Latest / Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh / Navigating Life's Seasons

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Navigating Life's Seasons · Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Chatting With The Experts where
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I speak with phenomenal women from Africa, from the Caribbean, and
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in the diaspora, and they share my mission, which is to educate, empower,
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and to encourage women globally.
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Today is no exception, and our show is titled
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Every Petal, Dusk, Twilight, Dawn.
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My guest, who will join me in a second, says, "Transforming in every
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season where every or each wave is a gift." She says, "Let's unfold with
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curiosity and wonder." My guest is a storyteller, a poet and coach, and is a
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United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland champion for governance, a HBR advisory
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council member, a TEDx panelist, and a fellow of the Association for Coaching.
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Isn't she amazing?
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And with that, I want to welcome Tesse Akpeki to Chatting with the Experts.
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Hi, Paula.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome, Tesse.
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I'm blessed that you said yes to being a guest on the show.
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I'm so glad to be here.
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Absolutely.
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Today we're gonna be talking about something that's special to you,
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and you titled it Every Petal, the Dusk, the Twilight and the Dawn.
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Let's talk about this.
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Why did you title that, title the show that in the first place?
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There's a reason.
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Oh, there's a very deep reason, and the petals of flowers are very
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beautiful, and singly they are delicate, fragile, vulnerable, easily destroyed.
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But when you put every petal together, it becomes a constellation.
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The beauty of the flower comes from every petal together, and
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that's why I called it Every Petal.
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In our seasons, in our reasons, in our lifetime, every petal matters.
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One is not important than the other, and that's what I'll be talking about today.
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But then again, I looked at the different waves of our experience.
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There's dusk, there's the twilight, and then there's dawn, and each of
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those signifies different rhythms.
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So with every petal, we'll be looking at how these different
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rhythms interact, engage, transform, and every season has a reason.
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So I hope that these different threads will come together as golden and hopefully
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speak to every person's experience.
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So you talked about dusk,
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twilight, dawn.
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Which comes first, Tesse?
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it depends on the way you look at it.
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But for me, the dusk comes first.
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Because that's the darkness.
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That's the shade.
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That's when you can't see things clearly.
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And in my reasoning, that time of the darkness, of the shade,
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of the uncertainty, in my experience is what has come first.
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When everything that I know
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becomes uncertain.
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Every step that I take is shaky because I don't know where the next rock is.
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I don't know what the next step should be.
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And that's a time in that place of uncertainty.
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Often for me it had been sadness and it's been grief that I don't know
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what to do next, and that's the dusk.
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And I think for different people, that season, that rhythm of dusk will vary.
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It will change.
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But for me, it has been traumatic events from being very young till
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now that when tragedies has struck, the dusk is present very strongly.
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Okay.
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All right.
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So for you it's been dusk, tragedy, loss-… sadness.
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Yeah.
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I'm almost saying
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'Cause we talked about petals, beauty.
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So from dusk is a twilight.
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Twilight, okay, let's talk about twilight.
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What's twilight for you?
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Twilight is, twilight is the kind of thing, in a lot of places a twilight
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is when the light is beginning to come through but not quite.
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And in some countries there's that kind of amber type of glow whereby it's not
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quite daylight and it's not quite night.
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And for me that, that's the twilight thing.
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it's where you have this kind, a transition that is not quite dark and
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not quite light, but it's quite real.
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And I would express it as emergence- that something is beginning to unfold.
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Something is beginning to surface, but I'm not quite sure what that is.
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And for me, during my twilight season, I really had this relationship with the
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butterfly, and I studied a lot about the butterflies and the butterfly effects.
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And the butterfly is not always beautiful.
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The butterfly starts as a maggoty kind of thing, very ugly, and then it's
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in a kind of um, cocoon, form whereby it's wrapped with layers of stuff
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and this kind of fluid inside, and it's not exactly pretty to look at.
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And it's in that form for quite a while, and then it breaks out
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from that, that cocooning effect type of thing, and it comes out.
