I think about this question every day; Who is my idol? Who is the one person I look up to? Well, when I was younger I would say “Oh my mom because she’s brave” or “My dad because he protects us!” But the more I think of it, the truth is it’s my older sister Mia. Mia is a headstrong girl, she doesn’t worry about other people’s opinions. She may seem like she doesn’t care or is a bit annoyed but she is one of the most caring, thoughtful and supportive people I know. My sister Mia will always be there when you need her. 

The day I saw how strong my sister was, was when she got cheated on. We were attending a western party at her college in Idaho, when she showed up to the hotel heartbroken. This scared me. How could someone I knew to be so independent and strong crumble over some dumb guy? Seeing my sister cry made me realize that even the strongest people aren’t invincible. But she picked herself up and decided that he didn’t deserve to be cried over. And she was right. 

 Growing up I don’t really remember her living at home. I was six when she was eighteen, so I can only vividly remember some things. Mia played high school soccer for Honokaa and she was great at it too. I can remember going to some of her games and thinking “That’s my sister!” Watching Mia play soccer and thinking how cool she looked made me wanna be just like her. So I got into soccer when I was younger. After Mia moved away to Montana is when I really started to remember things. Mia would  come back home once in a while and if she wasn’t home I could always FaceTime her. 

  I remember one day when she came home, I got into a fight with someone (we’ll call him David) and I was crying in my room because of this fight and my sister came in my room and demanded I tell her why I was crying. I told my sister what happened and she gave me this piece of advice that I won’t ever forget. She said “Tyra, don’t let things like that get to you. You wanna know why? Because that’s how people are, in the world, there are going to be a-holes like that. And you know what you do? You just look at them and say ‘ok’ because their opinions don’t matter, what matters is what YOU think.” That made me think. Mia was right, who cares what other people think? From that day on I decided that I was going to be more like Mia. I wasn’t going to cry over something so small and I sure wasn’t going to let people walk all over me. 

My mom always says “Tyra learned it from you Mia” and she always replies with “I’m not around enough for her to learn anything from me”. But the truth is, even though she’s not around a lot. I take up as much of her time as I can when she is with us.

When someone says ‘Who do you look up to?’ I say my sister Mia.

-Tyra Matsumura