A Cuban identified on TikTok as @gladys.minov1 posted an emotional video in which she confesses that, despite living abroad, she hasn't been able to stop thinking about Cuba for a single day.
Sitting under some trees, the creator poses an open question to all Cubans in the diaspora: how many miss the island and have been unable to return? How many have lost family members and have had to endure that grief in silence from afar?
"I don't let go of Cuba. I admit it, I don't let go of Cuba. I spend all my time comparing this to Cuba, I spend all my time saying yes to Cuba, that without Cuba, that... Because even though Cuba is in this state, I miss it," she says in the video.
The Cuban woman acknowledges that people around her have pointed out that she seems to be "the only Cuban who doesn't adapt" to living outside the island.
She responds honestly, "It's not that I don't want to fight, it's not that I don't want to adapt; it's been difficult for me because I can't let go of Cuba."
One of the hardest moments in the testimony comes when he talks about the losses: "We have lost family members while being here, whom we couldn’t go see."
That pain—the pain of bidding farewell to a loved one from afar, without being able to be present—is one of the most common experiences among Cubans who have emigrated in recent years.
The Cuban actor Jorge Cao experienced it firsthand. In July 2025, he publicly revealed that he was unable to say goodbye to his daughter who passed away in Cuba because he has not set foot on the island in 15 years: "I could not say goodbye, I mourned from afar."
This phenomenon has a name: "the sparrow," as it is colloquially known in reference to the Cuban migratory grief, characterized by helplessness, guilt, and mourning from afar.
The testimony of @gladys.minov1 is set against the backdrop of the largest exodus in recent Cuban history, driven by chronic economic crisis, blackouts, and the political repression of the regime.
According to official data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), more than 250,000 Cubans emigrated in 2024 alone, and the resident population on the island fell from 11.1 million in 2020 to less than 9.7 million by the end of that year.
That massive separation has fragmented entire families and left thousands of Cubans trapped in an emotional limbo: they are no longer entirely from Cuba, but they also do not feel completely part of the country that welcomes them.
Other Cuban women have expressed this same heartbreak on TikTok. A Cuban in Spain went viral in April for crying because she would spend her birthday outside the island, and those who return after years abroad describe feeling out of place in their own country.
There are even Cubans who, upon returning to the island after a long time, find that something in them has changed forever.
What @gladys.minov1 describes is neither a rarity nor a weakness: it is the shared experience of millions of Cubans who left in search of a better life, carrying Cuba in their hearts and unable to let go.
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