Latest / Deeply Well with Devi Brown / Protecting Your Peace with Nina Parker
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Mm from grandmothers who whispered in their baby girl in
- 0:13Speaker 1: two fathers on dimly lit street corners, instructing young soldiers
- 0:16Speaker 1: to always keep their eyes open. You be queen, you
- 0:21Speaker 1: were fired. You will pass through centuries on the hands
- 0:24Speaker 1: of your daughters. They called you wisdom. Proverbs on the
- 0:28Speaker 1: backs of diamond eyed school children who growing into hymnals
- 0:32Speaker 1: recited by amethyst holding urban philosophers who recited neighborhood commandments
- 0:37Speaker 1: out of the windows of restored ALCHEMYO cheriots to keep
- 0:40Speaker 1: the warmth of their blood. Be wise, be smart, being black,
- 0:46Speaker 1: Opal Brown courts, bloodstone and prayer. Be every form of
- 0:50Speaker 1: Jim se King told, scribe, scribe, told son, son, told wife,
- 0:57Speaker 1: wife told her daughter, and daughter told the as this is.
- 1:00Speaker 1: And the ancestors told me that you would come to
- 1:04Speaker 1: give wisdom thousands. They said you would come Dropping Dropping
- 1:09Speaker 1: the Jim. All right, Welcome back to another episode of
- 1:12Speaker 1: The Dropping Jim's podcast. I'm your host Stebbie Brown. Today's show.
- 1:16Speaker 1: I'm super high because this girl is a fave of
- 1:20Speaker 1: most of the people that I've run into. It's funny
- 1:22Speaker 1: because sometimes people see that we talk on Instagram and
- 1:26Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, my god, you know her what
- 1:28Speaker 1: I'm like? Not only do I know her? That is
- 1:31Speaker 1: my friend friend. That's so funny to hear today's show,
- 1:36Speaker 1: we have um just one of the bossiest boss women
- 1:40Speaker 1: in the business. She is killing it in the broadcasting world.
- 1:44Speaker 1: You first saw her on TMZ, where she really broke
- 1:47Speaker 1: so many barriers and created lanes for so many people
- 1:51Speaker 1: that came after her. She then went to The Insider.
- 1:53Speaker 1: You have seen her Taming Wild Wild Conversations as a
- 1:59Speaker 1: love and hip pop reunion host, and she is currently
- 2:02Speaker 1: a host on E with two of her own shows,
- 2:05Speaker 1: Nightly Pop Dating No Filter. And you have seen her
- 2:09Speaker 1: on every red carpet giving absolutely serving looks and giving
- 2:14Speaker 1: expert commentary as a news correspondent. So, without further ado,
- 2:18Speaker 1: we have the eyebrow God herself time so snatcher, Miss
- 2:24Speaker 1: Nina Parker is on the show. Thank you for having me.
- 2:26Speaker 1: I'm so excited we could make a hand. I know
- 2:29Speaker 1: you know what I want to so everybody in and
- 2:31Speaker 1: how we first met. I was trying to think back.
- 2:34Speaker 1: I was like, dang, at what point did did we
- 2:36Speaker 1: like fall in friend love? Remember how I met you?
- 2:40Speaker 1: It's been a long time. I don't Okay, you tell me,
- 2:42Speaker 1: and I'm gonna tell you. We were backstage at a Celo.
- 2:48Speaker 1: I went to my god, it was um shout, I
- 2:52Speaker 1: feel so old. Those groups name? What was the group's name?
- 2:54Speaker 1: What group was Celo in? Oh? Narles Barkley. Wasn't there
- 2:59Speaker 1: one before that? Oh? Goody mob? Good? Yeah? Yeah, we went.
- 3:03Speaker 1: It was a goody Mob like something and Celo was
- 3:08Speaker 1: performing and Echo invited me. Our friend MPR had invited me,
- 3:14Speaker 1: and you were there and I had seen you just
- 3:17Speaker 1: like on social media. I think at the time, I'm
- 3:19Speaker 1: not sure what social media we were using, but I
- 3:21Speaker 1: remember giving you my business card and I was like, Hi,
- 3:23Speaker 1: you know, I'm Nina from TMZ and I introduced myself
- 3:27Speaker 1: to you and gave you my card and you were
- 3:28Speaker 1: super nice. We were both backstage and um, you know,
- 3:32Speaker 1: because you were doing radio, and I think I was
- 3:34Speaker 1: just like, you were just somebody I wanted to know.
- 3:36Speaker 1: And mind you, this is like when I was kind
- 3:38Speaker 1: of still new to l A, so I was just like,
- 3:39Speaker 1: she just seems like somebody it would be cool to know.
- 3:42Speaker 1: And I remember introducing myself and being like, hit me up,
- 3:44Speaker 1: here's my email if you need anything like if you
- 3:46Speaker 1: get any stories, and you were like okay and super cool.
- 3:49Speaker 1: But that's the first time we met. I remember, and
- 3:52Speaker 1: I thought it was so cool. Um, just you being
- 3:55Speaker 1: like a dope ass black woman on TMZ and like
- 3:59Speaker 1: killing it in the broadcasting world. Um. And I loved,
- 4:02Speaker 1: like from the moment we met, I just loved the
- 4:03Speaker 1: way you carried yourself and you were so funny but
- 4:06Speaker 1: so gracious, and you just had so much integrity, which
- 4:10Speaker 1: especially in that space, like the space of specifically TMZ
- 4:14Speaker 1: gossip heavy space, it's so rare like normally when you,
- 4:18Speaker 1: at least back then would meet people in that space,
- 4:21Speaker 1: you kind of like maybe want to take a shower
- 4:22Speaker 1: later because you felt like you were getting finessed for
- 4:25Speaker 1: like information, you know. And I was like, Yo, she's dope,
- 4:29Speaker 1: and then I remember, Okay. So I don't know if
- 4:31Speaker 1: you remember this, but one of my biggest memories of
- 4:34Speaker 1: our early early friendship was you like did me a
- 4:38Speaker 1: super solid yeah. So at that time. So what I
- 4:42Speaker 1: was really really early on the curve of was whenever
- 4:46Speaker 1: I'd have an interview, sending it places. This is before
- 4:50Speaker 1: obviously far before Instagram, um, and it's before like blogs
- 4:54Speaker 1: have evolved into what they are now. So like most
- 4:57Speaker 1: talent in radio did not cut up bits and pieces
- 5:01Speaker 1: of their interviews and even posted online, let alone cut
- 5:05Speaker 1: up pieces specifically and send them to blogs with like
- 5:09Speaker 1: recaps like Hey, today I interviewed so and so so,
- 5:12Speaker 1: like how you're seeing like the breakfast club interviews today.
- 5:15Speaker 1: That's kind of like what I was doing a long
- 5:17Speaker 1: long time ago. Um, obviously not the same reach. I'm
- 5:20Speaker 1: not trying to take no credit for nothing, but you know, yeah, yeah,
- 5:24Speaker 1: but I was early on stuff like that, on navigating
- 5:26Speaker 1: social So I had just started doing mixtapes. Me and
- 5:30Speaker 1: Terris Martin had released some products projects. We released this
- 5:35Speaker 1: project called Here My Dear, which did really well and
- 5:39Speaker 1: it had we had like a very early kindreck on it.
- 5:42Speaker 1: We had snoop on it, corrupt even Charlie Wilson, a
- 5:45Speaker 1: lot of lot of dope talent. And then we've released
- 5:47Speaker 1: a second project called The Sex EP. And for those
- 5:51Speaker 1: not familiar, though I know many of you are, us
- 5:54Speaker 1: is he's a really really dope producer and artist, a
- 5:59Speaker 1: lot of infusion of jazz instrumentation meets hip hop. Right,
- 6:02Speaker 1: he's fired. He's produced some of your favorite music. We
- 6:05Speaker 1: did this project called the sex Cyp. My boy Rete
- 6:10Speaker 1: designed the cover of it, right, yes, I remember this now.
- 6:13Speaker 1: The cover of it was to Breasts in purple and
- 6:16Speaker 1: it said the sex Cyp Debbie dev Terrace Martin's and
- 6:20Speaker 1: unbeknownst to me, it was an image of Kim Kardashian
- 6:26Speaker 1: her breasts from her w mag shoot. Right, So this
- 6:30Speaker 1: is when the lines were really blurred. Like, we didn't
- 6:32Speaker 1: have the same type of content restrictions as we do now.
- 6:35Speaker 1: So it's like, just so if it was like a
- 6:40Speaker 1: free project, you didn't have to worry about getting songs
- 6:43Speaker 1: cleared um or samples cleared, and you didn't really have
- 6:46Speaker 1: to worry about photographs or attributing credit or anything like that. Right,
- 6:50Speaker 1: So I remember Kim tried to sue me. I've never
- 6:57Speaker 1: told this story before, so basically she somehow Well what
- 7:04Speaker 1: I thought it later was one of my friends loved
- 7:06Speaker 1: the project, was playing the project, was friends with someone
- 7:10Speaker 1: in her life. I think it was her brother. He
- 7:12Speaker 1: saw it and was like, Hey, I know whose boobs
- 7:15Speaker 1: these are like, and then took took our mixtape back,
- 7:19Speaker 1: you know, to Calabasas and and then I got sent
- 7:24Speaker 1: from Chris genera season about this mix tape it ended
- 7:30Speaker 1: up doing. It ended up great for us. But what
- 7:32Speaker 1: I loved was I had sent you the project because
- 7:35Speaker 1: because of that season desist letter, we had to pull
- 7:38Speaker 1: the project, um just to be safe, and we re
- 7:41Speaker 1: released it as the sex CP Season Desist, and we
- 7:45Speaker 1: used somebody else's breasts as to cover, and we put like,
- 7:48Speaker 1: you know, our season desists into the project. Right, great marketing.
- 7:52Speaker 1: But I had hit you up on like my blastlist
- 7:55Speaker 1: just in the hopes of you know, posting the project.
- 7:58Speaker 1: Right Obviously, I it probably wasn't gonna be material for you,
- 8:03Speaker 1: but I figured like, hey, you know, I want her
- 8:05Speaker 1: to be in the you know, in the loop of
- 8:07Speaker 1: stuff that I'm working on. So you did me such
- 8:09Speaker 1: a solid because I remember you said, hey, girls, so
- 8:12Speaker 1: we don't post mixtapes on TMZ, but I'm gonna turn
- 8:16Speaker 1: this into a story because we're gonna talk about this
- 8:18Speaker 1: season desist, And you ended up featuring the our mixtape
- 8:23Speaker 1: on TMZ TV, like you did a whole segment about it.
- 8:26Speaker 1: You're like my girl, Debbie Dead and Kim Gardashian sent
- 8:28Speaker 1: her this letter and you know, and it ended up
- 8:31Speaker 1: really helping us with the project got us great exposure.
- 8:34Speaker 1: I was like, Yo, we're to me now for giving
- 8:37Speaker 1: us that look to be creative back then, because you know,
- 8:41Speaker 1: when I started there, I didn't have any contacts. I
- 8:44Speaker 1: didn't know anybody in l A I had. I didn't
- 8:47Speaker 1: start there with like rolodex, you know. And so I
- 8:50Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna just have to build this. And
- 8:52Speaker 1: there were Harvey had rules. We weren't to report on pregnancies,
- 8:56Speaker 1: we weren't to report on weddings, engagements, Uh, no, mixtapes, no,
- 9:01Speaker 1: no music really unless it was like suing so often people.
- 9:06Speaker 1: Initially a lot of people I met in entertainment were black,
- 9:08Speaker 1: but a lot of them were in music. And I
- 9:10Speaker 1: was like, well, damn, Like I have all these music contacts,
- 9:12Speaker 1: I need more news contacts. But how can I like
- 9:15Speaker 1: use this to to like get us get stories about
- 9:18Speaker 1: like black people out there. So that's why I was
- 9:20Speaker 1: trying to find different angles of stuff where I was like,
- 9:22Speaker 1: I could cheat this and make up something else, but
- 9:25Speaker 1: I'm mentioning your thing, you know, So that's kind of
- 9:28Speaker 1: I would have to do. Like I'm mentioning you. You know,
- 9:30Speaker 1: people might come for you, but you know, but it
- 9:33Speaker 1: was it was. I actually remember that, still remember writing that.
- 9:36Speaker 1: That is so funny, you know. So I've been asking
- 9:38Speaker 1: Nina to come on the show forever. Instant response was yes,
- 9:41Speaker 1: but finding time in her schedule. And I feel like
- 9:46Speaker 1: such a horrible friend because I feel like I have
- 9:50Speaker 1: not mastered how to manage my time and outside of work.
- 9:54Speaker 1: I can manage work time perfect perfectly. I can squeeze
- 9:58Speaker 1: three jobs in one day and shoots, it's really difficult
- 10:02Speaker 1: for me to manage my friendships with my work schedule
- 10:06Speaker 1: um and being in a relationship. It's just a little overwhelming.
- 10:09Speaker 1: So I am just trying to always apologize to my
- 10:12Speaker 1: friends about like my lack of availability or like choosing
- 10:16Speaker 1: to sleep over. I feel I feel very guilty lately.
- 10:21Speaker 1: But what do I say to you every time on text?
- 10:24Speaker 1: I'm always like colon, no pressure. Yeah, oh, I mean
- 10:28Speaker 1: feel it from you. It's all from my own internal things.
- 10:31Speaker 1: There are some friends who guilt me more way more
- 10:34Speaker 1: like You're one of those friends. I know if I
- 10:35Speaker 1: didn't even see you for six months, we would just
- 10:37Speaker 1: get back to where we are. You wouldn't judge me,
- 10:39Speaker 1: you wouldn't you just be like you would just be
- 10:40Speaker 1: more like what's going on? Like have you been? But
- 10:43Speaker 1: there are certain people who definitely okay, So I guess
- 10:46Speaker 1: we're starting this already. I have been struggling in my
- 10:49Speaker 1: friendships and this isn't something I've actually talked about, but
- 10:53Speaker 1: I have been struggling in my friendships as a woman
- 10:55Speaker 1: in her thirties. Who is I live with my boyfriend.
- 10:58Speaker 1: We were in a home. We're kind of we you know,
- 11:00Speaker 1: we have a dog, where we have this life that
- 11:02Speaker 1: we're building together, working like three shows minimum, because sometimes
- 11:08Speaker 1: I guessed on other shows like Steve Harvey or Wendy
- 11:11Speaker 1: Williams where I'm flying out of town to do those shows.
