- 3 weeks ago
Join us as these insightful authors share their perspectives and wisdom on navigating the complexities of love, family dynamics, and community ties within the Black experience. From exploring intergenerational trauma to celebrating humanity and joy, this panel will discuss the power of healing, empathy, and resilience in relationships.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00It helps me to be open, to be okay, man, that you've been hurt.
00:05To release those feelings or emotions.
00:08Look, I'm not feeling well right now.
00:11You know, I feel hurt by what you said.
00:14I'm very uncomfortable.
00:16We don't say things like that.
00:19And so it gives you another language to move into and really identify that.
00:25Your book is powerful.
00:27Yes, clap it up for him.
00:28Woo!
00:30I've got a man back there testifying, saying, yes, he can feel that thing.
00:34And so I want to ask you, too, Doc, so what do you feel like folks can get out of your transformational tool,
00:41which is the powerful book that you have?
00:44Okay, I've talked that.
00:45I'm very skilled-based.
00:47Y'all got this.
00:48I'm also research-based because I'm an academic.
00:50I come from an academic background.
00:52So I had to figure out how to have relationships.
00:56So I was fortunate.
00:59I could read it and study it.
01:01Then I could test it out of my own life and see what worked and what didn't work.
01:06So the first book was the summary of that, the book that's out there now, Conscious Change,
01:12of my students and my clients who have taken, learned the skills, applied them to their life.
01:19So these are 19 authors who talk about very heart-rending, scary things they went through
01:26and how they used the skills to make it work.
01:30So that's the book for sale now.
01:34Yes, thank you so much.
01:36Clap it up for her.
01:38So, guys, these are transformational tools.
01:41We shared with you today our pain so you understand that we've really been through something, right?
01:46Because it's hard to teach somebody something that they ain't been through, right?
01:49So it's your real-life experiences that actually make you an expert in that.
01:54And that these books also give you information of how to overcome.
01:58A lot of us are sitting alone and we're in a huddle and we're not speaking to folks
02:02or really finding out how to get through your situation so you stay stuck.
02:07But by reading and by getting information from folks that's been through things,
02:11you can really transform yourself from the inside out.
02:15And I'm going to leave my partner with the closing words.
02:18Look, I just want to say that there is no reward in walking around suffering.
02:22At the end of it, there is no great house, a great loan in the bank.
02:27You're just walking around.
02:29And this is not a, what do you call it, a dress rehearsal.
02:33This is it.
02:34So please seek your healing.
02:38Acknowledge it.
02:38Find ways to heal from it.
02:40There are four great tools right here on this stage.
02:43And take it serious.
02:45Take you serious.
02:46You know, don't take you for granted.
02:48Stop putting other people before you, before you do the work that you need to do for you.
02:53That's real.
02:55Our book is entitled, I Love Me More.
02:57So we challenge each and every person in this audience to love yourself more.
03:02Self-care is working on you.
03:04And we got the tools to help you start working on you today.
03:08So we're going to meet you in the bookstore.
03:11Please come by.
03:12Come let us talk to you.
03:14Share with us your stories.
03:15We definitely want to connect with you in a real way.
03:18So we want to give it up to the collective curates for having us here.
03:22Thank you so much.
03:25And we're going to pass the show back over to the woman in charge.
03:30So today we are going to be talking about relationships and maintaining our emotional wellness.
03:36Our next group of authors are going to show how they've overcome generational trauma and found joy in humanity.
03:42Let's welcome to the Essence Stage moderator, Dr. Jamila T. Davis, media personality, podcast host, I Love Me More.
03:51Black Women's Lives Matter.
03:52Sharing the stage with her is digital creator and star of love and hip hop, Tara Wallace.
04:00They look so beautiful, don't they?
04:03And our panelists, the author of 27 Summers, My Journey to Freedom, Forgiveness and Redemption During My Time in Agola Prison, Ronald Olivier.
