Unapologetically Whole

Seeing Inner Peace as Success: A Conversation on Identity, Culture, and Personal Growth

• Lola Dada-Olley • Season 1 • Episode 12

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This episode dives into a powerful discussion on how redefining success, embracing wholeness, and recognizing one's own lane can transform life trajectories. Lola Dada-Olley explores these themes through stories of cultural conditioning, resilience, and intentional living, offering practical insights for anyone navigating personal or professional reinvention.

Main insights include:

  • The importance of recognizing the lane you're currently in, especially when life takes unexpected turns

 

  • How to redefine success beyond societal and cultural expectations


  • Reimagining what it truly means to thrive—centered around peace, authenticity, and self-awareness

 

  • The impact of cultural conditioning on women’s roles, expectations, and personal identity

 

  • Navigating career shifts and strategic sacrifices in pursuit of deeper fulfillment

 

  • The significance of healing from trauma and inner work to live more intentionally

 

  • The value of deliberate choices and breaking generational curses to shape a new legacy

 

  • How authenticity and emotional intelligence are critical leadership qualities, once undervalued

 

Timestamps:

 00:00 - Welcome and overview: Embracing wholeness beyond early conditioning


 02:25 - The three R's: Recognizing, redefining, reimagining success


 03:24 - Personal storytelling: Navigating cultural expectations and self-awareness


 04:50 - From childhood dreams to career shifts: The journey of recognizing new lanes


 08:00 - Self-awareness as a spiritual practice and continuous journey


 10:15 - Overcoming cultural pressures in marriage, motherhood, and personal choices


 13:00 - Redefining success: Living intentionally and authentically


 17:15 - The role of mentorship, representation, and community support


 20:00 - Breaking stereotypes: Women of color in leadership and engineering


 30:22 - The impact of cultural shame and the power of vulnerability


 35:40 - Unpacking trauma, grief, and the importance of mental health support


 43:10 - The significance of sacrifice, courage, and deliberate living


 49:10 - Embracing authenticity: Unapologetic expression and self-love


 53:40 - Living into your purpose: The importance of spiritual connection and intentionality


 62:09 - The legacy of wholeness: Living fully and leaving an impact

Resources & Links:

 

 

 

 

 

Connect with Lola Dada-Olley:

 

 

 

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www.loladadaolley.com


Lola

Welcome to Unapologetically Whole. I'm Lola Dada Olley, attorney, advocate, storyteller, and lifetime caregiver. This is a space for anyone navigating identity, caregiving, leadership, or the quiet work of becoming. Here, we tell the truth, the beautiful parts, the complicated parts, and the parts we're still learning how to name. Some episodes are intimate reflections. Others are conversations with people whose stories expand our understanding of resilience and wholeness. No matter the format, the heart of this show is the same. To remind you that your story matters, your voice matters, and you are allowed to be whole without apology. Let's begin. Welcome to the Unapologetically Whole podcast. How are you?

Edujie

I am good. How are you?

Lola

I'm well, I'm well. Thank you so much for being on this pod today. We're gonna talk about some very light topics, and I say that very sarcastically. But I think you would be you are a wonderful person to interview to talk about what I call the three R's. So, as you know, as one of my closest friends in this whole wide, wide, wide world, you know I've been writing a book off and on for the last two and a half years, and it's a memoir that happens to be the same title as this podcast, Unapologetically Whole. And in the back of the book, there's an advocacy guide. And yes, a lot of my story is about caregiving as it relates to autism and intellectual disability, but a lot of the story is finding one's true self in the midst of so many challenges, including cultural expectations, cultural stigma. So there are three R's, right? There's recognizing the lane you truly are in. So some self-awareness there, redefining what success can now look like within this lane, and then reimagining what it means to thrive. So from self-awareness to self-fulfillment and that long journey. And the road to whole is a marathon, and we'll just continue walking as long as you're alive, you're still on that road to whole, right? There's no completion. But I thought you'd be such an interesting person to talk to about this because you, even though we don't share the same walk when it comes to autism caregiving, obviously, but when it comes to thriving, you are at the top of the list. You are at the top of the list. Uh walking through cultural expectations, sometimes cultural stigma in many, many ways. You are an engineer by profession and training. You're also an artist. You are one of those left brain, right brain folks. So I think this conversation will get really interesting really quickly. But I want you to talk about, first of all, how do you describe yourself in this season? I guess that's the recognizing the lane you now find yourself in.

Edujie

I'm in my selfish season. I've I for so long, I think I I gave so much of myself. Because I I'm very, I'm very, I'm an empath, sometimes to to my own detriment. I'm very loyal, sometimes to my detriment. I when I say words have meaning, when I say somebody is my friend, I actually literally mean my friend. So which means I I embody like if you call me and give me a problem, I take on the problem. Like if I am you, it's we, it's us, it's not on me only. And so because of that, as I've gone through life, I have, you know, I've given so much of myself that it affected my health mentally, physically, emotionally. And uh, you know, when I say I'm in my selfish era, it's like, wow, you know, this is what it is like to put myself first. Because I've never really, I wasn't raised to put myself first. There was always this, you know how our culture is, it's like the girls are raised to give so much, and then the boys are raised to just be independent, like, you know, they don't sacrifice as much, they don't feel, you know, because that's unfortunately how it is framed. That, you know, they they are men, they are supposed to go out there and whatever they want to do, they can do. There are no obstacles to the way. But as a woman, you are raised to like, yeah, you have all these dreams, but hold back because it's for the greater good, you know, and and unfortunately, that actually did more harm to me than good. And it's not that I was a I was gonna be a selfish or an arrogant person, but it made me lose out on or hold back on opportunities because I was trying to, for the greater good, elevate other people, and in the end, I ended up hurting myself. So when I say selfisher, I don't mean if people come to me and they need help, I don't help. But then I now step back before I offer the help or offer anything and see how much of myself should I get? How much help should I get? And I weigh the pros and cons of will this set me back as far as I've come? I have healed, I have come this far. Is this thing going to now take me back? You know, like, you know, because that healing process took a long time. You know, I'm approaching the other half, second half of my life. So you know, I've spent 50 years catering to other people and I've managed to heal to this point. How much of a setback am I willing to even? And I'm not willing to give one inch, you know, because you know, you know my life. I've given so much that I am no longer willing to give an inch. So I I am now more, I think more about how I give of myself. So when I say selfish, yes, I put myself first more now. You know, I am still a work in progress, I'm not yet there, but there's always this, okay, DJ, this thing you're about to do, how is it going to impact you later? Is this something you will do and then later regret? You know, because we we do a lot of that. We offer ourselves and then later it's like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. And by then the damage is done, and then you're not trying to recuperate. And unfortunately, in our culture, they never give you time to recover because there's yet another one right behind it. You almost have age just to even just reset from whatever has happened. So, yeah, so I will say I'm in my selfish era, and I'm actually liking it because now if somebody calls me selfish, I am.

Lola

So let's unpack you're in your selfish era. So I mentioned earlier you're an engineer, you're an artist, you um are in leadership on in your career. What do you mean by you're now in your selfish era? So that goes back to recognizing the lane you're in. Give our listeners some background as to how you got here.

Edujie

Yeah, well, I actually didn't start out as to be an engineer. All my life, I actually thought I was gonna be a medical doctor, a neurosurgeon, to be specific. So even at a young age, I knew the area of medicine I wanted to be. So as far as staying in your lane, everything I did was always tailored towards, you know, the sciences, the things. Whenever I was classified, I think the classes they put me in, it was his A class was, I think, purely science, B class was the mix, or so I can't remember the exact, but it was something like that. And I was always in the middle. So I was an artist, I had the artistic flair, and I also had science. I mean, math and science. And the science part actually owed to my father because I was more into language, English was my strong point, I hated math. And one summer my dad sat me down and made me face my fear. Because when I see numbers, I would freeze. So it wasn't that I didn't know how to do it. I just thought, oh, these things are it's like a language. Numbers are like a language. I it was just a foreign language I couldn't understand, and I just froze and I shut it out of my mind. And my dad was one of those people who was like, you need to face your fears, you can't freeze up. So, based on that, and also, you know, influence, my mom was a nurse, so medical stuff was always around me all the time. And I had an uncle who was a medical doctor. So it was just, it just went without saying, oh, I was gonna go in that direction anyway. And of course, as life does, I ended up in civil engineering. And it's funny because I had a teacher, a Ghanaian teacher in secondary school. Uh, we used to do introduction. I didn't like agriculture because that meant I had to be outside and I hated getting dirty and dealing with dirt. So I took introduction to technology because it kept me in the classroom. And I was one of the few girls that was in that class because I didn't want to do agric. And that teacher at the time told my mom she's going to be an engineer. Mr. Coach, I think we used to call him coach or quarchy or something like that. And I was like, ah, this man doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm just here because I don't want to be out there in the sun. And funny enough, he he was the first person that told me I was going to be an engineer. The second person that led me into engineering, she was a black woman. Um she taught mathematics at uh Belmont Abbey College when I went through this crisis of, and how I how that crisis came about was I interviewed a bunch of neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins, because my uncle went to Johns Hopkins and he worked at Johns Hopkins, and I noticed a trend because I'm a I follow trends. I noticed patterns, and I noticed that all the women neurosurgeons I talked to were divorced or never married. And what I appreciated was their honesty. And what they told me is hey, if you're gonna do this thing and be very good at it, don't get married. And that's where the cultural angle comes in, because culturally I wanted to have the best of both worlds. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, I wanted to be married with kids. So here these people are telling me, if you're gonna be good at this thing, you may have to sacrifice the one thing I thought was the most important thing to me. Because even yes, career was important, but having family and creating my own family was also very important. And I was so depressed that day, and I walked into her office, I can't remember her name, and she was my advisor at the time. And I was so sad. I was like, here I have all my life. I have worked towards being this doctor. I was well on my way, I was in the pre-med program, and boom, all of a sudden, I don't even know if that's what I want to do because there was no plan B for me. It was always going to be medical school. And she sat me down and she asked me a question that nobody has ever asked me before. She said, What do you want to do? And nobody's ever asked me that. I mean, as liberal and as well-read as my father was. My father never asked me, I don't think he ever asked me what I wanted to do. He just assumed, hey, I've never told you what to do. I'm assuming you're doing what you want to do. But the truth is, she asked me, What do you really want to do with your life? And that made me sit down and actually reflect. When you talk about being in your lane and what does success look to you. You know, in Nigeria, you're either a lawyer, doctor, engineer. You know what I mean? Like that's what success looked like to me. That's true.

