “No soy de aqui, ni soy de alla,” which means, I’m not from here or from there. Ask anyone who’s come here from another country what that saying means to them, and especially if you ask in the language, they grew up speaking most will tell you: “Yes, it’s the truth.” It’s a truth that almost all immigrants share, no matter where they come from--or how they came.

Every immigrant and refugee I know wants to belong, to shed the label “them” and become one of “us”. The melting pot is part of the American myth, but those who step into it pay a heavy price: laying aside pieces of their identity to become someone they are not, no soy de aqui, ni soy de alla.

I never wanted to make that choice. Instead, my quest has been to embrace my bicultural identity, as a Bolivian American, and encourage others to embrace theirs.

When I was very young, I received a gift. It was a feeling in my heart that I was not separate from those who were suffering. I understood then, in ways I still struggle to explain, that I am “them,” and “they” are me.

And so, I became a weaver, not of cloth but of dreams and shadows. The threads on my loom are family, education, faith, opportunity, service, and the love I have for my two countries, Bolivia, and the United States.

We search for community. I believe that God calls us to work, not in isolation, not by ourselves, or for ourselves, but in service to others. In the Catholic Church, community is, literally, the body of Christ. Which means that we are called to serve community where it exists and to build it where it does not.

The great Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says that community is an organism, and that we are like living cells within a body whose life depends on each of us in the same way that every cell in a body depends on every other. As Jesus said: “even unto the least of these….”

When I was in my mid-seventies a dear friend wove a tapestry and called it “Emma, weaver.” She attached notes to the threads, naming what she saw as my various accomplishments.

I never knew she’d done this until after she died. But I’ve kept it ever since as a reminder of what my life has been: a weaving of the dreams and shadows of my immigration story, so that others will know and understand that we are not separate.

And that in reality, there is no “them,” only “us.”

— Emma Violand-Sánchez