Cornerstone Archives - Pura Vida Sometimes

Cornerstone, family, letter to my daughter

Letter to My Daughter: Keep Kicking Butt

November 5, 2018 No Comments

Letter to My Daugher - Keep Kicking Butt - Pura Vida Sometimes

Dear Warrior Princess, You’re another year older – a year full of surprises, fun, love, and sometimes challenges. You are cuddly, caring, and sweet, and also increasingly self-assured and terrifyingly independent. Like your mama, you don’t need validation from anyone else (including me!), and you don’t like being told what to do. Your personal strengths and inclinations won’t guarantee you an easy life, but we were made like this for a reason. They will call you bossy, and when you also have authority, they’ll call you aggressive – it comes with the skirt; but follow your heart, do what you […]

Cornerstone, family, Lymphedema, wellness

Loving Someone With Lymphedema

March 5, 2018 3 Comments

As many as 200 million people worldwide suffer from Lymphedema, but diagnosis can often leave patients feeling alone and stranded. If you love someone with Lymphedema (LE), there are a few regular habits you can establish to help them feel comfortable, understood, and loved. LE is a dysfunction of the Lymphatic System – the body’s network of filters that helps the Circulatory System clear bacteria, infection, and by-products of blood circulation. Lymphedema can be primary (genetic) or secondary, as the result of trauma or damage to lymph nodes, often as a result of cancer treatment. Fluid back-up in the limbs makes […]

Career, Cornerstone, culture

Becoming Self Made: Latinas and Financial Freedom

February 13, 2018 No Comments

Growing up, most of my heroes in life, films, books, and TV were the rebels. I never liked the prescribed protagonist, most likely because she was nothing like me and I identified more with those on the periphery. As I got older and more self-aware, I realized none of my role models were Latinas. I grew up in a border town, but publicly, our successes were not celebrated. Fast forward to now, I’ve built a respectable career but I haven’t yet realized my full potential and I still need Latino heroes. There’s a particular set of challenges we face, and as I […]

Cornerstone, travel

A Huge Border Wall is Not the Answer

February 5, 2017 No Comments

In the late 1800s, my family came from Solingen, Prussia and built their homestead in a canyon on the Mexican border before Arizona was a state. At that time, Nogales was literally a walnut grove bisected by an international line with little more than a railroad station and post office. My grandmother and all her siblings were born on that land, as was my father and his siblings, and it’s where we spent summers when my mom dropped us off with family and went to work. When I was growing up, the fence, as we called it, was literally a […]

beauty, Cornerstone

How Microblading is Done (Great Brows Changed My Life)

December 19, 2016 No Comments

I was born without eyebrows. Well, they’re there, but not visible to the plain eye. My hair is dark, my eyebrows belong on a blonde. My Irish face didn’t do me any favors growing up in a Mexican border town, where girls are known to be olive-skinned, put-together and beautiful, with a dramatic brow, long before that was a thing. I felt the disparity and tried to compensate with all the smoke and mirrors, but still, in the morning I wake up freckly and Irish and by the time I go to work, I look at least half Mexican. My […]

Cornerstone, travel

You Know Nothing About Cuba

December 12, 2016 No Comments

No matter how many books you read, classes you take, or how up on current events you are, there’s no way to understand Cuba, even if you’ve been there. It is a country of contrasts and incomparable warmth and beauty. I studied and was obsessed with the country – its politics, revolutionary history, intellectual capital, and culture – for about 15 years before I had the opportunity to visit the island. After a week in Cuba, the one thing I knew to be true, in the words of Aristotle, was “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” I began studying Cuba at the university […]

Cornerstone, travel

Have Passport – F Your Rules

September 11, 2016 No Comments

When I was literally 18 and a day, I traveled overseas for the first time. It was an amazing, illuminating experience – all that I’d hoped it would be, in most ways – but a couple of days into the trip I broke the travel rules and was labeled a delinquent and punished for the remainder of our travels. In hindsight, do I feel bad about what I did? Nope. I was invited to be part of a musical ambassador program, for high school musicians (or in my case, recent graduates) in which we traveled to seven countries in two […]

Career, Cornerstone, family, letter to my daughter

Letter to My Daughter: On Being a Workaholic

August 25, 2016 5 Comments

Letter on being a workaholic Pura Vida Sometimes

To my beautiful Warrior Princess: One of my greatest fears is that you will look back on your childhood and think that your mom cared more about work than about you. I would understand if my actions gave you that impression, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I’d like to explain a few things with hopes you will view our life together with love and compassion and make good choices on how you want to live yours. Since I was 17, I’ve only ever not worked during three four-month spurts in my life. The first two were between […]

Career, Cornerstone

How to Be the Best Woman for the Job

August 14, 2016 No Comments

I was invited to business development meeting with our director of operations and a potential partner from Spain – a well-dressed man in his 60s. We made introductions, talked about our ideas and possible synergies – an even interplay between the three of us in the room, but he and I also chatted briefly in his mother tongue. The Spaniard sat straight with his hands crossed, the director of operations had a small notepad and jotted things periodically, and I typed on my little laptop as we talked. At the end of the meeting, the three of us agreed it […]

Cornerstone, nutrition, wellness

The Fiend’s Peanut Butter Cup

August 4, 2016 No Comments

If I was ever stranded on a desert island, I’d hope there were cacao beans and coconut trees. I have a chocolate problem. I love it in it’s most pure form. Milk chocolate can fly a kite; sugar and milk are impurities, as far as I’m concerned. I adore dark chocolate – the more bitter, the better. This Fiend’s Peanut Butter Cup hits the spot when I put myself on a diet desert island and when I’m safe and sound in the city. When I started eating low-carb, I felt so much better, I stopped being so hangry, I spent a […]