Hidden Keys to Balancing Family and Career

[0:00]  I loved when she started that group because you know she's running this like for-profit business and she's busy and she's amazing and she's doing all of these things and then she talked about publicly you know struggling to find this balance and I really resonated when somebody was speaking openly and honestly uh when you love your job when you love running a company or a business and you also love your family right um and what does that balance look like and for me it was realizing that there is no real balance like sometimes I'm giving more to my family one week or one month and then other times I'm saying to my husband these two months are going to be hectic and I'm not really going to be as visible here so like let's talk about what that looks like ahead of time uh so for me finding somebody finding that group the helm that was pivotal for me

[0:47]  so there were other women and it is very difficult to find women of any race women who are going to support other women in that way so if you wanted to talk about your kids you can and if you're like eh my kids are like acting like Gremlins today I don't want to talk about them I want to talk about work you can do that in a really comfortable environment all right guys welcome back to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast today is going to be an amazing conversation because I'm sitting across this digital table from an amazing leader and CEO Tasha Connors who

[1:36]  is the CEO of my sister's house Tasha welcome to the show thanks for having me Kenan this is going to be an amazing conversation we're going to talk about your personal Journey when it comes to supporting amazing nonprofit organizations we're going to talk about some of the challenges that it face that we face in society today with different cultures becoming a part of our cities that we know and love we're going to talk about the challenges when it comes to to domestic violence advocacy and so much more but before we kind of get into this Tasha how's your heart doing today it's feding a little fast but I'm excited to be here thank you for asking absolutely so in order for us to kind of get into you know the amazing work that you do I think it's important for us to talk about the backstory so I know that early in your career you spent time working in Washington DC New York um

[2:25]  Washington State as well or no that's actually just Washington DC up down East Coast York and you also spent some time in Atlanta as well before returning back to South Carolina so let's talk about that I would say that Journey that you went on to work in all those different spaces what kind of work were you doing sure I was in the nonprofit field the whole time so um after I graduated from ug with a masters in public administration I went to DC I was working for boy town so serving abused neglected underserved children there uh then made my way up to New York and I was working in East Harlem specifically with undocumented immigrants uh and then down to Atlanta where I was working with an organization that served individuals with Developmental and intellectual disabilities so even though they were all different uh themes and nonprofits

[3:13]  domestic violence was certainly an undercurrent and a A continuing theme uh among all of them when you leave ug why are you so inspired to go into the nonprofit space and do the work that you're doing this seems like such heart-c centered work I wonder like was there a an aha moment early in your life where you thought this is the work that I want to do that's a good question so when I was applying for grad school I was looking at a few different programs and I was really considering uh a masters in public health and then I was looking at the public administration route I ended up taking that route with a nonprofit Focus because I saw in my own life how my grandmother and my mother were just always there for people in our community uh family members and I wanted to emulate that myself I would always say that the biggest point of

[4:01]  Pride for me would be somebody comparing me to my mother or to my grandmother um if I can be the type of mom that my mom has been to me to my three boys uh I would feel like I hit the lottery right if somebody made that comparison and similarly when I was thinking about the kind of woman that I wanted to be uh the kind of person I wanted to be it was really modeled after the two of them uh so it was a natural fit to really go for the public administration route with a nonprofit Focus what type of woman was your mom uh my mom is one of the most giving people uh on the planet I she is hardworking she is dedicated if you need something it doesn't matter what time of day she is going to be there uh and as I said I have three young boys uh and a

[4:50]  husband like we're a two parent household we're really fortunate and we have a third parent essentially in my mom because she is there every day um picking my kids up from school um helping us manage the things in our house there is no way that I could have this job uh that I I love so dearly and I get so much fulfillment from if we didn't have the support of my mother coming every single day um to help balance our family out in that way so if there there's nothing that my mother can't do and my kids anytime something happens like something breaks in the house or it needs to be washed or fixed Grandma can do it Grandma can do it um she's the person she can figure it out if she can't do it uh and she's just she does it from a true place of love in her heart isn't it amazing to think about how instrumental our motherly figure is

