106 Transcript: Becoming An Awakened Woman and Following Your Sacred Dreams (with Tererai Trent)

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Jen Riday: You're listening to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast, episode number 106.

Intro: Welcome to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast, stories of vibrant women living happy lives. And now, your host, Jen Riday.

Jen Riday: Hey there, welcome back to Vibrant Happy Women. I’m Dr. Jen Riday, your host, and
I'm a mom of 6 and I'm all about helping women shift from burnout to taking care of themselves all the way up to living their purpose, so I'm so glad you're here. On our last episode, I spoke with Gina Brodtmann all about overcoming perfectionism and fear and living more authentically and vulnerably. It was a beautiful episode, and if you haven't listened to that one yet, go back and do so at jenriday.com/105

. Today, I'll be talking with Tererai Trent, who happens to be Oprah's all-time favorite guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. To put it succinctly, Tererai is a woman of courage and you're going to love her story. So let's go ahead and dive in.

My guest today is Tererai Trent and she was on Oprah's stage as Oprah's favorite guest of all time. As a young girl in a cattle herding village in Zimbabwe, Tererai dreamed of receiving an education but instead was married young, and by 18 without a high school graduation, she was already a mom of 3. Tererai encountered a visiting American woman who assured her that anything was possible, reawakening her sacred dream. Tererai planted her dreams deep in the earth and prayed they would grow; they did. And now, not only has she earned her PhD, but she has also built schools for girls in Zimbabwe with funding from Oprah. ‘The Awakened Woman’, Tererai’s book, is an accessible intimate and evocative guide that teaches 9 essential lessons to encourage all women to re-examine their dreams and uncover the power hidden within them. Welcome to the show, Tererai, so glad you're here.

Tererai Trent: Thank you for having me.

Jen Riday: So I cannot wait to dive into your story; to go from goat-herder to PhD to building schools in Zimbabwe, amazing, and of course being Oprah's Favorite guest of all time. But let's start with just something simple, one of your favorite quotes.

Tererai Trent: I would like to say this quote from my mother, “See yourself as the creator of your own destiny, knowing that you have the power to shape your future and achieve your dreams.”

Jen Riday: Hmm! So tell us more about how that quote has inspired you.

Tererai Trent: My mother has always been my compass, my moral guide in life, and she helped me to believe in myself before I could know what I was doing in this life and she guided me over the years. And, as in your introduction, you know, I had 4 children before the age of 18 because I was married very young, and without a high school diploma, there I was living in abject poverty. And I realized that earlier on in my own life, I was just going through the life that my great-grandmother and my grandmother in my mother had gone through. I was just following this vicious cycle, this generational cycle, the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and the early marriage. But I wanted a better life for myself.

So when… when we gained our independence, I was hardly 22 years of age and I was expecting my 6th child… number 5. And when this woman from America, her name is Jo Luck, but then I didn't know that was her name, she came to my village, my rural village in Zimbabwe, where we had no running water, no electricity, nothing. And she found me seated in a circle with these other women. And it was their first trip to Africa and so she happened to come to our village. And she asked me one fundamental question which she had asked the other women, “What are your dreams? What are your hopes?” I had no idea that, as a poor woman marginalized, oppressed, just growing in a society that never saw the value of women, I was supposed to have a dream. So I kept quiet, and she said, “Young woman, you've been quiet. What are your dreams?” And when I opened my mouth, I said, “I want to have an education.”
“What kind of education?”
“I want to go to America. I want to have an undergraduate degree, a Master's degree and a PhD.” And the… Jo Luck looked at me and she said, “If you believe your dreams and if you work hard, they are achievable,” and I believe that. She would just look right into my eyes and say, “Yes, you can achieve your dreams.” And I'm thinking, “How can I achieve a PhD when I don't have a high school diploma, when she can see that I'm expecting a child?”

