Celia runs her own business focusing on social media and advertising. She’s hails from Peru and enjoys standup comedy, friends and spreading her energies to everyone around her.

As I’m getting older, my family is expecting me to fulfill certain things which I am ‘expected’ to fulfil.

I’ve had a long distance relationship with my boyfriend for a long time. That, in addition to not being married and not having kids has become complicated for them without admitting judgment.

I also have a public Instagram account, thus people know about my life with my boyfriend. There has been some things that hurt me the most, especially when people assume that I'm not worth it because I'm from Latin America, that I'm a South American from Peru, a developing country and that my boyfriend is European.

They fragilize me to the core and a lot of people do that with South American or Latinas who have a relationship with a foreigner. It doesn't matter where he's coming from and it doesn’t matter if that guy is a “loser” in his country.

If you are seen with a foreigner, you immediately become a woman in distress who is saved by this “white man”. This is something that really annoys me and one of the reasons why I stopped my personal account on social media because I started receiving a lot of messages, especially from women, which I think is what hurt the most - that other women are also part of the problem.

We are all part of the problem - men and women. I am a feminist, but feminism is not about defending all women, it's about fighting for equality.

Sometimes some women, because they have been raised under the same system, don't notice that they keep portraying the same stereotypes that hurt other women and that hurt themselves as well.

At the same time that can also be me. Having worked since I was 13, I’ve needed to find a way to earn my own money even with stupid things. Now I feel lucky - having my own business because of the experience I earned, paying ten salaries every month, having a business partner and working with large brands. But it's still that every time people know that I have a boyfriend that is from the Netherlands, they fragilize me to the core and they think that I'm this person who is being “saved”.

I am the “lucky one”. I am that “Oh my God, how did you do it? People would ask - “What kind of spell did you put on him?”

They don't see me as a woman that is worthy enough. They see me as a charity project and with little comments such as “Oh my God, you are so lucky, you must be so happy to have a boyfriend that is white!”

But in reality, my boyfriend just finished university. He started working 3 months ago!

I have been working since I was 13 years old. I have always had my own money. I pay for my own stuff. I paid sometimes for his stuff, but people don't know all of this and they always see me as the one that is being rescued, the one that needs the help and as a person that is not worth it.

I think the part that is most painful is when they say stuff like, “Oh my God, please tell me the spell you put on him!”

Does that mean I'm not enough? That I have to put some magic on him in order to make a foreigner fall in love with me?

Every time people in my country or in other parts of Latin America witness a Latin woman with a guy from Europe or North America, they always think he is doing her a favor and that she must have done a trick to make him fall in love with her.

They always judge you with very high standards like “he is way more good looking than you. He's way more ‘this’ and ‘that’ than you. How did you manage that?”

On social media for example, my boyfriend does not receive these kind of messages. He would never receive a message telling him, “Oh my God. You are so lucky. Oh my God, how did you get this Latina girl with you?”

Never. I'm always the one receiving all those messages and the one receiving - “Why are you guys not married? Why do you guys not have a kid already?”

If you go through his direct messages, it’s always along the lines of “Oh my God, you are so nice! You are so pretty together!”

For me it's like “Celia, wear makeup! You're going to lose him if you don't get married right now, because he will find another woman!” or “Oh my God, how did you do it? How did you manage to have a boyfriend like him?”

For us, it's not based on nationality. You cannot judge me because I'm a normal woman falling in love with a Dutch guy.

I really don't care where he is from. It’s not like I pursued him. It's not like I went to a bar and said “Where are the foreigners? Give me one please!” It wasn’t like I had a preference for the guys in this part of Europe because they had more money!

People don't do that. We were two people that found each other, clicked and started having feelings for each other. But I always received these pessimistic, sexist, conservative comments, in having a long distance relationship.

Latin American women know how it is to have nothing and fight for it. So we're really feisty, strong and don't fit in the stereotype that people think of us - that we are spicy, hot, dance salsa and that we're going to make your life miserable because we are so intense.

It's always the stereotype and it's never about the other part of us where we're also very loving, proud of our heritage and the things that we have done because we know how it is to not have much and fight for it.

Those are qualities that people don't notice but instead with just a focus on the materialistic part - that we are these crazy women where we are looking for the best lottery ticket, when in reality, my boyfriend is actually very expensive!

It would have been way easier for me if I had a boyfriend in Peru. I wouldn’t have to pay for plane tickets, I wouldn’t have to pay for his stuff nor would I have to change my money into euros!

It's actually very expensive to have a long distance relationship!

My advice

You cannot control how the other person has been raised, because the way that a person has been raised has shaped them in certain ways. Sometimes those ways are not healthy, they're hurtful, racist or sexist, but that's everything that person knows.

That doesn't mean that you have to be compassionate or agree with that person, but you need to validate their story and their truth so you can decide for yourself and say “OK, this is your truth and I understand that because you grow up in a very conservative place or household and you think that way, which a valid point for you to have.

I'm not agreeing with it, but I see you and I choose to remove myself from those situations. I'm not creating more conflict because sometimes it's very easy to do that as obviously these things feel very heavy on your body and you can feel very sensitive and emotional to react as badly as what the person is saying to you.”