- 11:13Speaker 1: So guesting on shows and then solidified two shows with
- 11:17Speaker 1: E and then also several times a year filming the
- 11:20Speaker 1: Love and Hip Hop Reunions. It's very overwhelming for huge
- 11:24Speaker 1: chunks of your time. Yes, which is good, so thank
- 11:27Speaker 1: you for these blessings. But what people don't tell you
- 11:30Speaker 1: is like you managing your relationships outside of like your
- 11:35Speaker 1: own with work are very It's it's an art that
- 11:40Speaker 1: I have not mastered, and I'm not sure a lot
- 11:42Speaker 1: of people have because most successful people, I finally don't
- 11:45Speaker 1: have a ton of friends they have like a core
- 11:47Speaker 1: group family, and that's kind of it. And as I've
- 11:52Speaker 1: gotten older, I've found that a lot of friends that
- 11:55Speaker 1: are not in the business because my friends in the
- 11:57Speaker 1: business seemed to have a little bit more of an understanding,
- 12:00Speaker 1: but my friends outside of entertainment don't have the capacity
- 12:03Speaker 1: to understand kind of pouring your blood, sweat and tears
- 12:07Speaker 1: into something seven And not that their jobs don't require that,
- 12:12Speaker 1: but they have those boundaries, or that you don't have
- 12:14Speaker 1: friends who are you know and work for the city
- 12:16Speaker 1: that you know they do their holidays, they're nine five
- 12:19Speaker 1: and that's that's what they're That's how they're fulfilled, and
- 12:21Speaker 1: they have their families and that's it. You're busy is
- 12:24Speaker 1: different than that busy and not better than our lesson
- 12:26Speaker 1: It just looks different. It's funny that you say that,
- 12:28Speaker 1: because earlier today, um My girl jazz Fly have put
- 12:31Speaker 1: this on her story. She said, anybody that says you
- 12:35Speaker 1: make time for you know, excuse me, what you want
- 12:38Speaker 1: to make time for? Blah blah blah. She said, they've
- 12:40Speaker 1: never actually been busy. Yes, because there has been legit
- 12:43Speaker 1: things that I want nothing more than with my whole
- 12:46Speaker 1: soul to have time to do or people that to
- 12:49Speaker 1: have time to see, and it's just you're just a human.
- 12:51Speaker 1: It's just not possible. And I think especially when you're
- 12:54Speaker 1: in media and you're you know, doing something like this,
- 12:58Speaker 1: when you're doing a podcast and giving to people or
- 13:00Speaker 1: for me, I often am you know, I'm not an actor,
- 13:02Speaker 1: so I'm giving myself every time I get on set
- 13:06Speaker 1: my opinions. But I'm also you know, giving a pent
- 13:09Speaker 1: of my energy to be authentic. When you're off, you're decompressing.
- 13:15Speaker 1: So when you have those moments to decompress, you don't
- 13:17Speaker 1: necessarily want to be surrounded by people because it's very
- 13:20Speaker 1: hard to like give all of your energy to something
- 13:24Speaker 1: and then just go give it to other people. Sometimes
- 13:27Speaker 1: you need those moments to recharge. And now that I'm
- 13:29Speaker 1: in at home with like a pool, sometimes I just
- 13:31Speaker 1: go and I sit out there and I'm reading or
- 13:34Speaker 1: I'm I just don't want to go anywhere, Like I
- 13:36Speaker 1: was thinking to myself, like, am I having like a
- 13:38Speaker 1: social anxiety because I just haven't wanted to go anywhere lately.
- 13:42Speaker 1: You're protecting your magic. I think that's what it is,
- 13:44Speaker 1: because yeah, you're protecting your magic Yeah, I think it's
- 13:48Speaker 1: it's just been I haven't it's I've never been i
- 13:52Speaker 1: haven't had this much work in my career where I'm
- 13:55Speaker 1: at right now, Normally I'm managing one show. So over
- 13:58Speaker 1: the last couple of years, it's grown. And with that growth,
- 14:03Speaker 1: I haven't quite learned how to manage my social relationships,
- 14:07Speaker 1: and they've become more important to me. So I've paid
- 14:10Speaker 1: more attention to like who reaches out to me or
- 14:13Speaker 1: who checks on me, and my energy has shifted towards
- 14:17Speaker 1: the people who don't do that, So I'm not necessarily
- 14:21Speaker 1: spending a lot of time with you know, I was
- 14:24Speaker 1: like the brunch queen like five years ago. Remember I
- 14:26Speaker 1: was planning brunches every weekend, like a group of women.
- 14:31Speaker 1: Like it was great, but I often found that a
- 14:34Speaker 1: lot of the people that were coming to these brunches
- 14:36Speaker 1: would never reach out to me. It was always me
- 14:39Speaker 1: reaching out. Me trying to maintain this level of um.
- 14:43Speaker 1: You know, I guess, like, you know, a level of
- 14:47Speaker 1: the relationship out in society that I didn't feel like,
- 14:54Speaker 1: you know what, you know what I found. Um, we
- 14:58Speaker 1: have to not only do we have to extend grace
- 15:01Speaker 1: to our friendships, we have to allow our friendships to
- 15:05Speaker 1: evolve into the age brackets that were in a thousand,
- 15:09Speaker 1: you know. Like the thing is, life shifts, life changes,
- 15:12Speaker 1: and I think people that are not choosing growth and
- 15:16Speaker 1: not expanding in their personal lives, they're the hit dogs
- 15:19Speaker 1: that holler when things change for other people and for them,
- 15:22Speaker 1: we just have to still send them love and wish
- 15:25Speaker 1: them excuse me, growth and the best. Um. But we
- 15:27Speaker 1: can't take that on and take it personally. They're upset
- 15:30Speaker 1: if even if they're emotional because of it, it's not
- 15:34Speaker 1: our responsibility or job to fix it. We have to
- 15:37Speaker 1: focus on ourselves. I think that's something that I had
- 15:40Speaker 1: to learn how to do because a lot of times
- 15:43Speaker 1: I was hurt by it and like I wasn't that
- 15:46Speaker 1: sin love person. I was like, forget them conversations with
- 15:50Speaker 1: you to get me more centered because it hurt my feelings.
- 15:53Speaker 1: And then I realized I was hurting people's feelings and
- 15:55Speaker 1: not knowing it. Um. You know. I even my my
- 15:58Speaker 1: own cousin I had a conversation with, Like, my cousin
- 16:01Speaker 1: lives in another state. We were very close for a
- 16:03Speaker 1: really long time, but my cousin got married at eighteen
- 16:07Speaker 1: and UM had three children and never quite got to
- 16:11Speaker 1: live her dream. She you know, did a lot. Her
- 16:14Speaker 1: husband was in the military. She traveled, UM and she's
- 16:18Speaker 1: probably gonna hate that I'm telling this story, but I
- 16:20Speaker 1: love her UM. But she traveled with him for many
- 16:23Speaker 1: years and just his his goals kind of she had
- 16:27Speaker 1: to live with his goals for a while. And she
- 16:29Speaker 1: went to school online and she pursued her degree, and
- 16:31Speaker 1: she did things for her But I think her family,
- 16:33Speaker 1: especially so young, took a precedent over her life. So
- 16:37Speaker 1: now that she's UM, you know, her kids are are
- 16:40Speaker 1: about to either in college or graduated. She's still very
- 16:43Speaker 1: young in her early forties. I think her expectation of
- 16:46Speaker 1: our of our relationship was going to be different. But
- 16:49Speaker 1: when she was coming out of that season, I was
- 16:52Speaker 1: kind of coming into getting into a long term relationship,
- 16:55Speaker 1: solidifying my career. So the I think the relations ship
- 17:00Speaker 1: she thought she would have with me once she got
- 17:01Speaker 1: to this place was different. But for me, I'm like, well, look,
- 17:05Speaker 1: you moved away when we were young, you traveled the world,
- 17:09Speaker 1: you know, with your man. Like I didn't say anything
- 17:11Speaker 1: about you moving to Germany or you pursuing your life.
- 17:15Speaker 1: So for me, I felt the expectation from her to
- 17:19Speaker 1: me when she felt I couldn't reciprocate in the way
- 17:21Speaker 1: that she and I felt it was a little unfair
- 17:23Speaker 1: because we were just at different stages. Well, it's kind
- 17:26Speaker 1: of like the idea that you can't judge people based
- 17:29Speaker 1: on who you are. You have to judge them based
- 17:31Speaker 1: on who they are, you know. We have to be
- 17:33Speaker 1: really really realistic about the rules of engagement of the
- 17:36Speaker 1: people that we have relationships with our lives, you know,
- 17:40Speaker 1: like you're one of them, right and some and I
- 17:42Speaker 1: have other friends like this, like I'm at a season
- 17:44Speaker 1: in my life where things are moving at a different
- 17:47Speaker 1: beat because I just had a child, you know what
- 17:49Speaker 1: I mean. So my days look completely different than they
- 17:53Speaker 1: used to, and the type of free time I have
- 17:55Speaker 1: is at different hours. Even today meeting our time, you
- 17:58Speaker 1: were like, are you coming at this time at this time?
- 18:00Speaker 1: Because I need to know for this baby. And it's like,
- 18:03Speaker 1: you know before where you might have been like how
- 18:04Speaker 1: many time you got you gotta tree Nina text me
- 18:08Speaker 1: she was like, I'll be there at eleven, and I
- 18:10Speaker 1: was like, is it eleven eleven or is it eleven twelve?
- 18:13Speaker 1: Just let me know that means I can give the
- 18:15Speaker 1: baby a bottle. But that's what you like, that's an
- 18:18Speaker 1: adjustment that, yeah, you have to do that. Thirty minutes
- 18:21Speaker 1: makes a difference, Yeah, you know. And it's like and
- 18:24Speaker 1: I think the older we get and the more responsibility have,
- 18:27Speaker 1: the more we value those thirty minutes. Yeah, you know.
- 18:30Speaker 1: And I think you don't want to waste of doing
- 18:33Speaker 1: anything that's not important to you or that is my
- 18:37Speaker 1: biggest issue with people in my life who run late.
- 18:41Speaker 1: I find running late to be, as adults, one of
- 18:44Speaker 1: the most disrespectful things you can do to another person
- 18:47Speaker 1: running late happened, especially if, like us, you live in
- 18:49Speaker 1: l A because traffic is nets. But it's a matter
- 18:52Speaker 1: of like how you finesse running late, Like don't tell
- 18:55Speaker 1: me if we're meeting at twelve, don't hit me at
- 18:58Speaker 1: twelve or five to say running late. You hit me
- 19:01Speaker 1: at eleven o'clock to tell me running late, because then
- 19:03Speaker 1: I might not want to get on the road jett.
- 19:06Speaker 1: Or I could say, you know what, since they're running
- 19:08Speaker 1: fifteen thirty minutes behind, I needed to make this call anyway,
- 19:13Speaker 1: Like allow me to maximize my time as I see
- 19:16Speaker 1: fit instead of using it to check my watch and
- 19:19Speaker 1: look around the room. Yeah, well, it's like just I think,
- 19:22Speaker 1: you know, weren't in this space. I think where when
- 19:25Speaker 1: we met each other, we were in our twenties and
- 19:27Speaker 1: we were in l A and we were living this
- 19:28Speaker 1: life and going out and now you know, we're in
- 19:31Speaker 1: our thirties and we're growing. You just had a baby,
- 19:34Speaker 1: and I think it's just life just kind of adjust you.
- 19:38Speaker 1: And it's it's hard and different too, Like you're like, dang,
- 19:42Speaker 1: this is really my life now, And so people don't understand,
- 19:45Speaker 1: Like if it's hard for them, imagine how hard it
- 19:48Speaker 1: is for us to like have this these different responsibilities
- 19:52Speaker 1: on us and trying to articulate that to the people
- 19:55Speaker 1: that you love who are used to you being one
- 19:58Speaker 1: way and can't accept that the things you used to
- 20:00Speaker 1: do you can't do anymore. The bigger illustration of that
- 20:03Speaker 1: type of scenario, too, is that sometimes we just grow
- 20:07Speaker 1: at different rates. Right Like, even if it didn't show
- 20:10Speaker 1: up right now, is a manifestation of people feeling a
- 20:13Speaker 1: way about the way you use your time. They're at
- 20:17Speaker 1: a stunted level of growth, which is not a judgment,
- 20:19Speaker 1: it just is. And so that would have shown up
- 20:22Speaker 1: in other ways too, even if you had all the time.
- 20:24Speaker 1: You know, sometimes it's just this like subconscious battle of
- 20:28Speaker 1: I know I haven't grown, or I'm not growing that
- 20:31Speaker 1: person has. I'm triggered, you know, I think so. I
- 20:33Speaker 1: think a lot of it is projection, because I have
- 20:36Speaker 1: friends who um are very understanding, who are just like, okay, girl,
- 20:41Speaker 1: I'll see you when I see you, I'm I'm rooting
- 20:43Speaker 1: for you. They retweet my projects or post my stuff
- 20:46Speaker 1: and it's like I saw them yesterday. And then I
- 20:48Speaker 1: have other friends who feel away about not seeing me,
- 20:52Speaker 1: and you know, it's like, well, I don't feel like
- 20:54Speaker 1: this friendship is a priority for you anymore. God, come on, guys.
- 20:57Speaker 1: And I've had that. I recently just this conversation actually
- 21:01Speaker 1: with a friend who um is not a social media user.
- 21:04Speaker 1: And everybody who uses Twitter knows you get two characters
- 21:09Speaker 1: to to surmise a story, so sometimes you don't give
- 21:12Speaker 1: all the minute details. You just kind of especially if
- 21:14Speaker 1: you're trying to empower other people, which I feel like
- 21:16Speaker 1: I used my Twitter to help empower other people who
- 21:18Speaker 1: were in my position and to talk about Game of Thrones,
- 21:21Speaker 1: so like, yeah, you know, the two uses here, you know,
- 21:25Speaker 1: news gathering and then just kind of talking about spirituality
- 21:28Speaker 1: or like you know, connections or what I may have
- 21:31Speaker 1: gone through because I made so many mistakes just kind
- 21:33Speaker 1: of telling people the human side of this entertainment business.
- 21:38Speaker 1: And I had someone who I get they're not on Twitter,
- 21:41Speaker 1: but they sent me a screen grab of a tweet
- 21:44Speaker 1: of mine and said they felt away about it because
- 21:47Speaker 1: I said, I didn't have any friends in l A
- 21:50Speaker 1: when I first moved here, and they were my friend,
- 21:52Speaker 1: so they felt away and didn't talk to me for
- 21:54Speaker 1: months and I didn't even know that they felt away.
- 21:57Speaker 1: And my first and mind you, we're in our thirties,
- 21:59Speaker 1: like we're this to me is a little bit of
- 22:02Speaker 1: a curious conversation to be having. We should be a
- 22:06Speaker 1: little bit more mature, because the first thing I would
- 22:09Speaker 1: do if you tweeted something that I felt a way about,
- 22:12Speaker 1: which I doubt whatever happened, but like I would just
- 22:15Speaker 1: call you or text you and just be like But
- 22:18Speaker 1: even the act of that makes me feel paranoid, like
- 22:20Speaker 1: I'm just like this. It just to me to think
- 22:23Speaker 1: that this is about you. And and literally it was
- 22:25Speaker 1: a thread trying to a girl had reached out to
- 22:29Speaker 1: me on Twitter saying that she felt alone in l A,
- 22:32Speaker 1: saying that you know, she was out here, she was hustling,
- 22:35Speaker 1: she didn't know, like, she didn't have any friends, and
- 22:37Speaker 1: she was frustrated. And so I did this threat in
- 22:40Speaker 1: response to that and basically saying like, look, sometimes not
- 22:44Speaker 1: having friends can be a blessing because when I first
- 22:47Speaker 1: moved here, and I still stand by what I said.
