Black Women and the Power of the Group Chat

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Calling all my sweeties to the forefront. I'm your host, Christo, and this is to keep it positive. Sweetish show we welcome to keep it positive, Sweetie, a place where we he'll grow and learn together. Today's guest is a strategist, advocate, and movement builder Joe Taika Edie. Joe Taica is someone many people know for her impact, but today's conversation goes deeper, from navigating grief and personal healing to finding power and heavy moments. This is a chance to hear how she moves forward through challenge, leadership and purpose.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: Kip Stanley, please give.

00:00:36
Speaker 1: A very warm welcome to my sister Joe Taika Edie.

00:00:40
Speaker 3: Hi, how are you? I feel good. I'm happy to be well.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: You look good. You came in here radiating.

00:00:47
Speaker 4: No, I think we got a memo like I got the memo for the brown and the Creams day.

00:00:52
Speaker 3: Do it just feels good? Is twenty twenty six? They say to what the year of the horse?

00:00:56
Speaker 2: The year the horse. That's what I'm hearing. Let's go. We are not playing.

00:01:01
Speaker 3: Five?

00:01:01
Speaker 2: Was we made it? Though?

00:01:04
Speaker 3: We made it?

00:01:05
Speaker 2: It was very Yeah, it was tumultuous what we made it? We made it? Yes, we did, so Jataka, I met you first.

00:01:12
Speaker 1: I believe it was Essence Festival that was the first time we actually met. Treill had come on and I'm talking about saying your praises.

00:01:20
Speaker 2: He's like, you gotta meet just like you got to meet her.

00:01:23
Speaker 1: And we got to finally meet and at Essence Festival at his all white, Black Excellence Brunch, and from there already your name preceded itself.

00:01:31
Speaker 2: So I knew who you were, but I had never gotten to meet you. And it was just you.

00:01:36
Speaker 1: Everything that we hear about Joe takea Edie, you are that. And then you bless us in Washington, d C. For our kIPS Live show, poured into us like no other. And I just want to say thank you just for being you but also coming into our world and sharing a piece of you with us.

00:01:51
Speaker 3: Seriously, well, thank you.

00:01:52
Speaker 4: And I love Treill he is you know, Treill is my South Carolina. Yes, brother, so and just do an amazing things like I think about the Black Excellence Brunch, what it's done for the culture, and then really to be here with you like so, I'm grateful to.

00:02:08
Speaker 3: Be here with you.

00:02:09
Speaker 4: Love love, love your journey and you know the DC like you know, like the DC.

00:02:17
Speaker 2: The DC Hustle, baby, because that's what it is, It's DC Hustle.

00:02:21
Speaker 4: But to just see just the space and just the beauty of what you bring the impact.

00:02:30
Speaker 3: So I'm just glad to be here.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Thank you.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: So I want to know, before the titles, before the world knew who you were, take us back to who you were before you knew advocacy was your.

00:02:41
Speaker 2: Calling on that journey, Cause I know it's been a journey.

00:02:44
Speaker 3: It's been a journey.

00:02:45
Speaker 4: So interestingly, you know, I'm from rural South Carolina. So I'm from a town with population fourteen hundred people.

00:02:53
Speaker 2: Wait, that's less than me. I thought I was from a small town.

00:02:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, are you si Johnsonville, South Carolina. Wow, I think it's forteen ninety one something like that, Like it changes beside the side. But I'm from a little small town. I grew up on a dirt road. My family still lives on that dirt road. And I think, really, what like who I always was the kid growing up? My mom would tell me stories about being me, being the kid that would talk to anybody in the grocery store. And I used to say, I want to be Annoyer. I couldn't even say lawyer. I want to be Annoyer. And really, I think probably watching Claire Huxtable was a big influence for me, growing up like she, and so that gave me this idea I want to be a lawyer. I always wanted to help people, but I always wanted to talk to people. So I was that kid that got talks too much, shocks too much. But I also was the advocate for other kids in school. So always growing up in like you know, a small rural town, I was that kid that was very talkative.

00:04:02
Speaker 3: And I was also that kid.

00:04:04
Speaker 4: That your grandmama made you get your Eastern speech together. Interestingly, I got my confidence for speaking and being in front of people doing Eastern speeches in church, and so I would get an extra long.

00:04:18
Speaker 3: Each Easter speech.

00:04:20
Speaker 4: And I never forget my grandma, and I was good at like memorizing, So I would wait till the last.

00:04:24
Speaker 3: Minute, and my grandma would be like I.

00:04:26
Speaker 4: Think her and her sister would compete, like which grandchild was going to do the best, Like my cousin Tarror would sing, and.

00:04:32
Speaker 3: It was like you got to get up there and do a good job. So I would go through my Eastern speech. I would memorize it, but.

00:04:39
Speaker 4: I would get up and it was like I would perform. And so as I grew up, people would wait, I would get to do my Eastern speech.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: Last they know, you got to do something your Eastern speech.

00:04:52
Speaker 4: But it gave me confidence, and it gave me a sense of like I could just get up here and speak. And I just remember, you know, older black women, right, like the Miss Bernie Ruths, the Miss Annie Lu's, you know, the Miss Louvinias that's sitting there. Go ahead, baby, go ahead, baby, do it baby, And that just did something for me. So, like, you know, fast forward twenty something years later, when I'm speaking at the un I'm nervous, but I had that confidence to be there because I revert back to what that felt like. And so that was like the kid growing up. But I was also that kid in student government. I grew up in the church, a very strong faith, spiritual, just tradition for me, like I grew Yeah, I grew up in the church, I know, like for me, like I'm nothing without God. And so that all together made me this kid that just believed that I wanted to create something better in the world.

00:05:50
Speaker 3: And really.

00:05:51
Speaker 4: What did it for me was what I was probably around eight or nine, the local plant in my town when the workers went on strike and Reverend Jesse Jackson, Wow, came to Johnsonville.

00:06:05
Speaker 3: South Carolina.

00:06:06
Speaker 2: That's huge.

00:06:07
Speaker 3: Yes, can you imagine fourteen hundred people.

00:06:10
Speaker 4: I'll never forget He marched from Welman Industries to the high school football field and I remember seeing Reverend Jesse Jackson. I'll never forget it. I was standing on the other side of the fence and I was like.

00:06:24
Speaker 3: Oh my God, like, this is this is it, this is what I want to do. And I was so inspired.

00:06:29
Speaker 4: From that moment on, I wanted to be an advocate and I would fight little fights in through the government, like I was in middle school, Like the mirrors in the bathroom were plastic and I was like, we need real mirrors. I'm going to fight for the bathroom. But that was kind of the start.

00:06:49
Speaker 1: That is amazing, and I love hearing stories like that because a lot of times when you are born into a small country town, we don't have a lot of the outlets that most kids in the city have. So to be able to have a Jesse Jackson come to your town, you know, to show you this is what real advocacy looks like and what standing up for the right thing looks like.

00:07:12
Speaker 2: I'm sure that was very pivotal.

00:07:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was something.

00:07:16
Speaker 4: You know what's interesting you think about like what we had when we didn't have I mean, like this is like you know, we had the big satellite dishes because we didn't have like we only had like three channels.

00:07:25
Speaker 3: Right.

00:07:25
Speaker 4: We barely had NBC because it was really in Charleston, which is like two hours away, so that I guess we didn't get signals. So you had like, you know, channel thirteen, Channel fifteen. Who's watching this, I know there's some you know, I know y'all all here from South Carolina. Y'all y'all from like where I'm from, Florence County, you know. Then the channel thirteen to Channel fifteen, and then Fox came like a couple of years later. Wow, but we had like three channels and then like you were lucky to you know, get a satellite and like and then so we didn't have you know, like the Star of the town I'm well known for, like you know, coming out of Johnsonville. Because it's interesting because any time I've ever done an interview or any magazine ever like writes about me, I'm very very like conscious and I'm very like deliberate about them printing that I am from Johnsonville, South Carolina, because to me, I'm like, I'm so proud of like being from the small town. And I think it's important, like you say, like we people that come from small towns, we I grew up in like a place where in the school system, you know, guidance counselors didn't lead you to believe that you can do any and everything like in these small towns across the country, like they don't tell particularly us, you know, And so it's important, I think for people to see that you can't, especially if you're like that kid, that young girl that's on a dirt road, that's you know, living in any small towns.

