There where the ground is too hard to grow your roots, but once you do they can never be unrooted.
There where there is always plenty of food.
Where a neighborhood raises a child, knows your secrets and acts like they don’t.
There where it’s so small you can travel it in a day, but get lost for weeks.
Where the beaches are made by nature and the rocks breathe the history of our magic.
There is even a place where you can hear a giant breathe…
It’s an island full of diversity that sometimes unifies us, while other days it divides.
Our history, build on salt and blood.
A mix of Jewish ancestry, European adventurers and African diaspora that makes us proud while it still hurts.
We are an island emancipating. Released from a colonialism that blew over the west long after it was (supposed to be) gone.
We are a young nation with a future so bright as our sun, but as dark as our oceans for we are afraid of what we are incapable of.
After a life altering accident that was supposed to leave me paralyzed, I found a new purpose in life. I quickly realized that if I wanted to walk again, I had to change my mindset as it relates to my emotional health and my self-expression.
Sitting in a wheelchair I had plenty of time to contemplate life and that’s when I desired to earn a spot on a TEDx stage. After four years of hard work I accomplished that dream in 2016 and I realized I had more to give to the world than working 4 years for 15 minutes of fame.
I had created a project in the previous years, 2nd Life Curaçao, to get me from a disability check (welfare) to become a small business owner. It even won me the JCI IOBA Aspiring Creative Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2015 and as my cycle from wheelchair to social entrepreneur completed, I understood that the message I was taught, wasn’t mine to keep.
I started coaching people that were dealing with life’s difficulties and still felt I was playing small. It is easy listening to someone for me and give them advice on how to solve it, but I wanted to go deeper into the human programming and really understand why we feel sad, angry or jealous. This led me to meditation, mindfulness, yoga and alter my mindset completely. What I realized in this journey that everything I learned I already had in me. I just didn’t know…
It became my calling to plant as many seeds in as many people as possible and teach them that they are powerful beyond means. As I spoke in more classrooms and at large corporations, I would get personal questions and I understood that the message starts within us. People want to know their why. Their how. And their what. I decided to write those answers in daily quotes on Instagram and Facebook, but soon wanted them to become physical. We are touching our phones enough and how can I coach people without being there?
By creating recycled paper postcards and organic fair trade cotton t-shirt with quotes that came straight from my coaching and public speaking business.
If I can re-learn to walk, that means I can relearn how to think and now it my turn to help as many people as possible starting with you.
Find me on Instagram or Twitter or watch my TEDx Aruba Talk From Wheelchair to Social Entrepreneur here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxY7hRhZKAk&t=5s.
“Curaçao 1836”
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