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And the wings are still wet
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And this is a creature that is supposed to fly, and the only way it can fly is
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when it comes out with those wet wings.
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And the wings begin to move, and it dries, and then it can fly.
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And then it comes out with all kinds of different colors.
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And so that twilight season for me was that kind of season
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of uncertainty and hurt.
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And in that sheltered place of cocooning, there was that protection of being
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there and learning and relearning and knowing that protective state was
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somewhere where I could get some clarity.
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And that meant that I needed very much that butterfly stage to go through the
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different stages and to trust the process.
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That even though it was a time of protection and being there, there'd
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be a time when I would break out of that shell, of that shelter,
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of that comfort and begin to fly.
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So it was to trust the process and to know that there would be an emergence on
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the other side, and that's the twilight.
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For a lot of people, that period of
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discovery, that period of reflection, that period of navigating something
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that they're not quite sure what it is, it's very different.
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For some people, it could be a lost job, something that they thought
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they would have for life, and then all of a sudden they're let go of.
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For some people, it might be a partner who gets Alzheimer's, and
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the person who they knew is there physically but not there after a while.
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So you… I can go on and everybody has that twilight situation, but
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how they actually are in that twilight season will be different.
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Remember, it's not quite dusk, and it's not quite light, and
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that makes it even more scary.
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So there's a lot of trust needed in the process for the twilight.
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It's hard.
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So would you say it's kinda like the emergence?
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When you said emergence, so there was the dusk.
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Now we're talking about the twilight, which is-… in between.
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Twilight is in between dusk and dawn.
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Yes.
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You mentioned.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And, the butterfly effect, as you said, goes from the caterpillar
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stage when it's in the cocoon-
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Yeah.
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Yes … which is protective.
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Yeah.
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It's not really beautiful.
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But a lot is going on there.
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yes.
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And, when we see the cocoon, it looks like it's so still.
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Yes.
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But- Yeah I remember reading up about somebody who's looked at the, the
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caterpillar and the cocoon, and I was like, "I need to help this cocoon."
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I need to help this caterpillar.
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Yes.
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And they went and they tried to help the caterpillar, but what they actually
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did was not helpful to the caterpillar.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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It was detrimental to the caterpillar because the caterpillar couldn't emerge.
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There were so many important things going on-
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Yeah
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… that was needed.
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And you mentioned that during that stage-… as painful as it was, as
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difficult as it is or was or is ongoing- … something important was happening.
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Yes.
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In your case, what was happening?
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Yeah.
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That's a beautiful question.
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And in my case, what was happening in the various traumatic events that I-
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navigated was actually to look at struggle
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Not as something that was meant to crush me- but something that
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I could use to strengthen my wings which were being formed.
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And that was very hard because it meant sitting and leaning into discomfort,
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but also being aware that I probably couldn't navigate the twilight by myself.
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And it meant that I had to make myself vulnerable and
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know where my limitations are.
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It meant that being somebody who has grown up very independent and doing a lot of
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things for myself, I had to know how to lean on other people for that time, how to
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research and resource help, how to ask for help, but also how to sit in the struggle
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without necessarily struggling because the str- there was no energy to struggle.
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There just wasn't the energy there physically, emotionally.
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There wasn't the energy.
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And there was something about being in that twilight which was about resting
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in possibility, but also knowing that just like that every petal matters,
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it was other people's take on the petal that was important for me to
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be part of that petal constellation.
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And as I said, that's very hard if you're used to being independent.
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It's about dependent, interdependent and acknowledging that.
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But also for someone like me that is very high-functioning and high-performing,
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it's very easy for me to see myself as a failure and not wanting to fail.
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But that not wanting to fail had resulted through my life in
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sometimes over-performing, being performative, not resting, burning out.
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And the twilight for me this time round was to accept and surrender to what was
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going on in the knowledge that just like the butterfly through the struggle would
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emerge to be beautiful, I had to trust the process that I could emerge from
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The pain and the loss and the grief of what I was experiencing,
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and I could still be beautiful.