- 22:49Speaker 1: When I first moved here, I knew three people from
- 22:51Speaker 1: college and they were not available to me the first
- 22:54Speaker 1: couple of years that I was here. I knew them,
- 22:56Speaker 1: but these were not people I was seeing all the time.
- 22:58Speaker 1: They were this was in my space was big that
- 23:01Speaker 1: lets you know when it was they were having parties
- 23:03Speaker 1: and posting on my top eight okay exactly. I wasn't
- 23:06Speaker 1: invited and and they and we we were in our
- 23:08Speaker 1: twenties and figuring life out. They didn't owe it to
- 23:11Speaker 1: me to like embrace me and take me everywhere, but
- 23:13Speaker 1: they didn't. I was in the valley, they were all
- 23:15Speaker 1: the way in Englewood, and there were just things I
- 23:17Speaker 1: wasn't invited to. I felt very alone my first couple
- 23:19Speaker 1: of years in l A. And I'm and I'm allowed
- 23:21Speaker 1: to tell my story. And because of that, though, because
- 23:25Speaker 1: I wasn't in my twenties and distracted by l A,
- 23:27Speaker 1: I was able to focus on work. I had landed
- 23:29Speaker 1: the job at TMZ, and it allowed me to work weekends, holidays,
- 23:33Speaker 1: allowed me to focus because I wasn't being invited anywhere.
- 23:36Speaker 1: It allowed me to use that like empty space and
- 23:41Speaker 1: fill it with work and make connections and network and climb.
- 23:44Speaker 1: And that's why I was able to And in the tweet,
- 23:47Speaker 1: I basically said in the summary was like when I
- 23:48Speaker 1: first moved to l A, I didn't have any friends,
- 23:50Speaker 1: and instead of looking at as rejection, I looked at
- 23:53Speaker 1: it as God trying to show me something else. And
- 23:55Speaker 1: I used that space to fill it with productive things.
- 23:58Speaker 1: And sometimes you don't understand God's plan until hindsight. And
- 24:02Speaker 1: she took that personally instead of seeing the message that
- 24:05Speaker 1: I was trying to convey, and kind of it ended
- 24:08Speaker 1: the It ended our friendship for the most part, And
- 24:11Speaker 1: it was sad to me that a tweet could end
- 24:12Speaker 1: our friendship. But I know that it's not about me,
- 24:15Speaker 1: and I still and you know, and and even in
- 24:17Speaker 1: the conversation it was still filled with love from my
- 24:20Speaker 1: ends as far as look, I love you this, but
- 24:23Speaker 1: I'm allowed to speak my truth. And the thing is,
- 24:25Speaker 1: when you're a public figure, you are allowed to talk
- 24:27Speaker 1: about things that other people may not talk about on
- 24:29Speaker 1: a big space. So people, I can understand people feel
- 24:31Speaker 1: in a way about that. But you know, even when
- 24:34Speaker 1: you get older, you think this kind of stuff is
- 24:35Speaker 1: gonna be relegated to your twenties, and it's not. People
- 24:37Speaker 1: feel away about everything you do for the rest of
- 24:39Speaker 1: your life. I know some seventy year olds that have
- 24:42Speaker 1: beef and I'd be like, how how are you and
- 24:45Speaker 1: Mildred fighting like this? It's like the biggest facade that
- 24:49Speaker 1: we've been sold that you mature out of certain things. Well, yeah,
- 24:54Speaker 1: that it's all about personal growth, because it's like, I
- 24:56Speaker 1: know people have like you may have someone in your life.
- 25:00Speaker 1: It's like, wait, we had so much in common in
- 25:02Speaker 1: high school, but it seems like they haven't changed since
- 25:05Speaker 1: high school. But I'm so different and now you seem
- 25:07Speaker 1: light years apart. Like age has nothing to do with it.
- 25:11Speaker 1: If you don't stay open and you don't pursue growth,
- 25:13Speaker 1: you will have the exact same mentality and the exact
- 25:16Speaker 1: same emotional intelligence as a fifteen year old as you
- 25:19Speaker 1: did when you were fifteen, if you didn't challenge yourself
- 25:23Speaker 1: or rise city occasion and other aspects of your life
- 25:26Speaker 1: even when you are sent I have my dad is
- 25:29Speaker 1: I think my dad is like sixty six now and
- 25:31Speaker 1: he has his friend. And the friend has always been
- 25:35Speaker 1: this crazy guy who you know back in the day,
- 25:38Speaker 1: because my dad is from l A. Back in the day,
- 25:40Speaker 1: when he was in his twenties, this guy was you know, pulling,
- 25:43Speaker 1: you know, doing, doing a lot of illegal things right,
- 25:47Speaker 1: and he was just in the streets moving. He's still
- 25:50Speaker 1: in the streets. He literally called my dad last week
- 25:54Speaker 1: at the border and was like, can you help me
- 25:56Speaker 1: because I lost everything. I need help to get Like
- 26:00Speaker 1: his life is still a crazy mess. He has like
- 26:02Speaker 1: eight kids all over the place and he's in his
- 26:05Speaker 1: sixties now doing the same thing. And my dad is like,
- 26:09Speaker 1: you better fun, you better get on the mega bus,
- 26:12Speaker 1: Like I have a fami Dad. It's like I have retired.
- 26:16Speaker 1: You've been doing this since we were in our twenties,
- 26:18Speaker 1: Like aren't you exhausted? And it's like he was telling
- 26:21Speaker 1: me the story and it was a funny story, but
- 26:24Speaker 1: I couldn't believe how much his friend had not grown
- 26:27Speaker 1: for he was literally the same man, still irresponsible, still
- 26:30Speaker 1: no relationship with most of his children, still calling my
- 26:32Speaker 1: dad out the blue for help like he did when
- 26:34Speaker 1: they were in their twenties. It's one of the reasons
- 26:36Speaker 1: my parents moved to the Bay Area and instead of
- 26:39Speaker 1: raising me in l A, because all of my dad
- 26:41Speaker 1: was surrounded by was his friends who were, you know, drinking,
- 26:44Speaker 1: drugg and breaking the law. And my mom was like,
- 26:46Speaker 1: I don't want to raise our kids in this type
- 26:47Speaker 1: of environment. And I don't feel like you're strong enough
- 26:50Speaker 1: to tell these guys know when they need help, we're
- 26:52Speaker 1: going up north. And they ended up moving to the
- 26:55Speaker 1: Bay because my mom was like, it's cheaper housing and
- 26:57Speaker 1: no drama. And and he said in hindsight, like at
- 27:01Speaker 1: the time he fought through the now. But my dad
- 27:02Speaker 1: did say my mom saved him because he was kind
- 27:05Speaker 1: of in the streets as women do. And they still
- 27:09Speaker 1: together child, And it's so funny because it's like to
- 27:13Speaker 1: be alive, to be a human on this earth. Age
- 27:16Speaker 1: and time are guaranteed. Growth is not. You know, age
- 27:22Speaker 1: and time are absolutely guaranteed to us that factor will
- 27:26Speaker 1: never change. But growth is fully dependent on us, and
- 27:29Speaker 1: melody of our life fully depending on us, and it's
- 27:32Speaker 1: and it's been. I would say these last two years
- 27:35Speaker 1: have been very sobering and heartbreaking at the same time.
- 27:42Speaker 1: I've lost some friendships that I and I still deeply
- 27:45Speaker 1: care about those people, but but I've learned that you
- 27:49Speaker 1: can't grow with everybody, and sometimes you kind of phase
- 27:53Speaker 1: out of friendships and relationships with no intention to hurt anybody.
- 27:59Speaker 1: You find your self and no and no actual beats,
- 28:02Speaker 1: like no, we didn't have some type of big blow
- 28:04Speaker 1: up and just kind of eased away from each It's
- 28:07Speaker 1: would be easier for me to just be able to
- 28:08Speaker 1: cut somebody at It'll have closure, and it'll have it'll
- 28:11Speaker 1: have a definite reason we're not friends, because I have
- 28:15Speaker 1: a couple of friendships where I'm like, I don't we
- 28:17Speaker 1: just don't. We just felt we just stopped speaking and
- 28:20Speaker 1: and you and and there's no beef, like we didn't
- 28:23Speaker 1: un follow each other. We still like each other's photos
- 28:25Speaker 1: and I still wish nothing but the best for them.
- 28:29Speaker 1: And in somewhere along the way, it just shifted, and
- 28:33Speaker 1: I think and I think also in the past, my
- 28:36Speaker 1: priority has always been to fix that in the past,
- 28:39Speaker 1: my priority has always been to be cool with everybody,
- 28:42Speaker 1: make sure I'm on you know, good standing, and if
- 28:45Speaker 1: something is wrong, I got to fix the problem. But
- 28:47Speaker 1: I no longer have the energy for that. And so
- 28:50Speaker 1: if it doesn't seem like it's reciprocated, not, it's not
- 28:53Speaker 1: even about the energy, you know what it is I
- 28:55Speaker 1: think sometimes and you were kind of like blissfully moving
- 28:58Speaker 1: into this space. It's just the accepting of what is
- 29:02Speaker 1: and that being enough and that It's so funny because
- 29:08Speaker 1: it made me so sad at first. Not sad in
- 29:11Speaker 1: the sense that I necessarily wanted to maintain the friendship.
- 29:15Speaker 1: But I've always just one of those people that like,
- 29:18Speaker 1: even once the lip couples break up, I'm sad. I'm like, oh,
- 29:20Speaker 1: really loved them together. Like I've always just had a
- 29:22Speaker 1: problem with people leaving each other's lives, even if I
- 29:25Speaker 1: wasn't involved, Like I always hated to see breakups. I've
- 29:28Speaker 1: always hated and I never could understand, like seeing somebody
- 29:31Speaker 1: together for a long time and then they just separate
- 29:33Speaker 1: and they start dating other people, I wouldn't even be
- 29:34Speaker 1: ready to But why can't you fix it? Why can't
- 29:38Speaker 1: come to always just wanted that for other people. So
- 29:41Speaker 1: for myself it's been it was initially difficult and now
- 29:45Speaker 1: it's easy, breezy, but it's I've always had a little
- 29:48Speaker 1: bit of separation anxiety with that for others and for myself,
- 29:51Speaker 1: And I don't really know why, but as I've gotten older,
- 29:56Speaker 1: my I almost had like an emotional maybe mental even breakdown.
- 30:00Speaker 1: Earlier this year, I had a health scare I had,
- 30:04Speaker 1: I lost my grandmother, um I had the month of February.
- 30:09Speaker 1: I think I worked like one day. I had one
- 30:11Speaker 1: day off in the whole month. I worked like every
- 30:15Speaker 1: job I had in February, plus awards season, and I
- 30:18Speaker 1: was going through like just a major turmoil, and I
- 30:21Speaker 1: just was like, I finally had to have a talk
- 30:24Speaker 1: with myself because I was gonna lose it, like I was.
- 30:27Speaker 1: I literally I was going in between doctor's appointments and
- 30:30Speaker 1: work and I was like, I don't have I People
- 30:33Speaker 1: were texting me about this innocuous stuff, and I was like,
- 30:36Speaker 1: I finally had to make a decision that I could
- 30:38Speaker 1: no longer give my energy to things that weren't serving
- 30:42Speaker 1: me for real, for real, Because sometimes I think people
- 30:44Speaker 1: say that and they don't really mean it, but I
- 30:46Speaker 1: really it was. It felt like it was either me
- 30:49Speaker 1: or them, and I had to just say two people
- 30:53Speaker 1: in text, I can't deal with this right now. I
- 30:55Speaker 1: can't help you with this right now. I am overwhelmed.
- 30:59Speaker 1: This is not in a negative way, but I just
- 31:01Speaker 1: can't give this to you right now. I gotta say.
- 31:04Speaker 1: I had to keep myself afloat, and there are a
- 31:07Speaker 1: lot of people who understood, and there were a lot
- 31:08Speaker 1: of people who didn't, and that was okay, but there
- 31:11Speaker 1: was a point where I just I no longer. It
- 31:14Speaker 1: was like a breaking point where it was like I
- 31:16Speaker 1: have to choose myself, my health, my peace, my wellness,
- 31:19Speaker 1: and I had to do start doing things and into
- 31:21Speaker 1: my relationship as well. I had to start setting boundaries
- 31:24Speaker 1: for everybody because it was killing me. It was trying
- 31:27Speaker 1: to please everybody, keep everybody cool, pay my bills, go
- 31:30Speaker 1: to work. My health was suffering. It was just like
- 31:34Speaker 1: enough already and one. And I never realized where I
- 31:37Speaker 1: was at until I lost some family members, and that
- 31:40Speaker 1: was like that kind of final stress on top of everything.
- 31:43Speaker 1: I didn't realize how close I had been teetering for
- 31:45Speaker 1: so long, how beautiful though, like I know, as you're
- 31:49Speaker 1: looking back on it, you're like, February it was like
- 31:52Speaker 1: the worst month of my life, honestly, but it was
- 31:54Speaker 1: like the freedom that you needed to write. And I'm
- 31:58Speaker 1: a big, big believer um that. You know, God only
- 32:02Speaker 1: comes to you through pain. Sometimes when we're not listening,
- 32:05Speaker 1: you know, like he'll whisper to you and if you
- 32:09Speaker 1: you'll start knocking on that door, child, then he'll punch
- 32:11Speaker 1: you in the thing. God God stays catching faces with me.
- 32:17Speaker 1: And you think it's all gonna come together, Like it was, like,
- 32:19Speaker 1: my career is going so well, how can all these
- 32:22Speaker 1: things be happening? Like you, you in your in your
- 32:25Speaker 1: idealistic young mind, you think if you have the perfect job,
- 32:29Speaker 1: your life will be perfect. You don't realize. First of all,
- 32:31Speaker 1: you don't realize how much you gotta work. Nobody tells
- 32:35Speaker 1: you how much sleep you don't get. People don't tell
- 32:38Speaker 1: you how hard you have to work to stay where
- 32:41Speaker 1: you are, because you the journey and the things when
- 32:45Speaker 1: I hear people speak is always about getting there. We
- 32:48Speaker 1: don't hear a lot about people saying what you gotta
- 32:49Speaker 1: do to stay there? And it's a lot of work,
- 32:52Speaker 1: and it's a lot of and it really brings a
- 32:55Speaker 1: lot of reckoning to you, because actually it's funny. Me
- 32:59Speaker 1: and um n Cocaine from Excellent Nicole, we were having
- 33:01Speaker 1: this conversation oh weekend about how we had to become
- 33:05Speaker 1: really real, realistic with ourselves about what we really wanted
- 33:10Speaker 1: our day to day life to look like and success
- 33:13Speaker 1: to look like a lot of a lot of what
- 33:15Speaker 1: we take on is the pressure of other people's expectations
- 33:20Speaker 1: of us, even in the best way, even right because
- 33:23Speaker 1: like you have fans that are like, oh my god, Queen.
