2022 was a year full of suffering and joy, Her parents finalizing their divorce, leaving behind her middle school friends, and not continuing her time playing volleyball, she didn’t know how to feel about anything. She often asked herself, “ Why?, What happened?”, thinking she was going to get answers to everything. She became obsessed with answering these questions that she forgot how to prioritize herself and do things she enjoyed doing. Being the person she was, impatient and impulsive, she would often try to do things such as dying her hair in her room with blacked out curtains and doing her makeup with a bunch of products scattered on her desk, to distract herself from the overbearing urge to want to solve everything. One random day, her sister breaks the news to her. She was expecting a mini her. I was happy for her but due to her previous experience, I didn’t want to be overjoyed to just be disappointed again. Days and months went by and it was time.
Life and joyness was brought into her life. The anticipation of waiting for that day to come was overwhelming her. At Texas Children’s Hospital ,October 17, 2022 at 5 am , a little princess with brown eyes, brown hair and weighing 5 pounds was welcomed into this world. She would’ve never thought that being able to experience having a niece would’ve made such an impact on her. Growing up living in a disorganized medium-sized home, and with seven other siblings, the idea of more life into the household was like throwing a match into a fireworks factory. She was told she wasn’t made to have that love for kids as her patience wasn't at an all time low. However ever since, she learned to be more patient. Not only did her niece change the way she viewed kids but she also changed her habits on lashing out anytime her patience was running low.
She also never really understood the excitement that an aunt experiences. Mainly because during that time she wasn't close to her own aunts. Now, suddenly that's all she posts on her socials and brings up her niece in any conversation she can. There really aren’t any words to express the amount of joy she brought into her life.It’s bittersweet seeing her little munchkin grow up. She is soon to turn 3 this year. Crazy to think that a few months ago she was still on the ground crawling. Now she runs everywhere and can sing her ABC’s and sing happy birthday in English and in Spanish. She now has the opportunity to experience the newborn stage of crawling to walking all over again. Except for this time that day began on April 04, 2025.
My name is Maily Garduno, I am a senior, sibling to 7, The Woods Project Participant, NHS member, and most important of all I am an aunt to two nieces. When I began writing this story, I had a mindset where I knew that I wanted to talk about my experience in becoming an aunt. I was sure this was a topic that others could relate to. Some literary devices I input into my story were imagery and indirect characterization. I aimed to structure my story in a timeline order, in which the times the events occurred.The reasoning behind this story is to show how truly beautiful life can be. Although we feel we are always in a never ending dark tunnel, at the end there is always going to be light. Sometimes there could be light in between that tunnel, but we just don’t expect it. I genuinely enjoy having nieces I can spoil and just getting to experience the newborn stage of seeing them grow up and learning new things. My inspiration comes from my nieces, seeing how truly life changing it was to get to experience the whole process of my siblings pregnancy to watching them give life to a human being. I don’t think a lot of people talk about it and how life-altering becoming an aunt is. No words could ever describe the abundance of joy it brings to one.
This story reflects universal ideas such as mental health awareness. Although it wasn’t really mentioned in the story, I was dealing with things that were just emotionally overwhelming that sometimes it would take over and affect how I would act to others. Mentioning the constant urge to solve things that maybe weren’t solvable, that could take a heavy toll on someone. Mental Health is something I truly believe needs more awareness and isn’t talked about a lot, which leads to bigger issues such as the act of suicide.
WIth the use of characterization, in the story you could slightly see a connection with the issue of miscarriages and mental health awareness. As previously mentioned, the narrator is seen to be dealing with some mental health issues prior to her niece being born. The topic of miscarriages is mentioned at the ending of the first paragraph. This is another common issue all over the world deals with. As noticed not only does it affect the experience of the mother but also the people surrounding her. It may not be as heavy as it would be on a mother but because of her prior experience the author didn’t want to over excite herself, just to prepare her for any unexpected news.
I chose the topic to begin with, and decided whether to jump into the day my niece was born. I dated back to 2022 because this year was full of life-altering events. It was the root cause of all the overbearing emotions I was feeling, in which becoming an aunt helped change.For me it was mentally struggling to accept and just move on and focus on better things. A challenge I faced writing was having a specific setting just because I feel like the narration was all over the place and had no specific setting where it all occurred. However, realizing that the majority of events took place in the house I was raised in. Another challenge I did have in writing this story, was figuring out what point of view I wanted to write in. I aimed to put it in a perspective where they could really understand all the emotions I encountered.