Letters From The In-Between

This letter is about the thing we try to outrun but will inevitably find out. And the only way we get to really listen is when we stop trying to fill our to-do list and be still. This letter tells you what you gain and what you lose when you choose to pause and feel. // Join Letters From The In-Between: https://buildthedream.co/letters Follow Vanessa: @vanessasantosleon About Vanessa Santos Leon:...

This letter is about trusting your vision before it makes sense in the material world, what betting on yourself feels like, and why your job is not to fix, save or absorb, but it's to observe and allow things to settle. Vanessa also gives a recap on Thrive & Lead at Avance Global and provides a preview into next year. / Join Letters From The In-Between: https://buildthedream.co/letters Fol...

This letter is about finding your people. The people who see you and aren't trying to dim your light. Post the Thrive & Lead energy, Vanessa describes what the energy felt like and what happens you are in alignment. / Join Letters From The In-Between: https://buildthedream.co/letters Follow Vanessa: @vanessasantosleon About Vanessa Santos Leon: Vanessa invested 20+ years building empires....

In this letter Vanessa shares a moment in time that changed the trajectory of her career and it began with a $350 investment. This letter explores the feelings of taking a chance on yourself and the realities of how proximity to the right spaces gives you access you wouldn't have otherwise. // Join Letters From The In-Between: https://buildthedream.co/letters Follow Vanessa: @vanessasantosleon...

This letter talks about the inherent power and economic force that are Latinas and why Vanessa and Patty are building Thrive and Lead. Meet the women speaking at Thrive and Lead and join the movement to create a more equitable and profitable world for women. // Join Letters From The In-Between: https://buildthedream.co/letters Follow Vanessa: @vanessasantosleon About Vanessa Santos Leon: Vanessa i...

This letter was recorded raw, no edits, and to serve as a reminder that even in your season of transformation, you have something to offer. You are worthy of love and support. The reminder you needed to hear is here. // Join Letters From The In-Between: https://buildthedream.co/letters Follow Vanessa: @vanessasantosleon About Vanessa Santos Leon: Vanessa invested 20+ years building empires. Then s...

This week's letter is about where the money is going, and who gets to hold it. The largest wealth transfer in history is moving toward women, around thirty trillion dollars by 2030. I map what that actually means: the value we already create for the economy, the leverage that decides whether we keep the money or just carry it for someone else, and the AI adoption gap sitting between us and real ow...

It's 8/8, the Lion's Gate, the most potent manifestation day on the calendar, and I'm interrupting your regularly scheduled life to remind you of something you already know and somehow forgot: you are so lucky, and you are so powerful. In this one I get into what it actually took for you to be here, why contrast is how you finally fall in love with yourself, and what to put down today...

This week, 110 people unsubscribed from my letters. A few marked me as spam. A few called them inappropriate. I could have spiraled over it. Instead, I want to tell you the thing nobody says out loud about growth: every time you become more of who you actually are, you lose people. That is the tax. In this episode I get honest about why the ones who leave were never yours to keep, why a shrinking...

Vanessa has been saying this to her girlfriends for years. Now she's saying it to you. A man burns the whole thing down and we call him a visionary who was just early. He gets the comeback story, the press tour, the second round of funding. A woman has one season of stumbling and suddenly the story is about her character. This letter names why that happens, the receipts, the villain era, and w...

Growth means having to let parts of you go, and growth also means having to let people go. This is the part that most people don't talk about when it comes to growth. It's the friendships that don't survive the version of you that you're loving, that you're becoming. This letter talks about it, in addition to a reflection on what it means for you to stay the course, to honor yo...

I broke a 50-day posting streak on purpose, and I don't regret it. This letter is about the privilege of choosing when to show up, why presence beats performance, and how joy and grief can live in the same week without canceling each other out. If you've ever felt guilty for stepping back to take care of yourself, this one will make you exhale. / Join Letters From The In-Between: https://v...

