# A Father's Legacy (Guests: Tay & LaTerria Cosby)

An episode of [Dear Future Wifey](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1506095537), 17 Jun 2026, 2 h 50 min.

Audio: https://prfx.byspotify.com/e/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/78a347aa-3282-4ac5-837c-a72300032082/293692a5-5b4e-44f3-89a3-b172011fe37c/bc013323-671f-401e-981a-b46c0047af0c/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=ae4e871a-36ca-4d76-83c3-b172011fe393

In this special Father's Day edition of Dear Future Wifey, Laterras and Ashley Whitfield sit down with their daughter, LaTerria, and her husband, Tay, for an intimate conversation about generational fatherhood. Laterras reflects on becoming a teenage father of LaTerria, a grandfather for the first time with baby Claire, while LaTerria and Tay open up about raising Claire and anticipating the arrival of their son. The couple shares their journey from meeting as seventh-grade sweethearts to navigating college together, building a marriage, and now growing their family. Through laughter, heartfelt moments, and lessons learned, this episode celebrates the legacy of love and fatherhood passed down from one generation to the next. CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST https://www.instagram.com/laterria.razsane https://www.instagram.com/taycosby5 CONNECT WITH OUR HOSTS https://www.instagram.com/laterrasrwhitfield https://www.instagram.com/ashleyrwhitfield ORDER LATERRAS R. WHITFIELD'S NEW BOOK "STUDENT OF LOVE" https://www.StudentofLove.com WANNA SEE BEHIND-THE-SCENES FOOTAGE? JOIN MY PATREON https://www.Patreon.com/laterrasrwhitfield SIGN UP FOR THE MAILING LIST https://bit.ly/LRWconnection PURCHASE "YOU (Dear Future Wifey)" Theme Song http://itunes.apple.com/album/id/1729993404 👑 SUPPORT OUR CAUSE Donate to Kingdom Royale: Empowering foster kids to become royalty: https://www.KingdomRoyale.com 👕 MERCH https://www.DearFutureWifey.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This man drafted up a purity contract, which means keep
[0:03] Speaker 1: your hands off my daughter.
[0:04] Speaker 2: You feel like I was doing too much.
[0:05] Speaker 3: I was surprised when it didn't come earlier.
[0:07] Speaker 4: We have our daughter and our son in love the
[0:11] Speaker 4: terrier and told past, oh my grand baby Claire.
[0:16] Speaker 2: Look at you.
[0:17] Speaker 4: During the wedding, you heard some negative people talk about
[0:20] Speaker 4: see his daughter ain't there. She don't approve of this marriage.
[0:22] Speaker 4: What would you like to say to that?
[0:24] Speaker 5: That's so silly. My dad is my best friend. I
[0:27] Speaker 5: love Ashley. She's so kind, she's sweet. You just feel
[0:30] Speaker 5: like a safe space. So I think it's very silly.
[0:32] Speaker 5: And everyone thought that I did not support this because
[0:35] Speaker 5: I was the first person to be able to see
[0:37] Speaker 5: this transpired and I had a baby Claire was three months.
[0:40] Speaker 5: Because I've had people say, well, why could they just
[0:41] Speaker 5: postpone it, I'm like, postpone their wedding.
[0:44] Speaker 2: Okay, what made you marry this woman?
[0:47] Speaker 3: We became adults together through all of that.
[0:50] Speaker 1: You get to learn pretty quick if the person massiges
[0:52] Speaker 1: was the right person. And I knew, even when I
[0:54] Speaker 1: didn't have the money to do it, I proposed I say,
[0:56] Speaker 1: I'll figure out the rest of that later on, I
[0:58] Speaker 1: had a very inexpensive.
[1:00] Speaker 5: Perspective around that.
[1:01] Speaker 6: A lot of young men are afraid to propose because
[1:04] Speaker 6: they feel like they can't.
[1:05] Speaker 5: Afford to well.
[1:06] Speaker 1: People hear cheap, they hear one thousand, they hear two thousand.
[1:09] Speaker 1: It couldn't have been more than like one hundred and
[1:11] Speaker 1: fifty dollars.
[1:11] Speaker 4: I want to salute you as a man for covering
[1:13] Speaker 4: my daughter property. I would be remiss if I didn't
[1:16] Speaker 4: celebrate you this Father's Day.
[1:19] Speaker 3: I see a logo in this bag hold on, but
[1:21] Speaker 3: well they'll go.
[1:21] Speaker 2: Do you see?
[1:22] Speaker 4: Letteria was born my senior year of high school, two
[1:25] Speaker 4: weeks before I walked across the stage. She came to
[1:27] Speaker 4: my graduation as a baby. That changed the trajector of
[1:31] Speaker 4: my life. I walked down the ol with her in
[1:34] Speaker 4: my arms. People are amazed by how transparent I am
[1:37] Speaker 4: on dear future wife, but it's because I started that
[1:40] Speaker 4: out in my private life. I remember a conversation that
[1:42] Speaker 4: you and I had where I first told you about
[1:44] Speaker 4: the infidelity that I had. The greatest thing I had
[1:47] Speaker 4: to do is confess my thoughts with someone that looked
[1:49] Speaker 4: at me like superman. You have been very open about
[1:53] Speaker 4: the journey of an angel.
[1:55] Speaker 5: Baby unpacked that you don't want to hear this part, Dad.
[2:03] Speaker 4: What started as a search for understanding became a journey
[2:07] Speaker 4: of transformation. Every letter that I wrote led me to
[2:11] Speaker 4: this day, the day I got married November twenty second,
[2:16] Speaker 4: twenty twenty five.
[2:17] Speaker 7: Dear my forever, Forever is a long time. That's how
[2:23] Speaker 7: long I'll love you. Those lyrics echo through every fiber
[2:27] Speaker 7: of my soul at the very thought of you.
[2:31] Speaker 4: This journey has culminated with you as both the award
[2:35] Speaker 4: and the reward of my pursuit of love.
[2:37] Speaker 2: You are the award, the.
[2:39] Speaker 4: Honor God placed before me, the recognition of growth, healing
[2:43] Speaker 4: and becoming the man I needed to be.
[2:45] Speaker 7: And you are the reward, the blessing given after endurance,
[2:51] Speaker 7: the gift promised to those who refuse to faint.
[2:56] Speaker 4: This isn't just our story, this is for all of us.
[3:00] Speaker 4: I'm the Terisaar Whitfield.
[3:02] Speaker 5: I'm Ashley our Whitfield. Welcome to.
[3:11] Speaker 2: Welcome to the Diffuture Wife podcast. I'm your host.
[3:13] Speaker 6: Laterisar Wifield, and I'm Ashley are Witfield.
[3:16] Speaker 2: Listen? Are you still shacking up with us? Come on?
[3:18] Speaker 4: If you're still shacking up with us. We're season eleven.
[3:20] Speaker 4: Hit that subscription button and subscribe. Make sure you turn
[3:23] Speaker 4: on your notification bell. She'll be notified about upcoming episodes.
[3:26] Speaker 2: Listen.
[3:27] Speaker 4: Ash and I were looking through the analytics a couple
[3:29] Speaker 4: of days ago, and.
[3:30] Speaker 2: What do we find.
[3:31] Speaker 6: We found that fifty two percent of you who tune
[3:34] Speaker 6: in every week are not subscribed.
[3:36] Speaker 2: So what's what's up with that?
[3:37] Speaker 5: What's up with that?
[3:38] Speaker 4: I know y'all want somebody to make a commitment to y'all,
[3:41] Speaker 4: but y'all haven't been making a commitment to the podcast
[3:44] Speaker 4: that has been healing you, that have been giving you
[3:47] Speaker 4: wisdom and knowledge on your relationship journey, whether you're married, single, divorce.
[3:51] Speaker 4: We do a lot of work making sure that we
[3:53] Speaker 4: put this content out consistently on a weekly basis, and
[3:57] Speaker 4: the least you can do is hit a subscription. But
[4:00] Speaker 4: and it's free. It's absolutely free. Let me tell you
[4:03] Speaker 4: why that's important. It's because a lot of advertisers.
[4:05] Speaker 2: We're signed to Urban one.
[4:07] Speaker 4: As a podcast network, and when they're trying to sell
[4:11] Speaker 4: ads for the podcast, they look at the subscribers. They
[4:14] Speaker 4: look at how many people are viewing daily and weekly,
[4:19] Speaker 4: and that's how they determine whether or not they want.
[4:22] Speaker 2: To support the podcast.
[4:23] Speaker 4: And if we can't get support, then guess what we
[4:26] Speaker 4: have to get off the air. So we need y'all
[4:29] Speaker 4: to do the small ask and hit that subscription button. Well,
[4:34] Speaker 4: today's episode is extremely special to us. This is going
[4:38] Speaker 4: to be a special Father's Day episode. And without further ado, Ashley,
[4:44] Speaker 4: who do we have?
[4:47] Speaker 2: We have?
[4:47] Speaker 4: She doesn't, she doesn't, she doesn't look at that says
[4:49] Speaker 4: she wanted to redo it so that she could introduce them.
[4:53] Speaker 2: But here we go. So without further.
[4:54] Speaker 4: Ado, we have our daughter and our son in the tear. Yeah,
[5:00] Speaker 4: and tay Cosby.
[5:02] Speaker 5: Let's go.
[5:06] Speaker 2: Look at them. Oh my bad, I am being to
[5:08] Speaker 2: throw shade on you. Claire.
[5:09] Speaker 4: Hello, my granddaughter, my grand baby, Claire, Claire.
[5:14] Speaker 2: Look at you? How you doing, Claire?
[5:17] Speaker 5: And see how you doing?
[5:18] Speaker 4: Oh okay, okay, all right now you don't want it,
[5:23] Speaker 4: all right, So we're gonna try to do this as
[5:25] Speaker 4: much as possible with Claire in the episode.
[5:29] Speaker 2: How old is Claire, y'all?
[5:31] Speaker 5: She just turned ten months today. She is a ball
[5:35] Speaker 5: of fun and chaos.
[5:36] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, have you on the chaos?
[5:38] Speaker 5: Yeah? No, no, she should. I just switch back.
[5:42] Speaker 4: I'll just switched back and forth. As y'all keep going
[5:44] Speaker 4: back and forth, you can be with me. So let
[5:47] Speaker 4: me ask you this Latario, how do you feel being
[5:49] Speaker 4: on their Future WIFEI podcast?
[5:50] Speaker 3: Again?
[5:50] Speaker 4: You were on here with Laderian and ARMANI. How many
[5:56] Speaker 4: years ago?
[5:56] Speaker 5: Is that a long time? Like at the very beginning?
[5:58] Speaker 2: So it's like four years ago? Yeah, four or five
[6:00] Speaker 2: years ago?
[6:01] Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a long time.
[6:02] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. You weren't even married then, were you.
[6:06] Speaker 5: I don't think so.
[6:07] Speaker 2: No, you wasn't even married.
[6:08] Speaker 4: Yeah, no, because I kept saying that I can't wait
[6:10] Speaker 4: to have y'all on as a cousin.
[6:13] Speaker 5: Yes, once we get married.
[6:15] Speaker 2: Hey, what made you marry this woman?
[6:19] Speaker 3: Starting there?
[6:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's tons of things that I can say.
[6:25] Speaker 1: But we've known each other for a very long time.
[6:29] Speaker 1: For anyone who doesn't know our story, we started dating
[6:32] Speaker 1: in high school back in twenty thirteen, but we've known
[6:34] Speaker 1: each other since we were in the seventh grade. So
[6:38] Speaker 1: there's been just so many experiences. We went off to
[6:40] Speaker 1: college together, we became adults together, and whether so many storms,
[6:48] Speaker 1: not our own making, just dealing with life and becoming adults.
[6:51] Speaker 1: And through all of that, I think you get to
[6:54] Speaker 1: learn pretty quick if the person besides you was the
[6:57] Speaker 1: right person.
[6:57] Speaker 3: And I knew, so even when I didn't have the money.
[7:01] Speaker 1: To do it, I proposed. I was like, I'll figure
[7:03] Speaker 1: out the rest of that later on.
[7:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the story of how you came to be.
[7:10] Speaker 1: Yeah, but out of all that, I just knew that's
[7:14] Speaker 1: what I wanted to be with. So I proposed. I
[7:18] Speaker 1: had a very inexpensive ring. I got what I could,
[7:22] Speaker 1: and I was like, we'll make the wedding thing work.
[7:23] Speaker 5: So can you put perspective around that?
[7:26] Speaker 6: Because a lot of young men are afraid to propose
[7:30] Speaker 6: because they feel like they can't afford to. So put
[7:33] Speaker 6: a little bit of like perspective around.
[7:35] Speaker 1: How it couldn't have been yeah, oh yeah, no, it
[7:41] Speaker 1: couldn't have been more than like one hundred and fifty dollars.
[7:43] Speaker 3: And that's gonna be like a huge shock.
[7:45] Speaker 1: Because when people hear cheap, they hear one thousand, they
[7:47] Speaker 1: hear two thousand.
[7:49] Speaker 3: Like that's not cheap, I mean actually cheap.
[7:53] Speaker 1: But yeah, So I think that goes to speak to
[7:57] Speaker 1: more of her as a woman. I can't just say
[7:58] Speaker 1: like four men and you know your partner, like for
[8:01] Speaker 1: some women, I think it to them, it is important,
[8:03] Speaker 1: Like they find value in the ring, like how big
[8:07] Speaker 1: the wedding is, Like all those things play a part
[8:09] Speaker 1: into like what they look and I've dreamed about their
[8:13] Speaker 1: entire life, so I can take that away from them.
[8:15] Speaker 1: But to her credit, she valued marriage above a wedding.
[8:20] Speaker 1: She valued marriage above the cost of a ring. She
[8:24] Speaker 1: was like, that's my person. That's why I want to
[8:26] Speaker 1: be with how we make that happen. We make that happen.
[8:28] Speaker 1: And at that time I wasn't as successful as I
[8:32] Speaker 1: am today.
[8:33] Speaker 3: So I think.
[8:36] Speaker 1: You, as a man, you get to really appreciate that perspective,
[8:42] Speaker 1: Like you get to really appreciate when somebody is like
[8:44] Speaker 1: I want you, the other stuff doesn't matter when that
[8:46] Speaker 1: seems to be different a lot of the time.
[8:48] Speaker 3: So I want to give more credit there. But if you.
[8:51] Speaker 1: Are self harming in that way, and you're just kind
[8:54] Speaker 1: of like self sabotaging and thinking that the money is
[8:57] Speaker 1: the problem, like don't let that blocker be there before
[9:00] Speaker 1: you actually proposed the idea, and if there's hesitation, then
[9:03] Speaker 1: it's there. But I just wouldn't like cut that off immediately.
[9:05] Speaker 1: I would have an open and honest conversations and be like, hey,
[9:09] Speaker 1: you're my person. I want to be with you. This
[9:13] Speaker 1: is where we are right now. That's not where we'll
[9:15] Speaker 1: always be.
[9:15] Speaker 4: That part, Soltario, What made you have that philosophy?
[9:20] Speaker 5: I just liked him and I was tired I don't
[9:23] Speaker 5: want to say tired of being his girlfriend, because I
[9:25] Speaker 5: wasn't afraid I wasn't going to be able to be
[9:27] Speaker 5: with him. It just didn't matter to me. I just
[9:30] Speaker 5: knew I was going to spend the rest of my
[9:31] Speaker 5: life with him, and I knew it would be happy.
[9:34] Speaker 5: And that's just what I knew. So I wasn't worried
[9:36] Speaker 5: about like. I wasn't one of those girls who like
[9:39] Speaker 5: had a Pinterest board of like weddings or like rings
[9:41] Speaker 5: that I had in mind. I just found a man
[9:44] Speaker 5: that I love and that was enough for me, I guess.
[9:47] Speaker 2: And so money was never an issue for you, No,
[9:49] Speaker 2: it wasn't. And so and we talked about that about
[9:52] Speaker 2: the ring.
[9:52] Speaker 4: He first got the ring as a promise ring because
[9:56] Speaker 4: you had lost your promise ring, and so he went
[9:59] Speaker 4: to go replace it and then said, no, this is
[10:03] Speaker 4: the real thing. What made you pivot like that day?
[10:07] Speaker 1: You know, I think after being together for so long,
[10:10] Speaker 1: it feels like I was about to make a second promise,
[10:14] Speaker 1: Which what's the point in that? Like I made the
[10:17] Speaker 1: first promise the first time, and the gap in time
[10:20] Speaker 1: from her losing the promise ring to me getting the
[10:22] Speaker 1: second one, it's like we're not the same people. It's
[10:26] Speaker 1: when I initially made that first promise, and the new
[10:29] Speaker 1: promise felt like it was supposed to be something bigger.
[10:32] Speaker 3: It felt like it was supposed to be permanent.
[10:33] Speaker 1: So I felt crazy on the inside if I would
[10:36] Speaker 1: have tried to string her along with another promise ring,
[10:39] Speaker 1: and clearly the opportunity presented itself to be like no,
[10:42] Speaker 1: like do.
[10:43] Speaker 3: What you're supposed to do, like another promise ring. Yeah,
[10:46] Speaker 3: that's my third one.
[10:47] Speaker 5: But that's a good point. I was happy just to
[10:49] Speaker 5: get a new ring after losing one.
[10:51] Speaker 2: All right, So let's talk about this. Y'all got together
[10:53] Speaker 2: at what age? And how old are y'all?
[10:55] Speaker 5: Now we were seventeen, so our junior summer going into
[10:59] Speaker 5: senior year. So yeah, seventeen, and now we just turned
[11:02] Speaker 5: thirty a month and a half too.
[11:04] Speaker 2: I was supposed to have no boyfriend, No, no, no.
[11:09] Speaker 5: We've been this, you know, It's funny. Remember when I
[11:11] Speaker 5: was like he was gonna take man to day for
[11:13] Speaker 5: a one year anniversary. He was like one year or
[11:15] Speaker 5: what being together was? Had no boyfriend. I'm like that
[11:21] Speaker 5: this man has been picking me up for the past year.
[11:23] Speaker 5: We have had Valentine's Day, Christmas. What did you think
[11:26] Speaker 5: this was?
[11:27] Speaker 2: I was class you think that was?
[11:29] Speaker 4: I thought there was some friends that first of all. Literally,
[11:34] Speaker 4: so listen, it's not I'm slow slow. This is what
[11:39] Speaker 4: they told me, Like Tay she went to Booker t
[11:42] Speaker 4: He went to school way out and foreign, not for
[11:46] Speaker 4: interot and so they would they couldn't see each other.
[11:49] Speaker 5: We were seeing each other. How he was to see
[11:52] Speaker 5: me like weekly, maybe like twice sometimes.
[11:55] Speaker 2: Your senior year. Yeah, yeah, that was in your senior
[11:58] Speaker 2: hold On.
[11:59] Speaker 5: We started dating on your summer senior year. Senior whole
[12:02] Speaker 5: senior year we were together. We started dating in the summertime.
[12:04] Speaker 5: I was like our first couple of dates, like at
[12:06] Speaker 5: North Park or something. She said she was seventeen.
[12:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking, were you doing that when you was
[12:11] Speaker 2: at your mama house? No, I was. I know that
[12:13] Speaker 2: you would see, hold On said at North Park? Yeah,
[12:18] Speaker 2: I remember.
[12:18] Speaker 4: Why do our only time I remember y'all seeing each
[12:21] Speaker 4: other is when the first time he asked to see
[12:22] Speaker 4: you was at school and he asked, could he stopped
[12:25] Speaker 4: by at school to come bring you a gift for
[12:27] Speaker 4: Valentine's Day.
[12:28] Speaker 5: That's when you decided to let him in your life,
[12:31] Speaker 5: I guess because you took me to the mall to
[12:33] Speaker 5: go see him in North Park and a friend.
[12:36] Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I took you there to go see if
[12:38] Speaker 4: my brain thinking he came and picked you up, and
[12:40] Speaker 4: I was like, that, ain't you took me there?
[12:42] Speaker 3: Okay?
[12:42] Speaker 2: I was like when I said I got to go
[12:44] Speaker 2: to that, I.
[12:46] Speaker 5: Said, I don't remember him coming, build up, pick me up?
[12:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, we didn't jump straight into that.
[12:52] Speaker 2: Yes, amen.
[12:53] Speaker 4: So y'all knew each other from the seventh grade. And
[12:57] Speaker 4: but seventh grade, y'all was just cool. Y'all were just friends.
[12:59] Speaker 5: Like him, well what was cool? But I liked him.
[13:01] Speaker 1: I was like, and then what you think the thing is?
[13:05] Speaker 1: This is where things get funny because I liked her
[13:08] Speaker 1: as well. But we were initially good friends.
[13:10] Speaker 3: So I was like, you don't know, like somebody's nice
[13:13] Speaker 3: to you, but we're cool, you know what I mean?
[13:14] Speaker 1: Like you don't want to break that and like kind
[13:16] Speaker 1: of make it awkward when things are going good, just
[13:17] Speaker 1: like they are.
[13:18] Speaker 3: So I never like acted on anything. And obviously no,
[13:20] Speaker 3: that is she So I think.
[13:24] Speaker 2: She's having what she want to do bottle.
[13:29] Speaker 3: Now we can try to get your bottle. Yeah, she
[13:34] Speaker 3: just wanted to live with her mama.
[13:35] Speaker 2: M she said, I want to.
[13:42] Speaker 5: Know, didn't actually great because you would have lost it.
[13:47] Speaker 4: It would have been here right now, be alive right now.
[13:51] Speaker 4: About this boy that she knew, that is so funny.
[13:56] Speaker 4: So in seventh grade, you you didn't know really what
[14:00] Speaker 4: it was. And one thing that I've always liked about
[14:04] Speaker 4: Tay is Tay was more on the side of the
[14:07] Speaker 4: nice guy, the little nerdy guy, the guy that wasn't
[14:10] Speaker 4: out there, you know, trying to date a bunch of
[14:12] Speaker 4: girls and all that. He was just a very He's
[14:15] Speaker 4: the guy that you want to take home to meet
[14:17] Speaker 4: your dad. So it's like, so when I met him,
[14:20] Speaker 4: I never was like, what are your intentions?
[14:22] Speaker 2: You know, I was never like that. I was just like,
[14:24] Speaker 2: this is a good dude.
[14:25] Speaker 8: Uh.
[14:25] Speaker 2: And we'll get to that a little later. But so
[14:27] Speaker 2: in the seventh grade, she was crushing on you. You
[14:32] Speaker 2: didn't know what it was. You was like, let's be friends.
[14:35] Speaker 4: What happened going into the senior year of high school
[14:38] Speaker 4: that made y'all start whatever y'all was.
[14:43] Speaker 2: This is funny.
[14:44] Speaker 1: I know you're gonna want to jump into this for sure,
[14:48] Speaker 1: but so funny story is. I know, I don't know
[14:51] Speaker 1: where you want to start with this because I don't
[14:52] Speaker 1: know if.
[14:52] Speaker 5: You started talking, like literally, how we started talking again.
[14:56] Speaker 1: How we first came back to see each other. This
[14:58] Speaker 1: is the funny thing. So I'm in a summer engineering camp.
[15:02] Speaker 1: You're speaking to like nerdy camp. We're telling the whole story.
[15:08] Speaker 1: So I'm in summer engineering camp again, testament to the
[15:12] Speaker 1: nerdy kid, and I'm having a good time and enjoying
[15:14] Speaker 1: my life. Of course, young somebody is a little like
[15:19] Speaker 1: interested in me, so I end up dating somebody. We
[15:24] Speaker 1: get to the graduation ceremony and lo and behold this
[15:27] Speaker 1: girl that I'm dating ends up walking with no other militarium.
[15:34] Speaker 5: She was like my best friend were really cool?
[15:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was like, man, I me and that
[15:37] Speaker 1: girl were like super cool back in the day, like
[15:39] Speaker 1: we had such a good friendship. Like I was like yeah, man,
[15:41] Speaker 1: Like I'll reach out to her later but again still
[15:44] Speaker 1: thinking like I did, Like nothing came of it. She
[15:46] Speaker 1: never like acted like she was interested in me, so
[15:48] Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, we're just friends, we'll talk whatever.
[15:50] Speaker 3: And of course, like that's how that kind of proceeded.
[15:54] Speaker 1: Time passed, no longer with that girl and from us
[15:58] Speaker 1: just still being friends on social media and stuff like that.
[16:01] Speaker 1: I end up dating different people and you got to
[16:04] Speaker 1: see the guy, yeah, as did she.
[16:06] Speaker 3: She wasn't just waiting on me.
[16:08] Speaker 1: And after you start seeing like the character of some
[16:10] Speaker 1: people and just kind of like how some people operate
[16:12] Speaker 1: through life. I was like, I feel like there was
[16:15] Speaker 1: something back there, Like I'm like, maybe I'm tripping you
[16:17] Speaker 1: start replaying all these memories and things like was that crazy?
[16:20] Speaker 4: Was I not?
[16:20] Speaker 1: So I end up texting him and I was like, hey,
[16:24] Speaker 1: like never crossed that boundary before, but like I've liked you,
[16:28] Speaker 1: and like I felt like there might have been.
[16:30] Speaker 3: Something there, But.
[16:32] Speaker 1: I'm interested in getting to know you if you're interested
[16:34] Speaker 1: in getting know me. And she told me no, because
[16:37] Speaker 1: she had a boyfriend.
[16:42] Speaker 5: Somebody only boyfriend that you would ever count, well, I
[16:47] Speaker 5: don't count that boy.
[16:48] Speaker 4: Well, so that's what you told me, that boy don't
[16:52] Speaker 4: count you're talking about the woman with the church with us.
[16:54] Speaker 2: At that time.
[16:56] Speaker 5: I don't remember details. You want to let's go, Let's
[16:58] Speaker 5: go with him because I'm not like that. Boy don't
[17:00] Speaker 5: count Okay, okay, yeah, because this boy.
[17:07] Speaker 4: Didn't count, man, and he was in number in Texas
[17:09] Speaker 4: homeboy time about oh yeah he over here were going
[17:14] Speaker 4: to church and all that he was talking so bad
[17:15] Speaker 4: about me. Yeah, I saw it on his Facebook. I'm
[17:20] Speaker 4: in the I'm in the backseat. We over here going
[17:22] Speaker 4: to church and this is I said, Oh, that's all
[17:24] Speaker 4: I love you to see. She ain't gonna be in
[17:27] Speaker 4: a picture a whack dude. And then and then come
[17:30] Speaker 4: find out later wrong in life. I found out that
[17:33] Speaker 4: Tay never was taking the church like that. He walked
[17:37] Speaker 4: himself to church. Yeah, so think about the memory that
[17:40] Speaker 4: I have. The first memory I talked about was you
[17:43] Speaker 4: having a quote unquote boyfriend which don't count.
[17:46] Speaker 2: And this guy is upset that I invited him to
[17:50] Speaker 2: church with you.
[17:52] Speaker 4: And then later on I found out that Tay found
[17:55] Speaker 4: out it was a church down the street and walked
[17:57] Speaker 4: himself to church.
[17:59] Speaker 2: You'll just sit sitting there.
[18:01] Speaker 5: Yeah, I hate her, boy, That's why I was dating
[18:05] Speaker 5: at the time, but I'm not are So I was like, well,
[18:07] Speaker 5: I have a boyfriend.
[18:08] Speaker 1: You know.
[18:08] Speaker 5: I respected that, Like what did you say? What was
[18:11] Speaker 5: your follow up text? Because that's the funny part. Yeah,
[18:14] Speaker 5: she's a hunky.
[18:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, she definitely was. It's a little bit. It's just
[18:18] Speaker 3: the tiniest corner left her past.
[18:21] Speaker 5: She's gonna be wasted.
[18:23] Speaker 2: Look, she's gone, she's gonna go sleep having that.
[18:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, she probably will end up sleep simming but good.
[18:33] Speaker 2: So Yeah.
[18:33] Speaker 1: I ended up texting her back after she said that,
[18:35] Speaker 1: and I was like, cool, let me know when y'all
[18:36] Speaker 1: break up.
[18:39] Speaker 2: Well played.
[18:40] Speaker 5: And I was offended because you know, you're not thinking
[18:42] Speaker 5: date somebody to break up. I wasn't thinking this is
[18:44] Speaker 5: my husband. But I was just like cocky.
[18:48] Speaker 3: We broke up.
[18:49] Speaker 5: I said, you know what text tape?
[18:53] Speaker 2: How long was you with him? I don't know, you
[18:56] Speaker 2: don't remember.
[18:56] Speaker 4: It had to be like that.
[18:58] Speaker 5: I don't now, I really don't know.
[19:01] Speaker 2: Don't count. Yeah, have any relationships.
[19:03] Speaker 5: I'd be like, that is a kid, you don't talk
[19:06] Speaker 5: and day you jumped right into like boyfriend and girlfriend, yeah.
[19:09] Speaker 2: And then lasts for thirty five hours.
[19:11] Speaker 5: Yeah, And you'd be like, oh no, you'd be sad
[19:13] Speaker 5: and you move on.
[19:16] Speaker 2: When you break up it. Yep, he prophesied, yep. And
[19:20] Speaker 2: then what happened? So you called him?
[19:21] Speaker 5: I texted him and I was like, hey, I'm single,
[19:24] Speaker 5: and then we talked on the phone the whole entire night.
[19:26] Speaker 1: Yes, literally all night like, and that's what the thing was.
[19:31] Speaker 1: I text you back and he was like, I don't
[19:32] Speaker 1: know why you text me.
[19:33] Speaker 3: Just call me.
[19:33] Speaker 5: I'm on the phone first. Me too, Yeah, me too.
[19:37] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[19:38] Speaker 1: So that's how that happened. And we would talk all
[19:40] Speaker 1: the time, get to know each other better, and that's
[19:43] Speaker 1: how that happened.
[19:43] Speaker 2: And then so, y'all senior his senior year.
[19:45] Speaker 4: I remember there's a picture on social media that went
[19:48] Speaker 4: viral with me standing behind you. You had went and
[19:51] Speaker 4: brought her a gift, and I was looking at you
[19:54] Speaker 4: like being mugging you, y'all sitting in the picture. You
[19:57] Speaker 4: had called because typically I would pick up the t
[20:00] Speaker 4: area after school and we'll head like resioning schools all
[20:04] Speaker 4: with I'm picking up and you called an asked.
[20:08] Speaker 2: Can I wait a little? First of all, could you
[20:10] Speaker 2: see her? And would it be.
[20:13] Speaker 4: Though it may be a little inconvenient for me to wait,
[20:16] Speaker 4: could I allow y'all to spend some time together while
[20:19] Speaker 4: you brought it that gift, you remember that, and what
[20:22] Speaker 4: was that conversation?
[20:23] Speaker 3: Like, so you mean like between us from okay, gotcha?
[20:29] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[20:29] Speaker 1: I think for me, I try to put myself in
[20:33] Speaker 1: the other person's shoes, and I'm imagining, like all right,
[20:36] Speaker 1: I'm reaching out, I'm trying to see somebody's daughter. I'm
[20:39] Speaker 1: like asking to bring her stuff because I can't even
[20:42] Speaker 1: imagine like a little boy trying to give her a necklace,
[20:43] Speaker 1: like it's going right back, like like a little bracelet.
[20:46] Speaker 3: It's going right back, like whoever gave it to you,
[20:48] Speaker 3: It's going back.
[20:49] Speaker 2: There's a wasting investment.
[20:50] Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean like you don't ever know, like
[20:52] Speaker 3: what's to somebody appropriate.
