Shemergence: Session 2 | When Silence Isn’t Strength - Emerge & Empower Podcast TV

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Emerge and Empower podcast TV, a platform where
resilience meets transformation. Here we amplify voices that have faced trials, trauma,
and adversity, stories that inspire hope, healing and empowerment. Every
episode brings raw, unfiltered conversations with individuals who have risen

(00:20):
from hardship, embracing faith, strength and purpose. Join us as
we break the silence, uplift one another, and emerge stronger together.
New episodes air Wednesdays at six pm English and Saturdays
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Haitian audience.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hello all and welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Welcome again to another episode of Emergent Empower. But this
is a special segment called the Shee Mergins Virtual Conference
twenty twenty five. We are happy that you were here,
and what I'm asking you to do because we're gonna
go right in. We're gonna dive right in. So what
you need to do is find that comfortable spot that

(01:09):
you can watch or listen to us. Go ahead and share, Share, Share,
share the links, subscribe if you haven't already to Emerging
in Power at emergentpowertv dot com, EMERGENTOPOWERTV dot com. You
can go at Emergent and Power with Doctor Lynja on YouTube.

(01:29):
You can find us on Apple and all of the
audio podcasts. This is a special segment once again that's
called She Mergents Okay, She Mergons Virtual Conference twenty twenty five. Now,
the very first conference we had was in twenty twenty
right in the midst of COVID, and we had individuals

(01:50):
that came on to share their stories of their emergence.
Ever since then, I also was on the verge of
launching my very first book that was All She Emrgins
I Am She. And while that book made such a
tremendous impact that we had to get it translated. It
is translated in French and it's also translated in Spanish. Now,

(02:14):
after all of that, people said, how.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Did you do it? I'm reading it, I can't believe it.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
So I had to share with them the words that
I affirmed myself and also the prayers that I prayed.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
So we had.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
A affirmation journal and a prayer journal that was also
birthed alls around that one first book. The journey continued
in a book called The Shift. This is now me
married and living my life? Is it my best life
was it the Cinderella story. I was still trying to
discover who I was. I was still bleeding, I was existing,

(02:51):
I was lost, confused, all right. I shared that with you.
So go back read I Am She which is book one.
Go to book two, which is the shixth But all
of this. If I am doing a virtual conference, obviously
there's yet another book. Many of you have been waiting,
but I don't think this is what you was waiting for.

(03:12):
This book is called Unholy at the Table. It talks
about moments where I felt unworthy of love, unworthy of healing,
and yet I was in church, I was ministering, I
was doing all of this, but felt like I was
a stranger, all right, So I take you to that

(03:34):
journey so that you can understand that though in my
look like we have it all put together, we truly
don't have it all together. Healing is every day. Healing
is a process. Healing is not overnight. So if there
are any of you that are watching here today who think, well,
I talked about it, there's more. After you've talked about it,

(03:56):
there's more that you need to do. You need to
break that down and you need to find a coat
you need to find a mental health coach, whatever it
is that you need, you need to connect. You have
to invest in your life because it is important. So
we have many women that will be on the panel
on today that will be sharing their moments where they
felt undeserving, unworthy. But what did they do about it?

(04:21):
Did they stay there or did they pick up themselves
to do better with their lives.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
So on today, as.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
We will be bringing each of them onto the set,
what I want you to do is go ahead and
subscribe if you haven't done so already. Share Share I'm
waiting share Share. Share as you share, I'll see if
you share because it shows me whenever you share. So
going into share, do not let she margins virtual conference

(04:51):
be your best kept secret. It is here for the
world and it doesn't matter what continent your connect is on.
As long as you're pay it, someone will see it.
Stay tuned.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
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Speaker 3 (06:05):
All right, everyone, we are back. We are back, and
welcome to my beautiful guests on today. Let's clap for
them and say welcome to the Sea RGEANS Virtual conference.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
On today.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
We are thankful that each and every one of you
are connected here on this virtual summit. Now, every one
of you are not locally meaning where I am, but
you're each on a different part of this globe. But
as you introduce yourself on today, you can also say
where you are reaching in from and also introduce yourself.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Let's start with Jen, my goodness.

Speaker 5 (06:44):
Hi.

Speaker 6 (06:44):
I'm Jen Shulock. I am in the Dallas Fort Worth
area and I'm a photographer, artist and conceptual speaker and
all the speaker as well. And it's like, I don't know,
I just love being creative, I love connecting and that's
just basically.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Re all right, let's keep going.

Speaker 7 (07:05):
Hi, every woman. Name is Laddie Rivera. I am the
founder and CEO of Oclian Rising. I am a career
alignment coach with a focus on supporting individuals dealing with
burnout and I am here to provide tremendous insight for
my previous career as a victim withness coordinator.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 8 (07:25):
Hi everyone, my name is Arnid I am I am
a single model of three and I am even pliner
also a CEO of g Lighting Flingishing, and it is
a pleasure for me to be here with you guys tonight.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
All right.

Speaker 9 (07:44):
The last but not least, I'm Marquila Hinton. I am
in Chicago. I'm the CEO of The Faith Edit, which
is a boutique publishing agency that helps Kingdom entrepreneurs launch
into the marketplace with the easiest business to start, which is.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
The book Wow, are all CEOs. Let's just clap. These
women are CEOs. Are right in their life, okay, CEOs.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
They have turned their pain and the purpose and their
tests into a testimony. So I applaud each and every
one of you and for the commendable work that you
do and everything that each of you mention are right
in the heartbeat of our lives of bringing joy.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Healing, all right, and relief.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Everything that you do is to help that human spirit
to elevate, to promote, to empower, to heal all right.
Taking a picture is about a moment of joy. Capturing
joy are made with the luxury, bringing up weddings and

(08:50):
all of the special events getting that together. We have
Mackaila that's doing the books, getting your story out there
all right. And we have Gladina that is breaking down
all right, breaking down walls, because it takes a lot
to break down walls. So every one of you have
a very powerful, powerful ministry. And I truly thank you

(09:12):
for coming on here today. I am truly humbled by
each and every one of your presence now as we
are on here. In the beginning I spoke about worth,
the feeling of do you deserve it? Should you be love?
Are you deserving of love? Many of us might have

(09:33):
asked ourselves that question. Am I worthy? Should I stay
the way I am? Is something wrong with me? There's
nothing wrong with me. There's a lot of questions that
we might have asked ourselves. But on today we will
just go right into our questions that we have here

(09:55):
for each and every one of you, and you can
answer that based on your personal li experience or on
your expert advice. Have you seen many that have gone
through they're on traumas right on today, and so that's
what we will be diving into.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
E just give me a moment, all right.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
So we have our panel right here on the she
Mergeons Virtual Conference. Yay, we are here, we are healed,
we are joyous, we are on the other side. You know,
some people say we're outside here, we're literally outside and
we're thankful for this. Where we were at a time
where silence was all we had to survive. But as

(10:54):
we moved to the she Mergons Virtual Conference, we'll be
talking about those moments where you felt you were not
deserving of love or worthy of healing. So on today
we have a few of our guest panelists as they
would be sharing their personal journeys or in their professional expertise,

(11:15):
what they have come across through helping individuals get on
the front row seat of their lives. So right now
we're going to start off with Jen. Go ahead and
introduce yourself to our audience.

Speaker 10 (11:28):
Hi.

Speaker 6 (11:28):
I'm pink Hare Jen and I am a wedding photographer
and soptual artist. I'm also a speaker, but beyond all that,
I'm also just a creative that wants to connect with everybody.
And I just love using my voice and opening up
to people as well as hearing their stories. So that's
who I am.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
All right, Thank you so much. We love the air.
We love the air.

