In this RTT exclusive, sports journalist Jemele Hill and her mother Denise sit down for their first interview together and reveal the pain passed down in their family after Denise was abused, raped and relied on drugs to cope with severe PTSD. In a raw emotional conversation, Jada and Gammy open up about their own traumas and how the adversity Jada and Jemele experienced throughout their childhoods shaped the incredible women they’ve become. It’s an inspiring and eye-opening discussion!
Hey, fam, I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the Red Table Pop podcast all your favorite episodes from the Facebook Watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review on Apple podcasts. I think she's still angry. I am not. I am not angry and ant t exclusive Emmy Award winning journalist Jamal Hill. My mother showed me what a piece of crack cocaine looked like and her mom in their first interview ever. I was mad that I couldn't have this normal childhood. How they ended generations of pain. When I was about maybe six years old and my mother was raped, my mother's brother sexually abused me. Our first experimented with herold actually twelve years old. What I realized, what I've done in my child It's the only thing that could break me. Mom, you've turned the drugs that you were young. I just had so much grief just about a lost childhood. If I could change anything, I would not want to lift this life again. That way, sharing our journeys house people understand how to navigate their own journeys. Do you know your mother's story? This is better than therapy and They called it the Table for a reason, So this is gonna be a really great show. Our special guest, Emmy winning journalists Jamal Hill says she inherited the generational pain of her mother and has spent years working to break the traumatic legacy passed on to her to forge a new path in the male dominated world of sports journalism. Jamal Hill has earned respect for her unbothered attitude and fearless opinions. By the way the team was bad and given how bad they were and how he played, I think that says a lot. She made headlines and was bombarded with death threats after she called them President Donald Trump a white supremacist. Jamal's childhood was filled with harsh realities. Her single mother was sexually abused by her uncle, abducted and raped at gunpoint by a stranger, and struggled with her addiction to heroin. For the first time, Jamal is opening up about her painful past that shaped her into the woman she is today. Let's welcome the wonderful and beautiful Jamal Hill. Hello, everybody, I know I'll take to see you. How is everything? Oh? How's everything? Thank you? So? Jamal has written beautiful and inspiring memoir called Uphill, which is a great title. So I know your mom is gonna be joining us shortly for her first interview with you, which is going to be really awesome. I want to ask you, when did you realize that things were not quite right in your family? Because I know for Jada, she knew that young. I knew it really young. Well, I would say when, and I was about six years old, and that was where my mother was raped. The fallout from that just kept happening. I just saw my mother falling apart. As a kid, you you know something is wrong, but you don't know how to put the finger on it. And as um she continued to work through what we know now is PTSD, all I could see was her slipping away. And what happens, as you know, Jada, when you're the child of somebody who's in addiction, is that you absorbed so much of that you enable you navigate around. And all I could do was being mad about the fact that I couldn't have this normal childhood and I couldn't really explain to people why, and it felt like so much was being taken. How did you see your mom slipping away? A lot of ways my mother got divorced, we were evicted from our home in Detroit. We had to live in a very rough neighborhood. I mean so rough. In fact, the woman who lived next door to her, she got murdered. And so my mother, already suffering from the pts of having been raped, sent her into a spiral. And so one of the harsher incidents is the night my mother showed me what a piece of crack cocaine looked like. And she's dealing with trying to understand the pain that she is in. But at the same time, mother enough to tell me, do not do this ever. I'm suffering from something I don't even understand. But I know one thing. I don't want you to trade places with me, you know. And and so that's when I knew she is not okay. And I don't really know what this is, but I just don't know how she's going to get out of it, how we're going to get out of it. Seeing her battle with this addiction and battle with that fear just always be present, it was obviously something I was absorbing, and so it made me a bit of a porcupine in terms of, like I did not want to share anything, because I was like, man, this vulnerability stuff is costly. Your father wasn't in the house with you. He wasn't When my mother met my father, he didn't know