[20:53] Speaker 1: I know, like you're staying some like dating in general,
[20:56] Speaker 1: like boyfriends in general and all that stuff.
[20:57] Speaker 3: So I can expect the stance that you took.
[21:01] Speaker 1: So I think it's really easy to be like all right,
[21:04] Speaker 1: it's a clear line of he wants to protect his
[21:07] Speaker 1: daughter if I want to pursue her, like, how do
[21:12] Speaker 1: I operate in a safe space to not not be
[21:16] Speaker 1: there for her, not like follow like what you are
[21:19] Speaker 1: expecting her dating life to look like. So that's where
[21:22] Speaker 1: that really came from. I was like, I can't just
[21:24] Speaker 1: like imagine me just pop it up and like I
[21:26] Speaker 1: got gifts, I got that. You're like, I'm trying to go.
[21:27] Speaker 1: I got stuff to do, I got places to be. Yeah,
[21:31] Speaker 1: I mean, like you never just want to like throw
[21:33] Speaker 1: yourself into somebody else's life when they are the parents.
[21:36] Speaker 1: They're the ones making like the the ultimate decisions of
[21:38] Speaker 1: what like they want for their children, and especially hopefully
[21:42] Speaker 1: you have power over influencing who they date. So I'm like,
[21:47] Speaker 1: clearly this man loves his daughter, he wants the best
[21:50] Speaker 1: for her. I'm very interested in her. I want what's
[21:53] Speaker 1: best for her. I'm gonna find a way to find
[21:55] Speaker 1: some middle ground to make sure that I'm like respecting
[21:57] Speaker 1: everybody's boundary.
[21:58] Speaker 2: You thought that as a senior in high schoo I did.
[22:01] Speaker 3: I did, so was it?
[22:02] Speaker 6: So?
[22:03] Speaker 4: What did you know about me at that time? If
[22:05] Speaker 4: you can recall, what did you know about me involved
[22:09] Speaker 4: in her life or not involved in her life? What
[22:11] Speaker 4: did you just know about me period that made you
[22:15] Speaker 4: have that level of respect to even want to call me?
[22:18] Speaker 1: I would say, honestly, not really anything. I think we've
[22:22] Speaker 1: had very little conversations or like again through me talking
[22:26] Speaker 1: to her, maybe you have some input or things that
[22:28] Speaker 1: you would say that I think initially set the tone
[22:31] Speaker 1: without us having to have like a just flat out,
[22:33] Speaker 1: like lay everything on the table type of conversation. I
[22:35] Speaker 1: think the way you like carry yourself the representation of
[22:39] Speaker 1: like who your daughter is.
[22:40] Speaker 2: Like.
[22:40] Speaker 1: I think depending on her personality and the things that
[22:44] Speaker 1: she involved herself with, you definitely get a feel for
[22:47] Speaker 1: like what that family's like. And if she wasn't who
[22:49] Speaker 1: she was and raised the way that she was raised,
[22:51] Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been interested in the first place.
[22:53] Speaker 2: Go deep.
[22:54] Speaker 1: But I think that really like set the foundation for
[22:58] Speaker 1: me to understand like who I was dealing with and
[23:00] Speaker 1: what type of family I was dealing with.
[23:02] Speaker 6: So when you met her, what values were? What values
[23:04] Speaker 6: are attached to what you just said?
[23:07] Speaker 1: I would say self respect first, Like I don't think
[23:09] Speaker 1: she's ever done anything that I've seen that she like
[23:14] Speaker 1: boy crazy or like has a certain rapper reputation amongst
[23:18] Speaker 1: like any group of boys. I think that's like again first,
[23:23] Speaker 1: because it's very easy to if those values aren't instilled
[23:25] Speaker 1: in you at home, kind of operate differently, And it's
[23:28] Speaker 1: not hard for reputations to move around, especially when you kids,
[23:30] Speaker 1: like one person blink three times in one space.
[23:33] Speaker 3: Everybody in the whole room knowing, and now everybody in
[23:36] Speaker 3: and like I got.
[23:37] Speaker 1: Kids at other school. You heard about that kids, so
[23:41] Speaker 1: like you can't keep anything under wrap. So I just
[23:43] Speaker 1: think her reputation and how she carried herself or self respect.
[23:48] Speaker 1: I think she was well spoken from a point of
[23:51] Speaker 1: like respecting other people. Like again, she was a good
[23:54] Speaker 1: a good person and a good friend to have, even
[23:56] Speaker 1: in the seventh grade. So I think talking to her
[23:59] Speaker 1: more and more are going into our junior and senior year,
[24:02] Speaker 1: Like that was just like a continuation.
[24:04] Speaker 4: How important was it, Lataria for me to approve of
[24:09] Speaker 4: the guy that you dated?
[24:11] Speaker 5: It was the importance like it was. It wasn't I
[24:14] Speaker 5: lived with you, So how how am I going to
[24:17] Speaker 5: want to go on a day with the guy that
[24:19] Speaker 5: you don't know? Nor like that wasn't an option.
[24:22] Speaker 4: Well, you could be rebellious. You'd be like, I don't
[24:24] Speaker 4: care what you say. I like them and I don't care,
[24:26] Speaker 4: and I'm running away from home.
[24:27] Speaker 2: You see that a lot. You see girls and be
[24:29] Speaker 2: like I don't care what you say.
[24:30] Speaker 4: I'm running away from home, so that she runs out
[24:32] Speaker 4: runs away from home with Johnny.
[24:34] Speaker 5: I guess it was never that deep for me. Why
[24:36] Speaker 5: because at that point, I'm choosing a little boy over
[24:38] Speaker 5: my dad. So that's weird. Like I'm saying, Oh, Dad,
[24:41] Speaker 5: I'm not gonna be with this boy who can't take
[24:43] Speaker 5: care of me. But does that makes sense?
[24:47] Speaker 4: Uh?
[24:47] Speaker 6: So it wasn't.
[24:48] Speaker 5: It wasn't like a conscious decision. I disrespected you and
[24:51] Speaker 5: I loved you, so I want you to you know,
[24:53] Speaker 5: we're we're friends, like you're my dad, but you're my
[24:55] Speaker 5: friend too. Like you taught me about dating and love
[24:59] Speaker 5: boys say this, like like you taught me all these
[25:01] Speaker 5: things to look out for. So it was almost like
[25:05] Speaker 5: as if I was talking to my friend and wanted
[25:07] Speaker 5: my friend to like my boyfriend. It felt very similar
[25:10] Speaker 5: to that.
[25:10] Speaker 2: I So why didn't feel like a daddy that was
[25:12] Speaker 2: just hating? Like why couldn't it?
[25:13] Speaker 4: That felt like because there's an extreme, there's a there's
[25:16] Speaker 4: an ideology where you go, you, oh, you don't know,
[25:19] Speaker 4: I know more than you, and you're not gonna like
[25:23] Speaker 4: any boy, because that's what that's you know, that's the
[25:25] Speaker 4: rhetoric of saying nobody's gonna be good enough for me.
[25:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, so I don't expect you to like anybody.
[25:31] Speaker 4: I know.
[25:32] Speaker 5: The thing is you were friends, like not friends, but
[25:34] Speaker 5: like when I would bring my friends around, you got
[25:36] Speaker 5: along with them. There was different. You mentored people, You
[25:39] Speaker 5: mentored people's sons. You never were mean or like judgmental
[25:44] Speaker 5: or stand offish to anybody. So it really wasn't, like
[25:48] Speaker 5: I said, the thought never popped into my head for
[25:49] Speaker 5: me to be thinking that you were jealous or doing
[25:52] Speaker 5: too much hate knowing Yeah, I was like, this is
[25:54] Speaker 5: my dad. My dad not gonna let me be waiting. No,
[25:56] Speaker 5: just anybody, So like I just respected it.
[25:58] Speaker 2: What did you like about Tay?
[26:02] Speaker 5: You know when you mentioned that he was like the
[26:04] Speaker 5: like the stereotypical I guess, nice guy. He was my
[26:07] Speaker 5: first nice guy. He was like the first guy I
[26:09] Speaker 5: didn't have to like try to impress or chase to
[26:12] Speaker 5: like me or like. He just liked me, and I
[26:14] Speaker 5: just liked him and I can be myself around him.
[26:17] Speaker 5: I could just talk to him all the time. I
[26:19] Speaker 5: wasn't too pushy, I wasn't overbearing. I wasn't what's the
[26:23] Speaker 5: word clingy like I just could just be his friend
[26:28] Speaker 5: and it was just natural, which.
[26:29] Speaker 4: Is key and I'm glad you said that, is that
[26:31] Speaker 4: you had a propensity for toxicity. You were attracted to
[26:36] Speaker 4: the worst by.
[26:37] Speaker 5: Even as a junior in high school. That's crazy.
[26:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was like, why do you like the
[26:41] Speaker 2: worst the worst woman?
[26:42] Speaker 5: Yeah?
[26:43] Speaker 2: And where do you think that comes from?
[26:48] Speaker 5: I don't know. I'm not going to pretend like I know.
[26:50] Speaker 5: I don't know. I just think it's like, that's your environment,
[26:53] Speaker 5: that's the boys that are out there. So you're like, well,
[26:55] Speaker 5: so and so likes him, so he must be a catch.
[26:57] Speaker 5: I guess, so he it's cute. And then you start
[27:01] Speaker 5: thinking that dating or people having these tending today something
[27:04] Speaker 5: very petty is I remember like having boys that I
[27:07] Speaker 5: liked in high school and they would go to parties
[27:09] Speaker 5: and they would like dance for girls, like torking with them.
[27:12] Speaker 5: And I used to be so upset about that because
[27:14] Speaker 5: I'm like, why would you want to if you're in
[27:16] Speaker 5: a relationship, why would you want to do that? And
[27:18] Speaker 5: then I had boys in my ear and girls in
[27:20] Speaker 5: my ear saying, cause that's not cheating, that's normal. So
[27:23] Speaker 5: then I said, Okay, I guess that's normal. I guess
[27:25] Speaker 5: my standards are just weird. And I don't well, I
[27:27] Speaker 5: don't want to like not be liked because like I'm
[27:30] Speaker 5: doing too much. So let me just accept that you
[27:32] Speaker 5: go to parties and you dance on people. That's just
[27:34] Speaker 5: the reality of what it is. But then now I
[27:36] Speaker 5: started dating day and I was going to parties and
[27:38] Speaker 5: he was like, you on to parties? Like, first of all,
[27:40] Speaker 5: he was he was turned off, like why are you
[27:42] Speaker 5: going to parties to do what? Like people go to
[27:45] Speaker 5: parties to meet people and today and dance. You have
[27:48] Speaker 5: a boyfriend, why are you doing that? But he didn't
[27:50] Speaker 5: tell me I couldn't go, obviously, he came seventh grade.
[27:53] Speaker 5: He just said okay, and I would invite him. He'd
[27:56] Speaker 5: be like, I'm not going.
[27:58] Speaker 3: So were you did?
[27:59] Speaker 2: You can see yourself Christian back then?
[28:01] Speaker 3: Oh absolutely?
[28:02] Speaker 2: And so you had the standard where you just didn't
[28:04] Speaker 2: believe in going to parties like that.
[28:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it bleeds into both.
[28:08] Speaker 1: I think it at my core comes from like morality
[28:10] Speaker 1: and that comes from my Christian background, so hand in hand,
[28:15] Speaker 1: but it.
[28:18] Speaker 5: Party.
[28:19] Speaker 6: I'm aware, I'm aware standing.
[28:26] Speaker 5: That hard walk for God. I went to a few
[28:30] Speaker 5: parties myself.
[28:33] Speaker 3: Yes, there's nothing wrong with whatever you want to do.
[28:35] Speaker 3: I'm just saying for me when I'm.
[28:39] Speaker 1: In my house, that's in my house, just my standards
[28:42] Speaker 1: for myself. And I think, like, I know what the
[28:45] Speaker 1: environment is, I know what you're putting yourself around. People
[28:47] Speaker 1: like you think you're want to want to.
[28:49] Speaker 3: Pull you here.
[28:50] Speaker 5: People are also shooting back.
[28:51] Speaker 4: Then, Yeah, and so my whole philosophy was like, hey, before,
[28:58] Speaker 4: I you know, rededicated my life Christ when I was
[29:01] Speaker 4: eighteen years old, when I was you're about to come
[29:04] Speaker 4: into this world. So those that don't know, Letteria was
[29:11] Speaker 4: born my senior year of high school, two weeks before
[29:13] Speaker 4: I walked across the stage. She came to my graduation
[29:16] Speaker 4: as a baby, and that changed the trajector of my life.
[29:21] Speaker 2: That December the twenty sixth, I gave my life to
[29:26] Speaker 2: Christ and never looked back.
[29:29] Speaker 4: No.
[29:30] Speaker 2: Twenty second, December twenty second, I gave my life to
[29:32] Speaker 2: Christ and never looked back. And I walked down the
[29:36] Speaker 2: aisle with her in my arms.
[29:38] Speaker 4: And so at eighteen, I didn't believe in going to parties.
[29:41] Speaker 4: From that point on, I was just like Nope, Because
[29:44] Speaker 4: the night before I went to church.
[29:46] Speaker 2: I was in this club.
[29:48] Speaker 4: Those that live in Dallas, y'all remember this club called Lakeside,
[29:51] Speaker 4: And so I was in Lakeside and.
[29:52] Speaker 2: Then the music is going on.
[29:54] Speaker 4: You heard Luke song, It's your Birthday, It's your Birthday,
[29:57] Speaker 4: popped that Kouchie Pop, that Kouchi Baby, all this crazy music,
[30:01] Speaker 4: these words, and I remember listening and I had this
[30:04] Speaker 4: standard to where if I met a girl at a club,
[30:07] Speaker 4: I would never meet a girl. I want to ask
[30:09] Speaker 4: her phone number. Kept saying, I don't want no woman.
[30:11] Speaker 4: If I meet at a club, and then I would
[30:14] Speaker 4: dance with you because I love to dance. But I'm
[30:16] Speaker 4: not gonna get your phone number. I'm not gonna go
[30:17] Speaker 4: home with you.
[30:18] Speaker 2: That's just it. And I'm gonna leave you where I
[30:19] Speaker 2: met you.
[30:20] Speaker 4: But that night, I was sitting in that environment and
[30:23] Speaker 4: I just saw spirits floating over people's heads. I just
[30:26] Speaker 4: started seeing spirits. People are drinking, and I just kept
[30:28] Speaker 4: seeing these spirits. I said, what in the world is this?
[30:31] Speaker 4: My homeboy, Monterrey Bible shout out to Mantre Bible. He
[30:33] Speaker 4: had invited me to come to church the next day.
[30:35] Speaker 4: He said, I want you to come to church. I said,
[30:37] Speaker 4: we I'm gonna go to this club first and then
[30:40] Speaker 4: and then if I get up early in the morning,
[30:42] Speaker 4: I'll go to church with you. He's like, man, just please,
[30:44] Speaker 4: and I was like, I can't make you no promises.
[30:46] Speaker 4: And so I saw these spirits just floating over people's
[30:49] Speaker 4: head and I was like, what in the world is this?
[30:51] Speaker 4: And I'm watching people and everything start moving slow. I
[30:54] Speaker 4: just kept hearing the music like and it just sounded
[30:59] Speaker 4: like that, and I was around. I said, what in
[31:01] Speaker 4: the world, And of course I didn't drink. I never
[31:03] Speaker 4: drank a day of my life. So I'm watching this
[31:05] Speaker 4: and I'm going, what is God trying to show me?
[31:08] Speaker 4: And God said, look at this environment, look at the
[31:11] Speaker 4: spiritual warfare that's going on. And I was just looking around.
[31:14] Speaker 4: I was listening to the music. And then people will
[31:16] Speaker 4: say I don't listen to the words to the music.
[31:18] Speaker 4: I just listened to the beat, and I was like, no,
[31:20] Speaker 4: I'm really big on words. So I would listened to
[31:22] Speaker 4: the words and they'll be like all the ages come
[31:25] Speaker 4: to danth and they run out there. And I was like,
[31:27] Speaker 4: if I call this woman that as she wants, she
[31:30] Speaker 4: will slap me. But if the music calls her that
[31:32] Speaker 4: she runs out and dances to it. I said, this
[31:34] Speaker 4: is weird. So I just started being very, very overly
[31:38] Speaker 4: analytical about everything that was going on, just watching the
[31:41] Speaker 4: spiritual ramifications of everything.
[31:42] Speaker 2: And then you know the girl sitting up there, she's
[31:45] Speaker 2: dancing dudes up by.
[31:47] Speaker 4: I said that if the music wasn't playing, and I
[31:49] Speaker 4: walked up to a girl on the street and put
[31:51] Speaker 4: my penis against her buttocks, she gonna slap me and
[31:54] Speaker 4: it's a sexual assault case.
[31:56] Speaker 2: But if music is playing, we can say it's dancing.
[31:59] Speaker 2: It's cool.
[31:59] Speaker 4: And she's like, I don't want you dancing, all right, cool,
[32:01] Speaker 4: but I'll get a chance to get a quick little feel.
[32:03] Speaker 2: Like that if the music is playing. So I was looking.
[32:05] Speaker 4: I was like, wow, this is amazing. How you can
[32:07] Speaker 4: do this in this environment. Outside of this environment, it's
[32:10] Speaker 4: not okay. And I just started watching. And then guy
[32:13] Speaker 4: said I want you to go to church in the morning,
[32:16] Speaker 4: and I was like, all right. Left there called up
[32:20] Speaker 4: Mantrede that early that morning, at seven o'clock in the morning.
[32:23] Speaker 4: I said, you don't have to catch the bus, because
[32:24] Speaker 4: he would catch the bus to go to church. I said,
[32:26] Speaker 4: I'm gonna pick you up, and I'm gonna go to church.
[32:28] Speaker 4: I had Lataria because my mom used to watch all
[32:31] Speaker 4: the time. My mom is right over there, y'all, hopefully
[32:34] Speaker 4: she'll make appearance, but my mom she was at home.
[32:38] Speaker 4: I got Lataria when I came back. I came home
[32:41] Speaker 4: and I went to church. And my life has never
[32:44] Speaker 4: been the same. And so when you see pictures and videos,
[32:49] Speaker 4: we weren't even much videos. I don't know if you
[32:51] Speaker 4: saw the video that I posted last year when I
[32:54] Speaker 4: did or the year before last, Eyebot, But when you
[32:58] Speaker 4: look back at pictures seeing us, how tight and we
[33:00] Speaker 4: will stick as thieves as that when you were that young,
[33:03] Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
[33:04] Speaker 5: I want clear to have that. That's really what I think.
[33:08] Speaker 5: I'm like, I can't wait for her to realize how
[33:11] Speaker 5: cool it is having a dad that loves her. That's
[33:14] Speaker 5: all I think. I talk about that all the time.
[33:16] Speaker 2: She talks about that a lot.
[33:17] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a really important thing for her.
[33:20] Speaker 1: And she says like tons of affirmations, like such a
[33:23] Speaker 1: great dad, like she has such a great dad. Like
[33:27] Speaker 1: so I think she again, she really values like her
[33:29] Speaker 1: having a present father and somebody who's like actively wanting
[33:33] Speaker 1: to be in her life and be there for all
[33:34] Speaker 1: the moments.
[33:35] Speaker 3: So those things are true.
[33:37] Speaker 4: Let me tell you what's so different about what you
[33:40] Speaker 4: are able to do that I didn't and it just
[33:43] Speaker 4: wasn't even meant to be. But you married the mother
[33:47] Speaker 4: of your child, and you married her before she became
[33:50] Speaker 4: the you know, before she became a mother of your child,
[33:54] Speaker 4: and so that's that's so beautiful that you created the standard.
[33:59] Speaker 4: Y'all create the standard together? How important or maybe I
[34:03] Speaker 4: don't know, since I don't know a lot of stuff
[34:04] Speaker 4: about when y'all was dating.
[34:05] Speaker 2: Was y'all ever trying to have kids before y'all got mad?
[34:07] Speaker 5: Absolutely, like a fear like that was like like the
[34:16] Speaker 5: concept of the concept theoretically.
[34:19] Speaker 4: Speaking, theoretically, that's what you was talking about. In case
[34:23] Speaker 4: y'all sat too close and accidentally that.
[34:27] Speaker 3: Makes I was very scarious.
[34:28] Speaker 2: That was very serious. Amen. Amen, that makes a whole
[34:31] Speaker 2: lot of nonsense.
[34:35] Speaker 3: On the record.
[34:36] Speaker 2: On the record, y'all go.
[34:38] Speaker 4: Y'all decided to go off to college together, wau.
[34:41] Speaker 5: We just liked each other. We were like because honestly,
[34:44] Speaker 5: when you think about it, we started dating our junior
[34:46] Speaker 5: summer going to senior year, we just really like got close.
[34:50] Speaker 5: It had just hit a year, and I think in
[34:52] Speaker 5: my head, I was thinking, if we go to separate colleges,
[34:55] Speaker 5: we're not going to survive. And that's not saying I
[34:58] Speaker 5: didn't like him enough for hitting like me enough, but
[35:00] Speaker 5: it's kind of just like real you're just separate. Like
[35:02] Speaker 5: he would have his own life, I would have my
[35:04] Speaker 5: own life, and we would try our best to make
[35:06] Speaker 5: it work, but realistically speaking, it just wasn't gonna work.
[35:09] Speaker 4: And so y'all just decided to go to Texas A
[35:12] Speaker 4: and M in Corporus Christian. We was at a whole
[35:15] Speaker 4: little plottin scheme y'all came up with, because y'all had
[35:18] Speaker 4: to have. Y'all just said, we're gonna go to school
[35:20] Speaker 4: together and then apply together.
[35:21] Speaker 2: Like what was all that about?
[35:22] Speaker 5: We just applied to the same school. Yeah, and then
[35:26] Speaker 5: if we both happened to get into the same school,
[35:30] Speaker 5: then it was like, maybe it's not to be, uh huh,
[35:33] Speaker 5: And it just had it happened, it.
[35:34] Speaker 2: Happened, let's rewind it back. Y'all went to prom together.
[35:38] Speaker 4: We did.
[35:39] Speaker 2: We did. How special was that? That was?
[35:41] Speaker 5: Funking?
[35:42] Speaker 8: No?
[35:43] Speaker 5: No, it was fun. I think the coolest thing about
[35:46] Speaker 5: us having these memories together from high school is it
[35:49] Speaker 5: just creative memories for us to show our children, Like,
[35:51] Speaker 5: look at it, we were a prom together, because not
[35:53] Speaker 5: everybody can do that. So I think those the memories
[35:56] Speaker 5: that we created in that moment. We didn't realize we
[35:58] Speaker 5: were creating memories. We were just living in the moment.
[36:00] Speaker 5: But now looking back at us as seniors, were like,
[36:02] Speaker 5: we were eighteen years old, and we thought we just
[36:05] Speaker 5: were grown and knew this and knew that, and we
[36:07] Speaker 5: didn't know nothing. But now we're learning something.
[36:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, we learned exactly exactly.
[36:12] Speaker 2: Wow, what do y'all think y'all knew back then that
[36:14] Speaker 2: that you come to find out you didn't know.
[36:16] Speaker 5: I really thought that being an adult adult was easy,
[36:19] Speaker 5: like you just go to work and you get married,
[36:21] Speaker 5: have today, Yeah whatever you want to do, easy fun.
[36:25] Speaker 2: It was all about you get to make your own yeah.
[36:26] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, bedtime, they'll see what you want to Yeah,
[36:31] Speaker 1: let's go. It was just simple in the morning, come on, yeah,
[36:35] Speaker 1: let's go.
[36:36] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[36:36] Speaker 4: So, looking back at knowing that y'all went to prom together,
[36:39] Speaker 4: explain what happened at prim what was that create the
[36:42] Speaker 4: scene from your prom.
[36:45] Speaker 5: I feel like I probably have more of a perspective
[36:47] Speaker 5: on that. You definitely that boys just get dressed. Like
[36:50] Speaker 5: for me, I remember him asking me the prom, and
[36:53] Speaker 5: I was very excited. I knew we were going to
[36:54] Speaker 5: prom together. But going back to twenty fourteen, that sounds whatever. Yeah,
[37:00] Speaker 5: twenty fourteen, that's when promposals started. So like he had
[37:04] Speaker 5: to ask me to promise. Because we were together, doesn't
[37:06] Speaker 5: mean we're just automatically going yeah, yeah, you have to
[37:09] Speaker 5: ask me. Yeah. Yeah, No, I get that he needed. Yeah,
[37:17] Speaker 5: I'm gonna just go and if you go, we go.
[37:19] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[37:20] Speaker 5: Yeah, approached me correctly. Yeah, So I remember, I remember
[37:24] Speaker 5: you created a video of it, which is so funny
[37:26] Speaker 5: because I feel like in those moments they just seemed
[37:28] Speaker 5: like something silly your dad wanted to record. But now
[37:31] Speaker 5: I'm like, we have a video of you asking me
[37:33] Speaker 5: to prompt, Like that's really cute. And then so I
[37:36] Speaker 5: remember that day getting dressed. She rented a hotel for
[37:39] Speaker 5: for you know, for me to get dressed in and
[37:41] Speaker 5: then I got a makeup done, I was playing my dress.
[37:43] Speaker 5: I remember you rented a horse drawn carriage. It was
[37:46] Speaker 5: a white horse, and then you had the horse wear
[37:49] Speaker 5: like royal blue whatever horses wear, I guess we wore
[37:53] Speaker 5: royal blue. And then Tay came to the hotel. We
[37:58] Speaker 5: walked downstairs. You had a photographer for their got professional
[38:01] Speaker 5: pictures taking, so that was because not everyone gets that.
[38:05] Speaker 5: And then we went to oh then the oh okay,
[38:08] Speaker 5: so I prom was in downtown and so it was
[38:09] Speaker 5: really cool riding the carriage through the streets of downtown
[38:13] Speaker 5: because everybody's like looking at me, like you look so pretty,
[38:15] Speaker 5: and I'm like waved like a little and then he
[38:18] Speaker 5: was there. It was it was like a fairy tale,
[38:20] Speaker 5: It really was. It was just like it was nice.
[38:22] Speaker 4: Did you feel like I was too strict because I
[38:23] Speaker 4: didn't let you hang out promising?
[38:26] Speaker 5: Yes, But now that I'm an adult, not at all
[38:29] Speaker 5: too strict, Like Claire's not going to be home at
[38:31] Speaker 5: eleven maybe eleven thirty, maybe eleven thirty, give me.
[38:37] Speaker 2: Because there's a dairy experience the same thing, just if
[38:40] Speaker 2: you about them up.
[38:41] Speaker 5: But he had to hang out a little bit.
[38:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, but he came home at twelve twelve o'clock.
[38:45] Speaker 4: He did.
[38:46] Speaker 2: Twelve o'clock, he did, but.
[38:49] Speaker 6: It's curfew, like you know, well, he wasn't driving, but
[38:52] Speaker 6: technically he's supposed.
[38:53] Speaker 2: To be home by twelve by state.
[38:56] Speaker 4: Yeah, guidelines, But you know, back then, the same thing,
[39:00] Speaker 4: but those parents didn't care.
[39:02] Speaker 5: Hotels, they were going to party, they were having all
[39:06] Speaker 5: kinds of stuff. But I was so jealous. I was like,
[39:08] Speaker 5: I want to go to the party, but my dad
[39:10] Speaker 5: won't let me. And I was the only person of
[39:12] Speaker 5: my friends whose parents wouldn't let them do the after
[39:15] Speaker 5: prom activities because the prom is just kind of like
[39:18] Speaker 5: you get cute and class and take pictures. But the
[39:20] Speaker 5: real turn up was after prom. I hear.
[39:22] Speaker 2: That's what I heard, and.
[39:24] Speaker 4: That's why I want the darn to hear that La
[39:25] Speaker 4: Darren shout out to the Darren. He's doing the switch
[39:27] Speaker 4: in the day. But he experienced the same thing where
[39:31] Speaker 4: he was just like, man, I want to dang, the
[39:34] Speaker 4: friends are.
[39:35] Speaker 6: Going here or whatever, and but then after the fact
[39:38] Speaker 6: he was like the party wasn't apparently even that.
[39:40] Speaker 5: It's never so I was like, yeah, we just sat
[39:43] Speaker 5: there and chilled and so and so was lad in
[39:45] Speaker 5: the corner. It's never like how they hype it up
[39:47] Speaker 5: to be.
[39:47] Speaker 4: Yeah, you just want to be there just because so
[39:50] Speaker 4: tell you did you feel a certain way, Well, you're
[39:52] Speaker 4: gonna go to party, so.
[39:53] Speaker 3: You so I wouldn't even trip it on that.
[39:55] Speaker 1: So with that whole time based thing, I think sometimes
[39:58] Speaker 1: it feels like the moment can get cut because you're
[40:00] Speaker 1: enjoying the day. Everything is like it's so much like
[40:02] Speaker 1: anticipation leading up to the event.
[40:04] Speaker 4: And he wasn't for me to cut off that moment
[40:09] Speaker 4: for sure, good job, I want the moment to get
[40:15] Speaker 4: too out of control.
[40:20] Speaker 3: What great job?
[40:22] Speaker 2: Se If you keep that same energy with Claire.
[40:24] Speaker 5: Wow, No, absolutely, I don't even worry about you.
[40:26] Speaker 3: Don't even have to project into the future. I can
[40:28] Speaker 3: tell you today.
[40:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, come back at three in the morning.
[40:33] Speaker 5: No, no, let go Claire. You'll be home by eleven.
[40:40] Speaker 3: I'll be right outside.
[40:45] Speaker 4: But isn't that crazy though? As teenagers you feel like
[40:48] Speaker 4: your parents have been extremely strict, but they're being protective
[40:52] Speaker 4: and they're using wisdom at the end of the day,
[40:55] Speaker 4: because I've heard so many bad situations that happened after
[40:58] Speaker 4: prom not just pregnant to see, but people getting the
[41:01] Speaker 4: car accidents, they're dying. It's people, like I said, somebody
[41:04] Speaker 4: come to party, shoot it up. It's all kind of
[41:06] Speaker 4: crazy stuff. That's like, it's just not necessary for one
[41:09] Speaker 4: night and it's.
[41:11] Speaker 5: Just prom and people feel grown too, yeah, because that's the.
[41:14] Speaker 4: First time they ever feel grown because they like, I'm
[41:17] Speaker 4: dressed up, this is my senior year, I'm graduating. In
[41:21] Speaker 4: the teenager's mind, I am grown. And my mom never
[41:24] Speaker 4: gave me a curfew. She never gave me a curfew.
[41:27] Speaker 2: To look at it? Did you ever give me a curfew? Mama? Really?
[41:31] Speaker 5: So he can be out to two three?
[41:33] Speaker 2: I would come home at two o'clock in the morning,
[41:35] Speaker 2: come home when.
[41:35] Speaker 5: I feel like we have a lot of like you know, Leeway,
[41:39] Speaker 5: look at you whole kid right now, right.
[41:48] Speaker 8: He was.
[41:49] Speaker 4: But then I rained myself in my senior year and
[41:52] Speaker 4: so prom I went out and came right back home
[41:55] Speaker 4: because I was just like, it's not it's not necessary.
[41:57] Speaker 4: But then like on like what I did from Thursday
[42:01] Speaker 4: to Sundays, I would club. This is my senior Towards
[42:05] Speaker 4: the end of my senior year, going in the summer,
[42:07] Speaker 4: I would just be club and it got so boring.
[42:10] Speaker 4: That's the reason why I don't even go to clubs
[42:12] Speaker 4: now or period.
