My name is Laurinda Andujar and I am the Founder of the Heal the City Tours, SheBlinked Literary Arts and Poetry and speaker at the John Maxwell Company. I grew up in a small town in Florida, I came from a single parent home and believe me my mother did the best she could with what she had.  

The things that I found myself struggling with the most, served as the catalyst for change not only in myself, but also in how I would interact with others moving forward. Those “challenges” shall we call them would leave me on a quest to help others realize not only their potential, but their self-worth and value. I needed them to understand how critical they were to the overall success and goodwill of this planet called Earth.

So you may ask why? Why in the world would I care about others? How did I expect to have an impact on their lives? Who would trust what at times seemed to be a perfect stranger with their most intimate secrets. I did it because I felt a social responsibility to do so. I did it because I witnessed all of these broken people trying to lead others… at times without one single ounce of emotional intelligence. I did it because I could not have been the only one out there dealing with these types of issues.

Early on in life, I would learn that life owed me nothing. I as a child experienced things the adult mind was not capable of processing. I would be labeled a victim, because I had been molested by a family member for years, which warped my view of relationships. I watched my mother endure countless nights of domestic violence. She was in the fight of her life.

As a child myself I had to play the role of mother at times. I would find myself baby-sitting being considered a baby so my mom could put food on the table. We were all we had. I guess you can say that’s where my protective instincts were born. When I wasn’t protecting myself or others I found myself creating alternate realities. Places where I was safe, places that I could win, places where I would be considered whole.

The problem is my alternate realities would fade away and I’d be left with reality. Later in life I would find myself in leadership roles. I would recognize some of these challenges in others and I would feel compelled to help them. That’s when I learned that we as people shared more in common than we had differences. The thing that we would find that we had in common was that we were all individuals trying to keep our heads above water. We were trying to take care of our families, and we just wanted internal peace.

Another thing that I would discover is that sometimes those in the leader role had not conquered their inner demons and were trying to help others fight theirs as well. That is the moment I decided there had to be more. So I would lace up my boot straps and fight for others. I would host conferences, which were free to the public. No gimmicks, no games. However one of the challenges that I would face is that people are so conditioned to believe that nothing worth having is free or easy. At times I found myself frustrated because I was serving up freedom on a platinum platter and few were willing to eat.