Swell AI Transcript: Marquette L Walker.mp4

Deneen L. Garrett 00:02 00:17 Hey, hey, hey, everybody. Welcome back to Women of Color, an Intimate Conversation. This week's guest is Marquette L. Walker. She is a talented speaker and advocate for personal growth and resilience. Marquette, tell us more about you.
Marquette L. Williams 00:19 00:53 Yeah, absolutely. First and foremost, Deneen, I would like to say thank you and I honor you for allowing me to be a part of this amazing platform. So who is Marquette L. Walker? Well, God has entrusted me with many of hats. I am a mother. I'm a wife. I am a Gigi. I don't want to say grandma yet, but I'm a Gigi. I'm also a inspirational coach, a motivational speaker. I'm a minister. I am an author. Let's see, what else am I? A lover of people.

Deneen L. Garrett 00:55 01:31 You are all the beautiful things, everything that God put in you, right? You're walking in your path. Absolutely. Absolutely. Love it. Love it. Love it. Okay, so you did mention why actually before we go there. So today's the name of this conversation. This episode is empowering others finding strength and serving and making a difference. which is what Marquette and I are going to talk about. So Marquette, you did mention that you're a wife, but I also noticed that you went through a divorce and you say divorce, but not defeated. So let's talk about that. Let's start there.

Marquette L. Williams 01:32 02:25 Absolutely. So let me tell you, so my story is not heard of, but you do read about her in the Bible. I am currently married, but I've been married four times prior. And I tell people, I said, if you heard of the woman at the well, I used to ask God, who do I align with in the Bible? And he dropped in my spirit, the woman at the well, the woman at the well was married five times. And I was like, wow, and not even realizing that. But anyway, yes, I've been married five times. I'm currently married to my one and forever, my fifth and forever, I should say. Yes, and when I say divorced but not defeated, because I've been married so many times and divorced so many times, but I still was not defeated. God still met me at the well and allowed me to be married for the fifth time.

Deneen L. Garrett 02:26 03:03 And so what I love about that is that you did not get you know you didn't give up on love you kept at it right until you got to that fifth time that Cinco. tempo. You know, and this is your fifth and final that's what we'll call it is. Absolutely. All right. All right. So let me ask this. What would you have told yourself prior to marriage number one? What have you learned with all the marriages and especially the one that you're in currently? What would you have told yourself before marriage number one?

Marquette L. Williams 03:04 03:51 So first I want to tell myself is to learn what marriage is. So I was born and raised in the church. So all I saw coming up as all these happy marriages in church. Everybody was so loving. They were kissing, holding hands and just loving. And I said, one day that's going to be me. But I fell in love with the idea of marriage, what I saw or what it looks like. So I will tell myself now or tell anyone that's going through what I've been through is to wait and get to know yourself first and foremost, deal with any issues that are in your past that's causing you to think the way you think or move the way you move. And then I would say, just be patient, be patient at first, grow yourself, know who you are and whose you are.

Deneen L. Garrett 03:53 05:29 Right, that part. And you know what? Knowing yourself is key to everything, right? Whether we're talking about relationships, whether we're talking about careers, you know, entrepreneurship, et cetera, knowing yourself. And I don't think we spend enough time on getting to know ourselves. We just go through the motions, right? We just move, you know, and don't necessarily get to know ourselves. So we'll talk a little bit more about that, but I wanna kind of hang out in this area a little bit longer because, you know, you said what you saw, so your experience with marriage was seeing happy marriages, which is great. My experience was that I saw my grandparents, right? They were married, they were happily married, But that's about it. Right. I didn't really have any other examples to look to. My father died as well. Okay. You know, before, before he died, of course, you know, well, my parents had a good relationship. However, after that, the only model that I had were my grandparents. And for me, that was just like, okay, that's a given your grandparents are like that. Right. I really didn't see anything else. I didn't have any other examples. So for me, marriages is not something that I really even thought about. And even to this day, is not like something that, oh, I aspire to be married. So with the four men previously, right? And I think this is important. Those men, I don't know whether they're remarried, et cetera, but is it, was it a timing issue? Like today, if those men were single, if they are single, they are good for somebody. They just weren't good for you at that time. Would you?

