267: Building Confidence & Resilience w/ CoCo Leary

* Rough Transcript *

Opening

Cosette: Because you see, I was a chameleon, I could get polka dots, stripes, anything, whatever you wanted me to look like, be like, act like, tap dance like, I could do it, please see me. Hmm.

But was I seeing me? No, because I was too busy trying to get other people to see me. So I had to get past that.

Aurora: Welcome to the Embracing Intensity podcast. I’ll be sharing interviews and tips for gifted, creative, twice exceptional, and outside the box thinkers who use their fire in a positive way. My name is Aurora Remember Holtzman. After years of feeling too much, I finally realized that intensity is the source of my greatest power.

Now, instead of beating myself up about not measuring up to my own self imposed standards, I’m on a mission to help people embrace their own intensity and befriend their brains so they can share their gifts with the world through the Embracing Intensity community, coaching, educational assessment, and other tools to help you use your fire without getting burned.

You can join us at embracingintensity. com.

Introduction

Aurora: Hello. So as I’ve been slowly pulling myself out of burnout, I realized that there were some amazing talks from 2022 that I never got on the podcast due to the challenging move and exhaustion. You can find the full discussion from this call, plus all the past calls, including our most recent one on emotional intensity with Christine Fonseca in our guest call library and all access, embracing intensity membership.

You can find the link in the show notes or at embracingintensity.com/join. Joining a membership tier not only gives you access to a wide range of content, but it also helps support the production of this podcast and other free content. For over seven years and 267 episodes, I’ve produced the show without any sponsorships. And consistent memberships would allow me to focus on continuing to bring inspiring interviews and talks without slipping back into burnout.

This weekend I had the joy of revisiting my talk with Cosette “CoCo” Leary, and it was just the thing to lift my spirits. Her joy is infectious and her positivity is far from toxic because she never glosses over the tough parts. Plus she’s all about building community and held one of the last events I attended before the pandemic, and the first one I attended as we started going back out -masked. I hope her enthusiasm brings as much joy to you as it did to me. Enjoy!

Introduction and Welcoming Coco

Aurora: Welcome everyone. I’m so excited to have Coco. We’ve been talking about this for a couple of years. It took us a few years to get her on as the first interview.

And she’s doing such amazing things. And as she mentioned right before the call, she’s had. So much growth, even since our last call and the very first in person event that I attended after the pandemic was one of Coco’s where I met one of our other folks who’s joined us here as we introduce ourselves.

And so, Coco is just an amazing person with amazing connections.

Coco’s Unique Connection Style

Aurora: And one of the things that I wanted to share about how much I love Coco is she does something very unique, which is that she’ll send little voice messages and songs about how wonderful you are. And it’s one of those things that just makes my day every time I get one.

And it’s one of those things that someone with ADHD out of sight, out of mind, like I have a hard time with. Staying connected and communication as some of you might relate to. So that just, those little things just kind of make my day. So I love that about you, CoCo. That’s one of my favorite things.

Coco’s Journey and Upcoming Projects

Aurora: So like I said Coco and I have been talking about this for actually we were looking at last year and there was just so much going on for you.

I know. So I was so glad when you locked it in this year. Coco actually had moved away from Vancouver right after that event and is doing some amazing things. So you’re doing speaking with, you said the name and I’m so terrible with names and somebody big. Right?

Cosette: Yes, most definitely. I am in the process of courting and negotiating and getting things locked in to share the stage with Les Brown in September and Les Brown is, what do I want to say, like, The most famous motivational speaker in the world. So very happy about that. Again, we’re negotiating all those things and getting everything fine tuned.

This has been in the process since last year, 2021. Seeing how we were going to go about that. So I’m very excited. I’m very excited because Les is the actual person that really got me deep into wanting to be a motivational transformational speaker, reading his books, listening to his CDs. I first learned about a gentleman named Zig Ziglar.

And from learning about Zig, I ended up learning about Les. And so It’s an honor for me to be able to have this type of contact with producers and people who are working in my favor to get me to be able to speak alongside of him. That is like the most incredible thing you talk about from welfare to something that’s just unbelievable, but it’s believable because It’s in the processes.

And I’m looking forward to the finalizations of all of that. And it’s just an honor.

The Power of Dreams and the Importance of Support Systems

Cosette: I mean, you know, to talk about what dreams may come and what we can achieve in our lives and how important it is for us to be each other’s support system. I need to put a lot of emphasis on that. A lot of people talk about, you know, what we can do.

