Letters From The In-Between

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...

In this letter, I trace the silence back to its origin, the childhood home where making myself invisible kept the peace. The things I survived and said nothing about, the little girl who wrote scripts and plays and performed with my siblings because make believe was the only place I got to be fully myself. This is the first in a series of letters about letting yourself be seen. No more performing...

Wrote this one from Medellín. This letter is about what happens when you stop measuring return on investment in spreadsheets and start measuring it in the people who see you before you've figured it all out. The friendships you almost didn't prioritize. The trips you almost didn't take. The vulnerability you almost kept locked inside because you weren't sure it would be received. T...

Nobody tells you what choosing yourself actually feels like on a Tuesday. Not the clarity moment. Not the decision day. The Tuesday after. When the vision is real but the bank account is quiet and you're building something so big it occasionally terrifies you. That's where I've been. That's where you are too. You are not stuck. You are mid-becoming. And those two things can feel id...

There's a specific moment when you stop playing the role everyone needed you to play: the good daughter, the easy friend, the one who always says yes, and the people around you decide you've changed. In this letter, Vanessa talks about the loneliness that comes not from being alone but from feeling unseen. About what happens when the people closest to you choose a narrative over actually k...

This letter is about the trap high performers fall into, mistaking endurance for loyalty, using our strength against ourselves, and not knowing how to stay in joy. The breakthrough isn't the moment of relief. It's learning to stay in your joy. Listen to hear what happens when high performers finally get the breakthrough, and why we immediately try to sabotage it. Reflection at the end. / ​...

Authenticity as a form of protest. This letter is about shedding what was never yours: the expectations, the identities, the lanes, so you can finally stand for something. You're not confused about what you stand for. You're comfortable. And comfort is the most expensive thing you'll ever pay for, because the cost is your life. Phase 3: The Shedding. Plus an announcement. Support Welln...

Bad Bunny headlines the Super Bowl. First Latino solo act. Entirely in Spanish. They called it luck. It's not. This letter is about the difference between luck and alignment — and why everything you built from obligation is exhausting you while everything you built from desire is sustaining you. / ​ Glow Up Hour ​ is my free monthly gathering. Founders, leaders, creators in the same room - bui...

It feels like the world is going through a collective descent right now. This letter is about Phase 2 of The Self-Reclamation Method™ — the identity death, the letting go. This is not the stage for dreams to die. It's where identities die so your dreams can thrive. Reflection included at the end.  If you're in The Descent right now, you have choices. You can sit with it alone. That's v...

This letter is different. I wrote it at 3am because I couldn't sleep. Because last week I was walking my boys, thought I saw an ICE agent, and immediately turned around and walked home without saying a word to anyone. That silence sat in my body. It compounded. Silence has a shelf life. And mine expired. In this letter, I share what I've been learning - about the leaked ICE memo, about the...

Your heart and your mind are often at odds. Your heart knows the truth — what needs to end, what no longer fits, who you're becoming. Your mind justifies why you should stay. Why it's not that bad. Why now isn't the right time. And when you keep ignoring it? It doesn't go away. It lives in your body as tension. As exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. That's when it catches fi...

Today we begin the journey of reclaiming the pieces of yourself you've given away. Whether through expectations. Overworking. Allowing harm without setting boundaries. Saying yes when your heart meant no. Never giving yourself a break. Neglecting your needs so someone else could be satisfied. This is Phase 1 of The Self-Reclamation Method™: The Shattering. The moment you realize you've dis...