- Major funding for the series, "I Am More Than", was provided by caring for Denver Foundation.

Additional support for this program was provided by the Colorado Health Foundation and Demi Fund.

[Music] - I am Jessica Monroe.

I am growing, expanding my identity, becoming a mother.

I'm trying to learn how to be there the most for the people of my life, how to balance what I want to do with what I need to fill my cup.

I'm always growing in the sense that I'm making mistakes, and I'm trying to learn as much as I can from those mistakes, and I'm growing just in the sense that I'm trying to be a better person every single day.

[Music] - This is Jessica.

- I go by Jess.

As a human, I am a mother, I am a wife, I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, I am from a family of immigrants, and my job title is Manager of Marketing Communications at Girls Inc. of Metro Denver.

It's really what motivates me is just trying to open the door for others, lift others up.

That's how I got to where I am, and I'm so grateful, and I'm always trying to pay it forward.

Coming from a family of immigrants, there's pressure.

There's pressure to achieve, there's pressure to live out others' dreams that they never had a chance.

Trying to live out the life that my mom would have wanted or my grandma and trying to do what they never had a chance to.

And they sacrificed so much so that I could.

And so, every day, I'm just trying to do what, you know, I wanted to achieve and also what they never had a chance to achieve.

What's wonderful about life is as you move through it, I feel like you gain access to new emotions and feelings, whether it's negative or positive.

And so, for me being a parent has brought out so many different emotions that I didn't think I would experience.

So, it's the love of, you know, I love this human so much and oh my god, I'm so scared to let him out in the world.

And I just want to keep him at home and homeschool him forever, but then there's also the I cannot wait till the world sees him, and who he becomes, and what he can do.

The conflict that arises sometimes out of wanting to do a lot of things, out of wanting a lot of self-growth, trying to be a leader in the community, it means having to balance family time, having to balance motherhood, having to balance friendships, just being a great daughter, a great sister, a great cousin.

Stay late and finish this project that I know is really meaningful and pushing the lives of others ahead or giving others opportunity, or do I go home and see my baby before he goes to sleep?

So, I think that's the most stressful, but you know, if I'm going to miss that one night at home, then I'm going to try and make sure the next day or the weekend I can be there, but it's hard when you're so passionate about the work, and then you're passionate about your family and just trying to balance those two things because both can be true.

I want to move fast, I want to be busy, I want to do a lot, but at the same time, I cannot, I literally cannot do it without having time for silence, having time for, you know, internal self-reflection.

You know, you can't grow unless you do some self-reflection, and there are some things that maybe I don't want to tell people, I don't want to process out loud.

And a journal is such a private space where it's just me and myself.

And so, it's nice to get things out that way.

Sometimes there's this perception just based on how I look, that I'm young, maybe not experienced, maybe not mature, or not competent.

A lot of times, age, especially for women, it's like there's no perfect age.

You're too old for something, you're irrelevant or you're too young to lead.

What I would say to somebody who's in change-making roles that it is so important to include young voices, younger generations in their conversations.

That's everyone from children to even teenagers to treat them with respect and as humans because there's so much potential if you just give somebody the opportunity to lead.

It's part of why I do the work that I do and I work with young people is because I know that if you just give them that opportunity, if you just ask them about their input, if you just give them the keys, you know, give them that meeting, give them that promotion, you would see so much more change happen in this world and so much more quickly if you just give people a chance and you believe in them.

I am thinking that I want to put in a little bit of navy around the perimeter, at least on the bottom, kind of representing challenges.

The girls who come through our programs are incredibly ambitious, they are very strong, they have these beautiful dreams and visions for what they want their lives to look like, and I get to be there as they actualize their dreams, and I get to be there as they're receiving scholarships, as they're walking across the stage and they're on the cusp of everything they want to do and accomplish.

So, I'm surrounded by inspiring girls all of the time, and it's such a great supportive environment and one that I've been a part of for six years now and counting.

And it's because of them, and their stories, and what they tell me about their lives.

I see myself in each and every one of them.

I know that they're gonna go on to achieve many wonderful things.

I see myself in the youngest girls, I can see the way that they look at the world with fresh eyes.

I remember being that age, you know, a first grader kind of going throughout the world and having-- You know, you can't even fathom what you're able to accomplish, but you know you want to do something great.

I also see myself as they become teenagers.

And sometimes they tend to pull away a little bit or begin to have opinions of their own like question things.

And as they get those scholarships, I remember being that girl receiving scholarships from different places and I remember that feeling of like hey, you know, I'm doing it.

I said I wanted to go to college, and I'm doing it.

I said I wanted to move somewhere else, and I'm doing it.

So, in them, I see so many different versions of myself as I was growing up.

I grew up on the south side of San Antonio.

There wasn't a ton of opportunities.

It was like a working-class neighborhood, you know, very family-oriented people.

I just didn't see a ton of women in leadership or the things that I would want to do now.

It just felt like a small world.