What we’re capable of without, you know, don’t limit yourself, all of these things. I don’t often hear people speak about that in the process of that having support systems, people that are in your corner, people that are cheering you on that are crying with you when you need to cry that are laughing with you when you need to laugh that are strategizing with you when you need to strategize that are saying I see you, you’re showing up, you’re amazing, I’m right alongside you.

You know, people can write books all day. People can do webinars all day. People can speak on stages all day. And those are great things. But I’m a firm, concrete believer that within all of that, please have enough humanitarianism, if I’m saying it right. To really care about people who are paying attention to what you say, who are listening and watching what you’re doing. Care enough to be a support system.

The Journey of Growth and the Responsibility of Lifting Others

Cosette: Don’t get to the point where you feel that you have arrived so much. And I want to put emphasis on that too, because we do arrive. I hear people say, well, we never truly arrive. Horse pucky. Yes, we do. And we keep arriving. Each time that we grow more and more, we are arriving.

But while we’re doing that, let’s please reach back and pull somebody else along the way with us, okay?

Just that little, you know, my name is Cosette Coco Leary and I support and endorse that statement. So that, you know, I’m excited about these prospects. It’s Like I said, it’s unbelievable, but it’s believable.

But again, support systems are very, very important. We have to be that for each other and for ourselves. We got to start doing better. I’m sorry, I can’t talk and not mention that we got to start doing better about that. We’ve got to support each other, whether it’s singing songs to each other or sharing what we’re doing or like.

You know, what we’re doing right here with Aurora being on her podcast, you know, she’s got this incredible platform. We have got to support each other.

Coco’s Call for More Human Connection

Cosette: And I really want to Also saying reach out to each other. Please. People don’t pick up the phone. No more. I want you to pick up the phone. Call each other.

I know we can message. I know we can text and all that. And I know we go through different things. I know there’s a whole plethora of things that people go through. People go through the comparativism. Oh, that person’s light is so bright. I don’t know what I would say if I get on the phone or the one that I love the most.

Well, I think you’re so busy. Now, let’s call each other, please. Take out the phone, call each other. Okay, I’m done with the soapbox. I just, I just have to say that. Let’s do that. Okay. So there we go, Aurora. That’s that.

Aurora: Awesome.

Building Confidence and Resilience

Aurora: So looking at the theme of building confidence and resilience, and I know you have a lot to say on that and you, as you mentioned the last year, the confidence piece really like, bloomed even more.

And so as I kind of made some notes, I was looking at like more chronologically, like the resilience, I think kind of comes first and then building into the confidence and you mentioned that you know, community and everything. And I think that’s really. Probably what’s helped a lot with building that confidence and everything like that.

Coco’s Early Struggles and Triumphs

Aurora: But considering that like early in your early years, you did not have a lot of support and yet you did some amazing things. And I know, you know, that’s not to be expected of everyone, but it, you broke out of the what’s possible paradigm at a very early point. And so I would love to hear from you a little bit about what you think helped you to build that resilience early on when you didn’t have the external support and what kept you going, knowing that these things were possible, even though there were barriers in the way.

Cosette: Thank you, Aurora. And like I said earlier, to you.

Coco’s Process of Self-Discovery

Cosette: I am so excited that we are having this topic. I’m so excited. I literally took notes and I’m celebrating that I took notes of things that I want to touch on. And thank you for bringing up the fact that I didn’t have a support system, which is why I have so much emphasis on having support systems of Venus support system because it was very hard.

I won’t I don’t sugarcoat anything. First of all, so I say it like it is from the hip. It was extremely hard. Number one, it was difficult because I came from direct poverty welfare check poverty. I had four children, we lived off of 742 a month.

That was my welfare check. It wasn’t because I wanted that. No. Yeah. Heck no. I didn’t want that, but I had grew up in orphanages and group homes and foster homes.

Struggles with Poverty and Aspirations for a Better Life

Cosette: So part of the inheritance of being awarded the court in that and a teen mom was you got a welfare check. Now you got a welfare check, but you didn’t get no tools to thrive.

Oh, yeah. Street level bureaucracy. You gotta love it. Gotta love it, honey. Right. So it was very difficult. And wherever I went for the most part, and I would tell people what I aspire to do with my life, what living legacy I wanted to give to my children. That’s great. But right now, we’re concerned with we want to get you a job at Target.

So let me explain we want to get you a job at Target. I always wanted higher education. Because whenever I would go into a welfare office, a housing authority, any form of social services, I knew the person behind the counter had a degree. And I knew that person had the authority to render me either eligible, you know, Are ineligible for benefits, and I did not want to constantly live my whole life begging to be poor again, but that’s what I did every six months.

I’d go in there with my social security cards and my kids social security cards birth certificates landlord statement. Please cosign for me to be poor another six months.

