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The Jeune Maman Podcast
The Jeune Maman Podcast is an audio-journey of the intricacies of Senegalese-American motherhood. Host Aissatou Guisse reflects on her own experiences and shares those of others around her, with the goal of sharing information, imparting wisdom with the help of guest speakers, dispelling myths, and much more!
The Jeune Maman Podcast
E16: Exploring Halal Dating and Intercultural Marriages w/ The Village Auntie
In this video, I discuss various topics around sexual/reproductive health, intercultural marriage, and familial relationships with Sister Angelica Lindsey-Ali, also known as The Village Auntie.
Check out her website: https://villageauntie.com/
Follow my guest on Instagram @villageauntie !
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Hello listeners and welcome back to the Genema podcast, where we talk about all things pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, tips and tricks and more from a Senegalese, american perspective. I'm going to start off with the would you rather motherhood edition, so let me get into those questions and then we'll do the introductions afterwards. Okay, awesome, so would you rather deal with the diaper blowout or try to get your baby to go to sleep?
Speaker 2:Probably try to get the baby to go to sleep.
Speaker 1:All right. Would you rather give your baby a bath or deal with that diaper blowout?
Speaker 2:They're both the same to me because I would have to give them a bath after the diaper blowout. So that one is. It could go either way.
Speaker 1:That's true. That's true. Would you rather watch kid cartoons all day or spend all day at the park with your baby?
Speaker 2:Probably spend all day at the park.
Speaker 1:Okay, would you rather have surprise triplets or surprise baby at 60?
Speaker 2:Oh, surprise triplets.
Speaker 1:Nobody wants to have a late baby. No, no. Would you rather try to calm them down when they are inconsolable, or stay up all night with them and you can't go to sleep, hmm.
Speaker 2:I'd stay up all night with them when they can't go to sleep.
Speaker 1:That's been hard for me. I personally I love sleep, but the not sleeping with. You know, having a new one has not been easy, so it's not for sure Would you wrestle with your baby, trying to give them food or trying to get them into the car seat.
Speaker 2:Hmm, try to get them into the car seat because they will eat eventually. Okay, but the car seat is like that's a non-negotiable. They have to be safe in the car.
Speaker 1:That's true, that's very true. And then the last one. I always ask my guest this would you rather pay for daycare or have your mother-in-law moving with you?
Speaker 2:Oh, my mother-in-law just passed last year. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that when she was able to help us with my last child, that was better than any daycare, so I would take mother-in-law anything.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry to hear about your mother-in-law. May she rest in peace. Oh well, thank you. Thank you for going through the exercise with me. I'm really excited about today's interview because we've been communicating back and forth. I've been following you for a while on social media and I think I don't know if you remember a while back too, we saw each other at the airport.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was on my way back from Senegal.
Speaker 1:You were on the same flight as my husband when he moved to the States, so that was his first flight into the United States. Oh, Michelle, I flew out to New York to meet up with him and that's when I saw you. So I was super excited about that. And I'm even more excited about this episode because I think you have so much wisdom to impart on our listeners. So with that we can get into the introduction. Would you mind telling my listeners who is the Village Auntie?
Speaker 2:Sure, my name is Angelica Lindsay-Ali, Known on social media as the Village Auntie. I am the founder of the Village Auntie Institute. I'm a certified sexual and reproductive health educator. I am a public health professional. I've been working in the field of public health for going on 21 years now and I dispense clinical sexual health information on the internet through a spiritual lens. So I call myself the Village Auntie because I consider myself a motherly figure in the way that I offer advice about things like sexuality, spirituality, culture, identity and all other things that people come to me for advice about.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So what has been your experience in kind of breaking ground it was what I'm going to call it, because we don't talk a lot about sexual health through the religious or the spiritual lens. So what has been your coming to experience about that?