[5:38]  I bring that up because I often talk about my mom is hands down one of the most amazing people I've ever come across an amazing heart always willing to do more for others than she does for herself but also just somebody who encouraged me to do things differently I guess I would say when I was a child every day when I would leave her school my mom would say one thing to me she' say be a leader not a follow and that had a huge imprint on how I looked at the world and the type of challenges that I take on and so I feel like it's so important to give props to all the moms out there because they're having such a huge impact and I'm sure you're doing the same for your children as well I hope so thank you moms are the best they really are they really are so so part of what I want to talk about so we spent some time right we're in Washington DC New York Atlanta before coming back to South Carolina so what

[6:27]  was the biggest impetus of coming back to South Carolina why did we choose after living in all those different places to come back to South Carolina you know part of it was really a compromise uh between my husband and myself he's from New York uh we tried these different places and we couldn't find a place where we both felt that this was the place we both felt comfortable um the time that we had in New York was great I loved being in the city loved iish uh but you know it wasn't my forever place and I didn't feel you guys were actually in the city city of nework we lived on the Upper East Side and I'd go up to East Harlem for work and so I said well if we're going to move there like you know we sold our cars we sold our houses in DC like we did and we were in there because I wanted the experience uh and I'm so grateful I had it but that wasn't my

[7:14]  long-term place and it wasn't where I felt true joy and happiness and then when we were in Atlanta we made so many great friends but it wasn't where he was feeling true joy and happiness and so you know he grew up near the water because he's from Long Island and um I had gone to College of Charleston here for my freshman year and had been to Charleston many times because I'm from Colombia in the middle of the state and so it was a nice you know happy medium uh and we ended up both getting jobs here so it felt very forward to with us I know that South Carolina has changed so much over the years when I in 2009 moved from Detroit down to South Carolina I was in Myrtle Beach I was a little bit north of Charleston right I was so surprised by the amount of people who came down from New Jersey and New York and Philadelphia

[8:02]  and things like that there were more people from those cities than it seemed like there were from actual people from South Carolina so has Charleston changed a lot with the influx of different cultures and people how's that been absolutely it's changed uh it feels like for the millionth year in a row we're always rated you know the best city in the US uh on the cover of some magazine and that's great the um visitors bureau has done an incredible job getting folks here uh but when you look at the Dem graphics and it was highlighted in the most recent census there are a lot of articles in the Post and Courier about it uh one about the changing demographics and this was I think in 2023 the fastest growing state in the US and we had one of the fastest growing counties in Jasper County which is part of the Low Country here um and there is um the white population is growing at a

[8:52]  much higher rate and you can see the black population continuing to dwindle uh and so when we think about how that impacts our work how it impacts um what's happening in the school system and our relationships um I'd say that Charleston has changed immensely over the years and certainly since the time when I was uh you know my freshman year in college uh the explosion the growth that's happened uh the housing prices are insane uh there's just this it doesn't even feel like a trickle down effect it is a flood that is happening and people are really trying to figure out how to balance and make that work what does that flood mean so just many people who are moving is the identity of the community changing the morals of it like what kind of things are you seeing out there oh so much there's so much um so certainly let's start with the

[9:38]  housing right um there are a lot of people who came from um New York New Jersey Connecticut uh there a lot of folks who've come from Ohio uh just all over California right the housing prices are astronomical here so when people are coming from other states where um it costs more money the taxes are higher and they're like wow I can get this great house and I can pay cash for it uh the folks who were living here can no longer afford to live here uh and just to give you a little bit of perspective some of the clients that we serve here at my sister's house pre pandemic if we were looking for a spot we might be able to find something for $8 $900 a month and this is like a one-bedroom unit right and now those same clients are having to find things that are $1,500 a month that are not Central not near

[10:26]  Transportation um it makes it impossible to have the the kind of job and the lifestyle that you need not only just to you know survive but to thrive here uh so that's changed uh certainly there are a lot of identity politics and things that have shifted in that way um and then you know at a really basic cellular level there's just the kindness um that you would get with certain communities uh that you would get from knowing your neighbors we live in a really lovely neighborhood and even on my street we had a block party um a few months ago and somebody said oh God there's nobody from even from down south who's here because everybody's moved from somewhere else I'm like no no no I'm from South Carolina and it was like wow like somebody who's actually from here lives here um because you just don't get that

