Posts by dlofflin

I came from a nice middle-class family. In 1969 we moved into a predominantly white neighborhood. We were one of two LatinX families on our street. At 10 years old everything changed when my mother died. My only sibling (my sister) moved out 2 years later, and my father did what he could to raise…

I remember asking strangers for a quarter in front of a liquor store to quiet the psychological and physical pain of being sober. People that didn’t understand drug addiction and alcoholism usually judged me as a useless member of society. It was easy to limit their perspectives to what society has conditioned them to believe…

As a first-generation Chicano on my father’s side and second on my mother’s side, I was raised between two cultures. My parents met in Mexico City and when they came over to the states, my father began his journey employed as a gardener while he and my mother lived with my grandmother. My parent’s split…