WartoWisdom_VTOnly

The speaker shares a personal story of growing up in Nicaragua during a time of political turmoil. Born into a family with political rivalries, the speaker's early life was marked by the revolution and the challenges faced by their mother. Fleeing the country to the United States, the family had to adopt fake identities and navigate dangerous situations. Adjusting to life in the U.S., the speaker reflects on their past experiences and the contrast between their sheltered upbringing in Nicaragua and the newfound freedom in America. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be part of the shift. And thank you for inviting me over Kayla. Yeah, it's it's really interesting because it sounds so much different than it sounds in my head when someone else says it. But the story really began on July 19 1979, which is actually my birthday. I'm from Central America, from Nicaragua. And I was born the day the revolution started there between the Sandinistas and the regime of Somoza. And my parents who weren't married at the time were actually politically rivals. They weren't supposed to be together. So when the war broke out, my dad split. So he left my mom behind pregnant. And he fled to Miami. And right before that, actually, and it really goes back to my mom's trauma and how she grew up. Because just about a month before I was born, her brother was murdered, actually executed due to the war. So my mom actually thought that she was part of the good guys, right? She was part of the Sandinistas who were trying to overthrow this horrible government, which they weren't wrong. But it turned out that the Sandinistas were actually much worse than the Somoza regime. And because they were involved, you know, there was a lot of political ties where my uncle was executed due to, you know, being involved into the in the war, very closely. So when I was born, my mom fled to El Salvador, where I was actually born there. And she was literally, you know, giving birth to me as you know, she's fleeing out of the country. And bombs were going off, you know, you can hear shots and guns in the background, like absolute total chaos. And after that, I believe that maybe days after I was able to go back to Nicaragua where I grew up. So the first eight years of my life were actually very tumultuous. Obviously, there was a lot of family pain. My mom was very, very close to her brother who was murdered. So my mom was literally not equipped to have a new baby, right? Plus, she was alone, her partner had left her. And he wasn't planning to come back, he couldn't come back to Nicaragua, because the government was overthrown. The Somozas were overthrown by the Sandinistas who took over after the revolution was over. So we were living in this very war, you know, written, torn down country. For my mom's sake, she was on the right side of history at the time, if she would have been part of the Somoza regime, things would have ended up very, very differently for her and my family. But we were able to live a pretty decent life after that. I mean, we were probably considered upper, much upper middle class economically there. So we had, you know, a safe home, I went to a private school. But it was very closed down. It was, I mean, I literally lived behind, you know, gates, and very tall, you know, how would I say, just my house was behind a gate, my school was behind a gate, you know, so I had to go to schools with guards, you know, guards with AK 47s in their truck going from home to school and from school to home. So I didn't have the typical childhood experience of, you know, going to school with different types of kids. This was a school that was very small, it was only for the kids with that had political ties, generals close to the president. So it wasn't a fun school, you know, it was, you know, when I was at school, I had to get back into a Jeep with AK 47s to go back home. And that was it. You know, so I lived a very sheltered life. I grew up with maids, nannies, my mom was rarely around. My grandmother, my mom's mother, passed away, who was like the maternal, you know, person in my life early on. But she passed away of cancer at the age, I was about five years old. So my mom was very emotionally inept, distant, traumatized, completely traumatized. I grew up with my mom. My early memories of my mom was her camo and her compact boots in a 38 on her hip. You know, so very masculine energy, not very loving at all, not nurturing whatsoever. So it was me just growing up with nannies, you know. So when we finally decided to leave to the United States really wasn't by choice. My mom finally figured out that she was on the wrong side of history, or the worst side of history, whichever way you want to look at it. And she realized that like, oh, crap, you know, this regime is is really, really bad. And they figured out that she wanted out. So in 1985, she started to make plans to get out and someone found out she wanted to leave the country. So we had someone break into our home, which was you can imagine, I mean, a security guards, we had huge gates with armed guards in front of our house, no one can get in and out. And while we were out of town, we got home and there was blood all over our house. And at six or seven years old, I was, you know, my first reaction was like, hey, like who threw paint in our house? Like, strange, you know, I've never seen anything like that. And my mom freaked out, obviously, they were sending a message. By then my mom had married what is my stepdad. And I had a younger brother at