February 22, 2022 • 31 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to this week's episode of Her with
Amina Brown. You know, you know what I haven't talked
enough about in these first few episodes of the year
is our her living room, and I just want to
bring you back to that visual. I don't know where
you are, where you may be listening. I get messages
from a few of you, so I know some of
(01:01):
you are working from home and you're listening from there.
Some of you may be commuting. You're listening in your car. Uh.
Some of you are on public transportation, headed to work
or headed to play wherever you're headed. Some of you
are listening late at night. So I don't know the vibes,
(01:21):
but just know when you're listening to this podcast. My
goal is still for you to feel that you are
gathered in our girlfriends living room. Gathered in the living
room space that is where you bring your little bits
of snacks. It's where there's no judgment for the combination
(01:42):
of snacks that you bring together. So welcome back to
our worn couch situation in the living room. Because isn't
it isn't that the best couch where it's just it's
just worn enough. You know, that's the best couch just
like a pair of jeans, just worn an enough. Okay,
speaking of being with girlfriends in the living room this episode,
(02:06):
we are talking about the friends that we need in
our lives. And I think I've discussed on here that
I spent the ladder in part of the year into
the beginning of the new year watching through Real Housewives
of New York and whenever I go through periods of
(02:27):
time where I'm experiencing high anxiety for some reason, there's
something about the Real Housewives franchise that is soothing to me.
And I don't I don't know what that says about me.
I'm not going to get into trying to psychoanalyze that
about myself, but it's just true. So there was a
scene where one of the housewives was it was actually
(02:51):
a reunion scene, and they were talking about Bethany Frankel,
and they were talking about how she always orders really
well for the table. Whenever they would go to a restaurant,
she would typically research the restaurant in advance. She would
call the restaurant ahead and say, when we sit down,
here's here's the food we want to come out while
everyone is still figuring out what they want to order,
(03:14):
and I was like, oh my gosh, like, what a
wonderful friend to have, Like, it's so good to have
a friend like that, which sent my mind going to
who are the friends that we really need in our lives?
So in this episode, let's talk about that the first
friend that you need is a cussing friend. And I
(03:35):
need to start right here. I need to start right
here because I didn't realize the importance of having a
custom friend until maybe several years ago, the last several
years of my life. And I happen to have a
couple of friends in my life that are just truly
the best at cussing and cussing in a moment it
(04:00):
where you don't have the other words to like articulate
your situation. And I also want to submit to you
all that I know that I am the custom friend
for some of my friends. I'm not gonna do all
that cussing on this podcast, but there are a few
of my friends that would be like, it's her, She's
the one that's doing the custom So if you're listening
(04:22):
to this and when I said custin friend, you got uncomfortable,
then the custin friend isn't you? You probably have some
custom friends. And if you have some friends and listen
to this podcast and they also reach out to you
when they get to this part, then it's you. You
are the friend that cusses. I'll tell you a moment
that I realized having a custom friend is really important.
(04:44):
Oh my gosh, y'all. Who I was just thinking about
this moment And I want to give a shout out
to my friend Nish nishe Y Seth. She is just
a fabulous person. I may just need to like reach
out to her and just call her real quick and
talk crazy to her for five minutes, because this story
is about her, a real life story. I was out
(05:06):
of women's conference. Nish and I and several of our
mutual friends were at this conference, and UM, I'm just
gonna keep it real with y'all. You know, my husband
and I were going through some struggles trying to get pregnant.
And I can't remember if this happened before or after
(05:28):
I had to go on stage. I think it happened
before that. Someone that I knew came up to me
at that event and announced to me her pregnancy. And
if you're listening to this and you have ever experienced
loss or miscarriage experienced and fertility in any way. You
know exactly what I'm talking about, that you can have
(05:50):
this moment inside where when you are struggling, you're trying
to get pregnant and it's not going well for you,
and someone else announces their pregnancy to you, you are
exceedingly happy for them, and you are also feeling such
heartbreak for yourself. And that can really be a hard
(06:11):
thing to describe to someone if they've never been through it,
you know. And so Nish is in the green room
of this conference with me, watching this moment happen, and
she knew some of the behind the scenes of my life.
And after this friend like told me her announcement, and
(06:35):
I I then did a I did a really great
job not showing to her like how much I was
like breaking inside. And then she left and I went
to sit down next to Nish, and Nis turned and
looked at me, and she said the F bomb so
loud and so pointedly, And I just never thought I
(06:55):
would appreciate hearing the F bomb in that context, in
that moment. But there wasn't anything else to say, there
was no advice to give, there was nothing she could
say to fix it or make it feel any better.
But just her saying the F bomb to me in
that moment just had me like yes, just that be like,
(07:20):
thank you girl for feeling me in this moment. You know,
you need a friend like that because sometimes, like you know,
here I go being the cusin friend, But sometimes hardship
is going to happen in your life. And the truth is,
sometimes they'll be such hard things that can happen to
(07:41):
you that even when people who are praying people go
to pray, they may not even have the exact words
to pray. And I am a person who also thinks
that cussin can be prayer to you know, um, because
I think God understands that understands our humanity and how
we feel when life just hits us in these really
(08:04):
really hard ways. When you have a custom friend, it's
really nice because sometimes they can use their cuss words
to articulate a thing that you are struggling to put
words to. Sometimes just them saying a word that in
some you know, circles of people would be considered a
really inappropriate word to say feels really great certain situations.
(08:29):
So you should have a custom friend, even if you
don't cuss yourself. You should have a custom friend. If
you do cuss yourself, sometimes you need a custom friend
that's very like cuss articulate. You know that just can
really drop a nice phrase that you need. So shout
out to the custom friend. It's important. And shout out
to my girl Niche because that was that was a
(08:49):
real moment between she and I. Okay. The next type
of friend that you need is a curator friend. And
this is a person that at knows a certain they
know like certain things really well. Like it could be
a person who knows music very well. It could be
(09:09):
a person who knows good books. It could be a
person who knows film, knows television shows, knows house decor
or house organization, things, you know, like. It could be
many things that that person can be really interested in,
but they go beyond being just an enthusiast about those things.
