Full Transcript for Seeing Inner Peace as Success: A Conversation on Identity, Culture, and Personal Growth

00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:55.199 But then I now step back before I offer the help or offer anything and see how much of myself should I get? 00:05:55.199 --> 00:05:57.040 How much help should I get? 00:05:57.040 --> 00:06:02.639 And I weigh the pros and cons of will this set me back as far as I've come? 00:06:02.639 --> 00:06:05.279 I have healed, I have come this far. 00:06:05.279 --> 00:06:08.319 Is this thing going to now take me back? 00:06:08.319 --> 00:06:12.000 You know, like, you know, because that healing process took a long time. 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:14.959 You know, I'm approaching the other half, second half of my life. 00:06:14.959 --> 00:06:19.680 So you know, I've spent 50 years catering to other people and I've managed to heal to this point. 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:21.519 How much of a setback am I willing to even? 00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:25.519 And I'm not willing to give one inch, you know, because you know, you know my life. 00:06:25.519 --> 00:06:28.879 I've given so much that I am no longer willing to give an inch. 00:06:28.879 --> 00:06:33.439 So I I am now more, I think more about how I give of myself. 00:06:33.439 --> 00:06:36.959 So when I say selfish, yes, I put myself first more now. 00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:45.519 You know, I am still a work in progress, I'm not yet there, but there's always this, okay, DJ, this thing you're about to do, how is it going to impact you later? 00:06:45.519 --> 00:06:47.759 Is this something you will do and then later regret? 00:06:47.759 --> 00:06:49.439 You know, because we we do a lot of that. 00:06:49.439 --> 00:06:52.079 We offer ourselves and then later it's like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. 00:06:52.079 --> 00:06:56.240 And by then the damage is done, and then you're not trying to recuperate. 00:06:56.240 --> 00:07:02.240 And unfortunately, in our culture, they never give you time to recover because there's yet another one right behind it. 00:07:02.240 --> 00:07:08.720 You almost have age just to even just reset from whatever has happened. 00:07:08.720 --> 00:07:16.000 So, yeah, so I will say I'm in my selfish era, and I'm actually liking it because now if somebody calls me selfish, I am. 00:07:17.279 --> 00:07:21.519 So let's unpack you're in your selfish era. 00:07:21.519 --> 00:07:30.399 So I mentioned earlier you're an engineer, you're an artist, you um are in leadership on in your career. 00:07:30.399 --> 00:07:36.399 What do you mean by you're now in your selfish era? 00:07:36.399 --> 00:07:40.079 So that goes back to recognizing the lane you're in. 00:07:40.079 --> 00:07:44.160 Give our listeners some background as to how you got here. 00:07:44.639 --> 00:07:47.839 Yeah, well, I actually didn't start out as to be an engineer. 00:07:47.839 --> 00:07:52.079 All my life, I actually thought I was gonna be a medical doctor, a neurosurgeon, to be specific. 00:07:52.079 --> 00:07:55.600 So even at a young age, I knew the area of medicine I wanted to be. 00:07:55.600 --> 00:08:03.120

So as far as staying in your lane, everything I did was always tailored towards, you know, the sciences, the things. 00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:13.839 Whenever I was classified, I think the classes they put me in, it was his A class was, I think, purely science, B class was the mix, or so I can't remember the exact, but it was something like that. 00:08:13.839 --> 00:08:15.519 And I was always in the middle. 00:08:15.519 --> 00:08:20.240 So I was an artist, I had the artistic flair, and I also had science. 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:21.600 I mean, math and science. 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:29.839 And the science part actually owed to my father because I was more into language, English was my strong point, I hated math. 00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:33.840 And one summer my dad sat me down and made me face my fear. 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:35.840 Because when I see numbers, I would freeze. 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:38.159 So it wasn't that I didn't know how to do it. 00:08:38.159 --> 00:08:40.639 I just thought, oh, these things are it's like a language. 00:08:40.639 --> 00:08:42.159 Numbers are like a language. 00:08:42.159 --> 00:08:46.639 I it was just a foreign language I couldn't understand, and I just froze and I shut it out of my mind. 00:08:46.639 --> 00:08:52.080 And my dad was one of those people who was like, you need to face your fears, you can't freeze up. 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:58.960 So, based on that, and also, you know, influence, my mom was a nurse, so medical stuff was always around me all the time. 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:01.200 And I had an uncle who was a medical doctor. 00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:06.159 So it was just, it just went without saying, oh, I was gonna go in that direction anyway. 00:09:06.159 --> 00:09:12.559 And of course, as life does, I ended up in civil engineering. 00:09:12.559 --> 00:09:16.720 And it's funny because I had a teacher, a Ghanaian teacher in secondary school. 00:09:16.720 --> 00:09:18.320 Uh, we used to do introduction. 00:09:18.320 --> 00:09:23.600 I didn't like agriculture because that meant I had to be outside and I hated getting dirty and dealing with dirt. 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:27.759 So I took introduction to technology because it kept me in the classroom. 00:09:27.759 --> 00:09:31.759 And I was one of the few girls that was in that class because I didn't want to do agric. 00:09:31.759 --> 00:09:36.399 And that teacher at the time told my mom she's going to be an engineer. 00:09:36.399 --> 00:09:36.960 Mr. 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:40.399 Coach, I think we used to call him coach or quarchy or something like that. 00:09:40.399 --> 00:09:43.360 And I was like, ah, this man doesn't know what he's talking about. 00:09:43.360 --> 00:09:46.320 I'm just here because I don't want to be out there in the sun. 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:50.639 And funny enough, he he was the first person that told me I was going to be an engineer. 00:09:50.639 --> 00:09:55.279 The second person that led me into engineering, she was a black woman. 00:09:55.279 --> 00:10:13.519 Um she taught mathematics at uh Belmont Abbey College when I went through this crisis of, and how I how that crisis came about was I interviewed a bunch of neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins, because my uncle went to Johns Hopkins and he worked at Johns Hopkins, and I noticed a trend because I'm a I follow trends. 00:10:13.519 --> 00:10:19.840 I noticed patterns, and I noticed that all the women neurosurgeons I talked to were divorced or never married. 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:22.240 And what I appreciated was their honesty. 00:10:22.240 --> 00:10:27.600 And what they told me is hey, if you're gonna do this thing and be very good at it, don't get married. 00:10:27.600 --> 00:10:32.639 And that's where the cultural angle comes in, because culturally I wanted to have the best of both worlds. 00:10:32.639 --> 00:10:35.919 I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, I wanted to be married with kids. 00:10:35.919 --> 00:10:44.720 So here these people are telling me, if you're gonna be good at this thing, you may have to sacrifice the one thing I thought was the most important thing to me. 00:10:44.720 --> 00:10:50.240 Because even yes, career was important, but having family and creating my own family was also very important. 00:10:50.240 --> 00:10:56.960 And I was so depressed that day, and I walked into her office, I can't remember her name, and she was my advisor at the time. 00:10:56.960 --> 00:10:58.080 And I was so sad. 00:10:58.080 --> 00:11:00.480 I was like, here I have all my life. 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:02.799 I have worked towards being this doctor. 00:11:02.799 --> 00:11:10.799 I was well on my way, I was in the pre-med program, and boom, all of a sudden, I don't even know if that's what I want to do because there was no plan B for me. 00:11:10.799 --> 00:11:12.720 It was always going to be medical school. 00:11:12.720 --> 00:11:17.840 And she sat me down and she asked me a question that nobody has ever asked me before. 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:19.360 She said, What do you want to do? 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:20.480 And nobody's ever asked me that. 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:23.840 I mean, as liberal and as well-read as my father was. 00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:26.799 My father never asked me, I don't think he ever asked me what I wanted to do. 00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:29.279 He just assumed, hey, I've never told you what to do. 00:11:29.279 --> 00:11:30.960 I'm assuming you're doing what you want to do. 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:34.799 But the truth is, she asked me, What do you really want to do with your life? 00:11:34.799 --> 00:11:37.519 And that made me sit down and actually reflect. 00:11:37.519 --> 00:11:41.279 When you talk about being in your lane and what does success look to you. 00:11:41.279 --> 00:11:43.440 You know, in Nigeria, you're either a lawyer, doctor, engineer. 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:44.240 You know what I mean? 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:45.759 Like that's what success looked like to me. 00:11:45.759 --> 00:11:46.480 That's

true. 00:11:46.639 --> 00:11:48.080 Especially during our era. 00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:51.679 We have now reached anti-stage in our in our time. 00:11:51.679 --> 00:11:52.480 It was. 00:11:53.039 --> 00:11:54.399 That was how it was now. 00:11:54.399 --> 00:11:57.279 Nobody had to tell you or sit you down to spell it. 00:11:57.279 --> 00:11:59.840 But I was like, you know, nobody has ever asked me this question. 00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:02.240 And she asked me, okay, what are the things you're good at? 00:12:02.240 --> 00:12:04.480 Nobody ever asked me that either. 00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:07.120 They just assumed that, you know, I was just good at stuff. 00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:11.440 But and I said, Ah, well, I like to draw, I like, you know, I'm good at math, I'm good at this. 00:12:11.440 --> 00:12:13.120 And she goes, and she's going through all this. 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:14.559 She said, Oh, architectural engineering. 00:12:14.559 --> 00:12:21.279 I said, Ah, but I want to also be actively involved in the building of the thing, you know, like so Shadow, have you thought about civil engineering? 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:22.879 And I was like, What is that? 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:24.159 Can you imagine? 00:12:24.159 --> 00:12:30.399 So the so the girl who didn't like to go outside is now out in the field occasionally. 00:12:30.639 --> 00:12:33.039 Even now, I still don't like to go outside. 00:12:33.440 --> 00:12:36.080 But you're out there with that pavement though. 00:12:36.399 --> 00:12:49.039 And I there with my hard hat and vest, and I complain the whole time I'm there because you know, my nails are done, my hair is done, I have to figure out how to fit my hair inside the hard hat, and I'm like, I make this one is too much. 00:12:49.039 --> 00:12:55.679 But it's interesting because she saw in me what at the time I didn't see in myself. 00:12:55.679 --> 00:13:04.559 And that's that's one thing as I've God has been very gracious with me on is that you know, you have to also have the ear to hear when God is talking to you. 00:13:04.559 --> 00:13:15.360 Because sometimes, you know, we we get so caught up in this is what I'm supposed to be doing, but then there's that one thing or one word or one sentence, or somebody will say something that will just ring. 00:13:15.360 --> 00:13:25.120 And that was, and she went, she said civil engineer, and she described the thing to me, and I said, Okay, this civil engineer, oh let me, she goes, Well, you have to change your program for from pre-med to pre-engineering. 00:13:25.120 --> 00:13:36.399 And this is what you know, you won't finish your program here, you get one degree here, and then you have to go to either Georgia Tech, Auburn, Clemson, you know, he she rattled off the schools I had to go to to complete my program. 00:13:36.399 --> 00:13:44.320 So I was like, Oh my, how am I going to call my father in Nigeria to tell my father that that medical school that I've been shouting about since has changed.

00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:45.200 So what happened? 00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:46.399 I said, this is what we're gonna do. 00:13:46.399 --> 00:13:47.360 I changed my nature. 00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:50.799 Nature, I had settled everything first, then I called my dad. 00:13:50.799 --> 00:13:53.279 And I said, Daddy, guess what? 00:13:53.279 --> 00:13:58.240 After a lot of thinking, you know, and I've consulted, I think I'm going to change my neighbor. 00:13:58.240 --> 00:14:02.720 And then my dad is like, you know, what exact, what, what, how, what are you, what do I do want to start? 00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:05.200 I said, I think I want to study civil engineering now. 00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:08.000 And he goes, Is this a phase? 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:15.600 Like, are you because my dad was that kind of person, he's like, is this something you know, you know, because sometimes he's like, maybe you're reacting to something and then just running away. 00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:16.960 And I was like, no, not really. 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:20.559 I just think you know, maybe it's not really for me. 00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:24.000 And um, then he goes, How much is this gonna cost me? 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:26.480 You trust Niger now. 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:30.480 And I was like, Well, you know, it's similar field. 00:14:30.480 --> 00:14:32.480 And I said, Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. 00:14:32.480 --> 00:14:36.720 He goes, Are you sure you can, you know, deal with you know what's what's gonna come? 00:14:36.720 --> 00:14:39.759 Because you know, you're gonna be a woman in a male field. 00:14:39.759 --> 00:14:44.799 So there are certain things you have to be mentally and emotionally and ready for, like, you know, it's gonna come at you. 00:14:44.799 --> 00:14:47.120 I said, Well, I think I can deal with it. 00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:50.960 So my father had me write, take a do an undertaking. 00:14:50.960 --> 00:14:52.799 We call it an undertaking in Nigeria. 00:14:52.799 --> 00:14:54.000 Here you call it a contract. 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:56.960 I had to write a contract with my father. 00:14:56.960 --> 00:15:03.279 If my grades got below a certain point, or my GPA went below a certain point, I had to go back to my pre-med. 00:15:03.279 --> 00:15:08.080 So all my life with my dad, you always wrote contracts. 00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:10.320 So I had to learn how to create my own signature. 00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:14.159 Before then, it was a thumbprint, an ink on a signed contract. 00:15:14.159 --> 00:15:19.039 You got the copy, he had the original, you know, that kind of like that was how we dad dealt with us. 00:15:19.039 --> 00:15:24.799 And so I was like, okay, you know, I'm gonna prove to this man that I'm gonna do this thing, you know, like because that was how I felt. 00:15:24.799 --> 00:15:27.679 I was like, you know, my dad was somebody that was like Superman to me. 00:15:27.679 --> 00:15:30.879 So I'm like, no, I'm gonna prove to him I'm gonna do this, it wasn't a waste. 00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:33.919 And as God would have it, I found my calling. 00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:42.720 And the good thing about where I am now is I'm able to use my art, artistic side of my mind, and I'm also able to use the engineering. 00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:50.320 So as far as how I got to engineering, I'll say it's a lot of God, it's a lot of right people in the right place at the right time. 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:58.639 Because when I went into that lady's office depressed, I didn't expect to come out of there like rejuvenated. 00:15:58.639 --> 00:16:03.679 You know, I just thought I'll go there, I'll cry it on her, and she'll just console me and I'll be back. 00:16:03.679 --> 00:16:06.960 You know, I didn't expect to come out of the counselor's office. 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:08.000 I wish I knew her name. 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:09.279 I've been looking for her name. 00:16:09.279 --> 00:16:12.480 I didn't expect to come out of her office with an option. 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:17.360 I think alternative, it was like a paradigm shift for you. 00:16:17.759 --> 00:16:34.240 Like a complete shift because engineering and yes, you have similar courses you have to take, but there's also and and the timing too, because the time I went there, I was not too far along in med in pre-med, so the courses I had taken could transfer over. 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:36.240 So I didn't really lose a lot. 00:16:36.240 --> 00:16:37.840 So that's what saved me. 00:16:37.840 --> 00:16:44.559 And I, you know, as a believer, I believe that God had a lot to do with that because the timing was just right go in that direction. 00:16:44.559 --> 00:16:50.799 And there was no, there were no mentors, there was nobody to show me how to go about it. 00:16:50.799 --> 00:16:54.000 You know, I never really saw women, even in college. 00:16:54.000 --> 00:17:11.359 I mean, the female teacher, professor we had was an Indian woman, and she didn't exactly make the profession look attractive because she had her own issues, you know, she had been overlooked for positions she wanted, so she taught the course she taught in his end. 00:17:11.359 --> 00:17:14.559 So she wasn't a good mentor. 00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:21.279 The mentor I had was a structural engineer, and of course, now I thought I was gonna be a structural engineer, that's a whole story for another time. 00:17:21.279 --> 00:17:33.359 But it was a structural engineering professor from the UK that moved to South Carolina, and I just gravitated to him and maybe him to me, because you know, I'm we're Nigerians, former British colony. 00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:40.160 So I could relate to him and he could relate to me, and he for him, it's like, oh my god, I found somebody that thinks like me here. 00:17:40.160 --> 00:17:43.440 And he pretty much he mentored me because of him. 00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:47.279 The civil engineering program at Clemson was very good. 00:17:47.279 --> 00:17:51.200 Like he he gave me the confidence to

