How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
The path to success isn’t paved for people of color. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories as we learn how to say Success in Spanglish.
How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
Immigrant Resilience and Mental Health in High Pressure Environments - Kay De Simone
Kay de Simone is a mental health expert that specializes in immigrational trauma and the stressors of high achievers of underrepresented backgrounds. She is a clinical psychotherapist specializing in high achievers' stressors, trauma treatment, and personal growth.
A Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the states of NC, NY, FL, CT, and DC. She earned her Master's Degree in Social Work from Adelphi University, NY, and was trained at the award-winning Zucker Hillside Hospital, a top behavioral, psychiatric hospital in NY. She is trained and certified in the modalities that are the gold standard for the treatment of PTSD, trauma, grief and loss. She is a sought after paid speaker and trainer on mental health topics related to underrepresented high achievers in high pressure academic/work environments. When not working she invests her time loving on for her 3 daughters, getting them credits as a Doctoral candidate for the University of Alabama. Kay also enjoys perusing museums and urban fashion stores, and is an avid sneakerhead.
Additional Resources:
The Boris Henson Foundation (therapy vouchers and resources )
https://borislhensonfoundation.org/
Loveland foundation (therapy vouchers and resources )
https://thelovelandfoundation.org/
Therapy for Black girls (mental health podcast and referral platform )
https://therapyforblackgirls.com/
Nedra Glover Tawwab. Psychotherapist. Expert on boundaries. IG, books and videos
National Association of Independent Schools
National Hispanic Institute (events and support for high achieving Hispanic youth )
https://www.nationalhispanicinstitute.org/
Latinx therapist and resources
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Resources , referrals , peer support
Summary:
Join us as we uncover the multifaceted journey of Kay De Simone, a mental health expert, licensed clinical social worker, and doctoral candidate. She takes us through her riveting voyage from the Dominican Republic to the United States, laying bare the challenges she faced and her encounters with immigration trauma. Kay's narrative of resilience paints an inspiring picture of her pursuit to become a therapist, in spite of the mountainous trials and tribulations.
As we delve deeper into Kay's professional expedition, she enriches us with a comprehensive understanding of her work as a psychotherapist. Her unique approach to finding the perfect fit for client and therapist relationships is enlightening. She shines a light on her focus on catering to the unique
See more at www.successinspanglish.com
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Intro Song: Regaeton Pop - Denbow Ambiance
This is Raul Lopez, and you're listening to. How Do you Say Success in Spanglish? The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt to journey with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together we can learn how to say success in spanglish. What's good me hentai? It's your boy, raul. Welcome back On today's episode. My guest is Kay DeSimon, founder and lead psychotherapist at Budavida Wellness Centers. How's it going, kay?
Kay De Simone:Everything is going great, fabulous.
Raul Lopez:Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time, especially on an early Sunday morning. So really appreciate you coming here and giving us some insight on your life and your journey. So just to introduce you, kay DeSimon is a mental health expert that specialized in immigration or trauma and the stressors of high achievers or underrepresented backgrounds. She is a clinical psychotherapist specializing in high achievers, stressors, trauma treatment and personal growth.
Raul Lopez:A licensed clinical social worker in the states of North Carolina, new York, florida, connecticut and DC, under master degrees in social work from Adelphi, adelphi Adelphi I'm messing it up again Adelphi University in New York, and was trained at the award-winning Zucker Hillside Hospital, a top behavioral psychiatric hospital in New York. She is a trained and certified in modalities at our gold standard for the treatment of PTSD, trauma, grief and loss. She is a sought after paid speaker and trainer on mental health topics related to underrepresented, high achievers and high pressure, academic work environments and work environments. We're not working. She invests her time in loving her three daughters, getting them credited as a doctoral candidate in the University of Alabama. Kay also enjoys pursuing museums and urban fashion stores and is an avid sneaker fan. Kay, thank you so much. Very impressive. It sounds amazing all that you've accomplished. So I guess, kind of a start off, tell me who is Kay.
Kay De Simone:Well, kay is a Dominican born and American bred citizen. I'm a psychotherapist, I am a mother, I am a doctoral student and, most importantly, I'm a community connector. A lot of the things that I do relate to just bringing the information and bringing people resources and connecting people that could collaborate together.
Kay De Simone:I believe that we are living in a very important historical time where we are able to show up, we're able to show out, we're able to connect to who we are intrinsically and accepting both of the dualities of who we are not only the country where we came from in my case, the Dominican Republic but also the country that has received us and where we have grown.
Raul Lopez:Okay, nice, and thank you so much for that. And so your journey to the United States isn't interesting when everybody thinks immigration is always the same, but yours is a little bit different. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Kay De Simone:Absolutely. I think it's very interesting that you highlight that because there's also an assumption, right? As a matter of fact, I had one of my little neighbors ask me many years ago if he could interview me because they had assigned him something in social studies where he had to and I quote, it was several years ago, so, forgive the wording, he had to interview an immigrant. So he said, do you mind if I interview his mom? I said yeah, absolutely. And then they created this long list of things and he was like tell me, how did you get here? So he was waiting for some juicy story. I had to swim, I had to run, I had to hide and I was like I came here on American Airlines flight 588 on seat 4A, first stop. So it was like, oh, I mean, he didn't get no hype at school when he came on my sad story of I came here when I was 24 years old and I was already an adult.
Kay De Simone:I already had my undergraduate degree in business and tourism from Dominican Republic. But when I came, I had a lot of different advantages and a lot of privileges. I had been part of an organization, international organization, the leadership group of the YMCA in the Dominican Republic, since I was 12 years old and I had been studying English since I was nine. So by the time I got here at 24, I already spoke English fluently. I already had my undergraduate degree and I also had a job. So I used to work for American Journalist. That was my job when I was a kid and I just transferred. So I came here with a lot of different privileges that really helped my transition. But even within that, I also had a lot of obstacles. Right, I wanted to continue studying and do some of the things that I was interested on, but there was nobody to really help me and guide me, which mainly moves a lot of years in pursuing what was going to end up being the passion and the profession that I love.
Raul Lopez:Yeah Well, the immigration journey for a lot of us varies and goes from different things to the most extreme to the most high, Sometimes more simplified version of just flying in and getting your paperwork undone. But even once you've come in, you deal with a variety of different obstacles. I think one of the things you mentioned you touch upon is the idea of immigration trauma. Can you explain what that is and how that affects you and the rest of us?
Kay De Simone:Absolutely so. That's one of the topics that I am researching as my doctoral path, and what it has to do with immigration trauma. We all get here, regardless of what age and what is the composition of our family, and it's a great opportunity. Many of us have been waiting for many years to be able to come and live here. Many of us, when we do that, have to manage challenges regarding this great gift, but also the great losses. So most of us are here, we're building a life, we're going to school, our parents are working, but three quarters of our families might be in a totally different country. Right, everything that we were has to be every engineer and it has to be a restructure to this society, to this new setup. Many of the people, for example, oh, I could run down the street and there was a market and my cousins live close by, and then it was potentially a more expansive community that you had access to. And then, when you're brought here, it's like you have to stand in a little apartment. Maybe there's a lot of people that live with you. Now you have to learn English. The children have a very different setup when it has to do with behaviors and what is, you know polite and what is appropriate. So it's very, very shocking when it has to do with other changes in weather. So people, as they get older and they achieve these things that our parents or our families or our sponsors blurs here, for they still have this guilt in the back of their mind. Like one of my clients and it's very interesting I have a clinical practice where I see individuals one-on-one. My full caseload is high achievers of underrepresented backgrounds that have transitioned into the spaces of medicine, law, technology and finance. So those are the four particular tracks that my clients work on.
