From a Padlocked Door to Oprah's Favorite Things

In this episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca sits down with Lia Valencia Key, founder of Valencia Key Jewelry, whose life began in circumstances most people would have accepted as permanent. Generational poverty. Homelessness. Instability that could have easily defined her path.

In this episode:

• How to turn early struggles into lessons for life
• Why choosing your own path can transform how you approach challenges
• The role of faith in yourself alongside faith in a higher power
• How speaking your goals out loud can open opportunities
• Why small, consistent actions—millimeter steps—make a difference
• How intentional words can shape your perspective and daily choices

Quotes from this episode:

“Your predicament doesn’t determine your destiny.” – Lia Valencia Key

“All things are possible. Lead with light.” – Lia Valencia Key 

“Faith plus belief equals millimeter actions that lead you all the way to all of your dreams.” – Lia Valencia Key

“You can call on God, but you need to have that amount of faith in yourself. You never know when you’re gonna need it.” – Becca Powers

“The biggest misstep we can make is lying to ourselves.” – Becca Powers

Connect with Lia:

• Website: http://www.valenciakey.com
• Instagram: @liavalenciakey
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valenciakey/

Useful Links:

·      Watch Full Episodes on YouTube

·      Becca’s Website

·      Follow Us on Instagram

·      Connect on LinkedIn

·      Find Us on Facebook

·      Get Becca’s Book: A Return to Radiance

·      Book Becca to Speak

Podcast Produced by Jen Kourtei at Savvy Edge Marketing

Transcript

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Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies

Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of The Empowered Half Hour, and I am so excited about today's guest because I feel like, well, I see her radiating from the other side, but I feel like Soul Sisters, it's a little early for me to say that. 

Lia Valencia Key: Yeah. 

Becca Powers: But I was reading her bio and preparing this week to interview her, and I was just like, oh my God.

She just seems like a gem of a human being. so let me just go ahead and do it. Audience introduce you to Lia Valencia Key. Owner, creator, and founder of Valencia Key Jewelry, which has been. It has been represented all the way up to the Oprahs. Okay. So She's made it around the world. But I am very excited to have you to the show. Welcome, Lia. 

Lia Valencia Key: So excited.

Yeah, so excited. So excited. It makes me move. I thank you for having me here. I'm just honored. 

Oh, 

Becca Powers: thank you for coming on. So audience listeners. Listen, we only known each other for about five minutes, but I was like, Hey, I think I understand your arc. You know, you've been through it. You have this beautiful brand, but there's something that happens on the inside when we're able to take what we've been through and instead of rejecting it, turn it into our strength.

We embody it and we learn and we grow, and we go from those trials and we turn 'em into triumphs. These are like my favorite interviews and I saw all of that in Lia's profile. So I'm gonna stop talking about what I've seen and I wanna get to know you better. So let's hear the story behind the story.

Like you have this beautiful brand, which I want to learn and explore more during the interview, but it didn't start off that way. 

Lia Valencia Key: No, 

Becca Powers: I think 

Lia Valencia Key: I love, uh, sharing link. You see. My jewelry brand is Valencia Key. Valencia, meaning bring very encouraging. Key we know is locking of something, utilize, unlock. So it, the intention is to be these wearable reminders and symbols that you have, the courage, the light, everything inside of you to unlock it to your destiny.

Becca Powers: I didn't even know like all of that, and I'm like, I want more. Keep talking about it. And 

Lia Valencia Key: that's like where we are now. But my journey, my beginnings got me to see that truth. And that's why my heart is to share that light with the world because I started what I consider in darkness. I was raised in, impoverished neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a single mom.

We started poverty. My grandmother was in poverty, her grandmother was in poverty, and it goes all the way back right to slavery if we wanna take it all the way there. 

Becca Powers: You broke that generational poverty too. 

Lia Valencia Key: Generational. Generational. 

Becca Powers: Yes. I get it. 

