Survivor Story
Get Through It
What is it about hispanic/latin culture that tells us to “take it easy,” “no te preocupes” “no llores”
“no te quejes.”
What is it about Hispanic culture that forces us into a sunny disposition?
On a recent exercise session, Celia Cruz’s “La vida es un carnaval” came on. While I admit it got me dancing, I also started having some cognitive dissonance. My body wanted to dance, but my mind said, well, life isn’t always a carnival. Life has pain. It has tears. Although her song admitted that, it also said there’s no point in living life in pain, so just push through and smile.
Forget about the pain. But how?
Now, I don’t pretend to know what the late Celia Cruz went through in her life, knowing she lived through the Cuban revolution and was ultimately exiled from her beloved island, but how did she do it? I am a survivor of child abuse, and for years, I was trained and programmed to say, “We don’t talk about that stuff.” Trauma and family mistakes are private and not discussed outside the house. The problem is it shouldn’t be addressed inside the house either. No one wants to talk about it. It’s taboo. It’s shameful. So what does one do...swallow it and celebrate life as if it were a carnival. Smile. You’ll get through it.
- Karina Davila
Karina Davila is a designer, researcher, artist, and writer whose life and work are shaped by her experience as a survivor of child sexual abuse. She channels that truth into advocacy, education, and healing—believing deeply in the power of design and storytelling to shift culture, spark conversation, and create the conditions for genuine connection and safety.
Her work sits at the intersection of human behavior, design, and social impact, with a focus on prevention, consent and boundaries. Most notably, she led UX design and research at Thorn, a tech nonprofit dedicated to detecting and removing child sexual abuse material—work that sits especially close to her heart as a survivor. Her broader career includes organizations such as UNICEF, The National Democratic Training Center, and Visa.
Currently, she is focused on community-led design projects exploring how prevention and boundary-setting can be woven into experiences that bring people genuinely closer together.
As an artist and writer, she uses visual and written storytelling to process and share her experience—turning personal history into work that resonates with fellow survivors and opens doors for those still finding their way. Outside of this work, she is a parent to a toddler, a yoga teacher, a calligrapher, and someone who finds restoration in running, kayaking, and hiking—usually with a cat and dog nearby.