The fact that I had this idealism about myself that was not low income perspective. It was middle class perspective. Wait, upper echelon perspective. But my socioeconomic demographic said, Oh no, honey, that ain’t you. You weren’t born into that, you don’t even know any of that, you right where you supposed to be.

Overcoming Stereotypes and Assumptions

Cosette: So that’s what I would come up against when I would voice. The type of life I wanted to design for myself and my family, I would come up against the stereotypical responses, the assumptions, I would come up against people’s idea of my norm, but my norm wasn’t what they figured my norm to be. So yes, Aurora, at first I didn’t have support systems.

I had a ton of naysayers, a ton of poverty, and a ton of people just saying she’ll never get to do those things she’s talking about because look where she’s at in life. You know, she’s got an umbrella stroller with a three year old in it. She’s catching C Tran buses. She’s working, when she does work, she’s working these jobs at night.

You know, how is she? She’s got four kids and no parents and no sisters or brothers to watch the kids and how is she going to be? Where’s the resources?

Coco’s Journey to Self-Reliance

Cosette: Well, I’m very happy to say that I was the resource. I still am my biggest resource. Let’s go. Holla! Yes! Okay, so let’s get started with some of the things.

There are things I used to say to myself, and there’s three that I get right here.

The Struggle of Self-Validation

Cosette: And the first one was, I wish I could do for myself what I do for others. What do I mean by that? Well, I was always a go to good listener. I was always a go to problem solver, I was always a go to cheerleader, I was always a go to empowerment person.

For other people. You know why? I wanted to be liked, I want it to be accepted, I want it inclusion, I want it community. So I would be these things for people, but I didn’t even know how to be them for myself and it was crazy because I could do this for other people, but not for me. Then I tell others that they are enough, but I wouldn’t say that to me.

You know why? Because god dang it, welfare office, catching buses in the rain. Four different baby daddies looking for love in all the wrong places, never getting it, trying to give examples to my kids, and I don’t even know how. I’m not enough. Because if I was enough, I wouldn’t be going through this. So I’m going to find out how to become enough.

I know that I am awesome, but I don’t know how to be awesome. See, I always knew I was awesome. I always knew I was dynamic, I always knew I had the gift of gab, but I didn’t know how to be awesome, I didn’t know how to be dynamic, I didn’t know how to express my gift of gab in a way. That my poverty would not render me tone deaf, no one can hear me.

The Power of Choice: Fight or Fade

Cosette: So these were some of the things that I would say to myself when I was trying to discover how to have confidence and resilience. But you know the interesting thing about that is that these were the very same things that built my confidence. I wanted to do for myself what I did for other people, I wanted to know, believe, understand, and accept that I was enough.

I wanted to understand and prove to myself that I was awesome. And I did. So what is that like for people, for myself, coming from my demographic? What is that like? What is it like when you are so poor that the world can’t see past your poverty to see your dignity? Oh, a lot of people, they asked me, they’re like, Coco, how did you find the tenacity to do what you did?

Well, it was a choice. It was a choice of either fade to black, become completely invisible. Not have anything for my children and myself or fight like hell to be a voice for myself, my children and other people like me and other allies who would join with me. So that’s what I did. I fought like hell for myself and my children, other people like me.

And I went and found my allies. Thank you, Aurora. So with that, where did the process really start for me? Well, one of the things I began to realize was I had to take a very internal deep look at what I believe I had as a tool set.

The Journey of Self-Discovery and Expectations

Cosette: See, the thing is, a lot of times I had misplaced expectations. And you know what that bred?

Disappointment. And why do I say misplaced expectations? I was placing so much expectation on the acceptance of society that I was leaving the gates, windows, doors wide open for their opinions, their assumptions. And that was my disappointment. So then I had to start looking at myself and say, okay, what can I expect of me?

Rather than what I expect of them, because obviously right now they’re just looking at my situation most of the time, they’re not listening to me. They’re not seeing me. So I need to listen and see me. So that’s what I started doing. I began to have deep conversations with myself. Of my pros and cons. And what do I think I could do to get more cons?

I mean, more pros and cons. And so that’s where, you know, this misplaced expectation. I took the responsibility of having those expectations on myself. That is not to say Because I always have to do these disclaimers because people people love stuff that sound good. They love stuff that is shiny and wonderful.

So I have to always do these disclaimers when I’m talking. So that’s not to say that although I, you know, took complete responsibility,

that it was unreasonable for someone to come and help me along the way. It’s not unreasonable. So I don’t want to, you know, be like, Oh, well, I took full responsibility. But I still had so many intangibles that it would take a community, which I later began to call my sisterhood nowadays in my life.