[11:13]  um so really trying to foster a sense of community even on our own Street uh has to be very intentional and has been a challenge at times it really isn't it you have to be incredibly intentional to be able to meet your neighbors today which is a crazy thing to think about I was having a conversation with another guest on the podcast and we were talking about the challenge of isolation and loneliness and he posed a simple question he said Keenan how often do you go spend time with your neighbors and I said never and he said okay here's another scenario simple question if you were out of sugar would you go to the store option one drive the 10 minutes there 10 minutes back or would you go knock on your neighbor's door and say hey I'm so sorry can I borrow a cup of sugar and I said I would honestly drive to the store because I don't know the community around me isn't that a scary

[12:00]  thought to think about it's it's so scary for many reasons uh and it's something that I really struggle with because you know where we grew up I I feel like I'm going to sound like an old kudin you know like get off my lawn it was better in the old days but you know I was driving riding my bicycle like two miles through my neighborhood to get to my friend's house and this is when I was like in the second and third grade I was a latch key kid you know like my parents didn't come home I had a key around my neck so I could get into the house and you know I I don't feel comfortable letting my son go more than a few blocks because I've timed him and I know how long it takes and I'm like I don't know some of these people I may not trust what's happening out there in the world um and it makes me nervous to feel that way right to always have to be

[12:49]  on guard when I'm thinking about my kids and the community and knowing who are the safe people on our street if something happens this is a safe person you can go to this house but you're not going inside so house um and it's really sad when I think about the kind of experience that my children and other children and other people have and what it was like when I was growing up uh in that sense of community that just it's not there in the same way I never really thought about it from that perspective yes I would be a lot less comfortable with my child riding their bike around the neighborhood when I'm in a neighborhood full of strangers that's a huge element of something that I've never really thought about before but you're a th% right I want to Pivot in a little bit into how some of these issues that we've been talking about cultures coming together the lack of community the sense of individualism right that we

[13:36]  see in our local neighborhoods and the price of housing that's increased when it comes to the challenges that you guys are facing when it comes to domestic violence advocacy are the cost of rising housing prices affecting the ability for the people who come to you guys to be able to have a safe space to get out of a scary situation right I never really thought about it like that certainly uh so we that Financial abuse is the most common co-occurring form of abuse so there are a lot of reasons why somebody may not leave their toxic or abusive relationship uh they can't afford to leave they have children also we know that when somebody decides to leave the relationship uh that is an increased likelihood that that person will be murdered because you're taking away the power and control from that abuser so

[14:23]  it's a very scary time to leave uh it's one of the most common questions we get right like well if this person's being abused why don't they just stop and leave well if it were that easy people would do it so you have all of these uh different factors and certainly the financial abuse so for um you know and I'm going to say women we know also men men are abused uh but if you have not worked if you are the person who has been bearing the children taking care of the children uh maybe you don't have a a skill set to get the kind of job that you want to get um or that skill set and that job is not paying enough for you to be able to afford to leave so if you want to continue to feed your children put clothes on their back uh they want the same quality of life or something similar than what you previously had and

[15:10]  oh by the way you have been isolated from your support group because that's what abusers do they isolate you from your family and friends and your support group where are you going to go and if you can no longer afford rent if the rent has jumped from something reasonable like $1,000 and now a place that would never look at before is now $2,000 which happens and more how are you supposed to afford that public transportation is not a big thing down here right um so if you have to live farther out you can't get to the peninsula where there um are a lot of hotels and the hospitality industry is booming but if you have to live 45 minutes out and it's going to take you an hour and a half to get to work you don't have a bus you don't have a car those things become impossible so really

[15:58]  you're weighing your decision if I leave how am I going to support myself what does that look like and if I stay what does that look like and how is my safety impacted I even think about the stigma right that comes along with the American society today of not having all of our ducks in a row right having Financial challenges are a huge Challenge in a lot of relationships but also when we don't have the safe space to lean in our community to even have the conversation or raise our hand that becomes a really scary time just dealing with all the the societal pressures on top of the relationship pressures that you're facing in being in an abusive relationship as well absolutely and if you think about there a lot of myths that seem to occur with DV victims right so we typically have this image of who is the victim uh and I can say and I've heard it a lot well it there are a lot

