Welcome to Renovating the Soul Podcast. I'm your host, Alexandria Robinson, and I am so glad that you have joined me for episode number two. In this episode, I share some of my journeys, some of the moments that have defined me, shaped me, but ultimately the moments that have led me into doing the reflective work, the introspective work, the hard work of looking within and wanting to grow and wanting to learn and wanting to change. Obviously, that's not an easy thing, and the things that have happened in my life are not easy things to have to cope with. I don't go into the greatest detail with each of the moments and the experiences that I do share. So you'll have to keep sticking around as we'll uncover those things throughout the podcast. But because I don't come to this podcast with thousands of followers or having told my story in one particular place that is easy to find or reference, I wanted to take the opportunity early on in my podcast journey to have a reference point where I share just some of my background, who I am, and those again, those moments that matter the most to me that have really defined me and shaped me, and that affect the way that I see the world, that affect my perspective and my outlook, and some of those things that I've had to adjust and and like we're talking about, right? Renovate because I can't unlearn them or erase them. I've had to adjust the way that I think, I've had to relearn, I've had to get rid of some old ways of thinking and adopt new ways of thinking. And so some of that is what I share on this episode. I really hope that overall you're able to take something away from it, not just for me or about me, but even about you. I challenge you that as you're listening to think of your own journey, think about the big moments and think about the small moments. Ask yourself how they've defined you, how they've affected you. So many times we push things off to the side and don't ever really look at how it has affected us in our lives and our trajectory and how we respond to life events or respond to the people around us. But we are here doing the work. We have just dedicated ourselves and vowed to ourselves that we are gonna do this work no matter how hard it gets. And the great part is we are in this together. So please like, share, subscribe to the podcast. If you have any questions, email me at renovatingthezoul.com. Again, I am so excited you're here, and please enjoy episode number two. So let's get started. So I'm Alexandria Robinson, of course, and I am I am married, I have been married to my high school sweetheart for six years. We met freshman year in gym class. No, it was not love at first sight. Um, that is I I will have him on one day and we can tell the story together, but it wasn't love at first sight, it definitely was um something that developed over time and developed through friendship. So I am really grateful that my husband really is my best friend and was my friend first. And so you can imagine that from freshman year of high school, which was like 2004-2005, up until 2023, we've seen each other through a lot of things. I definitely say that he knows me the best. I argue that I know him the best, and I think that that argument is valid. And hey, guess what? It's my podcast, and he can't say no different, right? Um, there's a lot that I've learned about marriage that we can get into later, but I'm I am really thankful that I can actually say that he's my friend, and I have not enjoyed all of marriage, I would say. Like, marriage has not been this blissful thing, and it's another thing that kind of shapes why I want to put my voice out there more, is because I don't want to, I've never since I got married, I've never wanted to sell people a fantasy or an idea about something that is super hard. Almost everything in life that's kind of worth having, I think this is a saying is is not worth working for because it is, but it's hard work, I would say. I think I'll twist that little thing to say that the things in life that we really want to have, we have to work at and we have to work towards. And so while marriage is beautiful and it's so nice to be with someone that you love and you get all the fun parts of it, it is really hard work because you're talking about two seemingly broken people coming together trying to make a life, and you have two different habits, two different upbringings, two different perspectives, like trying to get on one page, right? And that can be difficult and it can be hard to figure out the balance and to figure out a process and to figure out right a plan together. So while I have loved being married, and while I do love being married, I won't say that that is because it's been perfect and blissful all the time, and you guys will never hear me sell you on any kind of fantasy about love and relationships or marriage, okay? Y'all gonna learn about me, okay? I I try to be as realistic as possible. I'm trying to be realistic because I sit with people who have um held so much in about their marriage, trying to pretend that it's all perfect, and then when I come out and I'm like, baby, this marriage thing ain't easy. You can see the sigh of relief when they're like, Oh, oh my gosh, it's not. I know couples on social media or at churches or smiling for the pictures, right? Who are super unhappy behind closed doors. So I just refuse to go around trying to pretend that these things in our life, again, that are hard and take hard work, are perfect and that they're wonderful to have. And I would hate to send someone down a road of fantasy and imagination instead of sending them down the road with a realistic idea of what they're getting into. So I felt like I feel like