If you really knew me: You would know I hate Vegas, that when I was 14 and my brother was seven my mother use to drive to Vegas with my stepfather and neighbor to gamble while they left us outside in the car for hours.

When I heard the SLiCK training was in Vegas, I just knew memories would return of those moments waiting in the freezing desert cold for my parents to come back to the car. And so the memories came back and so did many others.

SLiCK is Student Leadership Inspired by Consuelo Kickbusch. For information on SLiCK go to
http://www.iamslick.com/.

Bring these young men and women to your school districts to change the lives of children who need help with school, peers, bullying, drugs, gangs, with their home, and life.

I and 39 other talented individuals from across the country were invited to participate in a training and to audition to help spread the work SLiCK does across the country. I was humbled from the very beginning at the level of talented individuals that I was surrounded by. As some of the readers on LatinosNJ.com know, I don’t hold my tongue for no one, and I’m as honest as I can be when it comes to Latino issues. This is no different.

As talented as I always tell myself I am (and people say I am, and I know it — plus I’m humble), I was in awe at the talents of individuals; from their singing ability to their pursuit of higher education and the changes they make on kids on a daily basis; from college recruiters that risk their lives driving to schools in snowy icy roads, to people who work in criminal detention centers that make a difference in the lives of kids in the “system.” I can sit here and write all day about the talent and loving souls in the room but it would take too much, plus I have to get back to writing a book (side note, in the last four months a copy editor from the Wall Street Journal is writing a book about my life, hence it has been difficult to write blogs) and the copy editor is a slave worker.

But what I do want to touch upon is the lives that touched my life, the stories that I will carry in my heart, the hugs and the tears I shared with so many people. We were there to get training and audition and we walked out of there with so much cleansing and release. Too many of the stories are too personal to share and it’s not my right to do so but one thing I can share is that we are all troubled and we all need this sense of release. As tired as I was from crying on Monday and as tired as I was trying to get my speech down to 20 minutes, I felt a calm, and I still feel a calm about me that’s different, I can’t even explain it, don’t want to, all I can say is that it’s SLiCK.

Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch once told me I had a gift, when all I did was stand in for a friend at a lecture and then because of a free ticket and hotel room in Chicago I went to do a workshop. I was not ever thinking of doing lectures for a living nor was ever thinking of someone writing a book about my life and now I feel even more humble because my story is not nearly as powerful as the stories of others in that room. I have not written a blog in a long time, but this experience moved me so much that I felt the need to tell people how wonderful this is. If grown professional men and women can reach deep into their souls and their inner demons and let them out, and feel at ease, I can only imagine what it can do to young men and women who have so much to live for.

As I was boarding the plane I had tears coming out of my eyes, which I thought was impossible from all the crying I had done on Monday. I had tears of joy; a place that I hated so much growing up, had brought me so much joy in the last three days. We took advantage of the buffet at the hotel, we went on a scavenger hunt, Consuelo said I looked “so cute” with my long hair ( I blushed) , we laughed till we couldn’t laugh anymore, I wore heels (don’t ask), and although hardly anyone saw this, I did a windmill at Coyote Ugly and won the dance-off against the Michael Jackson-looking guy, saw performances that couldn’t be topped anywhere else, saw a few friends I haven’t seen in a while, and felt inspired by humanity for the first time in a long time.

Yes, I thought, “How ironic, that I’m crying because I’m leaving Vegas and the memories and friends I leave behind, when I was crying a long time ago, that I was forced to come to Vegas.” Those things I can’t explain, but all I can say is, SLiCK made the change. Who’s SLiCK? I’m SLiCK!!!!