(09:33):
This is a person that not only is excited or
interested in that particular subject matter, but if you went
to them and said, hey, I'm looking to dabble in
this blah blah blah genre of stuff, where do you
think I should start? That person would then be able
to go through the things they know and curate to you,
(09:56):
I think you would like this book because of these reasons,
or they might even know enough about the subject matter
to say to you, tell me what you're looking for
when you're looking for this type of thing. I'll give
you an example. My friendly is a fantastic curator of
I would say of books in general, but very specifically.
(10:19):
I asked her sometimes to give me romance recommendations because
I know this is a genre that she reads, and
during the pandemic. I've talked to you in previous episodes
about how I picked up on reading more romance because
I just needed to read some books that we're about
the newness of love and always have a happy ending.
I just needed that, like everything's going to turn out
(10:41):
good for these characters, you know. So when I went
to her and said, hey, I'm thinking about reading more romance,
who should I read? And she had this like immediate
list of questions, like asking me different things. Was I
looking for authors of color? Was I looking for black
women authors like she had all? Was I looking for
(11:01):
a certain level of heat in the book itself? Right?
So I answered those questions and then she, like is
a wonderful friend. She sent me an email with like,
here are the things I would suggest for you based
upon what you described to me? Are your interests? Right?
So it was sort of like she used these answers
(11:21):
to her questions that I gave her. She used her
knowledge of me, and she used her knowledge of the
things that she knows well. Right. It is wonderful to
have a curator friend in your life. It could be
someone who, like my friendly, knows books. It could be
someone who knows good TV shows, Like I feel like
I watch a good bit of TV, and so maybe
(11:44):
a lot of TV is probably more than a good bit,
But anyways, I watch a lot of TV, and so
I do have people sometimes ask me like, hey, what
did you think about this show? You know, do you
think I would like it? And I can say, here's
what I liked about the show. I don't think you
would like it. I don't recommend you watch it, but
here's what's good about it. Or if people come to
(12:06):
me and say I want to watch something else on TV,
I'm totally that person. I can also be that person
about music too. It depends on the type of music,
because I'm not gonna lie to 'all that I'm kind
of like, it's a certain type of music I like
and a certain type of music I don't. So I'm
not as much of a wide span, you know, listen
to just all the music person. But if the person
(12:27):
comes to me and their taste are kind of similar
to mine, then I might be like, Oh, here's the
starting place, you know, here's where I would start, Here's
where I think about blah blah blah. You should get
you a good curator friend. Get you some friends that
know about some things that you don't know that much
about and would be willing to give you tips on
how you can kind of start, you know, dipping your
(12:48):
toe in the water of knowing more about that next.
This is what Bethany Frankel inspired me in seeing this
particular season of Real Housewives of New York. You need
a foodie friend, okay, and a foodie friend can present
themselves in a couple of different ways. Number One, a
(13:10):
foodie friend is someone who knows how to order food well.
And I'm gonna tell you the person in my life
who is the best orderer of food is my husband
when we were dating, and I have to say, he's
like this about food, and he's also like this about
cocktails too. When we were dating our first several dates,
I feel like I ordered badly. I don't, I don't.
(13:32):
I don't know if I just ordered, if I was
ordering safe. I don't know if I was like nervous
because we were on our first several dates. But I
feel like, pretty consistently our first several dates, his order
came to the table and I immediately like regretted what
I ordered. So after doing that a few times, then
(13:55):
I would finally, like I would look at the menu
and I would tell him, Um, these are the three
things I'm looking at. Which of these do you think
that I would like or do you think I should try?
And he would say, I would try this one, this one,
I wouldn't try that one because of the type of
restaurant this is, you know, Like I think I was
making some mistakes. Like if you go to a steakhouse place,
(14:19):
it depends on the place if getting something else other
than steak is actually gonna work out, you know, Or
if you go to a place that pasta is sort
of like the central of the menu, you know, you
might order a sandwich there and be like sorely disappointed. Right,
So I feel like I was making those kinds of mistakes,
(14:39):
which may have been just because I was so happy
to just hang out with him that I wasn't paying
much attention to the menu. And then sometimes now that
we've gotten married, sometimes what he'll do is if I'm
looking on the menu and I see like two or
three things that I'm like, oh, I can't really decide,
He'll be like, why don't you order this? And I'll
(15:00):
order that, and then you can try both things, which
is really sweet. It's really sweet when you are dating
in a relationship with someone that is willing to like
take that risk, They're willing to throw that throw that
dice out there. But I just started to trust his
palette there, you know. And as it relates to cocktails,
(15:32):
I am a person who I think as I've gotten older,
I've gotten a little more my palette has become a
bit more adventurous. But as previously stated in some other episodes,
you know, I was very new to drinking. I didn't
start drinking till I was in my late twenties, so
it has taken me some time to figure out, like,
(15:54):
am I a person who likes wine or my person
who likes wine? With this kind of meal. My person
who likes a cocktail, What type of cocktail do I like?
What kind of bidders do I prefer? What are the
things in the cocktail that excite me? You know? So
there are times that I would ask Matt, when you
look at the menu, what are the top two or
three things you would order? And I would order out
(16:17):
of his list of things. And I would do the
same with the cocktails. So that is the plus of
having a foodie friend that they know how to order food. Well, okay,
the other type of foodie friend you need is someone
who knows how to suss out a good restaurant. I
feel like I pride myself on being this friend. But
(16:38):
I didn't start being a person that susses out a
good restaurant because I wanted to be a foodie friend.
I think this happened to me because I was traveling
all the time. Well, it was a combination of the
fact that I was traveling all the time for work
and that in my thirties, I discovered that I was
going to have to for a while ago dairy free.