that was a good insight into, and that was me, yes, popping my chest, pounding myself on the back. Um, but yes, so that is that about my marriage. Together we have three kids, and separately we have no kids, so let me just make that clear. But together we have three uh kids, we have three boys, so our oldest is five, our middle is three, and our youngest is one. And I am the only girl in the house, but I'm used to that because I actually have three younger brothers. So I was the oldest of four of three younger brothers, but I have three boys, um, and they are all different in their own ways, and again, I might share more on mom life. That's another thing that sometimes I think people oversell, but it is great. I really do love being a mom, I love having boys, I love my boys, they are all again just so different in their own way, and I've learned a lot from being a mom. I always wanted to be a mom, I think I had the wrong day, the the wrong idea of what that looked like and what that was going to be. Um, and so I struggled in the beginning. I became a stay-at-home mom. I didn't really like it again because I think I just had a different idea of what a stay-at-home mom looked like. Um, but right now I do work, I am a full-time employee for the federal government, and I do enjoy what I do for work. I will not talk about work on here though, because who wants to talk about work? But I do really love my job, and I just want to put that out there that like podcasting is not my full-time gig. Um, it's not even a money thing for me. This is really a passion thing, and so I still have my full-time job, and I'm making this work in between kids and work and every other thing. But I again I keep saying it, I'm so excited to be here, and I'm just so excited to be doing this, and I'm so excited to be with y'all. Y'all gonna be so tired of me saying so excited, but here I am. But yes, so and like I said, so I did grow up, I have three younger brothers, um, and my mom and my dad they were married for like 20 some years before they got a divorce. That was really hard on me because I never wanted my parents to get a divorce. I had gone to elementary school and honestly throughout elementary, middle school, and high school with friends of divorced parents, and I watched how hard that was on them, and I watched how my dad was a dad to so many of the kids who didn't have dads, and so I always prided myself on the fact that, and yes, that sounds very selfish, but I did, I prided myself on the fact that my parents were married, and I could say that I was still a product of a marriage, and so I was really devastated when they got a divorce, and I wrote a blog post about it a couple of years ago, and I realized from like when I when I launched that blog post, what I observed about myself and what I kind of announced instead um was almost an apology to my parents. I think I think I did apologize to them, but I was super selfish in that I only focused on what I wanted as a daughter, I only focused on seeing it the way that I wanted to see it, and I didn't care about the religious implications or what the what other people said. I really was hurt like as their daughter because I never wanted to see them go through that, and I felt like it wasn't that bad, things could have been fixed, right? Um, but that wasn't my place, like that wasn't my position. I'm not saying that I couldn't feel that and I couldn't be be in and have my feelings, right? And and be sad, but I think that I put too much of a strain on them when they were each going through what they were going through and when they were trying to navigate something that was new for them as well, right? So I learned a big lesson from that. I love my parents um individually, and we actually all get along really great. I don't want to call myself like a product of divorce because I was a lot older when they got divorced, I was in college, and so I didn't have to grow up um like my husband did, you know, where you're I think he was like 10, you know, your parents get divorced. I didn't have to grow up in that way. I was again a lot older, but I feel like I took it as hard. I probably I think I took the divorce harder being older than I probably would have when I was younger because I've I've heard from my other friends who who were like, Yeah, no, I didn't cry, didn't it didn't bother me, didn't faze me, like it was fine. And for me, I was like devastated, okay? So I think I took it a little harder being older again. Um, and it was also around the time, which again we'll talk about this later, but um Quincy and I, and that's my husband, we have had like had our ups and downs in that whole dating phase, and then trying to do long distance when we went to college, and so we would I would, you know, I would break up, we would give back together, and there was like this period of time where we were not together for like a year, and and there around that time was when my mom told me that they were getting divorced, and so it felt like double just like a double slap in the face, like bam bam. Um, and so I took it particularly harder because I was also going through my own, you know, not I don't want to call it separation, but breakup. Yeah, there we go. I was going through my own breakup, right? So I was like struggling with that, and then you know, getting that news, so it was equally devastating, but those are both like years ago, so back in 2013, 2014, um, or 2012, excuse me. So yes, so it's hard to say that I'm a product of divorce, but my parents are not together, so I do have that experience and and share that experience with those who have um experienced it, and that and my husband's background really shaped how