Marquette L. Williams 05:29 07:54 Yes. So I tell women that it's not that they're bad men. We just get them in a wrong season. Everyone has to go through a journey and that does not make you bad because you made bad decisions right then. That just means you just made some bad decisions. You didn't think about it or whatever. But a lot of times we get men and we just get them in the wrong season and they have not grown yet. They have not matured yet. Don't even understand what it means to be a husband. But I don't want to even leave it there. I want to talk about where I played a part in. For me, I had to start peeling back the layers after number three. By the time I got to number three, like, oh, hold on, something is wrong. And I remember my dad telling me, you know, marriages have their ups and downs. They have their ins and outs. I'll give you the first and I'll even give you the second but the third one there's got to be something wrong with you. Right. And let me tell you that was made the light bulb go off, but the example that I had was church, not even my mom and my dad because The childhood trauma carried me, followed me all throughout my marriage. So I tell people I was just bleeding on people, but let me just step back to that childhood trauma that I carry is that my dad and my mom got a divorce. They were married for 18 years. So I was 11 years old. And one thing for sure, children do not ever want to see their parents get a divorce. They don't care how ugly it gets. Y'all better stay together. You know, they want their parents to be together. And, and just sometimes it just does not work out that way. And so I carry, Resentment, rejection, abandonment, the stuff that my mom felt, I internalize that and I carry that on and I never healed from that. So I'm entering in these marriages broken. So what happens? Broken people attract broken people. Hurt people attract hurt people. So even though I might have attracted them in their wrong season, I was even in my wrong season. I was hurt and jacked up, right? And so I wasn't even healed. So that's why it took so many marriages before. And God was trying to show me by the time I got to three, but I still didn't understand what to do with the downloads that he was giving me. My childhood was chasing me, but I was steady running away. When it tries to get us to a point of healing, but we won't. We were like, oh, no, I'm good. I'm good. And you just keep moving. And yeah, so that's what happened with that. I just got them in the wrong season.

Deneen L. Garrett 07:54 08:33 And what's key of what you said, so those who are watching or listening, what's key is two things. One, They were in wrong seasons. She was also in wrong season. Right. So you have to look at both. And she eventually recognized she was in the wrong season after getting in tune with herself, which again is so key. We all need to take that time to get in tune with ourself. which we'll come back to when we talk about the power in a pause, because, you know, that's kind of what we talk about, pause and take time for yourself. So the experiences that you had, okay, so why marriage and not just boyfriend, girlfriend? Is it because of the influence of the church or what?

Marquette L. Williams 08:35 09:27 Yes, so I was born and raised in the church. I mean, I probably came out right in the church. That's how close I was. So yes, but that's all I knew. That's all I knew was church, church, church, church. It was Sunday school, Sunday worship, Sunday evening, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, even revival convention, all that. I knew all that and that's all I see and that's all that we understood. And the bad thing about it is, Um, the church didn't even come to my rescue at that time and said, wow, she's on number three. Uh, you know, let's help her. Um, but that, that didn't take place. So that's that back then the church, I felt that's what we were failed by the church. And so even the church, you have to deal with the incorporate, you have to deal with it. But mainly mine's, uh, was from church because I, what I was taught and what I was raised on.

Deneen L. Garrett 09:28 10:01 Yeah, and so what we are talking about is resilience, which is where we're going to jump into it and inner strength, which is where we're going to go in a moment, but I do want to ask this question because again there's somebody else listening watching who's having this experience right. or who had the experience and still trying to figure out, you know, how do they kind of work their self out of it? Do you wish that the church had a stepped in? Like, if you look at how you are today, like everything you've gone through today, do you wish they had stepped in? Or is it more so like, you know what? I understand that I went through what I went through because I needed to.

Marquette L. Williams 10:03 10:28 So some part of me say I wish they would have stepped in, but let me tell you, I always, I'm a firm believer of God does not put more on you than you can bear. I know a lot of times we get ourselves into things, but that's where the grace comes in at. But I believe now looking back over my life that I was supposed to go through this and able to help other women and also men. It's not even just women, but it's men and women that's going through the same thing.