(17:00):
I mean, now I can have some dairy, but I
had to have a period of time where I was
gonna go dairy free, I had to limit sort of
the hormone induced foods that I was eating. So it
meant that that that limited the amount of chain restaurants
that I could eat at. And then over time, as
you know, Matt and I traveled together mostly for many years,
(17:22):
and so when we would travel together, it sort of
became this thing like I just really honestly feel like
life is too short to eat bad food. Like that's
just how I feel about it, you know. And just
because you're traveling and you're away from home, and you
maybe in a place that has restaurants that you're not
familiar with, whether they are chains or mom and pop shops,
(17:42):
you know, I really became a lot less interested in
eating at the restaurants I knew and more interested in
wanting to know, well, where are we and what is
the best cuisine that you can have here? What's the
stuff you know that people all always want to make
sure they eat when they're in blah blah blah city.
(18:04):
So Matt and I started kind of making a rule
for ourselves that we would not for the most part,
unless we were like in a pinch, we wouldn't go
looking for some national chain that we knew if we
had the time, we're gonna find someplace there that's really
good food. A lot of times. Some of the places
that are really good food there, of course they're local places.
(18:26):
A lot of times they are also locally sourced, which
was really helpful for a lot of my dietary restrictions.
Sometimes it was not healthy food at all, it was
just gonna be delicious. I remember one time Matt and
I were traveling at this we had performed at this
college in East Texas, and it was one of those
places where this what happen to us all the time,
(18:47):
because we did a lot of Christian youth and Christian
college events. So you'd fly into like the major airport,
but then you'd have to drive like an hour and
a half for two hours to get to whatever the
school was in the middle of no place, and so
the school was in East Texas, but we had to
fly into Houston. So it's one of those hustles where
(19:08):
we had to perform speak whatever we were doing at
the college in the morning, and then we had to
hustle the one and a half to two hours back
to get back to the airport in time for our flight.
We were so hungry we were electing not to eat
in the college cafeteria. Because I have spoken at many
colleges across the country, I have yet to meet one
(19:29):
that I was like, Wow, I'm really glad I ate
here instead of this restaurant. You know. And here's how
I suss out if it's a good restaurant. If I've
had the time prior to traveling to to said city,
I will look up the lists of like, you know,
top ten places you should eat in Houston, right, top
(19:53):
five best restaurants in Houston. I'll look up those things
so that I can know what we're close to or not.
The other thing I do is like cross reference the
list with Yelp, because sometimes a thing could end up
on a list, and maybe the list was three years ago,
(20:13):
and maybe the chef or whoever that was doing the
cooking at that time is not there anymore. So sometimes
the list are not always as current as what's on YO.
So if I see a restaurant on a list and
I go to yok, it always has to be four
stars and above. I don't play games about it. Okay,
(20:34):
when I'm in Atlanta, I'm not gonna lie. I know
my restaurants here. There are some restaurants I frequent that
have three and a half star reviews on Yo, but
I have eaten there. It's pretty consistent food. You know.
I'm not looking for this like Amazing League or may Meal.
(20:54):
I'm going there because there's like a particular taco I
love over there, or there's a particular sandwich I to
eat it over there. But when I'm out of town,
no games, you can't afford to risk yourself on three
stars in a city you're unfamiliar with. You can't afford
to do. It has to be four stars in above.
So Matt and I now man I are in a
(21:16):
situation where there wasn't really a way to search the
restaurants in advance because we technically weren't in Houston. By
the time we got to Houston, we were gonna have
to get on the plane. So we had to find
between this college in the middle of nowhere in Houston, Texas,
where can we eat? Okay, I go on, yell, I
(21:36):
find a four star po Boy restaurant. This is the
stuff of dreams. Okay, this is the stuff of dreams.
A four star Po Boy restaurant that just happens to
be between this old place in Houston. Sure, So Matt
and I are like, you know what, We're gonna take
the risk, throw the dice on it. We drive up
(21:58):
to the place and it literally looks you have pulled
up to your aunt's house. It's like a small, little
one story house. It had all these different colors the
way it was painted. The shutters were different colors from
the wall. We're different colors from the one wall over
here was a different color from this wall. Like it
was just all sorts of different colors. We go inside
(22:20):
it's black owned restaurant and they're like pictures of the family,
you know, up on the walls. And we look at
each other and we're like, I'm pretty sure this is
about to be some of the best food. Like this
little like little house, little hole in the wall type
spot four stars in the middle of like not quite
(22:41):
being in a metropolitan area. Yes please. We had two
of the best po boys I've ever had in my
entire life that day. Like we really had to I
want to say, we had to eat half of our
sandwiches in the restaurant, and then because we were in
a time crunch, we had to like wrap everything up
and like hurry up and leave. And the sandwich was
so good that we were like, if we don't wrap
(23:02):
this up and hurry up and leave, like we we're
gonna be late if we're gonna miss our flight. So
I love to be this person that suss is out
a good restaurant because typically if I'm meeting with my
friends and the other friend that I'm meeting up with,
like say, if I go visit a friend out of town,
and if the friend that I'm about to go visit
(23:24):
is not a foodie, then I always take it upon
myself to pick the restaurant because I feel like that
saves me from being annoyed. It's gonna give great food
to all of us, and we get a chance to
try some things, even in the city where they live.
