Dr. Carmen Roman shares with us today her journey of coming from a poor, but loving family in Mexico where there was no electricity and no running water. When it was time to go to middle school, it was expected she learn a trade to start making a living. However, Carmen secretly applied to attend a middle school and only got permission to attend if she also learned to become a hairdresser to also make money. She did so and continued through high school. Loving academia and psychology, she became determined to continue to college, got her bachelors and masters degrees, and then became a professor. After moving to the United States and marrying an American, she found herself alone in a new country from leaving an abusive relationship and was forced to live in a shelter for a few months. Determined to continue working as a psychologist again to help others, she returned to school yet again so that she can be licensed in California. Carmen has her own practice, has founded a nonprofit, Emotions in Harmony, and also has a podcast with that same name.
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If you prefer to read, here’s a transcript of the interview!
Carmen Roman: 00:01 We did it that way for these three years I was studying hairdressing in the afternoon with a bunch of adults.
Kathy: 00:10 And then they were studying at the school at the same time. So how old were you at this point?
Carmen Roman: 00:16 I was probably 12 to 14 to 11 to 14. Wow. That’s so young. That was very young. Yeah. I became a hairdresser like at 14, almost 15 years old. People didn’t want it to come be my customer because I was too young.
Kathy: 00:40 Hello and welcome to The Inspire Cafe Podcast where we bring you conversations and inspirational stories of people overcoming adversity and then how they came out of it transformed with the positive outlook or outcome. People are incredibly resilient and we need to hear more of their stories. This is Kathy De La Torre.
Kathy: 01:02 Today we’re talking with Dr. Carmen Roman. She shares her journey at coming from a poor but loving family in Mexico where they had no electricity or running water. When it was time to go to middle school, it was expected she learned a trade to start earning a living. However, Carmen secretly applied to attend a middle school and only got permission to go if she also learned to
Kathy: 01:24 become a hairdresser. She did so and continued her double efforts throughout high school. Loving academia, and determined to continue to college, she got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and then became a professor after yet more setbacks, but determined to help others. She returned to school yet again, and earned her PhD. Carmen now has her own practice in California, started her own podcast, and founded a nonprofit called Emotions in Harmony. We’ll have links to Carmen, her organization, and her podcast at theinspirecafe.com, as well as a transcript of this interview. And if you enjoy listening to Carmen’s story and want to hear more inspirational stories, make sure to subscribe on itunes or anywhere you find your podcasts. Okay, let’s get to Carmen’s story.
Kathy: 02:15 So Carmen, I understand you’re a clinical psychologist practicing in San Jose, California, and you’re also the president and founder of a nonprofit organization called Emotions in Harmony. Is that correct?
Carmen Roman: 02:31 That’s correct. That’s me.
Kathy: 02:33 Okay, great. And then you also have a podcast of the same name, Emotions in Harmony?
Carmen Roman: 02:37 Yes.
Kathy: 02:39 All right. First of all, what inspired you to become a clinical psychologist?
Carmen Roman: 02:46 I guess the way my parents had been their community helping others, listening to them and kind of been the social workers without the title. That probably set the expectations for that. And they even didn’t know. I didn’t even know that a psychologist career existed until I was 18.
Kathy: 03:09 Oh really?
Carmen Roman: 03:10 Yeah.
Kathy: 03:10 What kind of things where your parents helping out in the community?
Carmen Roman: 03:13 My mom was the um, the neighbor who you can go to for a tea and talk to her and people would bring the children, the babies when they were crying and I don’t know what the baby has and she would hold the baby, talk to the mom. My father would talk to the guys and they actually my home at some point was the place for people to come and get water because there was not running water in the, in this place. So they will come with buckets and do line. And my father had some kind of [inaudible] in the middle of the house that he gathered the water, so. And it was just a lot of services coming, going on in my home.
Kathy: 03:57 Wow. You sound like they were the neighborhood psychologists as well.
Carmen Roman: 04:05 They were, yeah.
Kathy: 04:05 Well, let’s, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the beginnings and where you came from. I understand that you’ve come a long way to where you are right now. So if you could share a little bit about your background, where you grew up and what it was like at that time for you and your family.
Carmen Roman: 04:23 Yeah. Um, I grew up in a very low income area of Guadalajara. It was part of Guadalajara city, but it was not as developed. We were in the family. We were like three families in the neighborhood and then they started growing after that. But we didn’t have any services like running water or pipes or electricity or transportation or nothing like that. I didn’t have electricity until I was 11, which probably was a blessing. I didn’t have to deal with any TV time boundaries or anything like that.