he had been using heroin on and off. He and my mother began to fight on a regular basis, and I don't mean just verbally. They sometimes gotten into physical fights, and my mother never backed down. If my father hit her, my mother hit him right back. The end of their relationship came when my mother arrived home from work one day to find my father passed out on the toilet. He helped me with one arm, and in his other arm was a heroin needle. My mother called my grandmother and asked her to come get us. That was the last time my father, mother, and I lived together under one roof. Once me and my mother really started having some struggles, just knowing that he was not reliable just angered me. And I think even now I struggle with that. I love my father, but like I can't say our relationship is in the place it needs to be. I feel like there's a lot of parallel lines between you and I and your mother and my mother. So Jamal and her mom have never sat down for an interview together. We are so honored that they're doing it at the table. So Jamaale introduced us to your well, I guess um, it feels like a worldwide debut. Everybody can meet my mom, Denise. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Thank you for having me, thank you for me, thank you for the wonderful treatment. I feel like a queen triplets. So how are you? This has been uh roller coaster train record times and we're talking. So this is good. This is real good. So when you say you talking, you mean that the the just talking through things, talking talking, just talking. We're talking, you're talking to one another. I've been telling her, I said, you need to get some help. When I got told me so, I said, uh, maybe I think you angry, and you have every right to be angry. I didn't press her because I wanted to give her what my mama never gave me. Gave me. My mama never gave me a chance to be angry because he was her brother that sexually abused me from four to eleven. Jamale describes her grandmother as a highly functioning alcoholic. When she drink to the point of passing out, her great uncle Edward would often be left in charge of Jamal's mother. My mother told my grandmother about the abuse, and my grandmother chose not to believe her. When my mother was eleven or twelve years old, my grandmother invited Edward to come live with him, even though she knew what he done. My mother retaliated by running away from home. My grandmother couldn't accept that her own brother had sexually abused her old. She couldn't face that the reason he had access to my mother, the reason his abuse continued for years, was because of her. It was a betrayal that changed the direction of my mother's life. So then I started acting out. That's just how the trauma started. So I just ran away and hung out with the wrong people. So, Denise, what made you actually turn the drugs. I wasn't looking for abus, so to speak. I was just looking to get away from myself because I didn't know how to deal with me. I was insecure. I didn't like the way I looked. I didn't like the way I felt because I felt inferior because my family they had made me feel this way, you know, with my uncle and stuff. Because you know what the family gathers. They wouldn't they don't want me. They always made me feel like I was a liar. And so I first experimented with HEROLD actually twelve years old, and I didn't like anything about me. I didn't like my life. I thought that I was a failure and I actually shouldn't even be on the planet. So so it was your escape. Yeah, and I didn't even know that story. Like, I didn't realize you started experimenting so young, And I was like, what, mom, you've turned the drugs that you were young? Yeah, I was. But I always felt just totally uncomfortable in my own scam me too, So I wanted somebody loved me. So I had my daughter. One of my outlets, you know, during all this time of tumultuousness, was was writing. I kept the journal. I vented in this diary a lot. I said some very unflattering things about my mother in it. One day I came home from school and to my complete horror, my mother was sitting at our dining room table reading the pages from my journal. I could see the anger in her face, and I knew, based off what I had written in that journal, my punishment was going to be severe. I was humiliated and mortified. Thinking about all the things that were in that journal. I called her a horror and a drug addict. I had even threatened to beat my mother up the line. I wrote that I will never forget the very line that triggered her the most. She's lucky she's bigger than me, or else I would drum kick her ass. I just come home with school one day, and the most frightening thing you can ever imagine is your mother with you, with your diary, sitting right there, waiting for you to answer to what you have done. And so that did not go well. Yeah, although they can laugh about it now, Jamal writes that what happened that day was anything but funny. My mother didn't see those entries as harmless venting. At some point during