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I could still be lovely.
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I had to trust that.
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I wasn't seeing it and I definitely wasn't feeling it.
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But the twilight was about learning to trust the process and learning
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to trust the reason for the season and not fight it, 'cause I didn't
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have the energy to fight it.
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Tesse,
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that's deep.
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Yeah.
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That's very deep.
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Yeah.
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I know that you've described yourself as a storyteller.
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Yeah
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I'm hearing a story, but I'm also hearing a poet- a poetess.
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Yeah.
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I'm also hearing a coach.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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And so you're embracing all three in one.
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Yeah.
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All three in one.
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So…
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took down some notes here about acceptance and surrendering and…
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being dependent and yet realizing that you had to be indi- you considered yourself
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an independent woman, but understanding that during the twilight zone, you had
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to be dependent on people in order to…
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survive
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willingly or unwillingly, you had to be dependent
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Yeah.
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Yeah
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… because you started seeing in yourself things that maybe being in the cocoon
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Enabled you to see more clearly?
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I'm not sure if, I'm never been a- Yeah … a person of much words.
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I don't consider myself- I
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think I am.
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Yeah
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… a wordsmith.
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I've always left that to you.
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Yeah.
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And you've done such a … great job.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I love what you're saying, to see more clearly, because in the cocoon,
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because of the blurriness of the situation, it's very hard to see
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clearly, and that's where the trust lies.
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That to not see clearly but yet to trust what is going on.
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And in the cocoon, for me, because of my particular challenges, I needed
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to get to clarity, but in getting to clarity, to recognize that I
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wouldn't understand everything.
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I'm a lawyer by background, and I'm very cognitive in that legal
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space, and it's just like you ask a question and you expect an answer,
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and you expect clarity to emerge.
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But in the twilight, when you're dealing with life and life circumstances,
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that clarity doesn't always emerge.
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And so for me, it was about being more intuitive and connecting with
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my intuition and my hunches, and also connecting with other people
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who could help me to stay with the things that made my life uncomfortable
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or, things that were painful.
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So you know one of the things that happened was my beloved
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brother Tony was killed, and he was a pedestrian going to work.
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Now, you'd expect that anybody who goes to work would come back home, right?
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And yet he was minding his own business on the road and someone from nowhere ran into
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him and left him to die, which he did.
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Now, no matter how much my cognitive mind tried to understand that, I couldn't.
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So , in that cocoon, I had to accept that there's some things
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that I will never understand.
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And in that cocoon, I had to accept that somewhere I had to find forgiveness for
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the woman who did that to my brother, because if I did not forgive her,
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it would be like me drinking poison and expecting somebody else to die,
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which is what Nelson Mandela said.
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And somewhere I needed to connect with my forgiveness, and forgiving was very hard.
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So in the cocoon, I had to somehow ask, I have a faith, I had to ask God, my maker
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and creator, to help me to find it in my heart to forgive this woman, who by
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the way hadn't even said sorry, right?
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Another thing was, for me having a lot of ill health because I didn't take care
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of my health and I was burning out and my body screamed and I wouldn't listen.
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So I had illness put me down and I had to go to a lot of operations and things.
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So in the cocoon, I had to actually rather than say, "Oh God, you stopped
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me from working for X number of months, for X number of years," I
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had to say, "Lord, how can I use this illness which I'm experiencing?
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How can I see the gift in it?"
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And so in that cocoon, I began to learn how to see the gift in
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things which were not necessarily positive and not necessarily calming
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and not necessarily comfortable.
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How could I see the gift even in bad stuff?
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And I feel that if I hadn't been in this kind of twilight place of exploration,
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of questioning, of curiosity, I probably wouldn't have got some of
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the realizations which I am with now.
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Now, I'm not saying that where I am now everything's complete.
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It never will be 'cause life isn't like that.
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But I sense that I'm much more refined in my acceptance of shade and light
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now than I ever was, growing up as an optimistic teenager, becoming
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a 20-year-old and 30-year-old.