Kathy: 05:00 That’s a good point. Yeah.
Kathy: 05:02 So how many kids were in a family and were you the oldest or the youngest?
Carmen Roman: 05:08 We were three and my parents lost some children when they were born or the pregnancy or something. So we survived three. I guess it was tied to the poverty as well that they didn’t have enough medical services, but we were three female growing up. So it was just a small family and the grandma living with us.
Kathy: 05:32 Oh, the grandmother living with you. So are you the oldest?
Carmen Roman: 05:36 Yeah, I am the oldest. Yeah. Yeah, I am.
Kathy: 05:41 You later on mentioned that although your parents didn’t complete a formal education, they were very passionate about you and your siblings of getting an education.
Carmen Roman: 05:51 You know, my parents actually moved from a small village to a city because my father had the idea of better future or the future children at that time. And my father didn’t have any formal education. And my mom was four grade elementary, which was the top of the town that she was living in. She was actually providing lessons for other students. She was kind of a teacher. And so they were reading a lot of books. I remember they were reading about recipes, like kitchen books or remedies or my father used to read all the books that I would, I would get at the beginning of the year because his dea was like, if I read everything, I would be prepared for my child when she has questions.
Kathy: 06:40 Oh, that makes sense.
Carmen Roman: 06:41 Yeah, so by October probably I started the year in September. By October, November, he was finishing all my books. As a child, it was a nightmare because he was like, hurry up. I am already finished. Yeah, I [inaudible] any rush to finish them all of them.
Kathy: 07:00 Well, you had mentioned that it was your parents goal to, for you kids to maybe get a certificate later on so you can learn a trade like being becoming a hairdresser or something like that. Was that a goal that you had in mind at that time too?
Carmen Roman: 07:26 No, I guess he was a miscommunication of my parents’ expectation about me because we never talked about it. They never talk about it, so I learned later that they actually, or my father had the expectation that I will finish elementary school and then after that I need to learn something useful. Yeah. In his terms it’s like you need to learn something useful to survive and to have a job and start helping the family income. But they didn’t tell that to me. And when I was in third grade, I, I listened to one of my teachers saying that one day maybe some of us will get all the way to a PhD. Yeah. And she explained, she put up on the board. Then she explained what this means and she said only three percent of the country in Mexico gets that level of education. And I was eight years old and I was like, uh, I am going there. I don’t know how, but I’m going there.
Carmen Roman: 08:28 Um, but I didn’t talk to my parents about it. So by the time I finished elementary, they were too busy. My mother was constantly in the hospital with asthma and my father was constantly helping her. So they were too busy to even realize that I went and applied to a middle school. And I didn’t tell them because I didn’t want them to say no. So I went and apply. I hide the fact that I went and applied far away because I didn’t like the middle school near, nearby. I applied to kind of a middle class only for women middle school and then I go into and the principal was kind of mean because she didn’t want anybody from my neighborhood there. So she called me to the office and she was pretending that I didn’t apply. She was accusing me that I stole the ID. And then the vice principal kind of got it and she advocated for me and I ended up being accepted to the, to the middle school.
Carmen Roman: 09:32 But my parents were like furious. Yeah. Because it’s like how come you went that far and that is two buses away and we don’t have the income to give you for the buses. And now that is. No, no, no. And, and my father was like, I want you to have something useful like become a hairdresser. And I negotiated, I was like, okay, I’m going to be a hairdresser in the afternoon, but let me go in the middle school to the middle school in the morning and I can walk if necessary. It was like 45 minutes of walking. And it was like I can walk if you want me to walk, I can walk, but I, I just want to be in that school. And we did it. We did it that way for these three years. I was studying hairdressing in the afternoon with a bunch of adults and then I was studying.
Kathy: 10:26 And then you were studying at the school at the same time. So how old were you at this point?
Carmen Roman: 10:31 I was from probably 12 to 14 to 11 to 14.
Kathy: 10:36 Wow. That’s so young.
Carmen Roman: 10:38 That was pretty young. Yeah. I became a hairdresser like at 14, almost 15 years old. Wow. People didn’t want it to come be my customer because I was too young.
Kathy: 10:51 Well, maybe all the kids came. You got some kids t come to you.
Carmen Roman: 10:54 Some people were brave to do it, but, and somebody hired me, actually.
