About a year after Mateo and I got married, I decided to do something about it.
I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone.
I downloaded an app on my phone and started listening to Spanish lessons during my morning commute.
At first, it was embarrassing in a private, harmless way. Mispronouncing words to an empty car, rewinding the same phrase four times, talking to myself at red lights like someone who had lost their mind.
Slowly, the language started sticking. My secret weapon was finally starting to take shape.
The process was slower than I expected and funnier than I wanted to admit.
I mixed up words constantly. I confused the Spanish word for “pregnant” with “embarrassed” and spent a full week not understanding why my podcast kept seeming so dramatic.
I practiced with cooking videos and radio stations and, eventually, with real conversations I’d overhear at the grocery store, standing a little longer than necessary in the coffee aisle just to test myself.
There was something quietly satisfying about it, even when it was hard.
Then, a major life shift changed our entire world.
The first year of parenthood arrived and rearranged everything.
Our daughter was born 14 months into our marriage, and I don’t have a clean or graceful way to describe what followed. It was just hard.
It felt like I was doing everything wrong. I remember whole weeks that felt like I was moving through water.
I thought I was suffering completely in the dark.
I thought I got through it mostly on my own. That I had been quietly strong when strength was required.
But I had no idea.