Speaker 9 (11:52):
I'm Marquila Hinton. I'm the CEO of the State That It,
which is a boutique publishing agency that helps Kingdom entrepreneurs
launches to the marketplace what I believe is the easiest
business to start a book.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 7 (12:07):
Hi, everyonem My name is Glady and Rivera. I am
the founder and CEO of Obsidian Rising. My company supports
women through career alignments and structured burnout recovery approaches. However,
my background, which is what I will be extrapolating for
today's session is having twenty years of experience working with

(12:27):
friend victims, and I will be tapping into that as
a resource for you all.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
All right, thank you so much. And as you see
it here on today, all of these women are CEOs.
They are in the business of betterment, healing, empowerment, inspiration,
from photography to writing the books, putting your story out there,
to chipping down those walls that you've put up. Because

(12:54):
when you put walls up, people can't get in, and
you too, you can't get out. So each of these
women to help individuals get on the front row seat
of their life, whether it's the moment that you want
to shine, the moment that you want to speak, or
the moment that you want to heal.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
And healing is beautiful, all right.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Healing is beautiful because once you healed, you learn to enjoy,
like smell the roses. You really want to go outside,
you really want to explore new things.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
You are no longer.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Existing, but instead you are living. I once was in
a place of gloom. I did not draw any attention
to myself whatsoever. I would not wear this very bright
color that I'm wearing today. Healing has brought all of
that about and then we can look at Jen. Her
healing is showing you she's got a future pink hair,

(13:53):
which is my favorite favorite color. Right I'm not when
I grow up, I want to be just like Jen.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
I could do my air pink. I just love it.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Okay, So we're going to come right in here because
we've talked about it already. The book will be launching
in just a couple of weeks, and it talks about
that feeling of unworthiness, unwanted, and uninvited. So this virtual
platform is going to take each every person or those
an expert feel as to what that was like as

(14:27):
they experience that or help individuals come out of that place.
So we're going to start off with the very first
question that talks about what was the moment you realize
your silence was hurting more than helping. Can we start off.

Speaker 11 (14:44):
With Jan.

Speaker 6 (14:46):
Yes, and this was the year I know the moment.
I know the year In twenty eighteen, I was at
a photo conference and it's one of my most favorite
I still go back every year. And the funny thing
is it's called Promoting Passion. So it's a space that's
open for people to come with whatever however, they are right,
and we were doing an exercise with each other, paired

(15:08):
up by two, and I realized the person I was
paired up with was asking me questions about me, and
had been so long since I felt like somebody cared
about me to ask me about me. Because I was
so busy doing things and connecting with everybody else, nobody
bothered to ask me about me. And so when I
realized crying in the bathroom, what I was missing was

(15:33):
simply my voice. I had not shared myself with anybody,
and I'm talking about the deep stuff, the deep stuff
that really connects us together. I was having a hard
time communicating with my husband because he didn't understand what
I was going through, and I realized that silence was
most definitely shutting me off from the world. And you know,
when you're shut off from everybody, that's a deep, dark

(15:55):
place to be. And that's kind of where I was
in that time of my life. At photo convention, at
the most creative space I that you could think of,
but I was so alone, so alone, I felt so
alone and so shut off. And so that's exactly when
I realized I came home to get help. I finished
off the conference, but I came home to get help,

(16:17):
you know what I mean. It's like it was an instant.
If I don't fix this now and address it now,
I'm going to die.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
So was it the actmosphear that was triggering, something that
was said that was trigger It was the.

Speaker 6 (16:31):
Person who asked me questions about myself just all that's all.
That's all she did was ask me questions and and
I was like, wait, you're asking me a question about myself?
Like I felt seen immediately, like we don't we don't
understand how powerful just questions can be to talk to me.
It's not just how are you? It's like, well what
do you think about that?

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Right?

Speaker 6 (16:52):
Like, whoa, I'm a person. You're treating me like a
real person, and I can answer you, right, I answered her?
And then after I cried in the back, I came
back out and I said, you have no idea what
you just did for me, have no idea how much
I needed that. And that's how I realized what I
was missing. I was like, I'm missing real human contact,
just contact. And I was just like wow, so.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Your silence was hurting you.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Silence it was so loud that you realize you needed help.

Speaker 6 (17:24):
Yeah, my silence was literally killing me on the inside.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Yeah, literally the word that says killing me softly literally literally.
All right, so let's go to Miquila.

Speaker 9 (17:37):
So I talk about shrinking a lot in my community.
I think a lot of times, especially women, were taught
that being silent or you serving other people as how
you can be a good person. And a lot of
times we don't realize how deceptive humility is when it's

(17:58):
rooted in insecure. Right, So we're calling ourselves being these humble, serving, caring,
loving people. But I tell people all the time, if
you can't give yourself that kind of honor, that kind
of love, then whatever you're doing for other people is
really coming from a place that's not sincere. So I
found myself my daughter. Being pregnant with my daughter is

(18:22):
the moment where I realized, like, oh, crap, insecurity is
a problem, Like why my gosh. I But I tell
this story all the time. I have a ginormous mirror
in my living room that I cannot avoid if you're
like going to the kitchen, if just there all the time.
And I walked past the mirror one day and I growled.

(18:43):
I was like ugh, and like all of the negative
things I've been saying to myself, all those bad things
that I was thinking, they had never actually come out
of my mouth. Growling was like when all of the
things that were inside of my head were external. So
it was that moment where I said, oh, lok, oh,

(19:04):
hold on, now, the you know, the cats off the bag,
the big hairy beast is no longer just hidden. It
is my It's in front of me. So I had
to really do some work. And I'm my dad's pastor,
my granddaddy's pastor, my mom's a chaplain. I'm a good
old church girl. So you know, yeah, you know what
we do when when we feel like we don't know

(19:26):
what to do, we go to God. We go to prayer.
And God showed me the story of Adam and Eve
in a new way that I had never experienced. He
showed me that Adam and Eves they were never supposed
to see themselves right, And he looked at me, and
the Holy Spirit helped me to be able to understand
that the reason why I was growling at myself, the

(19:48):
reason why I have been saying so many things in
silence and in my thoughts face, is because I have
been looking at myself with eyes that were broken, and
God began to deal with me about how I can
be free and seeing myself and seeing other people, and
how it's not my job to shrink or to downplay
or to even change myself for other things or other people.

(20:10):
That my job is to fulfill the assignment on my life.
So that moment, the growling was like the catalyst to
keep all the silent things. But it also really helped
me to be able to understand a lot more about
who I was as a human and so dealing with
my own insecurities. Mastering the way that I saw myself

(20:34):
gave me space to be able to help others not
only did with their confidence, but to help them launch
their's assignments. So I do what I do now because
I realized how my journey was so helpful to me.
I wrote a book, that confidence workbook was powerful, We
did workshops, and so now I do everything that I
do based off of that experience of me coming out

(20:55):
of a really dark place. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Wow, I I think in photography, right, and I also
think in song. So while you were talking, what I
saw before me was that song says I'm looking at
the man in the mirror. Yeah, I'm acting him to
change his ways. So you really had that moment, Yeah,

(21:20):
that time you under sad. Yes, So we're going to
go to Miss Burrea, who's going to present us the
professional perspective of this.

Speaker 10 (21:28):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (21:29):
So I see silence as a tool that perpetrators, whether
they could be batteries in him in domestic violence are
now known as interpersonal violence cases utilized to maintain power
and control over their victims. That is also a tool
that it's typically used in households where I don't know

(21:52):
if you've heard the saying, what happens at home stays
at home, right, you know, you don't share any to
anyone outside about our dirty land, laundry. That is also
a way to maintain certain information be kept at home.
And so in cases where you see sexual victimizations that
have happened in the house, there has been a culture

(22:13):
of silence throughout. And essentially you want to have a
sense of discernment what is it that is keeping you silent?
But it we also want to distinguish it with what
is it that is a boundary? Obviously, we don't walk
around the world and talking about all of our problems.

(22:33):
We want to have boundaries, but it's a key differentiation
from being silent. That is a projection from someone else
to enhance their control over us.

Speaker 10 (22:43):
Now I'm going to shift in the.

Speaker 7 (22:45):
Workplace for a little bit because I've also been talking
a lot about manipulative tactics that happen in the workplace
as a way to control individuals, subdue them, and ultimately
leading them into a path to words. Burnout and gas
lighting and silence are those two major tools. It's we

(23:05):
didn't say that, I don't know what you're talking about?
Who told you that? And so I always get tell
all of my clients make sure to keep track of
the conversation, who was there, uh, the date, the time,
the exchange altogether.

Speaker 10 (23:23):
Ultimately, how did that make you feel?

