From Emotional Zero to A Life Beyond My Dreams
A natural ability to create transformational change was evident early on in my career.
My first job at age 22 was to create the strategies from the ground up for a plan and program to introduce a new protected area in Panama, which I successfully created and pitched to the World Bank for funding.
Because of my efforts, this area is now known as the San Lorenzo National Park. A 9,653 hectare protected area of forests, mangroves and pastures, and 12 miles of coastline, that has cultivated activities involving the local communities such as coffee growing, craft making, bird watching, and secured the area for wildlife to flourish.
But what has significantly helped shape my abilities to center and transform myself and others, has been the more challenging times in my life.
I have experienced pessimism, deep anxiety, loss, and overwhelm, particularly after losing my grandfather to a terrorist attack.
It was July 19, 1994. I was 18 years old, right around that time after graduation and just before I was due to go off to school in the States.
My grandfather on my mom's side, with whom I lived at the time and was a father figure to me, died a victim of a terrorist attack.
The commuter plane he travelled on every day to and from work exploded mid-flight, leaving no one alive.
I remember it vividly.
Those words hit me hard...
I had already built up an emotional wall to block myself from feeling pain when my grandfather on my Dad's side passed away earlier that year. And now, after the horrific loss of my Mom's father, I became numb to my feelings altogether and never allowed myself to feel the full weight of this grief.I had tried my hardest to stay mentally 'strong' my whole life.
I guess that's where the block to these feeling had come from. And I let it stay like that for a long time.
Eventually, years of being this way led me to the low point in my life, my destroyed relationship and marriage of 14 years.
I was completely devastated; my self-esteem was beyond repair.
I contemplated the idea of dying.
It was the worst day of my life...
That epiphany came from my oldest daughter's psychiatrist, who told me my daughter had said: "mommy needs help."
I needed help.
