Service to Others with Naketa Ren Thigpen

Deneen L. Garrett  0:03 

Welcome to another episode of an intimate conversation with women of color. I am your host Deneen L Garrett and today's guest is Naketa Ren Thigpen. She is the CEO, Balance and Relationship Advisor of Thing Pro Balance and Relationship Management Institute. She is on a mission to build stronger families that leave new multi generational imprints witnessed from the ripples of love, empathy, adventure victory and edification they create from their wholeness.  Naketa, tell us more about you.

Naketa Ren Thigpen  1:34 

Oh Deneen, I'm so excited to be here. So thank you. I'm honored to be sitting on the virtual couch for so many reasons. So a little context, my background and foundation of all that I am professionally is I'm a licensed clinical social worker, trauma specialist, psychotherapist, sexologist and Relationship Expert before I became an entrepreneur. My husband and I started our company which is a Thig Pro Balance and Relationship Management Institute. A long a mouthful, so most people just say Thig Pro to keep it short. 2011 So we're going on our 12 year anniversary. A little differentiator is he does not work in the business as he likes to make it very clear and plain to see. But he is a shareholder and co founder and He supports me for favors in exchange for favors whenever I need them. So that's always helpful. Yeah. So how we serve people now? Our company is high level. It's a personal development company and we serve power couples and potent humans. Our potent humans are like you they are phenomenal visionaries, women entrepreneurs. Sometimes they you know served under the guise of lifestyle designer, Coach consultant. Actually, underneath all of it, they're healers. So that's what I see what you're doing is your healing in your way through your gift, and having conversations with people who don't necessarily know that there's access to this healing reservoir that you provide for them. And what we're doing for all those people is helping them have some intentionally selfish focus time on themselves. So they're not just healing and pouring out but leaving their own personal reservoir empty, and we amplify intimacy in all the ways possible.

Deneen L. Garrett  3:28 

I'm loving all of this right. Love and all of this I need to run out and get me a mate. So listen, yes, yes, yes, yes. And so, you know, the power couples is something that I definitely want us to kind of talk, you know, talk about, of course, this platform is for women of color. Well, yes, I'm gonna color it and make up a couple and then things that we can do individually because as you said, self care is so important. We need to take care of ourselves first. But I want to talk about how you have revolutionized you know, healing trauma, trauma, while balancing work and life and love. So let’s start there.

Naketa Ren Thigpen  4:11 

Honestly, my secret is helping people balanced boldly. It's what we call it. That's the name of our podcast to which goes right in line with all the things that you are serving people with. And I do that by helping them recalibrate and own their right to be intentionally selfish. So for us we've redefined the word selfish so you can reclaim your power and not be stuck in what we'll say is conventional wisdom or the patriarchy, which told us that being selfish choosing yourself first taking care of what you need to make sure that your reservoir your vessel is sealed. Right, so nobody can extract any energy from you without consent. No one can add any toxicity to you, without you being able to at least defend yourself. And a lot of the ways that we as women, especially were raised is it was absolutely horrifically bad for you to do anything for you first. You must give poor scratch star do all the things you need to do to help anyone around you your siblings, your parents, your kids, if you you have them your business, your career, and the only time we were given permission to really take care of ourselves is if you were two seconds from having a breakdown on a bathroom floor. Or worse, you already had the break down maybe it came up as a heart attack or stroke or seizure or some other kind of somatically induced repercussion to the stress that was happening and cause something really real in your body and lead you in a hospital to have an IV in your arm. Then people would say, oh my goodness Naketa, Deneen, you got to take some more time for yourself. 20 minutes before that they were blowing up your phone. Hey, I need you. I need you. I need you to volunteer. I need you to come here. I need you to do this. Watch the kids. Cover me borrow money. Right? Like all these things that people don't understand are not necessarily helpful because we're all caught in the same paradigm of give, give give. And I had to take a break from it personally because I was giving until I went emotionally broke. And I was like that's not serving anyone at the end of the day. If you're the glue and the glue breaks apart and basically turns into dust. Who are you actually serving? And that was honestly transparently my story. I was addicted to the stress of busyness and going and doing because the world validated me my parents who had abandoned me and had their drug addiction and all their stuff. This was me being validated that I wouldn't become a statistic Right. Like all those expired expectations that we put on ourselves and other people put on us. It was causing a huge detriment to not only me as a human, but me as a woman, me as a leader, me as a survivor, me as someone who has a purpose on this earth. And I didn't want to continue that legacy, if you will. For my son, my daughter, my husband, my nieces, my nephews let alone the people that I'm truly here to serve. So it honestly selfishly started with me saving my own life in that way by reclaiming that spaciousness that I need which for me that's all being intentionally selfish is is gifting yourself. What I consider a personal intimate gift to create your joy your way, but you can't do that if everyone in their mom was breastfeeding off of you at the same time. You got to snatch them titties back right like and say I need some time to heal. So that's that's what I did and that’s honestly how I helped the couples be better. I give them the right regardless of their gender. Snatch them titties back. Get the comfort that you need back from all the swelling and irritation and crackedness that was happening from everyone pulling at your teet. And just relax a little bit 10 minutes at a time. Have your own orgasm know your own body before you make demands on someone else to know you better than you know yourself. So a lot of the work I'm doing is really honestly helping them be more selfish.