04:21And finally, organizational coach and author of Conscious Change and Reframing Change, Dr. Jean Ladding.
04:27So what's up, Essence?
04:44How y'all feeling today?
04:47Y'all look amazing.
04:49So today, y'all, we are going to have a conversation that I feel like is going to be transformational for all of us, right?
05:01One thing that we have in common with the two authors today is that we write self-help books, right?
05:07And a lot of times you get healing from self-help books, but you don't know what somebody went through to get that message that they're giving to you.
05:17So we're going to talk about that a little bit and how we came about creating these tools and now how they are positioned to help you.
05:26So we'll start with my co-host, Tara Wallace.
05:29Many of you guys know that we have a podcast called I Love Me More, right?
05:34And it's based on our book, I Love Me More, The Eight Steps to Breaking Free from Toxic Relationships.
05:41I have been through a world of toxic relationships, and so has my co-host who will share that with you.
05:47I myself am formerly incarcerated.
05:50I spent close to a decade in federal prison, and a lot of me getting to prison was based on poor choices.
05:57And as I began to heal, I utilized writing to help me heal, and now I pass those tools on to others.
06:04And this is my co-host.
06:06Hello, y'all.
06:07You know, sometimes we all have different stories, right?
06:11So it's extremely important that we share all of these stories because you don't know who and how people will relate to you.
06:17One of the craziest things that happened to me and what was the hardest thing also was that a lot of my trauma came from after I thought I had done all of the things right, right?
06:29I had gone to school.
06:30I didn't get pregnant young.
06:32I did all of the things that my parents told me I was supposed to do.
06:36And then 2000-something or another, I found myself on one of the largest platforms, national TV, where the person I loved the most had married someone else.
06:47And it really made me question everything I had come to know up until that point.
06:52And I really had to go back to that 18-year-old me to figure out who was I at that time because I was so clear on what I wanted, and I had to ground myself and regroup.
07:05So that's why I share my story is so that for the young girl who thinks she's doing it right, right, you may have to drop it all, configure it again, and start over.
07:15And that's okay.
07:16We're not tied up in just a relationship.
07:18We are more than that, no matter how hard it hurts.
07:21That's a real thing.
07:23So speaking about trauma, our first guest has been through a world of trauma.
07:29Could you just share a little bit about who you are and your experience that led to writing?
07:34Yes, my name is Ron Olivier.
07:36I'm a native of New Orleans, so I'm home, and I'm very happy to be here.
07:41I know you can hear it, yeah, baby.
07:46So I come from the 7th and 8th Ward area.
07:50I grew up in the hood, and if you know anything about the hood, it's traumatic to live there.
07:58And so at an early age of 16, I found myself on trial for first-degree murder and then later got a mandatory life sentence without benefits of parole at the age of 17.
08:12And at 18, I ended up in Angola, Louisiana State, in this century.
08:18That's trauma stacked upon trauma there.
08:21And so I go through that.
08:24And so how do you deal with trauma?
08:27First of all, you've got to realize that you've been traumatized.
08:31And so when I was coming through that in my neighborhood, I was very accustomed to seeing people killed and seeing gunshot wounds and hearing sirens.
08:45I was accustomed to that.
08:46I didn't know I was traumatized.
08:47I thought that's how it was supposed to be.
08:50And so a lot of times it's difficult to see the picture when you're in it.
08:54And so here it is.
08:57I realized how traumatized I was.
09:01And I believe the greatest trauma healer is God.
09:06Amen.
09:07I don't want to have church, but we might just have some.
09:09We can have it now.
09:10Amen.
09:11Amen.
09:12And so that's who healed me.
09:14That's what started my journey on healing.
09:18And God, he used people.
09:21And I know in our culture, it's not acceptable to, you know, to go to counseling and have therapists.
09:31You know, we don't do that.
09:33And so consequently, we hide our trauma and just bury it and try to deal with it ourself.