Sometimes people, especially with microaggressions, don't notice that they're as bad as they are. Sometimes they think they're coming from a good place. I don't think my friend telling me “Oh my God, are you sick” because I'm not wearing makeup necessarily comes from a place that she wants to make me feel bad.

If I reply back maybe that person will say that I don't want to know anything about you anymore and we keep pulling each other apart, but when we understand that these microaggressions are part of everybody, we all have them and we all have biases that sometimes make us think in certain ways about certain people.

It's not on purpose all the time. Sometimes yes, it is full of ignorance, but sometimes it's also that people do it with a good intention.

Sometimes remembering that will help you stay regulated without going to a level of 100 in anger and for you to actually start creating bridges of conversation because if you say to your friend “hey I really feel bad when you say this to me because that means that I have to wear makeup all the time” and then she says, “oh dude, I didn't notice this before, you are right.”

Then you win a battle, a tiny battle. When you fight you create more hate. You create more space between the two of you when you actually need to get united.

I think with social media and how the world is going right now, they're so focused on polarization and we need to start being the person that creates the bridge to get to the middle point so we can all start making, saying and having dynamics that are more efficient.

For that you need to accept that the world will always have chaos. Accepting that will create pain, but also having a dialectical view and understanding that some people can have these bad and mean comments about you but at the same time they can also be good people. They don't notice it yet that what they're doing is hurtful to you. But that's also important that you speak up put your boundaries.

You can always say, “Hey, this is bothering to me. This is hurtful for me.” It doesn't matter that it’s not hurtful for the other person and I think that's also something that is important. It doesn't have to be hurtful for everybody.

It's enough if it hurts you. What you feel is enough for you to put a boundary. If it hurts and you feel it in your body that it was painful then maybe it was painful for you and you have all the right to say, “dude, I don't want you to keep saying these things to me”.

That is something that if I go back in time I will do.

I know that a lot of microaggressions I received came from people that loved me the most because people that love you the most tend to be the people that is more invalidating towards you.

We see these comments of criticism or microaggressions also as tools to improvement, comments like, “Hey you should do this! Hey you shouldn't be doing this! You shouldn't be doing that!”

All these don’t always come from a place of racism or sexism. These sometimes come from a place of love and if you reply in a level of 100 in anger you will break that relationship. We need to try to be a version we are proud of.

It's way easier to keep a fight and insult each other. Sometimes it can break relationships. What we need is to be a version of ourselves that we're going to be proud, react like that person and come to the world as that person. We should understand that we can put boundaries.

You can speak up for yourself that what you're feeling is valuable, and that sometimes not all people is bad in a way that they can say things that you don't agree with, but it doesn't mean that they cannot change their mind later, or they are not on their own learning processes.

I learnt that I had better results when I'm compassionate towards myself first and then towards others. As a result I had better conversations and friendships when I tried to speak up for myself and that I told the other person that maybe what they said was not nice.

A lot of the responses have always been positive: “Oh my God I didn't notice that! Oh my God, I never see in that way, I'm so sorry!”

When I reacted angrily towards other people however, I didn't get this. I had a fight of “who is right and who is not”, and that creates more polarization.

We need to create this conversation and build bridges instead. If you replied to your grandma or mom angrily, most likely they will reply in the same manner.

If you replied with a very intense response, you create more resistance and more polarization. When your parents tell you things like, “oh, you are so lazy” or “oh my God, why are you not doing this in your life”, they come sometimes from a place where they are worried, from a place of “everybody is doing this, why are you not doing this? What is wrong with you?”

I realized that a lot of microaggressions can come from my family as well with you noticing little of it. When you tell them that this hurts, they think, “why? I'm just taking care of you. I'm just doing my job as your mom or your dad or as your uncle or your aunt.”

In Latin American households, aunts are very close to you. You not only have to deal with your parent, but you have to also deal with the comments of your aunts and they can be very conservative. They just tell me: “Celia, you’re getting old, just get a baby already.”

They don’t mean it in that way when they're saying like “baby, when I was you, I already had a baby, because your eggs are better now. If you had it in five years, you will be so tired. Just do it now that you have so much energy and they don't mean bad.”

If I react to them in a way like “dude, what are you saying? Are you thinking I’m old? I’m not you!”

They won't be able to have an open conversation with me about it, and I think therapy has helped me a lot to recognize that. I can feel sad about something and angry about something, but I can still control my reactions. The person I want to be is a person where I'm proud of my reactions because I did have bad reactions in the past because I was so hurt by so many things and I thought fighting back with fire was the answer.

But that only created more polarization and suffering because I understand now that it if I can allow my emotions to exist but at the same time have the tools to control them, my reactions and the way I express later, I can have better results.

I think the final answer is that it’s painful, but you need to understand that you need to be compassionate towards yourself first and then towards others. Try to create bridges - tell people how you feel, what the boundary is for you and understand that we're all doing the ways that we can and sometimes the best that we can do sucks horribly. But if we react with more fire, it creates more fire and we need more love instead.

You have your truth, I have my truth and we need to find a way that the truth can cohabitate without hurting each other.