The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.

The challenges I have faced - among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother - are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

There had been questions raised about whether we could ever really unite to work together on an issue, whether we could do it with equal passion and fervor. And it happened during my nomination and I think I forever will be grateful for that love, for that support and for proving those naysayers wrong.

In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.

When you come from a background like mine, where you're entering worlds that are so different than your own, you have to be afraid.

My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I think there's a large segment of the mainland population that does not really understand the number of territories that are part of the United States.