09:40And I believe when we hide that in the attic in our mind, it's like burying a dead body in a shallow grave.
09:49And what happens to that?
09:50It starts to stink.
09:52That's real.
09:53So I just want to tell you, when I read your book, it triggered me.
09:57So I'm somebody that's been close to a decade in prison.
10:00And you spent 27 summers, right?
10:03Yes, ma'am.
10:03In prison.
10:04But one of the things I noticed is that just kind of like you, like me, your transformation came from behind bars, right?
10:13And I realized how real God is and how he does that with us sometimes.
10:17He takes us to dark spaces because it's in those dark spaces where we begin to learn.
10:23So I want to ask you about your book and the process of you writing that.
10:27Like, how was that for you?
10:28Did that free you?
10:29Because as I'm reading and turning through these pages, y'all, it was reading his life story,
10:35but it was also learning from him of how he coped through such a crazy situation.
10:40Yes, yes.
10:41And so that process was amazing.
10:43It started from me just going all over, being invited, different states, sharing my story.
10:51You know, that's how it started.
10:53Then I thought, wait, hold up.
10:54I can put this in a book.
10:55I saw the effect that it was having on people when I shared my story.
11:00And so I thought about writing it.
11:02And amazingly, I was in Brooklyn, in Brooklyn Tabernacle, speaking.
11:07And after I finished speaking, a lady comes up to me and she says, she said,
11:14I was here the first time you spoke.
11:16She said, man, the first time you spoke, I thought about your story being a book.
11:23She said, but I wasn't in position then.
11:25She said, I just recently became the chief executive editor of Nelson Book Publishing Company.
11:31She said, we got to do a book.
11:34And come on, that was a miracle right there.
11:36If you know anything about the book process, it doesn't go like that.
11:41And so here it is.
11:43We started on this journey of putting my story in a book.
11:48And each time I tell it and share it, it's healing for me.
11:52That's good.
11:53That's good.
11:53And every time it goes out and I hear someone and tell someone else's life and help someone,
11:59man, that's healing for me.
12:00And so I'm always in this process of being healed from trauma.
12:05That's what's up.
12:06You know, I wanted to ask you a question.
12:09You know, when you talk about trauma, can you talk to the audience about practical strategies
12:14that they can use to help get through some of the most traumatic times in their life?
12:20All right.
12:20First of all, like what I just said, you have to recognize that you've been traumatized.
12:25That's the first step, you know.
12:28And then second of all, man, I believe this here with all my heart of hearts, that helped me a lot was my relationship with God,
12:38depending on God, trusting Him, you know, reading His Word, spending time with Him,
12:44and God bringing people in my life that's going to help me and not hurt me, surrounding myself around people that helps me grow.
12:54You know, I like to be in a circle with people that's smarter than me.
12:58Come on.
12:59If you're the smartest person in your circle, you're in the wrong circle.
13:03Absolutely.
13:04And so you need to be stretched.
13:05You need to be challenged.
13:06And so surrounding yourself around people like that and people that's going into that direction will definitely help you heal.
13:14That is good.
13:15So now let's get to our next guest, right, because we're talking about strategies and tools, right, ways that we can heal from trauma.
13:23Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work of writing such amazing books that helped to transform the lives of people?
13:32Okay.
13:33So I'm a product of trauma, too.
13:35I haven't put that part of it in my books because my books focused on how to live and how to make it in this world, basically.
13:45I grew up with a mother who was both alcoholic and a rageaholic.
13:50A rageaholic means when she got drunk, we were the focus of her rage.
13:58So I've tried to think of how to summarize my childhood.
14:01I could imagine every time I came home from school, my sisters and I talked about that now.
14:09We come home from school.
14:11We stand before the door.
14:13And we take a deep breath because we don't know what's going to be inside the door.
14:19So day after day, that's how I grew up.
14:21I believe now, listening to Ronnie talk, I believe now that I went through what I went through so I could teach and write and help others.