Deneen L. Garrett 10:28 10:47 Absolutely. Absolutely. So I just wanted to bring that out. So getting into empowering women of color, empowering black women. You said you even want men to be empowered and learn from your experiences as well. So let's get into talking about how you inspire others to find their own resilience and inner strength.

Marquette L. Williams 10:48 11:48 Absolutely. So I started a winning women's course. Um, it's helping women cause you know, us women, we can hold on to some stuff. We'll go years and years holding on to stuff and other people will move on with their life. Who do you know what you're talking about? Right. And we're stagnant. They moved on a marriage. I've got five kids and we still stuck where we were because we're holding on to the bitterness and the resentment and all of that. So I'm trying to help women heal completely because in order for us to win, we have to heal. So that's what my course talks about. It talks about forgiveness. It talks about self-care because we, we ultimately lose ourselves. We become another representation when you get married. So now you got to find yourself again, right? self-care, time management, journaling, meditation. We go over all of these different topics in my winning women core just to help these women. I want our women to win. And so we have to heal in order to do that.

Deneen L. Garrett 11:49 12:55 Yes. And so the things that you just mentioned are the things, you know, that for me, you know, make me think about the power in the pause. So the power in a pause, like, Last year's I came up with that and really to start talking about it, and I did my own pause by taking a two month break from social media. And now social media is great, it has this purpose, but sometimes we're just caught up in it, right? Spending a lot of time in it, focused on it or focus on even like, oh, let me create, you know, the content, right? So, because that's a job within itself. And so, you know, we're not necessarily pausing, we're not necessarily actually living experience and life off the internet. So that's why I took a pause and I'm actually back into my pause season as well. So I'm paused right now from LinkedIn, probably the end of July, August, I'm gonna pause from social media so that I can just really be present and really get into the books and learn and everything about my new business. So in addition to the things that you mentioned, what is the power in the pause?

Marquette L. Williams 12:56 15:54 Let me tell you, it is so much power in the pause. And the biggest power is when you take a pause, now you learn who you are. Yes. You know who you are. You know whose you are. And not only that, the most important thing is that whose you are, love you in spite of everything that you've been through. So that's where the power in the pause comes in. And I'm so glad you brought that up because I had to take six years of pause between three and four. I said, okay, that was my dad said that even though I was mad at him, let me tell you, the scripture came back to me. Honor thy father and thy mother, that your days may be long on the earth. Let me tell you, I called my dad and I let my dad have it. Oh my goodness. But you know what? That scripture came up and I was like, oh, I see my days counting down. Let me hurry up and call him back. Now, I'm not saying I called him back a week or two or a month. It was close to three months before I called back to apologize, but that was the starting. of me on my healing journey is I had to forgive my dad from what he took my mom through. And I had to understand that's between him and God. That is not between me and him, him and I. That means that him and myself, we, I still have to respect him as my dad, no matter what. And I have to love him no matter what. But I had to learn that in my pause, started my pause phase. And so it's a lot of power and pause. You will start to, in that pause phase, you'll start to look back on everything that's happening you're like oh shoot you'll start to realize things like oh i'm really mad at my dad right now. Like him or I don't like her because she dating my ex or I need to do this, and you got all this stuff going on right. So it's very important. And when I say pause, I mean, I pause. I mean, I had the man coming for me, but I said, uh, they said, well, can I have your number? No, you can't have my number. Well, can I take you out? Nope. You cannot take me out. Well, can I be your friend? No, I have a friend in Jesus and that's all that I need. That's all I need. I don't need nothing else. And so I wanted to, I wanted to be very intentional on my paws. And let me tell you, it was me and God. I tell people, me and God dated. They were like, what does that look like? What it looks like is you are away from everything. And as you in quiet time, you're meditating, you're journaling, you're praying, you're fasting. And in all this time, God is showing you who you are, the things that he need to pull up out of you, the things he need to clean up out of you. Because I was still carrying that resentment, hurt, unforgiveness, all that stuff. So I definitely took a pause. And then after the fourth one, I had to take another pause because I wasn't all the way. I thought I was there yet, but I still wasn't there yet. So I had to take a two year pause and I shut down all social media. I didn't talk to anyone and I went back to repeat the cycle again. And I'm going to tell you now I'm at number five and it is working very well for me.