Kathy: 11:00 It worked out.
Carmen Roman: 11:01 It worked out, yeah. That was the same situation for the high school. I applied for the high school and my father was like, there is no way you can go. We really need your income. And that was true. He was not mean about it. It was like the family was really struggling and I was again negotiating. I actually left home at age 15 because I was like, if you don’t understand me, I don’t want to live with you guys. And I left home for a day or two to other family members. So family members came to my parents and say please, she’s not doing anything wrong. She just wants to go to school and he agreed. But I needed to have a full time job as a hairdresser. So I was just in the morning working as a hairdresser and in the afternoon, going to to the high school. That was the life for me, mainly to pay my own expenses. It was not that they really took my money or anything. It was just mainly to support probably my own. Yeah.
Kathy: 12:02 To support yourself.
Carmen Roman: 12:03 Yeah.
Kathy: 12:04 For being so young, you applying to this middle school, where do you think that drive came from?
Carmen Roman: 12:12 Um, it was very atypical that I defend my dream. That was so weird. I don’t even know why. Yeah. But I was, I guess I was so determined and I was so sure that I will get into what I wanted and I didn’t have a dream of one day I’m going to become a professional. I just had the dream at the time, like I just want to finish middle school. I just want to finish high school. Yeah. Yes. It was like earning one more degree. It was important for me. At that time, Kathy, it was very interesting, but I hear from my parents and from many other parents that a woman can only go to school to learn to read and write, to write letters to our boyfriend. So that was like, there is no point. Yeah, there is no sense. So my dad was, I was 10 or 11 and he was like, what, did you have a boyfriend? Do you want to learn to write to them? And like, I even didn’t, didn’t kind of make sense of this, his question. No,
Kathy: 13:20 He just assumed that would be the only reason why you would want to learn more, to go to school.
Carmen Roman: 13:26 Yeah. Yeah. And he was not really out of love or care for me was just that he was not in their mind. Yeah.
Kathy: 13:33 Yeah. No, well, that’s understandable. If that’s all he knew. He wasn’t there when you were an eight year old listening to the teachers talking about the top three percent.
Carmen Roman: 13:44 That’s right. He didn’t. He was not. And then when I finished high school in the last six, seven months, I worked with a family. I was working as a house cleaner for those, for that family, living with them for six months, just going on the weekends to my parents. And then I learned I wanted to go to have a bachelor’s degree. The woman, the owner of the house, the household, was furious. She was like, no, I can pay you double, you don’t need to go anywhere. You can be full time here. And the husband say, no. If she has a dream, let her go. Yeah, let, let, let her succeed. We can support her in any way. So I apply again for the bachelor’s without telling my parents again. Of course. It was a theme already. So I apply and I didn’t even tell anybody when I got into the, in the bachelor’s, which actually it was 900 people applying and only 60 got into.
Carmen Roman: 14:52 Wow. And it was psychology and I didn’t know what a psychologist was. Somebody described it to me and I just loved it. They were like, oh. And then I went to the school and sat in the campus and it was like this, this is my place. I want to be here. Yeah. So I, I got accepted and then I went and talked to my parents. And my father say, well, it’s going to be really hard for you to to be this student. Why you don’t be a doctor or an architect? If you are putting all of this effort, do something meaningful. So they kind of talked to one of my uncles and my uncle promised to talk to me. So he invited me. He and my aunt invited me for dinner and they were starting the topic of persuading me to be doctor or something else, not psychologists.
Carmen Roman: 15:46 And I remember we started the dinner and my uncle say something about let’s talk about it. And I was furious. And I was like, if you’re not going to support me, I cannot even see sit at your table. I’m leaving. Yeah. And, and he was like, oh my God, you are so serious. And, I just want to be psychologist. So I promised to my father, if I don’t get that salary as a psychologist, I promise to you I will work in any other way and I will make a salary to help the family. But I want to become a psychologist. So that was another agreement there.
Kathy: 16:26 That was another agreement. Wow. So that’s, that’s a real big commitment. Okay. So what happened?
Carmen Roman: 16:34 I went to school. The first year, my father really hard, he tried really hard to not have me working. And I was going to school only. He was say like, okay, you are going to do seriously. But I knew, sometimes we even didn’t have money for transportation, so I needed to go and work full time to finish the other 4 years. It was a five year program. Sure. So I needed to work and they were very understanding. My mother become extremely supportive and she was cooking and doing everything else for me. So we were kind of a team. Yeah.