[Music] I have parents who have always emphasized education, who have always stressed that all they want for me is to have a better life than they had.

That is the core of my childhood is parents who are doing anything and everything they can to get me a leg up and doing so with limited resources.

Thinking about my life, childhood definitely had its own challenges.

You know, my family didn't have a lot of financial resources.

I was bullied when I was younger, didn't always feel like I fit in.

And so, I think there wasn't a time to look forward to or really enjoy, but you know, it was something that I pulled out of pretty quickly.

I mean, my family was always supportive, so that was, you know, saving grace for me.

That was a beautiful part about coming from an immigrant family that was-- we all relied on each other and were heavily connected.

And so, every weekend, it was going to hang out with my cousins or them coming over to my house, and that was my whole life was just being there with my family.

And it just felt such like a carefree time and, you know, you don't have the weight of the world on you.

The cumbias blasting in the background, eating traditional foods, having everyone just feel happy and express it.

Those were my favorite memories.

Everyone looked like me, so it wasn't fitting in in terms of how I looked necessarily, it was just like the things that I enjoyed or didn't enjoy didn't always line up with, you know, my peers around me, and I just kept feeling like this isn't me, this isn't-- This doesn't feel right.

There's something more out there that I have to get to because this doesn't feel like home.

Oh, I'm cool.

I'm in another world.

[Laughs] Spent a lot of time I feel like around my grandparents growing up, but one of the really sad parts about being, you know, in my generation and happens quite a bit is that our parents go through so much discrimination on this side of the border.

And because of that discrimination, you know, parents are just trying to do the best that they can to make sure their kids grow up to be successful, not bullied, etc.

And so, for me, what that meant was my parents didn't carry on the language, and so, I didn't learn how to speak Spanish, and so there was always this kind of like, again, going back to why I wasn't able to fit in or really connect with my grandparents on a deeper level is because I don't have the language.

So, it was always kind of like a challenge talking to them or to completely have in-depth conversations with some of my aunts and uncles.

Yeah, so even though I look like I might speak Spanish if you just see me walking down the street, I don't, and it's because of the discrimination that they faced.

They thought this would help me assimilate more easily if I didn't have, you know, an accent when I spoke.

Since I can't carry on the language, I carry on the food.

And so, if I can take time to cook Mexican food, I definitely will because at least I can keep my culture alive in that way.

[Music] Like a very abstract idea of what I want, like pops of color in certain spots, and then also just moving my hand however it goes.

Representing growth as some sort of breakthrough color, like if these were all, I don't know, layers of something.

The end of the year in eighth grade, I moved out of San Antonio.

And again, my parents coming from a place of wanting me to have a better life moved us out to this town called Spring Branch.

And it's like half an hour, 40 minutes north of San Antonio.

In my whole life, everyone had kind of looked like me.

I was used to, you know, a certain culture, and I experienced a very severe culture shock.

I was also, for the first time, felt like I wasn't looked at as an individual but rather as like oh, the Mexican girl.

And with that negative stereotypes because that was already what was in place before I had even arrived.

There were incidences of discrimination that we faced where my dad's car was parked in front of our house and someone had thrown a brick through the front windshield and left a nasty note in our mailbox saying that, you know, we Mexicans didn't belong on that side of town and to go back to where we came from.

That was so severe and shocking to me.

I didn't have words for these concepts at the time.

And I was just trying to navigate one, being the new kid, but two, being the new Latina or brown kid in school.

The whole world isn't going to embrace me openly and that expectations are going to be low for me and what I can do and accomplish, it made me realize that I needed to show others that I can do more, that I can be more, that I am worthy, that I'm an individual, not just this monolithic idea of what a Latina is.

I can, you know, talk like them, I can read the same books as them, I can take those AP courses like them and do well in those courses.

Now, I don't feel so much like I always have to prove myself because, you know, I got through that experience.

And now, I just want to make sure that I'm living my life authentically, that I'm not going above and beyond just to show somebody that their idea of me is wrong.

I feel worthy regardless of what somebody else thinks.

I think I just want to make sure that I'm moving about the world as authentically as I can and showing up as Jess, showing up and doing the things that are true to who I am, and that's all that we should ever expect of anybody.

I think my younger self would be really proud of where I'm at now and just so excited.

I think it would give her a lot of hope and encouragement to get through all the hard parts of life.

And I think she'd say, "I can't wait to be you."

[Music] My perspective on the world is that it's ultimately a beautiful place.

It's a beautiful place full of potential, full of relationships waiting to be had, of love waiting to be experienced.

Yes, we can make it a better place.

Yes, there are people out there every single day working really hard to provide opportunities and to make life better and easier.

I think we can find unity when we start believing in others and when we start seeing people as human, as more complex than we'll ever understand, as beings that just need to be loved.

So, if we can move throughout the world with more care, more respect for others, I think it would completely change it.

The support systems that I have in my life include a couple of really close friends that I still stay in touch with, even though they've moved out of state sadly.