Speaker 2:So I'm a convert to Islam. I was not born and raised Muslim. I converted to Islam at the age of 23, after studying Islam for four years with a very good friend of mine who had a cynically shake, coincidentally and I learned as much as I could, and I was really surprised to know that the way that Muslims practiced their approach to sexuality was quite different than what the Quran and the Sunnah actually said about sexuality. There seemed to be a disconnect. So the way that I have always approached it is I don't speak for myself first. I let the religion speak for me, because Islam is very prescriptive about the ways in which we are to engage in all types of intimacy, including physical intimacy. So when I'm teaching about how we should be with our spouses, I use the greatest example, the Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam, and there are multiple examples.
Speaker 2:I'm also trained in Maliki Fiqh, so I take people directly to the Islamic jurisprudence, and that has helped to break down a lot of barriers that people have around talking about sex, since it's so taboo. People think that spirituality and sexuality cannot exist in the same space. But if you put sexuality under that umbrella of spirituality, it gives you a space to talk about it and that's what I do and that's what I have found has helped me. Now people still have stuff to say, people still get upset, but you know, at the end of the day, when they argue with me, they're not really arguing with me. They're arguing with their perception of Islam, which may not be correct.
Speaker 1:I love that. I um, as you were talking about my wheels, we're just turning because, to your point, no-transcript think of things from our own perspective. Like every time we get on social media and we're arguing something, it's from our own experiences and our own realities. But I love that you're saying I don't speak for myself, I'm speaking from the word. That is so true, and that you know it's our. Everything is already written down for us, so all we have to do is pass the message along, and I really liked that approach, because we tend to be defensive when we talk about some things especially those tabby topics?
Speaker 1:Yes, I do. So what advice would you have for young girls today in the dating and social media climate?
Speaker 2:So this is an unpopular opinion. I don't believe that there is a way to date in a halal way. I don't think that there's a way to go about dating in a halal sense, not in 2023. There are just too many. There are too many loopholes, there are too many spaces where you can engage in things that are haram, even without consciously doing so, even if you're not in the same physical space. There's so many channels of communication. There's so much temptation out there. So this is where I'm definitely showing my age, but I am a fan of the concept of courting. So people say, well, dating and courting, they're the same thing. The difference is intention.
Speaker 2:When I met my husband and I don't recommend this to anybody, you know I only had a six week courtship with my husband. We've been married for 19 years. But when we first met, he said are you serious about looking for a husband? Are you serious about getting married? And I said yes, why? And he said because I don't want to talk to you if you're not serious about marriage. I want to get married, I want a wife and I'm not interested in getting to know more about you, although you're probably a great person. If we're not gonna be talking about marriage. That one conversation told me something about his level of integrity, his ethical framework, his commitment to himself and his commitment to his Lord. So I think what a lot of young girls, especially those who are on social media and I'm using young, anybody 30 and under that's young to me, like I could be your mom if you're 30, I could be your mom and I say, if you're going to be engaging in conversation with a brother that you like, there's nothing wrong with engaging in conversation, but what is the intention behind the conversation? If it's just to get to know someone, you have to be very, very careful, very careful, that your feelings don't get involved, because it's.
Speaker 2:Falling in love is easy yeah, I can't even count the number of times that I thought that I was in love, right. But being in love is not really the foundation especially in its love for a relationship. It really is a commitment, it's a contractual agreement, and when I say that, people are like, oh Auntie, that doesn't sound romantic at all. It doesn't have to sound good in order for it to be true. You don't have to.
Speaker 2:I think you should love your partner, I think you should have an emotional investment, but in order to have a strong marriage, you have to have more than that and you have to have an agreement that you're going to build a life together. And if you're building a life together based on something that is not intentional, I find that it can be very challenging. So that's my stance, and that stance has evolved Over time and I'm learning as I get older, as I stay married longer, as I have an adult son. Now I'm realizing that those safeguards are there for a reason, because I can't tell you the number of women and men who come in my inbox like Auntie, I got my heart broken. I thought that they were the one. Did you ever talk about marriage? Well, no, but I just assumed, and I think that's the biggest mistake is not having that intentionality there.