actually see it through. 00:17:51.200 --> 00:18:02.960 It wasn't an easy program to go through, but without necessarily having female mentors or visuals or females to guide, he was the one that got me pretty much through the program. 00:18:02.960 --> 00:18:08.640 And of course, God did the rest because I didn't end up being a structural engineer, I ended up being a transportation engineer. 00:18:08.799 --> 00:18:09.119 Yeah. 00:18:09.359 --> 00:18:09.599 Yeah. 00:18:09.599 --> 00:18:19.759 So you went from thinking entering college thinking you would end up being a neurosurgeon, instead ended up becoming a civil engineer. 00:18:19.759 --> 00:18:27.119 So you recognize this new lane thanks to this what we think is a God conversation, right? 00:18:27.119 --> 00:18:31.680 Then you redefine what success can now look like. 00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:42.319 And then it was time to reimagine what it could now look like to thrive in this new area that you hadn't even thought of before. 00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:46.640 And there was nobody to even ask, like, oh, so how did you do it? 00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:47.920 So how did you do it? 00:18:47.920 --> 00:18:54.880 I am now the one that the younger people come to and say, or yes, very young female engineers come to and say, So how did you do it? 00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:56.240 Like, how are you doing it? 00:18:56.240 --> 00:18:58.559 Because I'm a woman of color. 00:18:58.559 --> 00:19:03.200 Um I'm African, you know, so obviously I'm not from here. 00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:08.400 People don't realize that there's certain things you go through that are different for everybody. 00:19:08.400 --> 00:19:16.720 So, yes, first thing they see in me, I'm a black woman, and I open my mouth, and then okay, they're like, Okay, she's a black woman, but she's not from here. 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:19.519 And then my own experiences are different, okay. 00:19:19.519 --> 00:19:22.960 And then I wasn't a refugee, I didn't come here because somebody, you know what I mean? 00:19:22.960 --> 00:19:28.160 Like people just make assumptions when they see about what your experience is. 00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:43.920 So I find myself now being the person, and I've had young people come up to me and say, we look up to you because we see how you present yourself, how you how you handle different situations, you know, because a lot of them are children of illuminants. 00:19:43.920 --> 00:19:56.720 You know, they're people of color too, you know, and a lot of people that come to me to say that that they know they are also navigating, even though they're the next generation, they're navigating the things that I didn't have anybody to mentor me through. 00:19:56.720 --> 00:19:58.240 I had to go through it myself. 00:19:58.240 --> 00:20:03.920 So even as far as promotions, elevations, I had to navigate it myself. 00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:05.839 You know, go through the myself. 00:20:05.839 --> 00:20:10.559 There was nobody that prepped me for interviews or prepping for how I was supposed to look. 00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:13.920 Instead, I always got things like, Oh, don't braid your hair. 00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:17.759 Oh, you have to look away to dress away. 00:20:17.759 --> 00:20:20.880 You know, you can't talking, you keep your mouth shut. 00:20:20.880 --> 00:20:22.720 That's the kind of advice I even got. 00:20:22.720 --> 00:20:26.799 Um, when I first got to Caltrans, uh, my mentor was a black woman. 00:20:26.799 --> 00:20:33.039 I would be honest with you, I wouldn't give her to anybody to mentor because the first thing she told me is you smile too much. 00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:34.160 You're too friendly. 00:20:34.160 --> 00:20:38.160 Sometimes we can only see the world through our own pain. 00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:50.960 Because I I remember an older woman in the workplace when I was a baby lawyer, and she walks up to me and completely unsolicited advice, and she goes, Just so you know you're gonna get old one day. 00:20:50.960 --> 00:20:53.920 And I looked at her and I said, I hope so. 00:20:53.920 --> 00:20:54.799 That's the plan. 00:20:54.799 --> 00:20:56.960 I mean, I'm not trying to die young. 00:20:57.039 --> 00:21:09.920 I mean, like it was a shock to me because you know how in Nigeria you always look at auntie, and that's how I forget that we are, you know, in this work setting, you're supposed to be like an anti-figure, like somebody I can come to and talk to. 00:21:10.079 --> 00:21:18.000 You know, as a mentor, you view those that come before you ideally, as you know, you've been around the block, you could help the younger ones. 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:19.119 Yeah, ideally, yeah. 00:21:19.599 --> 00:21:26.880 Realize that I was a threat because she had been the only one there, the only female engineer before I came along. 00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:35.680 And you know me, you know how we are bubbly, you know, just you know, I was half my size then, you know, just you know, just identifying. 00:21:35.920 --> 00:21:37.680 The metabolism was metabolizing. 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:49.279 Metabolizing, I mean, and you know, at that time, you know, the excitement was I had my first job out of college, you know, I'm willing to learn a lot, and all I got was, oh, you're too this, you're to that, you're too this. 00:21:49.279 --> 00:21:52.960 It's almost like the same criticisms I got culturally. 00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:54.880 I was now getting it in the workplace. 00:21:54.880 --> 00:21:57.839 Because you're too you're too, you talk too much. 00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:08.640 Oh, you oh, and but funny enough, those are the Things that helped me elevate to where I was because all that, oh, you talk too much, you speak your mind too much, you do those were the things that helped me to navigate to where I am now. 00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:15.599 Because if I hadn't spoken up, if I hadn't been, I met you aura for aura, you know, that kind of I'm not intimidated. 00:22:15.599 --> 00:22:18.960 Because

they try you in even till now in my position. 00:22:18.960 --> 00:22:20.640 I've had people test me. 00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:26.799 Some people still think the only reason why I got my position is because they were trying to fill a quota. 00:22:26.799 --> 00:22:30.720 You know, and I and some of them silently say it behind my back. 00:22:30.720 --> 00:22:33.119 Some of them come to my face and say it to my face. 00:22:33.119 --> 00:22:39.279 And of course, as a Nigerian, I tell them, I say, okay, bring your bring your resume, bring my resume. 00:22:39.279 --> 00:22:40.000 Let's compare. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:43.599 And that's when, you know, no, you trust me, I don't, I don't let things like that go. 00:22:43.599 --> 00:22:48.319 And the reason why I don't let things like that go is because I'm thinking of the person coming after me. 00:22:48.319 --> 00:22:54.240 I don't want fellas, my nieces, you know, like I don't want them to go through that. 00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:59.680 I want when people see them in certain environments, it should be normal to see them in those environments. 00:22:59.680 --> 00:23:03.039 I shouldn't, it shouldn't be like, oh my god, you know, you speak so well. 00:23:03.039 --> 00:23:04.960 Why would I not well? 00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:13.359 You don't man, where do we even begin there? 00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:18.000 I mean, it's like when you talk about staying in your lane, which lane exactly am I supposed to stay? 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:19.519 Who created? 00:23:20.720 --> 00:23:22.799 Yeah, it's true, it's true. 00:23:22.799 --> 00:23:27.039 Staying in the lane and recognizing it, I think, are two different things. 00:23:27.039 --> 00:23:30.880 Recognizing it is what you need to launch off from. 00:23:30.880 --> 00:23:31.839 Correct. 00:23:31.839 --> 00:23:32.960 Yeah, yeah. 00:23:32.960 --> 00:23:54.240 But to your point about people want to keep you in your lane, you said that you dropped a bunch of nuggets, but one I want to kind of revisit is you said ironically when you were younger, the things that you were criticized for are now the things that are considered leadership qualities in your current big girl role, if you will. 00:23:54.240 --> 00:24:08.559 So knowing that, when I give speeches on what it means for me to reimagine what it means to thrive, I talk about reconnecting to who I was at my earliest point, right? 00:24:08.559 --> 00:24:14.720 Of my earliest point of consciousness, like before I became this lifetime caregiver. 00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:21.039 Because if you tap into what's naturally inside you, those tend to be your strengths. 00:24:21.039 --> 00:24:22.319 Those are your strengths. 00:24:22.319 --> 00:24:27.680 That's what helps you thrive in whatever environment once you find the right one for you. 00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:29.440 That's exactly it. 00:24:29.440 --> 00:24:43.119 So you talked about recognizing this lane from neurosurgery to engineering, redefining success, reimagining what it means

to thrive, because Lord knows there's a lot of deprogramming and reimagining, right? 00:24:43.440 --> 00:24:49.200 And there's the deep it's it's I don't I think the Nigerian programming is unique. 00:24:49.359 --> 00:24:51.839 Let me Okay, let's let's unpack that. 00:24:51.839 --> 00:24:52.640 Let's unpack that. 00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:54.400 Let's also explain to listeners. 00:24:54.400 --> 00:25:01.119 So for background, for more background, I was born and raised in America to two Nigerian parents. 00:25:01.119 --> 00:25:05.359 But she was born. 00:25:05.359 --> 00:25:06.720 Were you born in Lagos? 00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:08.079 I was born in Benin City. 00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:12.960 Oh, born in Benin City, raised in Lagos, and then came over here when you were preteen, right? 00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:14.079 Like you were young, young. 00:25:14.079 --> 00:25:14.400 Yeah. 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:19.920 So we do have a view of both Nigeria itself as well as the diaspora. 00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:25.599 So we're kind of have like one foot in each culture in slightly different ways. 00:25:25.599 --> 00:25:27.119 So go ahead. 00:25:28.880 --> 00:25:39.839 And there, and I will not lie, the exceptionalism of Nigerians, even in Africa, because when you say Nigerian, it's the funniest thing, everybody knows in Nigeria. 00:25:39.839 --> 00:25:42.480 Like when you go out there, they're like you're Nigerian, right? 00:25:42.480 --> 00:25:48.160 You didn't go, you're Libyan, you didn't go you're Congo, you just went straight to Nigeria. 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:55.599 And that thing that makes Nigerians exceptional is also the thing that is like, what's the word? 00:25:55.599 --> 00:26:00.079 We we we are where we we succeed, we excel, you know. 00:26:00.079 --> 00:26:03.599 Success for us is like we just keep like we talk about checking boxes. 00:26:03.599 --> 00:26:05.599 You and I have had this conversation about checking boxes. 00:26:05.599 --> 00:26:07.279 You want to talk about box checkers? 00:26:07.279 --> 00:26:09.440 Nigerians are the best box checkers. 00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:15.279 The problem now happens when you check the box and you have to uncheck the box. 00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:18.319 Do tell you you gotta unpack that. 00:26:18.319 --> 00:26:21.279 You check because uncheck the boxes. 00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:25.759 So let's let's go back again because we gotta make sure everyone's coming along the journey with us. 00:26:25.759 --> 00:26:32.799 So check about box checking for women in Nigerian culture, circa what these 2000s, early 2000s. 00:26:32.799 --> 00:26:44.000 I know these younger ones are making it a lot easier by God's grace, but those of us that are that are now the ancestors, the checklist was you must, and let me switch, let me code switch. 00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:58.400 Your your checklist was you must you must marry, you must bump a king, which means you must have kids, you must have a career, uh yes, you must do all of them at the same

