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The Positive Voice
The Positive Voice, is a podcast dedicated to helping you live your best life. Our show is all about spreading positivity and inspiration, and we cover a variety of topics that are designed to help you cultivate a more positive mindset. From the neuroscience of positivity to the power of affirmations, we explore the many ways in which you can bring more positivity into your life. Our episodes are full of practical tips and strategies that you can apply to your own life, as well as inspiring stories from people who have overcome adversity to achieve their dreams. So if you're looking for a dose of positivity and inspiration, join us on The Positive Voice and start living life to the fullest!
The Positive Voice
E58: The Impact of Generational Trauma on How you show up in the world
In this Visionary Catalyst Rewind Episode ou are invited to join a journey of self-discovery and cultural introspection. This episode is a raw look into the emotional heritage that thrives in silence within minority communities, revealing how the act of holding back tears and anger has been a vital survival tool, passed down from generation to generation. From the consequences of imposing strict discipline out of a necessity to protect, to the current winds of change ushering in gentle parenting, we traverse the changing landscape of love and care within our families.
Moving through the kitchen and into the heart, we explore the unspoken dialogue that takes place over shared meals, where food becomes a vessel for apology and affection. This is poignantly captured in a scene with Viola Davis in "Antoine Fisher," which serves as a catalyst for our examination of these rich traditions. And with vulnerability, I open up about a pivotal moment in my life at 21 that steered me towards emotional detachment, discussing the subsequent journey towards wholeness and the embrace of my true self. This episode is an ode to the beauty of healing, the power of acceptance, and the courage it takes to face every part of our being with love.
Welcome to The Positive Voice, a feel-good podcast designed to inspire and uplift through heartfelt conversations and the power of positivity! Hosted by transformational life coach and hope dealer, Kimberly Houston, where we delve into personal growth, wellness, and the beauty of overcoming life's challenges.
Join our creative and supportive community as we laugh, learn, and grow together on this life-changing journey. Subscribe to The Positive Voice and let's spread the joy, one conversation at a time!
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Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of the pie. I am your host, kimberly Houston, transformational life coach, with the entrepreneurs yearning to have a growth mindset of growing their network and their net worth. Today's pie cast is being brought to you by the bakedography academy. You can check out online at bakedographycom, where you will learn all things food photography, as well as being able to elevate your sweetness. If you would like to begin selling content to other entrepreneurs, today we're just gonna jump right in. So, as many of you know, I am currently in school or in order to become an internationally certified transformational life and once a month we have these weekends and for two days, like over the course of two days, we are in 20 hours of live lecture.
Speaker 1:This weekend was so impactful for me and there were so many things to unpack. We were discussing feelings and I didn't know if I was gonna do a podcast episode on this or not, but based on the statistics of the people who listened to me, I thought that this was a conversation that could leave the classroom be brought out into a real world space. As an African-American woman in minority communities, we raise our children to be palatable to people who don't look like them. We raise our children in a manner that will make sure they come home, and so one of the things that my son and I have had many conversations on was the fact, since they were born, I have been teaching them to come home safely. That's the most important thing to me, and this weekend I was faced with the reality that many of the people who are in this program with me do not share the same cultural background, and so right now, we're talking about feeling, we're talking about expressing anger, expressing rage, sadness, and you know how those things come out, and as I am engaging in the conversations and watching these people, who do not look me, really talk about their rage and their anger, and then I was asked my opinion and I said those are not things that I am allowed to do. I cannot express to you where rage looks like or feels like, nor will I ever get to the point of showing it to you, because I've never been given permission to do it, and not only have I never been given permission to do it, it's just not safe. That's not territory that I could tiptoe into, nor is it a space that I want to tiptoe around, and so, generationally, we have been muted. We have been raised to not offend. We have been raised to not speak our truth all the time and to minimize yourself to make others feel better. Now, that one sentence in itself brings up a lot of things for me, and I am who I am and we're going to go there. So if you're a person who does not like difficult conversations, this might not be the episode for you, but for those of you that want to keep tracking, let's go.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I struggle with is the idea that for generations the older generations of minorities here in the United States, have used what we would consider like things passed down from the plantation. So if we look at slavery, the master beat the slaves into submission. The slaves then transferred this same type of behavior down to their own children, but they did it in a way to protect them. One of the things that I had to come to grips with was that we automatically, when someone says, oh man, your kid is so wonderful, your kid is so great, your kid is so well behaved, a lot of times we're like, you know, wait, wait till a little Johnny gets home, wait till we're no longer around company, because you automatically want to protect this child, you automatically like don't talk the positive things that people are saying about you or your children when this happens. This is happening because generationally this has been passed out, has been passed down through your bloodlines. I want to, I really want to point that out to you guys. This has been passed down for generations through your bloodline and it started on the plantation. So here's how we get to this point. So when the slaves then passes down to their children, where they beat their children, they tell them do not talk. You know, don't look over that way, don't dress a certain way, don't do anything. We're trying to keep you alive. Then those children grow up, procreate, have more children. So now they're passing this down as well.