00:09:04
Speaker 3: You're not in a big city.

00:09:05
Speaker 4: You don't have access to some of the programs and some of the activities, and you don't have that to see that like, yes, you can't come from a small town. You could go anywhere, you could travel, you can be anything that you want.

00:09:20
Speaker 3: And I just think it's really important for me to be a representation of that.

00:09:25
Speaker 1: When you are an outstanding representation of that. You said before that advocacy isn't a career choice, it's a responsibility.

00:09:33
Speaker 2: When did that.

00:09:34
Speaker 1: Responsibility show itself to you in a way that you couldn't ignore it anymore?

00:09:40
Speaker 4: I think it probably was in my high school days. For me, I became very interested in learning about the death penalty. So also, Johnsonville, South Carolina, is also home to this very infamous multiple murderer, Donald pee Wee Gaskin. So my small town had this man who had submitted a lot of murders and was on death row. When I was in seventh grade. He had come up for execution, and I'll never forget my seventh grade teacher asked us to argue in class our position. Now, this was the girl who did the power Easter speeches. So I was ready and I was like, Donald pee Wee gascon should be executed.

00:10:32
Speaker 3: You know. I was at I was like, I went to debate. I'm I'm on the winning side.

00:10:36
Speaker 4: We had to write a paper on the opposing viewpoint that you took in class. Oh wow, So I go and I'm doing this research and I start to learn about the death penalicgue. So I had learned about George Stinney, who was fourteen years old, the youngest person ever executed in the United States, who grew up in Clarenon County, South Carolina, which is probably like forty five minutes from where my little small town is. And I'm reading the history that I started digging into firm and versus Georgia, which was the landmark US Supreme Court case, and I was like, whoa, the death peloty has been racist and they were executing people who committed crimes. At the age of sixteen and seventeen, I became very opposed to the death penloty. So I started like a little student group in my middle school.

00:11:29
Speaker 3: And high school.

00:11:30
Speaker 4: If you go back to my yearbook, interestingly, my friends would write good luck trying to abolish the death penloty, like that was like the thing that they would say in my yearbook because I was so opposed. So but that was for me, That's what I got. And then I saw Reverend Jesse Jackson as a younger person. I was on fire and it was like I want to go I'm going to be a criminal defense lawyer and I'm going to go work on death parlic cases.

00:11:55
Speaker 3: And so I ended up. I ended up being a part of of the.

00:12:01
Speaker 4: Movement to a policy juvenile death penalty, like in two thousand and five.

00:12:04
Speaker 3: So for me, like that advocacy was like that thing that I.

00:12:08
Speaker 4: Couldn't unsee because I realized that we had been fed this information about a criminal justice system when really when you look at the history of the death penalty, why the death penalty, Like we went from slave codes to you know, the death penalty, and like who largely got the death penalty largely black and brown men and women in the United States. That the just the unfairness, the bias of the system, and so that was just something that was just a calling for men. So when I was in I think I was in maybe the tenth grade, my high school teacher recommended me to go to the National.

00:12:51
Speaker 3: Youth Leadership form of Law and Constitution in DC.

00:12:56
Speaker 4: And it cost three thousand dollars to go, and it was three thousand dollars my mom and daddy didn't have. And so the town of Josonville, all of the good people of Johnsonville, many black women in my church, they raised the money sold cake said Dinas to put me on an airplane that many of them and some of them have never even been on still today and sent me to.

00:13:20
Speaker 3: Washington, d C.

00:13:21
Speaker 4: And there I met the executive director, Steve Hawkins of the National Collage of Bosha Deathbeld.

00:13:28
Speaker 3: I'm like sixty years old, and I.

00:13:29
Speaker 4: Was like, I want to do I want to come work and abolished the death penalty. And he offered me an internship, like he said, when you finish high school.

00:13:36
Speaker 3: And I begged my mom and dad to let me go to d C.

00:13:39
Speaker 4: And when I graduated high school, I would have stayed with a distant cousin, my cousin mildyap in DC and did an internship. And that literally was what put me on the trajectory that has taken me to where I'm at today.

00:13:53
Speaker 1: My goodness, that is fascinating. And we share similar stories in me going from Martin, Tennessee to d C. What was that like going from a very small town. I'm interested to hear your take on it to the city known as Washington, d C.

00:14:08
Speaker 2: Because I know for me it was a big jump and I was like, whoa.

00:14:12
Speaker 3: Yeah different, Yeah, So I went.

00:14:14
Speaker 4: So it was a bit helpful because I went to the University of South Carolina and so that When I went to USC, it was you know, large campus.

00:14:22
Speaker 3: I was very active at.

00:14:24
Speaker 4: USC and then student government and student activism there. But when I went to d C, it was so Colombia was like kind of city, but that was big city to me, but d C, it was like what is this? And then I had never been around or in a city with so many black folks that were like just.

00:14:47
Speaker 3: Doing the thing.

00:14:48
Speaker 4: And not that Johnsonville didn't have dynamic, amazing, excellent black folks, but like just see black people running things, you know, leading mayors all of that.

00:14:59
Speaker 3: Like I never see that, honestly, Like I had never even seen or.

00:15:03
Speaker 4: Been around other uh just populations of the diaspora of black people. So that was like my first time like experiencing Ethiopian.

00:15:13
Speaker 3: Food or like, and it's just like one of those.

00:15:15
Speaker 4: Things because like Josphville, there is not an Ethiopian restaurant in Josphviel. So like for the first time I'm eating Ethiopian food or being open.

00:15:23
Speaker 3: To other the other cultures is being in DC and.

00:15:27
Speaker 4: So I and I love DC because I always saw DC as a place where you could go create.

00:15:33
Speaker 2: Change, and.

00:15:35
Speaker 4: Like that's where it changes, I mean over time and over the years of my career, I started to learn that like, nah, like you could create change in other spaces. But I used to think that like, if you go to do change change work, you need to be doing movement work. You need to be like in a nonprofit or you need to be in the government.

00:15:52
Speaker 3: That's the only way you could do change. And that's evolved for me. But that was like my experience and it was just like in DC.

00:15:58
Speaker 4: To me, still DC is still my home. I spent my time between DC and LA, but DC for me still there is something even though like the heaviness of a Trump administration in Washington, d C is very heavy and like what's happening right now, particularly how black women and black people are infected.

00:16:18
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that.

00:16:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's still something special to me about DC.

00:16:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know the exact number. And you may be able to help me on this of black women that lost their jobs last.

00:16:30
Speaker 4: Year, three hundred thousand, three hundred grief and shout out to Vlicia Butterfield. Yes, yes, we love for the global state of women and the fun for black women to have some relief. And so it's it's a hard time and it's it's particularly painful, like when you know people, yes and not just one person, but you.

00:16:56
Speaker 3: Know multiple people who.

00:16:59
Speaker 4: Have been out of work for over a year and it's all because of a deliberate, aggressive, poignant attack on black women, on black.

00:17:12
Speaker 3: People, on.

00:17:14
Speaker 4: Our livelihood, on our lives, on our education, on our culture. And so in this moment, I just think that it's a reality check for a lot of people, because I think some people didn't take it as seriously and now are realizing that this.

00:17:33
Speaker 3: Is real.

00:17:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is real.

00:17:35
Speaker 1: I remember a friend of mine saying when everything the pendum started swinging in our favor, he said, be careful, he said, because just as it swings, it's going to go back in the.

00:17:44
Speaker 2: Other direction, very drastically.

