When the "Cool Nerd" Grows Up and Chooses Herself Anyway
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- 8 min read
A conversation about reinvention, responsibility, and making beauty out of real life.
There are some people you meet as a teenager, and you just know they're going to become something. Not "successful" in the resume sense, something deeper. Like they're carrying a future inside them, even when the world tries to shrink their options.
That's how I've always felt about Francesca.
We grew up together in high school, in the choir and cheerleading, that sweet spot of being creative and smart and a little underestimated. We were the cool nerds. And I still love saying that out loud because the world doesn't always know what to do with bright girls who are both soft and strong, both thoughtful and bold.
In my latest podcast episode of Just Call Me Viv, Francesca and I sat down to talk not about titles, not about the highlight reel, but about what it looks like to reinvent yourself in real time and to finally listen to the part of you that's been knocking for years.
Francesca's Origin Story Isn't "Neat" It's Real
Francesca graduated from high school at 16. Brilliant, driven, kind. And also carrying more responsibility than most people her age. She grew up in the Dominican Republic, the eldest of five, in a family of entrepreneurs.
But when she came to the U.S., her path wasn't simply "work hard and thrive." She shared something that mattered: back then, she didn't have documentation, which meant her college options were limited. That single detail shaped everything: her major, her choices, her sense of what was "possible."
So she went into engineering. STEM became her career for many years. And like so many women, especially eldest daughters, especially immigrant daughters, she learned how to survive inside expectations.
The Eldest Daughter Thing… It Does Something to You
This part of our conversation sat in my chest.
Francesca talked about being the oldest "by a lot," with siblings born years apart (her youngest brother was born when she was in college, the last one arrived around her graduation), and how her role shifted over time from helper to caretaker to carrying responsibilities that weren't really hers. She named what so many of us don't name until later: parentification. Role reversal. That feeling of trying to be everything to everyone while quietly disappearing in the process.
And then adulthood hit.
Corporate America wanted her to be a machine, mobile, available, producing. Family needed her to,o real needs, daily needs, emotional needs. She said she felt like she was failing both (by her own standards), and honestly? I think so many women know that exact tension. You're pulled in opposite directions, and somehow you're still the one who feels "not enough."
At 21, Francesca faced a crisis point. She had to choose between everyone else's competing expectations or risk it all to find herself. She chose herself not selfishly, but necessarily. And even then, it would take years of therapy, boundary-setting, and unlearning to fully reclaim her life.
Reinvention Doesn't Always Start as a Big Leap
It starts as a whisper.
A drawing class in 1999. Sketching her daughters while they slept. Creating in the margins of life.
And then COVID happened and for Francesca, like for so many people, the world went quiet enough to hear herself again. She started painting. Color. Brushes. A whole new language. Less control. More trust.
She described the transition beautifully: pencil and charcoal gave her control, muscle memory. But brushes? "These things do whatever they want and I'm not in control." She had to develop entirely new dexterity, learn to work with color, trust the medium.
And she didn't stop.
When Your Art Becomes a Calling (and a Business)
Francesca described the build in a way I love: she didn't wait until she felt "ready." She moved. She showed up. She learned the industry from the inside.
She gave away paintings that first COVID Christmas and watched to see if people would actually hang them, "that's the litmus test," she said. They did. She started doing art fairs (including one where she didn't even have the right tent and showed up with a blue one instead of white they let her stay anyway. She sold work. Took commissions. Paid for travel, displays, hotels, and all the real costs of being an artist who's actually out in the world.
And eventually she asked a practical, powerful question: "If I'm spending all this money to travel… why not put it toward a space of my own?"
That's how the studio and gallery dream became a plan.
Tropical Home Fine Art Gallery: Where Beauty Meets Resistance
Francesca just opened her own space in Tampa: Tropical Home Fine Art Gallery—a gallery rooted not just in location, but in culture, history, the tropics as a shared experience, and the kind of beauty that holds truth.
The name itself came from an unexpected place: Bad Bunny's concert. She was going to call it Tampa Art Gallery, but after that show, she realized her work wasn't about Tampa it was about the tropics as a geographic region that shares a colonial history, similar architecture, vegetation that's central to life, and a cultural fusion that's been happening for centuries.
Her vision? To create a living, immersive space that celebrates the resilience and historical richness of tropical cultures. To honor the threads that connect Vietnam to the Philippines to the Dominican Republic all places colonized by similar powers, all places where people have been creating, surviving, dancing, mothering despite everything.
The Collections That Tell Our Stories
Interwoven: Her first major collection used embroidery to show how the same skills and traditions live across cultures that are too often dismissed or reduced to ugly labels. She almost called it "Shithole Countries," a direct response to that infamous phrase, to show the beauty, craftsmanship, and dignity of places that get disrespected.