[16:47]  of poor black women yeah there are and there are a lot of white women and a lot of Hispanic women uh there are a lot of men who were being abused but people get this image of what a typical victim looks like what they should sound like uh what resources they do or do not have and so that's also another level of Shame if you don't fall into that stereotypical this is what a victim is or looks like say you do come from means or your abuser is somebody who's very powerful or well known in the community there's that additional shame and stigma that you have to really contend with did you ever have an aha moment where you realize that you were going to dump your time your energy your passion into this space specifically was there like a first instance in your time when you were in Atlanta or New York or Washington DC XYZ

[17:36]  where you were like this is a bigger problem and I need to dedicate my energy as Tasha to this problem and advocating for these people for domestic violence survivors specifically uh no you know no there wasn't a specific aha moment it wasn't until I got here that I really started to reflect on all of the people in my own life who have been been victims and who are survivors of domestic violence it is so prevalent that I think at least for me and I know a lot of other people it just becomes part of the narrative it's not something that you question and in a lot of communities and cultures it happens all too frequently so nobody's questioning like this is toxic like what does this look like what's a healthy relationship look like but you know when you're having like your girls night out

[18:25]  and you're having drinks with your friends you're not like wow I wonder what is a health relationship look like right like those aren't the kind of discussions that we're having over drinks at least I'm not with my friends it looks a little bit different and so once I got here and I started learning the statistics uh and I really started to reflect the people in my own life uh from a very young age because you know there are a lot of folks in the state who get married very young I certainly had lots of friends who got married when they were 20 21 22 uh again you don't question those things when you're living in it because that's normalized to you and it's not until you step out and there was a lot of learning and growing for me being in a lot of bigger cities right and coming back to Charleston that was a reckoning moment uh for me I grew up in this state and then I left and I

[19:14]  was in all of these major cities where I saw a larger professional black Network I saw folks who were supporting each other in DC in a way that I have I didn't see anywhere else um and it was so unique and it felt so positive and so good and I had really strong black female mentors coming to me saying like let me show you the things and teach you the things that was a pivotal aha moment and then coming back to Charleston and I was looking for those people and I was asking people where is this community where do they exist where are they living and it was crickets was crickets crickets that's one of the biggest things that I think people don't recognize is the sense of community but also other people who have been a little bit further down the path than we are have such an opportunity to impact the

[20:01]  people behind them and so it sounds like you were surrounded by those powerful leaders that Community but when we come back to South Carolina there's really nobody around so how did you start to formulate that sense of community especially coming from where you came from how did you duplicate that feeling it's um it's been a slow process uh and it has been about choosing the people intentionally to bring into this space because this work is it can be very emotionally drain also incredibly fulfilling I have to be very intentional about the people I allow into my life and to take up my space and energy in that way so it has been finding other leaders in this space maybe in other parts of the State uh through our Coalition uh it has been um going back to some of the leaders uh and

[20:48]  relationships that I had in other cities um and even though they're in a totally different industry getting that advice and leaning on them uh and and really utilizing those experiences uh and then it has been creating my own little group here um so finding other like-minded people uh who are want to be transformative they want things to be better and there is this real sense and this desire and this urgency right like I think a lot of folks we recognize the things that need to change but there is this innate urgency that we must do something right now and it doesn't have to be perfect but we have to do something um and if if we have the good intent um if we have the love if we're keeping the clients at the center of what we do ultimately

[21:35]  we're going to make things better I mean I I truly believe that so let's get a little tactical here because you know one of the things that I think we experience a lot more examples of is somebody lives in a town they move to a new place because of work because of Life XYZ they may have come from a place like DC and New York where they had a community around them how do you insert yourself into a new community where there's no community that's been built up of like-minded people how do we get kind of the ball rolling especially when you're doing as much as you're doing on a daily basis are you showing up at events are you sending DMS on LinkedIn how are you trying to build that Community around you I'm I'm really po um social media type person so I that may be the Avenue for some people it hasn't been for me are you writing letters to people what are we doing smoke signals um you know so the ways

