Crossing Care 2

In this episode of Take Care Time: The Tales and Exhales of Caregivers, we return to Rosa—an immigrant mother working as a caregiver while awaiting her asylum hearing in the U.S. Now, we shift focus to her husband, Javier, still in their home country. Through calls, memories, and plans for reunion, we uncover the emotional cost of separation, the strength of long-distance love, and the dreams they carry together. This is a story of caregiving, migration, and the resilience it takes to build a life—one letter, one paycheck, and one promise at a time.

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Take Care of Time, the Tells and the Exhales of Caregivers. I'm your host, Beverly Nance, and I wanna thank you for sticking with me and giving me a moment to rest and reset. Like many other caregivers and storytellers, I needed to catch my breath. I was out helping With a joyful wedding in our family. But now I'm back. I'm back in the story Celler, where the mic is live and the typewriter is ready and the stories are exciting and ready to be told. Today we returned to Rosa. When we last heard from her, Rosa had risked everything to cross the southern border with her two children. She found work caring for others while barely keeping her own world together. An immigrant mother caught in the invisible threads of America's care economy. But what about the family? She left behind what happens to a marriage stretched across countries and time zones with nothing but hope and voice messages holding it together. Today we step into that quiet space between hearts, across borders, across years to meet Rosa's husband Javier, still in their home country. Through their memories calls and longing, we'll witness a love story rewritten by distance and discover what it really takes to build a new life while waiting for permission to live it. This is more than migration. This is resilience redefined. Every evening after dinner when Luna and Mateo have brushed their teeth after the dishes are washed and the TV hum softly in the background, Rosa tucks herself into the far corner of her couch, clutching a prepaid phone like it's a lifeline because in a way it is. It's her connection to Javier. Her husband, her heart, still 2000 miles away. Javier still lives in Honduras. He works construction when there's work and sells fruit from the roadside stand. When there's not, He's survived gunfire, gang intimidation, and long nights of wondering if he's next. He didn't want Rosa to leave without him, but Rosa brave, determined. Rosa knew they couldn't all go at once. The risk was too high. The children too young, they chose safety over togetherness. She would go first and every night for the past 14 months, they've ended their days with a phone call. Sometimes full of laughter, sometimes full of silence, always full of longing. How's Mateo? Javier asked one night. He's still asking questions I can't answer. Rosa replies and Luna. She's doing well. Reading everything in sight. She asks about you again in Atlanta, Rosa. Has started to breathe more easily. She walks her children to school. She works under the table. For an older woman who needs full-time care, she sends money home to her parents and Javier. When she can, she misses home, but she doesn't miss the fear in America. She feels something she hasn't felt in years hope, not just for her children, but for her husband too, and lately. Rosa's been thinking about asking Javier to come, but it's complicated. He doesn't have the same claim to asylum. She does the gang that threatened Rosa's cousin and tried to recruit. Mateo didn't target Javier directly, and applying as a male asylum seeker is different, is riskier, often harder to prove. She wants to file a family reunification petition, but her asylum hasn't been granted yet and the wait. The wait is endless still. Rosa holds, onto the dream. Maybe one day they'll be together again, legally, safely, working side by side, raising their children in peace. But for now, her life is a careful balancing act. Working enough to send money home, but not so much. She risks being noticed. Speak English confidently, but not too confidently. Raise two children alone in a foreign country while trying not to lose her husband across a long distance line. Rosa and Javier in their phone call by saying, I love you. It's just after 6:00 AM and and Heavy Yard is already sweeping dust from his family. Small. Front porch, the air is thick with humidity, sweat beads on his forehead before the sun fully rises. Rosa's absence is felt. In every corner of the house, there's an empty coffee cup on the table. She once sat at a a drawer, still holding her rosary, beads. The walls whisper her name, and yet the space is louder than ever with responsibility. Javier is no longer just husband. He's become an errand runner, a caregiver to aging parents, the guardian of long distance dreams. He walks past the church where they were married, past the bus stop where Rosa clutched Mateo's hand before they boarded that faithful van bound North. He smiles at neighbors who stopped asking when she's coming home because the truth is she's not. She's chasing a future. One he believes in. Even if it hurts. Javier's work is patchy. A few days of construction here a delivery job there. The country's economy already fragile, was further crushed by hurricanes and instability. Gangs roam freely extracting protection money from those who have nothing left to give. Javier stays out of their way. Mostly, but even staying out of trouble costs something. Staying alive some days feels like a full-time job. Every few weeks, Rosa sends what she can, not much, but enough for rice, beans, phone calls, phone minutes, and a little save for emergencies. But she's not just sending money, she's sending hope, stability. A promise. Javier rereads her letters like prayers. He doesn't always say it, but he's scared. Scared he'll never see his children again. In person scared that Rosa will get detained or worse. Scared that the distance will become permanent. But more than fear, he feels love and that love as impossible as it sometimes seems, keeps him going. back in America. There are moments when Rosa wonders if the silence will swallow her whole. The days are long, the nights are longer. Her