Kathy: 17:14 Wow. So the whole time since you’re 11 or 12, you’ve been working simultaneously while going to school full time.
Carmen Roman: 17:22 That’s right. Yeah. I am 47 and I’m telling you sometimes I’m tired.
Kathy: 17:32 Yeah, you deserve a break.
Carmen Roman: 17:37 Exactly. Since I was 11, I’m working. It was, it was something that I just loved. I love books. I loved to learn. Especially when I really entered the psychology field. I was, I was so eager to learn, so I didn’t feel that kind of a burden. Yeah.
Kathy: 17:54 Yeah, that’s true. If you’re passionate about something, you’re happy to make sacrifices in order to do it. Yeah, that makes sense.
Carmen Roman: 18:03 My favorite part is when I came to, now I learned that I will not hide my application for a master degree. I was fine, I was covering my salary and we were finding the family a little better, so I sat with them and I say, listen, I’m going to go off two years for a masters program and this is going to have some impact in our economy here. Yeah. In my father was like looking furious and I was like, oh, here we go again. Yeah. And my father, my father said if you were to go into a masters degree, I want to go. I want to study elementary and let’s see, let’s see what, who, who does better. Yeah.
Kathy: 18:48 Wow. So he, he wanted to go to elementary school.
Carmen Roman: 18:52 Yeah. Yeah. He say like we’re supporting you but I am not getting anything. Yeah. So I want to go too. So he actually signed up for the elementary school in the evenings in adult school. Or it was not actually adults, it was kind of a teenager school. So he was older student among teenagers. And we were sitting together and doing homework together and yeah.
Kathy: 19:18 Did he enjoy it?
Carmen Roman: 19:20 He enjoyed a lot and he actually took him 6 years to graduate. We did graduation when he was 56.
Kathy: 19:30 When he was 56. Wow. You must have been so proud.
Carmen Roman: 19:35 I was so proud of him. I was actually the godmother of his graduation and everybody in the family, we were so proud of him. He. He was so eager to learn as well,
Kathy: 19:48 So he probably at that point really understood how you felt about your drive to go to school.
Carmen Roman: 19:55 Probably. Probably he understood that it was possible for him as well.
Kathy: 20:03 Yes. Well, let’s jump forward. Okay, so you got your bachelor’s, you got your masters, and then you established your own practice and you built a solid career as a licensed psychologist in Mexico.
Carmen Roman: 20:17 That’s right.
Kathy: 20:18 And then you also became a professor at a university. Is that true?
Carmen Roman: 20:23 Yes. I became a professor for a couple of universities for seven years. I was a faculty member. I became faculty member of one of the top elite universities in our city, which was the [inaudible] university and I used to enjoy it really a lot. I worked four years for them. And then my practice. And I used to be keynote speaker or something in conferences or traveling or radio or some kind of media involved both for psychology and and then creating continuing education courses for others. But, but I continued to be passionate about working with clients. That was, that was my main focus. I wanted always to have some clients.
Kathy: 21:10 I’m curious, after you reached your success in your career, what did your parents think about everything at that point? Did they, okay, now I get it or, or they just knew. They just knew you were going to be a rising star?
Carmen Roman: 21:28 I don’t think so that even they understand what I was doing. Kathy. They were like, like we had a clinic that it was a six bedroom house. And my father went to the clinic because he needed to painter. He was a house painter. Okay. So he would like, oh my God, who pays the end of this? And I say when we do that, and he was like, How? Well, clients come. And then he say, say yeah, but they only talk to you. They pay you? Yeah, they pay me to talk to them. And he was like, they couldn’t, like I grew up in the way that they would have talking to people not charging them money. Yeah. Yes. So they were the psychologists without salaries, so they couldn’t. My father would never understand. He was just like, every time it’s like they paid you? And are you Okay? Do you need any money to pay this?
Kathy: 22:26 This probably blew their minds that people actually paid you to talk to you.
Carmen Roman: 22:32 Yes. He was like, still. My mother is still like, sure, this is what she does for a living. They just don’t get it.
Kathy: 22:40 It would be funny to be listening in to a conversation like a fly on the wall. If somebody asked them, well, what is Carmen do for a living? And then they explained that would be a funny conversation to listen to.
Carmen Roman: 22:59 That would be very funny. I actually, one day I probably will ask my mother. Yeah.