[22:26]  that I've done it uh our change Amber we have the Charleston Chamber of Commerce I I believe it's like the oldest chamber in the US they're very active a lot of folks there so I was looking at other um even though I'm mid-40s I like to consider myself young young younger professionals uh where are these people where are they where are they hanging out um the people I knew were making moves and you know in 15 20 years we're going to be the next leaders are going to be the next leaders um of this town those people let me let me go to some of the things that they're going to and feel them out and see if there's a Vibe if if we have some commonalities um and if they're a good person right um so I went to a lot of chamber events it's being consistent it was choosing one or

[23:13]  two things um like the chamber uh there's um a woman here Amy she started this group called the helm for executive mothers um I loved when she started that group because you know she's running this like Thor profit business and she's busy and she's amazing and she's doing all of these things and then she talked about publicly you know struggling to find this balance and I really resonated when somebody was speaking openly and honestly uh when you love your job when you love running a company or a business and you also love your family right um and what does that balance look like and for me it was realizing that there is no real balance like sometimes I'm giving more to my family one week or one month and then other times I'm saying to my husband these these two months are going to be hectic and I'm not really going to

[24:00]  be as visible here so like let's talk about what that looks like ahead of time uh so for me finding somebody finding that group the helm that was pivotal for me so there were other women and it is very difficult to find women of any race women who are going to support other women in that way so if you want to talk about your kids you can and if you're like eh my kids are like acting like Gremlins today I don't want to talk about them I want to talk about work you can that in a really comfortable environment and so finding that place where I could be both I didn't have to choose um that was really important to me it sounds like you also have to be incredibly Brave right to show up as your full version of yourself I'm guessing that's why it's a little bit difficult to find people who are willing

[24:46]  to support you on both sides of the professional and the personal side it's kind of what I picked up on intuitively was that correct I'd say so yeah there's certainly a level of vulnerability and uh a level of liability that I think everybody really feels when you're like how much of my real authentic genuine self can I be uh and you know I'm generally a positive person but I'll tell you like I'm always assuming the worst um and I don't know if it's a product of like the environment that I'm in where you know you see the outside shell of a lot of people and it's beautiful but you know what's happening on the inside uh so just inherently I don't trust a lot of people um and so there's a level of liability right that I think if I'm this

[25:34]  honest now or if I share this part about myself are they going to use it against me later um is this going to be used uh to my detriment or to the agency detriment uh because again at the end of the day what I care about are the clients that we are serving the reputation of our agency is so critical and that trust that we build and and knowing that for a lot of folks I'm the face of that agency so I take that responsibility very seriously oh man there was an amazing individual who I had on the podcast his name is Kevin Irvin he is the CEO of an organization called OurTime I believe up in New York City it's a youth advocacy group for education and one of the topics that we talked about which was really interesting was code switching he said Keenan one of the things that I

[26:22]  experienced one time that was kind of an aha moment for me was me being he's younger he's a 37-year-old CEO is incredibly smart like one of the sharpest guys I've ever had in the podcast he said depending on the group of people who I go engage with if those are funders if those are Community uh Advocates if those are Community leaders if those are people from the school board XYZ I found myself always being the different version of Kevin depending on who I engaged with and one day I took my fiance to the show or to an event we came back home and she said Kevin you talked like you were playing golf your entire life you've never even swung a golf club and he said you know I realized in that moment that I code switch depending on who I talk to but the element of that is often I feel like I have to be a different person in front of different groups of people because I had a real sense of in inconsistency and

[27:13]  I had a lack of confidence in who I truly am isn't this a really tough battle to say I want to show up as I truly am 100% authentic me but I also need to balance the business side because I'm afraid that if I'm over vulnerable people will use that against me that's a really interesting position to be in just in society and the life experience in general yeah it is and I've thought about that and I've also thought about the fact that everybody's multifaceted right so you know there was a time in my life I loved playing golf and and learned and played with my dad uh and there are times that I like bringing that part of myself out right and the same way that there may be certain things that I share with one friend because we have these things in common but I share more of another part of myself with a different friend uh and

