Welcome back to Raise the Praise where we choose to reclaim our joy and thrive in every area of our lives, that's physically, mentally, financially and spiritually, to do all that God is calling us to do. I'm your host, Jennifer Bell. I am so excited to have my sister friend Chulu Chansa, Founder of Africana Woman on the show today. Chulu is a writer of modern African culture & lifestyle, the host of the Africana Woman podcast, a transformational speaker and mentor. She currently resides in Zambia, is the proud mother of a teenage boy and is at peace. For many years Chulu experienced success in her career, however fell short in her personal life. Eventually she managed to transform her lifestyle and lives by the principle, K.N.O.W. your Roots, Grow your Purpose where KNOW stands for Knowledge, Nourishment, Operate in Obedience, and Weakness. As a result, Chulu is on a mission to ensure African women succeed both in work and their personal life. Listen in as my sister Chulu shares her story in this Courage2Heal Interview. If this episode inspired you, please subscribe and leave a review. I’m always looking to improve and I’d love your feedback! SHOWNOTES: 2:04 We've been featuring courage to heal stories recently, and I just had to have you share your story. And as we have our conversations today, I just know that you will be blessed and inspired and encouraged to heal as you hear her story. So let's just dive right into it to Chulu and talk about culture, and a little bit about health and wellness and how we blend the two. So my first question to you is, how would you say your culture has affected your overall wellness? 2:49 I think, you know, there's so many beautiful things about our culture. And I'm African, I'm from Zambia, beautiful country of Zambia, we call it the real Africa. And, you know, there's so many things from our food, our clothes, our music, all of those wonderful things. But then there's also I'd say, like an underbelly of, of things that are not necessarily talked about. And, you know, we like to refer to them as Oh, that's just the way culture is. Now. I think one of the things that's also unique about my country in particular is that we are a Christian nation, like it's actually in our Constitution. So Christianity is something that is also very, very deeply interlinked in our lives, right. So, you know, I think when it comes to myself, and my story, I think one of the things that really did affect me was the first thing was having a child out of wedlock, and having a child very young. I had my son when I was my senior year of college, and you know, just the shame and the, you know, the shame and the embarrassment. 9:14 So you know, they held a knife to my neck, they kicked me, they punched me in the stomach. It was a very violent experience. And at the time, I was just thinking, I really just gave it to God, because I just looked up and I was looking up at the sky, I didn't even want to look at them. And what actually happened was the three original men that had stolen the money, like stolen my bag, they came walking back, because they know, they just threw me on the middle of the road. So they came walking back. And they saw that and they did nothing. They just dropped the bag and walked away. And I remember thinking, how does someone? I can honestly say that therapy saved my life. 19:43 I had the job, I had a car, I had the house, like, I was okay, but then I'm trying to tell people that there's something wrong, this is not enough. I'm not okay, I'm not satisfied, I'm not fulfilled, I'm not happy, and people just didn't understand. They felt like, you know, when they're looking at the job that I had, it's one of those jobs, you know, here we say, it's kind of like, you know, you've arrived, you know, and you get a certain job, you've just arrived, and you can put your legs up and you like, everything is just jazz. But I'm just like, if this is what you guys call life, then it's not enough. And it just, it was blowing my mind. 26:14 So I actually experienced, I guess, all ranges of depression, because then I found myself depressed, and I was sitting, I wasn't sitting, I was lying in bed for three days straight. didn't eat didn't do anything, just lying, just crying there. And I think I got to the third day. And Funny enough, I wasn't, I wasn't really somebody who listened to podcasts at the time. But something told me to listen to a podcast. So I started going through the app, and then searching and I happened upon redefining wealth by Patrice Washington. And K.N.O.W. is an acronym for knowledge, k knowledge, and nourish, oh, operates in obedience, W weakness. If this episode inspired you, please subscribe and leave a review. I’m always looking to improve and I’d love your feedback! WAYS TO CONNECT WITH ME… Website: https://raisethepraisepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/...