00:17:46
Speaker 1: And what could you give us as a community advice on how to handle this as the pendulum is not in our favor.

00:17:54
Speaker 4: I think in this moment that would go back to where we started this podcast prayer. It's being grounded and recognizing that we are always going to be okay because God has us, and I think that's where it starts. It's just having a level of peace and understanding as hard as hard as it is, and I just to speak to my own self love that that there is something greater.

00:18:27
Speaker 3: That is holding us.

00:18:29
Speaker 4: So I think that's the first place, and the second is that we cannot as a people in this moment be silent. It's not an option, and we have to be united and together support each other and support our own in this moment. And so I think that as this pendulum, because it's not just people that had a federal job, it's people who consult or law firms, or or it's it's an attack on the entire culture and the entire system. And I think that's the part that is very real and is the part that's the most dangerous. And so you see now attacks on UH studios and so what does that mean about UH content as studios and ensure that there's diversity not on the camera but behind the camera and.

00:19:26
Speaker 3: All all of the craftsmen, all of that.

00:19:29
Speaker 4: So the attacks now on that, the attacks on universities and funding. NIH just announced that they are no longer going to have diversity, equity and inclusion grants, that they don't need that anymore. Think about research and so the greater impact, Think about all the jobs that are associated with that. So I think sometimes when we think about what has happened in terms of these massive, uh you know, jobs that have disappeared, and we think, oh, it's just someone that was working in a federal government an office that maybe we didn't need them, right, you know, maybe yeah we do need them. Yeah, But it's also you know, all of the surrounding jobs and industries that are also impact music, concerts, all those things, because there's not the support for all of that. And I think it's just a moment like for us to recognize that we are not in normal times, and because we are not in normal times, we cannot do our resistance can't look like you know, business as usual, right.

00:20:35
Speaker 2: That is so that's good. Thank you for sharing that.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: You have been known for also movement building, and people see the movements when it's visible, but they don't see it when it's fragile and behind the scenes and in its incubator phase. I wanted to ask you, can you walk us through what it really takes to move a movement in the way that you have from working with Kamala Harris or even with the abolishing the juvenile death penalty, What does it take to really build those movements from the ground up?

00:21:07
Speaker 4: I think the first thing is authentic relationships. Because when I go back and I think about.

00:21:13
Speaker 3: How we were able.

00:21:15
Speaker 4: To abolish the juvenile death penalty in two thousand and five, no one thought that that could happen, and it was.

00:21:22
Speaker 3: A lot of hard work.

00:21:23
Speaker 4: And I remember, you know, I mean, I was, like, I think it was twenty five in that Supreme Court case that I was the chief organizer for the National Culture bot death Penalty on that case, and I remember having to go to South Dakota, Wyoming, New Hampshire and the work that we did in the United Nations to really get that case into a place where the Supreme Court would.

00:21:49
Speaker 3: Vote, which is a five to four vote.

00:21:52
Speaker 4: Justice Kennedy was the swing vote, a very pivotal vote. But what it took was coalition and authentic relationships. And it takes strategy, but I think sometimes people think that the strategy leads, but really the authentic relationships first first, and once you have that, then you can employ it strategy with those authentic relationships that then can move the movement.

00:22:18
Speaker 3: And I think also movement.

00:22:20
Speaker 4: Is about collective, collective leadership, and it is about collective power. And when I think about the work around when with Black Women. That has really been the power behind when with Black Women is the collective nature of when with Black Women, because the notion for when with Black women is that we all have power. That you don't need institutional power, you don't need positional power to have power.

00:22:48
Speaker 3: No matter who you are, where you sit, you have some type of.

00:22:52
Speaker 4: Power that can be a contribution to the collective place that we are moving together as a key, So if you can just think of us as we're all on this journey together. We're all on like the big the big highway together. We're in our individual cars, but but we're moving. As long as we're moving in the same direction, we're moving forward. Not everybody's gonna drive the same color car, have the same car.

00:23:20
Speaker 3: We're not all going to drive at the same speed.

00:23:22
Speaker 4: But if we're moving in the same direction with the goal of getting to the destination, that's how we can have I think strong positives.

00:23:31
Speaker 2: I love it. I love that.

00:23:33
Speaker 1: Now we talked about your holy yes and your sacred no. When do you know when it's time to say yes to something? I'm sure you get a lot of calls like are things to take on? When do you know what to say yes to and what to say no to, and how do you discern like what projects.

00:23:49
Speaker 2: You'll take on?

00:23:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the notion of the.

00:23:53
Speaker 4: Sacred Noe holy Yes, you know Oprah Winfree and AA van Zance Poecast.

00:23:58
Speaker 2: We were just I love it, I love it.

00:24:04
Speaker 4: But we were talking about and I heard that and it was just so profound to me because I've struggled with being able to say no. I'm one of those people that my whole life it was always hard to say no because I've always wanted to be accommodating.

00:24:20
Speaker 3: And I think this last year for me, it's been oo.

00:24:29
Speaker 4: Yeah. Interestingly, it's like it's been the roughest, hardest year of my life. And it's interesting because I think most people have seen or saw all the awards, all of the things, the image award, this, that, this to that.

00:24:53
Speaker 3: But I have been on.

00:24:55
Speaker 4: A grief journey and it was so hard to be in deep grief, to deal with a multitude of challenges, but also be thrust it into this light where people are expecting you to smile, and inside.

00:25:18
Speaker 2: You're really just crumbling.

00:25:20
Speaker 4: You're crumbling on the inside. And you know, my mother, like the loss of my mother and the way my mother died.

00:25:30
Speaker 3: It was so sudden.

00:25:31
Speaker 4: It was like an unknown condition that never was could be diagnosed. And she was fine in July and died December the fourth. And while the election was going on, I was Most people didn't realize that I was spending most of my time in the medical My mother was in medical ICU on a ventilator for two months, and when she ultimately.

00:25:57
Speaker 3: Passed, it was very hard.

00:25:59
Speaker 4: So it's like, my mother dies December the fourth, we lost the election in November, this administration comes in in January, the country starts to move in this direction, and so.

00:26:12
Speaker 3: You're where it's just heavy.

00:26:15
Speaker 4: And I realized last year that I had to learn.

00:26:21
Speaker 3: How to say no more and yes to myself.

00:26:26
Speaker 4: And so that's when I think, for really the first time forever in my life, I was forced to slow down because I just there were days I just couldn't.

00:26:37
Speaker 3: I just couldn't.

00:26:38
Speaker 4: And I'm still learning how to say no. But it it has been a work in progress. But you know, life sometimes and God will God will sit you down, tell.

00:26:51
Speaker 2: Me about it. He'll sit you down.

00:26:52
Speaker 3: Sometimes He'll sit you down.

00:26:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people don't take the they don't understand that also like as you're being thrust into like life still happens, and so many people don't know what we're dealing with behind the scenes, and the way you push through.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: Would have never known.

00:27:09
Speaker 1: And I didn't know that until you shared it on the live show, and I was just like, wow, Like the fact that you can that's a lot. I know what you put into the election, you know, and then to go through that loss, and then to turn around and lose your mother, I know that was hard.

00:27:23
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And it's one of those things where I was just thinking. I was like, man, I was thinking about people. I'm grateful for it.

00:27:28
Speaker 3: I was thinking about I thought it was the craziest thing to think about.

00:27:32
Speaker 4: And I was like, the dynamic dope women that have done my makeup before I have gone on.

00:27:39
Speaker 3: To get anything right or speech or an.

00:27:42
Speaker 4: Award or whatever, and because They've had to redo my makeup so many times because I'm literally crying, yeah before I have to walk out there.

00:27:53
Speaker 3: I missed my mom so much.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: She's not here for these things. Yeah, And so it's been.

00:28:04
Speaker 3: It's like I know her spirit is here, but you miss her. And so like you go through life and this person who has poured everything into you to make you who you.

00:28:18
Speaker 4: Are, and finally you're there, You're there, or you're somewhat there, and she's not physically there, and it's yeah, it's.