[42:13] Speaker 2: It's like, what is that?
[42:14] Speaker 4: But I did all of that through eighteen all the
[42:17] Speaker 4: way to yeah, eighteen that December, I was still eighteen,
[42:21] Speaker 4: and I was like, this is this is this is crazy.
[42:23] Speaker 4: So I got all out of my system, as they say,
[42:26] Speaker 4: so it wasn't attractive to me. So then I also said,
[42:29] Speaker 4: you know what, I want to teach my daughter what
[42:31] Speaker 4: healthy boundaries look like.
[42:34] Speaker 2: And I wasn't.
[42:34] Speaker 4: Even though you talk about how close friends we were
[42:38] Speaker 4: or are, which is true, I still never want to
[42:41] Speaker 4: be more of a friend.
[42:42] Speaker 2: Than a father too.
[42:42] Speaker 5: Oh never.
[42:43] Speaker 4: Yeah, I was like, no, we're gonna be friends, We're
[42:45] Speaker 4: gonna be cool. You can talk to me about You just.
[42:47] Speaker 5: Meant like it's an open door policy. You can tell
[42:49] Speaker 5: me whatever you know. But like, I'm your dad, Did you.
[42:52] Speaker 2: Feel like that you could tell me anything?
[42:54] Speaker 5: I did? For sure?
[42:55] Speaker 2: We had some interesting conversations.
[42:57] Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, you think we had conversations that weren't typical
[43:01] Speaker 4: of a father and daughter to talk about.
[43:03] Speaker 5: Maybe, but I feel like they should be talked about
[43:05] Speaker 5: because I, for example, I want to be Claire's first
[43:09] Speaker 5: like example or perspective on a lot of things in
[43:12] Speaker 5: her life. So I mean, I don't want her to'll
[43:15] Speaker 5: be learning certain things from her friends who are just
[43:18] Speaker 5: as naive as she is.
[43:21] Speaker 4: How important was it that your friends would call me
[43:24] Speaker 4: an ask for advice?
[43:26] Speaker 5: Number One, It made me realize how important and like
[43:29] Speaker 5: lucky I was to have a father, not even if
[43:32] Speaker 5: I'm gonna say a father figure, but a father because
[43:35] Speaker 5: they didn't have that. So it made me think, like,
[43:38] Speaker 5: this is an important thing, like because you never were
[43:42] Speaker 5: not in my life, you know, so for me, your
[43:45] Speaker 5: presence of my life was normal. So to see my
[43:47] Speaker 5: friends use you as like a second parent in a way,
[43:52] Speaker 5: like a person to seek advice from, it was kind
[43:54] Speaker 5: of cool. Sometimes it would annoy.
[43:57] Speaker 2: Me though, but it was cool because school and you
[44:00] Speaker 2: had a whole problem.
[44:01] Speaker 5: Started running up to you and I'm like, this is
[44:04] Speaker 5: my dad, Yeah, chill out.
[44:08] Speaker 4: You got mad one day I went to the school.
[44:10] Speaker 4: And every time I would go to the school, they
[44:11] Speaker 4: would be like dad, Yes, that's.
[44:14] Speaker 5: What I'm getting mad. Why would you say dad? Everybody
[44:17] Speaker 5: looking like so, who daddy?
[44:18] Speaker 4: Is that my dad? Yeah?
[44:22] Speaker 5: That's crazy.
[44:26] Speaker 2: It was a white boys and girls.
[44:29] Speaker 4: They just all run to me and say dad, and
[44:31] Speaker 4: they will run up and bum rushed me and hug me.
[44:33] Speaker 4: Lataria got mad one day she went and started peeling
[44:36] Speaker 4: the kids off that's my dad.
[44:38] Speaker 2: She started.
[44:38] Speaker 4: We're talking about in high school. We're talking like juniors
[44:41] Speaker 4: over it. Junior year in high school, she started grabbing
[44:44] Speaker 4: kids and pushing them off, pushing them, I said later she.
[44:47] Speaker 2: Said, that's my dad, and they're gonna hug me like
[44:50] Speaker 2: she ain't seen me because.
[44:50] Speaker 5: They were run up first. I'm like, what were you
[44:53] Speaker 5: calling emotionally in that moment. Jealous? Yeah, but I didn't
[44:56] Speaker 5: even know why it was jealous because I'm like, I
[44:59] Speaker 5: get to see him every day. But I'm like, no,
[45:01] Speaker 5: that's I think the word dad is what got to me.
[45:03] Speaker 5: I was like, no, that it's my dad. I don't
[45:07] Speaker 5: know what you're gonna call him, but dad is reserved
[45:09] Speaker 5: for me.
[45:10] Speaker 4: What conversation that Kaylyn had with you, that that brought
[45:12] Speaker 4: you to tears and brought in perspective, remember that.
[45:14] Speaker 5: I do like he didn't. His dad wasn't very close
[45:17] Speaker 5: in his life. So he just said, like, seeing you
[45:21] Speaker 5: in my life kind of like gave him hope and away,
[45:24] Speaker 5: or it gave perspective of like how different life could
[45:27] Speaker 5: be if you do have a father in your life.
[45:28] Speaker 5: So when I got that perspective, not gonna lie being immature,
[45:32] Speaker 5: it was like, I was still kind of irritated because
[45:35] Speaker 5: I'm a kid too, you know, it's hard to turn
[45:38] Speaker 5: those emotions off, and said, Okay, I'm fine now. But
[45:40] Speaker 5: it did give me perspective to where I was like, okay,
[45:42] Speaker 5: just be patient, be gentle.
[45:44] Speaker 4: She came home that day she was like, Kaylen was
[45:47] Speaker 4: crying in class and was saying that he wished he
[45:49] Speaker 4: had a father like that and all that, and she said,
[45:52] Speaker 4: I'm being a brat.
[45:53] Speaker 5: Yeah, she said, as I was a lot of times
[45:55] Speaker 5: when I was that age, so.
[45:58] Speaker 3: You can see that for sure.
[46:00] Speaker 5: Absolutely all the ways I just was a brat like
[46:06] Speaker 5: and I wasn't like a brat in like a I
[46:09] Speaker 5: wanted everything my way kind of thing. It was more
[46:12] Speaker 5: so when I didn't get something that I thought that
[46:14] Speaker 5: I deserved, I was like, I would take offense to it.
[46:18] Speaker 5: But I think it was because you just would just
[46:19] Speaker 5: give me everything I want to be honest. So when
[46:22] Speaker 5: you would set the boundary like no, you're in trouble,
[46:24] Speaker 5: I'm like, he's for real, what do you mean?
[46:27] Speaker 6: Yeah?
[46:27] Speaker 5: And it really hit my senior year, so he didn't.
[46:29] Speaker 5: So you didn't get in trouble much. I did, but
[46:33] Speaker 5: his his punishments were really different. The way my dad
[46:36] Speaker 5: would punish me is he would talk to me for
[46:39] Speaker 5: like a long time and make me explain. So, why
[46:42] Speaker 5: do you make a decision? You know, I want you
[46:44] Speaker 5: to take me step by step how what brought you
[46:47] Speaker 5: to that point? And so the reason he's laughing, why
[46:51] Speaker 5: are you laughing.
[46:56] Speaker 6: Because because we just had this conversation with Ladarian and
[47:00] Speaker 6: I said, do you ever give consequences?
[47:03] Speaker 4: And I.
[47:05] Speaker 5: Said, what are the consequences? And he said, well, I've
[47:09] Speaker 5: never thought about that.
[47:11] Speaker 6: I said, because in life, there are consequences for everything
[47:15] Speaker 6: you do when you become an adult, Right you walk
[47:17] Speaker 6: out here, you break the law, there's a consequence. Right
[47:20] Speaker 6: You you go to college, you don't submit your papers,
[47:24] Speaker 6: there's a consequence. You don't go to class, there's a consequence.
[47:27] Speaker 6: You run a red light, there's a consequence. So I
[47:29] Speaker 6: was like, what are the consequences here? And so I'm
[47:34] Speaker 6: really glad to hear this from you.
[47:39] Speaker 5: No, it's good. It's good because he's so good but
[47:43] Speaker 5: he loves to have a conversation.
[47:44] Speaker 6: But we've been talking a lot about consequences and how
[47:48] Speaker 6: they don't have to be you know, the harshest of
[47:50] Speaker 6: the heart.
[47:51] Speaker 5: But what are they because it has to be something.
[47:53] Speaker 6: Yeah, just for learning in the future, right, Like when
[47:56] Speaker 6: we put a consequence in place, it discourages fully that behavior.
[48:01] Speaker 5: And gieshu we unpactic.
[48:02] Speaker 2: Then, so you said I didn't give Do you think
[48:05] Speaker 2: I gave consequences or not?
[48:07] Speaker 4: Because you said, all I do was have you break
[48:10] Speaker 4: down and rethink how you did it, well, how you are,
[48:14] Speaker 4: how your rose to the decision that you made. What
[48:17] Speaker 4: would have been different if should I have did that
[48:20] Speaker 4: and then gave your consequence or just do like I
[48:24] Speaker 4: think the congressparent did and just give your consequence.
[48:27] Speaker 5: I think the conversation aspect was helpful because it really
[48:30] Speaker 5: made me think, like, well, why did I do that?
[48:32] Speaker 5: Gain that was dumb, So it made me have to
[48:34] Speaker 5: really rethink, like why did I make that decision? But
[48:37] Speaker 5: you didn't really give me any consequences, like you didn't
[48:39] Speaker 5: take my phone or you didn't take TV. I could
[48:43] Speaker 5: still kind of go places.
[48:46] Speaker 3: You not say this after they can no longer get
[48:48] Speaker 3: in trouble.
[48:49] Speaker 6: You could, but no, but the conversation is absolutely essential,
[48:57] Speaker 6: like even even as when they're young, like I did
[49:00] Speaker 6: this in education, like you do want to explain what
[49:03] Speaker 6: it is. So it's not just like because I said so,
[49:06] Speaker 6: because you're basically teaching people how to make decisions or
[49:09] Speaker 6: you're teaching your children how to process all of that
[49:12] Speaker 6: when they're going through it, when they're up against the challenge.
[49:15] Speaker 6: And then I feel like it's two there's two parts
[49:17] Speaker 6: to it. Like you said, if we're having the issue,
[49:19] Speaker 6: let me take away the.
[49:20] Speaker 5: Phone or let me you know.
[49:22] Speaker 6: But he's I always just say, I always tell Ladarian
[49:24] Speaker 6: he is such a safe space.
[49:26] Speaker 5: Yes, because there is no comment you can say.
[49:34] Speaker 4: It is.
[49:34] Speaker 3: So I'm gonna give you more credit.
[49:44] Speaker 5: And he took my galaxy and from.
[49:48] Speaker 6: Wait, he'll be like your grounded Ladarian. Okay, what kind
[49:51] Speaker 6: of computer do you want? Literally, well, let me get
[49:54] Speaker 6: you the moment.
[49:55] Speaker 5: Over here and next, by the way, he actually is
[49:58] Speaker 5: a is a two thousand dollars computer.
[50:00] Speaker 1: I'm like, he's grand.
[50:03] Speaker 2: College computer.
[50:04] Speaker 5: He does, and he does, but it's just that the consequent.
[50:08] Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'm gonna tell y'all my problem because I
[50:11] Speaker 4: can speak about my problem, go for it. My problem
[50:14] Speaker 4: is I offer grace. Yeah, Letteria said this one day.
[50:19] Speaker 4: Matter of fact, I'm not even gonna say it. What
[50:21] Speaker 4: did I because you just brought up the phone situation.
[50:24] Speaker 4: What did you say to me? And when you got
[50:25] Speaker 4: that phone?
[50:26] Speaker 5: I remember, I said that that's something that like Jesus
[50:29] Speaker 5: or God would do. They would bless you with something
[50:32] Speaker 5: even though you don't deserve it, but they would say,
[50:34] Speaker 5: I'm going to give you this, learn from your mistake,
[50:36] Speaker 5: and take care of this.
[50:38] Speaker 4: And she said that to me cry because she was
[50:42] Speaker 4: in trouble. So so the truth was, she was in trouble.
[50:45] Speaker 4: I did ground her, and she knew that. When I
[50:47] Speaker 4: get really upset, then it's like, you know what, like
[50:50] Speaker 4: because there's been times I whooped her, But I'm gonna
[50:53] Speaker 4: talk to you way more. I probably whooped twice twice
[50:57] Speaker 4: in our whole life. Yeah, but I'm going to talk
[50:59] Speaker 4: to you for a long time, a long time.
[51:07] Speaker 3: It sounds like the talking was the punishment.
[51:12] Speaker 2: Hearing it.
[51:13] Speaker 5: I won't go to bed. I'll go to bed at
[51:15] Speaker 5: midnight and lunarium will still be up. I'm like, how
[51:18] Speaker 5: long y'all talking? It'll be like two of them more
[51:20] Speaker 5: like what kind of cover? So you gonna talk?
[51:22] Speaker 4: Because I wanted to talk to him and give get
[51:24] Speaker 4: some understanding because the thing about it was is that
[51:27] Speaker 4: I grew up in a generation and my mom can
[51:30] Speaker 4: attest to it, is that they'll just whoop you, and
[51:32] Speaker 4: that's the consequence, and then you do. You never have
[51:35] Speaker 4: a conversation about what you did, why you did it,
[51:37] Speaker 4: was this because at that time, your frontal lobe ain't
[51:39] Speaker 4: even developed, So you're the part of your brain where
[51:42] Speaker 4: you're making logic, reasoning, it's not even there, and so
[51:45] Speaker 4: you're just making decisions and you get a whooping because
[51:48] Speaker 4: you ain't supposed to do it, but no one is
[51:49] Speaker 4: talking to you about why and what's an alternative. And
[51:53] Speaker 4: so maybe I went to extreme and just said we're
[51:55] Speaker 4: gonna talk. We're gonna talk, and I want to get
[51:57] Speaker 4: to a place to where you can artic, you lay
[52:00] Speaker 4: what you did wrong and how you won't do it again.
[52:03] Speaker 4: That's all I care about. And if you can get
[52:05] Speaker 4: to that point, then I don't hold grudges. I don't
[52:09] Speaker 4: I don't be like, well, that's why you did this yesterday.
[52:12] Speaker 5: I don't care you didn't bring it up later.
[52:13] Speaker 2: I don't bring it up. It'd be done. I just
[52:16] Speaker 2: be like, you've learned that, it's fine. We move on. Now,
[52:20] Speaker 2: let's go get something neat, you know what I'm saying it.
[52:25] Speaker 5: I was like, this is great.
[52:29] Speaker 6: I think the key word is and I don't like
[52:31] Speaker 6: this word balance because I feel like we're more like
[52:35] Speaker 6: life is more about harmony. But I do think that
[52:38] Speaker 6: with children there is just the balance in providing like, Okay,
[52:42] Speaker 6: this is what happens in the real world, you know,
[52:45] Speaker 6: so there is consequences for actions. Also there's a healthy
[52:50] Speaker 6: amount of talking, which he excels, and he excels, so
[53:02] Speaker 6: that's the.
[53:03] Speaker 2: That's the key and so but that's my whole thing
[53:05] Speaker 2: is that.
[53:06] Speaker 4: And then also having a daughter, I didn't want to
[53:09] Speaker 4: just always have to hit you, you know what I'm saying.
[53:11] Speaker 2: And I didn't want consequences. Hold on, I'm talking about
[53:15] Speaker 2: I don't want to. Yeah, I'm talking about that side.
[53:17] Speaker 2: That's why I mean, my extreme was I didn't want
[53:19] Speaker 2: to hit her.
[53:20] Speaker 4: And so then when it came to the phone, it
[53:22] Speaker 4: was like, well, dang, I'm gonna need to call you
[53:24] Speaker 4: at school trying to pick you up, so I'm gonna
[53:27] Speaker 4: need you have a phone.
[53:28] Speaker 2: And then I remember what I did. I did lock
[53:32] Speaker 2: your phone up to where you can only call.
[53:35] Speaker 5: But did you see how that's kind of like, because
[53:37] Speaker 5: I got my phone, but you know that I could
[53:41] Speaker 5: call you, my mom and one friend. Yes, but why
[53:44] Speaker 5: let me call a friend?
[53:47] Speaker 3: It feel too hard? You got a heart? Okay, call her.
[53:54] Speaker 5: This papa. You canna let you?
[54:00] Speaker 2: Did you tell us? She said, give me a friend.
[54:06] Speaker 5: She's in trouble. She's like, oh thanks dad.
[54:08] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know it was reconnaisance. You want to know
[54:10] Speaker 3: who is the most important friend?
[54:12] Speaker 2: You know? In Prinson they still let you have a
[54:15] Speaker 2: guest list.
[54:19] Speaker 4: Yeah, funnybody get the visitor, I say, because I didn't
[54:26] Speaker 4: want man.
[54:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just it was just what it was.
[54:30] Speaker 2: And my whole thing was to operate in a level
[54:34] Speaker 2: of grace.
[54:36] Speaker 4: But again, when you have two parents, especially with like
[54:40] Speaker 4: when Ashley and I have a kid, then we'll have balance.
[54:42] Speaker 1: You know.
[54:43] Speaker 4: That's why I believe that it takes balance like that
[54:46] Speaker 4: to be like I'm this and she's like, oh no,
[54:48] Speaker 4: I'm this, and it's like, hey, what your mama say?
[54:50] Speaker 2: You know, you can always say what your mama say.
[54:52] Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
[54:52] Speaker 4: So that's cool. Instead of man, mom being a little
[54:55] Speaker 4: too hard or whatever, Hey what did she say? You
[54:58] Speaker 4: know your mama said this? Whatever y'all do this, but nah,
[55:00] Speaker 4: she and then you have the balance you can play
[55:03] Speaker 4: good cop, bad cop all the time. So that's why
[55:05] Speaker 4: I believe is it's better when you grow up in
[55:08] Speaker 4: a two parent household because y'all both get balanced.
[55:11] Speaker 6: So between you two, now that you are a parent,
[55:15] Speaker 6: how will you or what is the balance? What do
[55:17] Speaker 6: you feel like even the strict one?
[55:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what's funny about that, It is depending
[55:22] Speaker 1: on the situation and who it is to and like
[55:24] Speaker 1: we we change so much, Like if you want to
[55:27] Speaker 1: talk to our pets, I'm the lenient one. She's the
[55:29] Speaker 1: stricter one, and like I'm like, all right, like this
[55:32] Speaker 1: what you said and like she said you got to
[55:34] Speaker 1: be in here. I did say this, but it's you
[55:37] Speaker 1: and me like.
[55:40] Speaker 5: Like you.
[55:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think like when it comes to her,
[55:47] Speaker 1: we both have our different things that were like more
[55:49] Speaker 1: leanient on like I'm like the chill like food parent.
[55:52] Speaker 3: Like she's so like she can't have this ship like
[55:55] Speaker 3: this is.
[55:55] Speaker 1: Too you're throwing out, You're following out in the spirit's
[55:59] Speaker 1: like she love we're talking about it. But yeah, I
[56:02] Speaker 1: definitely see like or I'm more leaning in some areas
[56:05] Speaker 1: she might be more concerned and the more cautious parent.
[56:07] Speaker 1: But in the other situations she surprised me and I'm like,
[56:09] Speaker 1: you sure that's good, and she's like, yes, let her
[56:12] Speaker 1: go on and do this.
[56:13] Speaker 2: And an experiment, did you say going leather?
[56:18] Speaker 3: Where you going?
[56:21] Speaker 5: I can't think of the examples that he's using, but
[56:24] Speaker 5: we brought up one conversation or as a friend date
[56:26] Speaker 5: about kind of like the way like someone was dressed,
[56:29] Speaker 5: like a girl was dressed like to like a part
[56:32] Speaker 5: homecoming and she had like a little cute like dress
[56:36] Speaker 5: and it was a halter im like that was so
[56:38] Speaker 5: cute and he was like, absolutely not. And it made
[56:41] Speaker 5: me think, oh, that's going to be an issue because
[56:44] Speaker 5: I'm going to be the one shopping with her.
[56:46] Speaker 1: I mean, your perspective is just totally different, Like you've
[56:48] Speaker 1: been at that age, You've wanted to wear this, so
[56:50] Speaker 1: you got like a.
[56:51] Speaker 2: Little bit get into it about that.
[56:53] Speaker 3: I can imagine. I can imagine.
[56:55] Speaker 2: So that's what we're talking about. Strict about.
[56:57] Speaker 4: I'm strict about showing all that he ain't no compromising
[57:01] Speaker 4: that where she wanted.
[57:02] Speaker 2: To wear lipstick and make up and I lifstick, but
[57:04] Speaker 2: make up and all that strict.
[57:06] Speaker 6: Well wait now that we're talking about strict and I'm
[57:09] Speaker 6: not going to say too much on it, but we
[57:11] Speaker 6: just did.
[57:11] Speaker 5: We took some pictures and there was a dress that
[57:14] Speaker 5: he wanted me to wear it. The dress was see through.
[57:16] Speaker 2: They wanted you to wear it.
[57:18] Speaker 5: Yeah, He's like, you ain't seen that. You could see
[57:23] Speaker 5: everything through colored?
[57:26] Speaker 6: It was no, no, it was my whole body. It
[57:30] Speaker 6: had literally okay, I had spanks on, but you could
[57:33] Speaker 6: see the spanks. I didn't have spanks on.
[57:36] Speaker 5: You would be able to.
[57:37] Speaker 2: Just photoshop it out. I know.
[57:38] Speaker 5: So I'm like, Okay, I think I'm a little bit more.
[57:41] Speaker 5: She's more.
[57:41] Speaker 4: She's more conservative on dress at all. Just from her
[57:45] Speaker 4: her dress, she's not gonna show nothing. But I respect
[57:49] Speaker 4: that a lot. But I do believe that she's a
[57:51] Speaker 4: little extreme. Like she'd be like, oh, you can see
[57:53] Speaker 4: a little cleavage, and I'd be like, it's because you
[57:56] Speaker 4: got cleavan. Can you just hide it all the time.
[57:59] Speaker 4: She's like, I don't want she only want to see
[58:00] Speaker 4: the little little line. You don't want to see that.
[58:04] Speaker 9: No.
[58:04] Speaker 5: I had like a okay, I have a few outfits.
[58:07] Speaker 4: That will not show I promise you can y'all go
[58:09] Speaker 4: look on this episode. You can go look if you
[58:11] Speaker 4: can find a picture.
[58:11] Speaker 5: Where you're showing herd the wedding.
[58:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, I gots a wedding dress that was like that. Yeah,
[58:16] Speaker 2: and that was it.
[58:18] Speaker 5: Yeah, you show a little leg I oh no, I'll be.
[58:26] Speaker 2: Pulling out dress. I said, where it is? Where it is?
[58:28] Speaker 2: She'd be like willow crop talk.
[58:31] Speaker 5: Oh no, no, I'm learning something. I never knew this.
[58:35] Speaker 5: I will though I have. I do show a little skin.
[58:39] Speaker 2: Yeah all the time. You see this right here, you
[58:46] Speaker 2: see skin? Yes, arm. She's like, no strap, nothing like that.
[58:51] Speaker 5: No, halter t.
[58:52] Speaker 6: I will wear spaghetti strap in the summer. I have
[58:55] Speaker 6: a couple of outfits like we were on the honeymoon.
[58:57] Speaker 6: This wasn't about me, I don't know. Just like talking
[59:02] Speaker 6: about your dad.
[59:03] Speaker 2: You're saying you said that you brought up the.
[59:06] Speaker 5: Shooting with shocked the that'll be inter secret the sea
[59:10] Speaker 5: through nature of it. But go ahead, Yeah you were
[59:11] Speaker 5: talking about growing.
[59:12] Speaker 2: No, she don't like showing none of that stuff.
[59:14] Speaker 4: And I didn't pick the dress out, the design to
[59:16] Speaker 4: pick the dress out for her to take photos and
[59:19] Speaker 4: I was like, she looked good.
[59:20] Speaker 2: And another thing, it's gonna be hard for me to
[59:22] Speaker 2: look at her looking good and.
[59:23] Speaker 5: Say, yeah, you look fine for everyone to be seeing me.
[59:27] Speaker 2: But it was all it was hitting like you. You
[59:28] Speaker 2: don't see no breast, you don't see none of that stuff.
[59:31] Speaker 6: Legs, you saw, you see the dress got down to her.
[59:35] Speaker 6: They wanted to put pasties on, yeah, just to show
[59:38] Speaker 6: the no so.
[59:39] Speaker 5: That you couldn't see behind.
[59:40] Speaker 2: That the silver part was crossing the part.
[59:43] Speaker 5: But you could also see around the breast.
[59:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, but just it's just skin.
[59:51] Speaker 4: It's like you can see y'all can walk around on
[59:53] Speaker 4: the beach with brown panties on, with bron panties in,
[59:57] Speaker 4: but you can't have a full covered dress.
[59:59] Speaker 2: That's the fool wedding dress.
[1:00:01] Speaker 5: Because the I'm at the beach, that's what I'm seeing.
[1:00:04] Speaker 2: More skin than I could ever see because I'm going
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: in the water.
[1:00:07] Speaker 4: But before you get there, I'm seeing you and literally
[1:00:09] Speaker 4: broad panties because that's what that's what a swim suit.
[1:00:12] Speaker 5: I wore swim suit when we went to Jamaica.
[1:00:14] Speaker 2: You had a cover, you had covered, had two and
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: you had short piece.
[1:00:19] Speaker 5: Oh yeah yeah yeah with some daisy dudes soft. Yeah,
[1:00:24] Speaker 5: you could see a little you can see a little
[1:00:25] Speaker 5: mid drift and Claire is going to be able, so
[1:00:30] Speaker 5: they're going to have the same.
[1:00:31] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because yeah, because the Terrier used to get
[1:00:35] Speaker 4: mad at me sophomore and junior year and wouldn't want
[1:00:40] Speaker 4: to wear a little short because at the school she
[1:00:42] Speaker 4: went to, she went to perform in our school, so
[1:00:44] Speaker 4: they was dressed like everything.
[1:00:46] Speaker 5: We were expressing ourselves.
[1:00:48] Speaker 4: She's a form of creativity, and so she looked at
[1:00:51] Speaker 4: them little girls and be like, oh, I want dressed
[1:00:53] Speaker 4: like that too, And she got want to wear little
[1:00:55] Speaker 4: short skirts and short whatever because she was all real slim,
[1:00:58] Speaker 4: and so she was like, well, it's so I was
[1:01:00] Speaker 4: like no, no, no, not at all, and she would
[1:01:04] Speaker 4: get mad at me. One time she got in trouble.
[1:01:06] Speaker 4: Oh I got some consequences for you. I forgot about this.
[1:01:14] Speaker 5: When he would come up with consequence, they'll be very
[1:01:16] Speaker 5: creative because already know what he's talking about talking about.
[1:01:20] Speaker 5: I was doing not grade in school. I was focused.
[1:01:23] Speaker 5: I was cute, though, and he saw that. It was
[1:01:25] Speaker 5: like that's an issue because while you're cute, but your
[1:01:27] Speaker 5: grades aren't cute. So he made he went to the store.
[1:01:31] Speaker 5: He went to the store and purchased uniforms for me,
[1:01:35] Speaker 5: and I had to wear uniforms.
[1:01:37] Speaker 3: At school that didn't require No one had uniforms.
[1:01:39] Speaker 5: I remember having on these little blue Bermuda shorts and
[1:01:41] Speaker 5: a white collar shirt. Didn't mix up and get a
[1:01:44] Speaker 5: kaki in a blue and a black. I had to
[1:01:46] Speaker 5: get all the same four pair of shorts, the same
[1:01:49] Speaker 5: collar shirts, and I had to wear that to school.
[1:01:52] Speaker 5: And I don't even know how long it was, but
[1:01:53] Speaker 5: it feel like he turned into Everybody was like, why
[1:01:55] Speaker 5: are you going on uniforms? And I had to explain it.
[1:01:58] Speaker 5: It was embarrassing, and then I did it for so
[1:02:00] Speaker 5: long they got used to it. I just was wearing uniforms,
[1:02:03] Speaker 5: and I got to I take what I said, You
[1:02:07] Speaker 5: went to a.
[1:02:07] Speaker 4: Performing arts school where they dressing like they come in
[1:02:10] Speaker 4: to dresses, and she's dressing like she going to a
[1:02:12] Speaker 4: regular school in DSD where they have to wear khakis,
[1:02:15] Speaker 4: like literally a uniform.
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: That was like, I didn't know you had it in
[1:02:18] Speaker 2: you because I'm telling you pushed me there.
[1:02:21] Speaker 4: I'll be like, oh this ain't this ain't gonna you
[1:02:23] Speaker 4: ain't learning to hold on like this. And another time,
[1:02:28] Speaker 4: what happened going into your graduation? Y'all had senior, whether
[1:02:34] Speaker 4: senior holler or whatever. They go running through the hall
[1:02:36] Speaker 4: game and you got mad, and what happened?
[1:02:39] Speaker 5: I was threatened to not be able to walk, So.
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: I told her she so what happened was she got mad?
[1:02:45] Speaker 4: Yeah, she got mad at the at the principal to come,
[1:02:49] Speaker 4: this is fun. So the senior year, all the kids run.
[1:02:53] Speaker 4: The seniors run through the hallways and just scream in
[1:02:56] Speaker 4: the middle of the kids.
[1:02:57] Speaker 2: They taking chests.
[1:02:58] Speaker 4: They're doing next called senior chot. They will run and
[1:03:01] Speaker 4: just screamed and so and so. The principal said, just.
[1:03:05] Speaker 2: Break it down like that.
[1:03:06] Speaker 5: But no, it was the last day of school and
[1:03:09] Speaker 5: that was us taking our liberty to self.
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: But the other kids are taking tests.
[1:03:14] Speaker 4: They're taking for real tests, so they run down hollowd
[1:03:17] Speaker 4: So what the teachers did, the principal said, they called
[1:03:19] Speaker 4: them all out to the courtyard, said we have a
[1:03:22] Speaker 4: meeting for the seniors in the courtyard. They got into
[1:03:24] Speaker 4: the courtyard and they locked the doors where they were
[1:03:26] Speaker 4: stuck in the center of the courtyard and like y'all
[1:03:28] Speaker 4: can scream all y'all want to out.
[1:03:29] Speaker 2: Here, So the terrier the kids got mad.
[1:03:33] Speaker 4: They banging on the door I used to go to
[1:03:35] Speaker 4: the school so much and work around the school and
[1:03:37] Speaker 4: sell shirts and do all this stuff to everybody in
[1:03:40] Speaker 4: the school knew me, right. So the principal, the assistant
[1:03:43] Speaker 4: principal called me because the terrier was banging on the
[1:03:46] Speaker 4: door cussing, he said, And then they told her, I'm
[1:03:59] Speaker 4: gonna call your and she said, I don't care.
[1:04:02] Speaker 5: So kept cussing and kept cussing.
[1:04:04] Speaker 4: That man called me, mister Whitfield, your daughter is throwing
[1:04:09] Speaker 4: a fit because she can't come into the hallways and
[1:04:12] Speaker 4: run and do this.
[1:04:13] Speaker 2: And she told me what it was.
[1:04:15] Speaker 4: And I was like, and she said what I told
[1:04:17] Speaker 4: her that I was gonna call you, And she said,
[1:04:19] Speaker 4: I don't care.
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: Call him.
