SPEAK-NOW with GENA "The Journey"

What a wonderful opportunity to share the Cordelia's perspective about life, travels, music and what it means to be groomed to become a broadcaster to follow in her dad's footsteps.  From Nigeria to Fort Wayne and back to Nigeria  

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you do with what happens to you. Holding onto a positive perspective regardless to whats going on around you will help you remember two things.  1. Your vision is still relevant, right now.  2. Isolation can create the focus you need to take advantage of what's in front of you.  

In August 2003, Robert experienced a tragedy of Biblical proportions when his precious wife and all four children died in a flash flood in Kansas late one Saturday night. After 8 years as a father, nearly 12 years as a husband, and 13 years as an electrical engineer, Roberts's life completely changed on their way home from a wedding in Wichita when a six-foot wall of water inundated their van, sweeping them off the highway in the darkness and into the deluge. 

Do you trust yourself to unlock you own power by planting a seed of confidence? This podcast is going to look at 3 steps to look at ways to build confidence.  1. Know that competence builds confidence 2. Seeds of confidence can unlock your power to be brave, be bold and to blaze your own trail for others to follow.  3. Plant a seed and don't dig it up.     

Fireside Chat/Interview with DeShawn Moore sharing the many hats she wears as wife, mother,  first lady, actress, radio personality and much more and doing it all with style, grace and first and foremost with God! 

Who in their 40's with two adult children both in college, walks away from a fully furnished home to live on a college campus to pursue a college degree? Not a graduate degree, not as a graduate student but in pursuit of a bachelors degree? "I Did" Not that was self-discipline.  If you want to become the master of your craft, an expert in your area search out and pursue everything you can about your area of interest. That means obtaining knowledge, which requires self-discipline. After you see it! After you say it! After you write it! Commit to it! Being committed is developing self-discipline. 

Listen to her journey her vision!

Having a vision modifies sight but acting on a vision modifies behavior. Once you see it, say it, write it and act on it that is making a commitment to your vision. I read an article where Maya Angelo gave advice to youth saying, "you must see it and then go about the business of becoming it. Study it and bring all your energies to it." 

For 2018 Speak Now with Gena focused every Final Friday on living wellness, giving Voice-Support-Education at every level of mental wellness, mental health and mental illness to reduce the stigma.  Going into 2020 we're going to continue and expand the conversation and narratives around mental health.  This weeks podcast is to introduce a new association  "The Society of Black Mental Health Professionals" in the midwest, they are a group of multi-cultural professionals coming together to inform, educate and empower others about mental health.  I'm looking forward to watching this association grow and operate because they offer and bring to the community caring, educated, licensed, experienced professionals trained in mental health.  In my opinion they bring something just as important "Cultural Competence"  

Listen I had to realize and did realize pretty quickly that wanting and needing validation from others was not what I needed at all. I came to  an understanding of the private process the internal, the public process the external, and the eternal process which is the spiritual journey which made and continues to with focus to make me unstoppable. 

My interest with this awesome group of women started with their exhibit of beautiful one of a kind quilts which were on display for several months at The Jeffrey R. Krull Gallery in Fort Wayne Indiana the summer of 2019. I went on a weekly basis and with each visit I saw something new, each experience left lasting impressions. When it was time for the exhibit to be removed I was at a loss and reached out to the guild I wanted to know more about the quilts and the quilters who put the quilts together.   One of the founders of the guild responded (Jacquei Seals) and agreed to have a fireside chat/interview and she gathered some of sisters to share their experiences. Please enjoy Jacquei Seals, Linda Jones and Jomare Bowers-Myzzell as they talk about the love of quiliting, sisterhood and more.   

Affirmations can assist in changing the direction of your life. This year has been a roller coaster of emotions but throughout the year there's been an area in which I've learned and continue to embrace which assists my spiritual maturity and my ability to live with audacity. Let me start with sharing a few with you......  I am enough, I control my thoughts and direction I choose, I am the creator of my world, I embrace who I am, from the crown of my head to the souls of my feet, I am living my authentic self, I love my body profoundly , deeply and joyously. My looks are a projection of what I think about myself, I become more beautiful, more shiny each and every day, I love the person I see in the mirror..........  