Speaker 1:Right, so now we have communities of people where you know, when my parents talk about their childhoods, you know my father shared how, like everybody on the street, like discipline the kids because they're trying to keep the safe right. If you're misgaving, then you know if you're at somebody else's house, those parents really had permission to. You know, spank you, whoop, you put you on punishment. So we come down one more generation. And now here we are, and one of the things that is very, very evident is that the children of the 80s and beyond. We no longer stand for passing down the generational trauma. Right, there is a difference between the way that my son and my daughter were raised. I originally was raising my children based on the way that I was raised. I thought that spanking your children into submission something that parents did. The more that I'm studying, the more that I'm learning. In 2020, when this very large gentle parenting wave just gonna bust onto the scene, so many things came out of that and that's when I really became interested in what this plantation to now situation looks like.
Speaker 1:Spankings are a way not necessarily to like exert authority over people, but it is a power move also. I mean literally think about the positions that if we're watching TV or you know, you tell the kid lean over the bed, lean over the chair, or they're standing straight up, you're up in them like we're slaves, right, and while back in the day, the difference between you taking these beatings was whether or not you would continue to live. We are in a day and age with that just doesn't track anymore and that's just not gonna work, and it comes down to generations of people who never had the time, who never had the language, who never had the skills to tap into their emotional stability, and so, for generations, things that have served people no longer serve them. We've entered into a season where therapy is necessary. It is required because we cannot continue to live our lives as though people still own us and they don't. And so, even though we're no longer physically on the plantation, we're still there mentally. There are people who are still there.
Speaker 1:There are certain things that my children are not allowed to say around their grandparents. They can say it at home, because we have a very open dialogue here, but it would be considered respectful the eyes of my parents' generation, and so my kids know that. So that's something that we've been really talking about in school and I was like you know, culturally, you guys just don't understand. I don't know how to explain to you that the angry Black woman's trope is not something I want. It's. It's actually something that has been presented in such a negative way.
Speaker 1:If a Black woman shows emotion, she's not strong, and that's why I'm completely against the strong friend mentality and the more that I am digging into this and kind of really just brick by brick, looking at what life is, here's what I've discovered the strong friend is the friend that has the most emotional regulation. The strong friend is not strong because she can carry the weight everyone else's decisions. The strong friend is strong because she doesn't have a choice. She doesn't know how to regulate her emotions. She actually doesn't even have the language to put to what she's feeling.
Speaker 1:And when you become the strong friend, or when you, you are just this person in life, it's not you want to be the strong friend, it's that you have made a decision to disengage from your emotions and from your feelings on a level where you're just not moved. In good times or bad times, you are steady in the face of birth, weddings, or you or steady. There is no emotional change between the birth of a child, the union of two lovers or the death of a loved one. That doesn't make you the strong friend. It makes you the woman who was disengaged from her work. That's something I had to deal with this weekend. When I say struggling, I was struggling this weekend with having to express to my Eurocentric friends that, yeah, there's, there's no space for me to have feelings and emotions, and I didn't know how to explain that. There are some unspoken rules when you're the minority, and so when we do these weekends, we have a movie on Saturday night and no one knows what the movie is until we're about to log off on Saturdays, and then you know you can do watch parties, or the people who are together in person watched it together and everyone else at home watches it. And so this weekend our movie was Antoine Fisher.