So you need a foodie friend who can suss out
a good restaurant. It's a bonus if your friend also
knows food cities and travels. I'm gonna tell y'all that
(23:49):
one of my I used to say it was a
post pandemic dream, and sometimes I'm like, Amina, will we
ever be post pandemic? Like I just really hard for
me to imagine that life right now, Maybe it's more
like when things are less risky, when it's less risky
to travel and really vacation in the way that I
(24:12):
would like to do it. You know, I spent a
lot of time traveling to places for work every now
and then. I feel like Matt and I, towards the
end of our stint traveling, we were getting better at
making sure that if we were traveling to an area
that we really loved, that we would stay a couple
(24:32):
of extra days. Like my hometown is San Antonio, and
so whenever I get a gig in Austin or anywhere
near there, my best friend and her husband are there,
and so I almost always I'm going to stay over
an extra couple of days just to hang out with
them and just do whatever. You know. Um, Chicago is
another one of our favorite food cities, so we would
(24:54):
always at least try to give ourselves an extra day
to make sure we hit our spots, hit portillo Os
and make sure we got some Luma Naddis, you know,
pizza while we were in town, and stands donuts. You know,
there's just some places that we were like, I gotta
do it, you know, and my dream now that I
(25:15):
have been home for almost two years. I haven't taken
a flight, y'all, in almost exactly two years. Next month
will make exactly two years since I have been on
a plane, which is the longest I have not been
on a plane since I was a child, Okay, And
I have thought about, you know, the previous life that
I had that Matt and I were doing together when
(25:38):
we were on the road traveling a lot, and of
course I missed the stage and I do believe in
time I will be able to safely get back to that.
But I realized I missed traveling, and I missed traveling
more than I missed traveling for work. So it is
a dream of mine in this next you know, decade
(25:59):
or two of life to go back to some of
those cities that we went to for work and really
like fell in love with the food and just have
time that we're just going back to that city to
eat and probably go see some of the art that's
there if there's a show to see, you know. I
feel like Chicago is a city that's like that. L
A is like that. To me, New York is like that.
(26:23):
Miami is a city that I've been to, but I
haven't really gotten a chance to experience the food. So
it's one of my like food cities that I would
want to visit. New Orleans. We went to New Orleans
for an anniversary and I was like, oh my gosh,
like we just came here and we just got to
like sleep and eat food and listen to jazz. Like, yes,
you know, so I want to get back to actually
(26:45):
traveling to enjoy the cities there and enjoy the food.
So yes, honey, I'm here. I am here to be
the foodie friend as needed. Next friend you need is
a fashion friend. And I'm gonna tell y'all right now,
I am no, he's fashion friend. Not not not A
one of my friends would tell you that Amina helps
(27:09):
me with my fashions. Okay, fashion has just never it
has never been a gift for me, which is why
I need a fashion friend. My top fashion friend is
my sister, who was also one of my best friends.
My sister is just it's like my sister could be
in a pair of sweatpants and it just looks like amazing,
(27:31):
you know, Like I will be places with my sister
and people just they cannot stop looking at her because
she's just gorgeous in general, but then added to that
she just dresses in this way that is so like,
it looks so like effortless. But if I would tried
to wear those same exact outfits, it would look so terrible.
(27:52):
So she's my top fashion friend. Like, if I'm buying
clothes for myself, I like for her to be in
the mall with me, because I'm very much like a
creature of habit and a creature of comfort. So I'm
not as bad now as I used to be, but
I used to be very like, Oh, I walked in
Express and I tried on this one shirt. It looked nice.
I'll just buy that shirt in like four colors. She
(28:14):
was like, I know you like shirts like that, and
that's why you bought that shirt and that many colors.
But I don't think you should buy that kind of
shirt anymore because I don't think it looks flattering on
you like she would be that honest. That is part
of what a fashion friend does. I want to give
a shout out to one of my best friends, Kimberly.
She is also a person who knows how to dress.
She pays attention to like what's trending and what's in
(28:37):
fashion and stuff like that. She was the person in
my twenties that was the first person to tell me, like,
this shoe that you bought is a winter shoe. She
was like, you're not You're not supposed to wear this
shoe year round like this, you know, like she was
the first person that told me that. I want to
give a shout out to my friend and collaborator Michelle Norris,
(28:59):
who has styled me for quite a few of the
shoots that you have seen me do over the past
few years. Some of that is the work of Michelle
Norris and you have You can have a lot of
different ways that you can work with a stylist. You
can work with a stylist where they have like your measurements,
your sizes, what you're looking for, and they kind of
(29:19):
go around to different places and pull outfits for you,
and then you they either bring them to you or
you go to their space and kind of look through
what they pulled. But that wasn't as helpful for me
and trying to figure out how to be fashionable. So
I would ask Michelle if instead of doing that, if
I could go with her to the stores that she
(29:39):
would go to. You know if she were to pull
outfits or something for me. And Michelle doesn't even like
do styling like that really as a part of her
work anymore, but she would do this with me like
on the side, as like she still had a little
side hustle with me, and we would just go out
there and have a certain number of hours that I'll
(30:00):
be like, I will pay you come out here and
help me do this. And so we would go and
look through the different stores and she would pick things
for me to try on that I would never pick
off the rack for myself. Michelle Norris is the reason
that I wear a jumpsuits to this day because I
just like I couldn't get past the fact that when
I would see other women in jump suits, I would
(30:20):
think they looked gorgeous. But I really had a question
that I couldn't ask because most of the women I
saw wearing them were strangers, which is, how do you
go to the bathroom with all that stuff on? And
for those of you who know I'm gonna get you sucker,
I thank you for understanding the reference. I was just like,
I want to know how to go to the bathroom
because I can't figure that out. I'm never gonna wear this,
and she was like, please go in and try this on.
(30:41):
She was like, I think your body would be perfect
in jumpsuits, and turns out it was so Shout out
to the fashion friend. They can help you out of
a fashion rut. They can be honest with you when
you are wearing things that do not look good on you.
But it's not just that they're overcritical. They can also
help you find the things that do look good on you,
(31:03):
that do make you feel good, that do express your
sense of style. So we're going to have a part
two of this because I have a few more other
friends stories and friends suggestions that I want to give you.
But yes, everybody needs that friend. Join me in the
living room next time when we talk about what are
the other friends we need or what Amina Brown is
(31:42):
produced by Matt Owen for slobra Fit Productions as a
part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with
I Heart Radio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate,
and review the podcast.