[1:04:21] Speaker 4: Oh Jesus, well, Jesus, because they told her, they said,
[1:04:26] Speaker 4: if you don't calm down, you're not gonna get a walk,
[1:04:28] Speaker 4: get a chance to walk across stage.
[1:04:30] Speaker 2: She said, so I don't care. I said, Oh, she's
[1:04:32] Speaker 2: gonna keep that energy.
[1:04:33] Speaker 4: Then man they called I told her. Man, I called her,
[1:04:36] Speaker 4: I said, guess what, you ain't gonna walk across stad.
[1:04:38] Speaker 5: Remember what the punishment was for you? Okay, you know
[1:04:42] Speaker 5: how to do a little.
[1:04:48] Speaker 4: And so I told her. She couldn't walk across the stage.
[1:04:51] Speaker 4: She cried for two days. Please please, I'll do anything.
[1:04:55] Speaker 4: I got it right where she wanted push the microphone
[1:04:57] Speaker 4: and what did I tell you, dude? Keep it?
[1:04:59] Speaker 5: My school was out. Everybody summer vacation and started. Yeah,
[1:05:04] Speaker 5: for the seniors. He had me up at the school.
[1:05:08] Speaker 2: Close to your mouth all the way.
[1:05:09] Speaker 5: Yes, he had me up at the school basically being
[1:05:13] Speaker 5: like the assistant to like all the like secretarial like
[1:05:18] Speaker 5: people who are printing papers and doing stuff. I was
[1:05:21] Speaker 5: the I was their assistant for probably like a week
[1:05:23] Speaker 5: a week and then we're told and he and then
[1:05:26] Speaker 5: even then he was like, you're not doing this to
[1:05:31] Speaker 5: be able to walk. You're doing this because you disrespect
[1:05:34] Speaker 5: your the staff here. Now you have to help. And
[1:05:37] Speaker 5: then made me ask my principal at that time, like
[1:05:41] Speaker 5: after me doing all that work, like if he lets
[1:05:43] Speaker 5: you walk, he lets you walk, but I'm not talking
[1:05:45] Speaker 5: to him. You have to figure that out. And so
[1:05:47] Speaker 5: I like was like please please, I really want to walk,
[1:05:50] Speaker 5: And then he let me walk.
[1:05:51] Speaker 4: I clean the auditorium, yeah, I was like. And then
[1:05:56] Speaker 4: they kept telling the assistant principal was like the terrorists.
[1:05:59] Speaker 4: I think that's enough she did. I said, no, no,
[1:06:00] Speaker 4: you got anything else? As a test where I have
[1:06:02] Speaker 4: nothing else, We have nothing else to do, find something.
[1:06:05] Speaker 4: She had the janitorial cat because they watched. She's like,
[1:06:08] Speaker 4: she's been here all week. We have nothing else for
[1:06:11] Speaker 4: her to do.
[1:06:12] Speaker 2: Nothing else.
[1:06:13] Speaker 5: What I think about it?
[1:06:15] Speaker 3: Got everything?
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: She was driving the school. Yeah, mad, she said. Everybody
[1:06:20] Speaker 2: else they over here meeting at this.
[1:06:21] Speaker 4: My friends are beating at I said, guess what your
[1:06:23] Speaker 4: summer vacation they started, yet you're still in school because you.
[1:06:26] Speaker 2: Don't know how to act.
[1:06:27] Speaker 4: And that girl went and worked for them for free
[1:06:30] Speaker 4: for a whole week, going to school everybody else out.
[1:06:32] Speaker 4: She would go to school when they went like the
[1:06:34] Speaker 4: typical time you're supposed to go to school, and.
[1:06:36] Speaker 6: She would leave when it was Yeah, but then you
[1:06:39] Speaker 6: saw right like you made amends and then you were
[1:06:42] Speaker 6: able to actually get back on tracks.
[1:06:44] Speaker 4: So I love that. Yeah, trying to make me go
[1:06:46] Speaker 4: here be a pump, trying to make me stack guys,
[1:06:48] Speaker 4: let run over me.
[1:06:49] Speaker 8: Dad.
[1:06:50] Speaker 4: He was certain to get his problems back because I
[1:06:52] Speaker 4: was like, I said, I don't recall, just do whatever
[1:06:55] Speaker 4: she wants to. I would give her grace where I
[1:06:58] Speaker 4: knew it worked when she said, you're loving me like
[1:07:01] Speaker 4: Jesus does, is that when I don't deserve it, you'll
[1:07:04] Speaker 4: still bless me anyway. And I literally while she was crying,
[1:07:08] Speaker 4: I shed some tears and I was like, Wow, that's
[1:07:10] Speaker 4: extremely important.
[1:07:13] Speaker 2: So y'all go off to college.
[1:07:14] Speaker 4: Before y'all went out to college, well going getting ready
[1:07:17] Speaker 4: to problem that we left out is that I took
[1:07:20] Speaker 4: you to prepare for prom tay when it got you
[1:07:23] Speaker 4: fitted for your tuxedo, addressed you, we took a little
[1:07:26] Speaker 4: dope photo with that.
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: How important was that?
[1:07:29] Speaker 3: That was awesome?
[1:07:30] Speaker 1: I think for numerous reasons, but the two that I'll
[1:07:33] Speaker 1: stick to is it's not normal to be courting someone
[1:07:38] Speaker 1: and then their dad to be like either liking you
[1:07:40] Speaker 1: enough or interested enough to even be like willing to
[1:07:43] Speaker 1: be a part of that moment or wanting to because
[1:07:45] Speaker 1: you offered. And then two like me growing up single mom,
[1:07:51] Speaker 1: like I didn't have that father figure that that man present.
[1:07:55] Speaker 3: So I think for me, like, what's weird is you
[1:08:00] Speaker 3: don't know what you don't know.
[1:08:01] Speaker 1: So it's like just being there kind of seeing that,
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: making sure I got this right, get getting the tie right?
[1:08:05] Speaker 3: How you do this?
[1:08:05] Speaker 7: Man?
[1:08:06] Speaker 3: You put this on like this, you get this jacket
[1:08:07] Speaker 3: on like that, like it was cool.
[1:08:09] Speaker 1: It was cool because again, I don't think many people
[1:08:12] Speaker 1: will be sitting their daughter off to promise somebody and
[1:08:14] Speaker 1: then involved enough to be like, I'm gonna make sure
[1:08:16] Speaker 1: all the way together too, like.
[1:08:19] Speaker 4: And my cue for that was that if I could
[1:08:22] Speaker 4: love who she loves, that makes the love even greater,
[1:08:27] Speaker 4: because if I can show you that, it's not just
[1:08:31] Speaker 4: because I never want to be a type of father
[1:08:33] Speaker 4: that quote unquote choose sides, whereas like whatever she says is,
[1:08:38] Speaker 4: she got to be right, because if you must have
[1:08:40] Speaker 4: did something, if she did this, I always want to
[1:08:42] Speaker 4: be the person that was level had to be like
[1:08:44] Speaker 4: what happened, all right, let's talk about it and be
[1:08:47] Speaker 4: able to share her heart to you and your heart
[1:08:49] Speaker 4: to her so that.
[1:08:50] Speaker 2: There could be clear understanding.
[1:08:51] Speaker 4: I want to make sure that the love became the
[1:08:54] Speaker 4: main thing, and not choosing sides like that's why I
[1:08:56] Speaker 4: liked it.
[1:08:57] Speaker 2: I been mean to tell you this Lateria, I never
[1:08:59] Speaker 2: liked to you anyway. I just been pretending. You know
[1:09:00] Speaker 2: what I'm saying, like that's that's that's that's toxic.
[1:09:03] Speaker 4: I always want to be somebody to be like, no,
[1:09:04] Speaker 4: that's a good dude, and be able to identify there's
[1:09:07] Speaker 4: nobody perfect.
[1:09:08] Speaker 2: It's just people that are learning.
[1:09:09] Speaker 4: And if y'all could give each other the grace to
[1:09:11] Speaker 4: learn in the process, y'all can have something amazing together.
[1:09:14] Speaker 2: Uh.
[1:09:14] Speaker 4: Before y'all went off to college, I made you sign
[1:09:16] Speaker 4: some paperwork. What was that paperwork? Ta?
[1:09:18] Speaker 3: Oh god?
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: This is this is hilarious because I don't know if
[1:09:22] Speaker 1: anybody's ever heard of this before, but this man drafted
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: up essentially a purity contract, as in, you sign these
[1:09:29] Speaker 1: papers as you're going off the school, which means keep
[1:09:32] Speaker 1: your hands off my daughter. I might have to bring
[1:09:34] Speaker 1: it back. I might need to I might need to copy.
[1:09:37] Speaker 1: I might need to copy emails, Yeah, I might. I
[1:09:41] Speaker 1: might need to get the original drafts. Make sure I
[1:09:43] Speaker 1: messed nothing up.
[1:09:44] Speaker 2: When I did that. You feel like I was doing
[1:09:46] Speaker 2: too much?
[1:09:47] Speaker 3: No, I mean again, stage has been said. We didn't
[1:09:50] Speaker 3: just meet.
[1:09:53] Speaker 5: Expected it.
[1:09:54] Speaker 3: Yeah, I was surprised when it didn't come earlier.
[1:09:56] Speaker 2: Just kidd No.
[1:09:59] Speaker 1: But like a big change like that, and like sending
[1:10:02] Speaker 1: your kid off somewhere, I can't even project forward to
[1:10:05] Speaker 1: even think like trying to send her to a school anywhere.
[1:10:08] Speaker 3: I'm like, you're gonna be right down in the street
[1:10:09] Speaker 3: at unt or something like that.
[1:10:10] Speaker 1: I don't know where you think you going, Yeah, but yeah,
[1:10:13] Speaker 1: it's like a scary thing, like you're sending your kid
[1:10:15] Speaker 1: off somewhere nonetheless with a boy like you thinking the worst,
[1:10:20] Speaker 1: you're hoping for the best, but anything is possible. So
[1:10:23] Speaker 1: I wouldn't like really bugged out a tripping too much
[1:10:25] Speaker 1: about it. I just know in the moment of what
[1:10:27] Speaker 1: was going on, like I was willing to like be
[1:10:30] Speaker 1: open mind that didn't embrace it.
[1:10:32] Speaker 4: And then what happened when y'all didn't uphold my contract,
[1:10:37] Speaker 4: I don't remember.
[1:10:39] Speaker 5: I felt really bad, but it really not saying I
[1:10:43] Speaker 5: didn't feel bad for disappointing you, but I felt bad
[1:10:46] Speaker 5: because like, like when I was younger, I went to
[1:10:48] Speaker 5: like purity classes that I had a purity ring. So
[1:10:51] Speaker 5: I was like, dang, I met, I can't undo that.
[1:10:54] Speaker 5: So I failed. And that sounds like a strong word
[1:10:58] Speaker 5: to say, That's how it felt, because I was And.
[1:11:01] Speaker 4: It was interesting because you were reluctant to tell me
[1:11:05] Speaker 4: about it, And what made you.
[1:11:07] Speaker 5: Decide to tell me because my roommate told on me. Wow,
[1:11:11] Speaker 5: Because my roommate was like she basically vocalized to her
[1:11:15] Speaker 5: mother that Tay was over there all the time. And
[1:11:18] Speaker 5: then in my head I was like, well, I'm guilty
[1:11:20] Speaker 5: because what is he over here for all the time? Yeah,
[1:11:23] Speaker 5: and I'm like no, no, we just watched TV, like
[1:11:25] Speaker 5: you know. It just felt like and I just from
[1:11:27] Speaker 5: then that's when the conviction I think started, because I
[1:11:30] Speaker 5: was like, dang, I can't like it's out like this
[1:11:33] Speaker 5: is this is what it is, so.
[1:11:35] Speaker 2: And so and so what was that conversation?
[1:11:38] Speaker 5: Like I remember I was crying. I think I had
[1:11:41] Speaker 5: a hard time getting it out. I think you may
[1:11:43] Speaker 5: have had to like ask me and then we say
[1:11:45] Speaker 5: like yes or eventually, because I could not just come
[1:11:47] Speaker 5: out and say that to you. But that was very hard.
[1:11:50] Speaker 5: That was like top three, like hard conversations with your dad.
[1:11:54] Speaker 5: It was hard.
[1:11:54] Speaker 2: And then how did I respond?
[1:11:56] Speaker 5: I don't remember your response, which means you're probably just
[1:11:58] Speaker 5: kind of like, well, you did it.
[1:12:02] Speaker 2: So so and that's how it was.
[1:12:06] Speaker 4: I literally said, and I said, and I guarantee you this.
[1:12:09] Speaker 4: I said, I remember this specifically, and I said, and
[1:12:13] Speaker 4: I bet you. Now, y'all have arguments over trivial stuff.
[1:12:16] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and then you said yeah yeah.
[1:12:19] Speaker 4: I said, because what happens is Pandora box is now
[1:12:21] Speaker 4: open and the Bible says never awaken love before it's time.
[1:12:25] Speaker 2: And I said that now y'all are just arguing over
[1:12:28] Speaker 2: stupid stuff. Huh. You was like, how you know that?
[1:12:30] Speaker 2: I said, because that's just what happens.
[1:12:31] Speaker 4: I said, y'all could be so great together, so cool together,
[1:12:34] Speaker 4: getting along, and then you do you introduce sin into
[1:12:37] Speaker 4: the relationship, and now look at what happened.
[1:12:39] Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, weould be fighting over oh you know
[1:12:41] Speaker 2: what we find interview and this this?
[1:12:43] Speaker 4: I said that hard yeah, and and my whole thing
[1:12:46] Speaker 4: is I'm always pray with you, I'm always pray for you,
[1:12:49] Speaker 4: I'm always pray over you. And I am talking to
[1:12:52] Speaker 4: Tay and told him saying things like, hey, y'all deal
[1:12:54] Speaker 4: with y'all.
[1:12:55] Speaker 2: Did y'all wrong?
[1:12:56] Speaker 4: And so my whole thing is this what I've always
[1:12:59] Speaker 4: tried to. I ain't gonnaven say what I tried to.
[1:13:01] Speaker 4: I'm gonna ask you, what do you think I was
[1:13:04] Speaker 4: trying to show you through my parenting style.
[1:13:09] Speaker 5: I've never thought about that before, but I think you
[1:13:12] Speaker 5: were trying to show me like kind of like what
[1:13:15] Speaker 5: grace means, and kind of like making a mistake, but
[1:13:20] Speaker 5: like you don't have to become your mistake. Just because
[1:13:22] Speaker 5: you made a mistake, you can still grow from them.
[1:13:23] Speaker 5: It's important to learn from your mistakes. I think you
[1:13:28] Speaker 5: also taught me how to be a good parent, even
[1:13:31] Speaker 5: though when you were parenting me, I didn't think about
[1:13:33] Speaker 5: how to be a good parent. But now when I
[1:13:35] Speaker 5: think about me, I can just see myself talking clear,
[1:13:38] Speaker 5: you're off and you get in trouble, and I'll be like, sorry,
[1:13:41] Speaker 5: this is what I know how to do.
[1:13:44] Speaker 6: Yeah, sorry, let's put framework around. Though you'd be like
[1:13:47] Speaker 6: five hour conversation, you.
[1:13:49] Speaker 4: Know five when I talked to be like, well, talking
[1:13:52] Speaker 4: Latia about Ladarian, but there will be five it'd be
[1:13:54] Speaker 4: about hour.
[1:13:55] Speaker 5: And how many hours does your uncle talk to you?
[1:14:02] Speaker 3: If you didn't hear that hours.
[1:14:06] Speaker 2: Hours.
[1:14:07] Speaker 3: Yes, we're gonna start sitting stopwatches.
[1:14:11] Speaker 2: Beginning of this year. What we were talking about New Year's?
[1:14:19] Speaker 2: What happened New Year's?
[1:14:27] Speaker 6: Yes, it can be a four it could be a
[1:14:33] Speaker 6: four or five hour conversations.
[1:14:35] Speaker 2: Parent, very present happened.
[1:14:39] Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you what happened to a couple of
[1:14:41] Speaker 4: weeks ago or last week, I think that was last week.
[1:14:45] Speaker 4: Laterry the Ladarian did something he wasn't supposed to do again,
[1:14:49] Speaker 4: and I was real short with him, I said, I
[1:14:52] Speaker 4: when I say. The next day he told me he
[1:14:55] Speaker 4: felt what did you say you felt? He felt like
[1:14:59] Speaker 4: I didn't care?
[1:15:01] Speaker 5: I would too, he said.
[1:15:02] Speaker 2: I said why. He said, because you didn't talk to
[1:15:04] Speaker 2: me like you don't me talk to you.
[1:15:06] Speaker 4: I said, because I got so tired of telling you
[1:15:08] Speaker 4: the same stuff over and over again that I didn't
[1:15:10] Speaker 4: want to waste another breath. And he said, and I
[1:15:13] Speaker 4: felt it. He said, I'd rather you talk to me
[1:15:16] Speaker 4: because it shows that you care. Because the key what
[1:15:19] Speaker 4: you have been telling our money. One time you said,
[1:15:21] Speaker 4: if the Terris don't talk to you, that means he
[1:15:24] Speaker 4: don't care. Yeah, if I don't have a long conversation,
[1:15:27] Speaker 4: which it means it's a rap, I'm already checking out.
[1:15:30] Speaker 4: I feel like it's impossible. I feel like you just
[1:15:32] Speaker 4: it's just I ain't finna waste the breath. I'd be like,
[1:15:35] Speaker 4: all right, And that's that's why I did with La Darren.
[1:15:37] Speaker 2: I was so done.
[1:15:38] Speaker 4: I was like, all right, I'm done. He sat there
[1:15:41] Speaker 4: and walked off, and I watched him walk into his
[1:15:43] Speaker 4: room like feeling like a complete failure. And because what
[1:15:46] Speaker 4: happens in the conversations is going to start off with
[1:15:49] Speaker 4: me talking about what you did wrong, how can you
[1:15:51] Speaker 4: fix that, why you do that, all that, and then
[1:15:53] Speaker 4: by the end of it, I'm going to edify you
[1:15:55] Speaker 4: at the end and be like, Okay, now what can
[1:15:58] Speaker 4: you do? Can you make a bad decision? I believe
[1:16:00] Speaker 4: you could do this, this, this, It's gonna come back
[1:16:01] Speaker 4: to the edification process and then I'll send you off
[1:16:04] Speaker 4: with grace.
[1:16:05] Speaker 2: Yes.
[1:16:06] Speaker 4: But when that moment, I was like, this kid is hopeless,
[1:16:09] Speaker 4: Like I can tell him something one day and the
[1:16:11] Speaker 4: next day you forget it.
[1:16:12] Speaker 2: And I literally was just like, I don't even care.
[1:16:14] Speaker 5: It's not hopeless. He's just a teenager.
[1:16:16] Speaker 4: Yes, but I felt hopeless in it and didn't and
[1:16:18] Speaker 4: literally didn't even have that conversation with him, and he
[1:16:21] Speaker 4: felt that. The next day we had a deeper conversation
[1:16:23] Speaker 4: about it because he brought it up. He's like, can
[1:16:25] Speaker 4: we talk about this, this, this, this, this, And he said, well,
[1:16:28] Speaker 4: thank you for talking to me today, because yesterday it
[1:16:30] Speaker 4: hurt me when you didn't want to talk. I said,
[1:16:31] Speaker 4: I thought my long conversations frustrate you. He was like, no,
[1:16:34] Speaker 4: it shows that you cared.
[1:16:35] Speaker 3: And I was like, I think it does a little
[1:16:37] Speaker 3: bit of both.
[1:16:39] Speaker 5: I was gonna say because I forgot about that part.
[1:16:40] Speaker 5: But like, at the end of the conversations with you,
[1:16:43] Speaker 5: I always left feeling feeling good. I never felt like,
[1:16:47] Speaker 5: oh my god, I just feel like a horrible person.
[1:16:49] Speaker 5: You weren't like yelling at me or cussing at me
[1:16:51] Speaker 5: or anything crazy like you said. You would start off
[1:16:54] Speaker 5: with me explaining myself and then you were like poor
[1:16:56] Speaker 5: love back into me, and so you're better than they're smart,
[1:16:58] Speaker 5: You're this or that. I didn't I didn't think about
[1:17:01] Speaker 5: that because when in the moment, when you're a kid,
[1:17:02] Speaker 5: you're just like, oh my god, to me, I'll be
[1:17:05] Speaker 5: here forever.
[1:17:08] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[1:17:09] Speaker 5: Yeah, I always we always.
[1:17:12] Speaker 4: Down please a consequence, Yeah, because it don't be a consequence,
[1:17:16] Speaker 4: because I feel like, let's talk through it. I don't
[1:17:18] Speaker 4: have to give you a consequence after that, because at
[1:17:20] Speaker 4: the end of the day, I believe that given instruction,
[1:17:24] Speaker 4: having a conversation and sending you on your way to
[1:17:26] Speaker 4: something greater, that we can go do that show me
[1:17:29] Speaker 4: that you've learned from this moment and do better. I
[1:17:31] Speaker 4: don't have to say and now I'm gonnaunish you. When
[1:17:33] Speaker 4: it gets to that point, then I just be like you,
[1:17:35] Speaker 4: just you, just you just hard hited. Now I got
[1:17:37] Speaker 4: to give you a consequence. And when I give a consequence,
[1:17:39] Speaker 4: it's gonna be well thought out.
[1:17:41] Speaker 1: Okay, okay, So before you leave on that, I want
[1:17:44] Speaker 1: to one give you props on the conversation things. I
[1:17:47] Speaker 1: know we talked a lot about the balance between ensuring
[1:17:49] Speaker 1: you're like having that communication because I think what that
[1:17:53] Speaker 1: does is it especially I've gotten to see the effects
[1:17:56] Speaker 1: of that. It separates the problem the child and instead
[1:18:02] Speaker 1: of them feeling like a bad kid that makes bad mistakes,
[1:18:04] Speaker 1: you're talking through what actually happened, and you're letting them
[1:18:07] Speaker 1: know that you're upset with what's happened, like they're not
[1:18:10] Speaker 1: in and of itself the problem. So I think that's
[1:18:13] Speaker 1: important too. And then the consequence, of course, the terrence exists.
[1:18:16] Speaker 1: But if consequences are the only thing that happened, then
[1:18:18] Speaker 1: we could say, okay, well, if somebody goes to jail once, they.
[1:18:20] Speaker 3: Won't be back. And that's not the case.
[1:18:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, So the reform part of that and the guiding
[1:18:26] Speaker 1: part of that is important because I think if you're
[1:18:29] Speaker 1: having those conversations early, they expect that it feels weird.
[1:18:33] Speaker 1: Like Laderian just pointed out, it feels weird when it
[1:18:35] Speaker 1: doesn't happen. So when they get older, you're like, Okay,
[1:18:38] Speaker 1: now they're in the teen years or almost eighteen, they're
[1:18:40] Speaker 1: reaching that point to where they are armed with this
[1:18:43] Speaker 1: knowledge that you've instilled in them, and they're starting to
[1:18:46] Speaker 1: feel independent, but you're still like playing tug of war
[1:18:50] Speaker 1: trying to keep that influence and ensuring that they still
[1:18:52] Speaker 1: listen to instructions although they're like, well, you've been preparing
[1:18:55] Speaker 1: me for this. So I think both sides can kind
[1:18:57] Speaker 1: of struggle with that transition. But the way that you're
[1:19:00] Speaker 1: going about it, as they enter adult adulthood, she's entered adulthood,
[1:19:06] Speaker 1: you still have that space, that space to talk because
[1:19:08] Speaker 1: you don't you no longer have the ability to give
[1:19:09] Speaker 1: the consequences at all. That's gone, but you can always
[1:19:13] Speaker 1: still have that conversation. So I think that's important to
[1:19:15] Speaker 1: point out the importance of that. Yes, And separately, I
[1:19:19] Speaker 1: think on the parents side, if you're superheated with whatever,
[1:19:24] Speaker 1: just happened if we jumped straight into deciding a consequence.
[1:19:26] Speaker 1: I think, imagine if judges got to do that, Like,
[1:19:30] Speaker 1: imagine if whoever you just wrong got to immediately give
[1:19:33] Speaker 1: you a consequence like what that looked like. But they
[1:19:36] Speaker 1: get to understand what they did wrong, but you also
[1:19:38] Speaker 1: get an understanding of where their head was that and
[1:19:40] Speaker 1: how they ended up where they were. And I think
[1:19:41] Speaker 1: you can relate to that a lot better and maybe
[1:19:44] Speaker 1: not come down as hard and come from a place
[1:19:45] Speaker 1: of understanding. So that's why a lot of consequences probably
[1:19:48] Speaker 1: didn't follow. The talks went long enough that he understood
[1:19:51] Speaker 1: enough and related enough to not jump down too hard.
[1:19:54] Speaker 4: And what I also used to do is I will
[1:19:57] Speaker 4: always share transparent these mistakes I made.
[1:20:00] Speaker 5: It's true.
[1:20:00] Speaker 2: I will always say that I will always lead.
[1:20:03] Speaker 4: I'll be like, listen, when I was your age, I
[1:20:05] Speaker 4: did this, this, this, this, and you're better than I
[1:20:08] Speaker 4: am when I was your age. I'm always I said
[1:20:11] Speaker 4: to Ladarian all the time, I say, Ladarien, you are
[1:20:13] Speaker 4: a virgin. I said when I was your age, I
[1:20:15] Speaker 4: was not. I was giving birth to my first child.
[1:20:18] Speaker 4: So you're doing great at this. You're you're doing I'm
[1:20:20] Speaker 4: always say what you're doing. I'd be like, now, are
[1:20:22] Speaker 4: you telling me the truth? Though I don't want to
[1:20:25] Speaker 4: give you props? And it's a lot, yeah, I said,
[1:20:27] Speaker 4: because I want to give you. I want to tell
[1:20:29] Speaker 4: you what you're doing right where I wasn't doing right,
[1:20:32] Speaker 4: you know. And or I'll say stuff like when I
[1:20:35] Speaker 4: was like looking for jobs whatever I said. When I
[1:20:38] Speaker 4: was a job, I had to go find it myself.
[1:20:40] Speaker 4: I didn't have a parent going through my resume like
[1:20:42] Speaker 4: Ash is doing with you. I didn't have nobody.
[1:20:45] Speaker 2: Taking me to the job. I didn't have that. And
[1:20:47] Speaker 2: I said, and I'm giving.
[1:20:48] Speaker 4: You all these tools and support and asses come along
[1:20:52] Speaker 4: making sure that your resume is right, making sure that
[1:20:54] Speaker 4: when you do an application that you're answering it properly,
[1:20:58] Speaker 4: and all that I didn't have, all that I had
[1:20:59] Speaker 4: to learn from myself. So how dare you have all
[1:21:02] Speaker 4: this help and you still not doing it? Like so
[1:21:05] Speaker 4: I said, Are we are we hindering you because we're
[1:21:07] Speaker 4: helping you too much?
[1:21:09] Speaker 2: Or what?
[1:21:09] Speaker 4: And so those are type of conversations that we would
[1:21:13] Speaker 4: be having. I'm always lead with my mistakes. I'm always
[1:21:15] Speaker 4: show you the scars in my hand. I'm gonna say
[1:21:17] Speaker 4: this is what I did. I made mistakes because I
[1:21:19] Speaker 4: want you ever thinking that you're I remember a conversation
[1:21:23] Speaker 4: that you and I had where I first told you
[1:21:25] Speaker 4: about the infidelity that I had because you were beating
[1:21:29] Speaker 4: yourself up, saying, I feel like a failure. I feel
[1:21:32] Speaker 4: like because you were struggling in science and didn't feel
[1:21:35] Speaker 4: like you were the most talented kid at the school,
[1:21:37] Speaker 4: and you were like beating yourself up really really bad,
[1:21:40] Speaker 4: I mean really bad.
[1:21:42] Speaker 2: And I told her.
[1:21:43] Speaker 4: He was like, and you're just so perfect. I just
[1:21:45] Speaker 4: wish my life could be like yours. You're so talented,
[1:21:48] Speaker 4: everybody likes you. You're this, this, this, this this.
[1:21:51] Speaker 2: And then that's when I told you I'm not perfect.
[1:21:54] Speaker 2: I cheated on my wife and he was like what.
[1:21:58] Speaker 4: And so I'm always with transparency because I don't want
[1:22:02] Speaker 4: nobody on this earth to think that I got it
[1:22:05] Speaker 4: all together.
[1:22:06] Speaker 2: People are amazed.
[1:22:07] Speaker 4: By how transparent I am on dear future wife, but
[1:22:09] Speaker 4: it's because I started that out in my private life.
[1:22:12] Speaker 4: There's nobody outside of you and my wife now since
[1:22:18] Speaker 4: I'm married, but there was at that time, was you,
[1:22:21] Speaker 4: nobody who's approval that I sought greater than you. So
[1:22:26] Speaker 4: it didn't matter what nobody else said. You know what
[1:22:28] Speaker 4: I'm saying, Like even now, what my wife thinks about me,
[1:22:33] Speaker 4: it's superiod to anybody else. So people can sit on
[1:22:36] Speaker 4: social media say whatever they want to say, and I'd
[1:22:37] Speaker 4: be like, I don't have to go home, y'all. Y'all
[1:22:39] Speaker 4: don't mean nothing to me. You mean nothing to me.
[1:22:42] Speaker 4: What does my wife say about me? And so the
[1:22:45] Speaker 4: greatest thing I had to do is confess my faults
[1:22:47] Speaker 4: with someone that looked at me like superman, you know,
[1:22:50] Speaker 4: And so that was a lot.
[1:22:52] Speaker 2: What did that do for you? To show you the
[1:22:54] Speaker 2: frailties of your father?
[1:22:56] Speaker 5: It was honestly heartbreaking because I did think that you
[1:22:59] Speaker 5: were perfect And that sounds so silly when I say it,
[1:23:02] Speaker 5: but that's that's truly what I thought. And then, you know,
[1:23:05] Speaker 5: even being young, I realized that that was like a
[1:23:08] Speaker 5: really big mistake. You can make it a marriage, it's
[1:23:11] Speaker 5: being unfaithful. So I think that did exactly what you
[1:23:15] Speaker 5: amantive to do at that time, which made me think, wow, well,
[1:23:18] Speaker 5: yes I am feeling science, but like I'm not like
[1:23:22] Speaker 5: irredeemable or I'm not this horrible person who doesn't deserve whatever,
[1:23:27] Speaker 5: like it did exactly what you expected for it to do.
[1:23:31] Speaker 2: Why is it important as a parent?
[1:23:33] Speaker 4: And maybe y'all may not adopt that same philosophy, or
[1:23:36] Speaker 4: maybe y'all will to lead with your own.
[1:23:40] Speaker 2: Transparency and vulnerability as a parent. Do you feel like
[1:23:42] Speaker 2: that's important?
[1:23:43] Speaker 1: Hey, yeah, I'm gonna jump in on this one because
[1:23:45] Speaker 1: I got to see the other side of that. So
[1:23:46] Speaker 1: as all of this is happening, like I'm there, I
[1:23:49] Speaker 1: got to.
[1:23:50] Speaker 3: See she's having such a good time.
