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Martha Melendez wrote a e book in January, identical to her mom all the time knew she would.
Martha Melendez
You may know Melendez from her 2024 e book, The Aspiring Agent: From Overworked Rookie to Actual Property Rockstar. Otherwise you may acknowledge her from her appearances on HGTV’s My Lottery Dream House, or from stage appearances at WomanUP! or Engel & Völkers’ EVX convention — she has been an agent at Engel & Völkers Melbourne for practically six years.
After assembly Melendez for the primary time at WomanUP! in 2022, the place she advised her story of being a home abuse survivor, two issues stood out clearly: She’s a fierce, genuine, profitable lady, and he or she credit her mother for all of it.
A mom’s love
“My mother has all the time been my base, my rock, my all the things,” Melendez advised Inman.
Martha Melendez and her mom, Maria Clementina Perdomo
“She was so forward of her time. She wore denims earlier than anyone else did. She minimize her hair off as a result of again then, all the women had [long hair] … She was unbiased, wish to a fault. She all the time felt that she may do issues, and he or she didn’t want a person to inform her what to do, and he or she didn’t ever need to get married,” she mentioned. And he or she didn’t.
When Melendez was a baby rising up in Columbia, the academics dictated all of their classes, so college students took copious notes. Melendez’s mom, Maria Clementina Perdomo, would take Melendez’s notebooks from faculty and have them sure into hardback, leather-bound books for yearly at school, which she nonetheless has to at the present time.
“As a result of she had a imaginative and prescient: She wished me to be an writer. However she by no means advised me that,” Melendez mentioned.
Dwelling in Columbia within the ’80s, Perdomo noticed the drug cartels taking up, Melendez mentioned, so Perdomo bought all the things and moved herself and Melendez to the U.S., regardless of neither of them with the ability to communicate English.
Perdomo was already retired in Columbia, however within the States, she took a $3-an-hour manufacturing unit job. Melendez would work facet by facet along with her within the summers after she turned 14.
Realizing the necessity to acclimate to their new house, Melendez mentioned she signed her mother up for English lessons on the Hispanic Heart in downtown Mount Holly, New Jersey, on Mondays and Wednesdays.
They’d stroll two miles after work and faculty to take lessons, and Melendez would sit in on the lessons, telling the academics she wasn’t positive that her mother would have the ability to discover her approach again. She absorbed all the things as a result of she acknowledged that her mother would want her to study English on this new life.
Then Melendez discovered they had been educating English for adults at the highschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays and signed up for that, too. Her mother didn’t choose up English, however Melendez did; she discovered to write down checks, deal with medical doctors’ appointments and lease an residence.
“It was such a journey with my mother and I, and I believe that’s why I all the time discuss her as a result of it was all the time my mother and I,” Melendez mentioned.
Powerful instances
Martha Melendez and mom, Maria Clementina Perdomo
Melendez married at 18. The wedding was abusive, and the younger couple struggled to outlive, renting a room that had no entry to a toilet whereas Melendez was six months pregnant and dealing two jobs to make ends meet. She usually relied on a espresso can.
“Thank God, I used to be capable of get out alive. Many individuals don’t,” Melendez advised Inman. “It needed to go that far for me to open my eyes. I believe I might nonetheless be there with my Folgers can.”
A therapist as soon as advised her that when you may inform the story with out crying, you’ve healed from it. She advised the story for the primary time on the WomanUP! stage, Folgers can in hand.
“It took a few years for me to heal from that. I didn’t need to be a sufferer. And I didn’t need to be a survivor as a result of it meant that you just had trauma that you just survived, and I wished to thrive. I didn’t need to be the lady that received hit. And so I mentioned, How do I alter that narrative?” Melendez advised Inman.
“I’m glad that I went by way of that as a result of it made me a powerful individual. And I can acknowledge it, and I can assist others,” she mentioned.
Making mother’s goals come true
In 1998, Melendez reconnected along with her 1992 promenade date, Lucian Melendez. He wooed her laborious, shopping for her a automobile and a house and relocating to Florida earlier than they received married in 2000 and had two extra children.
Melendez received her actual property license in 2005 whereas educating English as a second language. Lucian Melendez is now an assistant principal at a highschool in Viera, Florida.
Perdomo was by her daughter’s facet for this joyful chapter of latest beginnings. However sadly, she handed away on Oct. 28, 2020. Melendez says it wasn’t till after she misplaced her mother that she actually acknowledged all of the sacrifices she had made.
Martha Melendez and daughter, Alexandra Villa
In January of 2024, Melendez made her mother’s dream come true when she printed her first e book, The Aspiring Agent: From Overworked Rookie to Actual Property Rockstar. It’s the e book she needs she had when she first began out in actual property.
It’s the proper how-to for Melendez’s 29-year-old daughter, Alexandra Villa, who began her personal actual property profession in November 2023.
Once they’d take lengthy drives, Melendez would learn her e book to Villa, and so they’d focus on it collectively, with Villa even quoting recommendation from the e book again to her mother. Now, Villa is working in her mother’s workplace, a part of the Engel & Völkers household.
Melendez mentioned it looks like she’s repeating the cycle. “I labored with my mother, and now [Alexandra] will get to work with me. I hope that now that she’s an grownup, we are able to deepen our relationship. I’m pleased with the mother that she is, and I hope that in the future, she will be able to do the identical along with her daughter, and we are able to have a 3rd era of actual property brokers.”
Electronic mail Dani Vanderboegh
