Who Made Me?: The Story Behind Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs

Before there were roadmaps, there were people.

In the first episode of Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs, I begin with the question I will eventually ask every guest: Who made you?

My answer leads me back to my mother, to Mamá Socorro, my paternal grandmother, to Puerto Rico in the 1960s and 70s, and to the ordinary details that stayed with me long before I understood their meaning. A kitchen with almost no salt. Jasmine outside a house. Hours spent sitting beside someone I simply loved being near.

Those memories became breadcrumbs.

From there, I look at the roadmaps I inherited, the ones I questioned, and the ones I eventually created for myself. I also talk about the world I am living in now, why silence began to feel different to me, and why I wanted a public place for conversations about history, work, responsibility, authorship, and legacy.

Season One, What Women Carry Forward, brings together women who have built companies, projects, ventures, bodies of work, and meaningful paths of their own. We begin with the person behind the visible work. We look at what shaped her, what she inherited, what changed her direction, what experience has made visible, and what she intends to do with what she knows now.

The solo episodes will make room for the questions that deserve more time.

This first episode is where I begin by answering some of those questions myself.

To learn about my work:

Website: Soulful Sojourners

Email: info@soulfulsojourners.com

Subscribe to The 1:1

Thank you for listening.

I hope today's conversation gives you something worth thinking about after the episode ends.

A question. A recognition. A thought worth returning to when you have the distance to hear it differently.

If you want to continue the conversation, listen to another episode of Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also learn more about my work, read my writing, and explore ways to work with me at www.soulfulsojourners.com. For information, email info@soulfulsojourners.com.

The views and opinions expressed by guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Neidy Lozada or Soulful Sojourners, LLC.

The content of this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, mental health, or other professional advice.

Original music composed by Micah Silverstein. Music copyright © 2026 Neidy Lozada and Soulful Sojourners, LLC. All rights reserved. All scripts written by Neidy Lozada. AI used for research, structure, or organization. Artwork designed by Neidy Lozada, enhanced by AI in Canva.

Until next time, I am Neidy Lozada, and you have been listening to Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs.

Transcript

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Neidy Lozada 0:09

Hi everyone, welcome to Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs, a conversation series about purpose, work, and legacy. I am your host, Neidy Lozada, transformational strategist, spiritual integration coach, and founder of Soulful Sojourners.

Neidy Lozada 0:25

Season One is called What Women Carry Forward. Throughout this first season, I will be spending time with women who have built families, companies, projects, ventures, bodies of work, and meaningful paths of their own.

Neidy Lozada 0:41

I'm interested in where they came from, what shaped them, what they created from what they inherited, and what they can see now that they could not see while they were living it.

Neidy Lozada 0:52

There will also be solo episodes like this one where I can stay longer with the question beneath those conversations.

Neidy Lozada 0:59

And because I am going to ask other women about their histories, I thought I should begin with mine. Now that I am 63, I find myself looking backward and forward at the same time. I think this is because there is enough life behind me now to recognize things I could not see while I was living them. There is also hopefully enough life ahead of me to ask a question that has become increasingly crucial in my life: What do I do with what I know now?

Neidy Lozada 1:32

Part of the answer begins with the people who made me. If you ask me who my hero and maker is, my answer is immediate. My mother. Hands down. Our relationship has always been complex, but her influence on me is absolutely undeniable. Her strength, her determination, and the way she moved through responsibility and also adversity became part of the material from which I built my own life.

Neidy Lozada 1:59

My grandmothers are part of that history too. Today I want to tell you about my paternal grandmother, though.

Neidy Lozada 2:07

When I think about my childhood, she is one of the people I remember most clearly in connection with feeling good in the world. My name for her was Mama Socorro. She was black, strong, funny, poised. Her voice was deep, and she loved, and I mean loved, watching wrestling matches. I don't know why, still to this day.

Neidy Lozada 2:33

Mama Socorro lived close enough to my house that I could walk to hers. And I did that every single day, by the way.

Neidy Lozada 2:42

And I have to tell you that there was nothing elaborate about those visits. She sat and I sat with her. I could spend hours upon hours there. In fact, this is one of the things I remember the most. I was sitting by her side in front of the TV when we witnessed Karl Wallenda plunge to his death while attempting a tightrope walk in Puerto Rico. This was 1978. I was 15 years old. And I remember it as if it were today. I invite you to look it up if you're interested in understanding his life, his legacy, and his death.