[1:23:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, but I got to see like the impact of that,
[1:23:55] Speaker 1: like to go from viewing someone like you said as Superman,
[1:23:58] Speaker 1: it's perfect who. A lot of the qualities that she
[1:24:02] Speaker 1: likes that I have, like the way that I carry myself,
[1:24:04] Speaker 1: the way that I lead, like they resemble you, and
[1:24:07] Speaker 1: that's what she looked for. So I think for a
[1:24:11] Speaker 1: brief period in time it kind of heightened like lack
[1:24:13] Speaker 1: of trust, and that like spread to me as well,
[1:24:15] Speaker 1: like if this man can do this, like this boy
[1:24:19] Speaker 1: can do whatever. But I think that it was really
[1:24:22] Speaker 1: important to do that because I think as she got
[1:24:25] Speaker 1: some mourn the perfect image of you, she created space
[1:24:29] Speaker 1: to have grace for you as a human. And I
[1:24:33] Speaker 1: think it's too easy to see someone who's like all
[1:24:36] Speaker 1: capable and always shows up and it's always reliable and
[1:24:40] Speaker 1: a like this not perfect. And I think that practice
[1:24:42] Speaker 1: and that understanding like got to bleed over into trying
[1:24:46] Speaker 1: to grow with me, like going from kids to adults.
[1:24:50] Speaker 1: So I think without that, like you can hold very
[1:24:52] Speaker 1: unrealistic expectations for another person if you have a standard
[1:24:56] Speaker 1: of perfection, and we might want to seem perfect, But
[1:25:00] Speaker 1: I don't think that does any good to whoever's modeling
[1:25:03] Speaker 1: their future relationship out For you.
[1:25:06] Speaker 2: That was so well said, Yeah, it's real something about that.
[1:25:11] Speaker 8: Uh, And.
[1:25:13] Speaker 2: So did you feel like you started developing trust issues
[1:25:16] Speaker 2: with Tay?
[1:25:17] Speaker 5: Absolutely? Yeah. And I'm surprised you remember that because I
[1:25:22] Speaker 5: literally was like, if my dad it's like capable of
[1:25:25] Speaker 5: doing something like that, what is this? That's really how
[1:25:30] Speaker 5: it felt.
[1:25:30] Speaker 6: I will say something about what Lateria said, though, because
[1:25:33] Speaker 6: I can definitely relate to that, because when your father
[1:25:37] Speaker 6: does something like that, it feels like, oh my gosh,
[1:25:41] Speaker 6: like if if he can do that, then of course
[1:25:45] Speaker 6: any man that I'm with can can do that as well.
[1:25:48] Speaker 6: So I certainly relate to that because it's not that
[1:25:53] Speaker 6: they did it to you, but it sets the kind
[1:25:57] Speaker 6: of framework for what you know is possible. And especially
[1:26:01] Speaker 6: when you see your dad or your grandfather or the
[1:26:03] Speaker 6: men in your life as that like pillar.
[1:26:05] Speaker 5: Now you're like, oh, man.
[1:26:08] Speaker 6: If he had it together and he did that, and
[1:26:10] Speaker 6: I thought, you know, it really is like having the
[1:26:13] Speaker 6: rug pulled from underneath you.
[1:26:15] Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, it was.
[1:26:16] Speaker 4: Real and I felt like And I told her one
[1:26:18] Speaker 4: day in the last episode that we did a couple
[1:26:21] Speaker 4: of years ago. I said, I did do that to you,
[1:26:24] Speaker 4: And I apologize because as a man, we are showing
[1:26:27] Speaker 4: our daughters what it looks like to love a woman properly.
[1:26:33] Speaker 4: And if you show any signs of a chink in
[1:26:36] Speaker 4: your armor where you're doing something that's ungodly, operating in sin,
[1:26:41] Speaker 4: whatever that is, I'm showing her that this is your expectation.
[1:26:47] Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
[1:26:48] Speaker 4: And I took it to heart. I took it to heart.
[1:26:51] Speaker 4: But I remember God telling me to tell her that.
[1:26:54] Speaker 4: And her response was I hate cheaters. And when I
[1:26:58] Speaker 4: said that, I hate cheaters, and I looked at her,
[1:27:00] Speaker 4: I was like, thanks. I just sat there and I
[1:27:02] Speaker 4: just took it.
[1:27:03] Speaker 6: I took it on the chin and I was like,
[1:27:05] Speaker 6: but I want to say to that because I know
[1:27:08] Speaker 6: a lot of men feel like that and they wear
[1:27:10] Speaker 6: that for their family, and I just want to say,
[1:27:12] Speaker 6: we're not our mistakes. I think you said that, and
[1:27:15] Speaker 6: so I think that you know you made a mistake,
[1:27:20] Speaker 6: and the important thing is the work.
[1:27:22] Speaker 5: That you do to not become the mistake.
[1:27:26] Speaker 6: Right, not to sit in that and dwell in that,
[1:27:28] Speaker 6: because sometimes when we dwell in the mistake or the
[1:27:32] Speaker 6: decision or the action, then we actually make it bigger
[1:27:35] Speaker 6: than it is. Right now, you are that person because
[1:27:37] Speaker 6: you walk around It's kind of like sometimes when you're dealing,
[1:27:40] Speaker 6: you know, with depression, or you're depressed, and you won't
[1:27:43] Speaker 6: go outside and you won't go try to get a job,
[1:27:45] Speaker 6: or you won't like literally, you are giving your body
[1:27:49] Speaker 6: more space to dwell in that. And so what I
[1:27:52] Speaker 6: just want to celebrate you for is that you didn't
[1:27:56] Speaker 6: sit in it. You didn't say, well, I am this,
[1:27:59] Speaker 6: I'm a cheat, like I can never be better. You
[1:28:02] Speaker 6: literally built a whole platform to show the world how
[1:28:06] Speaker 6: you healed publicly, so that you can show up as
[1:28:09] Speaker 6: this mighty man of valor who you've always been because
[1:28:12] Speaker 6: your heart was always pure, your heart ain't never not
[1:28:16] Speaker 6: been pure.
[1:28:17] Speaker 5: I know I just did a double negative there, but
[1:28:19] Speaker 5: your heart, now.
[1:28:20] Speaker 6: Your heart, can't nobody take Yes, It's always been pure.
[1:28:25] Speaker 6: So the mistakes that you made, even Lettaria saw that
[1:28:29] Speaker 6: they were momentary lapses, but they had nothing to do
[1:28:32] Speaker 6: with the man that you are, in the heart that
[1:28:34] Speaker 6: you have and the type of husband that you are
[1:28:37] Speaker 6: to me. And as we celebrate Father's Day, I just
[1:28:40] Speaker 6: want you to know that God broke the mold when
[1:28:42] Speaker 6: he made you.
[1:28:44] Speaker 2: Trying to give me.
[1:28:47] Speaker 6: God broke the mold when he made this one right here.
[1:28:51] Speaker 6: So everything about you strives to be perfect.
[1:28:55] Speaker 5: And to be better.
[1:28:57] Speaker 6: And I just want you to know that I'm proud
[1:28:59] Speaker 6: of the work that you've done, but most importantly, I'm
[1:29:02] Speaker 6: proud that it doesn't just stop.
[1:29:05] Speaker 5: It's continuous.
[1:29:06] Speaker 2: A man, thank you for recognizing that.
[1:29:10] Speaker 4: I'm gonna keep going because if I you know my
[1:29:12] Speaker 4: Loveland words, look at her smile, I'm like.
[1:29:18] Speaker 2: Plitarian When you met her, what did you say?
[1:29:21] Speaker 5: I loved Ashley from the moment I talked to her
[1:29:23] Speaker 5: on the phone. It just felt like it sounds cheesy
[1:29:28] Speaker 5: to say a broath of fresh air. That's what it
[1:29:29] Speaker 5: felt like. It just felt like, finally, that's what First,
[1:29:35] Speaker 5: I'm being honest, it was like finally, because I know
[1:29:38] Speaker 5: people don't get to hear my perspective on you know this,
[1:29:41] Speaker 5: But my dad didn't bring people around me that he
[1:29:43] Speaker 5: was just talking to or dating. Like when I met Ashley,
[1:29:47] Speaker 5: I was like, oh, this is serious, Like this is
[1:29:50] Speaker 5: in fact, you told me it was serious. I was like,
[1:29:52] Speaker 5: this is Ashley. I'm marrying her facts Ashley, And I'm like, hey, yeah,
[1:30:02] Speaker 5: you were there but very straight up told me what
[1:30:04] Speaker 5: it was from the beginning. And that's what I expect
[1:30:07] Speaker 5: from him, and that's exactly how.
[1:30:09] Speaker 4: You move so and of course a lot of it
[1:30:12] Speaker 4: was funny because during the wedding they were like you
[1:30:16] Speaker 4: heard some negative people talking out see his daughter ain't there.
[1:30:20] Speaker 4: She's yeah, she don't approve of this marriage. What would
[1:30:23] Speaker 4: you like to say to that?
[1:30:24] Speaker 5: That's so silly. First of all, my dad is my
[1:30:28] Speaker 5: best friend. I love him. I love Ashley just you know,
[1:30:32] Speaker 5: based off y'all being together, but even as as a person,
[1:30:36] Speaker 5: like when people ask me about you, people have asked
[1:30:38] Speaker 5: me about her about you, Like she's so kind, she's sweet,
[1:30:41] Speaker 5: and like her soul is just so pure and soft.
[1:30:45] Speaker 5: She just feels like a like a teacher, like your
[1:30:48] Speaker 5: favorite teacher. Was like, yeah, and I knew that, but
[1:30:52] Speaker 5: like that's the best way I could describe it. I'm like,
[1:30:54] Speaker 5: she feels like your favorite teacher who you sit after
[1:30:57] Speaker 5: class with, and you just like trumpa dump on. He said, Oh,
[1:31:00] Speaker 5: and howm I have this going on? Just mad at me?
[1:31:03] Speaker 5: You just feel like a like a safe space. So
[1:31:05] Speaker 5: I think it's very, very silly that everyone thought that
[1:31:08] Speaker 5: I did not support this because I was the first
[1:31:11] Speaker 5: person to be able to see this transpire, and I
[1:31:13] Speaker 5: had a baby. Claire was three months and I was
[1:31:15] Speaker 5: in my early postpartum, I was breastfeeding. I was scared
[1:31:20] Speaker 5: of her getting COVID, and so it was November. You know,
[1:31:22] Speaker 5: it was the last thing anybody should have concluded was
[1:31:26] Speaker 5: that I didn't support it. But people like negativity, so
[1:31:29] Speaker 5: I can't really blame them from jumping to that conclusion.
[1:31:32] Speaker 5: And you sent a voice.
[1:31:33] Speaker 6: I don't know if people knew or picked up on that,
[1:31:36] Speaker 6: but but you were actually the first person because it
[1:31:39] Speaker 6: was the mystery bride and your dad didn't know that
[1:31:42] Speaker 6: we did that. Shout out to Jen, our wedding planner,
[1:31:45] Speaker 6: who really was like, let's do this.
[1:31:46] Speaker 5: This is a good idea.
[1:31:47] Speaker 6: But Jen actually had asked for me to send it
[1:31:52] Speaker 6: back to you, to have you take my name out,
[1:31:55] Speaker 6: so that you because you said something, and you said
[1:31:58] Speaker 6: you and Ashley, and so I guess that moment was
[1:32:01] Speaker 6: supposed to be like people not seeing me until like
[1:32:05] Speaker 6: I walked out, but I intentionally left it in because
[1:32:08] Speaker 6: I wanted you to introduce me to everyone.
[1:32:12] Speaker 5: And I loved that. Thank you for doing that. I
[1:32:14] Speaker 5: actually watched it on my phone on YouTube in the car.
[1:32:17] Speaker 5: In the car we were parked at Walmart. She needed
[1:32:19] Speaker 5: formula and stuff and Tay it was inside. I remember
[1:32:22] Speaker 5: when because I mean, you just told me like, hey,
[1:32:24] Speaker 5: can you just send your dad and encouraging word for
[1:32:27] Speaker 5: like if you know you're not going to be here,
[1:32:28] Speaker 5: so just something you want to send him down the
[1:32:30] Speaker 5: aisle with. That's what happened. So when I took in
[1:32:34] Speaker 5: that moment and I said Ashley, and I knew what
[1:32:36] Speaker 5: I said, and I was like she took the name out,
[1:32:39] Speaker 5: Like I was freaking out. I'm like, oh my gosh,
[1:32:42] Speaker 5: I have ruined it. I don't know listen to it.
[1:32:45] Speaker 5: And then I saw the comments coming in like everybody
[1:32:47] Speaker 5: was like Ashley, I was actually actually I was liken,
[1:32:52] Speaker 5: but then it became beautiful because I was like, wait
[1:32:54] Speaker 5: a minute, I got to announced.
[1:32:57] Speaker 2: That.
[1:32:58] Speaker 5: Yeah, I loved it.
[1:33:00] Speaker 2: I was like, where's this voice coming home?
[1:33:02] Speaker 3: I said, who is?
[1:33:05] Speaker 4: I'm not frona cry. I'm not f the cry. I'm
[1:33:08] Speaker 4: gonna sit here and hold it. And I was like wow,
[1:33:10] Speaker 4: I was like that that that was extremely special to.
[1:33:13] Speaker 5: Me because go ahead, I wanted to say too, I've
[1:33:17] Speaker 5: never experienced fomo like that.
[1:33:19] Speaker 2: That was.
[1:33:20] Speaker 5: I'm like, I didn't see the wedding. I wasn't there.
[1:33:23] Speaker 5: It looked fun. Everyone was beautiful. Like that is the
[1:33:27] Speaker 5: height of like som like. But I can't get that back.
[1:33:31] Speaker 5: I don't want to say I regret not going. I
[1:33:34] Speaker 5: regret the situation because had I not had a baby,
[1:33:37] Speaker 5: had she been six months, I would have went. You know,
[1:33:39] Speaker 5: had it been in a different season, I would have went.
[1:33:41] Speaker 5: But it was never a situation where I was upset
[1:33:43] Speaker 5: with y'all. I wanted you guys to postpone it because
[1:33:45] Speaker 5: I've had people say, well, why could they just postpone it?
[1:33:47] Speaker 5: I'm like, postpone their wedding. Listen to what you're saying
[1:33:51] Speaker 5: this sounds crazy, and I'm not a selfish person.
[1:33:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, because if I would said six minds still too.
[1:34:00] Speaker 5: Soon, yeah, I would have been like, no, I'm scared,
[1:34:04] Speaker 5: she's but terry.
[1:34:05] Speaker 2: What do you think it's I'll let you know when
[1:34:06] Speaker 2: it gets.
[1:34:10] Speaker 5: That was never a thought, like they're going to get
[1:34:12] Speaker 5: married without me there, they don't, Like, I never thought that.
[1:34:15] Speaker 2: So I was about to put that in there to
[1:34:18] Speaker 2: tell how you feel missing out.
[1:34:20] Speaker 4: You know.
[1:34:21] Speaker 1: I was in a similar headspace of just like surviving.
[1:34:26] Speaker 1: Like I was still off from work, so just like
[1:34:29] Speaker 1: being able to take time off that's also awesome, But
[1:34:32] Speaker 1: I was off for what four months? Yeah, they give
[1:34:34] Speaker 1: me four months off, so I got to be there,
[1:34:36] Speaker 1: be a part of everything. And like I'm right in
[1:34:38] Speaker 1: the trenches too, So it's like I'm trying to see,
[1:34:40] Speaker 1: like what does that look like? Flying like diaper bags, bottles, formula,
[1:34:44] Speaker 1: like bottle warmers.
[1:34:45] Speaker 3: Like well she take it cold? Like yeah, it's just
[1:34:48] Speaker 3: like a lot of unknown.
[1:34:49] Speaker 1: So I think I kind of balanced in between, like
[1:34:52] Speaker 1: the same like the fomo, like everybody having a good
[1:34:54] Speaker 1: time dressed nice, looking good, good.
[1:34:58] Speaker 5: Eating good, eating good a dancing.
[1:35:01] Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, having fun, they hare turning up.
[1:35:05] Speaker 3: I'm I even know you hadn't had moves right where
[1:35:07] Speaker 3: that comes from.
[1:35:08] Speaker 4: We really really, really really missed y'all. One thing that
[1:35:11] Speaker 4: y'all did, which was such a wise thing was when
[1:35:15] Speaker 4: y'all got married.
[1:35:17] Speaker 2: Y'all were like, let's just talk about that. When y'all
[1:35:19] Speaker 2: was about to.
[1:35:20] Speaker 5: Get married, Well, we had been engaged for probably about
[1:35:23] Speaker 5: two or three years, and then we were just like,
[1:35:26] Speaker 5: we should get married. Why are we still engaged? And
[1:35:28] Speaker 5: so I was crazy and it was October or something,
[1:35:31] Speaker 5: and I said we should get married by the end
[1:35:33] Speaker 5: of the year. What year was this? Twenty twenty two,
[1:35:36] Speaker 5: which is funny, we've for like, we remembered it last night.
[1:35:39] Speaker 5: We always forget when our wedding was. We've been together
[1:35:42] Speaker 5: for so long it just feels like time just keeps
[1:35:45] Speaker 5: just going. But yeah, December twenty twenty two.
[1:35:49] Speaker 2: And so my mom and sober Western the exact date.
[1:35:54] Speaker 5: December twenty ninth, twenty twenty two.
[1:35:58] Speaker 3: I'm saying thirty, but go ahead, having days.
[1:36:01] Speaker 5: In December thirty one? Yeah, okay, thirtieth it was I'm sorry.
[1:36:08] Speaker 5: We don't get offended. You don't get no, no, no,
[1:36:12] Speaker 5: So good. Yeah, December thirty.
[1:36:14] Speaker 1: I feel like that's how little of emphasis we put
[1:36:16] Speaker 1: on the things outside of the relationship itself, like the ring,
[1:36:19] Speaker 1: the wedding, that that there were things that we wanted
[1:36:21] Speaker 1: to do. There were ceremonial and a part of it,
[1:36:23] Speaker 1: but being together for so long and intending for that
[1:36:27] Speaker 1: to be forever, the focus is always on the relationship itself.
[1:36:29] Speaker 1: So we yeah, we lapsed on those the other things
[1:36:33] Speaker 1: that the minor details sometimes because they to us are minor.
[1:36:37] Speaker 2: Which is a trip.
[1:36:37] Speaker 4: Because y'all were like, y'all gave me perspective by the ring,
[1:36:41] Speaker 4: saying it don't need to cost a lot of money,
[1:36:43] Speaker 4: it's the meaning behind it.
[1:36:45] Speaker 2: And I was like, who raised this shot?
[1:36:48] Speaker 4: Yeah?
[1:36:48] Speaker 5: You were like, I didn't raise you like that. I
[1:36:50] Speaker 5: don't know. I just love him.
[1:36:52] Speaker 4: Where'd you get this from? And I respected it this
[1:36:55] Speaker 4: He said the wedding. I want to have a big
[1:36:58] Speaker 4: wedding for her. And we started off down that route
[1:37:01] Speaker 4: where I was gonna do this big wedding for her,
[1:37:03] Speaker 4: and they just stopped me in my tracks and told
[1:37:06] Speaker 4: me straight up, like, no, we want something simple.
[1:37:10] Speaker 2: I said, simple, Like what she's talking about.
[1:37:12] Speaker 4: I don't care if we had a wedding on the
[1:37:14] Speaker 4: side of the road, like Kaylin and Kyra did. If
[1:37:17] Speaker 4: y'all been rocking with me before the whole duration of
[1:37:21] Speaker 4: Dear Future Wifey Kaylin and Kyra on the podcast, and
[1:37:25] Speaker 4: they had made their first million by the age of
[1:37:27] Speaker 4: nineteen doing prank videos on each other. Moved from California
[1:37:32] Speaker 4: to Dallas and came on the podcast, and now they
[1:37:37] Speaker 4: became one of y'all's closest friends. And they just had
[1:37:41] Speaker 4: a wedding when they got married, they just got just right,
[1:37:45] Speaker 4: just pulled off the field. Had his uncle that was
[1:37:47] Speaker 4: a past or something and they just they married him.
[1:37:49] Speaker 4: It's just on the side of the field. And but
[1:37:52] Speaker 4: Terry like, we could just have something like that. And
[1:37:54] Speaker 4: I was like, this is not the vision, yeah, that
[1:37:57] Speaker 4: I had when you were brought into this earth, you know,
[1:38:03] Speaker 4: And she was just like, I want So what happened
[1:38:05] Speaker 4: was I got this venue because this other lady called
[1:38:08] Speaker 4: off her her her wedding, and so she gave me
[1:38:12] Speaker 4: her venue half the price of what it was and
[1:38:17] Speaker 4: got the venue. And I asked the terrier and takeo
[1:38:20] Speaker 4: look at they looked at they said they want it.
[1:38:22] Speaker 4: I asked them to push the date where it was
[1:38:24] Speaker 4: something really cool. They went to go look at other venues,
[1:38:27] Speaker 4: said we're gonna do this. Then halfway through it, they
[1:38:29] Speaker 4: just like, I don't want to have a big wedding.
[1:38:31] Speaker 4: I was like, we're talking about what you want, we
[1:38:35] Speaker 4: talking about what we won't. She was like, we don't
[1:38:38] Speaker 4: want that. I said, okay, So I repurposed that venue,
[1:38:41] Speaker 4: and that's how I ended up doing Black Love Matters,
[1:38:43] Speaker 4: where I did a whole wedding.
[1:38:45] Speaker 2: I gifted it to other people. But then y'all decide to.
[1:38:50] Speaker 4: Have a quaint wedding in the clahouse of y'all's apartment.
[1:38:56] Speaker 5: It's called a micro wedding, which is like less than
[1:38:58] Speaker 5: twenty people. And I was that important for y'all because
[1:39:01] Speaker 5: I just really wanted the people there who knew us,
[1:39:03] Speaker 5: who loved us, who supported us. From like the very
[1:39:06] Speaker 5: beginning of our relationship. I didn't really care too much
[1:39:08] Speaker 5: about hosting or celebrating with other people. And that sounds
[1:39:14] Speaker 5: really like, well, you wouldn't want people a part of
[1:39:16] Speaker 5: your big day, which yes, but that wasn't what I
[1:39:20] Speaker 5: was focused on. I just wanted to finally get married,
[1:39:22] Speaker 5: So that's what made it to where I didn't have to.
[1:39:25] Speaker 5: We had all of garden catered. Like if that doesn't
[1:39:27] Speaker 5: tell y'all, how like basic and simple like we can be.
[1:39:30] Speaker 5: We just wanted to get married. We're on the like
[1:39:32] Speaker 5: twenty four in our clubhouse. It was beautiful, it was nice.
[1:39:35] Speaker 5: I made the decor, my mom helped set it up.
[1:39:38] Speaker 5: His mom bought the cake.
[1:39:41] Speaker 3: How much would you say?
[1:39:42] Speaker 5: Like just yeah, how three thousand dollars and my dress
[1:39:47] Speaker 5: and his suit. His suit was probably like eight hundred.
[1:39:50] Speaker 5: My dress was probably like eight hundred. And then yeah,
[1:39:53] Speaker 5: and then photography, oh yeah, And I remember when we
[1:39:56] Speaker 5: did the math on it a while ago. We added
[1:39:57] Speaker 5: all that in total, three thousand dollars including photography and makeup.
[1:40:03] Speaker 2: And that's how simply it can be.
[1:40:05] Speaker 4: Get married, create covenant, and nothing becomes about money. And
[1:40:10] Speaker 4: what I want to apply y'all at, what I want
[1:40:12] Speaker 4: to apply y'all for is that y'all never made finances
[1:40:16] Speaker 4: an issue in y'all's marriage, from a ring to the wedding,
[1:40:21] Speaker 4: to a dress to anything.
[1:40:23] Speaker 2: Uh so much so that.
[1:40:26] Speaker 4: It was some tension that we had while you were
[1:40:29] Speaker 4: in college with y'all started living together. So y'all hear
[1:40:32] Speaker 4: me beginning the podcast, and I say, are y'all still
[1:40:34] Speaker 4: shacking up with us?
[1:40:35] Speaker 2: It's because of her. Y'all was shacking up.
[1:40:40] Speaker 7: What was that like?
[1:40:41] Speaker 4: And you know, to have to tell me that y'all
[1:40:43] Speaker 4: was living together, knowing that my stance was totally against that.
[1:40:47] Speaker 3: Well, when it was cost effective were expensive?
[1:40:51] Speaker 5: We were sleeping together every.
[1:40:52] Speaker 2: Night, and then like he had back to you because yeah, yeah, like.
[1:40:57] Speaker 5: That he had an apartment, I had an apartment. We
[1:40:59] Speaker 5: were together every night, so it was cost effective.
[1:41:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we always ended up like spending majority
[1:41:05] Speaker 1: of our days at one place or the other. So
[1:41:07] Speaker 1: when you started going back at those finances and you're
[1:41:10] Speaker 1: always spending time, it's a commitment to make for sure,
[1:41:13] Speaker 1: to be like, well I'm always here anyway, so like
[1:41:16] Speaker 1: why not just make it one place? But I think
[1:41:20] Speaker 1: that was the leading part. But two, I think actually
[1:41:22] Speaker 1: I can't even say the leading part. The leading part
[1:41:24] Speaker 1: is for sure that we just wanted to spend time together.
[1:41:25] Speaker 1: We want to be around each other, and even if
[1:41:28] Speaker 1: we weren't living together, and you kind of have that
[1:41:29] Speaker 1: little like, well I got somewhere to go to like
[1:41:32] Speaker 1: at some point you got to rip the band aid
[1:41:33] Speaker 1: off anyways, And I don't condone everyone doing that.
[1:41:38] Speaker 3: That's just our story and how that worked out.
[1:41:39] Speaker 1: So I wouldn't say, like everybody, that's for everybody, because
[1:41:42] Speaker 1: everyone's situation is not the same. Like I don't know
[1:41:44] Speaker 1: the character of all men and all women. So you
[1:41:47] Speaker 1: can follow in those steps and find yourself in a
[1:41:50] Speaker 1: little bit of trouble. If someone's character isn't right, you're
[1:41:53] Speaker 1: gonna go through a lot of conflicts. Like it can
[1:41:56] Speaker 1: be minor. You talking about like trivial things like to
[1:41:58] Speaker 1: brush out this here, this thing, totally see it. It
[1:42:00] Speaker 1: don't matter if anything going on that can be a
[1:42:02] Speaker 1: big problem. It started off small, but now it's the
[1:42:04] Speaker 1: tone of how you said it to me, and now
[1:42:06] Speaker 1: it's like, oh well you responded in like a more
[1:42:08] Speaker 1: animated way, and now we beefing. But it started with
[1:42:11] Speaker 1: a toilet, see you know what I mean. So I think, again,
[1:42:14] Speaker 1: that's not for everybody all. I go as far as
[1:42:17] Speaker 1: to say it is not for anybody. Don't take the
[1:42:19] Speaker 1: risk if you don't have to.
[1:42:21] Speaker 2: But I did. I did. I think at what point
[1:42:25] Speaker 2: did you know you're gonna marry her?
[1:42:27] Speaker 1: I think it became like super apparent just early on
[1:42:30] Speaker 1: in the college days, I think as you got to
[1:42:32] Speaker 1: go through your first hardships, whether it's I blew all
[1:42:36] Speaker 1: my student money and now I'm working and I'm barely
[1:42:40] Speaker 1: making it the class, I'm like, I'm like, you're going
[1:42:42] Speaker 1: through what it feels like life hitting me with this.
[1:42:44] Speaker 1: My grade is not what I want to be, but
[1:42:47] Speaker 1: you kind of have that, Okay, But yeah, I think
[1:42:53] Speaker 1: that as you start to go through those things, the
[1:42:55] Speaker 1: same way you would look to your parent and be like, hey,
[1:42:57] Speaker 1: like this is where I'm at, this is where I'm
[1:43:00] Speaker 1: trying to be, and like how they respond to that.
[1:43:03] Speaker 1: It showed me like, Okay, this is somebody that I
[1:43:06] Speaker 1: can do life with because I'm doing it like I'm
[1:43:07] Speaker 1: doing training and wheels were own a little bit, but
[1:43:10] Speaker 1: like I'm doing it.
[1:43:11] Speaker 3: So yeah, that had to be like the first like
[1:43:14] Speaker 3: year or so of college.
[1:43:15] Speaker 4: So I knew, even though I didn't agree with y'all
[1:43:18] Speaker 4: living together while y'all were in college, and when y'all
[1:43:21] Speaker 4: moved to Dallas, I actually helped y'all move. You did.
[1:43:25] Speaker 5: You're the only person who helped us move to Nobody
[1:43:28] Speaker 5: helped us. I will never forget everybody was decided for
[1:43:30] Speaker 5: us to come back, and nobody helped us move.
[1:43:32] Speaker 6: Man.
[1:43:32] Speaker 1: When I tell you there was a it was our
[1:43:35] Speaker 1: head board was expensive head board. We got one of
[1:43:37] Speaker 1: the bigger things that we splurage them. But all I
[1:43:41] Speaker 1: got is an image of that head board around your shoulder.
[1:43:47] Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I didn't want to carry it. Yeah,
[1:43:52] Speaker 1: so I vividly remember.
[1:43:54] Speaker 3: Seeing you do that. So that was that was cool?
[1:43:56] Speaker 3: That was cool.
[1:43:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, because again I was dread and moving it like
[1:44:00] Speaker 1: I was too cheap to hire movers. I'm gonna do
[1:44:02] Speaker 1: it all. It can take me two days, I'm gonna
[1:44:04] Speaker 1: do all of it. Yeah, I'm not giving nobody five
[1:44:08] Speaker 1: six hundred dollars. It's gonna be me if it.
[1:44:10] Speaker 4: Tell you something was so interesting is that when my
[1:44:13] Speaker 4: daughter told me that you paid off for her, paid
[1:44:16] Speaker 4: off her past student loans.
[1:44:19] Speaker 2: What made you do that?
[1:44:21] Speaker 1: I did it because I didn't want it to be
[1:44:22] Speaker 1: a blocker for her, Like I have conversations with her
[1:44:25] Speaker 1: and where she wants to be, and a lot of
[1:44:28] Speaker 1: it centered around like the regrets of what school looked like.
[1:44:31] Speaker 1: Like I think especially as you hit ages where you
[1:44:34] Speaker 1: see people who stayed in school graduating, they're getting the
[1:44:36] Speaker 1: big job there, maybe going as far as to like
[1:44:40] Speaker 1: having the wedding because like the finances are there, like
[1:44:42] Speaker 1: they're starting life, and that what you want to say,
[1:44:44] Speaker 1: the American dream where everything's going perfect. That wasn't our case.
[1:44:49] Speaker 1: That's not how things played out. And I was like
[1:44:53] Speaker 1: that that was just something that we talked about a
[1:44:55] Speaker 1: ton that just kept revisiting. And one day I was like,
[1:44:57] Speaker 1: I'm gonna pay this off one way or another. So
[1:45:00] Speaker 1: I was like, take my car. I think my limit
[1:45:02] Speaker 1: might have been just about that, like six thousand, sixty
[1:45:04] Speaker 1: five hundred dollars something like that. I was like, gone, no,
[1:45:07] Speaker 1: my excuses, Like so if that's what you want, we
[1:45:10] Speaker 1: can go after that. Whether it was you wanted to do,
[1:45:11] Speaker 1: I think at the time it was interior designed. Yeah,
[1:45:14] Speaker 1: she has an eye for it, didn't have to go
[1:45:16] Speaker 1: to school for it. But sometimes certain jobs look for
[1:45:18] Speaker 1: stuff like that. But again, she decorates our house. Everybody,
[1:45:21] Speaker 1: so everybody is pulling her and every which way to
[1:45:24] Speaker 1: get her to design something, to decorate something for him.
[1:45:26] Speaker 1: But I was like, if that's what you want to do,
[1:45:28] Speaker 1: I'm taking the obstacle away and we'll figure it out.
