How Dinah and ‘Auntie Luisa’ wrote a children’s book
In her professional life, Luisa Molano is a speaker, author and coach – particularly for women who want to lead “emotionally empowered and purposeful lives.”
The St. Petersburg resident spent 15 years in the corporate world, and cashed that check in 2017 in order to help her clients take “one brave action at a time to move the needle in their life from where they are to where they want to be.
“I don’t preach or talk or share or teach or coach on anything that I haven’t myself lived through,” Molano says. “And that’s what allows me to go so deep with people. My whole trajectory has been a commitment to help people, guide people to awaken to just how incredibly and extraordinarily powerful they are.”
The premise is relatively simple. “Some wake up every day to settle. To not push back. To a boss that snaps at them in front of everybody, and they stay silent. And in the process their soul, their spirit, their essence suffocates.
“I help women – shake them by the shoulders, metaphorically – to wake up to how powerful they are.”
Molano recently put her motivational mission into practice by collaborating with her 8-year-old niece, Dinah Corona, on a book called I Believe in Me! How Little Dreams Become Big Ideas.
With illustrations by Angie Alape, it’s a simple book for kids with one, easy-to-understand message: You can do anything you set your mind to.
Dinah was 3 when she told Auntie Luisa’s her special words: I am smart, beautiful and brave. It became a phrase they always shared while talking on the phone or via FaceTime (Dinah lives in California, while Molano and her husband spend six months out of each year in Pinellas, and split the rest between Arizona and Colorado).
Miss Dinah Corona.
When Dinah was maybe 5, they were together reading a book, and Dinah told her aunt she would like to write a book too, someday.
Lightbulb moment.
“I thought what if I take all that I am, all that I work with others, and distill it into the most simple concepts possible?” Molano remembers. “And then it became a book!”
How Dinah talks about herself matters, and so do her ideas.
Guess what? The same goes for you!
The storyline is just that: Dinah says I can write a book, Auntie Luisa says of course you can, let’s do it together. It becomes inspirational, a lesson in overcoming obstacles.
Dinah and Auntie Luisa want every awesome reader of this book to know how vital it is to believe in yourself and your ideas.
They also want you to know that every idea in the world, big or small, happens ONE step at a time.
Issued in October by Halo Publishing, I Believe in Me! How Little Dreams Become Big Ideas is 42 pages long, and is available in hardcover, paperback and in a Kindle edition.
“Our first aim is to impact a million lives,” Molano explains, “whether that’s book sales, talks, engagements … Dinah and I have our first speaking gig. It is at her school – 425 little souls in two assemblies. We’re going to lead an assembly at her school, to share the book.
“In September, she was brave enough to bring the book to school. She was afraid – ‘what if they laugh at me?’ – but she brought it around anyway. She’s literally on a book tour at her school.”
Other kids were impressed, and curious, and began talking about making their own “brilliant ideas” come true. “Where that goes, I don’t know,” Molano says. “It’s incalculable.
“I believe that dreams are not just whispers from our heart; they’re echoes of the future.”
Find the book at Amazon, Tombolo Books and Barnes & Noble.
