VDG Cigars — Women Who Shape the Cigar Industry
I honestly did not know how to begin this article about Karen Berger. My thoughts kept turning more than usual, and every time I sat down to write, something sentimental and grateful came over me at once.
What started as a story about a strong woman in the cigar industry became something else. It became a story about the darker side of life, and about how a person finds a way through grief after losing the love of her life.
In this interview Karen Berger speaks about what came after the loss of her husband, Don Kiki, and offers her advice to anyone who has lost someone close to them. Opening up about something like that is difficult. Laying bare your feelings and your experience is harder still.
But this is also the story of a girl from a humble home in Estelí who sat down at a rolling bench at eighteen because she could not afford to finish her studies, and who today owns the factory she once walked into as an apprentice. More than sixty percent of the people who make cigars are women. Almost none of them own the factory. Karen Berger does, and she has a great deal to say about how she got there, and about what still stands in the way of the women coming after her.
And it is a story about dreams. About what it costs to follow one, what to do when nobody believes in it, and how to keep it alive when life strikes back. She answers all of it, and she answers it as someone who started with nothing but a pair of hands and a refusal to accept the life she was born into.
Karen, I want to thank you already here for taking part. Your openness, your strength and your willingness to help others will not be forgotten. I do not know whether I could have answered as deeply as you did.
If you are reading this while grieving someone, or standing in front of a dream you do not yet dare to begin, this article was written for you.
Who You Are
For someone meeting you for the first time — who is Karen Berger?
I am a Nicaraguan woman from Estelí, a mother, an entrepreneur, a cigar maker, and above all a dreamer who learned very early that nothing is simply handed to you. I started at a rolling bench with very little, and today I have the privilege and responsibility of carrying forward a factory, brands, a team, and a legacy that mean much more to me than business.
How do you introduce yourself when someone asks what you do?
I usually say that I am a cigar maker and businesswoman. I own Estelí Cigars S.A. in Nicaragua and Karen Berger Cigars, and I also work in the U.S. market through Don Kiki Cigar Superstore in Florida. But the title I value most is that I understand this industry from the hands-on side, because I began by making cigars myself.
Describe an ordinary day in your life today.
There is almost no truly ordinary day. My days move between production in Nicaragua, sales and distribution, the retail store in Florida, customers, new blends, packaging, employees, travel and, most importantly, my family. I may be discussing tobacco in Estelí in the morning and dealing with a customer or an event in another country later that same day.
What does your operation look like today — the factory, the farms, the brands? How many people work with you?
Today the operation reaches from Estelí to the United States and international markets. We manufacture in Estelí, work with tobacco from Nicaragua and other origins depending on the blend, produce our own brands and private-label projects, and support distribution and retail. The exact number of people changes with production, so I would prefer to confirm the current headcount before publication.
Nicaragua is not familiar to everyone reading this. What do you want them to understand about your country?
Nicaragua is a country of extraordinary people, beautiful land and enormous resilience. We have gone through difficult periods, but Nicaraguans know how to work, rebuild and keep dreaming. For me, Nicaragua is family, roots, culture, faith and the soil that gave me my life in tobacco.
And Estelí specifically — what kind of city is it?
Estelí is a working city with tobacco in its heartbeat. You smell tobacco, see the factories, meet families whose lives are connected to the leaf, and understand that cigars are not an abstract luxury product there—they are the work and knowledge of generations.
Peter:
She owns a factory in Estelí, brands on two continents, and a store in Florida. And when I asked her who she is, the word she put at the top of the list was dreamer.
Most people in her position would have led with what they own. She led with what made the owning possible.
There is something in that worth carrying. We introduce ourselves by our titles because we think that is what people want to hear. But a title is only the residue of something else — a decision, a stubbornness, a refusal to accept the life you were handed. Karen Berger still identifies with the thing that got her here rather than the thing she arrived at. That is why she is still moving.
Estelí and Childhood
You were born in Estelí. What is your earliest memory from that time?
My earliest memories are of a simple life, family and a home where you understood the value of work. We did not grow up surrounded by luxury. What we had was family, discipline and the understanding that if you wanted something more, you had to work for it.
Tell me about your family. What did your home look like when you were small?
I came from a large, humble family. Our home was not defined by material things; it was defined by people, responsibilities and closeness. Those beginnings taught me never to measure a person by what they possess.
Your father lived a long life and left behind a large family. What did he teach you that you still carry with you today?
My father lived to be 99, and one of the greatest things he left me was endurance. He taught me the dignity of work, the importance of family and that your circumstances do not have to decide the limits of your life.
What did you dream of becoming before tobacco took over? You studied Business Administration — was that the path you had planned to take?
I studied Business Administration because I wanted to build a better future and understand business. I did not imagine that tobacco would become my life’s work. Tobacco entered my life first as a way to survive and pay for my studies, and then it became a passion and a destiny.
Were there women around you as a child who showed you that a different life was possible?
The women around me taught me strength more by what they did than by what they said. In Nicaragua, women have always worked incredibly hard for their families. Seeing that gave me the belief that a woman can carry responsibility even when nobody gives her a title for it.
Estelí is the capital of tobacco. Was tobacco something you noticed as a child, or was it simply background?
Tobacco was part of the landscape of Estelí, but as a child I did not understand what it would mean in my own life. It was simply around us. Only later did I begin to see the knowledge, art and enormous world contained inside one leaf.
Peter:
Everything you are about to read begins in a house where there was not enough.
Not enough money. Not enough food. Not enough of anything except the will to change it.
Hold that image for a second, because it is easy to read a story like this from the end. From the factory, the brands, the awards. But she did not begin there. She began in a home that gave her nothing except a reason to leave it behind, and a father who taught her something that clearly stuck.
People say your starting point does not define your destination. It has become the kind of sentence you see on a poster and stop noticing. But here it is not a slogan. It is a woman in Nicaragua who proved it with her own life, one exhausting year at a time, and she is the evidence that it was never just something people say to make you feel better.
Studies and Work
You were studying Business Administration but did not have the money to finish. Describe the decision to take a job at the factory.
I needed to work because I did not have the money to simply continue studying without earning it. Taking the factory job was not a romantic decision; it was practical. I needed an opportunity, and the rolling bench gave me one.
Seven in the morning until five in the evening at the factory. Six to nine at university. Work at night. Babysitting on weekends. What did an ordinary Sunday look like?
Those years were exhausting. I worked at the factory during the day, studied at night and did whatever additional work I could, including weekends. Sunday was not always a day of rest; often it was another day of doing what was necessary to keep moving forward.
What drove you through those years?