Speaker 1:That's very, very true, because I will speak for myself where back when I was dating in the earlier years, it was very much about those feelings right, oh, I feel this way about a person, but when you take a step back and you think about what Islam does for us, it really is about those safeguards you talk about.
Speaker 1:It is trying to protect your emotions, it's trying to protect your heart, your integrity, your reputation, and in this day and age, we don't think that that's the most romantic thing in the world. You know, if people hear that you dated someone for three months and you got married, they're like well, you can, how do you know a person? And the reality is you never really know a person, right? And so I think what you said is very important that you go into it with the right intentions, you ask the right questions and you use that courtship time to really kind of do your vetting on both sides and not just be in this relationship because it feels good. So I think that's very good advice for and I'm 30, 31 this year, so I feel like I'm part of that generation. I've been there and done that and I think that advice is very sound, because too many hearts are getting broken, based off of assumptions, and based off of unspoken expectations too.
Speaker 2:And I think the stakes are higher, also for women too, when it comes to these types of conversations. Because if you have a brother, he might have dated all the girls in the same friend group and he will never get labeled as anything more than oh yeah, girl, you know he's a player, but sometimes being a player like increases his value in some ways. But if it were a woman who were to do the same thing and she were engaging even if it's completely hello conversations with multiple brothers there's a lot of shame that gets cast upon her. That's why it's like if you're going to do that, make sure that you put things in place so that what you are doing, no one can come and dispute you.
Speaker 2:Your honor, right and your worth, your value is clear from the beginning. I value myself enough to go into this with a level of intention and to me, I think there's nothing more romantic than a man respecting those boundaries, because it's like I want for you what Allah wants for you. There's nothing to me that's more romantic than that, because you want good for me, not just in this life but also in the Akira.
Speaker 1:I love this and so I have a follow up question to that is how do we date Allah? I know you mentioned there's no real way to date Allah, but the reality is that for a lot of us, we're not in our home countries or we're not in a place where we're gonna see like-minded people. So how do we approach that, where we still get to know folks in the most halal way possible, whilst respecting what our religion tells us?
Speaker 2:So there's all kinds of ways to communicate. People back in the day sorry, my husband is in the background, he's feeding the ducks and the sheep this morning we have like a little mini farm in our backyard. So back in the day people used to use email right, sisters and brothers that communicate via email. But now you know there are Instagram DMs, there's WhatsApp, there's FaceTime. There's ways to communicate. But I think you have to establish rules of engagement from the beginning. Rules of engagement could include no nicknames something very simple. When brothers who I don't have any type of like family relationship with, when they talk to me, they can't just call me Angelica, you're calling me sister, angelica, haji, angelica, something. You're gonna put something in front of that. It could include having boundaries around when you're having conversations. Do you need to have a conversation at two o'clock in the morning? If both of you are on Eastern Standard Time? There's no need to talk that late unless I'm calling you and saying, hey, wake up and pray to Hajjid, and they're hanging up the phone, right.
Speaker 2:There's lots of ways to get to know each other, even when you go out in friend groups. If you have a best friend, if you have friends who are married, you all can go out to dinner together. That's what my husband and I would do, and I know a lot of people are like, well, that's not realistic. I trust myself to be able to go out with this brother, you know, on a date, and it's fine, I'm gonna drive myself there and he's gonna drive himself there. But you have to be very careful If you're going to do those things. I'm not condoning it, I'm not suggesting it, I'm not advising it and I know that people are still going to do it. If you do it, you have to be careful, because there may not be any physical contact, but there could be a look that lingers too long, there could be a second glance. That's going to now count on this person's scale.
Speaker 2:There may be words that are said well, we're out in a public place. There are lots of public places where you can do very private things. So it's all about just intention and knowing that, because the system was like oh, assistant, you know, I felt so embarrassed when I was out on a date with this brother. I was like what was the stand I could say? I said but it's not about what would I say, what would a lot say, what would the angels, sort of recording your deeds, say that's what's most important.