clients need her. Her children need her, but she needs something too. Something that gets lost in the shuffle of caregiving, cash jobs, and crossing fingers that this country will let her stay. Okay. Some nights when the children are asleep, Rosa sits by the window with her journal. She writes letters. She may never send letters to Javier. She tells him that the house they use to dream about still lives in her imagination, that she misses his cooking, that Mateo is learning more English than Spanish these days. And Luna is starting to forget what mango smell like freshly picked. She tells him she's tired, but holding on and always, always promises they'll be together soon. But that promise is starting to stretch. She's been waiting nearly two years for her asylum hearing. She checks her mail every day like it's a ritual her attorney found through a nonprofit. Legal aid says delays are common. The court system is backlogged. The process is slow. Often punishly so, and Rosa. Rosa is undocumented but not invisible. She clocks in quietly She smiles politely. She works quietly. She smiles politely. She works hard hoping her presence doesn't draw attention. Meanwhile, Javier waits a city scarred by beauty and pain. Founded in 1578, once rich with silver mines and cobbled colonial charm. But the glimmer has faded today. It's a place of steep hills and steeper odds. Once called the city of Silver, has become one of the most dangerous cities in the Western hemisphere. Not because its people are violent, but because its systems are broken, public hospitals run out of supplies. Schools lose power. Mid lesson, and still people endure. Javier endures in the same neighborhood where Rosa grew up. He kept her memory alive. He tends his mother's plants. He sends voice messages to his kids. He rehearses his English in a mirror even though no one is watching. Because hope, like love requires maintenance in America. Rosa knows the path ahead is long. The family reunification process isn't guaranteed. It's expensive, time consuming and riddled with red tape. She'll have to show proof of stability income. She can barely document because she's paid in cash. She'll have to navigate systems designed to filter her out, not let her in. But Rosa has crossed harder borders. She's fought harder battles, and now more than ever, she needs her family to be whole. Because caregiving isn't just what she does is who she is. She wants to do it with her husband by her side to show her kids that even the deepest divide can be crossed with courage and faith. It's a rare day off. Rosa sits at the edge of her table in a small cafe on Bluefield Highway, the kind that smells like cardamon, cumin, and old books. A community organizer named Marta has invited her to a gathering. Informal. No photos, no last names, just stories around the table. Sit. Women from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nigeria, Pakistan, Haiti, and Peru. Some speak in fluent English. Others struggle to follow along, but it doesn't matter what they share isn't in the language, it's in the knowing. They're all caregivers. Some clean houses. Others care for children, seniors. Or adults with disabilities, most are paid in cash. Do you have contracts? None have paid time off, and yet they carry the emotional labor of entire families, sometimes multiple ones on their backs. Rosa listens, then she speaks, her voice cracks, but her spine stays straight. she tells him about the night she crossed the Rio Grande. About Luna sleeping on her chest and Mateo's shoes falling apart. She tells him about her client, a sweet elderly woman with Alzheimer's who clutches Rosa's hands and says, thank you for coming back. Even though Rosa never left. She says She feels invisible, but not forgotten. And in that moment, the women, nod in unison because they've all felt it too. That night, Rosa, Googles you visa for documented, um, caregivers, pathways to legal status After asylum delays immigrant caregiver advocacy groups, she reads until her eyes burn. She finds a hotline, she finds a lawyer referral service. She finds hope stitched into the words of women who. Came before her. Testimonies, written blog posts, affidavits, social media comment threads. She starts to believe that her story might be more than survival. It might be evidence. Rosa tells her kids gently that she wants to help other women like her. That maybe she'll write their stories down that maybe one day their father will walk through the door of this very apartment, Mateo Shrugs. Cool. He says, Luna claps her hands and asks if she can help. She presses her palm against the glass window. It's not quite warm, not quite cold. Just like her place in this country. But Rosa is no longer silent. She's a storyteller. And storytelling in a world that tries to erase people like her is a revolutionary act. In our next episode, we continue Rosa's journey. As an undocumented caregiver in Atlanta with her asylum case delayed, and her husband still back home. Rosa builds quiet strength through sisterhood sacrifice, and the power of shared stories at a community gathering of immigrant caregivers, she discovers she's not alone and that her voice may be her greatest form of advocacy. This episode reveals the hidden world. Of under the table caregiving, the resilience of undocumented workers and the courage it takes to speak up in a country that isn't sure it wants you. Before we wrap up, I would like to remind my fellow caregivers, document it or not that REST is not earned. It's essential. The Take Care Time Respite Box was created just for you. Whether you're caring for your own family or someone else's, you deserve care too. Each box is curated with items that soothe. Support and remind you that you matter. Visit takecaretime.com to subscribe or send one to a caregiver you love. If Rosa's story touched you, please share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. Caregivers, especially immigrant caregivers are the invisible scaffolding holding up families across this country. Let's make their work visible and if you have a story. Of your own that you would like to tell, reach out to me. This is take care of time. The tells and the exhales of caregivers where we hold space for those who hold so much. Until next week, take care for.