that point. And he's a US citizen. So he's he studied here in the States, moved back to Nicaragua, because he's from Nicaragua. And they started to make plans to leave the country. So we applied for asylum. And we had to have fake aliases to leave the country. So I had a fake name, I had fake everything, my brother, and we flew to Mexico. From in Mexico, we had all the right paperwork, the asylum paperwork, through my dad, my stepdad, and I call him my dad, I grew up with him since I was five years old. So that we could cross the border from Mexico. And I think this is a topic a lot of people are talking about right now. Most people cross the border, whether it's legally or illegally through San Isidro, which is the border of in from Mexico to the States. And I remember the story that because my mom was so afraid that, you know, there's operatives all over the place, you just don't know, you know, so with fake names, I remember having to learn this fake name, and I can't tell you what it is now is seven years old. But they had to drug my brother. And they gave him my quote, like way more than they should have, but it was just to make sure he was dead asleep. So that when we crossed the border, with aliases that, you know, God forbid, we bumped into the wrong people, right. So we finally got to the States, and down to California, my dad had friends and college friends and some family in California, Southern California. And it was really interesting, because the morning that I woke up, I was obviously in a completely different country, didn't speak the language really. And I opened the window and I look outside and I was like, Oh, my God, like, there's no guards, there's no gates, I felt so exposed. Really, like, I guess exposed is the right word, you know, I was a very timid kid. Very to myself. And plus, dealing with my mom, she had these outrageous outbursts of rage. And I, she was so unpredictable that I learned at a very young age, I had to learn how to be hypersensitive to how she was going to come home react, right. And I think, you know, when we're talking about trauma, and super emotionally intuitive kids, it's really because we grew up with narcissistic parents who are always anticipating what the next move is going to be. So we read body language, tone of voice, you know, how, how harsh are her footsteps when she's coming through the house, all those kinds of things. So I was always very hyper vigilant as a kid. So I didn't, I was always on the sidelines, like checking things out, like how legit is this, like how safe it is, like who is safe person who's not. So going to school in the States for the first time, I was like, completely overwhelmed, didn't speak the language, I think all I knew how to say was please and thank you. So it was just 180 degrees from where I came from. And I remember going to a park for the first time and seeing a jungle gym. It was like the most bizarre thing because it's like this huge, like field open field in this park. And there's this jungle gym, like maybe two 300 feet away. And I'm just like, what am I supposed to do here? When there's kids running around and playing, they're free, like parents are doing their thing. And it's just like so foreign. So it really did take me a long time to get acclimated. I mean, I learned the language extremely fast. I think I learned English, like within six months, I was fluent, you know, that's amazing how kids can be right, we pick things up so quickly. And, you know, slowly, but surely, you know, I began to obviously make friends and life seemed a lot more normal than what it used to be. I didn't have this sense of danger, like what I had when I was back home. But still, you know, I was a very cautious child. You know, so, you know, when I moved from LA County, where we were in Southern California, my dad had lost his job. And one of the things about my stepdad was that, you know, my parents didn't really have a good relationship. 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know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, that was really my trajectory. My life literally changed from the moment that I graduated. I made a 180 for my family. I made a decision to do things for the right reasons. I made decisions not based on nepotism. I made a decision to do the best that I could. I made the decision that I deserved more than what my family thought they deserved. And ever since that time I had that job within like a year or two, I got a better job and a better job and a better job. And every single time that I got a new job, I gave myself a raise. I wasn't expecting for someone to give me a raise. I would bump my salary by 25% and I said that was my bottom and I got it every single time. And I grew up, you know, in my 20s, I was making really good money. I never went to college. College wasn't for me. I had to support myself. So going off to college and doing the college thing, I saw some friends do that and their parents paid for it and they pissed it away. You know, $30,000, $40,000 and they came back from San Diego State and turns out they didn't have a diploma. They never went to school. You know, I had to earn every single thing that I had and I was okay with that because I knew that even if the car went away, even if I lost the job, I had this sense of security in myself because I had done it that I can do it again. You know, and that is the thing you lose when you do, when you live through nepotism. You don't earn things outright. So you don't have the confidence that you can regain what you once