- 33:26Speaker 1: I saw Nicole's post and she was like, don't ask
- 33:28Speaker 1: me where my abs are, because a lot of people
- 33:30Speaker 1: now see her body and they're like, she probably feels
- 33:33Speaker 1: like they have this expectation of how she's supposed to
- 33:34Speaker 1: look right right, and it's like, hey, this is still
- 33:38Speaker 1: my journey, guys, you know, like this is still my choice.
- 33:41Speaker 1: And she said something really profound to me. Um. She
- 33:45Speaker 1: was talking about how she had realized that she wants
- 33:49Speaker 1: to have the impact, but she doesn't care if it
- 33:52Speaker 1: makes her a billionaire, and so she doesn't want to
- 33:54Speaker 1: take on the lifestyle and pressure as if she is
- 33:57Speaker 1: looking to make a billion dollars because that at this
- 34:00Speaker 1: moment in her life's not what's important to her. And
- 34:03Speaker 1: I think, like for this year, big, a big shift
- 34:05Speaker 1: for me came because my for so long, my self
- 34:08Speaker 1: worth was tied to my productivity, how productive it might be,
- 34:13Speaker 1: that's my value, you know. And and I've been in
- 34:15Speaker 1: transition out of that for many years now, just as
- 34:18Speaker 1: I've been making more breakthroughs about myself. But I heard
- 34:21Speaker 1: this quote at the top of the year, and I said,
- 34:23Speaker 1: that's my intention for the year, and it was, don't
- 34:26Speaker 1: build a life around your career, build a career around
- 34:31Speaker 1: your life. And I know, and that's not everybody's desire,
- 34:35Speaker 1: you know, But I know, Okay, what's really important to
- 34:38Speaker 1: me my piece, having time to grow, having time to share,
- 34:44Speaker 1: share my gifts and my purpose in the way that
- 34:47Speaker 1: I feel is going to impact in the way that
- 34:48Speaker 1: I want to. And at this moment, that doesn't include
- 34:51Speaker 1: going viral, that doesn't include like which there's nothing wrong
- 34:55Speaker 1: with those things, it's just not for the long term
- 34:58Speaker 1: vision that I see for myself that other people don't
- 35:00Speaker 1: know about and couldn't comprehend. The things that are on
- 35:04Speaker 1: their goal list for me are far different than what's
- 35:07Speaker 1: on my goal list for me. And that's important to know.
- 35:09Speaker 1: I think, Um, when I was in transition from my relationship,
- 35:13Speaker 1: de have just snapped the hell out of her, y'all
- 35:15Speaker 1: thought she was taking herself out. You did a little
- 35:19Speaker 1: John Wick move. Just now you know me? You know
- 35:22Speaker 1: I am always popping my back and neck. Um, but
- 35:27Speaker 1: I forgot what I was saying. Um, you know they
- 35:30Speaker 1: Like I think someone asked me when I was on
- 35:32Speaker 1: a break from my boyfriend, like what do you want
- 35:35Speaker 1: in a relationship? And I didn't know? And I was like, damn,
- 35:38Speaker 1: how could I demand anything when I don't know? So
- 35:41Speaker 1: I had I took like a year to like figure
- 35:43Speaker 1: out what I wanted in life. And and I still
- 35:46Speaker 1: feel like I'm not quite there yet career wise, because
- 35:49Speaker 1: it's always changing for me and I'm very hard on
- 35:51Speaker 1: myself and that's something I'm learning about. But I think
- 35:55Speaker 1: it's important to know, like what like for me, how
- 35:58Speaker 1: I was telling you how just laying in my back
- 36:00Speaker 1: yard like that's peace to me. I feel like I
- 36:03Speaker 1: might have phased out of going out. And yeah, and
- 36:06Speaker 1: that's the part that we girl, Can I just say
- 36:09Speaker 1: for a second, we put so much pressure on ourselves
- 36:12Speaker 1: about that because, especially like for people like us that
- 36:16Speaker 1: are on more the top end of the millennial curve,
- 36:18Speaker 1: we remember life a little before, a little after. We
- 36:20Speaker 1: kind of have one foot in the way the old
- 36:22Speaker 1: regime operated and then in the way the new regime operates.
- 36:27Speaker 1: And also, our twenties were so tied. And you know,
- 36:31Speaker 1: I'm speaking specifically to us because we came up in
- 36:34Speaker 1: our twenties. We were in l a, We read a
- 36:36Speaker 1: lot of events, we're doing a lot of things, and
- 36:39Speaker 1: that's the way it's supposed to look in your twenties. Ideally,
- 36:43Speaker 1: by the time you make it to your thirties, your forties,
- 36:45Speaker 1: your fifties, you were in a different space with your career.
- 36:50Speaker 1: So the need to be out every night is not there.
- 36:54Speaker 1: But we don't. We don't take time to sit in that,
- 36:56Speaker 1: and we think, oh my god, if I'm not out
- 36:59Speaker 1: every night, then misspelling off, missing out I have fomo.
- 37:02Speaker 1: People are gonna think I'm irrelevant because I was in here. No,
- 37:05Speaker 1: all of that stuff was necessary and fulfilling in a
- 37:07Speaker 1: different phase of my life. It's not actually necessary to
- 37:11Speaker 1: what I'm building in this moment. It's also not what
- 37:15Speaker 1: I want in this moment and listen the second you
- 37:18Speaker 1: hit thirty. The way you sleep, the way you're sleep
- 37:22Speaker 1: is set up. It's a little different. People say it,
- 37:24Speaker 1: and you think when you're in your twenties, you think
- 37:26Speaker 1: it's b s. You're like, my money isn't gonna change.
- 37:29Speaker 1: You did it in a day. And then then it's
- 37:31Speaker 1: literally twelve oh five on the clock on your birthday
- 37:35Speaker 1: and you feel a little quick, you feel a little something.
- 37:37Speaker 1: It's different. Your metabolism slows down, like you need your
- 37:41Speaker 1: sleep more. It has to be like your best friend.
- 37:43Speaker 1: You have to regulate a lot more. And it's difficult
- 37:46Speaker 1: to navigate because in your mind you're still in your
- 37:49Speaker 1: twenties and you're like, I can do this. I did
- 37:52Speaker 1: it before. You think because you've always done it that way,
- 37:55Speaker 1: you can keep sustaining it, and your body is like, no,
- 37:57Speaker 1: you cannot, and you're not allowing yourself the race to
- 38:01Speaker 1: evolve into whatever. Then now you know it's so I
- 38:05Speaker 1: don't know if I've told you this story, I'm gonna
- 38:07Speaker 1: tell you're gonna get hot. But also what I'm really
- 38:11Speaker 1: noticing a lot in my life right now is how
- 38:13Speaker 1: much I don't subscribe to the societal expectations placed on women. Um,
- 38:19Speaker 1: I think we are always if we allow society to
- 38:24Speaker 1: tell our tales and if we allow society to direct us,
- 38:27Speaker 1: we're always going to be in a place of lack
- 38:29Speaker 1: in deficit, you know, because on one end, it's like
- 38:31Speaker 1: if you're super career driven, if you're killing it, if
- 38:34Speaker 1: you're doing all this great stuff, then you're minimize that's
- 38:38Speaker 1: minimized and people will instead comment, oh, well you ain't
- 38:41Speaker 1: got no man, or well why don't you have a baby.
- 38:44Speaker 1: Oh you don't want a baby? Something's wrong with you?
- 38:46Speaker 1: What kind of woman doesn't want a baby? Right? Then,
- 38:49Speaker 1: if you have a child or you have a family,
- 38:52Speaker 1: then it's like, yeah, she has that, but what else
- 38:55Speaker 1: does she have going on? Oh but she's not doing exe,
- 38:59Speaker 1: she's not a ball us. It's like there and there's
- 39:01Speaker 1: no winning right when when you subscribe to those type
- 39:04Speaker 1: of projections, like the expectations for us are so high,
- 39:09Speaker 1: the expectations for men are bottom level medio. And as
- 39:13Speaker 1: soon as I figured that out, I said, oh, I'm
- 39:15Speaker 1: not putting myself through this stress. I'm letting my I'm
- 39:19Speaker 1: going by the beat of my own drum. But I
- 39:21Speaker 1: have this experience UM that I found out about like
- 39:24Speaker 1: last year, and it was just to me further further
- 39:28Speaker 1: confirmation that I am living the life that feels good
- 39:33Speaker 1: to me, the quality of life that matters to me
- 39:36Speaker 1: above all else. UM. When I was this former boss
- 39:39Speaker 1: I used to have, he would always, you know, when
- 39:43Speaker 1: I'd be at work, killing it, excelling it, excelling, he
- 39:46Speaker 1: would always focus in on, well, you're married, so when
- 39:49Speaker 1: you're gonna have a child, Like you really need to
- 39:51Speaker 1: have a baby. First of all, you're my boss. Why
- 39:53Speaker 1: are you're talking. Why are we discussing my wom at work?
- 39:58Speaker 1: But he would always have, you know, his two sense
- 40:00Speaker 1: about it, how much I needed to have a child
- 40:02Speaker 1: and blah blah blah. And I was just like, yeah,
- 40:04Speaker 1: you know, when I'm ready, I will. I always knew,
- 40:07Speaker 1: even after getting married, that I wanted to wait five
- 40:09Speaker 1: to seven years before I had a child. Always knew
- 40:11Speaker 1: I didn't want to have kids till I had minimum
- 40:13Speaker 1: hit thirty. Always, so I did things in the exact
- 40:17Speaker 1: time frame that I wanted to do them. I ran
- 40:21Speaker 1: into this person when I was nine months pregnant. Right
- 40:24Speaker 1: I was walking around the grove and I ran into
- 40:27Speaker 1: this person, and I was so excited to see him
- 40:30Speaker 1: because I have great relationships with probably of anyone that
- 40:36Speaker 1: I've ever worked with, and people matter to me, you know,
- 40:39Speaker 1: the relationships that I build, especially when it's the day
- 40:41Speaker 1: in and day out type of thing. We're invest in
- 40:44Speaker 1: each other's lives, it matter to me. So when I
- 40:46Speaker 1: saw him, I was so excited, Hey how are you,
- 40:50Speaker 1: And you know, he was just like, oh, Hi, good
- 40:53Speaker 1: to see you. Hadn't see me. I was nine months pregnant.
- 40:58Speaker 1: Multiple people that work at that place let me know
- 41:01Speaker 1: in the preceding months that when he got back home
- 41:06Speaker 1: and was in a staff meeting with everyone that I
- 41:09Speaker 1: had worked with for many years and with a lot
- 41:11Speaker 1: of the people that I had personally hired. In the meeting,
- 41:15Speaker 1: he said, Oh yeah, I ran into Devy. She's so pregnant. God,
- 41:20Speaker 1: I feel so bad for her. She's not doing anything
- 41:22Speaker 1: with her life in a meeting, in a in a
- 41:27Speaker 1: professional meeting with my former co workers and people that
- 41:32Speaker 1: I had hired. Girl, And I was so And I
- 41:36Speaker 1: remember when the first person told me that story and
- 41:39Speaker 1: related to me, like a tear fell out of my
- 41:42Speaker 1: eye because I felt so disrespected by someone that I respected,
- 41:46Speaker 1: And then I felt like, number one, you don't know
- 41:49Speaker 1: anything about anything that I'm working on because I no
- 41:53Speaker 1: longer subscribe to what you find to be you're calling,
- 41:58Speaker 1: or I no longer hair to have the day to
- 42:01Speaker 1: day rat race that you're still locked into, or because
- 42:04Speaker 1: maybe the vision of for my life and myself has
- 42:06Speaker 1: expanded in a way that you don't understand. Because you
- 42:10Speaker 1: are a man twenty years older than me. You would
- 42:14Speaker 1: tell a room full of people that me being pregnant
- 42:19Speaker 1: is me not knowing what I want to do when
- 42:20Speaker 1: you were pushing me towards that when I was And
- 42:24Speaker 1: then you're like, okay, yeah, as a woman, you can't win.
- 42:27Speaker 1: And also it's like you obviously clearly don't know me
- 42:33Speaker 1: or don't know like that's the most hurtful thing I
- 42:35Speaker 1: think win when you hear something like that, almost not
- 42:39Speaker 1: that the person said it, that it's someone who you
- 42:43Speaker 1: thought knew you. They might as well be a stranger.
- 42:47Speaker 1: Oh I thought you got me. But this whole time
- 42:49Speaker 1: you're saying, this whole time, you have not been able
- 42:52Speaker 1: to fully compute the fullness of who I actually see.
- 42:58Speaker 1: How disional that person is, one dimension on you. And
- 43:01Speaker 1: then you're like, well, damn was I was my meter off?
- 43:03Speaker 1: But you know, it's like sometimes I feel like people
- 43:07Speaker 1: regress as well. So I feel like that's almost a
- 43:11Speaker 1: projection that he's in the same space, he's in the
- 43:14Speaker 1: same place, you know, because that has to be about
- 43:18Speaker 1: him and not about you. And it's and I was wondering,
- 43:20Speaker 1: I was actually having this conversation. This is a little
- 43:23Speaker 1: off topic, but I was having this conversation with my
- 43:25Speaker 1: best friend because I was saying, you know, in my
- 43:28Speaker 1: in my career, it's it's normal for me to call
- 43:30Speaker 1: a spade a spade. But I don't feel like I've
- 43:32Speaker 1: ever been a mean person, like you'll never You'll never
- 43:35Speaker 1: find anything of me saying this person is this person
- 43:38Speaker 1: is fat, this person is ugly, this person is stupid.
- 43:40Speaker 1: Like I don't. I don't talk like that, and I'm
- 43:43Speaker 1: not around anybody who talks like that. I don't. You
- 43:45Speaker 1: and I have never had a conversation ever where you've
- 43:49Speaker 1: called someone out in a nasty way about the way
- 43:53Speaker 1: that they look or something is so surface. And I
- 43:57Speaker 1: often feel like there are some people who just kind
- 44:01Speaker 1: of stay in this small box of projection, like I
- 44:05Speaker 1: believe anybody who talks the way that he talked, or
- 44:08Speaker 1: anybody who calls someone ugly, or anyone who can say, oh, well,
- 44:11Speaker 1: they're just fat. Like people who talk like that to me,
- 44:15Speaker 1: I've never heard them say it and believed what they
- 44:19Speaker 1: were saying about the other person. And a percent made
- 44:21Speaker 1: me look at them and wonder what was going on
- 44:24Speaker 1: with them to make them even say something like that.