Speaker 2:Anything that you're going to enter into if it's a phone conversation, an email exchange, writing letters, going out to a holocaust together, whatever it is make sure that you know that, even if your parents can't see you, a lot can see you, and that simple thought really shifts the way that we function. And I do know people who have successfully gone through courtship and they've gotten to know each other and there hasn't haven't been any slip-ups, and I know a lot of people where there have been slip-ups. I think it's also important to engage your community. Some may not want to engage their families because maybe their families are very strict or maybe their families are back home. Use your friend group. And you know, coming from a Senegalese background, I'm sure you know that in West Africa the gender segregation is not as stark as you find in some other Muslim communities. So you grow up with male friends you grow up with. You know men who grow up and they're like your cousins, they're like your brothers. Use them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Use them, bring the brother that you're talking to around them, because men will be able to be like no, he's not the one, that's not it. It also shows people that you have support. So I think using those cultural safeguards is also important because, at the end of the day, it's really about not just protecting your heart, but also protecting your Dean and making sure that you're not making a permanent decision based on a temporary feeling.
Speaker 1:So that's sound advice and I think the only question that I have around that. I think everything you said makes sense and I like the tactical approach to it. You're not just saying be halal, you're saying these are things that you can actively do, taking into account that cultural lens as well. But I have a question for you Do you think the risk level has gone up, where back in the day maybe people were more honest and you would know someone for six weeks and that would count for something, versus now where there's so much deception? Do you think if you date someone for I keep using six weeks, but if we date someone for, let's say, three months, do you think that is a good enough time? If you don't feel, I guess what am I trying to say is like, basically, are people honest enough that you can get to know them in a short amount of time and take that risk, to take to make a lifelong commitment to them?
Speaker 2:So I always tell people I do not suggest people do what I did. It is only by a law that my husband was exactly who he said he was and I was exactly who I said I was, Because I was not.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you out, but I think Islam doesn't have a recommendation of not courting for more than three months.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think that I think culturally, you know, people put different time limits on it, but so can you.
Speaker 2:I think you can know in three months if this is a person that you want to marry. You can know a one month if that's a person that you want to marry, should you marry that person after one month or three months? Not necessarily. It depends on how much work you have done, and I don't think people are any sneakier now than they were back in the day. In fact, now actually it's easier to find out if people are now who they say they are now, because you can do a whole investigation on someone. We didn't have those tools.
Speaker 2:So I, you know, I, when I met my husband, it was back in the phone card days, when you have to go by like the stack of phone cards, and that would be how I could find out who you know, who knew him back home. So I don't think that. I don't think that you should put a time limit on it. I know people who have gotten married after three weeks and have stayed married for 30 years. I know people who have courted for two years and stay married for six months.
Speaker 2:It really just depends on the level of integrity that each person has. And also I'm going to say this a lot of times when people say, oh, I had no idea she was like this. I had no idea he was like this, they knew. They didn't want to believe it. They knew because people will always show you who they are. It's whether you believe them the first time or you wait to see if you're going to change them. So can you marry somebody and know them enough after three months? It's possible, but it depends on the person.
Speaker 2:I'm a fan of taking your time to get to know a person, taking your time to see people in a variety of situations. You want to see somebody. How are they with children? How are they with older people? How are they with strangers? How do they treat service workers? How do they treat their parents? How do they treat their grandparents? How do they interact with people that they work with? Is he Mohammed when he comes to meet your mom and he's Mo at work, like you want to know those and maybe that's not a bad thing, but are they a person who hides their religion? And you're a very religious person. So are these things you can find out in three months Sure. But I'm also a fan of using prayer. I think istikada is so important. It has to be a part. I first learned how to pray istikada when I was marrying my husband and I prayed it more than once. I think using prayer, but also using common sense, because Allah gave us the tool of dua, but Allah also, hopefully, gave us common senses.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Thank you for that. I think a lot of gems were dropped as you were talking, and we have to be more conscious of how we approach our relationships, even beyond the getting married phase. A lot of conversations go towards getting married, getting married like that's the goal, but there's a lot of work that also has to be done after you're married. So I think everything you're saying goes beyond the nikade and it goes beyond that union of coming together. Being with someone is not easy and you continuously have to learn and you yourself have to evolve just the same way that the person you're with is evolving. So that's very important.