This letter is about the particular tenderness of being seen by someone who loves you and doesn't always understand you and realizing that both things can exist at the same time without canceling each other out. It's about what nobody prepares you for when you are the first in your family to do something different. Our parents survived so we could thrive. The least we can do with that inhe...

This letter is about audacity as a practice, not the absence of doubt, but the decision that your vision matters more than your hesitation. About the alignment people mistake for luck. About the women who watch from the sidelines and the grief that lives in that silence, the kind that has nothing to do with the women they're watching and everything to do with the gap between what they know the...

There is a moment that comes for every woman who has been giving herself away for too long. It's the feeling of meeting her threshold of discomfort. Then she finally decides, I am no longer settling. In this letter, Vanessa names the one quality shared by the most powerful, most wealthy, most influential people in the world. It is not intelligence. It is not privilege. It is not luck. It is the de...

A former corporate peer pulls Vanessa aside at a reunion and admits something most successful people never say out loud — that even after everything they've built, they still wonder if they could be doing something else. In this letter, Vanessa traces what that conversation unlocked, why she made the decision to end Glow Up, and what it actually means to stop operating in contradiction with wh...

What happens when a woman finally stops performing the version of herself that kept everyone else comfortable? In this letter, Vanessa makes herself the data point, tracing the moment she stopped playing roles that were never hers and what followed when she chose herself instead. Plus what's moving in the economy right now: the K-shaped split most people don't see coming, why women are bui...

This letter about recognizing that feeling ready is not a feeling at all but a choice. Letter #21 gives you 3 unlocks to make this the summer you become lethal. / Glow Up Hour ​ is my free monthly gathering. Founders, leaders, creators in the same room - building the dream while honoring the human. Join Letters From The In-Between: vanessasantos.kit.com Follow Vanessa: @vanessasantosleon About Van...

You are not behind. You are brewing. And those two things feel identical from the inside — but only one of them is true. In this letter, Vanessa talks about the specific feeling of being on the verge of something massive that you can sense but can't yet see, why the people around you right now either protect that or drain it, and what she found when she printed out everything in her notes app...

Vanessa's birthday didn't go as planned. At 2am, Elvis seized. She canceled everything and held him all night. It was the most perfect birthday she's ever had. This letter is about what happens when you stop fighting the unpredictable and let the universe show you what actually matters. About control, surrender, and the clarity that arrives when you finally stop resisting. And it's...

This letter is about the many versions Vanessa played before she remembered she was also allowed to be the author. The eldest daughter. The survivor. The wife. The corporate climber. The business partner. The friend. It's about what it actually cost to leave. And why the hardest part wasn't the grief, it was disappointing people she loved. It's about late bloomers. What we really are....

The idea that won't leave you alone, it's time to stop letting it take up space for free. In this letter, Vanessa reflects on decades spent collecting rent on other people's dreams and what it took to finally let her own brilliance collect rent. She unpacks the trap of people-pleasing, the real cost of overthinking, and why building in isolation is the most expensive thing we pay for....

This is Letter #16, the first official cheat code drop of Q2. Six unlocks Vanessa learned through love, business, money, pleasure, and health. The actual lived lessons from someone who lost herself in every relationship, scattered herself across ten projects as armor, built a business she loved more than herself, and fell apart doing it. The unlocks: The love you can give yourself is the frequency...

There are two kinds of caves. The one you go into on purpose, to protect what you're growing, to wait out the asteroid, to incubate the thing that isn't ready to fly yet. And the one you crawl back into out of fear, dressed up as patience. This episode is about the distance between those two caves. And the nervous system that can't always tell the difference. This letter marks the end...

This letter is about the psychology of control. Why we do it, where it started, what it costs us, and why the life we actually want cannot be built from inside a grip that tight. I talk about what happened on the Beauty Manifest podcast with my dear friend Melinda, why being seen still doesn't always feel safe, and the one thing Melinda said that we should all remember: If we're doing this...