Kathy: 23:04 That would be good to listen in on. No, I don’t know what she does.
Carmen Roman: 23:09 That probably would be, but they kind of realized that I liked books. I liked teaching. Yeah. Yeah. That, that was probably the most sense for them, she was teaching in the school. Yeah. Yes. That probably was the best for them.
Kathy: 23:25 Well, let’s move forward again. Okay. So you have your practice and then you left and you moved to the United States?
Carmen Roman: 23:33 Yes. Actually I was successful professionally and then I was feeling the loneliness of not having a relationship, a stable relationship because I was traveling a lot in the country. And it was like, no, I want a family. They just don’t want, I don’t want to be that professional that is single forever. Yeah? So I want a family. I, I met a guy online and I’m married with somebody in the United States. He was a professor, a doctor in math, math. So I came and I moved in with him and the dream was beautiful, like supposed to work as a psychologist in this country. It was in the north part of the United States. I didn’t realize that my license will not be useful at all. I didn’t realize that. I didn’t even think about it. And, and he knew that, but he didn’t kind of explain to me. So when I contacted the board of psychology in that state, they were like, no, sorry.
Carmen Roman: 24:39 And I didn’t speak the language to start with. So there was no way that I could do psychology. It was a big shock for me because I didn’t want to be anything else other than psychology. I was professional dancer when I was younger and was like, on the side. It was not my job. It was on the side. So I could be dancer, I could be something else. Economically, we were fine. My [inaudible] was really okay economically. So I didn’t need to struggle with it, but I wanted to be psychologist. And I talked to him and I said, you can pay my applications to the university. And I choose, and actually I chose an Institute in Palo Alto in California because that was my dream. It was like I want that kind of psychology. And he was like, no, they will never get you, he was like you don’t have the connections here.
Carmen Roman: 25:32 You don’t have the, you are not competitive enough to get into a program like that. So I was, I’m so sorry, but I needed to leave the guy. It was like you are not helping.
Kathy: 25:45 He wasn’t supporting you?
Carmen Roman: 25:48 No. Yeah.
Kathy: 25:48 It sounds just like your conversation with your uncle.
Carmen Roman: 25:52 Exactly. At this point I am going for whatever I want, whether you want to be with me or not, yeah? And there was a lot of parts in the relationship not working so it was good to leave the relationship. And then I came in, apply actually apply from far away to the Palo Alto School, the Institute of transpersonal psychology and they accepted me and it was really nice. The interview went really well. They understand what my credentials in Mexico are. They can do anything about it, but they understand my expertise. My English was so bad. Yeah. I’m like, I kind of could get across my English to kind of made it, made it to the interview, but I couldn’t go because now I was with no way to apply for any student loan or anything. So I needed to come in kind of work. I actually got a job in the University of California. I got a job helping Latino parents to help their children to go to college. Oh yeah. That was a very beautiful job. I really loved it. It was helping them understand the importance of education. And then I continued to have the dream of a PhD. Actually I never shared with the University of California team that if I work for them, they will help me to get into the PhD and understand what, how it works in this country. They did. They really did help me a lot.
Kathy: 27:24 Well, I’m glad that they helped you out and help you navigate through that. Yes. So you had mentioned that when you left your husband, you wrote that you got into a shelter.
Carmen Roman: 27:37 Yeah, I didn’t put it that way in my mind because it was difficult to understand, but I ended up in a domestic violence relationship and I always joke about it because I don’t. I didn’t understand because he was not physical abuse. It was a lot of psychological abuse. So somebody helped me actually to understand, one of the neighbors. And they took me to a shelter. I actually walked out of my house and then they took me to a shelter and I was in the shelter for three months. Somebody helped me and somebody took me to their house or they kind of sheltered me for another six, seven months. So I was at that moment I was not feeling it that bad. I just was so eager to keep going and keep learning that I didn’t kind of realize the bad situation that I was in. Yeah.
Kathy: 28:35 I at this point, imagine you mentally, emotionally and we’re going through a challenging time.
Carmen Roman: 28:41 Yes.
Kathy: 28:42 Carmen, what do you think was it that didn’t let you give up and just say I’m moving back home to Mexico or, or try to go back to your old life. What kept you keep going to stay here and continue with your education?