Kay De Simone:And it is very hard for you to be, you know, eating and eating your $18 avocado toast with the full knowledge that 70% of your family is living in poverty.
Kay De Simone:It is very hard, even as you grow up and go through all the challenges that you guys grow up, to know in the back of your mind that your mom is going to hit you up and be like we need $200 because Uncle Tito fell from the motorcycle drunk again, so we need to pitch it. All this ongoing, it's like almost all this investment that has been done and a lot of our families waiting for that return on investment from us. So it's like oh, when you make it so, then you're going to move back in with us so you can help to pay for the rent, or you're going to be my co-signer for this loan, or you're going to co-sign this one's student loans. All of those things are very stressful because you're trying to build a life, but also you are centered on the responsibility that you have towards your family in trying to find a balance of what makes sense.
Raul Lopez:Yeah it's funny the way you mentioned it where you feel you succeeded. You're eating your toast, you're making all this money and I think, even when you're not like that, you always have that mentality. I was born in Peru and my parents are the one that came here and brought us to this country, so I wasn't sacrificing much. I feel like I just grew up here, but my parents were. But even with that, I've always thought of my extended family in Peru as my family. And you think about, if I won the lottery, will I send money to my grandma and then she could help my uncle in Peru and she can help my other uncles.
Raul Lopez:And now your millions of dollars are being spread amongst a quarter of the population of Peru, because you feel like, oh, I still have to figure out how to give back to everyone at home, and so it becomes difficult. And these are things you overcome and sometimes you're able to overcome and help. You get the help from either people or other resources. What are some people or resources that has helped you on your immigration journey?
Kay De Simone:So when it has to do with my immigration journey, there are several people because I already had that background and that framework of the leadership group and volunteering and being part of an international organization. That was a good embedded in me trying to find mentors, trying to be easy to coach, trying to be easy to help, which is something that I always tell people. You want people to help you, you want people to invest in you. You have to make it easy for them. If the appointment is at 10, you better be there at 9.45. If they send you send me this by Monday. You need to burn the midnight oil. Send it by Saturday or Sunday. So I was already prepped to do that. So I was able to find people that invested in me and invested not only in me but eventually invested in the children that I have. I think some of the things that were helpful for me is being very observant. That is something that I would advise people to develop that ability to really invest time and become an observant. When you are in spaces, what are people doing? Where are people going? What are people reading? I have a story that was really good, one of the great things I found. I have my mother, I have my father and I give them all the props for the person that I am until I was a young adult. But then, after that, I had to most definitely give most of the props to the other mother that I found. One of the things with immigration and trauma and when you are displaced in my case, although my family lives in the Dominican Republic, I am the only one that came here. So I say a joke, which is not a joke, which is I am the only orphan Dominican. Everybody has 14 aunts, 13 uncles. There is the Tía de Madrina and I am the one Dominican. It's like, no, it's just me. So I made a purposeful effort to find really good friends and people that I could have reciprocity with. For example, I am a very big God girl, so I am all about the prayer, I am all about visualization, I am all about manifesting and just giving back. It just comes back, and I found a wonderful lady that happens there. I always say God sent her to me. I have many very fiable miracles and she is one of those.
Kay De Simone:I worked in a law firm when I became a paralegal. After I came here, after many detours, I was able to finally figure out how to become a paralegal and attend the University of New York. I wanted to be a lawyer but it failed because I had small children. It was like a good next step and it was a professional job. So eventually I ended up, after several jobs and getting some experience, and I ended up in one of the top corporate firms in the world. It was a fabulous job and it was a building with 55 floors attorneys, associates I mean the books I've been reading about this firm and God sent me to this floor. They sent me to the 38th floor for no reason.
Kay De Simone:I signed next to this lady and she's my mother in this country. From that day she has supported me. She has mentored me. She has told me a lot of stuff about education, not only for myself but also for my children resources, so I thank her for that. I've also had amazing bosses in the organizations that I have worked in, but it's also because I have walked into the organizations making sure that I become a NASA very quickly and that I by default receive a special treatment. I am all about a special treatment and accommodations. I say I already suffer a lot. We all have already suffered a lot. From now on. It's only gone through a luxury. And how do we pursue that is by making sure that we are connected, that we are showing up, and, in return, my experience has been that organizations that I've been a part of have matched me exactly where I was and pushed me forward.
Raul Lopez:That's awesome, because lots of times you feel like there's not enough pie for you to eat and you have to be happy with the scraps that you get and we don't advocate for ourselves and we don't push to say, hey, no, I deserve this and I deserve that. So it's nice to hear that type of mentality and the success that it can bring you, and so, obviously, with part of your journey, you also include the fact that you were in school already. You were in college when you transitioned, and so a lot of us we hear the general story oh, my uncle was a doctor in Peru and now he's mopping floors out of factory or something like that, and so that's not always the case and some people are able to maintain and figure out the way. So what were some of the difficulties that you had transitioning to the US as far as your education is concerned?
Kay De Simone:So when I came here and, like I said, there was just nice delay. Right, I had my degree, I know I wanted to do something else besides the job that I had and my dream since I was little was to be a therapist. So I am 50 years old, so back in the day that was not a thing in the Dominican Republic, out of all places. So when I came out with this bright idea that I wanted to be a therapist, or I wanted to be a lawyer, my parents had a meeting with my aunts, because my aunts, of course, lived with me, so it was like a four-parent household my two parents and my two aunts. They were little that they raised me, and the consensus was that if I pursued a therapist, me ha morir de nombre, I was going to die of hunger, which is true Because back in 1989, nobody was looking for no therapist in the Dominican Republic and most of the parts of the world was something that was very niche for people that had a lot of money and had like one percenter problems, not for people that were really going through it, like when you live in a developing country. My other choice was to be an attorney, and that was no bueno either. So they were like, yeah, but if you're not going to go into the government to steal and to do shaky stuff, which you cannot do because you're part of a family, then you're going to die of hunger too. So the two options that I liked and I wanted. So then I went into business. So when I came here I was like, oh, maybe I could be a therapist, maybe I could be an attorney, maybe I can figure it out.
Kay De Simone:So there was no internet. I know the shock and the lizards oh my God, what there's. No, yes, there was no internet. The internet was literally invented after I was here in the 90s. So there was no internet. There was no way to Google things. It was not just readily available. And one of the things that I talk a lot about is like we have to realize that us in this generation, my generation and yours we're trying to build lives that have never been built in our bloodline. And when I say I have never been built in our bloodline is lives of plenty, like when you have set income. Oh my God, you have medical insurance. That is not the public clinic. You have a good credit score, you manage and save to have, you know secure housing. We are building lives that have never been built before.
Kay De Simone:And if you look to that, we're also trying to have suitable relationships and happy marriages and date nights and our children with emotional intelligence. So it's like all these things on our shoulders that we have never seen in any generation before hours. The life that I'm trying to build with my, with my children. My partner has never been seen anywhere in my bloodline, so there is that stressor. And then I had no internet, so it's trying to.
Kay De Simone:It took me years to figure out that there was an organization called the World Educational Services that takes your degree from your country if it's a reputable university. That is not like the universities that you just pay and they give you a degree and they have a list of the regular good ones and the other ones are flaky and you get your stuff certified, which is obviously a headache, your VR and get a stamp and then the Department of Education. Then you have to pay some guy in the door all of that and then they were able to translate my degree so that I was able to apply for the City University of New York for the Paralegal Program and then I was able to get the program done and the school did a great job in placing me. You know, and I work through the ranks of you know, you have a little internship and a little law firm that's literally the guy and some old lady in Astoria. And then eventually I transitioned to medical practice and personal injury. So I was one hundred lawyers.
