Her Cup Overflows Podcast

Lovers and Friends Remastered

• Qwanze Tolbert • Episode 2

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Have you ever whispered a renewed "I do" to the evolving dance of your relationships? My own journey through self-love's ebb and flow has been a masterclass in the art of nurturing bonds that adapt as we grow. In this heart-to-heart session, I delve into the rich tapestry of human connection, sharing stories of seeking stability and authenticity in love. It's a candid exploration of how choosing to show up fully in our relationships can lead to transformational growth and deeper contentment within ourselves.

Then, we shift gears to the magnetic energy of self-love and its role in attracting kindred spirits into our lives. I lay bare the courage it takes to walk away from those who dim our shine, and the joy in embracing every part of our being, even those we once struggled to love. No guests join us, but together we unpack the significance of standing firmly in our truth, holding ourselves and others to a standard of love and respect that forges connections of great substance and resonance. Strap in for an empowering journey that may just redefine the way you view success, nostalgia, and the power of your own voice.

Q:

Welcome back to Her Cup Overflows podcast. I'm your Qw anze Tolbert. If you are new here or you chose to circle the block with me, I thank you and welcome you just the same. Her Cup Overflows is a listening community of healing for the mind, body and soul. 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 traumas and the triumphs. But it wouldn't be a place for healing if I didn't hold a safe space for trauma, without judgment, but with accountability, honesty and commitment, because in that lies your superpower to overcome life's adversities and that new energy becomes the catalyst to you living out loud, living freely and unapologetically, on your terms. That is Her Cup Overflows. This episode's special product feature feels like a 90s R&B Love Song Manifestation Candle is from none other than our sponsoring company, The Spiritual Tea Co. This Reiki-infused, powerful candle is designed to assist with intentional self-love and care, nurturing yourself with compassion, understanding, patience, forgiveness and all the sweet things that make a 90s R&B love song so irresistible. It has a unique combination of oils, rose quartz crystal, rose petals, jasmine, parsley, and lavender to promote unconditional love, relieve grief and amplify attraction while encouraging peace and joy within self. Imagine elevating your self-love to new heights and seeing it manifest in your reality, transforming your relationships into ones you thought were only possible in your dreams. Let Feels Like a 90s R&B Love Song Manifestation Candle be your partner in this journey of self-love. Shop this manifestation candle and other self-love and care products online at www. thespiritualteacompany. com or follow their socials on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Q:

This episode was inspired by one of Tyler Perry's movies with Madea in it. I can't recall the movie off the top of my head, but we're not promoting them anyway because they're not throwing any coins at Her Cup Overflows. But this conversation was inspired during one of the scenes in the movie, Madea was talking to her great-granddaughter and they were having a conversation about when you are getting ready to marry someone. You have to commit to saying I do, over and over again to the person that you are marrying, because people change, right, people evolve throughout the tenure of a relationship. So that just got me to thinking about how being in a personal relationship is like replaying the remastered, chopped and screwed version of Lil Jon's Lovers and Friends over and over again. Whether you have a platonic or intimate relationship with someone, that thing gonna get remastered, remade, and remixed more often than not, based on the season of love you are in with yourself. And in every relationship, we're looking for someone to satisfy some thing for us. And this thing to satisfy in your relationship can often change too, based on your past or current experiences, values, habits, etc. that you've developed throughout your different seasons of love. So I am going to share with you how learning myself through my seasons of love during my healing journey has had some major impacts on the relationships I choose, heavy on the choose to nurture and how I show up in them.

Q:

The irony in this story that I'm about to tell you is the thing that I was looking to be satisfied in my seasons of love, in my intimate and platonic relationships, was the same thing but had a different meaning based on my season. And that thing for me was, and still is till this day, stability. So back in the day I wouldn't say I was a hopeless romantic, but more like a settler. I would just settle for a long-term relationship with an individual who were intended to be short-term. Didn't know that at the time. Don't judge a sister! Now don't get it ego. I'm definitely not a Sister Mary Frances because I done had my share of fun boys too. But with the fun boys the thing to be satisfied was just my ego.

Q:

Anyway for the most part I would settle in long term relationships because I was looking for physical stability and that was because just being real transparent, keeping it 100, I didn't really have my shit together. Surface wise, you would have thought I did, because I've always maintained a certain look. But honey, that was vain as hell. There were seasons of me where I was financially unstable but also broken and felt unprotected because of a traumatic experience. So I looked for someone to fill those gaps for me. I look for the person who had some type of financial stability or had a physical appearance or persona of protector. Not knowing the law of attraction and how the universe got jokes, that's exactly what I got. I got someone with money, or at least knew how to manage it, and was a protector. But that was about it from an intimate perspective. He was doing very well for himself. But if there was an inkling of a come up for me, like something good happening for me, the jealousy red flags would rise.