Lola

Especially during our era. We have now reached anti-stage in our in our time. It was.

Edujie

That was how it was now. Nobody had to tell you or sit you down to spell it. But I was like, you know, nobody has ever asked me this question. And she asked me, okay, what are the things you're good at? Nobody ever asked me that either. They just assumed that, you know, I was just good at stuff. But and I said, Ah, well, I like to draw, I like, you know, I'm good at math, I'm good at this. And she goes, and she's going through all this. She said, Oh, architectural engineering. I said, Ah, but I want to also be actively involved in the building of the thing, you know, like so Shadow, have you thought about civil engineering? And I was like, What is that?

Lola

Can you imagine? So the so the girl who didn't like to go outside is now out in the field occasionally.

Edujie

Even now, I still don't like to go outside.

Lola

But you're out there with that pavement though.

Edujie

And I there with my hard hat and vest, and I complain the whole time I'm there because you know, my nails are done, my hair is done, I have to figure out how to fit my hair inside the hard hat, and I'm like, I make this one is too much. But it's interesting because she saw in me what at the time I didn't see in myself. And that's that's one thing as I've God has been very gracious with me on is that you know, you have to also have the ear to hear when God is talking to you. Because sometimes, you know, we we get so caught up in this is what I'm supposed to be doing, but then there's that one thing or one word or one sentence, or somebody will say something that will just ring. And that was, and she went, she said civil engineer, and she described the thing to me, and I said, Okay, this civil engineer, oh let me, she goes, Well, you have to change your program for from pre-med to pre-engineering. And this is what you know, you won't finish your program here, you get one degree here, and then you have to go to either Georgia Tech, Auburn, Clemson, you know, he she rattled off the schools I had to go to to complete my program. So I was like, Oh my, how am I going to call my father in Nigeria to tell my father that that medical school that I've been shouting about since has changed. So what happened? I said, this is what we're gonna do. I changed my nature. Nature, I had settled everything first, then I called my dad. And I said, Daddy, guess what? After a lot of thinking, you know, and I've consulted, I think I'm going to change my neighbor. And then my dad is like, you know, what exact, what, what, how, what are you, what do I do want to start? I said, I think I want to study civil engineering now. And he goes, Is this a phase? Like, are you because my dad was that kind of person, he's like, is this something you know, you know, because sometimes he's like, maybe you're reacting to something and then just running away. And I was like, no, not really. I just think you know, maybe it's not really for me. And um, then he goes, How much is this gonna cost me? You trust Niger now. And I was like, Well, you know, it's similar field. And I said, Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. He goes, Are you sure you can, you know, deal with you know what's what's gonna come? Because you know, you're gonna be a woman in a male field. So there are certain things you have to be mentally and emotionally and ready for, like, you know, it's gonna come at you. I said, Well, I think I can deal with it. So my father had me write, take a do an undertaking. We call it an undertaking in Nigeria. Here you call it a contract. I had to write a contract with my father. If my grades got below a certain point, or my GPA went below a certain point, I had to go back to my pre-med. So all my life with my dad, you always wrote contracts. So I had to learn how to create my own signature. Before then, it was a thumbprint, an ink on a signed contract. You got the copy, he had the original, you know, that kind of like that was how we dad dealt with us. And so I was like, okay, you know, I'm gonna prove to this man that I'm gonna do this thing, you know, like because that was how I felt. I was like, you know, my dad was somebody that was like Superman to me. So I'm like, no, I'm gonna prove to him I'm gonna do this, it wasn't a waste. And as God would have it, I found my calling. And the good thing about where I am now is I'm able to use my art, artistic side of my mind, and I'm also able to use the engineering. So as far as how I got to engineering, I'll say it's a lot of God, it's a lot of right people in the right place at the right time. Because when I went into that lady's office depressed, I didn't expect to come out of there like rejuvenated. You know, I just thought I'll go there, I'll cry it on her, and she'll just console me and I'll be back. You know, I didn't expect to come out of the counselor's office. I wish I knew her name. I've been looking for her name. I didn't expect to come out of her office with an option.

Lola

I think alternative, it was like a paradigm shift for you.

Edujie

Like a complete shift because engineering and yes, you have similar courses you have to take, but there's also and and the timing too, because the time I went there, I was not too far along in med in pre-med, so the courses I had taken could transfer over. So I didn't really lose a lot. So that's what saved me. And I, you know, as a believer, I believe that God had a lot to do with that because the timing was just right go in that direction. And there was no, there were no mentors, there was nobody to show me how to go about it. You know, I never really saw women, even in college. I mean, the female teacher, professor we had was an Indian woman, and she didn't exactly make the profession look attractive because she had her own issues, you know, she had been overlooked for positions she wanted, so she taught the course she taught in his end. So she wasn't a good mentor. The mentor I had was a structural engineer, and of course, now I thought I was gonna be a structural engineer, that's a whole story for another time. But it was a structural engineering professor from the UK that moved to South Carolina, and I just gravitated to him and maybe him to me, because you know, I'm we're Nigerians, former British colony. So I could relate to him and he could relate to me, and he for him, it's like, oh my god, I found somebody that thinks like me here. And he pretty much he mentored me because of him. The civil engineering program at Clemson was very good. Like he he gave me the confidence to actually see it through. It wasn't an easy program to go through, but without necessarily having female mentors or visuals or females to guide, he was the one that got me pretty much through the program. And of course, God did the rest because I didn't end up being a structural engineer, I ended up being a transportation engineer. Yeah.

Lola

Yeah. So you went from thinking entering college thinking you would end up being a neurosurgeon, instead ended up becoming a civil engineer. So you recognize this new lane thanks to this what we think is a God conversation, right? Then you redefine what success can now look like. And then it was time to reimagine what it could now look like to thrive in this new area that you hadn't even thought of before.

Edujie

And there was nobody to even ask, like, oh, so how did you do it? So how did you do it? I am now the one that the younger people come to and say, or yes, very young female engineers come to and say, So how did you do it? Like, how are you doing it? Because I'm a woman of color. Um I'm African, you know, so obviously I'm not from here. People don't realize that there's certain things you go through that are different for everybody. So, yes, first thing they see in me, I'm a black woman, and I open my mouth, and then okay, they're like, Okay, she's a black woman, but she's not from here. And then my own experiences are different, okay. And then I wasn't a refugee, I didn't come here because somebody, you know what I mean? Like people just make assumptions when they see about what your experience is. So I find myself now being the person, and I've had young people come up to me and say, we look up to you because we see how you present yourself, how you how you handle different situations, you know, because a lot of them are children of illuminants. You know, they're people of color too, you know, and a lot of people that come to me to say that that they know they are also navigating, even though they're the next generation, they're navigating the things that I didn't have anybody to mentor me through. I had to go through it myself. So even as far as promotions, elevations, I had to navigate it myself. You know, go through the myself. There was nobody that prepped me for interviews or prepping for how I was supposed to look. Instead, I always got things like, Oh, don't braid your hair. Oh, you have to look away to dress away. You know, you can't talking, you keep your mouth shut. That's the kind of advice I even got. Um, when I first got to Caltrans, uh, my mentor was a black woman. I would be honest with you, I wouldn't give her to anybody to mentor because the first thing she told me is you smile too much.

Lola

You're too friendly. Sometimes we can only see the world through our own pain. Because I I remember an older woman in the workplace when I was a baby lawyer, and she walks up to me and completely unsolicited advice, and she goes, Just so you know you're gonna get old one day. And I looked at her and I said, I hope so. That's the plan. I mean, I'm not trying to die young.

Edujie

I mean, like it was a shock to me because you know how in Nigeria you always look at auntie, and that's how I forget that we are, you know, in this work setting, you're supposed to be like an anti-figure, like somebody I can come to and talk to.

Lola

You know, as a mentor, you view those that come before you ideally, as you know, you've been around the block, you could help the younger ones. Yeah, ideally, yeah.

Edujie

Realize that I was a threat because she had been the only one there, the only female engineer before I came along. And you know me, you know how we are bubbly, you know, just you know, I was half my size then, you know, just you know, just identifying.

Lola

The metabolism was metabolizing.

