Episode 53: Finding Yourself Inside Your Life - Joy Within Limitations

Episode 53: Finding Yourself Inside Your Life - Joy Within Limitations

On this episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom, Africa O. opens month two of season seven with one of her most layered and honest conversations yet. The theme of finding yourself inside your life takes on a deeper, more grounded dimension here as Africa explores what it truly means to choose joy — not in the absence of limitations, but in full acknowledgment of them.

This episode centers on joy as an intentional practice and examines the very real, systemic barriers that can make that practice harder… as a woman, as a Black woman, and as a mother. Africa doesn’t look away from those realities. She names them, grounds them in research, and then speaks to the power of choosing joy anyway.

Theme: Finding Yourself Inside Your Life (Month 2 — Cultivating Inner Joy)

Month two shifts the season’s focus inward toward cultivating inner joy as an intentional practice. This month’s conversations explore what joy actually looks like when it coexists with real limitations — not in spite of them, but alongside them. Joy, Africa argues, is not a feeling you wait to arrive. It is something you choose, consistently and unapologetically, within the life you are already living.

Quote

“Move through life as if there aren’t limitations around you, just within you.” — Author Unknown

Episode Summary

Africa opens with a beautiful personal moment… her four-year-old daughter approached her the morning after a craft project to say, unprompted, that doing activities together makes her happy. It’s a small moment, but a meaningful one: an example of joy showing up simply, in the middle of an ordinary day. Africa uses it to set the tone for everything that follows.

The episode quote… “Move through life as if there aren’t limitations around you, just within you”... is not, Africa clarifies, a call to deny reality. It is an invitation to shift your mental posture. Limitations are real. They exist outside of us. But the quote asks us to stop letting external limitations become the ceiling on our inner experience. Joy, the episode argues, can coexist with constraint. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Africa then walks through her own layered experience of navigating limitations… first as a woman, then as a Black woman, and then as a mother. On the gender pay gap, she draws on personal experience and cites research from the National Women’s Law Center, noting that as of 2024, women earn an average of 81 cents for every dollar earned by men — a gap that compounds across retirement security, healthcare access, investing, and everyday financial decisions. She makes the point clearly: these are not abstract statistics. They shape the texture of daily life.

She then adds the layer of being a Black woman — naming the stereotypes that have followed Black women from slavery into the present day: the angry Black woman, the strong Black woman, the Jezebel trope. Africa is careful to distinguish stereotypes from truth: these are opinions, not facts, but they carry real impact. They shape professional outcomes, personal safety, credibility, and emotional labor. She connects this historical thread to the Me Too movement, noting that it was founded by a Black woman specifically to center the safety and vulnerability of Black women.

Finally, she speaks to the experience of being a Black mother… referencing Census Bureau data that shows Black women are more likely to work full time, more likely to experience involuntary part-time work, and less likely to have the flexibility to step back during seasons of motherhood. She speaks personally about job loss and the absence of choice when it comes to balancing career and caregiving.

But the episode doesn’t stay there. Africa closes by returning to the quote and affirming what she knows to be true from her own journey: acknowledging limitations is not the same as being defined by them. Joy is still available. It requires intention, it requires choice, and it requires refusing to let external barriers become internal ones. She will choose joy unapologetically… and she invites listeners to do the same.

Episode Highlights

•Introducing month two of season seven: cultivating inner joy as an intentional practice

•A tender moment with her four-year-old daughter as an example of joy showing up simply

•Unpacking the episode quote: limitations are real, but joy can coexist with them

•The gender pay gap, personal experience and 2024 research from the National Women’s Law Center (81 cents on the dollar)

•How the pay gap compounds across retirement, healthcare, investing, and everyday life

•Stereotypes affecting Black women: the angry Black woman, the strong Black woman, the Jezebel trope and their historical roots

•Stereotypes as opinions, not facts — but ones that still carry real impact on outcomes

•The Me Too movement and its origins in centering the safety of Black women

•Census Bureau data on Black women, Black mothers, and barriers to flexible or stable employment

•The difference between acknowledging limitations and being defined by them

•Choosing joy intentionally and unapologetically, even within real constraints

Make sure you explore more health & wellness insights and coaching opportunities at liveafricao.com. Stay connected for more episodes of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom.

Please be sure to rate and review the podcast. You are greatly appreciated. 

Thank you!