- 44:27Speaker 1: And I'm sure everybody at that meeting took that same thing,
- 44:29Speaker 1: which is why I got back to you, because it's
- 44:31Speaker 1: such a one dimensional way of thinking. It just makes
- 44:34Speaker 1: you look So every person I talked to about that
- 44:38Speaker 1: was just like, first of all, clearly he doesn't know you,
- 44:42Speaker 1: but a mess like who would say that? And who
- 44:45Speaker 1: would say that in front of people? Exactly? It's just
- 44:48Speaker 1: I've just I've just I just feel like it's so
- 44:51Speaker 1: one note. I remember when I first started at tmz uh,
- 44:55Speaker 1: there was this copy editor that kind of took me
- 44:57Speaker 1: under his wing because when I first started there, I
- 44:59Speaker 1: was just writing, and you know, at the time teams,
- 45:03Speaker 1: he was really quirky. It was we you know, we
- 45:06Speaker 1: were breaking stories, but it hadn't quite hit Like we
- 45:08Speaker 1: hadn't broken the Michael Jackson death, like it was still
- 45:10Speaker 1: kind of a quirky site, and so we would write
- 45:12Speaker 1: about like the CELEBT videos and I think it was
- 45:14Speaker 1: like Rody Jenner or something like that, and I was
- 45:17Speaker 1: calling him like a rich kid or something, and um,
- 45:21Speaker 1: I remember the writer's pulling me aside and being like,
- 45:25Speaker 1: I know you're not this one note, Like I know,
- 45:29Speaker 1: I know you have. There are so many funny things
- 45:32Speaker 1: you could say about this and yeah, he's rich, we
- 45:35Speaker 1: know that, Like what else? And and it really blew
- 45:38Speaker 1: me away because he was like, it's so easy to
- 45:41Speaker 1: call someone that or ugly or oh they look dirty
- 45:46Speaker 1: or you know, He's like, this is so it's also
- 45:48Speaker 1: one note like if you if you want to be funny,
- 45:51Speaker 1: be funny, and if you can't be funny, then just
- 45:53Speaker 1: write the story straight. And I was like, oh shoot,
- 45:56Speaker 1: like and it really checked me and I'm glad it
- 45:59Speaker 1: was in my twenties. Um, and I wanted to take
- 46:02Speaker 1: that outside of work and make sure that that's how
- 46:05Speaker 1: I applied it in my life. And I think because
- 46:08Speaker 1: I was that way, I only attracted people who were similar.
- 46:10Speaker 1: I think God that I've never into the friendship because
- 46:13Speaker 1: somebody was just a mean nasty person. It's been because
- 46:16Speaker 1: of our personal differences. But I would never say any
- 46:18Speaker 1: of those people are mean, nasty people something like what
- 46:21Speaker 1: he did. It's just so nasty and mean and dark.
- 46:26Speaker 1: Especially to even say that about a pregnant woman just
- 46:29Speaker 1: irks me, you know, and it's just it, you wonder,
- 46:33Speaker 1: like girl, And my pregnancy was so difficult. What he
- 46:37Speaker 1: didn't even see is like you seeing me sixty pounds
- 46:40Speaker 1: heavier than my norm Right, it was such a struggle
- 46:45Speaker 1: for me to get out of bed that day, Like
- 46:48Speaker 1: I was battling depression my pregnancy. Um a lot of
- 46:52Speaker 1: it obviously, it's chemical, and a lot of it was
- 46:54Speaker 1: because I was nauseous twenty four seven, throwing up seven
- 47:00Speaker 1: for ten months. When you feel that way, it's so
- 47:03Speaker 1: hard to have joy in your life. Like imagine, imagine
- 47:07Speaker 1: when you normally get a cold or sick, or when
- 47:09Speaker 1: you have food poisoning, you feel like crap the whole day.
- 47:13Speaker 1: You're not going to run out and frolic and do
- 47:15Speaker 1: all these things, right, you're not feeling like your best self. Well,
- 47:18Speaker 1: when you feel like that every day for close to
- 47:20Speaker 1: a year, you know, like just being able to me
- 47:23Speaker 1: it took such a psychological toll on me. Me even
- 47:26Speaker 1: being able to get out of the house that day
- 47:28Speaker 1: into the sunshine right to walked experience like it was
- 47:33Speaker 1: so hard for me, I threw up on the way
- 47:35Speaker 1: there in the car, you know. And so then it's
- 47:39Speaker 1: just I think, Um, I think it's also just such
- 47:45Speaker 1: people as we've talked about through this whole show their
- 47:48Speaker 1: their levels of projection, right, Like it also might have
- 47:50Speaker 1: just been he felt a kind of way because I quit,
- 47:54Speaker 1: you know, because I left that job though I thought
- 47:56Speaker 1: I left on good terms apparently but apparently maybe not.
- 48:00Speaker 1: But you know, I had left because I wanted to
- 48:02Speaker 1: pursue other things that were important to me in my life,
- 48:05Speaker 1: and I wanted to move back home to Los Angeles,
- 48:08Speaker 1: you know. Um. But yeah, hearing that and I quickly
- 48:11Speaker 1: let go of it. But in that afternoon, it definitely
- 48:14Speaker 1: it definitely made me sad. It made me sad that
- 48:17Speaker 1: someone I respected would see something that was both very
- 48:21Speaker 1: beautiful and challenging time in my life and carrying my son.
- 48:25Speaker 1: How would you not see that? And then also it
- 48:28Speaker 1: just blows my mind because and then guard me in
- 48:31Speaker 1: that way pushing right, you're talking to me every day
- 48:34Speaker 1: about my damn. When I do it, it's it's and
- 48:37Speaker 1: so that's how you know that it was never about
- 48:40Speaker 1: you having the baby. Yeah, And there's also no satisfying
- 48:44Speaker 1: people like that, right because anyone like that, any any
- 48:49Speaker 1: way that anybody sees you, it is fully based on
- 48:52Speaker 1: how they view themselves and how they be the world,
- 48:54Speaker 1: the good and the bad. And I tell people this
- 48:56Speaker 1: all the time, like when I have people like, oh, Debbie,
- 48:58Speaker 1: like you have so much peace or you have light,
- 49:00Speaker 1: I love you, It's like, yeah, you feel that way
- 49:03Speaker 1: about me, because you also see what's inside of you
- 49:05Speaker 1: and I'm giving you permission to tap into that. But
- 49:08Speaker 1: not everybody like I've seen you do with trolls on online,
- 49:12Speaker 1: and I know, especially like when Dwayne was leaving and
- 49:15Speaker 1: going to a different team, there were a lot of
- 49:17Speaker 1: people who were trolling you and you handled that with
- 49:20Speaker 1: a lot of grace and you let the choppolo a
- 49:22Speaker 1: couple of times, which was warranted, Which was very warranted,
- 49:26Speaker 1: because there's a lot of racist up in these up
- 49:27Speaker 1: in these comments sometimes, and I remember people were making
- 49:31Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy comments. And also please know I'm
- 49:35Speaker 1: always from l a right DEEPOC. But also have tupac. Okay,
- 49:40Speaker 1: you see her house. You know she got tupac everywhere,
- 49:43Speaker 1: But it was crazy. You handled it with a lot
- 49:45Speaker 1: more grace than most people would. But it was just
- 49:48Speaker 1: kind of like what people feel they have the right
- 49:50Speaker 1: to say to you because they think they know like
- 49:53Speaker 1: a caveat about your life that they get to dictate
- 49:56Speaker 1: what happens in it. Yeah, and I think it's like
- 49:59Speaker 1: people's own set of worth in their own sense of
- 50:01Speaker 1: luck in their life, because for them it's like whether
- 50:03Speaker 1: I give you a compliment or I'm giving you a criticism,
- 50:07Speaker 1: I'm I'm standing a little bit of a little bit
- 50:10Speaker 1: taller because you responded, which on a deeper soul level
- 50:14Speaker 1: as that is just them saying I don't feel important
- 50:18Speaker 1: in my life. I don't feel seen. Even if you
- 50:21Speaker 1: respond to me in a terrible way, you saw me.
- 50:25Speaker 1: I exists. It's why would people troll you and you
- 50:29Speaker 1: respond they say, oh, I was just kidding, or or
- 50:32Speaker 1: they like you responded that means this true, or it's
- 50:36Speaker 1: just and and and that's been It's gonna be interesting
- 50:39Speaker 1: when we look back in the history books in fifty
- 50:41Speaker 1: years and social media is taught in schools like the
- 50:44Speaker 1: origins of it are explained, um, and the mental, the
- 50:47Speaker 1: psychological and emotional toll that has taken. But my my
- 50:50Speaker 1: rule of thumb for stuff like that is, UM, ninety
- 50:54Speaker 1: percent of the time, never respond because you don't even
- 50:57Speaker 1: want to introduce your audience to whoever these people are,
- 51:00Speaker 1: because no one that follows you even knows this is
- 51:02Speaker 1: happening to you. And then you plant the seed that
- 51:05Speaker 1: you talked to in that way for them. The other
- 51:08Speaker 1: ten percent of the time, though, yeah, I always think
- 51:12Speaker 1: respond if it can be a teachable moment, you know.
- 51:15Speaker 1: So there have been some comments that I mean, I
- 51:19Speaker 1: could care less about it. You you are easy block
- 51:22Speaker 1: or delete away, I won't think about it at all later. Um.
- 51:25Speaker 1: But some people I have actually responded to just because
- 51:29Speaker 1: I know people are watching and I want them to
- 51:32Speaker 1: see how I handle a scenario like that, right like
- 51:35Speaker 1: and so for some people, um, and it hasn't happened
- 51:38Speaker 1: a long time. But if I get a random like
- 51:42Speaker 1: comment from someone who has an anonymous page, because that's
- 51:44Speaker 1: what always is, like no pictures or zero followers. Uh,
- 51:49Speaker 1: you know, sometimes I've responded and just said I and
- 51:52Speaker 1: I truely I'm not even trying to be like petty positive,
- 51:55Speaker 1: like I truly mean this. I'm so sorry that you're hurting.
- 52:00Speaker 1: My life doesn't feel that way. You know, my life
- 52:04Speaker 1: does not feel that way. And so I can imagine
- 52:07Speaker 1: that if my life felt that way, that I would
- 52:09Speaker 1: seek out someone I don't know or create a fake
- 52:12Speaker 1: page to say something nasty to somebody. There's something wrong inside.
- 52:18Speaker 1: Your life is not full. That's there's not that much
- 52:21Speaker 1: joy when you're not mad. When you see it, you're
- 52:24Speaker 1: more concerned, right, Like does your in shance com to therapy?
- 52:28Speaker 1: Because you should get it. That's actually something I've struggled with. No,
- 52:31Speaker 1: you do a great job. Because the other day and
- 52:33Speaker 1: I meant to grab this tweet before I saw you,
- 52:36Speaker 1: but quest baby life. But you the other day, you
- 52:41Speaker 1: you had this tweet that I was like, oh, I
- 52:43Speaker 1: want to frame this really Yeah, someone had made some comment. Um.
- 52:49Speaker 1: I wish I could fully remember it. But someone had
- 52:51Speaker 1: made this comment about you. Um, and I want to say,
- 52:54Speaker 1: like it was in relation to you being curvy and
- 52:56Speaker 1: being on the E network and the way that you responded.
- 52:59Speaker 1: I said, Nina clap because it was so It's just
- 53:05Speaker 1: it's fully highlighted how small their mind was and how
- 53:09Speaker 1: simple they're thinking. I think I remember what you're talking about.
- 53:13Speaker 1: And I think he had said something like because I'm
- 53:15Speaker 1: I think I was standing next to Zeri Hall, who
- 53:18Speaker 1: was very small. She's like they is like a negative zero,
- 53:21Speaker 1: and I think I was standing next to her and
- 53:23Speaker 1: obviously like I've got boobs and you know what I mean,
- 53:26Speaker 1: like I am a size fourteen child on TV, it
- 53:29Speaker 1: looks bigger. And so I think it was someone like
- 53:32Speaker 1: you shouldn't stand next to someone that's small, or it
- 53:34Speaker 1: wasn't in that in that vein of like I should
- 53:38Speaker 1: be embarrassed or or and it's just so funny because
- 53:41Speaker 1: I don't feel that at all. And the thing is,
- 53:44Speaker 1: you feel that at all. I was just like, oh
- 53:47Speaker 1: so it retweeting it even though he was insulting me.
- 53:49Speaker 1: I retweeted and I think I said something and um
- 53:52Speaker 1: b Lonnie Love ended up responding to it, um and
- 53:56Speaker 1: and it started a conversation, which was great. But I
- 53:59Speaker 1: feel like it's so funny how people want you to
- 54:01Speaker 1: feel bad about who you are, Like it's it's so
- 54:05Speaker 1: it's like this social it's It's something I'm fascinated with
- 54:09Speaker 1: because I don't feel that way, it's I'm fascinated with
- 54:12Speaker 1: people who want you to feel bad about being secure
- 54:15Speaker 1: and who you are, and I'm I wouldn't say I'm
- 54:17Speaker 1: secure all the time, like I have moments just like
- 54:19Speaker 1: everybody else, but I'm very confident when I'm on air.
- 54:24Speaker 1: Nobody's getting with me, and that's just the deal. I
- 54:26Speaker 1: come prepared, I know my stuff, I'm well, it's well
- 54:31Speaker 1: thought out. And I'm also encyclopedia for celebrity information as
- 54:33Speaker 1: far because I've been doing it for so long, so
- 54:36Speaker 1: I can give you backstory like I am. I to me,
- 54:39Speaker 1: I am very confident when I'm on air about what
- 54:43Speaker 1: I'm delivering. You may have a problem, in my opinion,
- 54:46Speaker 1: but you'll never have a problem getting facts. For me,
- 54:48Speaker 1: I'm never one of those people that gives wrong information
- 54:51Speaker 1: and so in those in that sense, I just feel
- 54:54Speaker 1: very fearless in front of the camera. And so for me,
- 54:58Speaker 1: I would have been more offensive if he was like,
- 55:00Speaker 1: you don't know what she's talking about. But it's never that.
- 55:02Speaker 1: I never get tweeted I don't know what I'm talking about.
- 55:04Speaker 1: It's always something one note about a look or you know,
- 55:08Speaker 1: and people have a right to feel, you know, however
- 55:10Speaker 1: they want to feel. But it warms my heart to
- 55:12Speaker 1: get so many women because it's an E was known
- 55:15Speaker 1: for being a very white, skinny girl network for a
- 55:19Speaker 1: very long time and if they had maybe one, one
- 55:22Speaker 1: or two black reporters, people felt like they fell in
- 55:25Speaker 1: line with the traditional mold. So when he hired me,
- 55:29Speaker 1: it was different. It was a different change. And you know,
- 55:34Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of a part of Black Twitter in
- 55:36Speaker 1: a sense where people know me. People see me on
- 55:39Speaker 1: the Love and Hip Hop reunions, They've seen me on
- 55:40Speaker 1: TMZ and now here I Am to eat. And I
- 55:42Speaker 1: think for some people they want to keep you in
- 55:44Speaker 1: a box so they don't understand where to put you.
- 55:47Speaker 1: And I love that. I love when people don't know
- 55:49Speaker 1: where to put me. I think that's a and I
- 55:54Speaker 1: can navigate in most spaces like most black people can.