And there was something about it; something about the way she talked about achieving my dreams, the way she made me believe, she inspired me. I ran to my mother and I told my mother that, “I met a woman who made me believe in my dreams.” And my mother said, “What dreams?” and I said, “To go to America, to have an undergraduate, a Master’s, and a PhD.” And I think, at that point, it was music to my mother's ears because my mother said, “Tererai, if you believe in these dreams and you achieve these dreams, not only are you defining who you are as a woman, but you are defining every life that comes out of your womb, then generations to come.”

Jen Riday: Mm-hmm. Oh, that's powerful. So in the book, you talk about having 5 dreams. So you shared 4, what was the 5th one?

Tererai Trent: So when my mother said, “Write down your dreams bury them the same way we bury the umbilical cord,” I come from a culture where, when a child is born, the female elders of the community, they snip the umbilical cord or the birth cord of the child and they take a piece of a cloth from the mother's dress and they tie that umbilical cord and bury it deep down into the ground with the belief that, when this child grows, wherever they go, whatever happens in their life, the umbilical cord who always reminded them of their birthplace. It's an old tradition and my mother said, “Write down your dreams and bury them. And wherever you go, whatever happens, despite the abuse in your life, those buried dreams who always remind you of their importance.” So I returned my 4 dreams and I was ready to go and dig the ground and bury my dreams and my mother said, “Read your dreams back.” And when I and she said, “Tererai, I see these dreams, all your personal dreams, but always remember, your dreams or you have greater meaning when they are tied to the betterment of your community.” And I waited my and I'm thinking, “What does that even mean?” And my mother was a very silent woman. She repeated the same thing, “Your dreams will have greater meaning when they are tied to the betterment of your community.” So I would end up writing my 5th dream, “When I'm done, I want to come back and improve the lives of women and girls so the girls they don't have to go through what I had gone through,” and I went and buried my dreams. And I realized, my mother, somehow she was handing me an inheritance. It's not only about our personal goals in life, our financial goals in life, but it is about how that education and how those goals are connected to the greater good.

So it would take me 8 years to accomplish my GED. And that time, I needed 5 classes of GED to qualify and we were still under the British education system where, because I was already an adult, an adult student, and I could not fit into… in a classroom, so I ended up doing correspondence. It would take me 8 years to do those correspondence to accomplish the 5 classes that I needed. I would do a class at a time because I did not have enough money, and I would find the little money that I could find from work, from my mother, because my mother used to have gardens and field and she would have these crops and sell. And I would sit down to write those classes and go to this rural post office and mail my classes to a place called Cambridge in Britain; a place that I didn't even know.

Jen Riday: Mm-hmm!

Tererai Trent: And I would wait 3, 6 months for that brown envelope to come back. And I would go to the post office, open that brown envelope and realize the 2 subjects that I had taken, I have a U I have an F; I have failed. And I would go back and try to find money to repeat the same classes and I would go and post those results and they would come back 6 months and I have a C and I have a D. And I would come back and I'll find money and I'll try my best to study hard and write again and send those results up until 8 years, I achieved my GED.

Jen Riday: Wow, that's amazing! So that's amazing in and of itself, but after reading your book, ‘The Awakened Woman’, I wanted you to tell us more about the story of your husband during that time and… and what it was like to be studying and hiding that money to send. How did you do that part of it? That sounds really challenging.

Tererai Trent: It was very difficult, but I was also surrounded with women like my sisters, my cousins, my mothers who really encouraged me to say, “If you have these dreams and if they are driving you, they're driving you for a greater purpose.” You have to hide all your money because that time, I used to do some piece work and I would hide every penny to save for my coming to America. And I would hide my money in a cornmeal. You know, we use cornmeal as part of our meal. We cook Sadza, we call Sadza, and no man cooks. So I knew that by hiding my money in the cornmeal bag, my husband would never find it.

Jen Riday: Ah!

