Daily Inspiration: Meet Heidi Lepe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Lepe.

Hi Heidi, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I grew up being an expressive and passionate kid. Growing up in a low income Latine church in South Central Los Angeles was the soil for my creativity. I’d learn how to play guitar, sing, song-write, and even wrote my own stories and lessons as a teen for the younger kids because we didn’t have the funds to always buy new curriculum or hire staff—so we winged it. In this environment, I learned there were no limits to my imagination and I’d use this approach in my future work. Many Black and Latine kids throughout the city run the show like this behind the scenes for their communities and families without knowing how brilliant and innovative our minds and ideas are. We figure and create things from scratch, we make outcomes happen, including with the little we have, but it happens and here our ideas and entrepreneurial spirit blooms. Yet it’s sometimes hard to imagine an actual vocation in the arts and as a creative person. Growing up as a child of immigrants in a working class family, I did not think a path in the arts was for me because of the usual (and true) belief that we can’t make ends meet with a creative job. Here we also fail to see how it is extremely difficult to imagine and find this path in a capitalist world, in one where heavy emphasis is placed on the individual to fund and figure everything out on our own—while discounting how resources, privilege, and opportunities play a role here. Yet, despite how difficult it is to follow a career path as a creative, I’ve made it not by following an individualistic model but a collective one. I would not be where I am today if it weren’t for the sacrifice and generosity of so many members in my community and close circle believing in me and my dreams. Pupusa sales, friends pitching in, friends saying my name in rooms, my mother and father’s hardworking hands, my older sister’s sacrifice and support through college, my people’s prayers, have all gotten me here in addition to my own bold, curious, and intuitive spirit. Today, I dedicate my life full time to the literary arts world as a writer, senior communications manager, and consultant for youth and arts organizations. I attribute this journey to being born and raised in love, to being poured into, and to the times I allowed my internal compass to guide me and tell me to keep going, to keep staying true to that passionate, expressive little girl through every transition.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Life is not a smooth road and neither is pursuing the job or creative journey you want. A struggle I think many of us can relate to is the fact that we lose people we love on the way that makes us pause, hurt, grieve and question everything—including ourselves. Losing people and family members dear to you, requires us to pause in our journey to prioritize our grief because if not, it can get really messy, inauthentic and just miserable trying to work, create and live—from what I’ve noticed. If I hadn’t truly processed and continue to process my grief, my art would not be where it is at today, and neither would I. It was hard not knowing what to write for periods of time seeing an empty page. It was hard quitting graduate school, saying no to fellowships and losing grant opportunities during this time period of extreme loss for me, but I had to say no to make space to heal and be well. All these experiences also made me look deep within to truly assess and decide if I still wanted to pursue a creative path and if it was still true to me during a time where grief changed me and made me a different person. What I found was that it was not only still true to me but also an avenue of healing. Through my words and storytelling, I began writing about the people I lost, the grief I experienced, and found this to be an avenue of healing and something I still wanted to do, while expanding on the subjects I’d write about and handling it with more care and experience.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a Senior Communications Manager for a youth writing movement amplifying student voices across the country and the power and joy of writing. I am also a communications consultant and strategist for a creative, digital and communications agency serving mission driven clients statewide in California. I am grateful for the opportunity to exercise storytelling and narrative change work through digital content. In particular, I love building, weaving and writing impact stories and centering underrepresented voices in my communications work through email and social media campaigns. I’ve also found joy in helping to tell the greater story of organizations in a true, inspiring, and new or relevant way while strengthening brand voice. I’m known for bringing in new ideas and angles in my communications work, in approaching campaigns and causes with fresh perspectives that resonate with different audiences. I think what sets me apart is that I come in as a writer and strategist who is rooted in her community and stays curious and informed about our community’s needs. I’m honestly proud to see my work and art intersect. It’s a true blessing working for mission driven organizations close to my own writer journey as a once young storyteller and youth writer. I’m grateful this path just makes sense.

Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
I wish we could simply be easier on ourselves when our journeys and choices might not be aligned with our dreams. What I mean by this is that many creatives have to prioritize stability, caring for families, collective communities, and bringing food on the table before their art and dream jobs. We do this by accepting odd or undesirable jobs and career paths so we can continue figuring out and funding our dreams. I want to validate that even if some of us are still in such places and positions we do not desire or relate to, this does not make us less of an artist, creative, writer etc. Our society was not set up to support and value the artist, let alone artists of marginalized backgrounds, and so some of the struggle includes being harder on ourselves and our process when in reality we can learn to give ourselves a break. We can validate and name ourselves in our journeys as creatives instead of waiting on a position, publisher, or invitation. Working as a legal assistant for some time, as a residential assistant another time, and even as an after school tutor at an elementary school wore me out and made me feel behind. Yet what I wasn’t realizing is that these jobs also provided times of respite and mental breaks for me to have more capacity to draft writing pieces, creative community projects, and even space to pitch my first essays to media pages and magazines. It was a struggle back then to choose to stay and prioritize stability, yet as I looked back these positions and times in my life did not stop me from my path. Instead they propelled me forward and helped birth new beginnings. I look back and would say choose peace, prioritize your needs, and trust that things will work out in your favor. Sometimes it just will look different than what we imagined and sometimes we might have to start over a few times but that does not discount us from who we know we are, especially when we name ourselves.

Contact Info:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidilepe/

Image Credits
White Portrait Shots: 9hundredeleven
Green Portrait Shot: Saon Kashem