About Me
I'm Ana Maria. My pronouns are she/her/ella. I am a , biracial, bicultural, bilingual Colombian American woman - a daughter of the colonizer and colonized: my father, of white European ancestry, was a volunteer with the Peace Corps in Colombia in the late 1970s. He was a Catholic and attended the local church in his host town of Ibague, where he met and fell in love with my mother, a Colombian mestiza. I am also a sister, a friend, a wife and partner, and a mother.
From my birth until present day I have moved enough to experience life in different locations. These settings have shaped me, my understanding of the world, and my passion for social justice. Those settings have been Colombia, Miami, Florida; Rio Grande Valley, South Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Honduras, Central America; Austin, Texas, and now Oceanside, California, where I have chosen to set roots with the birth of my first born son.
I received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology in San Antonio and then followed in my father’s (white savior) footprints and joined the Peace Corps, where I also met my life partner and the father to my child, a white surfer from San Diego. I was a “health volunteer” in Western Honduras for two years where I discovered a passion for education. After that I joined the Texas Teaching Fellows and received my first teaching credential in Spanish bilingual elementary education. For ten years I was a teacher in the public school system - credentialed and taught four grades in three states: Texas, Florida, and California.
In 2015 I celebrated two firsts: my first time teaching fourth grade (which I loved) and my first time experiencing pregnancy (with the help of in-vitro fertilization - IVF). Then, in the summer of 2016, everything changed. A few days after our due date, my child and I experienced a very traumatic birth followed by a month in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). I was not allowed to hold my baby until he was two weeks old. The life I had envisioned and planned for us began to slowly unravel.
I had intimately witnessed the fickle line between life and death. I witnessed the power of presence. I witnessed the healing that can happen in the most simple of acts, like showing up. I began to question everything and in that questioning I learned that I was not meant to go back to working in the school system, I was meant to support my baby's fragile life with my time and energy. I had never intended to be a stay-at-home-parent, to fall into what I thought was a role shaped by patriarchy. But I learned to find power in my role as a mother and to embrace the privilege of being able to stay at home.
Mothering filled me with more questions and in seeking answers I was led on a serendipitous journey to the movement for unschooling and self-directed education. And here I am.