[28:02]  I do feel that that way about you know our donors our supporters depending where I'm going in the state um if I'm at kiawa and it's you know very appcross and I'm going to present a certain way and dress a certain way but I always still look like me and um I always I I hope that the core still stay me but then there's that part where you're like know your audience right how am I going to show up and um and I do yeah I I struggle with that sometimes like is that fully authentic um it everybody's putting on some sort of mask or something depending on who they're talking to and maybe it just depends like to what degree you're really pushing that that side of you um yeah something I think about a lot yeah I

[28:50]  think about that a lot as well I gave the example and I was talking to Kevin when I first started working in the healthcare space back in 2014 the Keenan who you see here in the black t-shirt and the hat was non-existent he would wear a button-up T-shirt with a tie and a suit jacket because I felt like I had to fit in and then I started recognizing that often the value that I was bringing to the relationship was based on my expertise my own perspectives and how we were going to tackle challenges and then one day I decided hey I'm just going to show up as I truly am in a pair of Jordans and a pair of jeans sit across the table from the CEO and say hey this is what I can solve for you and guess what everything went well and we won the business and I said hold on have I been wasting so much of my personal energy thinking about a reality that wasn't even real I mean it's a really interesting battle that we have to go through especially as Leaders of organizations because the authentic the

[29:38]  authentic Tasha you can pick up on that person right naturally our intuition says she's being 100% who she is and that attracts me to her instead of trying to be a different version of ourselves for people which is an interesting battle can I tell you just a fun little aside it's a hair story but tangentially related so yeah assume most black women will totally get this um you know I had relaxers in my hair most of my life and then when I was working in DC uh one of my colleagues was natural and at that point my hair was maybe like 2 3 Ines natural and I was like oh my gosh this is crazy I need to go get it straightened she's like no don't do it like it's so freeing and I had not been natural since the second grade so I

[30:26]  didn't know what my curls looked like know how to take care of them yes and that day we went into her office she took her office scissors and she just cut my hair she cut it all off and I just had like three inches of like natural growth and I'm sitting there I'm like what the did I just do I like run home and I'm washing my hair and I'm like what are My Curls going to look like you know and and I'm biracial so I'm assuming I'm going to have like real cute like wavy curls I have like very tight forcy like very very kinky curly curls and I was like I don't know what to do from that point on like I didn't go back to getting my hair relaxed right like I've always had natural hair in some form or fashion I've worn a lot of wigs I'll

[31:13]  have it braided I'll have it twisted I'll just have my natural hair um my husband has seen me in like 50 different hairstyles and he's not surprised depending on how I come home anymore uh but it was really the like that was the moment where I was like I'm just going to be me and it was very bold and out of my comfort zone right to like let a colleague take her offices or and just stop start snipping away at my hair and then there is so much of your identity there's so much emotion wrapped up into your hair and for such a long while I was obsessed with like growing it long having it pressed it need to be straightened because to me that that that's what was considered beautiful right like that's what you want this long like flowing hair so that was a real identity pivotal moment for me

[32:03]  where it's was like like I'm going to have my natural hair and what I love now is that I have three boys and my oldest son has very curly hair and he's always like I don't like those wigs those look stupid you look best with like your natural hair and I like I love that he loves that and that he loves his curls um so that part that made me feel so proud when I think I look like a hobbit you know and I've just rolled out of bed and my son's like yes like that like yeah yeah that that looks awesome and this is a this is a really important topic for us to kind of like Riff on for a second but like so much of our social conditioning is to be a copy and paste version of someone else who we have no idea about their life experience and I often think about this element of how can we get the pendulum to swing back in

[32:53]  the other direction because very transparently we don't need more influencers we don't need more people people who are saying the same story we don't need more people who are telling us what to do without ever doing it but we need the real versions of ourselves to show up in society because that sense of connection and that sense of community of being okay and being yourself would solve a lot of problems that it seems like we're dealing with today yeah agreed agreed here's a so let's talk a little bit about we talked a little bit about this as kind of like you know you go into your um your co-workers office you guys cut your hair you come home you're a new liberated version of yourself that's a huge form of self-care right with the work that you guys do every single day incredibly emotionally taxing incredibly emotionally heavy how do you create the space so Tasha can show up every single day with a full cup so she

