Know Dumb Questions
Know Dumb Questions
KNOW DUMB QUESTIONS FT DR.LATONYA BAKER: A Conversation on Resilience and Empowerment
Get ready for an inspiring conversation with our extraordinary guest, Dr. Latanya Baker. An empowerment speaker, Dr. Baker drives a leading prenatal care agency in Milwaukee, lending new hope to over 1,800 families. Her journey, marked by personal loss, homelessness, and triumphant resurgence, is bound to leave you awestruck.
Have you ever felt trapped in a cycle of unhealthy relationships, self-sabotage, and enabling bad behaviors? Dr. Baker shines a light on her transformative journey, turning her personal loss into a catalyst for breaking these toxic cycles. She offers profound insights into redefining relationships and communication, harvested from her experiences and enlightenment from an old flame. Listen closely as she narrates her path from living out of her car to establishing essential services - including care coordination, housing, training, and performing arts centers - in Milwaukee.
In our journey to success, we often forget the critical role of self-care. Dr. Baker emphasizes how prioritizing yourself can contribute significantly to your climb toward building an empire. With her journey from homelessness to becoming a luminary of empowerment, she exemplifies the power of breaking generational curses and reforming one's narrative. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation where Dr. Baker draws from her personal journey to offer valuable lessons in resilience, empowerment, and transformation.
Yes, hello.
Speaker 2:This is dress down day. You're fancy.
Speaker 1:This is where clothes going to the NAACP freedom fund dinner here at this hall.
Speaker 2:Oh Nice.
Speaker 1:I wish. I'm just excited to be here to support Our sister who's a president. Madam president, I need a portion, but really I want to jump into it.
Speaker 1:You know I appreciate your voice. Thank you, I genuinely do. You have perspectives that I don't think are typical? I think that you represent a part of the conversation that In our community and as a woman, that is Probably not as popular as I think it is, but it's popular with me. So can you tell us first about you and from where your voice comes? I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:I Sure can well. First of all, thank you for even having me on your cell is definitely appreciated. My name is dr Latanya Baker. I go by Latanya Baker, the trendsetter. I am a empowerment speaker, I have a podcast and I run a premier prenatal care agency in Milwaukee, wisconsin.
Speaker 2:And my story kind of took a turn when I lost my mother back in 2012. It was unexpected. I had realized that my family had been just kind of living through this generational curse and I was just sick of it. I was just ready to break it. So, losing her, the first thing I wanted to do was just go into a depression. But instead I started researching my family history and I just realized how much Myself, other people in my family just kind of settled for whatever and I just wanted to break that generational curse. My mother passed. She had her life insurance laps, so we had to go to our family. Thankfully they were able to assist with.
Speaker 2:You know, barry, my mother and I just decided I didn't want to put my kids through that. I didn't want to leave this world and not leave a legacy them. You know, having to find out that I'm behind in my bills, my insurance laps, it was something that could have been embarrassing but, like I said, I had a very supportive family, but I did not want to put my kids through that. So that was like the start of my journey. It didn't, it didn't happen overnight. It was just me researching my mother, finding out that, you know, she passed in her sleep, her mother passed in her sleep, her mother's mother passed in her sleep. So we have three generation of women who died in their sleep from hypertension, obesity, stress and things like that, and I just did not want that for myself. I was living in that generational curse and I just wanted to break it.
Speaker 2:So I did that. I started Just, you know, trying to identify and realize who I was as a woman, and the first thing I wanted to do was be transparent. I wanted to share my story, but I wanted to do be an example of the change that I wanted to see. So I became that. I started really trusting the process and I just end up becoming a process. My brain manager, kevin, he's been amazing, which is kind of molding me and to what it takes to be on this platform and put my story out there and tell it in a way that people Would relate to it will understand it, and I understand that everybody won't understand it, and that's fine. But as long as it helps somebody, that's what my goal is. So here I am you said.