time, and you must do it very, very, very, very, very well. 00:26:58.400 --> 00:27:11.680 And then at the same time, you must take care of your husband, take care of your kids, take care of your in-laws, take care of your parents, and stay slim and stay all of the things and things and things and things all at the same time. 00:27:12.079 --> 00:27:14.480 How can a person remain sane in all of that? 00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:16.319 No, I mean, let's be honest. 00:27:16.319 --> 00:27:19.359 Okay. 00:27:26.559 --> 00:27:34.720 The expectations, and I don't even know whether it's it's it's it's implied or it's it doesn't, in fact, even if they don't tell you no. 00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:35.440 Yes. 00:27:35.440 --> 00:27:37.359 I mean that's a great point. 00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:38.559 That's a great point. 00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:40.960 Even if they don't tell you, you know, you do. 00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:42.720 It's it's like osmosis. 00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:44.160 Nobody needs to tell you. 00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:48.480 You just you look around you and you're like, you know, what you what are you talking about? 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:51.920 When we're in our 20s, you go to a wedding, you're celebrating like everybody else. 00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:56.480 They will say, ah, you yeah, you're here dancing, your mates are married. 00:27:56.480 --> 00:27:57.359 Yes, yes. 00:27:57.680 --> 00:28:05.680 Remember when I told you about my god, there's so much unnecessary verbal abuse in that during that time. 00:28:05.680 --> 00:28:08.720 One auntie pulled me, I was in my 20s, I was at a party. 00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:11.359 I was just like you said, I was dancing, minding my own business. 00:28:11.359 --> 00:28:13.920 She said, Lola, let's go to the bathroom. 00:28:13.920 --> 00:28:15.839 There's something very important I need to tell you. 00:28:15.839 --> 00:28:17.039 I'm thinking, what did I do? 00:28:17.039 --> 00:28:19.200 Is there like, I mean, what's happening? 00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:24.559 I get to the bathroom, she goes, the way your body is shaped, and not careful. 00:28:24.559 --> 00:28:27.839 After you burn the first bikini, you just grow very fat. 00:28:27.839 --> 00:28:29.359 I was like, What? 00:28:29.599 --> 00:28:32.319 That's what you saw me dancing and you thought about. 00:28:32.319 --> 00:28:34.319 Like, what? 00:28:34.319 --> 00:28:36.480 I just graduated from my undergrad. 00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:37.440 You know, I had this break. 00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:38.799 My father wanted me to take a break. 00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:41.440 He was like, You've been in school constantly, you know, take a break. 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:42.960 Don't be in a hurry to get a job. 00:28:42.960 --> 00:28:45.599 And my mom had an African market at the time. 00:28:45.599 --> 00:28:47.519 So, you know, I, you know, I had nothing else to do. 00:28:47.519 --> 00:28:52.960 I'll sit and this lady walks in, one of my mom's postmas, and right in front of, I'm right next to my mother. 00:28:52.960 --> 00:28:55.200 And she goes, So what's next? 00:28:55.200 --> 00:28:57.359 Is she just going to sit here like this? 00:28:57.359 --> 00:28:59.279 Don't you have prospects for her? 00:28:59.279 --> 00:29:03.039 And my mother looked at this woman like, Come, the girl just finished school. 00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:05.279 The next step for her is to figure herself out. 00:29:05.279 --> 00:29:10.319 The first thing you're coming to talk, and mind you, I don't know this woman from madam, and she's talking like I'm not there. 00:29:10.319 --> 00:29:13.200 Like, so the next step, you need to find husband for her. 00:29:13.200 --> 00:29:16.160 And my mother was like, Thank you very much, but no, thank you. 00:29:16.160 --> 00:29:29.680 I mean, thankfully, I had parents that were at least at that point still, but you know, my parents eventually fell to cultural pressure now because when I got married the first time, because I'm 042, I'm not even gonna lie about it. 00:29:29.680 --> 00:29:42.720 When I got married the first time, it was the pressure, and my dad even admitted it, he said, you know, as much as I raised you to be very independent, I eventually felt pressure to the culture, and I knew that you weren't gonna get married if I didn't tell you to get married. 00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:45.440 And it was when my father told me to get married. 00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:50.799 I had these standards, and you know, in Niger culture, even with the men, on paper, the men look fine. 00:29:50.799 --> 00:29:55.440 When you are now dating them, you'll find out the deficiencies of a lot of these Nigerian guys. 00:29:55.440 --> 00:30:09.519 So when I talk about the complexity of the conditioning, the girls are conditioned to be superhuman, the boys are just conditioned, like they go to school, a lot of them look good on paper, but they have certain character flaws that in our culture is overlooked. 00:30:09.519 --> 00:30:15.839 Then it's not until you start dating these young men that look good on paper you find out what those flaws are. 00:30:15.839 --> 00:30:20.240 And quite honestly, those are flaws that are destroying a lot of Nigerian marriages today. 00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:23.920 Because the divorce rates among my mates is high. 00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:30.000 And those who are married still, you can see the toll it's taking on them to just to keep it together. 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.079 Because those traits are problematic. 00:30:34.079 --> 00:30:38.319 You know, you can't say sorry, you are not even taking responsibility. 00:30:38.319 --> 00:30:46.880 Like it looks the woman is doing all the work to make the family look cohesive, but he's not really there emotionally, sometimes he's not even there physically. 00:30:47.920 --> 00:30:49.359 That that's actually a good segue. 00:30:49.359 --> 00:30:54.799 So we talked about recognize, redefine, reimagine in the career sense. 00:30:54.799 --> 00:30:58.400 Now, in the personal sense, we've

switched to just personal life. 00:30:58.400 --> 00:31:06.960 And especially both of us are first daughters, too, which I also think creates its own interesting dynamic as well. 00:31:07.359 --> 00:31:08.319 Has its own name. 00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:09.680 Has its own name. 00:31:09.680 --> 00:31:14.799 Like in our in another Nigerian ethnic group, the Igbos, they have a whole title for it. 00:31:14.799 --> 00:31:17.279 I mean, there's a reason, like there's so much responsibility. 00:31:17.279 --> 00:31:20.640 The the what they call in an Igbo land, Ada, right? 00:31:20.640 --> 00:31:25.440 It's such a strong, which means it's so powerful, it has its own title on its own, right? 00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:29.519 Because it means the responsibility is so high. 00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:36.000 The expectation level, like you must be excellence, is almost like the floor. 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:38.480 It's not even the ceiling, it's the floor. 00:31:38.480 --> 00:31:43.920 And then if we're honest with ourselves, some days it feels like the goalpost moves. 00:31:43.920 --> 00:31:48.400 So what you think is excellence at one age is no longer excellence. 00:31:49.279 --> 00:31:50.079 You yourself know. 00:31:50.079 --> 00:31:53.759 There's always that uh, why can't you be like so-so-and-so daughter? 00:31:53.759 --> 00:31:54.559 Exactly. 00:31:54.559 --> 00:31:56.480 I see that they have two heads. 00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:57.440 Exactly. 00:31:57.440 --> 00:32:04.960 I don't know Sotho's daughter, and what she I can only speak for myself. 00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:08.799 So there's always that competition, or you're being pit against people. 00:32:08.799 --> 00:32:13.279 Yes, that it's like, come, I don't, you know, that's that family. 00:32:13.279 --> 00:32:14.960 We don't know what is going on in that family. 00:32:15.279 --> 00:32:21.519 I don't know what's going on, and and that's and also with the culture, there's uh and again, maybe things are getting better. 00:32:21.519 --> 00:32:24.319 I can only go by what I know growing up. 00:32:24.319 --> 00:32:26.319 And parts of this are in my book. 00:32:26.319 --> 00:32:40.319 This need to chase some form of excellence in one my in one's mind's eye that really doesn't even always apply to your actual life circumstances, but you're chasing, chasing, chasing. 00:32:40.319 --> 00:32:43.599 So you don't even recognize the lane you're in. 00:32:43.599 --> 00:32:50.640 You're trying to fulfill some type of societal view of what success is supposed to look like. 00:32:50.640 --> 00:32:58.319 And that goes back to the deprogramming, and it always happens when some type of brick wall presents itself. 00:32:58.319 --> 00:33:15.200 Because when you are the first daughter and you naturally become a type A personality, you're always back to that box checking, you're box checking, you're going to the next goal without really enjoying the achievement of the current one. 00:33:15.200 --> 00:33:18.640 You're constantly like going

to the next thing, going to the next thing. 00:33:19.039 --> 00:33:22.640 First one, the next question people ask you is, how about this one? 00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:24.480 This one, yeah. 00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:29.680 Haven't you noticed once you are just like I have just done this great thing? 00:33:29.680 --> 00:33:32.720 The first thing they said to say, this one's uncle. 00:33:32.720 --> 00:33:35.759 Like it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. 00:33:35.759 --> 00:33:36.880 How about these other ones? 00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:42.480 So you never really get to bask in what you have even achieved up till now. 00:33:42.480 --> 00:33:43.039 Right. 00:33:43.039 --> 00:33:52.799 What even when you've gone through difficult trauma or difficult situations, nobody ever allows you to actually take a breather and be like, oh my god. 00:33:53.039 --> 00:33:54.319 And sit in it. 00:33:54.319 --> 00:33:59.359 Because part of healing, you gotta sit in that trauma. 00:33:59.359 --> 00:34:06.960 When that brick wall comes, wasn't it Mike Tyson that says everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face or something like that? 00:34:06.960 --> 00:34:09.199 We all have these grand plans. 00:34:09.199 --> 00:34:17.679 So for me, I had several brick walls, but one of my brick walls is not finding a job directly right out of law school. 00:34:17.679 --> 00:34:31.039 Your brick wall may have come later with marriage, but when the brick wall comes, like you don't really you don't have the coping mechanism to sit in it and like, okay, what does this mean? 00:34:31.039 --> 00:34:33.360 Okay, this is not my full identity. 00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:35.039 How do I work through this? 00:34:35.039 --> 00:34:42.639 Instead, you internalize it and say, okay, if something's not going wrong, there's something very wrong with me. 00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:53.760 Yeah, we never deal with um there are a lot of Nigerians that maybe now with this stigma being taken out of mental health and stuff, a thing in Nigerian culture. 00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:59.760 Like, you know, when you sit back and think about it, like we are never taught to deal with traumatic situations. 00:34:59.760 --> 00:35:05.840 So you have traumatized people raising people that they're traumatizing, and it becomes a generational curse. 00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:10.400 That's what I call we are taught to compartmentalize. 00:35:10.400 --> 00:35:14.400 Like I was a I was a I was what five years old when I was kidnapped. 00:35:14.400 --> 00:35:16.159 I was kidnapped as a child. 00:35:16.159 --> 00:35:25.199 Now, as to whether I've dealt with the kidnapping, I mean my mom goes through the trauma every year because when on the anniversary of it, she looks at me and it's like this child is still alive. 00:35:25.199 --> 00:35:30.480 Because at the time they used to kidnap back then in Nigeria, they used to call it Bomo Bombo, I think that's what they call this. 00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:31.920 But some of the kids didn't come home. 00:35:31.920 --> 00:35:35.840 So when I got kidnapped, I remember my mom crying. 00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:42.320 I remember instances of that day, but somehow or another in my brain, I have compartmentalized that. 00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:45.280 That was a trauma early in my life. 00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:51.280 And but I realize now, fast forward to today, that there's a reason why I don't trust people. 00:35:51.280 --> 00:35:55.199 There's a reason why I'm not comfortable in crowded spaces. 00:35:55.199 --> 00:36:06.239 There's a reason why I'm a certain way, you know, like, you know, like I'm very standoffish at first because I don't trust, I'm always weary, like somebody's gonna do something to me. 00:36:06.239 --> 00:36:14.000 And I when I really, really unpack it, that was that trauma that I never really dealt with as a child. 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:17.920 You know, my mom talks about it all the time because you know, she it's a she's reliving it. 00:36:17.920 --> 00:36:22.480 And the fact as I'm getting older, she's looking at me like I almost lost this child. 00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:24.000 And I'm an only girl. 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:25.519 You're an only girl too. 00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:32.239 So you can imagine like somebody retelling you all the time, and it's a trauma that has never been dealt with, like sat down. 00:36:32.239 --> 00:36:35.920 Because in Nigerian culture, they say, ah, don't let the thing bother you too much. 00:36:35.920 --> 00:36:37.519 I beg, just get up and keep moving. 00:36:37.519 --> 00:36:42.880 So, in the process of moving on, you're putting these traumas or these incidents in boxes. 00:36:42.880 --> 00:36:55.360 Then when you see a person flare up, like you said, when you hit that actual wall that finally crashes everything, you are now reacting to so many different things at the same time that people will be like, ah, waiting, do this one. 00:36:55.360 --> 00:36:56.880 Why are you overreacting? 00:36:56.880 --> 00:37:07.679 Why are you not understanding that everything has finally come to its point where it you you may think you're only dealing with the thing that just happened now? 00:37:07.679 --> 00:37:16.800 When you really sit down and sit in it properly, it's a bunch of other things that have been accumulating, accumulating, that you're just like okay, I I can't deal with that right now. 00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:21.280 I have to deal with this other thing, and you just leave that thing, and that thing's been stewing and stewing and stewing. 00:37:21.280 --> 00:37:24.079 Now this the pot of stew is ready to bubble over. 00:37:24.320 --> 00:37:27.039 Yeah, so and it's and it's pepper still. 00:37:27.039 --> 00:37:31.440 It's not like it's not blanced to his pepper, like real pepper. 00:37:32.079 --> 00:37:45.519 People don't realize, and I like I said, I'm hoping that with the tools available now, with counseling and and talking to people, you know, like look, I before my father died, I I had a an what they call

it, they call anticipatory grief. 00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:47.760 That it wasn't a thing I didn't know. 00:37:47.760 --> 00:37:57.519 And I went to a grief counselor, and I'll be honest with you, I still think my counselor needed counseling after she was done with me because she said she was like, How are you functioning? 00:37:57.519 --> 00:38:05.039 Because you know, I that was the first time I sat down and I went through every single thing I'd been through up until now I'm losing my father. 00:38:05.039 --> 00:38:12.800 And she just looked at me and she, how are you, how are you able to do, accomplish all these things in the midst of all this? 00:38:12.800 --> 00:38:16.960 Like, even the first one should have made you not okay in the head, you know. 00:38:16.960 --> 00:38:21.440 And I said, in Nigeria, though, what is the alternative? 00:38:21.440 --> 00:38:22.079 Yeah. 00:38:22.079 --> 00:38:30.159 Because I never even had options, or that there was even, you know, like I said, even this counseling, I mean, is because my doctor told me to come here. 00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:32.800 That's, you know, because I was having, you know, you know how it is. 00:38:32.800 --> 00:38:34.639 Now you start having symptoms of stress, you know. 00:38:35.280 --> 00:38:48.639 Your body was starting to show signs of all the previous types of grief because you were sitting in actual grief of your father's passing, but from the time you got kidnapped through your marriages, through the divorces, you never dealt with any of that. 00:38:48.639 --> 00:38:50.400 And then the brick wall, boom. 00:38:51.360 --> 00:38:55.119 That was and my father's death was the ultimate trauma for me. 00:38:55.119 --> 00:38:55.679 Yeah. 00:38:55.679 --> 00:39:02.320 Remember, my dad always told me when I was growing up that when he was a little boy, because my grandfather, my grandfather was a misogynist. 00:39:02.320 --> 00:39:04.639 He didn't believe in educating women. 00:39:04.639 --> 00:39:18.159 So the pain, my father, this trauma, I'm sure he had other traumas, but his biggest trauma was that his sisters, because if you look at all my uncles, my uncles are well highly educated, you know, accomplished, but his sisters were not. 00:39:18.159 --> 00:39:20.480 That was his main trauma. 00:39:20.480 --> 00:39:24.559 And then the overcorrection of that trauma was me. 00:39:24.559 --> 00:39:30.719 Because I told God that I wanted a daughter, and when I had a daughter, I would train her to be like a man. 00:39:30.719 --> 00:39:35.760 And I want her to all the things my sisters couldn't do, she has to go above and beyond. 00:39:35.760 --> 00:39:45.360 So I was like the first cousin, female cousin to do this, spell first to do this, first to graduate college, first, first, first, you know, that kind of like it was now on me with the moistilly name, that is. 00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:48.320 I had to be the one to now be the trailblazer. 00:39:48.320 --> 00:39:50.559 So you can imagine I wasn't even born yet. 00:39:50.559 --> 00:40:00.000 And this, as a little boy or as a young man, he had wheeled me into existence before I came into existence of how I was going to be. 00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.079 Then the other side of that is I raised her to be very strong and be like a man. 00:40:04.079 --> 00:40:06.320 Then I also wanted her to marry and become like a man. 00:40:06.320 --> 00:40:14.159 Because I had to unpack that in my for my to think about my divorces, because I was married, but I felt like I was the man and the woman in my mind. 00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:32.159 Because I was taking on roles that I wanted to have my, you know, they say what they call that, what they you girls say soft girl era thing, you can step back, let's when problems came, I couldn't rely on my partners or significant others to take the mantle and let me fall back. 00:40:32.159 --> 00:40:33.199 I have to do it all. 00:40:33.199 --> 00:40:36.239 And my mom recently said, I said, you are too strong. 00:40:36.239 --> 00:40:37.920 We raised you to be too strong. 00:40:37.920 --> 00:40:46.000 And we some I saw she goes, I sometimes wonder if raising you to be strong, we now made you too strong where it was not compatible with marriage. 00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:47.440 Like it wasn't compatible. 00:40:47.440 --> 00:40:49.679 But then again, maybe it's the people I was with. 00:40:49.920 --> 00:41:00.800 Yeah, I don't know if being strong is not compatible for marriage, because I see strength as such an asset for real marriage, not this Instagram marriage we see, because life be lifing. 00:41:00.800 --> 00:41:03.199 You want two strong partners. 00:41:03.840 --> 00:41:07.280 It goes back to this conversation we had about how sons are being raised. 00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:14.960 So we realize I see, and you know, Niger, it's only in marriage you really get to see the real face of the family you're marrying into. 00:41:14.960 --> 00:41:18.000 On the outside, it looks nice. 00:41:18.000 --> 00:41:26.320 When you become a wife and you get into the family, you start to see things that you're like, wait a second, because you know we're very good at cover up in Nigerian culture. 00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:31.039 I think culturally we are very again. 00:41:31.039 --> 00:41:34.000 This is maybe just our era, maybe it's getting better. 00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:40.159 There's a lot of focus on the show, and the substance is maybe secondary. 00:41:40.159 --> 00:41:45.840 So there's a lot of focus on how something looks, and not as much like back to your earlier point. 00:41:45.840 --> 00:41:49.280 No one ever really asked you, how are you doing, really? 00:41:49.280 --> 00:41:53.199 And that goes back to the recognition of your lane. 00:41:53.199 --> 00:41:57.840 Like, how do you really recognize a lane that you're in if you don't even take time out? 00:41:57.840 --> 00:41:59.519 Because you're not even taught to do it. 00:41:59.519 --> 00:42:04.159 It took me a long time to get to a point

