Her Cup Overflows Podcast

Coming Out the Closet

• Qwanze Tolbert • Episode 1

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When you pour from a cup that's already brimming, what spills over is the very essence of life's abundance and adversity. Embark with me, Qwanze Tolbert, on a poignant odyssey through my daughter's perplexing health challenges and the life-altering transformations they spurred within us. As we unveil the creation of 'Her Cup Overflows' podcast, this episode is a beacon of hope and resilience for anyone navigating their healing journey. It's a testament to finding strength in vulnerability and the bountiful wisdom that resides in the trials we face. Tuning into our tales of overcoming, let's collectively discover the riches that adversity can reveal, and fill our own cups with the nectar of empowerment and renewal.

My path took a sharp turn when joy unexpectedly dovetailed into despair, despite the euphoria of my daughter's recovery and the warmth of a new love and home. A simple comment made while enjoying a Marvel movie became the catalyst for an exploration into a world where energy, balance, and the mystique of alternative medicine converge. This narrative weaves through the shadowy depths of depression and emerges into the light of holistic healing, illustrating how the quest for understanding the unseen can profoundly shift our perspective. Every other Tuesday at noon, I extend an invitation to you: to join our community, to share your experiences, and to partake in the ever-evolving conversation on how to nourish your spirit, mend your body, and soothe your mind. Let's embrace this spiritual awakening together, ensuring our cups—and our spirits—remain ever-flowing.

Qwanze Tolbert:

Some years ago, somebody told me that my healing gift was bigger than what I was allowing it to be and that I needed to come out of my spiritual closet. I didn't get it at the time, but now I do. So, here I am. Welcome to Her Cup Overflows podcast. I'm your host, Qwanze Tolbert, creating a listening community of healing for the mind, body and soul through Her Cup Overflows. Each episode is a timeless conversation overflowing with wisdom to fill your cup with resilience, courage and empowerment. These conversations are inspired by real life experiences, the trials and the triumphs. Heavy on the triumphs! But it wouldn't be a place for healing if I didn't hold a safe space with trauma, without judgment and bias, but with accountability, honesty and commitment. This transformative power of healing will not only liberate you from those traumas. You know the things that makes you feel uncomfortable to talk about, the things that make you feel afraid shame, guilt, like all of those things that fool you into believing that you need to condemn yourself before God does. This is why we are heavy on the triumphs because, baby, when you overcome those adversities, that new energy becomes the catalyst to your overflow of abundance in all that you desire, tangible and intangible, like love, peace, wealth, health, and the list just goes on. It's definitely the things that be given that main character energy! So I'm sharing my story of why it was so important for me to create Her Cup Overflows podcast as a sacred space out of my healing and abundance for beautiful souls like yourself. Just know, this conversation, like every Her Cup Overflows conversation, is timeless, so it doesn't matter where you are in your journey or when you are listening. It is absolute divine timing that you were here. It was meant to happen when it would resonate with you the most. I welcome you and thank you.

Qwanze Tolbert:

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Qwanze Tolbert:

So my story that I My Story, God's Glory" " affectionately dubbed as , began back in 2014. My daughter, my oldest daughter at the time, was 13 years old, very vibrant, very bubbly spirited kid who always found laughter in everything. No sickness, no down days, no illness like that. That is what her sees. And so she went to a baby shower with her grandmother and her great aunt and from the baby shower, her great aunt called me and said that my daughter had started to swell like body-wise. She was swelling as if she had had an allergic reaction to eating something at the baby shower. But her great aunt was also a nurse, so you know she made it clear that. You know, my daughter Nia still acted, her normal bubbly self, still was having a good time. She just had that swelling that was taking place. So at the time they gave her some dinner drill. You know, she told me that they will monitor it and then, when they came back on that Sunday, for me to continue to watch to see if any of the symptoms change or, you know, if anything just gets worse with Nia. So they came back that Sunday and then for like the next 24, almost 48 hours, I was monitoring her, but I started to notice that her swelling wasn't going down. It actually wasn't changing, it wasn't increasing, but it wasn't going down either. And the weird thing about this swelling is that she was swollen from head to toe, so like her legs, her arms, her hands, her face, everything was just swollen. So we end up going to the pediatric evening care that they and they sent this to the hospital.