[1:45:29] Speaker 5: And we did.
[1:45:30] Speaker 1: That is gone paid it off. I don't think about it.
[1:45:33] Speaker 1: I don't look forward. I'm not gonna miss the six thousand.
[1:45:35] Speaker 1: But what I thought was I would rather pay six
[1:45:39] Speaker 1: thousand dollars in her eventually not continue school.
[1:45:41] Speaker 3: Then that be something that she regretted.
[1:45:43] Speaker 2: That's good, that's good. What that means to you, Liitaria,
[1:45:47] Speaker 2: It was very.
[1:45:49] Speaker 5: It was like a reminder of like he really does
[1:45:51] Speaker 5: love me for me. And one thing I also do
[1:45:54] Speaker 5: want to say is to go back and the school
[1:45:57] Speaker 5: that we actually went to together. I didn't get it
[1:45:59] Speaker 5: into to it when I first applied to I don't
[1:46:01] Speaker 5: know if you remember that.
[1:46:02] Speaker 2: Yep.
[1:46:03] Speaker 5: I actually was denied and then I had to appeal
[1:46:07] Speaker 5: and he helped me my appeal letter. When I say
[1:46:09] Speaker 5: help me, he basically wrote up, like you're going to school.
[1:46:15] Speaker 3: I told her I was a GPT for yeah, yeah,
[1:46:20] Speaker 3: and then you go there and then don't go there.
[1:46:22] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[1:46:24] Speaker 4: But it was all on academic probab Yeah, I said,
[1:46:28] Speaker 4: good lord girl, the Matario is like very very lazy
[1:46:32] Speaker 4: in school.
[1:46:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that just wasn't her thing.
[1:46:34] Speaker 4: Yes, And I was like, I don't pay for failure,
[1:46:38] Speaker 4: I said, I said, I'm paying for you to I
[1:46:41] Speaker 4: pay for your apartment, I pay for your stuff. I
[1:46:43] Speaker 4: do that, I got your car, I said, but I'm
[1:46:45] Speaker 4: not gonna pay for failure. If you're not going to school,
[1:46:48] Speaker 4: you're not going to class, you're not doing your work.
[1:46:51] Speaker 2: You're on your own at that point.
[1:46:53] Speaker 5: So I told you I get some consequences, which I
[1:46:54] Speaker 5: did want to say. That was a part of the
[1:46:57] Speaker 5: reason to why that kind of led us to moving
[1:46:59] Speaker 5: in together, because then you stop not saying this is
[1:47:02] Speaker 5: the bad thing, but you stopped paying all of my rents,
[1:47:05] Speaker 5: like when I'm paying half of it. Then I'm like, well, okay,
[1:47:09] Speaker 5: I kind of want to live with this guy. I'm
[1:47:11] Speaker 5: you know, with I'm like on this flinting rate with him,
[1:47:13] Speaker 5: and we can live together and then he saves money
[1:47:15] Speaker 5: and not save money. But I didn't want to go
[1:47:17] Speaker 5: back to saying that was another hard conversation for us
[1:47:19] Speaker 5: to have because I knew, under no circumstances would you
[1:47:22] Speaker 5: be like, Okay, have fun, congratulations, do a good job.
[1:47:25] Speaker 5: I know you were not going down easy. I knew
[1:47:27] Speaker 5: it wasn't going to be a resolve to the conversation
[1:47:29] Speaker 5: unless I decided not to move in with him. So
[1:47:33] Speaker 5: you definitely held your ground. I held mine, like Tate said,
[1:47:37] Speaker 5: I don't recommend anybody to do that.
[1:47:39] Speaker 2: And I told her.
[1:47:40] Speaker 4: She was like, see, I'm very very level headed. I'd
[1:47:43] Speaker 4: be like, this is where I stand. Where are you staying?
[1:47:45] Speaker 4: Or Dad, I'm moving in right. It's really I'd be like,
[1:47:51] Speaker 4: this is why you shouldn't. This is why you shouldn't.
[1:47:53] Speaker 4: This is why I say this. This is statistics, this
[1:47:55] Speaker 4: is blah blah blah blah blah, this is what the
[1:47:56] Speaker 4: spiritual ramifications are. But that I want to do this
[1:47:59] Speaker 4: because this is okay. Now, I ain't gonna hold no grudges,
[1:48:02] Speaker 4: ain't gonna give you no cold shoulder.
[1:48:04] Speaker 2: We're gonna still keep talking. I ain't gonna even bring
[1:48:06] Speaker 2: it up. No more bring that up again.
[1:48:09] Speaker 5: No, but you just stop paying my phone bill, my
[1:48:11] Speaker 5: car insurance, my car notes.
[1:48:12] Speaker 3: Ye well, my dad.
[1:48:16] Speaker 5: Said, and then now we have to figure those things
[1:48:18] Speaker 5: out together.
[1:48:20] Speaker 3: Advanced though it wasn't just dropped on us randomly like
[1:48:22] Speaker 3: it was. That was the condition. It was like, this
[1:48:24] Speaker 3: is what you're doing.
[1:48:26] Speaker 5: Okay, I'm not paying anything starting those days.
[1:48:28] Speaker 4: This is what I told her, I said, listen, right now,
[1:48:32] Speaker 4: I have authority and spiritual authority over you. I mean,
[1:48:36] Speaker 4: I'm covering you financially everything. If you decide to go
[1:48:41] Speaker 4: under somebody else's covering, he needs to cover you. And
[1:48:44] Speaker 4: I said, I'm not going to be paying for you
[1:48:47] Speaker 4: to have a living boyfriend. That's not gonna happen. I'm
[1:48:50] Speaker 4: not gonna be paying for y'all to be in you know,
[1:48:53] Speaker 4: fornication and sin. I'm not paying for that. So I said,
[1:48:58] Speaker 4: I hear deem, he's showing the proof. I'll be forgetting.
[1:49:02] Speaker 2: I'll be forgetting to it because I leave with Grace.
[1:49:07] Speaker 2: And then I'd just be like, Okay, do what you're
[1:49:09] Speaker 2: going to do. And they moved in and I and
[1:49:11] Speaker 2: I because I was like, wyn't you move back to
[1:49:12] Speaker 2: Dallas when I want to stay here. I want to
[1:49:14] Speaker 2: do this. I was like, you ain't in school. You
[1:49:16] Speaker 2: know what? You want to stay in Corpus CHRISTI for it.
[1:49:18] Speaker 2: You ain't in school. I just want to stay here
[1:49:19] Speaker 2: because you want to be grown cool.
[1:49:22] Speaker 4: You have a covering. And I told her this specifically.
[1:49:24] Speaker 4: I said, I haven't given you away yet. I said,
[1:49:27] Speaker 4: there's going to be a moment in the wedding where
[1:49:29] Speaker 4: when you get married, I'm going to give you away
[1:49:32] Speaker 4: to him. And when I give you to him, you
[1:49:35] Speaker 4: can no longer call me for you can.
[1:49:37] Speaker 3: I can.
[1:49:37] Speaker 4: I'll help you out if you need help or whatever,
[1:49:39] Speaker 4: But I no longer have spiritual authority.
[1:49:42] Speaker 2: Over you and a spiritual covering.
[1:49:44] Speaker 4: I said, your husband will be that and I will
[1:49:46] Speaker 4: respect that covering through and through.
[1:49:49] Speaker 2: And uh. And I said, so if you're expecting to
[1:49:52] Speaker 2: do that, now go ahead and do it.
[1:49:55] Speaker 5: I said, but how did that feel?
[1:49:57] Speaker 9: Take?
[1:49:57] Speaker 1: The thing is, it was, in a strange way, a
[1:50:02] Speaker 1: good thing for me. It was reassuring because you're essentially
[1:50:05] Speaker 1: presenting a girl with like, hey, you have your dad
[1:50:08] Speaker 1: who has been there for you forever, who has taken
[1:50:11] Speaker 1: care of these things financially forever. On the table is
[1:50:16] Speaker 1: you continue this relationship with faith that this person is
[1:50:19] Speaker 1: taking that over or you gonna find yourself paying your
[1:50:22] Speaker 1: phone bill in six months when you break up with you.
[1:50:25] Speaker 3: So it's like, so it was never.
[1:50:29] Speaker 1: Clearly a doubt that we were going to be together
[1:50:32] Speaker 1: and continue to be together, because you're you're risking, like
[1:50:35] Speaker 1: at that point, semi permanent assistance up until someone else
[1:50:39] Speaker 1: is able to take over that covering. But you're faced
[1:50:42] Speaker 1: with that choice, like in the face of technically uncertainty.
[1:50:45] Speaker 1: You're not married, so like those vows have not been made.
[1:50:48] Speaker 1: Like I did not have to continue to do anything,
[1:50:50] Speaker 1: but in my character I did. But like even through
[1:50:54] Speaker 1: ups and downs, through pettiness and want to be like
[1:50:56] Speaker 1: all right, well you pay your phone, but this mothery like,
[1:50:58] Speaker 1: well I don't have it.
[1:50:58] Speaker 3: Now, you don't got a phone on it.
[1:51:00] Speaker 2: Now you call him?
[1:51:00] Speaker 3: Daddy said he's not doing it. Like so I mean
[1:51:03] Speaker 3: that was a big legal faith. Yeah, it's like, wait,
[1:51:07] Speaker 3: let me see your stuff move out.
[1:51:08] Speaker 5: First, I need.
[1:51:11] Speaker 3: Everything need to be at least on the moving truck,
[1:51:14] Speaker 3: and then I send you the money for it.
[1:51:16] Speaker 1: But no, Yeah, I think that was important because that
[1:51:20] Speaker 1: transition was like, all right, you're choosing to live a
[1:51:23] Speaker 1: grown lifestyle. This is what that looks like. And you
[1:51:25] Speaker 1: get to make the conscious decision. So if anything came
[1:51:27] Speaker 1: up in the future, like you can go back to
[1:51:30] Speaker 1: that moment. There's a pivotal moment of you making a
[1:51:32] Speaker 1: conscious decision to take on these extra responsibilities. So I
[1:51:34] Speaker 1: think from that point on, like, that's kind of how
[1:51:36] Speaker 1: I've operated with nineteen.
[1:51:39] Speaker 5: I think we're twenty one at that time. Combray was
[1:51:42] Speaker 5: after my twenty first birthday.
[1:51:44] Speaker 2: Yeap, oh, there's a blur.
[1:51:46] Speaker 3: Been together so long as three it was one of them,
[1:51:50] Speaker 3: and y'all got married at.
[1:51:51] Speaker 2: What as.
[1:51:53] Speaker 5: Twenty two whatever twenty twenty two was.
[1:51:56] Speaker 1: We're twenty six, twenty six, I think twenty six is right, sure,
[1:52:00] Speaker 1: yeah they six years old.
[1:52:02] Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, I'm so young. Like now that I'm
[1:52:07] Speaker 5: looking back, I'm like that it feels young.
[1:52:09] Speaker 4: Yeah, but I don't want to get past this because
[1:52:12] Speaker 4: this was a very defining moment of childbirth and how
[1:52:15] Speaker 4: Claire came to be. Uh. You have been very open,
[1:52:20] Speaker 4: especially you share time on Facebook not too long ago
[1:52:23] Speaker 4: about the journey of an angel baby unpacked that so.
[1:52:29] Speaker 5: Literally the day we you don't want to hear this part, dad,
[1:52:33] Speaker 5: the day we got married, we were like we should
[1:52:34] Speaker 5: start trying to have a baby, and immediately began trying
[1:52:37] Speaker 5: to have a baby. And then years came, like a
[1:52:40] Speaker 5: year past, and I started kind of getting nervous because
[1:52:43] Speaker 5: I was just kind of like everyone gets pregnant, Like
[1:52:45] Speaker 5: why am I not getting pregnant. It was a very
[1:52:48] Speaker 5: weird feeling. But then you see y'allline like, oh, we
[1:52:51] Speaker 5: can take up to a year for even healthy couples
[1:52:53] Speaker 5: to get pregnant. So I was like, okay, fine, and
[1:52:56] Speaker 5: then I noticed that I had like a kind of
[1:52:58] Speaker 5: a a hard spot in my stomach, and so I
[1:53:03] Speaker 5: went to the doctor and they ended up finding a
[1:53:06] Speaker 5: what they just said was a fibroid ended up not
[1:53:10] Speaker 5: being a fibroid spoiler alert, but they said it was
[1:53:12] Speaker 5: a fibroid. They thought it was a fibroid or endometriosis.
[1:53:16] Speaker 5: So they ended up scheduling what they call it topic
[1:53:20] Speaker 5: sorry at laparoscopic surgery to get open, like you know,
[1:53:26] Speaker 5: get in there and see what was that lump in
[1:53:28] Speaker 5: my stomach. And it ended up being a tumor I
[1:53:32] Speaker 5: can't think of the name cyst. And it was a
[1:53:37] Speaker 5: five pound dermoid cyst. It was huge. It was like
[1:53:40] Speaker 5: a trilateral like three parts fuse together, also fuse on
[1:53:44] Speaker 5: my right ovary. They could not find my right ovary,
[1:53:47] Speaker 5: so they removed the ovary and the fallopian tube. And
[1:53:51] Speaker 5: then I woke up to that news again. I thought
[1:53:54] Speaker 5: I had a fibroid, or I thought that I had edometriosis.
[1:53:57] Speaker 5: But I woke up to finding out that, oh, you
[1:53:59] Speaker 5: have half as many eggs as you went to sleep with,
[1:54:03] Speaker 5: and that actually wasn't as traumatizing to me in the
[1:54:05] Speaker 5: moment as I think it could have been. So I
[1:54:08] Speaker 5: thank my family for y'all. Remember y'all being there, thank
[1:54:12] Speaker 5: you know, because y'all were kind of nervous. I remember
[1:54:13] Speaker 5: y'all whispering being like, did they tell her what happened?
[1:54:17] Speaker 5: And I was like, yes, they told me what happened, Okay, yeah,
[1:54:22] Speaker 5: And so it still took a year to get pregnant,
[1:54:27] Speaker 5: and then I actually we conceived Claire, not Claire.
[1:54:30] Speaker 4: We're talking about that journey because there's a lot of
[1:54:32] Speaker 4: women that may be on that journey where that faith
[1:54:36] Speaker 4: and it wasn't coming.
[1:54:37] Speaker 2: And what was you doing to.
[1:54:41] Speaker 4: To manifest your your your your child and what things
[1:54:44] Speaker 4: that you put in play to keep you hopeful and
[1:54:47] Speaker 4: moving in faith.
[1:54:48] Speaker 5: It was hard. It for sure, without a doubt, was
[1:54:51] Speaker 5: the hardest thing I've ever went through individually as a woman,
[1:54:55] Speaker 5: because you know, you get told like, as a woman,
[1:54:58] Speaker 5: you're supposed to have a baby, that's the one thing
[1:54:59] Speaker 5: you're supposed to do. So I was kind of carrying
[1:55:02] Speaker 5: some shame of not conceiving, even though no one around
[1:55:05] Speaker 5: me knew I was conceived. I was trying to conceive,
[1:55:08] Speaker 5: but I knew. I remember every single month, even months
[1:55:11] Speaker 5: where I knew we weren't hitting those fertile days and
[1:55:13] Speaker 5: fertile windows. Anybody who's trying to concede, you know what
[1:55:16] Speaker 5: that means. If you're not conceiving, you don't even know
[1:55:18] Speaker 5: what fertile days You're like, wait, talking about times where
[1:55:21] Speaker 5: I know we didn't hit those, I would still take
[1:55:24] Speaker 5: a test and it'd be negative and would bob my
[1:55:26] Speaker 5: eyes out because it was negative. I'm like, oh my gosh,
[1:55:28] Speaker 5: why is this not you know, why is this not
[1:55:30] Speaker 5: happening to me? It was hard. Mother's Day was hard.
[1:55:34] Speaker 5: Father's Day was hard, Christmas was Every big holiday where
[1:55:38] Speaker 5: you can think about people spending time with their families
[1:55:40] Speaker 5: was hard. It came to a point to where when
[1:55:42] Speaker 5: I was going to family gatherings and people weren't asking
[1:55:46] Speaker 5: we're not gonna have a kid, but like just seeing
[1:55:48] Speaker 5: people with their children kind of like emphasize my lack
[1:55:53] Speaker 5: I guess as like a woman. And that was really
[1:55:55] Speaker 5: really really hard for me. And also to add Tay
[1:55:59] Speaker 5: and then he was he was unemployed for like a year,
[1:56:02] Speaker 5: so it was like this weird balance of being like, well,
[1:56:05] Speaker 5: maybe God's trying to protect us from like having this
[1:56:08] Speaker 5: baby in this moment, knowing it'll be hard from us.
[1:56:10] Speaker 5: But then I was also arguing with God in my
[1:56:13] Speaker 5: head because I'm like, God, it takes nine months for
[1:56:14] Speaker 5: the baby to cook, so like, you might as well
[1:56:16] Speaker 5: put the baby in there and then they'll be cooking
[1:56:18] Speaker 5: and then he'll get a job.
[1:56:20] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:56:20] Speaker 5: I was just grasping that straws at that point. And
[1:56:23] Speaker 5: so I remember this the biggest time ever of me
[1:56:27] Speaker 5: getting a negative test. It was before Father's Day and
[1:56:32] Speaker 5: I just knew I was pregnant. I was like, I
[1:56:34] Speaker 5: am pregnant. I ordered stuff from Amazon to tell Tay
[1:56:37] Speaker 5: that I was pregnant. I was so excited. I took
[1:56:40] Speaker 5: a test and it said negative, and I bawled on
[1:56:44] Speaker 5: the floor like for like an hour, and I prayed
[1:56:47] Speaker 5: to God. I said, God, why would you put this
[1:56:50] Speaker 5: desire to be a mother in my heart if you're
[1:56:53] Speaker 5: not going to give me a child to mother. It
[1:56:56] Speaker 5: felt almost like a like a sick joke, for lack
[1:56:59] Speaker 5: of better words. It just felt like I just felt
[1:57:02] Speaker 5: like I wasn't whole. And I felt really guilty for
[1:57:06] Speaker 5: feeling that way because I have a husband I have dogs,
[1:57:09] Speaker 5: I have family, I was loved, so it's like, what
[1:57:11] Speaker 5: about being a mother was so big to me? But
[1:57:15] Speaker 5: it was just a feeling. And when you get that
[1:57:17] Speaker 5: feeling as a woman, it's like you can't shake it,
[1:57:20] Speaker 5: Like you can't shake it until that baby is literally
[1:57:23] Speaker 5: in your arms, not even your stomach. It has to
[1:57:25] Speaker 5: be in your arms for you to get past that feeling.
[1:57:27] Speaker 5: And then that same day, one of my best friends,
[1:57:31] Speaker 5: my best friend, basically called me and told me that
[1:57:33] Speaker 5: she was pregnant. And when I tell you, that was
[1:57:36] Speaker 5: my biggest test of like faith, because I remember her
[1:57:41] Speaker 5: telling me that, and she specifically wanted to FaceTime and
[1:57:44] Speaker 5: she told me on face time, and my heart just
[1:57:47] Speaker 5: feel with just like pain because it was her second baby.
[1:57:51] Speaker 5: I hadn't had my first. I'm comparing myself like dang,
[1:57:54] Speaker 5: what am I doing wrong? What are we doing wrong?
[1:57:56] Speaker 5: And I remember I got off the phone with her
[1:57:59] Speaker 5: and Tay said, hey, let's talk about something, and I'm like,
[1:58:05] Speaker 5: what's up. He's like, how do you feel you took
[1:58:07] Speaker 5: the news of your friend telling you that she was pregnant?
[1:58:10] Speaker 5: I said, I mean she told me, Like what is it?
[1:58:12] Speaker 5: He's like, you don't think that you were being standoffish
[1:58:15] Speaker 5: or like kind of rude or kind of like insensitive.
[1:58:18] Speaker 5: And I was offended that he came to be like
[1:58:21] Speaker 5: that because I'm like, well, you know, I'm struggling, like, well,
[1:58:23] Speaker 5: how do you expect me to act? He's like, well,
[1:58:25] Speaker 5: you can't act like that. Even when your face with that,
[1:58:29] Speaker 5: which I understand was hard, it doesn't give you the
[1:58:31] Speaker 5: excuse to be standoffish. My argument was that I wasn't rude.
[1:58:34] Speaker 5: I didn't yell at her, I didn't roll my eyes.
[1:58:36] Speaker 5: He's like, but you weren't even excited, and it was
[1:58:38] Speaker 5: very apparent to see that. And then at that moment
[1:58:41] Speaker 5: I took a step back, and I remember the sermon
[1:58:43] Speaker 5: that I had near that time at church talked about
[1:58:47] Speaker 5: making things idle in your life, and I realized that
[1:58:50] Speaker 5: I made becoming a mother and idol in my life
[1:58:53] Speaker 5: where nothing else mattered. And I just worshiped the idea
[1:58:56] Speaker 5: of being a mother to someone and those that could
[1:58:59] Speaker 5: be something. I think that it's okay, you couldn't idolize
[1:59:03] Speaker 5: worse things. I realized it had reached up plants where
[1:59:05] Speaker 5: it was unhealthy. And then so fast forward some months,
[1:59:09] Speaker 5: I actually conceived. I think it was October twenty twenty four,
[1:59:15] Speaker 5: and I was so excited I told it. I always
[1:59:17] Speaker 5: told myself that when I conceived, I wouldn't tell anybody
[1:59:20] Speaker 5: until I was exing myou. I told everybody to I
[1:59:23] Speaker 5: peede on the stick, I said, I'm pregnant, everybody. I
[1:59:25] Speaker 5: was so excited. That was the best feeling ever. And
[1:59:27] Speaker 5: the men take croud about it, and it was just
[1:59:29] Speaker 5: it was the best feeling ever. And I was pregnant
[1:59:32] Speaker 5: for two weeks technically six weeks in pregnancy time, but
[1:59:36] Speaker 5: two weeks of knowing that I was pregnant, and I
[1:59:38] Speaker 5: had a miscarriage while I was at work, and that
[1:59:43] Speaker 5: I can't even recall to you what that moment was
[1:59:47] Speaker 5: because I think I just like turned into myself. I
[1:59:52] Speaker 5: was like, everyone around me was like, how are you like?
[1:59:55] Speaker 5: I feel like everyone was walking on eggshells around me.
[1:59:58] Speaker 5: But I was assuring everybody, I'm fine, I'm fine, don't
[2:00:01] Speaker 5: worry about it. I'm fine. I was not fine. I
[2:00:04] Speaker 5: was bawling my eyes out, I was crying. Hey was
[2:00:07] Speaker 5: worried about me?
[2:00:09] Speaker 4: I was.
[2:00:09] Speaker 5: I wasn't fine at all. But then I said, you
[2:00:12] Speaker 5: know what you got pregnant once you can get pregnant again.
[2:00:15] Speaker 5: I don't want to try it, but I know we
[2:00:18] Speaker 5: can get pregnant again. And then here this man is
[2:00:20] Speaker 5: being like, we have to try, Like you cannot get
[2:00:23] Speaker 5: pregnant again unless we try to get pregnant again, Like
[2:00:27] Speaker 5: this is what it has to be. So we prayed
[2:00:29] Speaker 5: about it together. He was already involved in me tracking
[2:00:33] Speaker 5: my cycles and everything like that. But him being the
[2:00:35] Speaker 5: analytical person that he is, when he can understand the
[2:00:38] Speaker 5: science behind something, he's like, Okay, well, Google says that
[2:00:42] Speaker 5: if you do this and this and this increases your
[2:00:45] Speaker 5: chances and increases your chances of conceiving. And so we
[2:00:52] Speaker 5: actually conceived Claire sorry December twenty twenty four, so the
[2:00:59] Speaker 5: cycle after I had my miscarriage. So about a month
[2:01:01] Speaker 5: after I had my miscarriage.
[2:01:03] Speaker 4: I remember that phone conversation. I just got finished during
[2:01:06] Speaker 4: the interview and I was driving. I had pulled on
[2:01:09] Speaker 4: the side of the road because you were just I
[2:01:12] Speaker 4: was like that, and I forgot your exact words because
[2:01:15] Speaker 4: they were so strong where you was like pretty much,
[2:01:20] Speaker 4: I'm not a woman if I can't have a kid,
[2:01:22] Speaker 4: and I said no, And I.
[2:01:26] Speaker 2: Knew in that moment. Don't try to male explain it.
[2:01:30] Speaker 2: Just listen. And you were just going like what value
[2:01:35] Speaker 2: do I have if I can't be a mother? What
[2:01:38] Speaker 2: is my purpose? What is this? Like? Why?
[2:01:41] Speaker 4: And I just sat there and I said, this is
[2:01:43] Speaker 4: one thing I can't fix. And as a father, always
[2:01:46] Speaker 4: jumped to try to fix certain things, and I was like,
[2:01:48] Speaker 4: I can't. I can't do nothing. And then God, after
[2:01:51] Speaker 4: I got the phone and said you can't do nothing.
[2:01:53] Speaker 4: So I can't do nothing, he said you can pray,
[2:01:56] Speaker 4: and I was like yeah, but he said, why does
[2:01:59] Speaker 4: it have to be a butt pray? And I prayed,
[2:02:04] Speaker 4: and at first I wanted to pray a prayer that
[2:02:07] Speaker 4: if you don't have a kid, let you be okay
[2:02:09] Speaker 4: with it, but my faith be like I don't like ifs.
[2:02:13] Speaker 2: So I said, God, let her have a kid, like,
[2:02:15] Speaker 2: let her have a child, because I do.
[2:02:18] Speaker 4: Not want my daughter going through this earth feeling like
[2:02:23] Speaker 4: she is less than period. And I was like, I
[2:02:26] Speaker 4: ain't gonna tell her that though then I prayed that prayer.
[2:02:29] Speaker 4: I'm just going to just be like hey and let
[2:02:32] Speaker 4: it be what it is. And I was just silent,
[2:02:34] Speaker 4: but I cried in that car and I was like God,
[2:02:36] Speaker 4: because I will never understand what that feels like as
[2:02:39] Speaker 4: a woman. I can only speak up about it from
[2:02:43] Speaker 4: a male standpoint, but as a woman to feel like that,
[2:02:46] Speaker 4: and to know all the steps that you were doing
[2:02:48] Speaker 4: in order to position yourself into that, and how much
[2:02:51] Speaker 4: pushback you got from even your friends that said, why
[2:02:55] Speaker 4: do you make like all you want to be is
[2:02:57] Speaker 4: a mother.
[2:02:57] Speaker 5: And a wife like that it you don't have any
[2:03:01] Speaker 5: career like and he was like, that's what I want.
[2:03:03] Speaker 4: And at first you felt ashamed about it, and then
[2:03:06] Speaker 4: you start saying, no, it's okay.
[2:03:07] Speaker 2: Then I want to be a mother and a wife
[2:03:09] Speaker 2: like that's okay.
[2:03:11] Speaker 4: And I never knew that until you were struggling being
[2:03:16] Speaker 4: a mother, And I was like, oh you thought that,
[2:03:20] Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying, where did that come from?
[2:03:22] Speaker 4: By the way, what part that your whole purpose and
[2:03:25] Speaker 4: desiring life to be a mother and a wife.
[2:03:28] Speaker 2: You didn't have any type of career ambitions.
[2:03:32] Speaker 5: I you know, you said I didn't dograde in school,
[2:03:34] Speaker 5: not saying because I didn't degrade in school, I'm Georgia.
[2:03:37] Speaker 2: I guess that's all I got.
[2:03:39] Speaker 5: That's not at all what happened. But when I think
[2:03:41] Speaker 5: about what brings me joy and what brings me personally purpose.
[2:03:46] Speaker 5: I love my husband, I want to I think I
[2:03:48] Speaker 5: think about our future together, having children and raising them
[2:03:52] Speaker 5: and taking them on family trips and like all kinds
[2:03:55] Speaker 5: of things like that, Like those are the things that
[2:03:57] Speaker 5: actually brought me joy. So it made me think because
[2:03:59] Speaker 5: I used to struggle with the idea of why did
[2:04:01] Speaker 5: I have a passion, Like why are I good at anything?
[2:04:04] Speaker 5: Like what is my thing that I'm going to be
[2:04:06] Speaker 5: good at? And then I kind of just realized one day,
[2:04:10] Speaker 5: like I think I'm supposed to just be a good
[2:04:13] Speaker 5: mom and a good wife, and like, to me, that
[2:04:15] Speaker 5: is kingdom work. Like that, that's an amazing thing, is
[2:04:18] Speaker 5: to be a mom and a wife, a good mom
[2:04:21] Speaker 5: and a good wife. So I stop being ashamed of
[2:04:24] Speaker 5: it and just embrace it. And it doesn't mean And
[2:04:26] Speaker 5: I do want to take back on, you know, saying
[2:04:28] Speaker 5: the things that I said when like I don't have
[2:04:30] Speaker 5: value without being able to bear children. That is not
[2:04:33] Speaker 5: true at all, Like that was just me speaking from
[2:04:35] Speaker 5: a place of hurt. Even if I did not have children,
[2:04:38] Speaker 5: if God did not want me to have children, that
[2:04:40] Speaker 5: means that that is not what I was supposed to
[2:04:42] Speaker 5: do and that would be a very hard pill to swallow,
[2:04:45] Speaker 5: and it's easier on hindsight to say that. But yeah,
[2:04:48] Speaker 5: I do think that that's just where my heart led me.
[2:04:51] Speaker 5: And then now that I'm a mom and a wife,
[2:04:55] Speaker 5: I'm happy, like I just feel fulfilled every day, I
[2:04:58] Speaker 5: feel joy, I feel I just feel complete.
[2:05:02] Speaker 2: How did you feel about that, knowing that she was
[2:05:05] Speaker 2: struggling through all bit.
[2:05:07] Speaker 3: From the entirety of it.
[2:05:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So going back to the loss, I think
[2:05:11] Speaker 1: that was you kind of said a lot of the
[2:05:13] Speaker 1: same things that I went through. I think we, at
[2:05:15] Speaker 1: different points in her life, got to play the role
[2:05:18] Speaker 1: of like mister fix it. Like I think every problem
[2:05:21] Speaker 1: she's faced in the tenure of us dating is somehow
[2:05:25] Speaker 1: ended up right in front of me, and I've embraced it.
[2:05:28] Speaker 3: I've fixed it.
[2:05:29] Speaker 1: I have a bad habit of sometimes fixing everything and
[2:05:31] Speaker 1: sometimes like hold on, mister fix it, like listen.
[2:05:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was one of the.
[2:05:35] Speaker 3: Few times that when that happened.
[2:05:38] Speaker 1: I think it's easy for people to if it's not
[2:05:42] Speaker 1: like heavy on your heart to be a parent when
[2:05:45] Speaker 1: loss happens early.
[2:05:46] Speaker 3: I think it's like way differently.
[2:05:48] Speaker 1: I think people view someone being like six months along
[2:05:52] Speaker 1: as just leaps and bounds worse to somebody emotionally than
[2:05:56] Speaker 1: it would be if it was like a like two
[2:05:58] Speaker 1: to three week pregnancy in that case, and just to
[2:06:02] Speaker 1: see her go through those phases and like the helplessness
[2:06:05] Speaker 1: of like it's zero things that I can do. I
[2:06:08] Speaker 1: can pray with you, I can pray for you, I
[2:06:10] Speaker 1: can like hug you, hold you, I can assure you,
[2:06:14] Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, I can't fix
[2:06:16] Speaker 1: what the problem is.