00:28:37
Speaker 3: It's it's it has an impact.

00:28:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:28:45
Speaker 4: So yeah, So it's been really a journey and I've learned so much.

00:28:55
Speaker 3: About grief and how grief will you just have to just go through it. It will hit you at.

00:29:05
Speaker 4: Any moment you're in the grocery store and I would see Welch's grape juice because when my mom was getting sick, she liked welsh Is grape juice, and I just it would just impact me because I just think about, you know, my mother, if I can say her name, Leonora Abraham Edie, my best friend, my biggest supporter.

00:29:31
Speaker 3: My mom and my dad both.

00:29:34
Speaker 4: But my mom was this person, that gentle kind soul, and she taught me everything. She was always there, my person I talk to every day, and you know, we it was so harsh. I learned also, like when my mom her through her sickness, the horror of the healthcare system because my mom, you know, it was a July my mother was fine, laughing, talking, and then all of a sudden, she was like feeling a little off, and she goes to the doctor and the doctor tells her, you know, that she has anxiety and depression. And I'm like, this seems a little off, you know, but maybe, and so they prescribe her medicine.

00:30:22
Speaker 3: I'm like something my spirit kept saying, something is not right.

00:30:25
Speaker 4: That all of a sudden, my mother started having like the onset of like advanced dementia, and everything I read, every doctor friend that I spoke to is like, dementia does an onset like this.

00:30:37
Speaker 3: It doesn't. It's not this fast.

00:30:39
Speaker 4: And so by August my mom was could barely talk, could not I'll never forget. There was this moment when I and I would fly back home and I'm trying to go see a neurologist and they're like, oh, it's pseudo pseudo.

00:30:55
Speaker 3: Dementia, Like what is pseudo dementia?

00:30:58
Speaker 4: You know, what's you know, it's not really real. It'll reverse and so and I'm like, something's not right. And I never forget. I went home and I was in my room and I'm on emails.

00:31:11
Speaker 3: And the crazy part is life is lifing.

00:31:14
Speaker 4: But the world is still moving. So in the midst of this election, like I'm taking calls and it's on a strategy and I'm sitting there and my mom walks in my room door. She has on Sunday clothes, and I go and it's why were you doing? It's a Thursday, and she was like, I'm going to church. We're going to church. And she's out of her mind, but just as childlike and sweet and innocent, dressed to the nines. And I remember I just looked at her and I said, Mama, I said, but it's Thursday. And she looked at me and it was as if like she felt like she felt like, oh no, and she said it's Thursday. And I said yeah, I said, come sit beside me. And I remember I said, it was this moment where I just said, but we can pretend like it's Sunday, you know. And that was that moment where I realized, like, and I had thought still at that moment, like my mom was just gonna have be in the state and I'm gonna be able to And at that moment, it was like, oh, I can figure this out. We could live with this, we could we could get the best doctors, the best treatment. When we fast forward to September and my mother has to go to the emergency room. They run a scan. My mother has a four centimeter mass on her brain.

00:32:31
Speaker 2: What, yes, and that's what was causing.

00:32:34
Speaker 3: That was what was causing. And then from there.

00:32:38
Speaker 1: But nobody was like we should do that. They didn't think let's run a scan.

00:32:41
Speaker 4: Before they ran a scan in August and there was nothing there. What and so this is so this happened so fast. And then from September twenty fourth to December fourth, we went through first being told my mother had a rare infection. To know it's not an infection, she had a rare form of brain cancer. No, it's not brain cancer. To we don't know what this is. And so when my mother died, I literally had to fight the hospital system because they tried to say that my mother died from kidney filer. It was like, no, no, mother and die for kidney failure. Her kidney's failed because she's been on a ventilator. She's been in this hospital in a coma for two months. But I learned that the hospital system.

00:33:28
Speaker 3: I just remember.

00:33:30
Speaker 4: Having to stay at the hospital because the rounds, like the way the rounds work, if you don't if you're not there when the doctor comes, you don't get to talk to the doctor.

00:33:40
Speaker 2: For the day.

00:33:40
Speaker 4: So I would stay out at the hospital. I could never leave to fight. And then it's always like.

00:33:45
Speaker 3: But did you do this? Did you do this test?

00:33:48
Speaker 4: And what I learned is like I had all this privilege, all this access.

00:33:52
Speaker 3: I could call friends that are all these.

00:33:54
Speaker 4: Expert doctors, all of this access, and I had the ability and the economic ability to basically relocate myself to Charleton, South Carolina, where she was. And I thought, if this is this hard for me, what is it like for people who don't have my access.

00:34:15
Speaker 3: Who don't have just my abilities.

00:34:18
Speaker 4: And it just breaks my heart what people are dealing with on a day to day basis at a healthcare system, And now with the administration that we have, it's even worse. Hospitals are shutting down, you know, the one place or the one hospital that could actually serve And so it just really for me was a lesson. It was heartbreaking, but it also for me was more of a resolve to be a voice at an advocate, to tell the story of my mother, yes about misdiagnosis, because black women our pain, whether or not it's our it's the fibroids and our bodies, or it's you know, whatever it is our pain, or when we go to doctors, it's not viewed this season.

00:35:02
Speaker 3: It's it's like, oh, you just got this.

00:35:04
Speaker 4: Like my mother was misdiagnosed, yeah, and just pushed aside, and I still I still was fighting.

00:35:12
Speaker 3: We still couldn't save her.

00:35:14
Speaker 4: And so imagine the countless other people who have to go through that and are losing loved ones because the healthcare system is not listening, particularly the black people and black women.

00:35:28
Speaker 2: Right.

00:35:31
Speaker 1: Goodness, Yeah, that's I hear so many times where people are misdiagnosed and even sometimes like the medication given the wrong medication to begin with, and it's like that wasn't even what they needed.

00:35:42
Speaker 2: My mother, she has worked in.

00:35:43
Speaker 1: The health care system since I can remember, and I could see the toll that it would take on her, just as a person who had to see that every single day.

00:35:54
Speaker 2: And I can't.

00:35:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't imagine, especially with our resources and reach, that what other people are going through. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.

00:36:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, by home, my story just can just move the needle. And that's for me.

00:36:13
Speaker 4: It's like it's hard to talk about but it's important because it's to shed a light. Absolutely, It's like we've got to we've got to talk about how we're treated we do in the hospital system. We've got to talk about just how it works and how it doesn't work for everyday people who are just struggling to just keep their loved ones healthy and alive and in our lives.

00:36:35
Speaker 2: My goodness.

00:36:37
Speaker 1: Last season on Sisters, we touched on the disparaging inconsistencies of white women who have birth childhood birth, childhood birth deaths, and then I mean child labor birth deaths, and then Black women who have children died during labor, and even women who died during labor, and the number three.

00:36:58
Speaker 4: Times crazy to die giving birth, and the statistics for black women against the world.

00:37:08
Speaker 3: It's alarming, it is.

00:37:09
Speaker 4: It's alarming to hear the stories, the painful stories of black women, like just the recent stories of black women who had to give birth in a car or not sit in a hospital as a nurse is not paying attention to her pain while she's in labor. That's very real, it is, and we have to do something about it. We've got to talk about it and not just talk about it. There's powerful legislation in Congress, Black women in Congress that are leading on this conversation.

00:37:43
Speaker 3: Legislation you know that has been.

00:37:47
Speaker 4: Championed by black women in Congress for us to talk about this, And I think the more we talk about it and the more we take action on it, the better we are as a people, and particularly the we are as black women.

00:38:01
Speaker 2: For sure.

00:38:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: Well, I know with you being behind it and putting your voice in front of it, I know that the movement will go on and people will hear. And I support you whole heartedly because I've seen it, even with some friends of mine recently who have gone through that, and even as a woman who hasn't had children, that is one of the fears, you know, That's always been a fear of mine is I don't know why, but a fear of mine was always that I'm going to die during child labor because of that, you know, So to see it happening more than hitting closer to home. Yeah, however, I can support and be a voice.

