Story & Lesson Highlights with Carmen Vera

Carmen Vera shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Carmen, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What are you most proud of building — that nobody sees?
Hello, hello! Thank you so much for having me back. It’s wild to think it’s been six years since our last chat in 2019. Time truly flies… and so have I. (More on that later!)

Right now, what I’m most proud of is something deeply personal: I’ve been rebuilding me. The real me. The version of myself I had buried for years just to survive.

For so much of my life, I suppressed my creativity and natural spark. Growing up, my personality was “too much.” I was considered too loud, too expressive, too colorful, too me. The way I dressed, the way I did my makeup, the way I spoke — especially during my formative years. Middle school was horrible for me. I was constantly picked apart. I learned to shrink myself just to fit in, to water myself down so I wouldn’t make other people uncomfortable.

And for a long time, I truly believed I was the problem.

But after years of therapy (shout out to my therapist — I’m a proud mental health advocate!), I finally began to understand: people weren’t rejecting me because I was wrong. They were reacting to something right inside of me — something big, bright, and ahead of its time. And instead of nurturing that, they tried to put me in a box because it was easier. Safer. More familiar to them.

But I was never meant to live in a box or be categorized into one.

So now? I’m proud of returning to my roots. To the Carmen who was always bold and spunky and wildly creative. The one who danced to her own rhythm before anyone else even heard the music. I like to joke that I got LASIK so I could see my future clearly, but honestly… I always had great vision. I just had to unlearn the belief that I was too much.

So yes, what I’m most proud of is rebuilding the unapologetic version of myself. The one who no longer edits her essence or limits herself. She’s not a footnote. She’s not afraid anymore. And she’s SO back.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Oooh, I love this question. It always feels a little loaded, but let’s go for it!

Hi! My name is Carmen Vera. I’m a lot of things: I’m a writer and author with five published books and number six on the way. I’m a viral creator with over 200 million views and a loyal audience who I genuinely love through and through.

More recently, I’ve become known for content that blends nostalgia, comedy, satire, and storytelling into one recognizable style. I’m also known for my commentary on topics that can make you laugh, cry, or both, depending on who you are and how honest you’re willing to be with yourself.

I’m a trained vocalist (I’ve been singing since I learned to talk), a multi-platform creator, and a dedicated aviation baddie currently in pilot training. I’ve literally flown a plane solo, and I’m still proud of that moment. It changed my relationship with fear and built a whole new kind of confidence in me.
My creative journey started long before social media. I was coding on Xanga and MySpace in middle school, learning how to market myself before I even knew what branding meant, all while juggling 7th grade math. I’ve always been obsessed with content and connection. Back in the ’90s, I was that kid with the camcorder, putting on performances for my family and when no one would watch, I performed for my stuffed animals. That part of me has never left.

I started building a real audience on Twitter back in 2011, mostly tweeting about atheism and the harms of organized religion. Since then, I’ve grown across platforms—Vine (RIP), Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and now Threads—where I’ve built a following of over 155,000 people and counting.
I also have a background in competitive show choir, which gave me my stage presence and work ethic. I earned three college degrees, including in Communications and African American Studies, all magna cum laude. Those degrees aren’t just academic milestones. They’re proof of my ability to commit, to stay disciplined, and to show up for myself even when things get hard.

And I have to shout out my dad, who always told me to “keep plugging away.” That meant: do the work. Stay focused. Get it done. I wasn’t allowed to go outside unless I finished my homework first, and honestly? That shaped me. That’s still how I live. Work first, play later, take breaks, rinse, repeat.

At the end of the day, my content—and my life—is built on lived experience, crafted with intention, and delivered with unapologetic precision. That’s what makes Carmen Vera… Carmen Vera.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
Honestly, I was a pretty quiet kid. I kept to myself, stayed observant, and didn’t speak unless I really had something to say. Looking back, I think that silence actually became one of my superpowers. It made me a strategist before I even knew what that meant. I was always clocking the energy in a room, watching how people moved. I wasn’t loud, but I was definitely thinking.

But if we’re talking about my earliest memory of actually feeling powerful? It was the summer I turned six, and it involved an apricot.

There was this huge apricot tree in my neighborhood, and it was just there—gorgeous, glowing fruit, totally out of reach. One day, I decided I was going to climb that tree and get one for myself. Not ask. Not wait. Just me, a plan, and some very underdeveloped arm strength.

