Even if you are from the same neighborhood as someone else, you might still be coming from different places. Where you are from is a complicated question and it elicits complicated, but interesting and thought-provoking responses. We’ve shared some of those responses below.

Mystique Hargrove | Radical Birth and Postpartum Healing Specialist

I’m from a small town called Henderson in North Carolina. My background has always been in serving folks in need and healing. My family is pretty much a melting pot of traditional healing. My dad’s side is Black Indigenous and my mom’s side is Caribbean and Spanish, so I’m a spicy combination of healing. I was mostly raised in the practices of healing by my abuelita, or Mother Canada as folks use to call her. She is the one I just gravitated towards and would sit under as kid all the time learning from her about how to heal the body with things from the earth. That’s what pushed me in the direction of traditional herbal practices and healing the community. Read more>>

Alex Hogue | Outdoor Adventure Filmmaker

The simplest answer to this would be to say, ‘I’m from California’. In other words I’ve moved around a lot, specifically back and forth between San Diego County, The Bay Area, and Orange County. I was born in Riverside, CA where I grew up off a dirt road ranch with about 15 acres of land, and a ton of dogs and cats. My dad passed away from Cancer when I was ten. Looking back, this shaped my life tremendously and because of this traumatic experience at a young age I had to ‘grow up’ a little quicker than some of the other people around me. I moved to be closer to family, had to start working as soon as I was old enough, but it also gave me a jump start on a lot of life lessons and how to overcome challenges. I try to find the good in ‘bad’ situations. That might sound easy to read, but in reality – it can be very hard and take years to see the ‘good’, but it’s there. Read more>>

Ricky Pope | Counseling Psychologist

I moved to San Diego in second grade after spending three years living in Japan. Mother is my hero as she spent 13 years of her life protecting our country as a Corpsman in the U.S. Navy. Currently, she works in the healthcare industry and has spent over 20 years serving our local community. In her current role, she works as a health care director, and one of her tasks has been responding to the COVID-19 crises in San Diego County. My background and upbringing have often shaped my lived experience, leading me to feel as if I am not supposed to be here. I am a Black male from a single-parent home. In eighth grade, I was held up at gunpoint. In my junior year of high school, gang members shot at my car. Yet, it was not random acts of violence that almost jeopardized my future; instead, it was flawed institutional practices combined with lowered expectations that robbed my ambition, assaulted my sense of somebodiness, and ultimately led me to drop out of high school. Read more>>