Deneen L. Garrett  8:22 

I love that. I’m feeling everything that you're saying I'm sitting here just having these thoughts. And I liked that you mentioned patriarchy because we struggle. So many people struggle with self care, right? It’s a huge thing. You would think that taking care of yourself as a given is natural, but it's not. Right and so the why you know comes from the patriarchy it comes from someone saying no, you take care of me you take care of everybody else, right. Your second, third, fourth, fifth, and it's been ingrained for years. years years of racial trauma, all of that. It's been ingrained. So now we have to actually consciously intentionally make a decision to take care of ourselves first, which is the most sane or thing to do like it makes sense. Like why wouldn't you> Like on the airplane, what do they tell you? You put yours on 1st because if you don’t and put somebody else's on 1st, you fall out. You know, you're in that type of situation. So now you're no good to yourself, or anyone. So again, taking care of yourself should have always been such a natural thing, but we've been programmed against that. So I mean, it is what it is. Yeah. We are now reclaiming. As you said, we're being aware of the awareness and we're seeking the help and support from people like yourself to be selfish, like you said, and you know, so many people look at selfish as a bad thing. It is not. Take care of yourself first because it is okay to like want to take care of other people and to take care of other people. Because as you just said, you called me a healer that's new. I like that. And I understand that and you're right. And in order to do that we have to be together.

Naketa Ren Thigpen  10:10 

That's right. That's right. 1,000%, I would say, beyond people fighting me on the word balance, because that happens a lot. And like there's no such thing as integration. It's harmony.