Hey, everybody, Welcome to this week's episode of Her with
Amina Brown. You know, you know what I haven't talked
enough about in these first few episodes of the year
is our her living room, and I just want to
bring you back to that visual. I don't know where
you are, where you may be listening. I get messages
from a few of you, so I know some of
(01:01):
you are working from home and you're listening from there.
Some of you may be commuting. You're listening in your car. Uh.
Some of you are on public transportation, headed to work
or headed to play wherever you're headed. Some of you
are listening late at night. So I don't know the vibes,
(01:21):
but just know when you're listening to this podcast. My
goal is still for you to feel that you are
gathered in our girlfriends living room. Gathered in the living
room space that is where you bring your little bits
of snacks. It's where there's no judgment for the combination
(01:42):
of snacks that you bring together. So welcome back to
our worn couch situation in the living room. Because isn't
it isn't that the best couch where it's just it's
just worn enough. You know, that's the best couch just
like a pair of jeans, just worn an enough. Okay,
speaking of being with girlfriends in the living room this episode,
(02:06):
we are talking about the friends that we need in
our lives. And I think I've discussed on here that
I spent the ladder in part of the year into
the beginning of the new year watching through Real Housewives
of New York and whenever I go through periods of
(02:27):
time where I'm experiencing high anxiety for some reason, there's
something about the Real Housewives franchise that is soothing to me.
And I don't I don't know what that says about me.
I'm not going to get into trying to psychoanalyze that
about myself, but it's just true. So there was a
scene where one of the housewives was it was actually
(02:51):
a reunion scene, and they were talking about Bethany Frankel,
and they were talking about how she always orders really
well for the table. Whenever they would go to a restaurant,
she would typically research the restaurant in advance. She would
call the restaurant ahead and say, when we sit down,
here's here's the food we want to come out while
everyone is still figuring out what they want to order,
(03:14):
and I was like, oh my gosh, like, what a
wonderful friend to have, Like, it's so good to have
a friend like that, which sent my mind going to
who are the friends that we really need in our lives?
So in this episode, let's talk about that the first
friend that you need is a cussing friend. And I
(03:35):
need to start right here. I need to start right
here because I didn't realize the importance of having a
custom friend until maybe several years ago, the last several
years of my life. And I happen to have a
couple of friends in my life that are just truly
the best at cussing and cussing in a moment it
(04:00):
where you don't have the other words to like articulate
your situation. And I also want to submit to you
all that I know that I am the custom friend
for some of my friends. I'm not gonna do all
that cussing on this podcast, but there are a few
of my friends that would be like, it's her, She's
the one that's doing the custom So if you're listening
(04:22):
to this and when I said custin friend, you got uncomfortable,
then the custin friend isn't you? You probably have some
custom friends. And if you have some friends and listen
to this podcast and they also reach out to you
when they get to this part, then it's you. You
are the friend that cusses. I'll tell you a moment
that I realized having a custom friend is really important.
(04:44):
Oh my gosh, y'all. Who I was just thinking about
this moment And I want to give a shout out
to my friend Nish nishe Y Seth. She is just
a fabulous person. I may just need to like reach
out to her and just call her real quick and
talk crazy to her for five minutes, because this story
is about her, a real life story. I was out
(05:06):
of women's conference. Nish and I and several of our
mutual friends were at this conference, and UM, I'm just
gonna keep it real with y'all. You know, my husband
and I were going through some struggles trying to get pregnant.
And I can't remember if this happened before or after
(05:28):
I had to go on stage. I think it happened
before that. Someone that I knew came up to me
at that event and announced to me her pregnancy. And
if you're listening to this and you have ever experienced
loss or miscarriage experienced and fertility in any way. You
know exactly what I'm talking about, that you can have
(05:50):
this moment inside where when you are struggling, you're trying
to get pregnant and it's not going well for you,
and someone else announces their pregnancy to you, you are
exceedingly happy for them, and you are also feeling such
heartbreak for yourself. And that can really be a hard
(06:11):
thing to describe to someone if they've never been through it,
you know. And so Nish is in the green room
of this conference with me, watching this moment happen, and
she knew some of the behind the scenes of my life.
And after this friend like told me her announcement, and
(06:35):
I I then did a I did a really great
job not showing to her like how much I was
like breaking inside. And then she left and I went
to sit down next to Nish, and Nis turned and
looked at me, and she said the F bomb so
loud and so pointedly, And I just never thought I
(06:55):
would appreciate hearing the F bomb in that context, in
that moment. But there wasn't anything else to say, there
was no advice to give, there was nothing she could
say to fix it or make it feel any better.
But just her saying the F bomb to me in
that moment just had me like yes, just that be like,
(07:20):
thank you girl for feeling me in this moment. You know,
you need a friend like that because sometimes, like you know,
here I go being the cusin friend, But sometimes hardship
is going to happen in your life. And the truth is,
sometimes they'll be such hard things that can happen to
(07:41):
you that even when people who are praying people go
to pray, they may not even have the exact words
to pray. And I am a person who also thinks
that cussin can be prayer to you know, um, because
I think God understands that understands our humanity and how
we feel when life just hits us in these really
(08:04):
really hard ways. When you have a custom friend, it's
really nice because sometimes they can use their cuss words
to articulate a thing that you are struggling to put
words to. Sometimes just them saying a word that in
some you know, circles of people would be considered a
really inappropriate word to say feels really great certain situations.
(08:29):
So you should have a custom friend, even if you
don't cuss yourself. You should have a custom friend. If
you do cuss yourself, sometimes you need a custom friend
that's very like cuss articulate. You know that just can
really drop a nice phrase that you need. So shout
out to the custom friend. It's important. And shout out
to my girl Niche because that was that was a
(08:49):
real moment between she and I. Okay. The next type
of friend that you need is a curator friend. And
this is a person that at knows a certain they
know like certain things really well. Like it could be
a person who knows music very well. It could be
(09:09):
a person who knows good books. It could be a
person who knows film, knows television shows, knows house decor
or house organization, things, you know, like. It could be
many things that that person can be really interested in,
but they go beyond being just an enthusiast about those things.
