Thread by @TraceeM

I literally had to take a nap after I finished #InTheHeightsMovie because I was emotionally exhausted from the copious tears I shed. The music, the dancing, the choreography, the performances, the joy, the sadness, the beauty...

I was born and raised by the streets of NYC. The fire hydrants, the fire escapes, the stoops, the neighborhood folks that watched out for every kid on the block as if they were their own. #InTheHeightsMovie

I am not an immigrant, nor was my mother, but I was raised by them and among them and I learned something from every single one of them. #InTheHeightsMovie

We didn't have anything but we all wanted the best for each other and for the next generation to have more. I was the Nina, I was expected to do well and get out of the neighborhood because I was smart. #InTheHeightsMovie

I was the Vanessa craving to be anywhere but my small corner of NYC, long abandoned and forgotten and powerless, looked down on by anyone in a more powerful zip code and with more money. #InTheHeightsMovie

Watched abuela die in her sleep, I pictured my own other who looked after so many kids in her life. I thought about how often I hoped on her death bed she was comforted by memories of her own mother, long gone from the world. #InTheHeightsMovie

I thought about all those friends I had growing up and how far flung we are from each other, because no one stayed. We all moved away and some of us survived, a couple of us thrived, but most of us just kept spinning our way trying to make it through the day. #InTheHeightsMovie

I cried at "I've spent my life inheriting dreams from you" because I've spent my life just trying to be in a slightly better position than my mother was when she raised us. I haven't gotten very far but I've gotten ahead. #InTheHeightsMovie

I keep my mother's memory alive so fiercely because I don't want people like her to be forgotten. I don't want the dreams of those kids on those stoops to be forever stamped out as if we didn't matter. #InTheHeightsMovie

Life was hard but when you're a kid you don't notice it as you do when you reflect back and you're still comforted by the memories that shaped who you are, as I am still to this day. #InTheHeightsMovie

And I just cannot thank Lin Manuel Miranda and John Chu enough for bringing to life, for all of us now grown children, the memories we have of our own dreams and the importance of community. #InTheHeightsMovie

Whenever my actual last moments on earth come, I know I'm going to be bathed in the golden light of memories that my mother and brother and childhood helped create and I cannot tell you the comfort that brings me. I'm so thankful this movie exists. #InTheHeightsMovie