we do our marriage and what we want for our boys, and it makes us want to fight harder because so many marriages do get up to that 20-year mark, 30-year mark, and you I mean you're just seeing divorce after divorce. It is so hard to be optimistic about making it to 40 years when you're seeing so many couples get divorced, um, and then also you see couples who do make it that are not necessarily happy, um, or not necessarily in the play, like in a healthy marriage, right? But they've stayed just to stay for whatever reason. So it really does shape how we fight for our marriage, how we fight for our boys, and how we fight to stay together, um, and not just for our kids, that that's a big emphasis too, but for one another. Um, and so for my educational background, I went to the best HBCU out there. I went to Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, the Clark Atlanta University, the illustrious Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. Okay. Um, I that would still to this day is one of the best decisions I have ever made going to Clark Atlanta University. It gave me um some of my closest friends, my best friend Hannah, and um I met out there, like it has just it aided me in who I am, it grew me up as an individual, as a woman, as a leader. I really found my confidence there. Um, it has shaped me in so many ways. I think if I had stayed in Seattle, which is where I'm from, I'm born and raised in Seattle, Washington, if I had stayed in Seattle, I would not be the person that I am today. Atlanta, I I owe Clark Atlanta just so much for who it has helped me to become and the opportunities that it afforded me from being a part of the best school, the business school. So I got my business degree and I did graduate. It's important to say that I attended and I did graduate um from Clark Atlanta, but from being a part of the business school to being a part of chaplain, um, excuse me, to being a part of chapel under uh Reverend Dr. Everett, which she was the first woman chaplain at that time, and chapel was just amazing. 500 plus students gathering every single Sunday, and I got an opportunity to be a part of that. I got an opportunity to be a leader within that, and so you're talking about getting on a stage in front of your peers and and professing, right, that you're this leader, and not just any old kind of leader, but like a religious leader. So I kind of say fortunately, unfortunately, much of my college experience was still encompassed with ministry, and um, I don't regret that, but I I sometimes do get mad at myself, like girl, you should have been really living college life a little, a little differently. I won't say better or you know, wilder. I'll just say I should have been doing a little differently. Now, don't get me wrong, okay? I still lived my life, I still did my thing. Atlanta still, you know, you can't go to Atlanta and not be out. I don't want to say in them streets, but not be out enjoying life. Let's just do it like that. So no, I still have fun, but I just look at how much of my life and my time that I dedicated to doing ministry, and I honestly sometimes I can't believe it. Like we were praying with students and just doing all of these things that I'm thinking, I was 18, you know, night 18, 17, 18, 19, 20 in my 20s, in my early 20s at the time, like leading people, you know. I don't know. It's it's just it's it's just interesting to me. But that's why I say that Clark Atlanta has afforded me opportunities that I wouldn't have got elsewhere, given me experiences that I still hold on to, and it really has shaped who I am. And so I absolutely love, pump, support Clark Atlanta University, and I will forever. Um, I also went to graduate school at Azusa Pacific University, it wasn't as exciting of an experience, but I did graduate with my master's from there. And then another big piece and kind of the last part that I want to talk about more digging a little bit more into my upbringing and into my childhood. So on my dad's side, I come from a pretty big family. My grandma and grandpa had 13 children, and then there are 40 of us first grandchildren, and so my grandfather passed away a few years ago, and out of their children, only one has passed away, and that was the oldest. And so I still have all of my aunties and uncles on that side, and of course, my dad, so it's still 12 of them that are still alive, and then I have all of my cousins. Uh, it's again, it's 40 plus of us. Sometimes I share, I've just started sharing are some of our group chat messages on uh on inst on my Instagram story. But no, I um always say that the best thing that I got out of my family was is my cousins. I absolutely love them. If you know me, you know that. But really, what I wanted to kind of talk about with growing up in that family was that we grew up pretty churchy and religious, and so I do have that background of growing up in church and being a part of church for 18 years, and I was so hurt by the experiences that I had that when I went to college I vowed to not do ministry, but then got sucked in, so that's why I kind of say, you know, it's the balancing that now of like you know, I don't bittersweet, right? Like you like I I didn't have to, but I did, should I have? Well, I are you know, I can't take it back, but I still think that it afforded me some great opportunities and it grew me up again as a leader, and I think that it showed what was innately in me, whether I whether I liked it or not. Okay, um, but I really want to talk about this this part as we end, and that much of my family life experience, much of my church life experience has is probably the thing that shapes me the most. So I would say it is the thing that