Transcript

A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom

Episode 53 — Full Transcript

Joy Within Limitations

[INTRO]

Welcome to A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. I’m Africa O., your host and Wellness Guide. Each episode, I open with a quote that has shaped my own life journey in a positive way and explore how that same wisdom can uplift and do the same for you. This is a space for moms who are ready to reconnect with who they are beyond motherhood. Pull up a chair, pour your coffee. Let’s get into it.

[EPISODE]

Hello there. Welcome to another episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. I’m your host, Africa O., and as always, I feel honored, I feel blessed, and I feel very moved to be here having this honest conversation with you in this safe space.

If you are new here, my name is Africa. I go by Africa O. A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom is a podcast that exists under my wellness space, Live Africa O., which essentially stands for Live Africa O.’s Wellness Journey. It is my hope that you don’t live my journey exactly..  we all have our own unique journeys that God has created for us in this lifetime. But I hope that through my journey, you can find inspiration and positive insights that you can take and integrate into your own. I am not an expert. I am simply a holistic wellness guide, an individual first, and a mother, a wife, and so many other things to so many people. I am just hoping that through prioritizing my mental wellness and movement, I can really show up fully for myself and, as a result, for everyone else. If any of that sounds intriguing to you, stay right where you are. There is a lot of good here for you.

We are in month two. Each of my seasons is broken out into two months, and we are still within season seven, where the theme is finding yourself inside your life. I think that is a perfect frame for discovering how to prioritize yourself amid all of the competing priorities and all of the people and things that are constantly vying for your attention. In this particular month, I really want to focus on cultivating inner joy and exploring quotes that speak to that… as well as joy being an intentional practice with real limitations.

Before I jump into this episode, I want to say thank you again for listening. I am a one-woman show, and I truly value and appreciate your support. Listening, re-sharing, and leaving a review really helps this podcast and other wellness content continue to reach people like you. It also motivates me and supports me in doing more work like this. If you feel inclined to support further, visit buymeacoffee.com to explore other ways you can support my podcast and wellness space overall.

One last thing before I dive in. I occasionally like to share something that is really lifting my spirits. Today I want to share something that is just bringing me so much joy. My daughter is four years old, she’s a Pisces, Pisces energy all day… and she is so beautiful, intelligent, and caring. I know all parents say this about their children, and I get it. But I say it to express real gratitude for the child that I have.

I also want to say how wonderful it feels when they express gratitude back to you. As many of you know, toddlers are developmentally wired to make things about themselves and that is 100% appropriate for their stage. So sometimes, as a parent, you can find yourself feeling a little under-appreciated. Which is exactly why I want to share this moment.

My daughter and I have been working on what we’re calling “the ship”…  a really big cardboard box we pieced together and have been covering in stickers, coloring, and painting. It is honestly gigantic and probably belongs in the garage at this point, but we are enjoying it. The morning after we worked on it together, she walked up to me while I was making breakfast and said, “Mommy, I really enjoy doing activities with you. It makes me so happy.” If you could have seen the joy on her face… the pearly whites, the cheeks, the sincerity in her eyes… it just made me feel genuinely happy. It added to my joy in a real way. I wanted to share that.

Alright, getting into today’s episode. I am a holistic wellness guide, not an expert. Anything I share is reflective, not prescriptive. Take what resonates. That’s all.

I love to open with a quote, as many of you who have been here from the beginning know. This particular quote… I unfortunately do not know the source, and I’m not even sure exactly where I first encountered it, but I wrote it down in my notepad and it says this:

Move through life as if there aren’t limitations around you, just within you.

Even though this quote can come across a certain way at first read, if you really sit with it and process it, it’s actually saying… at least to me… that you cannot deny the limitations in your life. Limitations are real. However, the quote highlights them in a way that says: acknowledge them, and also acknowledge that joy exists within them. Limitations and joy can coexist. That is what I want to talk about today: how that shows up in my life as an individual, as a Black woman, and as a mother.

I think there came a point in my life where I had to understand that joy is a choice in how I move through what is already real. There are ups and downs. There are constraints. But joy is going to have to be something I choose as I move through all of it. I keep coming back to the word “choice” because that is really significant for me when I think about this quote and my life.