Deneen L. Garrett  10:22 

Yeah, I'm an integration person, right,

Naketa Ren Thigpen  10:24 

which is fine. So you're perfect for this right? So when I hear they're like Nakita, there's no such thing as Work Life Balance, or I say work life and love balance, right? Because love is my yummy my yummy space. Like you're right. If you go by the 5050 the 7030 to 6040 Right? No relationship, not you and your parents, you and your nieces, nephews, siblings. frog, dog everything in between and definitely not in a romantic sense. There's no 50/50 relationship. There will never be any space where it will be even at all times. But that's not how I define balance. I see it as your truth over your boundaries. So if you are actively stating that the truth of what I want is to serve 1 million women entrepreneurs, I'm just you know, picking out something that I kind of feel from what you're doing in the world right with these intimate conversations with LGBTQIA women of color and allies right? If Deneen says , And you did not tell me this guys. I’m just kind of like hypothesizing and she says, I want to help 1 million women entrepreneurs or women of color entrepreneurs to be very specific. Then I say, okay, great. That's your truth. That's what all the things you're doing from panel to podcast, right? I did my professional research, right. Professional stalking. If that's where you say you're doing that I would say okay, let's set up some boundaries, so you don't get distracted from your truth. So that way you stay full enough for you first because that's important for the legacy you're creating the philanthropy you want to do the all the altruistic things that you're doing in the world. It's important for you to be full enough to do that. So that you can pour from your overflow into the selflessness that you're going to continue to do because that's how we're all raised hopefully, to be selfless, but we never get that fill yourself up. First part. So we pour from resentment, exhaustion, overwhelm, underpaid, under appreciate, like that's where we pour from, and then we show up at the whatever the birthday party, the divorce party, the wedding like oh my god. When this is over before we even pulled into the parking lot, because we don't you know, we love the people. It's not about we don't have anything left for us to even show up. So we're giving a little bit we have, so I would say to this fictitious version of Deneen that I kind of made up, I would say all right, what's your boundary around time for your personal habits so you can get some energy? And you will say, Oh, well, I work out X number of times a week and I try to eat healthy and I'm like, Okay, are you paying every couple of hours? Shall who gets out for a bathroom break? Right? Because we hear that a lot, especially from women. Like, I can't remember I think it's been 12 hours since I went to the bathroom. And we're programmed to think that that's okay. I know my bladder took a hit after 40 When it was like autumn years of not going when you was working in emergency room trauma. Couple and now like it's gonna catch up to you at some point. And now I'm inconvenience because I felt inconvenience now and in my mid 40s, because I felt in my 20s and 30s that I didn't have the right. It wasn't just time. I didn't have the right to take a bio break because this had to be done. And it had to be done and it's walking into the bathroom. Somebody's calling my phone mom, an agent, right? Like, you're like, okay, hold on. And so we do all of that. And then we suffer because of it. And our children and our nieces and our neighbors and our friends and our colleagues. They will come visit us once a week. They'll send us some phone, they'll send us some soup, but who is taken over for all of the things that you can't get done because you weren't selfish enough at the time you need it. So my conversation with my fictitious Deneen who's serving a million women of color entrepreneurs will be all right. We need some boundaries around your faith. When do you have time to receive whatever it is whatever your faith is, if your faith is philanthropy, well, when do you have time to receive from yourself where you should pour your money versus being pulled along by whoever is the loudest call or saying Hey, Mr. Lee, and I need this and all right, our nonprofit needs that. So where's your time? Is it 10 minutes to just sit and receive from yourself? Is it an hour on a Sunday or Saturday like whatever that is for you, you need a boundary around it. So it's non negotiable. You need a boundary around your expectations. If you're a 22 year old version of yourself is still making you feel bad because you didn't actually Marry the doctor. Right or you didn't become the doctor, but you decided to take or maybe in life help you redirect in a different way. Then you're still anchored to an expired expectation that's weighing you down and keeping you from inviting boundless expansion in which you deserve and that's why you're here. So we look at like these different as five specific zones, but we look at these different areas of boundaries and help people create that spaciousness around it. So those boundaries kind of become like the Guardians over their estate, the estate of their truth, the estate of their healthy relationships, the estate of their wealth, their real wealth, not just money, money matters. We love money, right? But money is not the driver for most of us, right? Like money is just the thing that helps us do what we want to do a little easier, and we need that. But we really value healthy relationships, we value freedom like you're always talking about, like, how are you living your dream, how you live in and out in real life? Move money aside for a moment. When's the last time you play eat? When the last time you did something silly? Just got up and start dancing, shaking some Urraca shaking your maracas, like whatever works for you. Right like when's the last time you did that? And so some of the work that I do is really simple, in that I'm helping people get curious again and create some adventure and some play. But it's not easy, because we're all programmed to be validated by this. Oh, how many? How many things can you pack into an hour right like it? It's, it's the spaciousness that I want to help people create so they can really hear their truth come up from all of that calcified chaos that's been buried on top of it because of life and other people's expectations.

Deneen L. Garrett  17:01 

Yeah, no, I mean that everything is a mouthful, and I was thinking to my mom, she wanted to play checkers. So she bought a checker checkers playing on Christmas and I think her and my son they played maybe a couple games and that's it. She just wanted that play. And that is something that you know, we're probably so many of us are probably missing, right because I'm up here thinking okay, when's the last time I played and you know, what did I do? And you know, and we do need more of that and so those small little things right? You know, taking about because I'm thinking while treadmill, when that's not playing that's really a form of exercise. The plan is kicking the ball, you know, plan checkers playing something bowling and all of those things are that are just fun that a lot of us are probably missing. So you've already talked a lot about how women of color can tap into their power and voice but what would you say is maybe one main thing that if you would tell them I'm gonna stop what you're doing and do this right? Now.

Naketa Ren Thigpen  18:00 

If I had to give one deep thing that literally can shake their entire paradigm. It's awkward. It's uncomfortable, you sometimes you will feel silly, sometimes you'll cry sometimes you'll do all of the things. I would tell her to get a mirror.