Edujie

Metabolizing, I mean, and you know, at that time, you know, the excitement was I had my first job out of college, you know, I'm willing to learn a lot, and all I got was, oh, you're too this, you're to that, you're too this. It's almost like the same criticisms I got culturally. I was now getting it in the workplace. Because you're too you're too, you talk too much. Oh, you oh, and but funny enough, those are the Things that helped me elevate to where I was because all that, oh, you talk too much, you speak your mind too much, you do those were the things that helped me to navigate to where I am now. Because if I hadn't spoken up, if I hadn't been, I met you aura for aura, you know, that kind of I'm not intimidated. Because they try you in even till now in my position. I've had people test me. Some people still think the only reason why I got my position is because they were trying to fill a quota. You know, and I and some of them silently say it behind my back. Some of them come to my face and say it to my face. And of course, as a Nigerian, I tell them, I say, okay, bring your bring your resume, bring my resume. Let's compare. And that's when, you know, no, you trust me, I don't, I don't let things like that go. And the reason why I don't let things like that go is because I'm thinking of the person coming after me. I don't want fellas, my nieces, you know, like I don't want them to go through that. I want when people see them in certain environments, it should be normal to see them in those environments. I shouldn't, it shouldn't be like, oh my god, you know, you speak so well. Why would I not well?

Lola

You don't man, where do we even begin there?

Edujie

I mean, it's like when you talk about staying in your lane, which lane exactly am I supposed to stay? Who created?

Lola

Yeah, it's true, it's true. Staying in the lane and recognizing it, I think, are two different things. Recognizing it is what you need to launch off from. Correct. Yeah, yeah. But to your point about people want to keep you in your lane, you said that you dropped a bunch of nuggets, but one I want to kind of revisit is you said ironically when you were younger, the things that you were criticized for are now the things that are considered leadership qualities in your current big girl role, if you will. So knowing that, when I give speeches on what it means for me to reimagine what it means to thrive, I talk about reconnecting to who I was at my earliest point, right? Of my earliest point of consciousness, like before I became this lifetime caregiver. Because if you tap into what's naturally inside you, those tend to be your strengths. Those are your strengths. That's what helps you thrive in whatever environment once you find the right one for you. That's exactly it. So you talked about recognizing this lane from neurosurgery to engineering, redefining success, reimagining what it means to thrive, because Lord knows there's a lot of deprogramming and reimagining, right?

Edujie

And there's the deep it's it's I don't I think the Nigerian programming is unique.

Lola

Let me Okay, let's let's unpack that. Let's unpack that. Let's also explain to listeners. So for background, for more background, I was born and raised in America to two Nigerian parents. But she was born. Were you born in Lagos?

Edujie

I was born in Benin City.

Lola

Oh, born in Benin City, raised in Lagos, and then came over here when you were preteen, right? Like you were young, young. Yeah. So we do have a view of both Nigeria itself as well as the diaspora. So we're kind of have like one foot in each culture in slightly different ways. So go ahead.

Edujie

And there, and I will not lie, the exceptionalism of Nigerians, even in Africa, because when you say Nigerian, it's the funniest thing, everybody knows in Nigeria. Like when you go out there, they're like you're Nigerian, right? You didn't go, you're Libyan, you didn't go you're Congo, you just went straight to Nigeria. And that thing that makes Nigerians exceptional is also the thing that is like, what's the word? We we we are where we we succeed, we excel, you know. Success for us is like we just keep like we talk about checking boxes. You and I have had this conversation about checking boxes. You want to talk about box checkers? Nigerians are the best box checkers. The problem now happens when you check the box and you have to uncheck the box.

Lola

Do tell you you gotta unpack that. You check because uncheck the boxes. So let's let's go back again because we gotta make sure everyone's coming along the journey with us. So check about box checking for women in Nigerian culture, circa what these 2000s, early 2000s. I know these younger ones are making it a lot easier by God's grace, but those of us that are that are now the ancestors, the checklist was you must, and let me switch, let me code switch. Your your checklist was you must you must marry, you must bump a king, which means you must have kids, you must have a career, uh yes, you must do all of them at the same time, and you must do it very, very, very, very, very well. And then at the same time, you must take care of your husband, take care of your kids, take care of your in-laws, take care of your parents, and stay slim and stay all of the things and things and things and things all at the same time.

Edujie

How can a person remain sane in all of that? No, I mean, let's be honest. Okay. The expectations, and I don't even know whether it's it's it's it's implied or it's it doesn't, in fact, even if they don't tell you no.

Lola

Yes. I mean that's a great point. That's a great point. Even if they don't tell you, you know, you do. It's it's like osmosis.

Edujie

Nobody needs to tell you. You just you look around you and you're like, you know, what you what are you talking about? When we're in our 20s, you go to a wedding, you're celebrating like everybody else. They will say, ah, you yeah, you're here dancing, your mates are married. Yes, yes.

Lola

Remember when I told you about my god, there's so much unnecessary verbal abuse in that during that time. One auntie pulled me, I was in my 20s, I was at a party. I was just like you said, I was dancing, minding my own business. She said, Lola, let's go to the bathroom. There's something very important I need to tell you. I'm thinking, what did I do? Is there like, I mean, what's happening? I get to the bathroom, she goes, the way your body is shaped, and not careful. After you burn the first bikini, you just grow very fat. I was like, What?

Edujie

That's what you saw me dancing and you thought about. Like, what? I just graduated from my undergrad. You know, I had this break. My father wanted me to take a break. He was like, You've been in school constantly, you know, take a break. Don't be in a hurry to get a job. And my mom had an African market at the time. So, you know, I, you know, I had nothing else to do. I'll sit and this lady walks in, one of my mom's postmas, and right in front of, I'm right next to my mother. And she goes, So what's next? Is she just going to sit here like this? Don't you have prospects for her? And my mother looked at this woman like, Come, the girl just finished school. The next step for her is to figure herself out. The first thing you're coming to talk, and mind you, I don't know this woman from madam, and she's talking like I'm not there. Like, so the next step, you need to find husband for her. And my mother was like, Thank you very much, but no, thank you. I mean, thankfully, I had parents that were at least at that point still, but you know, my parents eventually fell to cultural pressure now because when I got married the first time, because I'm 042, I'm not even gonna lie about it. When I got married the first time, it was the pressure, and my dad even admitted it, he said, you know, as much as I raised you to be very independent, I eventually felt pressure to the culture, and I knew that you weren't gonna get married if I didn't tell you to get married. And it was when my father told me to get married. I had these standards, and you know, in Niger culture, even with the men, on paper, the men look fine. When you are now dating them, you'll find out the deficiencies of a lot of these Nigerian guys. So when I talk about the complexity of the conditioning, the girls are conditioned to be superhuman, the boys are just conditioned, like they go to school, a lot of them look good on paper, but they have certain character flaws that in our culture is overlooked. Then it's not until you start dating these young men that look good on paper you find out what those flaws are. And quite honestly, those are flaws that are destroying a lot of Nigerian marriages today. Because the divorce rates among my mates is high. And those who are married still, you can see the toll it's taking on them to just to keep it together. Because those traits are problematic. You know, you can't say sorry, you are not even taking responsibility. Like it looks the woman is doing all the work to make the family look cohesive, but he's not really there emotionally, sometimes he's not even there physically.

Lola

That that's actually a good segue. So we talked about recognize, redefine, reimagine in the career sense. Now, in the personal sense, we've switched to just personal life. And especially both of us are first daughters, too, which I also think creates its own interesting dynamic as well.

Edujie

Has its own name.

Lola

Has its own name. Like in our in another Nigerian ethnic group, the Igbos, they have a whole title for it. I mean, there's a reason, like there's so much responsibility. The the what they call in an Igbo land, Ada, right? It's such a strong, which means it's so powerful, it has its own title on its own, right? Because it means the responsibility is so high. The expectation level, like you must be excellence, is almost like the floor. It's not even the ceiling, it's the floor. And then if we're honest with ourselves, some days it feels like the goalpost moves. So what you think is excellence at one age is no longer excellence.

Edujie

You yourself know. There's always that uh, why can't you be like so-so-and-so daughter? Exactly. I see that they have two heads. Exactly. I don't know Sotho's daughter, and what she I can only speak for myself. So there's always that competition, or you're being pit against people. Yes, that it's like, come, I don't, you know, that's that family. We don't know what is going on in that family.

Lola

I don't know what's going on, and and that's and also with the culture, there's uh and again, maybe things are getting better. I can only go by what I know growing up. And parts of this are in my book. This need to chase some form of excellence in one my in one's mind's eye that really doesn't even always apply to your actual life circumstances, but you're chasing, chasing, chasing. So you don't even recognize the lane you're in. You're trying to fulfill some type of societal view of what success is supposed to look like. And that goes back to the deprogramming, and it always happens when some type of brick wall presents itself. Because when you are the first daughter and you naturally become a type A personality, you're always back to that box checking, you're box checking, you're going to the next goal without really enjoying the achievement of the current one. You're constantly like going to the next thing, going to the next thing.

Edujie

First one, the next question people ask you is, how about this one?

Lola

This one, yeah.

Edujie

Haven't you noticed once you are just like I have just done this great thing? The first thing they said to say, this one's uncle. Like it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. How about these other ones? So you never really get to bask in what you have even achieved up till now. Right. What even when you've gone through difficult trauma or difficult situations, nobody ever allows you to actually take a breather and be like, oh my god.

