I wrote this for Teen Vogue. Imagine what it would feel like to spend your entire life in a country only to find out you weren’t born there. Imagine then being uprooted from that place you thought was home, and then going to a foreign country where you have to assimilate to a new language and new customs. This cultural displacement happens daily, and it happened to 19-year-old Cindy Carrillo. At eight months old, Cindy’s parents smuggled her into the U.S. from Mexico. Tormented by the severe mental and physical anguish of possibly being picked up by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), her family, including her two U.S.-born siblings, voluntarily chose to leave the U.S. in 2013.

Mental health talk has been taboo among Latinx people for too long — While we know anxiety is on the rise in the U.S. — especially among kids and teens — the anxiety that plagues Latinx people is very distinct from that of other groups. My anxiety is basically this: scared when my husband goes to work, apprehensive to read the morning news…