Speaker 1:Now I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about intercultural marriage, and I know I saw your post about it on social media and I think that's something a lot more of us are facing, even when we're marrying within our culture. And the reason I say that is like for me. I was, I came to the US when I was eight years old, and so I consider myself probably more American than Senegalese, even though I have strong ties to my Senegalese roots. But my husband, he moved to the US two years ago, so he was very much raised in Senegal and you know, I consider us technically intercultural because we grew up in different cultures, and so how do we manage and balance those nuances of an intercultural relationship, whether we're from the same country or otherwise?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and it's something I definitely want to talk more about. But for me the challenge was some from the city of Detroit, which the Detroit that I grew up in was a black city, black mayor, black city council, black school principal, saw black doctors, black nurses, black engineers, like it was. I was immersed in a sea of like blackness and it's a very it's a very politically astute city. Very early on I was very much rooted in pan Africanist ideals and so you know Kwame and Krumah, julius Nureire, kwame Turei these people were people who were just regular names. You know, the Republic of New Africa, the nation of Islam, started in Detroit. So I was very much clear that I was a black woman and I saw the black community as a diaspora. So it wasn't me being black in Detroit If you're black in that car. I saw as being the same.
Speaker 2:And then I got married and then, when I married my husband, my husband's family is originally from Mali, but he is both of his grandfathers immigrated to Ghana. So my husband was, was raised in Ghana, and not my husband, because my husband and I very much are very similar. My husband came to the country, this country, and he was 16. He's 46 now, so he's lived the majority of his life here. He has African American friends we very much share the same political ideals but not people in his family. His mom and dad were fine, like. They were like as long as she's Muslim and she's good, we really don't care. They were very welcoming. But there were people in his family who pushed back on my idea of let's all hold hands and be black people together. They were very much rooted in their tribal affiliation, their last name affiliation, the fact that they were born and raised Muslim, and so there were lots of language that was coming out. How my husband wasted his citizenship by marrying me. He could have married someone from back home.
Speaker 2:I had to look at power and privilege in different ways. I had always seen myself as being someone who was not privileged. And then when I was met with people who were like but Angelica, you are like an Obroni, which is a white person, and I was like but I'm not white. They're like we don't mean skin color, we mean in terms of privilege. But then shifting also when I would, when we would go to Ghana because we lived there for a brief amount of time, seeing as how I was looked down upon by some people in his family because of how I looked and because mosquitoes liked me and they said, well, you have that sweet foreign blood, just things like that right, sometimes trying to pit my children against me and say well, you know, your children are pure, but you are not. So balancing all of that. The only way that I was able to make it through was being willing to listen and have uncomfortable conversations, and neither one of those things would have been possible if my husband had not been supportive.
Speaker 2:So I think that's the key is deciding when you get married, no matter what culture you come from, you create the culture within your marriage. You create that culture. So, yes, my husband is Ghanaian and, yes, I'm African-American, but within our household we also have a third culture that our children are being raised in. And it's surprising some of the things and I didn't mention this in the post because I haven't quite figured out an elegant way to put it in a caption but sometimes we would battle about things like food. My husband loves Ghanaian cuisine.
Speaker 2:I'm not a huge fan. I cook even before I married my husband. I cook Senegalese food more than anything else because from the age of 19, I was inculcated into the Senegalese community, so some of our early fights about intercultural differences was am I gonna make mafe or miangujiya? They're both a form of peanut butter stew, but how are you gonna make it? And this way is better and that way.
