[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to another episode of the Girls Stop Plan Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your favorite home girl choreo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here to encourage you to stop playing with your potential and start working for what you want in life and in love.
[SPEAKER_00]: You already know I'm bringing you the information and the conversations to help you make the money and get the honey.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have it all as long as you are willing to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you have not done your favorite home girl, a favorite yet, please leave me a five star review.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have no idea how much that helps the show to grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you did not hear the great news, I think I shared it on the last episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have been sitting pretty in the top two hundred charts for several weeks now.
[SPEAKER_00]: on Apple Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you so much to everybody who faithfully tunes in and taps into the pod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it has been a couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think maybe only two since I dropped my last episode, but your life has been life thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is coming at me fast and it's actually kind of the motivation for this week's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have moved into a new season
[SPEAKER_00]: in my life, all of the newness, all of the changes, all great things, nothing to complain about.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I accepted a contract, a virtual teaching contract, thank God it's work from home, thank God I can do all the things I need to do as a mom and not have to leave my house, but it's the first time and literally, fourteen years that I have taken on a contract like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So although I am
[SPEAKER_00]: grateful and excited and looking forward to all of the blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely a transition and so my official first day was like two weeks ago, probably the week that I did my last episode and so if you've been wondering where I have been, I have just been trying to recalibrate and figure out what this new normal looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in accepting this contract starting something new,
[SPEAKER_00]: and then also doing this podcast interview that I did a couple weeks ago where I was guessing on someone else's pod and just talking about the transition and even the told that it can take on women in general but especially entrepreneurs entering into motherhood or having another baby bringing another life into your life
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of encouraged me to record this podcast because I don't think that we talk enough about that transition and I think especially in the black community black women are so accustomed to doing it all being at all having it all together and you know being that strong black woman that can figure things out
[SPEAKER_00]: that when it gets real or when things really start weighing us down, or when we step into a season of newness, it can sometimes feel discouraging, it can feel like we have made a wrong turn, we're making mistakes, we don't really know what we're doing, we're resetting our
[SPEAKER_00]: especially when it comes to these babies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've talked before on the pod about just how I don't want to say depressing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I think about it, it really was depressing how depressing it was after having my first son in twenty twenty one and just really thinking in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: that once I had this baby, I was going to bounce back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not bounce back physically, but get back to who I was before I had the baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had truly spent that nine months of pregnancy convincing myself that once I had the baby, I'm just going back to who I was before just with the baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your girl was sadly mistaken.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, anybody who has had a child before knows that there is no going back.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no returning back to who you were.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really truly is accepting and figuring out what your new normal looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Mama Co was nothing close to who entrepreneur Co and single Co had been accustomed to being.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the biggest challenges for me, I think,
[SPEAKER_00]: was the fact that I had been surrounding myself by so many men professionally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, I've always had like women empowerment groups, you know, and my business has always served women, but my peers a lot of times were men.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I realized after I had my baby was how different my life was and how many adjustments I had to make after having a baby versus these men that I was surrounding myself with.
[SPEAKER_00]: They literally
[SPEAKER_00]: did not skip a beat.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did not take a seat.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did not really have to make any personal changes in their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they did, they definitely weren't to the extent to which I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really a humbling time for me to realize that I couldn't move how I wanted to move, that I couldn't do the things that I wanted to do, that I couldn't just get up and leave and be on my computer and doing work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really had to have office hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really had to make
[SPEAKER_00]: adjustments to prioritize this new person that I had brought into the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And although I didn't experience anything quite as traumatic with my second son being born, it definitely is still an adjustment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so on this podcast, I was talking about, you know, the fact that I had convinced myself that I was going to go back to who co was before I had a kid and that just didn't happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the precautions and just the preparations that you know, I've tried to make with my second pregnancy and now with this pregnancy, but you truly can't ever be prepared.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, every pregnancy is different, every baby is different and your life is absolutely going to change and be impacted in some way with every new addition.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the biggest change for me in this season is accepting this contract
[SPEAKER_00]: And although this is something that I prayed for, it's something that I talked with God about many times, it's definitely a transition.
[SPEAKER_00]: For someone who has been on my own, moving and shaking, making my own rules, marching to the beat of my own drum for the last fourteen years, literally since two thousand eleven, it's quite an adjustment to now have some parameters.