Neidy Lozada 3:21

But let me go back to my grandmother. Mama Socorro never sought to entertain me. Not one bit. I was not waiting for anything special to happen when I was with her. I simply liked being with her. I doubt I was her favorite grandchild. I don't know that I was because she had so many. But her life really impacted mine.

Neidy Lozada 3:44

Still to this day, I remember the jasmine plants in front of her house. I remember her kitchen and I remember her food and how she cooked. My grandfather was ill and he could not eat salty foods, so she cooked for him, and all of her food was devoid of salt and any type of condiment, and I ate whatever she cooked.

Neidy Lozada 4:08

Decades later, I still rarely add salt to my food, by the way. For most of my life, I thought that that was just a preference of mine, but eventually I understood that I could trace it back to her kitchen. And it seems like such a small thing, huh?

Neidy Lozada 4:25

Yet it reminds me of how quietly history can enter us. We absorb ways of being before we have the language to understand where they came from or how deeply they have shaped us.

Neidy Lozada 4:39

Years later, let me tell you this part, as I was talking with someone about my grandson, I stopped mid- sentence when I realized that I had become my grandmother. My grandson would sit at the counter, minding his business, and I was cooking every single time as he was visiting. I was there for him, and nothing special, even though we did a lot of great things and we had so much fun.

Neidy Lozada 5:07

But at home, that was what we did. We sat together, I looked at him and I cooked for him. He used to call my kitchen the restaurant because as he used to say, I ask for what I want and you give it to me. And at some point, that poor child called my kitchen a five-star restaurant. And anybody who has eaten my food aside from him knows that that's not true. But that's the beauty of being his grandmother.

Neidy Lozada 5:38

So let me continue talking about my history. My mother and grandmothers are part of that history, but so is Puerto Rico. I grew up there in the 60s and 70s, surrounded by family, community, faith, expectations, ideas about womanhood, work, responsibility, ambition, family violence, and there was a lot of that, but also survival and belonging.

Neidy Lozada 6:08

I absorbed some of those things without question. Others took a lot of years to examine. And some I eventually decided had no place in the life I wanted to build. That process of looking back, understanding what formed me, and deciding what I would do with what I received has become increasingly important as I have gotten older. And it has also changed the way I look at the world around me.

Neidy Lozada 6:37

As a matter of context, I am recording this episode on October 5th, 2026. And while Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs is neither a political nor religious space, I cannot help but be affected by the world around me.

Neidy Lozada 6:52

Over the last 10 years, the social and political landscape has changed the way I think about responsibility, dignity, belonging, and the consequences of remaining silent about the things that matter to me. I have watched the world become harsher in ways I find difficult to ignore. I have watched people, animals, and the planet become abstractions in public conversations while we are living the consequences of those conversations in our homes, families, bodies, and futures.

Neidy Lozada 7:24

In fact, I am tired of hearing and talking about today's occurrences as if recounting history 50 years from now. I believe we have the power to impact our destiny. I also believe that our history is not our destiny.

Neidy Lozada 7:40

So as I began networking more widely for my company, I found myself talking with women and men who shared many of my concerns about the state of the world. What struck me was that we were not simply talking about what troubled us. Each of us in different ways was already trying to create conditions for change. Those conversations made me examine my own place in that work more closely.

Neidy Lozada 8:05

And these questions came up for me one after the next. What did I believe strongly enough to say publicly? What had my own life taught me? What kind of voice did I want to have in the world? And what did I want to contribute while I still had the opportunity to do so?

Neidy Lozada 8:25

Those questions were also beginning to change the way I thought about my professional life. I had spent decades working directly with people before I founded Soulful Sojourners. When Soulful Sojourners came into being, even its name reflected the language I had been using for years. Journeys, paths, maps, changing direction when the information changes, and Breadcrumbs. Those were all part of my language.

Neidy Lozada 8:55

And the word sojourner mattered to me a lot during this process because I have always understood that people can travel closely together for a period of time without being meant to travel together forever.

Neidy Lozada 9:08

My job in that work is to work myself out of the job. That's my mantra. And Soulful Sojourners gave that philosophy a professional home with my name on it. But some of the questions I was carrying no longer belonged only inside private work. I wanted a public place for them.

Neidy Lozada 9:29

Age is part of that urgency, by the way. I know how easy it can become from older women to disappear from cultural view after decades of learning, building, changing, recovering, and accumulating perspective. I noticed that, and I'm not interested in disappearing.

Neidy Lozada 9:47

I wanted to put my ideas into the world more deliberately, and I wanted a form that would allow me to do more than speak. I wanted to listen.