Speaker 2:So these almost JoLoff wars we're happening in our home and I realized that this was not going to serve us well once we had children and so I had to pull back and I had to listen and I also had to learn. We both have had to learn how to compromise. I know a lot of people are like well, I'm not compromising marriage, you have to. You have to, you're gonna compromise. But you also have to have each other's back. Even when you may disagree on something. If there are people external to the relationship who is attacking one or the other person, you have to stand as a united front because at the end of the day, you're not gonna go home and get in bed with your cousin and your mother-in-law and this person. You're going home to your husband or your wife. You have to have that person's back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's very true.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I'm just taking in so much as you're talking, so trying to process the information.
Speaker 1:But one thing that stood out to me in your post and as you were talking now, is about that third culture in your home.
Speaker 1:That's something I have been trying to establish because one thing that I think culturally and I think you, having a bit of the Senegalese background as well, maybe you can relate to this is the agency to live your own life and make your own decisions is not always there. So even after you get married I remember before I got married I was like, oh, once I get married, I'm gonna be free to do what me and my husband wanna do. And that has not been the case, because people still try to tell you how to live your life, how to make decisions and how to set the tone for your family. But you really have to take that power back and, especially in an intercultural marriage, to Create your own family essentially and say this is how we're gonna run our household. So, as you were talking, that's really what was kind of just coming up in my mind, because it's something I'm dealing with and I'm sure others out there are also dealing with it.
Speaker 2:They are. I think what helps is when so when you're thinking about like elders because it usually comes from elders and parents, and this is this is a big thing that I that I had to really Come to realization about, is that wanting to tell you what to do and how to live your life? That comes from fear, hmm. It's a fear that you won't be accepted by your home culture. It's a fear that you perhaps will go down a way that's not correct. It's a fear that you won't live your life right and somehow you will be hurt emotionally, physically, spiritually or otherwise. And what does that fear come from? That fear comes from love. It comes from a neat place of love and protectiveness.
Speaker 2:So, as annoying as it can be to hear your, your parents or and my mother-in-law may Allah have mercy on her she would, she would, we would sometimes get into it. And then I had to realize she's not doing this because she didn't like me. She's not doing this because she didn't agree with me. She's doing this because she loves us deeply and this is how she's expressing that love. Now Doesn't mean that I took everything that she said and did it.
Speaker 2:No, listened and I realized that it was coming from a lens of love and and Concern, and that shifted everything. So it didn't create that, that resistance and that resentment, because you're right, I think when you get married, people expect you to be even more like now I can really tell you what to do because I've been married for 35 years and you've only been married for three months. So let me tell you how you have to. You know, make sure you burn the true right and use this and you know, make sure you make Chebu Jin every Sunday, like you know you have. Like that's the thing that people want to tell you to do. You can still do it your way. I have a lot of empathy and respect, because that protectiveness that they're, that they're giving you, really comes from a space of love and, again, having that boundary and having your spouse there to support you really help you get past a lot of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the only thing that I I want to follow up on with that is For those men or brothers who are mama's boys. It can be hard to have that support for your wife. I Know that that's a thing and so we're just gonna talk about it. But when you, when you do, marry your, your spouse, you know they complete half your Dean, and so I want you to speak a little bit about that. How can you balance, not, you know, hurting your mom, because, like you said, it's coming from a place of love, whether in the moment you want to admit it or not, at the end of the day, our moms love us and they want what's best for us. Now, one thing what's best for you and knowing what's best for you sometimes a little different, especially when you have different Perspectives on life. So what do you have to say about that when you have the mama's boy, who really doesn't want to hurt his mom's feelings, but he should also protect his wife?
Speaker 2:I Am married to a mama's boy, so my husband and his mother were the best of friends, talked every day and I remember when she came to live here in the States, I remember telling him you love your mother more than me. And he's like, do you hear yourself? Right now? You like, you sound like. You sound ridiculous. And he said something to me. He said it's impossible for me to love you the same way that I love my mother, just like it's impossible for me to love my mother the same way that I love you. That's my mother. She's always going to be my mother and she's not always right. I'm not gonna fight my mom in front of you, but I will always have your back because you are an amana for me. Someone entrusted you to me, hmm, and you are the mother of my children. So I don't love my mother more than you. I love my mother differently than you, and that was like a Like.
