“What Are You?”: Unpacking My Identity in a World That Kept Trying to Define Me

I was born Ramona Curry on September 24, 1996. Since then, I’ve lived many lives inside one body—shaped by circumstance, struggle, and survival. The woman I am today has been built from contradictions: a lower-class, non-religious, minority girl raised in an upper-class, predominantly white town in Utah. A girl whose roots were tangled in addiction, poverty, and resilience. A girl who never quite fit, but who refused to disappear.

My story starts with two teenage parents. My mother, half Mexican and half Spanish, was just sixteen when she had me. My father, a full-blooded Native American, was gone not long after my younger sister was born. He struggled with alcoholism and spent most of his life in and out of jail. I’ve never known him.

My mother’s childhood was a story of survival too. Her parents were both addicts—meth and alcohol, respectively—and by twelve, she had started using herself. Her own mother told her meth would help her lose weight. That became a devastating legacy passed down to us.

My early childhood was a blur of instability—rehab centers, halfway houses, strangers who came and went. My mom was sober sometimes, but never for more than six months. The only consistency was inconsistency.

When I was six, things began to shift. My mom graduated from The Odyssey House, a long-term rehab program, and married a man she met there. I call him my dad. He’s the only father I’ve ever truly known. Together, they had two children, bought a house, and for a moment, we looked like a “normal” family of six. That illusion didn’t last. They both relapsed. My mom couldn’t stay clean through either of her pregnancies. My dad was in and out of jail. And soon, we were back where we started—caught in a cycle that never seemed to end.

Eventually, my paternal grandmother—white and middle-class—stepped in. She adopted me and two of my younger siblings, but not my full biological sister. She was placed in the foster care system.

That adoption, at age ten, came with a new name: Mona Parker. I’ve often thought about how many immigrants assimilate by changing their names, shedding parts of their identity to survive in a dominant culture. It took me years to realize I had done the same. I wasn’t an immigrant, but I had lost a part of my culture and self in the process of being saved.

I was dropped into a very different world—an upper class neighborhood in Draper, Utah, where I was one of the only non-white kids at my school. I learned quickly to answer questions like “What are you?” without flinching. I didn’t realize how different I was until other people kept pointing it out.

In middle school, it became clearer. My skin, my hair, my name—they weren’t neutral. I heard racist jokes followed by, “But you’re not like the others.” That was supposed to be a compliment. It was really a sign that I had lost my cultural identity, that I had assimilated so well I no longer felt like I belonged anywhere.

I didn’t stay with my grandparents for long. Eventually, I was sent back to live with my mom—who was still battling addiction. Middle and high school were chaotic. I felt like an outcast: poor, angry, invisible. My grandparents said I was “too much.” In truth, I was just a kid trying to survive a life that never made space for me.

The class gap widened in high school. I visited friends' homes with pools, home theaters, and basketball courts in the basement. My own home—when we had one—meant shared bedrooms, cold showers unless it was payday, and no friends over because I was too ashamed.

But something in me shifted. By high school, I began carrying less shame about where I came from. I found people I could trust, people who had their own stories of struggle. I started to find my voice—and my power.

Then came another awakening: being a girl in a patriarchal world. It was subtle at first, until it wasn’t. I was an avid Law & Order: SVU fan, so I had a vague idea of what sexual harassment and assault looked like. But I wasn’t prepared for the moment a boy locked me in his car because I said no to a kiss. I wasn’t prepared for the fear that bloomed in my chest. That was the day I understood what it meant to be prey in a system designed to protect the predator.

Throughout my life, race, class, and gender have been threads pulling at every decision, every turning point. I’ve seen firsthand how poverty and marginalization make addiction and homelessness harder to escape. I’ve seen how generational trauma can pass silently, like an inherited illness. I’ve seen how being a woman means you’re often the one blamed for what happens to you.

But I’ve also learned that these things don’t have to define the ending.

...Today, the picture has changed again.

The father I once saw as my only stable parent—the one who had been clean for over a decade—has now spiraled into alcoholism and regret. Over the past year, he’s faced multiple DUIs and domestic violence charges. The man who once represented my hope for breaking generational cycles is now struggling to hold on to anything. There’s nothing left to his name but a shadow of who he once tried to be.

It’s a sobering reminder: healing is not linear. Some cycles bend and stretch, only to snap back with force. Some people can’t carry the weight of their own stories, let alone rewrite them. And while I grieve the man I knew, I also recognize this truth: I am not responsible for saving anyone but myself.

My mother still wrestles with addiction. My father is now lost in it. But I am choosing to do something different—not just for myself, but for my children. I am rewriting the narrative that says people like me don’t make it. I’m showing up, flawed and whole, doing the hard work of staying present and building something better.

I still go by Mona. I still identify as female. And when people ask me, “What are you?”, I now say, “I’m human.”

And in a world that tried to strip me of culture, identity, and safety, claiming my full humanity feels like the most radical answer I can give. Because I’ve realized that healing begins where shame ends. That acceptance is an act of resistance. And that speaking the truth—no matter how painful—is how we begin to rebuild what the system tried to erase.