Deneen L. Garrett 15:54 17:09 Very good. Congratulations on that, on the pauses and really taking the time. doing the work, right, as what is Ayano González's work? Do you know the book? Are you familiar with it? It's an old book, but I think it's like Night in Shining Armor is by Bunny. I think because it's based in, you know, your relationship with God and it's about different things to do to take that time, date yourself, you know, All those different things, but when you were talking about what you did in your positive just made me think of that book. And I think it's a good, it could be a good reference. So for anyone who is, you know, wanting to take that pause and really get to know themselves. you know, as it relates to themself, a relationship with self, and then also a relationship with others, that's a good book to probably, you know, consider. But so, yeah, just throwing that out there, but that's what I thought about while you were talking. Okay, so through these marriages, you know, I also talk about dreams deferred, and that's just, that's how I honor my sister, late poet and author, Soul Truth. She wrote a book called Dreams Deferred. So, you know, I'll throw that into the conversation. So at any point, did you have a dream that you put on hold?

Marquette L. Williams 17:10 17:40 I did. Let me tell you. Well, first, writing a book. That was a dream of mine to write a book. And it took me all these years and I just launched it this year, Divorced But Not Defeated. But now that goes back to you saying, do you think the church should have helped you or do you think it was meant for you to go through what you've been through? Well, that's why I said, I believe it was meant for me to go through it because now my story is on paper to help someone else. Yeah.

Deneen L. Garrett 17:41 18:42 No, you know what? That's right. And so I actually had a conversation with someone else a few weeks ago, Dima Gawi. And she actually just, she wrote a book as well. I just finished her book. It's about, I think it's broken or breaking bases or something like that. It was a great book. And so it wasn't, it wasn't so much that it was her background, so her background, her culture impacted. her relationships, right? And it was very restrictive. She grew up in a very patriarchal culture and how she kind of survived that is in her book. So yes, writing that book, getting your story out to other people, that is sort of how you were inspiring us. That is how, you know, we can find resilience and inner strength through you, through books, you know, like by Dima and other people. Absolutely. Greatly appreciate that. And yes, congratulations on you writing your book.

Marquette L. Williams 18:42 18:44 Thank you. Thank you so much.

Deneen L. Garrett 18:44 18:58 Welcome. So I encourage empower women of color to live a dream lifestyle and each one finds it differently for themselves. How do you define a dream lifestyle? And how are you living a dream lifestyle?

Marquette L. Williams 18:59 20:40 So how I envision a dream lifestyle is helping other women, it's helping people period. But it seems like my story is gearing towards women. So that's perfectly okay with me. My dream lifestyle is helping people. And right now I am living that dream lifestyle, being able to put a book out there for readers to read and to inspire and encourage and uplift them. And also having a coaching course that also inspires, encourage and uplift women, but we're going to try to add men. I just got to change the title one day because I'm going to bring my husband into it just so they can see it from both of our perspectives eventually. So we'll have two things going on. But yes, that is my dream lifestyle. My dream lifestyle is being able to help someone heal. Love that. Love that. So Marquette, before we wrap, what would you like to leave the audience with? What I would like to leave the audience with is, first and foremost, is get to know before you're going into these relationships, get to know who you are, get to know whose you are. and deal with any past traumas, whether that's childhood trauma, whether that's shame, that's guilt or resentment, abandonment, whatever it may be. I tell people I had a backpack, this invisible, visible backpack, and I packed all these things in there. And so I was getting weighed down with all this stuff. So please don't pack your backpack, or if you have it already packed, unload your backpack by spending time with God so you will know who you are and whose you are. And then, and ultimately, healing completely so you can win.

Deneen L. Garrett 20:41 20:52 Love it. I absolutely love it. Marquette L. Walker, thank you so much for lending your voice on women of color in intimate conversation, and enjoy the rest of your day. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Denise.

Marquette L. Williams 20:52 20:55 You have a blessed day. You're welcome, and thank you.