Raul Lopez:So when you call one hundred lawyers in the early 2000s that was me.
Kay De Simone:I was like hi, this is Kay, how can I help you? Eventually I transitioned to corporate, which is where the money resided, and I stayed there until eventually I transitioned to finally be able to pursue my dream of becoming a therapist. And then in that transition I was actually studying for the ELSA and applying to law school, and then I was also studying to get into social work school. So I was thinking the ELSA with Kaplan, they took all my money and I was applying to schools and then. But I was actively meeting with mentors and there was internet then by then. So I started going to networking stuff. I was very involved in the community life.
Kay De Simone:I'm originally, you know, when I came to the States I lived in Jackson Heights, queens so right thing for the Jackson Heights people. And I was the PTA president in my daughter's schools. I, because volunteering and being connected is part of the way that I was raised. And then I became, I was part of the board in the precinct, the 115. I was doing all these things and meeting people and people were connecting me. So I had two different mentors that were helping me to look at which was the track to follow, and then I was talking to both tracks until the very end and I was accepted to law school and then I was accepted to the social work school and in talking to praying and talk to my mentors, then I decided that being a therapist was the thing. I was a therapist in a university which, in New York, is a very, very highly respected university, which in turn allowed me to get placements into internships that were very, very highly coveted, which secure my training, clinical training, but also like free learning as part of the North Wales health system, which is the biggest employer in New York.
Kay De Simone:So because I was an adult learner, I was very, very deliberate on how I pursue my clinical career. I was very deliberate, you know, in the school of my classes I was also very deliberate on my internship. My school has a policy, and I hear it. They have a policy that does not permit you to find your own internships, so you have to wait for them to assign you, and so I have a saying in the back of my mind rules do not apply to me. So I always try to find what is the most efficient way. I always try to find the loophole, and I got my two. Interest is myself, and then I finagled away with the ladies and secretaries, just my friend. I always carry chocolate, they always carry candy. I always you know me little gifts, little dulce de leche, little jokes, and I got my own internships and the school assignment to those in. Those were the two things that supported me into fast track in my career. When you're in school as a social worker they can send you anywhere. They could be like oh, go to the YMCA and you're going to be filling out section eight vouchers and you're going to be doing this.
Kay De Simone:I knew I wanted to do clinical, so I was not interested in institutional work and my passion in my calling was to help people heal and be their companion in their healing mental journey. So I did that. So after I did that, after I was in a delphi, it was very challenging financially because for masters level they don't give you financial aid and money was super tight. I had to take all kinds of loans and do all of the things I did really well in school. And then the reason that I did really well in school and which I speak is not a sticker. I speak very openly about it when I do presentations.
Kay De Simone:I have a very high genetic psychiatric load on the right side of my family, so on the on the my mother side of the family, we have chronic mental illness. So I have, you know, on cold and on, and I had grandparents with everything from bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, neurological disorders like Parkinson's, all of the things. So I grew up in that's why I wanted to be a therapist, because that was little, because I will be four years old and I'll be like why can my favorite and get better? And that's because a lack of appropriate treatment for the fact that we were poor, right, so we didn't have the medication, we didn't have appropriate care, and it wasn't the many government, public in the olden days. So school for me, when it has to do with therapy, when it has to do with trauma, when it has to do with grief and has to do with loss, school is very easy for me because I'm not learning it from the book. So when I had to be like, oh, my policy, sort of be like my uncle, this one to the that, and I knew the presentation and the symptoms, and then you the dysregulation, how it looked, like the changes of energy, other people had to like read it and learn it. I'll just be like, oh, what schizophrenic. Okay, so I had that on in that uncle and he did this. So it was very easy and it was very natural for me and also created the sense of urgency that I work with.
Kay De Simone:So I work, I've worked very hard and, as you said before, certified in all the modalities to treat the highest level of dysregulation. So I went to soccer and suckers on the top psychiatric hospitals in the country, in one of the top of New York, and I was in. I was on like Donkey Kong, I was in every track, I was like I was going in when I was off. If there was a training, that was free, because I mean they cost a lot of money but if you're an internal work there, they give it to you for free because of the union. I will be going on my days off. I have too many certifications, I have too many trainings, because I wanted to be training the highest level of dysregulation so that I could bring that level of expertise down to the people down here on the fringes right, because I know, because of my personal experience and my family, the one hour, one day, one week, one month suffering is one too many, because within that small window is where the horror happens, right, that's when you make that bad decision, that's when you take that horrible reaction, that's when you make that decision that you have to live with for the rest of your life, but more, more.
Kay De Simone:I also took a different take where I say you know, like I was, I was a, I'm a financial aid kid, proud financial aid kid. So I went to scholarships since I was in preg until eighth grade in a Catholic school and you know, of course, I was a Catholic school girl and the Bible study and all that. And they would say, oh, when somebody does sin loosely and here sharing this, I don't remember like the verse or anything like when somebody does something he goes down to seven generations, like sounds like a curse, like, oh you, you be doing something against God, is that you curse for seven generations? And then, as I started doing this work in the psychotherapy where I was like, oh, my God, god is cursing you. It's that this decision that you make reverberates for seven generations down the line of the pain of the herd, of the lack of resources, of the lack of support and the people that come after. So for me, getting better and doing better and getting resource, getting support. For me is like I'm going to land the list and emergency. Because of that also I train on.
Kay De Simone:The modalities are evidence base. Like a lot of people say, I'm going to go to a therapist. It's like it has to be evidence base. Talk therapy is delightful and he helps a lot of people, but if you have challenges that are embedded in your physical body, in your biological body, if you're getting those headaches, even something sounds, you react. All of those things have to be processed with other modalities that are somatic modalities, because it's not only your memory intellectually you know that's not happening, that was before but your body, in your brain do not know that. Hence you have all the hyperactivity. So when I went into the therapy world, I was like 10 toes down and I was on it. I was getting mentored by the top doctors, I was making myself available. I was working many more hours than I had to. I just love it and I love it every day. So that allow me to not only pursue my career very diligently but also to be able to advocate but, more importantly, position myself for others to do for me.
Raul Lopez:So through all of that and you become a psychotherapist and mental health engineer, can you kind of explain exactly what a psychotherapist and mental health engineer is?
Kay De Simone:Right, so I'm mental health engineer is a term that I came up with with my partner because I am from a family of engineers, so everybody's an engineer. My brother, that's the one that doesn't have the engineering degree. When I was looking at the description of what an engineer does, it's like, oh, addresses problems and creates a workflow to solve them. And I was like, oh, so that's what I do and it sounds so, so much cooler. So when he has to do with what's psychotherapy, so it's like a therapist. Depending on the modality and the credentials, it's very much a person that's going to be with you in your journey of becoming aware, on reframing some of your past story, in creating a structure so that you can continue forward based on your values, on your goals and who you want to be today, right? So there is a lot of people that you know like the work that I do.
Kay De Simone:I deal a lot with PTSD and higher levels of symptoms that were rooted in a on poverty, racism and neglect, actual physical or sexual abuse, in order to release that from your body and for you to have a better awareness that that was then and this is now, and now you have other options.
Kay De Simone:And when he has to do with, with being psychotherapist based on the modality and what this, the special case, everything should be no client center.