- 55:57Speaker 1: Like where we all have to navigate in different space
- 56:00Speaker 1: is that we may not normally be in. Is there
- 56:02Speaker 1: a certain burden of responsibility when you're like the first Yeah,
- 56:07Speaker 1: I mean I think sometimes. You know, I used to
- 56:09Speaker 1: feel that at teams a lot because it was a
- 56:12Speaker 1: lot it was very edgy, and I always felt like
- 56:14Speaker 1: I had to be the voice of black people. You know,
- 56:17Speaker 1: this van wasn't there yet. It was like just kind
- 56:20Speaker 1: of me, And I was like I got exhausted because
- 56:23Speaker 1: I feel like I always had to speak up. So
- 56:24Speaker 1: every day it was a debate and they would gas
- 56:27Speaker 1: like me. You know, they would do things that they
- 56:28Speaker 1: knew I would have to say something about and it
- 56:32Speaker 1: and I because if it aired and I didn't, then
- 56:33Speaker 1: it was like Damnita, you just sat there and let
- 56:35Speaker 1: them say these things. But I got tired of fighting
- 56:38Speaker 1: every day because it gets tiring fighting a fight every
- 56:41Speaker 1: day that you know it's impossible to win. It's nobody
- 56:45Speaker 1: was changing their minds there. So if I thought it
- 56:50Speaker 1: was gonna make a significant difference to the way we reported,
- 56:53Speaker 1: then I think it would have been okay. But I
- 56:55Speaker 1: was like, this is not. That's when I realized I
- 56:58Speaker 1: had to leave because I was like, Okay, I get it.
- 57:01Speaker 1: This is a stick for them, like this is let's
- 57:03Speaker 1: anger everybody, role everybody up, and then we're gonna do
- 57:06Speaker 1: it again tomorrow. We don't report this. We're gonna do
- 57:09Speaker 1: these things the same way. And for me that was
- 57:12Speaker 1: difficult because I like these stories really affected my community.
- 57:16Speaker 1: Black people really get affected by what happens with our
- 57:19Speaker 1: celebrities because it's not just the celebrity to us. Whitney's family,
- 57:23Speaker 1: Michael Jackson was family, Prince was family. So when we're
- 57:26Speaker 1: talking about these people and it's being treated with such
- 57:29Speaker 1: light gloves. I walked out on TMZ on the Obama's
- 57:31Speaker 1: inauguration day because they were making fun of Michelle's dress.
- 57:35Speaker 1: I left that day. I walked out because I was
- 57:39Speaker 1: crying in the office and we were watching the inauguration
- 57:41Speaker 1: and they wanted to do and they did it. The
- 57:43Speaker 1: story is still there. They did a story she was
- 57:45Speaker 1: wearing that black and red dress and his inauguration and
- 57:48Speaker 1: they thought it was ugly and they did a story
- 57:50Speaker 1: about it. And I thought, this is such a monumental moment,
- 57:55Speaker 1: and this woman is just such an embodiment of what
- 58:00Speaker 1: black magic is to me. And this there was corn
- 58:06Speaker 1: Rows in the White House and I see these little
- 58:08Speaker 1: girls who are in the White House, and then they
- 58:11Speaker 1: got she got her mama with her, and it was
- 58:13Speaker 1: such an important moment for me, and they wanted to
- 58:16Speaker 1: do a story and I just got so upset because
- 58:18Speaker 1: I would fight in the news room. I would be like,
- 58:20Speaker 1: we are not doing this, and I obviously I thought
- 58:22Speaker 1: about it and they're like, it's your it's not that
- 58:24Speaker 1: big of a deal, Nina, you're taking it too seriously.
- 58:27Speaker 1: And I left and I was just like I'm out
- 58:29Speaker 1: of here because I just felt like it's it doesn't
- 58:34Speaker 1: mean it didn't mean as much to them as it
- 58:36Speaker 1: did to me. And I just realized that our goal
- 58:39Speaker 1: was never going to be the same and you know,
- 58:42Speaker 1: and I had I had to move on. And there's
- 58:44Speaker 1: no love loss in that area. Like they gotta do
- 58:46Speaker 1: what they gotta do. It's a it's a machine at
- 58:48Speaker 1: that point. But for me, it was hurting my spirit
- 58:50Speaker 1: because I was I wanted to be able to be
- 58:52Speaker 1: at a place where if they wanted to say or
- 58:55Speaker 1: do whatever, I could say it and do as much
- 58:57Speaker 1: as I needed to do freely to defend my side.
- 59:00Speaker 1: It also feel like it was going to make a difference.
- 59:02Speaker 1: The celebrity space can really be a lot right like,
- 59:05Speaker 1: especially when you have to offer up commentary, which means
- 59:09Speaker 1: forming opinions, sometimes forming judgments like a lot, it can
- 59:13Speaker 1: be a lot of chaos like the news that you're reporting. Um,
- 59:16Speaker 1: it can be both heavy or just centis feel really salacious. Um,
- 59:22Speaker 1: How how do you maintain the beautiful integrity that you
- 59:28Speaker 1: carry yourself with and the peace that you invite into
- 59:30Speaker 1: your life when your work is sometimes really dependent on
- 59:35Speaker 1: hearing a lot of like cutting commentary. Well, for me,
- 59:39Speaker 1: I made the decision, like I told you about the
- 59:41Speaker 1: copy editor that I spoke to us, So I made
- 59:42Speaker 1: the decision only in my career not to insult people
- 59:45Speaker 1: for how they look, only for their behavior. So that
- 59:47Speaker 1: was one of my rules. I only in told people
- 59:49Speaker 1: for their behavior, never for how they look. If somebody
- 59:51Speaker 1: came out with stains on the short, I wasn't gonna
- 59:53Speaker 1: talk about that, right, But if you came out and
- 59:55Speaker 1: you were drunk and you passed out on the street
- 59:57Speaker 1: and the cameras caught it, then I might say, well,
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: this person is acting a fool. But I made the
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: decision to only say things on air that I would
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: say to the person's face because I live in l
- 1:00:06Speaker 1: A and I might run across them write that down.
- 1:00:10Speaker 1: And I wanted to be able to defend myself because
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: this is the thing, like we have a friendship where
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: where we can be honest with each other with love.
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: If I was messing up you I know you will
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: put me aside and be like, girl, I love you,
- 1:00:21Speaker 1: but you forgot to get your ass together. You would
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: do that. And I feel the same way about some
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: of these celebts. I love some of these people, these
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: people I may have a crush on or whatever. But
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: a lot of people think if you report on somebody,
- 1:00:34Speaker 1: you always have to be nice to them. You're not
- 1:00:37Speaker 1: allowed to have any type of real feeling about it,
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: and you have to be have this general like happiness
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: for them no matter what they're doing. And I always
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: felt like I was doing disservice to the public who's
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: screaming at the TV, like y'all don't see what I see,
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: Like this person acted a damn fool. I'm not allowed,
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: you know. So for me, I was like, I'm gonna
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: I'm gonna say exactly what I would say to their
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: face and the most eloquent way possible. Sometimes funny, sometimes
- 1:01:03Speaker 1: it's just a joke. Sometimes it's just lighthearted than just
- 1:01:06Speaker 1: a funny joke. And we all have been able to
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: be the butt of a joke sometimes if we were
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: looking or acting crazy. But for me, I've made the
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: rule that I wanted to be able to say it
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: to their face, and I wanted to be able to
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: have ethics about like who I wasn't gonna if I
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: wasn't on set, then it wasn't my business. So like
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: if I was at a party and say you had
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: an event here and you had a bunch of different
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: celepse here, I would never take anything that happened here
- 1:01:34Speaker 1: and talk about it on air. So what people started
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: to notice after seeing me out in l A and
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: they would never have their business repeated. They would never
- 1:01:41Speaker 1: see me talk about it on air unless it was
- 1:01:44Speaker 1: like an intense conversation where I would tell them, oh,
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: I really want to talk about this. Most of the time,
- 1:01:49Speaker 1: if it was in a conversation I felt need to
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: go on air, they would just come in for an
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: interview or something like that. But people would be around
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: me and sometimes doing things that are illegal or whatever,
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: and it would never get act to anybody. I made
- 1:02:01Speaker 1: a choice that I was like, I'm not gonna repay
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: anything I see when I'm not working. Now, if you're
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: on a red carpet doing something crazy and cameras catch it,
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: I can't protect you. But if I'm at a private
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: event or if I'm at a party, I'm not taking
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: any of that back because I have my off times too.
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: I argue my boy from New Public, like, I've had
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: things that I don't want people to know. So I
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: had to keep a line, and I always made sure
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: that I'm not I'm more of a host now than
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: I am a reporter in the sense of, like, I'm
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: not calling reps and getting statements. I don't really do
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: that anymore, but when I was, I made sure that
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: if we were reporting a story, I always called and
- 1:02:35Speaker 1: got their side of things. So if there was a
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: story about a d y, if there was a story
- 1:02:39Speaker 1: about domestic violence, if there was a story about a
- 1:02:42Speaker 1: break in, or even if a story about something as
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: small as like somebody says something about them, instead of
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: just running the story, I would always make sure to
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: call them. I would always make sure to either call
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: them or their rep and let them know, Hey, the
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: story is going up. This is what we're saying. It's
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: going up regardless. I want to give you opportunity to
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: tell your side of the story or at least give
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: a statement. What do you want to do. Even if
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: they decided not to respond, I just wanted to have
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: fairness that they could be able to tell their side
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: of the story, and a lot of people wouldn't say anything,
- 1:03:09Speaker 1: but they respect the fact that they were asked, because
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: you would be surprised how many stories go up where
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: people don't even call and ask for comment. It's like you,
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: you wouldn't even have a story to run. I would
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: just tell you it wasn't true, and they And there's
- 1:03:22Speaker 1: so many people who appreciate cultivated friendships just by calling
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: and being like, hey, this is about to run. Just
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: want to let you know. That's really how I think
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: the ethic thing got instilled in me. Very early in
- 1:03:33Speaker 1: my career. I had some really good people around me
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: that were like, we don't operate like this. And my
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: friends that are still in the business that are journalists,
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: I tell them all the time, like, make sure you've
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: given both sides of the story, Like don't just run
- 1:03:45Speaker 1: with this, because you're gonna burn a lot of bridges
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: running with a rumor. You know, it's just not ethical.
- 1:03:51Speaker 1: And then like now the lines get blurred too because
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: when you are a host, you're also now the celebrity too.
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: I guess I still don't feel that way, but is
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: that you know, how do you feel? Do you feel
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: like people apply the same rules to you that you're
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: given when you report on celebrity. Probably not. I always
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: feel like my my boundaries are much harder than most people's.
- 1:04:15Speaker 1: Like I feel like I'm old fashioned in that sense.
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: I feel like I'm, you know, make I'm a person
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: just likes boundaries, So I probably apply that boundary pressure
- 1:04:24Speaker 1: more than most people. And that's okay. Like I don't
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: expect everybody to treat me the same way. I don't
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: probably won't get that same respect in in certain instances.
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: I haven't been in the press a ton. Most of
- 1:04:36Speaker 1: it is stories that people are calling me for to
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: do an interview. I don't really get like gossip stories
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: about me every now and then I'm on the shade room.
- 1:04:42Speaker 1: But like for the most part, like normally is for
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: something said on camera. So it's not like my personal
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: life or anything like that. But it's different. I remember
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: talking to Wendy Williams and she said that she doesn't
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: have select friends on purpose because she was saying that
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: it gets hard to do your job as a host
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: because you're not you're you become biased, you know, And
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: so that's been difficult for me too, because I genuinely
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: meet people that may be celept that I genuinely like,
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: but I have to tell them I still got to
- 1:05:12Speaker 1: do my job and I'm gonna do it with the
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: most respectful way possible. But I still have to be
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: able to do my job and be who I am
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: without you feeling offended by it. Because sometimes even when
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: they follow you, you you don't want to retweet certain things,
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: or you know, like Nicki Minaj follows me and then
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: Cardi B follows me on Instagram, and sometimes I'm like,
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: if I post this is someone's gonna go away. I
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: think I'm like, I gotta do me, you know. So
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: it's just just like they would do them. But it's
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: sometimes you feel weird, especially because you know you have
- 1:05:38Speaker 1: a platform and people you know want something from you.
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: But so many nuances now to like the social world
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: and the social relationships that we have, and it's like, oh,
- 1:05:48Speaker 1: are you gonna see this? Even just in in in
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: line of like how much of my life is going
- 1:05:55Speaker 1: to remain personal and how do I keep it that way?
- 1:05:58Speaker 1: You know, because since we kind of have first signed
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: up for Instagram, where it was just before this space
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: to kind of share your personality, your personal life, just
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: little musings or we used to post random pictures of
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: the most random things. Now it's more curated experience, and
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: it's more especially for public figures, it's used as a
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: marketing tool, not as a tool of self expression. So
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: it's kind of like that weird balance, well what do
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: I post? Well, do I want to post my man
- 1:06:26Speaker 1: or do I want to only post work things? Or
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: do I want to put you know, it's just like
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: it's this hard thing that that it's hard, and then
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: the bigger following you get, it's like, well, I'm really
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: allowing a lot of people into my life. Um, that's
- 1:06:40Speaker 1: part of the that's part of like the conflict I
- 1:06:44Speaker 1: have about whether or not I ever want to post
- 1:06:46Speaker 1: my son on social media. And it's not that I mean, obviously,
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: you know, he's not Northwest, so I'm not not posting
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: his face because I imagine that like, oh no, the problemically, Um,
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: but I'm just still kind of struggling with how am
- 1:07:00Speaker 1: I going to navigate this space for him and what
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: is like considered too young to require consent and what
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: isn't right because now, unlike me, everything about his life
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: is going to be on the internet. Forever until you know,
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: the end of time. So how do I want to
- 1:07:18Speaker 1: introduce him to the world? And how much of him
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: am I going to give to the world, because it's
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: still his business. He's a baby, but it's still his life.
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: It's still his business. You know what. I don't want
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: naked pictures of him on the internet or not that
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: that would happen, but you know, even what would be
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: cute in the tub, it's like, well, how how is
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: he going to feel about that when that is a
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: piece of his information he can never scrub from being online. Um,
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: And also just like I kind of want to keep
- 1:07:44Speaker 1: him for me. It's you know, I think I don't.
- 1:07:47Speaker 1: I don't unless it's like Mother's Day and it's an
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: old picture. I rarely post pictures of my parents. Yeah,
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: I don't post my any of my other family copers
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: on social even for that reason. It's just you're inviting
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: into their lives. Can say they didn't sign up for
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: Like I can take it. I signed up for. People
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: troll me, that's fine. But you know, like I have
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: a mom who was sick, like my dad is you know,
- 1:08:09Speaker 1: I just my sister, Like I just I am still me.
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: I'm still you know, from the bay, and there's never
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: there's always gonna be a biting part of me. Like
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: that has been my hardest part with this whole transition,
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: is that the way you want to clap back, you
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: can't clap back because you could lose your damn job.
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: So I have really worked since two thousand seven to
- 1:08:33Speaker 1: try to just control my mouth right, And it's sometimes
- 1:08:38Speaker 1: hard because people really really say things to you they
- 1:08:41Speaker 1: would never say to you in person, and people can
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: get really nasty, like they think there's no consequence. They
- 1:08:47Speaker 1: think there's no consequence to it. And so sometimes I
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: understand those celebs that have a million followers and they
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: retweet the person's insult and then everybody says, well, they're
- 1:08:54Speaker 1: getting docs and they're doing this. But it's like, even
- 1:08:58Speaker 1: though I have a million followers, we're both still human beings.