The belief that my life could become more than my circumstances drove me. I wanted an education, independence and a future. I did not know exactly where the road would lead, but I knew I could not stop walking.
Was there anyone who believed in you back then?
There were people who encouraged me, but I also had to learn to believe in myself before there was evidence that the dream would work. Sometimes the person who has to believe first is you.
To a young woman working double shifts right now to pay for her studies — what do you want to say to her?
Do not be ashamed of how hard you have to work. Those years may feel unfair while you are living them, but they are building discipline, judgment and strength that nobody can buy for you. Keep your eyes on why you started.
What do you feel today when you think about that 18-year-old?
I feel tenderness and respect for that 18-year-old girl. She did not know how far she would go or how much she would have to endure. I would tell her, ‘Keep going. One day you will understand why all of this mattered.’
Peter:
Read the hours again.
Seven in the morning to five in the evening at the factory. Six to nine at university. Work at night. Babysitting on weekends.
Now remember she was eighteen years old.
We all have a version of a dream we say we would do anything for. Karen actually did. Not for a week when it felt exciting. Not for a season. For years, while she was tired, while she had no guarantee, while nobody had promised her anything at the end of it.
And here is the part that matters most. She was not doing this because she had a vision of owning a factory. She was doing it because she wanted an education and could not afford one. There was no grand plan. There was only a young woman who refused to let her circumstances make the decision for her.
That is what discipline actually looks like. It is not a morning routine. It is doing what needs doing on the day nobody is watching and nothing feels like it is working.
The Rolling Bench
Your first day as a rolera. What do you remember of the smell, the sound, your hands?
I remember the tobacco—the aroma, the texture, the concentration. Your hands have to learn before your mind can fully explain what they are learning. At the rolling bench I began to understand that a cigar is something alive in the hands of the person making it.
You say you felt the art in the tobacco — even though you did not smoke back then. How can someone feel something they have never tasted?
You can feel craftsmanship before you become a smoker. You feel whether the leaf is responding to your hands, whether the bunch is right, whether the cigar has balance and care. Taste came later for me; respect for the art came first.
In Nicaragua it is almost always the woman who rolls, because she has a better touch and greater care. Is that true — and why do you think it is so?
Women have traditionally played an enormous role in cigar production, especially in detailed handwork. I do think patience, sensitivity and care can make a difference, but I would never say those qualities belong only to women. What matters is the skill of the individual and the respect she or he gives the leaf.
You knew the cigars you rolled would be sold in another country. What did that thought do to your work?
It made me proud and curious. I knew something I had made with my own hands would travel farther than I had ever traveled. That made me want every cigar to represent the quality of the people who made it.
What can a person who has rolled cigars with her own hands see, that someone who has only owned a factory will never see?
You see the human cost of every mistake and the human skill behind every beautiful cigar. When you have rolled, you never look at production only as numbers. You understand the hands, time, humidity, pressure, leaf selection and concentration behind the finished product.
Today you own the factory where you were once an apprentice. How does it feel to walk through that door in the morning?
It is emotional even today. I never forget that I once entered as a young woman looking for work and opportunity. Owning the factory does not make me feel above that girl; it makes me responsible for creating opportunities for the people who now walk through the same door.
Peter:
She did not smoke. She had no experience. And she felt the art in it anyway.
Stop there, because it turns something upside down that most of us believe. We are taught that passion arrives first and the work comes after. Find what you love, then do it. Karen’s story says the opposite. She took the job because she needed the money. The love arrived through the doing.
If you are waiting to feel passionate before you begin, you may be waiting for something that only shows up after you start.
The other thing in this section is one I want every cigar smoker to sit with. More than sixty percent of the people who make the cigars we enjoy are women. Their hands make the final product. Their care decides whether it draws, burns and tastes the way the blender intended. Karen Berger sat at that bench. Which means everything she says later about women in this industry comes from someone who was one of those hands, not someone observing them from an office.
And she now owns the building she walked into as an apprentice who could not afford to finish her degree. If you take one sentence from this whole interview, take that one, and keep it for the days your own progress feels invisible.
Don Kiki
One day the owner found you at the rolling bench. Tell me exactly how it happened.
Don Kiki noticed me while I was working at the rolling bench. That encounter changed the direction of my life. What began around tobacco became mentorship, partnership, love and eventually a life we built together.
What was your first impression of Don Kiki — before you knew who he was?
He had presence, knowledge and confidence. Before I understood the role he would have in my life, I could already see that he understood tobacco deeply and expected things to be done correctly.
He handed you a cigar and told you this is how a cigar is supposed to taste. What happened inside you in that moment?
That moment opened another door. Until then I knew tobacco through my hands and the production process; tasting a cigar connected the craftsmanship to the smoker’s experience. I began to understand why every small decision in production matters.
When did it go from mentor to love?
It was gradual. Respect came first, then trust and friendship, and love grew from the life and work we shared. It was never only a business story or only a love story; the two became intertwined.
His family had been forced to flee twice — from Poland, then from Cuba. You came from a humble upbringing in Estelí. What did the two of you actually have in common?
We both understood starting over, working hard and refusing to let the past define the future. Our backgrounds were very different, but resilience was a language we both understood.
What was the best thing he taught you about tobacco?
He taught me to respect the tobacco and never rush quality. A cigar must be balanced and honest. You cannot hide poor tobacco or careless work behind a beautiful band.
What was the best thing he taught you about life?
He taught me to dare. He had already lived through loss and rebuilding, and he showed me that life can force you to begin again more than once—and you can still create something meaningful.
What did he see in you that you did not see in yourself back then?
He saw ability and determination in me before I had the confidence to name those qualities myself. He treated my curiosity seriously and gave me room to learn.
Peter:
Think about how small that moment was.
A factory owner walks past a bench. There are dozens of them, dozens of women, all doing the same work. He stops at one. He watches for a moment. He says something.
That is the whole beginning.
Neither of them knew what they were standing inside of. He did not know he had just met the woman who would give him a kidney, carry his name after his death, and take his final blend to market. She did not know she had just met the man who would teach her everything, love her for two decades, and then leave her alone with all of it.
We spend our lives waiting for the big moment to announce itself. It almost never does. The moments that reshape a life look like an ordinary Tuesday until years later, when you look back and finally understand what you were standing in.
Which means the ordinary Tuesday you are living right now might be one of them.
And notice what he actually gave her. He did not hand her a formula. He handed her a cigar and told her what a cigar was supposed to taste like — and, by implication, what to do when it was not. That is a rarer kind of teaching. A poor teacher gives you the answer. A good one calibrates your judgment and then trusts you with it. More than a decade after he stopped being there to check, you can still taste the result in every cigar that leaves her factory.