00:38:34
Speaker 2: I will. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.

00:38:38
Speaker 1: You have been called and this is one of my favorite shows. You've been called the Olivia Pope of Silicon Valley. You are the fixed or the strategists and the power broker. When people started calling you that, did you feel like.

00:38:52
Speaker 2: Was it like okay, yeah, I'm that girl, or was it pressure? Did you feel pride?

00:38:56
Speaker 1: Or were you like, Okay, this is a bigger responsibility than I thought.

00:38:59
Speaker 3: It was all of the I think what I think about it, it was like all of the.

00:39:02
Speaker 4: Above, Like I think, I think it was like Forbes of Fortune that had vote that it actually first started on a podcast and they were like, she's Olivia popa Silicon Valley And it's interesting how that cake because you know, we all was watching Scandal was the thing with those Scandal parties. You know, everybody's like watching Scandal party, seeing what love you writing about it? What you know, Roland Bart, what you got to say about it? So it was so what It's interesting. When I went into tech, it was I was did the work of around the death penalty, was excited about the abolition of juvenile death Polly, and then I was like, Okay, I don't want to just be the death penalic strategist.

00:39:45
Speaker 3: I want to just be a strategist.

00:39:46
Speaker 4: So I went into doing progressive policy and advocacy work that I did. Obama Obama campaign first campaign, and then after that election, people are like, are you gonna go in the White House? Everybody was going in the White House. And I went to the NAACP. My friend who I met doing anti deacinity worked Ben Jealous and became the presidency of the NAACP, and so I went into senior advisor and right hand and so I had been at the NAACP for seven years.

00:40:18
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:40:18
Speaker 4: And then I got a call from some investor friends in Silicon Valley who said, we think you should come in the Silicon Valley. And I remember I was like my doing my movement work at the NAACP, and I was happy.

00:40:34
Speaker 3: I'm like I'm doing I'm great this Silica. I couldn't even say.

00:40:37
Speaker 4: I'll never forget my friend albut Sanders we went to when they first started talking to me about Silicon Valley and they reached out and they were like, hey, we think you should come.

00:40:45
Speaker 3: In this industry. And I was like, I don't know how to code.

00:40:49
Speaker 4: So this is like twenty thirteen, so nobody's talking about Silicon Valley or tech in DC. And I remember I was like, I don't know how to code. There's a bunch of white boys in hoodies' I'm not really a hoodie girl, like this is not for me, like that, I don't know anything about tech. So I really had this imposter syndrome that I didn't belong in the industry. In fact, I had already you know, worked on Roper Simmons, which is a landmark Supreme Court case. I had lobbied in the UN I had worked on voting voting rights laws at the NAACP. So all of this stuff that I had done, but I still didn't see a reflection of myself in the industry. And so I remembered when I first got the offer to go, and it was also it was foreign, like no one. I think Sola Dad O'Brien had did this special on CNN about Silicon Valley and that was probably maybe the first time I.

00:41:48
Speaker 3: Think I could say I had been really exposed.

00:41:51
Speaker 4: So when they first time, I was called it a silicone and I never forget.

00:41:54
Speaker 3: I went into Tournam with my friend Albert Sanders.

00:41:56
Speaker 4: And he was, you know, it's like you know, back in DC River Coastes, OK.

00:42:02
Speaker 3: But we thought we was doing something.

00:42:04
Speaker 4: We go to lunch at coast, like I'm going to a power lunch at Coast.

00:42:07
Speaker 3: I'll never forget Albert worked in the Senate.

00:42:10
Speaker 4: So we're like, I'm like Albert, they're talking to me about this going should I never get He leaned over our gooes.

00:42:18
Speaker 3: It's sili Kan, not Silicone.

00:42:20
Speaker 4: Okay, so you're gonna go there.

00:42:23
Speaker 2: It's Silkan Valley.

00:42:26
Speaker 3: And so I'll never I this moment.

00:42:28
Speaker 4: So he tells you how much I really kind of like knew about the industry. But I still felt like, Okay, what is this thing. I don't really know about it. I don't think I can do it. And I remember talking to my friends and mentors like Tanya Lombard and Mignon Moore and then Frieda. K Poor Klein, who amazing investor, and I'll never forget she had this conversation. She was like, you could do good and do well, because I also had this notion of you can ow do good work if you were doing nonprofit civil rights in the government, that's the only like, that's that's true movement work. Yeah, if I go to Silicon Valley, which is business, then I'm selling out. And so I had had like that notion like this is in my thirties, so I'm still thinking like no, like if I go do this, I'm like leaving the movement, when actually I you know, the work that I do impact where you to just take that to a different industry. And so when I went to Silicon Valley, I was I came from the NAACP, So I was never quiet about my advocacy.

00:43:39
Speaker 3: I was never quiet.

00:43:40
Speaker 4: I was the first black employee in the company was I mostly was in financial technology and fintech, and so it was the first black employee. But I also came out of Washington. So I was this person that was like different and unique in Silicon Valley. And so the reason I got that that nickname.

00:43:57
Speaker 3: Was because I was political.

00:44:00
Speaker 4: And so they're like, you're like Olivia Pope, like you could do strategy, but you also are very well connected. And what I realized, it's like I just had different connections. And so that's how it came about. And I remember like CEOs and tech leaders often would want to talk to me because they didn't understand Washington.

00:44:18
Speaker 3: Yes, and so I would get invited to dinner.

00:44:20
Speaker 4: Lunches CEOs of big companies and they would say like help me understand, investors, help me understand, or how should we be thinking about these candidates, and so I'm just kind of and it was me just going and talking.

00:44:35
Speaker 3: To people, and that's how I became.

00:44:38
Speaker 4: The quote Silica the Olivia Pope of Silica Valley.

00:44:43
Speaker 3: They would have got printed.

00:44:44
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, it's a nice ring to it, okay.

00:44:48
Speaker 4: You know, like but it's still then you also like you're like, oh, like I all of that, you know, so like it's it's still just like impostssive because it's like, okay, you know, Olivia Pope was like boom boom boom.

00:45:01
Speaker 3: But then when you think about it, like, you know, I know.

00:45:04
Speaker 4: So many Olivia popes like, you know, like so many dynamic like so many of my colleagues, our friends, you know, from Angela Ryde to you know, I could just go on and on with just like all of these dope, dynamic women that are like Olivia Popes, like their strategists, they're connectors and the most important thing is you know, they wear the white hat in terms of always focusing on impact.

00:45:32
Speaker 3: And so that was for me.

00:45:33
Speaker 4: Being in tech, it was like not only was my goal when I finally went in the Silicon Valley, because I was reluctant. It took me eight months, Like I'll never forget, I got to offer and I didn't want to leave the NAACPA. I was like, I don't know if I want to do this. And I remember I went into the industry and my goal was not only to help my company, but how can I make sure other people understand how to come into this industry. And that was the first time that I had learned about equity. That I had learned about you know, all I just knew is to negotiate, you know, vacation and salary, not to understand equity or to understand valuations of companies. So I went from not being able to pronounce Silicon Valley to being an investor, having an equity stake in multiple companies, having worked with a number of companies in Silicon Valley advising companies in Silicon Valley still today and it's been a blessing. And it was actually the scariest, one of the scariest jumps that I ever made, but it was the best jump absolutely that I made. And even when I made the jump, I had a bump in there. Like my first job, eight months in, I got laid off. What I got laid off because in Silicon Valley it's about fundraising and raising. You know, a company has to raise to continue to continue. In the first company that I went to, they had didn't raise the series C that they thought they were and you know, last one in first went out and I never forget the CEO called and said, I'm so sorry, you know, cruited you away from your job.

00:47:14
Speaker 2: So what y'all gonna do?

00:47:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was a blessing.