Q:

I remember two different arguments where I was told I thought I was better than him for one reason or another. The first time he said I thought I was better than him was because I know words like literally words. I guess like I halfway speak proper grammar or full sentences, because the ebonics definitely still be eboniking, but I guess, being from the country, being a country girl, you know I spoke proper. I don't know. But the second time was when I was offered a new job and the pay was substantially higher than what I was used to and I was told I thought I was better than him because of the pay increase. Now, weird thing is here he was thinking that I thought I was better than him, yet I was there allowing him to lead me. Chile that's like saying two plus two equal five. The math ain't math at all. And here I was acting like the three blind mice to all the foolishness.

Q:

But let me tell you about how my friendships aligned to this same energy. From a platonic perspective, me and my good Judys would have a time, honey trauma bonding over our unhappy relationships while we were together, and then we would go right back home to it. But that was the stability in reverse though that I needed from my friends. If I'm going through it in my relationship, I need you to be unstable and going through it too, so we can relate and we can bond over these struggles together. And, baby me and my good Judys, we never failed at doing so. The real tea to this story is when that relationship ended, I wasn't even the one to call it quits. I should have been, but I wasn't. But I swear that was the best thing that could have happened to me and for me for my healing. That's when I learned you can only meet people as deeply as you've met yourself. I was looking for someone to fill the gap and love on things about me that I didn't even love or even know how to do for myself. This was one of my pivotal moments in doing shadow work.

Q:

Shadow work is working on the things that triggers you. If it triggers you most likely, it's something you need to heal because it brings up undealt with emotions within you that makes you react emotionally, either irrational or in childish ways. You know you may see something you don't like or you may even say it like, say, I don't like so-and-so, or I don't like this, but not be triggered or bothered by it at all. That's not a trigger. So for me, during my shadow work how to address those triggers I wrote a list of things that I didn't like about others that triggered me. And when I say others, I mean those that are close to me and even those I didn't even know at all, like things that I saw on social media that would make me feel some type of way. And then I started to gracefully pick myself apart and ask myself real questions about why does it trigger me, so I can address the root of it to move forward.

Q:

What I found in my shadow work the root cause of my need for stability and at that time, physical stability was lack from a mindset of poverty and fear of abandonment that were driven by most of my younger experiences in life when I was a kid because I've been in situations growing up where I didn't have what I needed or who I needed when I needed them. So it put me in a space where everything was coming from either a fear of not having or fear of being abandoned. Once I discovered this, it changed the way I saw the need for stability in my life from others. Anytime I felt those feelings of lack, like I'm going to go without a necessity, or felt abandoned, I actively nurtured those things for the better. This organically increased my self-love, so I was no longer looking for people to love things about me that I wasn't even willing to love myself. And in some cases this also allowed me to become softer and more vulnerable in the things that I had built the wall around that I thought I needed to protect from everyone, no matter how intimate the relationship was. But the whole time I realized I was really protecting myself from those things, thinking I could prevent another hurt by not embracing it. So, stability went from a physical need for me to, today, a mental and spiritual one. Today's stability for me is being in genuine relationships with people who are mentally and spiritually stable enough to handle me and accept me as I am, not just the good parts of me, but all of me. No more trauma bonding platonically or intimately. Now I done told you I ain't no Sister Mary Francis, I'm still a work in progress. Because my good Judy can call me today and I'm probably going to be on that trauma bonding BS with her for a little bit. We might tag team for a second, but the change is that I won't stay in that moment.

Q:

I had a situation a few months ago. I had a conversation with one of my good Judys about a relationship that was no longer serving her, but she was still serving it. And while we were trauma bonding for a hot second, she said "I just can't understand why he treats me like this instead of moving on. And before I could even think about it, my healed side was just tired of bull and and I asked her but why you let him? Now we had an awkward silence of reality and then she chuckled and she was like ooh, touche, bitch, okay. And we both laughed. But guess what? My good sis ain't in that situation. Ship no more, cause my experience is my experience, so it stays with me and I can relate most times, but it no longer defines me, so I don't feel the need to relate or express myself through hurt, I'm able to speak with accountability for self because I'm all I can control, and I ain't saying that her letting that relationship go had anything to do with me. But in my healing I also realized that my healing is not just for me, it's for others, because sometimes your role, through that wisdom learned, is to hold others accountable to their worth.

Q:

I had another young lady that I love and she's had some bad, well, let's say misaligned relationships, and she was venting to me about how she hates that she is so naturally loving and caring because that is not what has been reciprocated in her intimate relationships. And I mean, like this young lady was really stressing and being dead ass serious about how she hates those characteristics about herself; her words, not mine. She even threw out the notion that God keeps sending her these dudes who are not loving and caring as if she had no choice in the relationship she chose and I wasn't about to let her play in God's face like that. So my little healing side showed up and I asked her "well, what is the ideal man you desire? And to a tease, she described someone who is hella loving and caring as her ideal guy. So I'm like nah, little mama, how someone going to love something about you that you don't even love about yourself? Because somewhere along the way, through all the hate you've talked about yourself, you've built a wall and in order for someone to love and care for you in the way that you described, you would need to be in your soft girl energy to receive it. He wouldn't even be able to do all that by default because you still too busy focused on you trying to prove you're not that girl, so you don't get played. What can he do with that other than you turn him into a salty man from an experience too, because women aren't the only ones who leave relationships with traumas. I got your fellas. Another story for another day.

