Welcome back to "She's Free2Fly," where we dive deep into empowering conversations that inspire and uplift women. In this episode, titled "Episode 2 Full," your host De'Shonda Lucas shares her personal journey of growth and the wisdom she has gained from the women in her life. From cross-generational conversations to the transformative power of love and healing, De'Shonda invites you to join her in exploring the value of learning from others and fostering meaningful connections. As she reflects on the importance of sharing experiences, De'Shonda encourages you to embrace the beauty of community and the power of relationships. So sit back, relax, and get ready for a heartfelt and empowering episode of "She's Free2Fly."

Discussion Questions

1. How have cross-generational conversations impacted your personal growth and understanding of the world?
2. Reflecting on the speaker's experience with their daughter and her friends, have you ever had a situation where younger people taught you valuable insights? If so, what did you learn?
3. Think about a person in your life who has had a profound impact on you. How have they influenced your communication skills and perception of others?
4. Whom do you feel grateful for in your life, and why? How have they positively contributed to your journey?
5. Have you ever had a conversation that was different when recorded versus when experienced live? How did it make you feel? Discuss the differences and any insights gained.
6. Share a situation where you observed dynamics of love, respect, accountability, and support between two individuals. How did it impact you?
7. Reflect on the women who have influenced you throughout your life. How have their experiences and wisdom shaped your own perspective?
8. Discuss the importance of community and connection with other women. How has joining a community helped you be more aware and connected?
9. Have you ever learned a lesson from someone else's experiences? Share an example and discuss how it impacted your own growth.
10. How do you navigate prioritizing different roles in your life, such as being a mother, pursuing romantic relationships, and investing in friendships? Share any insights or advice that you have received or applied.

Hello, ladies. Let's perch it's deshonda of the She's Free to Fly podcast. Thank you for so much for joining me for this episode. I want to begin by saying thank you. I've said it before and I will say it again. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for those who have supported me in this journey.

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement. Thank you for those who have listened, who have loved, who have said prayers, who have offered. I really, really appreciate your encouragement. And I also want to take the time to really just openly share my reflections on the mother Daughter Odyssey episode with Mariah. It was such a wonderful experience, like, to interview her. I'm so thankful that she allowed us into her world and just sharing what her experiences were. This college experience has really been a joyful experience for her, and she was able to share that joy, but it's also been one that she's learned a lot. Like, she has really learned a lot about who she is and really learned to use those resources that she has to grow and to help her reach the next leg of her journey.

So I thank her. My experience in recording the episode was very different from my experience in watching the episode. So as we were recording, I'm sitting there, I'm asking her questions and I'm interviewing. And it was a lot like how our conversations happen, right? I ask some questions, she offers answers, and we just have an exchange of love and words. But to really sit outside of our conversation and I think that's the first conversation that we've ever had that was recorded, that I could literally come outside of the conversation and just sit back and watch the dynamics between two women. And I saw love and I saw respect and I saw accountability and I saw support and I saw so many things that I'm very proud of to be a part of that. I'm very thankful that she allows me into her world. And I don't take it for granted because sometimes young people, they don't necessarily allow their adult, the adults in their lives, the older adults in their lives, or their parents into their world.

So for that, I'm very thankful. And I think this is a really good time to talk about the love of a mother. And the love of a mother is the core of my being on the website. Like, you'll find that I wrote a mother's love to daughters around the world. And while I'm a mother, I am also that daughter. And so I want to be very clear that this podcast is not just for women who have given birth to children or who are mothers or identify themselves as mothers. This podcast is for women in general because it is my belief that we are all mothers at some point or we have the ability to nurture. And to me, being a mother is about that nurturing and that support and that love that we have for someone else.

And I know, like, we are all daughters, we are all somebody's daughter at some point. And there are some things that we receive from our mothers or women in our lives who have supported us, but there are also some things that we can share with others. So that is why we have the cross generational conversations to share and help one another grow. And for me, it's not just a conversation based on older women sharing wisdom with younger women. I was sharing with a friend today. Like, I learned so much from younger people, it's ridiculous. I learned so much from my daughter and her friends and it has truly, truly created a better me. I remember a particular issue that I learned about from my daughter and her friends, which really helped me in my life on how I communicate and how I see people.