where I was like, okay, how am I really feeling? 00:42:04.159 --> 00:42:07.440 Like, I'm very good at doing this whole human doing thing. 00:42:07.440 --> 00:42:13.599 A plus, I got a PhD in that human being, it took me a while to get there, you know? 00:42:13.760 --> 00:42:17.119 No, I it's a cult, it's it's a cultural thing. 00:42:17.119 --> 00:42:20.800 I I'm hoping we are the generation it ends with. 00:42:20.800 --> 00:42:21.280 Yeah. 00:42:21.280 --> 00:42:25.519 And the children going into the next generation don't have that kind of burden. 00:42:25.519 --> 00:42:30.719 I actually am very happy that my nieces and my nephews are more into like arts. 00:42:30.719 --> 00:42:32.159 Most of them are more into art. 00:42:32.159 --> 00:42:33.599 I'm actually happy about that. 00:42:33.599 --> 00:42:37.599 But I'm like, good, don't think you have to do what I do. 00:42:37.599 --> 00:42:43.440 Now, if any of you as an engineer, I will guide you, hopefully, you know, so you don't have to go through certain obstacles. 00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:45.920 But if you want to be a dancer, please be a dancer. 00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:48.000 If you want to be a painter, please be a painter. 00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:50.960 We didn't know those were options available to us. 00:42:50.960 --> 00:42:53.440 You know, we're talking about lanes. 00:42:53.440 --> 00:42:56.719 Nobody told us we had several lanes we could stay in. 00:42:56.719 --> 00:43:00.480 We just was the way, and that was the way we were going. 00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:02.320 Could that be goal? 00:43:02.320 --> 00:43:07.039 And then we now had to step back and be like, okay, what I mean, like, what's going on here? 00:43:07.039 --> 00:43:08.400 I was doing everything right. 00:43:08.400 --> 00:43:13.360 And then another thing our family or parents never prepared us for was that life will life you. 00:43:13.679 --> 00:43:18.639 Yeah, we were taught that as long as you work really hard, things will always work out. 00:43:19.119 --> 00:43:23.280 And there was nothing more painful than somebody telling you, oh, it's because you didn't do this. 00:43:23.280 --> 00:43:25.199 Yeah, that's it. 00:43:25.199 --> 00:43:30.159 It's like, come, you want to talk about the person that did everything I was supposed to do, I was the one. 00:43:30.159 --> 00:43:38.320 I was that that when you told me this are the steps, step one, step two, step three, step four, I followed it to the letter. 00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:50.239 So when you know, people who are like that's why I tell people, I say, you should be thanking God that you didn't go through certain things because you are bad, criticize people for the decisions they're making. 00:43:50.239 --> 00:43:54.239 I pray you are never in a position to have to make a decision. 00:43:54.239 --> 00:43:59.360 I might I might like my father said before he died, he said, I asked him, I said, Do you regret any decision you ever made? 00:43:59.360 --> 00:43:59.840 He goes, No. 00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:03.679 Because I made it with the information I had at the time. 00:44:03.679 --> 00:44:04.639 That part. 00:44:04.639 --> 00:44:08.639 It's easy to be in 2020, yo, maybe I could have done it this way. 00:44:08.639 --> 00:44:13.599 But it's a look, if I'm being honest with myself, nobody wanted to make the decision. 00:44:13.599 --> 00:44:14.800 That's the first thing. 00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:21.119 The second the information available to me, the decision had to be made based on that information. 00:44:21.119 --> 00:44:27.280 I made it and I also, and in the same breath that I made the decision, I also accepted the backlash, like the consequence. 00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:32.320 So to sit now, I'll make you said, you know, most people say, Oh, maybe because I'm dying. 00:44:32.320 --> 00:44:33.840 No, he goes, No, I have no regrets. 00:44:33.840 --> 00:44:40.320 Yes, some people may have gotten hurt, seen it a certain way, but a decision had to be made. 00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:42.000 And the same thing with you and I. 00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:47.280 It's like I've learned, I think maybe going through what I've gone through in life makes me not judge other people. 00:44:47.599 --> 00:44:47.760 Yeah. 00:44:48.400 --> 00:45:03.280 Decisions they've had to make in their lives, because I have gone through the experience of having to make decisions that were not favorable, or the world frowned on, or was culturally frowned on, but it was the best decision for me. 00:45:03.280 --> 00:45:15.519 And after I died, I realized that why am I beating myself up for the lane I have now created for myself that did not fit the typical lane based on we talk about lane? 00:45:15.519 --> 00:45:17.119 I got out of that lane. 00:45:17.119 --> 00:45:18.000 That was the first thing. 00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:24.239 Second thing is what did I see now see as success or for myself? 00:45:24.239 --> 00:45:24.559 Yeah. 00:45:24.559 --> 00:45:26.400 And what do you want? 00:45:26.559 --> 00:45:26.960 Yeah. 00:45:27.119 --> 00:45:29.760 Where do you see yourself like now that you are here? 00:45:29.760 --> 00:45:31.760 So do you think so? 00:45:31.840 --> 00:45:34.719 Let me put a bit of that, because I think this is a good segue again. 00:45:34.719 --> 00:45:36.559 Like, how do you now redefine success? 00:45:36.559 --> 00:45:40.800 When your dad first started to get sick, I remember you in the private sector. 00:45:41.039 --> 00:45:41.440 Correct. 00:45:41.599 --> 00:45:46.239 And you made the very important decision to move to the public sector. 00:45:46.239 --> 00:45:51.599 And to some, especially Nigerians, be like, ah, you left all that money? 00:45:51.599 --> 00:45:52.400 Hey. 00:45:52.800 --> 00:45:54.639 So I was I still get told that. 00:45:54.639 --> 00:45:58.159 Like, I you know, you can always go back and make I'm like, you know what? 00:45:58.159 --> 00:46:04.880 I think when my dad got soup, that was when I had to re-reevaluate what my what I

considered valuable to me. 00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:17.920 Because I, the supervisor I had at the time, you know, I was on my I was on track to uh, you know, VP, you know all that was it was like, you mean you're gonna step away and you're gonna, you know, you're well on track. 00:46:17.920 --> 00:46:24.239 And I looked at this man, I was like, I said, you do you realize that this my father is the reason why I'm even here? 00:46:24.239 --> 00:46:26.960 And he couldn't understand. 00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:30.880 I said, you do realize that my biggest cheerleader is my father. 00:46:30.880 --> 00:46:36.400 There was no professional decision I ever made in my life that my father was not privy to. 00:46:36.400 --> 00:46:41.760 Any move, even if he didn't agree with me, I always ran it by my father. 00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:44.480 Even mock interviews I ran by my father. 00:46:44.480 --> 00:46:47.039 My father was the kind of person, if I tell him, Oh, I want to go get it. 00:46:47.039 --> 00:46:53.679 He would go on the internet and investigate, like do his research, then come back and say, Hey, I found this, that, that, that, and we'll discuss. 00:46:53.679 --> 00:46:58.800 So here this man was that made it possible for me to even exist as I am. 00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:02.320 And you are telling me that I should not take care of me. 00:47:02.320 --> 00:47:11.760 Because I felt like, and for us, for those of us that have parents that had their own money, had their own career, the least I could do for this man was to take care of me. 00:47:11.760 --> 00:47:12.559 That's how I felt. 00:47:12.559 --> 00:47:24.079 Like I felt that I can't, I can never repay what he has done for me emotionally, you know, and you know when I especially when I got my went through my first divorce, my father was the one that bringed life back into me. 00:47:24.079 --> 00:47:28.800 Yeah, went to I and you, I can say it now, I I was almost suicidal. 00:47:28.800 --> 00:47:38.159 My first was that disappointment, that whole thing of failure and the cultural cultural pressure, I almost tried to kill myself. 00:47:38.159 --> 00:47:42.239 And it was my father that prayed life back into me. 00:47:42.239 --> 00:47:50.400 So for me, that was my chance to repay him because there was nothing else in this world I could do. 00:47:50.400 --> 00:47:55.599 So when they were talking to me, and oh, you're gonna lose money, then I looked at them and said, We're talking about life here. 00:47:56.079 --> 00:47:56.800 Literal life. 00:47:57.039 --> 00:48:05.119 This is my and then and in and that two-year period I spent with my father, I got to really know this man and I got to have closure. 00:48:05.119 --> 00:48:06.960 And I also got to know myself. 00:48:06.960 --> 00:48:07.519 Yeah. 00:48:07.519 --> 00:48:12.239 Such that when I say my value, yes, I'm making significantly less than I've ever made. 00:48:12.400 --> 00:48:17.920 But I'm actually yes, I and the influence you have where you are now. 00:48:17.920 --> 00:48:24.960 I mean, you're a leader in state government, you literally make decisions that are life and death. 00:48:24.960 --> 00:48:27.119 Yeah, I mean roads we build. 00:48:27.119 --> 00:48:29.519 Like I always it's very important work. 00:48:29.760 --> 00:48:32.639 And I always tell you I say you're the Bible that people read. 00:48:32.639 --> 00:48:39.199 Because that may not feel they feel comfortable walking up to you to ask you a question or say anything, but they're constantly watching you. 00:48:39.199 --> 00:48:40.079 Watching you. 00:48:40.079 --> 00:48:41.360 How do you carry yourself? 00:48:41.360 --> 00:48:45.840 Are you somebody there are people that walk up to me to tell me things that I'm like, why are you telling me? 00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:48.400 You have all that tell. 00:48:48.400 --> 00:48:54.320 No, we've I've been watching you, and you are somebody that I feel that if you tell me something, you're gonna tell me the truth. 00:48:54.320 --> 00:49:03.360 You know, and like you said, all those features or character I had that people were like, Oh, you do you two they do this one, you are two this, you are to this. 00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:14.400 And now the characteristics that people look at and they are like, I have had, I told you I just came back, I had young people walk up to me and say, Oh my god, you have piercings in your ears, because not typically Nigerian, red hair. 00:49:14.400 --> 00:49:18.800 And how I got here was a white man in uh South Carolina. 00:49:18.800 --> 00:49:20.719 I saw him with sleeved tattoos. 00:49:20.719 --> 00:49:24.480 I mean, I'm a cow, I don't like tattoos because I'm I'm too scared of the thing. 00:49:24.480 --> 00:49:27.760 And I looked, because I'm an artist. 00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:33.039 Yeah, they signed up that's your artistic expression showing, yeah, for sure. 00:49:33.280 --> 00:49:38.320 And I always was like, I can't do this straight hair, briefcase, skirt suit every day. 00:49:38.320 --> 00:49:39.119 This is not me. 00:49:39.119 --> 00:49:40.559 This me, this is me. 00:49:40.559 --> 00:49:49.039 And these young people, you know, and he was the one that said, get your you know, your time, your time in, prove yourself, then you can be yourself. 00:49:49.039 --> 00:49:52.800 That was the first person that ever told me that. 00:49:52.800 --> 00:49:59.119 And so when I talk to the younger people, and they're like, Oh my god, you know, I first saw you, you know, as you were there, and you were interviewing us. 00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:01.679 And I used to remember even before this, I used to have a mohawk. 00:50:01.760 --> 00:50:02.079 Yeah. 00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:06.639 I was red and everything, and they'd be like, Oh my god, you know, it's so refreshing to see. 00:50:06.639 --> 00:50:10.639 And I keep and I I could give them that advice that was given to me, like, prove yourself first. 00:50:10.639 --> 00:50:12.800 When you're proven yourself, you can do whatever you

