A Basket of Letters

One simple prompt that helped me realign with my purpose.

These last several years have felt like a blink of an eye. In May of 2021, I packed up my loft in Rhode Island and drove down 95 South to Northern Virginia to start a new chapter. Once I got to the DMV, I quickly immersed myself in a church community and by fall of 2022, I got baptized and gave my life to Christ. In July of 2023 I got engaged, and by fall 2024, I had gotten married, moved in with my husband and celebrated it all with our closest family and friends in Portugal.

After what felt like a sprint, laying down the foundation of my life, I returned home from my wedding in 2024 ready to start building. But when I looked at where my career was taking me, I wasn’t excited about what was ahead. At that time, I had been wanting to leave my job for a couple of years. I’d felt so disconnected from my work in tech and, simultaneously, I watched myself fall deeply in love with different art mediums, in a way I had never experienced.

Though there was little I enjoyed about work, I’d still managed to develop and nurture beautiful relationships, sharing the joys and pains beyond my 9-5 with a client who’d evolved into a friend. Her and I found ourselves in similar seasons and she recommended I connect with someone who’d been extremely helpful to her during that time — a friend turned life coach. Coincidentally, the friend of hers was a former employee of the firm I worked at, and she’d been his client almost a decade ago.

By this time it was late November 2024 and in advance of the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to take an additional two days off to enjoy a staycation in DC. I wanted to be intentional about creating time to pause before the year ended and I also thought that’d be a perfect time to connect with the life coach. I spent the first day of the staycation mostly praying and journaling, doing my best to be still before what I had planned for the second day.

I strategically scheduled my meeting with the life coach for the morning of day two. That morning was slow: I’d woken up, called my husband and began getting ready for the day. When the time came, I logged onto my computer to meet the life coach and the conversation quickly took flight. I asked him about his time at our firm, and we soon pivoted to the work he was doing as a life coach.

Soon after sharing pieces of his story, he turned the dialogue over to me, asking about the series of events that led me to him that day. I felt like I didn’t even know where to start or how to explain how I got there, but little by little I began to share. The life coach knew the exact questions to guide the conversation and as I continued to reveal more about my current state of uncertainty, he introduced a prompt to anchor the rest of our time together:

Imagine you’re 80 years old and everyone has gathered to celebrate you. In preparation for the occasion, people have written you letters and they brought them all to the party. They placed the letters in a basket by your feet and have begun to read them aloud — what would those letters say?

Before I could even think about my responses, I immediately starting crying. As I reflect on those emotions, I was so tearful because I was prompted to think about my legacy through the lenses of other people and I felt an immediate sense of responsibility. I knew that, after answering, I would introduce a level of accountability to commit to this journey — not only for my own life, but also for how it would shape the lives of those around me.

After posing the question, the life coach paused to keep the prompt completely open for interpretation, and following a brief moment of reflection, I ultimately shared three things. I told him, ‘the letters would somehow say’:

I laughed as number three came out — kind of out of embarrassment, but I knew my life’s story would be incomplete without it. It was a reminder that we find deep fulfillment in our truest identity, and for me, a part of that has always been tied to fashion.

After sharing, I immediately felt a sense of relief. In some ways, I felt like I had my answers and that those three responses made me complete. From there, I knew I just had to work backwards from those letters.

The mission became clear: find the environments, people, and resources to best position me to reflect God’s love, continue to be curious about other people’s stories and celebrate those stories, all while being fly.

The prompt also grounded me, in a season where I felt like I didn’t know much, the very tail end of my story was especially clear to me and I knew I could return to it If I ever lost my way.

Now in July 2025, still at the same job, I’m fervently chasing after anything that would make those letters true. It hasn’t been easy but I’ve taken small steps (like starting this newsletter) to make sure I walk alongside the path that gets me there. I’ve already learned so much in the handful of steps that I have taken and I’m excited to share those reflections in Letters from Leticia.

I hope you take some time to think about what your basket of letters would say, and more importantly I hope we all find the courage and tenacity to have our lives reflect that exact story.

Thanks so much for reading.

Talk soon,

Leticia

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