Meet Juan Terrazas

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Juan Terrazas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Juan below.

Juan, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

Picture yourself as a teenager, suddenly facing life without the support of both parents by your side. That’s something I didn’t have to imagine because it did happen to me. At fourteen years old, my dad was deported, and my mom had to return to Mexico. Daily, I wondered if I had a future. I wondered if I would ever amount to anything. Growing up without my parents taught me how to be resourceful. I learned how to stretch out the very little that I had pretty far. At fifteen years old, my cousin’s boyfriend kicked me out. I had two options: sink or swim. As difficult as it was, I decided to swim.

Growing up in the streets of Old East Dallas, I constantly felt an inner voice pushing me to be better and do better. That voice would say, “You are not like them. There is so much more to life than what you see.” I grew up around drugs. My friends constantly smoked and sniffed. I’ve seen friends make bongs out of apples and soda cans. All of this was available to me, but the voice in the depths of my heart keep reminding me that there was something different in me. I made plenty of my own mistakes, but I learned to keep on swimming.

The very thing that made a difference in my life was learning that God loved me and had a purpose for my life. I started attending the youth groups at Dallas Metro and Youth With a Mission Dallas. Between these two ministries, my mindset began to shift, and I started to believe I had a reason to live. As I’ve grown deeper in my faith, I’ve realized it’s not my strength that gets me by, but it the confession of my weaknesses. I am not capable of doing anything apart from the Lord. This is where my resilience comes from. Having cloud of witnesses that I can lean on makes great difference If stand or fall.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My heart and passion is to work with the youth. Currently, I work full-time with a nonprofit called Path United. At Path, we establish community centers in mobile home parks, and we work with the youth within the communities. Throughout the year, we expose these youth to multiple positive adult relationships, careers, colleges, and ideas. A large percentage of these children are under resource, so we intend to fill in the gap. If you get to know me, you’ll realized impacting the youth is where my heart is.

Also, since Nov. 2020, I became a part of a network of speakers called Scholar System, that empowers educators and youth within schools. I’ve had the privilege of sharing my story with several students and educators as a way to empower them through adversity. I get excited and filled with energy after I hear a student reach out and tell me they needed to hear my story. Walking alongside Scholar System has been a blessing to me because it has opened various opportunities to impact students and educators. I look forward to speaking and sharing my experiences. I’m inspired to start my own business and offer my own services to schools in order to develop leadership skills with in the students.

Creating lyrics and finalizing a song is a way to express myself. I started writing music when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I do it for fun and use it as a vehicle to tell a story to the students I speak to. When opportunities arise to share my music during a speech, I do it for the youth, and they enjoy it. This gets my blood pumping! It’s exciting to see the students excited and get good content out of it. I have some songs on streaming services on streaming platforms, such as Spotify and iTunes.

I have a book published called, “Left in America: Story of Juan Terrazas.” This documents my journey of overcoming adversity as an undocumented immigrant. I am currently working on my second book, where I talk about the process of becoming a masterpiece during adversity. Stay tuned!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The Power of Who you Know – One of the most valuable skills I’ve learned very young was networking. After my father was deported, I got kicked out not too long after that. I was on my own, so I had to figure out how to get by. I jumped around from place to place. I got involved with with various volunteering opportunities with a couple of local ministries in Dallas, TX. As a teenager, I was helping out run children programs, and I was involved with a couple of youth groups. The more I got involved, the more people I met. The more people I met, I realized how much more valuable that was then having “things.” Little by little, I learned to be strategic about who I kept in my circle. Because of my relationships, I managed to be the first in my family to graduate from high school, obtain an associates and bachelors degree, and move to Northeast Atlanta, GA. I met various people along my path that helped open doors. Building a network and learning how to manage relationships has been a valuable asset. This is why I highly encourage people to pay attention to who is in your circle. Birds of a feather flocks together. You will only go as far as your friends.

Embracing Adversity – Let’s be honest, going through difficult times suck. However, let me submit to you that these times are some of the most valuable moments in your life. Depending on your perspective, you will either be crushed or rise above. In retrospect, everything I went through helped shape my character, I learned that it wasn’t just about getting through to the other side. It was about embracing the processing and learning to become the very person who I needed to be today to get to where I needed to get to tomorrow. Embracing Adversity is about facing your challenges head on instead of sweeping them under the rug or running away. I grew up around friends who ran away through the easy escapes of drugs and bad company. Broad is the road that leads to destruction, and narrow is the road that leads to life. The challenges we face produce perseverance. Perseverance, develops character, and character turns into hope. Adversity is inevitable. How you deal with it is your choice. During adversity, you begin to discover gifts and abilities within you that you didn’t know you had. Albert Einstein said, “Adversity introduces a man to himself.”

Discovering You – When I talk about “Discovering You,” I mean discovering the abilities hidden within you. I heard someone once say, “It’s not what we don’t have, but what we think we need that holds us back.” We get so caught up thinking of the things we don’t have. This is what prevents growth in our lives. Most of us didn’t grow up having bootstraps. I know I didn’t. But what I did have, I began to discover. Some of the things I discovered about myself that made a huge impact were my inherent value, mind, conscience, and potential. Finding out all of these things helped create a new person. I am not the same person I was when I was fourteen years old. Friend’s of mine were addicted to drugs, and they stayed there. I discovered I had a reason to live, and that fueled my drive to seek out a life of significance. To briefly expand on my discoveries, everyday I wake up, I know I can shape my mind. I have the power to control my thoughts or let them control me. There is a still small voice within me constantly whispering and guiding my steps. I feel a conviction when I do something positive or negative. That conviction guides me to choose accordingly. As for potential, when I think I’ve done my best, there is always more I can do to top that. There’s always room for improvement. Discovering my value made a great difference. I didn’t want people to know I was born in Mexico because I became ashamed of my ethnicity. Through a spiritual journey, I discovered that I didn’t have to be ashamed of who I was. This set me free. I am still free today.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

When I was a teenager, I started diving into the Bible. I specifically paid attention to the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom. Proverbs can be defined as “wise sayings.” Being on my own as a young person, my parents weren’t around, so I needed guidance. I learned to turn to the ancient scriptures. In the these scriptures, the book taught me to gain knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. It’s easy to get knowledge but not comprehend the information. That’s why we need understanding. In the same way, Knowledge by itself is pure information, but when that knowledge is applied, it becomes wisdom. You need to understand the information in order to apply it. As I read scriptures such as, “the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance,” this encouraged me to learn and grow. I can’t say I have all the wisdom in the world and know all there is to know, but I can confidently say that I’ve gained wisdom by applying what I’ve learned. This wisdom has shaped my mind. One example was learning about the importance of choosing friends wisely. Proverbs taught me that if I hung around people who got angry easily, I would eventually become like them. Reading those words impacted my heart. Even as an adult, I still listen to that advice. I encourage anyone desiring to grow in knowledge and wisdom to read the book of Proverbs. It changed my life, and I believe it can change yours as well.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Mike Desai, Latin American Association, and Church on Main – Snellville

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