shapes me the most. And it's not per the traditional things I think that people talk about. Again, I'm a little more jaded by church, and I don't want to say religion, you know, specifically, but really just by like church and specifically black church life and coming from a big family. I always say big family, big drama, and so I've experienced when you and within your family when you can experience so many different personalities and so many different um arguments and situations, and I mean, just you you name it, it's there, right? Like having to go through those motions with a family you're close to, okay. This is like a like we saw each other multiple times during the week, every single Sunday. And again, I have a group chat, two group chats with um cousins, right? Like I'm always talking to a cousin every single day, every single day I am talking to a family member. Um, and so we are it is close knit and and it does that does bring its own set of of things, right? We are going through life together, and not all of that has been good, not all of it has been bad, but I think sometimes it's the bad things that shape us a little differently, and maybe a little more the the good things, and on both sides of my family. So on my mom's side, my grandpa on that side was a pastor as well. Two different denominations, but I have pastors on both sides, so church on both sides, black church on both sides. Okay, so you can just imagine it's just always church, always religious, always this, always that, always that. And I think that when you get, I don't want to call it sucked in, but when you grow up in that way, your world is just a little different. And I'm thankful that going to Clark Atlanta, right? Expanding my horizons got me out of that uh single road of just like church, church, church. My aunts and uncles grew up super strict where they were in that generation where they couldn't do anything, you couldn't do pretty much anything outside of church, everything was a sin, everything was the devil, everything was bad, essentially. And some of that carried over to us, but not a lot, right? Then there's some of some of some of it aided us in some of the freedoms that we got because of how much they didn't get to do, right? So again, it's that balancing that. But for me, I think what's been hardest to kind of stand idly by and see is the lack of being able to express yourself, the lack of being able to dream, the um so much dishonesty, so much hurt, all in the name of God, right? Or just having to listen to a certain authority because they claim that they're you know the man or the woman of God, and yet they're just completely wrong. And I've watched people shape their lives off of things that people have said and have told them, but I've also watched them not live a full life, and those are things, conscious decisions that I have made for myself that if I'm going to, you know, be involved, right, or or or be a Christian, or you know, live that life like I'm not going to keep myself in this place where I am abused or where I am being you know talked down on, never lifted up, like uh uh treated with so much conditional love and not unconditionally, right? Like being told that you have to be a certain person for someone else when that's not who you feel like you are, okay. So I'm I'm I'm saying that because uh again, these experiences, the things that I have seen growing up, and the things that I've had to experience on my own, even moving past my family church, like going out and doing church and doing stuff on my own, so much of that has shaped the way I see the world. And one of the biggest things I felt like was missing from. My childhood was the realness and the honesty that I wish someone had been able to sit me down and be like, girl, this is what marriage is, this is what sex is, this is what instead of just saying, like, oh, it's bad, you can't do it, or sex is bad, don't have sex because it's a sin, and then that's really not enough to carry you through because everyone's doing it, right? Or like you have all the peer pressures in the school systems, and you know, your friends, and all these things going on, right? Or the fear tactics, a lot of my life was lived out of fear because of the things that were being instilled to me during my time in church, and a lot of those things, even in my 30s, I'm still working to rewrite, I'm still working to um get rid of. But let me say this: I've had to go through the process of being angry, being bitter, being mad. I've had to go through so much allowing myself to feel so that I did not become the people or the things that hurt me because that's what I was turning into, and I had to allow myself to to go through that heartache. To I had to admit so many times that I was hurt, you don't always want to admit that you were hurt or were affected by what someone did or what someone said, even and because it when it seems so small and so minor, you don't always want to admit that you want to act like you're a no-limit soldier when in reality, you know, you're you're not. You little you're a little toy soldier. But I had to have to go through that. I had to go through that from the the things that I have experienced, from you know the the family drama, right, to the church hurt, to parents' divorce, to you know, marriage issues, to what to whatever it is and whatever has happened to me and my life, I've had to go through those things so that I didn't always remain in a bitter place because I was at one point, especially when it came to the church stuff, super bitter, couldn't walk in my grandpa's church without being angry. And honestly, for a long time I didn't go there because of so much animosity and