Kay De Simone:So I practice from a decolonizing perspective, which means my client remains the expert and simply I am not main character, right, I am simply a companion on their journey when he has to do with us, with a pursuing services or offering services.
Kay De Simone:It is important to remember that and finding the right fit not only for the client to find the right provider, but also for providers should be working with the right fit of clients for them. When you're working, when your ideal client is that there's an understanding, as you're getting your degree and your credits and hours of supervision, you're going to do the job that you're going to do and you're going to treat whoever the setting treats. But then there should be a transition After you have your licenses and stuff, so that you can be treating the people that you're better fit to treat. In my case, the perfect fit for me is exactly the high achievers of underrepresented backgrounds in high pressure environments, because we have very specific and very unique needs. Right, we have to balance so much and it has to do with our aspirations, which many times the rest of our family do not understand what do you?
Kay De Simone:want so much. You have your job, you have your wife, you have your house, you're fine. We have a drive that is different. We have thoughts in our mind of pursuing things that make no sense to anybody else and we can do the work to come to terms of what is our calling like what was whispered in our ear was only whispered to us. There's also, you know, putting into perspective, especially when you're high achievers, sometimes somebody will have a mother, will have three or four kids and maybe you don't want to hit a big, big, whatever big is. You have a job, you work for finance. You, you know you have your six figures going on and nobody speaks about it. Is one of the things that I'm pursuing, going forward. So when he has to do with my research, that I'm doing an interview and I'm going to be publishing on that, because it's a topic that is not very well explored. It is explored from the place of PTSD. Horrible things happen on your way here. Who has seen loss? But there are two other parts are not being covered currently in academia and research, and research is what informs policy. So that is the importance of doing research is to get that data so that you can be. You know, the politicians, decision makers it's like, look, this is a thing, right, I'm from the place.
Kay De Simone:I was very fortunate. Last summer I was able to participate with my university. I became the first study abroad doctoral student that University of Alabama have ever had. They had never done it, they didn't know how to do it and I was like, well, okay, that's your job and you're going to have to figure it out because, as we both know, rules do not apply to me, right, but with ease and fun and you know and all of that. But I got it done, which was surprising. So I went to Guatemala and I was doing research for four weeks Under the support of the mega star and Dr Chris Hale, which is an expert online American studies and the things that I learned. I am so grateful. Of course, I got my six credits so that I can graduate faster, because anybody got time for that and that was importantly. Even as an expert in trauma and research and immigration trauma being there and seeing it with my own eyes and having to study I had to do research and write papers for six months before I even got there. Now I have a so much better understanding.
Kay De Simone:So if we think about. I'm going to use what I'm all I'm going to use is the medical Republic to. So when you look at Guatemala, right, and so when you look at the medical Republic and Peru, our countries have been ravaged by, first, the colonization, right, so the poverty that was induced by the colonization, the racism that was embedded by the colonization against the native people and the matter people and the Latinos. Then we won't go on into, if that was not enough, how it was the base and many native we have no tight nose. We tight nose passed away in the Dominican Republic that were decimated within five years.
Kay De Simone:And I think, if you take that right, is the fact that we have been ravaged by earthquakes, Hurricanes, political unrest, dictatorship, lack of education. So our parents this is where our parents are coming from. So when you're like, oh, they bullied me in school, they were like, did they disappear? Your father? Never to be seen. They don't have the bandwidth to understand our predicaments. Right, put your head down and don't look up.
Kay De Simone:Where did they learn that Polarization? They learned that into our multiple dictatorships. And they learned that by the forces of the United States disparaging everything that we build century after century. Right, I mean, when you think about Guatemala had the longest civil war in all of Latin America. That lasted 30 plus years. Right, when you think about the fact we had a dictator Trujillo in the Dominican Republic that not only ruled us with an iron fist for 30 plus years, but he was replaced by his boy, which ruled the country in a democratic government for 12 years and decimated the intellectual fabric of the Dominican Republic. He decimated and killed all scholars. You were dead. You were a scholar. You were a revolutionary. He killed the educational and scholar base of the Dominican Republic in the 70s. What does that do to the Dominican Republic today?
Raul Lopez:Right.
Kay De Simone:And how does that explain? They say how certain countries, in the Dominican Republic, everybody has one, two, three degrees, everybody's trying to go to college and they're all different bases of colleges and how much they cost and what they do. But the guy that's driving you in the Cat Republic, in the gypsy cab, he's like oh, I'm an attorney and you know what I mean Is that pursuit of education is so, so important, because in the 70s they literally took every scholar from us and then eventually we're able to study again. So when we're looking at that, so nobody's covering the fact that this is where we're coming from, this is our parents are bringing our grandparents right, so then they drop us here, boo, but nobody's. And then they're like oh yeah, you and your, you were affected because you were coming and you saw this and you saw that.
Kay De Simone:But nobody's also covering the fact of how hard it is when you go to a family, get together and a bunch of your cousins are upset. Oh, she, she'd be talking white, she has a little apartment in the city or she moved to New Jersey. She thinks it's better than everybody else. Now, how our parents, when they pursue education for us in supports, in the ways that they could, how a lot of their family members didn't understand.
Raul Lopez:It's like no, why are?
Kay De Simone:you going to leave him here and do in the, let's say, prep for prep program in the summer, send him to the yard with their well so that you can descansize, so you can rest, and the pressure that our parents also felt, the fact that they're like oh, you have to study, you have to go to school, mom, what does that look like? Who's going to fill up my FAFSA? Right? The fact that some of us are DACA and just a week ago they came up with an answer. So is this ongoing chronic trauma and this ongoing stressor that has to be covered so that we know how to normalize it, how to address it and how to find community within our circles to move forward. So, when it has to do with immigration or trauma, those are some of the things that happen that are not fully covered.
Kay De Simone:When it has to do with identity-based trauma, which is based on the work of Dr Desiree Dixon, one of my colleagues and mentors you have an imposter syndrome, right? So listen, you have stickers, you have a shirt, there's always a webinar imposter syndrome and until I found her, I had a really big problem with presenting and dealing with it, because I see it in the field, I see it in my patients, I see it in my presentations, I work for opportunity programs, I hear programs. Let's say, new York University, it's the University of New York Pelenove University. I see it, these kids don't think they're less. It's not. I didn't create this for myself. I'm not an imposter because I think I'm not worthy. And then when Dr Dixon came out and I found her, it made my life better because she created a different way to explain it. She doesn't go imposter syndrome. It doesn't exist. It's mislabel. What exists is identity-based trauma. So imposter syndrome is like oh my God, I believe I'm not worthy, blah blah blah, opposed to what reality is.
Kay De Simone:Identity-based trauma, which is our community, our society, our media is telling us every day and every step. Every time you walk into a store, every time you board a plane, every time you're passing to TSA, they are challenging our work. Every time you go into a big tech company and you're the only brown person in the vertical, the message is being given to you You're not making this up, you don't feel like an imposter? The system thrives on making us feel that we don't belong. And I always tell I have clients, and my clients work for all the top companies and this is the thing that they're working on. Their life is on point, their job is on point, they have their education, they're all in school, they're doing well in school, but it's this nagging feeling of I don't belong, but it's because I don't believe I'm worthy. They believe they're worth it. So this gives us a different explanation and a different process to be able to manage it, treat it and release it. All the work that we have to do is they're like oh, I'm gonna go to therapy so I can talk about it. That's cute and that helps a little bit, but what needs to happen is that you have a culturally competent provider that is certifying, training of the modalities to treat what the situation is, talking about it and journaling about it. Those are first aid kind of stuff. Love it, I use it in my own practice. But there are different levels of treatment that allow you to actually release it, that allow you to create a structure in the new design.