The first day, I was all excitement and no strategy. I fell and scraped my knee. Day two, I psyched myself out and barely got off the ground. But on the third day, I came back prepared. I wore long pants, better shoes, and I climbed that tree slowly and steadily. And when I finally reached that branch and took a bite of that apricot? It was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted. Not just because it was fruit. But because it was mine. I earned it.

That moment taught me something that’s still true about me to this day: if I want something, I’ll find a way to get it. Even if it takes a few tries. Even if I fall, I’ll come back smarter, more prepared, and hungrier.

That apricot was the first real bite of self-confidence I ever had. And I’ve been climbing ever since.

This story will actually appear in my upcoming book, Unbothered. You’re the first to hear the title, VoyageLA. This is the first time I’ve shared the title publicly… and it feels good to say it out loud.

What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
Oof. This one’s tough, but I want to answer it honestly.

Like anyone else, I’ve had my share of wounds. It’s part of being human. Feeling pain is proof that we’re alive, and sometimes it’s necessary to go through hard things in order to grow.

For me, some of the deepest pain has come from friendships—specifically, the ones I had to walk away from. I’ve had the privilege of meeting some truly amazing people in my life. And, as a Taurus, I’m fiercely loyal when it comes to friendship. I love deeply, I commit hard, and I show up. But over time, I realized that not everyone was rooting for me the way I was rooting for them.

Some friendships I thought would last forever began to shift. In a few cases, we simply outgrew each other. In others, our values no longer aligned. And sometimes, I had to face the harder truth: some people were never who I thought they were in the first place.

Letting go of those relationships wasn’t easy. It’s sad when you realize something that once felt like home no longer fits. But I had to stop watering gardens that weren’t blooming. No matter how much time I had invested, no matter how much history we had, I couldn’t keep giving my energy to connections that didn’t pour back into me.

That was a huge lesson for me—understanding the sunk cost fallacy and walking away anyway. And once I did? My life changed drastically. It was like clearing emotional clutter. Everything started moving again in the right direction.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: I will always choose my peace, even if it means letting go of someone I once loved. And if I had to do it all over again? I’d make the same call every single time.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Be selfish.

Seriously—choose yourself. Every day. Every time. It’s okay to do that. In fact, I think it’s necessary.

You only get one shot at this life. That’s it. Especially as someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife, I feel that urgency every day. This is your one chance on Earth to experience joy, alignment, truth. So why wouldn’t you make yourself the priority? At the end of the day, you’re the one who has to go to bed with your own thoughts. You’re the one living your life. No one else.

I’m really over the narrative that we should constantly stretch ourselves thin for everyone else. I think people would experience a lot more peace if they stopped trying to live for the approval of others and started aligning with their actual selves. That whole idea of “put others first”, sounds sweet when you’re in elementary school and learning how to share, but in real life? You need balance.

Two things can be true: you can care deeply about others, and still choose yourself. But make no mistake—you will need to choose yourself, and often.

Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
I think I have a gift. And that gift is being able to see beauty in everything—even in the bizarre, the uncomfortable, or what others might call “ugly.”

Most people are trained to see the world in categories: good or bad, beautiful or broken, black or white. But I’ve always lived in the in-between. That’s where I feel most at home. I exist in the grayspace—not necessarily right or wrong, not light or dark, just… being. That’s the beauty of it.

To me, this life holds all of it. The black before, the gray in between, the white after. We start in the unknown and eventually return to it, and everything in the middle is the part we get to shape. I actually wrote about this in my book Grayspace, because that concept—the richness of uncertainty, of contradiction—is something I believe we need to embrace more.

But in order to see life that way, you have to unravel a lot of what you’ve been taught. Society programs us to label everything quickly, to sort things into “acceptable” or “not.” Some of that is protective, but a lot of it limits our ability to really understand the world around us.

And that’s one of my superpowers: seeing beauty everywhere. In people, in art, in culture, in concepts, in chaos. I look for meaning where others might look away. And sometimes, just being able to sit in the gray is the most human thing we can do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.carmenvera.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmenvera
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecarmenvera
• Other: www.threads.com/@carmenvera
  www.tiktok.com/@thecarmenvera