She Slept on Wooden Planks Now She Teaches Veterans How to Win at Life

What if everything you thought made you "behind" was actually your greatest gift?

In this riveting episode of Rise From The Ashes, Dr. Constance Leland known as CJ shares a soul-piercing story that will shift how you see adversity forever. Born in the Philippines and separated from her mother until age 7, CJ arrived in America at 13 and mastered three years of English in just three months. Her academic brilliance masked a hidden truth: undiagnosed ADHD that went unseen for decades.

But this isn’t a story of struggle it’s a roadmap to power.

From raising pigs on a remote farm to now raising voices in academia and advocacy, CJ shows us what resilience really looks like when your life doesn't fit the mold. Diagnosed in her 40s, after already earning four degrees, she challenges the myth that neurodivergence and achievement are mutually exclusive: “The first thing they say is, ‘Oh, you have four degrees. You’re fine.’”

CJ’s life is a masterclass in spiritual grit, cultural courage, and tactical balance down to weekly scheduled date nights with her husband of 22 years. She leads, teaches, and thrives not by escaping hardship but by harvesting it.

If you've ever felt behind, misdiagnosed, or misunderstood this is your wake-up call.

This isn’t just an interview it’s your call to rise.
Listen now and discover how to turn your scars into strength and your challenges into a legacy that serves others.

🚀 Subscribe to Rise From The Ashes and start living your own comeback story today.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Dr. Constance Leland
• 3:18 From Philippines to America
• 5:15 Learning Differences and Educational Challenges
• 9:18 Grandmother's Wisdom and Life Lessons
• 16:28 Balancing Career, Family and Relationships
• 19:48 Closing Thoughts on Resilience

Transcript

Baz Porter : 0:02

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Rice and the Ashes. We are approaching the 100 mark. My next guest is Dr Constantine. Constantine, is that right? Constance, yes, constance, I do apologize. I am terrible with names because I am dyslexic, or I like to say dyspexic, so if I get it wrong, please tell me. Can I call you CJ? Yes, please. Okay, awesome, welcome to the show, and would you tell people who you are, what you do and a bit about your passions in life?

Dr Constance Leyland: 0:33

Sure, so my name is Dr Constance Leland, cj is what I prefer to be called, especially if you're not in my classroom. I am a professor for almost 14 years now and I used to do K-12 for three and a half years. My background is in property and casualty insurance, commercial banking, all kinds of insurance, sales and marketing. Before I became a full-time educator, I was also a dean at three different universities, both online and on-ground, and currently I work full time as a professor for veterans specifically. My students are all veterans and I also own a company called Level Up Academy and what we do. Actually we're going to go deep into it more, but it's all about visibility and people always say I'm visible and I say you're actually not, depending on your strategy. So that's what I go through is fill in that gaps and I provide courses and social media marketing as well.

Baz Porter : 1:32

But you seem very busy and you've got a lot of accolade and passions of education behind your name. What, originally going back, way back, in, way back, when it spurred you to get all of these? I call it prestige, but it's education, and it's not just academic education. You've traveled quite a bit, haven't you?

Dr Constance Leyland: 1:55

Yeah, I have. Okay, during my dissertation I opted it was a challenge. I opted to actually do a methodology that's dual and if you ever go for your doctorate anybody's listening. Don't ever do that. I'm just saying I wanted a challenge. So I actually had to travel to Korea, japan and Philippines to finish my dissertation because I needed to interview executive women. And you're probably asking we have technology now, cj, you can just talk to people you don't understand. These people are owners and VPs of huge organizations and they won't talk to you via Zoom. So I had to travel and luckily my family has a pole. Even when the bank was closed, it was open. For me. That was the ideal and I love Asian culture because we open doors. When you know people, you just know. But if, if you don't do that, but I did travel a lot. I also traveled for Nestle during my, I think, motherhood.

Baz Porter : 2:50

I quit full-time job but I was doing consulting, but yeah, I love, maybe, aging cultures, and I've got that, without going too much detail tattoos on my back. It's always fascinated me what's the difference between growing up in that culture and then coming to the States with virtually nothing and no experience of the Western world? What's the differences in that?

Dr Constance Leyland: 3:18

Okay. So I came here when I was 13,. But my family? I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday about corporate world and I said, come to think of it, I don't think any of my family members work for anybody. We own businesses, period. I don't remember owning like. I think I'm the only one who's working for corporate here in my family and I have a lot of family everywhere. So I grew up there in the Philippines since I came here when I was 13. So most of my life, really predominantly my life here, is in America.