(09:33):
This is a person that not only is excited or
interested in that particular subject matter, but if you went
to them and said, hey, I'm looking to dabble in
this blah blah blah genre of stuff, where do you
think I should start? That person would then be able
to go through the things they know and curate to you,
(09:56):
I think you would like this book because of these reasons,
or they might even know enough about the subject matter
to say to you, tell me what you're looking for
when you're looking for this type of thing. I'll give
you an example. My friendly is a fantastic curator of
I would say of books in general, but very specifically.
(10:19):
I asked her sometimes to give me romance recommendations because
I know this is a genre that she reads, and
during the pandemic. I've talked to you in previous episodes
about how I picked up on reading more romance because
I just needed to read some books that we're about
the newness of love and always have a happy ending.
I just needed that, like everything's going to turn out
(10:41):
good for these characters, you know. So when I went
to her and said, hey, I'm thinking about reading more romance,
who should I read? And she had this like immediate
list of questions, like asking me different things. Was I
looking for authors of color? Was I looking for black
women authors like she had all? Was I looking for
(11:01):
a certain level of heat in the book itself? Right?
So I answered those questions and then she, like is
a wonderful friend. She sent me an email with like,
here are the things I would suggest for you based
upon what you described to me? Are your interests? Right?
So it was sort of like she used these answers
(11:21):
to her questions that I gave her. She used her
knowledge of me, and she used her knowledge of the
things that she knows well. Right. It is wonderful to
have a curator friend in your life. It could be
someone who, like my friendly, knows books. It could be
someone who knows good TV shows, Like I feel like
I watch a good bit of TV, and so maybe
(11:44):
a lot of TV is probably more than a good bit,
But anyways, I watch a lot of TV, and so
I do have people sometimes ask me like, hey, what
did you think about this show? You know, do you
think I would like it? And I can say, here's
what I liked about the show. I don't think you
would like it. I don't recommend you watch it, but
here's what's good about it. Or if people come to
(12:06):
me and say I want to watch something else on TV,
I'm totally that person. I can also be that person
about music too. It depends on the type of music,
because I'm not gonna lie to 'all that I'm kind
of like, it's a certain type of music I like
and a certain type of music I don't. So I'm
not as much of a wide span, you know, listen
to just all the music person. But if the person
(12:27):
comes to me and their taste are kind of similar
to mine, then I might be like, Oh, here's the
starting place, you know, here's where I would start, Here's
where I think about blah blah blah. You should get
you a good curator friend. Get you some friends that
know about some things that you don't know that much
about and would be willing to give you tips on
how you can kind of start, you know, dipping your
(12:48):
toe in the water of knowing more about that next.
This is what Bethany Frankel inspired me in seeing this
particular season of Real Housewives of New York. You need
a foodie friend, okay, and a foodie friend can present
themselves in a couple of different ways. Number One, a
(13:10):
foodie friend is someone who knows how to order food well.
And I'm gonna tell you the person in my life
who is the best orderer of food is my husband
when we were dating, and I have to say, he's
like this about food, and he's also like this about
cocktails too. When we were dating our first several dates,
I feel like I ordered badly. I don't, I don't.
(13:32):
I don't know if I just ordered, if I was
ordering safe. I don't know if I was like nervous
because we were on our first several dates. But I
feel like, pretty consistently our first several dates, his order
came to the table and I immediately like regretted what
I ordered. So after doing that a few times, then
(13:55):
I would finally, like I would look at the menu
and I would tell him, Um, these are the three
things I'm looking at. Which of these do you think
that I would like or do you think I should try?
And he would say, I would try this one, this one,
I wouldn't try that one because of the type of
restaurant this is, you know, Like I think I was
making some mistakes. Like if you go to a steakhouse place,
(14:19):
it depends on the place if getting something else other
than steak is actually gonna work out, you know, Or
if you go to a place that pasta is sort
of like the central of the menu, you know, you
might order a sandwich there and be like sorely disappointed. Right,
So I feel like I was making those kinds of mistakes,
(14:39):
which may have been just because I was so happy
to just hang out with him that I wasn't paying
much attention to the menu. And then sometimes now that
we've gotten married, sometimes what he'll do is if I'm
looking on the menu and I see like two or
three things that I'm like, oh, I can't really decide,
He'll be like, why don't you order this? And I'll
(15:00):
order that, and then you can try both things, which
is really sweet. It's really sweet when you are dating
in a relationship with someone that is willing to like
take that risk, They're willing to throw that throw that
dice out there. But I just started to trust his
palette there, you know. And as it relates to cocktails,
(15:32):
I am a person who I think as I've gotten older,
I've gotten a little more my palette has become a
bit more adventurous. But as previously stated in some other episodes,
you know, I was very new to drinking. I didn't
start drinking till I was in my late twenties, so
it has taken me some time to figure out, like,
(15:54):
am I a person who likes wine or my person
who likes wine? With this kind of meal. My person
who likes a cocktail, What type of cocktail do I like?
What kind of bidders do I prefer? What are the
things in the cocktail that excite me? You know? So
there are times that I would ask Matt, when you
look at the menu, what are the top two or
three things you would order? And I would order out
(16:17):
of his list of things. And I would do the
same with the cocktails. So that is the plus of
having a foodie friend that they know how to order food. Well, okay,
the other type of foodie friend you need is someone
who knows how to suss out a good restaurant. I
feel like I pride myself on being this friend. But
(16:38):
I didn't start being a person that susses out a
good restaurant because I wanted to be a foodie friend.
I think this happened to me because I was traveling
all the time. Well, it was a combination of the
fact that I was traveling all the time for work
and that in my thirties, I discovered that I was
going to have to for a while ago dairy free.