want. 00:50:12.800 --> 00:50:17.280 Get that, make sure that whatever you're doing, you are true to yourself. 00:50:17.280 --> 00:50:27.840 So that you will now enter your your your evening of your life, or the early afternoon, or late afternoon evening of your life, and be like, uh-huh, this is who I am. 00:50:28.559 --> 00:50:39.679 And that's the deprogram back to the deprogramming, reimagining what it means to thrive, because the social conditioning is success has to look a certain way. 00:50:39.679 --> 00:50:45.199 You have to look a certain way on the road to collecting this conventional success. 00:50:45.440 --> 00:50:50.079 Like, like for us as Nigerian women, I'm supposed to be married, I'm supposed to have kids. 00:50:50.079 --> 00:50:51.840 I've decided I don't want to be married. 00:50:51.840 --> 00:50:55.679 I mean, I've already tried it, and I actually and I'm not really alone. 00:50:55.679 --> 00:50:56.239 I have my friends. 00:50:56.239 --> 00:50:58.079 I have you, like I talk to you almost every day. 00:50:58.079 --> 00:51:00.639 So sometimes I'm why do people think I'm lonely? 00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:02.480 Yeah. 00:51:03.039 --> 00:51:04.800 There's this, oh, you you don't have children. 00:51:04.800 --> 00:51:13.920 And I'm like, I you know, the day I sat down, just like I sat down and realized like this is what makes me happy, or going back to private was not for me. 00:51:13.920 --> 00:51:15.039 It was comfortable. 00:51:15.039 --> 00:51:16.719 Same with children. 00:51:16.719 --> 00:51:18.320 I have gone through IVF. 00:51:18.320 --> 00:51:21.599 It's not because I, for lack of trying, when I was married, I went through that whole process. 00:51:21.599 --> 00:51:23.599 But one day I actually sat down. 00:51:23.599 --> 00:51:30.639 How I knew that I was changing was my last IVF cycle failed, and I was relieved. 00:51:30.639 --> 00:51:39.840 You know, here I'm in a room of women crying, you know, they're giving us all our results, and some people were like in tears all over the place. 00:51:39.840 --> 00:51:41.199 And I was there like, ah, thank God. 00:51:41.199 --> 00:51:46.000 And then I had to ask myself, I said, Come on, Duji, something wrong with you, because that's something I should want. 00:51:46.000 --> 00:51:49.039 And this was the IVF where I could select the sex of my child. 00:51:49.039 --> 00:51:52.239 I had gotten to that point where I could select the sex of my child. 00:51:52.239 --> 00:51:58.000 I sat down one day and I said, Hey, Duji, but honestly speaking, do you even want children? 00:51:58.000 --> 00:52:06.960 Or you have you always just, because everybody says you're nurturing, you have motherly tendencies, you've told yourself that that's what you must do. 00:52:06.960 --> 00:52:07.920 And I really sat down. 00:52:07.920 --> 00:52:09.760 I said, you know, what about my life? 00:52:09.760 --> 00:52:11.519 Had children in it. 00:52:11.519 --> 00:52:14.239 When I was in the private sector, I was constantly traveling. 00:52:14.239 --> 00:52:22.480 I was never, I was, in fact, I was, I, you know, it's like there was nothing that if I had stopped working, we wouldn't have eaten. 00:52:22.480 --> 00:52:24.800 You know, my so where would I have fixed? 00:52:24.800 --> 00:52:32.480 It's not like I had the kind of support system where, okay, if I had a child, okay, somebody will be there taking care of the child while I'm out hustling and getting the money. 00:52:32.480 --> 00:52:35.280 I would have been the one taking care of the child and probably taking care of your husband. 00:52:35.280 --> 00:52:35.920 You know what I mean? 00:52:35.920 --> 00:52:44.719 Like the whole construct and trying to keep everything looking a certain way, which I did for a long time because culturally it couldn't be seen a certain way, like success. 00:52:44.719 --> 00:52:47.280 It had to look good, everything polished. 00:52:47.280 --> 00:52:51.280 And so I sat down and I said, honestly speaking, why even I have children now. 00:52:51.280 --> 00:52:53.039 I've got children all over the place. 00:52:53.039 --> 00:52:54.320 I have nieces and nephews. 00:52:54.320 --> 00:52:55.280 What else am I looking for? 00:52:55.280 --> 00:53:04.800 And I realized that we are also very greedy for things that, and the fact that I didn't get price that, you know, sometimes God is trying to prevent something, and we are the ones pushing and pushing and pushing. 00:53:04.800 --> 00:53:06.079 We want this thing, we want this thing. 00:53:06.079 --> 00:53:15.199 Maybe God's saving my life because I'd already gone through fibroid surgery, you know, all the I was on very heavy drugs that pretty much changed my body. 00:53:15.199 --> 00:53:19.280 Only God knows what the long-term effects eventually will be of the things I put in my body. 00:53:19.519 --> 00:53:21.519 Yeah, good as an IVF, yeah, for sure. 00:53:21.840 --> 00:53:22.639 One child. 00:53:22.639 --> 00:53:27.039 And when I made that decision, that was like it was like the load. 00:53:27.039 --> 00:53:28.639 I don't know what, I can't even explain it. 00:53:28.639 --> 00:53:31.519 It was like one spiritual load off my neck. 00:53:31.519 --> 00:53:35.280 With oh God, I said, God, thank you very much for the chance. 00:53:35.280 --> 00:53:37.440 And I only you know why. 00:53:37.440 --> 00:53:44.639 But and the minute I said that, I felt like a lot of the stress and the strain and all the wahala just went away. 00:53:44.639 --> 00:53:47.679 So even now, when people say, Ah, you want why don't you adopt? 00:53:47.679 --> 00:53:48.960 I just sit there and look at them. 00:53:48.960 --> 00:53:51.519 I'm like, you know, everybody get their own now. 00:53:51.519 --> 00:54:01.039 I like it doesn't bother me as much because before it bothered me not because I was like, Oh, I can't have a it bothered me more unless, like, why is everybody always projecting this thing on me? 00:54:01.039 --> 00:54:03.920 Like, I mean, while the people

projecting on none of them is gonna help me. 00:54:04.400 --> 00:54:05.119 That's for sure. 00:54:05.119 --> 00:54:06.239 That's for sure. 00:54:06.480 --> 00:54:18.400 So when I say I'm in my selfish era, circling back to what I said, the latest one is ah, you need to have a child, or you unless you'll be alone, who would all this stuff you are acquiring, who will you give it to? 00:54:18.400 --> 00:54:20.079 There's still that conversation. 00:54:20.079 --> 00:54:22.000 Ah, you don't want to be alone, no. 00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:25.840 And I look at this people, I said, Do you know how many people have children that their children don't talk to them? 00:54:25.840 --> 00:54:28.880 Do you know how many people give all their children are dead? 00:54:28.880 --> 00:54:30.880 In this life is guaranteed, though. 00:54:30.880 --> 00:54:38.400 I said, So I said, when I'm gone now, there are people that I will give it to, but this notion that ah, you can't be alone, you have to get married. 00:54:38.400 --> 00:54:39.599 Ah, you have to. 00:54:39.599 --> 00:54:40.880 I'm like, have to. 00:54:42.079 --> 00:54:42.719 Who says? 00:54:42.719 --> 00:54:43.440 Who says? 00:54:43.440 --> 00:54:52.000 And the truth is back to you know, read redefining what success looks like, reimagining now what it means to thrive. 00:54:52.000 --> 00:54:57.440 You have to get to the point where, okay, this is my new normal. 00:54:57.440 --> 00:55:06.320 You have to mourn the death of whatever previous expectations you had, because if you don't, the world can crush you. 00:55:06.559 --> 00:55:07.199 Oh, yeah. 00:55:07.519 --> 00:55:10.480 And they will yeah, and they will gladly do it. 00:55:10.480 --> 00:55:20.880 I remember a story you told me when you were walking your dog and you were minding your own business, and someone just said something very, very mean to you about not having children. 00:55:21.440 --> 00:55:22.400 He has a dog. 00:55:22.400 --> 00:55:26.000 And in fact, they didn't even say it in English, they said in Idibo. 00:55:26.000 --> 00:55:30.079 It was a friend who heard it that, you know, was got fled up. 00:55:30.079 --> 00:55:32.639 And so, you know, why are you fled? 00:55:32.639 --> 00:55:34.960 It was at a one-year-old child's birthday party, actually. 00:55:34.960 --> 00:55:36.000 We're in a pack. 00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:42.239 And the person that said it, you know, came with a gang of kids that he didn't even look like he was even taking care of his own. 00:55:42.239 --> 00:55:46.320 And the our friend, the family friend, fled up, like, how dare you say such a thing? 00:55:46.320 --> 00:55:47.760 You don't even know what people are going through. 00:55:47.760 --> 00:55:51.519 And I had to calm him down, like, look, those things won't bother me anymore. 00:55:51.519 --> 00:55:56.639 Because even the person, I'm one of those kinds of people, whenever somebody says something, I always look at the person talking. 00:55:56.639 --> 00:56:00.960 Because a lot

of it is project, you know, because you know, in our culture, it's projection. 00:56:00.960 --> 00:56:04.880 A lot of people project to you on you what they are going through. 00:56:04.880 --> 00:56:15.760 So that whole you're projecting on me, and I'm looking at your kids that you brought with you, and you don't look like you take care of the ones you even have, and you're worried about me with my dog, I'm the list of your problems, dude. 00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:23.920 There's nothing about your life that I'm envious of, but obviously you seeing me living like this is bothering you. 00:56:23.920 --> 00:56:32.559 And I had to tell my friend, you know, the family friend that, hey, you know, I we get it, you know, you know what we're going through, but don't take it too personally. 00:56:32.559 --> 00:56:42.880 Because, like when I say our people are sociopaths, psychopaths, like the things they say, you can be sick right now, going through chemo, bubble, oh, we're gonna pray for you, it will go away. 00:56:42.880 --> 00:56:43.440 I'm like, come. 00:56:43.440 --> 00:56:45.119 It's the same thing when my dad was dying. 00:56:45.119 --> 00:56:46.239 Oh, we will fast and pray. 00:56:46.239 --> 00:56:47.760 I'm like, look, my father is dying. 00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:50.239 Don't tell me things that don't make sense. 00:56:50.239 --> 00:56:52.000 You know it doesn't make sense. 00:56:52.000 --> 00:56:54.559 It's better for you not to even talk at all. 00:56:54.559 --> 00:56:59.199 Because all that fasting and praying, shouldn't you have been fasting and praying before he got sick? 00:56:59.199 --> 00:57:02.000 What am I gonna do with your fasting and praying? 00:57:02.000 --> 00:57:04.639 Because I mean, yes, they mean well. 00:57:04.639 --> 00:57:08.719 I'm sure he said it, you know, Nigerians sometimes don't think before they talk. 00:57:08.719 --> 00:57:13.119 He said it more or less like, you know, maybe he thought that will, you know, make me go have a kid. 00:57:13.119 --> 00:57:16.719 I don't know what he was thinking, but that is how our people are. 00:57:16.719 --> 00:57:27.679 And when I say I'm in my selfish era, I'm in an era now where things that used to affect me because I'm an empath, you know, they say whatever you hear, it comes, it hits you in the heart when you're an empath. 00:57:27.679 --> 00:57:28.800 It comes straight to me. 00:57:28.800 --> 00:57:31.280 They don't do that to me anymore. 00:57:31.280 --> 00:57:36.960 So even when people call me, oh, ah, you won't go and have a child, go and adopt, or go and do this. 00:57:36.960 --> 00:57:38.800 I just it to me, I just laughed. 00:57:38.800 --> 00:57:40.800 It's like, I mean, what else were you? 00:57:41.360 --> 00:57:46.800 Yeah, for me, it looked like, especially when I had the second child who was on the spectrum. 00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:52.960 I think I told you, and this is in the book, how someone approached me and said that maybe I'm not praying enough. 00:57:52.960 --> 00:57:57.360 That's why my daughter is autistic with intellectual disability. 00:57:57.360 --> 00:57:59.599 So, in other words, it's something I did. 00:57:59.599 --> 00:58:06.800 Yeah, it just came out so I really do think this is a God thing. 00:58:06.800 --> 00:58:12.719 I came out and I said, Okay, maybe instead of you assuming I didn't pray enough, maybe this is my ministry. 00:58:12.719 --> 00:58:14.960 Like, maybe this is my ministry. 00:58:14.960 --> 00:58:16.320 Did you ever think about that? 00:58:16.559 --> 00:58:17.679 Remember, I told you that. 00:58:17.679 --> 00:58:22.480 I said, I said, this, whatever it is, you know, this is going to be your ministry. 00:58:22.480 --> 00:58:35.440 Because culturally, you are helping a lot of people in our culture because dealing with kids with disabilities or or or developmental issues in our culture is they pretend like it doesn't exist. 00:58:35.440 --> 00:58:53.280 And you have a lot of mothers who, you know, maybe their husbands are still there, their husbands left them because they found out the child was autistic or something happening, and they're at their wits' ends, they don't know what resources are available to them, and then culturally, they don't have people to see and say, Hey, I have a question. 00:58:53.280 --> 00:58:54.079 How are you? 00:58:54.079 --> 00:58:55.280 Because it's it's different. 00:58:55.280 --> 00:59:00.159 Like if I go to an American and I ask the question, I'm not gonna get the kind of answer I'm trying to get. 00:59:00.159 --> 00:59:05.039 Because if I ask you as a Nigerian, you know what angle I'm coming from. 00:59:05.119 --> 00:59:05.280 Yeah. 00:59:06.800 --> 00:59:09.840 The culture, Nigeria, we come with culture first. 00:59:10.079 --> 00:59:10.719 Yeah. 00:59:10.960 --> 00:59:12.880 Because it's always culture first. 00:59:12.880 --> 00:59:23.760 So even as educated and as even we that are this generation educated, we too will do some things that would be like, oh my, it's not culture, that culture and how they affect me. 00:59:23.760 --> 00:59:26.880 Like it's the culture that we always come with. 00:59:26.880 --> 00:59:38.159 So when you see a Nigerian doing something that is typically frowned upon or is not usual, for those who are going through it in silence, they they're paying attention. 00:59:38.159 --> 00:59:42.400 They have their eyes are like when I say you are the Bible that people read, they're watching you closely. 00:59:42.400 --> 00:59:54.079 And when I said you are the you are you're what you're doing is a ministry, because you, like you said, you have reimagined what it's like to be a professional woman with two children now in their teens. 00:59:54.079 --> 01:00:00.559 You know, your husband is also working, both of you are navigating your careers, your children, and at different stages. 01:00:00.559 --> 01:00:08.800 But I've watched you from I've known you before you were even married, yeah, to children, all of that. 01:00:08.800 -->