Dr Constance Leyland: 3:48

But I do believe that the first 10 years of your upbringing actually creates your entire future and in Asian culture, academics is like breathing. So if you don't go to school, you get labeled a certain way and it's not just about you. You're like I don't really care, like here. If nobody's educated, they don't really care. Over there it's a pressure of the family. So if you are a mess up kid who don't go to school, the whole family is a mess up family. Does that make sense? It's labeled because it's communal. So the huge difference is that education for us is like breathing. So the huge difference is that education for us is like breathing. I also realize that education is not for everybody and the way we learn is so important, and I think a lot of kids and adults now realize that the reason I didn't really like education is the way they taught me I couldn't get it. My dad is dyslexic. He went to college for one year. Everything was prayed for.

Baz Porter : 4:45

Books were never open because he can't read it right what did you find growing up with dyslexia, adhd, all of these labels now, and they're all valid. I'm not discarding them, but did you find that a challenge when you were going through the education system and learning doctorates, professors, professors, o-levels, a-levels this is going back a while now. This is in the UK For me. I always was challenged at school. I was labelled thick, I was labelled stupid, but it wasn't the case. You understand this and people who have dyslexia or ADHD, add, whatever you want to call it we learn differently. Did you find that on your journey going back then? What was the stigma around your challenges and what was your experience?

Dr Constance Leyland: 5:33

Okay. So I actually wrote this on a book in the anthology. I remember there was a science class and it was about like learning all the planets. And in my head I planned it like I was an engineer okay, like I'm gonna do this paper mache, this glue, this blah, blah, blah. And I was telling all my classmates and they were so excited. But the end results was nothing but like my, because I didn't know I had ADHD. I didn't even know until I was already over my 40 years of age and I learned differently. But I also push myself in certain ways and I learned how to cope with my weaknesses and make my strength really high.

Dr Constance Leyland: 6:19

I can work in multiple projects, but if it's boring I will drop the ball Right. And it's not that I'm not capable. I am more than capable. I already know because I've proven myself over and over. But it's my brain. There's something in my brain that switches like, okay, that's just so boring, I can't. It's like getting your hands on this blackboard, like that's how I feel, right, and my learning style is actually kinesthetic and also visual. So if you give me a book and read the text, I can read it. Will I grasp it? Maybe I read really fast, but I will actually. How I do my brain is I read the first word and the last word and I can tell within the middle already, like I can literally tell. That's how, because I've read thousands and thousands, I can read 10,000 pages, probably in a week or less that's just insane yeah we actually have a lot in common.

Baz Porter : 7:10

I didn't realize, I didn't know I was. I didn't know about adhd until about three years ago and I just thought this was just normal before that and then I started to understand more about it. My wife is actually a therapist. She had an incredible backstory on her. She was in charge of the South Bay in Los Angeles in Kaiser Permanente for all the intakes. For about 13 years she worked for Kaiser Permanente. She put me onto it because she saw all the signs. As she gradually the relationship deepened. She was like I think you're dyslexic and I was like I think you're ADHD and I was like what's that? So it is real and what I find fascinating is like you, I didn't know that I had that even existed until I was mid-40s. But do you find that common or is it just a one-off?

Dr Constance Leyland: 8:10

No, that's very common. I actually have a couple of friends, including Susana, who she didn't know she had it until I told her I'm like you, have it, and I said I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, so I need you to go see someone Specifically for ADHD. It took me four psychiatrists to actually get diagnosed. The first thing they say is oh, you have four degrees, you're fine, you don't have any ADHD. But there are different. It's so ignorant. There are different types of ADHD out there, right, especially for boys also. And women are actually often misdiagnosed. And I actually am writing not me, but my part of my members. We're writing.

Dr Constance Leyland: 8:50

An academic publishing is going to be published in like 60 countries, into 120 different universities in the world. It's coming up soon. I hope that it will get six different languages and translated, because we are talking about ADHD and women are often misdiagnosed because we like to multitask anyway. So it's like, oh, it's just, it's just a mom thing, or oh, I'm just like that, right. But what they don't understand is that now it's glorified, it's annoying the heck out of me, but it comes with depression and anxiety. That's not fun.

Baz Porter : 9:23

No People speaking to is amazing, but this is the outcome of years of dedication you mentioned earlier. Without going into this is going to be a whole different conversation. Otherwise, there are different ways of learning. You mentioned visual kinesthetic. There's audio. There's other ways of people learning but people aren't aware of that or, most sorry, wrong statement. There's a lot of people aren't aware of that.