Tererai Trent: And I would find other places and I would give my money. But then, I had problems because I was so nervous. I lived in fear that, “One day, he would find it.” I always thought I… you know, “What about… you know, I become so stressed out and he asked and I just panic and give him the money?” So… and I ended up having dreams and dreaming, actually panicking and telling him. So I had to take that money away and give it to my… to my sisters and my cousins and my sister-in-law to hide for me. So I had all this money with different people, and it reached a point where I didn't even know how much they had.

Jen Riday: (Laughs).

Tererai Trent: And I just trusted that they were not going to use my money. And it was amazing that one day, we all come together in they were counting all the money and they gave it to me, and I realized I now had enough money for my plane tickets to come to America as well as for one semester it Oklahoma State University.

Jen Riday: Wow, amazing!

Tererai Trent: Yeah.

Jen Riday: Well, tell us more about the struggles that you and some of the other women in your family were facing with their husbands and what it was like to be a woman there; like how difficult it is as a woman to have choice and empowerment and education, all of those things that you talk about in your book.

Tererai Trent: Women in every society and silence. And also in Zimbabwe, we have women who are silenced because of their gender, denied the right to education, denied the right to making decisions to be in political power. So I grew up in that era where women were more marginalized and silenced because of their own gender. And, you know, I talk about… I come from a long line of generations of women; women who had been married very young before they could define their own dreams. My great-grandmother became the 5th wife, number 6, to my great-grandpa and it was a polygamist union. And my own grandmother would also go through the same pathway and became the 6th wife and married off when she was very young, and my mother would also do the same thing, and also, I also went through the same thing. So it's this pathway of silencing of women that I went through.

And I always talk about my grandmother, I visualized, and even in the book, I visualized my grandmother in a race, born into this relay race, a race of poverty. And as she's born, she's holding this baton. And she's running with this baton; the baton of poverty, the baton of early marriage, illiteracy, the baton of ugly circumstances that you can think of. And she runs and she hands over this baton to my grandmother. My grandmother grabs that baton of poverty, the baton of illiteracy, early marriage. She runs with that baton, she ran so fast, she hands that baton to my mother. My mother grabs that baton of poverty, the baton of illiteracy, and she runs and she hands that baton to me. I never wanted that baton. It was never part of my race. We marry off our young girls with the hope that we are improving our culture. But in time, the same young girls, they grow up in poverty, they hand over the same illiteracy, the same poverty to their own kids. It has to stop.

That's what really made we want to achieve my dreams. And the reason why I buried my dreams, the reason why it took me 8 years to accomplish a GED that I know many people can accomplish that within 6 months, but I knew I was the way to break this vicious cycle of poverty in my own family and be able to expand the kingdom of that to the whole community.

Jen Riday: Oh, that's beautiful.

Jen Riday: So you had 6 kids when you went to the US, is that right?

Tererai Trent: Yes, I had 6 children. And it was tough because when I arrived in the US, my goodness, after 3 months when my children arrived, I realized they were bleeding from their gums and they were missing vegetables, fruits because in America, we had only access to french fries and hamburgers. And I ended up into University and I approached the Vice President of Student Affairs and I said, “I need help. I can't see my children going through this, living in poverty in America.

Jen Riday: Yeah.

Tererai Trent: He said “We can ask a local store to provide you with fruits and vegetables. Sometimes they have fruits and vegetables that are going bad and at the end of the day, they throw them away. Sometimes you can pick good ones from those that they are throwing away. I hope you don't mind feeding your kids with those fruits and vegetables,” and I said, “No.” So I… we went to the store and the store manager says, “You know, in this country, if we give you these fruits and vegetables and if something happens to your children, you might end up suing.” And I said, “I have no time to sue anyone. I need the children.” So the store manager said yes had an arrangement, “I'm going to put 4 o’clock, you have to be here to pick your fruits and vegetables and go and feed the children.”

Jen Riday: Ah!

Tererai Trent: Nine… 99% of the time, I was late to that cardboard box.

Jen Riday: Ah!