Lia Valencia Key: Cycling, I get chills and emotional. Thinking about it. And so my mother struggled.

I self-diagnosed her. My mother's no longer with me. She passed super early. My mother passed in my early twenties. 

Becca Powers: Well, me too. 

Lia Valencia Key: She was around. My 

Becca Powers: mom passed when I was 22. 

Lia Valencia Key: She was in her and I'm 46 now. Right when she passed. Okay. 

Becca Powers: Lemme just stop. I'm gonna stop in real fast because I'm like, guys, we have never met.

Okay. My mom passed when I was 22. And she was 46. 

Lia Valencia Key: What? 

Becca Powers: And I'm 47, so I just wanna 

Lia Valencia Key: Wow. Same, same. that's a journey in itself. We could take that to another, 

Becca Powers: we can do it full. 

Lia Valencia Key: 30 minutes comes 

Becca Powers: up 

Lia Valencia Key: because losing any parent is something Yeah. Unexplainable until you experience it. And then the determination of how you.

Utilize that loss. Do you allow it to erode you? Do you allow it to darken you, to harden you? Or do you allow all the love that that parent put inside of you, even their struggles that you saw them experience? 'cause I'll get to that. Do you allow all to become a beacon of light to live within you forever, that you shine out consistently so their light and their love lives on, and that you're not heartened by the loss, but you're promoted and you're pushed and you're elevated because everything that they are now being so bright or in you, that's a whole story.

So I encourage anyone, that's listening who is in a loss right now, I'd encourage you to. Think about that loss in a different way, that their light will shine forever. Becca, would you say that like I can, 

Becca Powers: oh my gosh, I'm nodding. 'cause I just, wanted to speak, but I wanted to let you finish because everything you're saying was hitting my heart and my soul so deeply, but I would absolutely say the same thing.

You know, I'm the sole survivor of my family. My mom passed when I was 22. My dad passed when I was 36, and my brother passed away two years ago. So I'm the one

I have learned very much what you're saying. That. I mean, you have your moments where, it's heavy, right? 

Lia Valencia Key: And it's okay. Like I still randomly break down in tears outta nowhere. 

Becca Powers: And I came to this, place, similar to what you're saying, where I'm like, I'm just gonna curse a fucking honor to be able to rise and hold them inside me.

I am the legacy. 

Lia Valencia Key: Yes. You are the light, you are the combination of all their lights. That is so powerful. When somebody transcends on it's left and you are the vessel that it's emitting from. How amazing is that? 

Becca Powers: Who bumps even in my face? 

Lia Valencia Key: You know? So I wanted to stop there because loss is a, a big thing that.

We all have dealt with or gonna deal with. And it can, change your trajectory of life and the way you 

Becca Powers: often it does 

Lia Valencia Key: live and think and move. And I'm not saying no sorrow, I'm not saying no missing, but I am saying add some of their, all of their light and love, allow that to shift the way you move in the world.

Becca Powers: So like in this instance where we're talking about. Your rise into creating Valencia key. 

Lia Valencia Key: Yes. 

Becca Powers: your mother's death and we can talk about that more or transition depending where you wanna go in your story. But it sounds like it was a defining moment of your rise 

Lia Valencia Key: defining. 

Becca Powers: Defining, 

Lia Valencia Key: defining.

Becca Powers: And then you have your generational ancestors standing on your shoulders with your mother and you broke that poverty cycle. 

Lia Valencia Key: Emotional. So we can, I think the messages, you can, whatever it is, everyone's not struggling with generational poverty. You know, everyone's not, but there's something different. I had 

Becca Powers: generational 

Lia Valencia Key: alcoholism.

Becca Powers: You know, 

Lia Valencia Key: generational anger could have been passed down, right? Like anything, it could be anything that could be passed down. And so I'd love to be a beacon of light to say you can be the change in the trajectory and I'll, I'll go back before my mother passing, because you know, single mother, three children, I'm the youngest.