[33:41]  can pour into others what does that look like for you uh something else I continue to work on but I've been seeing the same therapist for about seven years now uh and that to me is a Saving Grace certainly for myself for my family for my work uh so having somebody who understands what we're doing here um and being able to share that just with all of its flaws uh that part has been major for me uh and I'm always surprised at the amount of people who come up to me and and they say I just started seeing a therapist I'm like Oh I thought everybody was seeing a therapist now like everybody is not seeing a therapist go find a therapist like we should all be seeing a therapist um that part has just been hugely

[34:31]  helpful so therapy certainly um making time for my friends uh you know I have a handful like literally a handful of friends uh whom I love and they don't live in South Carolina one of them does but you know they live in other places being intentional about the time setting something every year to have like our girls get away uh where I know 3 4 days I'm going to be gone and the kids and my husband are going to have to fend for themselves and saying like that's okay there are some days I might leave the office early and not tell anybody at home that I'm leaving early and like go to the movies by myself like a 3:00 movie um just because I want to be by myself um I don't want to hear anybody

[35:18]  else talking to me and those are those are like gems of moments for me that's something I've been trying to focus on very transparently is spending a little bit more time by myself you know I spend so much time pouring into my team and answering phone calls and helping people navigate challenges and then when it's after work my girlfriend's coming home and she's kind of decompressing after her long day going through medical school that sometimes being intentional about that space that we can create for ourselves just so we can be with the silence so we can think about things without emails pinging or calls coming in or Zoom notifications or XYZ are so important and I don't think a lot of people actually get a Time to disconnect especially the younger Generations on average an 18-year-old today spend about nine hours a day on their screen that's nine hours a day of time that they're

[36:06]  not getting in peace right and that's 24 years over the rest of their lifetime that they'll stay in that space of being interjected on right from things that we can't control that space is so vitally important I'm so proud of you for actually being intentional about that even if it means sneaking off to the movies by yourself yeah thank you that's actually probably the piece that I love the most um one I'm a natural introvert um and I miss having time to myself I don't sometimes I I struggle with like feeling guilty and not spending time with my family or not cleaning something up in my house because it looks like a tornado came through um but then the times that I'm just like it's quiet I love to read I love to listen to audio books I want to watch a movie like I just want to be in something that's so vapid where I

[36:55]  don't have to think and I can just be and have fun and be by myself those are too few and far between what's one book that you've read That's had a huge impact on you during your time of being an avid reader if you could pick one oh um there is oh man so many well there's a book that I read years ago called a perfect peace uh and um it was about this uh this boy who was growing up and and it was really a nature ver versus nurture question uh and kind of like around his identity and sexuality and um what that environment looked like growing up and if that was the thing

[37:42]  that um sort of intrinsically motivated him and his later lifestyle uh that to me I was trying to get so many people to read this book uh that one and there's another book that I read maybe two years ago called homecoming and or home going sorry and it was about um two different women in Africa like at the beginning of the slave trade and so you know um they're split up they come to America and they have very different lives and and just how some of those like early decisions really shaped with their lives looked like later that book was also incredible man those are two books that everybody needs to go check out because if you're an Avid Reader and you're talking about them so highly I think we all could use a little bit of you know so we got home going and which was the other book that we talked about a perfect piece a perfect piece very

[38:29]  appropriate for exactly the topic we were just talking about um there was there was one really good book that I read in 2021 called the untethered soul and in the book The author gives an analogy about the voice that is in our head do you have an internal monologue do you hear yourself think oh yeah sometimes yeah for sure okay so let me ask that question because there's some people out there who don't have an internal monologue they don't have that internal voice where they're narrating their thoughts which is really interesting I do but one of the things that this author brought up was the analogy of the roommate he said sit here for a second with me in silence can you hear that voice in your head okay if you can that means that you are an observer of that voice we've spent so much time with that internal monologue that we often think that it's us but if you can hear something that means you are