(17:00):
I mean, now I can have some dairy, but I
had to have a period of time where I was
gonna go dairy free, I had to limit sort of
the hormone induced foods that I was eating. So it
meant that that that limited the amount of chain restaurants
that I could eat at. And then over time, as
you know, Matt and I traveled together mostly for many years,
(17:22):
and so when we would travel together, it sort of
became this thing like I just really honestly feel like
life is too short to eat bad food. Like that's
just how I feel about it, you know. And just
because you're traveling and you're away from home, and you
maybe in a place that has restaurants that you're not
familiar with, whether they are chains or mom and pop shops,
(17:42):
you know, I really became a lot less interested in
eating at the restaurants I knew and more interested in
wanting to know, well, where are we and what is
the best cuisine that you can have here? What's the
stuff you know that people all always want to make
sure they eat when they're in blah blah blah city.
(18:04):
So Matt and I started kind of making a rule
for ourselves that we would not for the most part,
unless we were like in a pinch, we wouldn't go
looking for some national chain that we knew if we
had the time, we're gonna find someplace there that's really
good food. A lot of times. Some of the places
that are really good food there, of course they're local places.
(18:26):
A lot of times they are also locally sourced, which
was really helpful for a lot of my dietary restrictions.
Sometimes it was not healthy food at all, it was
just gonna be delicious. I remember one time Matt and
I were traveling at this we had performed at this
college in East Texas, and it was one of those
places where this what happen to us all the time,
(18:47):
because we did a lot of Christian youth and Christian
college events. So you'd fly into like the major airport,
but then you'd have to drive like an hour and
a half for two hours to get to whatever the
school was in the middle of no place, and so
the school was in East Texas, but we had to
fly into Houston. So it's one of those hustles where
(19:08):
we had to perform speak whatever we were doing at
the college in the morning, and then we had to
hustle the one and a half to two hours back
to get back to the airport in time for our flight.
We were so hungry we were electing not to eat
in the college cafeteria. Because I have spoken at many
colleges across the country, I have yet to meet one
(19:29):
that I was like, Wow, I'm really glad I ate
here instead of this restaurant. You know. And here's how
I suss out if it's a good restaurant. If I've
had the time prior to traveling to to said city,
I will look up the lists of like, you know,
top ten places you should eat in Houston, right, top
(19:53):
five best restaurants in Houston. I'll look up those things
so that I can know what we're close to or not.
The other thing I do is like cross reference the
list with Yelp, because sometimes a thing could end up
on a list, and maybe the list was three years ago,
(20:13):
and maybe the chef or whoever that was doing the
cooking at that time is not there anymore. So sometimes
the list are not always as current as what's on YO.
So if I see a restaurant on a list and
I go to yok, it always has to be four
stars and above. I don't play games about it. Okay,
(20:34):
when I'm in Atlanta, I'm not gonna lie. I know
my restaurants here. There are some restaurants I frequent that
have three and a half star reviews on Yo, but
I have eaten there. It's pretty consistent food. You know.
I'm not looking for this like Amazing League or may Meal.
(20:54):
I'm going there because there's like a particular taco I
love over there, or there's a particular sandwich I to
eat it over there. But when I'm out of town,
no games, you can't afford to risk yourself on three
stars in a city you're unfamiliar with. You can't afford
to do. It has to be four stars in above.
So Matt and I now man I are in a
(21:16):
situation where there wasn't really a way to search the
restaurants in advance because we technically weren't in Houston. By
the time we got to Houston, we were gonna have
to get on the plane. So we had to find
between this college in the middle of nowhere in Houston, Texas,
where can we eat? Okay, I go on, yell, I
(21:36):
find a four star po Boy restaurant. This is the
stuff of dreams. Okay, this is the stuff of dreams.
A four star Po Boy restaurant that just happens to
be between this old place in Houston. Sure, So Matt
and I are like, you know what, We're gonna take
the risk, throw the dice on it. We drive up
(21:58):
to the place and it literally looks you have pulled
up to your aunt's house. It's like a small, little
one story house. It had all these different colors the
way it was painted. The shutters were different colors from
the wall. We're different colors from the one wall over
here was a different color from this wall. Like it
was just all sorts of different colors. We go inside
(22:20):
it's black owned restaurant and they're like pictures of the family,
you know, up on the walls. And we look at
each other and we're like, I'm pretty sure this is
about to be some of the best food. Like this
little like little house, little hole in the wall type
spot four stars in the middle of like not quite
(22:41):
being in a metropolitan area. Yes please. We had two
of the best po boys I've ever had in my
entire life that day. Like we really had to I
want to say, we had to eat half of our
sandwiches in the restaurant, and then because we were in
a time crunch, we had to like wrap everything up
and like hurry up and leave. And the sandwich was
so good that we were like, if we don't wrap
(23:02):
this up and hurry up and leave, like we we're
gonna be late if we're gonna miss our flight. So
I love to be this person that suss is out
a good restaurant because typically if I'm meeting with my
friends and the other friend that I'm meeting up with,
like say, if I go visit a friend out of town,
and if the friend that I'm about to go visit
(23:24):
is not a foodie, then I always take it upon
myself to pick the restaurant because I feel like that
saves me from being annoyed. It's gonna give great food
to all of us, and we get a chance to
try some things, even in the city where they live.