The Role of Sacrifice in Success

Cosette: So then, one of the things I had to realize was not to lose my power, my authority over who I was in order to gain the acceptance of others.

Because you see, I was a chameleon, I could get polka dots, stripes, anything, whatever you wanted me to look like, be like, act like, tap dance like, I could do it, please see me. Hmm.

But was I seeing me? No, because I was too busy trying to get other people to see me. So I had to get past that. And then I had to realize that there is no level of success without sacrifice. But I didn’t want to be the sacrifice itself. But what I had to sacrifice was. Negative self talk, self doubt, fear factors.

These are all normal things, might I add, though. There’s no one walking on this planet that doesn’t have negative self talk, that doesn’t have fear factors, that doesn’t have self doubt. If they sayin it, they lyin Tell you right now. And they know it, too. So what I had to do, was I had to be able to detach myself from it.

I didn’t say get rid of it, cause that’s, that’s really, I don’t care, people will, like I said, people love the shiny words and everything, but I speak the truth! Because the truth is the only thing that sets us free anyway. So I didn’t say I got rid of it. I quit. And I said, I detached myself from it and started finding ways and things and components and examples to replace all of that.

Building Resilience and Setting Goals

Cosette: So the sacrifice that I had to make pretty much was I had to sacrifice entertaining those emotions and ideas. And I had to start saying, No one’s going to do this but me. So let me map out some ways to do it and that started building my resilience. I was resilient on what resources I had no matter how tiny they were.

And then I was resilient within my own get up and get out and get something. Okay, so that’s how that went. I went through the processes of it, you know. How do I introduce myself to society? How do I introduce myself to people in my community? You know, how do I go through this process in order to lead up to the promise that I want in my life?

And what is that promise? I want security, I want a decent home life, I want a car, I want food, I want to dress my kids in nice clothes from JCPenney’s. One day we’ll get to Macy’s. Maybe the gap, you know. But right now, JCPenney’s was great. They always had cute stuff. I wanted those things. That’s the promise.

I wanted an education. That’s the promise. I wanted to be a leader. That’s the promise. But I have learned that in order to be a leader, you’re really a servant, because if you don’t have anyone following you, you’re not leading nobody.

The Journey to Leadership and Overcoming Challenges

Cosette: But in order to really have people follow you, you have to be a leader that is able to have compassion, empathy, relatability.

If you don’t, you’ll come and go, you know, they might write about you in some history books, I have no idea. But at least for me. My perspective of being a leader was being someone who has walked a mile and people shoot, and we can get into that about how I ended up walking in middle class shoes and upper echelon shoes.

When I was on Capitol Hill in DC and all of that. So the thing is the promise, I was looking for the promise. I wanted a promise of being able to show myself and my children better. I didn’t want this narrative. Accepting that? Who cares what you say? I’m not accepting that. And I didn’t accept it. I found ways to I had one, one person tell me I circumvented the system.

I said, what is circumvent? Like me and Aurora was saying, in the average impoverished community, we have a vocabulary of 400 to 800 words, and we don’t talk in formal words, we talk in storytelling. So you come up with something like circumvent, I have no idea what the heck you’re talking about. But then they explain to me what that was.

And that’s not what I did. I didn’t go around everybody and this and that. No, I made a direct promise to myself and I followed that path. But for some people that circumvent whatever. Okay. So then when I was building my resiliency and I know Aurora was like, can you tell us how you did that? I did it out of desperation.

Coco’s First Tangible Success

Cosette: I didn’t have nothing else. Either I was going to sink or swim. That’s all I have. Those two things. I wasn’t trying to drown and sink. So I’m gonna find a way to swim.

That way presented itself for the first time as far as getting tangible results in 2004. And Aurora, I think we may have talked about this before when I wrote that CEO of that big Fortune 500 company.

We talked about that before. Okay.

Coco’s Inspiring Letter to a CEO

Cosette: So I wrote her a letter, read about her in a magazine, and I was working at her daycare. It was nap time. I was doing them magazine pullout art, you know, like I tell her when your kid comes home with a paper plate art with a big old piece of broccoli on it. And it’s like abstract art, you put it on the refrigerator.

Yeah, that’s me. That’s me pulling them pages out. I was pulling the pages out, and I came across a working mothers magazine. And even though my job would pay for squat, I was still a working mother. So I read these articles about the women in there, and one particular woman stood out. And she was the CEO of a major company.

In fact, her company owns all of Molly Maid, Mr. Reuter, The Window Doctor, Mr. Electric. All these are her franchises. What got me, to make a long story short, what got me was the fact that she mentioned women on welfare in her article! Because she was watching a waitress at IHOP hustle for tips. And she said when she got home, she was thinking to herself, if it’s that hard for that waitress and her feet must be killing her at night when she gets home.