Lola

And sit in it. Because part of healing, you gotta sit in that trauma. When that brick wall comes, wasn't it Mike Tyson that says everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face or something like that? We all have these grand plans. So for me, I had several brick walls, but one of my brick walls is not finding a job directly right out of law school. Your brick wall may have come later with marriage, but when the brick wall comes, like you don't really you don't have the coping mechanism to sit in it and like, okay, what does this mean? Okay, this is not my full identity. How do I work through this? Instead, you internalize it and say, okay, if something's not going wrong, there's something very wrong with me.

Edujie

Yeah, we never deal with um there are a lot of Nigerians that maybe now with this stigma being taken out of mental health and stuff, a thing in Nigerian culture. Like, you know, when you sit back and think about it, like we are never taught to deal with traumatic situations. So you have traumatized people raising people that they're traumatizing, and it becomes a generational curse. That's what I call we are taught to compartmentalize. Like I was a I was a I was what five years old when I was kidnapped. I was kidnapped as a child. Now, as to whether I've dealt with the kidnapping, I mean my mom goes through the trauma every year because when on the anniversary of it, she looks at me and it's like this child is still alive. Because at the time they used to kidnap back then in Nigeria, they used to call it Bomo Bombo, I think that's what they call this. But some of the kids didn't come home. So when I got kidnapped, I remember my mom crying. I remember instances of that day, but somehow or another in my brain, I have compartmentalized that. That was a trauma early in my life. And but I realize now, fast forward to today, that there's a reason why I don't trust people. There's a reason why I'm not comfortable in crowded spaces. There's a reason why I'm a certain way, you know, like, you know, like I'm very standoffish at first because I don't trust, I'm always weary, like somebody's gonna do something to me. And I when I really, really unpack it, that was that trauma that I never really dealt with as a child. You know, my mom talks about it all the time because you know, she it's a she's reliving it. And the fact as I'm getting older, she's looking at me like I almost lost this child. And I'm an only girl. You're an only girl too. So you can imagine like somebody retelling you all the time, and it's a trauma that has never been dealt with, like sat down. Because in Nigerian culture, they say, ah, don't let the thing bother you too much. I beg, just get up and keep moving. So, in the process of moving on, you're putting these traumas or these incidents in boxes. Then when you see a person flare up, like you said, when you hit that actual wall that finally crashes everything, you are now reacting to so many different things at the same time that people will be like, ah, waiting, do this one. Why are you overreacting? Why are you not understanding that everything has finally come to its point where it you you may think you're only dealing with the thing that just happened now? When you really sit down and sit in it properly, it's a bunch of other things that have been accumulating, accumulating, that you're just like okay, I I can't deal with that right now. I have to deal with this other thing, and you just leave that thing, and that thing's been stewing and stewing and stewing. Now this the pot of stew is ready to bubble over.

Lola

Yeah, so and it's and it's pepper still. It's not like it's not blanced to his pepper, like real pepper.

Edujie

People don't realize, and I like I said, I'm hoping that with the tools available now, with counseling and and talking to people, you know, like look, I before my father died, I I had a an what they call it, they call anticipatory grief. That it wasn't a thing I didn't know. And I went to a grief counselor, and I'll be honest with you, I still think my counselor needed counseling after she was done with me because she said she was like, How are you functioning? Because you know, I that was the first time I sat down and I went through every single thing I'd been through up until now I'm losing my father. And she just looked at me and she, how are you, how are you able to do, accomplish all these things in the midst of all this? Like, even the first one should have made you not okay in the head, you know. And I said, in Nigeria, though, what is the alternative? Yeah. Because I never even had options, or that there was even, you know, like I said, even this counseling, I mean, is because my doctor told me to come here. That's, you know, because I was having, you know, you know how it is. Now you start having symptoms of stress, you know.

Lola

Your body was starting to show signs of all the previous types of grief because you were sitting in actual grief of your father's passing, but from the time you got kidnapped through your marriages, through the divorces, you never dealt with any of that. And then the brick wall, boom.

Edujie

That was and my father's death was the ultimate trauma for me. Yeah. Remember, my dad always told me when I was growing up that when he was a little boy, because my grandfather, my grandfather was a misogynist. He didn't believe in educating women. So the pain, my father, this trauma, I'm sure he had other traumas, but his biggest trauma was that his sisters, because if you look at all my uncles, my uncles are well highly educated, you know, accomplished, but his sisters were not. That was his main trauma. And then the overcorrection of that trauma was me. Because I told God that I wanted a daughter, and when I had a daughter, I would train her to be like a man. And I want her to all the things my sisters couldn't do, she has to go above and beyond. So I was like the first cousin, female cousin to do this, spell first to do this, first to graduate college, first, first, first, you know, that kind of like it was now on me with the moistilly name, that is. I had to be the one to now be the trailblazer. So you can imagine I wasn't even born yet. And this, as a little boy or as a young man, he had wheeled me into existence before I came into existence of how I was going to be. Then the other side of that is I raised her to be very strong and be like a man. Then I also wanted her to marry and become like a man. Because I had to unpack that in my for my to think about my divorces, because I was married, but I felt like I was the man and the woman in my mind. Because I was taking on roles that I wanted to have my, you know, they say what they call that, what they you girls say soft girl era thing, you can step back, let's when problems came, I couldn't rely on my partners or significant others to take the mantle and let me fall back. I have to do it all. And my mom recently said, I said, you are too strong. We raised you to be too strong. And we some I saw she goes, I sometimes wonder if raising you to be strong, we now made you too strong where it was not compatible with marriage. Like it wasn't compatible. But then again, maybe it's the people I was with.

Lola

Yeah, I don't know if being strong is not compatible for marriage, because I see strength as such an asset for real marriage, not this Instagram marriage we see, because life be lifing. You want two strong partners.

Edujie

It goes back to this conversation we had about how sons are being raised. So we realize I see, and you know, Niger, it's only in marriage you really get to see the real face of the family you're marrying into. On the outside, it looks nice. When you become a wife and you get into the family, you start to see things that you're like, wait a second, because you know we're very good at cover up in Nigerian culture.

Lola

I think culturally we are very again. This is maybe just our era, maybe it's getting better. There's a lot of focus on the show, and the substance is maybe secondary. So there's a lot of focus on how something looks, and not as much like back to your earlier point. No one ever really asked you, how are you doing, really? And that goes back to the recognition of your lane. Like, how do you really recognize a lane that you're in if you don't even take time out? Because you're not even taught to do it. It took me a long time to get to a point where I was like, okay, how am I really feeling? Like, I'm very good at doing this whole human doing thing. A plus, I got a PhD in that human being, it took me a while to get there, you know?

Edujie

No, I it's a cult, it's it's a cultural thing. I I'm hoping we are the generation it ends with. Yeah. And the children going into the next generation don't have that kind of burden. I actually am very happy that my nieces and my nephews are more into like arts. Most of them are more into art. I'm actually happy about that. But I'm like, good, don't think you have to do what I do. Now, if any of you as an engineer, I will guide you, hopefully, you know, so you don't have to go through certain obstacles. But if you want to be a dancer, please be a dancer. If you want to be a painter, please be a painter. We didn't know those were options available to us. You know, we're talking about lanes. Nobody told us we had several lanes we could stay in. We just was the way, and that was the way we were going. Could that be goal? And then we now had to step back and be like, okay, what I mean, like, what's going on here? I was doing everything right. And then another thing our family or parents never prepared us for was that life will life you.

Lola

Yeah, we were taught that as long as you work really hard, things will always work out.

Edujie

And there was nothing more painful than somebody telling you, oh, it's because you didn't do this. Yeah, that's it. It's like, come, you want to talk about the person that did everything I was supposed to do, I was the one. I was that that when you told me this are the steps, step one, step two, step three, step four, I followed it to the letter. So when you know, people who are like that's why I tell people, I say, you should be thanking God that you didn't go through certain things because you are bad, criticize people for the decisions they're making. I pray you are never in a position to have to make a decision. I might I might like my father said before he died, he said, I asked him, I said, Do you regret any decision you ever made? He goes, No. Because I made it with the information I had at the time. That part. It's easy to be in 2020, yo, maybe I could have done it this way. But it's a look, if I'm being honest with myself, nobody wanted to make the decision. That's the first thing. The second the information available to me, the decision had to be made based on that information. I made it and I also, and in the same breath that I made the decision, I also accepted the backlash, like the consequence. So to sit now, I'll make you said, you know, most people say, Oh, maybe because I'm dying. No, he goes, No, I have no regrets. Yes, some people may have gotten hurt, seen it a certain way, but a decision had to be made. And the same thing with you and I. It's like I've learned, I think maybe going through what I've gone through in life makes me not judge other people.

Lola

Yeah.

Edujie

Decisions they've had to make in their lives, because I have gone through the experience of having to make decisions that were not favorable, or the world frowned on, or was culturally frowned on, but it was the best decision for me. And after I died, I realized that why am I beating myself up for the lane I have now created for myself that did not fit the typical lane based on we talk about lane? I got out of that lane. That was the first thing. Second thing is what did I see now see as success or for myself? Yeah. And what do you want? Yeah. Where do you see yourself like now that you are here? So do you think so?

Lola

Let me put a bit of that, because I think this is a good segue again. Like, how do you now redefine success? When your dad first started to get sick, I remember you in the private sector.

Edujie

Correct.

Lola

And you made the very important decision to move to the public sector. And to some, especially Nigerians, be like, ah, you left all that money? Hey.