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I have more of a sense of peace in this place of consciousness, and I suspect
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that other people who are going through twilight will be wrestling with their
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own stories and their own situations.
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It will be different for everybody.
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Yes, absolutely.
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So I know that you're a coach.
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I know that, correct me in the number of years, I was gonna say two or three
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years ago you founded, Future Focus Wellness and Resilience, Resiliency.
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Yeah.
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How does resiliency and hardiness come into play?
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How can you help someone walk through, 'cause no journey is the
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same, so walk through, through a similar journey to where you are?
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Because I know that is the whole purpose of Future Focus Wellness and Resiliency.
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Let's talk a little bit about that.
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This is Tesse Talks, but I do wanna bring that up because I know
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that's your passion these days.
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It's not about you.
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It's more about helping others because of your journey.
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Paula, I love how you ask the questions, and you've moved seamlessly to dawn.
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Yes.
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We are in dawn.
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You move very seamlessly to dawn, and dawn very much is a new beginning.
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It's a fresh start.
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It's the light is coming, and the light is shining.
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So that's a lot what Future Focus is about.
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I had founded an earlier, version of leadership which was about
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resiliency for leaders, and that's what led to Future Focus.
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That came at beginning of COVID in 2020, and it was
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something I always wanted to do.
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But because I got locked down in West Africa, I decided
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that I would launch that then.
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And what happened there was that I had expected maybe 20 or 30, 40, expressions
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of interest in connecting with that idea of resiliency for leaders, and
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actually 2,000 inquiries later in one week, I realized I had hit on something.
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It's one of those things where you don't realize that every- other people are
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interested, so much so that same year in 2020, for the first time I was contacted
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by a regulator, which is the Charity Commission for England and Wales, and
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they asked me to ask a question about leaders and the resilience in COVID.
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And I was completely and utterly surprised by that.
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But as a coach, where does this relate to wellbeing and resilience?
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Where does this relate to the different petals?
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Coaching, when it's working, coaching is very much about helping
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people to consider questions as they form and create their future.
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And that's questions about anything.
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It could be questions about their business, it could be questions about
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their personal life, it could be questions about their executive functioning.
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It could be questions about anything.
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And a good coach would be the person who trusts their coachee
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to know the answers but need the expertise to bring them out.
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And so to be able to enter into a new dawn and to see a new day, a good coach
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will walk alongside the person they are coaching and help them to sit with their
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curiosity, and help them to be honest in a way that is non-judgmental, in a way
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that is not about shaming or blaming.
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And in a way that is an acceptance of that person for themselves, by themselves.
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What do I mean by that?
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A coach needs to accept the coachee, the group that they're coaching as it is,
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and actually hold up a mirror to that person, hold up a mirror to that group
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and help them to see their possibilities, their probabilities without judgment.
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So for me, the coach in Dawn is someone who will radiate hope for
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the person or the group they are coaching, and say, "This is possible.
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Do you believe it for yourself?" And then along that journey, walk
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alongside them side by side and enable them to see those possibilities,
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those probabilities for themselves, and get the agency, the enablement,
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the facilitation, and the support to walk their journey by themselves.
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So I love this saying.
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Actually, I heard this saying, and it was by group Peter Block, who is a
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well-known facilitator, community builder.
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And the saying was, "Someone walking alongside you, taking your hand,
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you taking theirs, and you walk each other home." So Dawn is about hand
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in that light, leaving the twilight zone and walking in the possibility
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and the probability of what can be.
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And in that place is a balance and a rhythm between being and doing, because we
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are human beings, we're not human doings.
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And somewhere along the line, we leave the rhythm of being human
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beings and become human doings.
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And dawn shines that light, that the butterfly emerges from the cocoon.
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The butterfly, the wings stride, it's able to fly.
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And then in the dawn, the wings become strong, and he, she,
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they can fly and fly away.
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And guess what?
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In the daylight, they soar, S-O-A-R.
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They rise and soar.
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And I'm soaring as I hear that.