Tererai Trent: And I would find the fruits and vegetables inside the trash and sometimes scattered in the trashcan. And I would retrieve those fruits and vegetables, wash them, feed my children, and ask the fundamental question, “Who to complain that my children are eating from a trash can when I know there are thousands and hundreds of children in Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, who are on the streets, homeless children, who are eating from trash cans that no one is washing? And who am I even to complain that I live in Oklahoma in a trailer house where we don't have electricity, during summertime it's so hot, and during winter time, me and my children we huddle to find any warmth? Who am I to complain when I know in America and in most Western countries, women who are homeless, they have no shelter, they live on the streets? Who am I?”

Those things grounded me. Those thoughts grounded me in insuring me that, “Yes, I am here. I have a better life. I can see the end of the tunnel, the light; I can see it. And I am here to achieve my dreams and I will do it.

Jen Riday: Yeah! Well, so I love that. And so you made it to the US, tell us the story of getting your husband to agree to let you go. This is a great story.

Tererai Trent: So, you know, during that time, because we had just come from a colonial system, so all our systems were based on that colonial era where women did not have permission to get birth certificates for their children; you have to have your husband to do that. And women did not have bank accounts; you can't have that. You don't have an ID; you don't have that. So, for me, when I got accepted at Oklahoma State University, I knew I wanted to come to this country with my children, and it was very difficult. My husband denied, he said, “No, if you want to go to America, you can go on your own. You're not going with the kids.” And I begged him and he said, “No.” So I ended up going to my mother and I said, “Mother, I really want to change my life, as well as my children's life. I don't want to leave my children behind.” So my mother said, “Well, maybe there's someone in the family, in your husband's family, who might listen to you and convince your husband,” and I never thought of that.

So I came back from my mother and I went to his sister and the sister said, “Yeah,” you know? And the sister was a Pentecostal church woman. She said, “Yeah, we can pray and maybe things will change. But here's what we are going to do, we are going to do fasting.” I think we took a fasting with 10 days or so. And I remember getting so hungry and praying and I went to my husband's workplace and he still said, “No.” Then I thought, “Well, my mother said, ‘Go to the village where he comes from.’” So I went to the village where he comes from and I saw an uncle of his and he was a guy married to 3 wives. And as I approached his compound and I told him what I needed and he said, “No. You know, women like you, terrible; are terrible because you want to influence our wives! Going to America and leave your husband around, no! You are not going to do that. No! I'm not going to beg your husband to allow you to take the children.” And I'm crying and I could see that, “Goodness! There's no hope here.”

And as I was getting to go, he said, “Okay, let me accompany you,” to get off and get my next bus to go back. And on our way, he said something that changed the whole thing. He said, “Tererai, I don't know of anyone in this village who does not want to go to America, or in Africa, everybody wants to go to America. Have you tried to ask him to go with you to America?” and I said, “No, no, no, no! I'm not going to do that. I've had enough beating from this guy, I'm not going to do that.” So he said, “Well, here's what I know. With my little knowledge, I know that if a man beats you in America, they put him in prison. It’s different from here.”
“Gosh!” And I'm looking at this man and I'm saying, “Oh my goodness!” And I rushed home and I told my husband, I said, “Well, you know, we can go together.” And he said, “Oh yeah, sure! I’ll sign the birth certificates, I'll sign whatever is needed for the visa.” And so he ended up signing so that he could come with the children.”

Jen Riday: Mm-hmm. And so you went to the US and you started working on your Bachelor’s. And so in the book, you describe how he was beating you. And what happened to relieve you of that situation?

Tererai Trent: So when he came to the United States, you know, unfortunately, he continued to beat me. And I think it was much more worse because he now realized that I was now achieving my dream for an education. This was totally different from home and I think it escalated his anger in many ways. It's… gosh, whether he felt he was losing me, I don't know. He was just emotionally and physically abusive. And I would hide, you know, the beatings and I would… you know, I would go to school with a blue eye or a bruise and I would, you know, come up with all kinds of stories. But unfortunately, one day I think he overdid it and our neighbor heard the beatings and I was crying. And the police… she called the police and they found me, you know, all in blood and…

Jen Riday: Wow!

