First Gen Latina to Paradigm Builder: The Journey Beyond Labels
What does first gen even mean? It wasn’t until I left my corporate role and entered the Latina community in Dallas three years ago that I learned that language and its meaning.
Google says, ‘First generation’ generally refers to individuals who are the first in their family to achieve a specific milestone, most commonly graduating from a four-year college (neither parent completed a bachelor’s degree). It can also describe the first in a family to immigrate to a new country (foreign-born).’
Objectively, I’m the first in my lineage to do most of the things I’ve done, I’m Dominican-American, graduated with a PhD at 25 in the US, have traveled to all 50 states and 30+ countries in the world, and explicitly opt out of marriage and having kids.
But according to the standard definition, these are not first generation things.
I grew up under the shadow of my father, Dr. Rafael García, who was the first in his family to become a doctor, and my mother, Mariluz Hall, who immigrated to America and forged the path for all her children in the US. I was born into a family of trailblazers, but didn’t have the language for it.
And because I wasn’t the first to either go to college or emigrate, technically, I’m not first gen.
So what do you call it when you’re the first in your family to do things that have never been done?
In this blog, we’ll get into what it means to reclaim your right to not just be the first in paths others have chosen, but to author your own path, even if it costs you belonging.
The First To: Follow the American Dream
In Spanish, I belong to myself. But in English, I belonged to others. Although born in La República Dominicana, to a family who has existed on the island through colonial times, the US shaped my intellect, my achievement, and my ambitions.
The sacrifices my parents made created the path for me to be the first in many things in my classes. But as a mixed-race Dominicana who grew up to be tall (5’11”), I’ve literally always stood out. Never quite Dominican enough because of my gringa accent. Never quite American enough because of my Dominican flavor. Too dark for Latinos to claim me as one of them, too mixed for Black Americans to recognize our shared diaspora.
I was forged in the liminal space of standing out, and it made me develop an extraordinary inner self. I’ve been listening to myself and writing since I was a child, and over the years, my voice of desires came through all the achievements that America romanced me with.
By the time I graduated with my PhD at 25, after going in straight with my bachelor’s. I was apparently successful, but hollowed inside. My father, stepfather, and grandmother died within the years of my program, and how was I supposed to celebrate this achievement when I was completely broken internally? When I entered corporate, I was the only Latina period, and without any language to describe my experience, what I felt was loneliness, not success.
The First to: Question the Path
One of the greatest privileges of my American experience was the right to change. The right to change my identity, my jobs, my relationships, my friends. I was searching for that elusive “happily ever after” that’s promised in the Declaration of Independence, but the problem was that I was defining happiness based on other people’s terms.
In Dominican culture, and in many other Latin American cultures, “el que dirán” is a powerful shaping force of our paths. It’s the idea of “what will they say,” the community vigilance that keeps members of the tribe behaving in a way that benefits the whole.
But these customs can often be outdated, and in modern times, completely in misalignment with who we actually are. For me, the idea that I should get a job, get married, buy a house, and have 2.2 kids sounded like someone else’s idea of happiness. I wanted something else, a different experience of what it meant to be happy and alive, but I had no precedent for what that was.
When we focus on being the first in our families to hit all the achievements, we can get caught up in the dreams of others. And once you’re so committed to the path, it’s hard to deviate. Because to admit that you’re not actually happy means you’re confronting that you’ve been listening to others above yourself, and there is a mountain of grief that comes with that.
The First to: Learn the Paradigm of Belonging To Herself
Three years ago, I left what looked like a successful life on the outside promotion, 6-figure job, prestigious consulting work, Fortune 50 companies, the high-flying lifestyle for creativity..
I can only describe it as a calling because it didn’t make any logical sense. I didn’t have a formal business plan, proven model, or clients lined up. But I had this light in me, this desire to impact the world in a different way. And that’s the point. When we listen to ourselves, we realize the mind alone isn’t enough. We have to bring our hearts, spirits, and bodies back online.
For much of my achievement, I lived in my mind, and I was great at it. I convinced myself to want what others told me to want, trusting others over myself because that’s what trauma does.
When I started to heal my nervous system, my body felt safe to explore different possibilities again. You must feel rooted in order to leap into wildness, because otherwise your body gets thrown into fight or flight mode and you cannot survive such uncertainty.
The turning point for me was friends who lost their lives to mental unwellness. Combined with several of my own near-death experiences and the deaths of family members in my youth, I had a reverence for life and living it to its fullest that kept me from settling for what looked good but felt empty. I had potential in me, but others’ paths weren’t enough. I left Deloitte at the top of my career after my leadership development work led to a $14 billion investment in their people development to build my own practice, my own paradigm, my own life.
The work I do now— teaching decolonial leadership and slower, creative living through Queen Mindset Leadership® is what I’d been wanting all along. Because when you develop a deep relationship with all aspects of yourself, titles like First Gen or being first in other people’s lanes, don’t matter anymore.
What matters is how you feel, what your spirit wants, what your body says, and getting your mind in alignment to serve the rest of you instead of being your oppressor.
And that to me, feels like a more transformational impact to my lineage than pushing through on a disharmonious life that others say I should live to be whole. That’s self-abandonment.
Reclaiming Your Voice: From First Generation to a Whole You
This journey, from following prescribed paths to authoring my own taught me something crucial about what ‘reclaiming your voice’ actually means.
When people talk about reclaiming their voice and speaking up, we often think it’s just about sharing the trials and tragedies we’ve been through. But my extensive healing and decolonial work has taught me that reclaiming voice requires wholeness: mind, heart, body, spirit.
It’s not enough to speak up to and for others; it’s necessary for you to speak up to yourself. To be wildly truthful about how you feel and what you want in every single part of your life.
Your career, relationships, friendships, money, life path, lifestyle, relationship with self. Those all matter, and only you know, in the depths of your being, what you really want. Go there.
I love and breathe this work, and my collaboration with Dra. Mary Margaret Carrillo and Latina Voices Institute has amplified how I’m offering this to Latinas who are ready to move beyond the ‘first gen’ label and into full authorship of their lives.
I believe creativity is the foundation we need to realize we can author our own paths, not just fit into others’. I’ve designed a thorough but concise assessment that helps you figure out where you are and aren’t in alignment with your whole self—mind, heart, body, spirit.
Your answers will show you exactly where you’re still performing for others and where you’re ready to reclaim. Your whole self is on the other side.
LinkedIn: Dra. CarolLaine M García, Ph.D.
Instagram: drcarollainemgarcia
Threads: @drcarollainemgarcia
Website: www.drcarollainemgarcia.com