had, right? So, you know, fast forward, I had a great career. I did it for 20 years in corporate and I hated it. Going back to being me, I hated being told what to do. I hated being told that I had to be there at 8 and I hated being told that I couldn't leave at 5 or that I had to be there until 5 and if I wanted to take a day off, I had to ask for permission. I really disliked that. So I got tired of that and, you know, through that I met my husband and, you know, I just, I knew that corporate wasn't going to be my forever. It was a stepping stone. I worked for really great people and terrible people and I learned a ton and I worked with executives. So I worked with people who, you know, were very ambitious, very well educated and I only worked for Fortune 500 companies my entire career because I started at a Fortune 500 company since I was 18. So I had a great resume. You know, I had old bosses poaching me when I was working somewhere else. So I always had somewhere to go, build a great reputation but I wanted to own my own time and that's when I decided to get my certification as a coach and I began poaching ever since and I left corporate after 20 years and I've never looked back. And, oh, and I was just going to say that, you know, that whole experience of life, I think because I overcame so much and have worked through my own trauma, my relationship with my mom, my relationship with my parents, having to raise my brother, having to do things on my own and working on myself. When I got my coaching certification, one of the greatest things about that was that the school that I picked, like, you had to work through your own garbage to be able to become a coach. You know, how not to be triggered by your own traumas and familial dramas so that you can actually help others. You can't go around helping other people with their problems if you're triggered every which way and I fell in love with coaching because that's literally what I've been doing with myself, you know, since day one. It's like, how do I better myself? How do I do something different? Watching other people make mistakes and gathering what is working for them and can I replicate it for myself and leading the rest, you know? And, you know, at 46, I'm almost 46, you know, I look back and there's so many amazing things my mom taught me as big of a narcissist that she still is to this day. You know, she taught me so much amazing lessons, but it was more of, like, do as I say, not do as I do, which is really strange. But, you know, I'm a better parent because of the work I've done on myself, but I learned, in spite of her, I learned a lot of things as well that I do want to take forward, you know, and teach to my daughters, you know? But for me now, it's like leadership. I always loved leadership and leading yourself and developing yourself and what is that personal and professional value that you start within yourself that you can share with the world, but it always has to start with you. You can't lead anyone if you are not leading yourself, period. And that's really where I am today, you know? And I've been coaching for 12 years and, you know, leadership development is an amazing methodology, but in the last 10 years of that, now that I'm a mom, it's like, you know, leadership is not a job role. It's not a job criteria. Many people still view it that way, you know? Leadership is a lifestyle, you know? It's the way that you lead yourself. You show up for yourself and you lead from there. So, you know, that's one of the main things that I instill in my girls. I, you know, have a nine and a 10-year-old now, and it's no accident, I believe, that I ended up with two girls and, you know, we're a very loving family. My husband and I both work on ourselves independently and together, but we try to teach our girls that, you know, integrity and love and self-worth is number one thing, and that if you want to be successful in life, you have to have core values and integrity within yourself first so that you can become whole, and then you can be everything else to the world. Yeah, and I think that was taught, you know, watching my parents. Like, my mom gave her power away a long, long time ago, even before she married my dad, and my dad, to a certain extent, also did that. You know, he was always hoping that someone would do right by him, and no one came to save him, and same thing with my mom, and it's a harsh, harsh reality the older that you get because the opportunities were all within you the entire time, and that's what I tell my girls every single day. You have more control over yourself than, you know, you can imagine, so how do you teach those skills, you know, from an early age, and you can. I found out through parenthood you absolutely can, but I'm not going to do it the way my mother did it. I'm going to do it by leading by example. It's how I show up every single day for myself and let them see it for themselves so that they can do something even greater with it in their own life. So, you can ask me the question. Oh, that's a really good one. I think what I would say is to never forget that the ego is very loud, but intuition whispers, and to learn how to listen for the whispers more than the loudness of the ego. So, yeah, yeah, the monkey brain will catch up to you. Thank you for asking. You can reach me at lifeleaderscoaching.com, and I'm not much of a social media person, but if you are on LinkedIn, you can look me up as Veronica Taylor and also Life Leaders Coaching. Thank you for the platform, Kayla. I really appreciate it.