Baz Porter : 9:51

But your education was a. It seemed to be acceleration to, to build your credibility into something else which you use today. But going back in your childhood, how was that for you? Going through that culture, understanding the world, trying to find your footing? You're working for corporate america, which is hell. From my understanding from a lot of people, I did a lot of research with what I do interviewed, probably hold on, I don't get rid of that. People are calling me interviewed over 400 women who are corporate or executives, but I didn't. Like you said earlier, I could never break through into the Asian markets because they are closed doors. I don't want to be online. What was that like, coming from that sort of culture into the Western world as a child and then proving yourself in a very competitive space?

Dr Constance Leyland: 10:52

I love competition, except I'm a sore loser. So I already tell people that, like I can't do sports, I'll beat you up, even though I'm five feet tall, if I lose. So I just stay away from it. Okay, but in all honesty, when I was young because my parents left me when I was two I grew up with my grandparents and in Asian culture basically saying hey, if you are really smart, your parents will love you, right, that's the condition. And so I thought if I'm number one out of 7,000 kids, my parents will come back for me. So that was my goal. I would do everything, like you, would see lots of awards on me, and only my nanny was there. There was no mom and dad. I never even met my mom until I was seven, only for 12 hours. And then I didn't meet my dad until I came to America at age 13. Competition is everything.

Dr Constance Leyland: 11:42

When I came here in America, I didn't know how to speak English. I remember it was June and my dad's, like you, got to go to summer school to practice your English so that when you go to ELD English Language Development you can communicate and I'm like ugh, just send me back to the Philippines, I don't need to learn English Bye. My dad's like this is your new home. I'm like ugh, this is a practice home, I'm not staying here. That's what I told my dad. And, come to think of it, during summer you have to take three years of ELD to move on to senior year for a regular English and then go to college, because you need four years.

Dr Constance Leyland: 12:16

And so I challenged my teacher. I said can you teach me? She was a Spanish teacher but she was teaching ELD. Teach me whatever you can. And I want to test out for this three years. She's like no one ever does that, like we just take it slow. I'm like no, no, no, just test me.

Dr Constance Leyland: 12:34

So I had cassette tape at that time. I had a cassette tape and I would go to the library until I sleep, from the time I wake up until I sleep midnight every day listening to English, and then I would take Archie Archie magazine and I would read English then. And I took three years of English into three months and and I tested out. But I got actually embarrassed on that and there was a lawyer involved because my counselor said it's not possible, it's never happened. This school is 100 years old. Nobody ever comes in to learn English. Three years, for three months, I said. But you tested me. My stepmom was so upset she was like you tested her, so you put her where she needs to be. So it's been difficult in terms of always trying to go against the grain, but I don't take no for an answer.

Baz Porter : 13:26

I mean, I love that about you because you're so focused on achievement. And it's more than that, because you love to have impact. Where does that stem from? Because I think it's so important for this conversation, because impact is less known and less experienced, only in an idea. But you've not just had that impact, you're actually doing it.

Dr Constance Leyland: 13:52

I think it has to do with my grandmother. She told me so much about growing up during World War and how her family had been impacted in so many ways. And her sister got raped and she had to shave her head, she had to bond her body parts to look like a boy forever body parts to look like a boy forever. And she said we didn't. Women didn't have a voice. And I said why, if you did all the work? And she said that's just the man's world. But I'm hoping that you and your and my great grandkids would never live like that. And I said what could you have done differently? And she said what we did is teach our children to be resilient. And she would actually.

Dr Constance Leyland: 14:35

I grew up with nannies and drivers, but every year for three months she would send me to the farm. We had a farm and I would sleep there for three months with our farmers and there is no windows, it's just a foundation and it sticks and I sleep on two by two, no mattress or anything. Sleep on two by two, no mattress or anything. I learned how to raise a pig, kill the pig, skin a pig chicken, pick up eggs, sell eggs to my neighbors. I learned all of that and I always cry and she's like, if you can survive this, you can survive anywhere in the world.

Dr Constance Leyland: 15:12

And she was right. And then she also say that the only thing we have in this life not money, not accolades, not anything is your kindness and how you actually make other people's life easier. That's what I'm doing for you and hope that you will do that for the rest of your life for somebody else. But when you're a kid and you get her that, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you grow up, you're like, oh, she was right and she only graduated third grade, but she was the smartest woman you'll ever know ever. She taught me leadership. My great-grandmother, who died at 101, taught me about leadership.