[39:16]  separate from it and you have perspective over it the thing that we should recognize is that often that internal voice is someone else's voice that they put inside of our head AKA you're not good enough Kenan you can't do those things they're going to laugh at us XYZ if you spend years with that voice you think about it as being yourself now one exercise that you can do to kind of put this into perspective your roommate is sitting next to you on the couch you guys are both watching a movie and this roommate is a real person imagine if they started spewing off about the things that they're talking about Keenan did you remember to put the clothes in the dishwasher or the in the washing machine did you go pick up the dry cleaning did you send that email XYZ if you were sitting there trying to enjoy a movie you'd say roommate be quiet and so I've always tried to create that sense of perspective in recognizing

[40:03]  that that voice is something that I hear my roommate rather than being me and that's helped me overcome a lot of my internal challenges because in those moments of insecurity I feel like I'm not doing a good enough job normally it's that voice or that roommate who's telling me those things it's been incredibly impactful for me that what's the name of that book again it's called the untethered Soul uhuh yeah definitely add it to the add to the to the list for sure um super powerful so here's one of my last questions here for us Tasha is if we had to go back right to Tasha who was in DC or you know Atlanta or New York and you had an uninterrupted five minutes with that younger version of yourself what advice would you give for her as she navigates the future to bring her to

[40:50]  where she is here today sitting with me you know I would tell myself to not be afraid to be myself because I realize that is the same thing that like almost everybody else is thinking everybody else in the room is just as nervous or just as uncertain and they're figuring out their response they're not looking at you the same way that like I would be looking at myself and so I think knowing that peace uh you know when I would go into certain places I thought I must be the only one I I'm not as smart I'm not as prepared like all of those things in my head uh but realizing everybody else is thinking the same exact thing they're struggling with the same exact things they're just not saying it out loud um or some people are better at presenting than others right

[41:38]  like they always look great when they show up no matter where they are they look like they have it together I rarely look like I have it together um if I scan the rest of my office you'd be like o um and that's just you know how it typically looks uh and I always wanted to be one of those like I want to be that check like she looks beautiful she's like got it together you know she's all no no and and once I stopped trying um because it was exhausting and I wasn't getting to that point anyway and then I was like well I'm just going to just going to do me cuz I can't do anything else and I don't want to anymore and I got to this place where I was like I don't want to um I don't care I think I ended up becoming so much of my father at such a younger age um and hearing the things that my dad would

[42:28]  always say growing up again I just thought he was like this old kagin uh but he was right in a lot of instances I was like damn it I should have listened to him sooner um I'm just like I don't care you know my dad would always say like do they pay your bills no are they are they helping you survive no okay then you don't have a say in what's going on over here and I adopted so much of that where it's like you're not paying my bills you're not taking care of me like then I can make my own decisions and like and I'm just fine right um so yeah that's what I would tell myself I love that we always become a little bit more like our parents and I think we often want to but we realize that they were on the right path the entire time which is so funny so you know one of the traditions we have here

[43:15]  on the podcast Tasha is we have our previous guest ask a blind question to you now our previous guest is an amazing CEO and founder and they want to know when times are toughest what what is the conversation that you have with yourself to get back on the right track uh one of my first questions is you know have you prayed about this um have you sought guidance from somebody other than yourself and often times it's like no go do that right cuz I don't have all of the answers uh so seeking guidance praying being quiet again I think that's where some of that like I need to be by myself so I can process how I think and feel about certain situations uh because then once I go outside of myself and I

[44:04]  start getting input from other folks it can become overwhelming right so I need to know how I think and feel about a situation before I solicit a lot of information uh so I don't go astray uh that certainly is key um talking to my therapist making sure that I have like our regularly scheduled meetings uh and you know I started going back to see a personal trainer uh so that was another really important step for me is when I get older I still want my body to feel strong I want to feel good about the body that I'm in I want to be active for my kids I want to be active for myself uh and I want to feel good and so like have you worked out at all like are are you eating like like are you doing the things for your body to feel good so then you can

[44:52]  go out and do good for others Tasha Connor definition of heart and hustle thank you so much for coming on the show you absolutely killed it I really appreciate it for everybody who's tuning in watching and listening thank you for joining us we really appreciate it thanks for having me it was really fun