Speaker 1:You said that there's advice that you can hear today From a dating perspective that you could not have heard before. One of the that I saw that I found compelling because of the introspection and honesty in it was you said that women act from Feelings. I'm gonna let you say what you said.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I met a guy who really he really gave me a different insight on how I view men and he really helped me Understand how to better communicate with men. And some of what he said to me was one of the barriers in communication between men and women is Most of us, as men, we base our decision on our reality and most women base your decisions on Feelings. And not that that's for every woman, but a lot, you know I can only speak for myself and what I've been around but a lot of us do base our decisions based on, you know, from our feelings. And so I asked him, I said well, how can we better communicate with you as with men, and how can we better, I guess, coexist in a healthy relationship with men if Communication is a barrier? And he said love us for who we are and where we are, don't try to change that.
Speaker 2:So, for example, when I was married, I knew going into my marriage that my husband had issues, but I hadn't hit an agenda I would say hidden agenda that I'm pretty sure one day my good skills or my good Behavior or my big heart will rub off on him and he would eventually change. Well, that never happened. It only became worse, because at that point it's almost like when you accept what someone is doing for who they are, you kind of just like Justify that it's okay. So for years I just thought it was gonna change because I felt like I was such a good person. But then I realized years later, you know, once the marriage failed I was a good person but there were things that I could have did better as well as a wife or as a person. But I felt like, because I was the provider and because I had such a big heart, that one day I would rub off on him, but it was never in him.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like women? Often I derive their value from their ability to change the man that they're with meaning if he loves me. Then change to what I think he should be yes, that way do you think that comes?
Speaker 2:that was my mindset before. Okay, where do you think that comes from? Um insecurities for me. It came from my own insecurities. Um, when you're insecure, you typically settle. I watch my mother growing up. I never saw a man treat her like a queen. I never saw a man Cater to her. I never saw a man do anything for her.
Speaker 1:I saw her cook for her. Can we pause it? Cuz I want you to stay, cuz Folks, y'all I tell y'all I'm bringing folks who have the heat. I just want you to stand. So we ain't gonna, we ain't gonna just go over that. That's not what we're gonna do here. Uh, let's tie you when you say that you never saw a man who was in your mother's life.
Speaker 1:Treat her like a queen never, Can we talk about that Cuz you? Right now the hearts are going crazy. Right now, folks, today they that they were harsh really should be going up broken hearts they're a lot of us who sat at home and and watched our mothers be treated a whole ass.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:What did you see?
Speaker 2:I saw my mother working really, really hard. I saw her struggle and as a kid you don't know it's struggle because you're a kid you don't realize it's struggling to you start actually struggling and you see other people not struggling. So I saw her struggle. I saw her work. You know multiple jobs. We moved a lot. I saw her try her best to make ends meet but in the midst of me seeing that if and when she did date someone because I never really got a chance to witness the relationship that she had with my dad my dad was just like I never saw them together. If we, if she took us out of town, he would come to his grandmother's house where she would meet him at and visit us and then we would probably spend some summers with him. But I never saw them together as a couple.
Speaker 1:So I don't know what that looks like to have You're saying right now. Do you understand that you're talking about tens of thousands?
Speaker 2:of us yeah.
Speaker 1:My father will go to my grandmother's house, which is where I would typically see him. I vaguely saw the two of them together. What I did see was some wild shit with his behavior towards my mother that I can remember, being five years old, like wow, that's not OK. I know you ain't supposed to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How then do you take that stamp that is put on your life and not allow it to be a curse, Because you said at the top of this you're not going to allow a generation of curse in 2012. You're going to break it.
Speaker 2:What happened?
Speaker 1:inside you.