our heated argument, my mother began beating my ass. I am not sure where the first blow landed, but it felt as if my mother had four sets of hands. I tried to cover up my face as much as I could. Oh, you think you're gonna disrespect me and my house? It didn't take long, but it looked like she fit just about everything I owned into two trash bags. After that, my mother ordered me to get into her car, a Babe Chevette, and tossed the garbage bags into the back seat. She called me ungrateful as she drove. She also called me a bit. My mother pulled up in front of a tall building called Harbor Light. It was the rehabilitation center where my biological father had undergone treatment for his alcohol and heroin addiction. The last thing she said before she hopped out the car and went inside was along the lines of, since I'm such a bad parent, your daddy can have you now? After a couple of anxiety field hours for me, that is, my mother picked me up and I remember thinking that my mother hated me. I wasn't sorry about what I wrote. I needed her to know that her actions were hurting me. She wasn't in this alone. I guess that was my mother's point too. She was all I had drunk, drug or indifferent. Wow, look at you like, yeah, what are you? And are you still angry? In the public media, I can ask in a safe does I think so? I mean, I am not. I am not angry. But it's funny because that's the point I start the book, is that about how I started going to therapy because my mother said I think you're angry and you just don't know you're angry, and maybe you need to see somebody. I'm like, literally, what are you talking about? So I was like, well, maybe I shall start seeing somebody just to see if this is true. And you know what I found out is like that I wasn't angry. You were angry. I'm not angry. Sometimes what mother's interpret as anger is just pushback or even wanting you to be respectful of certain boundaries. So it wasn't necessarily anger at all. Like I told you a long time ago, repeatedly, I have forgiven you for everything. I understand you so much more now and knowing more of your story. I always respected and admire you because there are situations and circumstances that you went through and overcame that would have literally broken most people. And the fact that that didn't happen, and that you're here with me right now, there's nothing for me to be angry about. Of course, in a minute, I would have changed any of the pain that you went through, but I would not have changed the journey because we wouldn't be sitting here in this way able to deliver this story two people like this if not for that, and that's why I'm not angry about it. See its And it's when you hear this these kinds of details about someone else's life, then you understand. You can kind of oh, so that's why she's made the choices that she did. When you can start to understand someone else's trauma and like really see that, you kind of go wow, like you put yourself kind of in their shoes. Yeah, yeah, I think you know, um our stories aren't unique. Sharing our journeys house understand how to navigate their own journeys. And I realized in my therapeutic sessions that I was sitting on so much grief. Yeah, that anger was the safe defense. And I also felt so much that I missed so much that I thought I deserved, you know, and I just had so much grief just about a lost childhood. I think the what you missed really really was the nurturing. Yeah, just the nurturing protection and having to grow up quick. And I didn't have a lot of time to think about it in the mix of it, because I was just going I was like, just what it is, I'm navigating, I'm just getting through. So by the time I had time to sit and be with it. I was like, oh my goodness, I hadn't even realized I had like this, this this wall of ice around myself, like over here the porcupine. Yeah, it's like the protection porcupine. That's really good. That's perfect. When you said you were sitting a lot of grief and regret, I don't know. I want to ask you, don't you think that's the hardest part in journeys like us. It's when you realize what I've done in my child. It's hard to reconcile that. In two thousand and twenty two, it's the only thing that could break me the worst. You should have been value more from me. I'll do more than own it. I embrace it because if I don't, it would it would it would prove me unworthy of you. I mean, what I stole from you can't be replaced. And that's the hardest part. Do you I spoke with I felt like, you know, hey, that's that's my baby over it, six seven years old and her mom's not there and I can't get tour man. I totally okay, it's okay. I totally understand my feeling. I lived in that guilt for a really really long time. Yeah, I needed to express that. You said something to Demel and Jada says it all the time, going through this journey has made you who you are and you would never change anything. I disagree with that. I disagree with that because I would not I know, I know, I know, there's no words. If I