00:00I'm Remy Ma, and I think the moment that I realized my strength, I was still fairly young.
00:13I grew up with my mom and my stepdad, and then throughout the 80s with all the different drug
00:21abuse and the violence that was going on in the Bronx, my family got separated.
00:26And I had went through shelters, living with my mom and my siblings, several shelters.
00:33And we had finally got a place in Queens.
00:38I was probably about 10, 11 years old.
00:41And just due to family circumstances, I had to pretty much be an adult.
00:46I had to take care of my little sisters, one of them who was really sickly with asthma and
00:53bronchitis, and the other one who's like not even a year older than her.
00:58And it was like me and my little brother, and we literally would take turns to see who would
01:03go to school that day.
01:04You know, I'd go to school on Monday, and he'd stay there with the kids, and then he'd go
01:09on Tuesday, and I'd stay.
01:10Like, we would take turns watching my little sisters because, you know, my mom, she was
01:16going through things at the time, and she wasn't there that much.
01:19And I think one day I just sat down, and I was like, you know, I looked at a TV show.
01:26I'm not really sure what a TV show was, but I saw how the children were graduating from
01:31school, and they were getting cars at their graduation, and they had had money set aside
01:36for them for college.
01:38And just all these, like, things that I felt should have just been mandatory for any child.
01:43And it made me realize that when people have children, when they're poor, or when they're
01:50financially not stable, or mentally, physically, or whatever the case is, it kind of makes your
01:58children be born in the red.
02:00So I was born in the negative, and I just made that decision the day that I saw that show
02:06that I wasn't going to stay in the red, that somehow, some way, that I was going to get
02:12on the positive side.
02:13And if I ever had children, I would make sure that, you know, they had some things waiting
02:20for them or set up for them so that they wouldn't have to go into this world in the red.
02:25So anything that was thrown at me from homelessness to, you know, parents' drug addictions to, you
02:33know, moving to a whole other neighborhood that you know nothing about, school, prison,
02:39anything that was ever thrown my way, I just always knew.
02:42I never once doubted that, you know, I'm going to let this overcome me, I'm going to let
02:47this break me down.
02:48I always pick up and be like, you know what, all right, this is what's happening, but I'm
02:53going to do this, so I'm going to try my best to get through it.
02:56And so far, throughout my life, I've been able to do it.
02:59And, you know, that's my strength, that's something that people that I know and that
03:04personally know me admire about me.
03:07And sometimes, you know, it becomes a burden.
03:09And I think God heard that and he sent me my husband, who is amazing, times where I wouldn't
03:17ask for help because I'm so used to being the one that's helping and I'm so used to being
03:22the go-getter.
03:22He picks up on it and he just does it and he just gives me that assist.
03:26So I could definitely say that I'm blessed in that area and my strength is just knowing
03:33from a very early age that I don't want to be in the red and I don't want to be defeated.
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