Baz Porter : 15:51

I love that and I think some of the biggest lessons you learn are from your great grandparents. Your grandparents, I know certainly my nan taught me a lot of the values I still hold today. What I find interesting about this is they come from a different era but their lessons, their education which are sometimes the best in the world, still are relevant today.

Dr Constance Leyland: 16:19

Going through all that, going through all the transitions you've had in your life, what's been the biggest challenge for you, not just on a professional level but on a personal level, I think self-doubt, because when you hear 80% of your life that you are less than trying to get out of your head that you can has always been a challenge. Couple that with depression and anxiety for no reason at all, plus a curveball in your life. Raising a family, married and working with a business is a lot, but I thrive on those things. I love the challenge. I'm competing with myself. Like yesterday, CJ, you didn't do this, so today you're going to do this. Like that's what I do with myself every day.

Baz Porter : 17:12

So I want to touch briefly on your relationship, if I may. Sure You're very, very busy. You've got things over there, a pot cooking over there kids. How do you fit time in for your partner and also your children?

Dr Constance Leyland: 17:29

Everything is scheduled. I so Fridays. I've been married 22 years, so Fridays Fridays we have date nights and date lunch. So every Friday, it doesn't matter what he's doing or what I'm doing, he's super busy as well. We go to lunch.

Dr Constance Leyland: 17:44

We talked about whatever happened to our kids. Usually we talk smack about our kids and you're like she didn't listen to this one, we're not gonna let her do this one really. And then we talk about work and sometimes my husband's like well, how do you deal with this? Because I had 19,000 employees, uh, when I was a dean. And so he's like I don't understand how this? I'm like you don't need to understand, you just need to understand yourself and how you handle it, because you'll never understand people, but you need to understand how you react. And she was like oh, you're right, I taught my husband APA at work and he uses it all the time now. And his manager was like, wow, that's so amazing. And then he tells me I didn't tell him he was you, but I feel good about that. You know, he was so funny.

Dr Constance Leyland: 18:26

And then my kids. I have Saturdays with my child. We usually have dates. And then I, on Sundays, I have dates with my sisters, my friends, we have dates with my sisters. My friends, we have zoom, or sometimes every day we have zoom and calls, but literally I just fit in pretty much anything, because I still drive my youngest and then my oldest is out of the house, but I talk to her every Sunday and so is my mother every Sunday.

Baz Porter : 18:49

I think you, you just hit on something that's so important and that's family, and having that bond between the closest people in your life and, no matter what, scheduling it in and making that a priority, no matter what scales, is going on. I think that's a very good component to a healthy relationship, not just with your, your kids, but also your partner and your parent. I really admire that about you. It says a lot about your character. Thank you, no, thank you for being here. This is why I love having these conversations, because you make the show. It's not me, it's you and it's your message, and these help other people going through similar struggles. So, thank you. Is there anything you'd like to leave this part of the show, because it's only part one and as we move into part two, is there anything you'd like to share with the audience before we go for part two?

Dr Constance Leyland: 19:48

Yeah, definitely so. If you are watching this or if you're listening to this and you have struggles, I don't care what struggles you're having financial, mental, physical it's not the end of the life that you're wanting, it's actually the beginning. The harder your life is I know it sounds weird the more lessons you need to pay attention to, the more you build up yourself. Rather than looking for external like, oh my God, this person is doing this or that. Rather than looking at that as the Bible for your life, look at it and extrapolate what you can test. Our life and our journey is a whole bunch of tests, and if you just test yourself on your capabilities and push yourself to the most uncomfortable place ever and you will learn that you are more than enough. You are good, You're resilient, You're amazing and you're brilliant, Right, but stay humble. Humility is everything.

Baz Porter : 20:46

That's all. I agree with everything you've said. Thank you for sharing that. It's completely true For my listeners. If this is inspiring you, please share it with a friend. Share it with. This is inspiring you. Please share it with a friend. Share it with your dog cat, share it with somebody. That's going to change someone's life. I'm baz porter. This is cj and the end of part one of rise from the ashes and I do look forward to part two where we go on the ascent and cj. Thank you very much for joining me. Until part two. My listeners, my friends, my family, thank you very much have joining me. Until part two. My listeners, my friends, my family, thank you very much. Have an amazing day on purpose. See you soon.