Speaker 1:This movie came out in 2002. It was Denzel Washington's directorial debut and he took a major pay cut because, if you think about 2002, that's the year I gave birth to my son. That's why I know this much movie knowledge. I was working at Blockbuster and that is the year that Denzel Washington won Oscar for training day and so the project was released. Right after that was his directorial debut with Antoine Fisher. The actual Antoine Fisher wrote the screenplay and he wanted Denzel Washington to play the psychiatrist in the movie, and Denzel said not only do I want to play it, I want to direct it. And so there are so many things in this movie for two hours. For two hours I needed some sort of outlet because I was really experiencing a lot of things watching this movie, because I just can't watch a movie to watch a movie. I knew that we were watching this movie and we were going to have to digest it at 8 am on Sunday morning, and so I'm watching the movie. I don't want to give it away, but you know I'm watching this movie.
Speaker 1:In the opening scene this young man is asleep and there's. He walks through a field, he's welcomed into a barn and he walks through what looks like generations of black people and the elders are at the table and the table is full of food and pancakes are on this table. Pancakes are important throughout the course of the movie and that was our first introduction to food in this movie. So then we continue to watch like he jumps gears, wakes up, we go through, we see this young man has had a really tough life. He has anger, management issues, things of the sort, while he's in the Navy and he's having a really, really tough time adjusting and Denzel Washington is his psychiatrist and trying to help him work through it.
Speaker 1:And there were several things I took away from this. Number one as I am studying to be an internationally trained knife coach or transformational life coach, the things that I have to remember is that I have to co voyage with you. I cannot pull you along the journey right can only go with you. And there's a time in the movie where the young man refuses to talk and Denzel says that's fine, you can just meet me here at, you know, 1400 Wednesday and we'll just sit here, but you're you have to do three sessions with me where you're actually talking, and so this goes on for a while. You know, you see one one day Denzel is like eating lunch. He's like you want some chips and you know the kid is like no, and he just sits in this man's office multiple times not talking. And that was revolutionary to me because as a coach, you know, it's not my job to pull you along like you have to do the work.
Speaker 1:And the fact that Denzel was just holding space, literally holding space for this young man and he finally does start talking, and so they kind of start digging into his life and what it was like in foster care. And you know this young man is molested by a woman. He's still a virgin at 24, 25 in the Navy. He was called the N word repeatedly, repeatedly, so much so that the kids knew which in word the woman was looking for based on the way she said it. There was just so much trauma wrapped up into this young man's life and he talked about the way that he knew it was going to be a good day or a bad day was based on what he smelled cooking at at the beginning of the day. So if he smelled grits and eggs, he knew he needed to watch his back. If he smelled pancakes, he knew it was going to be a good day. And as soon as they brought that in, I remember the opening scene okay, bone pancakes, all right, this is important. And so you know, we go through the movie, we watch what happens, we, we learn his story, we see all the things and so you know, if we fast forward to the end of the movie, there was, there was one piece that literally had me in tears.
Speaker 1:Viola Davis is in this movie and she has two lines. That's it. The. Viola Davis is in this movie and she literally has two lines. In this movie she is the mother who abandoned Antoine Fisher and when he finds her and he walks in her house, you know, and the man is like, hey, do you know who this is? And she says this is such a such and he says no, that's not who this is. And then she says that's my first born son or my first born child, one of those two. And then she leaves the room, she walks out of the kitchen and goes to another room in the projects they're in the projects. It's very beaten down, there is no life, like even the the paint on the walls, like it's very dark. It's dark, it's grungy, there's no joy, there's no aliveness in this scene. And Viola walks off and you know the guy is like do you want to stay? You want to leave? And he's like I'm gonna stay. And so he walks, antoine walks around the corner and she says to him you want something to eat, and that that's all she says. And then he goes into his monologue about who he is as a man, who he has become, the things that he has seen, etc. Etc. Etc. And it was in that moment of the movie that I was literally weeping, and I was weeping because that that line you want something to eat.