could change any Stan, I would not want to slip this life again that way because she deserves so much Any child, any child, deserves so much better, and she certainly did. And I understand that what you went through made you the person that you are, and I get that too, But could we have not gotten there a different way? Who knows what you would have been. I think that we we say that as our own defense because we know that there's nothing we can do to change it. Well, so you say that to make you okay with the life that you've you've lived. But trust me, if we could do it differently, we would do it differently. And I understand that mine I could totally get it right. And I understand from your perspective as mothers, I I agree with you. But what I will say for Jamal and I the fact that we were lucky to make it out and the fact that we were lucky enough to have the level of telligence, level of courage, and the level of just no nonsense for the environments that we had to go into. God, God has a plan, Yeah, because I was gonna say it was a lucky plan. Right. We got, we got the experiences, I believe, and the mothers that we were supposed to have so that we could achieve the things that we needed to achieve. I was fully prepared to come out to l A at the age of eight team by myself. I could navigate through the fake lion, tigers and bears out here in the industry because I had done with real lions, tigers and bears on the street. And I would imagine you correct me if I'm wrong. The places that Jamal has been and what she's had to deal with, she might not have been able to do that without the level of adversity that she had as a child, right, and the same with me. Now, could we have had less trauma, I'll give you that. Okay, we could have had less trauma, no doubt about it. But we are both grateful for the adversity because there is no way she would have been able to survive what she has survived the level of attack. You know what I'm saying. The reason why she's so gangsters because of the adversity situation. Even though I pursued a non traditional career, my mother always supported me in it. She had all her paperwork, financial aid school picked out. She said, well, now my mom gonna have to go top ten. I said, baby, and I don't know. I think I had a Ford could forty five or something. I said, I don't know what you're gonna but whatever you're gonna be, just if you even if you're going to be a clown, we better find the best clown university for you to go to be the best. Added. Yeah, even though my journey has not been smoothed, I didn't relive what you went through, and I'm grateful for that. As painful as what you have gone through, this is where the trauma and our family was broken. I don't want you to ever think it was in vain because it wasn't beautiful. It wasn't that. It's like things are coming for a circle. I'm understanding what I did. This is better than therapy. They call it the table for a RESI Denise, do you feel like you have forgiven yourself sometimes, you know, sometime you kind of wait, yeah, yeah, there's a po of her closed off from me. Still I sense it. I don't think she intends to do it, but we Mama's no, and I know it stems from that. I feel like that we are mirrors of one another because I feel that with Jada too, and I feel it when I think about the relationship that Jada has with Willow. But I understand my role in that and I understand why that is, and so um, I know, I know I've forgiven myself. I know it's hard it think. Yeah, some things you're good with it, and some tastes because you're thinking the back of your head. Well, maybe if I had done just a little like her fame and started coming, it made me fierce and like want to be even more protective. I feel her pushed me away more emotionally. You guys raised you want us to be thoughtful, independent women. From the moment I was on this planet, you were like, don't rely on anybody else to do for you, do it for you. Then we started doing it. But I don't like, well no, no, no, do it do it in a way that includes me. I wasn't accustomed to check in because I'm used to just do and this is what got me. Jamal Hill Donald Trump, I'm like what. On September eleven, sen Jamal posted a series of twelve tweets that caused a tidal wave of controversy. I unloaded on Trump, explaining why he was a threat to our democracy and a racist. But the tweet that grabbed everyone's attention was Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists. I added that Trump is unqualified and unfit to be president. He is not a leader, and if he were not white, he never would have been elected. Two days later, the White House officially responded, I think that's one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make, and certainly something that I think is firable offense about ESPN, I have been receiving a ton of hate mail, including several death threats. I read some of it, and I was especially amused by the people who called me while also claiming they weren't racist. So I'm calling a white