Kay De Simone:What does K do? We always go through this anxiety. If they offer me this, if they ask me for that, if they give me something that's not part of my job, what do I do? Because we don't have a center. When you do the work and you strengthen yourself, you say this is what K does and I have a script. Thank you so much for thinking of me for that DEI meeting, which of course all the brown people they want to have us do, dei and affinity groups when there are people that's actually their job outside consultants, but they put. Thank you so much for thinking of me to be in that panel. I really appreciate it, but unfortunately I'm now concentrating on my deliverables because review time is coming. But keep in mind I'll get back to you on that.
Kay De Simone:So many people are put into this box. Is that have nothing to do with the job that you're getting paid to do. So when promotion time comes, when the layoffs be coming, you're outside doing the workshop and doing the panel and traveling for this and being the picture of diversity on the website, but you have not concentrated enough on the meeting stuff. That is the reason why they hire you. You want to be a team player. Let's work hard. No, no, no.
Kay De Simone:I am all about let's work smart, let's strategize, let's be observing, let's follow the money. What are the people that have the money and the access doing? What conferences are they going to? Can I help? Can I have my company pay for this? And if not, let me tell you I'm gonna apply for that scholarship on the website. Well, I'm gonna clarner this. We be clarding all the stuff. We do clard enough for she in. We do clard enough for no, no, let's do clard enough for a conference.
Kay De Simone:Right when people say what do you want for Christmas? I want money because I want to go to Afro Tech. So let's put it in this little Afro Tech account. That's what I want, right? So, looking at it from that perspective, I think advocating is great, but I think developing the skills so that you go in so that people from the get understand you're not the one, but you're also not the two. Right, and that's something that you can create. And when we look at the ways that we behave, of the things that we're missing, I like the title mental health engineer because I look at it just like it's an obstacle, it's a problem, it's a situation. How do we break it down? I don't. We do the work in therapy and the percentages that we stop internalizing the things that have happened to us, the messages that society has given us, so that we can look at it from a clinical, practical, logical perspective and say I get very nervous when I speak in public.
Kay De Simone:You internalize that, oh, I'm so weak, I'm so vain, what I have to say is not important. This is what we think right. So our internal talk, our negative talk, is to what I say, opposed to when we step back and say I have a very hard time speaking in public and what can I do about it, and you literally come up with little tasks. It could be that you start listening to a podcast that has to do with speaking, that you get one book from the library, that you Google a couple of people that are giving tips on speaking, so that your algorithm and the TikTok and the Facebook and in the Instagram changes to start giving you material that has to do with that. I get very anxious and scared. I'm so anxious. We internalize that as this bad, horrible thing and permanently damaged, I'm never gonna get better. But when we do the work to be able to step back and say I am very anxious and I am very hyper-vigilant, right or my six at all times, because horrible things have happened to me or to people around me, you're not crazy, you're not coming up with this. Let me be anxious because I have nothing else to do. You have seen horror and challenges and you have seen this other shoe drop so many times that you could have a whole shoe store. But we can say I am very anxious and hyper-vigilant because of the things I have seen and I have experienced and Jesus in Jesus, everything at once. I'm going to download the come app and I'm going to do some breathing exercises and I'm going to, if we are able to see the thing and understand that we don't have to go from zero to 100, we can do small steps. I have a lot of issues with friendships and people always take me for granted, not for everything. I have a lot of issues with friendships and people always take me for granted and I'm going to start looking for stuff that has to do with a certain communication. My girl, neater Tawhab she is my book, I think she's my friend. My mom I don't know her the super therapist that wrote the book Boundaries. She has a whole book 1999.
Kay De Simone:Download and get the workbook. Let's go right, it's not permanently yours, right? Our parents did the best that they could and most of the times for us that was not enough Not to survive in this country and not to pursue the life that we want. So we can say my parents did the best that they could. And that was not enough, and I still. If you have a relationship with them, I still love them and respect them and support them, and I'm going to outsource myself another mom or another dad or a group of mentors, or I'm going to listen to a podcast about the mother wound. If you have a challenging relationship that's been neglectful and hurtful with your mother, if there were issues with your father, I'm going to buy a workbook. Right, this thing's going to be true and this is what I'm going to do, little by little, right? Maybe it is.
Kay De Simone:We meet people where they are and one of the reasons. So my next steps in my career because I do not have space on my caseload, so nobody BDM me trying to get on my case, so I do not have space in my caseload In the next steps in my career. That's why I have started with the speaking and the paid speaking in order to bring the message, because I understand that nobody's going to be able to work with me, but I have the source and I have the message and information so that when they go to pursue a provider, they are a knowledgeable consumer, right? So when they go and have those conversations. They understand oh, I don't have insurance right now, that's okay. I have the Love Land Foundation. Rachel Cargo will be giving vouchers to the people. Taraji Jensen did a whole foundation to honor her dad.
Kay De Simone:You know also mental health issues. They have vouchers for people too. There's a National Association of Mental Illness. They have workshops, they have peer groups, they have materials, they have worksheets. There are things that we can do. If you are in a school, we're going to give ourselves the permission to go to the counseling center. There are the fancy schools have life coaches. Did you know that, like the fancy schools, they have life coaches? They text you. I have a life coach that texts me. I hope you start the semester strong. I say thank you, right, we're going to use that. We're going to change our mentality from those. Things are for somebody else, right? It applies to tutoring.
Kay De Simone:When I work with the OP, the opportunity programs, a lot of our children have attended very challenging and toxic public schools and Catholic schools where teachers don't want to help you, where if you raise your hand, you're done, or if you go to tutoring, you're labeled as done too, and then they transition to colleges that have all the support and they never use them. And then I have the conversations and we do the work so that they understand that there are other races and other backgrounds, that they are at the top of the class and as soon as they get there, they get the next 12 tutoring all the way until the end of the semester, not because they're trying to catch up, because they're trying to stay ahead of you. So by the time the meeting you regularly should be trying to get a tutoring session. That's why they're all gone. So we have to stay prepared, so that we don't have to get prepared.
Kay De Simone:When these offers are given, we take them. It's like I said. So you got to do your job. We need to figure out how I'm going to stay in the school or this money is going to come from. Who else can I talk to? To the people that have gotten to this place of they are already successful. What comes next?
Kay De Simone:So I'm also very involved in independent schools. So independent schools are schools elementary to high school that are not funded by the state and they're not funded by the Catholic or any religious church. So independent schools have been around since the 1700s. These are the schools for 1%. Other children have been there for legacy and legacy. There is a very big movement to transition into the schools. I have done the work and have done the fight and the driving opened down all the northeast of my three daughters having blessed me being part of the independent school organizations and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It has been the best, the hardest thing that we have ever done, but it has been the best thing we have ever done because being part of independent schools has created for them and for me, and network and support system that is parallel with anything else that I have.
Raul Lopez:Right.
Kay De Simone:Many of us are going to be like, oh, I'm going to leave my kids all these millions and ten buildings. But when you have your child in yourself as part of an independent school and we'll put the link under, say, if anybody's interested in looking at it, your life changes because your children. My daughter is not Isabella, the daughter of Kay Right, isabella is Isabella from Brent's Academy, sophia Academy, loomis Taft and Dover, the Duke Elite Program, the Baphson Pre-College Program, the NYU Pre-College School of Engineering. While you're in university there is a center of people that will be vouching, fighting and investing on your kid and the kids that come through them long after you have been gone. So when it has to do with success, how do we maintain it? What is the thing we can give our kids? For the people of Hispanic backgrounds? The National Hispanic Institute. I mean, don't sleep on that National Hispanic Institute. They meet every year in the summer. They have different institutes in five, six different cities. There's one in the Northeast and highly achieving Hispanic children from all over the United States and international countries Come and learn how to debate, how to advocate, how the government works. They have the college access symposium when they're in 11th, 12th grade. They already have colleges that are working with them, right, so they're waiting for your kids.