Carmen Roman: 29:00 At the beginning it was a very strange dream about not being far away from my stepson. As part of the marriage, I got to raise a stepson and even though I didn’t have any rights to see him, I still don’t know anything about him, but I was like, if I leave the country I will not be able to be nearby where he can find me. Yeah? And, and I was devastated because I really wanted a family. Yeah? So and then if I go to my country, I probably can go, but then I will not have the opportunities in my country that I can have here. It would be so expensive. It will not be doable and the degree I wanted didn’t exist in Mexico, only existed in California or in Argentina at that time. So I will not be able to help myself to go to Argentina. I don’t know how to get here. So I was literally walking around with the, with the flyer. I got a flyer or a booklet from the institute in California and I was walking around and walking around and trying to understand because I didn’t know how to read English, but I knew that was the kind of theory that I wanted to learn. So I knew in Spanish that that was my next step in the professional field. So that was my motivation to keep going, to that particular school.
Kathy: 30:31 You were just determined, the same determined Carmen back when you were 11, 12 years old to go to school. So now you have a practice in San Jose and you have a unique perspective of combining both cultures to psychology and your practice. What would you say is your typical client?
Carmen Roman: 30:59 My typical client is the one who also immigrated. They are Spanish speakers mostly. I work with Americans but I mostly work with Spanish speakers. And they sort of sometimes even they have already a professional in their country and they are successful here. They managed to be successful and also here in their professions. Or they are the first generation of the parents who immigrated like second generation Latinos and couples. Couples who are mixed couples who have one American, one Latino or two Latinos. So the people who really are looking for the quality in the Spanish. That’s been interesting because the. This is when they finally, this is where they refer to is like, I know your Spanish is kind of a highly educated and they have that kind of Spanish sometimes so that they feel seen.
Kathy: 32:03 So what would you say is the common thread of what they need help with?
Carmen Roman: 32:08 I think the common thread is to find themselves, to reinvent themselves again and to kind of live permanently in these two worlds. Like, like most of my clients even sometimes they support their families in their country of origin or they have a strong ties emotionally with their country and a lot of my work sometimes is to help them to be emotionally and spiritually in one place at a time.
Kathy: 32:40 Do you mean to say, because I’m a second generation, grandparents were from Mexico and my parents were born in California. I noticed that there’s a distinction between when you’re raised and you look like you’re Mexican, but your raised completely American, there’s sort of a identity, how should I say, confusion. Because do I belong in this country, but I feel like I’m sort of connected to my Mexican roots. And I imagine it was even more confusing to my parents who were communicating always in Spanish to their parents, but then having to navigate in America the way Americans expect you to.
Carmen Roman: 33:31 Yeah.
Kathy: 33:31 Is there a lot of that or is your clients still dealing with that too?
Carmen Roman: 33:36 I think. I think what I call it, that is something that I developed myself, a concept. I call it the luxury, the symptoms that are luxury or the diagnosis, the luxury. The first and the second generation, when they are getting adjusted to the United States as a family, as a lineage, they tend to develop anxiety, stress or the depression and they are highly sensitive. This is what I keep finding. And the reason that I explained is because the first generation parents, the ones who immigrated, were so focused on surviving that they didn’t have any time to think about emotions. So its the next generation or the next two that are extremely sensitive and they always struggle, which I certainly don’t belong to Mexico because I didn’t grow up there and I go and they don’t see me as one of them, but then I don’t quite belong here yet because my parents talk differently, eat differently, do something different. So this is what I keep finding that it’s kind of now you have the luxury to have anxiety or to have stress and to talk about it. Yeah.
Kathy: 34:52 Yeah. That makes sense. Carmen, tell us about your Emotions in Harmony, the nonprofit that I believe you founded and you’re president of, Is that right?
Carmen Roman: 35:04 Yes. If you allow me one minute, I would like to tell you my biggest accomplishment. I, I dedicated myself for the, for couple of years to find a person for me and I really did work on myself and a lot of things and I found an amazing husband. Now, so that was my biggest accomplishment rather than more than the PhD or anything else. It’s just I am married to an American guy and I think we found each other. nicely
Kathy: 35:37 Oh good. So you’re happily married now?