14:37There's no other way to make sense of my experience than to say I was put on this planet to suffer so that I could then help those who are suffering.
14:49Ooh, stop right there.
14:51So now I want to talk to somebody in this audience, right?
14:54Because we all go through things.
14:56And sometimes we think that we're alone in our journey.
14:59But we don't often realize that God is using the very thing that we're going through to build us up to help someone else, right?
15:07And many of you guys have a story in you or a book in you or a ministry in you or something that you're supposed to do for someone else.
15:16And it's your pain that's actually going to lead you to your purpose, right?
15:20So speaking of that pain, if you could just share with us, like reading your book was just amazing.
15:26I learned so many things.
15:27I'm supposed to be a self-help expert.
15:29But reading your book, I'm like, okay, hold on.
15:31I got something to learn from the doc.
15:33Can you share a few principles with folks that are hurting right now or going through some kind of trauma of ways and things that they could use to heal?
15:41Yes.
15:43So last, that's my husband right directly in front of me.
15:47We've been together 45 years.
15:50Clap it up for the 45.
15:53Angela, baby, we got to make it to the 45.
15:56Okay.
15:5747?
15:58Oh, my husband corrected me.
16:00It's 47 years.
16:01Oh, 47.
16:03Clap it up for 47.
16:04That's real.
16:05So we got some real instructions on how to get here to get to the Lock J and then to get to the loading dock and to get here and there.
16:16So the question is, what time should we leave the hotel?
16:20He has a great sense of time.
16:23I don't.
16:23I have to add it up.
16:24So we're both saying to each other, you're not listening to me.
16:27And while we were having this discussion, I'm thinking about this panel today, and I'm thinking, what skills are we using right now so that we're making this work even though we're getting totally pissed?
16:44We did active listening.
16:48Gene, you're not listening to me.
16:50Diallo, you're not listening to me.
16:52We worked real hard on that.
16:56We separated impact from intent.
17:00Just because I'm getting pissed doesn't mean he intends to hurt me.
17:07Oh, wow.
17:10And I could see it with him.
17:13We did.
17:14We accepted our responsibility.
17:16I was very intentional in how I talked with him to make sure I didn't say anything that I would regret or that was wrong or that was just coming out of frustration and anger.
17:30So we call that accept your own contribution.
17:34So I accepted my contribution.
17:37He was lying in bed looking at me, and I was thinking, probably right now he's not feeling too good about me.
17:44But he was very intentional in how he talked with me to make sure that even if he was getting frustrated, he didn't vent on top of me.
17:57That's great.
17:58Those three right there is what I love.
18:01I had the opportunity to have a conversation with you backstage, and I was just so excited to see her that I couldn't wait.
18:08And, you know, it's like a gym to ask questions that I would never, I may not have another opportunity to ask, again, anyone who's experienced that.
18:18So thank you, and I learned so much.
18:20And when you talk about resilience, right, or even how you just said about having a certain level of accountability, which is hard for all of us, right, to have accountability and look at ourselves and see where we went wrong.
18:32Like, when you talk about resilience, like, what is that mindset?
18:37Like, where do you self-check that to say, not just resilience, not just having resilience, it doesn't just fall from the sky.
18:48What are those tools?
18:49How do you unpack that so that someone can have that?
18:53Okay.
18:53He addressed a good part of it.
18:56Don't stuff it and don't vent it.
18:59He talked about how we stuff our emotions, we hold them in.
19:04So that's one side of it.
19:06The other side is what I said my husband and I were intentional not to do.
19:10We don't vent.
19:11We don't vent, explode on any people.
19:14So what's in between?
19:15Suppression, suppressing your emotions, and venting.
19:20What's in between is acknowledging and allowing yourself to feel the emotion and then release the emotion.
19:29Some people try to release the emotion with our first feeling, and it won't go away.
19:34It won't go away.
19:35You have to allow yourself to.
19:37I call it sinking in it.
19:39I just sink in it.
