We Were Raised to Survive, Not to Process

Editor’s Note: Chris will be running a monthly series with The Latino Newsletter. This is his first one in the series. — JRV

I was an emotionally aware kid. Looking back, I can see it clearly. I was tuned into how I felt and even more tuned into how the people around me felt. But there was a problem. In my house, in my family, men didn’t talk about any of that. 

Emotions weren’t discussed. 

They weren’t processed. 

They were stored.

So I did what made sense at the time: I assumed the rule was silence. You feel it, you hold it, you keep moving. And if you were ever foolish enough to let those feelings out, well, that was information someone could use against you.

I grew up in Miami in a Hispanic household, surrounded by people who worked incredibly hard, loved fiercely, and never stopped moving. My parents came to this country and built something from nothing. That was not an accident. That took a very specific kind of psychology, one built for endurance, not exploration.

“Tenemos que seguir pa’lante.” We have to keep moving forward.

I heard some version of that my whole childhood. And I want to be clear: I say that with nothing but respect. Because they were right — for them, in their context. 

My parents arrived in a new country, navigating a foreign culture, managing how they were perceived, and figuring out how to feed a family. Slowing down to examine their emotional state wasn’t a luxury they had. If they stopped to feel everything they were carrying, it might have cracked the foundation they were trying to build.

That’s not weakness. That’s survival-level discipline. That psychology kept families together and put food on the table. I honor it completely.

But here’s what I eventually had to sit with: I am not my parents. Not in terms of circumstance.

I had food. I had a home. I had safety. I had love. My parents worked hard, specifically so that I wouldn’t have to struggle the way they did. The very thing they sacrificed to give me — stability, space, time — created room for something they never had: the ability to slow down and actually look inward.

The immigrant psychology that protected my parents was passed to me as if my conditions were the same. But they weren’t. And that’s the quiet misalignment at the center of this conversation. We inherit the emotional operating system of survival even when we’re no longer in survival mode.

The psychology built for crossing borders doesn’t automatically upgrade when you’re born on the other side of one.

Latino men of my generation are walking around with a survival mindset installed in a stability environment. We were trained in endurance, control, and provision. We learned to hold things together, push through, and never let them see you sweat. Those are real skills. They matter. But they are incomplete as a full emotional operating system — especially when what’s in front of you isn’t a crisis to survive but a marriage to tend, children to raise, or a team to lead.

Processing emotions is not a soft skill. It’s not therapy language. It’s not weakness dressed up in academic vocabulary. It is the capacity to know what you’re feeling, understand why, and choose how to respond, rather than just reacting from unexamined pressure.

Our fathers didn’t have that taught to them. Their fathers didn’t either. It wasn’t neglect. It was a necessity filtered down through generations until it became an identity.

The problem is that what was necessary becomes normalized, and what’s normalized becomes invisible. At some point, we stopped asking, “Does this serve us?” and started assuming, “This is just how we are.”

I’m not writing this to critique where we come from. I’m writing it because I believe the next evolution of the Latino man — in his marriage, his parenting, his leadership — requires him to take the strength his parents gave him and add the one layer they couldn’t: the capacity to actually feel it, name it, and work through it.

Not instead of moving forward. In addition to it.

Our parents survived so we could thrive. Thriving requires a different set of tools. It’s time we picked them up.

Chris Bustos is a Latino father, business coach, and the host of Waking Up His-panic — a podcast and YouTube channel exploring emotional awareness, Hispanic identity, and what it means to evolve as a man. His work helps professionals and entrepreneurs grow without losing themselves in the process.

The Latino Newsletter is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and we are turning 2 years old in May! Help us with our birthday campaign by giving here.

Become a member of the National Audubon Society today, and we’ll send you our exclusive, award-winning magazine as a token of our appreciation. That means every three months you’ll receive stories about protecting birds and the places they need directly to your mailbox!

With over 120 years of conservation expertise, Audubon is responding to the greatest challenges facing birds and people today while anticipating the issues and opportunities of tomorrow. Where we work - and when you help - birds are better off.

Give a gift that renews each year to ensure our quarterly magazine continues arriving at your doorstep.

Donate Now

Our Latest Podcast Episode: The video version of The Latino Newsletter’s latest podcast episode with public historian Anthony Milian is now playing on our YouTube channel.

SCOTUS Ruling on Cuba: Over at SCOTUSBlog, “More than 65 years after the confiscation by Cuba’s communist government of assets owned by U.S. businesses there, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a U.S. business that is seeking to recover for its losses under a 1996 law that targets the Cuban regime. By a vote of 8-1, the justices ruled in Havana Docks Corporation v. Royal Caribbean Cruises that Havana Docks, a U.S. company that before 1960 had owned a right to use and operate the docks in the port of Havana, is potentially entitled to receive hundreds of millions of dollars for the use of the port by cruise lines between 2016 and 2019, even if the company’s control of the docks would have expired in 2004.”

Finally, The Latino Newsletter has some great news to share. Earlier on Thursday, we got word from the Institute for Nonprofit News that we were officially accepted to participate in NewsMatch 2026. We will have more to share soon, but this will open up new revenue streams for our newsroom.

Julio Ricardo Varela edited and published this edition of The Latino Newsletter.

The Latino Newsletter welcomes opinion pieces in English and/or Spanish from community voices. Submission guidelines are here. The views expressed by outside opinion contributors do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this outlet or its employees.