As a woman, for example, something I think is very relatable is the gender pay gap. I have a personal experience with this. My best friend is male and very forthcoming about his pay, and we worked for the same company. Through a colleague of his…  someone who felt comfortable sharing because of their closeness with my friend, I was able to learn that the pay difference was real. Not with my friend, he had been at the company longer than me, but with one of his friends. Who I guess felt comfortalble with sharing because my friend and him were so close. But the research confirms what so many of us already know. If you visit the National Women’s Law Center, they address this explicitly. As of a 2024 study, women earn an average of 81 cents for every dollar that men earn. And that number has been lower before.

This is not about a different skill set, a different level of competency, education, or work experience. It is simply based on gender. And the downstream impact of that gap touches everything: retirement security, healthcare access, the ability to invest, save, and spend. On an everyday level, it affects a woman’s ability to purchase groceries, access gym memberships, take vacations, rest. It shapes what leisure looks like and what wealth-building looks like… now and in the future. Think about what an additional 19 cents on every dollar could mean over a lifetime. It really does make a difference.

It’s also important to remember that limitations, at least in my experience and based on research I’ve done, are often systemic. They are not abstract. Now let’s add on the layer of being a Black woman.

Let’s talk about stereotypes first. Stereotypes are opinions, not facts. However, they still have the power to influence real outcomes. Some people genuinely live by stereotypes — and that shapes the environments and institutions that affect our lives.

Many of us are familiar with the stereotype of the angry Black woman… one that is honestly rooted in slavery, used to justify harm and the dehumanization of Black women, and one that still affects how Black women are perceived today. Then there is the strong Black woman stereotype. Being strong is empowering, yes. But this stereotype also carries harm… going back to slavery, where strength was used to justify brutal labor and abuse. In present day, it can still permeate spaces in ways that enable similar power structures. It leads to over-functioning, emotional suppression, and an impossible pressure to handle everything alone.

There is also the Jezebel trope… centered around the hyper-sexualization of Black women… still pervasive in media and other spaces today. It, too, derives from the historical justification of abuse of enslaved Black women. When you think about how relevant some of these stereotypes remain, consider the Me Too movement. That movement was started by a Black woman who wanted to raise awareness around the safety of Black women and the urgency of that cause. It grew to advocate for women broadly, but it was very important to center the Black woman, because historically we are at some of the highest levels of vulnerability when it comes to safety, credibility, and the many things that can limit and harm us.

Now let’s add the layer of being a Black mother. When you look at Census Bureau data, you will see a high number of Black women working full time. But you will also see a significantly high rate of Black women… including Black mothers… involuntarily working part time or losing their jobs altogether. The choice to step back, to work part time during a season of motherhood, to be more available for their children, is a choice that is not as readily available to Black women and Black mothers. I have personally experienced this — job loss, working grueling hours, and not having the luxury to choose a different arrangement during seasons when I needed it.

Let me bring all of these layers together. These are not imagined barriers. Everything I’ve mentioned is real, and all of it influences limitations within the workplace, around decisions, within legal outcomes, and within personal safety. These limitations are real, and they shape the conditions I live in.

[TAKEAWAY]

In closing, I want to share this. Stereotypes equal opinions. If you take away one thing from this episode, let it be that. They are not truths, but they still carry impact. They are part of your reality, and I will not stand here and dismiss that.

I refuse to let stereotypes define my story. Throughout my wellness journey, I have noticed a pattern: even the things that hurt, even the things that feel limiting… I acknowledge them. I do not believe it is healthy or conducive to your wellness journey to live in oblivion about the existence of something harmful. Acknowledging it is not the same as surrendering to it.

I find it very valuable to make the choice to refuse to let those harmful things define the end of my story. I have too much life to live. I am not going to let these limitations hold me back. Joy is still available. So whatever limitations you are navigating right now, remember…  joy is still available despite them.

I tell myself this today, and I have told myself this many times before: I will choose joy unapologetically. I just have to be more intentional in choosing it. That’s the key.

Let’s circle back to the quote one last time: Move through life as if there aren’t limitations around you, just within you. Very powerful. Very true.

[CLOSING]

As always, I enjoy having this conversation with you. I hope you have taken away something that adds a little something to your day, something to your week. That’s what this community is about. We uplift each other. I am so excited to talk with you again on the next episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. Stay tuned.

That’s a wrap on today’s episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. I hope this quote sat with you the way it sat with me. And if it challenged you, even just a little… good. That’s where the growth lives. You showed up for yourself today, and that matters.

If you’re ready to continue this journey, come find me at liveafricao.com. Until next time… you are seen, you are safe, and your joy is worth pursuing.