I screen shot my favorite quotes or meme’s on the daily. Whether I am sending it to my girlfriends to send her some Monday motivation or save it to my camera roll for back up. Either way quotes help me cope through everything and anything. It’s a daily reminder when I tend to be forgetful of the things that really matter. Quotes are significant contributors to our everyday life. The fulfillment it brings when we are having an off day can be completely turned around with a little bit of inspiration.

Quotes saved my life. Literally…

Growing up I truly lacked self-love and did not feel like I fit into any beauty standard. This really tied into shaping my identity and figuring out who I was. As content as I feel now about saying I am an Afro-Latina, it hasn’t always played out that easily. When the color of my skin and texture of my hair wasn’t embraced or considered beautiful, it was kind of challenging loving who I was. There was no way I could avoid my reflection forever. I had to accept who I was, even though others wanted to keep it hidden. I was a beautiful young Black girl who had strong Latin roots and if others couldn’t like it, that’s really their problem.

In a nutshell, things people said really stuck with me and replaying life quotes in my mind helped me into embody who I was. It helped me love myself and I want this post to do the same for any young girls out there lacking self-love. Not everyone has someone to tell them you’re beautiful and to know their worth.

Self-love is not something everyone is born with, sometimes you have to teach yourself and I hope this post can do this for a young Afro-Latinas who may be going through what I went through.

Here are 6 quotes by powerful Afro-Latinas that will hopefully do the same for you.

Amara La Negra

“ Be proud of who you are. Be proud of the skin you’re in. You’re one in a million. There’s no other you, and you got to embrace that shit and rock out. Don’t try to fit in. Don’t try to mimic what you see in the magazines, cause all of that is photo shopped anyway. Everything you see from mainstream media is bologna. It’s conditioned us to believe all of us women should look a certain way – our bodies, our hair. It’s bologna. Stop admiring how stars appear on the covers; direct your attention to who they are as people. And most of all, if you want something, go get it. You only have one life. The only thing we’re guaranteed is death.”

Source: Latina Magazine

Stephanie George

“ If there was one thing I wanted was for people to know that it’s okay to be yourself. You can’t help if you’re mixed, you can’t help your sexual orientation and you can’t help your religion. I wanted to make a statement its okay to be whoever the hell you are.”

Source: www.hashtagiamenough.com

 

Zoe Saldana

 

“ In my country, where I pledged allegiance every day since I was five, to be told when I’m out there trying to pursue my American dream that I was not a traditional American was very hurtful. I will never accept that I am not a traditional anything. I come from where I come from, I can’t change that, and you come from where you come from. But if you tell me that where you come from is the only right place, and therefore I don’t fit that traditional mold, let’s just establish, very clearly, that you are the one who’s wrong. Because everything about me and where I come from is just as right.”

Source: Net- A- Porter

Christina Milian

“ We’re all different, but you have to accept our differences. As Afro-Cuban [goes], I’m finding more and more that there’s people opening their eyes to seeing that. Latinos come in all colors, all shades.”

Source: Huffington Post

 

Dashca Polanco

 

” I love myself. I love myself enough to know that I’m as important as anyone else out there.” 

Source: Vivala

Monica Veloz 

“ Being Afro-Latina cannot be a story line. Something that’s gonna go away. It’s not something that’s gonna just be trending. My skin is not a trend, my skin isn’t a hashtag, my skin is not something that you can just, you know, use to make views.” 

Source: Huffington Post