[2:06:16] Speaker 3: I can't like hold a child in.
[2:06:18] Speaker 1: Your womb for nine months until it's ready to come out.
[2:06:22] Speaker 1: So I think like that was very humbling, and I
[2:06:27] Speaker 1: think it opened up the door for me to, I guess,
[2:06:31] Speaker 1: like understand my own emotions better because I think a
[2:06:34] Speaker 1: lot of times you just as a man in general,
[2:06:37] Speaker 1: you go through so many phases of life that you
[2:06:39] Speaker 1: just overcome, overcome, overcome, overcome, and you just kind of
[2:06:42] Speaker 1: like you harden a little bit, like you get you
[2:06:44] Speaker 1: get that that thick skin, you get tougher. So as
[2:06:46] Speaker 1: you handle the problem, it just doesn't phaze you the same,
[2:06:50] Speaker 1: and you feel it and it's stings, but you you
[2:06:52] Speaker 1: somehow find a way to continue to move forward almost
[2:06:55] Speaker 1: so fast that you don't really process, and I think
[2:06:57] Speaker 1: she forced me to like see they're in process, and
[2:07:01] Speaker 1: like process what it's like to have somebody else as
[2:07:03] Speaker 1: well be going through strong emotions. And it gave me
[2:07:06] Speaker 1: an opportunity to be the quote unquote strong one and
[2:07:09] Speaker 1: make sure that we were continue to moving forward.
[2:07:10] Speaker 3: Otherwise we wouldn't have tried. And I can't stay with certainty.
[2:07:13] Speaker 1: If we didn't try as like quickly as we did,
[2:07:16] Speaker 1: it wouldn't be this baby right here.
[2:07:17] Speaker 3: So I think that was important.
[2:07:20] Speaker 2: And Claire was born what was.
[2:07:21] Speaker 5: A date, August five.
[2:07:25] Speaker 2: And that wasn't an easy situation. Well what touched real
[2:07:30] Speaker 2: quickly on how that came to be.
[2:07:32] Speaker 5: Yeah, So I actually had Claire at thirty five weeks
[2:07:35] Speaker 5: in one day, so that's about or was it thirty
[2:07:38] Speaker 5: four weeks in one day? I don't know, but I
[2:07:40] Speaker 5: had her about five weeks early because I developed pretty clampsia,
[2:07:44] Speaker 5: which means I had high blood pressure, and they I
[2:07:47] Speaker 5: was getting constant headaches, so they just felt like it
[2:07:50] Speaker 5: was better to induce me. She was doing well, so
[2:07:52] Speaker 5: to protect me, they induced me. And that was very
[2:07:55] Speaker 5: scary because I didn't want to have a baby in
[2:07:57] Speaker 5: the nick you like, you know, you hear on the
[2:08:00] Speaker 5: on social media like having babies and the NIKKEI was
[2:08:02] Speaker 5: like scary, So that was that was very scary for me.
[2:08:07] Speaker 5: But it's kind of like I didn't I didn't even
[2:08:08] Speaker 5: have time to be scared because they were just like,
[2:08:10] Speaker 5: We're like, I just went in for a headache and
[2:08:12] Speaker 5: they're like, well, we're docing you tonight.
[2:08:13] Speaker 1: So so yeah, they came about pretty quick. I think
[2:08:17] Speaker 1: there there were some fears because I mean, you just
[2:08:19] Speaker 1: do not know. You don't know like the condition of
[2:08:21] Speaker 1: your child. I think through their ultrasounds they were like
[2:08:25] Speaker 1: it was wrong in hindsight, but they were saying she's
[2:08:27] Speaker 1: gonna be like four pounds, which is like very small.
[2:08:30] Speaker 3: That was not the case. She was like six and
[2:08:32] Speaker 3: a half pounds.
[2:08:33] Speaker 1: So we'll work harder on the on the medicine side
[2:08:36] Speaker 1: to get that get the sonograms up. But yeah, I
[2:08:38] Speaker 1: think you just have all these concerns you don't know,
[2:08:40] Speaker 1: like the health of your wife, the health of your child,
[2:08:44] Speaker 1: going in and messing with the process and like trying
[2:08:46] Speaker 1: to force something to happen early, like I don't know
[2:08:48] Speaker 1: what that looks like.
[2:08:48] Speaker 3: That's not how God intended.
[2:08:51] Speaker 1: So again, there was concerns for sure, but I think
[2:08:55] Speaker 1: it just happened so fast. You just pray, you move forward,
[2:08:58] Speaker 1: you continue to go, and thankfully we can say in
[2:09:01] Speaker 1: hindsight that it was a pretty good experience overall in
[2:09:03] Speaker 1: terms of like how everything played out.
[2:09:06] Speaker 4: Claire came into this earth, and a few months ya
[2:09:10] Speaker 4: after she was born, y'all said that y'all want to
[2:09:12] Speaker 4: have y'all second child around what time?
[2:09:14] Speaker 5: Probably when she was like two, yeah, But then as
[2:09:18] Speaker 5: the weeks and months were cricketbi we were like maybe five.
[2:09:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, we were like.
[2:09:23] Speaker 5: Maybe we would be only parents of one. Yeah, that
[2:09:25] Speaker 5: sounds fun.
[2:09:26] Speaker 2: Too, uh huh. And then what happened.
[2:09:30] Speaker 5: Claire hit four months. I said, Tay, my periods late,
[2:09:34] Speaker 5: but I know I'm not pregnant. He's like, yeah, you're
[2:09:36] Speaker 5: just probably, you know, you just stop breastfeeding. You probably
[2:09:39] Speaker 5: your body's still regulating. And I didn't have any pregnancy tests.
[2:09:42] Speaker 5: So I went on my neighborhood's Facebook group. And it
[2:09:44] Speaker 5: was also during the winter storm too, in fact, so
[2:09:47] Speaker 5: I went to my neighborhood's Facebook group and I said, hey,
[2:09:49] Speaker 5: any I posted anonymously. I said do any women have
[2:09:52] Speaker 5: any spare pregnancy tests? And what's funny is the woman
[2:09:55] Speaker 5: who had a spare pregnancy test was a woman who
[2:09:58] Speaker 5: gave me free formula when I was breastfeeding Clear giving
[2:10:01] Speaker 5: her formula, and I pete on the stick and before
[2:10:05] Speaker 5: I even could blink, it was two lines on it.
[2:10:08] Speaker 3: Oh, it was fast.
[2:10:09] Speaker 5: That's the fastest ever at all the times I beg
[2:10:12] Speaker 5: to see two lines.
[2:10:16] Speaker 2: And then y'all's first response was what.
[2:10:19] Speaker 5: Who mine or his? Y'all go first?
[2:10:22] Speaker 1: I mean for me, it was initial like shock. I
[2:10:24] Speaker 1: think I just didn't think it was possible, like we
[2:10:27] Speaker 1: worked so hard to get a child. Yeah, and then
[2:10:31] Speaker 1: just random like and here's another one like it said, Okay, well,
[2:10:33] Speaker 1: I guess I guess it. Maybe it can be easy
[2:10:37] Speaker 1: and sometimes if you just want it bad enough, I
[2:10:39] Speaker 1: guess some extra obstacles got to come up first.
[2:10:42] Speaker 2: And then what was your response?
[2:10:43] Speaker 5: I took it hard, if I could be honest, I was.
[2:10:46] Speaker 5: I cried, I sobbed, I bawled, tying it up, just
[2:10:51] Speaker 5: taking Clear out and was like, I'm gonna give you
[2:10:52] Speaker 5: some space, and he just left the room with Claire
[2:10:56] Speaker 5: because I was thinking why, like I am like like
[2:11:00] Speaker 5: in the thick of postpartum, just finished, like breastfeeding, was
[2:11:04] Speaker 5: worn out from that, just started back work. Nowhere near
[2:11:08] Speaker 5: like feeling like I'm getting the grasp of stuff. I
[2:11:11] Speaker 5: was happy because I kind of got back skinny quickly,
[2:11:13] Speaker 5: but other than that, I was I just really took
[2:11:16] Speaker 5: it really really hard. That we conceived a baby four
[2:11:19] Speaker 5: months postpartum.
[2:11:21] Speaker 4: Isn't that crazy? And this is what happens to us?
[2:11:23] Speaker 4: She a very praying prayer. I just want to be
[2:11:25] Speaker 4: a mom and a wife. I just wanted kids, only
[2:11:27] Speaker 4: be a mother. Well do this have two kids back
[2:11:30] Speaker 4: to back? And she's like, oh God, God. He's like,
[2:11:33] Speaker 4: oh my god, you are so like what's wrong with
[2:11:37] Speaker 4: these people? Why they always complain about everything I DIDNET
[2:11:40] Speaker 4: gave you what you wanted. Now you're mad because it
[2:11:42] Speaker 4: didn't happen when you want it. You want to happen
[2:11:44] Speaker 4: two years or three years later, five years later. You
[2:11:47] Speaker 4: want to happen on your timing. When God knew that
[2:11:50] Speaker 4: maybe five years later you may not be able to
[2:11:53] Speaker 4: have a kid. So God says, in all my infinite wisdom,
[2:11:56] Speaker 4: this is the time of the season for you to
[2:11:58] Speaker 4: have it. It's not based on your convenience. It's based
[2:12:01] Speaker 4: on my timing. And how long did it take you
[2:12:03] Speaker 4: to reconcile to get to a place where you said, God,
[2:12:06] Speaker 4: not my will, but that I will be.
[2:12:07] Speaker 5: Done, Probably like a good three months. It took me
[2:12:10] Speaker 5: a while.
[2:12:10] Speaker 2: And then three months, what did you end up accepting?
[2:12:14] Speaker 5: I accepted that I'm supposed to be pregnant. I may
[2:12:19] Speaker 5: not think I'm supposed to be caring a baby. I
[2:12:21] Speaker 5: may think this was an accident or a mistake, but
[2:12:24] Speaker 5: this child was never a mistake. Just because I didn't
[2:12:26] Speaker 5: plan for it doesn't mean it was a mistake. Because
[2:12:29] Speaker 5: me and Tay are such like serial planners. We left
[2:12:31] Speaker 5: planning out the next step for our life. We didn't
[2:12:34] Speaker 5: get to plan this. So it felt like hope, sorry,
[2:12:38] Speaker 5: figure that out, good luck with that. It felt like
[2:12:40] Speaker 5: an obstacle. But then I realized, maybe God wants this
[2:12:45] Speaker 5: baby here for a reason. Facts maybe maybe Claire is
[2:12:49] Speaker 5: supposed to be a big sister or somebody really close
[2:12:51] Speaker 5: in age it. Maybe it's even about you at all,
[2:12:53] Speaker 5: Like stop thinking it's about you, and what was you
[2:12:56] Speaker 5: like Claire gets to have a little sibling, Like how
[2:12:59] Speaker 5: cool is that? Yeah? Yeah? And then I remember after
[2:13:03] Speaker 5: finding out the gender and finding out it was a boy,
[2:13:07] Speaker 5: it was confirmation of, oh, yeah, God wanted us to
[2:13:11] Speaker 5: have this exact story. We didn't get pregnant in college,
[2:13:16] Speaker 5: we didn't get pregnant when we were living together. We
[2:13:19] Speaker 5: didn't get pregnant we were engaged. We got pregnant at
[2:13:22] Speaker 5: twenty nine years old. That seems like a pretty good
[2:13:23] Speaker 5: age to have a child, you know, in terms of
[2:13:25] Speaker 5: like everything that we've been through together, Like it may
[2:13:28] Speaker 5: feel like a team pregnancy, but it's not so. So Yeah,
[2:13:32] Speaker 5: it took me three months to realize, like, this baby
[2:13:35] Speaker 5: is a blessing. And that was also a struggle that
[2:13:37] Speaker 5: I had because being a part of the trying to
[2:13:40] Speaker 5: conceive community, I felt guilty for being frustrated that I
[2:13:45] Speaker 5: was pregnant when I know that there are women who
[2:13:47] Speaker 5: want to be pregnant right now. So that was definitely
[2:13:49] Speaker 5: something that I struggled with and prayed about, and honestly
[2:13:52] Speaker 5: forced me to get over my own self quicker because
[2:13:55] Speaker 5: it was just like, girl, what are you crying about?
[2:13:58] Speaker 5: Like two years ago you were crying to get pregnant,
[2:14:00] Speaker 5: and now you're pregnant, So what are you crying about? No,
[2:14:03] Speaker 5: you don't know how you how you know you're going
[2:14:04] Speaker 5: to afford this or afford that or make these things work.
[2:14:07] Speaker 5: But it's going to like it's going to work out.
[2:14:10] Speaker 2: How do you feel to tell you? How long did
[2:14:11] Speaker 2: it take you to come around and accept?
[2:14:14] Speaker 8: You know?
[2:14:14] Speaker 1: I think for me it was a lot quicker because
[2:14:17] Speaker 1: my problems were not necessarily struggling with like the idea
[2:14:22] Speaker 1: of being apparent to a second child so early.
[2:14:24] Speaker 3: I think, again, I get to skip a lot of
[2:14:26] Speaker 3: the stuff.
[2:14:26] Speaker 1: I'm not growing a stomach, I'm not about to sit
[2:14:29] Speaker 1: on the table and give birth, so I can quicker
[2:14:32] Speaker 1: get to this child's a blessing, like I'm ready to
[2:14:34] Speaker 1: receive them. I think for me, initially, the biggest things
[2:14:36] Speaker 1: are just like I just like, I mean, just sorted
[2:14:40] Speaker 1: out her daycare situation.
[2:14:42] Speaker 3: She was so expensive, is it?
[2:14:45] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[2:14:46] Speaker 1: I mean again standard raids where we're around fifteen hundred
[2:14:49] Speaker 1: dollars a month and they'll give you a nice little
[2:14:51] Speaker 1: tempercent discount for the second one.
[2:14:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, thank Yeah, So I'm yeah, we'll be paying somebody
[2:14:57] Speaker 3: mortgage soon.
[2:14:57] Speaker 2: But yeah, god, that's crazy.
[2:15:00] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[2:15:00] Speaker 1: I think that's where I was focused on because I
[2:15:01] Speaker 1: think I came out of a season of again not
[2:15:04] Speaker 1: working for like a year, and again I wasn't just
[2:15:05] Speaker 1: not doing anything for anybody who wants to know, but
[2:15:08] Speaker 1: just kind of going through a season of training and
[2:15:10] Speaker 1: building myself up to be able to reach this point
[2:15:14] Speaker 1: of like providing in the way that I can.
[2:15:15] Speaker 7: Now.
[2:15:18] Speaker 1: Everything was intentional, Like I made so many intentional like
[2:15:21] Speaker 1: calculated risk and steps to like build myself up to
[2:15:24] Speaker 1: double my income, a little more than double my income.
[2:15:27] Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, this is where we have to be
[2:15:29] Speaker 1: to afford everything that this little girl will want, like
[2:15:32] Speaker 1: have her a home that she can come back to
[2:15:34] Speaker 1: that she'll be raised in, Like I just I envisioned that,
[2:15:37] Speaker 1: so I think another kid coming early.
[2:15:40] Speaker 3: It's like, okay, this is overlapping.
[2:15:41] Speaker 1: Like I was hoping you will be in school or
[2:15:43] Speaker 1: going to school soon, and I only got to juggling
[2:15:44] Speaker 1: for a little bit. It's like it's gonna be at
[2:15:46] Speaker 1: the same time almost, like y'all are I hate to
[2:15:48] Speaker 1: say it, but there's only a couple months separating them
[2:15:51] Speaker 1: being in the same grade. But we're like we want
[2:15:53] Speaker 1: to talk too much about that. Yeah, for real, but
[2:15:55] Speaker 1: it's only a couple months separating that.
[2:15:58] Speaker 4: Yeah, well we definitely want to say, y'all doing an
[2:16:01] Speaker 4: amazing job. There's no textbook to show you how to
[2:16:04] Speaker 4: do this thing. You just experienced it through the grace
[2:16:07] Speaker 4: of God. And I know y'all read and chat GPT
[2:16:12] Speaker 4: questions and answers to all life situations of parenting.
[2:16:16] Speaker 2: But just know, y'all doing an amazing job.
[2:16:19] Speaker 4: I want to salute you as a man for covering
[2:16:21] Speaker 4: my daughter properly, for being a mighty man of valor
[2:16:23] Speaker 4: that has like you know as a father. We wonder
[2:16:29] Speaker 4: what type of man will our daughter Mary. We may
[2:16:33] Speaker 4: have a new question whether or not our daughter will
[2:16:35] Speaker 4: get married. I never had a question whether or not
[2:16:38] Speaker 4: she would get married. I just wanted to know who
[2:16:40] Speaker 4: this man was. And you've exceeded my expectations. And I
[2:16:44] Speaker 4: have extremely high expectations. You've exceeded it. You've covered her
[2:16:48] Speaker 4: in ways that and you said this earlier about the
[2:16:52] Speaker 4: way that I covered her. You came in and just
[2:16:56] Speaker 4: did that. And what was so great about it is
[2:16:58] Speaker 4: that I could see back in the rest, even when
[2:17:01] Speaker 4: you weren't employed during that season or whatever. I never
[2:17:04] Speaker 4: sat there and made you feel less than I was, Like,
[2:17:06] Speaker 4: you got it. This is what the season, y'all in
[2:17:09] Speaker 4: right now. This is fine, no big deal. You always
[2:17:12] Speaker 4: in that season you studied so you can level up
[2:17:15] Speaker 4: in your next position. You went and got a different
[2:17:18] Speaker 4: certification so that you could level up in your next employment.
[2:17:22] Speaker 4: I remember y'all called about whether or not y'all gonna
[2:17:24] Speaker 4: go forward with this house that y'all y'all live in now.
[2:17:27] Speaker 4: He was like, well, how we gonna do this? I
[2:17:28] Speaker 4: was like, if you wait, it's going to be longer
[2:17:31] Speaker 4: to qualify for it. Get it right now so you
[2:17:33] Speaker 4: can get out of paying rent. And y'all can shoot
[2:17:36] Speaker 4: if y'all gonna struggle paying for it, y'all struggle paying
[2:17:38] Speaker 4: for a house instead of struggling paying for an apartment.
[2:17:41] Speaker 4: And y'all did that, and look y'all doing great, have
[2:17:44] Speaker 4: y'all first home. So again, I salute you. Oftentimes. I
[2:17:49] Speaker 4: had my buddy David Burrows on the podcast a few
[2:17:51] Speaker 4: years ago, and that's one of Ashley's favorite episodes, and
[2:17:55] Speaker 4: they talk about how being a man, talked about how
[2:17:59] Speaker 4: being a man is in hair that oftentimes we're not celebrated,
[2:18:04] Speaker 4: and I would be remiss if I didn't celebrate you
[2:18:08] Speaker 4: this Father's Day, Ladarian.
[2:18:12] Speaker 3: Oh lord, I see a logo in this bag. Hold on,
[2:18:18] Speaker 3: what logo do you see? Because you know I am.
[2:18:22] Speaker 1: Not a materialistic person at all, but if somebody makes me, oh,
[2:18:31] Speaker 1: if somebody makes me.
[2:18:37] Speaker 3: Look at that a nice Gucci box.
[2:18:39] Speaker 1: Oh mind, Claire said, let me get in yeah, come on,
[2:18:44] Speaker 1: Oh they're playing no games.
[2:18:46] Speaker 3: They playing no games.
[2:18:48] Speaker 2: Throw the box down.
[2:18:55] Speaker 3: All right, let's go ahead and unveil this again. Packaging
[2:18:59] Speaker 3: is crazy.
[2:19:00] Speaker 2: All right, I got the wrong one. But Darren, you
[2:19:02] Speaker 2: got a wrong box. Nope, too late.
[2:19:06] Speaker 6: So let me just jump in here and say that
[2:19:09] Speaker 6: he was gonna surprise you, but then I wasn't gonna
[2:19:12] Speaker 6: let him not get his surprise today too.
[2:19:17] Speaker 5: Wow, I also went shopping.
[2:19:20] Speaker 2: Wow, And thank you for.
[2:19:24] Speaker 8: You know what? You know what?
[2:19:26] Speaker 1: I think you are an awesome father. I really want
[2:19:30] Speaker 1: to take the time to celebrate you. I really want
[2:19:34] Speaker 1: to make sure that you feel appreciated this Father's Day.
[2:19:37] Speaker 3: So this is my gift to you.
[2:19:40] Speaker 4: Is that? Is that?
[2:19:41] Speaker 3: The that was that the one under the All right,
[2:19:44] Speaker 3: I let you help out last time. You know what,
[2:19:46] Speaker 3: this ain't that bad. This ain't that bad. It's really
[2:19:48] Speaker 3: going all out. Not a spect of dust can get
[2:19:50] Speaker 3: on this Okay, I feel some tread on there.
[2:19:52] Speaker 2: You look at that?
[2:19:54] Speaker 1: Okay, okay, yeah, no, for sure, for sure, I got
[2:19:56] Speaker 1: a I got plenty of fits with all of these colors,
[2:20:00] Speaker 1: so I can mix a match and be the flies
[2:20:02] Speaker 1: person in my office. Y'all can wear like ten shoes
[2:20:07] Speaker 1: or anything. These centers are like super casual. You know,
[2:20:11] Speaker 1: it's awesome.
[2:20:12] Speaker 5: Happy Fathers.
[2:20:16] Speaker 3: Then got some new shoes.
[2:20:18] Speaker 2: We pay you too much?
[2:20:21] Speaker 3: Wait a minute, wait a minute, I don't know that
[2:20:26] Speaker 3: is so funny, but thank you.
[2:20:27] Speaker 5: I really appreciate fathers.
[2:20:29] Speaker 2: Happy father Day so much. Happy Father's Day.
[2:20:31] Speaker 5: Times too well and uh times too times too and
[2:20:38] Speaker 5: the Darren, can you grab the other bag in there
[2:20:41] Speaker 5: as well?
[2:20:43] Speaker 6: Because like I said, we got to celebrate mister dear
[2:20:48] Speaker 6: future wifey my husband, so I had to just buy
[2:20:50] Speaker 6: him a few gifts as well, and we got started already.
[2:20:55] Speaker 6: So we went to Burke Williams at the top of
[2:20:57] Speaker 6: the month, just you know, so he could have a
[2:21:00] Speaker 6: special facial because your dad, do you know that about
[2:21:04] Speaker 6: him facial? But I also went shopping because I know
[2:21:09] Speaker 6: how much he loves Gucci, so I just wanted to
[2:21:11] Speaker 6: spoil him a little bit.
[2:21:14] Speaker 2: Furnesday on Wednesday. I was that nice.
[2:21:20] Speaker 4: This is.
[2:21:23] Speaker 5: Would not open the other ones first, I wanted you
[2:21:26] Speaker 5: to hold.
[2:21:27] Speaker 2: Already looked at him.
[2:21:29] Speaker 4: Look at this.
[2:21:32] Speaker 5: Yeah, there you go today.
[2:21:39] Speaker 3: That's right clean.
[2:21:40] Speaker 4: Look look at the bottom of on the bottom Gucci
[2:21:43] Speaker 4: while I walk put in the sand and Gucci.
[2:21:45] Speaker 5: You should be sponsoring the amen.
[2:21:48] Speaker 2: Amen. Yeah, this is a nice Yeah, I like these.
[2:21:53] Speaker 2: These are dope. These are look great with jeans, they
[2:21:55] Speaker 2: look great with a suit, they look great with shorts.
[2:21:58] Speaker 2: You can wear it with everything. This is nice, Thank you,
[2:22:03] Speaker 2: thank you, thank you.
[2:22:04] Speaker 4: And then she just she want me to pull out
[2:22:07] Speaker 4: the other shoes and act surprised like I just didn't
[2:22:09] Speaker 4: see it.
[2:22:10] Speaker 5: Yes, and what else is in there?
[2:22:12] Speaker 2: What?
[2:22:13] Speaker 4: Yeah?
[2:22:13] Speaker 5: No, no, keep going in the other bed.
[2:22:15] Speaker 2: That's all doing. My mom would pass out or she
[2:22:22] Speaker 2: knew how much the shoes are excitement. Yeah, I was like,
[2:22:36] Speaker 2: what is it?
[2:22:37] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a different kind of box, pretty girl, I
[2:22:40] Speaker 4: want to take it real nice and.
[2:22:44] Speaker 2: Well I can't see this in here.
[2:22:51] Speaker 4: This is a belt be the shoes. Yeah, you know,
[2:22:57] Speaker 4: a little little Gucci belt, say Guky. She got the
[2:23:03] Speaker 4: knockoff verse called Kuky.
[2:23:08] Speaker 1: You know they put a lot of effort into that
[2:23:09] Speaker 1: packaging with that knockoff package.
[2:23:13] Speaker 2: You're young.
[2:23:13] Speaker 4: Got somebody real good if they can packaging with the
[2:23:16] Speaker 4: sticker and everything.
[2:23:17] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they they fooled me.
[2:23:20] Speaker 4: Yeah for real, the whole bag and everything. This is beautiful.
[2:23:23] Speaker 4: Look at this, got the belt and the shoes.
[2:23:27] Speaker 2: What is it? How do you do this well?
[2:23:31] Speaker 4: Like that?
[2:23:32] Speaker 2: You see this?
[2:23:33] Speaker 6: Mom?
[2:23:33] Speaker 2: You see my Father's Day.
[2:23:34] Speaker 5: Gift all before father. It's not even Father's Day.
[2:23:39] Speaker 2: Yet, in Father's Day.
[2:23:44] Speaker 3: I wonder what's her name?
[2:23:46] Speaker 5: I wonder what is he?
[2:23:48] Speaker 3: Oh, you're gonna be stepping clean.
[2:23:55] Speaker 4: Wow, these are nice. Look at the bottom. It's a
[2:24:00] Speaker 4: rubber bottom, which is great.
[2:24:01] Speaker 5: Those are very you. Yeah, you were a shoe like
[2:24:04] Speaker 5: a dress shoe.
[2:24:05] Speaker 2: It's nice. Yep, this is nice.
[2:24:07] Speaker 3: Yeah that's top tier right there, he says, top tier.
[2:24:10] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely. The ground will thank you for walking
[2:24:13] Speaker 3: on it.
[2:24:16] Speaker 4: Got my dress shoes. See what happened was I misplaced
[2:24:19] Speaker 4: my brown shoes. So she's been hearing me talk about
[2:24:22] Speaker 4: my brown shoes.
[2:24:23] Speaker 7: I don't know what it was.
[2:24:24] Speaker 5: I lost a whole pair of Gucci shoes.
[2:24:26] Speaker 4: I had some Gucci dress shoes and I wore when
[2:24:29] Speaker 4: I did an interview in January, and I ain't seen
[2:24:31] Speaker 4: them since she's been.
[2:24:32] Speaker 5: Looking for the shoe hotel or something.
[2:24:34] Speaker 2: Well, the we're here in Dallas and I don't know word.
[2:24:37] Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I appreciate you for even getting me
[2:24:41] Speaker 4: a gift because it is what what I've always told
[2:24:43] Speaker 4: you to get me for.
[2:24:44] Speaker 5: Uh, word to write me a letter. That's what he
[2:24:47] Speaker 5: was saying, write me a letter something like kind and
[2:24:50] Speaker 5: words affirmation.
[2:24:51] Speaker 4: Yeah, words of affirmation, and so, uh, that's right. Here
[2:24:54] Speaker 4: means a lot because I also like the dressing. I
[2:24:57] Speaker 4: love I love this, but it's it's hard for me
[2:25:00] Speaker 4: to receive gifts.
[2:25:02] Speaker 2: Are you like that? Are you real funny about getting gifts?
[2:25:06] Speaker 3: Gifts?
[2:25:06] Speaker 1: But I'm also funny with praise At times it just depends,
[2:25:09] Speaker 1: like I feel like it's not just that things are
[2:25:12] Speaker 1: an expectation. I think I just kind of operate in
[2:25:14] Speaker 1: the space of like I do it because you know
[2:25:16] Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, I don't do it looking for
[2:25:18] Speaker 1: so sometimes when it comes, it feels like, all right, now,
[2:25:21] Speaker 1: you're embarrassed me doing a little extra, Like you a
[2:25:23] Speaker 1: little extra spotlight than I was expecting.
[2:25:25] Speaker 5: We couldn't seen a happy birthday for his birthday at the.
[2:25:27] Speaker 1: Restaurant, it's weird for me because I think like a
[2:25:31] Speaker 1: lot of times, like what you're being thanked for is
[2:25:33] Speaker 1: sometimes like the impact that you have in other people's lives,
[2:25:36] Speaker 1: And I think for me it's.
[2:25:37] Speaker 3: Weird, but like I more so appreciate just seeing that
[2:25:41] Speaker 3: you enjoyed it. So I think again the same.
[2:25:45] Speaker 1: Is for you because words of affirmation, they're affirming you
[2:25:48] Speaker 1: the things that you do. They appreciate those actions. I
[2:25:51] Speaker 1: really just want to see it, like if you're happy
[2:25:53] Speaker 1: and you seem like you enjoy life and like you're
[2:25:56] Speaker 1: she just mentioned like she feels fulfilled in being like
[2:25:58] Speaker 1: a wife and a mom. If I'm contributing to that that,
[2:26:00] Speaker 1: I'm happy with it regardless, and like I just don't
[2:26:03] Speaker 1: really look to receive like a lot of validation for it.
[2:26:06] Speaker 1: I guess like I appreciate it. I definitely appreciate it,
[2:26:10] Speaker 1: but I think like it can be a little weird
[2:26:12] Speaker 1: to receive at times, like two big of gestures for
[2:26:15] Speaker 1: me to give you those, Oh, I appreciate it.
[2:26:19] Speaker 3: Don't get me right, because it's something I wouldn't do
[2:26:22] Speaker 3: for myself.
[2:26:23] Speaker 1: But I think it's still a little weird at times,
[2:26:28] Speaker 1: like receiving things for stuff that you do just because
[2:26:30] Speaker 1: I'm not gonna stop doing it whether you did or
[2:26:32] Speaker 1: didn't do it. So I appreciate the thought, and I
[2:26:34] Speaker 1: appreciate the sentiment, and I'm definitely gonna wear them.
[2:26:38] Speaker 4: Well, let me tell you that's the reason why I
[2:26:39] Speaker 4: did go above and get you some really, really nice
[2:26:43] Speaker 4: shoes is because I got a call from you a
[2:26:46] Speaker 4: few months ago where you were like, you know what
[2:26:48] Speaker 4: I've been thinking. You've been talking about wanting to build legacy,
[2:26:52] Speaker 4: and this is a conversation you had with me, and
[2:26:54] Speaker 4: you said, I found a way through a platform to
[2:26:58] Speaker 4: create you are a whole infrastructure for dear future wifey
[2:27:01] Speaker 4: that can create more engagement with your audience, that can
[2:27:04] Speaker 4: build an ecosystem for them to get more.
[2:27:07] Speaker 2: Value out of dear future Wifey.
[2:27:09] Speaker 4: The fact that you thought like that is everything that
[2:27:14] Speaker 4: I wanted as I build legacy with family. And so
[2:27:18] Speaker 4: when you said that, and I was like, and then
[2:27:20] Speaker 4: a lot of times I'm not as responsive because you're like, well, dang,
[2:27:23] Speaker 4: I'm creating all this and you still ain't told me whatever.
