Then The Tables Turned Into Red.

There is a reason coloring is one of the first things we teach children to do.

Coloring is one of the first ways we learn to belong to ourselves. A child does not choose a color to impress anyone. A child chooses a color because it feels right. Without hesitation, without comparison, without fear of getting it wrong, a child colors the world as their own.

Nothing feels as amazing as being in the light of true love. I am not talking about love. I am talking about true love. Baggage and all. My relationship with color and true love started in Puerto Rico, in the backseat of my parents’ car during sunrises and sunsets. Here is the thing about sunsets and sunrises: even if you hate purple, you would never take it out. For me, that color, that light, was true love.

There were two kinds of white walls I grew up in. One was my grandmother’s. She loved white. My mother’s white walls were different. She got married four times. Those walls were her escape hatch because she was always in search of true love.

Then I walked into the third kind of white wall. The loveless kind.

I was in color purgatory.

I was dreaming of this table. An old table I could restore and bring back to life. One day, I was walking in the middle of the street and I saw her. There she was, with a free sign on her. The only color that table could be was red. I thought, no, no, no, no, no. That comes with a lot of baggage. That is my mother’s favorite color. She was a woman who wore red lipstick all the time and wanted me to wear red lipstick so badly. And here I was, about to paint a table that was going to become huge lips in my entryway.

When I walked through the doors of my first-ever therapy session with a therapist, I was not there to blame my ex-husband for my unhappiness. I was there to unpack my bag and make room for new choices other than to live like my grandmother, stuck in a kitchen, in a terrible marriage, and powerless to leave, or like my mother, who divorced four times to avoid being in the kitchen or powerless.

That's what adulting is all about. Knowing who, what, why, and how life is meant to be lived according to its owner with the bag they carry, then leaving the way they did it behind in case anyone else needs it.

Our job is to run up that hill and meet our needs of belonging, love, and esteem to reach a summit where our potential can be fully realized and we can become a home, path, and destination that helps others do the same.

Imagine a world of grown-ups who can meet their needs, show others millions of ways to meet them, and help others who can't. When I ran up that hill to meet my needs and got divorced, I had no idea I would be trailblazing a path of belonging, love, and esteem to synchronize, harmonize, and magnetize more of the same others could see.

I made a living out of sharing my knowing, who I was, what I knew, and how I could help people know who they were with a bucket of paint. When I first got divorced, I was privileged to have had several women reach out and want to know what I had learned. It had been decades since I had given someone end-of-the-marriage advice, and when the neighbor girl invited me for happy hour, if asked, I would share it.

Two weeks later, my neighbor across the street invited me for a happy hour. I thought, how fabulous, because I had wanted to give her some words of wisdom for a long time. This young girl was getting a divorce, and she was my daughter’s age. She had a daughter my oldest grandson’s age. I thought, this is it.

This is the opportunity.

I went over there. It was awesome. We had a great time. And not once did she mention the divorce.

I guess it was not meant to be.

Later that night, while I was out to dinner a block away from my apartment, I got a text from the neighbor girl saying that Atlas had been crying inconsolably. The door was unlocked, so she went into my place to make sure he was alright, but the apartment was pitch black, and Atlas was freaking out.

They were waiting for me in the dark when I got there.

I called Scott, who was supposed to be home by then but was running late, and he suspected a small heater in the patio was the root problem. I unplugged it, flipped the breaker, and the lights came on.

The walls were no longer white.

The following morning, after staying up late with our friends and discussing the pros and cons of painting the place, I rolled out of bed around 10 in the morning. I looked at the table and thought, "Maybe I can start to paint the table today and finish it by the weekend while I look for another painter."

I painted the table and the walls of the apartment in four days.

The red table broke ground and made our Penthouse a beautiful version of life in shades of belonging I had never lived in before: midnight corduroy blues, heavenly misty lavenders, sultry smokey forest greens, whites, blacks, and everything in between. Friends came over and couldn't believe how much it felt like our old home, even though I did not use any of my old colors.

I was the one who had to do the root work and the painting because I needed to face my greatest fear: what if my color harmonies had lost their magic? What if I painted and nothing happened?

I saw the neighbor girl's face glow with wonder and delight as she became one with the rainbow and the harmony of my home. She was crazy about everything, but mostly my polar bear wallpaper.

As we walked to the front door together to say goodbye, she walked by the red table and told me how much she loved the color. She took both hands, rubbed the table's top from end to end, and said, "I want to take the energy of this table with me because I am signing my divorce papers this week."

That was it. The tables had turned, the red table had spoken, and the magic was back.

It was now my turn.

When I hugged her goodbye, I whispered, "Good luck, and whatever you do, don't give him full custody."

She pulled away, looking visibly stunned.

"Why would you say that?" she asked.

We talked for several hours, and she thanked me and left.

When I gave people color advice, if they didn't take the advice, I didn't take it personally because I had helped them see their truth with the meaningful synchronicity in their homes. I shared the same colorful path I used to honor who I was and gave them a painting ritual that expressed my color baggage in powerful and beautiful ways.

Picking up the bucket of paint was up to them.

That is precisely what I did for the neighbor girl that night. I had no idea if she would ever speak to me again. This wasn't the first time I helped someone the same way without using color, but it was the first time I saw the truth about who I was in light of my innate gifts, sacred duty, and purpose in life: my Dharma. By stepping into my limelight, I had transformed my life, again inspiring others to do the same.

Many events and timelines came together to meet this moment, each with its own story about stars, saints, planets, tables, dogs, bears, windchimes, and lost beaches. I had no idea what hers were, but I learned there had been a string of messengers shot before me, including her lawyer, who had advised her the same when she texted me several days later to tell me she asked and got full custody. A week later, she texted me and thanked me. She took a step she had been afraid to take and would not have taken had it not been for the red table.

At sixteen, my mother got a G.E.D. and took a secretarial job. That red lipstick gave my mom the courage to act like an adult and forge a new path ahead, reminding her of her independence, resilience, and the better life she made for herself and her daughter when she came to America to start a new life as often as she needed to.

No wonder red is a color associated with courage, willpower, and root energy, the seed of our core. Like a tree, a firm root builds a strong foundation that helps us grow, reach for the sky, bear fruit, and seed.

Red helps us root in our own being and in a nurturing Mother Earth who roots for us to play and thrive together. It is the only color that, when lightened, becomes an opposite version of itself: pink, associated with childhood innocence.

Red is the reason I picked up a brush again, rooted into new experiences, and birthed Color Baggage.

Red is the reason I discovered my sense of belonging after I thought I had lost it.

This is what the color red taught me about knowing. True love is not something you find. It is something you create. This is what makes humans a miracle.

Coloring is an act of belonging.

You are the palette.

 Send this to someone you know. 

Gretchen.

See my color work at colorbaggage.com