19:40I'm full of self-pity.
19:41Everybody's wrong.
19:42I'm the only person.
19:44I'm so, it's so hard.
19:45I just allow myself to just sink into it and then let it go.
19:51And I have tools and strategies for how to let it go.
19:55Wow.
19:56You know, I always try to self-check in that way because I'm a mom.
20:01So I try to, you know, it's so easy for us to lash out or be in that moment of frustration.
20:06But what I have learned is to go back and have that open dialogue to apologize to my children or to say, well, I don't know, or I was wrong.
20:15And so that just solidified that.
20:17It just gave me so much more to think about.
20:19And that's one of our skills, apologize effectively.
20:23There's an effective way to apologize so that it really works, and there's a way to apologize so people think, oh, she didn't mean it.
20:30She just said she's sorry, but she didn't mean it.
20:32But it's, when you do apologize, I just want to say this.
20:38Is it, once you apologize, they say that that's what you're supposed to do.
20:42It's now not your responsibility to control how the other person thinks or how they receive it.
20:48Okay, I'm a little different from that because I believe in being effective, not just right.
20:55That stance is being right.
20:58I'm right, I've done my part.
20:59Being effective is being also responsive to how others are receiving you.
21:06And if they are not receiving you in the way you want, then for me, what I try to do is I try to adapt what I'm saying so the other person, my intent and the impact on them are match.
21:18I have one more question for you because, you know, I don't know if I'm going to ever have an opportunity to ask you these questions, and I think they're so important.
21:29And that is, how do you feel cultural and societal norms influence our relationships and emotional wellness, particularly within the black community?
21:37Yeah, I, um, so cultural norms stir up the idea of stereotypes.
21:46And so when I think of stereotypes, and particularly stereotypes for black women, I think of Nina Simone for women.
21:54Okay, I see some of y'all remember that song, right, so let's see, I have them here, Aunt Sarah, she bears up the suffering and the pain, sweet thing, she's the prostitute who can sell herself for anyone who has money to buy, I forgot the yellow one, oh, here it was, okay.
22:20Sofrona, yellow skin, product of rape, full of rage, and then peaches, of course, I almost forgot about peaches.
22:28She's the product of generational pain and bitterness.
22:33So those are the stereotypes, right?
22:35So the question is, how do we move past those cultural norms?
22:40And that's what my book is basically about.
22:42How do I, knowing I'm a product, myself personally, I'm a product of trauma, how do I bring, how do I not bring those stereotypical behaviors into my actions with others?
22:58And I've talked about some of the skills already.
23:00But I never forget that I'm a product of trauma, and I never forget I'm the product of generations of people who went through holy hell so I could be here.
23:15That's good, that's good.
23:16So, wow, clap it up for her for that.
23:19Amazing, amazing, amazing.
23:21I'm going to shift it back over to you, Ronald.
23:23I know for me, I'm actually a product of the trauma to prison pipeline.
23:28A lot of people talk about the, you know, the school to prison pipeline, which we know a lot about, but we don't talk about the trauma to prison pipeline, which is with women, right?
23:38Particularly women of color.
23:40Many of the women that I was incarcerated with, and I told you guys I was there for close to a decade, right?
23:46They were women, more than 60-something percentage of us were there because of trauma.
23:52Something happened in our lives that took us to a dark place, and we started feeling less than.
23:57We started putting ourselves down and putting other people before us, and when you started talking about all the characters, you know, in Nina Simone's work, I thought of myself.
24:07Because I feel like I've been quite a bit of those characters, and so have the women around me.
24:11So, I feel like the healing has to occur within, but that's why books are important.
24:17We need tools, y'all.
24:18You don't just heal.
24:19You don't just get up one day and say, hey, I'm free and I heal.
24:22So, it's a journey, and it's a process, and someone has to help you with it, right?
24:28And we know therapy oftentimes is, you know, is stigmatized in our community, so we need to get through that with tools.