And my mother was struggling just, but I self-diagnose her as being paralyzed by society's prejudices and stereotypes and, and the fear of all that was out there that said that she was right by just being, a woman. Being a woman raised in poverty, being an African American woman, now being a woman, single mother with children.

Becca Powers: It's like 

Lia Valencia Key: all the negative. You imagine the burden 

Becca Powers: stereotypes. 

Lia Valencia Key: There's stereotypes on stereotypes on stereotypes is built around her, and that just paralyzed her. But she used her voice and she used her voice with her children, and I'm just so grateful because even in the midst of all that trauma, she would speak words of wisdom to my brother and my sister and I when we were babies.

And there was a moment. She broke her leg in several places and she could no longer do these little bit of jobs that she was trying to do to maintain this one bedroom basement apartment in a poverty neighborhood. So I remember this day vividly, and I share it because it was the first experience from poverty to destitute because she's trying to get her children back to the bedroom, apartment talk, bedroom, apartment.

We get to the door and there's a padlock on the door. And so now you've got a mother with three children with no place to take her kids. And that took us right to a homeless shelter. And we lived in this homeless shelter for several, several years, and I started to become my environment. But I remember the first day we landed in a homeless shelter because.

If you think about the past in your life, and yeah, there's a lot of experiences, but there are things that you can use for yourself. I was so young. I think I was about eight or seven, and my mother told us that in the homeless shelter there was crying, there was sorrow, there was profanity, cursing cots.

If anyone knows what a cot is, these hard metal beds one mother gets one cot. The whole family needs to ball jumble together on one cot. And so now we've got a gym room full of this single mothers imagine that experience. And in the midst of that, my mother looks down at her three children, myself, my sister and brother, and says, your predicament doesn't determine your destiny.

Becca Powers: Say it again, 

Lia Valencia Key: was the power that was light that was speaking. So even though she couldn't physically move, she used her voice to like as a last feeding effort throughout her life to like pour out into her children. And so fast forward several years, we were in this homeless shelter. I was becoming, everything that I was around, it was negative.

I was negative, I was everything. I was failing. And this was a second light in my life. I share these stories because there's pinnacles that can help shift you. 

Becca Powers: Yeah. 

Lia Valencia Key: And I'm coming back from school and I'm walking and I see my mother at the head of the homeless shelter and she's not looking happy. I get in front of her and I'm like, uhoh, this don't look good.

And she's like, Lia, do you wanna be a leader or follower? And I'm think. I don't understand. She's like, 'cause right now you're following and you're gonna follow right into everything that we're in, everything that's around you. Or do you wanna be a leader, Lia? You have a light inside of you, you have a divine destiny.

There's a whisper calling you. All you have to do is look inside of you and choose it. And that moment was the initial breakthrough to understand the power of choice, because up to then I thought. Well, this is what I'm given, so this is what I am. And so someone's listening and not in that situation, but maybe you're in something and you're just doing it or you're following, or you're looking at social media, or you're looking at your friends or you're looking at your family circle and you're just being that.

And so I'd encourage you as a reminder, we kind of know these things, but sometime you need permission. I think humans need permission. That you do have rich choice. We all have a light inside of us. We all have a divine destiny outside of our predicament and our power. If you 

Becca Powers: give yourself permission to dream it, be it, do it right, 

Lia Valencia Key: a mission to choose it, unlock it, walk towards it against the grain against what your predicament is saying, 

Becca Powers: I am picking up so much of what you're putting down.

I love that your mom reinforce with these words and these little, you know, like one-liners that are deep, right? Like soul shifting, trajectory shifting things, because I've had those in my moments too, and you know, I know your, jewelry has a lot of times one word on it, joy or light or something. And I, I have faith tattooed on my wrist because.

Hey, I'm gonna have to get it. I'm gonna go get it. but my grandma did a lot of that same with me. I remember. So my, grandma was, you know, very Christian, never overly pushed it on me, although until like 13, I had to get confirmed and all that stuff. So I had to do what grandma said, but then I, I got my own choices and, you know, I'm still like, I would say spiritually Christian, but that's not my point.