Speaker 7 (23:25):
And email all those details to yourself on an email
because it is going to have a date and a timestand.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yea, oh cool, Yeah that is that is really great.
I picked this up as a child.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
For example, I noticed that whenever I have a positive
or negative experience, I would pay attention to the time
on what was happening, and then I would write it down.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
When I was listening to a sermon at church.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
But within that sermon, I picked up something that the
speak up did not say, right, so I write down
the time who was speaking, or maybe something that they said.
Later on, when I go back, I'm like, wow, that
was three years ago, and now this word is coming
back to me. So it's important even to this day.
Even when I wake up. I don't know about you guys,

(24:22):
but I never sleep into the day. I sleep in
a new day, right. I'm always up. Have a prayer
line that goes from eleven to twelve, so i'm up
once that's over. It takes me a good two and
a half to three hours to unwind.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
That's me.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
And it wasn't until I went through I thought I
was all healed. I thought I had covered every basis
in my life. And I went through one of those
programs in order to mentor other women. I had to
go through the program and the woman was talking about
her experience at night and she was triggered just by

(25:00):
going to sleep.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
It wasn't until then did I realize my not sleeping.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
From four years old, five years old, six years old,
when other kids were taking naps, I was afraid to
fall asleep because every time I fell asleep.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
That's when the enemy crypt it. So I took this
all the when to my adults until early this.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Year for me to come to a realization of your
problem isn't the caffeine and your golfee, Okay, it is
the fact that I didn't realize this is why I
wasn't sleeping, so that I learned to get creative. When
I'm away, I write, I use.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
That time right.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
But the time step that you just said is very
crucial because it takes us back to so much.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
It brings so much in revelation.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
It causes you to pay attention to your environment, to
go beyond the regular. Somebody just saw yellow, but you
saw a yellow pink. You know, you saw it all
and what was happening, what was unfolding in the scene.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
And that is truly what happens in the place of silent.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Even though people are silent, it's really really loud, right,
it's really loud. The person my same silent. That's why
we're gonna touch this. When people have mental health, people
think mental health look like somebody with a needlestick it
out of their arm, or they're on drugs and they're drooling.
There are people who are the life of the party

(26:36):
and they're going through mental they're silent, but they're literally
loud in their noise.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
There's body language things, you know, that we give off.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
And those who are experts or experience can say, hmm,
there's something going.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
On there and you want to pull on that, right.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah, So that is leading me into how did unspoken
expectations or family dynamics influence your healing journey? Because it's
all unspoken at first, family wise can silence you. Right

(27:21):
In my case, when I told my story, I didn't
get the reaction that I thought of would happened. So
everything that happened after that, I kept it to myself. Okay,
so we're talking about the unspoken expectations of family dynamics.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
How did that influence your healing journey? Anyone can chime in?

Speaker 9 (27:49):
I know for me, my ex husband and I have
a fabulous co parenting relationship, but we were terrible in marriage,
and so I tell the story all the time that
it wasn't necessarily think disapproval or he didn't understand that
I needed to be healed. It's just that I think
a lot of people outside of me, they perceived me

(28:11):
as a person who was already confident, right, so they
felt like, oh my gosh, myr Kulia, You're fine, and
I'm like, no, I growled at myself in America, And
so I think a lot of times people who are
comfortable with their trauma, they are okay with you saying
in your trauma. I found that I had a few
people who they were just uncomfortable that I was now

(28:34):
addressing the problems and within me because they didn't want
to address their problem. So a lot of my healing
had to be kind of I don't want to say,
like in your face, but very much so, like I
don't care if you don't think I need more help.
I need help. I feel like I need help. I'm
gonna go get that help. But I also think that

(28:58):
there's like positive experts, like my daughter was the reason
why I was so insecure, but then also she was
the reason why it was so necessary for me to heal.
And of course she didn't have expectations of having a
mommy who was going to be a publisher or any
of that, but she did have expectations for me to
get up every day and feed her. And she was

(29:19):
a baby, so I had to take care of her,
and so on that journey of healing, I having to
take care of her as a human, stewarding her. You know,
newborn life really made it a requirement for me to
stand up against some of the things that wanted me
to be complacent. You know. It was like, I have

(29:41):
this whole little little gift, She's this little diamond in
my hand, and I can't be some half hearted version
of myself just because people think that it's enough when
I know it's not enough. Howes that makes sense?

Speaker 6 (29:56):
Yes, yes, yeah, And I wanted to echo something you
said earlier, Mikaela, about the expectations of you always got
to put yourself below everybody else. You got to go
serve everybody and all these environments and communities that you're
connected with. So what I had pretty much grown up

(30:19):
in is you know, yes, I had a great, loving family,
but because of what we were taught from a certain
perspective of well, somebody else always has it worse, so
you should just be thankful for where you are.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 12 (30:33):
And I'm like, well, okay, so in that frame of mind,
I'm going to shut down anything I'm thinking or feeling,
and I'm just going to pray for somebody else.

Speaker 6 (30:45):
That does mean no favors going into adulthood. No, it
didn't do me any favors in how to connect with
people or my future husband at the time. You know,
I wasn't even married at this time, and I'm seeing
this stuff and I'm like, well, I'm just being a
good person by shoving it all down. And people come
up to me saying, you know, Jen, we feel like
you just shove stuff down, and I said, well, yeah,

(31:06):
I mean we're supposed to just get over it and then,
you know, go help somebody else, because you need to
forget your troubles to go help somebody else. And what
I've realized in this healing process is that so many
of us are stuck in that area that we forget
that we're a human too. And I think that was
the influential part of this culture that we've all been

(31:29):
a part of, has told us you need to forget
yourself and go serve everybody else, because once you do,
you'll forget you ever had a problem in the first place.
And I think there is only a tiny bit of
truth of that, because I find now the more I
express my frustration or anger or joy or anything, I'm

(31:50):
expressing the full human experience instead of just suppressing it,
and then it getting bigger and bigger and darker and darker.
And so now I'm at the point where I'm able
to speak with my family differently, and specifically my husband
and my kid, because now I have an eight year
old and I'm learning how to navigate her childhood through

(32:10):
my past childhood. Talk about healing factors, is it's coming
up when you've got a little kid in your life.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yes.

Speaker 6 (32:17):
So the culture and the dynamics of how I grew
up into who I am now and what I've been
led to and how I've unraveled all of these things
that I've believed for so long that my feelings are
going to be there no matter what. It's better to
deal with them now and then happen, not build up
and then explode somewhere. But at the time I didn't

(32:39):
know how to deal with them, Like how there's not
a book that says, here's how you deal with your emotions.
So that for me has been part of my healing
of that dynamics of kind of like nobody has a
clue and then you figure it out and then you
kind of go back to those people and try to
teach them too if they're willing to learn, right, right,
especially in your family dynamics, but genetic family or chosen family,
whatever family you call family, right, Yeah, that was my

(33:02):
experience so far.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
It's so true. It's so true.

Speaker 7 (33:08):
So I had developed a program in one of the
correctional systems in my state, and essentially it was to
help address the impact of sexual victimization for the women
in that particular setting, not necessarily that they were victimized
in the prison system, but previous histories of trauma resulting

(33:31):
from sexual victimization. And so the best way that I
can put it is on a spectrum. So there is
the under expectations from family and the over expectations from
family members. So what I saw is that when it
comes down to the over expectations, silence was also a
tool that the person self imposed and not disappointed. Whereas

(33:52):
in family dynamics that were borderline negligent to the children,
and the children grew up without any expectations whatsoever. It
did harm to them because in a lot of ways
that perceived themselves as lesser than and so on both
spectrums and both ends, I noticed that there was a

(34:15):
lot of rates of victimizations, and so it really doesn't
matter where you fall in that spectrum. If you have
someone that identifies you as a victim who has predatory needs,
and in the likelihood that you've been sexually victimized in
the past, increases for a second type of victimization.

Speaker 10 (34:38):
Those family dynamics that are.

Speaker 7 (34:41):
Dysfunctional serve as a catalyst for all these awful things
that happen at home. Now I'm only talking about sexual predation,
but I'm also going to talk about interpersonal violence. I'm
going to refer from this point on as domestic violence
for those that haven't heard about it, as IPv. And
so again, you see children who are raised in households

(35:06):
where there's a lot of domestic violence, there's a lot
of abuse, and they'reforced to stay quiet that this function.
That type of abuse forces the child to see things
from a different perspective. Right, So they're not going to
respect mom, they're not going to see mom as someone
worthy of because they see dad doing this to mom.