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Thank you, Tesse.
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You are in the dawn.
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That's where I see you as the coach, as the future focus coach.
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Future focus, oh, wellness and resilience.
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I saw you come alive.
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Once we started talking about that, your smile opened, your face opened
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up because you are in the dawn.
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You are the coach for the coachees.
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I wrote down here the coach holds a mirror, radiates hope, and walks
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alongside with the coachee, sees the gift even in the bad stuff.
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And then the poet in you came alive.
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I then write that down, walks hand-in-hand, leaving the twilight because
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we are human beings and human doings.
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That's you.
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That's what you do.
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That is who you are, and that's what I know- Yeah … you
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want people to know about you.
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Absolutely.
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You bring hope to those who need hope because you've been down there.
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You've been in the dusk.
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Yeah.
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You've walked through the twilight, and now as you are in the dawn, you
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wanna hold the hands of others and let them walk alongside you in the dawn and
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know that there's a future out there.
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And you don't have to stay in the dusk.
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You are walking through the twilight to come into the dawn
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and know that there is hope.
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Yeah.
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Future focus.
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That's why we talk about the future, because it's ahead of us.
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We are looking ahead to what next, what is next, and that's what you
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do, and that's what you do so well.
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So tell us, for those who are looking Those who are not in the audience,
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those who are viewing this on Chatting With the Experts YouTube channel
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or they're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, how can
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they get in touch with you, Tesse?
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I am very active on LinkedIn.
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And I made it simple, Tesse Akpeki is my handle.
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I'm very active on LinkedIn.
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my website, Tesse at tesseakpeki.com,
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is there.
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And I have a private blog which I use to journal with pictures and voice.
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And everybody's welcome to be on my private blog.
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Smiley Tesse.
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Your IG.
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private blog in, yeah, in Instagram.
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And thank you for that.
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In Instagram, and it's Smiley Tesse.
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And Smiley Tesse is really somewhere that has helped me to heal,
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with the encouragement of some wonderful young people who you know.
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I started, Smiley Tesse, and it's been a vehicle for my healing because
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I've been able to- I listen to my own recordings to help myself.
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But really it is, now how am I finding my smile?
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It's not denying the pain.
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It's not being in unrealistic optimism.
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It's actually, can I smile again?
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And if I can have my inner smile, not just the outer smile, but if I can
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smile within me, how can I do that?
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And how can that smile go through the tears and the fears?
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And how can it be a smile that warms me up and also connects with other
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people who want to live life in all its fullness, the ups and its downs, and be
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in the water flow of life, and shine like gold, but also reflect like diamonds?
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How can you be that?
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And so folks, I promised you that I'll always bring to you the best.
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Women that educate, encourage, and empower others, and that's
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why we had Tesse Akpeki.
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And if you'd like to be a guest on Chatting With The Experts just
32:06
as she has been, please reach out to me on my website, which
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is chattingwiththeexperts.com.
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I'm also on LinkedIn, just as she is, and, you can visit my business page there,
32:20
which is Chatting With The Experts, or visit my profile page as Paula Okonneh.
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On Instagram, my handle there is
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@chat_experts_podcast.
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And we're on Facebook.
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My business page there is, I've made it simple, Chatting With The
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Experts, or you can visit my personal page, which is Paula Okonneh.
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And last but not least, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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There you'll be able to watch this episode with Tesse, and all the other episodes
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with just as amazing women who are educating, empowering, and encouraging
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other women all over the world.
33:10
Thank you, Tesse, for this amazing, for this wonderful time.
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And now we'll open up the floor for all those who have joined us who can
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ask you questions about Petals, not the petals on the flowers, of course.
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I love it.
33:31
But what you spoke about is such depth, and I know you touched the heart of so
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many others who are in the audience.
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So thank you again.
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Thank you.
33:41
Thank you, Podcast Paula.
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I love chatting with you.
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You're an expert.
33:47
I love being with you.
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You're the expert.
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I just bring experts on.
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Thank you.