What must it be like for women on welfare? Hot damn, what? I know I didn’t read that right. I know I didn’t read that right. So I commenced reading it a good five more times, but every time the sentence said the same thing. So like I told Aurora, I knew I had a decision to make. I decided to do what was upstanding, noble, practical, decent, forthright.

The Start of My Resilience Journey

Cosette: I stole the magazine.

I took that magazine home and I dialed 411 and I got the physical address of her company and the phone number and I wrote her a letter. That was being resilient. That was my first claim to fame. My first Taking my flag into the ground, saying this is my mountain that I’ve climbed, I wrote her a letter, I told her who I was, that I was an impoverished mom, that I had four kids, that I didn’t want this to be my life, but I wanted to go and get my destiny.

So that was the beginning of my resilience. Again, it came out of desperation. Very much so.

The Struggles of Poverty

Cosette: A lot of nights crying, looking at my kids not knowing what I’m gonna do. Don’t even get to back to school shopping, holidays, Christmas, everything. 742 a month for a family of five? And you mean to tell me I’m gonna allow society to tell me that’s gonna be my constant existence?

I’m about to flip them the birdie and say, heck no. That is not my existence. But I had to be resilient, out of desperation, enough. To forge a way to become confident.

Building Confidence Through Achievements

Cosette: My confidence came each time I decided to set a goal and go after it and achieve it. I achieved a lot of goals. I’m still doing that. But it’s the resiliency when we roll up our sleeves behind our closed doors.

Not necessarily what we show the world as our branding and all of that. When you are really gritty, what they call it when you’re dealing with your true grit, It’s When no one’s looking, mine was desperation when no one was looking.

The Power of Resilience

Cosette: And so, writing her that letter, she took me under her wing. She was amazed by me, and I was enthralled by her.

And she flew me out to her company as an honorary guest to their monthly franchise board meeting.

A Glimpse into the Rich Life

Cosette: She put me in a Hilton. And let me tell you about Rich People’s Continental Breakfast, baby! And see, I’m a girl from the hood, okay? Straight up ghetto, proud of it, I ain’t gonna lie. Ah! Right. Hood raised, Hood raised, Hood Rat, Hood Rat.

Yes. Mm hmm. Me and my Hood Rat, Hood raised self, always carried a big purse. And I opened up that purse and put every bagel, yogurt, sausage link. Girl! I was like, I’m having all this tonight in the hotel room. And I did. They know how to do up a breakfast. Let me tell you, and I learned so much when I was there in Waco, Texas.

That’s where her company is that I learned so much and saw an epiphany of despite all the naysayers of despite all the struggles of despite the desperation, my narrative. Can change. And it did.

The Power of Education

Cosette: She said to me, do you have a community college where you live? I said, yes, called Clark College. She said, I want you to take a public speaking course.

She said, you articulate so well. Here we go. I said, what is articulate? Cause again, I come from four to 800 words. You talk this stuff. She said to me, Oh, she explained to me. She said. You articulate well. That means when you talk, the way you express yourself, people can paint a picture in their mind of what you’re saying.

You give them a visual with your words. I said, oh, you mean I talk good? She started laughing, she said, yes, you talk good, Cosette, she said, I want you to go to school. I said, well, welfare won’t let me go to school. I’ve been battling with them for the longest time about this. I said, I don’t even know what to do.

She said, have you ever heard of a Pell Grant? I said, what is that? She explained to me what a Pell Grant was, what a FAFSA form was. And she said, I want you to go home, fill it all out, get your Pell Grant, and go to school. So, to make a lot of this, because this story is so long, it takes forever. I did what she said.

I went and took a public speaking class. And I got a B. Oh my gosh, shut up. Because I took the GED test five times before I passed it took me two years. So to get a B in my first community college class, Oh, you couldn’t tell me nothing. And I showed her my grade and you know what she said to me?

The Journey to Self-Confidence

Cosette: And I’ll run with it.

And I’ve been running with it every since. So my resilience came from my desperation. I begin to understand my misplaced expectations in other people that I should have these expectations in myself. I didn’t want to lose my power just to gain other people’s acceptance. Heck, half of the time they wouldn’t accept me anyway.

And I knew there wasn’t any success without my sacrifices. I had made those already. By standing my ground, I had made a sacrifice. I was sacrificing the fact that I wasn’t gonna believe when people said I was too poor to succeed and that I was too poor to lead. Because I wasn’t. I was actually everything I was supposed to be.

To succeed and to lead. We all are thing is we have to figure that out. Support systems help. Right. I had to understand that the processes that I was going through were to lead to my promise and that I have to expect a powerful what is the word I said? I have to expect my powerful unexpected.

The Power of Self-Belief

Cosette: You see, I was always expecting what was status quo and not realizing that by letting go of that and listening to my heart and my soul and my ambitions and my life experiences, my story, that my unexpected result would be success.

Now I’m successful, but I had to get out of character. What do I mean about getting out of character? I had to get out of the character of waiting for other people to co sign my talent, my gifts, my ambition.

Breaking Free from Expectations

Cosette: I had to get out of character so that the true Cosette Coco Leary could come and please stand up.

And it is my honor today to be with Aurora and all of you, standing in the shoes where I’m standing now. Understanding that I’ve shown my children other examples, and that they’ve taught me a lot, and they still are teaching me a lot. And that me and my kids are success stories in our own way, because we never tapped out.

And we never will tap out. You know what I mean? Seriously, we’re not going to tap out. We’re going to keep going. We’re going to keep going. So that’s where my resilience came from. Desperation. My confidence came from admiring myself. Within my resilience. So I will give it back to Aurora. See where you want to lead us now.

Aurora: I guess the two things that I had had note on when it comes to the resilience. Just sharing a little bit about what brought you the confidence and resilience to homeschool your kids who later you reflected might’ve been 2E as we were talking about twice exceptionality and then your experience coming back from your White House experience.

Cosette: All right. Okay, let’s make sure we get that.

The Power of Resilience in Homeschooling

Cosette: So when it comes to the homeschooling part. First of all, I was very frustrated with public school systems. My children were not being treated the way I preferred them to have been treated. So by the time I got to my two youngest children, I was very fed up. You know, My son, who is my youngest child and then my youngest daughter, I decided that there’s got to be a better way they my children often told me how much they couldn’t stand school.

You know, they didn’t like the teachers and I went head to head with teachers and principals and all of that before and part of this was when you have your children and low income schools.

It is terrible. You know, number one, they’re in overcrowded classrooms, which is always an issue. They’re in a community of other children who are living through crises every day, and teachers who don’t really get it.

The Turning Point: A Personal Story

Cosette: What made me go to homeschooling was one day, my son was at school, and he had left his backpack.

In our car, and I didn’t know that until later on that day, and so I decided to take it upon myself to take it to his school and give it to him. So when I went in his classroom, I didn’t see him anywhere. And the teacher said that he had gone to the office, and I said, Oh, okay. I said, Well, when he gets back, let him know, you know, I brought his backpack.

Now, brace yourself for this. When I pulled into the parking lot and parked, my son was in the principal’s office crying, looking at me out of the window, but I didn’t know he was doing that. So, when I went and got back in my car, he said he was screaming, Mommy, I’m in here, I’m in here, I’m in here. But I didn’t know that.

When he got home, he said, Why did you leave me in the office like that? I said, What are you talking about? He said, I was screaming for you through the principal’s office window. I said, What were you doing in the principal’s office and he began to tell me what he experienced that day and how he was trying to speak up for himself, but they would not listen to him.

So they made him spend the rest of that whole day in the principal’s office, and he said, Mommy, you left me there.

I looked up the story.

The Story of Toby: A Lesson for Educators

Cosette: It’s called a teacher story, and it’s about a young little boy who became a man named Toby. I had read that story, because even though my menial jobs of working in daycares didn’t pay much, I knew I was taking care of other people’s children, and I wanted to treat their children the way I would want someone to treat mine.

So I was always researching on how to be a great lead teacher, and I came across a teacher story about Toby. I printed that off, set an appointment with the principal, the school counselor, and me. And in that story, Toby is a little boy who, for the first couple of years of school, was considered a great student.

But by the time he got, like, in third grade, his behaviors started changing. He was troublesome in the classroom, and nobody wanted him in their class. So it came parent teacher conference time, and the teacher couldn’t wait to meet Toby’s parents, and tell them, there’s gotta be something to be done about their son.

Well, she met Toby’s mom, because you see, two years before, Toby’s mom died from a terminal illness around the time his behaviors started changing. And for all the time that they were labeling him, they were not looking underneath to find out if he was needing help. Oh, yeah. So the teacher, when she discovered this, she felt really bad.

Seeing Beyond the Surface

Cosette: She started to take a lot of time with Toby, and she watched him go from elementary school to junior high, to high school, on to college. When he graduated as a doctor, mind you, because she was always there to encourage him after then, kind of stepping in in the mom’s spot. When he graduated from university, As a doctor, he sent her a letter, see when he was little with her on Mother’s Day, he brought her a bottle half full of his mother’s perfume and a bracelet with some broken pieces on it and gave it to her for Mother’s Day.

So when he graduated from university as a doctor, he said, I want you to come to my graduation and stand in where my mom was. He said, and wear the bracelet and some of the perfume. And she did. I shared this story with the principal and the school counselor and they said that’s a nice story, but your son is a problem. I said let me rectify that problem for you then.

The Decision to Homeschool and Its Impact

Cosette: I will take him out of your school, out of your schools. I’m tired of your schools. And I decided, I said, what do I see white people doing? Because as an African American, a lot of times our measuring stick is what white people do. I said, I see white people homeschooling their kids.

What is this stuff called homeschool? So I looked into K 12, and I started homeschooling my children. Schooling became Social studies and all of this stuff became, you know, when we go to grocery stores, when we go out and do things and have fun and everything. And I decided that I wanted to have a better educational opportunity and I wanted to be more involved.

Now, me and Aurora talked about, that’s not a traditional norm for low income people. No, it’s not. Again, we pretty much have a 400 to 800 vocabulary, and we’re always living on a bartered system and desperate and all of this, but that desperateness, even for my son to tell me, why did you leave me in there?

I was screaming for you through the window that also became resilience that also built my confidence as not just mom, but mom, the teacher. And it also allowed me to know that this is something I want to bring to my communities. Please. Low income communities. Have you thought of this? Have you thought of homeschooling your Children so that you can tell them what they’re worth every day? versus someone saying they’re a problem.

The Journey to the White House

Cosette: So then let’s talk about Capitol Hill in D. C. Well, when I went to Clark College and took my public speaking class and got a B, I decided I wanted to get into poli sci, because I wanted power. Yes, I did. I wanted power to turn the tables on Department of Health and Social Services and all these people that said I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do.

But they were paying my subsidized child care, so I had to still petition them. And they denied my education. They said, if you go for poli sci, we’ll take away your childcare. But I had learned about a Pell Grant, right? And I learned about a work study job. I saw you, you know what you can do with your welfare check?

I ain’t gonna say what they can do with it, but y’all know, I said, I’m gonna get me a work study job and I’m going to go to school. And that’s exactly what I did. I got my job in international programs at Clark College. And I went to school studying poli sci back when everybody was talking about Huckabee!

Well, that was an election to remember, wasn’t it, y’all? Mm hmm. Everybody, whoo! Boy, I felt like CNN every day in my poli sci stuff. But the funny thing is, every day I would talk to my supervisor about work study job about, when I get my degree, I’m gonna open a non profit. I’m gonna help low income people.

I’m gonna this, I’m gonna that. She said, what is your major again? I said, poli sci.

A Change of Course: Discovering Public Administration

Cosette: She said, you are not poli sci. I dare you, yes I am. She said, no, you’re not poli sci, Coco. I said, yes I am. She said, you’re public administration. I said, what is public administration? She explained it to me. I said, I know I’m on the clock.

Can I go change my major? She said, get out of here. Go on and change your major. I ran through that door and got over there, you know, and changed my major and I became public administration.

Breaking Barriers: Serving in Senator’s Office and Beyond

Cosette: I ended up from that serving in US Senator Maria Cantwell’s office. I was the very first low income advocate she’d ever had in all the years that she’s been a senator.

When they asked me what I wanted to do as a niche, I said I wanted everything to do with Department of Health social services, homeless veterans, housing authorities, anything but low income. They were like, “you don’t want windmill technology?” I said, “no.” They said, “you don’t want oil?” I said, “no.” “We’ve never had anybody ask for this.”

I said, “well, I tell you what, I take that bus that runs down here on officers row, and many times I didn’t came past this Marshall house, I never came in, I didn’t think I could, I knew this was for rich people. This was middle class. This was upper class people. So now that I’m in here, I want to representation.”

They said, Okay, well, we would have to figure out what to do about that. And I said, Well, how long will it be before you let me know? And they said, Well, we got about another week of interviews, you know, and I knew I knew I knew I was up against Yale Georgetown have Harvard Stanford, New York University legacy babies.

I knew that. But I was like, I got to give it a shot. I asked him, because the outreach director drove me back to Clark College after the Day of Shadowing. I said, are you going to let me know either way? And he goes, either way I’ll let you know. And I shut the car door and I said, I’m counting on it.

The Power of Dreams and Achievements

Cosette: He called me the next day I had it.

You know, I’m going to say something. We got a dream. We owe it to ourselves. It’s an obligation, whatever your dreams are, whatever your desires are, don’t settle for not, don’t think about, well, what if, or how this could turn out, just go for it. I was supposed to be in there for a summer quarter. I was in there for three years, make long story short, that got me to Brookings Institution think tank, which I am an alumna of, and that is considered the highest think tank in the United States.

Give me some, give me some, give me some. Yes. Okay. I worked at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland during the night and served on the hill during the day, and I graduated summa cum laude. Somebody slapped somebody. I can’t handle it, I can’t handle it, I can’t handle it!

The Struggles After Success

Cosette: But with all of that, to get to what Aurora wanted me to talk about, when I got through serving on the Hill and I graduated from my university and enjoyed doing my homework in Blue Bird Library at John Hopkins, I came back to my Washington state and found myself homeless.

I couldn’t get a job anywhere.

I didn’t understand that. How had I done? What everyone said it took to become a success, to live my promise, to be able to have, how did I graduate summa cum laude? How have I had all these life experiences against all odds? They even told me on the hill that I was something they had never seen before. I was a 40 year old black woman from poverty.

On the heel. I wasn’t wearing a pencil skirt, I didn’t have flat shoes and a clipboard running around, I was a grown woman with children, okay, children. And I wasn’t something that they felt they were like, how did you get up here? Yeah, desperation, resilience would be confidence then. But I brought all that back to my Washington.

Only to find out I was a threat. You see, I had done something that my community had never seen a low income person do. I had shattered all of my socioeconomic glass ceilings. And executive directors in different non profits were afraid that if they hired me, I’d have their job in nine months to a year.

I heard all that through the grapevine. But I didn’t want their job. I just wanted a job. I wanted to get out of being homeless. But during that time, it really cultivated me becoming a motivational speaker, an entrepreneur.

Building an Empire

Cosette: And I established my empire, titled after my book, From Welfare to the White House.

My book is called From Welfare to the White House, How I Reclaimed Myself, and you can too, let’s get it. And that became my LLC. I then put my crown on real proper and decided to take the world by storm, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since and will continue to do because it’s not just for me.

It’s not just for my kids or my grandkids, but it is for all of us. But it’s for the next woman, whether she be low income, middle class, upper echelon. Who is dealing with her own level of poverty because you see I looked up the word poverty in the dictionary because I wanted to know what my identity was.

And in the Webster dictionary it says simply having a lack of. It didn’t say having a lack of money, it didn’t say having a lack of education, it didn’t say having a lack of resources, it said simply having a lack of. And what I discovered while I was on the illustrious hill is that some of our nation’s most powerful women behind closed doors, God bless them, they don’t even know themselves.

Let alone believe that they’re going to be able to do what they need to for the constituents. Well, let me tell you something. There’s a new sheriff in town, and I carry a big belt buckle.

And that’s that.

Aurora: Awesome. Well, thanks so much.

Looking, looking at wrapping things up, Coco, I don’t know if you have any final thoughts that you’d like to share.

The Importance of Support Systems

Cosette: Well, it would go back to being support systems. You know, and having that sisterhood and being able to develop a community where competition is not at the forefront, you know, let’s lock arms, let’s hand in hand, let’s help each other. Enjoy and discover and let’s read that across the whole world as much as we can that, you know, not the competition or the insecurity,

you know, I hear a lot of people say that they just. Don’t do well with social stuff for, being in rooms with people and stuff like that. But the thing about it is that is a form of isolation, just like she was talking about, you know that this person did this study on it and it’s not good, but I think a lot of times. Most people are so afraid of what other people are going to think of them.

Just Be Yourself!

What if I say the wrong thing, what if I sound silly, what if I sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about? Or, you know, or what if I don’t really fit in? So then let’s take the chance on welcoming people in. Let’s do that, please. You know, as a society. We have fallen from grace so much, and what I mean by that is, I had a girlfriend of mine tell me the other day, her kids said, you used to play outside?

And she was like, yeah! And she said it dawned on her, kids don’t really play outside anymore. There is no olly olly olly oxen free, there, you know, and even with adults. We don’t get with each other on such an intimate connected level and we got to change that if there’s any hope if we were worried about the Ukraine and we’re worried about all the, well let’s, hey, the only way to start taking back humanity is to pour into it, so pour into each other as much as you can.

Final Thoughts

Cosette: Because we done been through everything, racism, genderism, all kind of isms, schisms. We can break bread with each other and that’s what we need to do more than anything. Yeah, just saying

Aurora: and one of the things I really appreciate about some of the conversations we’ve had in the past too Is that you crave that at a deeper level beyond just the surface Surface niceties and you know getting into that more deep level and I appreciate that about you.

Cosette: Thank you Aurora

Aurora: Well, thanks so much.

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