(35:29):
And there's there's been cases that I've seen where the
father used to children to also victimize the mother.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yes, yeah, it's true, and it becomes It's actually a
cycle because when you look at it through generations and
the family, because it was a room resolved in this generation,
it continues in the next and then all it does
is gets worse. Then it becomes something like this is
our way, this is everyone. It becomes normal if it

(35:57):
doesn't go this way, so everyone's looking at it. For example,
I'm gonna go back to something Jen said, as you
relate to your daughter was eight years old. I did
not realize until my daughter was six. Girl, I'm seven
years old that I realized it was not my fault

(36:20):
because now I'm looking at her innocence, and I was like,
there's no way if someone did this to her, that
she was dressed a certain way, she talked a certain way,
there was nothing about her okay. And it was at
that time that I was able to say it was

(36:42):
not my fault. Because I'm always a person that's very transparent.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
So I share, right. Some people say overshare.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
I don't feel so I feel like there are things
I don't say, so I'm not oversharing. I'm sharing to
what estate write what you need to know, right, because
obviously nobody know about a lot of things until I
wrote about it in my book. So obviously I was
never over sharing. I was just sharing as much as
I thought. You know, I try to be as transparent

(37:11):
as possible. So the day that I realized it is
because I was dealing with a narcissistic husband's behaviors, who
kept saying I wasn't the one that broke you in
a sense like you want to virgin when I met you,
and that hung over my head.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Or whatever.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
The mother is, the child is, so there was always
back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. But
I got tired this day, and I remember going into
the bathroom to get a bottle of pills, closed the door.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
I was tired. I was done the thoughts of suicide.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
It was like, okay, this is D day, Okay, because
I was tired of the negativity. You're nothing, You'll never
be anything. That's why I talk about the unworthiness, not
feeling word. If you are someone, it's because I'm in
your life. I'm the best thing that ever happened to you. YadA, YadA,
all of this right. And so I ticked the pills

(38:16):
and I'm pouring it, okay, and I'm shaking, so it
falls down, and my sister was outside the bathroom. Here
is the pillbottle fall right, So she's knocking open the door,
but the door I didn't care. I was like gone Mentally,
I was like I checked out right, And then he
was able to open the door. It didn't matter who

(38:40):
was at the door. But you know who I saw.
I saw my daughter, and I was like, she don't
need to grow up in a life without a mom.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
She need the better version of me. And when I
looked at her, I started shouting, it was never my fault.
I didn't do it. I kept saying it over.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
My sister said, I must have said it fifty times.
It was never my fault. It was never my fault.
It was never my fault.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
That was when that realization came in.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Now dealing with wordy, feeling worth and all of that,
I was still feeling worthless. But at least I meant
something to one person. So I held on to that
one person from that day on. I said, I'm getting
up every day because of her. I'm getting up every
day because of my kids. So I was existing before,

(39:43):
I'm existing more, but now.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
I have a reason to live.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Okay, So when you talked about identifying with your eight
year old daughter that took me to that place.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
That I read for twenty eight years at that time. Okay, So.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
There's a lot of unraveling that's happening as we are healing,
a lot of self discovery. I just told you I
just found out my reason for not sleeping at night
was not caffeine.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
I found that out this year and I'm fifty. You understand.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
So it keeps unfolding and unfolding, and you're learning and
you're learning, and.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
So now I said, you know what, this is the
time of my creative juices. That's why I'm up. I
no longer say you understand what I'm saying. Oh my goodness,
it's it's it's it's a beautiful place. So that's leading
me into what's stopping you from speaking sooner.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
And what finally gave you the courage to share.

Speaker 7 (41:01):
I can take the lead on this question, if that's okay.
So one of the again looking at it from a
victim witness coordinator. Previously, when it came down to victims
of domestic violence, they lived in constant fear because of
their partners. The abuse more often than not escalates anytime

(41:24):
a woman is trying to separate from their partner. I
believe statistically it takes approximately seven times seven different attempts
before the woman can safely separate from the partner, depending
on the severity of the abuse.

Speaker 10 (41:38):
More often than not.

Speaker 7 (41:39):
Also, when you look at the police reports, when it
comes down which the most dangerous types of police responses,
you're going to also discover that whenever the police reports
to a household, whether it's domestic violence, the likelihood of
there being a officer side or murder suicide also increases.

(42:03):
So when it comes down to victims of domestic violence,
their fear is real, and it's very legitimate, and more
often than not, that is why they don't talk.

Speaker 10 (42:12):
That's why they don't speak.

Speaker 7 (42:14):
The problem is that they hold everything inside and it's
almost like you're putting drops in a cup of water
until it overflows, and a person cannot sustain abuse for
a prolonged time. Now, similarly, it's the same thing with
victims of sexual violence, depending on who the perpetrator is,
depending on the age of the victim, whether or not

(42:35):
they were grown for a prolonged time. Generally, if you
find children that have been groomed, they were grown by
someone they respected, they were grown by someone who they loved.
They were grown by someone who made promises to them
but also established that code of silence. For instance, don't
tell mommy or daddy because I won't be able to

(42:55):
bring gifts to you. Don't tell mommy or Daddy because
then I'll go arrest and you don't want that. And
so the child lives with that fear that if they
speak up it is going to harm the very person
they think in their very young mind that is going
to harm someone that is good, because they have not
yet seen or distinguished the harm that they're dealing with.

(43:18):
And so again it really depends on the person on
the scenario or the type of abuse in the workplace. Similarly,
people choose not to speak because of retaliation. People choose
not to speak because they may feel that they will
not be promoted or ascended up the ranks. And so

(43:38):
more often than not, people stay quiet when there are
abusive dynamics in the workplace that you could potentially even have.
Like you said, a narcissist as a leader who is
the main puppeteer controlling people, and the victim is seeing
all of this, but they are made to feel like

(43:58):
they're crazy, right right, And so again I talk a lot.

Speaker 10 (44:02):
About this and my sessions.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
You could stay right there in that one.

Speaker 10 (44:08):
I talk about this and my sessions.

Speaker 7 (44:10):
As a matter of fact, I created a web app
called Athena Rising, and it's free because I wanted people
to have access to information relevant to what are the
toxic dynamics in the workplace that you find, how can
you navigate them? What are the strategies to navigate someone
who demonstrates these toxic dynamics And I'm using toxic, but

(44:35):
in reality, I'm talking about the individuals who are covert
narcissists who utilize Machabelian tools and they maintain again that
power and control. And so that tool that I created
also talks about how to set and maintain proper boundaries
because that is your very the first line of defense,
and a good defense is a fantastic offense. But ultimately

(44:59):
having those tools readily available to you is going to
help you in identify and address furnol. And so that
tool is fuirly available. It's on my website and it
was there to support individuals navigating those toxic systems, toxic
dynamics in the workplace.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
So what is the name of that, so I can
put that here.

Speaker 10 (45:20):
Athena Rising at at h.

Speaker 9 (45:26):
E n a.

Speaker 10 (45:28):
Rising as the rising star. Ri I s i n g.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Atena Rising.

Speaker 10 (45:37):
Right, So that's an app.

Speaker 7 (45:39):
That is a web app within my website. My website
is Obsidian like the Stone RISINGLLC dot com. You can
see the menu the main banner, click on it, sign up,
and you can access all these resources that are pulled together.
It has a list of books, it has m Yeah,

(46:01):
I will give you the web addressed specifically to access that, right.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
That is okay, okay, all right, Wow, you've brought definitely
different perspectives here, work environment, domestic narcissists. Again, everyone has
a reason as to why they were stopped. The reason
why access because people say, why do you wait now?

(46:30):
Why didn't say that this was twenty years ago, that
was thirty years ago.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Why are you just telling this now? Ladies?

Speaker 9 (46:38):
Yeah, I think I love the idea that we're not
just waiting, We're not just holding these things because we're
like waiting for the moment, right. Like I think a
lot of authors, people who don't agree with the story
that comes out, it's like, well you just waited until
Like they're feelings at home, like right, an evil laugh.

(47:02):
I think that for most of for me and for
most of my clients, you just get sick of not
obeying God. I know for me, it was like God
had been shoving me in front of people. He had
been He had been telling me, like, stop acting like
you don't know who I made you. I keep showing
her to you in dreams, like he whispering things about

(47:26):
who you actually are in your hair. So I just
kind of was tired of sitting in a place where
my life didn't look like what I could see in
my imagination. But I also think what made me kind
of finally pull the trigger is that I had actually
mastered silence in a way that was positive. Like we've

(47:49):
been talking about silence in all the ways that it
kind of is negative. But for most people who I know,
who are really struggling with their mental wellness or with
their purpose or their assignment, silence is the worst thing
for them, right right, Like don't put me in a
room by myself. Until I could really learn how to
sit with God and there be no noise and there

(48:11):
be nothing but just me and nothing, I really was
not killed enough to do anything in front of people,
even though I knew the tools right, I had made
the book, I had the program, I'd done all the
things I should have known how to be confident, I
really tell people all the time. It took me a
year to get the confidence to sell the confidence because

(48:32):
I did not. But when I learned, like, Okay, silence
is really a place that I can step into and
have safety, and I can cultivate that safety within myself
regardless of what my family thinks, my husband thinks, the pressure,
regardless of what I feel about myself. If I could
learn the master silence, make it a safe space for me,

(48:56):
then I can do some really powerful and fantastic rapid
because I thought a lot more happens when you are
you can sit silently then when you're like running around
doing all the movement and all the things. Yeah, but
for me, it was like it took me a really
long time because I just hadn't gotten sick and tired yet.