So you need a foodie friend who can suss out
a good restaurant. It's a bonus if your friend also
knows food cities and travels. I'm gonna tell y'all that
(23:49):
one of my I used to say it was a
post pandemic dream, and sometimes I'm like, Amina, will we
ever be post pandemic? Like I just really hard for
me to imagine that life right now, Maybe it's more
like when things are less risky, when it's less risky
to travel and really vacation in the way that I
(24:12):
would like to do it. You know, I spent a
lot of time traveling to places for work every now
and then. I feel like Matt and I, towards the
end of our stint traveling, we were getting better at
making sure that if we were traveling to an area
that we really loved, that we would stay a couple
(24:32):
of extra days. Like my hometown is San Antonio, and
so whenever I get a gig in Austin or anywhere
near there, my best friend and her husband are there,
and so I almost always I'm going to stay over
an extra couple of days just to hang out with
them and just do whatever. You know. Um, Chicago is
another one of our favorite food cities, so we would
(24:54):
always at least try to give ourselves an extra day
to make sure we hit our spots, hit portillo Os
and make sure we got some Luma Naddis, you know,
pizza while we were in town, and stands donuts. You know,
there's just some places that we were like, I gotta
do it, you know, and my dream now that I
(25:15):
have been home for almost two years. I haven't taken
a flight, y'all, in almost exactly two years. Next month
will make exactly two years since I have been on
a plane, which is the longest I have not been
on a plane since I was a child, Okay, And
I have thought about, you know, the previous life that
I had that Matt and I were doing together when
(25:38):
we were on the road traveling a lot, and of
course I missed the stage and I do believe in
time I will be able to safely get back to that.
But I realized I missed traveling, and I missed traveling
more than I missed traveling for work. So it is
a dream of mine in this next you know, decade
(25:59):
or two of life to go back to some of
those cities that we went to for work and really
like fell in love with the food and just have
time that we're just going back to that city to
eat and probably go see some of the art that's
there if there's a show to see, you know. I
feel like Chicago is a city that's like that. L
A is like that. To me, New York is like that.
(26:23):
Miami is a city that I've been to, but I
haven't really gotten a chance to experience the food. So
it's one of my like food cities that I would
want to visit. New Orleans. We went to New Orleans
for an anniversary and I was like, oh my gosh,
like we just came here and we just got to
like sleep and eat food and listen to jazz. Like, yes,
you know, so I want to get back to actually
(26:45):
traveling to enjoy the cities there and enjoy the food.
So yes, honey, I'm here. I am here to be
the foodie friend as needed. Next friend you need is
a fashion friend. And I'm gonna tell y'all right now,
I am no, he's fashion friend. Not not not A
one of my friends would tell you that Amina helps
(27:09):
me with my fashions. Okay, fashion has just never it
has never been a gift for me, which is why
I need a fashion friend. My top fashion friend is
my sister, who was also one of my best friends.
My sister is just it's like my sister could be
in a pair of sweatpants and it just looks like amazing,
(27:31):
you know, Like I will be places with my sister
and people just they cannot stop looking at her because
she's just gorgeous in general, but then added to that
she just dresses in this way that is so like,
it looks so like effortless. But if I would tried
to wear those same exact outfits, it would look so terrible.
(27:52):
So she's my top fashion friend. Like, if I'm buying
clothes for myself, I like for her to be in
the mall with me, because I'm very much like a
creature of habit and a creature of comfort. So I'm
not as bad now as I used to be, but
I used to be very like, Oh, I walked in
Express and I tried on this one shirt. It looked nice.
I'll just buy that shirt in like four colors. She
(28:14):
was like, I know you like shirts like that, and
that's why you bought that shirt and that many colors.
But I don't think you should buy that kind of
shirt anymore because I don't think it looks flattering on
you like she would be that honest. That is part
of what a fashion friend does. I want to give
a shout out to one of my best friends, Kimberly.
She is also a person who knows how to dress.
She pays attention to like what's trending and what's in
(28:37):
fashion and stuff like that. She was the person in
my twenties that was the first person to tell me, like,
this shoe that you bought is a winter shoe. She
was like, you're not You're not supposed to wear this
shoe year round like this, you know, like she was
the first person that told me that. I want to
give a shout out to my friend and collaborator Michelle Norris,
(28:59):
who has styled me for quite a few of the
shoots that you have seen me do over the past
few years. Some of that is the work of Michelle
Norris and you have You can have a lot of
different ways that you can work with a stylist. You
can work with a stylist where they have like your measurements,
your sizes, what you're looking for, and they kind of
(29:19):
go around to different places and pull outfits for you,
and then you they either bring them to you or
you go to their space and kind of look through
what they pulled. But that wasn't as helpful for me
and trying to figure out how to be fashionable. So
I would ask Michelle if instead of doing that, if
I could go with her to the stores that she
(29:39):
would go to. You know if she were to pull
outfits or something for me. And Michelle doesn't even like
do styling like that really as a part of her
work anymore, but she would do this with me like
on the side, as like she still had a little
side hustle with me, and we would just go out
there and have a certain number of hours that I'll
(30:00):
be like, I will pay you come out here and
help me do this. And so we would go and
look through the different stores and she would pick things
for me to try on that I would never pick
off the rack for myself. Michelle Norris is the reason
that I wear a jumpsuits to this day because I
just like I couldn't get past the fact that when
I would see other women in jump suits, I would
(30:20):
think they looked gorgeous. But I really had a question
that I couldn't ask because most of the women I
saw wearing them were strangers, which is, how do you
go to the bathroom with all that stuff on? And
for those of you who know I'm gonna get you sucker,
I thank you for understanding the reference. I was just like,
I want to know how to go to the bathroom
because I can't figure that out. I'm never gonna wear this,
and she was like, please go in and try this on.
(30:41):
She was like, I think your body would be perfect
in jumpsuits, and turns out it was so Shout out
to the fashion friend. They can help you out of
a fashion rut. They can be honest with you when
you are wearing things that do not look good on you.
But it's not just that they're overcritical. They can also
help you find the things that do look good on you,
(31:03):
that do make you feel good, that do express your
sense of style. So we're going to have a part
two of this because I have a few more other
friends stories and friends suggestions that I want to give you.
But yes, everybody needs that friend. Join me in the
living room next time when we talk about what are
the other friends we need or what Amina Brown is
(31:42):
produced by Matt Owen for slobra Fit Productions as a
part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with
I Heart Radio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate,
and review the podcast.
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