Qwanze Tolbert:

When we got to the hospital through the emergency room, they did some immediate tests at the moment but still couldn't determine what was causing it. So they ended up sending us to the hospital. With that one hospital admission, we were there in the hospital for seven days. At the time, they determined it was something related to her kidneys, based on some of the tests that was completed but they couldn't exactly figure out what it was. So they did this fusion treatment, which is basically draining her body of all the fluids that she was retaining and she was put on this pill regimen to help maintain the symptoms. So it became a mystery to us, including the doctor, the hospital staff who were all so amazing. It could have possibly been lupus or it could have been something else, but they were for sure that it was related to her kidneys.

Qwanze Tolbert:

So there were a lot, lots of testing that was completed over time, but it took over a year to actually get her diagnosis, to determine exactly what it was. Just because of the lupus component, her symptoms were related to those, somewhat to those of lupus. So she had to take the lupus 12 strand test. So basically what that is is everyone has some strand of lupus within them, but it just depends on, like, how much of that strand that you have. That truly says whether you truly have lupus or not as an illness. So the 12 strand test every month she would take this test and then at the end of the test the 12 tests is one per month. So at the end of the year they would do a certain calculation and average out to see if it was actually lupus or not. At the time it was not lupus after the year had passed, and so they decided to go to the next course. The next course, they did a biopsy and that's where we end up getting the diagnosis that she had a kidney, a specific kidney disease.

Qwanze Tolbert:

During that time it was almost like we were going into the hospital. We had hospital stays at least once a month because even though she was on the medicine and she was on a lot of medicine she ended up being on 21 pills a day. It wasn't correcting the issue, it was just kind of maintaining the issue and so it throughout that time she would still have the swelling. So that's why we would have to go back into the hospital almost monthly to go through the fusion treatment to remove the fluid from her body. And then we were back home and it was like wash runs repeat.

Qwanze Tolbert:

Well, the thing is also, during this time her hair started falling out. So my daughter had a has always had minus been a baby a head full of curly hair and her hair fell out to almost. She was having a hard time, had putting a ponytail up there, like it was a lot. Her skin started darkening, especially around, like the perimeter of her face as well, as she started developing like these really scaly marks. And the weird thing about some of these scaly marks they would become so filled with fluid that they would just burst open so they would weep. It wasn't painful, it didn't hurt her or anything like that. The only time that we would know that these things were weep, these wounds would be weeping, is we would see, like the the witness in her pants a short, so whatever it is that she's wearing at the time, throughout this year's time that we were going through the diagnosis, it was, I just had, like this urge within me.

Qwanze Tolbert:

I did not know what it was, but I knew what it was calling me to do. I just didn't know where it was coming from at the time, and the urge was that I needed to look into holistic healing, like alternative medicines, like you know, treating naturally outside of modern medicine, outside of the doctors, the hospitals you know doctors visit all that stuff. And I had no idea, I didn't know anything at the time about alternative medicines or holistic healing or nothing like that. I really didn't know anything about it because, just as a child, I always wanted to be a medical doctor. I was always so fascinated with modern medicine and healing the sick that that's where my interest was, but like almost my entire life. So when this came to me that you know this is something that I needed to do, it just came out the blue.

Qwanze Tolbert:

So I actually, before I started to do the research, I asked my daughter's nephrologist, dr Ortiz, who I absolutely loved at the time. But understood his response to me and he, you know he pretty much said no, you know, don't try that. These things are not tested, they're sold and you know, nobody really knows that their work or if it's going to cause further issues or you know anything like that. So he kind of deterred me. But there was this one black, older nurse who came in to, you know, treat my daughter one day and I don't know. I just I just felt comfortable with asking her opinion about what does she think of my you know alternative medicine and she said and she was very honest, she said I don't know anything about it, but if you're telling me how it came to you and you don't know anything about it, that is nobody but God and you need to comply. And that was all I needed. Like that, her words to me settled my soul that day and I was ready to go.

Qwanze Tolbert:

So I started doing research. I started researching different herbs, just based on all of the things that I have been told about my daughter at the time you know, about her kidneys, like what. What does it look like, with retaining the fluids, her body not being able to filter and drain properly, like the average person bodies does, what's usually the cause of somebody needing a kidney transplant and somebody needing to have dialysis. All of this stuff, because these are conversations that out the blue that I am literally having about. My 13 year old daughter never had any sickness before, so of course this was like I didn't know if I was coming to go on many, many a days so and I started to do the research. That was just the ground in my research. These are the things that I knew about. These are the conversations that I was having with my daughter's medical team, with my daughter's medical team. So you know, I started researching the herbs that's related to kidney health and essential oils and how do these things play together.

