I gave away my television in 2013.
Not in protest. Not as a statement. I simply felt called to live inside my own story instead of consuming someone else’s.
So when I do watch something now, it is deliberate. And usually, it is with my mother.
She doesn’t really watch television either. She says she only feels like enjoying a film or series when I visit because I “make it richer.” She asks me to pause scenes, to explain choices in color palettes, cryptic dialogue, and what the silence between two characters is actually saying. A one-hour episode becomes two. Time doesn't matter. She leans in. We connect. It's lovely. So much has healed between us. We did the work. Now we get to enjoy this life together.
Recently, we sat side by side and watched Drops of God. The year before, it was Foundation. Somewhere between pause and play, between my mother’s questions and my explanations, I realized something was happening.
I wasn’t just watching a story.
I was remembering my own.
Not because I believe I can predict the future. I don’t. I am careful with that. But I do recognize patterns, especially the ones I have lived through.
And both series speak about the same inheritance: integration.
The Mathematician and the Seer
In Foundation, Gaal Dornick carries two seemingly opposing gifts: mathematical brilliance and intuitive sight. In Drops of God, Camille Léger must refine both instinct and discipline to step into her inheritance.
Neither wins by choosing one over the other.
That tension, between intuition and structure, has shaped my life.
When I was in fifth grade, I was chosen for an advanced mathematics program. I remember the bus rides to a different school, the quiet feeling of entering another world each morning. I remember missing my friends. I remember feeling expanded.
That year rewired something.
On rainy weekends, I would sit on the floor and complete 10,000-piece puzzles for joy. I painted imagined scenes in oil. I taught myself guitar and wrote melodies that felt older than me.
There was no war between logic and imagination.
They moved together.
I didn’t know then that the world would ask me to choose.
"Mathematics gives us the map, but our 'seeing' (our intuition and love) gives us the courage to walk the path."
The Store That Shifted the Air
In my twenties, I managed a high-end boutique that built custom furniture in California. I could feel, the moment I stepped inside, that something was off. The craftsmanship was exquisite. The presentation was not. Not for city life.
Lighting. Placement. Material tension. Story.
After a year of proving myself, I was given permission to reimagine the space. I placed a bold order, designed pieces specifically for modern city dwellers, including hand-painted fixtures from Italy that I knew would anchor the identity of the brand if the right balance of artful fixtures were invested.
Months later, the shipment arrived. My team and I worked tirelessly to transform the showroom. When the doors opened the next morning, the atmosphere felt different.
Within weeks, revenue tripled. One of the lowest-performing stores in a six-location company became the highest.
It was exhilarating. Not because of the numbers, but because what I had seen internally now existed externally. Vision had translated into form.
I remember standing in that space after closing one night, lights dimmed, feeling the quiet satisfaction of alignment.
That was my first proof.
It was also my first lesson in power .
Success does not always feel celebratory to everyone in the room. I was young. I did not yet understand hierarchy, insecurity, or the subtle ways vision can threaten structure.
I left.
Entrepreneurship was calling.
Building Before I Understood the Weather
I formed my first corporation soon after. A design company importing the very hand-painted Italian lighting company's collection I helped blossom financially. I was offered the exclusive rights in my region. I taught myself how to code and built one of the early high-end e-commerce sites before most believed luxury could live online.
Within months, the website won a coveted "Cool Site of Day Award". I was featured in leading business publications. I was invited to speak in Washington, D.C. I met world leaders through an entrepreneurial program to share my story and discuss small business policy — in my twenties.
It felt like momentum. Like confirmation.
Then Europe consolidated its national currencies into a single monetary system. Exchange rates locked. Tariffs shifted. It was financial chaos and the devastation of small businesses worldwide.
My shipments nearly tripled in cost.
There was no villain. No conspiracy. No cosmic targeting.
It was macroeconomics.
I understood aesthetics. I did not yet understand currency exposure or how quickly global restructuring can compress a margin.
I tried to hold it together. I couldn’t.
The corporation dissolved.
From the outside, it looked sudden. From the inside, it felt like standing in the tide, arms full, trying to keep everything from being pulled out to sea. The shame I felt was heavy.
But what I know now is this:
I was visionary.