Tererai Trent: And then they asked him to leave, and they said, “We are going to process your deportation right now.” And he wanted to come with the kids and they said, “No. As abusive as you are, you don't have a right to take the children.”

Jen Riday: Yes! So how did you feel when he was finally gone? Was it a day of celebration, I mean, mixed feelings?

Tererai Trent: You know, what's interesting about women who live in abusive relationships, sometimes you feel there's these mixed feelings. You feel guilty that, “Gosh, I should wrote have cried during the beatings. Maybe he could have been here with the children,” because remember, I was now about to take my graduate school and it was intense taking care of children and going to school. So there was always this piece in me that says, “Maybe if he was here, he would be helping with the children.” But there was also another piece in me that was saying, “Hallelujah! Now I'm free! I'm free!” But it's always difficult. There are no easy answers to the silencing of women, up until women themselves step up and say, “Yes, this is it.” And it takes the power of our connection with others. And in my case, I had others who rallied behind me. Dr. Beer and his wife and the church and other people rallied behind me and really helped me to stand on my own and to realize this is my awakening.

And I think it's one of the reasons why I want you to write this book to say that, “The silencing of women is everywhere, but when women are given the opportunities and women get the support that they deserve, women can excel and women can heal, not only themselves, but they can also heal the world.”

Jen Riday: Yes. Well, I loved your book so much. I think everyone needs to read it; and, again, that's called ‘The Awakened Woman’ it's probably in my top 10 favorite books of all time. It’s musical and amazing. I say musical because you write in a way that makes the pages come alive; it feels like just… I can almost hear a song through the pages. But you said women all have this opportunity to awaken and listen to their dreams, and I'm going to read a section in the book where you talk about the importance of speaking your dreams and sharing your stories. So you say in the book, you're quoting Rankin, it says, “Every time you tell your story and someone else who cares bears witness to it, you turn off the body’s stress response, flipping off toxic stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine, and flipping on relaxation responses that release healing hormones like oxytocin, dopamine, nitric oxide and endorphins. Not only does this turn on the body's innate self-repair mechanisms and function as preventive medicine, it also relaxes your nervous system and helps heal your mind of depression, anxiety, fear, anger, and feelings of disconnection.” Talk more about that, how important it is to, first, understand what our dream is and then to speak it and to share our stories in a sisterhood.

Tererai Trent: Mm-hmm. You know, the sisterhood, it's real if we want to achieve our dreams. And I talked about the gathering of women as we share our stories, there is no greater burden in an untold story. You go around with your untold story, it causes it stressing you. But when we our stories, we sit in a circle with other women, they hear our pain in our joy in our stories. There's also an awakening in them to want to tell their stories. And in many cases, as we share our stories as women, we are telling stories that others are dying to tell, but they don't have the courage, the tenacity to tell those stories; so we become the bridge. In telling our stories, we are enabling others to open up to de-silence themselves and begin to share. And in that sharing, when women share and when we come together to share, there is healing that happens because we are seeing ourselves as sisters; sacred sisters. And these stories that we are sharing our sacred stories that have been in us, but now we are saying, “Here they are. Can they be a source of healing to you as well?”

Jen Riday: Yes, sacred stories. And that's kind of what this podcast, Vibrant Happy Women, is about. I feel like it's a circle of sisterhood where, here you are today sharing your story, your dreams, which you planted in the earth, and they grew. So take us forward to what has happened since you earned your PhD, and being a guest on Oprah, and that 5th goal of giving back to your community.

Tererai Trent: Here's what one thing that happened in my life, when I wrote down my dreams and I buried them. And I use the word bury but, in many ways, I was planting because my mother said, “When you bury them, then you would see them grow and grow and grow.” And I had to visualize myself, “What would it look like if I achieved these dreams?” And I would see myself with an undergraduate, see myself in America, see myself in an airplane that I'd never been in.

Jen Riday: Mm-hmm!