Qwanze Tolbert:

I started researching things for the physical parents, for her as well, like her hair what could help with hair growth. That's related to alternative medicines, holistic healing type thing, you know, skin hyperpigmentation, wounds. We've been up like all of this stuff over a course. About six months I was the eye almost had like a whole regimen going in my house of creating natural products for my daughter from her soaps, herbal teas were her to drink to help her kidneys filter, shampoo, body lotions, all of those things in in a course of six months, everything when I say everything, I'm talking about everything literally started to improve. Not only her physical, because her hair was starting to come back in the same texture that it was before. It wasn't different. It was coming back thick. It was beautiful. Her skin, her complexion, was coming back. The scales the scales are no different than like stretch marks. So, although we couldn't get rid of them all together, but oh my god, we improved them so much with the things that I was creating at home for her skincare. But not only that. Her kidneys started all of a sudden functioning again and in that course of about six months, she went from 21 pills down to two pills a day. We stopped having those conversations about kidney transplants. We stopped talking about dialysis. Till today, she is on no pills From 21 pills down to no pills. And today's in a few weeks she's going to be 23 years old.

Qwanze Tolbert:

So 10 years ago, all of this took place. Our life was upside down. We didn't know what to do. We had never experienced this before, didn't know anything about kidney disease, alternative medicines, nothing at all. And the fact that my daughter had no previous illness. It's not even like we had a preview into this taking place. So life was good. Life was good again. Life was so good again.

Qwanze Tolbert:

Her nephrologist. I would never forget the appointment we had and, of course, every time we go, she would have to take the urine test so they could do the analysis on her urine to see how the kidneys are functioning. And he just came in and looked at me. He was like he was blown away from the results and asked like what are y'all doing? What are you doing differently than just the medicine? Like I don't get it. And I sat there for a second and I was willing to share my testimony and talk about the wind that God had given us, but then I said, nah, I decided not to Because it wasn't personal. But he was the same person that wasn't willing to explore this outside of his practice, and so I just thank God for that moment and I moved on. So life was good and life has been good ever since. If you all follow my socials, I know you see this child all over it and she's living her best life. I couldn't be more grateful for this moment.

Qwanze Tolbert:

So fast forward, 2014, beyond, you know we've been doing great. Life has been good. I'm in my job, job that I love, making good money. My relationship at the time was very good. We had been in it for a while still the same relationship I'm in today but we were still kind of in honeymoon phase. So life was real good and I had just moved into my new beautiful home. Like life was good I can't even stress that enough.

Qwanze Tolbert:

But boom, like 2018, something changed, kind of felt like my life was upside down again. But the weird thing about it this time is that there wasn't a single thing that I could pinpoint that was a part of like this upside down feeling. There was no diagnosis, there was no illness, there was no trauma. There was no trauma there was, it was nothing at all, nothing physical that I could say was the cause. I just felt like out of the blue, like I was experiencing some sort of depression out of nowhere and, to be quite, quite honest, I had no idea what depression felt like. I've never experienced it before. So feeling that feeling and knowing that it felt like depression was a lot, because I didn't. I had never felt that feeling before. I'm just saying my life was presumably happy, but in this moment nothing made me happy or like at times I didn't even feel alive, so to speak, like I actually felt quite the opposite. It's almost like I was longing for something that I didn't have, when there was really nothing more that I really needed, so I couldn't put my hands on it, I couldn't say it's this tangible thing that I need that will make me feel better.

Qwanze Tolbert:

Going through the motions on a Sunday, I was watching one of my favorite movies. So I am a Marvel Comics fan, absolute fan, love everything about Marvel Comics. One of the movies at the time I was watching was the Avengers, the end game, and there was this particular scene in it where Thanos, who is the villain, if you all are not aware, but Thanos is the villain and he is collecting all of these infinity stones so they give him, like this, certain power to make certain decisions in the universe. He can make certain things happen in the way that he desires if he had all of these stones At the time. So my boyfriend, who's not a Marvel Comics fan at all, didn't watch the movie other than Black Panther that we went to the movies to see. But you know, it's just, it ain't his thing, he just having to come downstairs. I'm watching this movie. He sit down in this very moment. That's when Thanos has his gun lit, All the stones are aligning, he's getting ready to do the big snap, to make some changes.