House, I'm like what thelass is calling the White House? If she willow you know what, I'm saying, I find the stuff out your wives, if you found out something about your grandma, your mom, your family that I didn't know exactly every day that happened. I have to sometimes won won my children to know what they are. And I talked to them every day, Okay, okay, tell me like they're not. I'm like, whoa, Because I thought it was just her rejecting me. I've received it like, yeah, she doesn't even want me in this priv like that's that's how I know. I took it like that. And I'll tell you what, if you just trust the love that you've put in your daughter's heart and the love that she has for you, there's gonna be a moment that you're gonna be able to show up for her. You don't have to force it. It happened with my mother when I had my kids. Okay, she was like, this is it, this is the moment I love my Gamby. Yeah, I felt that on your wedding days, man, I was like shat with Yeah. You were like, no, just take some conditioner. And that was and that was a right. I have to say, and I say this all the time when I talked about my journey, that there were words that Jada said to me. That really was almost like a lightbulb clicking off from me. And I was on the phone one night crying to you. You were in college, crying to you about whatever trauma I was going through. I had broken out with Rodney, and you know, I was miserable, and you were like, Mom, it doesn't have anything to do with Rodney. It doesn't have anything to do with anybody but yourself. How were you when you have got to get yourself together? And when you get together, everything else will fall into place. A lot of times they had to be the mama's force, didn't there right saying it was more my mama than I was. I always said that, and that's not that that's sad to have to say you're not alone saying that myself that same I've told her that the same thing. So, Mr n you talked a bit about you were molested by your uncle and people not believing you, and then on top of that you having to endure horrific rape. Yeah. I was coming home from work, me and a friend. I had dropped her off and this guy came with a park a lot with a gun. It said, bit, come on, let's go and uh. He took me into a white band and he drove me around, uh to this like a truck yard that gun to the head, and I talked to him about my daughter. I said, please let me get back to my little girl. I'm the only one that she has in this whole world to take care of her. And I stayed calm. The detective said, that's the best thing you did, because you would have been dead after the last go around, because they don't just do it. One stayed a couple of times and stuff. Man. I think that he went to zip up his pants and I saw a light on the van door and like, if you don't get out now, and I ran. I just jetted out the darn door and I ran zig zag. I had the fourth thoughter run, so I said, if he shoots, the bullet goes straight, maybe I get shot in the leg, maybe the arm. But I'm a run. And I slid under this truck bed adjacent to where the tires was, and I almost have stayed there. Was seemed like hours because I saw the van driving around and stuff. He was driving around, so for what seemed like maybe years went by. I got to a to a phone booth and there's this guy walking and he's I said, I've just been raped, and and he was gonna give me a I said, no, don't come near me. Don't. He threw the quarter on the ground, and then I called and said, this is what had happened. Right. I just want to say, I'm so sorry, thank you, but that's not me that he said here should be more than Okay, she's here right now. I love that to tell somebody, don't give up your life to nobody. Whether that assailant is a physical one or spiritual one, nobody has that right to take that from you. Fight, fight, do what you gotta do, but don't don't just give it up. I love it. Thank you for that word. That was beautiful. Thank you for that word came from him because I and after that incident, the drug use became more more. Yeah, it took some years. Nobody becomes a dope thing like overnight. You don't wake up to be that your goal. So it was progressive, Jamal, how does it steal here you tell that story? I guess for me, it's still heart wrenching to hear. My mother did everything they tell you to do, called the police, immediately, had to rape kid, right, all of that happened at the hospital, went through all of that told the police described her as saying, all of that, when did you hear from the police again, I never heard from now, Oh you didn't hear from whatever ever exactly. This is why I had a passion for justice related issues, even within sports, because I had to live with somebody who had to not just go through that, but the fallout from that was just so severe, and even going through my own experience, I was never raped. Right, Um, when somebody tried to rape me, I knew exactly what to do. And the reason why I knew what to do is because of her. When Jamal was twelve, her mom's good friend