Tererai Trent: It became so strong making those mental images in myself. And so when I achieved my PhD and I realized, “Gosh, now I have a PhD,” I couldn't find that inner joy. Even though when I walked that podium to receive that small paper that now says, “You're a PhD holder,” and I felt like a lawyer, but even though I felt like that, somehow when I went home, I felt empty. And I kept on saying, “Dear mother, why did you make me write that 5th dream; the dream that you always call the sacred to dream? Why? Where am I going to find the money to accomplish that dream?” Well, then I remembered Jo Luck, the woman who came to the village. She used the word ‘Tinogona- it is achievable for you if you believe in your dreams’. So I had my t-shirts, designed my t-shirts with ‘Tinogona- it is achievable’, and I said, “I'm going to sell these t-shirts and go back home and build schools and go like a champion.” Well, I only managed to sell 20 t-shirts, to my American friends; I was devastated.

And then one day, I got a phone call; the most memorable call of my life, from Oprah Winfrey. And she donated 1.5 million dollars towards that 5th dream to build schools back home. And I realized, “Gosh, my mother was right! It is about how our personal dreams are connected to the greater good.” And today, we have managed to build 11 schools. These are public schools in rural areas seeing more than 6000 children, both girls and boys, going through the education and receiving quality education.

Jen Riday: Hmm, wow!

Tererai Trent: Yeah.

Jen Riday: That's beautiful. Well, so your dreams are amazing; I'm so happy for you to have fulfilled them. But now, I feel like you have even more work that you feel you're doing, helping other women to recognize their… what you call in the book, their great hunger.

Tererai Trent: Mm-hmm.

Jen Riday: And empowering themselves and awakening; this movement of women rising up and speaking their dreams or varying their dreams. Tell us more about how you're helping women do that?

Tererai Trent: So here's what I'm doing. You know, many have asked me, “Do you have another dream to bury?” and I always say, “No, I don't have. I'm burying my… my dreams in your hearts, in every woman’s heart, in every man’s heart.” So I also realized that my own silencing and my own awakening, it wasn't because I am the smartest woman, no, but it is because of 2 things that happened in my life; opportunity. If we give women opportunity, they can achieve their own dreams. And the second one was mentorship, mentoring; women coming together helping one another, uplifting one another. I stand on the shoulders of many women. I stand on the shoulders of giants in my life. I wanted to come up with a book that would help women to really look into themselves and say, “Yes, I can achieve my dreams.” And I'm providing with these tools in this book so women can really rally themselves around these tools. They are rituals that women have to go through in my book. I talk about burying your dreams. I talk about finding your great hunger, in this book. I talk about the 2 kinds of hungers in our lives as women; the little hunger and the great hunger, the greatest of all hungers. And I want women to really get to those hungers and ask themselves, “What breaks my heart?” It is in those moments of our brokenness, in those moments when we feel overwhelmed, when we think that the world is collapsing around us, we find a yearning in our heart is cheering to want to change the circumstances in ourselves, as well as the circumstances in our own communities and the world at large. And that is the reason why I came up with this book.

Jen Riday: So you have 10 steps or 10 essential tools that women can follow to identify their great hunger and start to recognize their talents and visualize the future.

Tererai Trent: Yeah.

Jen Riday: Can you tell us more about those steps as we close and everyone can get excited to try them out for themselves?

Tererai Trent: Yeah. So the first step is identifying your greater hunger. And as I said, there are 2 kinds of hunger. The little hunger, that's the hunger that says, “I want it now; immediate gratification.” And then the greater hunger, the greatest of all, women and especially as we get older, we become a little bit bitter when we don't live a life with purpose. We want we have purpose in our life; we want to live legacy in our life. And then the second one is, recognizing our own talents. We have to recognize those hidden powers within; it’s all within us, let's step into that. And the third one is, understanding our own fears. You know, I post a lot of things on my Facebook around fears. It's important to understand your fear. Name it, talk about it, have a story around it, share it; by doing that, you diminish that fear. Then visualize your future; it's important to make that mental image. For myself, I would go to that place where I buried my dreams. And I would sit down and I would reflect and I would visualize and see myself achieving all these dreams. And I would see myself rubbing shoulders with giants and I'd believe. And would live in that moment and find joy in that moment, despite the fact that I was living in abject poverty, the fact that I was… I enabled myself to see a better future, it helped me; it became a healing process for me. Writing down your dreams is important.