00:47:18
Speaker 4: And I remember being so depressed after that because I was like, I left my good job at the NAACP. Now, granted, when I did go in to tech, it was a whole different you know, it's you know it was it was, it was great, Yeah, And so I still felt it was the first time I didn't have a job.

00:47:36
Speaker 3: And I never forget my mom had came to visit in DC.

00:47:39
Speaker 4: I didn't have the courage to tell my mom that I had got a call the day before to tell me that i'd have a job anymore, Like what am I gonna do?

00:47:47
Speaker 3: And I remember sitting in the dark in my house.

00:47:51
Speaker 4: And this was early days, like Facebook video was brand new, wow, and why Kenya Clinton had posted a Facebook video and It was Oprah Winfrey speaking at Stanford University, and it's a very viral clip, but I remember seeing it and it says, they go, is there anything else that you want to say?

00:48:14
Speaker 3: And Oprah goes, yes, they're no mistakes.

00:48:18
Speaker 4: They're no mistakes, that marriage, that job that didn't work out. Just to paraphase what she was saying, there are no mistakes. It is simply the universe.

00:48:30
Speaker 3: Moving you in the direction that you are divinely meant.

00:48:34
Speaker 2: To journey.

00:48:35
Speaker 3: Yes, and your job is to understand the lesson. And that spoke to me.

00:48:41
Speaker 4: I felt like Oprah was talking to me directly, and I never get that night.

00:48:47
Speaker 3: That night, I think I tweeted at Oprah.

00:48:48
Speaker 4: I was like, Oprah, thank you for reminding me that, you know black women, you are excellent. And it's something like one day will meet and it was just like, you know, I was one day meet you, but I was just it. But it took me out of because I shifted my mind. You know.

00:49:05
Speaker 3: I think it's.

00:49:06
Speaker 4: About like the mind is so powerful and how we condition our mind or how we think about our situation. Like I was thinking about. I talk a lot to younger people and I say, you are always going to have rocks thrown in your path. And the question is whether or not you see that rock as a you see that as a blocking stone, Is it a boulder or is it a stepping stone? But only you like how you view it will determine your next move, and your next move will determine like your journey. And so you can sit there and that rock can be a boulder and it could be a blocker for you, or you could say, no, this is a stepping stone. I'm going to learn. And so when I heard her say that, I got out of my thumb. And then soon after that I went to another company and that company had explosive growth, and everything in life has led me to where I'm at.

00:50:06
Speaker 3: And probably if that hadn't happened.

00:50:08
Speaker 4: I probably would maybe still be at that company, maybe like maybe I've been an executive vice president or something happy, you know, but I would not be where I am if that had not happened.

00:50:20
Speaker 3: And the power is in it for me.

00:50:23
Speaker 4: That lesson is that sometimes God might what might feel like a denial, He's actually preparing you for what He has for you. And the most important thing is to recognize that sometimes God is protecting you or he's closing a door so that he can open another door, and for you to understand that when that is happening, to just have peace and to just have faith. And that's a lesson that I'm still on today. But to just have faith that God is opening this door and to recognize and know that the door is there. Yes, that you might not see it, but the door is there and it's waiting for you. It's waiting for you. And when God's perfect timing, when He's perfect timing.

00:51:11
Speaker 2: Not yours exactly.

00:51:13
Speaker 3: It will manifest for you. And so that was what it was for me.

00:51:16
Speaker 4: And so Silicon Valley, like I go back, I would make the decision a hundred times.

00:51:21
Speaker 3: I learned so much, I grew so much.

00:51:25
Speaker 4: My mindset on understanding investing and generational wealth, all of that shifted, and also the understanding that you can be because you think about the tech industry, the explosive nature of the tech industry, A lot of wealth is created there and there's still a lot of work for us as black and brown folks, and particularly black women and black people that have a rightful.

00:51:49
Speaker 3: Place in this industry.

00:51:50
Speaker 4: Because I was in my own way when I was being recruited.

00:51:54
Speaker 3: I was in my own way. I had to get out of my own way.

00:51:56
Speaker 4: And then when I had that stumbling block that I thought was a stumbling block but really was a stepping zone.

00:52:05
Speaker 3: This industry has taught me so much.

00:52:07
Speaker 4: And I'm proud of all of the people who came to me and said, girl, I saw you go in and tell me what you did. And I literally would sit down with folks and say, Okay, this is how you need to negotiate your package. Just what you need to understand, because you know, as Megnyond Moore often tells us, you got to lift as you climb, you know, the whole notion.

00:52:25
Speaker 3: Each one teach one.

00:52:26
Speaker 4: So for me, once I learned, it's like, how can I like, you know, for me, it was like, I'm trying to be the you know, the underground railroad the Silicon Valley. So a lot of people shifted out of government and DC in the tech and that's something that like I'm not like solely responsible for, but I feel very proud of so many people that came to me and said I've been inspired and I'm going into tech, and they've gone on to be at major companies, making major decisions creating major impact across a number of tech companies.

00:52:57
Speaker 2: That's incredible. Wow, you got me want to go in and take.

00:53:01
Speaker 1: Let's listen because I know, like, yeah, I don't understand that world at all, but definitely interested in learning more.

00:53:07
Speaker 4: For sure.

00:53:08
Speaker 3: It's something that particularly with AI.

00:53:10
Speaker 4: Now, yes, and I think there's all kinds of sizes to AI, but there's such power you think about. You think about like an Uber, right, and one of my closest friends, she was the seventieth.

00:53:22
Speaker 3: Employee at Uber.

00:53:24
Speaker 4: I think they had They were only in nineteen cities when she started, amazing brilliant investor Kimberly Marshall, and when she left, they were in four hundred cities.

00:53:35
Speaker 3: And you think about like that technology.

00:53:38
Speaker 4: But I think when you think if you look at our backgrounds, right, we often think, oh, I don't know about that world.

00:53:45
Speaker 3: I don't know how to code. It's technical.

00:53:47
Speaker 4: When you think about a company like an Uber or an Airbnb, Yes, they need marketers, they need lawyers, they need strategists, the government affairs, they need all of these skill set that are transferable from other industries that we have. And I think, you know, really demystifying tech and helping people understand not only the side of how you can work in tech, but also how you can invest into and how understanding deal flow, understanding how to support particularly black founders that have amazing tech companies but cannot get the funding because black women get less than zero point one percent of venture funding for their companies, and then black businesses black women, I think it's one to two percent in small business loans. So there's a struggle there, but there's opportunities to invest, and I think that is an opportunity for us as a people to engage more in that industry.

00:54:53
Speaker 2: I love that.

00:54:53
Speaker 1: Speaking of black women founders, the one Million Black Women Initiative with Goldman says that was phenomena one billion dollars.

00:55:02
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, how like how did you pull that off? Then?

00:55:06
Speaker 3: So let me be very clear, Margaret A.

00:55:09
Speaker 4: Nandu because I'm gonna say a whole lot of people named it this podcast because I think that's what I believe in doing. Is Margaret Anandu amazing just investor leader, had been at Golden Sacks I think for.

00:55:23
Speaker 3: Like twenty years, and she came.

00:55:25
Speaker 4: Up with this idea inside of Goldman Sacks how to really take investment dollars and bring and pull a billion dollars for direct investment that has a direct impact that can be tied to impact to black women. And so she had and Goldman Sachs had already developed this program, and my work with that program was helping to launch it along with my good friend and partner Joshua Dubois and Michelle Dubois at Values Partnership. Our firms came together to help launch it. And what was important to to Margaret and to Goldman Sachs and the leaders there and still leaders that are still there, like uh, sister Sahi there was that this was something that was done with black women. Uh.

00:56:19
Speaker 3: And so we had.