Speaker 2:It took me, just wanting better and I had to get tired of being sick and tired. I actually found my mother's journal after she passed, maybe about a year after she passed, and I read it and in her journal she talked about how her mother's past unexpected and my grandfather was in jail and that how my grandfather just wasn't he didn't, he wasn't a good husband, and so when her mother passed and her father was in jail, she was 17 and pregnant with me. She had to immediately become a parent and guardian to her siblings 13 siblings. So she missed out a lot on her childhood and had to immediately become an adult. So she you know from what I saw in her and her journals she talked about my mother ran a daycare and she talked about how the only reason she opened up a daycare because that's what she was good at was raising kids, taking care of kids. So she ran a daycare so well, but she stressed about it. She wasn't making a lot of money and I'm like I thought she did it because she loved it, because she was passionate about it.
Speaker 2:So when I read her diary I'm like so my mother went through all these years doing things that people wanted her to do and I was like that's what I'm doing right now. I can't do this anymore, and it took her out. My mother wrote a letter to the Department of Human Services. She had a daycare in Memphis, tennessee. She wrote a letter to the Department of Human Services dated February 28, 2012 that she was closing her daycare. My mother never sent that letter off and she died February 28. So to go through life, majority of your life, doing things that other people thought you were just good at but it really wasn't your passion, that's just not the life that I chose to live. So had I not probably ran across her diary, who knows if I would have made the decision to break this cycle.
Speaker 2:But you run a daycare, yes, I ran one for a minute until I ran across her diary when I thought that I should have just opened her daycare up and ran her daycare to keep her legacy going. But this wasn't even what her legacy was supposed to be. She did it because everybody thought she was good at it. But when I read her diary I said, oh no, I hated it. I hated running the daycare, but I only did it because I thought I was doing my family some justice by keeping my mother's legacy going. But that wasn't even her dream legacy.
Speaker 1:How many people do you think are walking around chasing ghosts of what they think their parents would have wanted?
Speaker 2:Oh, millions, millions. I service right now 1,600 families, not people families. Now, those 1,600 families, when I read those reports of women or men just not even knowing what they want in life, they lose themselves, trying to become what somebody else wants them to be, or they're not happy, or there's a missing spouse or father in the household. Like, their story is very, very similar to mine, but they're just kind of coexisting in that.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you said, though. Your journey runs so close to so many people, but it's yours, and what I'm so impressed by is your ability to have this meta experience, where you are looking at yourself, looking at yourself and reflecting on people. You said a lot of folks and you can finish this a lot of folks pray for a certain kind of a man.
Speaker 2:Well, before my mindset changed and before there was growth again, insecurities I would literally like a guy, and if he did not have the qualities that a good man I felt should have, I would still almost beg God to just please, you know, please, make him like me. Or, you know, let him see something in me to where he likes me just as much as I like him. Because I didn't want to be alone. And so my mother, the alone, majority of her life, she, you know, my mother, passed, she never married, and I said I don't want to go through life being alone. So I settled, I settled for the red flags, I settled for their insecurities, I settled for what they lacked because I did not want to be alone, and I tried to make up for what they did not have. And after a while I'm like, oh my God, that was just, that wasn't smart.
Speaker 1:What couldn't have been inside you, though? Was it your child? Did you see your child? Did you see anything? Oh man, what, what? What was it that made you say Latanya, stop?
Speaker 2:I just got tired of hurting. I just got tired of hurting. I wanted to know what peace of mind really looked like. I really got. I really got tired of hurting. And then my friends have been around for 30 plus years. They were tired of me hurting and even having conversations with them. One of my best friends would say I wish you could see what I see when I look at you. You are so amazing. I wish you could see what I see.
Speaker 1:What does that sound like to hear that when you're friends? Because that's a we call it a backhand compliment right what does it feel like to hear that Because that's the person who loves the hell out of you. That goes on an emotional risk to say because that you could take that a whole bunch of ways.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I wanted to see what they saw as well. When they said, I wish you could see what I see in you, in my mind I'm like I wish I could see it as well. People can compliment you. I've always, you know, received compliments about how I dressed, how my hair looked, all that, but I didn't believe it. I don't care how many people told me how good I looked, I still found something negative to say about myself. I self-sabotaged myself, and so one day it just really resonated with me.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it takes getting out of a familiar environment. So when I when I when I heard this by this time I was in Atlanta where I barely had friends, I barely had family, and I was able to kind of isolate myself. And at the time my best friend told me this we were on the phone, talking, but I was not in a familiar place. So sometimes you have to get yourself out of what's familiar so that you can really hear what's being said to you. Because when you're around a lot of noise and you're around what's comfortable and what's familiar, my ex-husband was telling me things that really would have helped me.