Q:

The old saying is opposites attract. I say energy attracts. It's energy attracts, whether you want to admit to the energy you are giving or not, because you identify with some type of energy within that person that you are pulling back to yourself. And this is where stability changed for me, because I had to become what I wanted to attract, and that's where the mental and spiritual stability changed from physical for my relationships today. All the physical stability stuff, I got that. But I want folks in my circle who are stable enough mentally and spiritually who can hold space for me in all seasons, those courageous and confident enough in themselves who can root for me in my winning season, even if they are in their stagnant season, but also strong enough to hold my feisty ass accountable to do and be better in my spinning season cause ol girl still still be spiraling too.

Q:

Like I said, I'm a work in progress. But that's exactly what we do for each other in the relationships that I nurture today, and loving from a healing place within myself has allowed me to do that. If I can't have that in my relationships, I'd rather be alone. I don't want to be alone because I love my family and friends in this season of love, but I'm fully equipped to do so if I need to. Thank God, I don't have to. I can hold my friends and family to that highest standard because they saw me do it for myself. So they trust my heart and they trust my words that I pour into them, and they know I have a mean side eye when they know I know they be on that low vibrational BS. It ain't cockiness, it's humbled confidence, because I've been humbled many times on my healing journey, just learning how to genuinely love the things about myself that were once unloved.

Q:

Now, I told you in the last episode, doing this is going to cause you to lose some people on your journey and that's OK, because it's likely the narcissist, the taker and the person playing victim in your life anyway. And don't take it personal, because a narcissist is going to narcisst, a taker going to take and a victim going to victim as long as you let them. It ain't personal for them and they will show you every time because whenever you start to elevate and change for the better, they will go find their next person with ease and grace. So the part I need you to take personal is your self-love game and elevating that so you no longer accept that type of energy in your life. So let's get into the prompt this episode before we get into the Reiki collective message, because this week the prompt is not a question, it is an action that relates to this conversation. Now, this action is going to require a level of authenticity that you've probably never given yourself before. But you got this. You can do this.

Q:

Identify that thing in you or about you that you haven't quite accepted for yourself. You know, that thing that you may honestly just don't like about yourself. It's probably the thing that you won't tell anyone about. It's probably the thing that you overcompensate for or the thing that you joke about so no one else can use it against you. Yeah, you know, that thing. The thing about this thing is it could be anything, a tangible or an intangible thing. So, for instance, it could be something physical, like your weight, your nose, the way you walk, talk, etc. Or it can be something intangible, like trust.

Q:

Now this is where the honesty gets real. If you've had bad relationships in the past, it's possible you've developed a lack of trust that you think is for everybody else. But nah, babe, I'm happily being the bearer of bad news in this case. That lack of trust is in yourself. You don't trust that you'll find someone to love you entirely in the way you deserve for who you are, or someone that you can trust to be vulnerable with. So you fill that gap with people who you know do not hardly speak to your worth. You will slap some type of label on that relationship like it's just sex, it's just fun, acting like it's all good and the whole time still unhappy. Whew child, even my own shadow felt hit, because let me tell you, your triggers will fool you into thinking accountability is judgment.

Q:

So make sure that you use discernment, even with yourself. But when you find that thing, love on it, and I mean love on it hard, love on it with pure intentions, because you are who you are. Find something to like about it, because when you're intentional, you may find that your dislike for that thing was superficial anyway, based on something like social media standards. Most things about us is changeable. That's the beautiful thing about being human and if there is something you desire to change other than for medical reasons, it should be because you want to and not need to. That's the key. Because what happens when you start to love on your unloved thing? That love becomes so positively infectious, you start to attract that same type of love back to you through others. Those people won't care whether you change that thing or not, because the relationship won't be depending on it as a need. That's where it feels like a 90s R&B love song is no longer a fantasy and becomes a real thing. Shameless plug! But listen, I'm so excited for you because you're in your bloom season and you're about to be blossoming with doing this work, to get back to loving yourself.

Q:

So last thing for today is wrapping this up with my Reiki collective message. This message is definitely specific for someone. Like all things if it resonates, let it apply. If it doesn't, let it fly. But don't let it fly too far, as these messages are also evergreen, just like our conversations, and may have future resonance with you, because best believe, as much as you may love me, you are not here by happy stance in this moment in time. The message for this episode is someone is feeling a lack of success. You're feeling stagnant, and the thing about this moment that you are in is that you have an opportunity in front of you, but because of the lack of success that you've experienced thus far, you're playing this opportunity small. It's almost like you're dismissing it as if it's insignificant, and I just want to tell you no matter how big or small the opportunity is, this is something that would definitely lead to amazing things, so don't get caught up in the illusion of what was.

Q:

It may be like some type of nostalgic thing that's here for you to lead you to that great success that you desire. Also, make sure that you use your voice. Make sure that you are using your voice so this opportunity aligns to the desires that you have for yourself as you move forward towards these amazing things. All right, I hope that resonates with someone. That is it for today's episode of Her Cup Overflows. Until next time, keep taking up space and refill yourself because you can't pour shit from an empty cup. Take care.