resentment that I had, because I thought that it was a place that should have uplifted me and that should have uh provided better memories at at the end of it, but that I felt like gave me an experience that I I wasn't fond of and that shouldn't be one's experience when you are supposed to be in quote unquote church. So going through that process of having to feel of having to you know go through the hurt has aided me because on the other side I don't necessarily have to walk around with a bunch of bitterness and anger just sitting on my heart anymore. I didn't have to wait for someone to say that they were sorry in order to forgive them. I didn't have to get, you know, for lack of better terms, I didn't have to get my lick back in order to move on from uh certain people or situations. There are still conversations that were never had about things that people know that they've done, and I'm not saying that they're right for that, but I know that I couldn't keep myself in the place where it was then affecting me, and that then it would affect my marriage, and that then it would affect my kids, and then it would affect my work, and it would even affect me doing something like this podcast, where for so many years I was scared to speak out and use my voice because for so long, someone no matter who it was, an ex, a pastor, a friend, an old friend, a friend of me, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, no matter who it was, at some point in my life, and I'm not saying that was everyone, I'm just saying there are these kind of points in my life where there would be someone saying you shouldn't say that, or trying to challenge what you see, or just finding any kind of way to like minimize my voice. It's like no matter what it is, even through my blog, you know, uh, of expressing myself, oh, you're saying too much, you're revealing too much, and I was blogging back, oof, I was blogging back super long ago. I don't want to say super long ago, but I my blog is still up, and I'll actually put the link um in the in the resources. But I was doing that blog so long ago, and it really wasn't at a time where you had people just openly sharing things about their life, you really went to blogs for that, and maybe like a little bit of YouTube, but YouTube was still very creative at that time. Now in 2023, it's a different story where people are some people are honest, right? Some people are not, but people are seemingly sharing more about themselves and being more honest about depression and suicide and obesity and and anorexia and uh miscarriages or abortions, like or or surgeries, like we're living in a very different time than we were living in before. People are even more open about marriage struggles and still making it out on the other side and things that just conversations that weren't always happening, conversations that would come few and far between. And when you grow up, how I grew up in the church scene, you really don't talk about your stuff, you really don't talk about going through any struggles. Everything is good, everything is good, whether you're struggling financially, whether you're struggling in uh uh in work, whatever it is. No, we don't really talk about that. We say, Yeah, I need prayer for you know whatever this may be, or health concern because health was always a thing, but you didn't really disclose that, like, I have anxiety issues and I'm really depressed. Those were not things that we talked about, or I'm an alcoholic, or I'm angry, so I I grew up in that setting of we're really closed off, we don't share, we don't talk, we kind of talk on the surface level, and it seems like we're sharing, but we're really not getting to the heart of the matter. And so that's why I started to dedicate myself to being open and honest and sharing my story and wanting to sit with people and letting people ask me questions and answer them back. It's not about perfection, it's not about being somebody's counselor or therapist, but it's just what I wish I had. It's it is genuinely what I wish I had growing up for people to be open and honest about their struggles and to not always act like they had it all together, and that's why I'm okay with being honest about where wherever I'm at, and or that's that is why I am open and honest, and that's why I've shared on social media and I've shared on my blog, and I've tried to talk about topics that aren't always talked about or talk about them from a different angle. It's okay to be honest and to be realistic and to tell the truth, and that's what I seek to do on this podcast, that's what I seek to do in my life. I try to be an open book, try to be as open as possible with what I can. Sometimes it's hard when you're in the midst of a struggle or in the midst of going through something. I will share even that because I believe in the journey, I don't know what it's always gonna look like on the other side of something. But ironically, that's one of my favorite parts about the journey, about the journey called life, is that we don't have to wait until we make it to the other side to share what's going on in our lives. But that's what happens so often. People wait until they get the job, or they wait until they make the money, or they wait until they lose the weight, whatever it is, we're always waiting for that glory moment. And then what happens to a lot of us kind of sitting in the audience? We want to know how'd you do it? And a lot of times, if they're not tracking their journey or really paying attention, they don't know how to even tell you how to replicate it, and then that's where you get people in all industries, right? Religious or not, in all industries, you get people who