Speaker 2:A light bulb went on because I found myself in competition. If someone that I can't, I can't compete with his mom, it's a different kind of love and I had in my mind that love like, can Like, you can use it up some kind of way. You can use it up. Yeah, and I have an. I have a son. My relationship with my oldest child, who is a boy, is just like my husband's relationship with his mom. And now my son has a girl that he says he wants to marry and I have to check myself like, oh, am I being like that? Am I? So? Now I really understand, like yeah, where she was coming from. But it is a huge responsibility for the husband to make sure that he understands that he has been entrusted responsibility of leading a family and His wife is a has been entrusted to him. He has to take care of the wife. Sometimes that may mean having a private conversation with the mom and say, mom, when you say such a desert, what, whatever?
Speaker 2:whatever because I don't. I don't think that a less is something like egregious. I don't think these things have to be done in community, but the wife should know that she has an ally, and her biggest ally in the family should be the husband.
Speaker 1:So do you think, in terms of family Dynamics, that time heals all wounds, like for those Beginnings that are really hard and the harsh words are being said? Do you think that time overall diminishes that or makes it better?
Speaker 2:Time can either dull the pain or it can heal the pain. Mm-hmm differences in you how you perceive it. Dulling the pain is Stuffing the feelings down, which I don't recommend. Can it heal? Yes, but again you have to go back to having those courageous conversations my mother-in-law and I had. We had very rough beginnings when she first came. It was not easy, it was difficult. She had to share. I was the first person to marry Just three boys. My husband is the oldest. I was the first American to marry into the family.
Speaker 2:There was a lot happening at one time, and when she came to live here we already had four children. So you know she's coming into. We already had our thing going. But we had to have some difficult conversations and at first we use my husband like a two-way pager I would tell him this and then he would go back and tell her this, and then she would tell him something and she would come Back and tell me. And then finally, I said something has to give, because I don't want my children to see this. And so I Would start taking her out. I would take her out to the movies. It took her to her first movie. I took her to her first restaurant. I would take her to Sephora. I would take her to get her nails done, and we would.
Speaker 2:We would be able to have conversation and we came to a space of understanding that my way may be different than your way, but this is the way that I know best. And it's not just I'm not trying to be disrespectful. And she said, you know, she's just trying to understand. And so time did heal that wound and she would tell her friends, her friends, oh, his cousin is married to an American woman. Oh, she's. She's just too much. I don't understand how you deal with Angelica. She said Angelica gives me no problems.
Speaker 2:We had a very difficult time at first. She said but I'll handle it. Luck, no problems now, anything. I mean she does it for me because I had to understand that that's how she understood love was through service. So I think time can heal wounds. But you have to be willing to dig deeply and have those conversations. And I could have those conversations because I had two people, three people, who have my back. I have my husband. I had my father-in-law, so my husband. I had my father-in-law, so my mother-in-law's Husband. I also had her mother.
Speaker 2:My husband's grandmother always loved me, which is what I said in the post find an elder and make friends with the elder. Yeah, his grandmother, from the minute she met me, she loved me because she was a convert like me. Hmm, she came from somewhere else in a, a craw, to somewhere else in Ghana, to her husband's home, so she knew what it was like to be an outsider. So I had her as an ally. So I think having allies and having difficult conversation and a lot of prayer is what can heal it. If you just dull it and you just stuff it down, it's just gonna build up resentment and at some point it's gonna blow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I Love that for you and I had a question on here About how you stay so beautiful for you to give us the tea. But as you were talking, I figured it out. It's because of the way you approach things. You talked a lot from an eye perspective and I think that it takes a special kind of person to do that, because we often do get defensive. We often do say, well, why don't you like me, why don't you accept me? But a lot of what you were saying is I listened, I communicated, I reached out, I took her, I don't know. I'm just having a moment here because I had it as a question before we even had this conversation.