Qwanze Tolbert:

And my boyfriend casually says, oh, they are mimicking the chakras. And so I'm like what he said? They're mimicking chakras. So I'm like, well, what are chakras? What are you talking about? And so he explains to me that the chakras are, you know, the energy wheels within your body. That kind of keeps you balanced, keeps you in sync with yourself, with the universe, keeps you happy, keeps you healthy, keeps you mindful, keeps you all of these things. It's like the battery to a car keeps your car going. That's what these chakras do for your body.

Qwanze Tolbert:

And so I was intrigued because the weird thing as I explained to y'all that I'm a Marvel comments fan Dr Strange movie was all about chakras. But it just didn't dawn on me, I didn't make the connection. I just, you know, I'm watching for action because I love that type of stuff, but that whole movie was about it. And so I was like, okay, I need to learn more. So I jumped on Amazon. I bought a book called the Wheels of Life by Anadia Judith off of Amazon and I started to read it and y'all listen, my mom was a blown like baby, baby blown, because I had no idea how powerful these chakra things were to our everyday living, and so from that book, I just wanted to, like I couldn't get enough of learning from not only the chakras at the time, but things were starting to come full circle for me, like thinking back in 2013, between 2013, 2014, where I started doing the research on alternative medicine.

Qwanze Tolbert:

So now I'm combining all of this stuff that I'm learning, I'm starting to meditate, I'm starting to practice crystal energy, and my biggest blessing and pain to this day is I started doing shadow work. Y'all this was mind blowing. It was like I unlocked Pandora's box to living unapologetically. That before that saying just sounded so dope to me. I would see it on t-shirts, I would see it on counters, you know, on social media, wherever and I'm like, oh, that's cool, that's cool. Wasn't really doing that, though, but when I started to do these things, like practicing, you know, the meditation, crystal energy, and really started to work on my shadow work, yeah, that same living unapologetically became so much more to me Like life, a whole, full 360, full circle moment. Full circle moment At the time.

Qwanze Tolbert:

You know, I've always been a God fearing kid, right just growing up in the church, growing up with parents and you know family members who were heavy in the church too, so I knew what it meant to have a relationship with God. But this made it different. Like my relationship with God at that point became intentional and that that was the difference. I was very intentional about my relationship with God but, listen y'all, the game changer was I became very intentional about myself. I became so intentional about myself that there was some things from like a standard perspective that I really started to realize wasn't up to standard for me. Certain things that I would do certain way that I would talk. You know, some things just didn't resonate with me anymore, had nothing to do with anybody else, it had everything to do with myself and I just started feeling better.

Qwanze Tolbert:

I started living better throughout this time, you know, with continuing to do the meditation and all that stuff, the Shadow Work, by the way, we'll have a segment on Shadow Work, because I get that question all the time about how to start it During my time. There's so many avenues to start this, so many videos out there, so many books and things like that. I have a particular book that I started my first session of Shadow Work with. That kind of jumpstarted my healing journey. So I definitely share that and kind of talk a little bit more later on down the road. But in this moment I just I started to love myself. I started to love who I was and who God created me to be in this world, but, most importantly, I also started to see my purpose. So, doing all of those things, it just my purpose became louder and louder.

Qwanze Tolbert:

I was inspired to become a certified Reiki practitioner back in 2021, which is helping individuals balance their chakras, their energy flow, clear out the negative trauma, stuff like that. And then ultimately last year, in 2023, I achieved the level of mastery. For the first time in my life, I experienced holistic healing for my mind, body and soul, and it's been one of the most beautiful journeys I've ever experienced in life. And I just always laughed to this day because I said God, use two of the things that I loved Marvel Comics and my boo thing to help me realize the power that I had within to heal and to live as I desire. Right, and I'm writing my own story and, in a lot of ways rewriting my story, and I continue to do that to this day. And so that has turned into so much more that, turning to the Spirit to See Company, where I sell my handcrafted products, I literally make these products by hand myself. Some of them, I infused some of the some of my Reiki energy into for your healing. But all the same things that I was developing for my daughter from a skincare perspective just grew, and that's how I started the Spirit to See Company. It's what inspired me to become a Reiki practitioner.

