Destined To Become A Woman With A Very Colorful Past
I came to this work not through therapy or a doctorate, but through a bucket of paint. I didn't hear a calling, and I wasn't particularly gifted at art. Color became my vehicle for self-actualization, not because I loved decorating, but because using paint colors to make myself feel at home changed how I felt about the world.
I bore a dream of beauty, belonging, and worth, then shared it with others by helping them do the same. That's how I belonged, became, and bore a life of shared dreams. That's how I came to have a colorful past, and came to know that everyone else does too.
This is how I became a color baggage expert. How I bore my knowing from root to fruit.
LONGING
I grew up in Puerto Rico, riding in the back seat of my father's black Chevrolet Impala with red Naugahyde seats, watching light transform the world through chrome-lined windows. Between sunrise and sunset, I fell in love with color, beauty, and life itself. Then plans changed, and what I knew changed too.
KNOWING
Little did I know, when I moved to Oregon, light, nature, and culture would change overnight. I set out to explore these new experiences, not knowing the changes, setbacks, and mistakes would beeline me back to my knowing and help me find my way toward the future.
BELONGING
When my first daughter was born, everything changed. She was the homecoming I'd been waiting for all my life. Soon after, her sister arrived, and motherhood transformed the way I saw beauty, belonging, and the world I had longed for. I beelined towards my knowing, and I came to be.
BECOMING
By meeting the needs of my children and my own with what I knew, I became more than the sum of my biological parts, and helped others do the same. What began in 2001 as a colorful exercise to belong with a bucket of paint became Devine Color, a groundbreaking paint line that pioneered how paint is sold to women today. Devine Color sold to Valspar Paint in 2010, and was later acquired by Sherwin-Williams in 2017, sixteen years after I recolored my world.
BEARING
I still had a fecund life ahead. I began asking myself a different question: Could I help people belong, become, and bear shared dreams without a bucket of paint? This is how Knowing, From Root to Fruit came to be.
KNOWING TOGETHER
For me knowing began with color. For twenty-five years, my carefully crafted paint palettes could make the same room, with the same belongings, feel like a completely different world. Nothing in the room changed. But the relationship changed. When that bucket of paint was gone, I realized color had already taught me something much bigger. The same relationship, the same history, the same dynamics can become a different world with a different palette of words. Color was my first palette. Language became my second. That discovery became Knowing: From Root to Fruit. Same knowing. Same needs. Different world.