[2:27:25] Speaker 4: And I'm juggling, I'm traveling, I'm doing all this, Claire,
[2:27:28] Speaker 4: I'm talking Claire, I'm talking and so, so what happened
[2:27:33] Speaker 4: was when you started operating like that, I was like, man,
[2:27:36] Speaker 4: that's that's that's that's extremely great that you have the
[2:27:40] Speaker 4: forethought to do that and the type of work.
[2:27:42] Speaker 2: And Lateria called me up one.
[2:27:44] Speaker 4: Day she said that, uh, Tay hasn't heard from you,
[2:27:49] Speaker 4: and he's been sitting that he sent you some stuff
[2:27:52] Speaker 4: and you don't know how you feel or did you
[2:27:55] Speaker 4: see it or do you like it or what or whatever,
[2:27:57] Speaker 4: because she's finna go to bat for you.
[2:27:58] Speaker 2: And I was like, no, no, it's not that.
[2:28:01] Speaker 4: It's just that when I get on the phone with him,
[2:28:03] Speaker 4: I want to make sure I have my ducks in
[2:28:05] Speaker 4: a row that I can spend ample time. As you
[2:28:07] Speaker 4: hear Ashley throwing shade that it may take three, four
[2:28:10] Speaker 4: hours or five hours. So I know that if I'm
[2:28:13] Speaker 4: just gonna be really quick with you, then I'm not
[2:28:15] Speaker 4: giving you the attention that is necessary. So but what
[2:28:19] Speaker 4: I could have done was like, hey, let's schedule time
[2:28:23] Speaker 4: so we can actually have time only hear you.
[2:28:24] Speaker 2: My undivided attention and not something real short. And so.
[2:28:28] Speaker 4: Again I already apologized to you for that. But what
[2:28:31] Speaker 4: you did was greatly appreciated. And the other stuff that
[2:28:35] Speaker 4: you started working on, you haven't even showed me yet.
[2:28:38] Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, You like I done worked
[2:28:39] Speaker 4: on this or whatever, I'd be like, God, this dude,
[2:28:42] Speaker 4: is just because again here's another one of my flaws.
[2:28:45] Speaker 4: It's hard for me to receive that. It's hard for
[2:28:48] Speaker 4: me to receive that somebody that I didn't give money to,
[2:28:51] Speaker 4: I didn't pay to do this. They took it upon
[2:28:53] Speaker 4: themselves to say, let me create this for a vision
[2:28:57] Speaker 4: that you have. So in all honesty, it made me
[2:29:00] Speaker 4: uncomfortable because the first thing I started doing was like,
[2:29:02] Speaker 4: how much I need to pay them for this? I
[2:29:03] Speaker 4: don't know how much time he did whatever, and you
[2:29:04] Speaker 4: ain't came to me and said you owe me.
[2:29:06] Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
[2:29:07] Speaker 4: You're like, no, this is what I'm doing to build
[2:29:09] Speaker 4: our family. And so I celebrate you. I thank you
[2:29:14] Speaker 4: so much for having the vision, the insight, and the
[2:29:17] Speaker 4: forethought to create what you created that I can't wait
[2:29:20] Speaker 4: to introduce to this audience. So I salute you, king,
[2:29:24] Speaker 4: I appreciate you, I love you, and I thank you
[2:29:26] Speaker 4: so much. I thank you so much.
[2:29:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate that I appreciate. That's super sweet to say.
[2:29:30] Speaker 2: I think.
[2:29:32] Speaker 1: Finding ways to use what I'm passionate about to impact
[2:29:35] Speaker 1: like family and legacy, and just like I think everybody
[2:29:39] Speaker 1: searches for like what those skills are and what they're
[2:29:41] Speaker 1: good at. And it took me a lot of ups
[2:29:43] Speaker 1: and downs, lefts and rights and circles in life to
[2:29:46] Speaker 1: end up in my trade of software engineering. And I
[2:29:48] Speaker 1: think from building things all the time, I'm like, what
[2:29:52] Speaker 1: can I do that I'm passionate about.
[2:29:54] Speaker 3: What can I do that can impact somebody? Impact like
[2:29:57] Speaker 3: my family, our family?
[2:29:58] Speaker 2: All right, grab that box there, I want you to
[2:30:01] Speaker 2: write a key to love.
[2:30:02] Speaker 5: Can I say something Father's Day?
[2:30:05] Speaker 2: Go ahead?
[2:30:06] Speaker 5: I just wanted to point. I just wanted to say
[2:30:08] Speaker 5: something because I feel like Father's Day is one of
[2:30:10] Speaker 5: those like underwhelming holidays people don't necessarily like you get
[2:30:14] Speaker 5: on Father's Day on Facebook on Father's dancy Mother's Day
[2:30:17] Speaker 5: post like y'all yeah, you know that, sty doing that,
[2:30:23] Speaker 5: And I just feel like, can we not do that?
[2:30:25] Speaker 5: Be don't we do that? There also are fathers who
[2:30:27] Speaker 5: deserve to be celebrated and.
[2:30:29] Speaker 6: Highlighted, or if you don't have a father that you
[2:30:32] Speaker 6: want to celebrate celebrate any man who's had an impact
[2:30:36] Speaker 6: exactly anybody. But let's stop posting mothers on Father's Day.
[2:30:43] Speaker 5: Yeah, I can do it. I'm like, I get your point,
[2:30:46] Speaker 5: but it seems like hate field and I feel like
[2:30:49] Speaker 5: me and fathers deserve to have a love. Yes, you know,
[2:30:52] Speaker 5: because you go out on Mother's Day, because my first
[2:30:54] Speaker 5: Mother's Day this past Mother's Day, and you see like
[2:30:56] Speaker 5: everyone with their families and the mothers are getting doted
[2:30:59] Speaker 5: on and love you it on Facebook, the Facebook post.
[2:31:01] Speaker 5: So I just feel like fathers deserve to have that too. Yes,
[2:31:05] Speaker 5: So I wanted to just say that I agree. Oh like,
[2:31:11] Speaker 5: oh sorry, well, I wanted to tell you Happy Father's Day,
[2:31:17] Speaker 5: Happy Father's Day. I would not be the woman that
[2:31:20] Speaker 5: I am right now without you. And it took me, like,
[2:31:25] Speaker 5: not really far into my adulthood to realize the impact
[2:31:28] Speaker 5: of having a good father on a daughter, especially. I
[2:31:31] Speaker 5: know men need fathers too, but I think daughters also
[2:31:35] Speaker 5: need fathers. It's just shaped the kind of woman that
[2:31:37] Speaker 5: I am. I wanted to say, I know, take pretty
[2:31:40] Speaker 5: much said that a lot of the things that he has,
[2:31:44] Speaker 5: like you have, like the simate, like I guess the
[2:31:46] Speaker 5: big one is like work at work ethic. I've seen
[2:31:49] Speaker 5: him stay up to like two or three in the
[2:31:51] Speaker 5: morning working all the things that he's worked on that
[2:31:53] Speaker 5: you didn't ask him for, but just at a just
[2:31:55] Speaker 5: true passion. And that reminds me so much of you,
[2:31:57] Speaker 5: because growing up I just saw you working, working, working.
[2:32:00] Speaker 5: People didn't understand what you did. People would say, what
[2:32:02] Speaker 5: does your dad do? I'm like everything, he's an artist's
[2:32:07] Speaker 5: that's just what he does. So I just want you
[2:32:09] Speaker 5: to know that you know all your hard work does
[2:32:12] Speaker 5: not go unnoticed. I love you. You are still my
[2:32:15] Speaker 5: very best friend to this day. I love you so much,
[2:32:17] Speaker 5: and thank you so much for being a daddy to me.
[2:32:19] Speaker 2: Thank you so much, daughter, You're welcome.
[2:32:22] Speaker 5: And then to my husband, I just wanted to say
[2:32:24] Speaker 5: thank you so much for being the man that you
[2:32:27] Speaker 5: are to our family. I used to call us a
[2:32:30] Speaker 5: small family, but I don't think we're considered a small
[2:32:32] Speaker 5: family no more. I feel like if it's four of us,
[2:32:35] Speaker 5: that's just a family. So thank you so much for
[2:32:38] Speaker 5: I see you work day in and day out. You
[2:32:40] Speaker 5: travel to work, you commute to work, You make life
[2:32:43] Speaker 5: so easy for being I want you to know that
[2:32:45] Speaker 5: I do I do value all the work that you
[2:32:48] Speaker 5: put in every single day for our family. The way
[2:32:50] Speaker 5: that Claire lights up the room when she smiles. Here
[2:32:54] Speaker 5: are smile lights up the room when you walk in.
[2:32:56] Speaker 5: I love that. I can't wait to see you guys'
[2:32:58] Speaker 5: relationship blossom, that she gets to realize how lucky she
[2:33:02] Speaker 5: is for having a dad that loves her. I also
[2:33:05] Speaker 5: used to get jealous at the fact that she looks
[2:33:07] Speaker 5: like you, But I'm like my dad too, so I
[2:33:09] Speaker 5: can't even be mad. But I love you, and thank
[2:33:12] Speaker 5: you for being a good daddy.
[2:33:14] Speaker 3: Thank you.
[2:33:14] Speaker 2: That was them. I love it now.
[2:33:16] Speaker 4: Y'all grabbed that box right there, okay, and I want
[2:33:19] Speaker 4: y'all to get it's two keys in there and two markers, well,
[2:33:23] Speaker 4: two pieces of paper. I want y'all to use the
[2:33:25] Speaker 4: top of it to write down a key to love.
[2:33:28] Speaker 2: What do you think of seeing this little one right here?
[2:33:30] Speaker 5: Oh?
[2:33:30] Speaker 6: Well, it's so cool because I don't know if if
[2:33:33] Speaker 6: the world knows, but I got to meet Claire when she.
[2:33:36] Speaker 5: Was two days old. She was like fresh out the wound.
[2:33:38] Speaker 6: She was fresh out, and I didn't even think like
[2:33:41] Speaker 6: that I was supposed to be allowed to hold this
[2:33:43] Speaker 6: beautiful gift from God and Lataria put her in my arms.
[2:33:48] Speaker 3: So it is it is started crying.
[2:33:50] Speaker 5: Hey, I my eyes were sweating. It was a long day.
[2:33:55] Speaker 6: I was tired, and just to see it's like it's
[2:33:59] Speaker 6: like watching a miracle. So I try not to get emotional,
[2:34:03] Speaker 6: but I just babies are such a gift from God
[2:34:07] Speaker 6: that I feel the presence of God around.
[2:34:12] Speaker 5: Around babies, and I do. I do want Mom to
[2:34:15] Speaker 5: come make a cameo.
[2:34:16] Speaker 2: She can.
[2:34:17] Speaker 4: When they get I'm gonna have them go and put
[2:34:19] Speaker 4: the key up there, and I'm gonna tell the Darren
[2:34:21] Speaker 4: and come here, and my mom come here, and I'm
[2:34:23] Speaker 4: gonna talk to them about two minutes and then they leave.
[2:34:25] Speaker 2: All right. So what was the key that you wrote me? Yeah,
[2:34:29] Speaker 2: push the microphone closer about.
[2:34:34] Speaker 5: So, I wrote, the key to love is growth growth.
[2:34:38] Speaker 2: Did you write your name? And it's a good one.
[2:34:42] Speaker 3: No, I did not pull this guy back. So for me,
[2:34:46] Speaker 3: the key to love is choosing to love each version
[2:34:49] Speaker 3: your partner becomes.
[2:34:51] Speaker 2: Why is that important?
[2:34:53] Speaker 3: I think, as she said, I am not the same person.
[2:34:56] Speaker 3: I think.
[2:34:59] Speaker 1: I don't really believe in the whole like cupid mentality
[2:35:01] Speaker 1: of like it's love at first sight and it's just
[2:35:03] Speaker 1: sunshine and rainbows from that point forward. There's a lot
[2:35:06] Speaker 1: of growth that happens. So I think that bleeds into
[2:35:08] Speaker 1: what you said accidentally, but I think there's a lot
[2:35:11] Speaker 1: of growth. Yeah, that ends up happening. And like she
[2:35:15] Speaker 1: saw the vision, I saw the vision. She was a
[2:35:19] Speaker 1: great person at heart, and she strived to be an
[2:35:21] Speaker 1: even better person than I did too. And as long
[2:35:25] Speaker 1: as that is the core of your being, your good
[2:35:27] Speaker 1: people that love each other and want the best for
[2:35:28] Speaker 1: each other, I think it can and will work out.
[2:35:31] Speaker 3: It just won't always be easy. I don't think it
[2:35:33] Speaker 3: ever will be easy.
[2:35:35] Speaker 1: So it's a conscious decision that we've made and we've
[2:35:37] Speaker 1: continued to make, and we'll continue to make, is to
[2:35:40] Speaker 1: love the forever changing and forever growing and adapting to
[2:35:45] Speaker 1: like what our new reality is because we have one
[2:35:48] Speaker 1: new change and another one coming.
[2:35:50] Speaker 4: Yep, that's good, all right, sign your name and put
[2:35:54] Speaker 4: the and then go hang it up on that both
[2:35:57] Speaker 4: of y'all put on that available hook. Well, thank y'all
[2:36:01] Speaker 4: so much for showing up, being transparent and vulnerable.
[2:36:04] Speaker 2: Made the love you share today outlived the season you
[2:36:07] Speaker 2: in man carry you.
[2:36:09] Speaker 5: Through the days when words are few, and faith has
[2:36:12] Speaker 5: to do the talking.
[2:36:13] Speaker 4: Y'all give it up for the cosmic though, all right,
[2:36:18] Speaker 4: So listen, dear future wifey family also known as lit
[2:36:23] Speaker 4: fam and Love Scholars. Since this is a special holiday
[2:36:28] Speaker 4: Father's Day, I would be remiss if I didn't bring
[2:36:31] Speaker 4: my nephew son La Darien, and my mom, Lilian Whitfield
[2:36:37] Speaker 4: on the podcast. They were just sitting here because my
[2:36:41] Speaker 4: mom was here in case Claire needed to step out
[2:36:45] Speaker 4: and so she could watch her. And then Ladarien was
[2:36:48] Speaker 4: lucky enough today to be off, and so I wanted
[2:36:51] Speaker 4: him to do the switching for the episode today.
[2:36:53] Speaker 2: So how y'all doing. I'm doing great, pretty good. What
[2:36:57] Speaker 2: was it like raising me up? Mother?
[2:37:01] Speaker 3: Like you're doing what you want to do?
[2:37:04] Speaker 2: Explained you pretty much raising yourself.
[2:37:06] Speaker 3: I guess I don't know what you do.
[2:37:10] Speaker 9: I was raising myself, yeah, cause you have things in
[2:37:13] Speaker 9: your mind what you want to do, and you need it.
[2:37:17] Speaker 5: So I just praised God.
[2:37:18] Speaker 3: You did it.
[2:37:19] Speaker 2: Asked to ask him question.
[2:37:21] Speaker 6: Well, I think I know about the raising part, but
[2:37:23] Speaker 6: I guess so you said, he kind of did his
[2:37:26] Speaker 6: own thing and he raised himself in some ways. So
[2:37:30] Speaker 6: when you look back now at the father that he
[2:37:33] Speaker 6: is at the man that he is. What are you
[2:37:37] Speaker 6: most proud of?
[2:37:39] Speaker 9: Well, I'm looking at because he always put you know, well,
[2:37:42] Speaker 9: he kind of liked me family first, and like I say,
[2:37:48] Speaker 9: he just believe in family. Like I said, I knew
[2:37:51] Speaker 9: the night when God saved him, so God showed him.
[2:37:55] Speaker 2: I was at church.
[2:37:57] Speaker 9: I didn't know it was him.
[2:37:58] Speaker 5: What did God show you?
[2:38:00] Speaker 9: He showed me a similar way. A lot of rain
[2:38:03] Speaker 9: dropped me falling down into similar salvation.
[2:38:07] Speaker 2: It was in my family.
[2:38:09] Speaker 9: I didn't know it till the next day that was him.
[2:38:13] Speaker 9: So I just praised God because my prayers always been
[2:38:16] Speaker 9: you know, on my family, and he have come along ways,
[2:38:20] Speaker 9: you know. And uh, and I thank God for him
[2:38:23] Speaker 9: because of the day that I you know, one thing
[2:38:25] Speaker 9: I thought about, asking God, you know, who's gonna take
[2:38:28] Speaker 9: care of me when I got old, I didn't ever
[2:38:31] Speaker 9: gonna be him? And uh, but that's where it came
[2:38:35] Speaker 9: out to be.
[2:38:36] Speaker 3: And I thank God for him.
[2:38:40] Speaker 9: And like I said, he put me, you know, into everything,
[2:38:43] Speaker 9: a lot of stuff. I didn't understand a lot of
[2:38:44] Speaker 9: ways that he was going through, but I know he goes.
[2:38:47] Speaker 9: When y'all was talking about him talking a long time
[2:38:49] Speaker 9: I know what you.
[2:38:51] Speaker 2: Know about that. He talking.
[2:38:53] Speaker 4: Like you had.
[2:38:54] Speaker 5: I said, we're not in court. Wait what do you say, mom?
[2:38:58] Speaker 2: Not in court?
[2:39:00] Speaker 5: In court? That is funny, That is hilarious.
[2:39:05] Speaker 4: I always get in trouble growing up for talking in
[2:39:08] Speaker 4: class and talking a lot in school, and you always
[2:39:11] Speaker 4: get on you see.
[2:39:12] Speaker 2: The teacher then said you were talkative. You got in
[2:39:14] Speaker 2: trouble again.
[2:39:14] Speaker 4: I was like, hey, that's just maybe I'll be something
[2:39:17] Speaker 4: where talking is necessary, and hence the Dear You Dwarfy
[2:39:20] Speaker 4: podcast here we have.
[2:39:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, congratulations, you just graduated high school. How you feel? Honestly?
[2:39:30] Speaker 8: Okay, I can say this when it happened, and I
[2:39:33] Speaker 8: told you the day before I was low key stressed
[2:39:35] Speaker 8: about a lot of stuff and I was feeling bad,
[2:39:37] Speaker 8: and we had the conversation about like, don't worry about
[2:39:40] Speaker 8: that stuff, leave that in the past because tomorrow's all day.
[2:39:43] Speaker 2: And it's like, what this? So I enjoyed it.
[2:39:45] Speaker 8: I appreciate you for bringing my grandma Deontae. I appreciate
[2:39:49] Speaker 8: my mama for going. I appreciate my dad for coming.
[2:39:53] Speaker 8: It was a really happy moment. I appreciate you for
[2:39:55] Speaker 8: uh what's the name. Oh yeah, I keep you going.
[2:39:58] Speaker 8: I almost forgot my goodness, sorry about that. And I
[2:40:00] Speaker 8: appreciate you for having at dinner afterwards too, So I
[2:40:04] Speaker 8: really appreciate that. So I really enjoyed my day because
[2:40:07] Speaker 8: of it.
[2:40:10] Speaker 4: You've gone through an unconventional journey of fatherhood. It's interesting
[2:40:15] Speaker 4: because of course you never call me father, you never
[2:40:17] Speaker 4: call me dad, you call me uncle. What happens in
[2:40:21] Speaker 4: your mind as we approach Father's Day? Uh, with knowing
[2:40:26] Speaker 4: that I played the position and the role of father.
[2:40:31] Speaker 4: But yeah, and still I don't.
[2:40:32] Speaker 2: Have that title.
[2:40:35] Speaker 8: Okay with me, I'm like, you deserve the title. It's
[2:40:40] Speaker 8: not like, oh, you don't deserve it, and I'm like that,
[2:40:41] Speaker 8: it's like that. It's literally just it feels weird calling
[2:40:44] Speaker 8: you my father because blood related, you're my uncle. You're
[2:40:47] Speaker 8: my mom's brother, so it feel weird calling you my father. Also, yeah,
[2:40:55] Speaker 8: I look him his father.
[2:40:56] Speaker 2: I call him uncle.
[2:40:57] Speaker 8: Plus I've been even before I even got a doctored
[2:40:59] Speaker 8: by Uncle Terry was like, it kind of.
[2:41:02] Speaker 3: Just stuck with me.
[2:41:03] Speaker 2: So what do you want to ask them?
[2:41:07] Speaker 6: I guess as you think about Father's Day, and I
[2:41:12] Speaker 6: guess the most important thing that you've learned from your uncle?
[2:41:16] Speaker 5: What would you say that is.
[2:41:23] Speaker 8: It's a lot of things, so it's a good few things.
[2:41:25] Speaker 8: So you know, we haven't talked as off, So I
[2:41:28] Speaker 8: say this is more recent because you know me, I
[2:41:33] Speaker 8: don't really talk about my problems and nothing like that.
[2:41:36] Speaker 8: And I've been trying to be more better with like
[2:41:38] Speaker 8: become better with that. And I say, that's probably the
[2:41:40] Speaker 8: thing I learned the most, is be more transparent with
[2:41:43] Speaker 8: people because I'm not like and I'm still saying right now,
[2:41:45] Speaker 8: I'm still not perfect with that, but I've been trying
[2:41:48] Speaker 8: to like tell like people I care about how I'm
[2:41:52] Speaker 8: feeling and stuff like that. That's all recently, you know,
[2:41:55] Speaker 8: all the other stuff. I've been talking about that stuff too,
[2:41:56] Speaker 8: and I usually wouldn't talk about that like at all.
[2:41:59] Speaker 2: I just can to myself.
[2:42:00] Speaker 6: So I say that, So tell him how you feel
[2:42:05] Speaker 6: about him, because you know words mean everything to him.
[2:42:08] Speaker 6: So take this moment to share how you feel.
[2:42:11] Speaker 3: Okay, I'll have to.
[2:42:13] Speaker 2: Keep it g because I want to.
[2:42:14] Speaker 8: I want to get most of them because at times
[2:42:17] Speaker 8: when I started speaking to my feelings, I started getting
[2:42:19] Speaker 8: most of it just like him. But okay, hold up,
[2:42:26] Speaker 8: oh boy, I appreciate everything you've done for me.
[2:42:31] Speaker 2: Like genial lee.
[2:42:32] Speaker 8: You literally took me out of false care when I
[2:42:34] Speaker 8: was seven, and that's been that's literally ten years ago,
[2:42:38] Speaker 8: or I'm gonna be eleven years ago. You didn't ask
[2:42:43] Speaker 8: for this, You didn't. What's it you didn't. You wasn't Basically,
[2:42:46] Speaker 8: you wasn't supposed to. This wasn't supposed to happen like
[2:42:49] Speaker 8: I wasn't your son essentially, but you treated you always
[2:42:54] Speaker 8: treat me as when you took me as your son.
[2:42:57] Speaker 2: I just really think about sself. You're the closest person
[2:42:59] Speaker 2: I had because.
[2:43:01] Speaker 8: We've been like literally even before Almight, you know all
[2:43:05] Speaker 8: that stuff, it was just me and you for a
[2:43:06] Speaker 8: good two three years. So I just want to say
[2:43:10] Speaker 8: I really appreciate everything you've done for me, and you're
[2:43:14] Speaker 8: the best that anybody could have.
[2:43:18] Speaker 2: Don't cry. If you start crying, I might start crying.
[2:43:22] Speaker 3: I ain't trying to cry on him.
[2:43:26] Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you.
[2:43:30] Speaker 4: God has positioned you for greatness if you allow it.
[2:43:33] Speaker 4: As you get ready to go to college, I want
[2:43:35] Speaker 4: you to be a mighty man of valor. I want
[2:43:36] Speaker 4: you to be a man that doesn't have to always
[2:43:39] Speaker 4: make mistakes to learn from them, but you can look
[2:43:41] Speaker 4: at other people's mistakes and learn from their mistakes, and
[2:43:44] Speaker 4: you can just do the right thing for righteous sake.
[2:43:46] Speaker 4: You can literally say, God, who have you called me
[2:43:49] Speaker 4: to be? I don't have to go through a difficult
[2:43:51] Speaker 4: journey and then be on the outside of it, or
[2:43:53] Speaker 4: be at the rock bottom and then learn to build
[2:43:56] Speaker 4: myself up.
[2:43:56] Speaker 3: I can be.
[2:43:57] Speaker 2: I can use wisdom and learn right now, and I
[2:43:59] Speaker 2: don't have to make the same mistakes. And so I
[2:44:01] Speaker 2: believe in you.
[2:44:02] Speaker 4: I trust the God in you, and I want you
[2:44:05] Speaker 4: always say what for you to do better than I've
[2:44:07] Speaker 4: ever done. I want you to be a better man
[2:44:09] Speaker 4: than I ever was and who I am, and I
[2:44:12] Speaker 4: want you to accomplish more than I've ever accomplished, because
[2:44:16] Speaker 4: you can stand on my shoulders and get there faster,
[2:44:18] Speaker 4: said I told that to Lutaria.
[2:44:20] Speaker 2: You can stand on my shoulders and get there faster.
[2:44:22] Speaker 4: Whatever I am and whatever you see that you admire
[2:44:25] Speaker 4: about me, you can be that and more because you
[2:44:28] Speaker 4: have me and you actually now you got a bonus
[2:44:31] Speaker 4: mom where you got asley that you see she relentless.
[2:44:40] Speaker 8: Okay, not just on me conversations, you have other people.
[2:44:43] Speaker 8: I see it so reless, yes, but she sold that secure,
[2:44:49] Speaker 8: so good thing. She ain't gonna let she ain't gonna
[2:44:52] Speaker 8: let you fail this. No, and if you fail, there
[2:44:54] Speaker 8: ain't gonna be easy failing her.
[2:44:55] Speaker 2: She's gonna keep on. She's gonna stay on you. And so.
[2:45:01] Speaker 4: Again, thank you for being that type of woman that
[2:45:05] Speaker 4: can cover him and stay consistent.
[2:45:08] Speaker 2: Y'all give it up for my son. We've been here,
[2:45:15] Speaker 2: We'll be with you.
[2:45:17] Speaker 4: Ladarian rusted suddenly into child protective Services in twenty fifteen.
[2:45:23] Speaker 2: My nephew, black a boy.
[2:45:26] Speaker 4: The likelihood have been adopted outside of kinship, slim to
[2:45:29] Speaker 4: none Rmione, sixteen years old, black a boy with five
[2:45:35] Speaker 4: years in the FALSIL care system before I even knew
[2:45:38] Speaker 4: his name. The likelihood have ever been adopted? Yep, you
[2:45:42] Speaker 4: guessed it. Slim to none. While Ladarian and Ourmiani were
[2:45:48] Speaker 4: trying to survive and barely thrive in an overpopulated and
[2:45:51] Speaker 4: underfunded FALSI care system, I was living my own life,
[2:45:54] Speaker 4: doing well professionally, having been a single father with a
[2:45:57] Speaker 4: daughter who at that point was doing well in college.
[2:46:00] Speaker 4: It was my time to live my life right wrong.
[2:46:04] Speaker 4: I felt unsettled, tireless, agitated. There are just two many
[2:46:10] Speaker 4: of our Black children stuck in ambiguity and in the
[2:46:13] Speaker 4: limbo of the Falter care system. In twenty seventeen, I
[2:46:17] Speaker 4: legally adopted my nephew, Ladarian. Fast forward to twenty nineteen.
[2:46:21] Speaker 4: I had no ties to this other young king, but
[2:46:23] Speaker 4: I felt God instructed me to adopt them also in Ilbate.
[2:46:27] Speaker 4: Starting over with parenting should have been enough. Right, Working
[2:46:30] Speaker 4: with various foster care and adoption agencies to help bring
[2:46:33] Speaker 4: awareness to the countless young Black kings and the Falster
[2:46:36] Speaker 4: care system should have decreased My agitation. Right joined the
[2:46:40] Speaker 4: board of directors of Advantage of Adoption and organization that
[2:46:43] Speaker 4: helps find permanent adoptive homes for children in false care
[2:46:47] Speaker 4: should have led to some type of resolve.
[2:46:49] Speaker 2: Right, No, not at all. None of it felt like
[2:46:53] Speaker 2: I had done enough. I now realized that.
[2:46:57] Speaker 4: Every one of those experiences was land the fundamental foundation
[2:47:01] Speaker 4: for my life's mission.
[2:47:03] Speaker 2: Kingdom Royal.
[2:47:05] Speaker 4: Kingdom Royal would be a luxury, state of the art
[2:47:08] Speaker 4: home for foster boys. Our first location will be in
[2:47:11] Speaker 4: the Dallas Fortward Metroplex. We will utilize the whole person
[2:47:14] Speaker 4: approach that instills identity, empowers them to advocate for themselves
[2:47:19] Speaker 4: and enlightens them regarding new perspectives and limitless options that
[2:47:23] Speaker 4: they thought were impossible. Though the young Kings will attend
[2:47:28] Speaker 4: the local public schools that are in proximity to Kingdom Royal,
[2:47:31] Speaker 4: our at home curriculum will broaden their worldview through participating
[2:47:35] Speaker 4: in the arts, attending various cultural events, learning about and
[2:47:39] Speaker 4: engaging in multifaceted discussions about current events and even relevant
[2:47:43] Speaker 4: historical contexts, Introducing them to gardening and landscaping, and even
[2:47:48] Speaker 4: caring for our animals on our form and on site stables.
[2:47:52] Speaker 4: We just launched our startup capital campaign with the goal
[2:47:56] Speaker 4: of raising two point eight million dollars.
[2:47:57] Speaker 2: Now why two point eight million dollars?
[2:48:00] Speaker 3: Well.
[2:48:00] Speaker 4: In twenty seventeen, I created a web series in which
[2:48:02] Speaker 4: I performed random acts of kindness for targeting the homeless community.
[2:48:07] Speaker 4: One of the most notable successes was that one of
[2:48:09] Speaker 4: the videos went viral, garnering twenty eight million views. However,
[2:48:14] Speaker 4: one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't raise
[2:48:17] Speaker 4: a single dollar to help in implementing a more sustainable
[2:48:20] Speaker 4: plan for the homeless community. So throughout the years, with
[2:48:24] Speaker 4: much remorse, I reflect that I'm not maximizing that moment.
[2:48:28] Speaker 4: I knew if at that time just ten percent of
[2:48:31] Speaker 4: the viewers donated one dollar, we would have raised at
[2:48:34] Speaker 4: least two point eight million dollars that could have really
[2:48:38] Speaker 4: established long term support for the homeless community, or at
[2:48:41] Speaker 4: least started a long term initiative to do so.
[2:48:44] Speaker 2: This is my do over, This is our new beginning.
[2:48:49] Speaker 4: Together, we can attack this at the route by specifically
[2:48:52] Speaker 4: helping our homeless Black boys who are already disproportionately represented
[2:48:58] Speaker 4: in the American fossil care system.
[2:49:00] Speaker 2: I'm the Terisar Whickfield.
[2:49:01] Speaker 4: I've been nominated for three regional Emmys documenting my work
[2:49:05] Speaker 4: with the homeless as well as my personal adoption journey.
[2:49:08] Speaker 2: Despite those accolades, the greatest award for me is truly.
[2:49:13] Speaker 4: Providing the infrastructure for a transformed life. Visit Kingdomroyal dot
[2:49:18] Speaker 4: com for more details, Crown a king and make a
[2:49:22] Speaker 4: donation today. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the
[2:49:32] Speaker 4: Dear Future WIFEI podcast. Remember be lit, live intentionally and transparently,
[2:49:38] Speaker 4: and don't stop loving.
[2:49:39] Speaker 2: Make sure to subscribe to our Dear Future Wife and
[2:49:42] Speaker 2: YouTube channel.
[2:49:43] Speaker 4: We're available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
[2:49:46] Speaker 4: Welcome your support, simply share our podcasts with your friends
[2:49:50] Speaker 4: and family.

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