Carmen Roman: 35:39 I am happily married now and actually part of our mission was like we want, we don’t want to have kids. We want to dedicate ourselves to do something socially. So I start with the idea of the podcast. And I keep working and working. The first year of the podcast is extremely busy. Yeah, and my husband was helping me the same way he helped me to finish my PhD. So when, when we were after a year, we sat together and we say, you know, this is not, this is not going to stop. We are, we want to do more. And we decided to open the nonprofit and actually we named it the same, The Emotions in Harmony. I am the president, he’s a secretary and a group of our very dear friends are the members, the board members. And we have the dream that we can provide psychology information for all of these people that will never afford therapy, that they cannot go to therapy, they will not go to therapy because they don’t believe in or they don’t have the money to go in or they don’t even have the language, the person in their language to talk to. So I take topics from the therapy room, not examples of my clients because it’s a confidentiality thing, but the same topics. And I develop a topic for my listeners in English and Spanish.
Kathy: 37:07 Wonderful. And so I didn’t realize that your podcast came first and then your nonprofit.
Carmen Roman: 37:13 Yes, it was the need to do it, the nonprofit because one, it was just too expensive, the podcasting, as you know. So it was too expensive and I was supporting it by from my own salary. And the second is because we as as a couple, we really wanted to do something. We wanted to open a foundation to help children or to help girls to get an education. So we were like, okay, why are we don’t think about it in a different, other way. So we want to hire other psychologists and I am a provider for the county. Have them to help us to do therapy for low income families to help us with the podcast, like all of this kind of psychology information that make immigrants a better transition to this country.
Kathy: 38:03 That’s wonderful because there’s so many people that need your help.
Carmen Roman: 38:08 Yes, yes.
Kathy: 38:10 And knowing what I know from my experience with my background is that a lot of these people, they don’t want to seek help because they don’t want to ask for help.
Carmen Roman: 38:21 That’s right, they don’t.
Kathy: 38:24 How do we overcome that?
Carmen Roman: 38:26 I think when the person feels seen and listened to, they are willing to entertain the idea of therapy. And in therapy sometimes I’m kind of hard and especially when there is some kind of domestic violence going on or something, I am hard. So it can go either way. You can go either they are like, yeah, you’re right. Because I’m trying to be hard and I’m trying to be really respectful of their beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. So some people was like, yeah, and you’re right. I just, I don’t like psychologists, but I, I kind of like just so I can keep coming. Or the other side that I just don’t like you, I don’t want even my wife to be in here.
Kathy: 39:12 And that’s because you were too tough on them? Is that why?
Carmen Roman: 39:15 I’m serious. Sometimes it’s needed to be a little bit tough, no? And I’ve tried to be still respectful even when I am being tough because sometimes it’s really out of our knowledge or or I get the one person in the couple and I say just share the videos with the other person and eventually they come too.
Kathy: 39:36 Well it’s nice to hear a psychologist being a little tough because I know I would appreciate that because I think I learned faster that way. Hurry up and learn this.
Carmen Roman: 39:42 Learn this because we really need to work on something else.
Kathy: 39:53 That’s right. Carmen, you’ve come a long way from when you grow up in Mexico to where you are today and I wanted to ask you for anybody who’s out there listening who may be going through something similar or can identify with you and the challenges that you overcame, is there anything that you would like to share? Maybe words of encouragement.
Carmen Roman: 40:17 I think my, my encouragement, my words of encouragement will be when somebody don’t believe in you that doesn’t mean that they are right. Yeah. So it seems important to question. It’s like they may say nobody’s going to listen to you, nobody’s going to believe in you, whatever. You can just stop that and say, I don’t know if you are right because Dr. Carmen says you may not be right. Yeah. And that is the opening for your own intuition. And once you tap into your own intuition, then the opportunities will come and the ways to move forward will come.
Kathy: 40:58 I see. So trust your intuition and listen to it.
Carmen Roman: 41:02 Hmm-hmm.
Kathy: 41:03 Okay. Yeah, that’s wonderful. So if anybody has a question or wants to find out about you or Emotions in Harmony, how can people get ahold of you?
Carmen Roman: 41:16 Yeah, and they certainly can go to the website. Is emotionsinharmony.org And my email is the same is Carmen@emotionsinharmony.org.
Kathy: 41:29 Okay. EmotionsinHarmony.org. Carmen, thank you so much for sharing your story, your journey, and for all the great work you’re doing right now. It was a pleasure speaking with you.
Carmen Roman: 41:41 Thank you. It was really fun talking to you.
Kathy: 41:45 You’ve been listening to The Inspire Cafe Podcast. You’ll find the show at theinspirecafe.com, and also we’re on facebook, instagram, and twitter. If you’d like what you’re hearing, please subscribe and share with your friends. Until our next conversation, thank you for listening.