Welcome to when mothers lead a podcast created by mother for soulful grassroots collective of single mothers. I'm Heidi and I'm Lisa and we will discuss how you can be a part of this movement and what the world will look like when mothers lead
See, I feel the mother's grieving
Hello and welcome welcome everyone to win mother's lead matriarchy. Now, I'm Heidi house.
And I'm Lisa Woodward.
And we are here today with our beautiful friend, Tiffany Kendrick, also known as Tiffany K inspires, or TK inspires.com. And before we get started, we want to share some things about our amazing friend Tiffany Kendrick, who's also a member of our collective at mother for VIP. She is an inspirational list. I love that. And a transformational coach, a writer, spoken word artist, also an author, so many things. She's the presenter of a beautiful TED Talk. Hopefully you can let us know where to find that. But you can find all things Tiffany Kay inspires at TK inspires.com. And she also has some beautiful classes that she's teaching. And we want to hear more about that. So Tiffany Kendrick, thank you for coming and being with us today. And we love you so much. We're so happy to talk with you. And also to be able to bask in your poetry a little bit today. And just uplift your leadership as a mother. And the many, many places where you are organizing and community over probably over a decade now. I think. So, we'd love to hear from you about your motherhood and what's what's alive for you right now.
Thank you so much for having me. Mother fall is an organization that I found out to the world wherever. And whenever I'm in conversation with other moms, I'm like, Have you heard of Thank you. I'm proud to be part of the collective and really glad that we could make this work so we can have this conversation. I remember being a child playing with Barbies wanting to be a mom. I remember having dreams and visions and actually have in my journal. And when I was 18 years old, I wrote out my vision so that I would be a mom. And so it was it was something that being a mom is something that has been part of my calling and purpose. Though the journey that I'm now embarking on, it was not part of the original vision. Because marriage was at the cornerstone of that. And I met my children's dad and we married and we were married for 13 years together for 15. And now my children are 12 and 15. And I am no longer married. So being growing into singlehood as a mother has been divinely supported by mother full as role models as community as sisterhood as places to really exchanged our skills, our values, our assets, and I'm just I'm really grateful for that space. Thank you.
Yeah, we're lucky to have you in it.
Yeah, so the single mother journey is relatively new for you. Since you brought it up, I'm wondering like, how how's it going?
How do you do it? How can you do it?
Um, first of all, how's it going? It is going. Miraculously, honestly, again, when, for me, envisioning life away, and then things, taking a turn, and exploring new ways to envision and dream is not easy. So I definitely rely on my faith in God, my faith, that's foundational to me, in order to actually grow in acceptance of okay, this is it. Now, this is what life is in what life can I create from here. And literally, that is my more of a daily practice of like, okay, this is where I am now. Similar to getting on this call, and realizing, Oh, this, my Mac doesn't have Chrome, and it's gonna take a minute to download, let me pivot and use this. Like, this practice of pivoting, I think that speaks to what motherhood is, like, in general, is like, Oh, I thought this day was gonna look like this, right? So how do I do it, I do it in village and community and with friendships and relationships that are critical to feeling safe, and being able to ask for help when I need it. And being able to also feel like I have something to offer, even in times where I might feel inadequate, like whatever, I don't know what I'm doing. And that is one thing that I do feel a sense of godly pride and humble pride around is that I will admit to my children, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm figuring it out as I go, but I'm here to support you. I do know what I've experienced already. And I have wisdom that can support you and your life journey. So community faith, and just even that acknowledgement that I don't know what I'm doing. However, I do know what I do know, right, I do know me, and I'm coming to know me more and more along the journey, and using different wellness tools to support that.
I love that. I love that. I think like for so many single moms, it's just really, really hard. And there's like a lot of survival and fear and maybe even despair. I know that I experienced that a lot this is especially in the first in the beginning when I was kind of figuring it out, you know? And I love to just hear like how just faithful you are, you know, like that you're really just trusting the process is what it sounds like. And I think that's something just feels really grounded. You know?
And I think you know, what that might how that might look or feel, in regards to it being a practice. Center centered and using breath as an analogy, like no, really, it is taking in and letting go on a constant basis. So trust and balance and harmony and all these things we kind of aspire toward. It's not this single line of, you know, continuance is this ebb and flow of like, literally spending my mornings reading and journaling and crying me through and just like feeling the struggle in like battling with that fear until I surrender and look at it and say, Oh, that's right. You're an illusion. Okay, you're gonna lose it. I don't. I don't need you right now. I don't need fear. Okay, let me pass, you can pass through. I don't have to hold on to you anymore. And so it is definitely a practice. Yeah. Yeah.
I didn't realize how much I held my breath until I started listening to your work. Like, how do you instill breathing? The breath work with your children? Do you guys have a routine?
That's a great question. I would love for us to develop a routine a routine right now. During the school year lately. They are with me on the weekends. And what I'm finding is after a week, full work. I'm still gathering myself on the weekends and so they we find our way to do that and is it necessarily us sitting down together, breathing down Yeah, that I do, I am intentional about those moments where we're intentionally together at the table, or on the couch, eating or in my room, which is one of my favorite things is that my kids, you know, liked me enough to like, okay, we're all sleeping in your room tonight. And they'll come in and we'll watch a movie. So in the metaphor of breath, us spending time together is our way of connected connectedness. Where we're not always problem solving and figuring it out and kind of in conflict, about things, but we're like, settling into movie or settling into a game or what have you. But I do breathe daily, I do some form of meditation every day, even if it's five minutes. We're navigating emotions as a family, I do. Ground us dance and encourage, okay, let's take a breath, you know, maybe need to count. Like, I'll just reinforce that. Occasionally, we'll pray together, we'll read something, you know, sacred together. So again, it doesn't look like a particular way, the time
that you brotherhood never looks the same way. Every time. Okay.
Or from mother to mother, right? It's like, that's, I think that's important too, for us to acknowledge that No, no, one's mothering looks like anyone else's mothering. Right. Right. And I was thinking this morning, in preparation for this call how, really looking at the type of daughter, I've been in the mother that I had the Mother I am and the mother and becoming. And I don't, you know, I just wanted to uplift that, that as we mother, it helps to, it has helped me to acknowledge what I'm healing from as a daughter. Yeah,
totally. It's such an intense healing journey, I think like, because when every stage that our children reach there are different, you know, healing experiences that we get to have around, like, Oh, when I was this age, this happening, you know, this part of me was not heard or seen or valued or accepted, or whatever. And so then we get to, like, confront that, you know, emotionally and I think especially, you know, for those of us who experienced, you know, multiple traumas as children, which many of us did, you know, I know, I have a pretty high aces score. I think, you know, those stages of growth that my children have had at every stage, and there's something I'm confronting with myself, or like, having to heal within myself, you know, and I wasn't not prepared
Yeah, like, not in the picture that I journal. Yeah, mother, yeah. Then no, no,
it's yeah, the jeans. I feel the DNA passed down.
To me, I think motherhood is the deepest, deepest spiritual path that exists. At least in my world, like the the, I remember, just as a segue, because I've said, we I know your yoga teacher, right? If you're a yoga teacher now, and I'd love to hear more about that, but I started studying yoga in 2001. And I happen to have the blessing of being initiated into Kriya Yoga by a Nepali yoga master His name is we just call it Swami Ji but Kiran Shankar You have Acharya and he, you know, taught me so many things that I still use today. And I remember just at that point, I was thinking about going to live in an ashram in North Carolina and ashram called the kindness house, which was part of the human kindness Foundation. And when I met my children's father, who became a husband, it was like, I literally made a choice, like, I'm going to either go to this life at an ashram of an ascetic, you know, Yogi, or I'm going to be a householder as they call it right. And I remember like I was pulled between the two and I remember hearing in my spirit, say, like this path of the householder or the mother is truly the one that will Ciao I'm sure you the most like an ashram would have been. Like, yeah, and pray and write all day, you know, like, Yes sir. Like that would have been easy peasy. But motherhood I mean, just the toil trials, the tribulations the the growth, the evolution like such a such a, an amazing path for spiritual seekers, you know. Yeah. And I'm just I can't believe I'm 20 years in, you know, 3030 years in
guess. Yes.
What a journey.
It's a big journey. Yeah. And your grandmother helped raise you. Correct? Yeah. And you're so well smoked, spoken. And so graceful. Tell me how she influenced your upbringing, and lessons that she taught you that you still hold on today?
That's, that's a great question and topic because I'm in a season of my life where I'm honoring, consciously in my own way, carrying the ancestry of my grandmother, my mother, and my Auntie's who have passed away. And my grandmother, I said, at one point, I said, That's my other parent, like my dad, was present, from a distance. And I love him dearly and appreciate the way we continue to evolve our relationship. But my grandmother raised me when my mother was active in her addiction in and out of stability. My grandmother, laid the foundation of faith through the Christian church. And so And she also applauded me and put me on stages and platforms and taught me poems and scriptures to remember and put me in, you know, costume. And so she cultivated and pulled out of me those gifts that God had given me and gave me room, and not only gave me room but like, pushed me the ropes, so that I would be expressive and creative and perform. And so very much my foundation, what I didn't know after until my mother passed was my mother was also a creative, she wrote poetry in her jungles and prayed and was a spiritual warrior in her own way outside of beyond the church. That is deepened my connectedness with my own spiritual journey and practices, and allowing me to expand beyond what I originally thought was the only way to express a relationship with God. My grandmother was a preacher and teacher, a mentor, youth advocate, she pushed the envelope in her apostolic church. She thing, she did do the things that things like dance in the church. He's like, I'm bringing in praise dancers. I'm bringing in, you know, gospel rappers, like she'll bring bringing
raised in Apostolic Church, so I know like, yeah, boundaries,
okay, lots of lots of walls, and she was like, we're gonna push those boundaries. And yet, she still kept a certain standard of this is how to live your life holy. And so as much as I've embodied her expectations, the first half of my life, I feel myself shedding a lot of fears. And leaning into some of the things that my mother was teaching me in liberation, and expansive, and freedom. And so that's been really interesting for me, which also opened me up towards meditation and yoga and Heidi hearing you talk about an ashram? I'm like, so I feel like I'm, I'm headed there like yeah, like if I can like since I've done that part, like Can I now like end up in some beautiful and some beautiful mountain somewhere?
Yeah. I see you I see you there. That's Yeah, completely your vibe. I feel like you embody that already. I feel like every time I'm with you, I'm like, everything slows down. Yeah. Oh, yeah. She's reminding me to like be present and embody breeze lower. I'm just like, how did she do it? I don't because I'm on this like that, that that you know. I want to I want to ask you about your work with mothers now at Urban Strategies eight because you're a leader, community leader now and you know that Hey, I just want to know what's you know, your daily work is, is with mothers, right? Yes. So share what you're up to and how you're pouring into.
Yeah, we're there. I counted a privilege, honestly, almost to tears and grant of gratitude that I can that I can serve in a capacity where as a, you know, with the title of family support specialists in the role of service coordinator and connector, I get to be nested on the Mary side of Columbus and Poindexter village and really meet people where they are. Because I am that and I express that, like, I am that mother, figuring it out, right. So we, whether they come to us for rent assistance, which seems to be the primary need that is expressed to us, we get to hear and share stories of survival. We get to hear and share stories of and identify dreams and goals. So my office is nested in the community and someone comes to me and I asked the question, well, you know, what else can we do, or, you know, what happened that you're now in need of this particular assistance, we hear the trauma, we hear about grief, we hear about successes of you know, collegiate degrees, and then just the the expansion and diversity that exists even within a black community of mostly mothers. And with that, what I love doing is being able to make that connection to a resource to a person to person to an opportunity that aligns with those goals, those dreams and those needs. And now that I even have a colleague working alongside me, which is amazing, it's beautiful, it was one thing to do it, you know, so low on a site that support it nationally, in our system. It's another thing that I have somebody arm in arm with these, though, and you said you have 300 families is that what I, we have 300 plus units on our property, we have, I'll say almost 100 families that we have in our system that we're serving. And then there's those primary and prioritized ones that we're definitely working to get to stability, and love working for our minister with urban strategy strategies. I love working in that community. And just the highlight, we were able to receive a grant to operate a mentoring program this summer, that included the moms towards the end, here's the in celebration. Here's some resilient tools that we were able to offer the girls. And then last couple of weeks ago, we were able to host the day retreat at replenish spa with the moms and daughters funding and so dream come true to like be in that wellness space. And hold that with moms and daughters and see them connect to themselves and each other and a new space. That's black women owned mother owned. You know, like that is like for me. That's that's the dream. And that's to me how we can invest in? Are we hear some rent assistance by this other agency? No, we're getting funding and we're using it to invest in local business. That's women on black owned mother and owned. And we're being able to use that to pour into mothers in the community who might not otherwise have access that opportunity. So Right. Those are those are like little dreams coming true, right? So big dream is like, can we scale this and make this more accessible more, more consistently, right, like how can we really prioritize and invest in the wellness of mothers and the wellness of our businesses that our mother owned? Yeah. on a consistent basis. expansively Yes, yes,
absolutely. We need all that we are here we are. Yes, we love recliner spot to wishes.
