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Martha Melendez wrote a book in January, just like she always knew her mother would do.
Martha Melendez
You may know Melendez from his 2024 book. Aspiring agents: From overworked rookie to real estate rock star. Or maybe you recognize her from her appearance HGTV’s my lottery dream house, from stage appearances in WomanUP! Or Engel & Völkers’ EVX her conference — she’s been her Engel & Völkers her agent in Melbourne for nearly six years.
After meeting Melendez for the first time, WomanUP! In 2022And as she told her story as a domestic violence survivor, two things really stood out. It’s that she’s a fierce, honest, successful woman, and she credits all of that to her mother.
mother’s love
“My mother has always been my rock, my everything,” Melendez told Inman.
Marta Melendez and her mother Maria Clementina Perdomo
“She was ahead of her time. She wore jeans before anyone else. She cut her hair, because all women at that time were shaving their heads. [long hair] …She was independent to a fault. “She always felt like she was capable, she never needed a man to tell her what to do, and she never wanted to get married,” she said. . And she didn’t.
When Meléndez was a child growing up in Colombia, teachers dictated everything in class, so students took copious notes. Meléndez’s girlfriend, Maria Clementina Perdomo, would take Meléndez’s notebooks from school each year and have them bound in her hardcover, leather-bound book. She still has it.
“Because she had a vision. She wanted me to be a writer. But she never said that to me,” Melendez said.
Melendez said Perdomo lived in Colombia in the 1980s and saw the drug cartels grow in power, and Perdomo sold everything, even though neither he nor Melendez spoke English. He is said to have immigrated to the United States.
Mr. Perdomo had already retired in Colombia, but took a factory job in the United States that paid $3 an hour. Melendez ended up working with her the summer she turned 14.
Realizing the need to adjust to her new home, Melendez said she enrolled her mother in English classes on Mondays and Wednesdays at the Hispanic Center in downtown Mount Holly, New Jersey.
They walked two miles to class after work and school, and Melendez attended class and told the teacher that she didn’t know if her mother would be able to find her way home. She knew that her mother would need to learn English in this new life, so she absorbed everything.
Melendez then learned that she was teaching English to adults at the high school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so she signed up. Her mother couldn’t learn English, but Melendez did. She learned how to write checks, handle doctor’s appointments and rent an apartment.
“It’s been such a great journey for my mom and I. I think that’s why I always talk about her, because it’s always been my mom and me,” Melendez said.
tough times
Marta Melendez and her mother Maria Clementina Perdomo
Melendez married at the age of 18. Her marriage was abusive, and the young couple rented a room without a bathroom while Melendez was six months pregnant and worked two jobs to make ends meet. I had a hard time. She often relied on canned coffee.
“Thanks to God, I was able to get out alive. A lot of people don’t do that,” Melendez told Inman. “I had to go all the way there to open my eyes. I think I’m still there with my Folgers can.”
A therapist once told her that if she could tell a story without crying, she was healed from it. She told her story for the first time on WomanUP! Folgers will be available on stage.
“It took me years to recover from that wound. I didn’t want to be a victim. And I didn’t want to be a survivor, because that’s when you have the trauma of having survived. And I wanted to thrive. I didn’t want to be the girl who got hit. How can we change that narrative?” Melendez told Inman.
“I’m glad I got through it because that experience made me a stronger person and I can recognize that and help others,” she said.
Make your mom’s dream come true
In 1998, Melendez reunited with his 1992 prom date, Lucian Melendez. He wooed her so hard he bought her a car and a house and moved to Florida, where she married in 2000 and had two more children.
Melendez earned her real estate license in 2005 while teaching English as a second language. Lucian Melendez is currently an assistant principal at a high school in Viera, Florida.
Perdomo was by her daughter’s side during this happy chapter of a new beginning. But unfortunately, she passed away on October 28, 2020. Melendez says it wasn’t until she lost her mother that she truly realized all the sacrifices she had made.
Martha Melendez and daughter Alexandra Villa
In January 2024, Melendez published her first book, fulfilling her mother’s dream. Aspiring agents: From overworked rookie to real estate rock star. It’s the book she wished she had gotten when she first started her real estate career.
It’s the perfect how-to for Melendez’s 29-year-old daughter, Alexandra Villa, who began her real estate career in November 2023.
On long drives, Ms. Melendez would read books to Villa and discuss them together, and Villa would sometimes quote advice from the books to her mother. Currently, Villa works in the office of her mother, a member of the Engel & Völkers family.
Melendez said it feels like the cycle is repeating itself. “I worked with her mother and now [Alexandra] You will be able to work with me. Now that she’s an adult, I wish she could develop a deeper relationship with her. I am proud of her mother like her and I hope that one day she will do the same for her daughter, creating a third generation of real estate agents. ”
Email Dani Vanderborg