Speaker 1:Historically, that is how people apologize. If you are not a part of a minority cultural community. There are not a lot of words that are been too. I'm sorry. There's not a lot of apologizing. That happens, and so I knew. I knew that once. I was like at 8 am tomorrow morning. When we have to dissect this, they're gonna be like this woman is so rude and so mean that she never apologized to her son, and I cannot.
Speaker 1:The second person to speak literally said that and I came off mute and I said, um, can I challenge that? And they were like sure, let's hear it. And I said she absolutely apologized to him. I said she said you want something to eat? And also, by the way, the last line of the movie Denzel Washington asked him you want to go get something to eat? And there's a reason why I'm taking you out through this story that we're gonna get to. And I said she said you want something to eat. That was her apologizing for the abandonment.
Speaker 1:And so you know people are looking very confused and I said one of the things you guys have to understand about minority communities is that we break bread like food for us is an experience. It is. You know, when you see people fight, the way people in their fights they say you want something to eat, right, when we don't see healthy ways of talking about our feelings and things of the sort, people want to feed you, they want to feed you, and so this is essentially a way of inviting you to the table. Inviting you in when we prepare a meal for you is our heart and soul. Black people. When they were brought over they, they brought over knowledge, they brought over spices, they brought over processes that could cultivate the land. We're given scraps and we're able to turn the scraps into meals for their children. We're able to nourish generations upon generations of people based off of the little bit that we've been given, and so this became a way of communicating.
Speaker 1:This became a way of apologizing, of showing love. One of the things I can remember was, you know, as a kid, I watched how women would prepare a plate for men and hand it to them, and I was just like well, this is a feminist thing, what are you all doing? Let them go get their own place. They are able-bodied people, but this isn't about controlling people or whether or not they could or couldn't do something. It had everything to do with the fact that this is an app service. It is an act of love, and you have that cultural understanding that we use food, whatever it is, to show love, to show compassion, to show care.
Speaker 1:It's like you want something to eat, right? You know, as a parent, or even if you look at movies in general and, like a kid, may get a spanking in the way that it's like you know, the parent doesn't apologize. Or if a parent yells at a kid because they're having a bad day, let's use that. Let's not use a spanking If someone's having a bad day, right, and so they yell and they take it out on you. How many times has someone said what you want to eat, what you want to give for dinner? Like there was never an apology, it was always what do you want to eat?
Speaker 1:When I brought this to the forefront, it caused everyone to pause, to understand that your lived experiences do not match mine and my lived experiences are as important as yours, and you have to understand that. When you introduce concepts to me about feelings and I tell you that I've never been given the space to have feelings you need to understand why. And so I don't know if they did it on purpose or not, but this movie was the perfect way to introduce people to the thought, into the idea that we are not all created equal and that we have not all been given the opportunity to dig into our feelings and to express rage, to express anger in a healthy way, and so that led to some beautiful conversations throughout the day on Sunday, one of which brought me to a crisis I don't want to say crisis, but a little bit of an identity crisis that I've been having. Well, you all know that I'm a chef. I have been a pastry chef professionally for the last decade of my life. I'm also a food photographer, I am a content creator, I'm a food stylist, I'm a mentor, I'm a teacher and I'm also a transformational life coach. And I have been trying to segment all of those different pieces of me in order to be more palatable to other people.