But the thing I keep returning to is this. Someone saw her before she saw herself.
She was an eighteen-year-old apprentice with no money and no degree. She did not walk into that factory believing she would one day own it. That belief was not hers first. It was his, and he lent it to her until she could carry it alone.
Most of us have had this happen at least once, and most of us never thank the person properly, because we do not understand what happened until much later.
Here is the part I want you to take with you. You are that person for someone right now. There is a young person in your life who has no idea what they are capable of. What you say to them costs you nothing. Saying nothing could cost them everything.
Kiki said something. Look at what grew from it.
The Kidney
When did you understand that Don Kiki was seriously ill?
His kidney disease made the seriousness impossible to ignore. Illness changes the rhythm of a household; suddenly appointments, treatments and uncertainty become part of everyday life.
You gave him one of your kidneys. How long did you think about it before you decided?
For me, the decision came from love. When the possibility existed that I could help give him more time and a better quality of life, I did not see the kidney as something more important than the person I loved.
Were you afraid before the operation?
Of course there was fear. Any major operation carries fear, and you think about your children and your future. Courage is not the absence of fear; sometimes it is deciding that love is bigger than the fear.
How did the donation change your relationship?
It deepened something that was already profound between us. Going through illness and transplantation together makes ordinary disagreements feel smaller. You understand very clearly that time with another person is not guaranteed.
What does an experience like that do to the way you see time?
It makes time precious. You stop assuming there will always be another year, another trip or another conversation. I learned to value the day in front of me.
Peter:
She did not deliberate.
Read her answer again and notice what is missing from it. No weighing. No calculating. No careful consideration of the risk to herself.
We tell ourselves love is proven in grand gestures. It is not. It is proven in the speed of the answer.
Most decisions in life deserve careful thought. A very small number do not, and when you meet one of those, you will know, because your body will have answered before your mind catches up. Karen Berger met hers. Not many people are ever asked a question that important. Fewer still answer the way she did.
And there is something else here, quieter. She gave him years. Years they used to build, to work, to be together. Then she lost him anyway. Knowing how the story ends, she would do it again. That is what it means to love someone properly — you do it without a guarantee.
2014
2014 changed everything. When you look back at that year now, what stands out most clearly?
2014 is a dividing line in my life: before and after. What stands out is the feeling that a person who was part of my everyday life, my work and my future was suddenly no longer physically there.
What was your first thought when you realized you were standing alone?
My first thought was not a business thought. It was the shock of realizing that I had to learn how to exist in a life that no longer looked the way I had imagined it.
What carried you through that first year?
My children, my responsibilities, my faith and the work carried me. Sometimes you do not move because you feel strong; you move because people depend on you and because stopping is not an option.
Who was there for you?
My family and the people who truly cared about us mattered enormously. Grief also taught me that support is not measured by how many people are around you, but by who remains when there is nothing glamorous about the moment.
What did you learn about yourself that year — and what do you wish more people knew about themselves?
I learned that I could survive something I had once thought would destroy me. I wish more people knew that they often have strength they will not discover until life asks for it.
Peter:
This is the year the story breaks in two.
She did not lose one person. She lost her husband, her mentor and her business partner in the same moment. Everything she loved and everything she had built were the same thing, and they went at once.
And she was not allowed to fall apart, because there were children.
That is the part I keep coming back to. Most of us, when the worst happens, get to close a door somewhere and let go for a while. Karen Berger could not. There were children in the house who had just lost their father and who needed to see that their mother was still standing. There was a factory. There were farms. There were families whose wages depended on decisions she now had to make alone, in the worst weeks of her life.
Grief does not pause for payroll. It does not pause for school runs or dinner or bedtime either.
So she did what mothers have always done. She carried it where the children could not see it, and she got up the next morning, and the morning after that. Nobody applauds this. There is no recognition for the woman who holds a family and a company together while her own world has come apart. It happens quietly, in kitchens and factories, and the only people who ever really know are the children who grew up watching it.
Read what she says about that first year. It is quiet, and I think that is exactly right. The years that change us rarely announce themselves loudly. They just grind, day after day, until one morning you notice you are still here — and that the people depending on you are still here too, because you were.
Fear and Strength
What were you most afraid of when you suddenly stood alone — not as a business owner, but as a human being?
I was afraid of the emptiness—of making decisions alone, raising a family, carrying responsibilities and facing a future that had changed without my permission.
Were there mornings when you did not know how you would find the strength to get up? What got you up — and what would you say to someone lying there right now?
Yes, there were difficult mornings. My children and responsibilities got me moving, and my faith gave meaning when I could not find it elsewhere. To someone in that place, I would say: do not demand that you solve your whole life today. Get through this day.
If someone reading this is standing in exactly that place today — what is the first thing you want to say to them?
You do not have to know how the rest of your life will look. You only need to keep living this piece of it. Pain can make the future invisible, but invisible does not mean nonexistent.
What should a person do in that very first week? Not the big long-term things, but concretely: how do you get through a single day?
Eat something. Drink water. Get out of bed. Take a shower. Answer only the decisions that truly have to be answered today, and let someone you trust help with the rest. Survival can be very simple in the beginning.
How do you tell the difference between fear that is warning you and fear that is only holding you back?
Warning fear gives you information; limiting fear keeps repeating reasons you are incapable. I ask myself whether the fear is protecting me from a real danger or protecting me from the discomfort of growing.
Many see you as one of the strongest women in this industry. Do you feel strong?
I do not wake up thinking, ‘I am a strong woman.’ I have moments of fear, sadness and exhaustion like anyone else. People call it strength because they see the result; I remember the days when I was simply trying to make it through.
What is strength to you — never falling, or getting up every time?
Strength is getting up. Falling is human. Strength is allowing yourself to feel the fall and still deciding that it will not be the last chapter.
To someone who feels weak right now: what do you want them to know about their own strength?
Feeling weak is not proof that you are weak. Sometimes it is proof that you have been carrying something very heavy. Give yourself permission to recover, but do not surrender your future to one terrible season.
Who or what gave you strength when you had none of your own left? What should a person turn to?
My faith, my children, my family and the responsibility I felt toward the people around me gave me strength. Different people may turn to different sources of support, but nobody should believe they have to carry profound grief completely alone.
Peter:
I asked these questions carefully. She answered them without flinching.
What she says about strength is the part I would underline. We are taught that strong people do not fall. That is not what strength is, and anyone who has actually been through something knows it. Strength is what you do after you have already fallen and there is nobody there to see whether you get up.