Qwanze Tolbert:

And then now here I am. Right, I said in the beginning, coming out of my spiritual closet, here I am, living in my overflow of abundance that I am sharing with you through her Cup Overflows podcast, because, just like I deserve to live out loud, you do, too. You deserve to live out loud, free and unapologetic, and that's my goal to help you get there. So, to help you on your healing journey, I'll be sharing a collective message from my Reiki energy channeling. Like all things, if it resonates, embrace it. If it doesn't, then let it fly. But I will tell you, don't let it fly too far, as these messages are also evergreen, just like our conversations, and may have future resonance with you. Besides, there are no coincidences.

Qwanze Tolbert:

The message for this week it's time to go into hermit mode. It is time for you to retreat and isolate yourself, to recover. Now I know that's the opposite of everything that I have talked about up until this point. We're living out loud, living freely, living unapologetically all of that, but stay with me, I'm going somewhere. You've been at the forefront too long barely hanging on for yourself while you're trying to stand in the gap for everyone else. It really is time for you to get selfish and to focus on you. This is so important in this moment, when we talk about living out loud and living freely, because there's a certain level of inner strength, courage, confidence, like the emotion mastering and instilling calmness with yourself that you are going to need in this journey in order to live unapologetically. So it's time to retreat, it's time to isolate and it's time to focus on you. This will give you an opportunity to recover, an opportunity to face your fears and stop being in denial. But you will definitely need to be vigilant and protective of yourself in this moment and, more importantly, be gentle.

Qwanze Tolbert:

You're not on this journey alone. Be okay with surrendering, be okay with trusting yourself and releasing control. We got to stop the bonding around struggle. A lot of times we create bonds with others because we give them a role that doesn't necessarily align to what you need or even who you are. So have faith in you, have faith in where you are and trust yourself enough to know that where the divine is trying to take you on this journey is exactly where you should be. Okay. So that way, when you pop back out, babe, you're going to be so renewed People going to need to relearn you, like people going to need to relearn you, people going to have to level up to you or they're going to have to get lost because maybe they just won't resonate with you anymore, and that's okay. It's not that you become better than that person. You just become better than the situation or the dealings that you have with that person. It's still a lot of love, but we are learning to love from a distance, when it no longer serves us. I hope this message resonates with you, as I believe there is no coincidence that you are here in this space hearing it. You are the hero of your story and no one is coming to save you. So to help you also uncover that superpower of healing within yourself.

Qwanze Tolbert:

There will also be a self-discovery prompt in every one of our episodes. These prompts are useful during journaling, mindfulness activities or, if you're just like me, in my think zone, which is my infamous bathroom, where I have the most most prominent thoughts and ideas. But these genre prompts are to help you on this journey to deep dive more into yourself, and so my question to you for this week is what is your why? Now, before you, ready to jump off the deep end into that question, this why is more so focused on you? I know sometimes, just as parents, as caretakers, as pillars in the community, whatever your role is, we tend to think of our why as being other people our children, our spouse, the pets, the neighbors, my grandma, whoever it is. But this question is about you. What is your why? Why do you keep doing the things that you do on a daily basis? You can probably even ask yourself that question related to others. Why do you keep nurturing the relationships that you do? Why do you keep settling for the things that you have?

Qwanze Tolbert:

These are the type of questions that I want you to ponder on and think about, and let me just say, if you discover you don't have an answer for yourself. That is an answer. That is a very loud answer, and you now know you need to start figuring out what would you like your why to be? Ask me, from my own journey, that is a healing game changer when you figure out your why for you. So, listen, I want you to follow me on my socials.

Qwanze Tolbert:

As we talked about before, the Spiritra T Company, I am on Facebook and Instagram. I will be posting that question out there. Talk to me, tell me about your why. Let's have some open discussion around it. This is the end of this episode of sharing my why with you and coming out of my spiritual closet which I'm so excited to be doing and bring you on this journey with me, as I also go on your journey with you. A new episode will be posted every other week on a Tuesday around 12 noon each day. Time may change, so I'll keep you posted, but let's stay in touch. Let's keep going, let's keep healing, let's keep growing this community and, until next time, keep taking up space and refilling yourself, because you can't pour shit from an empty cup. Take care.