Yeah, yeah. Check
them out in Columbus. So I wanted Just invite you now to share one of your poems that you came to bring, you know, that you brought with you today. And I would love to make space for that.
Yes, share this piece. And dedicated to the mothers and daughters, too. I think of the mentees, those youth who were once in my program who are now mothers that have daughters in programming that I'm developing and to my daughter and so this is definitely a multi generational piece written and inspired by the black women rise poetry collective that I'm also part of shout out to us. And the things that we're being able to do, including a poetry slam coming up on melanated metaphors, we was in high school that is on December 9, actually, after century so just grateful to be a part of that and whoever in this piece and performed it as part of the collective. Definitely a journey. So I hope you enjoy. Yes. I have always been fascinated with fire. The way she dances on the candles wick, tamed and restricted cage to a specific stage fire intrigues me because I know that if she were to be pushed over the edge, her choreography would consume everything beneath her feet I've always admired how fire makes room for herself, announcing herself in a dark room. She is illuminating. Loring have always been nervous around fire because if you touch her you'll never forget the texture of her passion. She Sears the skin with a kiss you would not soon forget. See, fire always leaves a mark. But I've only known how to be water, how to flow from one unstable home to the next offering very little resistance to my environment. I know how to take on the shape of whatever space I'm put into. When temperatures rise. I'm steam airy and invisible. When it feels cold. I'm ice frozen and impenetrable, and emotion, rivers and streams of refreshing optimism. And as a child, I bounced my anger with tears drift my spark into a diary. I drowned my girlhood and dreams for stability. My mom always kept a lighter nearby, smoke spring from her lips as she spoke expletives. She kept her conversations fiery and honest. And when her heart lit with determination, she conquered addiction and lead others to freedom. My grandmother, she burned in the kitchen, faithfully cooking to feed our family souls. Her hands never felt cold class in forbidden prayer blessings flavored every meal in a church. The kinds of fire was shut up in her bones, her praise would spread like wildfire. Though I am ocean, rivers and streams of thirst quenching positivity. As a woman I am becoming more acquainted with the infernal of divine femininity, how she embodies complexity. She is warm and enlightening and she is destructive and threatening fire speaks a language the ancestors known and when we tap in the spirit sparked embers at the core of our frozen souls our bellies are blazing with intuitive guidance. We know who we are. We are all young, sacred temples draped in red we are phoenix rising again and again we are Alchemist, unquenchable bonfire, devouring the systems that were built to enslave us we burn every hand that raises itself against us. We burn every mouth that has tried to curse us. We burned every soul tie that distracts us from our purpose we know who we are. We are mothers of this Earth and all its inhabitants. We are generous lovers offering the gift of our presence carriers have the most holiest of secrets we are love and light personified daughters of the Most High Holy and brilliant beautiful beloved woman I have always been drawn to our fire though I emotion rivers and streams. I'm learning to keep a lighter close to carry higher in my bones to let God be my guide and my tongue be torch and my pin beat remade because I know who we are. We are both fluid and flame. We are an all consuming warmth that can never be constrained in peace
fluid in flame yes
yeah so beautiful.
Thank you for letting me share.
Yeah, I love you sharing.
We love it. We love it so much and wow powerful stuff. Thank you so much for sharing. So I guess after that we just want to know what your vision of the world is when the mother's lead.
Yeah. When mamas are leaving. How's the word changing
the vision of the robber mother's lead is love being fully embodied.
oppressive systems being dismantled
our well being being prioritized every human being humanized children being free to grow into adulthood without the fear of losing their life to someone else's fear or hatred. It is a world of wholeness. It is expansive and yeah, the embracing of the complexity of our humanity
Yeah, leads are lovely. Ah, yes. We'll take it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tiffany. Kay, inspires TK inspires.com Go check out her beautiful work. And where can people find your TED Talk? Because that's a really powerful piece as well. Is that on YouTube? Yeah, it
is on YouTube. There is a link on my website. I do mention it in my on my Instagram, which is probably my favorite social media platform and Tiffany K inspires. This is one one F and in the eye at the end, Tiffany K inspires and so YouTube search the life saving power of inspiration.
Beautiful. Yeah, we love you so much. Tiffany, thank you for loving you and being with us and making me cry.
Today meet so there's that coming from? Okay. It's coming from the well that we tend to start with each other. So I'm so grateful for you. I love you all.