If you are afraid of something right now — a decision, a change, a loss you can see coming — read her answer again. She is not telling you the fear goes away. She is telling you it does not get to make the decision.
And notice that she does not claim to feel strong. People look at her and see one of the strongest women in this industry. She does not walk around feeling like that. Almost nobody does. The people you admire for their strength are not fearless. They are simply afraid and moving anyway, which is the only version of strength that has ever actually existed.
Grief and the Way Forward
Grief looks different for different people. What do you think people misunderstand about how grief actually feels?
People sometimes imagine grief as a straight line that gradually becomes easier. It is not. You can have a good day and then a smell, a song, a place or a date can bring everything back.
Did you get to grieve properly, or did you postpone it? What do you recommend to others?
I had responsibilities that did not stop, so part of my grief had to coexist with work and motherhood. I do not recommend pretending you are fine. You can continue functioning and still give yourself permission to grieve.
Did the grief catch up with you later? What do you wish you had known in advance?
Grief can return in waves long after everyone else assumes you are ‘better.’ I wish I had understood that this does not mean you are going backward. It means love left a deep place in your life.
What actually helped? Not what others said would help — what helped you?
What helped was purpose: my children, work, faith and continuing to build. I needed reasons to wake up that existed outside the pain.
People say the wrong things to someone grieving, all with good intentions. What helped to hear — and what did not help at all?
What helped was presence more than perfect words. I did not need someone to explain why it happened. I needed people who could simply be there without trying to rush me out of grief.
What should a person ask for help with, that they are often ashamed to ask for?
Ask for help with ordinary things. Food, children, paperwork, an appointment, sitting beside you—small tasks can feel enormous when your mind is grieving.
Many who lose someone carry guilt — over what was said, or left unsaid. What do you say to them?
Guilt is one of grief’s cruelest companions because you replay moments you can no longer change. I believe we have to judge a relationship by the whole love we lived, not by one sentence we wish we had said differently.
How do you know when you are ready to move forward? And how do you do it without feeling you are betraying the person you lost?
Moving forward does not mean leaving the person behind. You carry what they gave you into the life that continues. Living is not betrayal; for me, it became a way of honoring the life and love we had.
What do you say to someone who has just lost the most important person in their life and believes it will never get better?
I would never promise that the pain disappears. I would say that you learn to carry it differently. There will come a day when a memory can make you smile before it makes you cry.
Does grief ever end — or does it only change shape?
For me, grief changes shape. Love does not end, so the absence never becomes meaningless. But the pain no longer occupies every room of your life.
What has grief given you that you did not have before?
Grief gave me a deeper understanding of time, compassion and courage. It made me less interested in postponing what matters.
If you could speak to Karen from 2014 — what would you say to her?
I would tell her: ‘You are going to survive this. You will cry, you will doubt yourself and you will miss him, but you will build again. Do not be afraid of the woman you are becoming.’
If someone is reading this article in the darkest period of their life: what do you want them to take away from it?
I want them to understand that a dark chapter is not the same thing as the end of the story. You may not be able to see your next life from where you are standing, but keep walking until you can.
Peter:
I have read this section more times than any other part of this interview, and it still stops me.
Karen did not have to answer any of it. She could have left every one of these questions blank and I would have understood completely. She answered because she believed that somewhere out there is a person sitting in the dark who needs to hear it from someone who has been there. That is the only reason this section exists. She gave away something private so that a stranger might feel less alone.
I do not think people understand what that costs. To go back into the worst year of your life, deliberately, and describe it in enough detail to be useful — while knowing it will be published, read, shared, and discussed by people you will never meet. That is not an interview answer. That is an act of generosity toward people who will never be able to thank her for it.
What strikes me most is that she does not describe grief as a feeling to be endured. She describes what she wishes she had known. What she wishes people had done differently. What she got wrong herself. Very few people are willing to say that last part out loud, because it means admitting you stumbled through something you were supposed to handle with dignity.
If you are grieving as you read this, I am not going to pretend anything here will fix it. Nothing fixes it. But there is a particular loneliness in grief that comes from believing you are doing it wrong — that everyone else managed this better, more gracefully, with less mess. Karen’s answers take that away. She did not do it gracefully either. She was not calm. She did not have it under control. She just kept going, badly, on the days when badly was all that was available.
And she came out the other side. Not unchanged. Nobody comes out of that unchanged. But she is here, still building, still loving him, still standing.
If you are not grieving right now, read it anyway. You will need it eventually. Everyone does. And one day, when someone you love is standing where Karen stood, you will be glad you already knew what to say.
How You Get Through Grief
What is the first thing a person should do, and what should they avoid?
First, accept that you are grieving. Do not make yourself perform strength for everyone else. Avoid making every major decision in the first shock unless it truly cannot wait.
Do you have to keep daily life running — or are you allowed to let everything fall for a while?
You are allowed to let some things fall. Keep the essentials running—especially if children or other people depend on you—but not everything has to remain perfect while your heart is broken.
How do you rebuild an ordinary day when nothing feels meaningful?
Rebuild routine one small piece at a time. Wake up, get dressed, eat, work if you can, care for your family, rest. Meaning often returns after routine, not before it.
What did you do every single day that kept you upright?
I kept showing up for my children and my responsibilities. Even on days when my heart was not ready, my body learned to keep moving.
Do you need other people, or do you need time alone? How do you find the balance?
You need both. People can hold you up, but solitude gives you space to hear your own feelings. The balance changes from day to day.
Should a person seek professional help? What do you think about that?
Yes, I believe professional help can be valuable, and nobody should feel ashamed of needing it. Grief is deeply personal, and support can come from family, faith, community and qualified professionals.
What was the turning point for you?
There was not one magical morning. The turning point was realizing over time that continuing to live fully did not erase Don Kiki. I could protect the legacy and still create a life that was mine.
If you were to give three concrete pieces of advice to someone who has to get through this — what would they be?
First, reduce life to one day at a time. Second, accept help instead of proving you can carry everything. Third, find a reason outside the grief—children, faith, work, service, a dream—and keep returning to it.
Peter:
Everything before this describes the road. This part is the map.
What she gives here is powerful and practical. I asked for something concrete because I have read too many articles about loss that offer nothing but sympathy. Sympathy is not useless, but it does not tell a person how to get through Tuesday.
What she offers is small and usable, and that is precisely the point. Nobody survives grief through a grand plan. You survive it through the next hour, and then the one after that, and eventually you look back and realize you have covered a great deal of ground without ever having felt like you were moving.
