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When Alondra Briseño Monje ’28 thought she was visiting her mother in the United States, she didn’t expect the trip to change everything.

What began as a short visit — just a couple of weeks, she thought — quickly became permanent. While helping her mom translate paperwork, Alondra began to realize what was happening. Her sister was already enrolled in school, and soon, she would be too.

In that moment, she realized she wasn’t going back to Mexico.

“I didn’t even say goodbye to my friends,” she said. “I really believed I would be back soon.”

For Alondra, now a digital art major at Linfield, the transition marked the beginning of a new chapter shaped by uncertainty and, eventually, growth.

This spring, she shared her story publicly for the first time as part of the Art of Personal Narrative Workshop hosted by Learning Across Boundaries. Through a series of workshops led by storyteller Will Hornyak, students and faculty gathered to write, revise and reflect on the experiences that shaped them, then took the stage to share those stories with others.

Finding Her Way Between Two Homes

Before moving to the United States, Alondra’s life in Mexico felt steady and full. She attended a private school, earned strong grades and built close friendships. She imagined a future that followed a familiar path, possibly even in architecture like her father.

The move disrupted all of that.

As she adjusted to a new country, school and language, Alondra said she often felt like an outsider. She focused on keeping up academically while trying to rebuild a sense of belonging.

“I did what I needed to do to stay afloat,” she said.

At the same time, her family continued to evolve. Her mother remarried, and her grandfather later moved to the United States as his health declined. When he died in 2024, it marked another turning point.

“For me, my grandfather was Mexico,” she said. “He represented everything about it.”

The following year, she returned to Mexico to bury his ashes, a trip that brought both reconnection and realization.

“The Mexico I knew was no longer the home I wanted,” she said. “But that doesn’t take away how important those memories are to me.”

Learning to Share Her Story

Encouraged by her professors, Alondra chose to participate in the storytelling workshops, where she began shaping these experiences into a narrative.

“My story is really about my family, especially my mom and everything she’s been through,” she said. “As a woman, a mother and an immigrant, she’s been my biggest inspiration.”

Through the process, she found not only the words to tell her story, but also the confidence to share it.

“My professors helped me realize how important it is to talk about different immigration experiences and what people go through,” she said.

Across several weeks, participants worked together to refine their stories, offering feedback and support as they uncovered the deeper meaning behind their experiences. By the time they stepped on stage, each storyteller had transformed a personal memory into something larger: an invitation for others to listen and connect.

Learning to See Herself Differently

While Alondra explored identity through culture and place, Belén Cañestro Valverde, a Spanish language teaching assistant at Linfield, approached it from another angle, how she saw herself.

Growing up in Seville, Spain, Belén often struggled with her appearance, particularly her curly hair. Trips to the salon left her frustrated, and comments from peers only deepened her insecurities.

“There were moments when I didn’t feel comfortable being myself,” she said.

Over time, those experiences shaped how she viewed herself. She hid her hair and tried to blend in, distancing herself from the very thing that made her unique.

That perspective began to shift when she took a step she had long avoided, wearing her hair down in public.

“I realized people weren’t paying attention to it the way I thought they were,” she said.

That moment led to a broader realization that the standards she had been trying to meet were not fixed at all.

“Beauty standards are always changing,” she said. “You don’t have to fit into something that isn’t permanent.”

Now, Belén embraces her hair and the identity that comes with it. Sharing her story became a way to help others reconsider the expectations they place on themselves.

“I wanted people to see that you can go from not liking something about yourself to truly accepting it,” she said.

Creating Space for Every Story

On May 1, seven storytellers took the stage to share glimpses of their lives, stories shaped by movement across countries, evolving identities, family connections and moments of resilience.

For the participants, the experience was about more than performance. It was about understanding their own stories and giving them space to exist.

“In the end, it’s very different from writing in your diary,” Belén said. “You have to think about how to connect with an audience while still being authentic.”

Through the workshops and the final event, students learned how to hold that balance, to craft stories that were both deeply personal and widely relatable.

For Alondra, that meant reflecting on the role love has played throughout her life, love for her family, her memories and the places she still carries with her.

“Without that love, my story wouldn’t exist,” she said.

As the evening came to a close, one thing was clear. Each story, in its own way, created a bridge between past and present, between individuals and community, and between the experiences we carry and the ways we choose to share them.