Speaker 1:And while we were talking, you know, like we have these breakout sessions where you just kind of talk about how you feel in the moment. And I was saying, you know, I don't know how I feel, I don't know what's means for me. And I was in a breakout session with two gentlemen and one of the guys said well, kimberly, do you mind if I offer you my back? And I said absolutely, let me hear it. And he says You're, you're made up of three C's, you're a chef and you build community. And when he said this, it was right at the end of our breakout session, and so we were like whisked away back into the larger zoom room and I sat there weeping just uncontrollable tears flowing out of my eyeballs, and I was like, oh my God, that is who I am. I am a chef and I build community.
Speaker 1:And I don't know if in that moment he gave me permission to be okay with all the pieces of me, with all of the things that I have become because of decisions that I've made in my life. And some of those decisions were not they weren't I don't want to say appreciated. They weren't necessarily what other people had planned for me. And so I was absolutely raised in a community of people that has certain expectations, and when you give birth to a baby at 21 by a preacher, you totally their expectation of you, and I have carried weight of that for 20 years, see a half years.
Speaker 1:And as we went throughout the day, we were just kind of talking about different things and I finally realized that, well, a lot of people need to heal their inner child. I need to heal my inner 21 year old, because she was hurt. She is the reason that I disengaged from emotion. She is the reason in order to protect her in that season of my life, I disengage from feelings and emotions In order to not destroy myself based on the opinions and beliefs of other people. I had to disengage and nothing could bother me, and so for 18 years I lived with emotion. So you know how at the beginning I talk about there was no difference between the birth of a child, the death of one or two lovers coming together in marriage. There was literally no emotional conviction on any of them, because for 18 years, I was engaged from it. And what I learned today is that that engagement was my way of hoping, with feeling hurt. It was my way of coping with rage, with anger, with the idea that people who are supposed to love me can say things that hurt me.
Speaker 1:And I have never really had to look at this in an academic setting. Yes, I've been to therapy. Yes, we've talked about emotions. Yes, my therapist was like let it go, because these people no longer walk the face of the earth. Why are you still carrying the weight of this? Now that I have to look at this as a transformational life coach, I have to accept the fact that that was a part of my life that shaped who I am now, that there was nothing bad or no bad parts. That was one of the things that we talk about today is that there are no bad parts of you. And when they said that, you know many of us just sat there with it and people all have their own stories. But when you really about that, that you are whole and complete just as you are and that there are no bad parts of you, if you sit with that, it changes you. You can't help but think about the number of things you've done because of or in spite of something that somebody said to you.
Speaker 1:I have a very successful six figure food photography business. Would you like to know why I'm going to tell you? I don't even know if I've ever said this out loud in a public domain, but I'm going to say it now. The only reason not the only reason the driving force behind my success is the fact that my ex husband told me I was not a real photographer. That is the last face to face conversation that he and I had where he told me you're not a real photographer. And I took that and built a highly successful food photography business, turned it into a coaching program, a $12,000 launch, and now have over 30 people learning how to do food photography from me.
Speaker 1:The only other time there was something that big, that major, that was said to me was when I had my son and I was told you'll never be anything, your life is over and that baby won't be anything either, because that child is going to have unwed parents and will not have the life they deserve. And I raised that child in direct opposition of it. And that child is the youngest TEDx Broadway speaker to date. That child's head talk is taught to adults all over this world in public speaking classes. That child was accepted into 26 colleges with over half a million dollars awarded in scholarships.
Speaker 1:If you can't tell, I am a woman who does not do. Well, when you tell me I cannot do something and what I learned today is that that is how my body would cope with not feeling hurt. I become very driven, I become very focused. I will have tunnel vision most on proving you wrong. And here's the T right. If you were to ask my ex-husband if he remembers saying those words to me, probably not. If you were to go dig up the grave of the people who told me and my child we would never be anything, they even remember saying it? Probably not, but I do. I do, I remember, and you want to know why I remember. I remember because it hurts. I remember because it hurts and because I'm not given the space to deal with my feelings and to deal with hurt and to deal with anger and to with rage, because I don't have permission to do that. The only way that I can prove myself to the people who no longer matter to me is to go through a series of events to prove you wrong. And I can guarantee, based on my research this weekend, I'm not the only woman who feels this way or the only person. I want to relate this down to just being a woman. I'm not the only person who feels this way. All of us have never been given the space to do so, and this is the outcome of it, right? And so I say all of that.