01:00:21.920 And where you are now is like, my God, you know, I I you inspire me too, because it's like, ah, this girl has been through it, and then here she is now in the next phase of what it is. 01:00:21.920 --> 01:00:29.519 Every step of the way, it has not been an easy one, but every step of the way you have re-redefined who you are. 01:00:29.519 --> 01:00:31.039 You you it's still not done. 01:00:31.039 --> 01:00:35.760 You're still re- you know, redefining and redefining, and even for me, it's like, okay, I'm inspired. 01:00:35.760 --> 01:00:37.280 Oh thank you, friend. 01:00:37.280 --> 01:00:37.920 Thank you, sir. 01:00:37.920 --> 01:00:45.199 Why can't you redefine who I am at each step of the way and make it work for me? 01:00:45.199 --> 01:00:58.719 And I've watched you that and and when you know, I call you more like you're like a younger sister to me because I don't have sister, and it's like, wow, if I had a younger sister, that is how I would react to everything. 01:00:58.719 --> 01:01:09.679 And then in my mind, I'm like, okay, as an older sister, how can I inspire my younger sister to keep going, keep going back wherever you want, always be in the mood. 01:01:10.079 --> 01:01:28.960 Yeah, and I think both of us, yes, different journeys and different challenges, but I think what we can both as we walk along this life journey together as very close friends is walking away from the idea of perfection and walking into wholeness. 01:01:28.960 --> 01:01:36.079 It's so important because the goal in life is not to be perfect, it really is to be whole. 01:01:36.079 --> 01:01:49.760 It's one of my favorite quotes, it's from Jane Fonda, and it's so true because the moment you let go of some idea of what perfect is supposed to look like is where the good stuff is, on the other hand. 01:01:49.760 --> 01:01:51.119 It really, really is. 01:01:51.519 --> 01:02:01.119 Because when you realize it's your life, you get to write how it, you know, we didn't get to write how it began, get to write the middle portion of it, but you get to write how it ends. 01:02:01.119 --> 01:02:06.320 And the minute I realize that, I'm like, wait a second, where do you come? 01:02:06.320 --> 01:02:19.840 And I think watching my father die also opened something up in me because I realized like this is somebody who had done so much, you know, he died at 76, but he had done so much, but at the end, he had to face death alone. 01:02:19.840 --> 01:02:30.719 So that means that even after you've done all this stuff, you've met all the when the time comes, you may be surrounded by loved ones. 01:02:30.719 --> 01:02:32.960 Then the question then becomes, How did you live? 01:02:32.960 --> 01:02:35.039 So that's an eye-opener for me. 01:02:35.039 --> 01:02:35.760 Like, you know what? 01:02:35.760 --> 01:02:39.039 I need to do a better job of living. 01:02:39.039 --> 01:02:42.800 So that when that, you know, I can just be like, Okay, I'm good now. 01:02:42.800 --> 01:02:49.760 You know, it doesn't matter how I started, maybe the middle was a little bit choppy, but how I end this thing is me. 01:02:49.760 --> 01:02:55.679 That's why, even as I enter my 50s, I'm like, okay, now I don't I've done the first half. 01:02:55.679 --> 01:03:01.119 I've I've given of myself, I've done everything our daughter is supposed to do. 01:03:01.119 --> 01:03:02.880 La la la, okay, fine, good. 01:03:02.880 --> 01:03:05.679 Now let me do the rest of this. 01:03:05.679 --> 01:03:12.559 And in even in your case, I'm like, I'm seeing you more now, like it's me, my family, this family I created. 01:03:12.559 --> 01:03:13.039 Yeah. 01:03:13.039 --> 01:03:14.960 How do we move this forward? 01:03:14.960 --> 01:03:25.599 And I also see how your son sees you are showing him, you know, and and like like what my father told me, he said, you have to be deliberate. 01:03:25.599 --> 01:03:31.599 So when we talk about your lane, what you see as success, and what you see as you have to be deliberate. 01:03:31.599 --> 01:03:33.599 These are things that you deliberately create. 01:03:33.599 --> 01:03:41.039 Deliberately create the lane you want to see yourself in, you deliberately create what you see as success to you, yeah. 01:03:41.039 --> 01:03:45.039 And then you create where you see, like, where is this going? 01:03:45.039 --> 01:03:56.159 That's your, you know, and we all need to understand and realize that some people do, some people never do, yeah, and some people realize it too late. 01:03:56.159 --> 01:04:05.119 But for those of us that God has given the grace to the awakening, for the awakening to happen, your eyes to be open now, it's like, okay, God, I get it now. 01:04:05.440 --> 01:04:12.320 And self-awareness is such a spiritual gift, it really, really is, and it's also a walk, a continuous walk. 01:04:12.559 --> 01:04:15.760 It is that, and even people's walk with God is different. 01:04:15.920 --> 01:04:16.480 Yeah. 01:04:16.880 --> 01:04:19.199 And I thought that I don't have to go to a church. 01:04:19.199 --> 01:04:26.639 Every all of us have experienced God in different ways that makes us how we are, or whatever you believe in, or whatever that keeps you going. 01:04:26.639 --> 01:04:30.639 I won't even judge anybody on that because you know everybody's experience is different. 01:04:30.639 --> 01:04:38.159 But I will say for those of us who are believers, it deliberates how you're like where we are now is the lane created. 01:04:38.159 --> 01:04:49.119 We've been in several lanes, but now we created the lane that is unique to us, and we are holding on to God that we're going in the direction of how it should go for us. 01:04:49.119 --> 01:04:54.239 So what I'm saying is we're in different lanes from how we started. 01:04:54.239 --> 01:04:58.960 So we started with the conventional, you know, is the box, the what society puts us in. 01:04:58.960 --> 01:05:06.559 And like I said, some of us, by the grace of God, will create our own

lane, our own future, our own destiny, everything. 01:05:06.559 --> 01:05:10.800 And then some people will stay in that box because it's comfortable to be in that box. 01:05:10.800 --> 01:05:20.320 It's it's it's you know, it's not easy being who we are because we're constantly having society push back on us, you know, because it's not conventional. 01:05:20.320 --> 01:05:22.960 Like how we look is not conventional. 01:05:22.960 --> 01:05:39.519 You know, and we're we're women, we're black women with natural hair in corporate society, you know, in out there, you know, we're visible, and we don't have the stereotypical, I mean my I'm big, but you know, full-bodied, you know, like I have my African features are very much there. 01:05:39.519 --> 01:05:40.960 I'm not even hiding. 01:05:40.960 --> 01:05:47.599 And then society is telling you every day go back into that box that we put you in, and we are saying no. 01:05:47.599 --> 01:05:59.679 And and we look, we are happier, healthier, because I cannot tell you how your nervous system is significantly affected when you are so. 01:05:59.679 --> 01:06:06.239 Pressing a lot of that, you know, you want to just scream, and then everybody just telling you to keep it in, keep it in. 01:06:06.239 --> 01:06:25.199 And so, and I think our mothers look at us, and there's a bit of envy there because you are living the way they would have wanted to live, but they were so confined by the society, the culture, and everything that they just, you know, you know, I'm looking at my mom now. 01:06:25.199 --> 01:06:34.719 Maybe this is when her free era, because you know, my dad is gone, so she's not constrained by a lot of those societal things, but she's now living, and this is she was married to my dad when she was what, 22? 01:06:34.719 --> 01:06:38.159 And she's 72, 73 now. 01:06:38.159 --> 01:06:38.639 Wow. 01:06:38.639 --> 01:06:45.679 Yeah, is when she's now rediscovering herself after change and all what not. 01:06:45.679 --> 01:06:54.320 There's a level of grace to be given, but also accountability in that okay, fine, but you still need to be held responsible for the things you've done. 01:06:54.320 --> 01:06:59.519 I also am holding myself responsible for the things I'm done and and creating this new lane. 01:06:59.519 --> 01:07:04.239 So, what we talk about what you see as success for yourself, she is redefining for herself. 01:07:04.239 --> 01:07:09.280 Your mom is redefining, like they are redefining because they're the first women we knew. 01:07:09.519 --> 01:07:10.880 Yeah, absolutely. 01:07:11.280 --> 01:07:14.960 If for themselves, what they see as what they their vision now. 01:07:14.960 --> 01:07:36.639 I don't know what that is, but for us in our generation, we are now redefining what success is, hoping that it also for those young ones coming after us, they now see that you can be yourself and you can like, like I said, all those qualities we were told, all the qualities I was told were negative about me are the qualities that are helping me where I am now. 01:07:36.800 --> 01:07:37.199 Oh, yeah. 01:07:37.199 --> 01:07:57.679 It it's funny because obviously you don't think of empathy and authenticity in engineering or lawyering, but it's funny that we're both in leadership positions now, and those are the qualities that get called out now that were viewed once upon a time as not so ideal. 01:07:58.079 --> 01:07:59.039 No, it's not. 01:07:59.039 --> 01:08:05.360 And like I said, as a person of color in some of these spaces, you are expected to just be happy that they let you in. 01:08:05.360 --> 01:08:09.840 When you come in there, you walk in the room, and you know, you you I love color. 01:08:09.840 --> 01:08:15.360 You color, ah, you know, you just say things, and everybody's like, whoa, you're free. 01:08:15.360 --> 01:08:16.560 Yeah, yeah. 01:08:16.560 --> 01:08:20.399 So a lot of people pushing back against you is the I should, you know, why should you be free? 01:08:20.399 --> 01:08:21.600 Why don't you just fit into this? 01:08:21.600 --> 01:08:24.640 And you are like, I'm calm, I'm okay with myself. 01:08:24.640 --> 01:08:36.399 I'm not ashamed of what I've had to go through to even get to this point because this is the real me, this is who I am, and there's more of need to for me to find out about like and discover stuff. 01:08:36.399 --> 01:08:41.039 And your children are seeing that, people around you are seeing it. 01:08:41.039 --> 01:08:43.279 Some people like it, some people don't, but it's okay. 01:08:43.279 --> 01:08:43.840 Yeah. 01:08:43.840 --> 01:08:58.720 But you are yourself, and even among our mates, there are some of them that long to have that level of freedom because you know they've sort of kind of boxed themselves in where they don't even feel they feel that it's too late for them to get out of what they've put themselves into. 01:08:58.720 --> 01:09:01.279 But that's a journey that they have to go through. 01:09:01.600 --> 01:09:08.960 And it's individual for everybody, the deprogramming process to really look around and ask yourself, is this what I really want? 01:09:08.960 --> 01:09:16.000 For me, the pandemic was a stage where it that's when I launched the podcast. 01:09:16.000 --> 01:09:18.000 That's when all of these things happened. 01:09:18.000 --> 01:09:19.680 So I became this lawyer. 01:09:19.680 --> 01:09:20.079 Yeah. 01:09:20.319 --> 01:09:23.439 And the pandemic did two different things for very different people. 01:09:23.439 --> 01:09:29.119 If you were not already honest with yourself, or you didn't already know yourself, the pandemic was helpful. 01:09:29.119 --> 01:09:44.880 But in your case, the pandemic helped you to actually like come out of yourself, like discover other aspects of yourself and and tap into things that you, you know, when you know, when we were always working, working, working five days a week, we never really stopped. 01:09:44.880 --> 01:09:47.199 Yeah, the pandemic was

that brick wall. 01:09:47.199 --> 01:09:47.840 Yeah, yeah. 01:09:47.840 --> 01:09:54.239 That a lot of people, you know, recovered from it some and learned what they needed to learn and discover, we discovered themselves. 01:09:54.239 --> 01:10:02.479 Some people that wall hit them so hard, they just never, in fact, they reverted further into whatever it was that they were originally. 01:10:02.479 --> 01:10:07.840 So the older I get, the more I realize that you know what, really, it's it's what you want out of life. 01:10:07.840 --> 01:10:09.920 It's like it's it's still your story to write. 01:10:09.920 --> 01:10:14.800 It's your it's your perspective about this life that you've been put on. 01:10:14.800 --> 01:10:15.039 Yeah. 01:10:15.039 --> 01:10:19.119 So you can make the conscious decision to create your idea of success. 01:10:19.119 --> 01:10:26.720 But for me, when I say my value system change, when I was younger, it was like, oh, money, I'm making money and traveling. 01:10:26.720 --> 01:10:29.279 Now I'm like, I like my house, Joe. 01:10:29.279 --> 01:10:30.560 I like stay. 01:10:30.560 --> 01:10:38.479 I like peace, you know, like peace was the biggest thing for me. 01:10:38.479 --> 01:10:44.640 Like, and peace came for me, came with taking it easy, slowing down significantly. 01:10:44.640 --> 01:10:46.399 It's not like it's not that serious. 01:10:46.399 --> 01:10:49.680 In fact, I've added that to my it's like promo, it's not that serious, right? 01:10:49.680 --> 01:10:51.279 It's not it's not that it's not serious. 01:10:51.279 --> 01:10:52.479 I keep an eye on it. 01:10:52.800 --> 01:10:59.439 Going to get myself worked up and completely back to what you said earlier about a regulated nervous system. 01:10:59.439 --> 01:11:05.199 You get to a certain age, it's like peace of mind and a regulated nervous system is a form of wealth. 01:11:05.199 --> 01:11:06.319 It really is. 01:11:06.640 --> 01:11:18.880 It really, really is healthy now because now we are at the age where family illnesses start showing up that I was a six mile-a-day runner, and then now all of a sudden I'm like, man, where are all these things coming from? 01:11:18.880 --> 01:11:32.319 Like you wake up in the point pain, all these other things, and so your focus now is like, look, look, I don't have the energy for things, I need to be healthy and in the right frame of mind and make sure I take care of you know myself and things around me. 01:11:32.319 --> 01:11:37.840 So my idea of success, yeah, it could change next, but it's okay. 01:11:37.840 --> 01:11:39.600 Yeah, because that's the whole point of it. 01:11:39.600 --> 01:11:42.720 It's like I there's no real it hasn't finished. 01:11:42.720 --> 01:11:44.479 I'm still a work in progress. 01:11:44.479 --> 01:11:46.239 I'm done with the lane. 01:11:46.239 --> 01:11:48.079 That was the first one. 01:11:48.079 --> 01:11:50.399 I I now know what lane I want to be in. 01:11:50.399 --> 01:11:52.800 Um where was the second one? 01:11:52.960 --> 01:11:54.720 What redefining success. 01:11:55.840 --> 01:11:58.079 I have redefined what I consider successful me. 01:11:58.079 --> 01:12:01.520 The third one is where I am right now, and that one is ever changing. 01:12:01.760 --> 01:12:03.920 Yeah, reimagining what it means to thrive. 01:12:04.479 --> 01:12:05.600 What does it mean to thrive for me? 01:12:05.600 --> 01:12:06.079 It's okay. 01:12:06.079 --> 01:12:15.760 Today for me, thriving is my peace of mind, taking a walk, getting my steps in, yeah, looking for thanking God for what God has given me. 01:12:15.760 --> 01:12:20.880 Tomorrow it's maybe something else, and tomorrow something else, but that I'm okay with. 01:12:20.880 --> 01:12:37.520 But the first two I want to believe I used the morning and the afternoon of my life to take care of and maybe those things that I went through and like you you did go through too are what was what prepared me for the third phase of this journey that we're on. 01:12:37.520 --> 01:12:46.800 And I'm very happy where I have because now I'm at a stage where I know who I am, I know what I want, and I now I know what to do to get there. 01:12:46.800 --> 01:12:55.359 It's a process, I guess it may take me a little longer than because some people were lucky to got a head start, some of us learned it later, but it's okay. 01:12:56.239 --> 01:12:57.520 We're all on different journeys. 01:12:57.760 --> 01:12:58.800 Yeah, well, different journeys. 01:12:58.800 --> 01:13:04.880 So I'm at that third stage, and for me, next year is what marks that third stage for me. 01:13:04.880 --> 01:13:12.079 It's like that, you know, is that milestone, like okay, flag in the ground, 50 5-0 baby. 01:13:12.079 --> 01:13:21.520 And you know, and things have happened recently in my family that have you know put in perspective, like um, you know, you nobody is guaranteed forever. 01:13:21.520 --> 01:13:24.560 That's true, whatever you know, time God gives you. 01:13:24.560 --> 01:13:29.439 And like I said, as people of faith, we always move with God first. 01:13:29.439 --> 01:13:37.600 So that's what gives us the comfort, like me personally, that's what gives me the confidence to move because I'm always like, well, God, I'm going in this direction, please leave. 01:13:37.600 --> 01:13:41.279 If it's not that direction, slowly guide towards the direction. 01:13:41.279 --> 01:13:43.199 So far, God has been gracious. 01:13:43.199 --> 01:13:52.479 So, you know, and and I'm learning also to just give everybody their own grace because we're all on different journeys, and what it looks like to everybody is different. 01:13:52.479 --> 01:13:54.399 Where do you want your story to end? 01:13:54.399 --> 01:13:58.000 Like, how do you want your story to be told, and how do you want it to end? 01:13:58.159 --> 01:13:58.800 Yeah. 01:13:59.039 --> 01:14:05.520 That when you are taking your last breath and you're all by yourself, your life is flashing through your