Head of Household: A series honoring women who carry loads on their heads, water jugs, baskets, and babies on their backs. Women whose daily labor doesn't come close to the comfort many of us live in, but whose strength and commitment deserve to be seen as beautiful. One piece, Working Mother, shows a woman balancing both literally carrying everything.
Happy Kids: One of Francesca's (and my) favorites. Two children, the older one carrying the younger with that mix of mischief and responsibility that every eldest sibling knows. The joy on their faces. The trust. The moment captured in paint.
Joy Is Not Fluff. Joy Is Resistance.
One of the most powerful moments in our conversation was when Francesca said:
"Joy and beauty are a form of resistance."
She explained it like this: when you're a kid getting spanked, and you refuse to cry, that's resistance. When things are rough, but you choose to smile, to find the good, to make your spaces beautiful anyway, that's resistance.
Her art doesn't minimize struggle. It dignifies it. It says: This hard work matters. This person matters. This moment matters.
The Painting That Reminded Me of My Abuela
I told Francesca about one of her pieces, the woman balancing a heavy basket on her head, because it immediately brought me back to my abuela.
The posture. The strength. The grace. The quiet power of carrying a load and still standing tall, back straight, like you wouldn't even know the weight was there.
That's what Francesca's work does. It doesn't just look beautiful. It reminds you who you are. Where do you come from? What you've survived. What lives inside you?
When you stand in her gallery, she wants you to feel overwhelmed by the beauty first—but then, as you read the stories, as you sit with the pieces, she hopes you realize: There are parts of me that live in them, even though we're strangers.
In a time like this, we need to find commonality. We need to look for what makes us human, like each other, not different from each other.
The Advice I'm Still Thinking About
Francesca doesn't do "generic advice." She offered the kind that comes from lived experience:
It's one life. That's it. That's what we get. One chance to create something meaningful, to leave a mark, to choose joy.
Get an anchor. If you don't have something that gives you courage—faith, purpose, community—get one. For Francesca, her faith fills her with courage to do hard things because she believes God is calling her to something bigger.
Reinvention doesn't have to mean burning everything down. Sometimes it's shifting the percentage: more time for what brings you alive. Maybe you play guitar and teach preschool—what if you just said that backwards? What if you're a guitarist who teaches on the side? It's about which part of yourself you want to cultivate more.
And my favorite: "Fear is an opportunity to be courageous. You can't be courageous unless you're scared. So do it anyway."
Whew.
What Courage Actually Looks Like
When Francesca evaluated the risk of opening her gallery, she asked herself: What's the worst that could happen?
Her kids' college was handled. The house was secure. The worst-case scenario? Her credit takes a hit.
"Who cares?" she said. "It's worth the risk."
That's the kind of clarity that comes from living 50 years. From raising children, leaving a difficult marriage (it took her five years to leave, and the turning point was asking: "Can I ask my daughters to be a kind of woman I don't dare to be myself?"), supporting family, and finally, finally, asking yourself: What kind of life do I want to live?
She doesn't feel 50. She feels 25. But not the lost, scared 25 she was before. The 25 where you can start over without having to do all the hard parts again. The 25 with enough foundation that the risk is small.
What I Hope You Take From This Episode
If you're in your 40s, 50s, beyond… if you're tired, restless, curious, craving more this is your reminder:
You're allowed to change your mind.
You're allowed to want a different life than the one you planned at 22.
You're allowed to take up space, especially as a woman who's aging, because this world likes to make us disappear, but we refuse.
You're allowed to become someone new without apologizing for it.
Because maybe that version of you that's been knocking? She's not being dramatic. She's telling you the truth.
We live longer, healthier lives than our grandmothers did. We look different than they did at our age. We have opportunities they could only dream of. Francesca's great-grandmother once said, "If I had been born in these times, I'd be flying all over the trees." Francesca didn't know what that meant either, but she decided to try.
So what are we waiting for?
A Few Pull Quotes You Can Sit With
"Joy and beauty are a form of resistance."
"Reinvention can be as simple as giving more time to what brings you joy."
"Fear is an opportunity to be courageous… so do it anyway."
"You're allowed to cultivate a different part of yourself."
"Can I ask my children to be a kind of woman that I don't dare to be myself?"
Connect With Francesca
Francesca's gallery just opened in Tampa, and you can experience her work in person or online:
🎨 Gallery Website: tropicalhomegallery.com🖼️ Artist Portfolio: escoto.art📸 Instagram: @escoto.art | @tropicalhomegallery
Listen to the Full Episode
If you haven't heard the episode yet, go listen, especially if you're in a season of becoming. You'll laugh, you might cry, and you'll definitely leave inspired to choose yourself a little more boldly.
Until next time, take care of yourselves.
– Viv
What part of yourself has been knocking louder lately? Drop a comment, I'd love to hear from you.
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