So that's what she's free to flies about. It is about cross generational conversations where we as women help one another. And my first experience with cross generational conversations that I can remember are the conversations between me and my grandmothers. My paternal grandmother, and we'll call her Grandmother Kay. She is no longer with us. But my paternal grandmother, I can remember being a little girl, and I have always been that child that will sit at my grandmother's feet and I stay at both their feet. Like, I'm literally going to sit on the floor and I'm going to listen to them. I can remember being a little girl and me and my cousin, we would just sit in the living room at my grandmother's feet and she would tell us stories.

About 30, 40 years ago, she could tell a story and tell if the sun was shining, if it was raining outside, what day of the week it was, the clothes she had on, what color, what everybody was doing. And she was like the first storyteller of my life that I can remember because I remember her sitting and telling those stories. And she loved us. Oh, my gosh. I was her first granddaughter. And then I have a cousin who's a year younger than I am. And so we were really close, practically raised together, and we were her girls like, we were her girls. And she cared for us and she loved her children.

And she was always there in unconditional love. Right or wrong, she was going to be there. She's going to make sure you had food on the table. She's going to make sure you could get a hot bath. That is who my grandmother was. It was the place that anybody from the neighborhood could come and get a plate. And even when I think about that side of my family, it is still that it's the place that you can come and get a meal. So for that, I'm very thankful.

I'm thankful for the relationship that I had with my grandmother. My grandmother passed away very soon after I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. And I tell my daughter, she is so special. Like, the universe had to make space for her. And so as my grandmother, as she was coming into my womb, my grandmother was leaving. And then her father's mother, her father's grandmother, as I was in the hospital giving birth to my daughter, her paternal grandmother was actually in the same hospital, and she was leaving this earthly space as well. So literally as she was coming in this world, her great grandmother was leaving. So, man, the cycle of life is so, so beautiful.

It is so beautiful. It is so beautiful. And we're very blessed to not only be a part of it, but be aware of the cycle of life. Yes, we're very blessed to be aware of the cycle of life. My maternal grandmother, and we'll call her Nana. My Nana is the epitome of grace. She is the epitome of just beauty on the inside. My grandmother does not raise her voice.

She's not going back and forth with you. I think I get a lot of that from my grandmother. She's very mild tempered, but she says what she means. She means what she says. If she says this is the consequence, you need to know this is the consequence. But she is always, like, a woman of standard. Even today, in her 90s, she still dresses and carries herself in the most pristine way, like when she goes to church. And she's like the mother of the church and stuff, and she's all coordinated.

And I can literally probably go to my grandmother's house and find something to wear in her closet. And you would not know it came from my grandmother's closet because that's just who she is. She's always loved fashion. As a little girl, she would sew, and I would watch her on the sewing machine. And, like, I have sewing machines upstairs here, and I can pretty much get on the sewing machine and do a little bit. I can't do as much as I used to could because I don't sew as much. But I learned that homemaking from my nana. I really did.

My cousins and I, we would go to my grandmother's house, and we would all be there at one time, and we would make tents, like, with all the blankets in the house. And we would go out in the yard and run around. And she has, like, a good bit of land, she and my grandfather, and we would pick vegetables and stuff out of the garden. And she has plants in her house that are 50 years old. So that is where a lot of that comes to from it is from my Nana. And that love she has for life. She truly has a love for life. When we would move and travel and stuff, you can count on.

My grandmother is going to get in the car, and she's going to come see where you're at. She believes in knowing where her children are at. And I was so thankful. I think it was last year, maybe when she's in her 90s, she came to my house to visit, and she doesn't get out as much as she used to, but she still keeps a check on us, and she likes to know how we're doing, and she loves us to reach out to her on a regular basis. And the days that I talk to my grandmother, baby, when I hang up that phone, I say, if the good Lord take me today, I'm going to heaven. Because she is just like, talking to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it really is just to see her face. I'm so happy every time I see her, and I don't take those moments for granted.