Speaker 2:It helped me if had I listened, but back then I didn't think that he was qualified to tell me certain things. He was doing so many things that was not valuable to our family. So when he was telling me something that was valuable, it was like I wasn't listening. So he would tell me to stop putting everybody before me and I couldn't receive that from him because he, I was putting him before me and I'm like how are you telling me to stop putting everybody before me and you're one of the ones that I'm putting before me?
Speaker 1:How many women right now? How many women right now are you buckling their knees? You buckling the knees right now, sis, Because how many women derive their sense of self from their connection to someone else? Not the value of that connection, not a connection that uplifts me and makes me feel better, but just having someone that they can go to a wedding with, go to the Freedom Fund dinner with, go to a cookout with, call somebody and complain about how many women are right now doing that. And as you think about that, that's more rhetorical. But here's this Do you ever think women think that by you taking whatever crap we give you, you ain't making us better?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that definitely runs across our mind. We end up enabling that person, and I know I did that. I was a master at enabling people, not just men, but people. What does that mean?
Speaker 1:Because people hear the term enabling and they don't. It gets just that we throw it around. What does it? I did this, so this would have. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:We're basically doing it for people versus giving them the tools to do it themselves. And that's what I was doing. If I could have went to work and took my husband's place on his job, that's how much I wanted to see him thrive. If I could have stand for him, that's how much I know I enabled that man. You know a lot of the jobs that he obtained. I did the application, I did the resume. The only thing he had to do was show up. If I could have did that for him, I would have did that because I wanted him to thrive.
Speaker 2:But I did that for so long that guess what. He expected it. And when it got to the point where I felt like I was burned out from it and I said to him I'm burned out. It was just like you know. I know you don't expect this to change overnight. He told me he understood, but his actions showed me different and I can say that now. But you know, when it first happened I couldn't even admit to it. I was just pointing fingers at him. But we typically teach people how to treat us and that's what I did. I learned how to treat me.
Speaker 1:Kevin said wow. Kevin said wow. Kevin, I'm with you on wow. Let me tell you why I'm saying wow, sis. I'm saying wow, because whether it's a mother doing it to a son, a girlfriend doing it to a boyfriend, or a college girl writing papers for her boyfriend, or a baby's mother picking up the man's other children that he ain't taking care of, paying the child support to another woman all the way through, talking about substance abuse issue, living another wife's unhealthy existence, when we're talking about enabling, we're talking about encouraging bad behavior.
Speaker 2:Indeed.
Speaker 1:As you know that you've done that. What do you do differently? Because no one's. It's hard to leave all of our behaviors behind, right? We grew up with an accident, we grew up learning the language, and so we still think. He calls and says hey, babe, I'm not going to be able to come tonight, something wrong with my car. Your first reaction normally would be what?
Speaker 2:Now or back then, I would find a way. I always found a way, whatever the situation was. I always made it work and he was used to me making it work, and that's actually how it happened. And now, well, now, when it comes. Well, right now I'm not dating, but when it comes to whoever it is, I'm going to end up dating. His characteristics have to line up with what I deserve, not what I want, what I deserve, and there's a big difference. I had to realize there's a big difference from what I want and what I deserve. And so if his character, if they don't line up with that, it's a no-go for me.
Speaker 1:Someone asked a really cool question and they said it's no judgment. I believe them to be the case. They said do you think that enabling is a form of control?