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: Like I'm allowed to feel emotion, and there's a part
- 1:09:03Speaker 1: of you that does kind of have to turn off
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: with these with these trolls. I controlled a lot for
- 1:09:08Speaker 1: love and hip hop, so for my stuff with E
- 1:09:11Speaker 1: and when I did stuff with access different audiences, very
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: different audience, they would more come at me for my opinion.
- 1:09:16Speaker 1: So it's like I disagree with you about this, that's fine,
- 1:09:19Speaker 1: But like with love and hip hop, that audience is
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: more visceral and obviously fueled by a lot of drama.
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: And really, I have nothing to do with the show.
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: Like I have nothing to do with the show. I come,
- 1:09:32Speaker 1: I literally get emailed the episodes. I watched the episodes
- 1:09:36Speaker 1: on my own and addition all my other work, and
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: I come in. I cultivate these questions with production, and
- 1:09:40Speaker 1: I do an interview that's a reunion, and then I
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: go and I leave, and people are very intense about
- 1:09:48Speaker 1: the show, and it's it's look, it's v H one's
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: highest rated series and it does really well. But people
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: are very invested in these other people's lives and they
- 1:09:57Speaker 1: hold you personally accountable if they don't feel, oh that
- 1:10:00Speaker 1: you ask what they would ask, or you know, everybody
- 1:10:03Speaker 1: thinks they can be a host. Everybody thinks they can
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: do these things until it's time to do it. And
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: and there's also but people don't understand that this is
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: not just like as easy as like me and you're
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: sitting down, this is a production. So it's a you're
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: trying to get your balancing the energy of people who
- 1:10:21Speaker 1: want to have their own egos, who all have their
- 1:10:24Speaker 1: own temperament, who all want you to talk about one thing.
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: And then you have a network that's telling you what
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: they want literally in your ear, like you have an earpiece.
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: Then yeah, I think people don't realize that, they say,
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: push them harder on this. Yeah. Well, there's like a
- 1:10:40Speaker 1: full audience, so the audience is kind of fueling the
- 1:10:42Speaker 1: energy in the in the room. So sometimes like even
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: if the first person doesn't feel combative, if the audience
- 1:10:47Speaker 1: is like oh or ah, then they because remind you,
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: these are reality stars, so they're very much ego based,
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: so they respond to that. So I'm dealing with, you know,
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: a control room full of people talking to me. It's
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: not one person, it's a control room full of people.
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: In my ear, I have the audience, I have the
- 1:11:03Speaker 1: cast members who were talking when I need to try
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: to pay attention to, you know, I have questions that
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: we've already had mapped out a floor director prompter. So
- 1:11:10Speaker 1: it's a lot of moving pieces to navigate and still
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: be able to have like fluid conversations that feel natural
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: and still get some type of result from people who
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: don't want to answer your questions, Like they want to
- 1:11:22Speaker 1: be at the reunion and they want to be able
- 1:11:24Speaker 1: to say whatever they want to say, but the questions
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: are never going to be geared to cater to them.
- 1:11:28Speaker 1: So if you acted, if you cheated or had a
- 1:11:30Speaker 1: threesome on your wife, and I have to ask you
- 1:11:32Speaker 1: about that, imagine how I'm going to be met. So
- 1:11:35Speaker 1: I'm dealing with all of that, and then you get
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: somebody else. It's not your fault. You have to ask
- 1:11:39Speaker 1: that question. It's their behavior. Well, and that's the thing,
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: and they don't want you to talk about the behavior
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: on camera that they signed up for. So you're dealing
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: you're literally getting paid for that exactly. So it's it's
- 1:11:51Speaker 1: a sorry, let's have a smart home. So they've got
- 1:11:57Speaker 1: this fancy house. People at my gate at the ranch. Um.
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: But yeah, it's um. You know when I get people
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: in my comments like you didn't do this or you
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: didn't and also they edited however they see fit. So
- 1:12:09Speaker 1: I very well may have asked the question and they
- 1:12:12Speaker 1: chose not to include it. Sometimes the things that I
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: want to ask are obviously more deep, like sometimes Mono
- 1:12:17Speaker 1: be in my ear, Like okay Yama, She said that
- 1:12:20Speaker 1: to me a few times and they'll cut it and
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: I can't do anything about it. And it's not I'm
- 1:12:24Speaker 1: not mad at it. It's not. I will not be
- 1:12:27Speaker 1: in the edit bay for that. So whatever they choose
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: to include is this is not a show executive producer
- 1:12:33Speaker 1: right on. It's a job as a host. And I
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: enjoy it for for what it's worth, and I leave
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: it when I when I fly back to l A.
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: And they can do what they want with it. And
- 1:12:42Speaker 1: so you know, people are very invested in it. I
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: suggest they get careers in production to try to make
- 1:12:47Speaker 1: their thing and and and see if they can be
- 1:12:49Speaker 1: saying encourage that. Okay, before I get you out of here,
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: because girl, when we be talking, let me tell you,
- 1:12:57Speaker 1: me and Nina are brunches. Go for ten hours. It's bad.
- 1:13:00Speaker 1: We were. I'm sure our significant others are, like, are
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: y'all really with each other? Or having you where? Because
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: we can go, we can go for a lunch and
- 1:13:11Speaker 1: then like me and you the way that we are,
- 1:13:13Speaker 1: like the type of connection we have. If we don't
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: have enough time, then we'd be like dang. But I
- 1:13:17Speaker 1: wanted to talk about them. Why are all these other
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: people here? Because I wanted to talk about X. We
- 1:13:21Speaker 1: get mad sometimes when it's not just us and because
- 1:13:24Speaker 1: we're like because and then and then we kind of
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: click up because I'll be whispering to you like we'll
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: just with and I'm like, I don't want other people
- 1:13:31Speaker 1: to feel, you know, left up. But sometimes the only
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: thing for your ears, So you know, we have to
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: do our own solo stuff sometimes. So what are some
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: things for your spiritual health, for your self care, your
- 1:13:41Speaker 1: self development. Tell me some for our listeners, some podcasts,
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: some books that have enriched you that other people need
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: to get there. So funny because you have the seven
- 1:13:51Speaker 1: Spiritual Laws of Success right here, which I just reread
- 1:13:55Speaker 1: not too long ago. I have that. Um, I have
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: to say, I'm trying to think about Okay, I'm actually reading. Okay,
- 1:14:03Speaker 1: you guys are gonna laugh at me. So I'm reading.
- 1:14:06Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm gonna say this. I'm reading Men
- 1:14:08Speaker 1: are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Right now, Bok's book.
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard your parents talk about it. So books,
- 1:14:19Speaker 1: obviously you've got to put your own spin on it
- 1:14:21Speaker 1: because it's a dated book. So they're probably gonna be
- 1:14:23Speaker 1: some social norms for men and women in there that
- 1:14:26Speaker 1: you should ignore, like they're gonna be like if you're
- 1:14:28Speaker 1: in the A O L chat room, you know. I mean,
- 1:14:32Speaker 1: the author does kind of have certain things for men
- 1:14:34Speaker 1: and women that are very like some things you feel
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: a little outdated, but okay. So my mom recommended the
- 1:14:40Speaker 1: book because I'm in a relationship and we have growing
- 1:14:43Speaker 1: pain just like everybody else. And there's definitely been some
- 1:14:46Speaker 1: headbuttings for like a man's way of thinking in a
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: woman's way of begging, just like why doesn't he understand
- 1:14:53Speaker 1: when I do this? I mean this, Why doesn't understand
- 1:14:56Speaker 1: when I vent? I don't want advice. I just wanna vent.
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: I don't need your advice. And so my mom recommended
- 1:15:07Speaker 1: that I read this because she was like, your dad
- 1:15:08Speaker 1: was frustrating me for a really long time. And I
- 1:15:11Speaker 1: read this and then really, there are some there are
- 1:15:12Speaker 1: some gyms in there that you can take to help
- 1:15:14Speaker 1: improve your relationship. So I kept telling her I would
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: read it. I never did, so she sent it to me.
- 1:15:20Speaker 1: So I'm reading it now, and I have to tell you,
- 1:15:23Speaker 1: as archaic as this book is, it has a section
- 1:15:26Speaker 1: in it on how to talk to your man when
- 1:15:28Speaker 1: you want to discuss something and when the best time
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: is to do it. Because I realized that my timing
- 1:15:35Speaker 1: has always been off, which is why I haven't been
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: getting the result I want it. And this book tells
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: you about men their moods, how men have this thing.
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: It says men have this thing where they tucked themselves
- 1:15:47Speaker 1: in their own mental cave. And if you're trying to
- 1:15:50Speaker 1: talk to them while they're in that, like they phase
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: in and out of it. That's just a man's way,
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: if that's what the book says. And it's like, if
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: you're talking to them while they're in it and you
- 1:15:58Speaker 1: try to pull them out, you're gonna get more resistance.
- 1:16:00Speaker 1: So it's like, when you feel like you're not being
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: heard or listen to, you've got you've got a phase
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: of timing right. So it's taught me a little patience
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: and it's taught me how to And I was like,
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: this is a bunch of bs. So I tried it,
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: actually tried it today. I was reading it yesterday and
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: I tried to approach something I wanted to talk about
- 1:16:17Speaker 1: and how and realized how you approach things and how
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: you phrase things can change. And it gives you, it'll
- 1:16:25Speaker 1: tell you like how to talk to him, how to
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: phrase it in a way that it will be the
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: best received. And I was laughing at it, but it
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: worked today. So I was like, this is actually notice
- 1:16:35Speaker 1: say that's what I'm reading right now, And you guys
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: can laugh at me if you want to. But sometimes
- 1:16:40Speaker 1: I feel like when I talked to my girlfriends about
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: my relationship, we're all kind of like they're dumb, you know,
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: So so I wanted to just get a different perspective, right, Like,
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: when when you get in my group conversations with women,
- 1:16:54Speaker 1: it always will boil down to men are trash, Like
- 1:16:56Speaker 1: it's just like we love y'all, but like some times
- 1:17:00Speaker 1: I just truly don't understand their frame of thinking. Like
- 1:17:03Speaker 1: I truly do feel like they're a we have we
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: we do have just such fundamental differences. Um and specifically
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: because of the way society has boxed men and women.
- 1:17:16Speaker 1: You know, how we got into the conversation. I was
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: able to ease into it because I used to curry
- 1:17:19Speaker 1: statements today that came out. Um, it'll probably be a
- 1:17:23Speaker 1: little dated when the podcast comes out, but that's okay.
- 1:17:25Speaker 1: So she made the comments basically saying that she didn't
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: feel attractive and she was insecure about her attractiveness because
- 1:17:31Speaker 1: everybody knows that she's with Steph, so men don't approach her,
- 1:17:35Speaker 1: and how she was saying that she still wants to
- 1:17:36Speaker 1: be hit on even though she's married, because she feels
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: like no one is attracted to her because they're so
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: used to her being this mom and wife, and how
- 1:17:44Speaker 1: it makes her feel a little insecure her to say,
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: So that was my take. I took it as her
- 1:17:51Speaker 1: being vulnerable. Most of us don't talk about our insecurities.
- 1:17:54Speaker 1: My man felt that she was giving a green light
- 1:17:57Speaker 1: for men to come hit on her, and I thought
- 1:18:00Speaker 1: that was a very simple take. Well, men are so territorial,
- 1:18:02Speaker 1: and that's what he said. He's like, you're giving men
- 1:18:04Speaker 1: a green light to come and hit on you. When
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: we created the safe space together, so we had at
- 1:18:08Speaker 1: first we started with this debate because I was like,
- 1:18:11Speaker 1: you're ridiculous, and then it ended up being able to
- 1:18:15Speaker 1: I was able to kind of maneuver it into talking
- 1:18:17Speaker 1: about us and you know, our boundaries and social cues
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: and what would be And I was like, so you're
- 1:18:23Speaker 1: not really upset about her being, you know, feeling insecure.
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: You're upset that she said it publicly, and he was like, well,
- 1:18:29Speaker 1: I guess it was just the way she phrased it,
- 1:18:31Speaker 1: but we were able to kind of I'm always curious
- 1:18:34Speaker 1: as to how men think, because I think they're thinking
- 1:18:37Speaker 1: is more zigzact than ours. What's funny to like, even
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: Jez and I had a conversation like this a while back,
- 1:18:43Speaker 1: but I totally here and get what she's saying, like,
- 1:18:47Speaker 1: and I was very brave that she would say that
- 1:18:49Speaker 1: out loud because the fact of the matter, like the
- 1:18:52Speaker 1: way that men and women see the opposite sex and
- 1:18:55Speaker 1: see what the you know, proverbial green light or would
- 1:18:58Speaker 1: be is so different because for a man, if a
- 1:19:01Speaker 1: man is in a relationship, it makes women hit on
- 1:19:05Speaker 1: them more. That's what I said this morning, because they say,
- 1:19:08Speaker 1: I see what you're capable of giving, and I want
- 1:19:12Speaker 1: that for me. I also, like a lot of women,
- 1:19:16Speaker 1: they're worth is tied into whether they feel comparatively that
- 1:19:20Speaker 1: they have one up on another woman, right like a
- 1:19:22Speaker 1: better fashion or more men like them are better career
- 1:19:25Speaker 1: or more money. So a lot of women's self worth
- 1:19:28Speaker 1: is tied into that. So for a woman, for some
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: certain types of women, if they see a married man,
- 1:19:35Speaker 1: they're they're saying, if I can get him to pay
- 1:19:38Speaker 1: attention to me, that means that I have value. That
- 1:19:42Speaker 1: means that I can feel better about myself. And they
- 1:19:44Speaker 1: see it more as a challenge for them to feel
- 1:19:47Speaker 1: that they have worth, and they also see it as,
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: oh God, I don't. I personally don't come across good men.
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: So if I see somebody treating someone else really good,
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: they're capable of it, and I want something of that
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: at any cost. Men. The way that men view women
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: in relationships for the most part, uh, the way they
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: view women in relationships or marriages is they're too territorial.
- 1:20:13Speaker 1: You have someone else, there's a turn the light off.
- 1:20:15Speaker 1: There's a chance that you are being uh interred by
- 1:20:19Speaker 1: another person. I don't not interested saying. That's what they
- 1:20:23Speaker 1: were telling her. She was on there with Jada, which
- 1:20:25Speaker 1: is why I think. I don't think she was prepared
- 1:20:27Speaker 1: for the conversation, which is why I don't think she
- 1:20:28Speaker 1: articulated it in a way that everybody received it. Because
- 1:20:31Speaker 1: I think Jada has a way of making people open
- 1:20:33Speaker 1: up that make them talk about subjects that they were
- 1:20:36Speaker 1: not necessarily prepared for and the way she articulated. A
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: lot of men had a problem with how she said it,
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: but I think she was just probably saying it for
- 1:20:43Speaker 1: the first time out loud to even herself. And she
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: was around these strong women who are all experienced in
- 1:20:48Speaker 1: marriage where she felt like she could relate. Her mom
- 1:20:50Speaker 1: was there, her sister in law was there, you know,
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: Jada was there, Willow was there. She was saying these things,
- 1:20:56Speaker 1: and I think she was kind of resonating for the
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: first time about like what is my worth based in
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: my have this? And she was talking about how groupies
- 1:21:03Speaker 1: bother her, that she has so bad, she has bad anxiety,
- 1:21:07Speaker 1: she has to take medication for it. So for me,
- 1:21:10Speaker 1: I felt that I saw the vulnerability and how brave
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: of her. That's what I didn't see it. That's a
- 1:21:16Speaker 1: that's I can imagine that that was an incredibly difficult
- 1:21:20Speaker 1: conversation for And she is going to be hit everybody.
