WHERE THIS BEGAN

I got married over seventeen years ago. Like most couples, we were caught up in the planning — the venue, the family logistics that always seem to take on a life of their own. What we were not expecting was a priest handing us a 180-question inventory and telling us to sit apart and fill it out in silence.

That was Padre Thomas Mitchell. He had known me since I was nine years old. He knew exactly what he was doing.

When we sat back down with him the following week, something shifted. We thought we were ready for marriage. We were — mostly. But there were entire conversations we had never had. Finances. Family expectations. The kind of assumptions couples carry into a life together without realizing they are assumptions. Padre Thomas didn't tell us what to think. He just opened the door and made us walk through it, together.

That process gave us something the flowers and the cake couldn't: a foundation. Seventeen years later — two teenagers, more than a few hard seasons, and a marriage I am still grateful for every day — I know exactly what that conversation was worth.'

WHY CLARIDAD EXISTS

A few years ago, my niece told me she was getting married. My first thought was: she needs to do the inventory. My second thought, after spending weeks trying to find her access to it, was: why is this so hard to get?

The preparation that had shaped my own marriage was nearly inaccessible to any couple who wasn't Catholic, or who wasn't already inside the right parish network, or who simply didn't know it existed.

That gap bothered me enough that I didn't look for someone else's solution. I built my own. I got certified as a facilitator, and I founded Claridad to make this work available to every couple — regardless of faith, background, or how they define their relationship.

A LITTLE ABOUT ME

I'm Lourdes. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and I've called Florida home since 2019 — though I've been in the States since 1998, long enough to hold both places inside me at once. I live in St. Augustine, a city that, if you know Old San Juan, feels like a quiet echo of it: the stone walls, the narrow streets, the way the light falls at a certain hour.

By training, I'm a Chemical Engineer — which is a long way of saying I was taught to look at a complex system, find where it's breaking down, and figure out what it actually needs. I've spent the past fifteen years doing a version of that in brand strategy: understanding what people need, often before they can name it. It turns out that skill translates directly to sitting across from two people who love each other and helping them find the conversations they didn't know they were missing.

My parents have been married for over fifty-three years. I've been married for over seventeen. I've officiated the weddings of people I love. I know what it looks like when two people build something that holds.