start making stuff up or fabricating because they really don't know how they did it sometimes, and that for me is why I started documenting the journey no matter what it looked like. And on that old blog that I'm gonna share in the resources, there's a section called Marriage from a Single Girl's Perspective, and the whole idea behind that was exactly this part is that I want to know and remember what I think before I get married because we have all of these thoughts again after the fact. But what did I think before? What were my struggles? What were my misconceptions? What were the things that I thought I was gonna do that I don't do anymore, right? And that's just one small example. But my point in kind of closing out this podcast is that I'm on a journey just as you're on a journey, and I don't want to just share the high parts of the journey, and I don't want to just share when I made it to the other side and what the end looks like. Again, I wish that throughout my life there have been more transparent people to sit me down and say, This is how I got the job, this is how I became an entrepreneur, this is how I started with no money, this is how I started with four or five kids, right? Or this is what held me back. It's not always positive, it's not always that you did it, it's that you failed, it's that I tried five times and on the six I did it, or on the six I didn't, right? It's just it's the journey. I want to embrace, and I do embrace, and I want you all to embrace with me the journey. It's the journey, and that's why we can also look at this idea of renovating our souls and introspection and looking within ourselves as part of the journey. It's not just one notch, it's not just something we do today and we forget tomorrow, it's something that will continue on in our lives no matter what season we are in, in that time of our lives. You get to work on growing and being better and identifying areas where you're weak and praising and loving and rejoicing over the things that you've overcome, over the times where you were once bitter and mad and angry, and now you don't even let the same things bother you. Over the fact that you used to run to alcohol to solve all your problems, and now you don't even think about it in that way, right? Over the times where you accepted all of the criticisms from people and allowed that to affect your self-worth, but now you're saying, forget what people say. I know me. I have taken the time to get to know me so you can throw your stones and say what you want to say, but I know who I am. It's such a beautiful part of the journey to be open, to be honest with who you are, with what you're going through, and to obviously, like we're talking about, constantly be growing and looking within, right? Not just becoming better people just for yourself, but becoming better people for your children, for your spouse, for your parents, for your friends, for your co-workers, for the other people that will come along your journey and whose lives you will affect, whether you know it or you don't know it. So that's it. That's all. One thing I'm learning about podcasting is you could really just sit here and talk, and I don't want to talk you guys, I don't want to talk you guys into a slumber, but um I I really do hope that you got something from this episode and that you were able to learn something new, and that it just honestly gives you more insight into who I am and some of the high-level things, again, these bigger moments in my life that have kind of pushed me and shaped me. These are not all of them by any means, and I didn't even get a chance to go into detail with each of them. That's why you have to stick around because I, as we're sharing and going through different topics, I'll be able to insert more of the specifics, how things have really affected my emotions, have grown, have really struggled with people and friendships and family and uh uh just the confidence and anxiety and depression and my faith. Because I know faith is a big thing for people, no matter what your faith is that you profess, it's a big thing for people. But I also know that there is a vast majority of people who have unfortunately been hurt and abused by the church, whether that's Catholic, whether that's uh Pentecostal, whether that's Kojik, whether that's Baptist, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. You've been affected and abused and influenced by these people that we assumed were gonna take care of us and protect us and lead us and guide us, and that's a big pain point for a lot of people, and it's something that I didn't get a chance to go in great detail about, but like I said, you gotta stick around. So stick around. Um, the next episode I'm really excited about. We're gonna be talking more about projecting. Yeah, I'm not talking about the PowerPoint projector. Okay, we're gonna talk about projecting. If you don't know what I mean by that, then you have to stick around. That concludes episode two. Thank you all again so much for tuning in. I really hope that you learned something, not just about me, but about yourselves. Write down what you have learned if you thought about those moments in your journey that have affected you. Maybe you didn't recognize it before, and this episode helped you to recognize something new. Episodes drop every other Wednesday, okay? Every other Wednesday is when the episodes drop. You can find the podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Podcasts, Amazon Podcast, anywhere that major podcasts are streaming. You can find it, subscribe, share with your family and friends. And again, thank you all so much for being here. Until next time, let's keep renovating ourselves.