My point is, is that. At five years old, I have no concept of religion, right? I don't have anything. My grandma puts a mustard seed in my hand, and you know how tiny the mustard seed really is? Like if you've ever held one, like it is tiny. And she says, Becca Ann, all you need is faith the size of a mustard seed and you can move mountains.

And I'm looking at her. What is she talking about? But also you know, you said 5, 6, 7, like these young ages, you know, without knowing that there's truth to these things that are being said, and I. 

Lia Valencia Key: And they're seeds like that is so good. Like your grandmother was planting a seed. 

Becca Powers: She 

Lia Valencia Key: did. 'cause she knew all you needed to do was digest it.

'cause one day it'll grow faith the size of a mustard seed. 

Becca Powers: She's like you. And then she says to me, she says, but that's not enough. And I'm like, my grandma was a spitfire. I love her. God bless her. She's on the other side now. But I love my Grammy. And she says to me, she's like. You also need to have faith in yourself.

Lia Valencia Key: Ooh. 

Becca Powers: Like that faith, like you can call on God, but you need to have that amount of faith in yourself. You never know when you're gonna need it. Right? And so as you're sharing your stories, I'm like, and like now, you know, like we're sharing in this dialogue that like, you know, you lost your mom.

You had to create your own path. When you're in your twenties, you end up having to be your own GPS because without your mom, like you just gotta figure shit out, right? And so I can't tell you that that moment from my grandma. Has almost been the reason I've sur not only survived, but thrived, right?

Like when I get down, I'm like, you know what? All I gotta do is have faith like in me that I can't, all I gotta do is have faith the size of a mustard seed and I'll find a way. and so anyway, I love that you're talking about this. I feel like I could interview you for hours and ask you something.

Oh 

Lia Valencia Key: good. Like 

Becca Powers: less time. But I just wanted to share that with you. 

Lia Valencia Key: I needed that because what we're saying is. The power of light filled words, the power of light filled words will change the trajectory of life. Yeah, 

Becca Powers: that's good. 

Lia Valencia Key: Things are beautiful hearts that spoke light into our lives through words when it had no correlation.

They just spoke it and so. Faith, the size of a mustard seed, and then faith within yourself is everything that I'm sure you and I utilize to find that little bit of light, to see the little bit of direction to go one millimeter forward, to get yourself to where you know you're supposed to be, and we all can do it.

That's why I love sharing. Just from being reminded of that. Like I can have faith, I can believe in myself just enough. 

Becca Powers: Yeah. I can lead, not follow. 

Lia Valencia Key: And that will move you to an action. 

Becca Powers: Right. and that piece too. You know, I was just saying like I hear in my head I'll lead not follow. Like that gives you that permission to be on the edge, think outside the box, be different.

Fold yourself into the constructive societal expectations. Right. you know, you were saying, we're divine. We are a divine, we are light. We were meant to be like, I go off on radiance because I feel like our radiance and my definition of it is like our gifts, our talents, our strengths, it's our special juice, right?

Yeah. Is our radiant. And it wasn't meant to be put in a box. It is meant to be uniquely brilliant. 

Lia Valencia Key: Yes. It's not meant to, I feel that like outside, we look outside of ourselves often for validation, confirmation, and direction, and there's a power when you shift inside. I look outside for inspiration.

Becca Powers: That's the same word. I was gonna speak over you, but didn't want to, 'cause I'm trying to be a good host, but that's the word I was thinking of 

Lia Valencia Key: outside for inspiration. Meaning there's proof that it's possible. We love proof. Proof is a great energizer to say, yes, my belief is true. Right? So I look outside for like, oh, they're doing that.