- 1:21:24Speaker 1: I mean, if you go on Twitter later, it's people,
- 1:21:26Speaker 1: you know, people are taking her to task for it,
- 1:21:28Speaker 1: mainly people who are seeing it in in a selfish way.
- 1:21:31Speaker 1: But like my boyfriend was like, well, she's telling people
- 1:21:34Speaker 1: that stuff doesn't make her feel beautiful and I'm like,
- 1:21:36Speaker 1: I don't think that's what it is. It's just into
- 1:21:40Speaker 1: it's like, you know, not that we should be tapped
- 1:21:43Speaker 1: into our ego, but it's the ego of it, right
- 1:21:45Speaker 1: because for him, as a married man, you can still
- 1:21:49Speaker 1: not act on it but feel flattered that you know,
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: a lot of people think you are dope. A lot
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: of women want top off, top right, and you can
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: get that little like have that little smile. Oh when
- 1:22:00Speaker 1: you know you're walking down the street and you know
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: that feeling of you know that someone wants your time
- 1:22:06Speaker 1: and attention or finds you attractive, it feels good even
- 1:22:09Speaker 1: if you don't act on it and imagine it, it
- 1:22:12Speaker 1: feels good on that scale attention. And then you on
- 1:22:15Speaker 1: the flip side because of the way men protected. Men
- 1:22:18Speaker 1: aren't going to cat call you, and they're not going
- 1:22:21Speaker 1: to she's a she's stunningly gorgeous, very talented, very gifted.
- 1:22:27Speaker 1: But men are never going to come out of pocket
- 1:22:30Speaker 1: to tell her like, wow, you look beautiful today, or
- 1:22:33Speaker 1: damn girl, or whatever ego boosts however can come to
- 1:22:36Speaker 1: you because the way men see women is, oh, she's
- 1:22:39Speaker 1: off limits, not gonna waste my time. Um, And so yeah,
- 1:22:42Speaker 1: that that would give you a certain level of deficit,
- 1:22:45Speaker 1: Like your man is getting that ego boost of of
- 1:22:48Speaker 1: being set into in that way, and you don't get
- 1:22:50Speaker 1: any of that except from him. Not to say it's
- 1:22:53Speaker 1: not enough or good from him, but it's a difference.
- 1:22:57Speaker 1: I understood exactly what she's coming from, and even though
- 1:22:59Speaker 1: I'm may not feel the way she feels, I can
- 1:23:02Speaker 1: definitely empathize with someone saying that. And I just don't think.
- 1:23:06Speaker 1: I think in this world we're supposed to be perfect.
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: So anytime anybody is vulnerable, it's always up for debate
- 1:23:12Speaker 1: and for people to be critical. But I don't think
- 1:23:15Speaker 1: people understand how hard it is to be a public
- 1:23:18Speaker 1: figure and be that your authentic self and your She
- 1:23:21Speaker 1: was criticized when she was Betty Crocker imperfect, and now
- 1:23:25Speaker 1: she's being criticized for being vulnerable. So you it's like
- 1:23:28Speaker 1: what you were saying, women can't win, You can't win.
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: So the thing is like and say what you want, Yeah, yeah,
- 1:23:35Speaker 1: what's brought me some pieces. I know that no matter what,
- 1:23:39Speaker 1: I'm not going to be universally liked ever, because that's
- 1:23:41Speaker 1: not how humanity is. Listen, if Jesus wasn't universally liked
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: what hope do I have? It's so it's so true,
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: and I think when you let that go, when you
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: you know, and I had to have that. I had
- 1:23:53Speaker 1: that conversation actually with the coworker of mine because of
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: a troll or something, and I was irritated and she
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: was like, you know, I don't believe with the people
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: who hate me, saying I don't believe with the people
- 1:24:02Speaker 1: who love exactly online. Yeah, you know, because she was like,
- 1:24:05Speaker 1: it's so fleeting, and it was such a gain point.
- 1:24:08Speaker 1: It's wrapped in the way they view themselves and the
- 1:24:11Speaker 1: way that they view the world. Just like you know.
- 1:24:14Speaker 1: Something that that used to like be kind of irritating
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: to me was like I would know people right that
- 1:24:21Speaker 1: we're in the public space, and I would see that
- 1:24:24Speaker 1: they would be very hurtful to other people. Like the
- 1:24:27Speaker 1: personal version of them to me was like, oh, your
- 1:24:30Speaker 1: your spirit is trash at this moment in your life, right,
- 1:24:33Speaker 1: like you are you are at your court not a
- 1:24:37Speaker 1: good person, or you're steeped in narcissism, or you might
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: be a sociopath. Right. But because whatever they did publicly
- 1:24:45Speaker 1: got attention or no, no, no, like whatever they did publicly,
- 1:24:50Speaker 1: the same part of it. People would constantly message them,
- 1:24:53Speaker 1: you are the most incredible human being I've ever seen.
- 1:24:57Speaker 1: Wait what because you like that they acted in this
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: or played that, and and it gives it gives people
- 1:25:04Speaker 1: this sense of I can be trashed inside because I'm
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: still gonna get praise. And that used to I mean,
- 1:25:11Speaker 1: that used to really irritate me, you know, because you
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: feel like you're in the scary movie and you're the
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: only one who knows like the killer. You're like one
- 1:25:19Speaker 1: who knows you. Guys are very fooled. It's a frustrating
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: place to be in. But that's why too. It's like
- 1:25:25Speaker 1: you can't go off of the praise to the to
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: the earlier point you were making, like you can't go
- 1:25:30Speaker 1: off of the praise or the criticis if you're in
- 1:25:32Speaker 1: this industry and you're in a season where all you're
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: getting his praise and then for whatever reason, that season changes,
- 1:25:39Speaker 1: which it will, because that's just the nature of the business.
- 1:25:42Speaker 1: And you've put all of your worth in your career
- 1:25:45Speaker 1: based on what these people are saying, you won't make it.
- 1:25:49Speaker 1: There are people who we've started careers with who are
- 1:25:52Speaker 1: no longer in this business because they couldn't deal with
- 1:25:55Speaker 1: the ups and downs, you know, and it's you. You
- 1:25:59Speaker 1: have to be so solid in what you're doing that
- 1:26:02Speaker 1: you won't waiver either way. Because while it's amazing to
- 1:26:07Speaker 1: get that love, we all want it, it's if it's
- 1:26:10Speaker 1: your sole basis from these people who don't know you,
- 1:26:13Speaker 1: it will ultimately lead to your demise because they have
- 1:26:18Speaker 1: no saying what your value is and and your your
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: moral compass is not in alignment, you know, Like, then
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: you're going to start making decisions just based on how
- 1:26:28Speaker 1: they'll be received or how you'll be perceive, and you'll
- 1:26:32Speaker 1: go through that where you'll figure it out. I've done that.
- 1:26:34Speaker 1: I actually had a reading that's the Journey. Yeah, I
- 1:26:37Speaker 1: had a reading actually where the lady told me, uh,
- 1:26:40Speaker 1: do not change when I was being she told me
- 1:26:44Speaker 1: I was going to get the job before I got it,
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: and what she told me was, do not change your
- 1:26:51Speaker 1: behavior for this network because you're going to think they
- 1:26:55Speaker 1: want something else, and you will. You'll skew yourself to
- 1:26:58Speaker 1: give them that and they won't want you. So I
- 1:27:01Speaker 1: made sure when I was doing everything at E I
- 1:27:03Speaker 1: was authentically myself. She just told me, and she was right.
- 1:27:06Speaker 1: I did go through those moments where listen, I am
- 1:27:08Speaker 1: around everybody who's a size zero and they don't necessarily
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: look like me or even think the way I do,
- 1:27:14Speaker 1: and so you think, well, damn, I am not going
- 1:27:16Speaker 1: to be accepted in this space, like I'm too much
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: for some people off camera? So am I going to
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: be too much for? You know? And I did have
- 1:27:23Speaker 1: that thought, and but I would. I remembered her telling
- 1:27:26Speaker 1: me that, and I made sure that I was. I
- 1:27:28Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I'm gonna just give it.
- 1:27:30Speaker 1: I'm gonna just be me and if if it's not enough,
- 1:27:32Speaker 1: then it's just not for me. But I can no
- 1:27:34Speaker 1: longer temper who I am to cater to what I
- 1:27:38Speaker 1: think people want me to be. And I so I
- 1:27:41Speaker 1: didn't and I got the job. And I remember her
- 1:27:44Speaker 1: telling me. She was like, do not change who you
- 1:27:45Speaker 1: are because of who you think they want you to be.
- 1:27:49Speaker 1: And I keep that with me because sometimes you want
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: to waiver a little bit. You're like, oh, it would
- 1:27:54Speaker 1: be so much easier if I could just be agreeable,
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: or you know, be so much easier if I just
- 1:27:58Speaker 1: didn't have this opinion. But which, yeah, it'll keep you afloat.
- 1:28:02Speaker 1: But then ultimately, what is your impact on the world
- 1:28:05Speaker 1: If you're not being your authentic self, what is your point?
- 1:28:09Speaker 1: What's the point and the impact there are you helping.
- 1:28:12Speaker 1: There are days when I don't get in these, like
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: Twitter conversations. I just let everybody debate and you know,
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: my mention stay empty and dry. But the days where
- 1:28:21Speaker 1: I do get involved or I say something, it really
- 1:28:25Speaker 1: resonates with certain people. Not everybody, but there are people
- 1:28:27Speaker 1: who resonates with And when I see that, when I
- 1:28:32Speaker 1: see that it's really being received, I'm like, Okay, this
- 1:28:36Speaker 1: is a converse. These are conversations. I'm supposed to be
- 1:28:38Speaker 1: a part of it. And as easy as it would
- 1:28:40Speaker 1: be just to dip out and not participate, I just
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: don't feel like that's part of my journey. Like I
- 1:28:46Speaker 1: got this big amount for reason. It's intentional. I love
- 1:28:50Speaker 1: that Nina. Listen as we close out this show, I
- 1:28:53Speaker 1: just want to celebrate you. I celebrate you in private
- 1:28:57Speaker 1: a lot, and I'm like, probably the number one always
- 1:29:00Speaker 1: on your Twitter and in your d MS, like yes,
- 1:29:03Speaker 1: but listen, I I want to celebrate you on my
- 1:29:06Speaker 1: platform in front of the people that are listening. And
- 1:29:09Speaker 1: just let you know that I think you are such
- 1:29:12Speaker 1: a phenomenal woman, and I am so grateful and blessed
- 1:29:16Speaker 1: not just to have you in my life, but I'm
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: just so grateful and blessed that you exist for the
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: world because I think the impact that you're making, you're
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: not even going to fully understand the depths of it
- 1:29:27Speaker 1: and the range of it until you're looking back in
- 1:29:29Speaker 1: twenty years. And I think you're right, especially because I'm
- 1:29:34Speaker 1: so hard on myself, and it's even sometimes hard when
- 1:29:36Speaker 1: you compliment me, because I'm like, oh, I'm not doing that.
- 1:29:40Speaker 1: I saw you typen up, like you got uncomfortable, like
- 1:29:42Speaker 1: like even right now you're crying like yourself off. I
- 1:29:45Speaker 1: don't know your heart except this love like you are.
- 1:29:50Speaker 1: You're just a phenomenal woman, and I love like I
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: know you in my personal life, and I think that
- 1:29:55Speaker 1: you're you're just an incredible friend. You're always there. You're
- 1:29:59Speaker 1: like you will show up when I need you and
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: I and I can respect when you're unable to, you know,
- 1:30:06Speaker 1: but in the world, in the form of what you do,
- 1:30:09Speaker 1: you carry yourself with the standard of excellence and this
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: level of integrity that I think is just it's just
- 1:30:17Speaker 1: stunning to watch, and I think it's giving not just
- 1:30:20Speaker 1: permission to the people that want to stand up and
- 1:30:23Speaker 1: being a space like you, but it's giving them the
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: actual blueprint of how to do it the right way,
- 1:30:30Speaker 1: even in this day and age where that's very hard
- 1:30:32Speaker 1: to understand, especially a lot of young women are being
- 1:30:35Speaker 1: pulled in these different ways that they think are the
- 1:30:38Speaker 1: best way to get attention that ultimately or not going
- 1:30:42Speaker 1: to get them close to their dreams. But you are
- 1:30:45Speaker 1: a great blueprint for that of just showing someone how
- 1:30:48Speaker 1: to show up as your authentic self in all moments,
- 1:30:53Speaker 1: no matter who it's in front of, and just how
- 1:30:55Speaker 1: to have such a high level of personal integrity. So
- 1:30:58Speaker 1: I'm just grateful for you. I'm I love you, I
- 1:31:02Speaker 1: celebrate you keep me grounded and just I think Van
- 1:31:06Speaker 1: Leathan had tweeted the other day that you got him
- 1:31:08Speaker 1: together in like fifteen minutes or something, and I think
- 1:31:10Speaker 1: I tweeted, like, she's good for that, and you are,
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: like you are you allow me to kind of sometimes
- 1:31:14Speaker 1: emotionally vomit on you and just kind of like, oh,
- 1:31:18Speaker 1: I feel like you ground me because you keep me,
- 1:31:20Speaker 1: you checked me, But you also like you'll say, no, look,
- 1:31:23Speaker 1: you did this right, this you could work on like
- 1:31:25Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And I think we all
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: need somebody like that who you know. Just it's just
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: talking to you feels like a nice massage and such
- 1:31:33Speaker 1: a girl my Instagram girl, It's true. You give a
- 1:31:40Speaker 1: little soul massage to your friends and we need that.
- 1:31:43Speaker 1: So it's just, you know, it's good to have a
- 1:31:44Speaker 1: good tribe. And I'm so happy that I'm a part
- 1:31:47Speaker 1: of yours and you're a part of mine. Yes, I
- 1:31:49Speaker 1: see you, I love you. Thank you. It's been a
- 1:31:52Speaker 1: Dropping Gems podcast. Peace, big thank you for listening to
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: this episode of the Dropping Gems podcast. This show's exactly
- 1:32:00Speaker 1: to produced by Adrian Scott and me Debbie Brown. Our
- 1:32:03Speaker 1: theme music was created by producer Day one, and the
- 1:32:06Speaker 1: poem that you heard at the beginning of the show,
- 1:32:08Speaker 1: well that was created especially for us by award winning
- 1:32:10Speaker 1: poet Nambie Okaf. Do you have a quick moment right now,
- 1:32:14Speaker 1: please hit subscribe on the show and if you like
- 1:32:16Speaker 1: what you heard, take it a step further and give
- 1:32:19Speaker 1: us a five star rating. Until next time you connect
- 1:32:21Speaker 1: with me on I g at Debbie Brown or my
- 1:32:24Speaker 1: website Debbie brown dot com be blessed