and neighbor, Miss Francis, would watch her after school. We spend a good amount of time at Miss Francis's house, but one night, when my mother had a date, she actually let me stay the night. Miss Francis's brother, Cornell, also stayed there, and I had always gotten really strange vibes from him. Jamal says, while in a deep sleep, she woke up after feeling a strange breeze on her legs. With my eyes still closed, I reached down to try to pull some additional covers over me. I was almost back to sleep when I noticed that Cornell was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at me in a way that made me feel exposed. I was too aware of my body. A knot of tension sat in the pit of my stomach, and I suddenly felt edgy as adrenaline surged through me and so um. I was instantly terrified because I was like, this is not right. Immediately knew something was wrong, and just remembering parts of my mother's story that I knew at that point, I was like, Okay, I need to really be calm in this moment. I'm gonna pretend that I have to go use the bathroom to get past him to go downstairs, because it's just like an act, right, So I pretend to do this. I was like, okay, and so I just acted like it was no big deal. But I'm terrified. So I go to make a mood to go past him, and he grabs me and throws me on the bed, and then that's when the other thing I remember, my mother told me kick's to fight right straight up. Even at that moment, not even fully understanding the depth of her trauma. I knew whatever she was going through, I didn't want to go through that. I was thinking, even at that age, you got to kill me. It's just like I was like, you got to kill me. So I just fought. I scratched, I need, I kicked, and I think he was really surprised that I didn't just lay there and just let him do whatever. And I struggled to the point where I warned my way out, got up, rand woke the whole housel. How yeah, And I was like, call my mother right now, because she always told me, if anybody ever tries to violate you in any way, tell me. So, Denise, what did you do when you got there? I just leaped. She was choking this dude out and then was pulling me off of him. He said, yeah, when you list on the date, you didn't care. And that's how they do that. They throw it off off them to make you look like a slut. See, it's just a brutal world out there, the devils there walking. I don't know how else I would have handled that if I did not have a mother who had been through it. That's right. And so by the time you were twelve, your mother had already talked to you about her always. See now I want to take a minute with this. That's important. This is important, okay, because I feel like a lot of times we don't have these real conversations with our daughters. And it's the one thing that I learned with Willow. It's like, I'm not telling you this just to be an annoying other. Let me just put you on game, right, you know what I mean. And the fact that your mom took a horrific experience, it was like, no, I'm gonna have to share this with my daughter and through this educate her because I don't want her to go through this. And I think a lot of times, through our own guilt, through our own shame, we will withhold these stories. But I think as women, as mothers, it is so important that we share these stories because that saved you, I guess, to bring you full circle. Despite whatever ups and downs our relationship have gone through, you showed up and arguably the most critical moment of my life. And I didn't even ask you to show up, right, I didn't have to ask you. You were just there on the side. You were there, and so that should be test improof that when it matters, absolutely, I will lean on you when it does. I want you to take that in of what she just said, because you raised a strong, confident woman. So it might be areas that she doesn't need you in, but she knows, she knows, Okay, she knows when she needs you, and you just gotta trust that. Yeah, and just yeah and then what Yeah, it's like it was very critical. And then after that you took me to the police station because I told you I wanted to follow a report and I asked you to Yeah. You asked me, like, do you want to follow a report? And I said, yes, I do, And so they took down all the information and everything, just like my mother never heard from the police again. Well, I'm gonna tell you, I'm really hoping that people buy your book, you know what I mean, because your story is really powerful. I'm really glad to know more about your history. It gives us a clear understanding also of why and how you were able to navigate what you have that white corporate world. Yeah, masculine energy that you've had to deal with in the sports industry, Gamby. This is why I tell people all the time, I was like, listen, doctor shop going off on me is like in the scope of worst things that have ever happened to me, And I got to be honest, it's like that part. So, Jamal, you have a lot of fans out there and they were very excited for you in your