Her advice about not rushing yourself is the piece I would ask you to sit with. We live in a culture that wants people to be finished with their sadness on a schedule that suits everyone else. There is no schedule. There is only your own pace, and the only mistake is letting somebody else set it for you.
One more thing, and I say it as someone who cares about the people reading this. If the weight is more than you can carry alone, please speak to someone qualified. There is no strength in doing it without help, and I am certain Karen would be the first to say so.
The People Around You
Who mattered most to you when things were at their heaviest — and what did they do that actually helped?
My family mattered enormously, especially my children. The people who helped most did not demand that I be the strong Karen they knew; they allowed me to be human.
What do you wish the people around you had done, that they did not do?
Sometimes I wish people understood that grief does not follow their timetable. A grieving person may need support months later, when everyone else has already returned to normal.
What do you wish they had not done?
I wish people would not try to compare losses or tell someone exactly how they should feel. Every relationship and every grief is different.
Many people do not know what to say to someone grieving, so they say nothing at all. What do you think about that?
Silence can feel like abandonment, even when it comes from fear of saying the wrong thing. A simple ‘I am here’ is often enough.
What should a person do if they have no one around them at all?
If you truly feel alone, create a circle deliberately: family if available, a friend, a faith community, a support group or a professional. Asking for connection is not weakness.
To someone who wants to help a friend in grief but does not know how — what is your advice?
Do not try to fix your friend. Show up. Bring food, help with something practical, listen when they want to talk and sit quietly when they do not.
Peter:
Most of us will one day stand beside someone in grief with no idea what to say. So we say nothing, and we tell ourselves we are giving them space.
Read what Karen says about that, because it is the most useful thing in this article for anyone who has ever been that person standing there.
What she wishes people had done differently is worth more than any advice column. And what she wishes they had not done may be uncomfortable to read if you recognize yourself in it. I did, a little. I have said the wrong thing to a grieving person more than once, always meaning well.
Here is what I took from it. Presence beats words almost every time. You do not need the right sentence. You need to be there, repeatedly, without expecting anything back, long after everyone else has moved on. The people who disappear at week six are not cruel. They just assume the worst has passed. It has not. Week six is often when it starts.
Pay attention to this section. One day someone you love will need you to have read it.
Don Kiki Gold
He had blended Don Kiki Gold but never lived to see it reach the market. When did you find the blend?
Don Kiki Gold became a very emotional project because the blend connected me directly to him and to work he had begun. Bringing it to market after his death was a way of allowing something he created to continue speaking.
Did you smoke it before you decided to release it?
Yes, tasting the cigar was essential. I could not release something carrying his name and legacy without making sure the cigar itself deserved that responsibility.
You designed the gold band and the footer yourself. What did you want the band to say?
I designed the Gold Label band myself, and every detail was personal. I wanted the gold presentation to communicate value, legacy and respect. The foot band carries the year Don Kiki was born, so the design is not simply decorative—it is part of his story and a tribute to his life.
How did it feel to hold the finished cigar for the first time, in 2016?
Holding the finished cigar was both beautiful and painful. It was pride mixed with absence—the feeling of accomplishing something and wishing the person who began it could be standing beside you.
Someone on the team called it a part of Kiki’s heart. Do you agree?
Yes. Tobacco was one of the languages Kiki and I shared, so a blend he created naturally carries part of his story. That is why Don Kiki Gold can never be just another SKU to me.
On what occasions do you light a Don Kiki Gold?
I light one when I want to remember, celebrate or reconnect with that history. It has an emotional place in my portfolio.
Peter:
He blended it and never lived to see it reach the market.
I have written about this cigar before, and it was the reason Karen and I first spoke. But I did not fully understand what I was holding until she explained it here.
Think about the position she was in. A finished blend, made by the man she had just lost, sitting there. She could have left it. Nobody would have judged her. Releasing it meant working on it, tasting it, deciding on a band, approving a box — every step of it in the company of someone who was no longer there.
She designed the gold band herself. That detail matters. It is the last conversation between them, conducted in tobacco and paper, one of them answering a question the other could no longer ask.
Someone on her team called it a part of Kiki’s heart. That sounds like the kind of thing people say about a product. In this case I think it is simply accurate.
If you ever smoke one, take a little more time with it than you normally would. There is more in it than tobacco.
K by Karen Berger
In 2016 you put your own name on a band for the first time. What went through your mind?
Putting my own name on a band was frightening and liberating, but I also wanted Kiki to remain part of it. The “K” in K by Karen Berger stands for Kiki. So even when I took the step of putting my own name on a cigar, I was carrying him with me. A name on a band is a promise, and I was telling the smoker that I personally stood behind what was inside while honoring the person who had been such an important part of my journey.
How did it feel to finally see your own name on a cigar?
It was one of the moments when I understood that I was no longer only protecting someone else’s legacy. I was also building my own.
What did it take to dare that step — from his name to your own?
It took confidence that came slowly through years of work. I had to understand that honoring Don Kiki did not require me to disappear behind his name.
What is the difference between a Don Kiki and a K by Karen Berger — in the tobacco, not in the marketing?
Don Kiki Gold is rooted in his blend and legacy; K by Karen Berger expresses my own palate and decisions as a blender. Across K by Karen Berger you see different wrappers—Connecticut, Habano, Maduro and authentic Cameroon—over Nicaraguan binder and filler profiles selected to give each expression its own character.
What is you in a blend? What is your signature?
My signature is balance with character. I like a cigar to have enough complexity that you keep paying attention, but I do not believe strength alone makes a cigar interesting.
What does your blending process look like? Are you in the fields, in the factory, or at the table?
I am involved from tobacco selection and tasting through production decisions. Blending is not one afternoon at a table; it is repeated testing, adjusting proportions, wrappers, binders and fillers, and then seeing how the cigar develops with rest.
Which of your own cigars are you most proud of — and why?
It is difficult to choose only one because each represents a chapter. Ixtelli is especially meaningful because it represents Nicaragua, my roots and a newer expression of what I want my work to say; K by Karen Berger is personal because it carries my name.
The 25th anniversary was made together with AJ Fernandez. How did that collaboration come about?
The 25th Anniversary collaboration with AJ Fernandez came from a long relationship within the Nicaraguan cigar world and a desire to create something worthy of a major milestone. It brought together two histories in tobacco while still needing to taste like something I could proudly put in my portfolio.
Peter:
For years her name was on nothing.
She worked in a factory that carried someone else’s name. She built brands that carried someone else’s name. She married a man whose name was on the band, and after he died she kept that name alive, because it deserved to be kept alive.