I was not yet structurally prepared.
And those are different skills.
When I hear conversations today about tariffs, shifting trade alliances, digital currency experimentation, or capital moving toward gold and silver during uncertain cycles, I don’t feel prophecy.
I feel recognition.
The world restructures itself from time to time. Systems evolve. Frameworks shift.
The lesson is not fear.
The lesson is integration.
Creative sovereignty requires imagination and infrastructure. Without both, brilliance exhausts itself.
The Street in Miami
During this difficult transitional period, my best friend Dee Dee bought me a ticket to join her on a 4-day trip to Miami to celebrate her birthday. I had fallen ill and wasn't up for the trip. I declined but then decided at the last minute to "breathe warm air into my lungs" as Dee Dee suggested.
We arrived, dropped our bags and immediately set out to grab a bite. Dee Dee gets motion sick when she flies and insists on traveling on an empty stomach, which means the moment we land, she becomes a “big bear.”
We were walking down Collins Avenue when she said, “I need to feel my feet in the ocean. I’m a Pisces.”
I laughed. Not knowing anything about astrology other than the basics. I said, “I’m a Libra. I’d like a harmonious day. Let’s stay on Collins so we can get you fed.”
We had already crossed toward the beach when she stopped.
“You’re right,” she said. “Let’s go back.”
So we turned around.
One minute later, my estranged father — whom I had not seen since I was a teenager — was walking directly toward me.
As he walked past me, I felt something shift in the air.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just precise.
A few steps later I said, barely above a whisper, “That was my dad.” Dee Dee didn’t hesitate. “Can I go get him?” Something in me, deeper than pride or fear, said yes.
As he walked back toward me, I felt a stillness settle over everything. If Dee Dee had not been there to witness it, I’m not sure anyone would believe the timing of it. We had almost chosen the ocean. We had already crossed the street. We had already redirected our steps.
And yet we were exactly where we needed to be.
He invited me to join him for dinner the following evening.
I agreed, privately vowing to give him twenty minutes.
Only twenty.
When I arrived, he opened with a single line:
“I want to tell you about a man, his wife, and his children.”
In that moment, I knew.
He was ready. Ready to speak plainly. Ready to offer context. Ready to close what had been left open for years.
He apologized for leaving us. Honored my mother, admitting: "Your mother was the best thing that every happened in my life."
I'm usually not at a loss for words and had prepared many for my dad, but in that moment all of that over-thinking, and all of the burdens just dissolved — for both of us. I sat there and listened. He was a hurt person who hurt people deeply. I truly saw him for the first time. It was a lot to process. I held space for him, for myself, for the moment—the power of repentance and the healing it provides. It was a gift from the Most High delivered right on time.
Dinner lasted four hours.
Four hours of stories.
Of history.
Of perspective.
Of humanity stripped of myth.
It changed the course of my life.
Not because something supernatural happened, although that is what it felt like, but because something unfinished became complete.
Divine timing is REAL.
Witness matters.
Dee Dee’s presence mattered. The near-miss of the ocean mattered. The turn back to Collins mattered.
Sometimes life arranges steps we could not choreograph ourselves.
That night, I left with clarity.
He said, “Don’t do what I did. Follow your dreams.”
And I did.
Not recklessly.
Not to prove.
But with integration.
Sitting Beside My Mother
Which brings me back to the sofa.
Back to my mother pressing pause and asking why a character looked away at a particular moment, the subtext in the dialogue, the director's intention. Mom is seeing the deeper layers of the art form. It makes me smile.
In Drops of God, the inheritance is not wine. It is discernment. Camille does not win because she feels deeply. She wins because she learns to pair instinct with discipline.
That is the inheritance.
Not money.
Not title.
Not validation.
Integration.
I gave away my television in 2013 because I wanted to live inside my own creation.
And yet here I am, years later, sitting beside my mother and watching a story about legacy, realizing the real inheritance was never external.
It was this:
Walk with intuition.
Build with structure.
Honor the moments that close loops.
Prepare for shifting tides.
Begin again — wiser.
The story did not begin on the screen.
It began long before.
And it is still unfolding —
here, now, on this screen,
within Idea Embassy,
in a life still being lived.
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