She is a grandmother who has always you could always talk to, like, each of her grandchildren think that they're her favorite. Now there's one special person that knows that they're her favorite, but everybody has their day when they can be her favorite. But there's one person that we know is like, that favorite, right? Yes, me. But we all think that because we all have this very close connection to her. We really do have this very close connection to her and a respect for her. And she is treated as definitely the treasure that she is. She truly is a treasure in our family. And my grandmother did not grow up with her mother.

Actually, my grandmother's mother passed, like, two to three days after giving birth to my grandmother, so she didn't have someone to teach her how to be a mother that was not taught. It was literally something that I now know that flows through our veins and flows through our spirit. That spirit of being a mother flows in the lineage of my family. That love that you see between me and Mariah, that is a flowing of the spirit between generations. It is a flowing of the spirit between generations that I am, like, blessed. I'm blessed, blessed, blessed to have. And my mother is her youngest daughter, her youngest child, actually. And my mother has always said that her mother accepted her for exactly who she was.

My mother is the youngest, and she would say, I've always been different and stuff, but my mother always accepted her. Like, my mother has always been a person. She's going to do her own thing in her own way, and that's going to be it. I'm a lot like my mother in that sense that as long as me and my mother and my daughter on one accord, I feel confident in what I am doing. They give me the support and the freedom to fly without the thought of, I'm in this alone. Right. I've never really felt, in very few instances alone because I have always had the support of my mother. I have always had the support of my mother.

So I've never really felt alone with any of the things that I was doing. And I could always call her and talk to her about those things whether they were good or bad. And sometimes I wouldn't and sometimes I talked to my other mother. So I have two and a lot of people, some people may not get one mother that they can talk to or they didn't have the time with one mother that they can still talk to. But I tell you, I am one of the most blessed people to walk this earth because I have two mothers who absolutely love me unconditionally. I have two mothers that I absolutely love unconditionally. My mother and father, they divorced when I was four years old. When I was seven, my father remarried.

And so for as long as I can remember, I've had two mothers. And my two mothers love me so much that they chose to love one another. That is God. That is unconditional love. Because I've had these women to love me so much. I have so much love to give. My other mother is the diva grandmother. Like we call her the diva.

She stays ready to the ten and she's very honest. She has a prayer for each of us. She keeps me and my sisters in her prayers all the time and my mother does as well. So I'm surrounded by these women where one woman really taught me how to take care of other people and that nurturing for others. My other mother taught me how to take care of myself and that inward self care that you need. So if you're only caring for yourself, sometimes that can be selfish. If you're only caring for other people, sometimes that is going to leave you empty. Pretty much all the time.

It'll leave you empty. If you're only caring for others and not yourself, there can be an emptiness. So for those of you who have blended families, blended families can work. Blended families can create magic. Blended families can grow and blossom the most wonderful individuals because I believe the more any individual is love, the better they become. So let this be a message for those who have blended families. Like, I have two sets of parents, right? And all of my parents can sleep under the same roof in my house. All of my parents can come and support one another.

Both of my mothers can stand in the kitchen and cook together if they want. Both of my fathers can sit and watch a football game together. And we've done that. We've had instances where if something's going on with me that both sets of my parents show up and support one another and they love one another. I remember for my 45th birthday I had a group of women over my house. It was bring a sister to meet a sister. So I invited my girlfriends and they all invited one friend and we all fellowshiped and just had a wonderful time together and had a circle and just discussed things that were going on. That's just what I believe in, right? And so we get ready to sing Happy Birthday and one of my girlfriends had bought the most beautiful cake and so what did I do? On one phone I called one mother.

On another phone I called another mother. They're talking to each other through the phone, right? And just saying hey wife. And that's what they call each other wife. Hey wife, how are you doing? And stuff. And they're loving on one another and my friends, they're all sitting like wow. And I'm holding both phones up and everybody is singing Happy Birthday. That is joy. That is love.

That is like man, that makes you whole if you're fighting with the loved ones of the people you love. That causes discord, that causes pain. Let's not cause pain, let's cause healing. I've been able to take the best of these women and really create the best in me. And I've been exposed to women who love and care and nurture one another. My mother has two best friends that since I was probably about, I would say maybe twelve or 13 and maybe even younger than that, they've been friends for a very long time. They have been part of the women that make me one of my mother's friends. She is truly like the great communicator, can talk about anything and she has the very gifted ability to express her thoughts, express her emotions, express historical things that have happened in her life and also be able to apply those things.

But not only can she communicate and given communication, but she has a very strong ability to strong ability to receive communication as well. So she is like a really great listener and when you're talking to her she is going to be very soft spoken and she's really going to give you a safe space to communicate and she is going to communicate in a very safe way to you as well. And that has been my experience. So the thing that I learned from her was the ability to communicate. And you need that. You need that. Whether communicating positive conversations or what some could think of as negative conversations. Like I really got that from her.

And then her other best friend taught me that everything has a place and a place has space for everything. So everything really has a place. And she is just a woman of order. Like there has to be order, it has to be a certain way and she's very particular about those things, but in a real graceful way, not in this anal angry way or nothing like that. It's truly, truly out of love that she really wants the best. And she has a certain standard as well. A certain standard for the way things should be presented, a certain standard for the way things like if she cooks a meal, it's going to be in a certain order. Her attention to detail is very beautiful and she's able to use those gifts to help the multitude of people, like literally, professionally, she uses her gifts of order, her gifts of excellence.

That is it. She has a desire for excellence. She uses that in a way that helps and supports a multitude of people. So those are the women that really help make me the person I am. And they were able to do that because of their mother's love. That love, that nurturing that they hold as women, that is truly, truly a mother's touch. The ability for me to be able to call my mothers and have really hard conversations and for them to not hold it against me or not remind me of it 30 days down the road or three years down the road, to really take those things in and release them and still see me as a new person every single day. That is to me what a mother's love is.

It is that nurturing communication. It is that nurturing connection. That is what I strive to be and that is what I strive to give. And I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about my mother in law, my late husband's mother. I can remember when I was in the 8th grade because I was upstairs, I was in the 8th grade in class and I was sitting, my back was to the wall and this beautiful lady comes in the door and she's one of the parents of one of the students and she's just checking on her son. And when she walked in, y'all, she was so beautiful. Like, she was beautiful on the outside and she is beautiful on the outside still to this day. She's beautiful on the outside.

But the beauty and the power that radiated from the inside of her body, I was so attracted to. I was like, oh my gosh, that is what I want. She just walked in her power and her beauty and her grace, and that one interaction, that one observance because it wasn't even an interaction, because we didn't interact with one another. But when they say representation matters, the way she represented herself in that moment created a desire in me to want more and better and to want to grow into a particular thing. And then years later, I ended up it's funny how life goes around. I married her youngest son and he's now deceased. But she and I still have a very loving relationship. And it's not just because of the marriage, it's just because I respect her and I admire her as a woman and I admire the accomplishments that she has created in her life.

I admire the impact that she has on her community. Yeah, so I'm just so in love and grateful to God that he allowed these women to not only come into my life, but for me to be aware what they brought to my life. And for me to be able to say from this person, I admire that. From that person, I admire that. And I'm very grateful that he saw fit for me to be able to maintain these relationships this long in my life. I'm grateful for the smile that my mother has shared with me. When you see a lot of people saw the episode number one with me and Mariah, and a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, she looks just like you. She took your face like she smiles just like you.

That smile came from my mother. It came from her. This is her smile. When I look in the mirror and I smile, I literally see my mother smiling back at me. That is what I see. And I'm grateful to see that because I know everybody doesn't see that. Everybody doesn't have that person in their life who's smiling at them. And for those who do not, please open yourself up to it.

Look for it, ask for it. Start listening to this podcast. Maybe you will receive a daily dose of love. A weekly dose of love. Go to the website. On the website you can join the community where you will get blog posts, a newsletter. We're going to be doing quite a few things with those who join the community. I know a lot of people have subscribed to the podcast, to the YouTube, but truly take the time to go to She'sfriedofly.

Com and join the community. Because it's in that joining of the community that you will be aware of the things that are happening and the connections that you can make with other women. And so I definitely want for people to really think about what is it that particular women in your life have brought to the table? Who are some of the people that you have ran across that you connect with that sphere or something that you desire? It is time to start having conversations with not only people in our own age group, but have conversations with your seniors, have conversations with your young adults, have conversations even with your teenagers. Because everybody possesses some type of gift. Everybody has something that they can give and share with someone else, because if they didn't, they wouldn't be here. We have love to share. We have experiences to share. The experiences of my life, I had those experience to learn lessons.

And what point is me learning the lesson only if I'm learning it for myself? Like, really? So when I talk about just a mother's love, I'm talking about the experience. The action of love is the sharing of the experience. It is the telling you how I learned to love myself, telling you about how I heal through certain situations, telling you about how I dealt with grief, telling you about my experience when I had open heart surgery so that I can share my experience for someone else. It is literally for the blessing of others. When people share their experience with me, I do not take it for granted because there's something for me to listen and learn in each conversation. I think I know one of the greatest pieces of advice, two of them that I got as a mother is that it was okay for me to focus just on being a mother. I wasn't very focused on relationship, like romantic relationships and stuff like that. I really, really wanted to focus on being a mother.

And I remember talking to one of my girlfriends who was sharing about her experience, and she said, when you're building a relationship, especially like, for marriage, there's a lot that you have to put into that. But there's also a lot when you're raising teenagers and they're going into those teenage years. And she said, So it's really okay if you just want to focus on so she said, it was just okay if you just want to focus on being a mother. And I really, really did that. I was very intentional and very focused on those things, very focused on channeling my love for her through her so that it could grow into something else. Another piece of advice that I got from a sister friend, cousin was at one point, I wanted to do foster care. And I still know, like, at some point I'm going to do foster care. But she told me, she said, Deshaunda, you are creating a masterpiece.

Keep working on your masterpiece. And that's what I did. I kept working on my masterpiece, and I stayed in the stillness and the parenting of her and allowed me to complete that process and not start anything too early. So I know one day I probably will do foster care because I love children. I love being a mother, and I believe that every child deserves a safe space. And I know my home is a safe space. I know that when you come here, you're going to feel the love, and you're going to feel the nurture. The nurturing.

So, yeah, when I remember one day riding in the car, one day riding a car, I was talking to my daughter, and I asked her, I said, Mariah, what are those things that you think that I want you to take with you for as long as you live? And I told her one thing I want her to take is kindness. I believe in being kind to people. Another thing I want her to take is the ability to smile. Smile at the world, and it will smile back at you. Like, I got that from my mom. I pass it on to my daughter. I also believe, as a mother, that sometimes you have to allow your children to suffer. And I say that because if you never suffer, you never learn how to heal.

And there's I don't think one person alive who is not going to go through who is going to go through life and not have an experience that they need to heal. So I believe in having some experiences earlier. I'm going to let you suffer a little bit so you learn how to heal. I can call Magic and say she tell me she have a bad day. Okay. What are you eating? What are you listening to? Who are you talking to? Those are the things that influence how you heal. Another thing I believe in is learning how to make decisions early. So for our young mothers and you have young children allow them to make certain decisions.

What are you going to eat tonight? What are you going to wear tomorrow? I remember we would go different places, and I would let Mariah walk ahead of me, not too far, but walk ahead of me so that she would learn how to find her own way. And I'm glad I did those things, because those are the things that allowed me to let her, at 19 years old, move to another country and stuff like that, because I knew she knew how to make small decisions. I am just beyond thankful for this opportunity again. And we're going to just close by saying, I pray you receive our love. I pray that you feel God's grace, and I pray that you share it with others. So this is she's free to fly? Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, she's Free to Fly you can listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify. She's free to fly. And also you can view the podcast on YouTube, she's Free to Fly podcast.

And we drop a new episode every Tuesday morning. So have a wonderful, wonderful day.