new book, and a few of them have sent some love. Why do I love Jamal? She's a truth teller. She tells it like it is, no matter what, no matter who's listening now, no matter what's on the line, no no matter what it may cost her, she says the impactful thing. She says the hard thing that actually leads to change. She she's something beyond brave. I I love Jamal. She is inspiring, she is wildly funny, and she's changed me. Our group chat changed. Congratulations. So my friend has written a wonderful book that is going to be a bestseller. I already know that. When I read your book, the lesson that I took away was loyalty. You've been loyal to yourself this entire time, as long as I've known you. You've never deviated from your story. You've always spoken the truth, but in such a way that people can understand that there's logic to it. Or you've represented balance, loyalty, and fairness, and you're sharing that in your story and I'm just so grateful to be a witness and live the story with you up close and personal. Hey, Jaanel, what's happened to me? I was just wanted to say congratulations on your new books and we love you very much and wish you so much luck and supporting you. Hund A, good luck, God bless you, hey and go green. Congratulation awesome. Alright, Magic, Remember that I expect you to buy the most books, so I expect the order of five plus from you. But I'm really grateful to have you know good people that um you know, I admired them from Afar and then when I actually got to know them, it's like they just are really tremendous. Well, we have one more super special one from someone you call your rock. You did it, babe, Congratulations. I want to congratulate you and creating the masterpiece and sharing your world with the whole world. I know you never intended to write a memoir. That's what the world wanted. You created a masterpiece. I just want to let you know how proud I am of you, and I want to thank you for sharing your world. You're gonna help so many people and enlightened so many people. Mommy d thank you for raising I love this and I love y'all. So let's bring Dr Anita Phillips into the conversation. She is a nationally acclaimed trauma therapist whose advice has helped thousands. Hi, thank you for joining the table. I'm just sitting here as a mom who has a daughter listening, and it's so important to tell our stories to our children, even when it's scary. One of the things that hasn't come up today whether trauma is they are not personality who personality differences. We are not born a blank slate. We're born with a temperament that is the cornerstone of our personality. Mom's there who have more than one kid, you know they were different in the wound. And we don't come here blank. And I've heard a lot today from you, Jada, from you Jamal that I'm just personality typing y'all like click cick, clicklick click. And one of the traits that I hear is a particular or type that doesn't like to need that is inborn. It's not because of your environment. It is not because of your mother's. You were born with a personality type that doesn't like to need. Now, let's say you have a mother loves to feel needed. That's a personality difference. And so then when someone who's personality says I don't like to need is in relationship with someone who wants to be needed, it's like opposite magnets pushing apart. And that's not trauma. It's just a personality difference. Thank you God. If I'm a metal hanger and you twist me into a different shape, baby, I'm still metal. How is metal from the start? And I'm metal now? So trauma shapes us, but it doesn't make us. And a lot of times we can become so frustrated trying to figure out what's the trauma and what's me and unravel that or just give it all to the trauma. God. Well, thank you so much, Dr Nita. This was really helpful. Thank you, thank you, thank you. When she was talking about need, I got triggered. Me too, Yeah, I got completely and utterly triggered. It was like no, no, no needs, not a that's not in a vocabulator. It brought up in me a place that I still need work around because I have a very difficult time with needing. You think that makes you feel weak. I think it makes me feel way too vulnerable, you know what I mean? Yeah, I get that. Yes. One thing that I want to say to both of you, you are strong, black, powerful women, and you both have been through this journey and you've learned who you are and you are walking in your truth and I love it. I love both of you all, and I'm so proud and happy for you. Damn and everybody. Don't forget to go out there and buy that book, all right, right? Ye? Thank you? Thank you for everything. Yeah, this was great. You keep shining. Thank you, Thank you so much. I told your mama, thank everything. It's so perfect. I'm just like super grateful. Were so grateful to have you. You keep shining too. To join the Red Table Talk family and become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook dot com slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.