Unknown Speaker  18:17 

Mm hmm pick

Naketa Ren Thigpen  18:19 

it up mine right now. My girlfriend created it. I don't know if you guys can see it, but get a mirror and look at yourself be about half an arm's length away so you can see just about Chester and look in your eyes and look at your skin. Your beauty marks your dimples, you know your fabulous don't this is not a vanity moment. I look in your eyes and I would say something like whatever your name is, but I'm gonna use mine. Makita Rin Webster, big pen. I love you. You are worthy of every good thing. I forgive you. For every one. You hurt intentionally when he was being a petty 20 Bad and unintentionally. You just didn't know or you were ignorant or in your ego. I forgive you. I forgive you. I release you from the secrets from the shame from the guilt, the frustration and the rage. For some of y'all might just be anger but I hate rage. I release you and I love you more than life itself. Because you are worthy and deserving every good thing and I will go on. And for some women. Just some version of that is like oh, I can't do that. That's too like I'm you know, I can't and I would say the reason that you can is exactly why you should Yes. You have to be uncomfortable with you. You have to feel the feels that so many of us I feel specifically for women and extra for women of color. If there was a platinum Olympic medal that we could receive for compartmentalizing. We would we would all have it right because we are infamous for like I'm confident I don't have companies tears. I don't have time to do the breakdown. Right? No, no matter what it is that we're feeling. If it is disrupting our momentum, we will push it down and then never come back to it. Is one of the gifts of it is you should sometimes you really don't have time. You know what? There's a baby on the floor with a broken elbow note you ain't got time to be sad and freeze up. Get to that baby. Do what needs to be done. Go to the hospital keep it moving. But come back to that feeling. What came up for you when you felt frozen? What came up for you when you felt anxious? What did it remind you have to not have control, like come back to it. So it doesn't become this calcification that literally covers your purpose? We a lot of us are looking for our purpose because it's buried under life. It's buried under it. Let's chip away and you can chip away with clay and with passions. Like you know what? I'm looking at this beautiful plant that's behind you. I can't keep plants alive. Let me try with a baby one. Like let me just see what I could do. And I'll do my research was the sturdiest plant out there that I can keep on the East Coast right? You know, with my amount of son or whatever. But let me let me try being a plant. Auntie for a minute. Maybe I'm not ready to be a plant Mom. Let me be an auntie for a second. Let me reach out to a nephew or niece that is probably a teenager that associates me with money in a card because I've never been the proximity aren't that you know like just having them come over. Let me do something different and reach out and say you know what little Johnny, how about we get together and you guys can just tell me all the ways that you feel like you're not being heard. Do something different. It doesn't have to be super deep, but something that gets you out of your mundane. You could do it with your eyes closed, even the 55 hats that you're wearing because you've been doing the same thing repetitively to avoid listening to what's been trying to come up. That's what I would say.

Deneen L. Garrett  22:32 

Yeah, well, that's definitely powerful. So you know, I look at that mirror talk. I was doing it while you were talking and let me tell you, I put I put the phone down it was my head was starting like Oh, yeah. So it's a beautiful thing for us to do. And it's a hard thing for us, is it with ourselves to talk to ourselves that even think of the things to say to ourselves, right? Like, you know, I don't know, you know, you know, I'm sure this is not for you. You don't have to deal with this. But for me, even if I'm in a mirror I'm not necessarily looking at myself. You know, when I'm brushing my teeth or whatever, I'm not necessarily looking at myself, right? I'm not I'm just going about the business. So to do this exercise, it is definitely one is going to bring things up if you feel a certain way but like Nakita said, keep with it, keep going more and more each day to whereas it's it's just natural.