[SPEAKER_00]: to now have, you know, almost a box that I have to play in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this week is a message to myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all just get to sit in on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in encouraging word that there's no shame in the season's changing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no shame in stepping into a new season.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes even if it feels like you are stuck
[SPEAKER_00]: in a season.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times these seasons can just be a bridge to that next blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to call it like the hallway where it's like dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel like you're by yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are in between.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've left one place and you're headed to another but you don't quite know what that next door is going to look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: When that door is going to open up and you're just in the hallway trying to figure out how the hell did I get here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every single time that I have doubted, my next move, every single time that I have questioned God about my current movement, my current situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: it has always worked out and so as I remind myself I want to remind you as well that what got you here might not be what's going to take you there and sometimes we don't even know where there is we just know that we don't want to be here we don't want to be stuck we don't want to be sitting in this season forever but a lot of times
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to just change our perspective and go from thinking of it as that dark depressing hallway where we're just clueless and you know in the unknown.
[SPEAKER_00]: So realizing that it truly is just a bridge to your next blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that even when you don't know the next step, even when you are unsure of your next move, God already has all the plans mapped out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are so many things that we are just unaware of, so many things that we can't see with our limited perspective, our limited vision, so many things that we don't know that God could be doing behind the scenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I think about even my babies,
[SPEAKER_00]: like the way that my two-year-old and my four-year-old think that they know so much, they literally have two and four years worth of life, worth of experience that they are basing their thoughts and their experiences off of, whereas I, coming up on forty years of experience, I have a bird's eye view.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know everything, but I know a lot more than what they've learned in their two and four years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I often think about just how they are so sometimes stubborn or so, you know, in their mind, they want to be so independent.
[SPEAKER_00]: They want to make their decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: They think they know what's best and they want to argue me down about what they should be able to do and what they want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: to think to myself sometimes, like, how silly am I?
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm doing the same thing to God, what I'm in prayer, arguing God down.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I'm in prayer, in meditation, thinking about what I want, what I think I want, based on my limited experience, based on my limited information.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I can just imagine God just sitting back laughing like, girl, stop playing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop playing like you know all the answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop playing like I'm playing with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop playing like I don't have your next move planned out just like I had your last steps ordered.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so today I just want to encourage you that your seasons might be changing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might feel lost in the sauce.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might feel like you have no clue where you're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might be beating yourself up for where you currently are.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we just keep the faith, if we just keep our focus on who God has always been.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we can all think back to times where we thought, who this the last time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I didn't really done it now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't mess some things up.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way I'm a dig myself out of this whole.
[SPEAKER_00]: And miraculously, God grabs our hands and pulls us up out of those holes.
[SPEAKER_00]: pulls us up out of those situations that we thought were literally going to break us.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many times we've been going crazy, obsessing, worrying about things that literally were already planned out, were already a part of your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's that meme of like somebody reaching into a box and they're feeling like a stuffed animal and they feel the fur and they're screaming because they think
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a real animal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like we oftentimes make things so much worse, so much more dramatic than they have to be when our only goal, our true prayer should be, God's will be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not give me what I want God because I think I know what's best for me, but what is it that you want for me?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can I stay in alignment with your divine assignment?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I want you to just consider this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it, write it down in your journal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sit with it for a little while.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what does this season require of you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Forget where you thought you were supposed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Forget those titles that you once were so proud.
[SPEAKER_00]: to have forget that vision of yourself that you once had because all of those things have to be fluid.
[SPEAKER_00]: We truly have to learn how to be flexible so that we can step into the season that God is welcoming us into.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we're spending our time kicking and screaming and complaining because this is not where we saw ourselves being or this is not what we think we deserve, we are truly going to miss out on the direction that God is giving us so that we can get to that next season.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as I encourage myself, I want to continue to encourage you that, again, there's no shame in this season.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if this season doesn't look like what you thought it would look like, even if this season requires that you take a step back so that so that God can push you forward, even if you feel like your steps are just baby steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your reminder that even baby steps are ordered steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I hope that you are feeling empowered and encouraged and inspired to sit in this season with grace, to not beat yourself up about what you thought you should be doing, where you thought you should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: This, I don't know if you have friends that like,
[SPEAKER_00]: really keep it real with you about what they got going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the number of people, women specifically black women, even more specifically that I know of who are just struggling, whether it's mentally, physically, financially.
[SPEAKER_00]: just struggling in this season where there's just so much uncertainty and so many unknowns that we are dealing with, especially for women who like to have it all together, like to call the shots, like to be in control.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's tricky when you don't really know what your next move is gonna be.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't really know what's right around that corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't really know what God is calling you to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be very frustrating to find yourself in this season and so I just want you to know that you are not alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that whatever God is requiring of you in this season is absolutely a bridge to your next blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got nothing but love for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll catch you on the next episode.