(49:16):
But then I got sick and tired, And when I
got sick and tired, I started to do the work
to master the silence. Yeah, silence wasn't a bad thing anymore.
Silence was now a guided place that I could go
into and hear from the Holy Spirit and from God,
and from my intuition and from my gut. I could
go and be creative all kinds of for lack of
better words, sexy things could happen, you know, and it

(49:39):
not be a bad thing, but it'd be a safe space.
So that those are the things that I think helped
me to actually activate the things that would move me
out of the place of silence.

Speaker 6 (49:51):
And yeah, I was writing notes because I wanted to
be sure I hit everything. So when I was writing
about my personal experience, is that the reason I didn't
speak out sooner is because I had built such a
great case against myself it was easy not speak up.

Speaker 9 (50:09):
Ooh my.

Speaker 6 (50:10):
And the interesting thing was, and I'm a movie buff,
so I love how movies can help you articulate what
you can't see your say. And so in the movie
Pretty Woman, we all know what she did as a profession,
and we all know where she was as a person,
and she's laying there saying the bad stuff is easier

(50:31):
to believe.

Speaker 5 (50:32):
Right.

Speaker 6 (50:33):
That is what I had built against myself is everything
against me. So I didn't have a voice at that point.

Speaker 9 (50:41):
And where the.

Speaker 6 (50:42):
Shift started happening where I was starting to recognize where
I was ashamed. I was ashamed about things. I was
definitely feeling unworthy at that point, because if you've built
such a big case against yourself, you're very worthless. You
have nothing to offer the world. And that's kind of
where I had gotten to at that point. But what
I didn't also realize is the previous times before that.

(51:03):
A couple of years before that, when we tried to
start a family, I had two miscarriages in a row
at photography conventions. So I'm bleeding out at these photography
conventions feeling like a complete failure. But a brilliant artist,
I can make art out of everything. I can make
this scenario into art, and I am doing that now right.

Speaker 10 (51:22):
Like talking about it.

Speaker 6 (51:25):
But when you have miscarriages and no baby, you're invisible
because the baby doesn't exist. And I'm going to have
a moment like you did, doctor Linda this year in March.
For the first time in my life, I've realized they
were alive, yes, and that I didn't miss it.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (51:47):
I was not a failure, no no, And I have
three total over the course of my journey. And I
knew going into it. It was going to be a journey.
I just didn't know how much it was going to hurt.
And a lot of times we run from hurt, don't
we run from the pain. And until I started facing

(52:08):
the pain, this is where the power came in. And
so when in March, when I realized that my body
is not a failure and that these babies exist, and
I had some people walking, I had amazing counselors that
pulled me from the brink, and this one particular person,
she had me imagine them and she's like, where are they?

(52:28):
And I was like, Oh, They're on a playground. And
then I started imagining them because they all had names,
I named every single one of them, including my human child.
And after that, within a within a couple of weeks,
I started commissioning an artist to draw what I saw
as my family, my family that has been given to me.

(52:50):
And so we have four children, two cats that have
passed on, and two cats that are living. They're all
in this beautiful picture. And this is how I'm using
art to heal me. Yes, I'm no longer silenced. I'm
putting the words out there. I'm letting the vision speak
for itself. For me, even if it's just for me.

(53:13):
And so that's what has given me the courage Back
to the question here, what gave me the courage to share?
Knowing that I'm not alone in all of this and
that I'm not the only one. I know that in
twenty fifteen and sixteen I was going through it at
the time. I started sharing about it almost immediately because
what else was I going to do if I don't

(53:35):
share it. I'm I don't want to bottle it up anymore.
So I found the courage and voice at that point.
And then that's when slowly it got dark again, and
then boom, I was re released out with my fresh
voice knowing that I have value for the world here.

Speaker 10 (53:52):
I have a story to share, I have.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Art to make.

Speaker 6 (53:54):
I have so much more art to make, you know
what I mean? Yes, So that's where I'm at with
that question, is like, my voice is valuable and my
story is my story. And like you said, Linda, just
this year have I discovered that I'm not a fan?
I have dropped twenty pounds just because of that shift.
What God has showed me that you were not a failure?

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Yeah, let me applaud you ladies. It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
We gotta go to a break so we could just
take a pause for people who might have cried along
who was like, you know, I'm gonna give you all
the break so I could come back okay, refreshed, so
we can breed.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
We gotta take a short break here and we'll be back.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Old that I do.

Speaker 11 (54:50):
Understanding my surroundings.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
That's when I realized, and.

Speaker 11 (55:01):
You don't know what you don't have to tell, realize.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
What is in front of the hiss and more treated
me really.

Speaker 6 (55:09):
Like their children, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
But I thank God for football and the journey.

Speaker 11 (55:15):
If you have a Grand Book one, you have the
Red Book one to make sense because it's.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
A film and it's a sequence, and they will.

Speaker 6 (55:23):
Be a great thereafter.

Speaker 11 (55:25):
I was trying to surprise it up second, but it
didn't make sense to them.

Speaker 5 (55:30):
Ship basically talks about once I got there, about like
what I still went arrived. It was not a single
RelA story.

Speaker 11 (55:41):
Who was not a firstrming story.

Speaker 6 (55:43):
It was a sycle that kept going and I had the.

Speaker 11 (55:47):
Weak up heart so I live to tell the story
because I couldn't have the women that at the side, people.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
That are out there for you, Tally or whatever. You
don't know their story.

Speaker 11 (55:57):
No little girl got out and I just said, okay,
I'm want to be I want to leave the field
the dream I want to sell for nobody waits some one.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
It is makes to me. People have that conces things
to end up happening.

Speaker 6 (56:13):
So as a Christian, for the won us be for
giving people.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
So something happens.

Speaker 11 (56:20):
Sometimes I'm watching a lot and after a movie, the
young lady that's only waits to be able to help
the fat that was the rock that she wuta.

Speaker 10 (56:28):
All right, so these thirties, my heart.

Speaker 11 (56:33):
I was suicidal until twenty eight years old, and that's
when I forget myself. Everybody here how the one to live?

Speaker 2 (56:41):
He say, how the one to be? Well? But let's
basically need the journey I'm going now. I try to
need it the purpose and I created people, all right?
All right, all right, turning our being into purpose. We
are back. We are back, We are back.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
As we continue, I hope that you've been blessed, and
I pray that you go back and you're going to
replay if you missed anything. There might be a lot
of nuggets that was dropped today. There was a word
a message in there for you just go back. What
I love about social media is you can always go back.
You can replay it and put it on replay and

(57:19):
tell it. Get there right, just let us sink in.
Let us sink in. So we're gonna just go dive
right in. As we continue into our next question, and
this is to anyone who would like to answer, how
do you differentiate between being private and being silence private

(57:40):
and silenced with a.

Speaker 9 (57:42):
Ed private versus silence silenced. I think if somebody tells
you that you can't you can't tell it right, if
there's an external force, it doesn't even have to be someone.
It could be a something like I'm again, I'm a

(58:03):
I'm a PK, I'm a I grew up in the church.
I think a lot of times in church and in
and even business and in entrepreneurship, the idea that you're
not supposed to tell people the truth. It's like, you know,
tell them the truth that's cute, or tell them the
truth that sounds good, but don't tell them how hard
it really is. So I think if there's if it's

(58:26):
ever external, if it's ever because you don't want other
people to judge you or think that you're not good enough,
then that's being silenced. For me, being private is more
so about safety, right, So there are some things that
I don't feel safe to share. It mean that I'm

(58:49):
being silentced. It just means this is not the space.
Like you know, you walk in a room and and
and maybe someone's like, how you doing, and you're like,
I'm good, but really you're like, I'm exhausted. It took
me twenty ten minutes to get here.

Speaker 5 (59:03):
You know.

Speaker 9 (59:05):
There's just some places where you can go off and say, oh,
I'm exhaust it took me twenty five minutes again. But
there are also sometimes when that's just it's just not
the time, right, And so you're not being silentced because
you understand how to navigate relationships and you understand how
to navigate safety. I know, for me, I had people
who felt like I should not discuss certain aspects of

(59:28):
my divorce. I had people who felt like in the
book that I wrote, because it is a thought leadership
book and cast snap out of it, it's about kingdom
women understanding not to play small. So people thought that
there were certain parts of my story I went through
domestic violence as a young girl. I was sexually assaulted
as a young woman, and so people were kind of
surprised that they were hearing about these complex topics while

(59:51):
I was talking about business and not But I think
all of those things kind of play a part together,
and so there a moment when your your story needs
to be told in the way that it needs to
be told, right then I always say let it rip.
My mom told me to let let an email rip
yesterday and I sent that email so fast. She was like,

(01:00:15):
then you can let it rip, as my mom.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Say, so that's good. That's good, ladies.