Naketa Ren Thigpen  23:30 

Oh today and you hit on something so strong. I had it. It would be if I was a different person. I would have been embarrassed, but because I'm so used to being awkward. It was just another awkward moment that I learned a lesson from so back in. I don't know 2013 2014 I was running a my first version of an incubator I don't even think I called it an incubator but that's basically what it was. And it was called mogul minded. Right like I was me and my alliterations like I was so excited about this. And it was just a handful. I think it was for women, not including me that were meeting up way pre COVID. So before we had to use Zoom, so I think we were using Skype back then. And we would meet and go over like specific things to help them elevate their business lessons learned that I had had I had only been in business for two years but lost a ton of money. I learned a ton of lessons and was like let me help people not do what I did, and find better ways to do this because ultimately my mission never change. I wanted to build stronger families. That has always been the mission that we had even though our pathway to do on it was a little different. And in this conversation and one of our sessions, somehow or another and it was in the early check in like we hadn't even gotten into session. I said something like a lot of look at myself in the mirror and one of the women Natalie Fikes awesome calling you out net her legs. She's super powerful black woman. She said, Um, excuse me, can we not skip past that for a second? Did you just say you don't look at yourself in the mirror. And so maybe it was like 2015 ish. or so because I had got diagnosed with a rare autoimmune in 2014. And I hadn't really truly looked at myself since my diagnosis because I had gained all this weight. Everything was changing, right? Like there was just like all these systemic issues and it wasn't I wasn't purposefully not looking in the mirror. I just stopped looking in the mirror to your point brushing my teeth. I'm just like brush make sure it's nothing Oh my mouth rinse, you know go but I'm not actually looking in the mirror. And back then. I think the only thing that I pretty much still wear is lipstick. So you're not really looking at your face, right like you're looking at your lips making sure it doesn't bleed out. Of your natural line didn't even wear lip pencil and kept it moving. And she said Nikita Do you understand how powerful you are and we got the whole thing this woman started ministering to me okay Now mind you, she's my client on this we're actually colleagues and friends now and and all of it, but at the time. This was the the relationship was different. And I was like, Well, yeah, like, don't get me wrong, Natalie. I know I'm sexy. I'm gonna you know, right like in my mind, I deny that of myself. But there was a subconscious thing which 95% of our actions are led by our subconscious, subconsciously, me not looking in the mirror because I had already said to myself well until they figure out my metabolism and so they figure out this until it right like all of the medical stuff, it's whatever and she was like that shows up in your work. Now we wouldn't have known if you didn't tell us, but that's a very powerful thing. That's disrupted and you know, she went one on one it like really ministered to me and other women started ministering to me. So I thought to pay y'all because this whole session, you know, then flipped around and it was an amazing, amazing reverse session that forced me to look at what I wasn't dealing with. I had already been in therapy. I had already had coaches. Right like I had spiritual counselors. I had my bishop, I had my pastor, it wasn't about, you know, someone not doing the work who was being like a wounded healer. I was doing so much of the other work that I never looked at something right on the surface that was in the way because I was busy myself, to not have to deal with it. stay busy, keep helping others. I wasn't selfish yet. I wasn't and it was showing up. It was being reflected in my outcomes. I'm helping other people go from 20% of themselves to 60% themselves big jump but that's because I was only using 10% of me. Imagine what would have happened if I was using 100% of me. If I had been filled up enough to do it. Those people could have made leaps and bounds so much faster and didn't have to take as many years to do it. And I held myself accountable for that like this wasn't you not doing good? Work? This was you taking good as a bare minimum and became okay with it. Because you were too exhausted to do even more, which is why I became an entrepreneur in the first place. I didn't want to just do the bare minimum right? So yeah,

Deneen L. Garrett  28:08 

wow. Wow. Yeah. Okay, more more mirror talk.

Naketa Ren Thigpen  28:14 

Every day for the last eight years it's been amazing for me every day.

Deneen L. Garrett  28:18 

I’m gonna pivot a bit I honor my late sister author and poet Soltru by asking about dreams deferred which is the title of one of her books. Please share a dreams deferred moment.