Then, in 2016, she put her own name on a cigar for the first time.
I do not think most people understand what that costs. Not the money or the work — the permission you have to give yourself. To stand beside a legend you loved and say: I am also something. Not instead of him. Alongside him.
Every woman who has spent years making something excellent under somebody else’s label knows exactly what that step feels like. Karen Berger took it knowing that if the cigar was mediocre, it would be her name on it, in gold, in humidors, in front of everyone who had ever doubted she was more than Kiki’s widow.
It was not mediocre.
And that is the quiet lesson here. At some point in your life you will have to stop being the person who helps someone else’s thing succeed and start putting your own name on something. It will feel like arrogance. It is not. It is the moment you stop asking for a place and simply take one.
The Cigars
For a reader who has never smoked one of your cigars — where should she start, and why?
I would first ask what she normally enjoys. For someone wanting to understand my style without beginning too strong, I would often point toward a balanced K by Karen Berger expression or Ixtelli. The goal is not to impress someone with strength; it is to make them want the next cigar.
Walk us through the portfolio. What is what, and who is each line made for?
The portfolio ranges from K by Karen Berger in Connecticut, Habano, Maduro and Cameroon to K-Fire with Mexican San Andrés, Ixtelli as a Nicaraguan expression, Don Kiki lines carrying the legacy, the AJ Fernandez 25th Anniversary collaboration, and newer concepts such as Halftime, Overtime and Tailgate. Each line is built for a different moment and palate rather than making the same cigar with a different band.
What is the first thing a smoker notices in a K by Karen Berger?
I want the first impression to be construction and balance. Then the smoker should begin finding the personality of the wrapper and how it works with the Nicaraguan tobacco underneath.
Which of your blends was the hardest to get right, and what was the problem?
The hardest blends are usually the ones where I have a very specific flavor in my mind. Getting strength, aroma, combustion and balance to arrive at the same place can require many versions. A blend is finished when changing it no longer makes it better.
Which tobaccos keep returning in your blends, and what do they give you?
Nicaraguan tobacco returns again and again because it is my foundation. Estelí can bring strength and depth; Jalapa can bring aroma, sweetness and elegance. I also use wrappers such as Mexican San Andrés, Cameroon, Connecticut and other origins when they give the blend the character I am seeking.
How much of the tobacco comes from your own farms in Jalapa and Estelí?
Our connection to tobacco in Nicaragua is very close, including tobacco from the regions where we work and source. The exact percentage from our own farms versus purchased leaf varies by blend and crop, so I would prefer to confirm a current percentage rather than give a number that could be misleading.
How long is the aging before a cigar leaves your factory?
Aging depends on the tobacco and the cigar. We rest and age tobacco and finished cigars according to what the blend needs rather than forcing every product into one marketing number. The cigar tells you when it has settled.
What do you personally check before a cigar is allowed to carry your name?
Construction, draw, burn, aroma, flavor and consistency. If my name is on it, I want the cigar in the box to represent what we intended at the blending table.
In which vitola do your blends show themselves best?
I have always loved how a good blend can express itself in a Toro because it gives tobacco room to develop without losing balance. I also have a special affection for lanceros because they put so much emphasis on the wrapper and on the skill of the roller.
What story do you want to tell with your cigars?
I want to tell a story of Nicaragua, work, family, resilience and the hands behind the cigar. Luxury means more to me when you understand where it came from.
What do you want a smoker to feel in the final third?
I want the final third to reward the smoker, not punish them. It should deepen and become more interesting while remaining balanced enough that you are sorry when the cigar ends.
If you could keep only one of your own cigars, which would it be?
That is almost an impossible question. Emotionally, Don Kiki Gold carries irreplaceable history; personally, a K by Karen Berger or Ixtelli carries my own voice. If forced to choose only one, I would choose the cigar that best connects my past with the work I am still building.
Where can readers find your cigars today — and what is coming next?
Today our cigars are sold through retailers and distributors in the United States and a growing number of international markets. We are continuing to expand distribution while developing new sizes and projects, but I want growth to remain controlled enough that quality never becomes secondary.
Peter:
This is a cigar publication, so we asked the maker about the cigars.
What comes back is not marketing. It is a portrait of how she works — what she checks before a cigar is allowed to carry her name, which blend fought her hardest, what she wants you to feel in the final third.
That last one is the question I care most about. Most brand owners answer it with adjectives. Karen answers it like somebody who has sat with her own product and thought carefully about the person on the other end of it.
And when she talks about the story she wants her cigars to tell, remember where that idea comes from. She said to me once that every great cigar should tell a story. She was not being poetic. She meant it as a standard, the same way Kiki meant it when he told her what a cigar was supposed to taste like.
The next time you light one of hers, you will know whose hands it passed through, and what those hands went through to get there.
A Woman Who Chases Her Dreams
You had no plan, no capital and no door standing open. You had a pair of hands and a will. What was it inside you that refused to accept the life you were born into?
I refused to believe that being born without money meant being born without possibility. I did not have a detailed plan, but I had ambition, curiosity and a willingness to work longer than the circumstances around me.
When did you first feel that you were going somewhere?
The first signs were small: learning more, being trusted with more responsibility, understanding tobacco beyond my station and realizing that people valued my judgment. Progress rarely announces itself with a trumpet.
What did it cost you to get here?
It cost time, sleep, comfort, tears and many moments with family that work demanded from me. Success always has a price, which is why I try not to romanticize it.
Who is the woman Karen Berger today, compared to the girl in Estelí?
The girl in Estelí was hungry for possibility. The woman I am today has more experience, responsibility and confidence, but I still recognize that girl in myself. I never want success to make me forget her.
What have you proven to yourself?
I proved that I could rebuild. I proved that a woman who began at the rolling bench could learn every side of the business, lead, own, create and compete internationally.
Peter:
No plan. No capital. No open door. A pair of hands and a refusal to accept the life she was born into.
I have spoken to a lot of people about dreams. Most talk about them the way you talk about something that belongs to someone else — someone luckier, braver, better positioned. Karen Berger does not talk about them that way at all. For her, a dream is not a wish. It is a decision you make about your own life and then keep making, every day, whether or not anyone notices.
She had less than you do when she started. I do not know your circumstances, but I am fairly confident of that sentence anyway, because she started with nothing.
And here is the thing that should sit uncomfortably with all of us. She did not have room to wait. Hardship pushed her forward. Most of us are comfortable enough to postpone, and comfort has killed far more dreams than hardship ever has.
Dreams and How You Follow Them
What is the difference between dreaming and deciding?