Speaker 6 (01:00:24):
Yeah. I wrote something a little bit to this this
question because where I was coming from was still in
the same thing. I'm sharing pieces of my story and
and I was like, well, if I'm being private, means
I can still talk about it. I'm just not going
to talk about it to every single person I know.
Like you were just saying, like, it's like you don't
need to share everything with everybody all the time. It's

(01:00:47):
right kind of like save those first spaces that you
feel are not only safe, but like are they the
right spaces these things? And for being silenced, I still
see I still see that as an external or sometimes
an internal like shoving down of your voice. And so

(01:01:07):
what I had kind of thought about was to me
being silenced in this case of my story, was I
never open up, never share where I was coming from
in culture or family or everything around you. And all
of this around me was just saying just be quiet,
no one cares. So it was so easy to just

(01:01:30):
be silenced by everything I heard and everything I talked
to myself about too. And so when I think about
being silenced, I think about it like that.

Speaker 7 (01:01:41):
Yes, I echo both responses. So the imposition of silence,
as I mentioned, as a tool to intense power.

Speaker 10 (01:01:51):
And control, it exists, but we can almost in our
own spaces. I think that step back to respect and
our silence be right.

Speaker 7 (01:02:01):
And one thing I want to convey very briefly is
that boundaries are a way to keep you safe. And
I will never stop saying this. I think I'm gonna
take it to the grave. And anytime that you say
no to something, you're saying yes to yourself. But there
are three types of boundaries. So the first one is

(01:02:23):
imagine the big wall. It's that very strong boundary you
don't share any information about yourself to others, it's on
a need to know basis even if that So, I'm
going to compare it to working in the prison system.
I used to work in the prison system, travel to
all at the time, thirteen correctional institutions, and I did

(01:02:45):
direct worth with incarcerated individuals and later on with returning citizens.
The prison is not the place to share anything about
yourself because anything that you share about yourself will it
will be used against you, and it can be used
as a firm as attack to manipulate you. So my
walls were high, and I always follow the internal policies

(01:03:05):
and procedures. So I always tell anyone who wants to
work in the prison system, know your policies, have your boundaries,
don't show emotion, right, you want to have that wont
Next is when you're a little bit more open, right,
you can still maintain that boundary, but it's a little
bit more per course, So it's almost like you're opening
the door, but you.

Speaker 10 (01:03:25):
Can close it whenever you feel like it.

Speaker 7 (01:03:27):
And so with that boundary, the way that I think
about it is when you're in the office, right, you
want to be able to connect with people at the
end of the day, we're all human, but there's certain
things that you don't want to share.

Speaker 10 (01:03:39):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:03:39):
I can talk about coffee, I can talk about food,
I can talk about one of my favorite movies. But
I learned that whenever I talk about the favorite type
of music that I listen so, I usually get the
side eye, right, So that's something that I usually don't
talk about because people say, oh, you listen to that.

Speaker 10 (01:03:56):
I's like, yes, yes, I do. So I stop telling
everyone the music that I listen to.

Speaker 7 (01:04:02):
And then there are people that navigate through the world
as these beautiful butterflies that they can tell everything to anyone,
and I love that. I love to see that because
they feel safe enough to be open with the world.
But I also fear for them because whenever we start
talking from a place of pain and a place of hurt,

(01:04:23):
where we talk about our past experiences, particularly from a
trauma perspective, we're giving people insider information that they can
and again can and will use against us.

Speaker 10 (01:04:35):
And so I'm always very careful.

Speaker 7 (01:04:37):
I like to keep my boundaries porous, but there are
times that I have those walls up and it's like
the Great Wall of China.

Speaker 10 (01:04:42):
I will not share anything.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
I love it because I do have like I work
with a lot of young people, and they'll say things
to me that I don't tell my husband because I
know he can't keep a secret. He can't keep anything,
so I just know I can't say anything to him
about then go out the last person people going to
think about it. Mean, I mean, even if it's just
a regular conversation, you want people to know if you

(01:05:07):
tell me, you didn't tell me. For people to know
I'm not we use an express that I'm not channel
seven US. Right, that's going to repeat it over and
over till we get tired of it. Right, But I
remember there were times when in while you're worshiping, right
and you feel the presence of God, and I'm feeling
like I shouldn't be feeling this because I'm not deserving

(01:05:28):
of even feeling his presence. Right, I'm overcome with joy
and I'm in church in tears of flowing. Right, I'll
get home because he's an astor why are you crying?
People are going to think that I did something to you,
YadA YadA, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
So I was silenced.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
Then I had moments where I would just open up
on what people knew I told you. They didn't know
the rest of the stuff that's in my book. They
just knew the incident had happened because the church knew,
you know, people knew. So I would go back to
that place when I want to share with young women
and tell them I know these things are real. I
know there is a sexual traumas at home, and they
could be uncle. They were, you know, just so they

(01:06:08):
could feel comfortable that they could come and talk to me.
Right Whenever I would share that, He'll come, I'm sick
and tired of you telling this story. Aren't you embarrassed?
Aren't you ashamed? Silenced and I would cry. I was
never one to be outspoken to heal me. I got

(01:06:30):
an answer for you, but Dan, just to save my truth,
I would choke up and I would cry just to
say a word. So I stayed silent. People would say, smile,
you have a beautiful smile. Strangers will walk to me,
what's wrong? Smile woman? And I'm like, what's there this

(01:06:54):
matter of why? Because I had to be silent, I
literally had to muffle off if church ended and I
shook somebody hand too long. When I get home, what
were you talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
Why?

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
You know? So it was always monitor, monitor, monitor, So
after a while, I realized, you know, and I'm eighteen
years into this marriage, or got married young. I met
him when I was thirteen. As I go through my
healing journey, I realized he was manipulating the situation from
the beginning. I just wasn't wise to it. So as

(01:07:32):
I started, as I start to heal, that's when I
started lifting those fingers off. I start taking care of myself.
Never got my nails done because he didn't like it,
didn't dressed a certain way because he didn't like it.
I didn't have friends because they didn't like it. I
didn't call family because again.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
I was muted.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
So I saw that time as me living in a
state of zombifide. I went to church to work, and
I came home. I didn't do anything else. It was
then until seventeen years into our marriage with somebody mentioned,

(01:08:12):
oh I'm taking my wife out for Anniversaryginna. We never
went out. You could cook, Why have to spend the money.
All of these things was happening, and I just kept
getting smaller and smaller. So for me, and when I
tell this the people, they say, oh, I can't believe
you could marry somebody that didn't love. I was coming
out of a situation. He was somebody I respected. He

(01:08:35):
showed me a security, so I accepted that security blanket.
He was the protection to stop a lot of bad
things from happening because his presence was there. So I
gravitated to that. But the more he did these things,
the respect kept going away, away, away, away and away.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
Right, So.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
I was silent, and I was living a private life
because nobody knew. My family never knew what I was
going through. Then I would be in church. I'm living
a pretentious life, pretending to look like we have it
all together, okay. So I would pray, and I would say, hey,

(01:09:20):
pray for my family. If you get wind of it,
why are you telling people that pray for our family
what's wrong with our family? You're what's wrong with our family,
but you're making it say like I'm the person that's
wrong with the family.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
And when I say that, immediately I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
Was always apologizing for what I didn't do. So, like
I said, I started pulling those fingers off. I saw
a separation. I grew up in a religious faith. I
didn't see divorce as an option. You know, I come
from four generations of women who were never married. There
were the other women, and I said, it stops with me.
I'm breaking that cycles. Of course, I'm paving the way

(01:09:58):
for everybody else. So I can't go and say divorce
when I'm the one that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Broke them all here to make the change.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
So I stuck it out for all of them before me,
and all of them that is coming from after and before.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Okay, So when I talk about the silent of private, let's.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
Say, for example, when you see people go to a divorce,
maybe they were married for thirty years. Do you know
in that thirty years they've been separated, probably from five
years in so the last twenty five years they weren't married.
Some people were just waiting for the kids to get
out of college or whatever their reason is. And it happened.
These things don't happen overnight. They had already happened. The

(01:10:45):
world just found out about it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
So today I've been married thirty two years, and that
thirty two years be Gouna have been divorced three times.
But from year eighteen to about two years ago, we
were in the house together. The world saw us together,
but we were not so that's what I say private.