Edujie

So I was I still get told that. Like, I you know, you can always go back and make I'm like, you know what? I think when my dad got soup, that was when I had to re-reevaluate what my what I considered valuable to me. Because I, the supervisor I had at the time, you know, I was on my I was on track to uh, you know, VP, you know all that was it was like, you mean you're gonna step away and you're gonna, you know, you're well on track. And I looked at this man, I was like, I said, you do you realize that this my father is the reason why I'm even here? And he couldn't understand. I said, you do realize that my biggest cheerleader is my father. There was no professional decision I ever made in my life that my father was not privy to. Any move, even if he didn't agree with me, I always ran it by my father. Even mock interviews I ran by my father. My father was the kind of person, if I tell him, Oh, I want to go get it. He would go on the internet and investigate, like do his research, then come back and say, Hey, I found this, that, that, that, and we'll discuss. So here this man was that made it possible for me to even exist as I am. And you are telling me that I should not take care of me. Because I felt like, and for us, for those of us that have parents that had their own money, had their own career, the least I could do for this man was to take care of me. That's how I felt. Like I felt that I can't, I can never repay what he has done for me emotionally, you know, and you know when I especially when I got my went through my first divorce, my father was the one that bringed life back into me. Yeah, went to I and you, I can say it now, I I was almost suicidal. My first was that disappointment, that whole thing of failure and the cultural cultural pressure, I almost tried to kill myself. And it was my father that prayed life back into me. So for me, that was my chance to repay him because there was nothing else in this world I could do. So when they were talking to me, and oh, you're gonna lose money, then I looked at them and said, We're talking about life here.

Lola

Literal life.

Edujie

This is my and then and in and that two-year period I spent with my father, I got to really know this man and I got to have closure. And I also got to know myself. Yeah. Such that when I say my value, yes, I'm making significantly less than I've ever made.

Lola

But I'm actually yes, I and the influence you have where you are now. I mean, you're a leader in state government, you literally make decisions that are life and death. Yeah, I mean roads we build. Like I always it's very important work.

Edujie

And I always tell you I say you're the Bible that people read. Because that may not feel they feel comfortable walking up to you to ask you a question or say anything, but they're constantly watching you. Watching you. How do you carry yourself? Are you somebody there are people that walk up to me to tell me things that I'm like, why are you telling me? You have all that tell. No, we've I've been watching you, and you are somebody that I feel that if you tell me something, you're gonna tell me the truth. You know, and like you said, all those features or character I had that people were like, Oh, you do you two they do this one, you are two this, you are to this. And now the characteristics that people look at and they are like, I have had, I told you I just came back, I had young people walk up to me and say, Oh my god, you have piercings in your ears, because not typically Nigerian, red hair. And how I got here was a white man in uh South Carolina. I saw him with sleeved tattoos. I mean, I'm a cow, I don't like tattoos because I'm I'm too scared of the thing. And I looked, because I'm an artist.

Lola

Yeah, they signed up that's your artistic expression showing, yeah, for sure.

Edujie

And I always was like, I can't do this straight hair, briefcase, skirt suit every day. This is not me. This me, this is me. And these young people, you know, and he was the one that said, get your you know, your time, your time in, prove yourself, then you can be yourself. That was the first person that ever told me that. And so when I talk to the younger people, and they're like, Oh my god, you know, I first saw you, you know, as you were there, and you were interviewing us. And I used to remember even before this, I used to have a mohawk. Yeah. I was red and everything, and they'd be like, Oh my god, you know, it's so refreshing to see. And I keep and I I could give them that advice that was given to me, like, prove yourself first. When you're proven yourself, you can do whatever you want. Get that, make sure that whatever you're doing, you are true to yourself. So that you will now enter your your your evening of your life, or the early afternoon, or late afternoon evening of your life, and be like, uh-huh, this is who I am.

Lola

And that's the deprogram back to the deprogramming, reimagining what it means to thrive, because the social conditioning is success has to look a certain way. You have to look a certain way on the road to collecting this conventional success.

Edujie

Like, like for us as Nigerian women, I'm supposed to be married, I'm supposed to have kids. I've decided I don't want to be married. I mean, I've already tried it, and I actually and I'm not really alone. I have my friends. I have you, like I talk to you almost every day. So sometimes I'm why do people think I'm lonely? Yeah. There's this, oh, you you don't have children. And I'm like, I you know, the day I sat down, just like I sat down and realized like this is what makes me happy, or going back to private was not for me. It was comfortable. Same with children. I have gone through IVF. It's not because I, for lack of trying, when I was married, I went through that whole process. But one day I actually sat down. How I knew that I was changing was my last IVF cycle failed, and I was relieved. You know, here I'm in a room of women crying, you know, they're giving us all our results, and some people were like in tears all over the place. And I was there like, ah, thank God. And then I had to ask myself, I said, Come on, Duji, something wrong with you, because that's something I should want. And this was the IVF where I could select the sex of my child. I had gotten to that point where I could select the sex of my child. I sat down one day and I said, Hey, Duji, but honestly speaking, do you even want children? Or you have you always just, because everybody says you're nurturing, you have motherly tendencies, you've told yourself that that's what you must do. And I really sat down. I said, you know, what about my life? Had children in it. When I was in the private sector, I was constantly traveling. I was never, I was, in fact, I was, I, you know, it's like there was nothing that if I had stopped working, we wouldn't have eaten. You know, my so where would I have fixed? It's not like I had the kind of support system where, okay, if I had a child, okay, somebody will be there taking care of the child while I'm out hustling and getting the money. I would have been the one taking care of the child and probably taking care of your husband. You know what I mean? Like the whole construct and trying to keep everything looking a certain way, which I did for a long time because culturally it couldn't be seen a certain way, like success. It had to look good, everything polished. And so I sat down and I said, honestly speaking, why even I have children now. I've got children all over the place. I have nieces and nephews. What else am I looking for? And I realized that we are also very greedy for things that, and the fact that I didn't get price that, you know, sometimes God is trying to prevent something, and we are the ones pushing and pushing and pushing. We want this thing, we want this thing. Maybe God's saving my life because I'd already gone through fibroid surgery, you know, all the I was on very heavy drugs that pretty much changed my body. Only God knows what the long-term effects eventually will be of the things I put in my body.

Lola

Yeah, good as an IVF, yeah, for sure.

Edujie

One child. And when I made that decision, that was like it was like the load. I don't know what, I can't even explain it. It was like one spiritual load off my neck. With oh God, I said, God, thank you very much for the chance. And I only you know why. But and the minute I said that, I felt like a lot of the stress and the strain and all the wahala just went away. So even now, when people say, Ah, you want why don't you adopt? I just sit there and look at them. I'm like, you know, everybody get their own now. I like it doesn't bother me as much because before it bothered me not because I was like, Oh, I can't have a it bothered me more unless, like, why is everybody always projecting this thing on me? Like, I mean, while the people projecting on none of them is gonna help me.

Lola

That's for sure. That's for sure.

Edujie

So when I say I'm in my selfish era, circling back to what I said, the latest one is ah, you need to have a child, or you unless you'll be alone, who would all this stuff you are acquiring, who will you give it to? There's still that conversation. Ah, you don't want to be alone, no. And I look at this people, I said, Do you know how many people have children that their children don't talk to them? Do you know how many people give all their children are dead? In this life is guaranteed, though. I said, So I said, when I'm gone now, there are people that I will give it to, but this notion that ah, you can't be alone, you have to get married. Ah, you have to. I'm like, have to.

Lola

Who says? Who says? And the truth is back to you know, read redefining what success looks like, reimagining now what it means to thrive. You have to get to the point where, okay, this is my new normal. You have to mourn the death of whatever previous expectations you had, because if you don't, the world can crush you.

Edujie

Oh, yeah.

Lola

And they will yeah, and they will gladly do it. I remember a story you told me when you were walking your dog and you were minding your own business, and someone just said something very, very mean to you about not having children.

Edujie

He has a dog. And in fact, they didn't even say it in English, they said in Idibo. It was a friend who heard it that, you know, was got fled up. And so, you know, why are you fled? It was at a one-year-old child's birthday party, actually. We're in a pack. And the person that said it, you know, came with a gang of kids that he didn't even look like he was even taking care of his own. And the our friend, the family friend, fled up, like, how dare you say such a thing? You don't even know what people are going through. And I had to calm him down, like, look, those things won't bother me anymore. Because even the person, I'm one of those kinds of people, whenever somebody says something, I always look at the person talking. Because a lot of it is project, you know, because you know, in our culture, it's projection. A lot of people project to you on you what they are going through. So that whole you're projecting on me, and I'm looking at your kids that you brought with you, and you don't look like you take care of the ones you even have, and you're worried about me with my dog, I'm the list of your problems, dude. There's nothing about your life that I'm envious of, but obviously you seeing me living like this is bothering you. And I had to tell my friend, you know, the family friend that, hey, you know, I we get it, you know, you know what we're going through, but don't take it too personally. Because, like when I say our people are sociopaths, psychopaths, like the things they say, you can be sick right now, going through chemo, bubble, oh, we're gonna pray for you, it will go away. I'm like, come. It's the same thing when my dad was dying. Oh, we will fast and pray. I'm like, look, my father is dying. Don't tell me things that don't make sense. You know it doesn't make sense. It's better for you not to even talk at all. Because all that fasting and praying, shouldn't you have been fasting and praying before he got sick? What am I gonna do with your fasting and praying? Because I mean, yes, they mean well. I'm sure he said it, you know, Nigerians sometimes don't think before they talk. He said it more or less like, you know, maybe he thought that will, you know, make me go have a kid. I don't know what he was thinking, but that is how our people are. And when I say I'm in my selfish era, I'm in an era now where things that used to affect me because I'm an empath, you know, they say whatever you hear, it comes, it hits you in the heart when you're an empath. It comes straight to me. They don't do that to me anymore. So even when people call me, oh, ah, you won't go and have a child, go and adopt, or go and do this. I just it to me, I just laughed. It's like, I mean, what else were you?

