“I know it’s not easy,” she said and then paused. She raised her eyes from the podium and looked at the young girls across the room, searching for their eyes behind long slanted bangs.
“Trust me. I KNOW,“ and then Congresswomen Velazquez cleared the stage for Nydia.
“I know, because I was there too… I came from Puerto Rico to New York when I was 19 years-old.”
Nydia Velazquez talked about how different the big city is from the warm country she came from. How every day brings new challenges, and how solitary it feels to be in a foreign country, without your family by your side.
She spoke of her brother’s drug addiction, and how frustrated it was for her, not being able to help him from afar.
The room was silent. A mother of five was drying her teary red eyes behind the glasses. The mother and her young daughter, like Nydia and one of seven Latina adolescents, tried to commit suicide.
An hour earlier, I got off at the Flushing Avenue stop. A couple of blocks from the train, I found the old facility for the new center, where the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new “Life is Precious” program was about to begin.
Located only three train stops away from my Williamsburg station, I was in the same 12th District, but stepped into a completely different world. It was bare, poor and neglected. No one was brunching, but a man who peaked out of his trailer grabbed something from a nearby pile of bags. The streets were quiet, but inside the decorated building, excitement and anticipation buzz was getting louder by the minute.
The room was full with more than 60 Hispanic teenage girls, mothers and therapists. There was one father and two male photographers. All were waiting for Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez: La Madrina.
As the godmother entered the room, she went straight to the girls. Hopping over the pre-cut red ribbon with her stilettos, she was kissing the girls, talking, taking pictures, spreading cherry blossom magic around the captivated crowd of Latina women.
“Velázquez to Announce Federal Support for Local Health Program,” the Thursday press advisory said, but something greater happened there. It was the first time Velazquez publicly spoke of her private experience, possibly, a more precious gift then the $167,000 Federal funding cardboard check she brought.
My internal debate was over. I didn’t have to wonder how to weave her personal narrative into the sunny Saturday “photo-op” event in Brooklyn’s suicide prevention center – she laid it all out there – her journey, her story, her struggle.
Then she delivered a few passionate words in Spanish. I didn’t understand much, but she said something about “Republicano” that instigated some laughs from the audience, and Congresswoman Velazquez was back.
Still, those few minutes, when the 19-year-old Puerto Rican newcomer Nydia was talking, for the girls, and mothers, both were present. She was both the powerful woman with an elegant white and navy stripe suite -Washington big shot – first Puerto Rican woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and a Latina who tried to end her life.
Maybe it’s all part of the game. But even if so – for the teenage girls in this critical moment of their lives – their petite elected official who went through the same thing they’re going through, it was huge.
* Godmother, matron of honor, woman who launches ship.