(01:11:12):
You saw me, but you didn't know my private struggle.
You understand, but I was finding myself. You talk about
roaring at yourself in the mirror. My raw was from
Getton to Lioness. And whenever he said something, I would
come back with a word. I've never wanted to be disrespectful.

(01:11:34):
But I said, I don't like you saying that to me,
and I stood my ground. I'm not gonna let you
destroy my life.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
I'm not gonna I.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
Kept talking and talking and talking. After a while, I
started making my own friends because I needed my control.
These are my friends. It took a lot to get
where I am today. He's still not perfect, but he's
got a deal. He's realized the kids are growing. At
the end of the day, all you have is me,
the person you didn't want to have around. So you

(01:12:02):
gotta be nice. Yeah, Hello, you gotta be nice to me,
all right. So I say this because there's a lot
of people that are watching us today. The marriage has
been gone, and you've just been showing up. And I
said this a lot. When you see people on social

(01:12:22):
media showing these cute, funk pictures and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
All of that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
That was probably the best day they had that month,
and we're judging, Oh, look at so and those life.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
M hmm, not so.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
All right, So we're gonna come down to our last
question everyone. This is not our regular normal our talks.
We have more people on the panel, so it requires
more time or else. I left off episode one to thirty.
You know, we can't do all of those episodes and one.
So the last question here is what would you say
today to the version of yourself that stayed quiet to survive.

Speaker 7 (01:13:07):
I've been inspired and I didn't want to interject as
you were speaking, but there was this thought that came
through and I had to write it down. Essentially, shame
stops you from the greatness of your own creation. Shame
stops you from the greatness of your own creation. The
more shame we carry, the less likely we are to

(01:13:29):
be able to establish our goals, accomplish our goals, be
creative in our space, because it we begin to feel unworthy,
We begin to feel that nothing that we do matters.

Speaker 10 (01:13:42):
We begin that.

Speaker 7 (01:13:43):
Shame is this ugly feeling that takes us away from
our highest vibration, which is joy.

Speaker 10 (01:13:51):
It's the you know that, and I don't want to
get to spiritual.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Here, but get spiritual. This is a platform to get spiritual.

Speaker 7 (01:14:01):
Joy and gratitude to me are the lines to be
closest to God and that and so whenever you have
that shame, whenever you are carrying that, except mental and
emotional exhaustion, which I've seen in trauma or in burnout,
you're not able to establish that communication line.

Speaker 10 (01:14:24):
You're not able to.

Speaker 7 (01:14:25):
Receive because in the vibrational language, you're just in a
very low state. That doesn't mean that God is not there.
That doesn't mean that God is not paying attention to you.
That doesn't mean that God is not helping you. Is
that you are in a space where you cannot get
that information.

Speaker 3 (01:14:44):
Nope, Yeah, so true. And that's where I was for
eighteen years. Wow, you know, for eighteen whole years.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
A one day. You know, it took the trigger of
my dhood to say it stops.

Speaker 11 (01:15:02):
This is it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):
I'm done, I'm tired of carrying this. I love people,
I'm a people person.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
But you wouldn't know it. You know, there's no way.
Really you used to.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
Be what used to be over the youth group, used
to be the one to have them go to the
beach and have beach parties.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
You used to want where is it? What happened to her?
She was gone.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
I used to read books that I would look for
the thickest book in the library because I know, guarantee
I escaped.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
Everybody was livingly real lives.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
I was living real life, taking care of home from
the age of six younger siblings.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
That was real life.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Girls were playing dollhouse. I was really cooking and cleaning.
So my only escape was in books. So I found
the thickest book to read, and then I share what
I learned or what I wanted that, And I think
about the romance that I see in Harlequin.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
I used to love those as a teenager. I'm like,
what happened? Did I miss that? I said, I'm a romantic?
How Come I got the short end of the stick?

Speaker 9 (01:16:12):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
So I thought I had enough love in me and
that love is what carried. But you're right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
I was at a low frequency. I knew God was there,
but I was at a low frequency. And whenever that
frequency increase, I couldn't believe that he would come to
my level because there goes the unworthiness again. What's been
said from a child into adult All right. So again,

(01:16:47):
like I said, this is still a continuation of the
emerging and power. We're real here, you know, to be
real because we have real individuals people that are watching us,
that are going through these experiences and they need to
hear this. And as we speak, we need to hear it,
believe it or not, because we're planting positive seeds. Okay,

(01:17:09):
it's like a flower that was growing in a place
that it shouldn't plant anybody, see those plants shouldn't be
in the environment that it's in. But it's thrive to
come up. But the environment will not let it be
great unless somebody take it out and transplant it and
report it into another environment for it to fully become

(01:17:32):
with it is.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
And that is what God literally had to do for me.

Speaker 10 (01:17:38):
And he will give signals too.

Speaker 7 (01:17:41):
Oh but sometimes we don't listen or we find it
we are being stubborn or we think we know better. Oh,
if you become obedient too, when you have that feeling
I don't belong here, nothing I do is going to
fix the situation. And you are strong in your faith

(01:18:02):
and your you have that confidence, you're walking in your
lights and not in your shame.

Speaker 10 (01:18:07):
Yes, you remove yourself.

Speaker 7 (01:18:09):
That's when you allow the space to come in from
the center and let you know, God do his work.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
Yes, indeed, that's why you see. Everything I do is
the butterfly, because I came from the caterpillar.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
I almost died in the cogon. But now, huh, you
can't tell me nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
You know. I'm at the point like I am so confident.
I was so low self esteem. I wear confidence like
a garment. It's not the hair, it's not the nails.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):
I could go to Walmart and walk out of there
like I just came out of Vogue. Yeah, it's the confdance.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
I go thrifting and I say this all the time.
You would be you would dare to say that's a
dress that came off a trift rock.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
Why?

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Because the confidence that exude it is so powerful, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
And when people say I love you, I say, no,
you saying that now, but you didn't say that ten
years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):
It's because I'm loving me now, all right, And that's
what's exuding, and that's what you're connecting to. Don't get
it twisted. Yeah, you know it's because I am now
loving me, all right. So we're going back to this.
So the version of yourself today, Okay, what would you

(01:19:29):
say today to the version of yourself that stayed quiet
to survive?

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Speak to her.

Speaker 9 (01:19:39):
That you said something that I think is extremely powerful.
I think culture likes to make it seem like if
you like yourself, that it's a negative thing. But there
are a lot of studies and tons of use cases
and even scriptures that talk about how important the way
you see your is to the way that you interact

(01:20:01):
with other people. So I do a lot of like
guided meditations with my clients where they talk to themselves,
or they hug themselves, or they interact with themselves, because
there's so much work that can happen when you really
learn to like you. She said, love yourself, like yourself,
give yourself compassion, take away blame. There's so much that

(01:20:24):
can happen in that space. So I love this question.
I think the version of me who was silent to survive,
she was saying all the all the wrong things in
her thoughts, but all the right things with her mouth.
And even Marqua today, I'm really learning to teach myself

(01:20:44):
how to embody what I really believe. Take the things
that you think and the things that you believe and,
like you said, wear it as a garment. What does
it really look like to think the way that you're talking.
Because if you really think that God loves you and
it's unconditional and there's nothing that you can do to
receive that love other than just agreeing that it's yours,

(01:21:08):
then stop making it your responsibility to check off boxes
or to accomplish things, or to make people feel safe,
or to make people feel comfortable, and just agree with
what you say out your mouth. Because I know for
years of my life there were things that I was
saying that sounded right, but I would negate them right

(01:21:29):
away in my mind, and I couldn't embody what I
was saying out my mouth because I didn't believe my
heart and in my and in my mind. So I
do the imagination work says okay, let.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
Me Welcome to Emerge and Empower podcast TV, a platform
where resilience meets transformation. Here we amplify voices that have
faced trials, trauma, and adversity. Story episode brings raw, unfiltered
conversations with individuals who have risen from hardship, embracing faith,
strength and purpose PM English and Saturdays at six pm,

(01:22:06):
would select Saturdays in Creole for our Haitian audience.

Speaker 2 (01:22:17):
All Right, we're back. Can you remember what you said?

Speaker 9 (01:22:24):
Well, yes, embodying right, believing what you say out your mouth,
not just you know, not just using words as a
way to sound good in front of people, but actually
believing what you're saying with your heart and with your head,
creating that. I live a coach who I love. She's
a full body.

