It’s that time of the year when we all pause to think about what we are thankful for in our lives: our families, our friends, our health. Thanksgiving is a holiday that I continue to grow to love more and more as the years progress. The older I’ve gotten, the more I have come to realize that I have so much to be thankful for in my life. This year, I have realized that one of many things that I have an immense amount of gratitude for is being raised in an incredibly diverse community.

My hometown is a center of Asian-American cultural diversity. From the time I entered kindergarten at five years old, I have been surrounded by people of many different backgrounds. I have been exposed from a young age to people of different skin tones, people practicing different religions, people speaking different languages, people who had ethnic names not often used in movies or television shows. As a Caucasian girl, I was often the minority in my classrooms, as peculiar as that may sound; looking back, this is something I am incredibly thankful for.

Growing up in a diverse community allowed me to become open minded and colorblind without even realizing it. When I walk into a room today, I can actually see people for who they are without dwelling on what religion they practice or what country they come from or what color their skin is, something I am incredibly grateful for. Having friends from such a wide array of backgrounds has taught me that people are pretty much the same no matter what they look like on the outside. It has taught me that a person’s worth should not be determined based on their ethnicity, religion, or skin color. In a world filled with so much racism and xenophobia, growing up in a diverse community has taught me the importance of love, acceptance, and equality.

So this Thanksgiving, I am so incredibly thankful to have learned first hand from such a young age that everyone is equally worthy of achieving whatever their minds set for them. Growing up in a diverse community has definitely shaped me into the person I am today, and I am grateful for my roots in such a diverse community.