Speaker 1:To say this this weekend for me was so life changing for me to be able to see myself the way these people who have no idea who I am, they don't know my story, for them to be outsiders looking in and for them to not say oh my gosh, you're so strong. They know that bothers me. We talk about that the first weekend, don't say that. But when he said you, your pillars, like your three C's, your coach, your shelf, you build community, it's true, that literally sums up the outward facing appearance of who I am and what I do and why I do it. And I have made a decision to really lean into that and to lean into being okay with who I am and changing the narrative that I don't fit in certain spaces and that that's where we came up with those. Well, that's where he came up with those three C's that I said I don't feel like I fit in the sweets industry anymore because I'm not up to, you know three and four in the morning making cakes, cupcakes and cookies and things of the sort anymore. And I said I just don't know if people can relate to me on that level. He said you have over 30 people paying you to teach them a new way.
Speaker 1:I think you're still relevant. You teach at industry conferences over the United States. I think you're still relevant. I think you need to understand that the places that you used to be, the person who you were, is not who you are and that's okay and I think that it's important for us to understand that as we evolve and grow in life, that certain titles no longer fit us. But it doesn't mean that we don't fit and I want to say that one more time but that you get it Our times in life where it's not about facts that we are not fitting in certain spaces, it's just that that title doesn't. Who I am, who I become, who I am becoming is still relevant in spaces that I have made an impact in for well over a decade. Who you are is important. Who you are becoming is also important.
Speaker 1:And if I can leave you with anything, it is the fact that we have to get to the point of ridding ourself of imposter syndrome, ridding ourself of the idea we are not good enough because we haven't been in this space long enough, that we haven't studied as long as other people. It's not imposter. You're a practicing baker. You're a practicing photographer. I'm a learning coach. The way that I coach this month will be different than the way that I coach next month, because I am continuously evolving and as I grow, I expect that my clients are also growing, and those are just expectations that we should give ourselves permission to have. You have to stay the same way. You don't have to be defined by the neighborhood you grew up in, the lineage that you came from, the bad relationship that you left. Those things don't have to define you right?
Speaker 1:The most important, most important moment in our lives is the next one, and the next one, and the next one. If we can just get to the point of focusing on the next moment, the years to come will take care of themselves, and I hope that my sort of breaking down of my weekend, what it looks like for me as a transformational life coach student I hope that this is helpful for you. I hope that it gives you language to be able to express how you feel. I hope that it gives you permission to be okay with starting to look at feelings. Look at emotions. I assure you, if you've never Googled a feelings chart or feelings wheel or the emotion chart in the emotion wheel, you will be real surprised about how many emotions humans go through. You will be very surprised at what that actually looks like, like. Google those things and it will show you that we have been living in a very two dimensional way instead of a 3D way.
Speaker 1:Step into your power, love. Step to your power and unapologetically do so. If you would like to connect with me. You can definitely follow me online. I'm on all things at Chef Kimmy Hoop. Or you can, if you just need some constant inspiration, definitely follow my Instagram page at the visionary catalyst, where it is nothing but mindset shift, information, loving on yourself, self love, self care.
Speaker 1:And this weekend, one of the things that was really, really big for me was just breathing. I did a real on breathing on the visionary catalyst. So many people thanks me for I also did it on TikTok. So many people thanks me just to the moment to breathe, and once I I recorded us breathing this weekend because it's something that we do every month and it's really important to a transformational life. Coaches. We have to be centered and we have to ground it and not moved. When other people are expressing emotion to us in the way that we do, that is through breath work, and so I encourage you to just take a breath, to just breathe and to allow yourself to be, to give yourself permission to just be. Until next time, beloveds, be safe, sweet and talk to you soon.