Lola

Yeah, for me, it looked like, especially when I had the second child who was on the spectrum. I think I told you, and this is in the book, how someone approached me and said that maybe I'm not praying enough. That's why my daughter is autistic with intellectual disability. So, in other words, it's something I did. Yeah, it just came out so I really do think this is a God thing. I came out and I said, Okay, maybe instead of you assuming I didn't pray enough, maybe this is my ministry. Like, maybe this is my ministry. Did you ever think about that?

Edujie

Remember, I told you that. I said, I said, this, whatever it is, you know, this is going to be your ministry. Because culturally, you are helping a lot of people in our culture because dealing with kids with disabilities or or or developmental issues in our culture is they pretend like it doesn't exist. And you have a lot of mothers who, you know, maybe their husbands are still there, their husbands left them because they found out the child was autistic or something happening, and they're at their wits' ends, they don't know what resources are available to them, and then culturally, they don't have people to see and say, Hey, I have a question. How are you? Because it's it's different. Like if I go to an American and I ask the question, I'm not gonna get the kind of answer I'm trying to get. Because if I ask you as a Nigerian, you know what angle I'm coming from. Yeah.

Lola

The culture, Nigeria, we come with culture first.

Edujie

Yeah. Because it's always culture first. So even as educated and as even we that are this generation educated, we too will do some things that would be like, oh my, it's not culture, that culture and how they affect me. Like it's the culture that we always come with. So when you see a Nigerian doing something that is typically frowned upon or is not usual, for those who are going through it in silence, they they're paying attention. They have their eyes are like when I say you are the Bible that people read, they're watching you closely. And when I said you are the you are you're what you're doing is a ministry, because you, like you said, you have reimagined what it's like to be a professional woman with two children now in their teens. You know, your husband is also working, both of you are navigating your careers, your children, and at different stages. But I've watched you from I've known you before you were even married, yeah, to children, all of that. And where you are now is like, my God, you know, I I you inspire me too, because it's like, ah, this girl has been through it, and then here she is now in the next phase of what it is. Every step of the way, it has not been an easy one, but every step of the way you have re-redefined who you are. You you it's still not done. You're still re- you know, redefining and redefining, and even for me, it's like, okay, I'm inspired. Oh thank you, friend. Thank you, sir. Why can't you redefine who I am at each step of the way and make it work for me? And I've watched you that and and when you know, I call you more like you're like a younger sister to me because I don't have sister, and it's like, wow, if I had a younger sister, that is how I would react to everything. And then in my mind, I'm like, okay, as an older sister, how can I inspire my younger sister to keep going, keep going back wherever you want, always be in the mood.

Lola

Yeah, and I think both of us, yes, different journeys and different challenges, but I think what we can both as we walk along this life journey together as very close friends is walking away from the idea of perfection and walking into wholeness. It's so important because the goal in life is not to be perfect, it really is to be whole. It's one of my favorite quotes, it's from Jane Fonda, and it's so true because the moment you let go of some idea of what perfect is supposed to look like is where the good stuff is, on the other hand. It really, really is.

Edujie

Because when you realize it's your life, you get to write how it, you know, we didn't get to write how it began, get to write the middle portion of it, but you get to write how it ends. And the minute I realize that, I'm like, wait a second, where do you come? And I think watching my father die also opened something up in me because I realized like this is somebody who had done so much, you know, he died at 76, but he had done so much, but at the end, he had to face death alone. So that means that even after you've done all this stuff, you've met all the when the time comes, you may be surrounded by loved ones. Then the question then becomes, How did you live? So that's an eye-opener for me. Like, you know what? I need to do a better job of living. So that when that, you know, I can just be like, Okay, I'm good now. You know, it doesn't matter how I started, maybe the middle was a little bit choppy, but how I end this thing is me. That's why, even as I enter my 50s, I'm like, okay, now I don't I've done the first half. I've I've given of myself, I've done everything our daughter is supposed to do. La la la, okay, fine, good. Now let me do the rest of this. And in even in your case, I'm like, I'm seeing you more now, like it's me, my family, this family I created. Yeah. How do we move this forward? And I also see how your son sees you are showing him, you know, and and like like what my father told me, he said, you have to be deliberate. So when we talk about your lane, what you see as success, and what you see as you have to be deliberate. These are things that you deliberately create. Deliberately create the lane you want to see yourself in, you deliberately create what you see as success to you, yeah. And then you create where you see, like, where is this going? That's your, you know, and we all need to understand and realize that some people do, some people never do, yeah, and some people realize it too late. But for those of us that God has given the grace to the awakening, for the awakening to happen, your eyes to be open now, it's like, okay, God, I get it now.

Lola

And self-awareness is such a spiritual gift, it really, really is, and it's also a walk, a continuous walk.

Edujie

It is that, and even people's walk with God is different.

Lola

Yeah.

Edujie

And I thought that I don't have to go to a church. Every all of us have experienced God in different ways that makes us how we are, or whatever you believe in, or whatever that keeps you going. I won't even judge anybody on that because you know everybody's experience is different. But I will say for those of us who are believers, it deliberates how you're like where we are now is the lane created. We've been in several lanes, but now we created the lane that is unique to us, and we are holding on to God that we're going in the direction of how it should go for us. So what I'm saying is we're in different lanes from how we started. So we started with the conventional, you know, is the box, the what society puts us in. And like I said, some of us, by the grace of God, will create our own lane, our own future, our own destiny, everything. And then some people will stay in that box because it's comfortable to be in that box. It's it's it's you know, it's not easy being who we are because we're constantly having society push back on us, you know, because it's not conventional. Like how we look is not conventional. You know, and we're we're women, we're black women with natural hair in corporate society, you know, in out there, you know, we're visible, and we don't have the stereotypical, I mean my I'm big, but you know, full-bodied, you know, like I have my African features are very much there. I'm not even hiding. And then society is telling you every day go back into that box that we put you in, and we are saying no. And and we look, we are happier, healthier, because I cannot tell you how your nervous system is significantly affected when you are so. Pressing a lot of that, you know, you want to just scream, and then everybody just telling you to keep it in, keep it in. And so, and I think our mothers look at us, and there's a bit of envy there because you are living the way they would have wanted to live, but they were so confined by the society, the culture, and everything that they just, you know, you know, I'm looking at my mom now. Maybe this is when her free era, because you know, my dad is gone, so she's not constrained by a lot of those societal things, but she's now living, and this is she was married to my dad when she was what, 22? And she's 72, 73 now. Wow. Yeah, is when she's now rediscovering herself after change and all what not. There's a level of grace to be given, but also accountability in that okay, fine, but you still need to be held responsible for the things you've done. I also am holding myself responsible for the things I'm done and and creating this new lane. So, what we talk about what you see as success for yourself, she is redefining for herself. Your mom is redefining, like they are redefining because they're the first women we knew.

Lola

Yeah, absolutely.

Edujie

If for themselves, what they see as what they their vision now. I don't know what that is, but for us in our generation, we are now redefining what success is, hoping that it also for those young ones coming after us, they now see that you can be yourself and you can like, like I said, all those qualities we were told, all the qualities I was told were negative about me are the qualities that are helping me where I am now. Oh, yeah. It it's funny because obviously you don't think of empathy and authenticity in engineering or lawyering, but it's funny that we're both in leadership positions now, and those are the qualities that get called out now that were viewed once upon a time as not so ideal. No, it's not. And like I said, as a person of color in some of these spaces, you are expected to just be happy that they let you in. When you come in there, you walk in the room, and you know, you you I love color. You color, ah, you know, you just say things, and everybody's like, whoa, you're free. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people pushing back against you is the I should, you know, why should you be free? Why don't you just fit into this? And you are like, I'm calm, I'm okay with myself. I'm not ashamed of what I've had to go through to even get to this point because this is the real me, this is who I am, and there's more of need to for me to find out about like and discover stuff. And your children are seeing that, people around you are seeing it. Some people like it, some people don't, but it's okay. Yeah. But you are yourself, and even among our mates, there are some of them that long to have that level of freedom because you know they've sort of kind of boxed themselves in where they don't even feel they feel that it's too late for them to get out of what they've put themselves into. But that's a journey that they have to go through.

Lola

And it's individual for everybody, the deprogramming process to really look around and ask yourself, is this what I really want? For me, the pandemic was a stage where it that's when I launched the podcast. That's when all of these things happened. So I became this lawyer. Yeah.

Edujie

And the pandemic did two different things for very different people. If you were not already honest with yourself, or you didn't already know yourself, the pandemic was helpful. But in your case, the pandemic helped you to actually like come out of yourself, like discover other aspects of yourself and and tap into things that you, you know, when you know, when we were always working, working, working five days a week, we never really stopped. Yeah, the pandemic was that brick wall. Yeah, yeah. That a lot of people, you know, recovered from it some and learned what they needed to learn and discover, we discovered themselves. Some people that wall hit them so hard, they just never, in fact, they reverted further into whatever it was that they were originally. So the older I get, the more I realize that you know what, really, it's it's what you want out of life. It's like it's it's still your story to write. It's your it's your perspective about this life that you've been put on. Yeah. So you can make the conscious decision to create your idea of success. But for me, when I say my value system change, when I was younger, it was like, oh, money, I'm making money and traveling. Now I'm like, I like my house, Joe. I like stay. I like peace, you know, like peace was the biggest thing for me. Like, and peace came for me, came with taking it easy, slowing down significantly. It's not like it's not that serious. In fact, I've added that to my it's like promo, it's not that serious, right? It's not it's not that it's not serious. I keep an eye on it.