Kay De Simone:So it's not only showing up for ourselves advocating, but it's like we need to concentrate on positioning. We need to concentrate on using the resources that are already available to us, because we already did the most dangerous thing that anybody could ever done. I always say, at the beginning of my life, I did the three more reckless things I could have ever done. I was born brown, poor and female, right, so we did our dive, we transitioned, we've been going through the grinder for things, but we're in the space and it's like we started from the bottom. Now we're here and we wanna make here even better, because we are disturbing, because our voices are important, because we bring life experiences and we bring this us home, right? This school, this organization, they're looking for you, they're looking for your kids, they embrace you, right. So we don't tell ourselves now, but what we do is we resource ourselves and find who's the person that knows, who's the connect. I tell my clients, I tell my kids, I tell myself every day, going to LinkedIn find two people every week. I do it every day, but if you don't have a press for time every week. Finally, it's two people that when you see them in their bio and their posts, you say I want that life Not that I want that life and I'm gonna take it from dude, but I want that life. And then all you have to do is go under bio and reverse engineer what they did.
Kay De Simone:When I go to open houses listen, I go to open houses when my kids already accepted to those schools. I go to the other schools to see what they got and I sit there and talk to them. We like, oh so, where's little Johnny doing this summer? That's how I find the school, but I have nobody to tell me what to go, what to do. But if you tell me he's going to this program, you know what I mean with my paper. He had to write in the sound and I had it in my little folder. Right? Who knows what you need? Right?
Kay De Simone:I've read this really good book. It's called who, not how, right, and it's changing our mentality. Who within our network can facilitate? What advantage can we bring to them? I always start, not by asking anybody I always connect with. This is who I am. How can I help? What do you need? What kind of life are you trying to build and then from my notebook I pull a sample I can give you this. I'm not even asking you for nothing, but the universe returns for you. Things tenfold and that has been my experience, right Of us showing up, owning our story.
Kay De Simone:There's a lot of messages about, you know, being ashamed of my financial aid kit. Listen, I'm a financial aid kit, I'm a financial aid mom, how you like me now, and then walking into this organization. We pride, right, because they're giving me this money, whether it's for myself or for my kids, but I'm giving them myself, I'm giving them my kid. They're winning. They still owe me, even after giving me this big scholarship.
Kay De Simone:My kids have received $2.5 million of scholarships and we have earned every single one of those dollars. We have also paid out of our mouth money that we didn't have. Okay, through our many times, because even though they give you very generous financial aid packages, there's still a gap that you have to cover, right, but we have earned that and I have. Listen, me and my kids. We're internationally known in the microphone. All of the Northeast, all the DC Long Girls schools will always make a space for us. They'll make the spot that give us the money because they know and I write in my letters, right, because they this is the whole thing. They interview the kid, they interview you. You have to write like 14 essays and all kinds of paperwork and I have the goal and the certain feeling in my heart that I write on my essays.
Kay De Simone:I know my daughters are gonna be successful, whether you accept them to the school or not. If you want to be part of their story because there will be children to be claimed in the newspapers and these are the children that I'm raising If you want to be part of the story, get on on, but they will be successful whether they're accepted to the school or not. I am also the financial aid mom that looks at the director of admissions on her eyes or his eyes and said out of my mouth and I say out loud to the universe I am on financial aid today. I want buildings with my name on it and I see that, like I have seen everything else that has come to pass. Right, that's the certainty of the work that I'm doing and the work that I'm doing with myself and for my kids. Right, we show up and we've earned our spot every day. This is one of the lines of my essay. We will get accepted and we will work every single day to re-earn the spot and the investment that you're making.
Kay De Simone:That's a gangster move that has been proven over and over and many people oh, I got into the school, I got into BU, I got into the whatever the TAF and this and that, and then I really hype when they get the letter. But then they start slacking mm-mm. Not us. We ran our spot every day. That's part of our brand and we have delivered. And it might be that you're like, I'll be like they don't have the highest SAT because they don't, because, oh my God, your kids went to this grade school. They might be so gifted. They're not gifted. We are working right.
Kay De Simone:We hustlers gifted that. It comes easy. That's not a thing, not for my kids. Some people do have that blessing. I've seen it myself. They don't have the higher SAT, but I can promise you here that they will graduate and they will finish, because if I have to throw them by their teeth, oh the fans, that's what we're gonna do. Right, and it has come to pass. So it's just showing up for ourselves and not being ashamed of our story.
Kay De Simone:I drive a Honda Civic, you have your Maserati, like, let's say, it's all good. You know, we don't have to share our story with everybody either. Right, nobody's entitled to our story either. We have to have scripts for that too. I would navigate the world, have the interact with others. Oh, you're going, you're all going to Miro Beach in the break. Yeah, I'm gonna go check on my grandma to see what's up, without internalized, and that makes you less. Oh, they're gonna think about me. No, it just. This is a delivery, right, so you can create all those structures for yourself.
Kay De Simone:So life just feels easier, right, when people like us are looking for education, high income and you know the white picket fence. We're not looking because we're trying to bling, bling, right, because those things give us what. They give us safety. They give us protection right. They get. Living in a better neighborhood gives you a better chance at having a good school system, at having less issues with violence right. Having a good job gives you more of an ability to have all your benefits medical for 1K, all this stuff and having a steady income. This is what we're looking for. We're looking for this this moment like this. That is all we're pursuing with everything that we do, right, and it's just creating mantras for yourself. I say to myself I deserve the world and everything in it. I say to myself I'm not the one and I'm not and definitely not the two. I say to myself, who's gonna apply to me? But I also say to myself nobody's gonna go harder and smarter. Harder by itself is not enough. The harder, the smarter. Very few can do it right.
Raul Lopez:Yeah. So it's a lot to unpack on that and it reminds me of a lot of things, because a lot of things you point out are very true. And there is this. There's just kind of a little go, a little bit back on what you were saying, but there was this part of this, I guess kind of like generational trauma, that you deal with your parents and moving forward. And I think at this generation of our generation, we're kind of a little more read up and more open to changing who we are, to improve ourselves, as opposed to sticking to what we've been dealt with our whole life. And so I have a daughter now she's 10, and I'm raising her completely different than when I was raised.
Raul Lopez:I don't hit her, I talk to her I try to talk back.
Kay De Simone:She gets to talk back she converses with you.
Raul Lopez:We try to talk as adults. You know what I mean and I try to keep it where.
Raul Lopez:it's like if she has an issue and she gives me an attitude, it's like I don't talk to you that way, you don't talk to me that way. But also I work on building skill sets that I never had confidence in yourself. She'll tell me I can't do something and I say no, it's not that you can't do nothing. Is that you don't have enough experience that it's easy for you and you have to work a little harder and practice more to get that skill set that you wanna get.
Raul Lopez:You wanna try to build risk-taking teach her that hey, it's okay to try something that you're afraid of and hopefully it'll help you get where you want. But the stuff that I do, and it's even my dad's journey from being proven. Raised by, he never knew his dad and so he came to this country. He sacrificed everything, worked hard, blue collar, old school proven. I used to get beat all the time. You know what I mean. It was very part of whatever.