00:56:21
Speaker 4: The the privilege to work with them to help guide the launch of that, to help guide how we had conversations with black women to help shape how that work was done. And I'm just so proud to have been a part of that. But Margaret, and I do would say her name over and over and over again, was the visionary and went to the CEO of Goldman and said let's do this. And David Solomon at the time was like, yes, wow. And I think that speaks to the power of black women who have back to Oprah and thence conversation, Yes, having that holy yes, you know, because Margaret had that holy yes, and she was she was determined and built something you know, quite incredible. And to be a part of, you know, helping launch that was something really like deeply powerful and impactful for me as a black woman. Yeah, to just be a part of something so significant of that magnitude.

00:57:26
Speaker 2: That's incredible.

00:57:29
Speaker 1: There's been other funds like the Fearless Fund that had initiatives for black women founders that received backlash. Did you guys hit any roadblocks or was it pretty smooth because she had been with Gold and Sacks for so many y Yes, it was.

00:57:41
Speaker 4: Pretty smooth because and it was before all of the attacks. But it was pretty smooth, and it was a great launch, and the program invested and you know, it's just amazing. And these were large A lot of these are large scale investments as well, so it was like large scale investments and projects that had direct impact that would impact black women across the board. But you know, I think again, like you know, when you look at when you see like in that moment, I think that was in twenty twenty twenty one.

00:58:13
Speaker 3: When I get the.

00:58:14
Speaker 4: Years like you know, the COVID years, it starts to get it starts mixing up. But then you fast forward now and you see the attacks on the Fearless Fund, you see the attacks on all of these funds that support black women, and you're just like, how are we going backwards?

00:58:31
Speaker 3: I mean, we know, like it's a it's a rhetorical question.

00:58:35
Speaker 4: We know why we're going and how we're going backwards. But you know, you just sort of like, you know, as Barvin Gay says, it makes you want to holler, you know, like we just we just keep getting pushed back. But the thing is black women we're resilient. Yes, as you know, back to that, you know, I just keep talking about like that that that podcast, you know, with how you have playing Oprah, but like getting to that that holy you know, like when we get that, I think that gives us a power.

00:59:05
Speaker 3: That's that's unstopped.

00:59:08
Speaker 2: Right for sure. I love that. Just take a thank you so much.

00:59:11
Speaker 1: I've totally enjoyed this conversation. Our theme of season ten is unapologetic. What does unapologetic mean to you?

00:59:22
Speaker 4: I think unapologetic in this season for me, it just meaning it just it means that just means that I can recognize that I'm going to be boldly my authentic self in my truth.

00:59:47
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my goodness, I literally have to play this. I did a video while I was doing makeup today talking about the word for this season, and I literally said, walking authentically in your truth.

01:00:00
Speaker 3: It's an alignment.

01:00:02
Speaker 4: And I think because it's the thing that I like, I have like these mantras, and so one for me is when I get up, I say evolve or repeat.

01:00:12
Speaker 3: It's just take you get evolve or repeat. You got a choice.

01:00:16
Speaker 4: And every day we're not gonna all evolve. We're not, but some days to go repeat and that's okay, Yeah, give yourself grace. But my prayer is that I evolve more than I repeat. And that's like for me, like when I wake up and a part of that evolution and when we evolve, it's about how how how can like I'm like one of those people like I am going to always cheer for my sister and my brother that's walking ahead of me, behind me, beside me, uh and the person that I am going to look into the mirror every single day. It is about evolution is not about trying to be better than anybody else. It is about being a better version of myself that allows me to find and to tap into God's purpose on my life so that I can live that, but do that authentically in my truth being, my authentic self, being who I am, that little black girl Lenora Abraham Edie's daughter that grew up on that dirt road, that was nerdy, that God's talks too much, that wants to help people. But is just go be that girl and I can go all over the world, I can do all those things, but I am still that girl, and I think what I hold that and just tap into what I feel God has for me and God. I feel like God's calling on my life is just to do something and to push our people forward. Then to me, that is being unapologetic.

01:02:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, so good, so good.

01:02:11
Speaker 4: I have been very open about us talking about our lows equally is as much as our highs. Yes, because I think right now social media has us people on highlight reels and people lead it's people are led to believe that it's always good.

01:02:29
Speaker 3: It's not. It is not like and so I.

01:02:32
Speaker 4: Talk about the low moments equally as I talk about my high moments because I believe deeply that.

01:02:41
Speaker 3: Really, I think.

01:02:44
Speaker 4: And it's been true for me. More people have connected when I talked about my.

01:02:48
Speaker 2: Lowest moments, everybody's going through.

01:02:51
Speaker 3: Because other people going through it.

01:02:53
Speaker 4: And so when you talk about that, someone can say I'm not alone because most of the time somebody's sitting there, they're going through it, and they think that it's just them, and it's not. And I think it's important for all of us with platforms yes, to talk about it, to talk about the low moments equally as the high. To talk about how we have tests because without tests, we don't have a testimony, and to talk about the testimony and how we've come through, but.

01:03:21
Speaker 3: The fact that we had to go through.

01:03:23
Speaker 4: To get and also that I think sometimes people see, you know, they see the awards, they see the lights, they see the red carpets, they see all of that, but people don't see they don't see the tears, or they don't see the work, or they don't see the twenty years that got us there.

01:03:40
Speaker 3: Like it wasn't overnight.

01:03:41
Speaker 4: Yes, And I think social media, while it is a blessing in many ways, I believe that it's dangerous because it gets into people's psyche that people are often forced to compare themselves to edited videos, and there could pairing their everyday life to an edited highlight reel that someone created and cropped out there.

01:04:06
Speaker 3: And cropped out the low.

01:04:08
Speaker 4: And I think we got to talk about the lows so that people can understand that they're not walking these journeys along.

01:04:14
Speaker 2: That's it.

01:04:15
Speaker 1: I love that, So true, so true. Okay, So we have what is called positive outcomes, where our audience members write into us and ask us a question.

01:04:29
Speaker 2: This one says, Hello, Crystal.

01:04:31
Speaker 1: First off, I want to say that I love your podcast and the light it shines on mental health and finding faith. For the past twenty five years, I've been dealing with CPTSD, chronic post traumatic stress disorder and depression stemming from death and other adverse childhood experiences. I started therapy during COVID nineteen lockdown, hoping to put an end to thoughts of self harm and to feel better.

01:04:54
Speaker 2: Suggestions of medication.

01:04:55
Speaker 1: Have been made, but I am very apprehensive about introducing that into my system. My question to you is what is your thoughts on taking medication for mental health. I worry about the side effects and have been trying to look for more natural holistic alternatives. I've also started a slow return to faith traditional church and have received conflicting opinions on the subject.

01:05:18
Speaker 3: There.

01:05:19
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do on this one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Sierra am. First of all, Sierra, thank you so much for writing in Joe Take. I thought this would be a good one because you spoke about your mother and she was diagnosed with mental health disorder and they put her on meds and.

01:05:37
Speaker 2: That wasn't even what it was, it wasnosed.

01:05:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what advice would you give her because you have actually dealt with this firsthand.

01:05:45
Speaker 3: Yeah. First of all, Sierra, just saying to you my prayers and my thoughts, so with you.

01:05:53
Speaker 4: But also I heard the part of going to faith and getting conflicting a pinion. And the thing that I would say first is for me, when I'm most quiet, I hear God, and so you going to hear all kinds of opinions, but listen to that inner spirit, that inner voice.

01:06:15
Speaker 3: I believe that's God talking to us. So that's the first thing.

01:06:18
Speaker 4: But I believe that, you know, like my experience with my mom, I remember like it was like when my mom came and said when they said the doctor said what they said, I struggled with it because it was like, what is this, Like, you know, and my family has a history of mental health challenges. My great grandmother died in a mental health institution and so and you know, back then, it was like they don't know what's wrong with her. I think, you know, now think it was you know, postpartum and you know, complicated the post part of what was happening. But she was in and out and I don't know much about her, and that's been like this thing to try to learn about her. But when my mom, like you know, I was very I have friends, very close friends who have had parents that have been diagnosed with mental health disorders. And so when they said that, and they just so quick to do the meds, which was detrimental to my mom because it wasn't her diagnosis. My mother had a mass on her brain, not a mental health disorder. And so what I would say is that you know, really finding the health care provider.

