Lucia Dramat (32) vannie Gordon’s Bay is a Public Relations professional, facilitator, event host and organizer, TV presenter, public speaker, Radio Helderberg presenter, and blogger.
Her vision is to make a big impact on people’s lives through encouragement and motivation and to make their lives bright and beautiful by bringing joy and happiness.
She is a very open and friendly person. When asked, how old are you? She laughingly responds, “Age is just like the number on the scale it doesn’t matter as long as you are lekke.” One can’t help but smile and feel a sense of peace and optimism when she’s talking.
Lucia’s love for motivational speaking
She starts off by saying that her life in communication and motivations started at a young age and it just kept growing.
As a young girl, she loved to perform for her grandparents in her grandmother’s old fur coat and accessories. She and her cousins would entertain them for hours.
While in primary school, Lucia’s love for performing compelled her to audition for the kids’ show, Craze TV, she laughs out loud and says “I failed horribly!”.
After matriculating from Hottentots Holland High school, Lucia tapped into her heart for women. She started a girls group called “Girls just wanna have fun.” The goal was to reconnect after high school. Most of us experienced high school girls being very catty. Only certain individuals would socialize with certain groups, depending on where you come from or even what your family’s financial status was.
With this group, Lucia hoped the girls would connect irrespective of where they come from, what they liked or disliked, or even whether they liked sports or academics. It would be a place for girls to bond. The group evolved into speaking engagements at youth groups and home cell groups.
Lucia and motherhood
About her struggles as a mother and wife, Lucia says: “Before becoming a mother, I told people to stop being so negative about motherhood. I thought it is a whimsical and like a fairy tale when in fact, it is just wild and no fairy tale,” shocked at her own candour she bursts out in laughter.
Lucia adds that as a parent she and her husband soon realized that they can’t just lie on the couch anymore for 2 hours. She says now she must limit her time and rethink her choices, even in her career.
The fact that she can’t do as much as she used to do before her child was born, is quite a challenge for her. She adds, “I am such a career-driven and ambitious person so it is very difficult for me to be so restricted, but motherhood is something that I’ve always wanted.”
“I cannot imagine my life without having children, not leaving a legacy behind, not having all of my family sitting around the table for Christmas lunch and not having grandchildren,” she says.
Lucia explains that 6 months after her baby’s birth she realised that she has to work very hard to leave a legacy behind for him. Yes, she wants to leave him, property and money but she also wants him to remember her for doing amazing things.
Lucia as a wife
Lucia and her husband are happily married for almost 7 years and they have been dating long before that. As all couples do, they went through the honeymoon phase and then reality suddenly kicked in.
Soon after getting married, her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer. They are a very spiritual couple and mostly relied on their faith to pull them through this battle. Lucia explains that they never shared their journey with people because they didn’t want them to feel sorry for them. Lucia says their marriage is constantly growing and they are working through different battles each day, but they are not giving up on each other.
Her parents were divorced when she was 6 years old and she always kept that as an option at the back of her mind but as they’ve grown through the years, that’s no longer an option. She says it took her very long to realize that he is not going to leave her, not even after all of the family and work drama they go through.
Lucia the career woman
A few years ago, she and her husband started a business. It was a Lifestyle website where you could digitally download Christian music. This was way before iTunes and Google Play Store was a thing in South Africa. When these programs became popular their business took such a hard knock that they couldn’t keep up financially and they had to close it down.
To help her get through this low in her life, she decided to flood herself with motivational videos, she wrote gratitude journals, made dream and vision boards. She practiced and tried everything that could possibly take her out of that dark place she was in. She says instead of feeling sorry for herself, she decided to be grateful, and that’s what changed her perspective on life.
Lucia currently has her own brand which she uses to motivate, inspire and encourage other people. She offers a workshop called “Strategize your outstanding life” which can be presented as a seminar, workshop or course. It is based on different principles that she uses to propel herself forward.
Lucia measures the success of these workshops by the real-life experiences of the attendees. Her face beams with pride when she tells us the story of a lady that dropped out of school and years later went back to complete her matric. After 4 attempts she did the “Strategize Your Outstanding Life” course. Months later Lucia got a call from her saying that she passed. “These are the moments I work and live for,” she says with a big smile.
She emphasizes that whenever you want something very badly, prepare yourself for it, appreciate what you already have and be patient.
What does Colouredness mean to Lucia?
She sums this up with three words:
Family. The intensity of Coloured families is unique she says. All the family functions and gatherings. You know your whole extended family by name and everyone is connected.
Food. “Food is serious business. How can you not have a “boud” at Christmas lunch? And Easter there has to be some type of fish to eat” she says.
Photos. “There are certain photos that every Coloured family has, whether it was a black and white photo or even a modern-day photo. The infamous pose: “someone posing next to a car with a grin on their faces,” she describes laughingly. I’m sure every family photo album has that photo.”
For her, the core of being Coloured is food and family and not how you dress or talk.
About raising her son
Lucia explains how they’ve opted to raise their son in less traditional ways. For example, they teach him to call people by their names and not say, aunty or uncle, this has caused a lot of eyes being rolled at them.
She would love to allow him to live his own life without worrying about what family or friends are saying. To live out his heart.
Lucia says family is important and she wants her son to experience big Christmas lunches with family and friends.
What is next for Lucia?
“I want to do a few more seminars for the year and possibly take it out of Cape Town, places like Johannesburg”, she says.
Lucia is also working on Season 2 of her video series, “Authentic and Thriving”, which are bite-sized motivational videos.
Lucia isse voobeeld van wat ôs mean as ôs sê “Don’t dream, Dala”