eyes. 01:14:05.520 --> 01:14:08.560 Like, can you honestly say, you know what, it was a good one? 01:14:08.560 --> 01:14:23.199 You know, and as women, I think women need to, it's an extra layer to, you know, men have the I don't know anything about what men go through, but as a woman and how we were raised and how we were conditioned, this is a very crucial time to be. 01:14:23.199 --> 01:14:30.399 It's a very crucial time of our lives, and and I think it's very important that we take that into consideration, take a breath. 01:14:30.399 --> 01:14:38.399 Even even, yeah, we will stumble, but I've I've come to embrace stumbling as part of this journey and not beat myself up over a pendulum. 01:14:38.399 --> 01:14:41.279 I'm a I am a perfectionist or a recovering one. 01:14:41.279 --> 01:14:44.880 And I'm learning that there's no such thing. 01:14:44.880 --> 01:14:45.680 There isn't. 01:14:45.680 --> 01:14:50.159 And that it's okay for something to not be perfect, because maybe that's what makes it perfect. 01:14:50.159 --> 01:14:54.880 That is or that it's unique in itself, that it's not what I want it to be. 01:14:55.279 --> 01:15:05.039 I realized how much in my life I had delayed because waiting for something to look like my version of what perfect was supposed to be. 01:15:05.039 --> 01:15:11.840 Yeah, I waited to launch this podcast, I waited to do so many things. 01:15:11.840 --> 01:15:16.640 And this podcast, meaning the previous version of this podcast, not your mama's autism. 01:15:16.640 --> 01:15:23.840 I I waited on a lot of things when I should have just put one little step in front of the other, and I started doing that. 01:15:24.960 --> 01:15:28.800 We were conditioned to be anxious because the not to fail. 01:15:29.039 --> 01:15:29.520 Yeah. 01:15:29.760 --> 01:15:34.319 There was no, I don't even think I knew what it was like not to fail. 01:15:34.319 --> 01:15:37.840 Like that's why when I failed, my first major failure was marriage. 01:15:37.840 --> 01:15:40.560 So when I failed, like you see, I'm using the word failed. 01:15:40.560 --> 01:15:40.880 Yeah. 01:15:40.880 --> 01:15:44.159 But I felt like I had failed. 01:15:44.159 --> 01:15:47.199 I mean, this was something I was supposed to get, you know, it was like open book exam. 01:15:47.199 --> 01:15:48.159 I was supposed to pass. 01:15:48.159 --> 01:15:51.279 So I took it, I embodied that failure like me. 01:15:51.279 --> 01:15:54.560 I have every other thing I've ever done, I've accomplished. 01:15:54.560 --> 01:15:56.800 You know, if I wanted to be first in class, I was first. 01:15:56.800 --> 01:16:00.239 If I wanted to, and then this one thing I failed. 01:16:00.239 --> 01:16:05.439 It was that first failure that allowed me to deal with the second one, so-called failure. 01:16:05.439 --> 01:16:07.840 Because then it was, you know, it happens. 01:16:07.840 --> 01:16:19.039 It's not because it's not about lack of trying, but that was how I handled it, because we were, and so that when that whole anxiety, I was I was always the kind of person that I would measure a thousand times and I still wouldn't curse. 01:16:19.039 --> 01:16:22.640 Because after that cut was the mistake I didn't want to make. 01:16:22.640 --> 01:16:26.079 So rather than try it, I would rather not even touch it at all. 01:16:26.079 --> 01:16:28.640 So I didn't have to deal with failure. 01:16:28.640 --> 01:16:41.600 And our culture sort of kind of conditions us into that mentality where you're too scared to try things because you are scared of failing, and then the backlash that comes from the so-called failure, because what would people say? 01:16:41.600 --> 01:16:50.319 Well, my parents have to deal with the embarrassment, and at the end of the day, you realize my hair so what you know, but you tried it, yeah. 01:16:50.479 --> 01:16:51.199 Yeah, yeah. 01:16:51.199 --> 01:17:03.279 I I had a friend recently give me some interesting type of ultimatum and tell me that now that she's going through a divorce, if I want to stop talking to her, just let her know. 01:17:03.279 --> 01:17:06.319 And I was shocked that she would even bring that up. 01:17:06.319 --> 01:17:16.720 But it just shows the societal pressure on women and marriage and how you internalize it and think it's hold the marriage. 01:17:17.039 --> 01:17:19.680 Don't because you know she might affect your marriage. 01:17:19.680 --> 01:17:21.359 And I'm like, what does that have to do with anything? 01:17:21.359 --> 01:17:28.399 I'm not affecting anybody, I'm living my life, JJ, but you've already said on me things that don't make any sense, or oh, you know, don't not invite me. 01:17:28.399 --> 01:17:30.159 Some people don't invite me to baby showers. 01:17:30.319 --> 01:17:30.800 Yeah. 01:17:31.119 --> 01:17:34.000 Because they think that oh, to make me depressed. 01:17:34.000 --> 01:17:38.319 I'm like, the Bible says rejoice with those who rejoice, cry with yeah. 01:17:38.319 --> 01:17:43.039 It hasn't even gotten into what you've already taught it for me. 01:17:43.039 --> 01:17:44.960 You know, it's like, well, what is wrong with people? 01:17:44.960 --> 01:17:46.800 Like, but then I realized it's the culture. 01:17:46.800 --> 01:17:53.439 I had to undo that anxiety because I I didn't realize that all that was making me anxious. 01:17:53.439 --> 01:17:58.159 I had a lot of anxiety issues because of that cultural pressure. 01:17:58.159 --> 01:18:04.319 Once I got out of my lane and I was like, and I'm gonna take this thing all the way, I no longer cared. 01:18:04.560 --> 01:18:15.199 So much of life is how you metabolize trauma, grief, getting back up again after things you had not planned for. 01:18:15.199 --> 01:18:21.039 And if you never tell your kids that things will come, they won't know. 01:18:21.039 --> 01:18:25.760 Part of this life is helping them cope because it's just a matter of time. 01:18:25.760 --> 01:18:27.760 Everyone goes through something. 01:18:28.079 -->

01:18:29.680 Look, I've been depressed for five years. 01:18:29.680 --> 01:18:30.720 I mean, I told you that. 01:18:30.720 --> 01:18:34.079 I said depression shows up differently for different people. 01:18:34.079 --> 01:18:41.439 I was still functioning, going to work, doing, I would lab, you know, like but until this is the first year. 01:18:41.439 --> 01:18:47.520 Like when I told you, this was the year, the 550 year of my dad's passing that I actually traveled and hung out with friends and everything. 01:18:47.520 --> 01:18:58.960 And I realized, I'm like, wow, I have been depressed, you know, and this is not something anybody prepares you for because I always thought, ah, okay, sadness is one thing, you know, that I just blow it up, you know. 01:18:58.960 --> 01:19:00.880 But yes, I was depressed. 01:19:00.880 --> 01:19:11.279 Constantly not wanting to get out of bed or getting out of bed and just barely being there, you know, checked out emotionally and mentally, and just using, you know, you and I use laughter a lot. 01:19:11.279 --> 01:19:17.439 You know, people just thought we're laughing all the time that everything is well, but that's the only way I know how to deal with situations. 01:19:17.439 --> 01:19:21.920 I just laugh at the situation or the absurdity of the situation or make a joke out of it. 01:19:21.920 --> 01:19:22.399 Yeah. 01:19:22.399 --> 01:19:29.359 It's just laughter has always been the way I've dealt with it. 01:19:29.359 --> 01:19:37.920 There are some things I would say that, you know, they seem funny to people, but anybody who knows me really well is like, okay, Edge is, you know, she's saying something. 01:19:37.920 --> 01:19:42.960 And um it's just I finally realized, oh, so this is what I was going through. 01:19:42.960 --> 01:19:45.199 Because I needed time to process what it was. 01:19:45.199 --> 01:19:51.119 I was grieving, and my grief took longer than than I guess most other people, you know. 01:19:51.119 --> 01:19:52.560 Do you think so though? 01:19:52.560 --> 01:20:00.000 I guess no, well, maybe maybe they'd handle this in different ways from directly linked to the cause of the grief. 01:20:00.239 --> 01:20:07.199 Yeah, because the death of a parent to a present parent, an emotionally available parent, I don't think anyone gets over that. 01:20:07.520 --> 01:20:08.880 You you never get over it. 01:20:08.880 --> 01:20:10.079 I get I have moments. 01:20:10.079 --> 01:20:12.079 I'm still gonna, I'm not moments. 01:20:12.079 --> 01:20:13.760 Come on, you know, my dad died at home. 01:20:13.760 --> 01:20:15.920 So right, um, I have moments. 01:20:15.920 --> 01:20:21.199 Yeah, I mean, there are times even even when somebody will say something and I'll just like my brain will start. 01:20:21.199 --> 01:20:24.800 But my grief now is not as bad as it was early on. 01:20:24.800 --> 01:20:31.199 I mean, like now I I I I have a sense of grief, but there's also a sense of okay, it's okay. 01:20:31.199 --> 01:20:35.119 It's okay to I felt guilty because like you're talking about being a caregiver. 01:20:35.119 --> 01:20:38.640 When you're a life caregiver, like there's still a guilt to everything. 01:20:38.640 --> 01:20:47.920 Because it's always like, oh, maybe if I'd done things, you know, even though yes, you do realize it's not your fault, or the buttons there's always this maybe I could have done more, maybe I could do more. 01:20:47.920 --> 01:20:51.520 Your case, your lifetime caregiving even extends to your brother. 01:20:51.760 --> 01:20:54.720 But it's literally a lifetime, that's why I call it a lifetime caregiver. 01:20:55.359 --> 01:20:58.640 You're still dealing with because you're not even in a position to help. 01:20:58.800 --> 01:20:59.119 Yeah. 01:20:59.119 --> 01:21:01.840 Because most people, it's seasonal caregiving. 01:21:01.840 --> 01:21:03.359 Mine was lifetime. 01:21:03.600 --> 01:21:04.079 Whatever. 01:21:04.079 --> 01:21:11.199 You know, you've been doing it since you were you were young, and then now it became, you know, it's your own children, but you still have your brother. 01:21:11.199 --> 01:21:17.520 So it's like people don't seem to understand it, and that was why you reacted the way you did when it was diagnosing your children. 01:21:17.520 --> 01:21:22.720 Because you you saw what happened with your brother, and you know, it's like is that overcorrection? 01:21:23.039 --> 01:21:24.000 Yeah, yeah. 01:21:24.000 --> 01:21:27.279 I feel like it's a good it's a good, hmm. 01:21:27.279 --> 01:21:30.159 My parents grieved Kunle. 01:21:30.159 --> 01:21:32.239 I grew up with Kunle. 01:21:32.239 --> 01:21:39.199 I think I I grieved an existence where I thought my parents were going to get it together. 01:21:39.199 --> 01:21:58.640 I really, I really, really, really, really thought that they would get it together so that I could be fully present raising my own kids, and I wouldn't have to think about also caring for my brother in the way I will likely have to. 01:21:58.640 --> 01:22:03.119 I think I grieved the way I wanted my parents to be. 01:22:03.119 --> 01:22:12.479 My grief is even though they're both still alive, I'm grieving the parents I thought they were going to grow into, if I'm being honest. 01:22:12.479 --> 01:22:39.920 Instead, it's more of a realization through writing this memoir, through quite frankly, sitting down with a therapist as I was writing it, is how much generational trauma I carried, both the one I was conscious of and the one the generations that came before me that I still don't know what trauma my mom and dad went through, but I know I'm carrying that too because of how they've been acting. 01:22:43.279 --> 01:22:47.119 And I, you know, I have my little thing dedicated to my father in my living room. 01:22:47.119 --> 01:22:52.000 I saw and I'll have a conversation with my father, like, what how was your life? 01:22:52.000 --> 01:22:56.319 How much did you make sure you didn't transfer to us?