Lola

Going to get myself worked up and completely back to what you said earlier about a regulated nervous system. You get to a certain age, it's like peace of mind and a regulated nervous system is a form of wealth. It really is.

Edujie

It really, really is healthy now because now we are at the age where family illnesses start showing up that I was a six mile-a-day runner, and then now all of a sudden I'm like, man, where are all these things coming from? Like you wake up in the point pain, all these other things, and so your focus now is like, look, look, I don't have the energy for things, I need to be healthy and in the right frame of mind and make sure I take care of you know myself and things around me. So my idea of success, yeah, it could change next, but it's okay. Yeah, because that's the whole point of it. It's like I there's no real it hasn't finished. I'm still a work in progress. I'm done with the lane. That was the first one. I I now know what lane I want to be in. Um where was the second one?

Lola

What redefining success.

Edujie

I have redefined what I consider successful me. The third one is where I am right now, and that one is ever changing.

Lola

Yeah, reimagining what it means to thrive.

Edujie

What does it mean to thrive for me? It's okay. Today for me, thriving is my peace of mind, taking a walk, getting my steps in, yeah, looking for thanking God for what God has given me. Tomorrow it's maybe something else, and tomorrow something else, but that I'm okay with. But the first two I want to believe I used the morning and the afternoon of my life to take care of and maybe those things that I went through and like you you did go through too are what was what prepared me for the third phase of this journey that we're on. And I'm very happy where I have because now I'm at a stage where I know who I am, I know what I want, and I now I know what to do to get there. It's a process, I guess it may take me a little longer than because some people were lucky to got a head start, some of us learned it later, but it's okay.

Lola

We're all on different journeys.

Edujie

Yeah, well, different journeys. So I'm at that third stage, and for me, next year is what marks that third stage for me. It's like that, you know, is that milestone, like okay, flag in the ground, 50 5-0 baby. And you know, and things have happened recently in my family that have you know put in perspective, like um, you know, you nobody is guaranteed forever. That's true, whatever you know, time God gives you. And like I said, as people of faith, we always move with God first. So that's what gives us the comfort, like me personally, that's what gives me the confidence to move because I'm always like, well, God, I'm going in this direction, please leave. If it's not that direction, slowly guide towards the direction. So far, God has been gracious. So, you know, and and I'm learning also to just give everybody their own grace because we're all on different journeys, and what it looks like to everybody is different. Where do you want your story to end? Like, how do you want your story to be told, and how do you want it to end?

Lola

Yeah.

Edujie

That when you are taking your last breath and you're all by yourself, your life is flashing through your eyes. Like, can you honestly say, you know what, it was a good one? You know, and as women, I think women need to, it's an extra layer to, you know, men have the I don't know anything about what men go through, but as a woman and how we were raised and how we were conditioned, this is a very crucial time to be. It's a very crucial time of our lives, and and I think it's very important that we take that into consideration, take a breath. Even even, yeah, we will stumble, but I've I've come to embrace stumbling as part of this journey and not beat myself up over a pendulum. I'm a I am a perfectionist or a recovering one. And I'm learning that there's no such thing. There isn't. And that it's okay for something to not be perfect, because maybe that's what makes it perfect. That is or that it's unique in itself, that it's not what I want it to be.

Lola

I realized how much in my life I had delayed because waiting for something to look like my version of what perfect was supposed to be. Yeah, I waited to launch this podcast, I waited to do so many things. And this podcast, meaning the previous version of this podcast, not your mama's autism. I I waited on a lot of things when I should have just put one little step in front of the other, and I started doing that.

Edujie

We were conditioned to be anxious because the not to fail.

Lola

Yeah.

Edujie

There was no, I don't even think I knew what it was like not to fail. Like that's why when I failed, my first major failure was marriage. So when I failed, like you see, I'm using the word failed. Yeah. But I felt like I had failed. I mean, this was something I was supposed to get, you know, it was like open book exam. I was supposed to pass. So I took it, I embodied that failure like me. I have every other thing I've ever done, I've accomplished. You know, if I wanted to be first in class, I was first. If I wanted to, and then this one thing I failed. It was that first failure that allowed me to deal with the second one, so-called failure. Because then it was, you know, it happens. It's not because it's not about lack of trying, but that was how I handled it, because we were, and so that when that whole anxiety, I was I was always the kind of person that I would measure a thousand times and I still wouldn't curse. Because after that cut was the mistake I didn't want to make. So rather than try it, I would rather not even touch it at all. So I didn't have to deal with failure. And our culture sort of kind of conditions us into that mentality where you're too scared to try things because you are scared of failing, and then the backlash that comes from the so-called failure, because what would people say? Well, my parents have to deal with the embarrassment, and at the end of the day, you realize my hair so what you know, but you tried it, yeah.

Lola

Yeah, yeah. I I had a friend recently give me some interesting type of ultimatum and tell me that now that she's going through a divorce, if I want to stop talking to her, just let her know. And I was shocked that she would even bring that up. But it just shows the societal pressure on women and marriage and how you internalize it and think it's hold the marriage.

Edujie

Don't because you know she might affect your marriage. And I'm like, what does that have to do with anything? I'm not affecting anybody, I'm living my life, JJ, but you've already said on me things that don't make any sense, or oh, you know, don't not invite me. Some people don't invite me to baby showers.

Lola

Yeah.

Edujie

Because they think that oh, to make me depressed. I'm like, the Bible says rejoice with those who rejoice, cry with yeah. It hasn't even gotten into what you've already taught it for me. You know, it's like, well, what is wrong with people? Like, but then I realized it's the culture. I had to undo that anxiety because I I didn't realize that all that was making me anxious. I had a lot of anxiety issues because of that cultural pressure. Once I got out of my lane and I was like, and I'm gonna take this thing all the way, I no longer cared.

Lola

So much of life is how you metabolize trauma, grief, getting back up again after things you had not planned for. And if you never tell your kids that things will come, they won't know. Part of this life is helping them cope because it's just a matter of time. Everyone goes through something.

Edujie

Look, I've been depressed for five years. I mean, I told you that. I said depression shows up differently for different people. I was still functioning, going to work, doing, I would lab, you know, like but until this is the first year. Like when I told you, this was the year, the 550 year of my dad's passing that I actually traveled and hung out with friends and everything. And I realized, I'm like, wow, I have been depressed, you know, and this is not something anybody prepares you for because I always thought, ah, okay, sadness is one thing, you know, that I just blow it up, you know. But yes, I was depressed. Constantly not wanting to get out of bed or getting out of bed and just barely being there, you know, checked out emotionally and mentally, and just using, you know, you and I use laughter a lot. You know, people just thought we're laughing all the time that everything is well, but that's the only way I know how to deal with situations. I just laugh at the situation or the absurdity of the situation or make a joke out of it. Yeah. It's just laughter has always been the way I've dealt with it. There are some things I would say that, you know, they seem funny to people, but anybody who knows me really well is like, okay, Edge is, you know, she's saying something. And um it's just I finally realized, oh, so this is what I was going through. Because I needed time to process what it was. I was grieving, and my grief took longer than than I guess most other people, you know. Do you think so though? I guess no, well, maybe maybe they'd handle this in different ways from directly linked to the cause of the grief.

Lola

Yeah, because the death of a parent to a present parent, an emotionally available parent, I don't think anyone gets over that.

Edujie

You you never get over it. I get I have moments. I'm still gonna, I'm not moments. Come on, you know, my dad died at home. So right, um, I have moments. Yeah, I mean, there are times even even when somebody will say something and I'll just like my brain will start. But my grief now is not as bad as it was early on. I mean, like now I I I I have a sense of grief, but there's also a sense of okay, it's okay. It's okay to I felt guilty because like you're talking about being a caregiver. When you're a life caregiver, like there's still a guilt to everything. Because it's always like, oh, maybe if I'd done things, you know, even though yes, you do realize it's not your fault, or the buttons there's always this maybe I could have done more, maybe I could do more. Your case, your lifetime caregiving even extends to your brother.

Lola

But it's literally a lifetime, that's why I call it a lifetime caregiver.

Edujie

You're still dealing with because you're not even in a position to help.

Lola

Yeah. Because most people, it's seasonal caregiving. Mine was lifetime.

Edujie

Whatever. You know, you've been doing it since you were you were young, and then now it became, you know, it's your own children, but you still have your brother. So it's like people don't seem to understand it, and that was why you reacted the way you did when it was diagnosing your children. Because you you saw what happened with your brother, and you know, it's like is that overcorrection?

Lola

Yeah, yeah. I feel like it's a good it's a good, hmm. My parents grieved Kunle. I grew up with Kunle. I think I I grieved an existence where I thought my parents were going to get it together. I really, I really, really, really, really thought that they would get it together so that I could be fully present raising my own kids, and I wouldn't have to think about also caring for my brother in the way I will likely have to. I think I grieved the way I wanted my parents to be. My grief is even though they're both still alive, I'm grieving the parents I thought they were going to grow into, if I'm being honest. Instead, it's more of a realization through writing this memoir, through quite frankly, sitting down with a therapist as I was writing it, is how much generational trauma I carried, both the one I was conscious of and the one the generations that came before me that I still don't know what trauma my mom and dad went through, but I know I'm carrying that too because of how they've been acting.

