Faith, Courage, Learning: The Three Pillars of My Journey

In the summer of 2023, I took a course called "Reputation Management," and our very first assignment was to write a four-minute speech on three words that define us. For me, those words were clear: Faith, Courage, Learning.

Unfortunately, the original speech was lost when my old laptop crashed, but maybe that’s life’s way of telling me to rewrite it, not just on paper, but in the way I live. And what better way to share it than here, on this personal corner of the internet, as part of this massive undertaking of letting the world know who I am?

As I tell my dogs every morning and afternoon when it’s time to get moving - let’s roll.

Faith

I am a Roman Catholic, and my faith is the cornerstone of my life. About six months after my father passed away suddenly, I was having a conversation with a close friend, telling her how much I was struggling with grief. I had no idea how I was managing to get through each day. She listened, then said something that stopped me in my tracks: Jenel, it’s your faith.

I sat with that thought for a moment, letting it sink in. And for the first time in my life, I realized that I wasn’t just practicing my faith, I was living it. It was carrying me through the pain, through the uncertainty, through the days that felt impossible. And if I were truly living my faith, I would need to take courage. I needed to move beyond just surviving without my dad; I needed to embrace life fully, even without him.

Courage

Life is fragile. It can change in an instant. And for a long time, before my father passed, I wasn’t living, I was just getting through each day. My faith gave me the courage to make that change.

That courage led me to take one of the biggest risks of my life: leaving Trinidad after 15 years of running my family’s business to start over in the United States. It meant saying goodbye to my mom, who had just lost the love of her life, the man she had spent 48 years with. It meant walking away from the business I had poured my heart into, where I had introduced new printing technology, built an excellent customer service model, and maintained the highest quality standards.

Starting over was terrifying. But I knew that the only way to truly live my faith was to take that leap, to build something new for myself. And the way I knew how to do that? Learning.

Learning

I have always been an avid reader, a lover of knowledge. So, when I decided to start over, I knew that going back to school for my master’s degree in professional communication was the right path. I applied to the University of San Francisco’s MAPC program and was accepted.

That moment was thrilling yet terrifying. I hadn’t been in a formal learning environment for 20 years. Could I really do this? Could I read research papers filled with academic jargon that made me reach for a dictionary more times than I could count? Could I write papers with references and citations after being away from the classroom for so many years? Could I give presentations where I wasn’t an expert but still had to sound like one?

The answer, I discovered, was yes. Because every single step of the way, my faith was my foundation. It gave me the courage to push through my fear and tackle every challenge head-on. And through it all, I didn’t just learn how to communicate professionally, I learned about myself. Who I was. Who I wanted to be. How to use every talent God has given me to serve, to grow, and to live.

So here I am, embracing this new chapter, sharing my journey with you. Because faith, courage, and learning aren’t just words, they are the foundation of everything I do.

And if you’re standing at the edge of something new, something uncertain, something that scares you a little, take the leap. Let’s roll.