Speaker 1:I didn't know you were going to say those things, but as you were talking, it just dawned on me that if we take that approach in life more, we will have better outcomes, and better outcomes leads to less stress. Less stress leads to more beauty. So you get the point. But when you're saying this, so so, so true, we deal with people. We're not always going to come across people who automatically love us or that we click with, but we have to put in that work. And one thing that my friend and I were talking about is that marriage is hard because it's an act of worship, and no act of worship is easy, and in Wolof they say yabben yabben, yabben, yabben, yabben. So why do we expect marriage to be easy when we know that getting up to prayer is not easy, fasting is not easy? So I think just putting those things into perspective has really been a lot for me in this conversation we're having.
Speaker 2:I'm really not. Yeah, it is. Marriage is hard. It's hard but it's worth it. And I learned a lot about taking responsibility for myself from my mother-in-law, because she's one of the few elders that I ever saw who had that same approach where she would say I need to do this, or I get this, or I'm sorry, or you know, and that's a big thing. So I owe a lot to her and to her memory, and I pray that I can be half the mother-in-law that she was, because she really was like a mother to me and truly one of my closest friends. So to see a last but not the latter, take us from where we started to where we ended. You just have to say alhamdulillah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, alhamdulillah, definitely Now shifting gears a little bit to the Village Auntie Institute. So I want you to talk to us a little bit about what you mentioned in the beginning sexual health, these taboo topics that we don't always dive into. What was your inspiration for starting the Institute and how can folks get involved with it today?
Speaker 2:Sure, so the Village Auntie Institute was my birthday present to myself when I turned 45. I've been working in public health since 2003. I've been volunteering in public health since 1994. So it's been a long time and I wanted to start the Institute because I wanted to be able to have a space to house all of the classes and workshops that I do. I have a very robust student population and I wanted to be able to have a space where I could provide certifications to women, where I could hold classes. And someone said well, what gave you permission to do that? I said Allah gave me permission to do it because he put it in my heart to do it, and the first university I was ever founded was founded by a Muslim woman, an African Muslim woman. So it is definitely a part of my spiritual heritage and cultural heritage to be able to do that. So the Village Auntie Institute is where you find classes like our flagship class, foundational Womanhood, which is a 12-week rights of passage class. We have over 300 women who have graduated. We're currently in week four of our 2024 cohort. They'll graduate in January, inshallah.
Speaker 2:This year we're also adding classes for men. So it's a place to have classes on sexuality and reproductive health, but also spiritual classes. We have our Ramadan Intensive. We're coming up on the fifth year of hosting that. We started it during the pandemic. We've had over 13 people who have taken their shahada through the Village Auntie Institute. So it's a place. It's an online learning platform, but we also do classes in person. So all of the information for those classes can be found on my Instagram page at Village Auntie or on the website VillageOntiecom, and we're looking to expand our offerings as we move out of sort of being in the house all of the time. I do a lot of traveling. I'll be in New York soon. I'll be in San Francisco this coming week, so it's a place for us to be able to have something that is truly for us, that is created by us.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And so for those in-person classes, where would someone need to be in order to attend?
Speaker 2:The in-person classes. Usually, when I'm going to a city, I'll put it on Instagram. Sometimes I'll put it on TikTok, but TikTok definitely shows me my age. But I'm planning to do a workshop in New York a couple of weeks and also in Atlanta in December. So everything that I do I usually post on social media so people can register.
Speaker 1:Well, I live in Atlanta, so we are here for the December session. But, like she mentioned, if you are interested in any of the classes or retreats, I'm going to call them retreats because I feel like when you go to a retreat you meet your best friends. They're your best friends for the week and then you stay in contact. So if you're interested in anything that the Village Auntie will be putting on, make sure you follow her on social media. I'll be sure to include the information in the description when I publish this episode. But I wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart, because this has been as helpful for others who are going to be listening to it as it has been for me. I always learned from these interviews and I thought this one was especially unique and special to me, so thank you for the time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you everyone for tuning into this episode and I will give you a rendezvous for the next one.