Neidy Lozada 9:58

That is how Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs began to make sense to me as a podcast. The Roadmaps are the directions we inherit or create for ourselves. Some are handed to us through family, culture, faith, circumstance, and expectation, just to name a few. Others we create as we begin making our own decisions about who we are and how we want to live.

Neidy Lozada 10:24

And life keeps giving us information the map could have not anticipated. There are areas under construction, right? So that is where the Breadcrumbs come in. They are the experiences whose meaning becomes clearer with time. My grandmother's kitchen is one of mine. I did not know as a child that something as ordinary as eating the food she cooked would remain with me more than 50 years later. I recognize the connection only when I had enough distance to look back.

Neidy Lozada 10:56

That relationship between what shapes our direction and what becomes visible in hindsight is at the heart of this podcast.

Neidy Lozada 11:04

In season one, I am having those conversations with women who have built something. As I said before, a company, family, venture, project, a body of work, or a path that has mattered beyond themselves. All of these women are women of service, by the way. Their accomplishments give us a place to begin. But they are not the whole story. I want to know the person behind the visible work, of course, who made her.

Neidy Lozada 11:36

I want to ask questions like, what did she inherit? What did she eventually question? What choices changed her direction? What does she understand differently now because she has lived long enough to look back? Then we will move into the work she built and the decisions that shaped it. And eventually we turn toward what is still ahead. What does she intend to do with what she knows now? Has her purpose of her work changed? What responsibility does she associate with the experience, authority, resources, or influence she has accumulated? What does legacy mean while she is still here to participate in creating it?

Neidy Lozada 12:21

The women who sit with me are still living their lives. Their work may change. And I have to say that the decisions still in front of them matter as much to me as the ones already behind them. And you do not need to share a guest profession, background, or history for her story to matter to you. Something she inherited may make you consider what you inherited. A decision she describes may bring one of yours back into view. Something she recognizes only in hindsight may help you recognize one of your own Breadcrumbs. That is the conversation I want Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs to make possible.

Neidy Lozada 13:07

The solo episodes make room for a different kind of conversation though. They are not simply reactions to the interviews, by the way. Some will grow from questions that surface with guests and deserve more attention. Others will begin with my own history, my professional experience, my education, something happening around us, or an idea I want to examine more closely. Purpose, responsibility, capacity, authorship, aging, work, service, and definitely legacy all belong here. So does the possibility that my thinking will change.

Neidy Lozada 13:48

We make decisions with the information available to us at any given time. Experience gives us more information, and time can change what we understand about what happened. The solo episodes gives us room to stay with those questions without forcing them toward a conclusion.

Neidy Lozada 14:05

Over time, I hope Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs become a record for people looking carefully at where they came from, what they built, what experience taught them, and what they are still choosing. Season one begins with women. Some will have spent decades building one body of work. Others will have changed directions several times. Some will arrive knowing exactly which experiences altered their course. Others may recognize something while we are sitting together. Those are my favorite conversations, by the way.

Neidy Lozada 14:40

Between those conversations, the solo episodes will give us room to keep examining the ideas that surface along the way. And your commentary will help guide those questions and those episodes as well. History is important here because it gives us the context. Work is important to this conversation because work has a history too. And legacy is crucial because we are creating it while we are here alive right now.

Neidy Lozada 15:11

I began with my mother, my grandmother, and Puerto Rico because I could not ask another person who made you without being willing to ask myself first. But my history is only where the conversation begins.

Neidy Lozada 15:26

From here, we listen to other lives. We look at what was inherited, what was chosen, what changed, what became visible with time, and what remains possible from here. That is Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs, a conversation series about purpose, work, and legacy. And underneath all of it is a question I expect we will return to many, many times. What do we do with what we know now?

Neidy Lozada 15:56

Thank you for listening. I hope today's conversation gives you something worth thinking about after the episode ends. A question, a recognition, or a thought worth returning to when you have the distance to hear it differently. If you want to continue the conversation, listen to another episode of Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also learn more about my work, read my writing, and explore ways to work with me at soulfulsojourners.com. The views and opinions expressed by guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Nady Lozada or Soulful Sojourners LLC. The content of this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, mental health, or other professional advice. Original music was composed for this podcast by Micah Silberstein. Music Copyright 2026, Nady Losada and Soulful Sojourners LLC. All rights reserved. Until next time, I am Nadi Lozada and you have been listening to Roadmaps and Breadcrumbs.