Strength is earned and learned and when you’re lacking the inspiration you need to push through it’s important to remember you can find it through honest conversation and in the lessons other people have learned on their journey. We can share. In this R&V interview with Tamika Hall, I talk to her about her lifelong muse, her father Vivian Charles Wesley and the inspiration he gave her to keep pushing through difficult times, staying grounded in who she is and being her best, no matter what.

If you’re in need of some fatherly advice mixed with some gentle firmness you’re in the right place, &GoodGrief welcomes our latest contributor, Tamika.

Ariele, known as “Miz Pinky” is creating a legacy as a self made entrepreneur and the owner of Pinky’s Kids, a kids membership only braid salon. Miz Pinky shares her journey towards being a boss in the &Careers section, and the lessons she’s learned through the risks it costs her to stay nimble. We talked about tragedy, self-doubt, patience, the power of knowing who you are, and staying on track to your dreams. Plant seeds of your own through her experience.

In sharing a childhood she described with one word “traumatic” my conversation with Shawana was one about learning lessons the hard way, releasing expectations and setting boundaries in the relationships that are most expected of us.

In the &Family category Shawana reminds us to create the life we want, reminds us it won’t always be picture perfect, and blending ain’t always that easy.

In the &Wellness category, I have the honor of sharing Sakai’s story and the inspiration we can find through her honesty and the wisdom she’s earned over the hardest season of her life.

After tragically losing her younger brother to suicide Sakai was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and soon after, endometrial cancer.

Her journey is one of reflection on the power of self advocacy and community as she shares with us how each combined with the will of her tribe saved her life and made impossible, possible. Her journey is an on time reminder for us (especially me!) to consider the people we can turn to and to ask ourselves if we are ready and willing to be a part of an army our friends and family can count on — even unto death

Kelli and I set aside some time to talk about the journey that led her, a 36 year old healthy and health conscious woman to consider in vitro fertilization. She spares no detail and held no jabs while she talked about the initial concerns around her fertility including contracting an STD in her teens and an ectopic pregnancy in her twenties that required an emergency surgery to remove a fallopian tube.

Read on as I share my honest conversation with Kelli and a journey toward motherhood filled with lessons and a whole lot of determination.

Shaquay Peacock has known she wanted to be a chef since the age of five and the cultivation of that itty-bitty dream has led her around the world following her five year old self’s lead and watering and grooming the seeds she planted oh so long ago. In my conversation with Shaquay, found in &CareerI have the honor of sharing the blueprint of a woman who honors her truest self and know the importance of taking risks and 5 year olds very (very) seriously.

Ahdehroh, pregnant and only fourteen years old hid her pregnancy for six and a half months until an incident at school started the rumors that would end it all. Finally able to live outside of this huge secret she started a new path in her journey that brought her to Holmes High School in San Antonio, TX where she’d be able to carry out the rest of her pregnancy quietly, removed from New York. The trip though was much more than she planned and two mothers, Ahdehroh and her own prepared themselves to give their children a fighting chance.

Ahdehroh was between two to three months pregnant when at 14 she was admittedly too naive to understand the signs of cells splitting in her body. Confused but determined, she made the decision to keep the pregnancy and hide it and did just that — for over six and a half months! 22 years later Ahdehroh joins R&V category &Life to talk about her experience, the tear filled way her mother would find out, and how she’s challenged and succeeded in pushing through a journey she could never have prepared for to reclaim the way people would see her and ultimately, how she saw herself.

In launching The Roots & The Vines, I knew the very first person I’d want to sit with was Kéara.