Dreaming is imagining a different life. Deciding is accepting the work, risk and sacrifice required to move toward it.
What is the first step for someone who has a dream but does not know where to begin?
Start with the smallest action that makes the dream real. Make the call, learn the skill, save the first dollar, write the plan, ask the question. A dream becomes less frightening once it has a first step.
How do you know whether a dream is worth fighting for — or whether it is time to let it go?
A dream is worth fighting for when the sacrifices still have meaning to you and the goal is connected to who you want to become. Letting go is not always failure either; sometimes maturity is recognizing that a dream has changed.
What do you do when nobody believes in your dream?
Work anyway. Other people’s belief is wonderful, but it cannot be the fuel your dream depends on.
Many people wait for the right moment, the right money, the right conditions. What do you say to them?
The perfect moment is often another name for fear. I began without perfect conditions. Start responsibly, learn, adjust and grow; waiting until every risk disappears can mean waiting forever.
How do you keep a dream alive when life strikes back?
You remember why the dream mattered before the setback. Then you adjust the route without abandoning the destination. Resilience is not doing the same thing endlessly; it is finding another way forward.
Is there a dream you still have not fulfilled?
Yes. I still have dreams for my brands, my factory, my family and the international reach of what we make in Nicaragua. I hope I never reach a point where I have no new dream.
Peter:
The difference between a dream and a decision is smaller than people think.
A dream is something you carry. A decision is something you act on. The distance between them is not talent, money or luck. It is one moment where you stop describing what you want and do something about it, however small, however badly.
Most dreams do not die from failure. They die from postponement. Next month. Next year. When the children are older. When I have saved a bit more. When I feel ready. And that day never arrives, because readiness is produced by starting, not before it.
Karen Berger did not feel ready at eighteen. She was exhausted and broke. She started anyway.
Read what she says about people not believing in you. If you are waiting for someone’s belief before you begin, understand what you are actually waiting for. You are waiting for permission. And the people you are waiting on usually are not withholding it out of malice — they simply cannot see what you see. They are not inside your head. Their belief would be nice. It was never required.
Her proof did not arrive until years later, when the doubters could see the factory with their own eyes. By then she no longer needed them to.
And when she talks about keeping a dream alive when life strikes back — she is not speaking in theory. Life hit her harder than it hits most people. She lost the man she loved, her mentor and her business partner in a single moment and was left holding a company she had never planned to run alone. That is not a setback. That is the kind of thing that ends people.
She kept going. Not gracefully, not immediately, not without cost.
Whatever is currently in your way, I am not going to insult you by calling it small. It might be enormous. I will only point out that something enormous has been survived before, by someone with less than you, and she is sitting here answering these questions from the other side of it.
A Woman in a Male-Dominated Industry
More than 60 percent of the workforce in the tobacco industry are women — in the seedbeds, in the fields, in the factories. Yet almost all the owners are men. How do you explain that paradox?
Women have always done much of the physical and detailed work that sustains tobacco, while ownership, capital and decision-making historically remained concentrated elsewhere. Visibility is changing, but visibility alone is not the same as equal access to opportunity.
You say it is difficult for a woman to be taken seriously here, that they assume we lack knowledge both as smokers and as businesswomen. When did you notice it for the first time?
I noticed early that a woman sometimes had to demonstrate knowledge before receiving the respect a man might be given automatically. Later, as an owner and blender, I still encountered assumptions about whether I truly understood tobacco or business.
Tell me about a time you were underestimated in a room. What did you do?
There have been many rooms where people initially saw a woman before they saw the experience behind her. I learned not to waste all my energy arguing. I let knowledge, the cigar and the business results change the conversation.
Do you answer with words, or with results?
Results. Words matter, but results last longer. A well-made cigar, a factory that operates, customers who return and a business that survives are difficult to argue with.
How do you handle being underestimated without becoming bitter?
I try not to carry other people’s limitations inside me. Bitterness gives the person who underestimated you too much space in your life. I prefer to turn that energy into work.
What have you had to do that a man in your position would never have had to do?
I have often had to prove that I know tobacco before being allowed to simply discuss tobacco. I have had to establish credibility repeatedly in spaces where a man with the same years of experience might be assumed credible from the beginning.
You were named Tobacco Businesswoman of the Year. What did that recognition mean to you?
Being named Tobacco Businesswoman of the Year in 2021 meant a great deal because it recognized not only a brand, but years of work as a woman building within this industry. Recognition is meaningful when it can also make another woman see a door she did not know was open.
You are called the Cigar Queen. Do you love the title, or does it sometimes get in the way?
I enjoy ‘Cigar Queen’ when it is said with affection, but I never want a title to become bigger than the work. I am still a woman from Estelí who respects the leaf and knows what it means to sit at a rolling bench.
Has it become easier for women in this industry since you started — or only more visible?
It is more visible, and in some ways easier because there are more women publicly leading, blending, selling and owning. But women still have to keep turning visibility into real authority and opportunity.
What can men in this industry do that actually helps?
Take women’s knowledge seriously without treating us as an exception or a marketing category. Give qualified women access to the same conversations, opportunities, capital and respect.
Which women in the industry inspire you today?
I am inspired by women who are doing real work at every level of the industry—from the fields and factories to retail, distribution, media and ownership. I hesitate to make a short list because there are many women whose contributions deserve recognition.
Peter:
Here is a number to carry with you the next time you light a cigar.
More than sixty percent of the people who produce the cigars we smoke are women. They plant, they harvest, they sort, they roll. Their hands make the final product and their care decides whether it draws, burns and tastes the way it was meant to.
Almost none of them own the factory.
Karen Berger does. And she is not describing this from the outside. She sat at the bench. She knows exactly what the distance is between those two positions, because she is one of the very few who has walked it.
Read her answer about the paradox and let it land properly. The work is done by women. The ownership is held by men. The explanation is not a lack of skill, because skill is precisely what they are hired for. It is access — to capital, to networks, to the assumption that you might be something more than the hands doing the work.
What I find remarkable in her answers is what is not there. No bitterness. She could have earned it honestly. She chose instead the one argument that cannot be dismissed, which is the work itself.
That is not the same as accepting how things are. It is choosing the fight you can actually win.
Every woman reading this already recognizes the feeling in her answers. The meeting where the question goes to the man beside you. The assumption made before you have opened your mouth. Small, unprovable moments that leave no mark you can point to but build a ceiling over time. Karen sees them clearly, names them plainly, and then goes back to work.
What You Wish More Young Women Knew
What do you wish someone had told you when you were 18 and sitting at that rolling bench?