Oh, this is possible. Oh, that's done. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But now I go inside to say both. What's my direction? What's my truth? Where am I supposed to be? Who am I supposed to be hanging out with? What conversations am I supposed to be having? How should I be talking to myself? It's all inside of you. And then I listen to that for direction, and then I go back outside to say, oh yeah, okay, now.

Someone had to have done it because there's not much new under the sun. Like this is my truth. Now, is there someone who's done it okay? Oh, they do it this way. Okay, but now what's my way? And these, when you keep playing inside, outside, and inside is your truth. Another I love my aunt used to say, when we talk about light filled words, she would say, Lia Valencia.

The truth will set you free. And I'm like, Hmm. Because I would lie. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Yeah. You know, trying to get away. But now what I understand about the truth will set you free is when you really. Know the truth. Even the hard consequence will be stomachable to get you to where you're supposed to be.

It will be freeing to least worry. It will be peace because you know it's defined in poorness of whatever the truth is that you're looking for. It will set you free because you can walk your own path when you know it's true for yourself. And those that powerful. 

Becca Powers: I have the goosebumps head to toe. I'm like, God, and the thing about, I love that you said that, like really considering the truth helps you, not even brace, but understand the impact of things.

Right? Because I think so many times. When we live in the facade or we're lying to ourselves, and I mean, if you're outward lying and to other people, that's an integrity thing. gotta go, yeah, you gotta go clean that up. Okay. know? But I think the biggest, misstep we can make is that lie to ourselves.

because, you know, as you're saying, the truth will set you free. Well, when you tap into your light, when you tap into your truth, not only does it set you free. You get to What I'm trying to say is you do have consequences. There are things, and I wanna play off that, but this weight comes off of you because you have an understanding that that's the path.

Lia Valencia Key: Yes. 

Becca Powers: You know that I have to walk through this fire. It is going to burn me, but you know what I got fireproof gel on. I might just get a little blister. 

Lia Valencia Key: Yes, It's but, and it's gonna be scary, but I'm just gonna walk through it. 

because that's The truth The truth will set you free because it can relieve the torment of it.

Becca Powers: That's what I'm trying. Yes. Thank 

Lia Valencia Key: you. Right. Like the consequence, the thing, the pain that you may have to go through, the burden that you may have to bear will still be there if that is part of that truth. But you know that Okay. Like you said, well. This has to be done. This is part of that journey, that trajectory.

Yes. To get me to the answer. For example, I 

Becca Powers: knew that 

Lia Valencia Key: my truth wasn't the predicament I lived in, so we lived in a homeless shelter, then moved to a housing project, very similar to a homeless shelter. And you know, I was just around a lot of stuff because the environment, you know. You weren't given much, so then you didn't believe in yourself much, right?

Because the environment was set up to not believe it was set up for that. And so I knew that I was destined for something different, and so much so that I went back and I just start learning. I just start asking, how can I see different things, learn different things? And I realized that education was a powerful key.

Learning. You know, the first part of education, of course is school, but now education as a whole, learning as much as you can. And so I just started doing that and I started getting good grades and I got all the way up to the point where it was college time and I got accepted into college. And I come home and I tell my mom, I'm excited.

I'm like, I got accepted into college. And then she's like, oh. And I'm thinking like, why is she not excited? Like, here we go. Like, 

Becca Powers: like, 

Lia Valencia Key: mom, bottom life, shoot, you're destiny. Like, I'm living it lady. Yeah, I'm 

Becca Powers: leaving right now. Look at me. 

Lia Valencia Key: Yeah, it's, and she's like, but you can't go. And I'm like, what? She said, because we couldn't even afford to get you there, let alone.

Book for whatever financial it takes. She'd never been to college. She didn't know what it needed, but she know it needs money. Right. and here's where the truth will set you. Free will come in. I heard her words and I was like, first of all, you told me to choose my light, so I'm gonna go on those first words.

Becca Powers: Yeah. I'm 

Lia Valencia Key: gonna choose many years you 

Becca Powers: said. Yeah. 