24:35And, Tara, I wanted you to share, before I go back to Ronald, I love me more.
24:40And the tool, like, what is here and the tools in it that have helped you transform as they've helped me to transform.
24:46So, if you guys, just a brief education.
24:51So, Jamila, Dr. Jamila T. Davis and I wrote a book called I Love Me More, Eight Steps to Breaking Free from Toxic Relationships.
24:57And I just want to have a lot of accountability here, because when you write a book and you begin to ask yourself the questions that you need to answer,
25:07you have to ask yourself, have I done the work?
25:09So, you know, Dr. Jamila T. Davis is a genius, and she can write and write and write.
25:15But I found myself having to sit and be truthful and work it out, because you don't want to put a product out that you have not also answered the questions
25:24and lived through and sorted through or even be confused in it.
25:27And one of the things that we do is we take this book into the school systems, right?
25:35And what it does is it changes the mindset at a very early age so that you are now conscious of perhaps some of the first traumas
25:43that you experience even at as early as 13, 10, whatever the trauma is at whatever age, you begin to become aware of it.
25:50How can you have a level of accountability?
25:53What are your core values?
25:55Sometimes we don't even know what our core values are.
25:57We don't even know what we're offended by because we don't even know what we stand for.
26:00So let's get clarification on that.
26:02Let's get language on that so we can begin to change that.
26:06Because I find that sometimes even as women, and you guys can agree with this if you want or not,
26:11is that we don't even know how traumatic a situation is until we're in it.
26:17We have never self-checked.
26:19And one of the things that I found, especially with the younger girls, is that they don't like to be wrong, right?
26:27They don't like to be wrong at all.
26:29So we have this open dialogue where girls feel comfortable and sharing and opening up.
26:36So we have these tools, these practical tools.
26:40And one of the amazing things about the book is at the very end of each chapter, it's the space for you to do the work.
26:47The work that you don't have to answer publicly.
26:50You can do it.
26:51You can be truthful to yourself.
26:53Now, if you can't be truthful to yourself, that's a problem, right?
26:55You need to go back to Chapter 1.
26:57Please do not proceed to Chapter 2, okay?
26:59Please be honest so that you can answer.
27:02Because if you're not doing the work, the healing is not going to fall from the sky.
27:06So that's I Love Me More.
27:09So speaking of trauma and healing tools, I want to go back to you, Ronald,
27:13and kind of take us through your book and, like, ways that folks say that they've healed.
27:18Because now I know a lot of you are going to grab these books.
27:20So we don't want you to just read.
27:21We want you to actually read with your healing, right?
27:24So they become your healing tools.
27:26So if you could just share with us with trauma, like men that have also experienced what you've experienced,
27:31what do you feel like your book helps them to do?
27:33Well, I think one of the things it helps us to do is to talk about it, to open up.
27:40Men are very closed.
27:42We don't like to talk about things.
27:45We don't like to show much emotion.
27:47And we don't, you know, we shut down easily,
27:51especially if we're in a relationship with when we have been open
27:55and then what we open up with been used as a tool in an argument.
28:01Oh, you wouldn't hear from us ever again, you know?
28:04And you're always here.
28:05I'm okay.
28:07I'm good.
28:08That's the best you'll get out of us.
28:11And so I think this help, my book helps you to open up
28:15and to really be honest with yourself.
28:17One of the hardest things for me in my book was to admit that, man, I had killed someone.
28:28And so I come from the streets.
28:30I come from the hood.
28:32And you never admit what you did.
28:35You know, that's part of the streets.
28:37I don't care if they got you on camera.
28:39It wasn't me.
28:41That's real.
28:41And so it took something for me to admit and to release that, you know, into the atmosphere.
28:49I believe this here, the devil, he feeds off of darkness and you hiding things.
28:56But when you release it to the light, it loses its power.
29:00And so the more I talked about it, the easier it became.
29:02And so I think that's one of the things my book does.
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