Fireside Chat with poets Linda Bess and Curtis Crisler honoring National Poetry Month. I'm excited to come out to play as I also read some of my original works of poetry.  Linda is a talented artist with many gifts to offer ranging from the written and spoken word to dance and sharing her voice through her music. Her primary art is poetry, she has been published in several journals and has worked as a freelance editor working very closely with aspiring authors.   Curtis is the author of several books, an associate professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne. He has been a contributing poetry editor for Aquaris Press and a Poetry for Human Equity through Art (HEART). He created the chitlin circut. Curtis is a lover of words and a lover and supporter of his community and people around the world. 

Dear God, It's time, time to take her and shake her into consciousness, It's time to call her by name loud and clear. Justine is totally screwing her life up and as she screws her life it's affecting my grandsons life. This excerpt from an epistolary novel shares a parent's notice about the struggles related to being and feelings success as she talks about the struggles related to her adult daughter until she clearly hears from God that not only is she successful as a mother but that he has never left her side nor has he left the side of her daughter.  Followed by 7 principles of success, how to look at success and how to obtain it in life. 

Triple Board Certified Child & Adolescent, Adult and Forensic Psychiatrist.   Specialties: Treatment of children, adolescent and adults with therapy and/or medications for ADHD, Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders and PTSD: parent management training; cultural psychiatry; forensic assessment of children, adolescents and adults in civil and criminal matters including but not limited to psychosexual evaluations of adolescents.  She is the founder of the Lorio Psych Group, an Atlanta, GA based mental health practice providing expert care and consultation. 

As a lover of poetry, spoken words and quotes I will continue to look at how they have the ability to heal as well as hurt. Written and spoken words have such amazing power. Part 2 re-caps how the written word, poetry and people have been the wind beneath my wings as well as the impact of positive words or the lack of and how and the lasting impact that can and did have on my life.  Part 2 focuses on 5 areas of shifts (mental/emotional shifts, spiritual shifts, financial shifts, physical shifts and relational shifts) that can change direction of a life, yours/mine/or a life you might touch. I share a few quotes but one particular quote which continues to assist in me playing my life's music. Please use this opportunity to evaluate the stage of change you might be in. Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action or Relapse and what do you plan to do about it?

Mental Health is a calling listen to the journey of Xavier from engineer to therapist as he makes a difference in the people around him, making a difference in the community.

I'm a lover of poetry, spoken words and quotes. Words have the ability to heal as well as hurt. Written and spoken work have such amazing power. Let's talk about how the impact of poetry became a chain reaction of unwrapping gifts, how having or not having positive words spoken can also be the chain reaction that shifts the atmosphere around you and finally how quotes can be and in 1 particular case became a part of the chain reaction of change in my life. 

Please enjoy as you are informed through this amazingly candid fireside chat with Ms. An'Drewice Owens of Cleveland Ohio as she shares her journey her story of Mental Illness to her healthy Mental Health. An'Drewice is a certified peer support advocate of SAMSA and she is very frank about; her diagnosis and coming face-to-face with it, medications and it's side effects, being a Black woman & being bioplar, recovery and living a healthy life, relationships, suffering in silence and finding supports.

Sometimes you've got to be able to listen to yourself and be okay with nobody else understanding the direction your traveling and remember it's your vision. Today is a day of seeing the possibilities of you, your dreams and your vision. It's exciting to watch a person flow in creativity. There is electricity that is set off in the presence of an individual having a dream, strategically developing that vision and realizing the possibilities while walking in their potential and speaking into existence that which shifts the atmosphere, making "IT" happen.  

This JOURNEY shared is with Tyhria, she grew up in East Chicago, Indiana. She was beautiful, vibrant, popular, and had big plans for her life. At the age of 16, Ty began to party and experiment with alcohol, like every other 16year old in her neighborhood. Shortly after, she was introduced to marijuana, and that's when her life changed forever.   As she unexpectedly encounters one of the cruelest acts of betrayal from a close friend, this malicious act sends Ty's life in a downward spiral that she'll never forget. 

Hey have you ever gotten to a place in life and had thoughts of "I wish I would have tried..." well me too until 7 years ago when the direction of my life forever changed. Now 2019 I am 50 plus and fabulous and I'm learning to enjoy the journey of my life. The ups and downs, the twists and turns, the humor and the pain and I realize now more than ever before that every life event is developing and forming me and more important I'm right where I'm suppose to be.   Enjoy this humorous leg of the journey, "Its Never Too Late"