Speaker 2:No, because I never wanted to control him. I actually wanted him to take the lead. But how do you expect someone to take the lead that does not have any type of leadership skills? I just felt, as a man, he should have taken the lead, but it wasn't in him. He was never going to take the lead if I kept taking the lead, and so it was not about control for me. I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to be alone. So for me not to be alone, I didn't want to give him a reason to leave me.
Speaker 2:So this is why I did it.
Speaker 1:So many women don't realize that there's actually something worse than being alone, and it's being with somebody who tags you to pieces.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's draining. How so? Because you end up not you lose you when you're so focused on someone else's happiness or someone else's well-being. It took me to leave my marriage, move out of town to realize things that I really liked or did not like. I realized how I was going through life doing almost everything that I thought people wanted me to do. There were things that I realized that I didn't even like, even some of the things that I was cooking. I cooked it because this is what my family, like my husband, like my kids like.
Speaker 2:But I had to really identify what I liked and I also had to understand. You know, people say I want peace of mind, but the only way you know you want something used if you witness someone else having it. And so I started surrounding myself with people who literally had peace of mind. I was like I want some of that and I started asking those questions like how do you get that? And they were like you have to put you first, and if people don't understand or respect putting you first, the hell with them. And so that's what I had to do.
Speaker 1:You've got to aim and corner. There are a few sisters that say these are facts. This is me too, like I did the same thing. What's the difference, though? Describe to me the difference between being empathetic to the needs of others and enabling others. So what's the difference between cooking something that other people like would just use that as an example, as a form of love and affection, versus not including yourself in your conversations, I mean in your decision making?
Speaker 2:I think when we're more empathetic to people, we're showing them that we hear them, we see them, we understand them and we empathize with them. This is what I can offer, but when we are enabling people, we hear you, we see you. This is what I did because of that. So it's not about doing for them, it's about giving the tools. So, for example, my sons, I'm building an empire. I'm not just going to leave this empire to them, I'm going to show them how to keep this empire going, because if I don't show them how to maintain it, what good am I doing? What if I'm gone and it falls apart within a year or two? I want to be able to pass it on to their children and their children and their children.
Speaker 2:So I think my main focus is longevity and I made, believe me, my business is probably the most successful business in my family. So to go from being homeless and broken to running an empire and feeding the community and helping families and providing housing for families. I was out here trying to be MC Hammer Because I still had those enabling skills in me, because I was never able to help as many people as I was able to help. So even in that I had to discipline myself because if I did not, I could have lost everything. So again, if I can give people the tools and show them how to do the things that I do, share my story and tell them not to make these same mistakes, then I can create longevity Versus just giving it to them and never showing them how to use it.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about your empire. I know we're nearing the end. I know you had a short time today and I'm so happy that you took the time out to talk to me. You know I love to do this again. Let's talk about your empire. What do you do for a living?
Speaker 2:So my main business was my prenatal care. We pretty much assist women and children who were either pregnant or recently had a child. They received it state funded. So if they're eligible for our services, we pretty much assess their situation and we address any barriers that they may have. And most of those barriers may be housing issues, financial issues. They may need clothing, food, anything of that nature, and we basically have what we call care coordinators that provide case management and care coordination on a monthly basis. So that grew from me providing the prenatal care to me open up our housing program because we discovered a lot of our clients were dealing with evictions, we were putting clients in hotels trying to find shelters and we were just kind of running out of options. So we became the option. We opened up our housing program. It's been open for about four years now. We found a lot of our clients were in need of jobs but they didn't have the skills. So we opened up a training center so we can provide them with the skills. When COVID hit, a lot of the youth didn't have anywhere to go, so we opened up a performing arts center to give the youth something to do. So it just kind of grew into this empire of services so that we can make sure everybody in the household. We had some type of service for them In Milwaukee.