Raul Lopez:And now he's in the 60s and retired and we sit down and talk and he'd meet him talk all the time now, compared to when I was little, and he will even come to me and says I love the way you're raising your daughter. I grew up I didn't know how to raise kids. I was doing it myself and you're doing stuff that I wish I would have done with you guys, and I told him it's a journey for all of us and you did the best you could, and you should be proud of where I'm at and be proud of the fact that I'm able to take what you did and try to improve on it. You know what I mean and for a lot of us, I think we talk about generational wealth, generational stuff, but it's very important the way you put it out, Whereas like not just generational wealth, but let's improve our generational trauma so that we can become more successful and get over it.
Raul Lopez:So I think that's very beautiful and I think it's a wonderful thing, and I love the advocating for yourself, which is another thing we all don't do very well, because we do. All of us have always been in a situation where we know that one asshole who works half as hard, gets twice the promotion and does make some money, lives a better life than you ever did. Why? Because he knows his shit don't stink. Well, he thinks his shit don't stink and he's always willing to push himself in that situation.
Kay De Simone:To put it so, like I said, but it is also the fact that that guy has a network. That has a network and also it could be the smaller and the bigger things like like we don't know, like we get this job, we're tired, like we don't like, oh, I'm not going to that happy hour, that's stupid.
Kay De Simone:Oh no, you better go to the happy hour because if you don't go to the happy hour, nobody's going to put you in their project. They don't know who you are. People want to work with people that they like, even if they're incompetent. So those are the differences. For us, it's like the best has to win and the vector will be, you know, the person that deserves it the more. But that's not the reality. That's not how the world works. But we can use that to our favor also. Right, by staying observant, by strategizing, by connecting ourselves with something that's bigger than us, all of the organizations, the fraternities, the professional organizations. If you have children being involved with the PTA, having the teachers know who they are and who you are, so when the favor or the accommodation is needed, it's already within the level of reciprocity that they will have towards you.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, and it's not to say that like I don't believe the idea that there are no obstacles that we ever have to overcome that are placed in those space over a race or wherever from, and stuff like that there is, there's always something societal that we overcome, but the opportunities are there and a lot of times we don't know which opportunities are there for us to take or that they're even worth taking for us. You know, that's kind of one of the reasons I want to do the podcast like this it's like they're there.
Raul Lopez:Those happy hours aren't just for people to go get a beer and free food. Go and meet your coworkers, because at some point you might need to reach out to them because they left your job and they might need something.
Kay De Simone:Or they go 100%, or when they have a lot of these top companies in finance and tech. Their evaluation is horizontal versus also vertical. So even the people that are under you are reviewing you, and the people that are on top of you and the people on your side. So it's like this very macro evaluation. What is the perception of you in those spaces? And by doing your own healing, by reframing your narrative of who you are, by accepting that the things that you want are for you to want, it's not for your mom or your cousin and your neighbor, it's for you to want, right, and that you are so deserving, and that whatever skills you're missing, we simply patch it up. I say, for example, that the iPhone is one of the greatest pieces of technology ever invented and the iPhone in all its greatness. Every month, be like I'm gonna update myself, whether you want it or not, 12 o'clock, I'm upgrading my system. We can look at it from that perspective too, where these are simple skills that we have to agree. These are different instances that we have to release and there is a way, there's evidence-based ways that work.
Kay De Simone:Nobody has to be in therapy for five years and 10 years. Oh my God. If I start therapy, I'm gonna be there forever. Now, if you're going working with an efficient therapist that's properly trained, certified, has cultural competence, most people don't have to go to therapy forever. They can go for a few months, they go for a year and then after that they're fine. If you have a chronic condition, then you need ongoing support. That's a different story. But the big part of the population you said tune up and if therapist is really an adult, that's gonna talk to you about whatever you want for an hour and your insurance is gonna cover it. Sign me up. I have a therapist and that way I talk and I complain and she's neutral and she calls me on my bluff and she redirects me. Therapies have therapists and so much so that therapy is tax-adoptable for therapists. Are you like me now?
Raul Lopez:Yeah, I told you at the beginning before we started recording. It's a journey that we keep popping up. It's a part of people's journey that keeps popping up has improved their mental health and seeing therapists in almost all my interviews and it was something that, while I always recommended, I never felt the need to it and now I'm taking that steps to be like I'm gonna go see a therapist.
Kay De Simone:Absolutely, and they even ask me do you have any issues?
Raul Lopez:Like I don't have any issues, but I figure it's not gonna hurt me if I try it and it's been wasted on my insurance for the past 15, 20 years.
Kay De Simone:Let me take it I'm about to cash those vouchers in absolutely what's the worst?
Raul Lopez:that's gonna happen. I get better at being who I am.
Kay De Simone:Right, and also the other thing that I wanna add, as you're saying that when people are looking, there are certain resources that we can post to help them and stuff, but it's just like doing your nails or getting a haircut. If you go to a barber and he messed up your hair, what do you do? I'm never going to the barber again Screw my nails.
Raul Lopez:I look like a monster forever.
Kay De Simone:No, you're like oh, I'm never going back to that salon, but maybe I'll try somewhere else. And it's the same thing. There are skills and resources that we can provide so people can find the right thing. But remember this is a paid job. You're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you for the match. You have to feel comfortable with them. You have to feel like in the future you'll be able to share certain things right. You have to be a knowledgeable customer because you are disturbing.
Raul Lopez:Okay, look, I really appreciate you taking the time. Your journey has been amazing and you've hit so many, like I think, important things and I'm definitely looking forward to have you more and things. But one of the things I do like to ask everybody that comes in here is kind of, I think, reflecting back on everything you've done and going back, and if you were able to go back in time and talk to yourself again at a younger you and give yourself some advice, what's something you'd tell yourself?
Kay De Simone:I think I would tell myself too, not tell myself now, right. So this is something that I learned, like I said, from this great mentor, my second mother, philly's Aline. She taught me not to say no to myself, right so, show up, send the application, show up to the event, apply for the school, apply for the position. Don't tell yourself now, just give your best effort and release it into the universe, right. So that was very, very helpful for me to learn around when I was in my late 20s, because it changed the perspective of everything that I do. I see things more from the perspective of doing the best effort, showing up, taking the shot, and then I have become very able to release it.
Kay De Simone:So, like, let's say one, of the things that I want to do in order to be able to share and to connect people with information and resources. I'm going to be pursuing Events and media and I'm pitching for a TED Talk and then I practice in and pitching to different organizations that do TED. And it's just like I did my application, I sent it and the second next. So it's just showing up when we are looking at, say, to the schools for the children, like I was saying, in the defendant schools, the schools were $70,000 a year, like for fourth grade, like many men, like you know, and then you see this price, you're like, oh my God, I could never, but you don't know how, the way it's going to remain just have to show up. You have to build yourself to a place where most likely things that you're going to win you know, and I'm very audacious when it has to go without Like, I'll be in my Instagram and be like I'm going to get a TED Talk. Mind you, I got no TED Talk yet, but I've been saving articles. I've gone to three, four TED Talks. As a matter of fact, I'm going to one. Today. In the afternoon I signed up for some Facebook group with a person that is like the TED Talk Whisperer, I already said it and I know what's going to happen right. So I'm not telling myself no, I am preparing myself, I'm positioning myself so that the things that I want will come to pass. So it's not telling yourself now, but also preparing in advance, before you need it, even for my doctoral degree.