01:07:25
Speaker 3: That you can trust that really will.

01:07:31
Speaker 4: Dive deep into a diagnosis, but also what will help most. And I'll also say that I recently started to look into more natural holistic started learning about psilocybin treatment and reading more about cilocybin which is the UH treatment, mushroom treatment, psychedelic mushroom treatment for healing. And I had a friend that share that they had experienced that and share that it was like four years of therapy as he was going through grief, very traumatic grief. So I would say being open to holistic, but really finding that therapist and that medical provider that you trust that will give you the right mix of of of remedy because sometimes like people think that you could just take appeal and just and this and and sometimes those medicines may make it worse.

01:08:38
Speaker 3: Or I'm not a doctor, so I never would.

01:08:40
Speaker 4: Give medical advice, but you know, seeing all the things that that you know, but I don't. I'm not a person that says don't take medicine, because I think if you have, I have lots of friends that have to take medicine and it's needed. And but I just think making sure not really being a shame of it.

01:09:00
Speaker 3: And I think that's the bigger thing is.

01:09:03
Speaker 4: Like destigmatizing mental health, Like we have to destigmatize that sometimes you are not okay.

01:09:11
Speaker 3: I believe everybody at some point is not okay.

01:09:14
Speaker 4: So we have to destigmatize this notion that we're always okay, destigmatize going to therapy, destigmatize if you need to take medication, and destigmatize this notion that mental having a mental health diagnosis is the end or that something is you know, innately wrong with you. Because we are made by God and God does not make mistakes, and we are all we are all made perfectly imperfect, and I think it's important for us to just accept and I think as a society, where we destigmatize that we don't, we will not have, you know, this question of you know, it's one thing to think about, do I want to put medicine in my body?

01:10:02
Speaker 2: Yeah?

01:10:03
Speaker 3: Is it healthy for me? Yes?

01:10:04
Speaker 4: It's another is what how do I feel if people know I'm taking medicine? You know, I'm all meds, you know, And I think that's the part that we've got to stigmatized.

01:10:14
Speaker 2: No, for sure, that's so good.

01:10:15
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for me, Sierra, I would echo what you said about being still in silence and hearing God's voice. I for me, a journal, working out is my therapy. I have a therapist, but also meditation in that sitting still and really hearing God's voice. But also with journaling, I'm getting out my thoughts. That's my outlet when I don't have anybody just to physically sit down and talk to, I can also write down how I'm feeling. And when it comes to church, and I've heard it so many times like I don't need therapy or I don't need help because I have Jesus, or I feel like you will get conflicting messages when it comes to that. But I am a true believer that both go hand in hand.

01:11:04
Speaker 4: Both go ahead because Jesus gave the doctors the expertise to be able to help you.

01:11:11
Speaker 3: And so that's the part too.

01:11:12
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, God gave them, like you know God, God gave them the God gave them what they got to help you. Sometimes God is helping you through other people, helping you do other people.

01:11:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, thank you so much for writing in. Thank you so much.

01:11:26
Speaker 1: Your advice was spot on, and thank you for sharing your experience with that.

01:11:31
Speaker 2: Yes, is there any way that we.

01:11:32
Speaker 1: Can support you or anything that the audience needs to be on the lookout for it because we want to get behind you on everything you have going on.

01:11:38
Speaker 3: Well, I would first say When with Black Women.

01:11:41
Speaker 4: If you're a black woman, I know there's lot of black women I here watching, Yes, y'all, yeah, I love it. It's just if Big in DC was so amazing saying so many sisters driving fly in, come in. You know. I love the community. But I would say, you know, join us on a Sunday night. I would love for you to come on us Sunday Night When with Black Women and talk about not only the podcast but.

01:12:06
Speaker 3: Everything that you're doing.

01:12:09
Speaker 4: It's at Women Blackwomen Dot Org on most Sunday nights.

01:12:13
Speaker 3: We're on Zoom.

01:12:14
Speaker 4: Still all of us are still getting on zooms, thousands of us and it's really like forty four Well we started in twenty twenty during the pandemic and they were like that was what it was like, hundreds of us and it was interesting.

01:12:28
Speaker 3: So even from twenty to twenty twenty four.

01:12:30
Speaker 4: The Miss Oprah gotten on the Calls I'll Never Forget was like, so.

01:12:35
Speaker 3: You have these calls. I wanted to get on one. I'm like, girl, what I'll never forget?

01:12:39
Speaker 4: Like this we had like it's like the first people don't realize when were black women calls for the first four and a half years before the viral call was a regular zoom on my zoom account that had like a thousand people could be on the zoom, and so I never forget what type. When Missus Winfrey Oprah got on, it was like the zoom went form like two hundred and fifty. It went like the ninth, nine and nine, and everybody was like because like over like getting like you're just sitting in a zoom and Oprah in the box just with you, and she just sit there and she was just like all the calls like it's been so over the years, like we had had every black women that were running for office, you know, black women and entertay. It was all of it, and so people knew about it. If you knew, you knew.

01:13:21
Speaker 3: And so the crazy part was the night that we had the viral call. I'll never forget that day. I was crazy. I was in South Carolina because my mom first got sick.

01:13:32
Speaker 2: Wow.

01:13:32
Speaker 4: So I was in South Carolina because I just went to check on my mom because she wasn't feeling well. So it was July twenty fourth, Yeah, and so the announcement comes out. We had already had a call set for Sunday. It was already set, and so the Women Black Women Call was set. Jasmine Crockett, Congresswoman Jasmin Crockett was on the gyenda Donna Brazil, and so we were talking about Melanie Campbell. Shout out to Melanie Campbell because everybody was trying to push President Biden out and black women were like, no, President Biden has been good to us until he's ready to go, then he'll go. And sinster Melanie Campbell had pinned an open letter as eight thousand black women had signed that letter, and we were standing firm yes. And when he made his decision with an announcement happened. I remember it was like about two o'clock and so we were like, oh, we got the call tonight. So we shifted kind of the focus of the call. And I really thought that they might be we would have gone from a thousand and maybe three thousand people on the call, you know, and we were just thinking like, oh, to be maybe a thousand, we're going to hit our max. And I never forget I told you know, one of the sisters that helped on the tech, I was like, let's keep it at nine to fifty. Let's only let nine to fifty people in so we have like a you know, special guest that would to get it. We got enough space when I could get on my own zoom, and then we switched the webinar and in real time. The reason why we were able to grow in real time it was a sister black woman got on the phone. While we were like, I don't know so many people on that call. We were like, yeah, people are like trying to get in, and I'll never forget that.

01:15:14
Speaker 3: I'll never forget.

01:15:16
Speaker 4: She picks up the phone and she calls her friend at Zoom and in real time real time artists Hampshire or Cohen calls her friend the coo a zoom in real time ten thirty or something at night, they open up, the engineers come in, open up the zoom what in real time And that's when they lifted the cap off and it went to forty four thousand. But by then there were thirty thousand people at clubhouse. There were ten thousand. My line sister told me she just put out a free conference call number and she said the next day she was like, it was ten thousand people on it. So there were we count probably about one hundred and fifty thousand people were either on the zoom or watching that zoom that night, and so that.

01:16:00
Speaker 2: Was the power of the black woman.

01:16:02
Speaker 4: That's how they the power of black the power of the group chat, in the group chat and the group text, because we would be like, how did that happen? It was like child as black women talking to each other. That's how that call happened. It was black women, black women.

01:16:18
Speaker 2: We will definitely be tapped in. Yeah, I love that. Thank you, Thank you so good.

01:16:28
Speaker 1: This is a powerful reminder that even in the hardest seasons, healing and purpose can coexist. Thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode to keep it Posita, sweetie, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with someone who could use a little encouragement today. And it's always stay blessed, stay encouraged, and remember keep it posa sweet.

01:16:48
Speaker 2: See you guys next time.