Speaker 2:I hear a lot about wraparound service wraparound service, but trans-sitters. I would like to say we're a wrap in service Because when you just wrap around people, you're not really including the people. So we wrap in so we can include the people in the decision making, so we can include the people in just making them a more of a success story. We have clients who, since providing services to them, they've purchased houses, they've wrote books, they've done things like that, because we don't want them to become enabled from this service, and then they tend to not do anything. So we hold them accountable. So it's just a variety of services that we provide to make sure that the entire household has what they need.
Speaker 1:Hey folks, are you serving?
Speaker 2:The last time I checked, maybe three months ago, it was over 1,600 families. So we've enrolled more families since then. So we're probably roughly at probably about 1,800, 1,900 families.
Speaker 1:So let's just say that again for the people in the back. So you went from being homeless.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was homeless in Atlanta, thought I was living my dreams until I became homeless, living out my car. I was looking nothing like. I went through my car was my house in the nighttime and it was my job in the daytime. I drove Uber in the daytime and at the time I was in a partnership with someone in Atlanta running a dance studio. But that was her dream. It was not my dream and that partnership didn't work out, so I had to figure something out. I was probably homeless for two days, but it was enough.
Speaker 2:When someone is homeless, the first thing you think about is a soft pillow and a soft bed. Just imagine people who are homeless for weeks and days and months what that does to their mental. I was only homeless for two days and a great friend of mine extended, opened her doors to me and I was able to live in her house for a while, but for two years I was sleeping on people's couches. So I still feel homeless, because when you're homeless, you don't have a steady roof over your head. You're going from house to house. So I had been going from house to house for two years.
Speaker 2:Again, you miss what you no longer have and that's your own key being able to come in and out, being able to go to bed when you want to set your alarm. Those are things that people take for granted, that you have the liberty to do those things and when those things are taken away from you. But my mother always told me before she died what you're going through is not about you, and I didn't understand it in the beginning. I used to say, well, who is it about? Because I'm the one hurting. So now, when I look at a woman and her children who's homeless, I can say I know how it feels because I went through that. So now I understand everything that I went through. It was to prepare me for who I am today, because I can honestly say to someone I understand.
Speaker 1:When was the last time you slept in the house? That wasn't yours, meaning five.
Speaker 2:It's been five years.
Speaker 1:So in five years, you went from sleeping on other people's couches to serving 1800 people who were in similar, in some cases worse, circumstances than you were 1800 families.
Speaker 2:And the reason I stress that? Because some of these families are five to 10 people per family.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I appreciate it. No, and to be clear, I want that correction. I accept that because you need to own all of that. You need to own all of that, so I deeply appreciate you. Let's leave folks with how they can contact you, what it is that you're doing. I know one of the things you do is you do go out and speak. Folks are really excited about things you said, so I want to make sure that they can follow you and connect with you.
Speaker 2:Most definitely the best way is to go to my website, which is latanyabakercom. All of my social media handles are on there my email, my media kit, everything is on there about me my podcast, my bio, all the information on there, my books. So latanyabakercom, but everybody that's on IG it's latanyabaker, the trendsetter.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate you. Milwaukee is one of my favorite towns. Got one of my favorite people out there, Dr Howard Fuller.
Speaker 2:Nice, that was my principal.
Speaker 1:So you know he is my guy. I was just talking, I literally was just talking to him last night. He's literally one of the most amazing human beings that this world has produced and Milwaukee gets to have them still.
Speaker 2:We all jealous. We all jealous. He's amazing.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much for all you do and thank you so much for, quite frankly I'll add that for showing that Dr Fuller's work is still making its way out in the world. But, more importantly, thank you for what you do for 1800 families in Milwaukee, the empire that you're building and how you built yourself up, because no empire can be built upon a faulty foundation. Your foundation, for God's sake, is pretty solid.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, sis, my pleasure I just want to leave with you and your viewers. Just always remember that you cannot help anyone breathe if you can't breathe. So remember that when you get up each and every day and practice self-care. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. You take good care of yourself.
Speaker 2:You as well, my pleasure, thank you.