Kay De Simone:I've been thinking of a doctoral degree for seven years now and finally I was able to enroll and I applied and I was accepted and I went to open houses. I had my little folder putting a lot of things. I was on everybody's newsletter but because of my life and my children were younger, I had to advance more of my career, so they wouldn't even consider me. But the year that it was like boom, the kids are bigger, the students are graduating, the one is going to high school. I applied and I sent that application and I released it. It's an R1 research institution, one of the strongest university in the South, ridiculously wealthy, very, very competitive, and I was accepted. But if they were not accepted, by the same token, the point is not telling myself no and continuing to prepare, and I think when you can put those two things together, it can allow you to get everything that you want, and also everything that you need.
Raul Lopez:Nice, awesome, and I think I love the whole concert. I think it's something that this whole, the whole thing of telling yourself you can do it, believing in yourself, and not telling yourself, no, it's true, I mean, there's so many opportunities, I probably just applying for jobs, oh, I don't have the experience for that. And then you come to find out you don't need it.
Kay De Simone:Yeah, the Tom and Tucker. They're applying no experience and no knowledge. They apply anyway.
Raul Lopez:And I guarantee you I'll have a better interview. It's just, it's just believing in yourself sometimes and that confidence. And I think my last question for you, it's probably gonna be the most important question ever as a sneakerhead what's your favorite sneaker style?
Kay De Simone:So I'm partial to Jordans, so I love Jordans in all colors, particularly red, beige. And also when it has to do with the sneakers, I want to let you know that I never have sneakers. So when I'm doing presentations I tell people I was raised with shoes from La Sirena and then eventually here the stays from like Kmart, which most young people don't know what Kmart is, but it's the sad sister of Walmart. And I didn't get my first actual 90s like real 90s, until I was 40 years old and it was a gift from my partner and it was such a moment and then after that, forget it. It was like Donkey Kong, but it was such a challenging thing to do because it took 40 years. And then now I have like a sneaker collection that I don't make like Roman cry. But the most beautiful part of that is you can go from being the kid that has no sneakers no sneakers, definitely no Nike sneakers to grow up to be the adult that not only has a Nike collection but that Nike pays our money to see their employees. So that is that journey that while we're in it, we're in it to win it, and anything that you have you cherish, but everything you didn't get. You can go back and get it and that is the beauty of our journey, right?
Kay De Simone:I never went to no study abroad. Listen, I was like what? I'm 50, I'm gonna go to study abroad. I started applying and figuring it out. I had never been in a dorm in a college because I was always a community student, because money, obviously, and they had my residency, my doctoral degree I was so excited for that little twin bed. It was like, oh, I was like I was storming myself in the floor of excitement. I had my little dorm, I'm probably even decorations. I did too much of a song for five days.
Kay De Simone:But everything that you have, you cherish, and everything you don't have, you can go back and get it right when we're in the spaces, for example, when they independent schools, very wealthy families and they always have a lot of like hair rooms, right, oh, this watch was my grandma's and this was this earring for my great grandma. I don't got none of that, but you know what I got? What I got is I can go to eBay and I'm gonna buy everybody's grandma stuff and I'm gonna be the grandma. I am the grandma. So I didn't have that.
Kay De Simone:I don't have that for my children to be like oh, this is from my great grandma. No, don't you worry, I can create a task about that sorrow, about that hurt, about that lack. And I said, what can I do? And I was like, oh, look at eBay with all this vintage watches and rings and necklaces. So my children are getting that and my grandchildren will have it. Whatever you don't have, you can go get it and while you're working and pursuing whatever that is, you can heal your inner child right? The sneakers are not only sneakers for me. I mean, they were fly and they gave me a lot of compliments for sneaker hats when I'm traveling.
Kay De Simone:But it's for me, for that little girl that didn't have it Every time I go to my class and I'm like you know, and all of the things you can get whatever it is that you're lacking, not permanent, it's not personal damage. Put it on a board, write it down, do the work show up, and the universe is always going to deliver you. It has for me.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, no, it's funny because I grew up on Payless shoes and I remember the first time I got a pair of Reeboks. It was it was, but it wasn't like the fanciest, it just happened to be like the.
Raul Lopez:so we were going to a wedding and my Payless dress shoes did not fit me anymore, so we had to go buy new shoes. But Payless was closed. There was only this one store in Patucket called Apex, which was kind of like a local version of like, kind of like a Sears. You know. They sold a little bit of everything, so they have the little sneaker section in the head. So my dad was going to go buy me shoes, but he's like I'm not going to spend 30, 40 bucks on a pair of dress shoes that you're only going to wear now and then you probably won't wear it for as a time. So it was like let me buy you some. Let's find a black pair of sneakers, and there was a black pair of sneakers, and there was a Reebok.
Raul Lopez:Then he bought me a Reebok and I was like oh so excited, like I got my fair. I got a fair of Ree. I wore the shit out of those shoes.
Kay De Simone:Yeah, I can imagine you were in school. In the back they wore fancy they weren't anything special but they were.
Raul Lopez:And I got like this, like one of my childhood stories. I'm like, oh my God. And then, when I got older, I finally started working and I bought my first pair of Jordans because the buddy of mine worked at the store and he was able to give me a hookup. So I got, I paid him $65 for a pair of Jordan ones the day before they release oh, I'm sorry, $85. And the next day I got to pick them up before people, before the store opened. So I went to school with the new Jordans that came out.
Kay De Simone:Oh, okay, and I was like you were a dugger, and so now, yeah, so now.
Kay De Simone:Jordan ones are like my favorite ones to keep buying and when we think about things like that is also what I would tell myself is like the world is bigger than what we think. Like I do this work now because of the nature of the people that I work with. It's like I learned all these things right that I didn't know myself, even as a professional person. Like, oh, did you know that if you work for Nike, you get 40% off of all their products? Do you know that if you work for Peloton, they give you a free bike to take home right Now? These people have all these bonuses and they have seniority bonuses in all these trips Like we don't know anything about. Like your company paying for you to travel to conferences and then you get a per diem. Like for me also, that's one of the things that I want to work on going forward. It's like so that I can give that information to the kids.
Kay De Simone:The kids are going through it right now. They are eating you know, those ramen noodles in the dorm and the floor that nobody can come and visit them on parents weekend. Like those kids that are like us, they need to know how life looks on the other side and that's why I made time to speak with you and I am so grateful that you're doing this work, because the kids are in school now. They need to know that, all this effort that they're doing, what's going to be the bounty when they get there, and they need to see people like us that are living a life that we dreamed and worked for and that's still. We have a runway of what comes next. Like I didn't get it myself Thinking about what comes next for me and I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, like it is very exciting.
Kay De Simone:You can build a life that you're excited about, that you are getting back, but that also people are pouring into you. So it feels very organic and just very joyful.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, and it's definitely like I said when I did this podcast. I've always kind of want to do something to give back and help people and I'm like you know it's we don't record enough of us. You know, we don't have a record of us and our stories and our journeys and what we did to get to where we are, because it's we feel, like it's hidden and where the only one's doing it. And you know, 20 years ago, you know no internet. Like you said, there was no internet. Now let's present it, let's show them what we're made of. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time. It was great talking to you today, but thank you so much.
Kay De Simone:Thank you so much for having me and I definitely look forward to all of your episodes and I'll be listening.
Raul Lopez:Thank you, and I definitely want to have you back in the future to discuss some more stuff as well, so keep me, keep me on your LinkedIn and send me messages sometime. Okay, very good, thank you. But to everyone else listening, thank you again so much for all your support. I appreciate you guys listening in and I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue to learn how to say success in Spanish Situation of demand Helloregation.