I wish someone had told me that I did not need to see the entire road to begin walking it. I also wish I had understood earlier that the hard years were teaching me things I would later need as an owner.
What do young women think they need, that they actually do not need?
They think they need permission, perfect confidence, a lot of money or the approval of everyone around them. You can begin before you have all of those things.
What do they need, that nobody tells them?
They need discipline, financial understanding, patience, the ability to hear ‘no’ without collapsing, and people who tell them the truth instead of only applauding them.
What should a woman do when she feels she is not enough?
Stop measuring your worth against somebody else’s finished chapter. Learn what you do not know, improve what you can improve and remember that insecurity is a feeling, not a verdict.
What do you say to a woman sitting at a rolling bench in Estelí right now, dreaming of more?
I would tell her: I sat where you are sitting. Do your work with excellence, but keep learning beyond the job in front of you. The bench where you sit today does not have to be the limit of where you stand tomorrow.
What is your best advice to a woman who wants to start her own business in an industry full of men?
Know your numbers as well as you know your product. Do not enter the room asking to be treated like an exception; enter prepared to do business. Build strong relationships, understand every part of your business and never stop learning.
What is your message to every woman reading this?
Do not allow fear to make your life smaller than your ability. Dream, but then work. Believe in yourself enough to begin and respect yourself enough to keep learning.
Peter:
If you are at the beginning of something and unsure whether you belong there, this section was written for you.
Karen Berger did not have to answer these questions. She has nothing to gain from it. She answered because somebody once saw something in her before she saw it herself, and she has clearly decided to be that person for someone else.
What she says about not being enough is the part I would ask every young woman to read twice. That feeling is almost never a verdict on your ability. It is a verdict on your experience, and experience is the one thing guaranteed to change if you simply keep going.
She was an eighteen-year-old with no money and no degree, sitting at a bench in Estelí, absolutely certain she was not enough for what she wanted.
She was wrong. You probably are too.
Family
How has your family carried you through all of this?
My family has been one of the greatest sources of strength throughout my life. My mother has been a tremendous pillar for me, always giving me strength, love and support through every stage of my journey. Doña Carmen has also been an essential part of my life and business; she manages the factory in Nicaragua and has been beside me carrying enormous responsibility. My children and my family remind me why I continue working and building. Success means very little if you do not have people you love to share it with.
What have your children learned from growing up in a tobacco family?
They have learned that tobacco is not only cigars on a shelf. They have seen travel, factories, customers, difficult decisions, long days and the responsibility that comes with a family business.
Do you want them to take over?
I want my children to have the freedom to choose their own lives. If they genuinely love this business and want to continue it, I would be proud to teach them. But legacy should be an opportunity, not a prison.
What have you been given that you would never have dared to dream of?
I have been given the chance to see a product made in Estelí carry my name into countries I once only knew on a map. I have received recognition, relationships and opportunities that the young girl I was could not have imagined.
What does a Sunday look like for Karen Berger today — compared to when you were 18?
Today Sunday can include family, church, rest and still a little business because an entrepreneur’s phone rarely understands weekends. At 18, Sunday could simply be another day of work and survival. The greatest difference is that today I can look back and see what all those Sundays were building.
Peter:
Everything she built, she built for them.
It is easy to read a story like this and see only the work. The hours, the factory, the brands, the years. But underneath all of it there was a family — a father who taught her something that lasted his whole long life, a husband, children who grew up watching their mother carry something enormous.
What her children learned from growing up in a tobacco family is worth reading closely, because they did not learn it from anything she said. They learned it from watching her get up.
That is how it works with children. They do not remember your advice. They remember what you did when it was hard, and they carry it into their own lives without ever knowing where it came from. Karen’s father gave her something like that. She has clearly passed it on.
If you have children, this is the section to sit with. Not because it will tell you what to teach them. Because it is a reminder that they are already learning, from the way you handle the days you think nobody is watching.
Closing
You say the passion and love of the leaf run through your veins, and that the earth and the fields are your origin. Describe that feeling to someone who has never stood in a tobacco field.
It is difficult to explain because the field reaches several senses at once—the smell of the earth, the size and texture of the leaves, the heat, the workers and the knowledge that this plant will pass through many hands before becoming a cigar. For me, standing in tobacco fields feels like standing at the beginning of the story.
You wrote yourself that every great cigar should tell a story. What story do yours tell?
My cigars tell a story of Nicaragua and of refusing to be defined by where you begin. They tell Don Kiki’s story, my story, the story of the people in our factory and the story of a woman who learned the leaf with her hands before she ever put her name on a band.
If you could say one single thing to Don Kiki today, what would it be?
I would say: Thank you. Thank you for what you taught me, for believing in me, for the life we shared and for the legacy you trusted me to carry. I hope you would be proud of what I have done with everything we built together.
What do you want people to remember — not the brand, but the woman Karen Berger?
I want people to remember a woman who worked, loved deeply, fell, got back up and never stopped dreaming. I want them to remember that I did not forget where I came from, and that whatever success I achieved, I tried to use it to open doors, create work, help people and leave something meaningful behind.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Karen. Thank you for taking part in this article, and for the way you took part in it. You did not give me polite answers. You gave me your life, and you did it knowing that strangers would read it. To speak about your life the way you did, to tell your story so openly in the hope that it might help someone else, cannot have been easy. Looking back on a life sometimes tears open memories a person has fought with for a long time, and grief that took years to walk through. There were questions in that document you had every right to leave blank. Nobody would have thought less of you. You answered them anyway, and I know what that must have cost, because I could feel it in the answers themselves. I have been doing this long enough to know the difference between someone giving an interview and someone giving something of themselves. You gave something of yourself. There is no other honest way to describe it. Your advice to women, and everything you shared about following dreams, was just as valuable as the rest. Somewhere out there is a young woman who will read this and make a different decision about her own life. She will never write to you. She will never tell you it happened. But it will happen, and it will happen because you sat down and wrote all of this out for someone you will never meet. You began at a rolling bench in Estelí with nothing but a pair of hands and a refusal to accept the life you were born into. You loved a man completely, you gave a part of your own body to keep him here longer, and when he was gone you carried his name, his company and your children forward at the same time. Then you put your own name on a cigar and made sure it deserved to be there.
Your strength is rare, and it will be a guiding light for many women. Not because you told them to be strong, but because you showed them what it actually looks like from the inside — including the parts that were not graceful.
Kiki would be proud of you. I think you already know that. But it deserves to be written down somewhere permanent, so here it is.
From the bottom of my heart, Karen, thank you for letting me be a part of your story. It has been an honour I will not forget.
