Olvido pa' Recordar (Forget to Remember) Twelve years ago, my mom and I had to start a new life, a life in the U.S., a place so unfamiliar and distant from my home in Colombia. In these years, I have unsuccessfully worked towards finding a way to call the United States home, allowing a strong feeling to grow, a feeling of cultural and personal disconnection based on my constant, and yet failing, emotional search for a home. Leaving me questioning, can I ever feel like I really belong here? I knew I had to go back to Colombia and rediscover my country. It was essential to piece back together memories and confront repressed feelings. Thinking about displacement, assimilation, and longing for home, I decided five years ago, to start traveling back home, seeking a sense of belonging within my homeland, but I quickly learned that a lot had changed. The country was not the same as when I had to leave. Colombia has become a new country itself, very different from the place I once knew. The armed conflict in the country has started slowly transitioning to peace, family members have died, my childhood friends have grown up and apart, and areas of the country that were inaccessible before are opening up. Maybe what I found familiar is long gone. A strange familiarity accompanied me all along this journey. An understanding that knows that Colombia is where I come from but doesn't acknowledge that time and space are barriers that can be both physical and emotional. "Olvido pa' Recordar" (Forget to Remember) is a search to find myself in a country I once called home. The project is an eleven-year catharsis to understand who I am, where I come from. I've linked the idea of "forget to remember" to accept, forget, and let go.