You know, we don't have time to text every single day, or phone calls, or anything like that, but when we do have our scheduled calls that we commit to, that's when I'm able to kind of just spew everything that's been happening, the updates, the highs, the lows, and it does help that one of them is a therapist.

So, she's like, I'm here as your friend or therapist, whichever you need.

So, that's really lovely.

And they're just so great.

And I just had a call with them.

And after those calls, I just feel so in touch with myself.

I feel grounded.

I feel like I'm able to get things off my chest.

Of course, my husband.

We've been together like 10 years.

And so, he is like the rock, the person I go to with everything.

He's my biggest cheerleader.

And then, my parents.

My parents have always been there for me, have always encouraged me to do whatever it is that I want to do in life.

And they've never said, "Oh, you're never going to be that.” They've never said anything like that.

So, it's great to have parents that believe in you.

And I would also say just like my community of co-workers and my community here at work, it's so inspiring again to be surrounded by women and girls who are empowered and are talking to you about how they're going to take on the world or telling you about their great ideas.

And when you're just around that all the time, it's amazing.

And it's very, very encouraging.

It's just like by osmosis, I feel like I can do the same things.

I can accomplish just as much.

There are so many challenges that young girls are facing today.

CDC came out with a report recently.

Mental health is really the biggest thing that girls are struggling with.

A lot of the mental health struggles can be attributed to social media and just how prevalent that is.

And there's still so much risk and danger associated with that and so much comparison to their lives against other people's lives, the content creators that they're following.

At Girls, Inc. of Metro Denver, there are so many different ways that we're trying to equip girls to better be able to identify their emotions, to cope with them in a healthy way.

Yes, we're all going to be feeling negative things from time to time because that's just life, but here's how you address it.

And not only here's how you address it, it's okay to feel those negative emotions, whether it be sadness or anxiety.

And it's okay to ask for help.

And not only is it okay, it's healthy to ask for help.

It's everything from the relationships with our staff have with the girls, making them feel supported, and then really connecting them to, you know, if they need to see a therapist, then we can connect them to that resource.

[Music] My life today is so full of potential.

I feel like it still feels like a beginning, which is the beautiful part of where I'm at.

It feels like there's so many different paths I can take right now.

And it feels like I'm just at the cusp of it all.

And it's beautiful, and it's also exhausting.

It feels like I don't get rest.

And I love, you know, having a family.

I have a one-year-old now, and it's been so wonderful just watching my boy grow up.

And I can't wait to teach him about all of the ways that he can show up authentically in the world, and how to respect women, and how to be a man independent of all the stereotypes and pressures that still get put on men and boys all the time.

I'm trying to think, should I try and cover every inch of the white?

But I kind of like it like gradients.

Yeah.

- [Inaudible] - Yeah.

Just going where the wind takes.

I'm at a place where I'm comfortable with my voice, I'm comfortable with my opinions, I feel more confident in who I am, and I want to take that into different leadership spaces.

I want to have a voice in what my community looks like so that I can make sure that girls, women, people that look like me, and others who are maybe not at the table yet, have an opportunity to shape this world.

For me, that's really, really important.

Again, it's just opening the doors of opportunity for everyone because deep down, I mean, I come from immigrants.

I come from people who don't fit in necessarily.

And I just want to make sure that all of those kids have opportunities to succeed, and thrive, and exist outside of stereotypes.

[Music] Cool.

Thank you.

[Applause] I approached this painting the same way I feel like I approach my life.

I chose colors that kind of represent contrasting sides of my energy.

Red really symbolizes for me kind of my drive to be a role model for others in my life and to live boldly and passionately.

Dark Navy to sort of represent life's challenges.

They're always going to be there with the beautiful things.

That is just part of living and something that you have to accept.

Yellow represents being a source of light for those in my life and my community.

I also included a little bit of gold and had it kind of running off of the canvas in one area to represent the future growth, to represent wanting to do more, to accomplish more.

The painting was so recharging.

I felt like I was in this free flow kind of state of mind.

I was very quiet, I know, just because I was in my thoughts, in my zone.

And when I say thoughts, I mean like not really thoughts, just like feeling.

Like I feel like I should have this color in here and in this spot.

It felt really great to try and put on canvas parts of my life and to represent my values on canvas.

That was a really fun assignment.

I hope that my experience painting kind of like my life or a representation of me inspires others to get involved with maybe some of the parts of themselves that they've left behind or have-- what I like to say instead are in hibernation so that they can go back to those pieces of themselves because when you start reconnecting with your past identity, that oftentimes just generates so much self-reflection.

And when it comes to mental health, self-reflection is so crucial for addressing how you're feeling, how you're doing, checking in with yourself because again, in that day-to-day life, that kind of drowns out the feelings, it drowns out how you're really doing and your ability to check in with yourself.

But if you can just slow down to even paint something on canvas, that is a great way to just be there with your thoughts and yourself and think about where you're at in life.