You know, if you don't write it, it's not going to happen; you have to write it down. Then, you have to understand the steps that you need to achieve your dreams. And then, ground yourself in faith and belief the rituals that I talked about. Find a ritual that will cement that thing that you have written down, that will cement the dream that you have written down. I love rituals! They ground me. They make me believe in myself. They make me believe in things that are impossible. Then the 7th one is, cultivate gratitude. We have to be thankful; we have to be grateful in your life. And then establish your family, your sisters, you know, the champions who will support you; you know, the sister who will be there for you and you’ll also be there for them. And then, honor, what I call… this is the last one, honor the sacred laws of the invisible ladder. My mother always say, “On this earth…” she would always say, “On this earth, women, we are climbing an invisible ladder, and it has its own laws that we have to obey. These are the moral, sacred obligation that will make us giants. This ladder that we are climbing, it has rungs. There are other women who are at the bottom of the rung and there are others that are at the top of the rung. And it does not mean that those that are at the bottom… at the bottom of the rung are poor or they are not smart. No, it only means that those who are at the top, they have a moral obligation to pull our sisters who are at the bottom. Let's pull all of us together so that at least we can achieve our dreams.” That's the secret to our success; our ability to turn around and help one another and be genuine about it without expecting anything in return.

Jen Riday: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's a giant sisterhood; I love that. So, Tererai, this has been amazing. I love, love, love your book. Everyone listening, be sure to go get your hands on ‘The Awakened Woman; Remembering And Reigniting Our Sacred Dreams’; it is so good. And I… I wish, Tererai, that I could sit in a circle with you and all the women you described in the book, around a fire, under the stars, and tell those stories and speak my dreams. It sounds so sacred and amazing and I love your concept of sacred sisterhood. And if you could give our listeners one parting challenge before we say goodbye, what would that be?

Tererai Trent: Wow! You know, maybe I can repeat what I wrote this morning on my Facebook when I said, “An awakened sister or an awakened woman is the one who finds joy it is the one who feels celebrated when another woman rise to power.”

Jen Riday: Oh, wow! Thank you so much for being on the show; I have chills. Everyone be sure to grab ‘The Awakened Woman; Remembering And Reigniting Our Sacred Dreams’. Thank you so much, Tererai.

Tererai Trent: You’re welcome. Thank you very much and thank you for having me.

Jen Riday: Take care.

So inspiring. I love the story of completely changing your life; having that vision, that nearly impossible vision in Tererai’s case, and then making it happen making it real. And now, her children have an entirely different life. But bigger than that, Tererai is making such a big difference for all of the children in her community where she grew up. I hope it inspired you. What are your sacred dreams? Be sure to get Tererai’s book, ‘The Awakened Woman’. Like I said in the interview, it's one of my top 10 favorite books of all time. It's so beautifully written and
inspiring and I love her concept of that circle of sacred sisterhood. And that's what I hope you feel this podcast is for you; a circle of sisterhood where we hold space for each other's dreams and desires and becoming the most vibrant and happy women we can be. I will see you next time with a happy bit, and next week, I'll be back with an interview with Courtney Donnelly, founder of Vibrant Home, who will teach us how to have a more vibrant home. And don't forget, it is spring, and if you want some amazing, beautiful new window treatments, be sure to go to smithandnoble.com/happywomen to learn how they can walk you step-by-step through the process of making your home more vibrant and happy. Again, that’s smithandnoble.com/happywomen. I will see you next time. And until then, take care.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast at www.jenriday.com.