'From Havana to Tanzania' Guest Post by Tamara Núñez

Your Story is a series by WonderfulWomen where you will read inspiring Guest Posts from women around the world. Here they share their experiences, stories and things that matter most to all women.

Today’s Guest Post is by Tamara Nuñez who is an active Instagrammer and an aspiring blogger. Tamara is a Cuban by heart, loves her life and learns every day from it. She is happily on her way to healthy 30s and 40s. It’s her passion to write and share her experiences and motivate women to take better decisions in life. Tamara loves music, dance and traveling to exotics places. She feels thankful for every morning and believes ‘Every day is an opportunity to rewrite your destiny.’ Read this inspiring story of her life to get motivated women!

From Havana to Tanzania

For you, The woman who knows how difficult is to survive from one divorce, imagine from 2 with only 28 years old, even harder when every chemical component of my DNA had written the words “ marriage =safety”.

The first one was the innocent and pure love of adolescence, my first love, my first husband and my beautiful princess’s father. But what to do when you are not mature enough to understand life or you just skipped a few steps ahead of time?

Above of all, I will always be grateful for having such a wonderful forever best friend and amazing father, because I also learned that choosing an irreplaceable father for your children is one of the most important decisions in a woman’s life.

I started my second engagement at 23 years old, getting married once again at 26 and he was 20 years older than me. Sorry if I don’t want to give details because I believe that there is not a bad man or bad woman in a relationship, it is just not the moment or the right person for you at that moment, but you can be completely sure that there is always something to learn.

The fact is that in a blink of an eye I became in a very low confidence, scared, again divorced and unemployed single mother who returned back to her grandparents’ house and deal with three different generations making decisions in the education of my little girl.

After one year trying to find my place in this world, was the only thing that gives me the strength to wake up every morning was the fact that there was someone following my steps imitating my gestures so perfectly that I was so frightened of being her role model.

‘From Havana to Tanzania’ Guest Post by Tamara Núñez

Suddenly at the end of the black hall, I got some light. One of my best friends told me that her neighbor presented to her an offer to go to work at a casino in Africa. – Is she crazy? – My friend said, making some jokes about the news -. What she never could imagine was that while she was talking I was preparing my “I accept”.

Keep in mind that the only images of the casino that we used to receive in my country were in the movies and all we know how hard represented are the women rolls on it. I investigated and received all the info necessary to realize that the job there was really serious and the reality was very far from our rigid thoughts.

I checked the website of that casino and also the Facebook of every single Cuban girl working there and everything was looking perfectly right.

The first person to communicate my plans was my daughter’s father, I was so fearful that I remember myself biting my nails while he was telling me: “Sometimes we reject the best opportunity of our life because this one comes dressing the ugliest custom and we let our fears to take place keeping us regretting all time”– he said- Go, I trust you. He and his wife will take care of my baby until I achieve the new challenge.

The second one was my little girl, I remember we, both seating on the bed in our small and comfortless room talking like two friends, checking every detail of what will happen to us. She made very quickly a comparison with our internationalist doctors, maybe because she was excited about living with her father, or maybe because she also trusted on my decisions, she kept the secret with her like a little woman and supported me all the time, I cannot be more proud of her.

The third one was my sister, my other half. She cried a lot asking me: What I was really looking for? She will give me what I was needing at that moment. A house? – She asked-. Come and live with me. But she knew in the bottom that was not only about this. I needed to find myself again, I needed to find the light that was extinguished inside me because you can’t pour anything from an empty cup. I needed to be a good example for my daughter, to teach her something different because it’s better to raise strong girls than to fix broken women, and I needed to change my family formula. She has to know that marriage is not = safety.

Marriage= Mutual understanding, unconditional love, magic, respect…

Safety = Yourself.

Two days before I left, I informed the rest of my family avoiding negative comments that could make me feel weak because anyway my decision will not be canceled.

And this was the beginning of my trip from Havana to Tanzania, I don’t know how to start or end the story of this season of my life, full of drama, comedy, and learning. I just want to tell you that everything in this world is possible.

I remember myself with only a basic English for greetings and emit a couple of words more, with a CV full of degrees but without work experience, fighting for an opportunity 4 times because the only thing that I really cared about at that moment was not showing to my princess that her mother once again came back to the same point. I only wanted to show her that the world is wide, that her dreams will come true if she believes in them, that there are not bad life just bad moments to teach us something new, that when you fall down just stand up and continue because life is pretty amazing and belongs to you.

Till now I just continue learning and sharing my experiences because I found that light again, the one that shows me every day that love is coming in different shapes and is always present, you only have to believe in yourself.