Becoming Brave: A Story of Resilience, Safety, and the Strength to Start Over

💫 Becoming Brave: Finding Strength in the Face of Fear

Featuring Ana Hebra Flaster, Author of Property of the Revolution

A motorcycle in the barrio.
Forty-eight hours to leave.
A six-year-old girl whose world shrinks to the sound of an engine and the shape of fear—then widens again across an ocean.

That’s how Ana Hebra Flaster’s story begins. It’s not just a story of escape — it’s a story of resilience. Of what happens when survival becomes a kind of strength, and safety becomes the most courageous thing you can choose.

🌎 Leaving to Live

In her memoir Property of the Revolution, Ana takes us back to post-revolutionary Cuba — a place where families were divided by politics, loyalty, and fear. Her family had just forty-eight hours to leave their home. They walked away from everything they owned, trusting that life on the other side of the ocean, no matter how uncertain, had to be safer than staying.

Leaving wasn’t freedom — it was faith.
Faith that safety was worth the loss.
Faith that courage could outlast fear.

When they finally arrived in America after years of waiting, the promise of safety met the reality of hardship. Hunger, racism, and bone-deep winter cold became their new normal. But Ana’s mother never lost sight of her mantra: “Ponte guapa” — make yourself brave.

That’s the heart of this story. Not the fear, but the bravery it demanded.

💪 The Quiet Mechanics of Resilience

Ana’s story reminds us that resilience isn’t loud. It’s not always heroic or glamorous. Sometimes, it’s just continuing to show up when everything feels foreign.

It’s learning a new language.
It’s facing prejudice without letting it define you.
It’s finding warmth in a cold world — and dignity when everything else has been stripped away.

Her family’s courage shows up in countless small moments: a grandmother’s quiet prayers for the father she had to leave behind, a mother who protected strangers at great risk, an aunt who sewed her doctorate into her clothing so no one could take her education away.

Each act is a declaration: We may have lost our country, but we will not lose ourselves.

🌤️ The True Meaning of Freedom

Through Ana’s eyes, we see freedom not as a flag or a place, but as a right to live without fear — to speak, believe, and dream without being controlled. It’s the ability to build something new after everything familiar has been taken.

And through that rebuilding, Ana’s family became a living definition of resilience — choosing hope over bitterness, dignity over despair, and courage over silence.

💖 The Strength to Begin Again

This isn’t a story about running away. It’s a story about moving toward something better — safety, peace, and possibility.

Ana’s journey is proof that strength isn’t born in comfort. It’s forged in motion — in the leaving, the loss, and the long walk toward something safer.

Her family’s story is all of ours in some way:
The reminder that home isn’t where you start.
It’s where you finally feel safe enough to breathe.

If Ana’s story moved you, share it with someone who understands what it means to rebuild. Subscribe to Real Talk with Tina & Ann for Part Two, and leave a review with the moment that stayed with you most.

Because stories like this remind us that even in the hardest departures, hope is always boarding the plane with us.