Cynthia LeeHi, there, friends! I wanted to do this video to explain a bit of myself and why I started my Coaching Business, Capricious Lee, LLC.
However, to fully explain the story and why I started my business, I would need to take you back 30 years.
The Beginning
My mother always told me that my skin was too dark, my nose was too big, I was not girlie enough, and I didn’t speak as a proper girl should. She enrolled me in etiquette classes, cooking classes, sewing classes and made me push up to make my back strong so I wouldn’t slouch, and I got in trouble if I didn’t cross my legs and always presented myself as a proper lady. My mom put bleaching cream on my face, and after school, she would put a clothespin on my nose to try to make it smaller. Throughout my early childhood, I felt ugly. I felt like I was not good enough. I felt so small. My self-esteem and confidence were at their lowest point as I made my way into my teenage years.
I felt like I didn’t have a voice in my teenage years because it was ingrained in me from an early age that I wasn’t good enough and wasn’t beautiful. In high school, I always tried to remain unnoticeable, but guys always told me that I was beautiful, and no matter what they said, I did not see that in myself. Because my mother did not see it in me. I never felt comfortable speaking up for myself, and I found myself consistently being sexually harassed and violated. After becoming a victim of date rape, I somehow found the courage to speak up for myself, only for my mother to tell the investigators that I was just playing and not to take me seriously. That moment for me only served as a reminder that I was worthless.
The Pit
To escape my small world, I joined the Army thinking that a change in my environment will allow me to find myself. Wrong! I isolated myself from the world and only went out of my apartment to go to work. I didn’t have any friends, and I always dressed in dark clothing, hoping to not stand out in the crowd. In the military, I was sexually harassed by my supervisor, and in an attempt to stop the harassment, I spoke to another female senior noncommissioned officer to prevent the harassment. I was betrayed by her, and for the next 12 months of my tour, it was hell on wheels. I was depressed, I ended up having a stillborn, and I lost so much weight because I was too sad to eat, and I again felt like my voice, feelings, and body didn’t matter to anyone.
I remember driving another senior non-commission officer around, and she asked me what was wrong and replied nothing. She told me to tell her what was wrong, and she said I asked explicitly asked for you to take me on the tour of the city because there was this sadness and emptiness in your eyes. I told her everything. She responded with, you know that you do not have to deal with anything of this, and your voice, how you feel, and your body matters.
The Search
As I walked through the mall, I saw this dark skin woman with the most giant afro I have ever seen and her lips were so full, and she was wearing this bright pink dress. I thought to myself, wow, she wants to be noticed. I watched her almost glide across the mall with such confidence and beauty, and I said I want that. I can change. I am beautiful. I am strong. My voice has the power to command an army, and it will be heard.
I knew I had to change my mindset, and I will admit it was so hard because, for years, I was made to believe that I was not beautiful. I started some techniques, and I linked up with some strong, confident women, and I will admit, I was faking confidence for a while, and I felt so uncomfortable, but these women gave me the power and strength and reminded me that I was a queen.
The Breakthrough
I was out of my shell, and I was never going back. And since being out of my shell, I was able to see the sadness and emptiness in other women’s eyes. Then for over 15 years, I made it my mission to empower those women and teenagers to realize their strength in their bodies, the power in their voice, and freedom to become authentic. My passion for helping women to realize their influence was more evident when I looked into my daughter’s eyes when she was born. I told her that she was a beautiful and smart queen capable of commanding an Army if she wanted.
In my attempt to spread my reach, I opened named my company Capricious Lee LLC. The word capricious has both a positive and negative connotation and though the negative is often the focal point since humans tend to prefer a much more stable, predictable flow. I feel like the occasional capricious decision, an impulsive move is a welcome deviation. Someone may call someone capricious as unpredictable, indicative of sudden change, or likely to react to a sudden desire or new idea.
So of all the names that I could have chosen for my business, why did I chose the word capricious? For so many years of my life, I felt like my voice was silenced and that I had to accept how things were. When I regain my power back, my voice back, my confidence back, I became capricious. My very presence in a space displayed strength, grace, and poise. I became a capricious queen in a male-dominated IT career field and kept everyone around me on their toes because they never knew how I would react. I was free to speak my mind, make on own thought-out decisions, and never allow anyone to dim my voice again, not let my situation control me ever again. For the second part of my business name, I chose the word, Lee. Lee is my middle name, my mother’s middle name, and my grandmothers’ middle name. I felt this cycle of raising women to be voiceless housewives that needed to be stopped. And it was going to stop with me.
Since coaching, I have seen hundreds of women feel empowered to live their life on their own terms, start their businesses, and even realize the beauty that they have on the inside and out.
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