Edujie

And I, you know, I have my little thing dedicated to my father in my living room. I saw and I'll have a conversation with my father, like, what how was your life? How much did you make sure you didn't transfer to us? Because I wasn't first cousin when I talk to them and they talk about our parents were supposedly raised together, right? They weren't raised the way we were raised. And I'm saying to myself, okay, your dad, you know, some of them were like, Oh, their dads were abusive, and they was these are my dad's brothers, and I'm looking at them later, hand on me. My dad never called me a name. So, how much of his generational stuff did he unload?

Lola

Exactly. And we'll never know. I was at that's a great point. I was talking to Tosa about this recently. It's like, I know my dad leapfrogged a lot, I know he did, because you know he leapfrogged poverty because we grew up upper middle class, we never wanted for anything, but my dad, both his parents passed by the time he was 13. There's a lot of trauma he's holding that I will never know because he grew up at a time where they don't men don't really talk about those things, and then my mom was the child of divorce, which in Nigeria in the 50s and 60s was like an abomination.

Edujie

Wow.

Lola

So I know she carries that shame and guilt. So part of her leapfrogging was she thought she had to keep her marriage together no matter what. So I know they leapfrog things, and then so when you're raising the next generation, they don't know the gap, they just know the evidence, but they don't know. So now, once you now pass the baton, hopefully, if you do this right, there's less of a load. You don't want to give them more of a load, you want to give them less. Not that they won't carry a load, but it will be less by God's grace.

Edujie

Well, that's why being deliberate, and and when I say I'm proud of you, I've watched you deliberately create the life, like you know, you've made conscious decisions to leave what's that trauma is behind. Yes, yes, you've gone through some of that trauma. Yeah, how you have chosen to deal with it and not transfer it to your children, and also explaining to your children what that was.

Lola

Yeah.

Edujie

Because now they like especially he's coming of age, some things now you you can tell him so he better understands. This is why mommy is the way she is. Yeah. This is why daddy and mommy may do things a little differently. Yeah. This is why, you know, like, you know, so that moving forward, you know, it it doesn't transfer on. And even with me, I'm I'm hoping that, you know, when my nieces and nephews get old enough and they start asking questions, I'm in the position to say, okay, now you're ready to know what you want to know. And I can tell you um what I know, what I found out when I asked, what this is why things are the way they are. But I do I do notice, like, we either take it forward with you or you decide to make it, but it's a deliberate effort. And when we talk about talk about breaking generational chains or curses, that's what we're talking about. Just because it happened. I, you know, I used to watch my dad. My dad was very introspective, he was very reserved, he measured his words. And I always wondered, and everybody that knew my dad before, we came along, they're like, Oh, your dad was hot and third. Your dad was, I couldn't see it. I never that man didn't raise his voice, never raised his hand, never did like so. For me, it was like everybody that knew you way back says one thing about you, but you made a conscious decision not to be that thing. So, and he was always like, You have to be deliberate. He always said, He said, You have to be deliberate. You can't say, Oh, that's how it's always been. This is what you have to now make a conscious decision, is how you want to do this thing. I said, and I made a conscious decision that my children, I was not going to abuse you, I was not gonna, they said I breathed life into you, you know, I, you know, I I made it and I told God I wasn't gonna do that. I, you know, yes, because I wasn't perfect, but I didn't, I deliberately didn't do that. And so even in my own life now, I'm trying to use that same principle of being honest with myself, trying to be as honorable as I can, I'm not perfect, but just being okay and and and being deliberate, everything I do, I'm being deliberate. Like I'm being conscious of living like this, I'm being conscious of how I look, how I carry myself, how I speak, like being deliberate. And breaking generational curses comes with that. It's it's like I'm like when I say I'm proud of you, I'm proud of how because I've I've known you now, what, 20 something, yeah? Well, you know, we look back and we laugh now, but there are some times that things were not as easy as they are. But where you are now and where I see you being, I'm so proud of you because you know, you have faded your own lane. Your you and your husband have created your family, that unit, and how it works for you. Consider you don't, you didn't really have proper guidance, but you've created something that works for you. And I am always amazed at how you make it work. Remember, I told you somebody told me, somebody told me watching you guys, like, you are not a teacher. Nigerian households.

Lola

We are very weird, and that's okay.

Speaker

Yeah, but you know, it's like when you say Olley Ink.

Lola

Olley Incorporated, baby. Ollie Inc.

Edujie

Yeah, that makes sense. Like it works. But you guys have made you've taken the stigma, in my opinion, out of autism as it is. Because you are the first person, it was through Kunley, I knew about autism. I'll be very honest with you. I'd never mostly Nigeria people hide their family members. You didn't hide that from me. In fact, when I first met you, you were very direct. Oh, I have a brother. And then it was through you. And I started reading up on autism and what it was about, and like, wow, okay, I didn't even know. And you're upfront about it, you never hit him. When you go on ride, you'll be in the back, and you know, you'll be like DJ Kunle on the ones and twos. I mean, like, I after all that, I'm just like, this is so not Nigerian, you know, and even your your your your ministry started then. Because even me, when I talk to people about autism, I'm always like, oh, you know, and whatever I learn from you, I'm always like trying to inspire you. So think about your ministry. You you you don't even know you're educating people who are educating other people, you know, who are educating other people because knowledge is power. A lot of people don't know because it's not what they're exposed to. And then with your children, I also learned something new with your kids and how you've handled that. And I'm just like, wow, okay, you know, this is a ministry that's just growing and growing, and there are a lot of people looking to you and looking at you and saying, How is she doing it? And it's not like you're hiding, you're not hiding anything, we're very open with information, but the sacrifices you have made, how many people are willing to do that? Because where you end up is depending on what sacrifices you're willing to make, because you can sit here and complain about how life has liked you, but there are certain things you're gonna have to do to get from this point to that point. A lot of people are not willing to make those sacrifices. Are you willing to sit at home and leave your nice position job to sit at home with your children for like so many years with aggressive therapy? Yeah, not earning like after after going through all that to get a job, only to leave the job, leave your house, leave everything.

Lola

And then having to start all, I had to start all over again in a new state, and I was underemployed for a while. I was underemployed. I had these degrees, I couldn't, it was a journey. It was a journey.

Edujie

Go through all that, and then you are where you are now. You deserve to be where you are now. God is now replenishing what you lost. So for me, it's like, okay, even when I talk to people, I'm like, okay, are you willing to do all this? Because it's one thing and say, Oh, this is the problem when you're talking to me. But then it's like, okay, these are all the steps to get to here. Are you willing? And they're like, ah, that one's too much. So it's like, okay, then the truth is you have to do what it takes. I said, but I've watched somebody do what it takes. And I like you said, in grieving your parents, yeah, you're grieved what they didn't weren't willing to do to get where you have gotten to. So it's like if you can't even make the sacrifice, life life's everybody, but you have to make certain sacrifices to go from this point to this point. And a lot of people they don't want to make they they complain, yeah, but they don't want to make the necessary changes or the sacrifices to get there. Some of them watch you and admire you, and they won't even ask you, hey, what are the resources available to me so that I can take advantage of them? They just sit there and they wallow and okay. Ministry, they can preach the gospel to you. How you take the gospel and use it is all to you now. And you know, and how you live your life, and why I'm so proud of you is you are showing people that life does not end because your what you you envisioned, your plan, what you call that success did not happen the way or it didn't come in wrapped in the package you expected it to be wrapped in. Now, this is what it is. Okay, what next? What can that look like? And you are showing people what that can look like from your perspective, and then for them to give them the opportunity to create what it should look like in from their perspective. So you inspire me. I mean, my selfish era, I'm like, okay, big auntie, I've got kids to take care of, auntie needs to make the money. So when the children come, you know, it's almost time for university smoothies. Okay, where are my kids at? What are we doing? So keep up what you're doing. I believe you're pretty much you're almost at the third third leg of what where you are. You know, you've you've carved out your own lane and you've gone far. Let's take it back, quite honestly. I think that uh you've passed this Lola 2.0.

Lola

Solidly a lola 3.0, at least.

Edujie

At least you're quadratic. Done a lot. Like and and what I like is the self-improvement, you know, how you've you've you've faced your demons and head on, you know, it's not an easy thing, you know, it but you face your demons and you've accepted who you are, where you came from, and how far you've come and where you're going.

Lola

And and the journey continues one day at a time, one day at a time.

Edujie

And those children are are blessed to have um proud, proud of my nephew, even my niece. My niece surprises me every time. Yeah, so just keep up what you're doing, and uh, we'll be here to cheer you on, even in the nursing home. Thanks, sis. Thanks until next time.

Lola

Thank you for joining me on Unapologetically Whole. My hope is that something you heard today offered you some space to breathe, reflect, and feel seen. If this episode resonated with you, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It helps this community grow. And if you want to stay connected, visit loladadaali.com, l-ol e y dot com to sign up for my monthly newsletter, purchase my upcoming book, Unapologetically Whole, or learn how to bring me to your next event as a speaker. Until next time, I'm Lola Dada Ali, and this is Unapologetically Whole.

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Lola Dada-Olley

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