Naketa Ren Thigpen  28:28 

Oh, how much time again, okay. dreams deferred moment. So when I was younger, my grandmother who was a nurse used to catch me like reading all these like social science books, psychology, anthropology, sociology, all this stuff and I guess she understood really early that that was the lane. I didn't know but that was the lane that I was going out and she would say things like, you can't do that. You're not gonna make any money. Don't Don't do that. I was like, What are you talking about? I wasn't even interested. Right like in my mind as a little child. I'm gonna be a pediatrician with a psychology office practice on the side of my house is that was like very serious about that. But I had no connection to any of the things other than it was very interesting. I loved human behavior from a really early age and I just didn't understand why. I do understand and I was trying to figure out my dysfunctional family, but I didn't understand it at such a young age. And so I started to push a lot of the things that I was interested in across the board down because I felt like I was being judged. I was like, I'm being judged for all the things. One of the secret things secret is a strong word, but it was very private, that I really loved was interior. Design. I loved just aesthetic intimacy, like I love to make things beautiful and pretty, maybe in my own way that might be seen different from other people. And so I didn't do it. I went to school thinking well, I have to go to B I was in a med school med student at Drexel University. And I was triple major in psychology, sociology and anthropology because I was like, I need to at least be interested in the major even though I'm a pre med student, and I did all the things I found out very fast that I hated the med part of all of it because organic chemistry was like, Nope, you're done with this, but I stayed on the other track and when I finished school, and I got my masters and I did all the things. I kept feeling like I want more color in my life. I really think that I want to do interior design, but I felt like it was too little too late. Because I was older. I'm a wife. I got multiple kids, you know, taking in my brother who we took custody of who was a teenager so that was a nightmare. Like all the things that went with that. And I kept thinking my life would be so different. If I was an interior designer on like HGTV right like, in my mind, like that's where I would be. Yeah, so I enrolled in more College of Art in Philadelphia, and I got accepted for the interior design program. And that was going on and I already had my masters as a clinician, I was already licensed. And at this point, I said, Okay, this is what I'm gonna do, but I'm a nerd Deneen, so I don't ever do anything halfway. So I did informational interviews with designers like Well, what was the process like for us, especially black designers, when you got out like what did that look like for you? What was your competition? What was your money because listen, I'm already a social worker now making no money, right? Like I'm already $1 More than the people that I can help get the resources that I can't get because I make $1 more. So like, what was that look like? And they started talking about coming in at back then which is still a small amount of money 30 $35,000 Which was less than me as a social worker. And I was like, so I had to take on another $80,000 in school loans, and all the things to make less than what I make now. And hope that I can compete with these other well known designers to get, you know, access to high level client lists. And that made me realize I don't I'm not driven by money, but money matters to me, so I can't make that mistake for my family. And that was a dream that was different for me, because if I would have stayed the track when I was younger, and just did design, I'm sure I would have ended up where I am right now because I believe in destiny and purpose. But it would have been a very colorful route here versus one that was stuffed inside of statistics and methodology books and all the things that I hated when I was in school.

Deneen L. Garrett  32:31 

Very nice, very nice. So let's kind of go in here with a dream lifestyle. So what does this mean to you? And how are you living a dream life?

Naketa Ren Thigpen  32:45 

Honestly, I've had to say I live it now. Just the way it is. I have access to my grandbabies who are just turn as of Saturday four and going on five that Saturday coming up. Thank you. My youngest grandson has a severe form of sickle cell disease and has been in the hospital more than he's been out and his young age. And both of my grandbabies have autism and I appreciate their brilliant perspective of the world and how they get to look at it but I extra appreciate being available for them every summer but our whole company takes a sabbatical that we call self love Keishon for six weeks, no one works except there is a rotating of someone check in the admin box once a week just to make sure there's no fires and every at the end of the year we take another 18 to 21 day Winter Solstice holiday. That's been a staple since 2014 2015. That we've been consistent and not using it as pretend vacation where you're really working 18 hour days but you're just not available to clients. Because that was that was the first couple of years to be fully transparent. We will be off but none of us were really off. And every fourth week of every single month I call it amplify intimacy week that I get to do this. I get to love one other people who love on me have beautiful conversations, some are taped, some are not taped. But it's not traditional work because it frees me up for me to receive. So this is my dream lifestyle.

Deneen L. Garrett  34:18 

Love it. And so one final thing What would you like to leave the audience with?

Naketa Ren Thigpen  34:25 

If I could leave you with anything today thinking about the spirits that are listening to this and all of the wackiness that's going through your mind, the busyness, the need for validation from yourself from your younger self from your parents living or dead, all the things that are coming up for you. If I could give you anything it would be to honor yourself for where you are and create some spaciousness. If there's anything that you can change or add it would be to really look at how you power up in the morning and how you power down. Because those bookmarks those book ends if you will up your day, really are not only anchors to hold you accountable to your truth, whatever that T is over your B but it also allows you to have space for you so you're not starting the day. Focused on other people. You're starting with yourself and you're ending with a with a reminder that you are valuable and you're valuable enough to have space at the end of your day to it might be 10 minutes. I'm voting for you to have 90 minutes at top and bottom. That's that's the goal. 90 minutes to two hours at the top and somewhere between 30 minutes and 90 minutes at the bottom but even if you only start with 10 minutes, it changes your life when you choose yourself first.

Deneen L. Garrett  35:51 

Naketa Ren Thigpen thank you so much for sharing and lending your voice to an intimate conversation with women of color and enjoy the rest of your day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai