Luis Congdon

Hey. Welcome to the special Monday episode where we dive deep into the lives or things that Kamala and I want to teach you.

Today, I want to really have the opportunity to sit down with you and just tell you a little bit about who I am and why Thriving Launch is so special to me. Also, so we get to know each other.

A lot of people don’t know that I was born in Medellin, Columbia at 1983. I was adopted after being homeless for 3 years living on the streets in Columbia. I was adopted at the age of 8 years old in Seattle, Washington by American parents and I had to learn English and come to Seattle, Washington in the time period when there really wasn’t a lot of Latinos living in Washington State. It’s a very interesting time period, 1991. George Bush was president. The 80’s, I was born 1983 where a very tumultuous time in Medellin, Columbia where I was born. Pablo Escobar was in power. The cocaine cartel and mafia was at its height during this time period.

When I was born, my mother was 25 years old, she had 3 kids and my dad had left. So I never met my dad. I didn’t know him until I was 18 years, which I’ll talk more about that in some later episodes.

So, I have a very unique and different life and yet, it’s a life that connects with a lot of people because when I was born, my mom was a drug addict. She would leave the house all day long. She would come home do more drugs. She had a very promiscuous lifestyle. She was a very wild woman to say the least. And then when I was 5 years old, my mother was actually murdered because she had some drug debts and I was left homeless with my homeless uncle who I lived with. So we would travel from home to home and get by this way by staying at different people’s houses. He was a live in maid for different periods of time. So he would stay at someone’s home and work inside their home in exchange for a place to live and for food and maybe a little bit of a compensation monetarily. He didn’t really make very much money and we lived from home to home. We’re on the streets and that’s the first 5 – 8 years of my life.

Then through crazy turn of events, I was put into an orphanage by a group of people that I’ve never met and this was actually one side of my family that I never met which is my dad’s side. They had me put into an orphanage. I was adopted. I came to the United States in 1991. George Bush was thr president, Seattle, Washington, and not a lot of people got far up North. We’re Latinos. So, the very first school I went too, not a single person in the whole grade school spoke Spanish. So I went to that school for a very short period of time. I was transferred to another school where there are maybe a handful of Spanish speaking kids in the whole school.

And for me, this is important to share with you because this really in a lot of ways, they say that the first 8 years of our life really shapes who we are, who will become later on in life. And, for me, it’s important to share this with you because this later led me to working in a non-profit sector, working with homeless families, homeless kids, mentoring at risk youth, working with kids in urban cities, and utilizing poetry, art, and literature as way to help them find their voice.

Then, going on and teaching language courses in different parts of the world. Then later, joining more non-profits and working with Dr. John and Julie Gottman, and teaching the work of the Gottman’s in one of the nation’s largest research project on marriage education and working with nearly 300 married couples. Also, I was helping a lot of couples find love, and the keys to a successful marriage and a successful relationship.

So all of that, by the time I was 28 years old is happening in my life. And then, the next few years after that, I was homeless again. I’ve been homeless twice as an adult. There’s something about childhood that it sets this kind of precedent for what will happen later.

And for a long time, I dealt with personal issues around money, feeling poor, feeling impoverished, and I became homeless as an adult. I really got to this place where I wanted to figure out what is it going to take for me to free myself of this poverty mind-set, of the pain that I’ve carrying around in regards to my childhood, and everything else that had happened to me.

At some point, I decided to start my own business. I went in to that and really loved it. Kamala, the co-host who you’ve heard from already, she joined me and we went on this mission of starting an online business. Since then, my finances and travels have sky rocketed. I’ve been to so many countries with Kamala now. We’re running an online business. It’s been very special and for right now, I just wanted to give you a nutshell of who I am and have it in forms the reasons why I have might bring on people who specialize in business, people who specialize in meditation, people who specialize in psychology, relationships, mind-set, all these stuff has really been very important to me in trying to free myself from my own demons.

And it’s a real honor for me to create the show for you. I want to thank you so much for tuning in with me and as we dive deeper together, I’d love to open up more with you and tell you more about my story, find out about who you are, which you’re welcome to write me at thrivinglaunch.com.