01:22:56.319 --> 01:23:03.119 Because I wasn't first cousin when I talk to them and they talk about our parents were supposedly raised together, right? 01:23:03.119 --> 01:23:04.880 They weren't raised the way we were raised. 01:23:04.880 --> 01:23:12.960 And I'm saying to myself, okay, your dad, you know, some of them were like, Oh, their dads were abusive, and they was these are my dad's brothers, and I'm looking at them later, hand on me. 01:23:12.960 --> 01:23:14.239 My dad never called me a name. 01:23:14.239 --> 01:23:18.640 So, how much of his generational stuff did he unload? 01:23:18.880 --> 01:23:19.439 Exactly. 01:23:19.439 --> 01:23:20.880 And we'll never know. 01:23:20.880 --> 01:23:22.960 I was at that's a great point. 01:23:22.960 --> 01:23:25.279 I was talking to Tosa about this recently. 01:23:25.279 --> 01:23:46.000 It's like, I know my dad leapfrogged a lot, I know he did, because you know he leapfrogged poverty because we grew up upper middle class, we never wanted for anything, but my dad, both his parents passed by the time he was 13. 01:23:46.000 --> 01:24:03.039 There's a lot of trauma he's holding that I will never know because he grew up at a time where they don't men don't really talk about those things, and then my mom was the child of divorce, which in Nigeria in the 50s and 60s was like an abomination. 01:24:03.279 --> 01:24:03.439 Wow. 01:24:03.680 --> 01:24:07.680 So I know she carries that shame and guilt. 01:24:07.680 --> 01:24:13.760 So part of her leapfrogging was she thought she had to keep her marriage together no matter what. 01:24:13.760 --> 01:24:26.399 So I know they leapfrog things, and then so when you're raising the next generation, they don't know the gap, they just know the evidence, but they don't know. 01:24:26.399 --> 01:24:33.359 So now, once you now pass the baton, hopefully, if you do this right, there's less of a load. 01:24:33.359 --> 01:24:37.760 You don't want to give them more of a load, you want to give them less. 01:24:37.760 --> 01:24:42.079 Not that they won't carry a load, but it will be less by God's grace. 01:24:42.319 --> 01:24:54.800 Well, that's why being deliberate, and and when I say I'm proud of you, I've watched you deliberately create the life, like you know, you've made conscious decisions to leave what's that trauma is behind. 01:24:54.800 --> 01:24:57.039 Yes, yes, you've gone through some of that trauma. 01:24:57.039 --> 01:25:06.239 Yeah, how you have chosen to deal with it and not transfer it to your children, and also explaining to your children what that was. 01:25:06.399 --> 01:25:06.720 Yeah. 01:25:06.960 --> 01:25:14.319 Because now they like especially he's coming of age, some things now you you can tell him so he better understands. 01:25:14.319 --> 01:25:16.079 This is why mommy is the way she is. 01:25:16.079 --> 01:25:16.319 Yeah. 01:25:16.319 --> 01:25:19.760 This is why daddy and mommy may do things a little differently. 01:25:19.760 --> 01:25:20.000 Yeah.

01:25:20.000 --> 01:25:25.680 This is why, you know, like, you know, so that moving forward, you know, it it doesn't transfer on. 01:25:25.680 --> 01:25:36.319 And even with me, I'm I'm hoping that, you know, when my nieces and nephews get old enough and they start asking questions, I'm in the position to say, okay, now you're ready to know what you want to know. 01:25:36.319 --> 01:25:43.760 And I can tell you um what I know, what I found out when I asked, what this is why things are the way they are. 01:25:43.760 --> 01:25:50.000 But I do I do notice, like, we either take it forward with you or you decide to make it, but it's a deliberate effort. 01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:55.359 And when we talk about talk about breaking generational chains or curses, that's what we're talking about. 01:25:55.359 --> 01:25:56.640 Just because it happened. 01:25:56.640 --> 01:25:58.000 I, you know, I used to watch my dad. 01:25:58.000 --> 01:26:03.359 My dad was very introspective, he was very reserved, he measured his words. 01:26:03.359 --> 01:26:08.319 And I always wondered, and everybody that knew my dad before, we came along, they're like, Oh, your dad was hot and third. 01:26:08.319 --> 01:26:09.760 Your dad was, I couldn't see it. 01:26:09.760 --> 01:26:15.439 I never that man didn't raise his voice, never raised his hand, never did like so. 01:26:15.439 --> 01:26:23.920 For me, it was like everybody that knew you way back says one thing about you, but you made a conscious decision not to be that thing. 01:26:23.920 --> 01:26:26.640 So, and he was always like, You have to be deliberate. 01:26:26.640 --> 01:26:28.560 He always said, He said, You have to be deliberate. 01:26:28.560 --> 01:26:30.720 You can't say, Oh, that's how it's always been. 01:26:30.720 --> 01:26:36.319 This is what you have to now make a conscious decision, is how you want to do this thing. 01:26:36.319 --> 01:26:47.119 I said, and I made a conscious decision that my children, I was not going to abuse you, I was not gonna, they said I breathed life into you, you know, I, you know, I I made it and I told God I wasn't gonna do that. 01:26:47.119 --> 01:26:51.840 I, you know, yes, because I wasn't perfect, but I didn't, I deliberately didn't do that. 01:26:51.840 --> 01:27:06.880 And so even in my own life now, I'm trying to use that same principle of being honest with myself, trying to be as honorable as I can, I'm not perfect, but just being okay and and and being deliberate, everything I do, I'm being deliberate. 01:27:06.880 --> 01:27:14.800 Like I'm being conscious of living like this, I'm being conscious of how I look, how I carry myself, how I speak, like being deliberate. 01:27:14.800 --> 01:27:18.319 And breaking generational curses comes with that. 01:27:18.319 --> 01:27:24.720 It's it's like I'm like when I say I'm proud of you, I'm proud of how because I've I've known you now, what, 20 something, yeah? 01:27:24.720 --> 01:27:29.840 Well, you know, we look back and we laugh now,

but there are some times that things were not as easy as they are. 01:27:29.840 --> 01:27:38.239 But where you are now and where I see you being, I'm so proud of you because you know, you have faded your own lane. 01:27:38.239 --> 01:27:44.960 Your you and your husband have created your family, that unit, and how it works for you. 01:27:44.960 --> 01:27:52.000 Consider you don't, you didn't really have proper guidance, but you've created something that works for you. 01:27:52.000 --> 01:27:55.840 And I am always amazed at how you make it work. 01:27:55.840 --> 01:27:59.840 Remember, I told you somebody told me, somebody told me watching you guys, like, you are not a teacher. 01:27:59.840 --> 01:28:02.720 Nigerian households. 01:28:03.760 --> 01:28:06.239 We are very weird, and that's okay. 01:28:06.560 --> 01:28:09.119 Yeah, but you know, it's like when you say Olley Ink. 01:28:09.439 --> 01:28:10.960 Olley Incorporated, baby. 01:28:10.960 --> 01:28:11.920 Ollie Inc. 01:28:12.399 --> 01:28:13.439 Yeah, that makes sense. 01:28:13.439 --> 01:28:14.399 Like it works. 01:28:14.399 --> 01:28:20.880 But you guys have made you've taken the stigma, in my opinion, out of autism as it is. 01:28:20.880 --> 01:28:25.680 Because you are the first person, it was through Kunley, I knew about autism. 01:28:25.680 --> 01:28:26.640 I'll be very honest with you. 01:28:26.640 --> 01:28:30.800 I'd never mostly Nigeria people hide their family members. 01:28:30.800 --> 01:28:39.600 You didn't hide that from me. 01:28:39.600 --> 01:28:41.920 In fact, when I first met you, you were very direct. 01:28:41.920 --> 01:28:43.039 Oh, I have a brother. 01:28:43.039 --> 01:28:44.479 And then it was through you. 01:28:44.479 --> 01:28:49.520 And I started reading up on autism and what it was about, and like, wow, okay, I didn't even know. 01:28:49.520 --> 01:28:52.479 And you're upfront about it, you never hit him. 01:28:52.479 --> 01:28:57.039 When you go on ride, you'll be in the back, and you know, you'll be like DJ Kunle on the ones and twos. 01:28:57.039 --> 01:29:07.039 I mean, like, I after all that, I'm just like, this is so not Nigerian, you know, and even your your your your ministry started then. 01:29:07.039 --> 01:29:14.319 Because even me, when I talk to people about autism, I'm always like, oh, you know, and whatever I learn from you, I'm always like trying to inspire you. 01:29:14.319 --> 01:29:15.600 So think about your ministry. 01:29:15.600 --> 01:29:24.399 You you you don't even know you're educating people who are educating other people, you know, who are educating other people because knowledge is power. 01:29:24.399 --> 01:29:26.800 A lot of people don't know because it's not what they're exposed to. 01:29:26.800 --> 01:29:33.199 And then with your children, I also learned something new with your kids and how you've handled that. 01:29:33.199 --> 01:29:42.720 And I'm just like, wow, okay, you know, this is a ministry that's just growing and growing, and

there are a lot of people looking to you and looking at you and saying, How is she doing it? 01:29:42.720 --> 01:29:52.399 And it's not like you're hiding, you're not hiding anything, we're very open with information, but the sacrifices you have made, how many people are willing to do that? 01:29:52.399 --> 01:30:03.920 Because where you end up is depending on what sacrifices you're willing to make, because you can sit here and complain about how life has liked you, but there are certain things you're gonna have to do to get from this point to that point. 01:30:03.920 --> 01:30:06.960 A lot of people are not willing to make those sacrifices. 01:30:06.960 --> 01:30:14.479 Are you willing to sit at home and leave your nice position job to sit at home with your children for like so many years with aggressive therapy? 01:30:14.479 --> 01:30:22.319 Yeah, not earning like after after going through all that to get a job, only to leave the job, leave your house, leave everything. 01:30:22.560 --> 01:30:30.479 And then having to start all, I had to start all over again in a new state, and I was underemployed for a while. 01:30:30.479 --> 01:30:32.159 I was underemployed. 01:30:32.159 --> 01:30:35.199 I had these degrees, I couldn't, it was a journey. 01:30:35.199 --> 01:30:36.159 It was a journey. 01:30:36.479 --> 01:30:38.319 Go through all that, and then you are where you are now. 01:30:38.319 --> 01:30:40.079 You deserve to be where you are now. 01:30:40.079 --> 01:30:43.600 God is now replenishing what you lost. 01:30:43.600 --> 01:30:48.399 So for me, it's like, okay, even when I talk to people, I'm like, okay, are you willing to do all this? 01:30:48.399 --> 01:30:52.079 Because it's one thing and say, Oh, this is the problem when you're talking to me. 01:30:52.079 --> 01:30:55.039 But then it's like, okay, these are all the steps to get to here. 01:30:55.039 --> 01:30:55.520 Are you willing? 01:30:55.520 --> 01:30:57.039 And they're like, ah, that one's too much. 01:30:57.039 --> 01:31:00.720 So it's like, okay, then the truth is you have to do what it takes. 01:31:00.720 --> 01:31:03.439 I said, but I've watched somebody do what it takes. 01:31:03.439 --> 01:31:10.960 And I like you said, in grieving your parents, yeah, you're grieved what they didn't weren't willing to do to get where you have gotten to. 01:31:10.960 --> 01:31:20.720 So it's like if you can't even make the sacrifice, life life's everybody, but you have to make certain sacrifices to go from this point to this point. 01:31:20.720 --> 01:31:28.000 And a lot of people they don't want to make they they complain, yeah, but they don't want to make the necessary changes or the sacrifices to get there. 01:31:28.000 --> 01:31:33.760 Some of them watch you and admire you, and they won't even ask you, hey, what are the resources available to me so that I can take advantage of them? 01:31:33.760 --> 01:31:35.840 They just sit there and they wallow and okay. 01:31:35.840 --> 01:31:38.399 Ministry, they can preach the gospel to you. 01:31:38.399 --> 01:31:41.439 How you take the gospel and use it is all to you now. 01:31:41.439 --> 01:32:00.159 And you know, and how you live your life, and why I'm so proud of you is you are showing people that life does not end because your what you you envisioned, your plan, what you call that success did not happen the way or it didn't come in wrapped in the package you expected it to be wrapped in. 01:32:00.159 --> 01:32:01.840 Now, this is what it is. 01:32:01.840 --> 01:32:03.039 Okay, what next? 01:32:03.039 --> 01:32:04.560 What can that look like? 01:32:04.560 --> 01:32:13.920 And you are showing people what that can look like from your perspective, and then for them to give them the opportunity to create what it should look like in from their perspective. 01:32:13.920 --> 01:32:16.000 So you inspire me. 01:32:16.000 --> 01:32:22.560 I mean, my selfish era, I'm like, okay, big auntie, I've got kids to take care of, auntie needs to make the money. 01:32:22.560 --> 01:32:26.560 So when the children come, you know, it's almost time for university smoothies. 01:32:26.560 --> 01:32:30.479 Okay, where are my kids at? 01:32:30.479 --> 01:32:31.680 What are we doing? 01:32:31.680 --> 01:32:34.319 So keep up what you're doing. 01:32:34.319 --> 01:32:40.159 I believe you're pretty much you're almost at the third third leg of what where you are. 01:32:40.159 --> 01:32:43.359 You know, you've you've carved out your own lane and you've gone far. 01:32:43.359 --> 01:32:45.520 Let's take it back, quite honestly. 01:32:45.520 --> 01:32:49.439 I think that uh you've passed this Lola 2.0. 01:32:50.000 --> 01:32:52.479 Solidly a lola 3.0, at least. 01:32:52.880 --> 01:32:55.520 At least you're quadratic. 01:32:55.520 --> 01:32:58.079 Done a lot. 01:32:58.079 --> 01:33:15.840 Like and and what I like is the self-improvement, you know, how you've you've you've faced your demons and head on, you know, it's not an easy thing, you know, it but you face your demons and you've accepted who you are, where you came from, and how far you've come and where you're going. 01:33:15.920 --> 01:33:19.920 And and the journey continues one day at a time, one day at a time. 01:33:20.079 --> 01:33:27.760 And those children are are blessed to have um proud, proud of my nephew, even my niece. 01:33:27.760 --> 01:33:30.000 My niece surprises me every time. 01:33:30.000 --> 01:33:36.880 Yeah, so just keep up what you're doing, and uh, we'll be here to cheer you on, even in the nursing home. 01:33:36.880 --> 01:33:37.680 Thanks, sis. 01:33:37.680 --> 01:33:40.399 Thanks until next time. 01:33:42.560 --> 01:33:47.600 Thank you for joining me on Unapologetically Whole. 01:33:47.600 --> 01:33:58.560 My hope is that something you heard today offered you some space to breathe, reflect, and feel seen. 01:33:58.560 --> 01:34:07.520 If this episode resonated with you, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. 01:34:07.520 --> 01:34:10.079 It helps this community grow. 01:34:10.079 --> 01:34:37.119 And if you want to stay connected, visit loladadaali.com, l-ol e y dot com to sign up for my monthly newsletter, purchase my upcoming book, Unapologetically Whole, or learn how to bring me to your next event as a speaker. 01:34:37.119 --> 01:34:45.439 Until next time, I'm Lola Dada Ali, and this is Unapologetically Whole.