Lia Valencia Key: And I'm like, that's not true for me. That's not true for me. And I didn't know. What that looked like. But I knew that answer wasn't true for me, and so I left it there, and I just start sharing about going to college, never asking anyone for anything.

And so I'd love to share a key that I use. Speak your dreams in the world. Now, in a poverty mindset, the poverty mindset says, don't tell anybody. people they'll try to take your dream or they'll try to sabotage it. That's a poverty mindset because it tells you that you don't have ownership of your own dream.

True. But if you realize you own your dream, you own your destiny, and no one can take it, no one can kill it, but you, you're the only one that can take your dream. And so somehow divinely, I realized to just share my dreams and I'm sharing it just in conversation. And by speaking that out in the world, and I've done this all the way up to creating Valencia Key jewelry.

This has been my strategy. All been talking 

Becca Powers: about being a New York Times bestselling author. Like, I mean, I have a sign over here on the wall that I made when I was 29 years old and I'm 47. I've been the same way. I've been telling people I only meet New York Times. I'm only USA today right now. But mark my words, you'll 

Lia Valencia Key: see what And 

Becca Powers: New York Times, 

Lia Valencia Key: you're gonna be a New York Times bestseller.

It calls in, I feel, you can say the universe, you can say God, you can say divine. Whatever it is, that's the bigger power, higher than you, that you deserve to honor it as is gonna align it. And so one of my aunts showed up and said, I'll pay to get you to school. Another aunt said, oh, I'll get you the laptop.

Then I told the counselor, there's a financial funding for people that are under this income. I'm like, just start now. Was it easy? No. I was free because I was speaking my truth. If you speak your truth, you will get to your destiny. 

Becca Powers: Gosh. All right. We're at 30 minutes and I can talk to you forever. I love it.

and just audience today, if you hear any snoring in the background, that's my French Bulldogs, which you guys have heard before. I just, Bella, she'd be, snoring right now. So I just wanted to make sure, like, hey, weird sounds. but Lia, it was such an honor to spend 30 minutes with you. I feel really, like I could do a three hour podcast and we would both just leave like so energized.

It's ridiculous. I'm already like ear to ear or ear to ear smiling. Yeah, that's, the right words. But before we end, I definitely wanna end, end with you sharing how the audience can find your jewelry. Stay in touch with you. I mean, you're a light of inspiration and a joy, this whole episode's been empowering.

I can feel it, but let's give them a message of empowerment. What would you like to say to the audience if you were to say it in a summarized statement of some kind? 

Lia Valencia Key: All things are possible. Lead with light. I'm working on this concept of light positioning strategy, and if you position your life in a strategic way of light, it will shine you to every dream that's inside of you.

Now, the key is, 

Becca Powers: I'm gonna walk away

Lia Valencia Key: are the keys to, is there's millimeter actions that have to happen. When you have faith the size of a mustard seed, and you believe and have faith in yourself the size of a mustard seed, that belief in that faith when it's true belief and true faith. If you want the formula, faith plus belief equals millimeter actions that 

Becca Powers: will 

Lia Valencia Key: lead you all the way to all of your dreams.

Becca Powers: Gosh. I'm just, I'm obsessed with you. You're fabulous. Thank you for bringing your light to the empowered half hour. Can you please share with the audience how they can find you and stay in touch? 

Lia Valencia Key: Yes, please. I love all of these nuggets and words and messages. There are keys. They're something that you need to be reminded of sometimes 'cause life, life wear a piece of Valencia key jewelry.

It's a www, I don't even know if you need the W's anymore. I'm old. Valencia key.com, V-A-L-E-N-C-I-A-K-E y.com. Sign up, stay connected with me. I love sharing little light messages and then wear your message because when it gets really hard, it'll be just reminders to unlock. And then I love being on, I'm primarily on Instagram, Lia Valencia key, and then Valencia Key Design.

I just love you all and I it we're heart connected. 

Becca Powers: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Well, thank you again for being a guest. It was a complete honor.