Speaker 6 (01:22:41):
Yes.

Speaker 9 (01:22:42):
I wish that the version of me who felt like
she had to be silent understood that I could give
myself a full body.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
Yes.

Speaker 9 (01:22:50):
And the cookies that crumbled and the people who had
to go away, or the things that I had to
navigate as a result of my yes to myself were
all so beautiful, you know, like we we all the
time look at like our negative situations or the time
it takes for us to get to where we're supposed
to be as a negative thing. God has really showed

(01:23:10):
me like the hard times, the years of confusion, the chaos,
all of the stuff that really is comfortable to talk about,
that's really where the beautiful stuff gets created. And so
in my difficult moments, in the moments where things were
trying to silence me. I can look back at those
spaces now and say, man, I learned so much about

(01:23:33):
how to love myself in that moment. That was the lull,
right like that was the bottom, So now the ceiling.
As a result of that, I was very low. That
was my floor in that moment, or my basement. So
now the opposite of that is I get to be
the type of Marquela who can show up in the world,
who can give compassion to other people because I give
it to myself first. I can love people without frills

(01:23:56):
because I love myself without friels first, and all of
that embodiment it only comes because I believe that what
I was saying was actually real with my heart in
my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
Thank you so much. I'm gonna borrow one of my
trophies here.

Speaker 3 (01:24:13):
I'd say to you, congratulations, thank you, you've made it,
you have emerged.

Speaker 9 (01:24:25):
Yes, I like you're saying. I might've been quiet before,
but now I don't know. Even before I was cussing
my ex husband. Now he was acting great and I
was acting crazy him. But now the freedom to what
I say, it's not that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:42):
Yes, thank you so much. That was just definitely beautiful jet.

Speaker 7 (01:24:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:24:48):
So I'm taking myself back to the gem that I
am envisioning who was in that really dark place and
felt really alone and isolated. And I would say to
that Jem right there in that moment, you are not alone.
I see you, and I think there is something powerful

(01:25:11):
about being seen. And I opened up a talk one
time about hey, it's nice to see you, because even
now I can still struggle with those things that come
up that say, well, nobody is seeing you right now.
See you're invisible, and I went through this long season
of invisibility and I just felt like nobody sees anything

(01:25:33):
at all. But I would go back to her and say,
I see you, and you definitely aren't alone sitting there
on the floor crying and you can't figure out why
you can't stop crying because I see it, and I
know there's people dealing with that right now. It was
never just me. And I also wrote down there's something
powerful about being seen and known as who you are,

(01:25:56):
your truest identity, to the core of who you have
been made to. There is power and the knowing of that.
So knowing yourself, knowing others, knowing God, that's it. If
I ever was to win an award, That's what I
want to go out.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
You know, I'm gonna get your one. You ain't got
to worry. I'm giving you.

Speaker 6 (01:26:19):
I want to know myself, I want to know other people.
I want to know God because all of it works together,
because we're all connected.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
Yes, that's what I.

Speaker 6 (01:26:27):
Would continue to tell myself that was struggling at that moment,
the darkest moment I could ever think of, and knowing
that even in that moment, still connected, was not alone,
was never disconnected.

Speaker 11 (01:26:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
So that takes me to my first book that talks
about she mergins. I am she You have e merged. Okay,
I got to get you a shirt, so we'll talk
about all of this later. I can get to everyone
that has participated in this virtual conference.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
You have emerged.

Speaker 3 (01:27:01):
You know, you have come away from all right, so
you are she merged. You have emerged, amen, Doctor Rivera.

Speaker 7 (01:27:11):
Yeah, so I the one thing that I want to
say is for anybody who's a very dark moment in
your life right now and you're seeing us as individuals
who have emerged, or from my experience, you can learn.

Speaker 10 (01:27:25):
Something from it.

Speaker 7 (01:27:27):
There's a couple of things don't allow a traumatic incident
to find who you are or your identity. Don't fall
a victim again of wearing that victim blanket over you,
because you're more than just a label victim.

Speaker 10 (01:27:44):
You are a survivor.

Speaker 7 (01:27:46):
You will get to the point where you will become
a thriver, a healer, and an alchemist. You will be
able to alchemize the pain into something wise and so
it's gonna take time time, it can take years. Make
sure that you're connected with mental health counseling. Make sure

(01:28:06):
that in the event that you cannot connect with a
direct therapist, there are women's programs or shelters out there
that have counselors who can work with you, and you
know they work on a particular scale, so it could
be depending on what you can afford.

Speaker 10 (01:28:26):
So services are out there.

Speaker 7 (01:28:28):
Don't restrict yourself thinking, oh, I'm never going to be
able to heal or move on. Also, if you happen
to have a history of sexual victimization, the Rape Abuse,
Incest and National Network has a chat availability that is
completely anonymous, and so you can share what happened to you.

(01:28:50):
You can disclose the incident. Nothing is going to affect you.
They're not going to reach out to the police. It
is a space for you to let it out and
they can give you resources. And in that website, there
are centers that rein dot org where you can look
for organizations in different states and you can connect with

(01:29:12):
those organizations that can provide you with that level of support.

Speaker 10 (01:29:16):
Now, I am a burnout coach.

Speaker 7 (01:29:18):
I treat burnout in the same trauma informed lens as
I would have with working with victims. So if you
are managing those symptoms of burnout, feel free to reach out.

Speaker 10 (01:29:29):
I am here for you.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:29:32):
Well you heard it here on Emerge and empower as
we are running the she Mergence virtual conference. Now, if
you found any of my guests to be relatable, do
reach out. You can in box me.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
So I could get you in touch with their information.

Speaker 3 (01:29:48):
If you watch my pages LinkedIn and Facebook and even Instagram,
you'll be able to see their bio and their links
so that you could be in touch with them, especially
if they are in your area and you want to
see someone in person. But remember you can also do
it virtually and you could be anywhere in the world

(01:30:08):
and still connect and get the healing that you need
right on your sofa, right in your bed, wherever you
are sitting.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
At a park.

Speaker 3 (01:30:16):
You can have someone come right there and just you know,
mentor you empower you help you. And burnout, guys, is stressed.
It it's very disabling and it causes so much more,
even especially if you have unresolved trauma and then with burnout.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
I don't know what to say. That's just a recipe
for disaster there. So let's heal.

Speaker 3 (01:30:40):
Let's heal for real, right, Start, don't say I don't
know how. Start Start by talking.

Speaker 9 (01:30:47):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:30:48):
If you've talked and you say nothing has happened, I'm stilerating.
It's because there's more to it. You have to go
to the next step. You got to keep moving in
this journey of healing. It is not spontaneous. It's not overnight,
even though we live in a microwave society, it's not.
You have to take time and invest in your healing.

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):
Amen.

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
So thank you so much ladies for being here on
the set on today. I really want to thank you.
And you have definitely shared your personal journeys and also
the experiences that are out there, whether you're at work, home,
whatever situation. I believe we've covered every topic all right
on today, grief, loss, pain after the fact, even when

(01:31:31):
you're behind bars and you're still because a lot of
reason why people go behind bars is because we have
too much unresolved issues and we feel angerage all of
these different things that we're lashing out. Let's heal for real,
all right, don't explode. Let's bring that down so you
can go into your journey for healing. So thank you

(01:31:52):
for watching, and we'll be back next week. Bye bye,
wow wow wow wow. What a powerful segment, What a
powerful segment. And I can't wait. I can't wait for
the other women that will be coming on. I'm men
because remember this platform of emergence and not just female,
all right, even for our men. So I want to

(01:32:14):
thank each and every one of you as you have
been here for session two of the she Mergent Virtual Conference.
I want to thank you for following along with this
segment and our virtual conference, your engagement, support and participation
to make this journey meaningful, impactful, all right, your shares,

(01:32:34):
your giving, everything that you do has made a difference.
Thank you so much, and we'll be back next week
for more. Hey, Every Tuesday, remember every Tuesday at six
pm up until the first Tuesday in September, we'll be
running it. So if you feel like I should have
been on this conference, it's not too late, all right.

(01:32:57):
Some could not make it, but you know the seats
are still here. There's one or two seats that still available,
so just go to uh invox me and we'll get
you in touch with what you need to continue on
this healing journey. Until next time. Thank you so much

(01:33:17):
for watching the she Emerge and Virtual Conference on Emerge
and Embower.

Speaker 2 (01:33:22):
Bye

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Shemergence: Session 2 | When Silence Isn’t Strength

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Shemergence: Session 2 | When Silence Isn’t Strength