Friendly Reminder

Messages come to us in many ways. This one came through the coffee window of my Latin Cafe.

In April 2019, I started a corporate opportunity that everyone thought had potential, even if it was below my professional experience and I was overqualified.  Surprisingly, it ended abruptly right in the most questioning of circumstances.

The day after this demoralizing experience, and regardless of how broken I felt, I headed to my holy grail of morning glory, the Latin Cafe in my neighborhood where I order my daily dose of Cuban coffee.

I placed my order as usual, and the woman manning the window asked me how was work. My reply was as brief: “Over.”

She told me to sit in one of the tables across the window, and that she would be happy to serve me.  I insisted that there was no need for her to to go out of her way, but she was resolute.

Minutes later, she approached my table, placed my cup of caffeine octane on its center, and told me to be positive, not elaborating much in case I did not want to engage. I thanked her and thought that would be the end of it. Not a chance. I was out of work, but my new friend had just found one – Me.

“I don’t know if you know about me,” she said. Time stood still as she focused her eyes on mine.

“See those buildings behind you” she said, pointing to the high-rise Brickell skyscrapers in construction right behind my back.  “I used to work there,” she said. “I managed construction projects, I had a secretary, and a big stack of papers on my desk. I worked so hard managing offices but things also ended for me.”  Nobody cared about me there, she continued, until one day I said enough of this.

My eyes were watery. My heart in my throat. Her story resonated.

Does it ring a bell? A fire alarm?

Read on, don’t run for cover.

“You see me doing coffee here?” she pressed on.  “I don’t care what people think of me because I come here every morning happy.  I like working with my people, and my customers are very generous with me. I work half-day, then I go swimming, and at home I do my own thing!  It may be a bit less money, but I am free.”

In my case, years of successful corporate experience with outstanding reviews seemed like an illusory past after my dismissal. I recall the moment as an emotional tsunami at the core of my “not good enough” fault zone. This fear is among the most dreaded and irrational by the majority of the population, “The Impostor Syndrome” – to be found out, to be good at nothing, the labeling of one’s strengths as non-existent.  I felt my body sank, drowning into the depths of insanity, all of it questioning if I had gone mad, if I had made my years of professional seniority, sacrifice, and glory all up.

I did not. My corporate history and my stellar recommendations available on Linkedin speak for me. My formative years with brilliant mentors reached its summit bringing me to a hostile arena — a much needed ego crush, a life-kicking fracture, yet a jump-start to my intentions which had been on life support in a financial toxic culture, trapped in a cubicle, accepting the unacceptable, smelling the backstab.

Little did I know that the dismissal that felt shocking, embarrassing, humiliating, and shameful, came to land me at my purpose.

“Look at you Mami!,” my waitress smiled as if questioning my wistful look. “You are a beautiful elegant woman, do something creative — go for art — you are probably very good at it, write a book girl!”

All of it prophetic, particularly knowing that what I love to do is precisely what she mentioned – what you see in this website, in the words of those who know me and motivate me – an eye that beautifies. I am a visual poet, a story teller. I am an artist.

I am no longer the woman settling for the cubicle.

And just like that, I remembered a favorite teaching from Gary Zukav’s The Seat of the Soul :
“When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment.”

Shouldn’t we all? Isn’t this one of life’s best friendly reminders?